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B M 3<5D 135

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HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY,

BOSTON AND NEW YORK.

AMONG MY BOOKS

BY

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.

BOSTON:
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY.

New York: 11 East Seventeenth Street.

1888.

Univ. library, Univ. Catif., Santa Cru*

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1870, by

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL,
in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts.

THIRTIETH EDITION.

"PS

23

To F. D. L.

Love comes and goes with music in his feet,
And tunes young pulses to his roundelays ;

Love brings thee this : will it persuade thee, Sweet,
That he turns proser when he comes and stays?

CONTENTS.

DPYDEN

PlGB

1

WITCHCRAFT

SHAKESPEARE ONCE MORE 151

NEW ENGLAND Two CENTURIES AGO

LESSING • • • ' 291

ROUSSEAU AND THE SENTIMENTALISTS ... 349

DRYDEN.*

BENVENUTO CELLINI tells us that when, in his boy-
hood, he saw a salamander come out of the fire, his
grandfather forthwith gave him a sound beating, that he
might the better remember so unique a prodigy. Though
perhaps in this case the rod had another application
than the autobiographer chooses to disclose, and was
intended to fix in the pupil's mind a lesson of veracity
rather than of science, the testimony to its mnemonic
virtue remains. Nay, so universally was it once believed
that the senses, and through them the faculties of obser-
vation and retention, were quickened by an irritation of
the cuticle, that in France it was customary to whip the
children annually at the boundaries of the parish, lest
the true place of them might ever be lost through neg-
lect of so inexpensive a mordant for the memory. From
this practice the older school of critics would seem to

* The Dramatick Works of JOHN DRYDEN, ESQ. In six volumes.
London: Printed for Jacob Tonson, in the Strand. MDCCXXXV.
18mo.

The Critical and Miscellaneous Prose- Works of JOHN DRYDEN, now
first collected. With Notes and Illustrations. An Account of the Life
and Writings of the Author, grounded on Original and Authentick Docu-
ments; and a Collection of his Letters, the greatest Part of which has
never before been published. By EDMUND MALONE, ESQ. London:
T. Cadell and W. Davies, in the Strand. 4 vols. Svo.

The Poetical Works of JOHN DRYDEN. (Edited by MITFORD.J
London: W. Pickering. 1832. 6 vols. 18mo.

1 A.

2 DRYDEN.

have taken a hint for keeping fixed the limits of good
taste, and what was somewhat vaguely called classical
English. To mark these limits in poetry, they set up
as Hermse the images they had made to them of Dryden,
of Pope, and later of Goldsmith. Here they solemnly
castigated every new aspirant in verse, who in turn per-
formed the same function for the next generation, thus
helping to keep always sacred and immovable the ne plus
ultra alike of inspiration and of the vocabulary. Though
no two natures were ever much more unlike than those
of Dryden and Pope, and again of Pope and Goldsmith,
and no two styles, except in such externals as could be
easily caught and copied, yet it was the fashion, down
even to the last generation, to advise young writers to
form themselves, as it was called, on these excellent
models. Wordsworth himself began in this school ; and
though there were glimpses, here and there, of a direct
study of nature, yet most of the epithets in his earlier
pieces were of the traditional kind so fatal to poetry dur-
ing great part of the last century ; and he indulged in
that alphabetic personification which enlivens all such
words as Hunger, Solitude, Freedom, by the easy magic
of an initial capital.

44 Where the green apple shrivels on the spray,
And pines the unripened pear in summer's kindliest ray,
Even here Content has fixed her smiling reign
With Independence, child of high Disdain.
Exulting 'mid the winter of the skies,
Shy as the jealous chamois, Freedom flies,
And often grasps her sword, and often eyes."

Here we have every characteristic of the artificial method,
even to the triplet, which Swift hated so heartily as "a
vicious way of rhyming wherewith Mr. Dryden abounded,
imitated by all the bad versifiers of Charles the Second's
reign." Wordsworth became, indeed, very early the
leader of reform ; but, like Wesley, he endeavored a re-

DRYDEN. 3

form within the Establishment. Purifying the substance,
he retained the outward forms with a feeling rather than
conviction that, in poetry, substance and form are but
manifestations of the same inward life, the one fused
into the other in the vivid heat of their common expres-
sion. Wordsworth could never wholly shake off the in-
fluence of the century into which he was born. He
began by proposing a reform of the ritual, but it went
no further than an attempt to get rid of the words of
Latin original where the meaning was as well or better
given in derivatives of the Saxon. He would have
stricken out the " assemble " and left the " meet to-
gether." Like Wesley, he might be compelled by neces-
sity to a breach of the canon ; but, like him, he was
never a willing schismatic, and his singing robes were
the full and flowing canonicals of the church by law
established. Inspiration makes short work with the
usage of the best authors and ready-made elegances of
diction ; but where Wordsworth is not possessed by his
demon, as Moliere said of Corneille, he equals Thomson
in verbiage, out-Miltons Milton in artifice of style, and
Latinizes his diction beyond Dryden. The fact was, that
he took up his early opinions on instinct, and insensibly
modified them as he studied the masters of what may
be called the Middle Period of English verse.* As a
young man, he disparaged Virgil (" We talked a great
deal of nonsense in those days," he said when taken to
task for it later in life) ; at fifty-nine he translated three
books of the ^Eneid, in emulation of Dryden, though
falling far short of him in everything but closeness, as
he seems, after a few years, to have been convinced.
Keats was the first resolute and wilful heretic, the true
founder of the modern school, which admits no cis-Eliza-

* His " Character of a Happy Warrior " (1806), one of his noblest
poems, has a dash of Dryden in it, — still more his "Epistle to Six
George Beaumont (1811)."

4 DRYDEN.

bethan authority save Milton, whose own English was
formed upon those earlier models. Keats denounced the
authors of that style which came in toward the close of
the seventeenth century, and reigned absolute through
the whole of the eighteenth, as

" A schism,

Nurtured by foppery and barbarism,
who went about

Holding a poor decrepit standard out,
Marked with most flimsy mottoes, and in large
The name of one Boileau! "

But Keats had never then * studied the writers of whom
he speaks so contemptuously, though he might have
profited by so doing. Boileau would at least have
taught him that flimsy would have been an apter epithet
for the standard than for the mottoes upon it. Dryden
was the author of that schism against which Keats so ve-
hemently asserts the claim of the orthodox teaching it
had displaced. He was far more just to Boileau, of
whom Keats had probably never read a word. " If I
would only cross the seas," he says, " I might find in
France a living Horace and a Juvenal in the person of
the admirable Boileau, whose numbers are excellent,
whose expressions are noble, whose thoughts are just,
whose language is pure, whose satire is pointed, and
whose sense is just. What he borrows from the an-
cients he repays with usury of his own, in coin as good
and almost as universally valuable." f

Dryden has now been in his grave nearly a hundred
and seventy years ; in the second class of English poets
perhaps no one stands, on the whole, so high as he ;
during his lifetime, in spite of jealousy, detraction, un-
popular politics, and a suspicious change of faith, his
pre-eminence was conceded; he was the earliest com-

* He studied Dryden's versification before writing his " Lamia."
t On the Origin and Progress of Satire. See Johnson's counter
opinion in his life of Dryden.

DRYDKN. 5

plete type of the purely literary man, in the modern
sense ; there is a singular unanimity in allowing him a
certain claim to greatness which would be denied to men
as famous and more read, — to Pope or Swift, for exam-
ple j he is supposed, in some way or other, to have re-
formed English poetry. It is now about half a century
since the only uniform edition of his works was edited
by Scott. No library is complete without him, no name
is more familiar than his, and yet it may be suspected
that few writers are more thoroughly buried in that
great cemetery of the " British Poets/' If contempo-
rary reputation be often deceitful, posthumous fame may
be generally trusted, for it is a verdict made up of the
suffrages of the select men in succeeding generations.
This verdict has been as good as unanimous in favor of
Dryden. It is, perhaps, worth while to take a fresh ob-
servation of him, to consider him neither as warning
nor example, but to endeavor to make out what it is
that has given so lofty and firm a position to one of the
most unequal, inconsistent, and faulty writers that ever
lived. He is a curious example of what we often re-
mark of the living, but rarely of the dead, — that they
get credit for what they might be quite as much as for
what they are, — and posterity has applied to him one
of his own rules of criticism, judging him by the best
rather than the average of his achievement, a thing pos'
terity is seldom wont to do. On the losing side in poli-
tics, it is true of his polemical writings as of Burke' s, —
whom in many respects he resembles, and especially in
that supreme quality of a reasoner, that his mind gath-
ers not only heat, but clearness and expansion, by its
own motion, — that they have won his battle for him in
the judgment of after times.

To us, looking back at him, he gradually becomes a
singularly interesting and even picturesque figure. He

6 DRYDEN.

is, in more senses than one, in language, in turn of
thought, in style of mind, in the direction of his activ-
ity, the first of the moderns. He is the first literary
man who was also a man of the world, as we under-
stand the term. He succeeded Ben Jonson as the ac-
knowledged dictator of wit and criticism, as Dr. Johnson,
after nearly the same interval, succeeded him. All ages
are, in some sense, ages of transition ; but there are times
when the transition is more marked, more rapid ; and it
is, perhaps, an ill fortune for a man of letters to arrive
at maturity during such a period, still more to represent
in himself the change that is going on, and to be an
efficient cause in bringing it about. Unless, like Goethe,
he is of a singularly uncontemporaneous nature, capable
of being tutta in se romita, and of running parallel with
his time rather than being sucked into its current, he will
be thwarted in that harmonious development of native
force which has so much to do with its steady and suc-
cessful application. Dryden suffered, no doubt, in this
way. Though in creed he seems to have drifted back-
ward in an eddy of the general current ; yet of the in-
tellectual movement of the time, so far certainly as
literature shared in it, he could say, with ^Eneas, not
only that he saw, but that himself was a great part of
it. That movement was, on the whole, a downward one,
from faith to scepticism, from enthusiasm to cynicism,
from the imagination to the understanding. It was in
a direction altogether away from those springs of imagi-
nation and faith at which they of the last age had slaked
the thirst or renewed the vigor of their souls. Dryden
himself recognized that indefinable and gregarious in-
fluence which we call nowadays the Spirit of the Age,
when he said that " every Age has a kind of universal
Genius." * He had also a just notion of that in which

* Essay on Dramatick Poesy.

DRYDEN. 7

he lived ; ior ho remarks, incidentally, that " all know-
ing ages are naturally sceptic and not at all bigoted,
which, if I am not much deceived, is the proper charac-
ter of our own." * It may be conceived that he was
even painfully half-aware of having fallen upon a time
incapable, not merely of a great poet, but perhaps of
any poet at all ; for nothing is so sensitive to the chill
of a sceptical atmosphere as that enthusiasm which, if
it be not genius, is at least the beautiful illusion that
saves it from the baffling quibbles of self-consciousness.
Thrice unhappy he who, born to see things as they
might be, is schooled by circumstances to see them as
people say they are, — to read God in a prose translation.
Such was Dryden's lot, and such, for a good part of his
days, it was by his own choice. He who was of a stat-
ure to snatch the torch of life that flashes from lifted
hand to hand along the generations, over the heads of
inferior men, chose rather to be a link-boy to the stews.
As a writer for the stage, he deliberately adopted and
repeatedly reaffirmed the maxim that

" He who lives to please, must please to live."

Without earnest convictions, no great or sound literature
is conceivable. But if Dryden mostly wanted that in-
spiration which comes of belief in and devotion to
something nobler and more abiding than the present
moment and its petulant need, he had, at least, the next
best thing to that, — a thorough faith in himself. He
was, moreover, a man of singularly open soul, and of a
temper self-confident enough to be candid even with
himself. His mind was growing to the last, his judg-
ment widening and deepening, his artistic sense refining
itself more and more. He confessed his errors, and was
not ashamed to retrace his steps in search of that bet-

* Life of Lucian.

8 DRYDEN.

ter knowledge which the omniscience of superficial study
had disparaged. Surely an intellect that is still pliable
at seventy is a phenomenon as interesting as it is rare.
But at whatever period of his life we look at Dryden,
and whatever, for the moment, may have been his poetic
creed, there was something in the nature of the man
that would not be wholly subdued to what it worked in.
There are continual glimpses of something in him great-
er than he, hints of possibilities finer than anything he
has done. You feel that the whole of him was better
than any random specimens, though of his best, seem to
prove. Incessu patet, he has by times the large stride
of the elder race, though it sinks too often into the
slouch of a man who has seen better days. His grand
air may, in part, spring from a habit of easy superiority
to his competitors ; but must also, in part, be ascribed
to an innate dignity of character. That this pre-emi-
nence should have been so generally admitted, during
his life, can only be explained by a bottom of good
sense, kindliness, and sound judgment, whose solid
worth could afford that many a flurry of vanity, petu-
lance, and even error should flit across the surface and
be forgotten. Whatever else Dryden may have been,
the last and abiding impression of him is, that he was
thoroughly manly ; and while it may be disputed wheth-
er he was a great poet, it may be said of him, as Words-
worth said of Burke, that " he was by far the greatest
man of his age, not only abounding in knowledge him-
self, but feeding, in various directions, his most able con-
temporaries." *

Dryden was born in 1631. He was accordingly six
years old when Jonson died, was nearly a quarter of
a century younger than Milton, and may have personally

* " The great man must have that intellect which puts in motion
the intellect of others." — LANDOR, Im. Con., Diogenes and Plato.

DRYDEN. 9

known Bishop Hall, the first English satirist, who was
living till 1656. On the other side, he was older than
Swift by thirty-six, than Addison by forty-one, and than
Pope by fifty-seven years. Dennis says that " Dryden,
for the last ten years of his life, was much acquainted
with Addison, and drank with him more than he ever
used to do, probably so far as to hasten his end," being
commonly " an extreme sober man." Pope tell us that,
in his twelfth year, he " saw Dryden," perhaps at Will's,
perhaps in the street, as Scott did Burns. Dryden him>
self visited Milton now and then, and was intimate with
Davenant, who could tell him of Fletcher and Jonson
from personal recollection. Thus he stands between the
age before and that which followed him, giving a hand
to each. His father was a country clergyman, of Puri-
tan leanings, a younger son of an ancient county family.
The Puritanism is thought to have come in with the
poet's great-grandfather, who made in his will the some-
what singular statement that he was "assured by the Holy
Ghost that he was elect of God." It would appear from
this that Dryden's self-confidence was an inheritance.
The solid quality of his mind showed itself early. He him-
self tells us that he had read Polybius " in English, with
the pleasure of a boy, before he was ten years of age, and
yet even then had some dark notions of the prudence with
which he conducted his design" * The concluding words
are very characteristic, even if Dryden, as men common-
ly do, interpreted his boyish turn of mind by later self-
knowledge. We thus get a glimpse of him browsing
— for, like Johnson, Burke, and the full as distin-
guished from the learned men, he was always a random
reader f — in his father's library, and painfully culling

* Character of Polybius (1692).

t " For my own part, who must confess it to my shame that I never
read anything but for pleasure." Life of Plutarch (1683).
1*

10 DRYDEN.

here and there a spray of his own proper nutriment
from among the stubs and thorns of Puritan divinity.
After such schooling as could be had in the country,
he was sent up to Westminster School, then under the
headship of the celebrated Dr. Busby. Here he made
his first essays in verse, translating, among other school
exercises of the same kind, the third satire of Persius.
In 1650 he was entered at Trinity College, Cambridge,
and remained there for seven years. The only record
of his college life is a discipline imposed, in 1652, for
"disobedience to the Vice-Master, and contumacy in
taking his punishment, inflicted by him." Whether this
punishment was corporeal, as Johnson insinuates in the
similar case of Milton, we are ignorant. He certainly
retained no very fond recollection of his Alma Mater, for
in his " Prologue to the University of Oxford " he says : —

" Oxford to him a dearer name shall he
Than his own mother university;
Thebes did his green, unknowing youth engage,
He chooses Athens in his riper age."

By the death of his father, in 1654, he came into pos-
session of a small estate of sixty pounds a year, from
which, however, a third must be deducted, for his moth-
er's dower, till 1676. After leaving Cambridge, he be-
came secretary to his near relative, Sir Gilbert Pickering,
at that time Cromwell's chamberlain, and a member of
his Upper House. In 1670 he succeeded Davcnant as
Poet Laureate,* and Howell as Historiographer, with a
yearly salary of two hundred pounds. This place he
lost at the Revolution, and had the mortification to see
his old enemy and butt, Shadwell, promoted to it, as the
best poet the Whig party could muster. If William was

* Gray says petulantly enough that " Dryden was as disgraceful to
the office, from his character, as the poorest scribbler could have
been from his verses." — GRAY toMAsox, 19th December, 1767.

DRYDEN. 11

obliged to read the verses of his official minstrel, Dryden
was more than avenged. From 1G88 to his death,
twelve years later, he earned his bread manfully by his
pen, without any mean complaining, and with no allu-
sion to his fallen fortunes that is not dignified and
touching. These latter years, during which he was his
own man again, were probably the happiest of his life.
In 1664 or 1665 he married Lady Elizabeth Howard,
daughter of the Earl of Berkshire. About a hundred
pounds a year were thus added to his income. The
marriage is said not to have been a happy one, and per-
haps it was not, for his wife was apparently a weak-
minded woman ; but the inference from the internal evi-
dence of Dryden's plays, as of Shakespeare's, is very
untrustworthy, ridicule of marriage having always been
a common stock in trade of the comic writers.

The earliest of his verses that have come down to us
were written upon the death of Lord Hastings, and are
as bad as they can be, — a kind of parody on the worst
of Donne. They have every fault of his manner, with-
out a hint of the subtile and often profound thought
that more than redeems it. As the Doctor himself
would have said, here is Donne outdone. The young
nobleman died of the small-pox, and Dryden exclaims
pathetically, —

" Was there no milder way than the small-pox,
The very filthiness of Pandora's box? "

He compares the pustules to " rosebuds stuck i' the
lily skin about," and says that

" Each little pimple had a tear in it
To wail the fault its rising did commit."

But he has not done his worst yet, by a great deal.
What follows is even finer : —

" No comet need foretell his change drew on,
Whose corpse might seem a constellation.

12 DRYDEN.

0, had he died of old, how great a strife

Had been who from his death should draw their life!

Who should, by one rich draught, become whate'er

Seneca, Cato, Numa, Caesar, were,

Learned, virtuous, pious, great, and have by this

An universal metempsychosis !

Must all these aged sires in one funeral

Expire? all die in one so young, so small? "

It is said that one of Allston's early pictures was
brought to him, after he had long forgotten it, and his
opinion asked as to the wisdom of the young artist's per-
severing in the career he had chosen. Allston advised
his quitting it forthwith as hopeless. Could the same
experiment have been tried with these verses upon Dry-
den, can any one doubt that his counsel would have
been the same 1 It should be remembered, however,
that he was barely turned eighteen when they were
written, and the tendency of his style is noticeable in so
early an abandonment of the participial ed in learned and
aged. In the next year he appears again in some
commendatory verses prefixed to the sacred epigrams of
his friend, John Hoddesdon. In these he speaks of the
author as a

" Young eaglet, who, thy nest thus soon forsook,
So lofty and divine a course hast took
As all admire, before the down begin
To peep, as yet, upon thy smoother chin."

Here is almost every fault which Dryden's later
nicety would have condemned. But perhaps there is
no schooling so good for an author as his own youthful
indiscretions. After this effort Dryden seems to have
lain fallow for ten years, and then he at length reappears
in thirty-seven " heroic stanzas " on the death of Crom-
well. The versification is smoother, but the conceits
are there again, though in a milder form. The verse is
modelled after " Gondibert." A single image from na-

DRYDEN. 13

ture (he was almost always happy in these) gives some
hint of the maturer Dryden : —

" Arid wars, like mists that rise against the sun,
Made him but greater seem, not greater grow."

Two other verses,

" And the isle, when her protecting genius went,
Upon his obsequies loud sighs conferred,"

are interesting, because they show that he had been
studying the early poems of Milton. He has contrived
to bury under a rubbish of verbiage one of the most
purely imaginative passages ever written by the great

Puritan poet.

" From haunted spring and dale,

Edged with poplar pale,
The parting genius is with sighing sent."

This is the more curious because, twenty-four years after-
wards, he says, in defending rhyme : " Whatever causes
he [Milton] alleges for the abolishment of rhyme, his own
particular reason is plainly this, that rhyme was not his
talent ; he had neither the ease of doing it nor the
graces of it : which is manifest in his Juvenilia, ....
where his rhyme is always constrained and forced, and
comes hardly from him, at an age when the soul is most
pliant, and the passion of love makes almost every man
a rhymer, though not a poet."* It was this, no doubt,
that heartened Dr. Johnson to say of " Lycidas " that
" the diction was harsh, the rhymes uncertain, and the
numbers unpleasing." It is Dryden's excuse that his
characteristic excellence is to argue persuasively and
powerfully, whether in verse or prose, and that he was
amply endowed with the most needful quality of an
advocate, — to be always strongly and wholly of his
present way of thinking, whatever it might ba Next

* Essay on the Origin and Progress of Satire.

14 DRYDEN.

we have, in 1660, " Astrsea Redux " on the " happy res-
toration " of Charles II. In this also we can forebode
little of the full-grown Dry den but his defects. We see
his tendency to exaggeration, and to confound physical
with metaphysical, as where he says of the ships that
brought home the royal brothers, that

" The joyful London meets
The princely York, himself alone a freight,
The Swiftsure groans beneath great Gloster's weight

and speaks of the

" Repeated prayer
Which stormed the skies and ravished Charles from thence."

There is also a certain everydayness, not to say vul-
garity, of phrase, which Dryden never wholly refined
away, and which continually tempts us to sum up at
once against him as the greatest poet that ever was or
could be made wholly out of prose.

u Heaven would no bargain for its blessings drive "

is an example. On the other hand, there are a few
verses almost worthy of his best days, as these : — •

" Some lazy ages lost in sleep and ease,
No action leave to busy chronicles ;
Such whose supine felicity but makes
In story chasms/ in epochas mistakes,
O'er whom Time gently shakes his wings of down,
Till with his silent sickle they are mown."

These are all the more noteworthy, that Dryden, un-
less in argument, is seldom equal for six lines together.
In the poem to Lord Clarendon (1662) there are four
verses that have something of the " energy divine " for
which Pope praised his master.

"Let envy, then, those crimes within you see
From which the happy never must be free ;
Envy that does with misery reside,
The joy and the revenge of ruined pride."

DRYDEN. 15

In his " Aurengzebe " (1675) there is a passage, of
which, as it is a good example of Dryden, I shall quote
the whole, though my purpose aims mainly at the latter
verses : —

** When I consider life, 't is all a cheat;
Yet, fooled with Hope, men favor the deceit,
Trust on, and think to-morrow will repay;
To-morrow 's falser than the former day,
Lies worse, and, while it says we shall be blest
With some new joys, cuts off what we possest.
Strange cozenage ! none would live past years again,
Yet all hope pleasure in what yet remain,
And from the dregs of life think to receive
What the first sprightly running could not give.
I 'm tired of waiting for this chymic gold
Which fools us young and beggars us when old."

The "first sprightly running" of Dryden's vintage
was, it must be confessed, a little muddy, if not beery ;
but if his own soil did not produce grapes of the choicest
flavor, he knew where they were to be had ; and his
product, like sound wine, grew better the longer it stood
upon the lees. He tells us, evidently thinking of him-
self, that in a poet, " from fifty to threescore, the bal-
ance generally holds even in our colder climates, for he
loses not much in fancy, and judgment, which is the ef-
fect of observation, still increases. His succeeding years
afford him little more than the stubble of his own har-
vest, yet, if his constitution be healthful, his mind may
still retain a decent vigor, and the gleanings of that of
Ephraim, in comparison with others, will surpass the
vintage of Abiezer." * Since Chaucer, none of our poets
has had a constitution more healthful, and it was his old
age that yielded the best of him. In him the under-
standing was, perhaps, in overplus for his entire good
fortune as a poet, and that is a faculty among the earli-

* Dedication of the Georgica.

16 DRYDEN.

est to mature. We have seen him, at only ten years, di-
vining the power of reason in Polybius.* The same turn
of mind led him later to imitate the French school of
tragedy, and to admire in Ben Jonson the most correct
of English poets. It was his imagination that needed
quickening, and it is very curious to trace through his
different prefaces the gradual opening of his eyes to the
causes of the solitary pre-eminence of Shakespeare. At
first he is sensible of an attraction towards him which
he cannot explain, and for which he apologizes, as if it
were wrong. But he feels himself drawn more and more
strongly, till at last he ceases to resist altogether, and
is forced to acknowledge that there is .ytiething in this
one man that is not and never was anywhere else, some-
thing not to be reasoned about, ineffable, divine ; if con-
trary to the rules, so much the worse for them. It may
be conjectured that Dryden's Puritan associations may
have stood in the way of his more properly poetic cul-
ture, and that his early knowledge of Shakespeare was
slight. He tells us that Davenant, whom he could not
have known before he himself was twenty-seven, first
taught him to admire the great poet. But even after
his imagination had become conscious of its prerogative,
and his expression had been ennobled by frequenting
this higher society, we find him continually dropping
back into that sermo pedestris which seems, on the whole,
to have been his more natural element. We always feel
his epoch in him, that he was the lock which let our lan-
guage down from its point of highest poetry to its level
of easiest and most gently flowing prose. His enthusiasm
needs the contagion of other minds to arouse it ; but his
strong sense, his command of the happy word, his wit,

* Dryden's penetration is always remarkable. His general judg-
ment of Polybius coincides remarkably with that of Mommsen. (Rom.
Gesch. II. 448, seq.)

DRYDEN. 17

which is distinguished by a certain breadth and, as it
were, power of generalization, as Pope's by keenness of
edge and point, were his, wrhether he would or no. Ac-
cordingly, his poetry is often best and his verse more
flowing where (as in parts of his version of the twenty-
ninth ode of the third book of Horace) he is amplifying
the suggestions of another mind.* Viewed from one
side, he justifies Milton's remark of him, that " he was
a good rhymist, but no poet." To look at all sides, and
to distrust the verdict of a single mood, is, no doubt, the
duty of a critic. But how if a certain side be so often
presented as to thrust forward in the memory and dis-
turb it in the effort to recall that total impression (for
the office of a critic is not, though often so misunder-
stood, to say guilty or not guilty of some particular fact)
which is the only safe ground of judgment 1 It is the
weight of the whole man, not of one or the other limb of
him, that we want. Expende Hannibalem. Very good,
but not in a scale capacious only of a single quality at a
time, for it is their union, and not their addition, that
assures the value of each separately. It was not this or
that which gave him his weight in council, his swiftness
of decision in battle that outran the forethought of
other men, — it was Hannibal. But this prosaic ele-
ment in Dryden will force itself upon me. As I read
him, I cannot help thinking of an ostrich, to be classed
with flying things, and capable, what with leap and flap
together, of leaving the earth for a longer or shorter
space, but loving the open plain, where wing and foot
help each other to something that is both flight and run
at once. What with his haste and a certain dash, which,

* " I have taken some pains to make it my masterpiece in English."
Preface to Second Miscellany. Fox said that it " was better than the
original." J. C. Scaliger said of Erasmus: " Ex alieno ingenio poeta,
ex suo versificator."

B

18 DRYDEN.

according to our mood, we may call florid or splendid, he
seems to stand among poets where Rubens does among
painters, — greater, perhaps, as a colorist than an artist,
yet great here also, if we compare him with any but the
first.

We have arrived at Dryden's thirty-second year, and
thus far have found little in him to warrant an augury
that he was ever to be one of the great names in English
literature, the most perfect type, that is, of his class, and
that class a high one, though not the highest. If Joseph
de Maistre's axiom, Qui n'a pas vaincu a trente ans, ne
vainer a jamais, were true, there would be little hope of
him, for he has won no battle yet. But there is some-
thing solid and doughty in the man, that can rise from
defeat, the stuff of which victories are made in due time,
when we are able to choose our position better, and the
sun is at our back. Hitherto his performances have
been mainly of the obUigato sort, at which few men
of original force are good, least of all Dryden, who had
always something of stiffness in his strength. Waller
had praised the living Cromwell in perhaps the manliest
verses he ever wrote, — not very manly, to be sure, but
really elegant, and, on the whole, better than those in
which Dryden squeezed out melodious tears. Waller,
who had also made himself conspicuous as a volunteer
Antony to the country squire turned Caesar,

(" With ermine clad and purple, let him hold
A royal sceptre made of Spanish gold,")

was more servile than Dryden in hailing the return of
ex officio Majesty. He bewails to Charles, in snuffling
heroics,

" Our sorrow and our crime

To have accepted life so long a time,

Without you here."

A weak man, put to the test by rough and angry times,

DRYDEN. 19

as Waller was, may be pitied, but meanness is nothing
but contemptible under any circumstances. If it be true
that " every conqueror creates a Muse," Cromwell was
unfortunate. Even Milton's sonnet, though dignified, is
reserved if not distrustful. Marvell's " Horatian Ode,"
the most truly classic in our language, is worthy of its
theme. The same poet's Elegy, in parts noble, and
everywhere humanly tender, is worth more than all Car-
lyle's biography as a witness to the gentler qualities of
the hero, and of the deep affection that stalwart nature
could inspire in hearts of truly masculine temper. As it
is little known, a few verses of it may be quoted to show
the difference between grief that thinks of its object and
grief that thinks of its rhymes : —

" Valor, religion, friendship, prudence died
At once with him, and all that 's good beside,
And we, death's refuse, nature's dregs, confined.
To loathsome life, alas ! are left behind.
Where we (so once we used) shall now no more,
To fetch day, press about his chamber-door,
No more shall hear that powerful language charm,
Whose force oft spared the labor of his arm,
No more shall follow where he spent the days
In war or counsel, or in prayer and praise.

I saw him dead; a leaden slumber lies,

And mortal sleep, over those wakeful eyes ;

Those gentle rays under the lids were fled,

Which through his looks that piercing sweetness shed;

That port, which so majestic was and strong,

Loose and deprived of vigor stretched along,

All withered, all discolored, pale, and wan,

How much another thing! no more That Man!

0 human glory ! vain ! 0 death ! 0 wings !

0 worthless world ! 0 transitory things !

Yet dwelt that greatness in his shape decayed

That still, though dead, greater than Death he laid,

And, in his altered face, you something feign

lhat threatens Death he yet will live again."

Such verses might not satisfy Lindley Murray, but

20 DRYDEN.

they are of that higher mood which satisfies the heart.
These couplets, too, have an energy worthy of Milton's
friend : —

" When up the armed mountains of Dunbar
He marched, and through deep Severn, ending war."

" Thee, many ages hence, in martial verse
Shall the English soldier, ere he charge, rehearse."

On the whole, one is glad that Dryden's panegyric on
the Protector was so poor. It was purely official verse-
making. Had there been any feeling in it, there had
been baseness in his address to Charles. As it is, we
may fairly assume that he was so far sincere in both
cases as to be thankful for a chance to exercise himself
in rhyme, without much caring whether upon a funeral
or a restoration. He might naturally enough expect
that poetry would have a better chance under Charles
than under Cromwell, or any successor with Common-
wealth principles. Cromwell had more serious matters
to think about than verses, while Charles might at least
care as much about them as it was in his base good-
nature to care about anything but loose women and
spaniels. Dryden's sound sense, afterwards so conspicu-
ous, shows itself even in these pieces, when we can get
at it through the tangled thicket of tropical phrase.
But the authentic and unmistakable Dryden first mani-
fests himself in some verses addressed to his friend Dr.
Charlton in 1663. We have first his common sense
which has almost the point of wit, yet with a tang of
prose : —

" The longest tyranny that ever swayed
Was that wherein our ancestors betrayed
Their freeborn reason to the Stagyrite,
And made his torch their universal light.
So truth, while only one supplied the state,
Grew scarce and dear and yet sophisticate.
Still it was bought, like empiric wares or charms^
Hard words sealed up with Aristotle's arms"

DRYDEN. 21

Then we have his graceful sweetness of fancy, where he
speaks of the inhabitants of the New World : —

" Guiltless men who danced away their time,
Fresh as their groves and happy as their clime."

And, finally, there is a hint of imagination where
" mighty visions of the Danish race " watch round
Charles sheltered in Stonehenge after the battle of
Worcester. These passages might have been written by
the Dry den whom we learn to know fifteen years later.
They have the advantage that he wrote them to please
himself. His contemporary, Dr. Heylin, said of French
cooks, that " their trade was not to feed the belly, but
the palate." Dry den was a great while in learning this
secret, as available in good writing as in cookery. He
strove after it, but his thoroughly English nature, to the
last, would too easily content itself with serving up the
honest beef of his thought, without regard to daintiness
of flavor in the dressing of it.* Of the best English
poetry, it might be said that it is understanding aerated
by imagination. In Dryden the solid part too often re-
fused to mix kindly with the leaven, either remaining
lumpish or rising to a hasty pumness. Grace and light-
ness were with him much more a laborious achievement
than a natural gift, and it is all the more remarkable
that he should so often have attained to what seems
such an easy perfection in both. Always a hasty

* In one of the last letters he ever wrote, thanking his cousin Mrs.
Steward for a gift of marrow-puddings, he says : " A chine of honest
bacon would please my appetite more than all the marrow-puddings;
for I like them better plain, having a very vulgar stomach." So of
Cowley he says: " There was plenty enough, but ill sorted, whole pyra-
mids of sweetmeats for boys and women, but little of solid meat for
men." The physical is a truer antitype of the spiritual man than we
are willing to admit, and the brain is often forced to acknowledge the
inconvenient country-cousinship of the stomach.

22 DRYDEN.

writer,* he was long in forming his style, and to the
last was apt to snatch the readiest word rather than
wait for the fittest. He was not wholly and uncon-
sciously poet, but a thinker who sometimes lost himself
on enchanted ground and was transfigured by its touch.
This preponderance in him of the reasoning over the in-
tuitive faculties, the one always there, the other flashing
in when you least expect it, accounts for that inequality
and even incongruousness in his writing which makes
one revise his judgment at every tenth page. In his
prose you come upon passages that persuade you he is
a poet, in spite of his verses so often turning state's evi-
dence against him as to convince you he is none. He
is a prose- writer, with a kind of ^Eolian attachment. For
example, take this bit of prose from the dedication of
his version of Virgil's Pastorals, 1694 : "He found the
strength of his genius betimes, and was even in his
youth preluding to his Georgicks and his ^Eneis. He
could not forbear to try his wings, though his pinions
were not hardened to maintain a long, laborious flight ;
yet sometimes they bore him to a pitch as lofty as ever
he was able to reach afterwards. But when he was ad-
monished by his subject to descend, he came down gen-
tly circling in the air and singing to the ground, like a
lark melodious in her mounting and continuing her song
till she alights, still preparing for a higher flight at her
next sally, and tuning her voice to better music." This
is charming, and yet even this wants the ethereal tinc-
ture that pervades the style of Jeremy Taylor, making

* In his preface to " All for Love," he says, evidently alluding to
himself: " If he have a friend whose hastiness in writing is his great-
est fault, Horace would have taught him to have minced the matter,
and to have called it readiness of thought and a flowirg fancy." And
in the Preface to the Fables he says of Homer : " This vehemence of
his, I confess, is more suitable to my temper." He makes other allu-
sions to it.

DRYDEN. 23

it, as Burke said of Sheridan's eloquence, "neither prose
nor poetry, but something better than either." Let us
compare Taylor's treatment of the same image : " For
so have I seen a lark rising from his bed of grass and
soaring upwards, singing as he rises, and hopes to get
to heaven and climb above the clouds ; but the poor
bird was beaten back by the loud sighings of an eastern
wind, and his motion made irregular and inconstant,
descending more at every breath of the tempest than
it could recover by the libration and frequent weighing
of his wings, till the little creature was forced to sit
down and pant, and stay till the storm was over, and
then it made a prosperous flight, and did rise and sing
as if it had learned music and motion of an angel as
he passed sometimes through the air about his minis-
tries here below." Taylor's fault is that his sentences
too often smell of the library, but what an open air is
here ! How unpremeditated it all seems ! How care-
lessly he knots each new thought, as it comes, to the
one before it with an and, like a girl making lace !
And what a slidingly musical use he makes of the sibi-
lants with which our language is unjustly taxed by
those who can only make them hiss, not sing ! There
are twelve of them in the first twenty words, fifteen of
which are monsyllables. We notice the structure of
Pryden's periods, but this grows up as we read. It
gushes, like the song of the bird itself, —

" In profuse strains of unpremeditated art."

Let us now take a specimen of Dryden's bad prose from
one of his poems. I open the " Annus Mirabilis " at
random, and hit upon this : —

" Our little fleet was now engaged s"o far,
That, like the swordfish in the whale, they fought :
The combat only seemed a civil war,
Till through their bowels we our passage wrought."

24 DRYDEN.

Is this Dryden, or Sternhold, or Shad well, those Toms
who made him say that " dulness was fatal to the name
of Tom " 1 The natural history of Goldsmith in the
verse of Pye ! His thoughts did not " voluntary move
harmonious numbers." He had his choice between prose
and verse, and seems to be poetical on second thought.
I do not speak without book. He was more than half
conscious of it himself. In the same letter to Mrs.
Steward, just cited, he says, " I am still drudging on,
always a poet and never a good one " ; and this from no
mock-modesty, for he is always handsomely frank in
telling us whatever of his own doing pleased him. This
was written in the last year of his life, and at about the
same time he says elsewhere : "What judgment I had
increases rather than diminishes, and thoughts, such as
they are, come crowding in so fast upon me that my
only difficulty is to choose or to reject, to run them into
verse or to give them the other harmony of prose ; I
have so long studied and practised both, that they are
grown into a habit and become familiar to me." * I
think that a man who was primarily a poet would hard-
ly have felt this equanimity of choice.

I find a confirmation of this feeling about Dryden in
his early literary loves. His taste was not an instinct, but
the slow result of reflection and of the manfulness with
which he always acknowledged to himself his own mis-
takes. In this latter respect few men deal so magnani-
mously with themselves as he, and accordingly few have
been so happily inconsistent. Ancora imparo might
have served him for a motto as well as Michael Angelo.
His prefaces are a complete log of his life, and the habit
of writing them was a useful one to him, for it forced
him to think with a pen in his hand, which, according to
Goethe, " if it do no other good, keeps the mind from

* Preface to the Fables.

DRYDEN. 25

staggering about." In these prefaces we see his taste
gradually rising from Du Bartas to Spenser, from Cowley
to Milton, from Corneille to Shakespeare. " I remember
when I was a boy," he says in his dedication of the
"Spanish Friar," 1681, " I thought inimitable Spenser a
mean poet in comparison of Sylvester's Du Bartas, and
was rapt into an ecstasy when I read these lines : —

'Now when the winter's keener breath began
To crystallize the Baltic ocean,
To glaze the lakes, to bridle up the floods,
And periwig with snow* the baldpate woods.'

I am much deceived if this be not abominable fustian."
Swift, in his " Tale of a Tub," has a ludicrous passage in
this style : " Look on this globe of earth, you will find
it to be a very complete and fashionable dress. What is
that which some call land, but a fine coat faced with
green ] or the sea, but a waistcoat of water-tabby 3 Pro-
ceed to the particular works of creation, you will find
how curious journeyman Nature has been to trim up the
vegetable beaux ; observe how sparkish a periwig adorns
the head of a beech, and what a fine doublet of white
satin is worn by the birch." The fault is not in any in-
aptness of the images, nor in the mere vulgarity of the
things themselves, but in that of the associations they
awaken. The "prithee, undo this button" of Lear,
coming where it does and expressing what it does, is one
of those touches of the pathetically sublime, of which
only Shakespeare ever knew the secret. Herrick, too,
has a charming poem on " Julia's petticoat," the charm

* Wool is Sylvester's word. Dryden reminds us of Burke in this
also, that he always quotes from memory and seldom exactly. His
memory was better for things than for words. This helps to explain
the length of time it took him to master that vocabulary at last so va-
rious, full, and seemingly extemporaneous. He is a large quoter,
though, with his usual inconsistency, he says, " I am no admirer of
quotations." (Esaay on Heroic Plays.)

26 DRYDEN.

being that he lifts the familiar and the low to the region
of sentiment. In the passage from Sylvester, it is pre-
cisely the reverse, and the wig takes as much from the
sentiment as it adds to a Lord Chancellor. So Pope's
proverbial verse,

" True wit is Nature to adrantage drest,"

unpleasantly suggests Nature under the hands of a lady's-
maid.* We have no word in English that will exactly
define this want of propriety in diction. Vulgar is too
strong, and commonplace too weak. Perhaps bourgeois
comes as near as any. It is to be noticed that Dryden
does not unequivocally condemn the passage he quotes,
but qualifies it with an " if I am not much mistaken."
Indeed, though his judgment in substantials, like that of
Johnson, is always worth having, his taste, the negative
half of genius, never altogether refined itself from a
colloquial familiarity, which is one of the charms of his
prose, and gives that air of easy strength in which his
satire is unmatched. In his "Royal Martyr " (1669),
the tyrant Maximin says to the gods : —

" Keep you your rain and sunshine in the skies,
And I '11 keep back my flame and sacrifice ;
Your trade of Heaven shall soon be at a stand,
And all your goods lie dead upon your hand" —

a passage which has as many faults as only Dryden was
capable of committing, even to a false idiom forced by
the last rhyme. The same tyrant in dying exclaims : —

" And after thee I '11 go,

Revenging still, and following e'en to th' other world mytolow,
And, shoving back this earth on which I sit,
1 '# mount and scatter all the gods I hit"

* In the JEpimetheus of a poet usually as elegant as Gray himself,
one's fiiier sense is a little jarred by the

" Spectral gleam their snow-white dreuet"

DRYDEN. 27

In the "Conquest of Grenada" (1670), we have : —

" This little loss in our vast body shews

So small, that half have never heard the news ;
Fame 's out of breath e'er she can fly so far
To tell 'em all that you have e'er made war." *

And in the same play,

" That busy thing,

The soul, is packing up, and just on wing
Like parting swallows when they seek the spring,"

where the last sweet verse curiously illustrates that in-
equality (poetry on a prose background) which so often
puzzles us in Dryden. Infinitely worse is the speech of
Almanzor to his mother's ghost : —

" I '11 rush into the covert of the night
And pull thee backward by the shroud to light,
Or else I '11 squeeze thee like a bladder there,
And make thee groan thyself away to air."

What wonder that Dryden should have been substituted
for Davenant as the butt of the " Rehearsal," and that
the parody should have had such a run ] And yet it was
Dryden who, in speaking of Persius, hit upon the happy
phrase of " boisterous metaphors " ; f it was Dryden who
said of Cowley, whom he elsewhere calls " the darling
of my youth," $ that he was " sunk in reputation because
he could never forgive any conceit which came in his

* This probably suggested to Young the grandiose image in his
« Last Day" (B. ii.): —

" Those overwhelming armies ....

Whose rear lay wrapt in night, while breaking dawn
Roused the broad front and called the battle on."

This, to be sure, is no plagiarism; but it should be carried to Dryden's
credit that we catch the poets of the next half-century oftener with
their hands in his pockets than in those of any one else.
t Essay on Satire.
Ibid.

28 DRYDEN.

way, but swept, like a drag-net, great and small."* But
the passages I have thus far cited as specimens of our
poet's coarseness (for poet he surely was intus, though
not always in cute) were written before he was forty, and
he had an odd notion, suitable to his healthy complexion,
that poets on the whole improve after that date. Man
at forty, he says, " seems to be fully in his summer
tropic, .... and I believe that it will hold in all great
poets that, though they wrote before with a certain heat
of genius which inspired them, yet that heat was not
perfectly digested." f But artificial heat is never to be
digested at all, as is plain in Dryden's case. He was a
man who warmed slowly, and, in his hurry to supply the
market, forced his mind. The result was the same after
forty as before. In " (Edipus " (1679) we find,

" Not one bolt

Shall err from Thebes, but more be called for, more,
New-moulded thunder of a larger size I "

This play was written in conjunction with Lee, of whom

* Preface to Fables. Men are always inclined to revenge themselves
on their old idols in the first enthusiasm of conversion to a purer faith.
Cowley had all the faults that Dryden loads him with, and yet his
popularity was to some extent deserved. He at least had a theory
that poetry should soar, not creep, and longed for some expedient, in
the failure of natural wings, by which he could lift himself away from
the conventional and commonplace. By beating out the substance of
Pindar very thin, he contrived a kind of balloon which, tumid with
gas, did certainly mount a little, into the clouds, if not above them,
though sure to come suddenly down with a bump. His odes, indeed,
are an alternation of upward jerks and concussions, and smack more
of Chapelain than of the Theban, but his prose is very agreeable, —
Montaigne and water, perhaps, but with some flavor of the Gascon
wine left. The strophe of his ode to Dr. Scarborough, in which he
compares his surgical friend, operating for the stone, to Moses striking
the rock, more than justifies all the ill that Dryden could lay at his
door. It was into precisely such mud-holes that Cowley's Will-o'-the-
Wisp had misguided him. Men may never wholly shake off a rice
but they are always conscious of it, and hate the tempter.

f Dedication of Georgics.

DRYDEN. 29

Dryden relates * that, when some one said to him, " It
is easy enough to write like a madman," he replied,
" No, it is hard to write like a madman, but easy enough
to write like a fool," — perhaps the most compendious
lecture on poetry ever delivered. The splendid bit of
eloquence, which has so much the sheet-iron clang of
impeachment thunder (I hope that Dryden is not in the
Library of Congress !) is perhaps Lee's. The following
passage almost certainly is his : —

" Sure 't is the end of all things ! Fate has torn
The lock of Time off, and his head is now
The ghastly ball of round Eternity ! "

But the next, in which the soul is likened to the pocket
of an indignant housemaid charged with theft, is wholly
in Dryden's manner : —

"No; I dare challenge heaven to turn me outward,
And shake my soul quite empty in your sight."

In the same style, he makes his Don Sebastian (1690)
say that he is as much astonished as " drowsy mortals "
at the last trump,

" When, called in haste, they fumble for their limbs,"
and propose to take upon himself the whole of a crime
shared with another by asking Heaven to charge the bill
on him. And in " King Arthur," written ten years after
the Preface from which I have quoted his confession
about Dubartas, we have a passage precisely of the kind
he condemned : —

" Ah for the many souls as but this morn
Were clothed with flesh and warmed with vital blood,
But naked now, or shirtedbut, with air."

Dryden too often violated his own admirable rule, that
" an author is not to write all he can, but only all he
ought." f In his worst images, however, there is often a
vividness that half excuses them. But it is a grotesque

* In a letter to Dennis, 1693. t Preface to Fablos.

30 DRYDEN.

vividness, as from the flare of a bonfire. They do not
flash into sudden lustre, as in the great poets, where the
imaginations of poet and reader leap toward each other
and meet half-way.

English prose is indebted to Dryden for having freed
it from the cloister of pedantry. He, more than any
other single writer, contributed, as well by precept as
example, to give it suppleness of movement and the
easier air of the modern world. His own style, juicy
with proverbial phrases, has that familiar dignity, so hard
to attain, perhaps unattainable except by one who, like
Dryden, feels that his position is assured. Charles Cot-
ton is as easy, but not so elegant ; Walton as familiar,
but not so flowing ; Swift as idiomatic, but not so ele-
vated ; Burke more splendid, but not so equally lumi-
nous. That his style was no easy acquisition (though,
of course, the aptitude was innate) he himself tells us.
In his dedication of " Troilus and Cressida " (1679),
where he seems to hint at the erection of an Academy,
he says that "the perfect knowledge of a tongue was
never attained by any single person. The Court, the
College, and the Town must all be joined in it. And as
our English is a composition of the dead and living
tongues, there is required a perfect knowledge, not only
of the Greek and Latin, but of the Old German, French,
and Italian, and to help all these, a conversation with
those authors of our own who have written with the
fewest faults in prose and verse. But how barbarously
we yet write and speak your Lordship knows, and I am
sufficiently sensible in my own English.* For I am
often put to a stand in considering whether what I write
be the idiom of the tongue, or false grammar and non-

* More than half a century later, Orrery, in his " Remarks " on
Swift, says : " We speak, *vnd we write at random ; and if a man's com-
mon conversation were committed to paper, he would be startled for

DRYDEN. 31

sense couched beneath that specious name of Anglicism,
and have no other way to clear my doubts but by
translating my English into Latin, and thereby trying
what sense the words will bear in a more stable lan-
guage." Tantoe molis erat. Five years later : " The
proprieties and delicacies of the English are known to
few ; it is impossible even for a good wit to understand
and practise them without the help of a liberal educa-
tion, long reading and digesting of those few good
authors we have amongst us, the knowledge of men and
manners, the freedom of habitudes and conversation with
the best company of loth sexes, and, in short, without wear-
ing off the rust which he contracted while he was laying
in a stock of learning." In the passage I have italicized,
it will be seen that Dryden lays some stress upon the
influence of women in refining language. Swift, also, in
his plan for an Academy, says : " Now, though I would
by no means give the ladies the trouble of advising us in
the reformation of our language, yet I cannot help think-
ing that, since they have been left out of all meetings
except parties at play, or where worse designs are car-
ried on, our conversation has very much degenerated." *
Swift affirms that the language had grown corrupt since
the Restoration, and that " the Court, which used to be
the standard of propriety and correctness of speech, was
then, and, I think, has ever since continued, the worst
school in England." f He lays the blame partly on the

to find himself guilty in so few sentences of so many solecisms and
such false English." I do not remember for to anywhere in Dryden's
prose. So few has long been denizened; no wonder, since it is nothing
more than si pen Anglicized.

* Letter to the Lord High Treasurer.

t Ibid. He complains of " manglings and abbreviations." " What
does your Lordship think of the words drudg'd, disturb'd, rebuk'd,
fledg'd, and a thousand others? " In a contribution to the " Tatler"
!No. 230) he ridicules the use of '«m for them, and a number of slang

32 DRYDEN.

general licentiousness, partly upon the French education
of many of Charles's courtiers, and partly on the poets.
Dryden undoubtedly formed his diction by the usage of
the Court. The age was a very free-and-easy, not to say
a very coarse one. Its coarseness was not external, like
that of Elizabeth's day, but the outward mark of an in-
ward depravity. What Swift's notion of the refinement
of women was may be judged by his anecdotes of Stella.
I will not say that Dryden's prose did not gain by the
conversational elasticity which his frequenting men and
women of the world enabled him to give it. It is the
best specimen of every-day style that we have. But the
habitual dwelling of his mind in a commonplace atmos-
phere, and among those easy levels of sentiment which
befitted Will's Coffee-house and the Bird-cage Walk, was
a damage to his poetry. Solitude is as needful to
the imagination as society is wholesome for the character.
He cannot always distinguish between enthusiasm and
extravagance when he sees them. But apart from
these influences which I have adduced in exculpation,
there was certainly a vein of coarseness in him, a want

phrases, among which is mob. " The war," he says, " has introduced
abundance of polysyllables, which will never be able to live many more
campaigns." Speculations, operations, preliminaries, ambassadors, pal-
lisadbes, communication, circumvattation, battalions, are the instances he
gives, and all are now familiar. No man, or body of men, can dam the
stream of language. Dryden is rather fond of 'em for them, but uses it
rarely in his prose. Swift himself prefers '< is to it is, as does Emerson
still. In what Swift says of the poets, -he may be fairly suspected of
glancing at Dryden, who was his kinsman, and whose prefaces and
translation of Virgil he ridicules in the " Tale of a Tub." Dryden is
reported to have said of him, " Cousin Swift is no poet." The Dean
began his literary career by Pindaric odes to Athenian Societies and
the like, — perhaps the greatest mistake as to his own powers of which
an author was ever guilty. It was very likely that he would send these
to his relative, already distinguished, for his opinion upon them. If
this was so, the justice of Dryden's judgment must have added to the
smart. Swift never forgot or forgave: Dryden was careless enou'
*o do the one, and large enough to do the other.

DRYDEN. 33

of that exquisite sensitiveness which is the conscience
of the artist. An old gentleman, writing to the Gentle-
man's Magazine in 1745, professes to remember "plain
John Dryden (before he paid his court with success to
the great) in one uniform clothing of Norwich drugget.
I have eat tarts at the Mulberry Garden with him
and Madam Reeve, when our author advanced to a
sword and Chadreux wig." * I always fancy Dryden
in the drugget, with wig, lace ruffles, and sword super-
imposed. It is the type of this curiously incongruous
man.

The first poem by which Dryden won a general ac-
knowledgment of his power was the " Annus Mirabilis,"
written in his thirty-seventh year. Pepys, himself not
altogether a bad judge, doubtless expresses the common
opinion when he says : " I am very well pleased this
night with reading a poem I brought home with me
last night from Westminster Hall, of Dryden's, upon the
present war ; a very good poem." f And a very good
poem, in some sort, it continues to be, in spite of its

* Both Mai one and Scott accept this gentleman's evidence without
question, but I confess suspicion of a memory that runs back more
than eighty-one years, and recollects a man before he had any claim to
remembrance. Drydeu was never poor, and there is at Oxford a por-
trait of him painted in 1664, which represents him in a superb periwig
and laced band. This was " before he had paid his court with success
to the great." But the story is at least ben trovato, and morally true
enough to serve as an illustration. Who the " old gentleman " was has
never been discovered. Of Crowne (who has some interest for us as a
sometime student at Harvard) he says: "Many a cup of metheghn
have I drank with little starch'd Johnny Crown; we called him so,
from the stiff, unalterable primness of his long cravat." Crowne re-
flects no more credit on his Alma Mater than Downing. Both were
sneaks, and of such a kind as, I think, can only be produced by a de-
bauched Puritanism. Crowne, as a rival of Dryden, is contemptuously
alluded to by Gibber in his " Apology."

t Diary, III. 390. Almost the only notices .of Dryden that make
him alive to me I have found in the delicious book of this Polonius-
Montaigne, the only man who ever had the courage to keep a sincere
journal, even under the shelter of cipher.

2* C

34 DRYDEN.

amazing blemishes. We must always bear in mind that
Dryden lived in an age that supplied him with no
ready-made inspiration, and that big phrases and images
are apt to be pressed into the service when great ones do
not volunteer. With this poem begins the long series
of Dryden's prefaces, of which Swift made such excellent,
though malicious, fun that I cannot forbear to quote it.
" I do utterly disapprove and declare against that perni-
cious custom of making the preface a bill of fare to the
book. For I have always looked upon it as a high point
of indiscretion in monster-mongers and other retailers of
strange sights to hang out a fair picture over the door,
drawn after the life, with a most eloquent description

underneath ; this has saved me many a threepence

Such is exactly the fate at this time of prefaces

This expedient was admirable at first ; our great Dryden
has long carried it as far as it would go, and with in-
credible success. He has often said to me in confidence,
' that the world would never have suspected him to be so
great a poet, if he had not assured them so frequently,
in his prefaces, that it was impossible they could either
doubt or forget it.' Perhaps it may be so ; however, I
much fear his instructions have edified out of their place,
and taught men to grow wiser in certain points where he
never intended they should." * The monster-mongers is
a terrible thrust, when we remember some of the come-
dies and heroic plays which Dryden ushered in this
fashion. In the dedication of the " Annus " to the city
of London is one of those pithy sentences of which Dry-
den is ever afterwards so full, and which he lets fall with
a carelessness that seems always to deepen the meaning :
" I have heard, indeed, of some virtuous persons who

* Tale of a Tub, Sect. V. Pepys also speaks of buying the " Maid-
en Queen " of Mr. Dryden's, which he himself, in his preface, seems
to brag of, and indeed is a good play. — 18th January, 1668.

DRYDEN. 35

have ended unfortunately, but never of any virtuous na-
tion ; Providence is engaged too deeply when the cause
becomes so general." In his " account " of the poem in
a letter to Sir Robert Howard he says : " I have chosen
to write my poem in quatrains or stanzas of four in al-
ternate rhyme, because I have ever judged them more
noble and of greater dignity, both for the sound and

number, than any other verse in use amongst us

The learned languages have certainly a great advantage
of us in not being tied to the slavery of any rhyme.
. . . . But in this necessity of our rhymes, I have
always found the couplet verse most easy, though not so
proper for this occasion ; for there the work is sooner at
an end, every two lines concluding the labor of the poet."
A little further on : " They [the French] write in alex-
andrines, or verses of six feet, such as amongst iis is the
old translation of Homer by Chapman : all which, by
lengthening their chain,* makes the sphere of their activ-
ity the greater." I have quoted these passages because,
in a small compass, they include several things charac-
teristic of Dryden. " I have ever judged," and " I have
always found," are particularly so. If he took up an
opinion in the morning, he would have found so many
arguments for it before night that it would seem already
old and familiar. So with his reproach of rhyme ; a

* He is fond of this image. In the " Maiden Queen " Celadon tells
Sabina that, when he is with her rival Florimel, his heart is still her
prisoner, " it only draws a longer chain after it." Goldsmith's fancy
was taken by it; and everybody admires in the " Traveller" the ex-
traordinary conceit of a heart dragging a lengthening chain. The
smoothness of too many rhymed pentameters is that of thin ice over
shallow water; so long as we glide along rapidly, all is well; but if we
dwell a moment on any one spot, we may find ourselves knee-deep in
mud. A later poet, in trying to improve on Goldsmith, shows the ludi
crousness of the image : —

" And round my heart's leg ties its galling chain."
To write imaginatively a man should have — imagination I

36 DRYDEN.

year or two before he was eagerly defending it ; * again
a few years, and he will utterly condemn and drop it in
his plays, while retaining it in his translations ; after-
wards his study of Milton leads him to think that blank
verse would suit the epic style better, and he proposes
to try it with Homer, but at last translates one book as
a specimen, and behold, it is in rhyme ! But the charm
of this great advocate is, that, whatever side he was on,
he could always find excellent reasons for it, and state
them with great force, and abundance of happy illustra-
tion. He is an exception to the proverb, and is none the
worse pleader that he is always pleading his owrn cause.
The blunder about Chapman is of a kind into which his
hasty temperament often betrayed him. He remem-
bered that Chapman's " Iliad " was in a long measure,
concluded without looking that it was alexandrine, and
then attributes it generally to his " Homer." Chap-
man's " Iliad " is done in fourteen-syllable verse, and his
" Odyssee " in the very metre that Dryden himself used
in his own version. f I remark also what he says of the
couplet, that it was easy because the second verse con-
cludes the labor of the poet. And yet it was Dryden
who found it hard for that very reason. His vehement
abundance refused those narrow banks, first running

* See his epistle dedicatory to the " Rival Ladies " (1664). For the
other side, see particularly a passage in his " Discourse on Epic
Poetry" (1697).

t In the same way he had two years before assumed that Shake-
speare " was the first who, to shun the pains of continued rhyming, in-
vented that kind of writing which we call blank verse ! " Dryden was
never, I suspect, a very careful student of English literature. He
seems never to have known that Surrey translated a part of the
" jEneid " (and with great spirit) into blank verse. Indeed, he was not
a scholar, in the proper sense of the word, but he had that faculty of rapid
assimilation without study, so remarkable in Coleridge and other rich
minds, whose office is rather to impregnate than to invent. Thes»
brokers of thought perform a great office in literature, second only t»
that of originator?

DRYDEN. 37

over into a triplet, and, even then uncontainable, rising
to an alexandrine in the concluding verse. And I have
little doubt that it was the roominess, rather than the
dignity, of the quatrain which led him to choose it. As
apposite to this, I may quote what he elsewhere says of
octosyllabic verse : " The thought can turn itself with
greater ease in a larger compass. When the rhyme
comes too thick upon us, it straightens the expression :
we are thinking of the close, when we should be em-
ployed in adorning the thought. It makes a poet giddy
with turning in a space too narrow for his imagination." *
Dryden himself, as was not always the case with him,
was wTell satisfied with his work. He calls it his best hith-
erto, and attributes his success to the excellence of his sub-
ject, " incomparably the best he had ever had, excepting
only the Royal Family" The first part is devoted to
the Dutch war ; the last to the fire of London. The mar-
tial half is infinitely the better of the two. He altogether
surpasses his model, Davenant. If his poem lack the
gravity of thought attained by a few stanzas of " Gondi-
bert," it is vastly superior in life, in picturesqueness, in
the energy of single lines, and, above all, in imagination.
Few men have read " Gondibert," and almost every one
speaks of it, as commonly of the dead, with a certain
subdued respect. And it deserves respect as an honest
effort to bring poetry back to its highest office in the
ideal treatment of life. Davenant emulated Spenser,
and if his poem had been as good as his preface, it could
still be read in another spirit than that of investigation.
As it is, it always reminds me of Goldsmith's famous
verse. It is remote, unfriendly, solitary, and, above

* Essay on Satire. What he has said just before this about Butler
is worth noting. Butler had had a chief hand in the " Rehearsal," but
Dryden had no grudges where the question was of giving its just
praise to merit.

38 DRYDEN.

all, slow. Its shining passages, for there are such, re-
mind one of distress-rockets sent up at intervals from
a ship just about to founder, and sadden rather than
cheer.*

The first part of the " Annus Mirabilis " is by no
means clear of the false taste of the time,f though it
has some of Dryden's manliest verses and happiest com-
parisons, always his two distinguishing merits. Here,
as almost everywhere else in Dryden, measuring him
merely as poet, we recall what he, with pathetic pride,
says of himself in the prologue to " Aurengzebe " : —

" Let him retire, betwixt two ages cast,
The first of this, the hindmost of the last."

What can be worse than what he says of comets 1 —

" Whether they unctuous exhalations are
Fired by the sun, or seeming so alone,
Or each some more remote and slippery star
Which loses footing when to mortals shown."

Or than this, of the destruction of the Dutch India'
ships 1 —

" Amidst whole heaps of spices lights a ball,

And now their odors armed against them fly ;

Some preciously by shattered porcelain fall,

And some by aromatic splinters die."

Dear Dr, Johnson had his doubts about Shakespeare, but

* The conclusion of the second canto of Book Third is the best con-
tinuously fine passage. Dryden's poem has nowhere so much mean-
ing in so small space as Davenant, when he says of the sense of honor
that,

" Like Power, it grows to nothing, growing less."

Davenant took the hint of the stanza from Sir John Davies. Wyatt
first used it, so far as I know, in English.

t Perhaps there is no better lecture on the prevailing vices of style
and thought (if thought this frothy ferment of the mind may be called)
than in Cotton Mather's u Magnalia." For Mather, like a true pro-
vincial, appropriates only the mannerism, and, as is usual in such
cases, betrays all its weakness by the unconscious parody of exaggera-
tion.

DRYDEN. 39

here at least was poetry ! This is one of the quatrains
which he pronounces " worthy of our author."*

But Dryden himself has said that " a man who is re-
solved to praise an author with any appearance of jus-
tice must be sure to take him on the strongest side, and
where he is least liable to exceptions." This is true
also of one who wishes to measure an author fairly, for
the higher wisdom of criticism lies in the capacity to

admire.

Leser, wie gefall ich dir?
Leser, wie gefallst du mir?

are both fair questions, the answer to the first being
more often involved in that to the second than is some-
times thought. The poet in Dryden was never more
fully revealed than in such verses as these : —

" And threatening France, placed like a painted Jove,f
Kept idle thunder in his lifted hand " ;

" Silent in smoke of cannon they come on " ;

" And his loud guns speak thick, like angry men " ;

* The Doctor was a capital judge of the substantial value of the
goods he handled, but his judgment always seems that of the thumb and
forefinger. For the shades, the disposition of colors, the beauty of the
figures, he has as good as no sense whatever. The critical parts of his
Life of Dryden seem to me the best of his writing in this kind. There
is little to be gleaned after him. He had studied his author, which he
seldom did, and his criticism is sympathetic, a thing still rarer with
him. As illustrative of his own habits, his remarks on Dryden's read-
ing are curious.

t Perhaps the hint was given by a phrase of Corneille, monarque en
peinture. Dryden seldom borrows, unless from Shakespeare, without
improving, and he borrowed a great deal. Thus in " Don Sebastian "
(of suicide): —

" Brutus and Cato might discharge their souls,
And give them furloughs for the other world ;
But we, like sentries, are obliged to stand
In starless nights and wait the appointed hour."

The thought is Cicero's, but how it is intensified by the " starless
nights" ! Dryden, I suspect, got it from his favorite, Montaigne, who
says, " Quo nous ne pouvons abandonner cette garnison du monde, sans

40 DRYDEN.

" The vigorous seaman every port-hole plies,
And adds his heart to every gun he fires " ;

"And, though to me unknown, they sure fought well,
Whom Rupert led, and who were British born."

This is masculine writing, and yet it must be said that
there is scarcely a quatrain in which the rhyme does not
trip him into a platitude, and there are too many swag-
gering with that expression forte (Tun sentiment faible
which Voltaire condemns in Corneille, — a temptation
to which Dry den always lay too invitingly open. But
there are passages higher in kind than any I have cited,
because they show imagination. Such are the verses in
which he describes the dreams of the disheartened
enemy : —

" In dreams they fearful precipices tread,
Or, shipwrecked, labor to some distant shore,
Or in dark churches walk among the dead " ;

and those in which he recalls glorious memories, and
sees where

" The mighty ghosts of our great Harries rose,
And armed Edwards looked with anxious eyes."

A few verses, like the pleasantly alliterative one in
which he makes the spider, " from the silent ambush of
his den," " feel far off the trembling of his thread," show
that he was beginning to study the niceties of verse, in-
stead of trusting wholly to what he would have called
his natural fougue. On the whole, this part of the poem
is very good war poetry, as war poetry goes (for there is
but one first-rate poem of the kind in English, — short,
national, eager as if the writer were personally engaged,
with the rapid metre of a drum beating the charge, —

le commandement exprez de celuy qui nous y a mis." (L. ii. chap. 3.)
In the same play, by a very Drydenish verse, he gives new force to an
did comparison : —

" And I should break through laws divine and human.
And think 'em cobwebs spread for little man,
Which aU the bulky herd of Nature break."

DRYDEN. 41

and that is Drayton's " Battle of Agincourt " *), but it
shows more study of Lucan than of Virgil, and for a
long time yet we shall find Dry den bewildered by bad
models. He is always imitating — no, that is not the
word, always emulating — somebody in his more strictly
poetical attempts, for in that direction he always needed
some external impulse to set his mind in motion. This
is more or less true of all authors ; nor does it detract
from their originality, which depends wholly on their
being able so far to forget themselves as to let something
of themselves slip into what they write. f Of absolute
originality we will not speak till authors are raised by
some Deucalion-and-Pyrrha process ; and even then our
faith would be small, for writers who have no past are
pretty sure of having no future. Dryden, at any rate,
always had to have his copy set him at the top of the
page, and wrote ill or well accordingly. His mind
(somewhat solid for a poet) warmed slowly, but, once
fairly heated through, he had more of that good-luck of
self-oblivion than most men. He certainly gave even a
liberal interpretation to Moliere's rule of taking his own
property wherever he found it, though he sometimes
blundered awkwardly about what was properly his ; but
in literature, it should be remembered, a thing always
becomes his at last who says it best, and thus makes it
his own.J

* Not his solemn historical droning under that title, but addressed
" To the Carabrio-Britons on their harp."

t " Les poetes euxmemes s'animent et s'e"chauffent par la lecture
des autres poetes. Messieurs de Malherbe, Corneille, &c., se dispo-
soient au travail par la lecture des poetes qui e"toient de leur gout." — •
Vigneul, Marvilliana, I. 64, 65.

J For example, Waller had said,

" Others may use the ocean as their road,
Only the English make it their abode;

We tread on billows with a steady foot" —

42 DRYDEN.

Mr. Savage Landor once told me that he said to
Wordsworth : " Mr. Wordsworth, a man may mix poetry
with prose as much as he pleases, and it will only elevate
and enliven ; but the moment he mixes a particle of
prose with his poetry, it precipitates the whole." Words-
worth, he added, never forgave him. The always hasty
Dryden, as I think I have already said, was liable, like
a careless apothecary's 'prentice, to make the same con-
fusion of ingredients, especially in the more mischievous
way. I cannot leave the " Annus Mirabilis " without
giving an example of this. Describing the Dutch prizes,
rather like an auctioneer than a poet, he says that

" Some English wool, vexed in a Belgian loom,
And into cloth of spongy softness made,
Did into France or colder Denmark doom,
To ruin with worse ware our staple trade."

One might fancy this written by the secretary of a board
of trade in an unguarded moment ; but we should re-
member that the poem is dedicated to the city of Lon-
don. The depreciation of the rival fabrics is exquisite ;
and Dryden, the most English of our poets, would not
be so thoroughly English if he had not in him some
fibre of la nation boutiquiere. Let us now see how he
succeeds in attempting to infuse science (the most obsti-

long before Campbell. Campbell helps himself to >oth thoughts, en-
livens them into

" Her march is o'er the mountain wave,

Her home is on the deep,"

and they are his forevermore. His "leviathans afloat" he lifted from
the " Annus Mirabilis " ; but in what court could Dryden sue? Again,
Waller in another poem calls the Duke of York's flag

" His dreadful streamer, like a comet's hair " ;

and this, I believe, is the first application of the celestial portent to
this particular comparison. Yet Milton's " imperial ensign " waves
defiant behind his impregnable lines, and even Campbell flaunts his
u meteor flag " in Waller's face. Gray's bard might be sent to the
lock-up, but even he would find bail.

" C'est imiter quelqu'un que de planter des choux."

DRYDEN. 43

nately prosy material) with poetry. Speaking of " a
more exact knowledge of the longitudes," as he explains
in a note, he tells us that,

" Then we upon our globe's last verge shall go,
And view the ocean leaning on the sky;
From thence our rolling neighbors we shall know,
And on the lunar world securely pry."

Dr. Johnson confesses that he does not understand
this. Why should he, when it is plain that Dryden was
wholly in the dark himself! To understand it is none
of my business, but I confess that it interests me as an
Americanism. We have hitherto been credited as the
inventors of the " jumping-off place " at the extreme
western verge of the world. But Dryden was before-
hand with us. Though he doubtless knew that the
earth was a sphere (and perhaps that it was flattened at
the poles), it was always a flat surface in his fancy. In
his " Amphitryon," he makes Alcmena say : —

" No, I would fly thee to the ridge of earth,
And leap the precipice to 'scape thy sight."

And in his " Spanish Friar," Lorenzo says to Elvira that
they " will travel together to the ridge of the world, and
then drop together into the next." It is idle for us poor
Yankees to hope that we can invent anything. To say
sooth, if Dryden had left nothing behind him but the
" Annus Mirabilis," he might have served as a type of
the kind of poet America would have produced by the big-
gest-river-and-tallest-mountain recipe, — longitude and
latitude in plenty, with marks of culture scattered here
and there like the carets on a proof-sheet.

It is now time to say something of Dryden as a
dramatist. In the thirty-two years between 1662 and
1694 he produced twenty-five plays, and assisted Lee in
two. I have hinted that it took Dryden longer than
most men to find the true bent of his genius. On a

44 DRYDEN.

superficial view, he might almost seem to confirm that
theory, maintained by Johnson, among others, that
genius was nothing more than great intellectual power
exercised persistently in some particular direction which
chance decided, so that it lay in circumstance merely
whether a man should turnout a Shakespeare or a Newton.
But when we come to compare what he wrote, regardless
of Minerva's averted face, with the spontaneous produc-
tion of his happier muse, we shall be inclined to think
his example one of the strongest cases against the theory
in question. He began his dramatic career, as usual, by
rowing against the strong current of his nature, and
pulled only the more doggedly the more he felt himself
swept down the stream. His first attempt was at com-
edy, and, though his earliest piece of that kind (the
"Wild Gallant," 1663) utterly failed, he wrote eight
others afterwards. On the 23d February, 1663, Pepys
writes in his diary : "To Court, and there saw the
1 Wild Gallant ' performed by the king's house ; but it
was ill acted, and the play so poor a thing as I never
saw in my life almost, and so little answering the name,
that, from the beginning to the end, I could not, nor
can at this time, tell certainly which was the Wild
Gallant. The king did not seem pleased at all the
whole play, nor anybody else." After some alteration,
it was revived with more success. On its publication in
1669 Dryden honestly admitted its former failure,
though with a kind of salvo for his self-love. " I made
the town my judges, and the greater part condemned it.
After which I do not think it my concernment to defend
it with the ordinary zeal of a poet for his decried poem,
though Corneille is more resolute in his preface before
1 Pertharite,' * which was condemned more universally

* Corneille's tragedy of " Pertharite " was acted unsuccessfully i*
1659- Racine made free use of it in his more fortunate " Andromaque-'

DRVDEN. 45

than this Yet it was received at Court, and was

more than once the divertisement of his Majesty, by his
own command." Pepys lets us amusingly behind the
scenes in the matter of his Majesty's divertisement.
Dryden does not seem to see that in the condemnation
of something meant to amuse the public there can be no
question of degree. To fail at all is to fail utterly.

" Tons les genres sontpermis, hors le genre ennuyeux."

In the reading, at least, all Dryden's comic writing for
the stage must be ranked with the latter class. He
himself would fain make an exception of the " Spanish
Friar," but I confess that I rather wonder at than envy
those who can be amused by it. His comedies lack
everything that a comedy should have, — lightness,
quickness of transition, unexpectedness of incident, easy
cleverness of dialogue, and humorous contrast of charac-
ter brought out by identity of situation. The comic
parts of the " Maiden Queen " seem to me Dryden's best,
but the merit even of these is Shakespeare's, and there
is little choice where even the best is only tolerable.
The common quality, however, of all Dryden's comedies
is their nastiness, the more remarkable because we have
ample evidence that he was a man of modest conversa-
tion. Pepys, who was by no means squeamish (for he
found "Sir Martin Marall " "the most entire piece of
mirth .... that certainly ever was writ .... very
good wit therein, not fooling "), writes in his diary of the
19th June, 1668 : " My wife and Deb to the king's play-
house to-day, thinking to spy me there, and saw the new
play 'Evening Love,' of Dryden's, which, though the
world commends, she likes not." The next day he saw
it himself, " and do not like it, it being very smutty,
and nothing so good as the ' Maiden Queen ' or the ' In-
dian Emperor " ^f Dryden's making. / was troubled at

46 DRYDEN.

if1 On the 22d he adds : " Calling this day at Her-
ringman's,* he tells me Dryden do himself call it but a
fifth-rate play." This was no doubt true, and yet,
though Dryden in his preface to the play says, " I con-
fess I have given [yielded] too much to the people in it,
and am ashamed for them as well as for myself, that I
have pleased them at so cheap a rate," he takes care to
add, " not that there is anything here that I would not
defend to an ill-natured judge." The plot was from Cal-
deron, and the author, rebutting the charge of plagiarism,
tells us that the king (" without whose command they
should no longer be troubled with anything of mine ") had
already answered for him by saying, " that he only de-
sired that they who accused me of theft would always
steal him plays like mine." Of the morals of the play he
has not a word, nor do I believe that he was conscious of
any harm in them till he was attacked by Collier, and then
(with some protest against what he considers the undue
severity of his censor) he had the manliness to confess
that he had done wrong. " It becomes me not to draw
my pen in the defence of a bad cause, when I have so
often drawn it for a good one." f And in a letter to his
correspondent, Mrs. Thomas, written only a few weeks
before his death, warning her against the example of
Mrs. Behn, he says, with remorseful sincerity: " I confess
I am the last man in the world who ought in justice to
arraign her, who have been myself too much a libertine
in most of my poems, which I should be well contented I
had time either to purge or to see them fairly burned."
Congreve was less patient, and even Dryden, in the last
epilogue he ever wrote, attempts an excuse : —

" Perhaps the Parson stretched a point too far,
When with our Theatres he waged a war;
He tells you that this very moral age
Received the first infection from the Stage,

* Dryden's publisher. t Preface to the Fables-

DRYDEN.

But sure a banished Court, with lewdness fraught,
The seeds of open vice returning brought.

Whitehall the naked Venus first revealed,
Who, standing, as at Cyprus, in her shrine,
The strumpet was adored with rites divine.

The poets, who must live by courts or starve,
Were proud so good a Government to serve,
And, mixing with buffoons and pimps profane,
Tainted the Stage for some small snip of gain."

Dryden least of all men should have stooped to this
palliation, for he had, not without justice, said of him-
self : " The same parts and application which have made
me a poet might have raised me to any honors of the
gown." Milton and Marvell neither lived by the Court,
nor starved. Charles Lamb most ingeniously defends the
Comedy of the Restoration as " the sanctuary and quiet
Alsatia of hunted casuistry," where there was no pre-
tence of representing a real world.* But this was cer-
tainly not so. Dryden again and again boasts of the su-
perior advantage which ins age had over that of the elder
dramatists, in painting polite life, and attributes it to a
greater freedom of intercourse between the poets and the
frequenters of the Court, f We shall be less surprised
at the kind of refinement upon which Dryden congratu-
lated himself, when we learn (from the dedication of
" Marriage a la Mode ") th&t the Earl of Rochester was
its exemplar : " The best uomic writers of our age will
join with me to acknowledge that they have copied the
gallantries of courts, the de±icacy of expression, and the
decencies of behavior from your Lordship." In judging

* I interpret some otherwise ami .iguous passages in this charming
and acute essay by its title: ' On icne artificial comedy of the last
century."

t See especially his defence ol jhy epilogue to the Second Part of
the " Conquest of Granada " (167i

48 DRYDEN.

Dryden, it should be borne in mind that for some years
he was under contract to deliver three plays a year, a
kind of bond to which no man should subject his brain
who has a decent respect for the quality of its products.
We should remember, too, that in his day manners meant
what we call morals, that custom always makes a larger
part of virtue among average men than they are quite
aware, and that the reaction from an outward conform-
ity which had no root in inward faith may for a time have
given to the frank expression of laxity an air of honesty
that made it seem almost refreshing. There is no such
hotbed for excess of license as excess of restraint, and
the arrogant fanaticism of a single virtue is apt to make
men suspicious of tyranny in all the rest. But the riot
of emancipation could not last long, for the more toler-
ant society is of private vice, the more exacting will it
be of public decorum, that excellent thing, so often the
plausible substitute for things more excellent. By 1678
the public mind had so far recovered its tone that Dry-
den's comedy of " Limberham " was barely tolerated for
three nights. I will let the man who looked at human
nature from more sides, and therefore judged it more
gently than any other, give the only excuse possible for
Dryden : —

" Men's judgments are

A parcel of their fortunes, and things outward

Do draw the inward quality after them

To suffer all alike."

Dryden's own apology only makes matters worse for
him by showing that he committed his offences with his
eyes wide open, and that he wrote comedies so wholly
in despite of nature as never to deviate into the comic.
Failing as clown, he did not scruple to take on himself
the office of Chiffinch to the palled appetite of the pub-
lic. " For I confess my chief endeavours are to delight

DRYDEN. 49

the age in which I live. If the humour of this be for
low comedy, small accidents, and raillery, I will force
my genius to obey it, though with more reputation I
could write in verse. I know I am not so fitted by na-
ture to write comedy ; I want that gayety of humour
which is requisite to it. My conversation is slow and
dull, my humour saturnine and reserved : In short, I am
none of those who endeavour to break jests in company
or make repartees. So that those who decry my come-
dies do me no injury, except it be in point of profit :
Reputation in them is the last thing to which I shall pre-
tend." * For my own part, though I have been forced
to hold my nose in picking my way through these or-
dures of Dryden, I am free to say that I think them far
less morally mischievous than that corps-de-ballet lit-
erature in which the most animal of the passions is made
more temptingly naked by a veil of French gauze. Nor
does Dryden's lewdness leave such a reek in the mind
as the filthy cynicism of Swift, who delighted to uncover
the nakedness of our common mother.

It is pleasant to follow Dryden into the more conge-
nial region of heroic plays, though here also we find him
making a false start. Anxious to please the king,t and
so able a reasoner as to convince even himself of the
justice of whatever, cause he argued, he not only wrote
tragedies in the French style, but defended his practice
in an essay which is by far the most delightful repro-
duction of the classic dialogue ever written in English.
Eugenius (Lord Buckhurst), Lisideius (Sir Charles Sid-
ley), Crites (Sir R. Howard), and Neander (Dryden) are
the four partakers in the debate. The comparative

* Defence of an Essay on Dramatick Poesy.

t " The favor which heroick plays have lately found upon our
theatres has been wholly derived to them from the countenance and
approbation they have received at Court." (Dedication of "Indian
Emperor " to Duchess of Monmouth.)

3 D

50 DRYDEN.

merits of ancients and moderns, of the Shakespearian and
contemporary drama, of rhyme and blank verse, the value
of the three (supposed) Aristotelian unities, are the main
topics discussed. The tone of the discussion is admira-
ble, midway between bookishness and talk, and the fair-
ness with which each side of the argument is treated
shows the breadth of Dryden's mind perhaps better than
any other one piece of his writing. There are no men of
straw set up to be knocked down again, as there com-
monly are in debates conducted upon this plan. The
" Defence " of the Essay is to be taken as a supplement
to Neander's share in it, as well as many scattered pas-
sages in subsequent prefaces and dedications. All the in-
terlocutors agree that "the sweetness of English verse was
never understood or practised by our fathers," and that
" our poesy is much improved by the happiness of some
writers yet living, who first taught us to mould our
thoughts into easy and significant words, to retrench the
superfluities of expression, and to make our rhyme so
properly a part of the verse that it should never mis-
lead the sense, but itself be led and governed by it." In
another place he shows that by "living writers" he meant
Waller and Denham. " Rhyme has all the advantages of
prose besides its own. But the excellence and dignity
of it were never fully known till MX. Waller taught it :
he first made writing easily an art ; first showed us to
conclude the sense, most commonly in distiches, which in
the verse before him runs on for so many lines together
that the reader is out of breath to overtake it." * Dry-
den afterwards changed his mind, and one of the excel
lences of his own rhymed verse is, that his sense is too
ample to be concluded by the distich. Rhyme had been
censured as unnatural in dialogue ; but Dry den replies
that it is no more so than blank verse, since no man

* Dedication of " Rival Ladies."

DRYDEN. 51

talks any kind of verse in real life. But the argument
for rhyme is of another kind. " I am satisfied if it
cause delight, for delight is the chief if not the only end
of poesy [he should have said means] ; instruction can
be admitted but in the second place, for poesy only in-
structs as it delights The converse, therefore,

which a poet is to imitate must be heightened with all
the arts and ornaments of poesy, and must be such
as, strictly considered, could never be supposed spoken

by any without premeditation Thus prose, though

the rightful prince, yet is by common consent deposed
as too weak for the government of serious plays, and,
lie failing, there now start up two competitors; one
the nearer in blood, which is blank verse ; the other
more fit for the ends of government, which is rhyme.
Blank verse is, indeed, the nearer prose, but he is blem-
ished with the weakness of his predecessor. Rhyme (for
I will deal clearly) has somewhat of the usurper in him ;
but he is brave and generous, and his dominion pleas-
ing." * To the objection that the difficulties of rhyme
will lead to circumlocution, he answers in substance, that
a good poet will know how to avoid them.

It is curious how long the superstition that Waller
was the refiner of English verse has prevailed since Dry-
den first gave it vogue. He was a very poor poet and
a purely mechanical versifier. He has lived mainly on
the credit of a single couplet,

" The soul's dark cottage, battered and decayed.
Lets in new light through chinks that Time hath made,"

in which the melody alone belongs to him, and the con-

* Defence of the Essay. Dryden, in the happiness of his illustrative
comparisons, is almost unmatched. Like himself, they occupy a mid-
dle ground between poetry and prose, — they are a cross between
metaphor and simile.

52 DRYDEN.

ceit, such as it is, to Samuel Daniel, who said, long be-
fore, that the body's

" Walls, grown thin, permit the mind
To look out thorough and his frailty find."

Waller has made worse nonsense of it in the transfu-
sion. It might seem that Ben Jonson had a prophetic
foreboding of him when he wrote : " Others there are
that have no composition at all, but a kind of tuning
and rhyming fall, in what they write. It runs and
slides and only makes a sound. Women's poets they
are called, as you have women's tailors.

They write a verse as smooth, as soft, as cream
In which there is no torrent, nor scarce stream.

You may sound these wits and find the depth of them
with your middle-finger." * It seems to have been ta-
ken for granted by Waller, as afterwards by Dryden,
that our elder poets bestowed no thought upon their
verse. " Waller was smooth," but unhappily he was
also flat, and his importation of the French theory of
the couplet as a kind of thought-coop did nothing but
mischief, f He never compassed even a smoothness ap-
proaching this description of a nightingale's song by a
third-rate poet of the earlier school, —

" Trails her plain ditty in one long-spun note
Through the sleek passage of her open throat,
A clear, unwrinkled song," —

* Discoveries.

t What a wretched rhymer he could be we may see in his alteration
of the "Maid's Tragedy" of Beaumont and Fletcher: —
" Not long since walking in the field,
My nurse and I, we there beheld
A goodly fruit; which, tempting me,
I would have plucked; but, trembling, she,
Whoever eat those berries, cried,
In less than half an hour died! "

What intolerable seesaw ! Not much of Byron's " fatal facility *
in these octosyllabics !

DRYDEN. 53

one of whose beauties is its running over into the third
verse. Those poets indeed

" Felt music's pulse in all her arteries ";

and Dryden himself found out, when he came to try it,
that blank verse was not so easy a thing as he at first
conceived it, nay, that it is the most difficult of all verse,
and that it must make up in harmony, by variety of
pause and modulation, for what it loses in the melody
of rhyme. In what makes the chief merit of his later
versification, he but rediscovered the secret of his pre-
decessors in giving to rhymed pentameters something of
the freedom of blank verse, and not mistaking metre for
rhythm.

Voltaire, in his Commentary on Corneille, has suffi-
ciently lamented the awkwardness of movement imposed
upon the French dramatists by the gyves of rhyme.
But he considers the necessity of overcoming this ob-
stacle, on the whole, an advantage. Difficulty is his
tenth and superior muse. How did Dryden, who says
nearly the same thing, succeed in his attempt at the
French manner 1 He fell into every one of its vices,
without attaining much of what constitutes its excel-
lence. From the nature of the language, all French
poetry is purely artificial, and its high polish is all that
keeps out decay. The length of their dramatic verse
forces the French into much tautology, into bombast in
its original meaning, the stuffing out a thought with
words till it fills the line. The rigid system of their
rhyme, which makes it much harder to manage than in
English, has accustomed them to inaccuracies of thought
which would shock them in prose. For example, in the
" Cinna " of Corneille, as originally written, Emilie says
to Augustus, —

" Ces flarames dans nos cceurs des longtemps e*toient ne*es,
Et ce sont des secrets de plus de qaatre anne"es."

54 DRYDEN.

I say nothing of the second verse, which is purely pro-
Baic surplusage exacted by the rhyme, nor of the jin-
gling together of ces, des, etoient, nees, des, and secrets,
but I confess that nees does not seem to be the epithet
that Corneille would have chosen forflammes, if he could
have had his own way, and that flames would seem of
all things the hardest to keep secret. But in revising,
Comeille changed the first verse thus, —

" Ces flammes dans nos coeurs sans votre ordre Etoient ne"es."
Can anything be more absurd than flames born to order 1
Yet Voltaire, on his guard against these rhyming pit-
falls for the sense, does not notice this in his minute
comments on this play. Of extravagant metaphor, the
result of this same making sound the file-leader of sense,
a single example from " Heraclius " shall suffice : —

" La vapeur de mon sang ira grossir la foudre
Que Dieu tient dejaprete a le reduire en poudre."

One cannot think of a Louis Quatorze Apollo except in
a full-bottomed periwig, and the tragic style of their
poets is always showing the disastrous influence of that
portentous comet. It is the style perruque in another
than the French meaning of the phrase, and the skill
lay in dressing it majestically, so that, as Gibber says,
" upon the head of a man of sense, if it became him, it
could never fail of drawing to him a more partial regard
and benevolence than could possibly be hoped for in an
ill-made one." It did not become Dry den, and he left
it off »

Like his own Zimri, Dryden was "all for" this or
that fancy, till he took up with another. But even
while he was writing on French models, his judgment
could not be blinded to their defects. " Look upon the

* In more senses than one. His last and best portrait shows him iij
his own gray hair.

DRYDEN. 55

* Cinna ' and the ' Pompey,' they are not so properly to
be called plays as long discourses of reason of State, and
' Polieucte ' in matters of religion is as solemn as the
long stops upon our organs ; . . . . their actors speak

by the hour-glass like our parsons I deny not

but this may suit well enough with the French, for as
we, who are a more sullen people, come to be diverted
at our plays, so they, who are of an airy and gay tem-
per, come thither to make themselves more serious." *
With what an air of innocent unconsciousness the sar-
casm is driven home ! Again, while he was still slaving
at these bricks without straw, he says : " The present
French poets are generally accused that, wheresoever
they lay the scene, or in whatever age, the manners of
their heroes are wholly French. Racine's Bajazet is
bred at Constantinople, but his civilities are conveyed to
him by some secret passage from Versailles into the Se-
raglio." It is curious that Voltaire, speaking of the Bere-
nice of Racine, praises a passage in it for precisely what
Dry den condemns : "II semble qu'on entende Henriette
d'Angleterre elle-meme parlant au marquis de Vardes.
La politesse de la cour de Louis XIV., 1'agrement de la
langue Fra^aise, la douceur de la versification la plus
naturelle, le sentiment le plus tendre, tout se trouve
dans ce peu de vers." After Dryden had broken away
from the heroic style, he speaks out more plainly. In
the Preface to his "All for Love," in reply to some
cavils upon "little, and not essential decencies," the de-
cision about which he refers to a master of ceremonies,
he goes on to say : " The French poets, I confess, are
strict observers of these punctilios ; .... in this nice-
ty of manners does the excellency of French poetry con-
sist. Their heroes are the most civil people breathing,
but their good breeding seldom extends to a word of

* Essay on Dramatick Poesy.

56 DRYDEN.

sense. All their wit is in their ceremony ; they want
the genius which animates our stage, and therefore 't
is but necessary, when they cannot please, that they
should take care not to offend They are so care-
ful not to exasperate a critic that they never leave him
any work, .... for no part of a poem is worth our
discommending where the whole is insipid, as when we
have once tasted palled wine we stay not to examine it
glass by glass. But while they affect to shine in trifles,

they are often careless in essentials For my part,

I desire to be tried by the laws of my own country."
This is said in heat, but it is plain enough that his mind
was wholly changed. In his discourse on epic poetry he is
as decided, but more temperate. He says that the French
heroic verse " runs with more activity than strength.*
Their language is not strung with sinews like our Eng-
lish ; it has the nimbleness of a greyhound, but not the
bulk and body of a mastiff. Our men and our verses
overbear them by their weight, and pondere, no?i nume-
ro, is the British motto. The French have set up pur-
ity for the standard of their language, and a masculine
vigor is that of ours. Like their tongue is the genius
of their poets, — light and trifling in comparison of the
English." f

Dryden might have profited by an admirable saying

* A French hendecasyllable verse runs exactly like our ballad
measure : —

A cobbler there was and he lived in a stall, ....
La raison, pour marcher, n'a souvent qu'une voye.

(Dry den's note.)

The verse is not a hendecasyllable. " Attended watchfully to her
recitative (Mile. Duchesnois), and find that, in nine lines out of ten,
' A cobbler there was,' &c., is the tune of the French heroics." —
Moore's Diary, 24th April, 1821.

* " The language of the age is never the language of poetry, except
among the French, whose verse, where the thought or image does not
support it, differs in nothing from prose." — GRAY to WEST.

DKYDEN. 57

of his own, that " they who would combat general au-
thority with particular opinion must first establish them-
selves a reputation of understanding better than other
men." He understood the defects much better than
the beauties of the French theatre. Leasing was even
more one-sided in his judgment upon it.* Goethe, with
his usual wisdom, studied it carefully without losing his
temper, and tried to profit by its structural merits.
Dryden, with his eyes wide open, copied its worst faults,
especially its declamatory sentiment. He should have
known that certain things can never be transplanted,
and that among these is a style of poetry whose great
excellence was that it was in perfect sympathy with the
genius of the people among whom it came into being.
But the truth is, that Dryden had no aptitude whatever
for the stage, and in writing for it he was attempting
to make a trade of his genius, — an arrangement from
which the genius always withdraws in disgust. It was
easier to make loose thinking and the bad writing which
betrays it pass unobserved while the ear was occupied
with the sonorous music of the rhyme to which they
marched. Except in " All for Love," " the only play,"
he tells us, " which he wrote to please himself," f there
is no trace of real passion in any of his tragedies. This,
indeed, is inevitable, for there are no characters, but only
personages, in any except that. That is, in many re-
spects, a noble play, and there are few finer scenes,

* Diderot and Kousseau, however, thought their language unfit for
poetry, and Voltaire seems to have half agreed with them. No one
has expressed this feeling more neatly than Fauriel : " Nul doute que
Ton ne puisse dire en prose des choses e'minemment poe"tiques, tout
comme il n'est que trop certain que Ton peut en dire de fort prosaiques
en vers, et meme en excellents vers, en vers e'l^gamment tourne's, et
en beau langage. C'est un fait dont je n'ai pas besoin d'indiquer
d'exemples : aucune litteVature n'en fournirait autant que le notre." —
Hist, de la Poe'sie Provencale, II. 237.

t Parallel of Poetry and Painting.
3*

58 DRYDEN.

whether in the conception or the carrying out, than that
between Antony and Ventidius in the first act.*

As usual, Dry den' s good sense was not blind to the
extravagances of his dramatic style. In " Mac Flecknoe "
he makes his own Maximin the type of childish rant,

" And little Maximins the gods defy " ;

but, as usual also, he could give a plausible reason for
his own mistakes by means of that most fallacious of all
fallacies which is true so far as it goes. In his Prologue
to the " Royal Martyr " he says : —

" And he who servilely creeps after sense
Is safe, but ne'er will reach an excellence.

But, when a tyrant for his theme he had,
He loosed the reins and let his muse run mad,
And, though he stumbles in a full career,
Yet rashness is a better fault than fear;

They then, who of each trip advantage take,

Find out those faults which they want wit to make."

A.nd in the Preface to the same play he tells us : "I
have not everywhere observed the equality of numbers
in my verse, partly by reason of my haste, but more es-
pecially because I would not have my sense a slave to syl-
lables." Dry den, when he had not a bad case to argue,
would have had small respect for the wit whose skill lay
in the making of faults, and has himself, where his self-
love was not engaged, admirably defined the boundary
which divides boldness from rashness. What Quintilian
says of Seneca applies very aptly to Dryden : " Velles
eum suo ingenio dixisse, alieno judicio." f He was think-
ing of himself, I fancy, when he makes Ventidius say of
Antony, —

* " H y a seulementla scene de Ventidius et ftAntvine qui est digne
de Corneille. C'est la le sentiment de milord Bolingbroke et de tous
les bons auteurs ; c'est ainsi que pensait Addisson." — VOLTAIBJC t«
M. DE FROMONT, 15th Norember, 1735.

t Inst. X., i. 129.

DRYDEN. 59

" He starts out wide

And bounds into a vice that bears him far
From his first course, and plunges him in ills;
But, when his danger makes him find his fault,
Quick to observe, and full of sharp remorse,
He censures eagerly his own misdeeds,
Judging himself with malice to himself,
And not forgiving what as man he did
Because his other parts are more than man."

tf ut bad though* they nearly all are as wholes, his plays
contain passages which only the great masters have sur-
passed, and to the level of which no subsequent writer
for the stage has ever risen. The necessity of rhyme
often forced him to a platitude, as where he says, —

" My love was blind to your deluding art,
But blind men feel when stabbed so near the heart." *

But even in rhyme he not seldom justifies his claim to
the title of "glorious John." In the very play from
which I have just quoted are these verses in his best
manner : —

" No, like his better Fortune I '11 appear,

With open arms, loose veil, and flowing hair,
Just flying forward from her rolling sphere."

His comparisons, as I have said, are almost always hap-
py. This, from the "Indian Emperor," is tenderly
pathetic : —

" As callow birds,

Whose mother 's killed in seeking of the prey,
Cry in their nest and think her long away,
And, at each leaf that stirs, each blast of wind,
Gape for the food which they must never find."

^nd this, of the anger with which the Maiden Queen,
striving to hide her jealousy, betrays her love, is vigor-
ous : —

" Her rage was love, and its tempestuous flame,
Like lightning, showed the heaven from whence it came.

* Conquest of Grenada, Second Part.

60 DRYDEN.

The following simile from the " Conquest of Grenada "
is as well expressed as it is apt in conception : —

" I scarcely understand my own intent ;
But, silk-worm like, so long within have wrought,
That I am lost in my own web of thought."

In the " Rival Ladies," Angelina, walking in the dark,
describes her sensations naturally and strikingly : —

" No noise but what my footsteps make, and they
Sound dreadfully and louder than by day:
They double too, and every step I take
Sounds thick, methinks, and more than one could make."

In all the rhymed plays* there are many passages
which one is rather inclined to like than sure he would
be right in liking them. The following verses from
" Aurengzebe " are of this sort : —

" My love was such it needed no return,
Rich in itself, like elemental fire,
Whose pureness does no aliment require."

This is Cowleyish, and pureness is surely the wrong
word ; and yet it is better than mere commonplace.
Perhaps what oftenest turns the balance in Dryden's
favor, when we are weighing his claims as a poet, is his
persistent capability of enthusiasm. To the last he
kindles, and sometimes almost flashes out that super-
natural light which is the supreme test of poetic genius.
As he himself so finely and characteristically says in
" Aurengzebe," there was no period in his life when it
was not true of him that

" He felt the inspiring heat, the absent god return."

The verses which follow are full of him, and, with the
exception of the single w^ord underwent, are in his lucki-
est manner : —

" One loose, one sally of a hero's soul,
Does all the military art control.

* In most, he mingles blank vers«.

DRYDEN. 61

While timorous wit goes round, or fords the shore,
He shoots the gulf, and is already o'er,
And, when the enthusiastic fit is spent,
Looks back amazed at what lie underwent." *

Pithy sentences and phrases always drop from Dry-
den's pen as if unawares, whether in prose or verse. I
string together a few at random : —

" The greatest argument for love is love."
" Few know the use of life before 'tis past."
" Time gives himself and is not valued."

" Death in itself is nothing; but we fear

To be we know not what, we know not where."

" Love either finds equality or makes it ;

Like death, he knows no difference in degrees."

" That 's empire, that which I can give away."

" Yours is a soul irregularly great,
Which, wanting temper, yet abounds in heat."

" Forgiveness to the injured does belong,

But they ne'er pardon who have done the wrong."

" Poor women's thoughts are all extempore."

" The cause of love can never be assigned,
'T is in no face, but in the lover's mind." f

" Heaven can forgive a crime to penitence,
For Heaven can judge if penitence be true;
But man, who knows not hearts, should make examples."

" Kings' titles commonly begin by force,
Which time wears off and mellows into right."

" Fear's a large promiser; who subject live

To that base passion, know not what they give."

" The secret pleasure of the generous act
Is the great mind's great bribe."

" That bad thing, gold, buys all good things."
" Why, love does all that 's noble here below."

* Conquest of Grenada.

t This recalls a striking verse of Alfred de Musset: —

;' La muse est toujours belle.
Meme pour 1'insense', meme pour 1'impuissant,
Car sa beaut* pour nous, c'eat notre amour pour elle.n

62 DRYDEN.

" To prove religion true,
If either wit or sufferings could suffice,
All faiths afford the constant and the wise."

But Dryden, as he tells us himself,

" Grew weary of his long-loved mistress, Rhyme;
Passion 's too fierce to be in fetters bound,
And Nature flies him like enchanted ground."

The finest things in his plays were written in blank
verse, as vernacular to him as the alexandrine to the
French. In this he vindicates his claim as a poet. His
diction gets wings, and both his verse and his thought
become capable of a reach which was denied them when
set in the stocks of the couplet. The solid man becomes
even airy in this new-found freedom : Anthony says,

" How I loved,

Witness ye days and nights, and all ye hours
That danced away with down upon your feet."

And what image was ever more delicately exquisite,
what movement more fadingly accordant with the sense,
than in the last two verses of the following passage ?

" I feel death rising higher still and higher,
Within my bosom ; every breath I fetch
Shuts up my life within a shorter compass,
And, like the vanishing sound of bells, grows less
And less each pulse, till it be lost in air.'1'1 *

Nor was he altogether without pathos, though it is rare
with him. The following passage seems to me tenderly

full of it : -

" Something like

That voice, methinks, I should have somewhere heard ;
But floods of woe have hurried it far off
Beyond my ken of soul." t

And this single verse from " Aurengzebe " : —
" Live still ! oh live ! live even to be unkind ! "
with its passionate eagerness and sobbing lepetition, is
* Rival Ladies. 1 Don Sebastian.

DRYDEN. 63

worth a ship-load of the long-drawn treacle of modern
self-compassion.

Now and then, to be sure, we come upon something
that makes us hesitate again whether, after all, Dry den
was not grandiose rather than great, as in the two pas-
sages that next follow : —

" He looks secure of death, superior greatness,
Like Jove when he made Fate and said, Thou art
The slave of my creation." *

" I 'm pleased with my own work ; Jove was not more
With infant nature, when his spacious hand
Had rounded this huge ball of earth and seas,
To give it the first push and see it roll
Along the vast abyss." f

I should say that Dryden is more apt to dilate our
fancy than our thought, as great poets have the gift of
doing. But if he have not the potent alchemy that
transmutes the lead of our commonplace associations into
gold, as Shakespeare knows how to do so easily, yet his
sense is always up to the sterling standard ; and though
he has not added so much as some have done to the
stock of bullion which others afterwards coin and put
in circulation, there are few who have minted so many
phrases that are still a part of our daily currency. The
first line of the following passage has been worn pretty
smooth, but the succeeding ones are less familiar : —

" Men are but children of a larger growth,
Our appetites as apt to change as theirs,
And full as craving too and full as vain;
And yet the soul, shut up in her dark room,
Viewing so clear abroad, at home sees nothing;
But, like a mole in earth, busy and blind;
Works all her folly up and casts it outward
In the world's open view." J

The image is mixed and even contradictory, but the
thought obtains grace for it. I feel as if Shakespeare
would have written seeing for viewing, thus gaining the

• Don Sebastian. f Cleomenes. $ All for LOT*.

64 DRYDEN.

strength of repetition in one verse and avoiding the
sameness of it in the other. Dry den, I suspect, was not
much given to correction, and indeed one of the great
charms of his best writing is that everything seems struck
off at a heat, as by a superior man in the best mood of
his talk. Where he rises, he generally becomes fervent
rather than imaginative ; his thought does not incorpo-
rate itself in metaphor, as in purely poetic minds, but
repeats and reinforces itself in simile. Where he is im-
aginative, it is in that lower sense which the poverty of
our language, for want of a better word, compels us to
call picturesque, and even then he shows little of that
finer instinct which suggests so much more than it tells,
and works the more powerfully as it taxes more the im-
agination of the reader. In Donne's " Relic " there is
an example of what I mean. He fancies some one break-
ing up his grave and spying

" A bracelet of bright hair about the bone,'4 —

a verse that still shines there in the darkness of the
tomb, after two centuries, like one of those inextinguish-
able lamps whose secret is lost.* Yet Dry den some-
times showed a sense of this magic of a mysterious1 hirt,
as in the " Spanish Friar " : —

" No, I confess, you bade me not in words ;
The dial spoke not, but it made shrewd signs,
And pointed full upon the stroke of murder."

This is perhaps a solitary example. Nor is be always
so possessed by the image in his mind as unconsciously

* Dryden, with his wonted perspicacity, follows Ben Jonson in call
Ing Donne " the greatest wit, though not the best poet, of our nation.''
(Dedication of Eleonora.) Even as a poet Donne

" Had in him those brave translunary things

That our first poets had."

To open vistas for the imagination through the blind wall of the senses
as he could sometimes do, is the supreme function of poetry.

DRYDEN. 65

to choose even the picturesquely imaginative word. He
has done so, however, in this passage from " Marriage
a la Mode " : —

" You ne'er must hope again to see your princess,
Except as prisoners view fair walks and streets,
And careless passengers going by their grates."

But after all, he is best upon a level, table-land, it
is true, and a very high level, but still somewhere be-
tween the loftier peaks of inspiration and the plain of
every-day life. In those passages where he moralizes
he is always good, setting some obvious truth in a new
light by vigorous phrase and happy illustration. Take
this (from " (Edipus ") as a proof of it : —

" The gods are just,
But how can finite measure infinite ?
Reason ! alas, it does not know itself !
Yet man, vain man, would with his short-lined plummet
Fathom the vast abyss of heavenly justice.
Whatever is, is in its causes just,
Since all things are by fate. But purblind man
Sees but a part o' th' chain, the nearest links,
His eyes not carrying to that equal beam
That poises all above."

From the same play I pick an illustration of that ripened
sweetness of thought and language which marks the
natural vein of Dryden. One cannot help applying the
passage to the late Mr. Quincy : —

" Of no distemper, of no blast he died,
But fell like autumn fruit that mellowed long,
E'en wondered at because he dropt no sooner;
Fate seemed to wind him up for fourscore years ;
Yet freshly ran he on ten winters more,
Till, like a clock worn out with eating Time,
The wheels of weary life at last stood still." *

Here is another of the same kind from "All for Love" : —

* My own judgment is my sole warrant for attributing these extracts
from (Edipus to Dryden rather than Lee.

66 DRYDEN.

" Gone so soon !

Is Death no more? He used him carelessly,
With a familiar kindness ; ere he knocked,
Ran to the door and took him in his arms,
As who should say, You 're welcome at all hours,
A friend need give no warning."

With one more extract from the same play, which
is in every way his best, for he had, when he wrote it,
been feeding on the bee-bread of Shakespeare, I shall
conclude. Antony says,

" For I am now so sunk from what I was,
Thou find'st me at my lowest water-mark.
The rivers that ran in and raised my fortunes
Are all dried up, or take another course :
What I have left is from my native spring;
I 've a heart still that swells in scorn of Fate,
And lifts me to my banks."

This is certainly, from beginning to end, in what used
to be called the grand style, at once noble and natural.
I have not undertaken to analyze any one of the plays,
for (except in " All for Love ") it would have been only
to expose their weakness. Dry den had no constructive
faculty : and in every one of his longer poems that re-
quired a plot, the plot is bad, always more or less incon-
sistent with itself, and rather hitched-on to the subject
than combining with it. It is fair to say, however,
before leaving this part of Dryden's literary work, that
Home Tooke thought " Don Sebastian " " the best play
extant." * Gray admired the plays of Dry den, " not as
dramatic compositions, but as poetry." | " There are as
many things finely said in his plays as almost by any-
body," said Pope to Spence. Of their rant, their fus-
tian, their bombast, their bad English, of their innu-
merable sins against Dryden's own better conscience
both as poet and critic, I shall excuse myself from

* Recollections of Rogers, p. 165.

f Nicholls's Reminiscences of Gray. Pickering's edition of Gray'g
Works, Vol. V. p. 35.

DRYDEN. 67

giving any instances.* I like what is good in Dryden
so much, and it is so good, that I think Gray was justi-
fied in always losing his temper when he heard " his
faults criticised." f

It is as a satirist and pleader in verse that Dryden is
best known, and as both he is in some respects unrivalled.
His satire is not so sly as Chaucer's, but it is distin-
guished by the same good-nature. There is no malice in
it. I shall not enter into his literary quarrels further
than to say that he seems to me, on the whole, to have
been forbearing, which is the more striking as he tells
us repeatedly that he was naturally vindictive. It was
he who called revenge " the darling attribute of heaven."
" I complain not of their lampoons and libels, though I
have been the public mark for many years. I am vin-
dictive enough to have repelled force by force, if I could
imagine that any of them had ever reached me." It
was this feeling of easy superiority, I suspect, that made
him the mark for so much jealous vituperation. Scott
is wrong in attributing his onslaught upon Settle to
jealousy because one of the latter's plays had been per-
formed at Court, — an honor never paid to any of Dry-
den's. $ I have found nothing like a trace of jealousy in

* Let one suffice for all. In the " Royal Martyr," Porphyrius,
awaiting his execution, says to Maximin, who had wished him for a
son-in-law : —

" Where'er thou stand'st, I '11 level at that place
My gushing blood, and spout it at thy face ;
Thus not by marriage we our blood will join ;
Nay, more, my arms shall throw my head at thine."
" It is no shame," says Dryden himself, " to be a poet, though it is
to be a bad one."

t Gray, vbi supra, p. 38.

J Scott had never seen Pepys's Diary when he wrote this, or he
would have left it unwritten : " Fell to discourse of the last night's
work at Court, where the ladies and Duke of Monmouth acted the
' Indian Emperor,' wherein they told me these things most remarkable
that not any woman but the Duchess of Monmouth and Mrs. Corn-

68 DRYDEN.

that large and benignant nature. In his vindication of
the " Duke of Guise," he says, with honest confidence
in himself : " Nay, I durst almost refer myself to some
of the angry poets on the other side, whether I have
not rather countenanced and assisted their beginnings
than hindered them from rising." He seems to have
been really as indifferent to the attacks on himself as
Pope pretended to be. In the same vindication he says
of the " Rehearsal," the only one of them that had any
wit in it, and it has a great deal : " Much less am I con-
cerned at the noble name of Bayes ; that 's a brat so
like his own father that he cannot be mistaken for any
other body. They might as reasonably have called Tom
Sternhold Virgil, and the resemblance would have held
as well." In his Essay on Satire he says : " And yet we
know that in Christian charity all offences are to be for-
given as we expect the like pardon for those we daily
commit against Almighty God. And this consideration
has often made me tremble when I was saying our Lord's
Prayer ; for the plain condition of the forgiveness which
we beg is the pardoning of others the offences which
they have done to us ; for which reason I have many
times avoided the commission of that fault, even when
I have been notoriously provoked."* And in another
passage he says, with his usual wisdom : " Good sense
and good-nature are never separated, though the ignorant
world has thought otherwise. Good-nature, by which I
mean beneficence and candor, is the product of right
reason, which of necessity will give allowance to the
failings of others, by considering that there is nothing

wallis did anything but like fools and stocks, but that these two did do
most extraordinary well ? that not apy man did anything well but Cap-
tain 0' Bryan, who spoke and did well, but above all things did dance
most incomparably." — 14th January, 1668.

* See also that noble passage in the "Hind and Panther" (1573-
1591), where this is put into verse. Dryden always thought in prose.

DRYDEN. 69

perfect in mankind." In the same Essay he gives his
own receipt for satire : " How easy it is to call rogue and
villain, and that wittily ! but how hard to make a man
appear a fool, a blockhead, or a knave, without using
any of those opprobrious terms ! .... This is the mys-
tery of that noble trade Neither is it true that

this fineness of raillery is offensive : a witty man is
tickled while he is hurt in this manner, and a fool feels
it not There is a vast difference between the slov-
enly butchering of a man and the fineness of a stroke that
separates the head from the body, and leaves it standing
in its place. A man may be capable, as Jack Ketch's
wife said of his servant, of a plain piece of work, of a
bare hanging ; but to make a malefactor die sweetly was
only belonging to her husband. I wish I could apply it
to myself, if the reader would be kind enough to think
it belongs to me. The character of Zimri in my ' Absa-
lom ' is, in my opinion, worth the whole poem. It is
not bloody, but it is ridiculous enough, and he for whom
it was intended was too witty to resent it as an injury.
.... I avoided the mention of great crimes, and applied
myself to the representing of blind sides and little ex-
travagances, to which, the wittier a man is, he is gen-
rally the more obnoxious."

Dryden thought his genius led him that way. In his
elegy on the satirist Oldham, whom Hallam, without read-
ing him. I suspect, ranks next to Dryden,* he says : —

" For sure our souls were near allied, and thine
Cast in the same poetic mould with mine;
One common note in either lyre did strike,
And knaves and fools we both abhorred alike."

His practice is not always so delicate as his theory ; but

* Probably on the authority of this very epitaph, as if epitaphs were
to be believed even under oath ! A great many authors live because
we read nothing but their tombstones. Oldham was. to borrow one of
Dryden's phrases, " a bad or, which is worse, an indifferent poet."

70 DRYDEN.

if he was sometimes rough, he never took a base advaii-
tagfc. He knocks his antagonist down, and there an
end. Pope seems to have nursed his grudge, and then,
watching his chance, to have squirted vitriol from behind
a corner, rather glad than otherwise if it fell on the
women of those he hated or envied. And if Dryden is
never dastardly, as Pope often was, so also he never
wrote anything so maliciously depreciatory as Pope's un-
provoked attack on Addison. Dryden's satire is often
coarse, but where it is coarsest, it is commonly in defence
of himself against attacks that were themselves brutal.
Then, to be sure, he snatches the first ready cudgel, as
in Shadwell's case, though even then there is something
of the good-humor of conscious strength. Pope's provo-
cation was too often the mere opportunity to say a biting
thing, where he could do it safely. If his victim showed
fight, he tried to smooth things over, as with Dennis.
Dryden could forget that he had ever had a quarrel, but
he never slunk away from any, least of all from one pro-
voked by himself.* Pope's satire is too much occupied
with the externals of manners, habits, personal defects,
and peculiarities. Dryden goes right to the rooted
character of the man, to the weaknesses of his nature,
as where he says of Burnet : —

" Prompt to assail, and careless of defence,
Invulnerable in his impudence,
He dares the world, and, eager of a name,
He thrusts about and justles into fame.
So fond of loud report that, not to miss
Of being known (his last and utmost bliss),
Be rather would be known for what he is."

It would be hard to find in Pope such compression of
meaning as in the first, or such penetrative sarcasm as

* " He was of a nature exceedingly humane and compassionate
easily forgiving injuries, and capable of a prompt and sin-cere
filiation with them that had offended him." — CONGB«*».

DRYDEN. 71

in the second of the passages I have underscored.
Dryden's satire is still quoted for its comprehensiveness
of application, Pope's rather for the elegance of its finish
and the point of its phrase than for any deeper qual-
ities.* I do not remember that Dry den ever makes
poverty a reproach.| He was above it, alike by generos-
ity of birth and mind. Pope is always the parvenu,
always giving himself the airs of a fine gentleman, and,
like Horace Walpole and Byron, affecting superiority to
professional literature. Dryden, like Lessing, was a
hack-writer, and was proud, as an honest man has a
right to be, of being able to get his bread by his brains.
He lived in Grub Street all his life, and never dreamed
that where a man of genius lived was not the best
quarter of the town. " Tell his Majesty," said sturdy
old Jonson, " that his soul lives in an alley."

Dryden's prefaces are a mine of good writing and
judicious criticism. His obiter dicta have often the pen-
etration, and always more than the equity, of Voltaire's,
for Dryden never loses temper, and never altogether
qualifies his judgment by his self-love. " He was a more
universal writer than Voltaire," said Home Tooke, and
perhaps it is true that he had a broader view, though
bis learning was neither so extensive nor so accurate.

* Coleridge says excellently: "You will find this a good gauge or
criterion of genius, — whether it progresses and evolves, or only spins
upon itself. Take Dryden's Achitophel and Zimri ; every line adds to
or modifies the character, which is, as it were, a-building up to the
very last verse; whereas in Pope's Timon, &c. the first two or three
couplets contain all the pith of the character, and the twenty or thirty
lines that follow are so much evidence or proof of overt acts of jealousy,
or pride, or whatever it may be that is satirized." (Table-Talk, 192.)
Some of Dryden's best satirical hits are let fall by seeming accident in
his prose, as where he says of his Protestant assailants, " Most of them
love all whores but her of Babylon." They had first attacked him on
the score of his private morals.

t That he taxes Shadwell with it is only a seeming exception, as any
careful reader will sec.

72 DRYDEN.

My space will not afford many extracts, but I cannot
forbear one or two. He says of Chaucer, that " he is a
perpetual fountain of good sense," * and likes him better
than Ovid, — a bold confession in that day. He prefers
the pastorals of Theocritus to those of Virgil. " Virgil's
shepherds are too well read in the philosophy of Epicurus
and of Plato " ; " there is a kind of rusticity in all those
pompous verses, somewhat of a holiday shepherd strut-
ting in his country buskins ";f "Theocritus is softer
than Ovid, he touches the passions more delicately, and
performs all this out of his own fund, without diving
into the arts and sciences for a supply. Even his Doric
dialect has an incomparable sweetness in his clownish-
ness, like a fair shepherdess, in her country russet,
talking in a Yorkshire tone."$ Comparing Virgil's verse
with that of some other poets, he says, that his " num-
bers are perpetually varied to increase the delight of the
reader, so that the same sounds are never repeated twice
together. On the contrary, Ovid and Claudian, though
they write in styles different from each other, yet have
each of them but one sort of music in their verses. All
the versification and little variety of Claudian is included
within the compass of four or five lines, and then he
begins again in the same tenor, perpetually closing his
sense at the end of a verse, and that verse commonly
which they call golden, or two substantives and two
adjectives with a verb betwixt them to keep the peace.
Ovid, with all his sweetness, has as little variety of
numbers and sound as he ; he is always, as it were, upon
the hand-gallop, and his verse runs upon carpet-ground." §
What a dreary half-century would have been saved to
English poetry, could Pope have laid these sentences to
heart ! Upon translation, no one has written so much

* Preface to Fables. J Preface to Second Miscellany.

t Dedication of the Georgics. § Ibid.

DRYDEN. 73

and so well as Dryden in his various prefaces. What-
ever has been said since is either expansion or variation
of what he had said before. His general theory may be
stated as an aim at something between the literalness of
metaphrase and the looseness of paraphase. " Where I
have enlarged," he says, " I desire the false critics would
not always think that those thoughts are wholly mine,
but either they are secretly in the poet, or may be fairly
deduced from him." Coleridge, with his usual cleverness
of assimilation, has condensed him in a letter to Words-
worth : " There is no medium between a prose version
and one on the avowed principle of compensation in the
widest sense, i.e. manner, genius, total effect." *

I have selected these passages, not because they are
the best, but because they have a near application to
Dryden himself. His own characterization of Chaucer
(though too narrow for the greatest but one of English
poets) is the best that could be given of himself : " He is
a perpetual fountain of good sense." And the other pas-
sages show him a close and open-minded student of
the art he professed. Has his influence on our litera-
ture, but especially on our poetry, been on the whole for
good or evil ? If he could have been read with the
liberal understanding which he brought to the works of
others, I should answer at once that it had been benefi-
cial. But his translations and paraphrases, in some
ways the best things he did, were done, like his plays,
under contract to deliver a certain number of verses for
a specified sum. The versification, of which he had
learned the art by long practice, is excellent, but his
haste has led him to fill out the measure of lines with
phrases that add only to dilute, and thus the clearest,
the most direct, the most manly versifier of his time be-
came, without meaning it, the source (fans et origo ma-

* Memoirs of Wordsworth, Vol. II. p. 74 (American edition).

4

74 DRYDEN.

lorum) of that poetic diction from which our poetry has
not even yet recovered. I do not like to say it, but he
has sometimes smothered the childlike simplicity of
Chaucer under feather-beds of verbiage. What this
kind of thing came to in the next century, when every-
body ceremoniously took a bushel-basket to bring a
wren's egg to market in, is only too sadly familiar. It is
clear that his natural taste led Dryden to prefer direct-
ness and simplicity of style. If he was too often
tempted astray by Artifice, his love of Nature betrays
itself in many an almost passionate outbreak of angry
remorse. Addison tells us that he took particular de-
light in the reading of our old English ballads. What
he valued above all things was Force, though in his haste
he is willing to make a shift with its counterfeit, Effect.
As usual, he had a good reason to urge for what he
did : " I will not excuse, but justify myself for one pre-
tended crime for which I am liable to be charged by
false critics, not only in this translation, but in many of
my original poems, — that I Latinize too much. It is
true that when I find an English word significant and
sounding, I neither borrow from the Latin or any other
language ; but when I want at home I must seek abroad.
If sounding words are not of our growth and manufac-
ture, who shall hinder me to import them from a foreign
country] I carry not out the treasure of the nation
which is never to return ; but what I bring from Italy I
spend in England : here it remains, and here it circu-
lates ; for if the coin be good, it will pass from one hand
to another. I trade both with the living and the dead
for the enrichment of our native language. We have
enough in England to supply our necessity ; but if we
will have things of magnificence and splendor, we must

get them by commerce Therefore, if I find a word

in a classic author, I propose it to be naturalized by

DRYDEN. 75

using it myself, and if the public approve of it the bill
passes. But every man cannot distinguish betwixt
pedantry and poetry ; every man, therefore, is not fit
to innovate."* This is admirably said, and with Dry-
den's accustomed penetration to the root of the matter.
The Latin has given us most of our canorous words, only
they must not be confounded with merely sonorous ones,
still less with phrases that, instead of supplementing the
sense, encumber it. It was of Latinizing in this sense
that Dryden was guilty. Instead of stabbing, he " with
steel invades the life." The consequence was that by
and by we have Dr. Johnson's poet, Savage, telling us, —

" In front, a parlor meets my entering view,
Opposed a room to sweet refection due " ;

Dr. Blacklock making a forlorn maiden say of her " dear,"
who is out late, —

" Or by some apoplectic fit deprest
Perhaps, alas ! he seeks eternal rest " ;

and Mr. Bruce, in a Danish war-song, calling on the vi-
kings to " assume their oars." But it must be admitted
of Dryden that he seldom makes the second verse of a
couplet the mere trainbearer to the first, as Pope was
continually doing. In Dryden the rhyme waits upon
the thought ; in Pope and his school the thought courte-
sies to the tune for which it is written.

Dryden has also been blamed for his gallicisms, f He
tried some, it is true, but they have not been accepted.

* A Discourse of Epick Poetry. " If the public approve." " On ne
peut pas admettre dans le de"veloppement des langues aueune re"vo-
lution artificielle et sciemment executed; il n'y a pour elles ni conciles,
ni assemblies de'libe'rantes ; on ne les reTorme pas comme Tine consti-
tution vicieuse." — RENAN, De 1'Origine du Langage, p-. 96.

f This is an old complaint. Puttenham sighs over such innovation
in Elizabeth's time, and Carew in James's. A language grows, and is
not made. Almost all the new-fangled words willi Which Jonsou
taxes Marston in his " Poetaster" are now current

76 DRYDEN.

I do not think he added a single word to the language,
unless, as I suspect, he first used magnetism in its pres-
ent sense of moral attraction. What he did in hia best
writing was to use the English as if it were a spoken,
and not merely an inkhorn language ; as if it were his
own to do what he pleased with it, as if it need not be
ashamed of itself.* In this respect, his service to our
prose was greater than any other man has ever rendered.
He says he formed his style upon Tillotson's (Bossuet,
on the other hand, formed his upon Corneille's) ; but I
rather think he got it at Will's, for its great charm is
that it has the various freedom of talk.f In verse, he
had a pomp which, excellent in itself, became pompous-
ness in his imitators. But he had nothing of Milton's
ear for various rhythm and interwoven harmony. He
knew how to give new modulation, sweetness, and force
to the pentameter ; but in what used to be called pin-
darics, I am heretic enough to think he generally failed.
His so much praised " Alexander's Feast " (in parts of
it, at least) has no excuse for its slovenly metre and
awkward expression, but that it was written for music.
He himself tells us, in the epistle dedicatory to " King
Arthur," " that the numbers of poetry and vocal music
are sometimes so contrary, that in many places I have
been obliged to cramp my verses and make them rugged

* Like most idiomatic, as distinguished from correct writers, he
knew very little about the language historically or critically. His
prose and poetry swarm with locutions that would have made Lindley
Murray's hair stand on end. How little he knew is plain from his criti-
cising in Ben Jonson the use of ones in the plural, of " Though Heaven
should speak with all his wrath," and 6e"as false English for are,
though the rhyme hides it." Yet all are good English, and I have
found them all in Dryden's own writing! Of his sins against idiom I
have a longer list than I have room for. And yet he is one of our
highest authorities for real English.

t To see what he rescued us from in pedantry on the one lur'/d, and
vulgarism on the other, read Felthara and Tom Brown — if yo»' can.

DRYDEN. 77

to the reader that they may be harmonious to the
hearer." His renowned ode suffered from this constraint,
but this is no apology for the vulgarity of conception in
too many passages.*

Dryden's conversion to Romanism has been commonly
taken for granted as insincere, and has therefore left an
abiding stain On his character, though the other mud
thrown at him by angry opponents or rivals brushed off
so soon as it was dry. But I think his change of faith
susceptible of several explanations, none of them in any
way discreditable to him. Where Church and State are
habitually associated, it is natural that minds even of a
high order should unconsciously come to regard religion
AS only a subtler mode of police, f Dry den, conservative
by nature, had discovered before Joseph de Maistre, that
Protestantism, so long as it justified its name by con-
tinuing to be an active principle, was the abettor of Re-
publicanism. I think this is hinted in more than one
passage in his preface to " The Hind and Panther."
He may very well have preferred Romanism because of
its elder claim to authority in all matters of doctrine,
but I think he had a deeper reason in the constitution
of his own mind. That he was " naturally inclined to
scepticism in philosophy," he tells us of himself in the
preface to the " Religio Laici " ; but he was a sceptic

* " Cette ode raise en musique par Purcell (si je ne me trompe),
passe en Angleterre pour le chef-d'oeuvre de la poesie la plus sublime
et la plus variee; etje vous avoue que, comme je sais mieux 1'anglais
que le grec, j'aime cent fois mieux cette ode que tout Pindare." —

VOLTAIKE tO M. DE CHABANON, 9 murs, 1772.

Dryden would have agreed with Voltaire. When Chief-Justice Mar-
lay, then a young Templar, " congratulated him on having produced
the finest and noblest Ode that had ever been written in any language,
' You are right, young gentleman ' ( replied Dryden), ' a nobler Ode
never was produced, nor ever will.' " — MALONE.

t This was true of Coleridge, Wordsworth, and still more of Southey
•who in some respects was not unlike Dryden.

78 DRYDEN.

with an imaginative side, and in such characters scepti-
cism and superstition play into each other's hands. This
finds a curious illustration in a letter to his sons, written
four years before his death : " Towards the latter end of
this month, September, Charles will begin to recover his
perfect health, according to his Nativity, which, casting
it myself, I am sure is true, and all things hitherto have
happened accordingly to the very time that I predicted
them." Have we forgotten Montaigne's votive offerings
at the shrine of Loreto 1

Dryden was short of body, inclined to stoutness, and
florid of complexion. He is said to have had " a sleepy
eye," but was handsome and of a manly carriage. He
"was not a very genteel man, he was intimate with
none but poetical men.* He was said to be a very good
man by all that knew him : he was as plump as Mr.
Pitt, of a fresh color and a down look, and not very
conversible." So Pope described him to Spence. He
still reigns in literary tradition, as when at Will's his
elbow-chair had the best place by the fire in winter, or
on the balcony in summer, and when a pinch from his
snuff-box made a young author blush with pleasure as
would now-a-days a favorable notice in the " Saturday
Review." What gave and secures for him this singular
eminence 1 To put it in a single word, I think that his
qualities and faculties were in that rare combination
which makes character. This gave flavor to whatever
he wrote, — a very rare quality.

Was he, then, a great poet ? Hardly, in the narrow-

* Pope's notion of gentility was perhaps expressed in a letter from
Lord Cobham to him : " I congratulate you upon the fine weather.
'T is a strange thing that people of condition and men of parts must
enjoy it in common with the rest of the world." (Ruff head's Pope,
p. 276, note.) His Lordship's naive distinction between people of con-
dition and men of parts is as good as Pope's between genteel and po«
etical men. I fancy the poet grinning saragely as he read it.

DRYDEN. 79

est definition. But he was a strong thinker who some-
times carried common sense to a height where it catches
the light of a diviner air, and warmed reason till it had
wellnigh the illuminating property of intuition. Cer-
tainly he is not, like Spenser, the poets' poet, but other
men have also their rights. Even the Philistine is a
man and a brother, and is entirely right so far as he
sees. To demand more of him is to be unreasonable.
And he sees, among other things, that a man who under-
takes to write should first have a meaning perfectly de-
nned to himself, and then should be able to set it forth
clearly in the best words. This is precisely Dryden's
praise,* and amid the rickety sentiment looming big
through misty phrase which marks so much of modern
literature, to read him is as bracing as a northwest wind.
He blows the mind clear. In ripeness of mind and bluff
heartiness of expression, he takes rank with the best.
His phrase is always a short-cut to his sense, for his es-
tate was too spacious for him to need that trick of wind-
ing the path of his thought about, and planting it out
with clumps of epithet, by which the landscape-gar-
deners of literature give to a paltry half-acre the air of a
park. In poetry, to be next-best is, in one sense, to be
nothing ; and yet to be among the first in any kind of
writing, as Dryden certainly was, is to be one of a very
small company. He had, beyond most, the gift of the
right word. And if he does not, like one or two of the
greater masters of song, stir our sympathies by that in-
definable aroma so magical in arousing the subtile asso-
ciations of the soul, he has this in common with the
few great writers, that the winged seeds of his thought
embed themselves in the memory and germinate there.
If I could be guilty of the absurdity of recommending

* " Nothing is truly sublime," he himself said, "that is not just and
proper."

80 DRYDEN.

to a young man any author on whom to form his style,
I should tell him that, next to having something that
will not stay unsaid, he could find no safer guide than
Dryden.

Cowper, in a letter to Mr. Unwin (5th January, 1782),
expresses what I think is the common feeling about
Dryden, that, with all his defects, he had that indefina-
ble something we call Genius. " But I admire Dryden
most [he had been speaking of Pope], who has succeeded
by mere dint of genius, and in spite of a laziness and a
carelessness almost peculiar to himself. His faults are
numberless, and so are his beauties. His faults are those
of a great man, and his beauties are such (at least
sometimes) as Pope with all his touching and retouching
could never equal." But, after all, perhaps no man has
summed him up so well as John Dennis, one of Pope's
typical dunces, a dull man outside of his own sphere,
as men are apt to be, but who had some sound notions
as a critic, and thus became the object of Pope's fear
and therefore of his resentment. Dennis speaks of him
as his "departed friend, whom I infinitely esteemed
when living for the solidity of his thought, for the spring
and the warmth and the beautiful turn of it ; for the
power and variety and fulness of his harmony ; for the
purity, the perspicuity, the energy of his expression ;
and, whenever these great qualities are required, for the
pomp and solemnity and majesty of his style."*

* Dennis in a letter to Tonson, 1715.

WITCHCRAFT.

CREDULITY, as a mental and moral phenomenon, mani-
fests itself in widely different ways, according as it
chances to be the daughter of fancy or terror. The one
lies warm about the heart as Folk-lore, fills moonlit dells

* Salem Witchcraft, with an Account of Salem Village, and a His-
tory of Opinions on Witchcraft and Kindred Subjects. By CHARLES
W. UPHAM. Boston : Wiggin and Lunt. 1867. 2 vols.

TOANNIS WIERI de praestigiis daemonum. et incantationibus ac vene-
ficiis libri sex, postrema editione sexta aucti et recogniti. Accessit
liber apologeticus et pseudomonarchia daemonum. Cum rerum et ver-
borum copioso indice. Cum Caes. Maiest. Regisq; Galliarum gratia
et privelegio. Basiliae ex officina Oporiniani, 1583.

SCOT'S Discovery of Witchcraft: proving the common opinions of
Witches contracting with Divels, Spirits, or Familiars; and their power
to kill, torment, and consume the bodies of men, women, and children,
or other creatures by diseases or otherwise; their flying in the Air, &c.;
To be but imaginary Erronious conceptions and' novelties ; Wherein
also the lewde, unchristian practises of Witchmongers, upon aged,
melancholy, ignorant and superstitious people in extorting confessions
by inhumane terrors and Tortures, is notably detected. Also The knav-
ery and confederacy of Conjurors. The impious blasphemy of In-
chanters. The imposture of Soothsayers, and infidelity of Atheists.
The delusion of Pythonists, Figure-casters, Astrologers, and vanity of
Dreamers. The fruitlesse beggarly art of Alchimistry. The horrible
art of Poisoning and all the tricks and conveyances of juggling and lieger-
demain are fully deciphered. With many other things opened that
have long lain hidden : though very necessary to be known for the un-
deceiving of Judges, Justices, and Juries, and for the preservation of
poor, aged, deformed, ignorant people; frequently taken, arraigned,
condemned and executed for Witches, when according to a right un-
derstanding, and a good conscience, Physick, Food, and necessaries
4* r

82 WITCHCRAFT.

with dancing fairies, sets out a meal for the Brownie,
hears the tinkle of airy bridle-bells as Tamlane rides
away with the Queen of Dreams, changes Pluto and

should be administered to him. Whereunto is added a treatise upon
the nature and substance of Spirits and Divels &c., all written and
published in Anno 1584. By REGINALD SCOT, Esquire. Printed by
R. C. and are to be sold by Giles Calvert dwelling at the Black Spread-
Eagle, at the West-End of Pauls, 1651.

De la Demonomanie des Sorciers. A MONSEIGNEUR M. CHRESTOFK
DE THOU, Chevalier, Seigneur de Coali, premier President en la Cour
de Parlement et Conseiller du Roy en son prive* Conseil. Reveu,
Corrige", et augmente d'une grande partie. Par I. BODIN ANGEVIN.
A Paris: Chez lacques Du Puys, Libraire lure", a la Samaritaine.
M.D.LXXXVII. Avec privilege du Roy.

Magica, seu mirabilium historiarum de Spectris et Apparitionibus
spirituum: Item, de magicis et diabolicis incautationibus. De Mira-
culis, Oraculis, Vaticiuiis, Divinationibus, Prsedictionibus, Revelatio-
nibus et aliis eiusmodi multis ac varijs praestigijs, ludibrijs et imposturis
malorum Daemonum. Libri II. Ex probatis et fide dignis historiarum
scriptoribus diligenter collecti. Islebise, cura, Typis et sumptibus
Henningi Grossij Bibl. Lipo. 1597. Cum privilegio.

The displaying of supposed Witchcraft wherein is affirmed that there
are many sorts of Deceivers and Impostors, and divers persons under a
passive delusion of Melancholy and Fancy. But that there is a cor-
poreal league made betwixt the Devil and the Witch, or that he sucks
on the Witch's body, has carnal copulation, or that Witches are turned
into Cats, Dogs, raise Tempests or the like is utterly denied and dis-
proved. Wherein is also handled, The existence of Angels and Spirits,
the truth of Apparitions, the Nature of Astral and Sydereal Spirits, the
force of Charms and Philters; with other abstruse matters. By JOHN
WEBSTEK, Practitioner in Physick. Falsa etenim opiniones Hominum
non solum surdos sed et coecos faciunt, ita ut videre nequeant quae
aliis perspicua apparent. Galen, lib. 8, de Comp. Med. London:
Printed by I. M. and are to be sold by the booksellers in London.
1677.

Sadducismus Triumphatus: or Full and Plain Evidence concerning
Witches and Apparitions. In two Parts. The First treating of their
Possibility; the Second of their Real Existence. By JOSEPH GLAN-
VIL, late Chaplain in Ordinary to His Majesty, and Fellow of the Roy-
al Society. The third edition. The advantages whereof above the
former, the Reader may understand out of Dr H. More's Account pre-
fixed therunto. With two Authentick, but wonderful Stories of cer-
tain Swedish Witches. Done into English by A. HORNECK DD. Lon-
don, Printed for S. L. and are to be sold by Anth. Baskerville at the
Bible, the corner of Essex-street, without Temple-Bar. M.DCLXXXLX,

WITCHCRAFT. 83

Proserpine into Oberon and Titania, and makes friends
with unseen powers as Good Folk j the other is a bird
of night, whose shadow sends a chill among the roots

Demonologie ou Traitte des Demons et Sorciers : De leur puissance
et impuissance: Par FR. PERKAUD. Ensemble L'Antidemon de
Mascon, ou Histoire Veritable de ce qu'un Demon a fait et dit, il y a
quelques annees en la maison dudit Sr Perreaud a Mascon. I.
Jacques iv. 7, 8. " Resistez au Diable, et il s'enfuira de vous. Ap-
prochez vous de Dieu, et il s'approchera de vous." A Geneve, chez
Pierre Aubert. M,DC,LIII.

The Wonders of the Invisible World. Being an account of the try-
als of several witches lately executed in New-England. By COTTON
MATHER, D. D. To which is added a farther account of the tryals of
the New England Witches. By INCREASE MATHER, D. D. , President of
Harvard College. London: John Russell Smith, Soho Square. 1862.
(First printed in Boston, 1692.)

I. N. D. N. J. C. Dissertatio Juridica de Lamiis earumque processu
criminali, 93on £eren unt> t>em peini. ^rojefli iniber Hefeibeu, Quam,
auxiliante Divina Gratia, Consensu et Authoritate Magnifici JCtorum
Ordinis in illustribus Athenis Salanis sub praesidio Magnifici, Nobilis-
simi, Amplissimi, Consultissimi, atque Excellentissimi DN. ERNESTI
FRIDER. @ct)r6tcr hereditarii in 2Buf erfiatt, JCti et Antecessoris hujus
Salanse Famigeratissimi, Consiliarii Saxonici, Curiae Provincialis, Fa-
cultatis Juridicae, et Scabinatus Assessoris longe Gravissimi, Domini
Patroni Prseceptoris et Promotorissui nullo non honoris et observantly
cultu sancte devenerandi, colendi, public® Eruditorum censurae subjicit
Michael Paris 28alburger, Groebziga Anhaltinus, in Acroaterio JCtorum
ad diem 1. Maj. A. 1670. Editio Tertia. Jense, Typis Pauli Ehrichii.
1707.

Histoire de Diables de Loudun, ou de la Possession des Religieuses
Ursulines, et de la condemnation et du suplice d'Urbain Grandier, Cure"
de la meme ville. Cruels effets de la Vengeance du Cardinal de Riche-
lieu. A Amsterdam Aux depens de la Compagnie. M.DCC.LH.

A view of the Invisible World, or General History of Apparitions.
Collected from the best Authorities, both Antient and Modern, and at-
tested by Authors of the highest Reputation and Credit. Illustrated
with a Variety of Notes and parallel Cases ; in which some Account
of the Nature 'and Cause of Departed Spirits visiting their former Sta-
tions by returning again into the present World, is treated in a Manner
different to the prevailing Opinions of Mankind. And an Attempt is
made from Rational Principles to account for the Species of such su-
pernatural Appearances, when they may be suppos'd consistent with
the Divine Appointment in the Government of the World. With the
sentiments of Monsieur LE CLERC, Mr. LOCKE, Mr. ADDISON, and
Others on this important Subject. In which some humorous and di-

84 WITCHCRAFT.

of the hair : it sucks with the vampire, gorges with the
ghoule, is choked by the night-hag, pines away under the
witch's charm, and commits uncleanness with the em-
bodied Principle of Evil, giving up the fair realm of
innocent belief to a murky throng from the slums and
stews of the debauched brain. Both have vanished from
among educated men, and such superstition as comes to
the surface now-a-days is the harmless Jacobitism of senti-
ment, pleasing itself with the fiction all the more be-
cause there is no exacting reality behind it to impose a
duty or demand a sacrifice. And as Jacobitism survived
the Stuarts, so this has outlived the dynasty to which it
professes an after-dinner allegiance. It nails a horseshoe
over the door, but keeps a rattle by its bedside to sum-
mon a more substantial watchman ; it hangs a crape on
the beehives to get a taste of ideal sweetness, but obeys
the teaching of the latest bee-book for material and
marketable honey. This is the sesthetic variety of the
malady, or rather, perhaps, it is only the old complaint
robbed of all its pain, and lapped in waking dreams by

verting instances are remark'd, in order to divert that Gloom of Melan-
choly that naturally arises in the Human Mind, from reading or medi-
tating on such Subjects. Illustrated with suitable Cuts. London:
Printed in the year M,DCC,LII. [Mainly from DeFoe's " History of
Apparitions."]

Satan's Invisible World discovered; or, a choice Collection of Mod-
ern Relations, proving evidently, against the Atheists of this present
Age, that there are Devils, Spirits, Witches and Apparitions, from
Authentic Records, Attestations of Witnesses, and undoubted Verity.
To which is added that marvellous History of Major Weir and his bis-
ter, the Witches of Balgarran, Pittenweem and Calder, &c. By GEOKGE
SINCLAIR, late Professor of Philosophy in Glasgow. No man should
be vain that he can injure the merit of a Book; for the meanest rogue
may burn a City or kill a Hero ; whereas he could never build the one,
or equal the other. Sir George M'Kenzie, Edinburgh: Sold by P.
Anderson, Parliament Square. M.DCC.LXXX.

La Magie et 1'Astrologie dans I'Antiquite" et au Moyen Age, ou
Etude sur les superstitions palennes qu> se sont perpe"tue*es jusqu'a nos
jours. Par L. F. ALFRED MAURY. Troisieme Edition revue et
corrigee. Paris: Didier. 1864.

WITCHCRAFT. 85

the narcotism of an age of science. To the world at
large it is not undelightful to see the poetical instincts
of friends and neighbors finding some other vent than
that of verse. But there has been a superstition of very
different fibre, of more intense and practical validity, the
deformed child of faith, peopling the midnight of the
mind with fearful shapes and phrenetic suggestions, a
monstrous brood of its own begetting, and making even
good men ferocious in imagined self-defence.

Imagination, has always been, and still is, in a nap
rower sense, the great mythologizer; but both its mode of
manifestation and the force with which it reacts on the
mind are one thing in its crude form of childlike wonder,
and another thing after it has been more or less con-
sciously manipulated by the poetic faculty. A mythol-
ogy that broods over us in our cradles, that mingles with
the lullaby of the nurse and the winter-evening legends
of the chimney-corner, that brightens day with the pos-
sibility of divine encounters, and darkens night with in-
timations of demonic ambushes, is of other substance
than one which we take down from our bookcase, sapless
as the shelf it stood on, and remote from all present
sympathy with man or nature as a town history. It is
something like the difference between live metaphor and
dead personification. Primarily, the action of the im-
agination is the same in the mythologizer and the poet,
that is, it forces its own consciousness on the objects of
the senses, and compels them to sympathize with its own
momentary impressions. When Shakespeare in his " Lu-
crece " makes

" The threshold grate the door to have him heard,"
his mind is acting under the same impulse that first en-
dowed with human feeling and then with human shape
all the invisible forces of nature, and called into being
those

86 WITCHCRAFT.

" Fair humanities of old religion,"

whose loss the poets mourn. So also Shakespeare no
doubt projected himself in his own creations ; but those
creations never became so perfectly disengaged from
him, so objective, or, as they used to say, extrinsical, to
him, as to react upon him like real and even alien exist-
ences. I mean permanently, for momentarily they may
and must have done so. But before man's conscious-
ness had wholly disentangled itself from outward ob-
jects, all nature was but a many-sided mirror which
gave back to him a thousand images more or less beau-
tified or distorted, magnified or diminished, of himself,
till his imagination grew to look upon its own incorpo-
rations as having an independent being. Thus, by
degrees, it became at last passive to its own creations.
You may see imaginative children every day anthropo-
morphizing in this way, and the dupes of that super-
abundant vitality in themselves, which bestows qualities
proper to itself on everything about them. There is a
period of development in which grown men are child-
like. In such a period the fables which endow beasts
with human attributes first grew up ; and we luckily
read them so early as never to become suspicious of any
absurdity in them. The Finnic epos of " Kalewala " is
a curious illustration of the same fact. In that every-
thing has the affections, passions, and consciousness of
men. When the mother of Lemminkainen is seeking
her lost son, —

" Sought she many days the lost one,
Sought him ever without finding;
Then the roadways come to meet her,
And she asks them with beseeching:
' Roadways, ye whom God hath shapen,
Have ye not my son beholden,
Nowhere seen the golden apple,
Him, my darling staff of silver? '

WITCHCRAFT. 8T

Prudently they gave her answer,
Thus to her replied the roadways :
' For thy son we cannot plague us,
We have sorrows too, a many,
Since our own lot is a hard one
And our fortune is but evil,
By dog's feet to be run over,
By the wheel-tire to be wounded,
And by heavy heels down-trampled.' "

It is in this tendency of the mind under certain con-
ditions to confound the objective with subjective, or
rather to mistake the one for the other, that Mr. Tylor,
in his " Early History of Mankind," is fain to seek the
origin of the supernatural, as we somewhat vaguely
call whatever transcends our ordinary experience. And
this, no doubt, will in many cases account for the par-
ticular shapes assumed by certain phantasmal appear-
ances, though I am inclined to doubt whether it be a
sufficient explanation of the abstract phenomenon. It
is easy for the arithmetician to make a key to the prob-
lems that he has devised to suit himself. An imme-
diate and habitual confusion of the kind spoken of is
insanity; and the hypochondriac is tracked by the black
dog of his own mind. Disease itself is, of course, in
one sense natural, as being the result of natural causes ;
but if we assume health as the mean representing the
normal poise of all the mental faculties, we must be
content to call hypochondria subternatural, because the
tone of the instrument is lowered, and to designate as
supernatural only those ecstasies in which the mind,
under intense but not unhealthy excitement, is snatched
sometimes above itself, as in poets and other persons of
imaginative temperament. In poets this liability to be
possessed by the creations of their own brains is limited
and proportioned by the artistic sense, and the imagina-
tion thus truly becomes the shaping faculty, while in
less regulated or coarser organizations it dwells forever

88 WITCHCRAFT.

in the Nifelheim of phantasmagoria aud dream, a thau-
maturge half cheat, half dupe. What Mr. Tylor has
to say on this matter is ingenious and full of valuable
suggestion, and to a certain extent solves our difficulties.
Nightmare, for example, will explain the testimony of
witnesses in trials for witchcraft, that they had been
hag-ridden by the accused. But to prove the possibility,
nay, the probability, of this confusion of objective with
subjective is not enough. It accounts very well for
such apparitions as those which appeared to Dion, to
Brutus, and to Curtius Rufus. In such cases the im-
agination is undoubtedly its own doppel-gdnger, and
sees nothing more than the projection of its own deceit.
But I am puzzled, I confess, to explain the appearance
of the first ghost, especially among men who thought
death to be the end-all here below. The thing once
conceived of, it is easy, on Mr. Tylor's theory, to ac-
count for all after the first. If it was originally believed
that only the spirits of those who had died violent
deaths were permitted to wander, * the conscience of a
remorseful murderer may have been haunted by the
memory of his victim, till the imagination, infected in
its turn, gave outward reality to the image on the in-
ward eye. After putting to death Boetius and Sym-
machus, it is said that Theodoric saw in the head of a

* Lucian, in his " Liars," puts this opinion into the mouth of Arig-
notus. The theory by which Lucretius seeks to explain apparitions,
though materialistic, seems to allow some influence also to the work-
ing of imagination. It is hard otherwise to explain how his simulacra
(which are not unlike the astral spirits of later times) should appear in
dreams.

Quae simulacra ....
.... nobis vigilantibus obvia mentes
terrificant atque in somnis, cum saepe figuras
contuimur miras simulacraque luce carentum
quae nos horrifice languentis saepe sopore
excierunt.

De Her. Nat. IV. 33-37, ed. Munro.

WITCHCRAFT. 89

fish served at his dinner the face of Symmachus, grin-
ning horribly and with naming eyes, whereupon he
took to his bed and died soon after in great agony of
mind. It is not safe, perhaps, to believe all that is re-
ported of an Arian ; but supposing the story to be true,
there is only a short step from such a delusion of the
senses to the complete ghost of popular legend. But,
in some of the most trustworthy stories of apparitions,
they have shown themselves not only to persons who
had done them no wrong in the flesh, but also to such
as had never even known them. The eidolon of James
Haddock appeared to a man named Taverner, that he
might interest himself in recovering a piece of land un-
justly kept from the dead man's infant son. If we may
trust Defoe. Bishop Jeremy Taylor twice examined
Taverner, and was convinced of the truth of his story.
In this case, Taverner had formerly known Haddock.
But the apparition of an old gentleman which entered
the learned Dr. Scott's study, and directed him where
to find a missing deed needful in settling what had late-
ly been its estate in the West of England, chose for its
attorney in the business an entire stranger, who had
never even seen its original in the flesh.

Whatever its origin, a belief in spirits seems to have
been common to all the nations of the ancient world
who have left us any record of themselves. Ghosts be-
gan to walk early, and are walking still, in spite of the
shrill cock-crow of wir habenja aufgeklart. Even the
ghost in chains, which one would naturally take to be a
fashion peculiar to convicts escaped from purgatory, is
older than the belief in that reforming penitentiary.
The younger Pliny tells a very good story to this effect :
" There was at Athens a large and spacious house which
lay under the disrepute of being haunted. In the dead
of the night a noise resembling the clashing of iron

90 WITCHCRAFT.

was frequently beared, which, if you listened more atten-
tively, sounded like the rattling of chains ; at first it
seemed at a distance, but approached nearer by degrees ;
immediately afterward a spectre appeared, in the form
of an old man, extremely meagre and ghastly, with a
long beard and dishevelled hair, rattling the chains on

his feet and hands By this means the house

was at last deserted, being judged by everybody to be
absolutely uninhabitable ; so that it was now entirely
abandoned to the ghost. However, in hopes that some
tenant might be found who was ignorant of this great
calamity which attended it, a bill was put up giving
notice that it was either to be let or sold. It happened
that the philosopher Athenodorus came to Athens at
this time, and, reading the bill, inquired the price. The
extraordinary cheapness raised his suspicion ; neverthe-
less, when he beared the whole story, he was so far from
being discouraged that he was more strongly inclined to
hire it, and, in short, actually did so. When it grew to-
wards evening, he ordered a couch to be prepared for
him in the fore part of the house, and, after calling for
a light, together with his pen and tablets, he directed
all his people to retire. But that his mind might not,
for want of employment, be open to the vain terrors of
imaginary noises and spirits, he applied himself to
writing with the utmost attention. The first part of
the night passed with usual silence, when at length
the chains began to rattle ; however, he neither lifted up
his eyes nor laid down his pen, but diverted his obser-
vation by pursuing his studies with greater earnestness.
The noise increased, and advanced nearer, till it seemed
at the door, and at last in the chamber. He looked up
and saw the ghost exactly in the manner it had been
described to him; it stood before him, beckoning with
the finger. Athenodorus made a sign with his hand

WITCHCRAFT. 91

that it should wait a little, and threw his eyes again
upon his papers ; but the ghost still rattling his chains
in his ears, he looked up and saw him beckoning as be-
fore. Upon this he immediately arose, and with the
light in his hand followed it. The ghost slowly stalked
along, as if encumbered with his chains, and, turning
into the area of the house, suddenly vanished. Athe-
nodorus, being thus deserted, made a mark with some
grass and leaves where the spirit left him. The next
day he gave information of this to the magistrates, and
advised them to order that spot to be dug up. This
was accordingly done, and the skeleton of a man in
chains was there found ; for the body, having lain a con-
siderable time in the ground, was putrefied and mould-
ered away from the fetters. The bones, being collected
together, were publicly buried, and thus, after the ghost
was appeased by the proper ceremonies, the house was
haunted no more." * This story has such a modern air
as to be absolutely disheartening. Are ghosts, then, as
incapable of invention as dramatic authors 1 But the
demeanor of Athenodorus has the grand air of the clas-
sical period, of one qui connait son monde, and feels the
superiority of a living philosopher to a dead Philistine.
How far above all modern armament is his prophylactic
against his insubstantial fellow-lodger ! Now-a-days
men take pistols into haunted houses. Sterne, and
after him Novalis, discovered that gunpowder made all
men equally tall, but Athenodorus had found out that
pen and ink establish a superiority in spiritual stature.
As men of this world, we feel our dignity exalted by his
keeping an ambassador from the other waiting till he
had finished his paragraph. Never surely did author-
ship appear to greater advantage. Athenodorus seems
to have been of Hamlet's mind :

* Pliny's Letters, VII. 27. Melmoth's translation.

92 WITCHCRAFT.

" I do not set my life at a pin's fee,
And, for my soul, what can it do to that,
Being a thing immortal, as itself ? " *

A superstition, as its name imports, is something that
has been left to stand over, like unfinished business,
from one session of the world's witenagemot to the next.
The vulgar receive it implicitly on the principle of omne
ignotum pro possibili, a theory acted on by a much larger
number than is commonly supposed, and even the en-
lightened are too apt to consider it, if not proved, at least
rendered probable by the hearsay evidence of popular
experience. Particular superstitions are sometimes the
embodiment by popular imagination of ideas that were at
first mere poetic figments, but more commonly the degrad-
ed and distorted relics of religious beliefs. Dethroned
gods, outlawed by the new dynasty, haunted the borders
of their old dominions, lurking in forests and mountains,
and venturing to show themselves only after nightfall.
Grimm and others have detected old divinities skulking
about in strange disguises, and living from hand to mouth
on the charity of Gammer Grethel and Mere 1'Oie. Cast
out from Olympus and Asgard, they were thankful for
the hospitality of the chimney-corner, and kept soul and
body together by an illicit traffic between this world and
the other. While Schiller was lamenting the Gods of
Greece, some of them were nearer neighbors to him than

* Something like this is the speech of Don Juan, after the statue of
Don Gonzales has gone out :

" Pero todas son ideas
Que da a la imaginacion
El temor; y temer muertos
Es muy villano temor.
Que si un cuerpo noble, vivo,
Con potencias y razon
Y con alma no se tema,
> Quien cuerpos muertos temio? "

El Burlador de Sevitta, A. iii. s. 16.

WITCHCRAFT. 93

lie dreamed ; and Heine had the wit to turn them to
delightful account, showing himself, perhaps, the wiser
of the two in saving what he could from the shipwreck
of the past for present use on this prosaic Juan Fernan-
dez of a scientific age, instead of sitting down to bewail
it. To make the pagan divinities hateful, they were
stigmatized as cacodsemons ; and as the human mind
finds a pleasure in analogy and system, an infernal hie-
rarchy gradually shaped itself as the convenient antip-
odes and counterpoise of the celestial one. Perhaps at
the bottom of it all there was a kind of unconscious
manicheism, and Satan, as Prince of Darkness, or of the
Powers of the Air, became at last a sovereign, with his
great feudatories and countless vassals, capable of main-
taining a not unequal contest with the King of Heaven.
He was supposed to have a certain power of bestowing
earthly prosperity, but he was really, after all, nothing
better than a James II. at St. Germains, who could
make Dukes of Perth and confer titular fiefs and garters
as much as he liked, without the unpleasant necessity
of providing any substance behind the shadow. That
there should have been so much loyalty to him, under
these disheartening circumstances, seems to me, on the
whole, creditable to poor human nature. In this case
it is due, at least in part, to that instinct of the poor
among the races of the North, where there was a long
winter, and too often a scanty harvest, — and the poor
have been always and everywhere a majority, — which
made a deity of Wish. The Acheronta-movebo impulse
must have been pardonably strong in old women starv-
ing with cold and hunger, and fathers with large fami-
lies and a small winter stock of provision. Especially
in the transition period from the old religion to the new,
the temptation must have been great to try one's luck
with the discrowned dynasty, when the intruder was

94 WITCHCRAFT.

deaf and blind to claims that seemed just enough, so
long as it was still believed that God personally inter-
fered in the affairs of men. On his death-bed, says
Piers Plowman,

" The poore dare plede and prove by reson
To have allowance of his lord ; by the law he it claimeth ;

Thanne may beggaris as beestes after boote waiten
That al hir lif han lyved in langour and in defaute
But God sente hem som tyme som manere joye,
Outlier here or ellis where, kynde wolde it nevere."

He utters the common feeling when he says that it were
against nature. But when a man has his choice be-
tween here and elsewhere, it may be feared that the
other world will seem too desperately far away jto be
waited for when hungry ruin has him in the wind, and
the chance on earth is so temptingly near. Hence the
notion of a transfer of allegiance from God to Satan,
sometimes by a written compact, sometimes with the
ceremony by which homage is done to a feudal superior.
Most of the practices of witchcraft — such as the
power to raise storms, to destroy cattle, to assume the
shape of beasts by the use of certain ointments, to in-
duce deadly maladies in men by waxen images, or love
by means of charms and philtres — were inheritances
from ancient paganism. But the theory of a compact
was the product of later times, the result, no doubt, of
the efforts of the clergy to inspire a horror of any lapse
into heathenish rites by making devils of all the old
gods. Christianity may be said to have invented the
soul as an individual entity to be saved or lost ; and
thus grosser wits were led to conceive of it as a piece of
property that could be transferred by deed of gift or
sale, duly signed, sealed, and witnessed. The earliest
legend of the kind is that of Theophilus, chancellor of
the church of Adana in Cilicia some time during the

WITCHCRAFT. 95

sixth century. It is said to have been first written by
Eutychianus, who had been a pupil of Theophilus,
and who tells the story partly as an eyewitness, partly
from the narration of his master. The nun Hroswitha
first treated it dramatically in the latter half of the
tenth century. Some four hundred years later Rute-
beuf made it the theme of a French miracle-play. His
treatment of it is not without a certain poetic merit.
Theophilus has been deprived by his bishop of a lucra-
tive office. In his despair he meets with Saladin, qui
parloit au deable quant il voloit. Saladin tempts him to
deny God and devote himself to the Devil, who, in
return, will give him back all his old prosperity and
more. He at last consents, signs and seals the contract
required, and is restored to his old place by the bishop.
But now remorse and terror come upon him ; he calls
on the Virgin, who, after some demur, compels Satan to
bring back his deed from the infernal muniment-chest
(which must have been fire-proof beyond any skill of
our modern safe-makers), and the bishop having read it
aloud to the awe-stricken congregation, Theophilus be-
comes his own man again. In this play, the theory of
devilish compact is already complete in all its particu-
lars. The paper must be signed with the blood of the
grantor, who does feudal homage (or joing tes mains, et
si devien mes horn), and engages to eschew good and do
evil all the days of his life. The Devil, however, does
not imprint any stigma upon his new vassal, as in the
later stories of witch-compacts. The following passage
from the opening speech of Theophilus will illustrate
the conception to which I have alluded of God as a
liege lord against whom one might seek revenge on suf-
ficient provocation, — and the only revenge possible was
to rob him of a subject by going over to the great Suze-
rain, his deadly foe : —

96 WITCHCRAFT.

" N'est riens que por avoir ne face;
Ne pris riens Dieu et sa manace.
Irai me je noier ou pendre ?
le ne m'en puis pas a Dieu prendre,
C'on ne puet a lui avenir.

Mes il s'est en si haut lieu mis,
Por eschiver ses anemis
C'on n'i puet trere ni lancier.
Se or pooie a lui tancier,
Et combattre et escrimir,
La char li feroie fremir.
Or est la sus en son solaz,
Laz ! chetis ! et je sui es laz
De Povrete" et de Soufrete." *

During the Middle Ages the story became a favorite
topic with preachers, while carvings and painted win-
dows tended still further to popularize it, and to render
men's minds familiar with the idea which makes the nexus
of its plot. The plastic hands of Calderon shaped it into
a dramatic poem not surpassed, perhaps hardly equalled,
in subtile imaginative quality by any other of modern
times.

In proportion as a belief in the possibility of this
damnable merchandising with hell became general, accu-
sations of it grew more numerous. Among others, the
memory of Pope Sylvester II. was blackened with the
charge of having thus bargained away his soul. All
learning fell under suspicion, till at length the very
grammar itself (the last volume in the world, one would
say, to conjure with) gave to English the word gramary
(enchantment), and in French became a book of magic,
under the alias of Grimoire. It is not at all unlikely
that, in an age when the boundary between actual and
possible was not very well denned, there were scholars
who made experiments in this direction, and signed con-

* Theatre Francais au Moyen Age (Monmerque* et Michel), pp. 13^
140.

WITCHCRAFT. 97

tracts, though they never had a chance to complete their
bargain by an actual delivery. I do not recall any case
of witchcraft in which such a document was produced in
court as evidence against the accused. Such a one, it is
true, was ascribed to Graiidier, but was not brought for-
ward at his trial. It should seem that Grandier had been
shrewd enough to take a bond to secure the fulfilment
of the contract on the other side ; for we have the docu-
ment in fac-simile, signed and sealed by Lucifer, Beelze-
bub, Satan, Elimi, Leviathan, and Astaroth, duly wit-
nessed by Baalberith, Secretary of the Grand Council of
Demons. Fancy the competition such a state paper as
this would arouse at a sale of autographs ! Commonly
no security appears to have been given by the other
party to these arrangements but the bare word of the
Devil, which was considered, no doubt, every whit as
good as his bond. In most cases, indeed, he was the
loser, and showed a want of capacity for affairs equal to
that of an average giant of romance. Never was com-
edy acted over and over with such sameness of repetition
as " The Devil is an Ass." How often must he have
exclaimed (laughing in his sleeve) : —

" 7 to such blockheads set my wit,
/ damn such fools ! — go, go, you 're bit ! "

In popular legend he is made the victim of some equivo-
cation so gross that any court of equity would have
ruled in his favor. On the other hand, if the story had
been dressed up by some mediseval Tract Society, the
Virgin appears in person at the right moment ex mackina,
and compels him to give up the property he had hon-
estly paid for. One is tempted to ask, Were there no
attorneys, then, in the place he came from, of whom he
might have taken advice beforehand 1 On the whole, he
had rather hard measure, and it is a wonder he did not
5 o

98 WITCHCRAFT.

throw up the business in disgust. Sometimes, however,
he was more lucky, as with the unhappy Dr. Faust ; and
even so lately as 1695, he came in the shape of a " tall
fellow with black beard and periwig, respectable looking
and well dressed," about two o'clock in the afternoon,
to fly away with the Marechal de Luxembourg, which,
on the stroke of five, he punctually did as per contract,
taking with him the window and its stone framing into
the bargain. The clothes and wig of the involuntary
aeronaut were, in the handsomest manner, left upon the
bed, as not included in the bill of sale. In this case
also we have a copy of the articles of agreement,
twenty-eight in number, by the last of which the Mare-
chal renounces God and devotes himself to the enemy.
This clause, sometimes the only one, always the most
important in such compacts, seems to show that they
first took shape in the imagination, while the struggle
between Paganism and Christianity was still going on.
As the converted heathen was made to renounce his
false gods, none the less real for being false, so the rene-
gade Christian must forswear the true Deity. It is
very likely, however, that the whole thing may be more
modern than the assumed date of Theophilus would im-
ply, and if so, the idea of feudal allegiance gave the
first hint, as it certainly modified the particulars, of the
ceremonial.

This notion of a personal and private treaty with the
Evil One has something of dignity about it that has
made it perennially attractive to the most imaginative
minds. It rather flatters than mocks our feeling of the
dignity of man. As we come down to the vulgar par-
ody of it in the confessions of wretched old women on
the rack, our pity and indignation are mingled with dis-
gust. One of the most particular of these confessions
is that of Abel de la Rue, convicted in 1584. The

WITCHCRAFT. 99

accused was a novice in the Franciscan Convent at
Meaux. Having been punished by the master of the
novices for stealing some apples and nuts in the convent
garden, the Devil appeared to him in the shape of a
black dog, promising him his protection, and advising
him to leave the convent. Not long after going into the
sacristy, he saw a large volume fastened by a chain, and
further secured by bars of iron. The name of this
book was Grimoire. Thrusting his hands through the
bars, he contrived to open it, and having read a sentence
(which Bodin carefully suppresses), there suddenly ap-
peared to him a man of middle stature, with a pale and
very frightful countenance, clad in a long black robe of
the Italian fashion, and with faces of men like his own
on his breast and knees. As for his feet they were like
those of cows. He could not have been the most agree-
able of companions, ayant le corps et haleine puante.
This man told him not to be afraid, to take off his
habit, to put faith in him, and he would give him what-
ever he asked. Then laying hold of him below the
arms, the unknown transported him under the gallows
of Meaux, and then said to him with a trembling and
broken voice, and having a visage as pale as that of a
man who has been hanged, and a very stinking breath,
that he should fear nothing, but have entire confidence
in him, that he should never want for anything, that his
own name was Maitre Rigoux, and that he would like to
be his master ; to which De la Rue made answer that he
would do whatever he commanded, and that he wished
to be gone from the Franciscans. Thereupon Rigoux
disappeared, but returning between seven and eight in
the evening, took him round the waist and carried him
back to the sacristy, promising to come again for him
the next day. This he accordingly did, and told De la
Rue to take off his habit, get him gone from the con-

100 WITCHCRAFT.

vent, and meet him near a great tree on the high-road
from Meaux to Vaulx-Courtois. Rigoux met him there
and took him to a certain Maitre Pierre, who, after
a few words exchanged in an undertone with Rigoux,
sent De la Rue to the stable, after his return whence
he saw no more of Rigoux. Thereupon Pierre and
his wife made him good cheer, telling him that for
the love of Maitre Rigoux they would treat him
well, and that he must obey the said Rigoux, which
he promised to do. About two months after, Maitre
Pierre, who commonly took him to the fields to watch
cattle, said to him there that they must go to the As-
sembly, because he (Pierre) was out of powders, to
which he made answer that he was willing. Three days
later, about Christmas eve, 1575, Pierre having sent his
wife to sleep out of the house, set a long branch of
broom in the chimney-corner, and bade De la Rue go
to bed, but not to sleep. About eleven they heard a
great noise as of an impetuous wind and thunder in the
chimney : which hearing, Maitre Pierre told him to
dress himself, for it was time to be gone. Then Pierre
took some grease from a little box and anointed himself
under the arm-pits, and De la Rue on the palms of his
hands, which incontinently felt as if on fire, and the
said grease stank like a cat three weeks or a month
dead. Then, Pierre and he bestriding the branch,
Maitre Rigoux took it by the butt and drew it up chim-
ney as if the wind had lifted them. And, the night
being dark, he saw suddenly a torch before them light-
ing them, and Maitre Rigoux was gone unless he had
changed himself into the said torch. Arrived at a
grassy place some five leagues from Vaulx-Courtois, they
found a company of some sixty people of all ages, none
of whom he knew, except a certain Pierre of Damp*
martin and an old woman who was executed, as he had

WITCHCRAFT. 101

heard, about five years ago for sorcery at Lagny. Then
suddenly he noticed that all (except Rigoux, who was
clad as before) were dressed in linen, though they had
not changed their clothes. Then, at command of the
eldest among them, who seemed about eighty years old,
with a white beard and almost wholly bald, each swept
the place in front of himself with his broom. There-
upon Rigoux changed into a great he-goat, black and
stinking, around whom they all danced backward with
their faces outward and their backs towards the goat.
They danced about half an hour, and then his master
told him they must adore the goat who was the Devil
et ce fait et diet, veit que ledict Bouc courba ses deux pieds
de deuant et leua son cut en haut, et lors que certaines
menues graines grosses comme testes d'espingles, qui se con-
uertissoient en poudres fort puantes, sentant le soulphre et
poudre a canon et chair puant meslees ensemble seroient
tombees sur plusieurs drappeaux en sept doubles. Then
the oldest, and so the rest in order, went forward on
their knees and gathered up their cloths with the pow-
ders, but first each se seroit incline vers le Diable et iceluy
baise en la partie honteuse de son corps. They went home
on their broom, lighted as before. De la Rue confessed
also that he was at another assembly on the eve of St.
John Baptist. With the powders they could cause the
death of men against whom they had a spite, or their
cattle. Rigoux before long began to tempt him to drown
himself, and, though he lay down, yet rolled him some
distance towards the river. It is plain that the poor
fellow was mad or half-witted or both. And yet Bo-
din, the author of the DC Republica, reckoned one of the
ablest books of that age, believed all this filthy nonsense,
and prefixes it to his Demonomanie, as proof conclusive
of the existence of sorcerers.

This was in 1587. Just a century later, Glanvil, one

102 WITCHCRAFT.

of the most eminent men of his day, and Henry More,
the Platonist, whose memory is still dear to the lovers
of an imaginative mysticism, were perfectly satisfied with
evidence like that which follows. Elizabeth Styles con-
fessed, in 1664, "that the Devil about ten years since
appeared to her in the shape of a handsome Man, and
after of a black Dog. That he promised her Money,
and that she should live gallantly, and have the pleasure
of the World for twelve years, if she would with her
Blood sign his Paper, which was to give her soul to him
and observe his Laws and that he might suck her Blood.
This after Four Solicitations, the Examinant promised
him to do. Upon which he pricked the fourth Finger
of her right hand, between the middle and upper Joynt
(where the Sign at the Examination remained) and with
a Drop or two of her Blood, she signed the Paper with
an 0. Upon this the Devil gave her sixpence and van-
ished with the Paper. That since he hath appeared to
her in the Shape of a Man, and did so on Wednesday
seven-night past, but more usually he appears in the
Likeness of a Dog, and Cat, and a Fly like a Millar,
in which last he usually sucks in the Poll about four of
the Clock in the Morning, and did so Jan. 27, and
that it is pain to her to be so suckt. That when she
hath a desire to do harm she calls the Spirit by the name
of Robin, to whom, when he appeareth, she useth these
words, 0 Sathan, give me my purpose. She then tells
him what she would have done. And that he should so
appear to her was part of her Contract with him." The
Devil in this case appeared as a black (dark-com-
plexioned) man " in black clothes, with a little band," -
a very clerical -looking personage. " Before they are
carried to their meetings they anoint their Foreheads
and Hand- Wrists with an Oyl the Spirit brings them
(which smells raw) and then they are carried in a very

WITCHCRAFT. 103

short time, using these words as they pass, Thout, tout a
tout, throughout and about. And when they go off from
their Meetings they say, Itentum, Tormentum. That at
every meeting before the Spirit vanisheth away, he ap-
points the next meeting place and time, and at his
departure there is a foul smell. At their meeting they
have usually Wine or good Beer, Cakes, Meat or the like.
They eat and drink really when they meet, in their Bod-
ies, dance also and have some Musick. The Man in
black sits at the higher end, and Anne Bishop usually
next him. He useth some words before meat, and none
after ; his Voice is audible but very low. The Man in
black sometimes plays on a Pipe or Cittern, and the
Company dance. At last the Devil vanisheth, and all
are carried to their several homes in a short space. At
their parting they say, A Boy ! merry meet, merry part ! "
Alice Duke confessed " that Anne Bishop persuaded her
to go with her into the Churchyard in the Night-time, and
being come thither, to go backward round the Church,
which they did three times. In their first round they
met a Man in black Cloths who went round the second
time with them ; and then they met a thing in the
Shape of a great black Toad which leapt up against
the Examinant's Apron. In their third round they met
somewhat in the shape of a Rat, which vanished away."
She also received sixpence from the Devil, and " her Fa-
miliar did commonly suck her right Breast about seven
at night in the shape of a little Cat of a dunnish Colour,
which is as smooth as a Want [mole], and when she
is suckt, she is in a kind of Trance." Poor Christian
Green got only fourpence half-penny for her soul, but
her bargain was made some years later than that of the
others, and quotations, as the stock-brokers would say,
ranged lower. Her familiar took the shape of a hedge-
hog. Julian Cox confessed that "she had been often

104 WITCHCRAFT.

tempted by the Devil to be a Witch, but never consented.
That one Evening she walkt about a Mile from her own
House and there came riding towards her three Persons
upon three Broomstaves, born up about a yard and a
half from the ground. Two of them she formerly knew,
which was a Witch and a Wizzard that were hanged for
Witchcraft several years before. The third person she
knew not. He came in the shape of a black Man, and
tempted her to give him her Soul, or to that effect, and
to express it by pricking her Finger and giving her name
in her Blood in token of it." On her trial Judge Archer
told the jury, " he had heard that a Witch could not re-
peat that Petition in the Lord's Prayer, viz. And lead us
not into temptation, and having this occasion, he would
try the Experiment." The jury " were not in the least
measure to guide their Verdict according to it, because
it was not legal Evidence." Accordingly it was found
that the poor old trot could say only, Lead us into temp-
tation, or Lead us not into no temptation. Probably she
used the latter form first, and, finding she had blun-
dered, corrected herself by leaving out both the negatives.
The old English double negation seems never to have
been heard of by the court. Janet Douglass, a pretended
dumb girl, by whose contrivance five persons had been
burned at Paisley, in 1677, for having caused the sick-
ness of Sir George Maxwell by means of waxen and
other images, having recovered her speech shortly after,
declared that she " had some smattering knowledge of
the Lord's prayer, which she had heard the witches re-
peat, it seems, by her vision, in the presence of the
Devil ; and at his desire, which they observed, they
added to the word art the letter w, which made it run,
' Our Father which wart in heaven,' by which means the
Devil made the application of the prayer to himself."
She also showed on the arm of a woman named Camp

WITCHCRAFT. 105

bell " an invisible mark which she had gotten from the
Devil." The wife of one Barton confessed that she had
engaged " in the Devil's service. She renounced her
baptism, and did prostrate her body to the foul spirit,
and received his mark, and got a new name from him,
and was called Margaratus. She was asked if she ever
had any pleasure in his company ] * Never much,' says
she, ' but one night going to a dancing upon Pentland
Hills, in the likeness of a rough tanny [tawny] dog,
playing on a pair of pipes ; the spring he played,' says
she, ' was The silly bit chicken, gar cast it a pickle, and it
will grow meikleS " * In 1670, near seventy of both
sexes, among them fifteen children, were executed for
witchcraft at the village of Mohra in Sweden. Thirty-
six children, between the ages of nine and sixteen, were
sentenced to be scourged with rods on the palms of their
hands, once a week for a year. The evidence in this
case against the accused seems to have been mostly that
of children. " Being asked whether they were sure that
they were at any time carried away by the Devil, they
all declared they were, begging of the Commissioners
that they might be freed from that intolerable slavery."
They " used to go to a Gravel pit which lay hardby a
Cross-way and there they put on a vest over their heads,
and then danced round, and after ran to the Cross-way and
called the Devil thrice, first with a still Voice, the sec-
ond time somewhat louder, and the third time very
loud, with these words, Antecessour, come and carry us to
Blockula. Whereupon immediately he used to appear,
but in different Habits ; but for the most part they saw
him in a gray Coat and red and blue Stockings. He had
a red Beard, a highcrowned Hat, with linnen of divers

* u There sat Auld Nick in shape o' beast,
A towzy tyke, black, grim, an' large,
To gie them music was his charge."
5*

106 WITCHCRAFT.

Colours wrapt about it, and long Garters upon his Stock-
ings." " They must procure some Scrapings of Altars
and Filings of Church-Clocks [bells], and he gives them
a Horn with some Salve in it wherewith they do anoint
themselves." " Being asked whether they were sure of
a real personal Transportation, and whether they were
awake when it was done, they all answered in the Af-
firmative, and that the Devil sometimes laid something
down in the Place that was very like them. But one of
them confessed that he did only take away her Strength,
and her Body lay still upon the Ground. Yet some-
times he took even her Body with him." " Till of late
they never had that power to carry away Children, but
only this year and the last, and the Devil did at this
time force them to it. That heretofore it was sufficient
to carry but one of their Children or a Stranger's Child,
which yet happened seldom, but now he did plague them
and whip them if they did not procure him Children, in-
somuch that they had no peace or quiet for him ; and
whereas formerly one Journey a Week would serve their
turn from their own town to the place aforesaid, now
they were forced to run to other Towns and Places for
Children, and that they brought with them some fifteen,
some sixteen Children every night. For their journey
they made use of all sorts of Instruments, of Beasts,
of Men, of Spits, and Posts, according as they had op-
portunity. If they do ride upon Goats and have many
Children with them," they have a way of lengthening
the goat with a spit, " and then are anointed with the
aforesaid Ointment. A little Girl of Elfdale confessed,
That, naming the name of JESUS, as she was carried
away, she fell suddenly upon the Ground and got a great
hole in her Side, which the Devil presently healed up
again. The first thing they must do at Blockula was
that they must deny all and devote themselves Body and

WITCHCRAFT. 1D7

Soul to the Devil, and promise to serve him faithfully,
and confirm all this with an Oath. Hereupon they cut
their Fingers, and with their Bloud writ their Name in
his Book. He caused them to be baptized by such
Priests as he had there and made them confirm their
Baptism with dreadful Oaths and Imprecations. Here-
upon the Devil gave them a Purse, wherein their filings
of Clocks [bells], with a Stone tied to it, which they
threw into the Water, and then they were forced to speak
these words : As these filings of the Clock do never return
to the Clock from which they are taken, so may my soul
never return to Heaven. The diet they did use to have
there was Broth with Colworts and Bacon in it, Oatmeal-
Bread spread with Butter, Milk, and Cheese. Sometimes
it tasted very well, sometimes very ill. After Meals,
they went to Dancing, and in the mean while Swore and
Cursed most dreadfully, and afterward went to fighting
one with another. The Devil had Sons and Daughters
by them, which he did marry together, and they did
couple and brought forth Toads and Serpents. If he
hath a mind to be merry with them, he lets them all ride
upon Spits before him, takes afterwards the Spits and
beats them black and blue, and then laughs at them.
They had seen sometimes a very great Devil like a
Dragon, with fire about him and bound with an Iron
Chain, and the Devil that converses with them tells them
that, if they confess anything, he will let that great
Devil loose upon them, whereby all Sweedland shall come
into great danger. The Devil taught them to milk,
which was in this wise : they used to stick a knife in the
Wall and hang a kind of Label on it, which they drew
and stroaked, and as long as this lasted the Persons that
they had Power over were miserably plagued, and the
Beasts were milked that way till sometimes they died of
it. The minister of Elfdale declared that one Night

108 WITCHCRAFT.

these Witches were to his thinking upon the crown of
his Head and that from thence he had had a long-con-
tinued Pain of the Head. One of the Witches con-
fessed, too, that the Devil had sent her to torment the
Minister, and that she was ordered to use a Nail and
strike it into his Head, but it would not enter very deep.
They confessed also that the Devil gives them a Beast
about the bigness and shape of a young Cat, which they
call a Carrier, and that he gives them a Bird too as big
as a Raven, but white. And these two Creatures they
can send anywhere, and wherever they come they take
away all sorts of Victuals they can get. What the Bird
brings they may keep for themselves ; but what the
Carrier brings they must reserve for the Devil. The
Lords Commissioners were indeed very earnest and took
great Pains to persuade them to show some of their
Tricks, but to no Purpose ; for they did all unanimously
confess, that, since they had confessed all, they found
that all their Witchcraft was gone, and that the Devil
at this time appeared to them very terrible with Claws
on his Hands and Feet, and with Horns on his Head and
a long Tail behind." At Blockula "the Devil had a
Church, such another as in the town of Mohra. When
the Commissioners were coming, he told the Witches
they should not fear them, for he would certainly kill
them all. And they confessed that some of them had
attempted to murther the Commissioners, but had not
been able to effect it."

In these confessions we find included nearly all the
particulars of the popular belief concerning witchcraft,
and see the gradual degradation of the once superb Lu-
cifer to the vulgar scarecrow with horns and tail. " The
Prince of Darkness was a gentleman." From him who
had not lost all his original brightness, to this dirty fel-
low who leaves a stench, sometimes of brimstone, behind

WITCHCRAFT. 109

him, the descent is a long one. For the dispersion of
this foul odor Dr. Henry More gives an odd reason.
" The Devil also, as in other stories, leaving an ill smell
behind him, seems to imply the reality of the business,
those adscititious particles he held together in his visible
vehicle being loosened at his vanishing and so offending
the nostrils by their floating and diffusing themselves in
the open Air." In all the stories vestiges of Paganism
are not indistinct. The three principal witch gatherings
of the year were held on the days of great pagan festi-
vals, which were afterwards adopted by the Church.
Maury supposes the witches' Sabbath to be derived from
the rites of Bacchus Sabazius, and accounts in this way
for the Devil's taking the shape of a he-goat. But the
name was more likely to be given from hatred of the
Jews, and the goat may have a much less remote origin.
Bodin assumes the identity of the Devil with Pan, and
in the popular mythology both of Kelts and Teutons
there were certain hairy wood-demons called by the
former Dus and by the latter Scrat, Our common names
of Dense and Old Scratch are plainly derived from these,
and possibly Old Harry is a corruption of Old Hairy.
By Latinization they became Satyrs. Here, at any rate,
is the source of the cloven hoof. The belief in tho
Devil's appearing to his worshippers as a goat is very old.
Possibly the fact that this animal was sacred to Thor,
the god of thunder, may explain it. Certain it is that
the traditions of Vulcan, Thor, and Wayland * converged
at last in Satan. Like Vulcan, he was hurled from heav-
en, and like him he still limps across the stage in Mephis-
topheles, though without knowing why. In Germany,
he has a horse's and not a cloven foot,f because the

* Hence, perhaps, the name Valant applied to the Devil, about the
origin of which Grimm is in doubt,
t One foot of the Greek Empusa was an ass's hoof.

110 WITCHCRAFT.

horse was a frequent pagan sacrifice, and therefore asso-
ciated with devil-worship under the new dispensation.
Hence the horror of hippophagisni which some French
gastronomes are striving to overcome. Everybody who
has read " Tom Brown," or Wordsworth's Sonnet on a
German stove, remembers the Saxon horse sacred to
Woden. The raven was also his peculiar bird, and
Grimm is inclined to think this the reason why the
witch's familiar appears so often in that shape. It is
true that our Old Nick is derived from Nikkar, one of
the titles of that divinity, but the association of the
Evil One with the raven is older, and most probably ow-
ing to the ill-omened character of the bird itself. Al-
ready in the apocryphal gospel of the " Infancy," the
demoniac Son of the Chief Priest puts on his head one
of the swaddling-clothes of Christ which Mary has hung
out- to dry, and forthwith " the devils began to come out
of his mouth and to fly away as crows and serpents."

It will be noticed that the witches underwent a form
of baptism. As the system gradually perfected itself
among the least imaginative of men, as the superstitious
are apt to be, they could do nothing better than de-
scribe Satan's world as in all respects the reverse of that
which had been conceived by the orthodox intellect
as Divine. Have you an illustrated Bible of the last
century 1 Very good. Turn it upside down, and you
find the prints on the whole about as near nature as ever,
and yet pretending to be something new by a simple de-
vice that saves the fancy a good deal of trouble. For,
while it is true that the poetic fancy plays, yet the fac-
ulty which goes by that pseudonyme in prosaic minds
(and it was by such that the details of this Satanic com-
merce were pieced together) is hard put to it for inven-
tion, and only too thankful for any labor-saving contri-
vance whatsoever. Accordingly, all it need take the

WITCHCRAFT. Ill

trouble to do was to reverse the ideas of sacred things
already engraved on its surface, and behold, a kingdom
of hell with all the merit and none of the difficulty of
originality ! " Uti olim Deus populo suo Hierosolymis
Synagogas erexit ut in iis ignarus legis divinse populus
erudiretur, voluntatemque Dei placitam ex verbo in iis
praedicato hauriret ; ita et Diabolus in omnibus omnino
su is actionibus simiam Dei agens, gregi suo acherontico
conventus et synagogas, quas satanica sabbata vocant,

indicit Atque de hisce Conventibus et Synagogis

Lamiarum nullus Antorum quos quidem evolvi, imo neo
ipse Lamiarum Patronus [here he glances at Wierus]
scilicet ne dubiolum quidem movit. Adeo ut tuto affir-
mari liceat conventus a diabolo certo institui. Quos vel
ipse, tanquam praeses collegii, vel per daemonem, qui ad
cujuslibet sagae custodiam constitutus est, .... vel per
alios Magos aut sagas per unum aut duos dies ante-

quam fiat congregatio denunciat Loci in quibus

solent a daemone ccetus et conventicula malefica institui
plerumque sunt sylvestres, occulti, subterranei, et ab
hominnm conversatione remoti Evocatse hoc mo-
do et tempore Lamiae, .... daemon illis persuadet eas
non posse conventiculis interesse nisi nudum corpus
unguento ex corpusculis infantum ante baptismum neca-
torum praeparato illinant, idque propterea solum illis
persuadet ut ad quam plurimas infantum insontium caedes

eas alliciat Unctionis ritu peracto, abiturientes,

ne forte a maritis in lectis desiderantur, vel per incanta-
tionem somnum, aurem nimirum vellicando dextra manu
prius praedicto unguine illita, conciliant maritis ex quo
non facile possunt excitari ; vel daemones personas quas-
dam dormientibus adumbrant, quas, si contigeret exper-
gisci, suas uxores esse putarent ; vel interea alius daemon
in forma succubi ad latus maritorum adjungitur qui loco
uxoris est. . . Et ita sine omni remora insidentes

112 WITCHCRAFT.

baculo, furcse, scopis, aut arundini vel tauro, equo, suiv
hirco, aut cani, quorum omnium exempla prodidtt Hemig.

L. I. c. 14, devehuntur a deemone ad loca destinata

Ibi daemon praeses couveutus in solio sedet magnifico,
forma terrifica, ut plurimuin hirci vel canis. Ad quern
adveuientes viri juxta ac mulieres accedunt revuren-
tise exhibendae et adorandi gratia, non tainen uno
eodemque modo. Interdum complicatis genubus sup-
plices ; interdum obverso incedentes tergo et modo re-
trogrado, in oppositum directo illi reverentiae quam nos
praestare solemus. In signum homagii (sit honor castis
auribus) Principem suum hircum in [obscaenissiino quo-
dam corporis loco] sumnia cum reverentia sacrilego ore
osculantur. Quo facto, sacrificia daemoni faciunt inultis
modis. Saepe liberos suos ipsi otferunt. Saepe com-
munione sumpta benedictam hostiam in ore asservatam
et extractam (horreo dicere) daemoni oblatam coram eo
pede conculcant. His et similibus flagitiis et abomina-
tionibus execrandis commissis, incipiunt mensis assidere
et convivari de cibis insipidis, insulsis,* furtivis, quos
daemon suppeditat, vel quos singulae attulere, inderdum

tripudiant ante convivium, interdum post illud

Nee mensae sua deest benedictio coetu hoc digna, verbis
constans plane blasphemis quibus ipsum Beelzebub et
creatorem et datorem et conservatorem omnium profi-
tentur. Eadem sententia est gratiarum actionis. Post
convivium, dorsis invicem obversis .... choreas ducere
et cantare fescenninos in honorem daemonis obscaenissi-
mos, vel ad tympanum fistulamve sedentis alicujus in
bifida arbore saltare .... turn suis amasus daemonibus
foedissime commisceri. Ultimo pulveribus (quos aliqui
scribunt esse cineres hirci illis quern daemon assumpserat
et quern adorant subito coram illius flamma absumpti) vel
Tenenis aliig acceptis, sacpe etiam cuique indicto nocendi
» Salt was forbidden at these witch-feast*.

WITCHCRAFT. 113

penso, et pronunciato Pseudothei dsemonis decreto,
ULCISCAMINI vos, ALIOQUI MORIEMINI. Duabus aut tribus
horis in hisce ludis exactis circa Gallicinium daemon con-
vivas suas dimittit." * Sometimes they were baptized
anew. Sometimes they renounced the Virgin, whom
they called in their rites extensam mulierem. If the
Ave Mary bell should ring while the demon is con-
veying home his witch, he lets her drop. In the confes-
sion of Agnes Simpson the meeting place was North
Berwick Kirk. " The Devil started up himself hi the
pulpit, like a meikle black man, and calling the row
[roll] every one answered, Here. At his command they
opened up three graves and cutted off from the dead
corpses the joints of their fingers, toes, and nose, and
parted them amongst them, and the said Agnes Simpson
got for her part a winding-sheet and two joints. The
Devil commanded them to keep the joints upon them
while [till] they were dry, and then to make a powder
of them to do evil withal." This confession is sadly
memorable, for it was made before James L, then king
of Scots, and is said to have convinced him of the reality
of witchcraft. Hence the act passed in the first year of
his reign in England, and not repealed till 1736, under
which, perhaps in consequence of which, so many suf-
fered.

The notion of these witch-gatherings was first sug-
gested, there can be little doubt, by secret conventicles
of persisting or relapsed pagans, or of heretics. Both,
perhaps, contributed their share. Sometimes a moun-
tain, as in Germany the Blocksberg,| sometimes a con-

* De Lamiis, p. 59 et seq.

t If the Blokuln of the Swedish witches be a reminiscence of this,
it would seem to point back to remote times and heathen cei-emonies.
But it is so impossible to distinguish what was put into the mind of
those who confessed by their examining torturers from what may have
been there before, the result of a common superstition, that perhaps,

114 WITCHCRAFT.

spicuous oak or linden, and there were many such among
both Gauls and Germans sacred of old to pagan rites,
and later a lonely heath, a place where two roads crossed
each other, a cavern, gravel-pit, or quarry, the gallows,
or the churchyard, was the place appointed for their dia-
bolic orgies. That the witch could be conveyed bodily
to these meetings was at first admitted without any
question. But as the husbands of accused persons some-
times testified that their wives had not left their beds on
the alleged night of meeting, the witchmongers were
put to strange shifts by way of accounting for it. Some-
times the Devil imposed on the husband by a deceptio
visus ; sometimes a demon took the place of the wife ;
sometimes the body was left and the spirit only trans-
ported. But the more orthodox opinion was in favor of
corporeal deportation. Bodin appeals triumphantly to
the cases of Habbakuk (now in the Apocrypha, but once
making a part of the Book of Daniel), and of Philip in
the Acts of the Apostles. " I find," he says, " this
ecstatic ravishment they talk of much more wonderful
than bodily transport. And if the Devil has this power,
as they confess, of ravishing the spirit out of the body,
is it not more easy to carry body and soul without sepa-
ration or division of the reasonable part, than to with-
draw and divide the one from the other without death ] "
The author of De Lamiis argues for the corporeal theory.
" The evil Angels have the same superiority of natural
power as the good, since by the Fall they lost none of
the gifts of nature, but only those of grace." Now, as
we know that good angels can thus transport men in the
twinkling of an eye, it follows that evil ones may do the
same. He fortifies his position by a recent example from
secular history. " No one doubts about John Faust, who

after all, the meeting on mountains may have been suggested by what
Pliny says of the dances of Satyrs on Mount Atlas.

WITCHCRAFT. 115

dwelt at Wittenberg, in the time of the sainted Luther,
and who, seating himself on his cloak with his compan-
ions, was conveyed away and borne by the Devil through
the air to distant kingdoms." * Glanvin inclines rather
to the spiritual than the material hypothesis, and sug-
gests " that the Witch's anointing herself before she
takes her flight may perhaps serve to keep the body ten-
antable and in fit disposition to receive the spirit at its
return." Aubrey, whose " Miscellanies " were published
in 1696, had no doubts whatever as to the physical
asportation of the witch. He says that a gentleman
of his acquaintance "was in Portugal anno 1655, when
one was burnt by the inquisition for being brought
thither from Goa, in East India, in the air, in an incredi-
ble short time." As to the conveyance of witches
through crevices, keyholes, chimneys, and the like, Herr
Walburger discusses the question with such comical
gravity that we must give his argument in the undimin-
ished splendor of its jurisconsult latinity. The first
sentence is worthy of Magister Bartholomseus Kuckuk.
" Hsec realis delatio trahit me quoque ad illam vulgo
agitatam qusestionem : An diabolus Lamias corpore per
angusta foramina parietum, fenestrarum, portarum aut
per cavernas igjiifluas ferre queant ? " (Surely if face be
good Latin for a candle, caverna igniflua should be flatter-
ing to a chimney. ) " Resp. Lamiee prsedicto modo ssepius
fatentur sese a diabolo per caminum aut alia loca angus-
tiora scopis insidentes per eerem ad montem Bructerorum
deferri. Verum deluduntur a Satana istsec mulieres hoc
casu egregie nee revera rimulas istas penetrant, sed
solummodo daemon praecedens latenter aperit et claudit
januas vel fenestras corporis earum capaces, per quas eas

* Wierus, whose book was published not long after Faust's death,
apparently doubted the whole story, for he alludes to it with an at
ftriur, and plainly looked on him as a mountebank.

116 WITCHCRAFT.

intromittit quse putant se formam unimalculi parvi, mus-
telse, catti, locustse, et aliorum induisse. At si forte
contingat ut per parietem se delatam confiteatur Saga,
tune, si non totum hoc prsestigiosum est, dsemonem
tamen maxima celeritate tot quot sufficiunt lapides exi-
mere et sustinere aliosne ruant, et postea eadem celeritate
iterum eos in suum locum reponere, existimo : cum
hominum adspectus hanc tartarei latomi fraudem nequeat
deprendere. Idem quoque judicium esse potest de trans-
latione per caminum. Siquidem si caverna iguiflua justa3
amplitudinis est ut nullo impedimento et hsesitatione
corpus humanum earn perrepere possit, diabolo impossi-
bile non esse per earn eas educere. Si vero per inpropor-
tionatum (ut ita loquar) corporibus spatium eas educit
tune meras illusiones prsestigiosas esse censeo, nee a dia-
bolo hoc unquam effici posse. Ratio est, quoniam diabo-
lus essentiam creaturse seu lamise immutare non potest,
multo minus efficere ut majus corpus penetret per spa-
tium inproportionatum, alioquin corporum penetratio
esset admittenda quod contra naturam et omne Physi-
corum principium est." This is fine reasoning, and the
ut ita loquar thrown in so carelessly, as if with a depre-
catory wave of the hand for using a less classical locution
than usual, strikes me as a very delicate touch indeed.

Grimm tells us that he does not know when broom-
sticks, spits, and similar utensils were first assumed to
be the canonical instruments of this nocturnal equita-
tion. He thinks it comparatively modern, but I sus-
pect it is as old as the first child that ever bestrode his
father's staff, and fancied it into a courser shod with wind,
like those of Pindar. Alas for the poverty of human
invention ! It cannot afford a hippogriff for an every-
day occasion. The poor old crones, badgered by inquisi-
tors into confessing they had been where they never were,
were involved in the further necessity of explaining

WITCHCRAFT. 117

the devil they got there. The only steed their parents
had ever been rich enough to keep had been of this do-
mestic sort, and they no doubt had ridden in this inex-
pensive fashion, imagining themselves the grand dames
they saw sometimes flash by, in the happy days of child-
hood, now so far away. Forced to give a how, and un-
able to conceive of mounting in the air without some-
thing to sustain them, their bewildered wits naturally
took refuge in some such simple subterfuge, and the
broomstave, which might make part of the poorest
house's furniture, was the nearest at hand. If youth
and good spirits could put such life into a dead stick
once, why not age and evil spirits now 1 Moreover,
what so likely as an emeritus implement of this sort to
become the staff of a withered beldame, and thus to be
naturally associated with her image ? I remember very
well a poor half-crazed creature, who always wore a scar-
let cloak and leaned on such a stay, cursing and banning
after a fashion that would infallibly have burned her two
hundred years ago. But apart from any adventitious
associations of later growth, it is certain that a very
ancient belief gave to magic the power of imparting life,
or the semblance of it, to inanimate things, and thu. •
sometimes making servants of them. The wands of the
Egyptian magicians were turned to serpents. Still
nearer to the purpose is the capital story of Lucian, out
of which Goethe made his Zaubcrlekrling, of the stick
turned water-carrier. The classical theory of the witch's
flight was driven to no such vulgar expedients, the oint-
ment turning her into a bird for the nonce, as in Lucian
and Apuleius. In those days, too, there was nothing
known of any camp-meeting of witches and wizards, but
each sorceress transformed herself that she might fly to
her paramour. According to some of the Scotch stories,
the witch, after bestriding her broomstick, must repeat

118 WITCHCRAFT.

the magic formula, Horse and Hattodc ! The flitting of
these ill-omened night-birds, like nearly all the general
superstitions relating to witchcraft, mingles itself and is
lost in a throng of figures more august.* Diana, Bertha,
Holda, Abundia, Befana, once beautiful and divine, the
Wringers of blessing while men slept, became demons
haunting the drear of darkness with terror and ominous
suggestion. The process of disenchantment must have
been a long one, and none can say how soon it became
complete. Perhaps we may take Heine's word for it,

that

" Genau bei Weibern
Weiss man niemals wo der Engel
Aufhort und der Teufel anfangt."

Once goblinized, Herodias joins them, doomed still to
bear about the Baptist's head ; and Woden, who, first
losing his identity in the Wild Huntsman, sinks by de-
grees into the mere spook of a Suabian baron, sinfully
fond of field-sports, and therefore punished with an
eternal phantasm of them, " the hunter and the deer a
shade." More and more vulgarized, the infernal train
snatches up and sweeps along with it every lawless shape
and wild conjecture of distempered fancy, streaming
away at last into a comet's tail of wild-haired hags,
eager with unnatural hate and more unnatural lust,
the nightmare breed of some exorcist's or inquisitor's
surfeit, whose own lie has turned upon him in sleep.

As it is painfully interesting to trace the gradual de-
generation of a poetic faith into the ritual of unimagina-
tive Tupperism, so it is amusing to see pedantry cling-
ing faithfully to the traditions of its prosaic nature, and
holding sacred the dead shells that once housed a moral
symbol. What a divine thing the outside always has
been and continues to be ! And how the cast clothes of
the mind continue always to be in fashion ! We turn
* See Grimm's D. M., under Hexenfart, Wutendet Heer, &c.

WITCHCRAFT 119

our coats without changing the cut of them. But was
it possible for a man to change not only his skin but his
nature 1 Were there such things as versipelles, lycan-
thropi, werwolf s, and loupgarous ? In the earliest agea
science was poetry, as in the later poetry has become
science. The phenomena of nature, imaginatively rep-
resented, were not long in becoming myths. These the
primal poets reproduced again as symbols, no longer of
physical, but of moral truths. By and by the profes-
sional poets, in search of a subject, are struck by the
fund of picturesque material lying unused in them, and
work them up once more r,s narratives, with appropriate
personages and decorations. Thence they take the further
downward step into legend, and from that to supersti-
tion. How many metamorphoses between the elder
Edda and the Nibelungen, between Arcturus and the
" Idyls of the King " ! Let a good, thorough-paced
proser get hold of one of these stories, and he carefully
desiccates them of whatever fancy may be left, till he
has reduced them to the proper dryness of fact. King
Lycaon, grandson by the spindleside of Oceanus, after
passing through all the stages I have mentioned, becomes
the ancestor of the werwolf. Ovid is put upon the stand
as a witness, and testifies to the undoubted fact of the
poor monarch's own metamorphosis : —

" Terrritus ipse fugit, nactusque silentia ruris
Exululat, frustraque loqui conatur."

Does any one still doubt that men may be changed
into beasts'? Call Lucian, call Apuleius, call Homer,
whose story of the companions of Ulysses made swine of
by Circe, says Bodin, n'est pas fable. If that arch-patron
of sorcerers, Wierus, is stilJ unconvinced, and pronoun-
ces the whole thing a delusion of diseased imagination,
what does he say to Nebuchadnezzar 1 Nay, let St. Aus-
tin be subpoenaed, who declares that " in his time among

120 WITCHCRAFT.

the Alps sorceresses were common, who, by making
travellers eat of a certain cheese, changed them into
beasts of burden and then back again into men." Too
confiding tourist, beware of Gruyere, especially at sup-
per ! Then there was the Philosopher Ammonius, whose
lectures were constantly attended by an ass, — a phe-
nomenon not without parallel in more recent times, and
all the more credible to Bodin, who had been professor
of civil law.

In one case we have fortunately the evidence of the
ass himself. In Germany, two witches who kept an inn
made an ass of a young actor, — not always a very pro-
digious transformation it will be thought by those famil-
iar with the stage. In his new shape he drew customers
by his amusing tricks, — voluptates mille viatoribus exhi-
bebat. But one day making his escape (having overheard
the secret from his mistresses), he plunged into the wa-
ter and was disasinized to the extent of recovering his
original shape. " Id Petrus Damianus, vir sua setate in-
ter primos numerandus, cum rem sciscitatus est diligen-
tissime ex hero, ex asino, ex mulieribus sagis confessis
factum, Leoni VII. Papse narravit, et postquam diu in
utramque partem coram Papa fuit disputatum, hoc tandem
posse fieri fuit constitum." Bodin must have been de-
Jighted with this story, though perhaps as a Protestant he
might have vilipended the infallible decision of the Pope
in its favor. As for lycanthropy, that was too common
in his own time to need any confirmation. It was no-
torious to all men. " In Livonia, during the latter part
of December, a villain goes about summoning the sor-
cerers to meet at a certain place, and if they fail, the
Devil scourges them thither with an iron rod, and that
so sharply that the marks of it remain upon them.
Their captain goes before ; and they, to the number of
several thousands, follow him across a river, which

WITCHCRAFT. 121

passed, they change into wolves, and, casting themselves
upon men and flocks, do all manner of damage." This
we have on the authority of Melancthon's son-in-law,
Gaspar Peucerus. Moreover, many books published in
Germany affirm " that one of the greatest kings in
Christendom, not long since dead, was often changed into
a wolf." But what need of words 2 The conclusive
proof remains, that many in our own day, being put to
the torture, have confessed the fact, and been burned alive
accordingly. The maintainers of the reality of witchcraft
in the next century seem to have dropped the iverwolf by
common consent, though supported by the same kind
of evidence they relied on in other matters, namely,
that of ocular witnesses, the confession of the accused,
and general notoriety. So lately as 1765 the French
peasants believed the " wild beast of the Gevaudan " to
be a loupgaroa, and that, I think, is his last appear-
ance.

The particulars of the concubinage of witches with
their familiars were discussed with a relish and a filthy
minuteness worthy of Sanchez. Could children be born
of these devilish amours 1 Of course they could, said
one party ; are there not plenty of cases in authentic
history 1 Who was the father of Romulus and Remus 1
nay, not so very long ago, of Merlin 1 Another party
denied the possibility of the thing altogether. Among
these was Luther, who declared the children either to be
supposititious, or else mere imps, disguised as innocent
sucklings, and known as Wechselkmder, or changelings,
who were common enough, as everybody must be aware.
Of the intercourse itself Luther had no doubts.* A

* Some Catholics, indeed, affirmed that he himself was the son of a
demon who lodged in his father's house under the semblance of a
merchant. Wierus says that a bishop preached to that effect in 1566,
and gravely refutes the story.
6

122 WITCHCRAFT.

third party took a middle ground, and believed that ver-
min and toads might be the offspring of such amours.
And how did the Demon, a mere spiritual essence, con-
trive himself a body 1 Some would have it that he en-
tered into dead bodies, by preference, of course, those of
sorcerers. It is plain, from the confession of De la Rue,
that this was the theory of his examiners. This also
had historical evidence in its favor. There was the well-
known leading case of the Bride of Corinth, for example.
And but yesterday, as it were, at Crossen in Silesia, did
not Christopher Monig, an apothecary's servant, come
back after being buried, and do duty, as if nothing par-
ticular had happened, putting up prescriptions as usual,
and "pounding drugs in the mortar with a mighty
noise " ] Apothecaries seem to have been special vic-
tims of these Satanic pranks, for another appeared at
Reichenbach not long before, affirming that, " he had
poisoned several men with his drugs," which certainly
gives an air of truth to the story. Accordingly the
Devil is represented as being unpleasantly cold to the
touch. " Caietan escrit qu'une sorciere demanda un
iour au diable pourquoy il ne se rechauffoit, qui fist re-
sponse qu'il faisoit ce qu'il pouuoit." Poor Devil ! But
there are cases in which the demon is represented as so
hot that his grasp left a seared spot as black as charcoal.
Perhaps some of them came from the torrid zone of their
broad empire, and others from the thrilling regions of
thick-ribbed ice. Those who were not satisfied with the
dead-body theory contented themselves, like Dr. More,
with that of " adscititious particles," which has, to be
sure, a more metaphysical and scholastic flavor about it.
That the demons really came, either corporeally or
through some diabolic illusion that amounted to the
same thing, and that the witch devoted herself to him
body and soul, scarce anybody was bold enough to doubt

WITCHCRAFT. 123

To these familiars their venerable paramours gave en-
dearing nicknames, such as My little Master, or My dear
Martin, — the latter, probably, after the heresy of
Luther, and when the rack was popish. The famous
witch-finder Hopkins enables us to lengthen the list con-
siderably. One witch whom he convicted, after being
" kept from sleep two or three nights," called in five of
her devilish servitors. The first was " Holt, who came
in like a white kitling " ; the second " Jarmara, like a fat
spaniel without any legs at all " ; the third, " Vinegav
Tom, who was like a long-tailed greyhound with an head
like an oxe, with a long tail and broad eyes, who, when
this discoverer spoke to and bade him to the place pro-
vided for him and his angells, immediately transformed
himself into the shape of a child of foure yeares old,
without a head, and gave half a dozen turnes about the
house and vanished at the doore " ; the fourth, " /Sack
and Sugar, like a black rabbet " ; the fifth, " News, like a
polcat." Other names of his finding were Elemauzer,
Pywacket, Peck-in -the-Crown, Grizzel, and Greedygut,
" which," he adds, " no mortal could invent." The name
of Robin, which we met with in the confession of Alice
Duke, has, perhaps, wider associations than the woman
herself dreamed of; for, through Robin des Bois and
Robin Hood, it may be another of those scattered traces
that lead us back to Woden. Probably, however, it is
only our old friend Robin Goodfellow, whose namesake
Knecht Ruprecht makes such a figure in the German
fairy mythology. Possessed persons called in higher
agencies, — Thrones, Dominations, Princedoms, Powers ;
and among the witnesses against Urbain Grandier we
find the names of Leviathan, Behemoth, Isaacarum, Be-
/aam, Asmodeus, and Beherit, who spoke French very
well, but were remarkably poor Latmists, knowing, in-
deed, almost as little of the language as if their youth

124 WITCHCRAFT,

had been spent in writing Latin verses.* A shrewd
Scotch physician tried them with Gaelic, but they could
make nothing of it.

It was only when scepticism had begun to make itself
uncomfortably inquisitive, that the Devil had any diffi-
culty in making himself visible and even palpable. In
simpler times, demons would almost seem to have made
no inconsiderable part of the population. Trithemius
tells of one who served as cook to the Bishop of Hilde-
sheim (one shudders to think of the school where he had
graduated as Cordon bleu), and who delectebatur esse
cum hominibus, loquens, interrogans, respondens famili-
ariter omnibus, aliquando visibiliter, aliquando invisibili-
ter apparens. This last feat of " appearing invisibly "
would have been worth seeing. In 1554, the Devil came
of a Christmas eve to Lawrence Doner, a parish priest
in Saxony, and asked to be confessed. " Admissus,
horrendas adversus Christum filium Dei blasphemias
evomuit. Verum cum virtute verbi Dei a parocho victus
esset, intolerabili post se relicto foetore abiit." Splen-
didly dressed, with two companions, he frequented an
honest man's house at Rothenberg. He brought with
him a piper or fiddler, and contrived feasts and dances
under pretext of wooing the good man's daughter. He
boasted that he was a foreign nobleman of immense
wealth, and, for a time, was as successful as an Italian
courier has been known to be at one of our fashionable
watering-places. But the importunity of the guest and
his friends at length displicuit patrifamilias, who accord-

* Melancthon, however, used to tell of a possessed girl in Italy who
knew no Latin, but the Devil in her, being asked by Bonamico, a
Bolognese professor, what was the best verse in Virgil, answered at
once : —

" Discite justitiam moniti, et non temnere divos," —
a somewhat remarkable concession on the part of a fallen angel.

WITCHCRAFT. 125

ingly one evening invited a minister of the Word to meet
them at supper, and entered upon pious discourse with
him from the word of God. Wherefore, seeking other
matter of conversation, they said that there were many fa-
cetious things more suitable to exhilarate the supper-table
than the interpretation of Holy Writ, and begged that
they might be no longer bored with Scripture. Thor-
oughly satisfied by their singular way of thinking that
his guests were diabolical, paterfamilias cries out in
Latin worthy of Father Tom, ** Apagite, vos scelerati
nebulones ! " This said, the tartarean impostor and his
companions at once vanished with a great tumult, leav-
ing behind them a most unpleasant fcetor and the bodies
of three men who had been hanged. Perhaps if the
clergyman-cure were faithfully tried upon the next for-
tune-hunting count with a large real estate in whiskers
and an imaginary one in Barataria, he also might vanish,
leaving a strong smell of barber's-shop, and taking with
him a body that will come to the gallows in due time.
It were worth trying. Luther tells of a demon who
served as famulus in a monastery, fetching beer for the
monks, and always insisting on honest measure for his
money. There is one case on record where the Devil
appealed to the courts for protection in his rights. A
monk, going to visit his mistress, fell dead as he was
passing a bridge. The good and bad angel came to liti-
gation about his soul. The case was referred by agree-
ment to Richard, Duke of Normandy, who decided that
the monk's body should be carried back to the bridge,
and his soul restored to it by the claimants. If he per-
severed in keeping his assignation, the Devil was to have
him, if not, then the Angel. The monk, thus put upon
his guard, turns back and saves his soul, such as it was.*

* This story .eems mediaeval and Gothic enough, but is hardly more
so than bringing the case of the Furies v. Orestes before the Areopagu^

126 WITCHCRAFT.

Perhaps the most impudent thing the Devil ever did war
to open a school of magic in Toledo. The ceremony of
graduation in this institution was peculiar. The senior
class had all to run through a narrow cavern, and the
venerable president was entitled to the hindmost, if he
could catch him. Sometimes it happened that he caught
only his shadow, and in that case the man who had been
nimble enough to do what Goethe pronounces impossible,
became the most profound magician of his year. Hence
our proverb of the Devil take the hindmost, and Chamisso's
story of Peter Schlemihl.

There is no end of such stories. They were repeated
and believed by the gravest and wisest men down to the
end of the sixteenth century ; they were received un-
doubtingly by the great majority down to the end of the
seventeenth. The Devil was an easy way of accounting
for what was beyond men's comprehension. He was the
simple and satisfactory answer to all the conundrums of
Nature. And what the Devil had not time to bestow his
personal attention upon, the witch was always ready to do
for him. Was a doctor at a loss about a case 1 How
could he save his credit more cheaply than by pronoun-
cing it witchcraft, and turning it over to the parson to be
exorcised 1 Did a man's cow die suddenly, or his horse
fall lame 1 Witchcraft ! Did one of those writers of
controversial quartos, heavy as the stone of Diomed, feel
a pain in the small of his back "? Witchcraft ! Unhap-
pily there were always ugly old women ; and if you
crossed them in any way, or did them a wrong, they
were given to scolding and banning. If, within a year

and putting Apollo in the witness-box, as ^schylus has done. The
classics, to be sure, are always so classic ! In the Eumenides, Apollo
takes the- place of the good angel. And why not ? For though a de-
mon, and n Vying one, he has crept in to the calendar under his other
name of Helios as St. Helias. Could any of his oracles have foretold
this?

WITCHCRAFT. 127

or two after, anything should happen to you or yours,
why, of course, old Mother Bombie or Goody Blake must
be at the bottom of it. For it was perfectly well known
that there were witches, (does not God's law say ex-
pressly, " Suffer not a witch to live 1 ") and that they could
cast a spell by the mere glance of their eyes, could cause
you to pine away by melting a waxen image, could give
you a pain wherever they liked by sticking pins into the
same, could bring sickness into your house or into your
barn by hiding a Devil's powder under the threshold ;
and who knows what else ? Worst of all, they could
send a demon into your body, who would cause you to
vomit pins, hair, pebbles, knives, — indeed, almost any-
thing short of a cathedral, — without any fault of yours,
utter through you the most impertinent things verbi
ministro, and, in short, make you the most important per-
sonage in the parish for the time being. Meanwhile, you
were an object of condolence and contribution to the
whole neighborhood. What wonder if a lazy apprentice
or servant-maid (Bekker gives several instances of the
kind detected by him) should prefer being possessed,
with its attendant perquisites, to drudging from morning
till night ? And to any one who has observed how com-
mon a thing in certain states of mind self-connivance is,
and how near it is to self-deception, it will not be sur-
prising that some were, to all intents and purposes, really
possessed. Who has never felt an almost irresistible
temptation, and seemingly not self-originated, to let him-
self go 1 to let his mind gallop and kick and curvet and
roll like a horse turned loose 1 in short, as we Yankees
say, " to speak out in meeting " 1 Who never had it
suggested to him by the fiend to break in at a funeral
with a real character of the deceased, instead of that
Mrs. Grundyfied view of him which the clergyman is so
painfully elaborating in his prayer ? Remove the pendu-

128 WITCHCRAFT.

him of conventional routine, and the mental machinery
runs on with a whir that gives a delightful excitement
to sluggish temperaments, and is, perhaps, the natural
relief of highly nervous organizations. The tyrant Will
is dethroned, and the sceptre snatched by his frolic sis-
ter Whim. This state of things, if continued, must be-
come either insanity or imposture. But who can say
precisely where consciousness ceases and a kind of auto-
matic movement begins, the result of over-excitement ?
The subjects of these strange disturbances have been
almost always young women or girls at a critical period
of then* development. Many of the most remarkable
cases have occurred in convents, and both there and else-
where, as in other kinds of temporary nervous derange-
ment, have proved contagious. Sometimes, as in the
affair of the nuns of Loudon, there seems every reason
to suspect a conspiracy ; but I am not quite ready to say
that Grandier was the only victim, and that some of the
energumens were not unconscious tools in the hands of
priestcraft and revenge. One thing is certain : that in
the dioceses of humanely sceptical prelates the cases of
possession were sporadic only, and either cured, or at
least hindered from becoming epidemic, by episcopal
mandate. Cardinal Mazarin, when Papal vice-legate at
Avignon, made an end of the trade of exorcism within
his government.

But scepticism, down to the beginning of the eigh-
teenth century, was the exception. Undoubting and
often fanatical belief was the rule. It is easy enough to
be astonished at it, still easier to misapprehend it. How
could sane men have been deceived by such nursery-
tales 1 Still more, how could they have suffered them-
selves, on what seems to us such puerile evidence, to
consent to such atrocious cruelties, nay, to urge them
on 1 As to the belief, we should remember that the hu-

WITCHCRAFT. 129

>an mind, when it sails by dead reckoning, without the
possibility of a fresh observation, perhaps without the
instruments necessary to take one, will sometimes bring
up in very strange latitudes. Do we of the nineteenth
century, then, always strike out boldly into the unland-
marked deep of speculation and shape our courses by the
stars, or do we not sometimes con our voyage by what
seem to us the firm and familiar headlands of truth,
planted by God himself, but which may, after all, be no
more than an insubstantial mockery of cloud or airy
juggle of mirage 1 The refraction of our own atmos-
phere has by no means made an end of its tricks with
the appearances of things in our little world of thought.
The men of that day believed what they saw, or, as our
generation would put it, what they thought they saw.
Very good. The vast majority of men believe, and
always will believe, on the same terms. When one
comes along who can partly distinguish the thing seen
from that travesty or distortion of it which the thou-
sand disturbing influences within him and without him
would make him see, we call him a great philosopher.
All our intellectual charts are engraved according to his
observations, and we steer contentedly by them till some
man whose brain rests on a still more immovable basis
corrects them still further by eliminating what his pred-
ecessor thought he saw. We must account for many
former aberrations in the moral world by the presence
of more or less nebulous bodies of a certain gravity
which modified the actual position of truth in its rela-
tion to the mind, and which, if they have now vanished,
have made way, perhaps, for others whose influence will
in like manner be allowed for by posterity in their esti-
mate of us. In matters of faith, astrology has by no
means yet given place to astronomy, nor alchemy be-
come chemistry, which knows what to seek for and botf
6* I

130 WITCHCRAFT.

to find it. In the days of witchcraft all science was still
in the condition of May-be; it is only just bringing
itself to find a higher satisfaction in the imperturbable
Must-be of law. We should remember that what we call
natural may have a very different meaning for one gen-
eration from that which it has for another. The boun-
dary between the " other" world and this ran till very
lately, and at some points runs still, through a vast
tract of unexplored border-land of very uncertain tenure.
Even now the territory which Reason holds firmly as
Lord Warden of the marches during daylight, is subject
to sudden raids of Imagination by night. But physical
darkness is not the only one that lends opportunity to
such incursions; and in midsummer 1692, when Eben-
ezer Bapson, looking out of the fort at Gloucester in
broad day, saw shapes of men, sometimes in blue coats
like Indians, sometimes in white waistcoats like French-
men, it seemed more natural to most men that they
should be spectres than men of flesh and blood. Grant-
ing the assumed premises, as nearly every one did, the
syllogism was perfect.

So much for the apparent reasonableness of the belief,
since every man's logic is satisfied with a legitimate de-
duction from his own postulates. Causes for the cruelty
to which the belief led are not further to seek. Toward
no crime have men shown themselves so cold-bloodedly
cruel as in punishing difference of belief, and the first
systematic persecutions for witchcraft began with the in-
quisitors in the South of France in the thirteenth cen-
tury. It was then and there that the charge of sexual
uncleanness with demons was first devised. Persecuted
heretics would naturally meet in darkness and secret,
and it was easy to blacken such meetings with the accu-
sation of deeds so foul as to shun the light of day and
the eyes of men. They met to renounce God and wor-

WITCHCRAFT. 131

ship the Devil. But this was not enough. To excite
popular hatred and keep it fiercely alive, fear must be
mingled with it ; and this end was reached by making
the heretic also a sorcerer, who, by the Devil's help, could
and would work all manner of fiendish mischief. When
by this means the belief in a league between witch and
demon had become firmly established, witchcraft grew
into a well-defined crime, hateful enough in itself to fur-
nish pastime for the torturer and food for the fagot. In
the fifteenth century, witches were burned by thousands,
and it may well be doubted if all paganism together was
ever guilty of so many human sacrifices in the same
space of time. In the sixteenth, these holocausts were
appealed to as conclusive evidence of the reality of the
crime, terror was again aroused, the more vindictive that
its sources were so vague and intangible, and cruelty was
the natural consequence. Nothing but an abject panic,
in which the whole use of reason, except as a mill to
grind out syllogisms, was altogether lost, will account for
some chapters in Bodin's Demonomanie. Men were sur-
rounded by a forever-renewed conspiracy whose ramifica-
tions they could not trace, though they might now and
then lay hold on one of its associates. Protestant and
Catholic might agree in nothing else, but they were
unanimous in their dread of this invisible enemy. If
fright could turn civilized Englishmen into savage Iro-
quois during the imagined negro plots of New York in
1741 and of Jamaica in 1865, if the same invisible om-
nipresence of Fenianism shall be able to work the same
miracle, as it perhaps will, next year in England itself,
why need we be astonished that the blows should have
fallen upon many an innocent head when men were
striking wildly in self-defence, as they supposed, against
the unindictable Powers of Darkness, against a plot
which could be carried on by human agents, but with

132 WITCHCRAFT.

invisible accessories and by supernatural means ? In
the seventeenth century an element was added which
pretty well supplied the place of heresy as a sharpener
of hatred and an awakener of indefinable suspicion.
Scepticism had been born into the world, almost more
hateful than heresy, because it had the manners of
good society and contented itself with a smile, a shrug,
an almost imperceptible lift of the eyebrow, — a kind
of reasoning especially exasperating to disputants of
the old school, who still cared about victory, even
when they did not about the principles involved in the
debate.

The Puritan emigration to New England took place at
a time when the belief in diabolic agency had been
hardly called in question, much less shaken. The early
adventurers brought it with them to a country in every
way fitted, not only to keep it alive, but to feed it into
greater vigor. The solitude of the wilderness (and soli-
tude alone, by dis-furnishing the brain of its common--
place associations, makes it an apt theatre for the delu-
sions of imagination), the nightly forest noises, the
glimpse, perhaps, through the leaves, of a painted sav-
age face, uncertain whether of redman or Devil, but
more likely of the latter, above all, that measureless
mystery of the unknown and conjectural stretching away
illimitable on all sides and vexing the mind, somewhat
as physical darkness does, with intimation and misgiving,
— under all these influences, whatever seeds of super-
stition had in any way got over from the Old World
would find an only too congenial soil in the New. The
leaders of that emigration believed and taught that de-
mons loved to dwell in waste and wooded places, that
the Indians did homage to the bodily presence of the
Devil, and that he was especially enraged against those
who had planted an outpost of the true faith upon this

WITCHCRAFT. 133

continent hitherto all his own. In the third generation
of the settlement, in proportion as living faith decayed,
the clergy insisted all the more strongly on the tradi-
tions of the elders, and as they all placed the sources of
goodness and religion in some inaccessible Other World
rather than in the soul of man himself, they clung to
every shred of che supernatural as proof of the existence
of that Other World, and of its interest in the affairs of
this. They had the countenance of all the great theo-
logians, Catholic as well as Protestant, of the leaders of
the Reformation, and in their own day of such men as
More and Glauvil and Baxter.* If to all these causes,
more or less operative in 1692, we add the harassing
excitement of an Indian war (urged on by Satan in his
hatred of the churches), with its daily and nightly ap-
prehensions and alarms, we shall be less astonished that
the delusion in Salem Village rose so high than that it
subsided so soon.

I have already said that it was religious antipathy or
clerical interest that first made heresy and witchcraft
identical and cast them into the same expiatory fire.
The invention was a Catholic one, but it is plain that
Protestants soon learned its value and were not slow in
making it a plague to the inventor. It was not till after
the Reformation that there was any systematic hunting
out of witches in England. Then, no doubt, the inno-

* Mr. Leckie, in his admirable chapter on Witchcraft, gives a little
more credit to the enlightenment of the Church of England in this
matter than it would seem fairly to deserve. More and Glanvil were
faithful sons of the Church; and if the persecution of witches was es-
pecially rife during the ascendency of the Puritans, it was because they
happened to be in power while there was a reaction against Sadducism.
All the convictions were under the statute of James I., who was no
Puritan. After the restoration, the reaction was the other way, and
Hobbism became the fashion. It is more philosophical to say that the
age believes this and that, than that the particular men who live hi it
do so.

134 WITCHCRAFT.

cent charms and rhyming prayers of the old religion
were regarded as incantations, and twisted into evidence
against miserable beldames who mumbled over in their
dotage what they had learned at their mother's knee.
It is plain, at least, that this was one of Agnes Simp-
son's crimes.

But as respects the frivolity of the proof adduced,
there was nothing to choose between Catholic and Prot-
estant. Out of civil and canon law a net was woven
through whose meshes there was no escape, and into it
the victims were driven by popular clamor. Suspicion
of witchcraft was justified by general report, by the ill-
looks of the suspected, by being silent when accused, by
her mother's having been a witch, by flight, by exclaim-
ing when arrested, / am lost ! by a habit of using im-
precations, by the evidence of two witnesses, by the
accusation of a man on his death-bed, by a habit of be-
ing away from home at night, by fifty other things
equally grave. Anybody might be an accuser, — a per-
sonal enemy, an infamous person, a child, parent, broth-
er, or sister. Once accused, the culprit was not to be
allowed to touch the ground on the way to prison, was
not to be left alone there lest she have interviews with
the Devil and get from him the means of being insensi-
ble under torture, was to be stripped and shaved in order
to prevent her concealing some charm, or to facilitate
the finding of witch-marks. Her right thumb tied to
her left great-toe, and vice versa, she was thrown into the
water. If she floated, she was a witch ; if she sank and
was drowned, she was lucky. This trial, as old as the
days of Pliny the Elder, was gone out of fashion, the
author of De Lamiis assures us, in his day, everywhere
but in Westphalia, " On halfproof or strong presump-
tion," says Bodin, the judge may proceed to torture.
If the witch did not shed tears under the rack, it was

WITCHCRAFT. 135

almost conclusive of guilt. On this topic of torture he
grows eloquent. The rack does very well, but to thrust
splinters between the nails and flesh of hands and feet
" is the most excellent gehenna of all, and practised in
Turkey." That of Florence, where they seat the crim-
inal in a hanging chair so contrived that if he drop
asleep it overturns and leaves him hanging by a rope
which wrenches his arms backwards, is perhaps even bet-
ter, " for the limbs are not broken, and without trouble or
labor one gets out the truth." It is well in carrying the
accused to the chamber of torture to cause some in the
next room to shriek fearfully as if on the rack, that they
may be terrified into confession. It is proper to tell
them that their accomplices have confessed and accused
them ("though they have done no such thing") that
they may do the same out of revenge. The judge may
also with a good conscience lie to the prisoner and tell
her that if she admit her guilt, she may be pardoned.
This is Bodin's opinion, but Walburger, writing a cen-
tury later, concludes that the judge may go to any ex-
tent citra mendacium, this side of lying. He may tell
the witch that he will be favorable, meaning to the
Commonwealth ; that he will see that she has a new
house built for her, that is, a wooden one to burn her
in ; that her confession will be most useful in saving her
life, to wit, her life eternal. There seems little difference
between the German's white lies and the Frenchman's
black ones. As to punishment, Bodin is fierce for burn-
ing. Though a Protestant, he quotes with evident satis-
faction a decision of the magistrates that one " who had
eaten flesh on a Friday should be burned alive unless he
repented, and if he repented, yet he was hanged out of
compassion." A child under twelve who will net confess
meeting with the Devil should be put to death if con-
victed of the fact, though Bodin allows that Satan made

136 WITCHCRAFT.

no express compact with those who had not arrived at
puberty. This he learned from the examination of
Jeanne Harvillier, who deposed, " that, though her
mother dedicated her to Satan so soon as she was born,
yet she was not married to him, nor did he demand that,
or her renunciation of God, till she had attained the age
of twelve."

There is no more painful reading than this, except
the trials of the witches themselves. These awaken, by
turns, pity, indignation, disgust, and dread, — dread at
the thought of what the human mind may be brought
to believe not only probable, but proven. But it is well
to be put upon our guard by lessons of this kind, for the
wisest man is in some respects little better than a mad-
man in a strait-waistcoat of habit, public opinion, pru-
dence, or the like. Scepticism began at length to make
itself felt, but it spread slowly and was shy of proclaim-
ing itself. The orthodox party was not backward to
charge with sorcery whoever doubted their facts or pitied
their victims. Bodin says that it is good cause of sus-
picion against a judge if he turn the matter into ridicule,
or incline toward mercy. The mob, as it always is, was
orthodox. It was dangerous to doubt, it might be fatal
to deny. In 1453 Guillaume de Lure was burned at
Poitiers on his own confession of a compact with Satan,
by which he agreed " to preach and did preach that
everything told of sorcerers was mere fable, and that it
was cruelly done to condemn them to death." This con-
tract was found among his papers signed " with the
Devil's own claw," as Howell says speaking of a similar
case. It is not to be wondered at that the earlier
doubters were cautious. There was literally a reign of
terror, and during such regimes men are commonly found
more eager to be informers and accusers than of counsel
for the defence. Peter of Abano is reckoned among

WITCHCRAFT. 187

the earliest unbelievers who declared himself openly.*
Chaucer was certainly a sceptic, as appears by the open-
ing of the Wife of Bath's Tale. Wierus, a German
physician, was the first to undertake (1563) a refutation
of the facts and assumptions on which the prosecutions
for witchcraft were based. His explanation of the phe-
nomena is mainly physiological. Mr. Leckie hardly
states his position correctly, in saying, " that he never
dreamed of restricting the sphere of the supernatural."
Wierus went as far as he dared. No one can read his
book without feeling that he insinuates much more than
he positively affirms or denies. He would have weak-
ened his cause if he had seemed to disbelieve in demo-
niacal possession, since that had the supposed warrant of
Scripture ; but it may be questioned whether he uses
the words Satan and Demon in any other way than that
in which many people still use the word Nature. He
was forced to accept certain premises of his opponents
by the line of his argument. When he recites incredi-
ble stories without comment, it is not that he believes
them, but that he thinks their absurdity obvious. That
he wrote under a certain restraint is plain from the Colo-
phon of his book, where he says : " Nihil autem hie ita
assertum volo, quod aequiori judicio Catholicee Christi
Ecclesise non omnino submittam, palinodia mox spon-
tanea emendaturus, si erroris alicubi convincar." A great
deal of latent and timid scepticism seems to have been
brought to the surface by his work. Many eminent per-
sons wrote to him in gratitude and commendation. In
the Preface to his shorter treatise De Lamiis (which is a

* I have no means of ascertaining whether he did or not. He was
more probably charged with it by the inquisitors. Mr. Leckie seema
to write of him only upon hearsay, for he calls him Peter " of Apono,"
apparently translating a French translation ot the Latin " Aponus."
The only book attributed to him that I have ever seen is itself a kind
of manual of magic.

138 WITCHCRAFT.

mere abridgment), he thanks God that his labors had
"in many places caused the cruelty against innocent
blood to slacken," and that " some more distinguished
judges treat more mildly and even absolve from capital
punishment the wretched old women branded with the
odious name of witches by the populace." In the Pseu-
domonarchia Doemonum, he gives a kind of census of the
diabolic kingdom,* but evidently with secret intention
of making the whole thing ridiculous, or it would not
have so stirred the bile of Bodin. Wierus was saluted
by many contemporaries as a Hercules who destroyed
monsters, and himself not immodestly claimed the civic
wreath for having saved the lives of fellow-citizens.
Posterity should not forget a man who really did an
honest life's work for humanity and the liberation of
thought. From one of the letters appended to his book
we learn that Jacobus Savagius, a physician of Antwerp,
had twenty years before written a treatise with the same
design, but confining himself to the medical argument
exclusively. He was, however, prevented from publish-
ing it by death. It is pleasant to learn from Bodin that
Alciato, the famous lawyer and emblematist, was one of
those who " laughed and made others laugh at the evi-
dence relied on at the trials, insisting that witchcraft
was a thing impossible and fabulous, and so softened the
hearts of judges (in spite of the fact that an inquisitor
had caused to burn more than a hundred sorcerers in
Piedmont), that all the accused escaped." In England,
Beginald Scot was the first to enter the lists in behalf
of those who had no champion. His book, published in
1584, is full of manly sense and spirit, above all, of a
tender humanity that gives it a warmth which we miss
in every other written on the same side. In the dedica-

* " With the names and surnames," says Bodin, indignantly, " of
seventy-two princes, and of seven million four hundred and five thou-
sand nine hundred and twenty-six devils, errors excepted, "

WITCHCRAFT. 139

tion to Sir Roger Manwood he says : " I renounce all
protection and despise all friendship that might serve to-
wards the suppressing or supplanting of truth." To his
kinsman, Sir Thomas Scot, he writes : " My greatest
adversaries are young ignorance and old custom; for
what folly soever tract of time hath fostered, it is so
superstitiously pursued of some, as though no error
could be acquainted with custom." And in his Preface
he thus states his motives : " God that knoweth my
heart is witness, and you that read my book shall see,
that my drift and purpose in this enterprise tendeth
only to these respects. First, that the glory and power
of God be not so abridged and abased as to be thrust
into the hand or lip of a lewd old woman, whereby the
work of the Creator should be attributed to the power
of a creature. Secondly, that the religion of the Gos-
pel may be seen to stand without such peevish trump-
ery. Thirdly, that lawful favor and Christian compas-
sion be rather used towards these poor souls than rigor
and extremity. Because they which are commonly ac-
cused of witchcraft are the least sufficient of all other
persons to speak for themselves, as having the most
base and simple education of all others, the extremity
of their age giving them leave to dote, their poverty to
beg, their wrongs to chide and threaten (as being void
of any other way of revenge), their humor melancholi-
cal to be full of imaginations, from whence chiefly pro-

ceedeth the vanity of their confessions And for

so much as the mighty help themselves together, and
the poor widow's cry, though it reach to Heaven, is
scarce heard here upon earth, I thought good (according
to my poor ability) to make intercession that some part
of common rigor and some points of hasty judgment may
be advised upon." .... The case is nowhere put with
more point, or urged with more sense and eloquence.

140 WITCHCRAFT.

than by Scot, whose book contains also more curioui
matter, in the way of charms, incantations, exorcisms,
and feats of legerdemain, than any other of the kind.

Other books followed on the same side, of which Bek-
ker's, published about a century later, was the most im-
portant. It is well reasoned, learned, and tedious to a
masterly degree. But though the belief in witchcraft
might be shaken, it still had the advantage of being
on the whole orthodox and respectable. Wise men, as
usual, insisted on regarding superstition as of one sub-
stance with faith, and objected to any scouring of the
shield of religion, lest, like that of Cornelius Scriblerus,
it should suddenly turn out to be nothing more than
"a paltry old sconce with the nozzle broke off." The
Devil continued to be the only recognized Minister Resi-
dent of God upon earth. When we remember that one
man's accusation on his death-bed was enorgh to consti-
tute grave presumption of witchcraft, it might seem
singular that dying testimonies were so long of no avail
against the common credulity. But it should be re-
membered that men are mentally no less than corporeal-
ly gregarious, and that public opinion, the fetish even
of the nineteenth century, makes men, whether for
good or ill, into a mob, which either hurries the individ-
ual judgment along with it, or runs over and tramples it
into insensibility. Those who are so fortunate as to oc-
cupy the philosophical position of spectators ab extra
are very few in any generation.

There were exceptions, it is true, but the old cruel-
ties went on. In 1610 a case came before the tribunal of
the Tourelle, and when the counsel for the accused argued
at some length that sorcery was ineffectual, and that
the Devil could not destroy life, President Seguier told
him that he might spare his breath, since the court had
long been convinced on those points. And yet two

WITCHCRAFT. 141

/ears later the grand-vicars of the Bishop of Beauvais
solemnly summoned Beelzebuth, Satan, Motelu, and
Briftaut, with the four legions under their charge, to ap-
pear and sign an agreement never again to enter the
bodies of reasonable or other creatures, under pain of
excommunication ! If they refused, they were to be
given over to "the power of hell to be tormented and
tortured more than was customary, three thousand
years after the judgment." Under this proclamation
they all came in, like reconstructed rebels, and signed
whatever document was put before them. Toward the
middle of the seventeenth century, the safe thing was
still to believe, or at any rate to profess belief. Sir
Thomas Browne, though he had written an exposure of
" Vulgar Errors," testified in court to his faith in the
possibility of witchcraft. Sir Kenelm- Digby, in his
" Observations on the Religio Medici," takes, perhaps, as
advanced ground as any, when he says : " Neither do I
deny there are witches ; I only reserve my assent till I
meet with stronger motives to carry it." The position
of even enlightened men of the world in that age
might be called semi-sceptical. La Bruyere, no doubt,
expresses the average of opinion : " Que penser de la
magie et du sortilege ? La theorie en est obscurcie, lea
principes vagues, incertains, et qui approchent du vi-
sionnaire ; mais il y a des faits embarrassants, amrme>
par des hommes graves qui les ont vus ; les admettre
tous, ou les nier tons, parait un £gal inconvenient, et
j'ose dire qu'en cela comme en toutes les choses extraor-
dinaires et qui sortent des communes regies, il y a un
parti a trouver entre les ames cre"dules et les esprits
forts." * Montaigne, to be sure, had long before de-
clared his entire disbelief, and yet the Parliament of
Bourdeaux, his own city, condemned a man to be burned

* Cited by Maury, p. 221, note 4.

142 WITCHCRAFT.

as a noiieur tfaiguillettes so lately as 1718. Indeed, it
was not, says Maury, till the first quarter of the eigh-
teenth century that one might safely publish his incre-
dulity in France. In Scotland, witches were burned for
the last time in 1722. Garinet cites the case of a girl
near Amiens possessed by three demons, — Mimi, Zozo,
and Crapoulet, — in 1816.

The two beautiful volumes of Mr. Upham are, so far
as I know, unique in their kind. It is, in some re-
spects, a clinical lecture on human nature, as well as on
the special epidemical disease under which the patient
is laboring. He has written not merely a history of the
so-called Salem Witchcraft, but has made it intelligible
by a minute account of the place where the delusion
took its rise, the persons concerned in it, whether as
actors or sufferers, and the circumstances which led to
it. By deeds, wills, and the records of courts and
churches, by plans, maps, and drawings, he has re-
created Salem Village as it was two hundred years ago,
so that we seem wellnigh to talk with its people and
walk over its fields, or through its cart-tracks and
bridle-roads. We are made partners in parish and vil-
lage feuds, we share in the chimney-corner gossip, and
learn for the first time how many mean and merely
human motives, whether consciously or unconsciously,
gave impulse and intensity to the passions of the actors
in that memorable tragedy which dealt the death-blow
in this country to the belief in Satanic compacts. Mr.
Upham's minute details, which give us something like a
photographic picture of the in-door and out-door scen-
ery that surrounded the events he narrates, help us
materially to understand their origin and the course
they inevitably took. In this respect his book is origi-
nal and full of new interest. To know the kind of life
these people led, the kind of place they dwelt in, and

WITCHCRAFT. 143

the tenor of their thought, makes much real to us that
was conjectural before. The influences of outward na-
ture, of remoteness from the main highways of the
world's thought, of seclusion, as the foster-mother of
traditionary beliefs, of a hard life and unwholesome diet
in exciting or obscuring the brain through the nerves
and stomach, have been hitherto commonly overlooked
in accounting for the phenomena of witchcraft. The
great persecutions for this imaginary crime have always
taken place in lonely places, among the poor, the igno-
rant, and, above all, the ill-fed.

One of the best things in Mr. Upham's book is the
portrait of Parris, the minister of Salem Village, in
whose household the children who, under the assumed
possession of evil spirits, became accusers and witnesses,
began their tricks. He is shown to us pedantic and
something of a martinet in church discipline and cere-
mony, somewhat inclined to magnify his office, fond of
controversy as he was skilful and rather unscrupulous
in the conduct of it, and glad of any occasion to make
himself prominent. Was he the unconscious agent
of his own superstition, or did he take advantage of
the superstition of others for purposes of his own ?
The question is not an easy one to answer. Men will
sacrifice everything, sometimes even themselves, to
their pride of logic and their love of victory. Bodin
loses sight of humanity altogether in his eagerness to
make out his case, and display his learning in the canon
and civil law. He does not scruple to exaggerate, to
misquote, to charge his antagonists with atheism, sor-
cery, and insidious designs against religion and society,
that he may persuade the jury of Europe to bring in a
verdict of guilty.* Yet there is no reason to doubt

* There is a kind of compensation in the tact that he himself lived
to be accused of sorcery and Judaism.

144 WITCHCRAFT.

the sincerity of his belief. Was Parris equally sincere 1
On the whole, I think it likely that he was. But if we
acquit Parris, what shall we say of the demoniacal
girls'? The probability seems to be that those who be-
gan in harmless deceit found themselves at length in-
volved so deeply, that dread of shame and punishment
drove them to an extremity where their only choice was
between sacrificing themselves, or others to save them-
selves. It is not unlikely that some of the younger
girls were so far carried along by imitation or imagina-
tive sympathy as in some degree to " credit their own
lie." Any one who has watched or made experiments
in animal magnetism knows how easy it is to persuade
young women of nervous temperaments that they are
doing that by the will of another which they really do
by an obscure volition of their own, under the influence
of an imagination adroitly guided by the magnetizer.
The marvellous is so fascinating, that nine persons in
ten, if once persuaded that a thing is possible, are eager
to believe it probable, and at last cunning in convincing
themselves that it is proven. But it is impossible to
believe that the possessed girls in this case did not know
how the pins they vomited got into their mouths. Mr.
Upham has shown, in the case of Anne Putnam, Jr.,
an hereditary tendency to hallucination, if not insanity.
One of her uncles had seen the Devil by broad day-
light in the novel disguise of a blue boar, in which
shape, as a tavern sign, he had doubtless proved more
seductive than in his more ordinary transfigurations.
A great deal of light is let in upon the question of
whether there was deliberate imposture or no, by the
narrative of Rev. Mr. Turell of Medford, written in
1728, which gives us all the particulars of a case of
pretended possession in Littleton, eight years before.
The eldest of three sisters began the game, and found

WITCHCRAFT. 14:5

herself before long obliged to take the next in age into
her confidence. By and by the youngest, finding her
sisters pitied and caressed on account of their supposed
sufferings while she was neglected, began to play off the
same tricks. The usual phenomena followed. They
were convulsed, they fell into swoons, they were pinched
and bruised, they were found in the water, on the top of
a tree or of the barn. To these places they said they
were conveyed through the air, and there were those
who had seen them flying, which shows how strong is
the impulse which prompts men to conspire with their
own delusion, where the marvellous is concerned. The
girls did whatever they had heard or read that was
common in such cases. They even accused a respect-
able neighbor as the cause of their torments. There
were some doubters, but " so far as I can learn," says
Turell, " the greater number believed and said they
were under the evil hand, or possessed by Satan." But
the most interesting fact of all is supplied by the confes-
sion of the elder sister, made eight years later under
stress of remorse. Having once begun, they found
returning more tedious than going o'er. To keep up
their cheat made life a burden to them, but they could
not stop. Thirty years earlier, their juggling might
have proved as disastrous as that at Salem Village.
There, parish and boundary feuds had set enmity be-
tween neighbors, and the girls, called on to say who
troubled them, cried out upon those whom they had
been wont to hear called by hard names at home.
They probably had no notion what a frightful ending
their comedy was to have ; but at any rate they were
powerless, for the reins had passed out of their hands
into the sterner grasp of minister and magistrate. They
were dragged deeper and deeper, as men always are by
their own lie.

7 j

146 WITCHCRAFT.

The proceedings at the Salem trials are sometimes
spoken of as if they were exceptionally cruel. But, in
fact, if compared with others of the same kind, they
were exceptionally humane. At a time when Baxter
could tell with satisfaction of a " reading parson " eigh-
ty years old, who, after being kept awake five days
and nights, confessed his dealings with the Devil, it is
rather wonderful that no mode of torture other than
mental was tried at Salem. Nor were the magistrates
more besotted or unfair than usual in dealing with the
evidence. Now and then, it is true, a man more scep-
tical or intelligent than common had exposed some pre-
tended demoniac. The Bishop of Orleans, in 1598,
read aloud to Martha Brossier the story of the Ephe-
sian Widow, and the girl, hearing Latin, and taking it
for Scripture, went forthwith into convulsions. He
found also that the Devil who possessed her could not
distinguish holy from profane water. But that there
were deceptions did not shake the general belief in the
reality of possession. The proof in such cases could
not and ought not to be subjected to the ordinary tests.
"If many natural things," says Bodin, "are incred-
ible and some of them incomprehensible, a fortiori the
power of supernatural intelligences and the doings of
spirits are incomprehensible. But error has risen to its
height in this, that those who have denied the power of
spirits and the doings of sorcerers have wished to dis-
pute physically concerning supernatural or metaphysical
things, which is a notable incongruity." That the girls
were really possessed, seemed to Stoughton and his col-
leagues the most rational theory, — a theory in har-
mony with the nest of their creed, and sustained by the
unanimous consent of pious men as well as the evidence
of that most cunning and least suspected of all sor-
cerers, the Past, — and how confront or cross-examine

WITCHCRAFT. 147

invisible witnesses, especially witnesses whom it was a
kind of impiety to doubt 1 Evidence that would have
been convincing in ordinary cases was of no weight
against the general prepossession. In 1659 the house
of a man in Brightling, Sussex, was troubled by a de-
mon, who set it on fire at various times, and was con-
tinually throwing things about. The clergy of the
neighborhood held a day of fasting and prayer in conse-
quence. A maid-servant was afterwards detected as
the cause of the missiles. But this did not in the least
stagger Mr. Bennet, minister of the parish, who merely
says : " There was a seeming blur cast, though not on
the whole, yet upon some part of it, for their servant-
girl was at last found throwing some things," and goes
off into a eulogium on the " efficacy of prayer."

In one respect, to which Mr. Upham first gives the
importance it deserves, the Salem trials were distin-
guished from all others. Though some of the accused
had been terrified into confession, yet not one perse-
vered in it, but all died protesting their innocence, and
with unshaken constancy, though an acknowledgment
of guilt would have saved the lives of all. This martyr
proof of the efficacy of Puritanism in the character and
conscience may be allowed to outweigh a great many
sneers at Puritan fanaticism. It is at least a testimony
to the courage and constancy which a profound religious
sentiment had made common among the people of
whom these sufferers were average representatives.
The accused also were not, as was commonly the case,
abandoned by their friends. In all the trials of this
kind there is nothing so pathetic as the picture of Jona-
than Gary holding up the weary arms of his wife during
her trial, and wiping away the sweat from her brow and
the tears from her face. Another remarkable fact is
this, that while in other countries the delusion was ex-

148 WITCHCRAFT.

tingtiished by the incredulity of the upper classes and
the interference of authority, here the reaction took
place among the people themselves, and here only was
an attempt made at some legislative restitution, how-
ever inadequate. Mr. Upham's sincere and honest
narrative, while it never condescends to a formal plea,
is the best vindication possible of a community which
was itself the greatest sufferer by the persecution which
its credulity engendered.

If any lesson may be drawn from the tragical and too
often disgustful history of witchcraft, it is not one of
exultation at our superior enlightenment or shame at
the shortcomings of the human intellect. It is rather
one of charity and self-distrust. When we see what in-
human absurdities men in other respects wise and good
have clung to as the corner-stone of their faith in im-
mortality and a divine ordering of the world, may we
not suspect that those who now maintain political or
other doctrines which seem to us barbarous and unen-
lightened, may be, for all that, in the main as virtuous
and clear-sighted as ourselves 1 While we maintain our
own side with an honest ardor of conviction, let us not
forget to allow for mortal incompetence in the other.
And if there are men who regret the Good Old Times,
without too clear a notion of what they were, they
should at least be thankful that we are rid of that
misguided energy of faith which justified conscience
in making men unrelentingly cruel. Even Mr. Leckie
softens a little at the thought of the many innocent
and beautiful beliefs of which a growing scepticism has
robbed us in the decay of supernatural ism. But we
need not despair ; for, after all, scepticism is first
cousin of credulity, and we are not surprised to see the
tough doubter Montaigne hanging up his offerings in
the shrine of our Lady of Loreto. Scepticism commonly

WITCHCRAFT. 149

takes up the room left by defect of imagination, and is
the very quality of mind most likely to seek for sen-
sual proof of supersensual things. If one came from
the dead, it could not believe ; and yet it longs for such
a witness, and will put up with a very dubious one.
So long as night is left and the helplessness of dream,
the wonderful will not cease from among men. While
we are the solitary prisoners of darkness, the witch
seats herself at the loom of thought, and weaves
strange figures into the web that looks so familiar and
ordinary in the dry light of every-day. Just as we
are flattering ourselves that the old spirit of sorcery is
laid, behold the tables are tipping and the floors drum-
ming all over Christendom. The faculty of wonder is
not defunct, but is only getting more and more emanci-
pated from the unnatural service of terror, and restored
to its proper function as a minister of delight. A
higher mode of belief is the best exerciser, because it
makes the spiritual at one with the actual world instead
of hostile, or at best alien. It has been the grossly
material interpretations of spiritual doctrine that
have given occasion to the two extremes of superstition
and unbelief. While the resurrection of the body has
been insisted on, that resurrection from the body which
is the privilege of all has been forgotten. Superstition
in its baneful form was largely due to the enforcement
by the Church of arguments that involved a petitio
principii, for it is the miserable necessity of all false
logic to accept of very ignoble allies. Fear became at
length its chief expedient for the maintenance of its
power ; and as there is a beneficent necessity laid upon
a majority of mankind to sustain and perpetuate the
order of things they are born into, and to make all new
ideas manfully prove their right, first, to be at all, and
then to be heard, many even superior minds dreaded

150 WITCHCRAFT.

the tearing away of vicious accretions as dangerous to
the whole edifice of religion and society. But if this
old ghost be fading away in what we regard as the
dawn of a better day, we may console ourselves by
thinking that perhaps, after all, we are not so much
wiser than our ancestors. The rappings, the trance
mediums, the visions of hands without bodies, the
sounding of musical instruments without visible fingers,
the miraculous inscriptions on the naked flesh, the en-
livenment of furniture, — we have invented none of
them, they are all heirlooms. There is surely room for
yet another schoolmaster, when a score of seers adver-
tise themselves in Boston newspapers. And if the me-
taphysicians can never rest till they have taken their
watch to pieces and have arrived at a happy positivism
as to its structure, though at the risk of bringing it to
a no-go, we may be sure that the majority will always
take more satisfaction in seeing its hands mysteriously
move on, even if they should err a little as to the pre-
cise time of day established by the astronomical observa-
tories.

SHAKESPEARE ONCE MORE.

IT may be doubted whether any language be rich
enough to maintain more than one truly great poet, —
and whether there be more than one period, and that very
shoi £, in the life of a language, when such a phenome-
non as a great poet is possible. It may be reckoned
one of the rarest pieces of good-luck that ever fell to
the suare of a race, that (as was true of Shakespeare)
its mo»t rhythmic genius, its acutest intellect, its pro-
foundebt imagination, and its healthiest understanding
should fiave been combined in one man, and that he
should have arrived at the full development of his
powers at the moment when the material in which he
was to work — that wonderful composite called English,
the best rebult of the confusion of tongues — was in its
freshest perfection. The English-speaking nations should
build a monument to the misguided enthusiasts of the
Plain of Shiimr ; for, as the mixture of many bloods
seems to have made them the most vigorous of modern
races, so has th« mingling of divers speeches given them
a language which is perhaps the noblest vehicle of poetic
thought that ever existed.

Had Shakespeare been born fifty years earlier, he
would have been cramped by a book-language not yet
flexible enough for the demands of rhythmic emotion,
not yet sufficiently popularized for the natural and fa-

152 SHAKESPEARE ONCE MORE.

miliar expression of supreme thought, not yet so rich in
metaphysical phrase as to render possible that ideal
representation of the great passions which is the aim
and end of Art, not yet subdued by practice and general
consent to a definiteness of accentuation essential to
ease and congruity of metrical arrangement. Had he
been born fifty years later, his ripened manhood would
have found itself in an England absorbed and angry
with the solution of political and religious problems,
from which his whole nature was averse, instead of in
that Elizabethan social system, ordered and planetary in
functions and degrees as the angelic hierarchy of the
Areopagite, where his contemplative eye could crowd it-
self with various and brilliant picture, and whence his
impartial brain — one lobe of which seems to have been
Normanly refined and the other Saxonly sagacious —
could draw its morals of courtly and worldly wisdom, its
lessons of prudence and magnanimity. In estimating
Shakespeare, it should never be forgotten, that, like
Goethe, he was essentially observer and artist, and inca-
pable of partisanship. The passions, actions, sentiments,
whose character and results he delighted to watch and to
reproduce, are those of man in society as it existed ; and
it no more occurred to him to question the right of that
society to exist than to criticise the divine ordination of
the seasons. His business was with men as they were,
not with man as he ought to be, — with the human soul
as it is shaped or twisted into character by the complex
experience of life, not in its abstract essence, as some-
thing to be saved or lost. During the first half of the
seventeenth century, the centre of intellectual interest
was rather in the other world than in this, rather in the
region of thought and principle and conscience than in
actual life. It was a generation in which the poet was,
and felt himself, out of place. Sir Thomas Browne, our

SHAKESPEARE ONCE MORE. 153

most imaginative mind since Shakespeare, found breath-
ing-room, for a time, among the " 0 altitudines ! " of
religious speculation, but soon descended to occupy him-
self with the exactitudes of science. Jeremy Taylor,
who half a century earlier would have been Fletcher's
rival, compels his clipped fancy to the conventual dis-
cipline of prose, (Maid Marian turned nun,) and waters
his poetic wine with doctrinal eloquence. Milton is saved
from making total shipwreck of his large-utteranced
genius on the desolate Noman's Land of a religious epic
only by the lucky help of Satan and his colleagues, with
whom, as foiled rebels and republicans, he cannot con-
ceal his sympathy. As purely poet, Shakespeare would
have come too late, had his lot fallen in that generation.
In mind and temperament too exoteric for a mystic, his
imagination could not have at once illustrated the influ-
ence of his epoch and escaped from it, like that of
Browne ; the equilibrium of his judgment, essential to
him as an artist, but equally removed from propagan-
dism, whether as enthusiast or logician, would have un-
fitted him for the pulpit ; and his intellectual being was
too sensitive to the wonder and beauty of outward life
and Nature to have found satisfaction, as Milton's could,
(and perhaps only by reason of his blindness,) in a world
peopled by purely imaginary figures. We might fancy
him becoming a great statesman, but he lacked the social
position which could have opened that career to him.
What we mean when we say Shakespeare, is something
inconceivable either during the reign of Henry the
Eighth, or the Commonwealth, and which would have
been impossible after the Restoration.

All favorable stars seem to have been in conjunction
at his nativity. The Reformation had passed the period
of its vinous fermentation, and its clarified results re-
mained as an element of intellectual impulse and exhila-
7*

154 SHAKESPEARE ONCE MORE.

ration ; there were small signs yet of the acetous and
putrefactive stages which were to follow in the victory
and decline of Puritanism. Old forms of belief and
worship still lingered, all the more touching to Fancy,
perhaps, that they were homeless and attainted ; the
light of sceptic day was baffled by depths of forest where
superstitious shapes still cowered, creatures of immemo-
rial wonder, the raw material of Imagination. The in-
vention of printing, without yet vulgarizing letters, had
made the thought and history of the entire past contem-
poraneous ; while a crowd of translators put every man
who could read in inspiring contact with the select souls
of all the centuries. A new world was thus opened to
intellectual adventure at the very time when the keel of
Columbus had turned the first daring furrow of discov-
ery in that unmeasured ocean which still girt the known
earth with a beckoning horizon of hope and conjecture,
which was still fed by rivers that flowed down out of
primeval silences, and which still washed the shores of
Dreamland. Under a wise, cultivated, and firm-handed
monarch also, the national feeling of England grew rap-
idly more homogeneous and intense, the rather as the
womanhood of the sovereign stimulated a more chivalric
loyalty, — while the new religion, of which she was the
defender, helped to make England morally, as it was
geographically, insular to the continent of Europe.

If circumstances could ever make a great national
poet, here were all the elements mingled at melting-heat
in the alembic, and the lucky moment of projection was
clearly come. If a great national poet could ever avail
himself of circumstances, this was the occasion, — and,
fortunately, Shakespeare was equal to it. Above all, we
may esteem it lucky that he found words ready to his
use, original and untarnished, — types of thought whose
sharp edges were unworn by repeated impressions. In

SHAKESPEARE ONCE MORE. 155

reading Hakluyt's Voyages, we are almost startled now
and then to find that even common sailors could not tell
the story of their wanderings without rising to an almost
Odyssean strain, and habitually used a diction that we
should be glad to buy back from desuetude at any cost.
Those who look upon language only as anatomists of its
structure, or who regard it as only a means of conveying
abstract truth from mind to mind, as if it were so many
algebraic formulae, are apt to overlook the fact that its
being alive is all that gives it poetic value. We do not
mean what is technically called a living language, — the
contrivance, hollow as a speaking-trumpet, by which
breathing and moving bipeds, even now, sailing o'er life's
solemn main, are enabled to hail each other and make
known their mutual shortness of mental stores, — but
one that is still hot from the hearts and brains of a
people, not hardened yet, but moltenly ductile to new
shapes of sharp and clear relief in the moulds of new
thought. So soon as a language has become literary, so
soon as there is a gap between the speech of books and
that of life, the language becomes, so far as poetry is con-
cerned, almost as dead as Latin, and (as in writing Latin
verses) a mind in itself essentially original becomes in the
use of such a medium of utterance unconsciously remi-
niscential and reflective, lunar and not solar, in expression
and even in thought. For words and thoughts have a
much -more intimate and genetic relation, one with the
other, than most men have any notion of ; and it is one
thing to use our mother-tongue as if it belonged to us,
and another to be the puppets of an overmastering vo-
cabulary. " Ye know not," says Ascham, " what hurt
ye do to Learning, that care not for Words, but for
Matter, and so make a Divorce betwixt the Tongue and
the Heart." Lingua Toscana in bocca Romano, is the
Italian proverb ; and that of poets should be, The tongue

156 SHAKESPEARE ONCE MORE.

of the people in the mouth of the scholar. I imply here
no assent to the early theory, or, at any rate, practice,
of Wordsworth, who confounded plebeian modes of
thought with rustic forms of phrase, and then atoned
for his blunder by absconding into a diction more Latin-
ized than that of any poet of his century.

Shakespeare was doubly fortunate. Saxon by the fa-
ther and Norman by the mother, he was a representative
Englishman. A country boy, he learned first the rough
and ready English of his rustic mates, who knew how to
make nice verbs and adjectives courtesy to their needs.
Going up to London, he acquired the lingua aulica pre-
cisely at the happiest moment, just as it was becoming,
in the strictest sense of the word, modern, — just as it
had recruited itself, by fresh impressments from the
Latin and Latinized languages, with new words to ex-
press the new ideas of an enlarging intelligence which
printing and translation were fast making cosmopolitan,
— words which, in proportion to their novelty, and to
the fact that the mother-tongue and the foreign had not
yet wholly mingled, must have been used with a more
exact appreciation of their meaning.* It was in Lon-
don, and chiefly by means of the stage, fiat a thorough
amalgamation of the Saxon, Norman, and scholarly ele-
ments of English was brought about. Already, Putten-
ham, in his " Arte of English Poesy," declares that the
practice of the capital and the country within sixty miles
of it was the standard of correct diction, the jus et norma
loquendi. Already Spenser had almost re-created English
poetry, — and it is interesting to observe, that, scholar
as he was, the archaic words which he was at first over-
fond of introducing are often provincialisms of purely
English original. Already Marlowe had brought the

* As where Ben Jonson is able to say, —
" Men may securely sin, but safely never."

SHAKESPEARE ONCE MORE. 157

English unrhymed pentameter (which had hitherto justi-
fied but half its name, by being always blank and never
verse) to a perfection of melody, harmony, and variety
which has never been surpassed. Shakespeare, then,
found a language already to a certain extent established,
but not yet fetlocked by dictionary and grammar mon-
gers, — a versification harmonized, but which had not
yet exhausted all its modulations, nor been set in the
stocks by critics who deal judgment on refractory feet,
that will dance to Orphean measures of which their
judges are insensible. That the language was estab^
lished is proved by its comparative uniformity as used
by the dramatists, who wrote for mixed audiences, as
well as by Ben Jonson's satire upon Marston's neolo-
gisms ; that it at the same time admitted foreign words
to the rights of citizenship on easier terms than now is
in good measure equally true. What was of greater im-
port, no arbitrary line had been drawn between high
words and low; vulgar then meant simply what was
common ; poetry had riot been aliened from the people
by the establishment of an Upper House of vocables,
alone entitled to move in viie stately ceremonials of
verse, and privileged from arrest while they forever keep
the promise of meaning to -cne ear and break it to the
sense. The hot conception of the poet had no time to
cool while he was debating the comparative respectabil-
ity of this phrase or that ; but he snatched what word
his instinct prompted, and saw no indiscretion in mak-
ing a king speak as his country nurse might have taught
him.* It was Waller who first learned in France that
to talk in rhyme alone comported with the state of roy-

* " Vulgarem locutionem anpellamus earn qua infantes adsuefiunt
ab adsistentibus cum primitus distinguere voces incipiunt: vel, quod
brevius dici potest, vulgarem locutionem asserimus quam sine omni
regula, nutricem imitante$ accepimu$. Dantes, de Vutg Eloquio, Lib I
cap. i.

158 SHAKESPEARE ONCE MORE.

alty. In the time of Shakespeare, the living tongue
resembled that tree which Father Hue saw in Tartary,
whose leaves were languaged, — and every hidden root
of thought, every subtilest fibre of feeling, was mated by
new shoots and leafage of expression, fed from those un-
seen sources in the common earth of human nature.

The Cabalists had a notion, that whoever found out
the mystic word for anything attained to absolute mas-
tery over that thing. The reverse of this is certainly
true of poetic expression ; for he who is thoroughly pos-
sessed of his thought, who imaginatively conceives an idea
or image, becomes master of the word that shall most am-
ply and fitly utter it. Heminge and Condell tell us, ac-
cordingly, that there was scarce a blot in the manuscripts
they received from Shakespeare ; and this is the natural
corollary from the fact that such an imagination as his
is as unparalleled as the force, variety, and beauty of
the phrase in which it embodied itself* We believe
that Shakespeare, like all other great poets, instinctively
used the dialect which he found current, and that his
words are not more wrested from their ordinary mean-
ing than followed necessarily from the unwonted weight
of thought or stress of passion they were called on to

* Gray, himself a painful corrector, told Nicholls that u nothing was
done so well as at the first concoction," — adding, as a reason, "We
think in words." Ben Jonson said; it was a pity Shakespeare had not
blotted more, for that he sometimes wrote nonsense, — and cited in
proof of it the verse,

" Caesar did never wrong but with just cause."

The last four words do not appear in the passage as it now stands,
and Professor Craik suggests that they were stricken out in con-
sequence of Jonson's criticism. This is very probable; but we sus-
pect that the pen that blotted them was in the hand of Master
Heminge or his colleague. The moral confusion in the idea was sure-
ly admirably characteristic of the general who had just accomplished
a successful coup d'etat, the condemnation of which he would fancy
that he read in the face of every honest man he met, and which h«
would therefore be forever indirectly palliating.

SHAKESPEARE ONCE MORE. 159

support. He needed not to mask familiar thoughts in
the weeds of unfamiliar phraseology ; for the life that
was in his mind could transfuse the language of every
day with an intelligent vivacity, that makes it seem
lambent with fiery purpose, and at each new reading a
new creation. He could say with Dante, that " no word
had ever forced him to say what he would not, though
he had forced many a word to say what it would not,"
— but only in the sense that the mighty magic of his
imagination had conjured out of it its uttermost secret
of power or pathos. When I say that Shakespeare used
the current language of his day, I mean only that he
habitually employed such language as was universally
comprehensible, — that he was not run away with by the
hobby of any theory as to the fitness of this or that com-
ponent of English for expressing certain thoughts or feel-
ings. That the artistic value of a choice and noble dic-
tion was quite as well understood in his day as in ours
is evident from the praises bestowed by his contempora-
ries on Drayton, and by the epithet " well-languaged "
applied to Daniel, whose poetic style is as modern as
that of Tennyson ; but the endless absurdities about
the comparative merits of Saxon and Norman-French,
vented by persons incapable of distinguishing one tongue
from the other, were as yet unheard of. Hasty general-
izers are apt to overlook the fact, that the Saxon was
never, to any great extent, a literary language. Accord-
ingly, it held its own very well in the names of com-
mon things, but failed to answer the demands of com-
plex ideas, derived from them. The author of " Piers
Ploughman " wrote for the people, — Chaucer for the
court. We open at random and count the Latin * words
in ten verses of the " Vision " and ten of the " Romaunt

* We use the word Latin here to express words derived either me-
diately or immediately from that language.

160 SHAKESPEARE ONCE MORE.

of the Rose," (a translation from the French,) and find
the proportion to be seven in the former and five in the
latter.

The organs of the Saxon have always been unwilling
and stiff in learning languages. He acquired only about
as many British words as we have Indian ones, and I
believe that more French and Latin was introduced
through the pen and the eye than through the tongue
and the ear. For obvious reasons, the question is one
that must be decided by reference to prose-writers, and
not poets ; and it is, we think, pretty well settled that
more words of Latin original were brought into the lan-
guage in the century between 1550 and 1650 than in
the whole period before or since, — and for the simple
reason, that they were absolutely needful to express new
modes and combinations of thought.* The language has
gained immensely, by the infusion, in richness of syno-
nyme and in the power of expressing nice shades of
thought and feeling, but more than all in light-footed
polysyllables that trip singing to the music of verse.
There are certain cases, it is true, where the vulgar
Saxon word is refined, and the refined Latin vulgar, in
poetry, — as in sweat and perspiration ; but there are
vastly more in which the Latin bears the bell. Perhaps
there might be a question between the old English again-
rising and resurrection ; but there can be no doubt that
conscience is better than inwiJ, and remorse than again-
bite. Should we translate the title of Wordsworth's
famous ode, " Intimations of Immortality," into " Hints

* The prose of Chaucer (1390) and of Sir Thomas Malory (translat-
ing from the French, 1470) is less Latinizefl than that of Bacon,
Browne, Taylor, or Milton. The glossary to Spenser's Shepherd's Cal-
endar (1579) explains words of Teutonic and Romanic root in about
equal proportions. The parallel but independent development of
Scotch is not to be forgotten.

SHAKESPEARE ONCE MORE. 161

of Deathlessness," it would hiss like an angry gander.
If, instead of Shakespeare's

" Age cannot wither her,
Nor custom stale her infinite variety,"

we should say, " her boundless manifoldness," the senti-
ment would suffer in exact proportion with the music.
What homebred English could ape the high Roman
fashion of such togated words as

" The multitudinous sea incarnadine," —

where the huddling epithet implies the tempest-tossed
soul of the speaker, and at the same time pictures the
wallowing waste of ocean more vividly than the famous
phrase of ^Eschylus does its rippling sunshine ? Again,
sailor is less poetical than mariner, as Campbell felt,
when he wrote,

" Ye mariners of England,"
and Coleridge, when he chose

" It was an ancient mariner,"
rather than

" It was an elderly seaman " ;

for it is as much the charm of poetry that it suggest a
certain remoteness and strangeness as familiarity; and
it is essential not only that we feel at once the meaning
of the words in themselves, but also their melodic mean-
ing in relation to each other, and to the sympathetic
variety of the verse. A word once vulgarized can never
be rehabilitated. We might say now a buxom lass, or
that a chambermaid was buxom, but we could not use
the term, as Milton did, in its original sense of bowsome,
— that is, lithe, gracefully bending.*

* I believe that for the last two centuries the Latin radicals of
English have been more familiar and homelike to those who use them
than the Teutonic. Even so accomplished a person as Professor Craik,

162 SHAKESPEARE ONCE MORE.

But the secret of force in writing lies not so much in
the pedigree of nouns and adjectives and verbs, as in
having something that you believe in to say, and making
the parts of speech vividly conscious of it. It is when
expression becomes an act of memory, instead of an
unconscious necessity, that diction takes the place of
warm and hearty speech. It is not safe to attribute
special virtues (as Bosworth, for example, does to the
Saxon) to words of whatever derivation, at least in poe-
try. Because Lear's " oak-cleaving thunderbolts," and
" the all-dreaded thunder-stone " in " Cymbeline " are
so fine, we would not give up Milton's Virgilian " ful-
mined over Greece," where the verb in English con-
veys at once the idea of flash and reverberation, but
avoids that of riving and shattering. In the experiments
made for casting the great bell for the Westminster
Tower, it was found that the superstition which attrib-

in his English of Shakespeare, derives head, through the German haupt,
from the Latin caput! I trust that its genealogy is nobler, and that
it is of kin with ccelum tueri, rather than with the Greek *ce</>oAi7, if
Suidas be right in tracing the origin of that to a word meaning vacuity.
Mr. Craik suggests, also, that quick and wicked may be etymologically
identical, because he fancies a relationship between busy and the Ger-
man bose, though wicked is evidently the participial form of A. S.
wacan, (German weichen,} to bend, to yield, meaning one who has given
way to temptation, while quick seems as clearly related to wegan, meaning
to move, a different word, even if radically the same. In the " London
Literary Gazette " for November 13, 1858, I find an extract from Miss
Millington's " Heraldry in History, Poetry, and Romance," in which,
speaking of the motto of the Prince of Wales, — De par Houmout ich
diene, — she says .' " The precise meaning of the former word [Haumout]
has not, I think, been ascertained." The word is plainly the German
Hochmuth, and the whole would read, De par (Aus) Hochmuth ich diene,
— " Out of magnanimity I serve." So entirely lost is the Saxon meaning
of the word knave, (A. S. cnava, German knabe,) that the name nawie,
assumed by railway-laborers, has been transmogrified into navigator.
I believe that more people could tell why the month of July was so
called than could explain the origin of the names for our days of the
week, and that it is oftener the Saxon than the French words in Chau-
cer that puzzle the modern reader.

SHAKESPEARE ONCE MORE. 1G3

uted the remarkable sweetness and purity of tone in
certain old bells to the larger mixture of silver in their
composition had no foundation in fact. It was the cun-
ning proportion in which the ordinary metals were
balanced against each other, the perfection of form, and
the nice gradations of thickness, that wrought the mira-
cle. And it is precisely so with the language of poetry.
The genius of the poet will tell him what word to use
(else what use in his being poet at all ?) ; and even then,
unless the proportion and form, whether of parts or
whole, be all that Art requires and the most sensitive
taste finds satisfaction in, he will have failed to make
what shall vibrate through all its parts with a silvery
unison, — in other words, a poem.

I think the component parts of English were in the
latter years of Elizabeth thus exquisitely proportioned
one to the other. Yet Bacon had no faith in his mother-
tongue, translating the works on which his fame was to
rest into what he called "the universal language," and
affirming that " English would bankrupt all our books."
He was deemed a master of it, nevertheless ; and it is
curious that Ben Jonson applies to him in prose the
same commendation which he gave Shakespeare in verse,
saying, that he " performed that in our tongue which
may be compared or preferred either to insolent Greece
or haughty Rome "; and he adds this pregnant sentence :
" In short, within his view and about his time were all
the wits born that could honor a language or help study.
Now things daily fall : wits grow downwards, eloquence
grows backwards." Ben had good reason for what he
said of the wits. Not to speak of science, of Galileo and
Kepler, the sixteenth century was a spendthrift of literary
genius. An attack of immortality in a family might
have been looked for then as scarlet-fever would be now.
Montaigne, Tasso, and Cervantes were born within four-

164 SHAKESPEARE ONCE MORE.

teen years of each other ; and in England, while Spenser
was still delving over the propria quce mambus, and
Raleigh launching paper navies, Shakespeare was stretch-
ing his baby hands for the moon, and the little Bacon,
chewing on his coral, had discovered that impenetrability
was one quality of matter. It almost takes one's breath
away to think that " Hamlet " and the " Novum Orga-
non " were at the risk of teething and measles at the
same time. But Ben was right also in thinking that
eloquence had grown backwards. He lived long enough
to see the language of verse become in a measure tradi-
tionary and conventional. It was becoming so, partly
from the necessary order of events, partly because the
most natural and intense expression of feeling had been
in so many ways satisfied and exhausted, — but chiefly
because there was no man left to whom, as to Shakespeare,
perfect conception gave perfection of phrase. Dante,
among modern poets, his only rival in condensed force,
says : " Optimis conceptionibus optima loquela conveniet ;
sed optimse conceptiones non possunt esse nisi ubi scien-
tia et ingenium est ; . . . . et sic non omnibus versifi-
cantibus optima loquela convenit, cum plerique sine
scientia et ingenio versificantur." *

Shakespeare must have been quite as well aware of
the provincialism of English as Bacon was ; but he knew
that great poetry, being universal in its appeal to human
nature, can make any language classic, and that the men
whose appreciation is immortality will mine through any
dialect to get at an original soul. He had as much con-
fidence in his home-bred speech as Bacon had want of it,
and exclaims : —

* De Vulgari Eloquio, Lib. II. cap. i. ad Jinem. I quote this
treatise as Dante's, because the thoughts seem manifestly his; though
I believe that in its present form it is an abridgment by some tran-
scriber, who sometimes copies textually, and sometimes substitutes his
own language for that of the original.

SHAKESPEARE ONCE MORE. 165

" Not marble nor the gilded monuments
Of princes shall outlive this powerful rhyme."

He must have been perfectly conscious of his genius,
and of the great trust which he imposed upon his native
tongue as the embodier and perpetuator of it. As he
has avoided obscurities in his sonnets, he would do so
a fortiori in his plays, both for the purpose of immedi-
ate effect on the stage and of future appreciation. Clear
thinking makes clear writing, and he who has shown
himself so eminently capable of it in one case is not to
be supposed to abdicate intentionally in others. The
difficult passages in the plays, then, are to be regarded
either as corruptions, or else as phenomena in the natu-
ral history of Imagination, whose study will enable us to
arrive at a clearer theory and better understanding of it.
While I believe that our language had two periods
of culmination in poetic beauty, — one of nature, sim-
plicity, and truth, in the ballads, which deal only with
narrative and feeling, — another of Art, (or Nature as it
is ideally reproduced through the imagination,) of state-
ly amplitude, of passionate intensity and elevation, in
Spenser and the greater dramatists, — and that Shake-
speare made use of the latter as he found it, I by no
means intend to say that he did not enrich it, or that
any inferior man could have dipped the same words out
of the great poet's inkstand. But he enriched it only
by the natural expansion and exhilaration of which it
was conscious, in yielding to the mastery of a genius
that could turn and wind it like a fiery Pegasus, making
it feel its life in every limb. He enriched it through
that exquisite sense of music, (never approached but by
Marlowe,) to which it seemed eagerly obedient, as if
every word said to him,

" Bid me discourse, I will enchant thine ear," —

as if every latent harmony revealed itself to him as the

166 SHAKESPEARE ONCE MORE.

gold to Brahma, when he walked over the earth where
it was hidden, crying, " Here am I, Lord ! do with me
What thou wilt ! " That he used language with that in-
timate possession of its meaning possible only to the
most vivid thought is doubtless true ; but that he wan-
tonly strained it from its ordinary sense, that he found
it too poor for his necessities, and accordingly coined new
phrases, or that, from haste or carelessness, he violated
any of its received proprieties, I do not believe. I
have said that it was fortunate for him that he carrie
upon an age when our language was at its best ; but it
was fortunate also for us, because our costliest poetic
phrase is put beyond reach of decay in the gleaming
precipitate in which it united itself with his thought.

That the propositions I have endeavored to establish
have a direct bearing in various ways upon the qualifi-
cations of whoever undertakes to edit the works of
Shakespeare will, I think, be apparent to those who
consider the matter. The hold which Shakespeare has
acquired and maintained upon minds so many and so
various, in so many vital respects utterly unsympathetic
and even incapable of sympathy with his own, is one of
the most noteworthy phenomena in the history of liter-
ature. That he has had the most inadequate of editors,
that, as his own Falstaff was the cause of the wit, so he
has been the cause of the foolishness that was in other
men, (as where Malone ventured to discourse upon
his metres, and Dr. Johnson on his imagination,) must
be apparent to every one, — and also that his genius
and its manifestations are so various, that there is no
commentator but has been able to illustrate him from
his own peculiar point of view or from the results of his
own favorite studies. But to show that he was a good
common lawyer, that he understood the theory of colors,
that he was an accurate botanist, a master of the science

SHAKESPEARE ONCE MORE. 167

of medicine, especially in its relation to mental disease,
a profound metaphysician, and of great experience and
insight in politics, — all these, while they may very well
form the staple of separate treatises, and prove, that,
whatever the extent of his learning, the range and ac-
curacy of his knowledge were beyond precedent or later
parallel, are really outside the province of an editor.

We doubt if posterity owe a greater debt to any two
men living in 1623 than to the two obscure actors who
in that year published the first folio edition of Shake-
speare's plays. But for them, it is more than likely that
such of his works as had remained to that time uii-
printed would have been irrecoverably lost, and among
them were " Julius Ceesar," " The Tempest," and " Mac-
beth." But are we to believe them when they assert
that they present to us the plays which they reprinted
from stolen and surreptitious copies " cured and perfect
of their limbs," and those which are original in their
edition " absolute in their numbers as he [Shakespeare]
conceived them " ] Alas, we have read too many theat-
rical announcements, have been taught too often that
the value of the promise was in an inverse ratio to the
generosity of the exclamation-marks, too easily to be-
lieve that ! Nay, we have seen numberless processions
of healthy kine enter our native village unheralded save
by the lusty shouts of drovers, while a wretched calf,
cursed by stepdame Nature with two heads, was brought
to us in a triumphal car, avant-couriered by a band of
music as abnormal as itself, and announced as the great-
est wonder of the age. If a double allowance of vitu-
line brains deserve such honor, there are few commen-
tators on Shakespeare that would have gone afoot, and
the trumpets of Messieurs Heminge and Condell call
up in our minds too man}7 monstrous and deformed
associations.

168 SHAKESPEARE ONCE MORE.

What, then, is the value of the first folio as an au-
thority 1 For eighteen of the plays it is the only au-
thority we have, and the only one also for four others in
their complete form. It is admitted that in several in-
stances Heminge and Condell reprinted the earlier quarto
impressions with a few changes, sometimes for the better
and sometimes for the worse ; and it is most probable
that copies of those editions (whether surreptitious or
not) had taken the place of the original prompter's books,
as being more convenient and legible. Even in these
cases it is not safe to conclude that all or even an}- of
the variations were made by the hand of Shakespeare
himself. And where the players printed from manu-
script, is it likely to have been that of the author ? The
probability is small that a writer so busy as Shakespeare
must have been during his productive period should have
copied out their parts for the actors himself, or that one
so indifferent as he seems to have been to the imme-
diate literary fortunes of his works should have given
much care to the correction of copies, if made by others.
The copies exclusively in the hands of Heminge and
Condell were, it is manifest, in some cases, very imper-
fect, whether we account for the fact by the burning of
the Globe Theatre or by the necessary wear and tear of
years, and (what is worthy of notice) they are plainly
more defective in some parts than in others. " Measure
for Measure " is an example of this, and we are not sat-
isfied with being told that its ruggedness of verse is in-
tentional, or that its obscurity is due to the fact that
Shakespeare grew more elliptical in his style as he grew
older. Profounder in thought he doubtless became ;
thoiigh in a mind like his, we believe that this would
imply only a more absolute supremacy in expressioa
But, from whatever original we suppose either the
quartos or the first folio to have been printed, it is mor«

SHAKESPEARE ONCE MORE. 169

than questionable whether the proof-sheets had the ad-
vantage of any revision other than that of the printing-
office. Steevens was of opinion that authors in the
time of Shakespeare never read their own proof-sheets ;
and Mr. Spedding, in his recent edition of Bacon,
comes independently to the same conclusion.* We
may be very sure that Heminge and Condell did not,
as vicars, take upon themselves a disagreeable task
which the author would have been too careless to as-
sume.

Nevertheless, however strong a case may be made out
against the Folio of 1623, whatever sins of omission we
may lay to the charge of Heminge and Condell, or of
commission to that of the printers, it remains the only
text we have with any claims whatever to authenticity.
It should be deferred to as authority in all cases where
it does not make Shakespeare write bad sense, uncouth
metre, or false grammar, of all which we believe him to
have been more supremely incapable than any othor
man who ever wrote English. Yet we would not speak
unkindly even of the blunders of the Folio. They have
put bread into the mouth of many an honest editor,
publisher, and printer for the last century and a half ;
and he who loves the comic side of human nature will
find the serious notes of a variorum edition of Shake-
speare as funny reading as the funny ones are serious.

*" Vol. ITT. p. 348, note. He grounds his belief, not on the misprint
ing of words, but on the misplacing of whole paragraphs. We were
struck with the same thing in the original edition of Chapman's " Bi-
ron's Conspiracy and Tragedy." And yet, in comparing two copies of
this edition, I have found corrections which only the author could have
mnde. One of the misprints which Mr. Spedding notices affords both
a hint and a warning to the conjectural emendator. In the edition of
" The Advancement of Learning" printed in 1605 occurs the word dusi-
wsse. In a later edition this was conjecturaliy changed to business ; but
the occurrence of vertigine in the Latin translation enables Mr. Sped-
ding to print rightly, dizziness.
8

170 SHAKESPEARE ONCE MORE-

Scarce a commentator of them all, for more than a hun-
dred years, but thought, as Alphonso of Castile did of
Creation, that, if he had only been at Shakespeare's el-
bow, he could have given valuable advice ; scarce one
who did not know off-hand that there was never a sea-
port in Bohemia, — as if Shakespeare's world were one
which Mercator could have projected; scarce one but
was satisfied that his ten finger-tips were a sufficient key
to those astronomic wonders of poise and counterpoise,
of planetary law and cometary seeming-exception, in his
metres ; scarce one but thought he could gauge like an
ale-firkin that intuition whose edging shallows may have
been sounded, but whose abysses, stretching down amid
the sunless roots of Being and Consciousness, mock the
plummet ; scarce one but could speak with condescend-
ing approval of that prodigious intelligence so utterly
without congener that our baffled language must coin
an adjective to qualify it, and none is so audacious as to
say Shakesperian of any other. And yet, in the midst
of our impatience, we cannot help thinking also of how
much healthy mental activity this one man has been the
occasion, how much good he has indirectly done to so-
ciety by withdrawing men to investigations and habits
of thought that secluded them from baser attractions,
for how many he has enlarged the circle of study and
reflection ; since there is nothing in history or politics,
nothing in art or science, nothing in physics or meta-
physics, that is not sooner or later taxed for his illustra-
tion. This is partially true of all great minds, open and
sensitive to truth and beauty through any large arc of
their circumference ; but it is true in an unexampled
sense of Shakespeare, the vast round of whose balanced
nature seems to have been equatorial, and to have had a
southward exposure and a summer sympathy at every
point, so that life, society, statecraft, serve us at last but

SHAKESPEARE ONCE MORE. 171

i

as commentaries on him, and whatever we have gath-
ered of thought, of knowledge, and of experience, con-
fronted with his marvellous page, shrinks to a mere
foot-note, the stepping-stone to some hitherto inaccessi-
ble verse. We admire in Homer the blind placid mirror
of the world's young manhood, the bard who escapes
from his misfortune in poems all memory, all life and
bustle, adventure and picture ; we revere in Dante that
compressed force of lifelong passion which could make a
private experience cosmopolitan in its reach and ever-
lasting in its significance ; we respect in Goethe the
Aristotelian poet, wise by weariless observation, witty
with intention, the stately Geheimerrath of a provincial
court in the empire of Nature. As we study these, we
seem in our limited way to penetrate into their con-
sciousness and to measure and master their methods ;
but with Shakespeare it is just the other way ; the more
we have familiarized ourselves with the operations of
our own consciousness, the more do we find, in reading
him, that he has been beforehand with us, and that,
while we have been vainly endeavoring to find the door
of his being, he has searched every nook and cranny of
our own. While other poets and dramatists embody
isolated phases of character and work inward from the
phenomenon to the special law which it illustrates, he
seems in some strange way unitary with human nature
itself, and his own soul to have been the law and life-giv-
ing power of which his creations are only the phenomena.
We justify or criticise the characters of other writers by
our memory and experience, and pronounce them natural
or unnatural ; but he seems to have worked in the very
stuff of which memory and experience are made, and we
recognize his truth to Nature by an innate and unac-
quired sympathy, as if he alone possessed the secret of
the " ideal form and universal mould," and embodied

172 SHAKESPEARE ONCE MORE.

generic types rather than individuals. In this Cervantes
alone has approached him ; and Don Quixote and Sancho,
like the men and women of Shakespeare, are the con-
temporaries of every generation, because they are not
products of an artificial and transitory society, but be-
cause they are animated by the primeval and unchanging
forces of that humanity which underlies and survives
the forever-fickle creeds and ceremonials of the parochial
corners which we who dwell in them sublimely call The
World.

That Shakespeare did not edit his own works must be
attributed, we suspect, to his premature death. That
he should not have intended it is inconceivable. Is
there not something of self-consciousness in the break-
ing of Prospero's wand and burying his book, — a sort
of sad prophecy, based on self-knowledge of the nature of
that man who, after such thaumaturgy, could go down
to Stratford and live there for years, only collecting his
dividends from the Globe Theatre, lending money on
mortgage, and leaning over his gate to chat and bandy
quips with neighbors'? His mind had entered into
every phase of human life and thought, had embodied
all of them in living creations ; — had he found all
empty, and come at last to the belief that genius and
its works were as phantasmagoric as the rest, and that
fame was as idle as the rumor of the pit ? However
this may be, his works have come down to us in a con-
dition of manifest and admitted corruption in some por-
tions, while in others there is an obscurity which may
be attributed either to an idiosyncratic use of words and
condensation of phrase, to a depth of intuition for a
proper coalescence with which ordinary language is in-
adequate, to a concentration of passion in a focus that
consumes the lighter links which bind together the
clauses of a sentence or of a process of reasoning iu

SHAKESPEARE ONCE MORE. 173

common parlance, or to a sense of music which mingles
music and meaning without essentially confounding
them. We should demand for a perfect editor, then,
first, a thorough glossological knowledge of the English
contemporary with Shakespeare ; second, enough logical
acuteness of mind and metaphysical training to enable
him to follow recondite processes of thought ; third,
such a conviction of the supremacy of his author as
always to prefer his thought to any theory of his own ;
fourth, a feeling for music, and so much knowledge of
the practice of other poets as to understand that Shake-
speare's versification differs from theirs as often in kind
as in degree ; fifth, an acquaintance with the world as
well as with books ; and last, what is, perhaps, of more
importance than all, so great a familiarity with the
working of the imaginative faculty in general, and of its
peculiar operation in the mind of Shakespeare, as will
prevent his thinking a passage dark with excess of light,
and enable him to understand fully that the Gothic
Shakespeare often superimposed upon the slender col-
umn of a single word, that seems to twist under it, but
does not, — like the quaint shafts in cloisters, — a
weight of meaning which the modern architects of sen-
tences would consider wholly unjustifiable by correct
principle.

Many years ago, while yet Fancy claimed that right
in me which Fact has since, to my no small loss, so suc-
cessfully disputed, I pleased myself with imagining the
play of Hamlet published under some alias, and as the
work of a new candidate in literature. Then I played,
as the children say, that it came in regular course before
some well-meaning doer of criticisms, who had never
read the original, (no very wild assumption, as things go,)
and endeavored to conceive the kind of way in which he
would be likely to take it. I put myself in his place,

174 SHAKESPEARE ONCE MORE.

and tried to write such a perfunctory notice as I thought
would be likely, in filling his column, to satisfy his con-
science. But it was a tour de force quite beyond my
power to execute without grimace. I could not arrive
at that artistic absorption in my own conception which
would enable me to be natural, and found myself, like a
bad actor, continually betraying my self-consciousness by
my very endeavor to hide it under caricature. The path
of Nature is indeed a narrow one, and it is only the inv
mortals that seek it, and, when they find it, do not find
themselves cramped therein. My result was a dead fail-
ure, — satire instead of comedy. I could not shake off
that strange accumulation which we call self, and report
honestly what I saw and felt even to myself, much less
to others.

Yet I have often thought, that, unless we can so far
free ourselves from our own prepossessions as to be capa-
ble of bringing to a work of art some freshness of sensa-
tion, and receiving from it in turn some new surprise of
sympathy and admiration, — some shock even, it may
be, of instinctive distaste and repulsion, — though we
may praise or blame, weighing our pros and cons in the
nicest balances, sealed by proper authority, yet we shall
not criticise in the highest sense. On the other hand,
unless we admit certain principles as fixed beyond ques-
tion, we shall be able to render no adequate judgment,
but only to record our impressions, which may be valu-
able or not, according to the greater or less ductility of
the senses on which they are made. Charles Lamb, for
example, came to the old English dramatists with the
feeling of a discoverer. He brought with him an alert
curiosity, and everything was delightful simply because
it was strange. Like other early adventurers, he some-
times mistook shining sand for gold ; but he had the
great advantage of not feeling himself responsible for

SHAKESPEARE ONCE MORE. 175

the manners of the inhabitants he found there, and not
thinking it needful to make them square with any West-
minster Catechism of aesthetics. Best of all, he did
riot feel compelled to compare them with the Greeks,
about whom he knew little, and cared less. He took
them as he found them, described them in a few pregnant
sentences, and displayed his specimens of their growth
and manufacture. When he arrived at the dramatists
of the Restoration, so far from being shocked, he was
charmed with their pretty and unmoral ways ; and what
he says of them reminds us of blunt Captain Dampier,
who, in his account of the island of Timor, remarks, as
a matter of no consequence, that the natives "take as
many wives as they can maintain, and as for religion,
they have none."

Lamb had the great advantage of seeing the elder
dramatists as they were ; it did not lie within his prov-
ince to point out what they were not. Himself a frag-
mentary writer, he had more sympathy with imagination
where it gathers into the intense focus of passionate
phrase than with that higher form of it, where it is the
faculty that shapes, gives unity of design and balanced
gravitation of parts. And yet it is only this higher form
of it which can unimpeachably assure to any work the
dignity and permanence of a classic ; for it results in
that exquisite something called Style, which, like the
grace of perfect breeding, everywhere pervasive and no-
where emphatic, makes itself felt by the skill with which
it effaces itself, and masters us at last with a sense of in-
definable completeness. On a lower plane we may detect
it in the structure of a sentence, in the limpid expression
that implies sincerity of thought ; but it is only where it
combines and organizes, where it eludes observation in
particulars to give the rarer delight of perfection as a
whole, that it belongs to art. Then it is truly ideal, tha

176 SHAKESPEARE ONCE MORE.

forma mentis ceterna, not as a passive mould into which
the thought is poured, but as the conceptive energy
which finds all material plastic to its preconceived de-
sign. Mere vividness of expression, such as makes quot-
able passages, conies of the complete surrender of self to
the impression, whether spiritual or sensual, of the mo-
ment. It is a quality, perhaps, in which the young poet
is richer than the mature, his very inexperience making
him more venturesome in those leaps of language that
startle us with their rashness only to bewitch us the
more with the happy ease of their accomplishment. For
this there are no existing laws of rhetoric, for it is from
such felicities that the rhetoricians deduce and codify
their statutes. It is something which cannot be im-
proved upon or cultivated, for it is immediate and intui-
tive. But this power of expression is subsidiary, and
goes only a little way toward the making of a great poet.
Imagination, where it is truly creative, is a faculty, and
not a quality ; it looks before and after, it gives the form
that makes all the parts work together harmoniously to-
ward a given end, its seat is in the higher reason, and it
is efficient only as a servant of the will. Imagination,
as it is too often misunderstood, is mere fantasy, the
image-making power, common to all who have the gift
of dreams, or who can afford to buy it in a vulgar drug
as De Quincey bought it.

The true poetic imagination is of one quality, whether
it be ancient or modern, and equally subject to those
laws of grace, of proportion, of design, in whose free
service, and in that alone, it can become art. Those
laws are something which do not

" Alter when they alteration find,
And bend with the remover to leinove."

And they are more clearly to be deduced from the emi-

SHAKESPEARE ONCE MORE. 177

nent examples of Greek literature than from any other
source. It is the advantage of this select company of
ancients that their works are defecated of all turbid
mixture of contemporaneousness, and have become to us
pure literature, our judgment and enjoyment of which
cannot be vulgarized by any prejudices of time or place.
This is why the study of them is fitly called a liberal
education, because it emancipates the mind from every
narrow provincialism whether of egoism or tradition, and
is the apprenticeship that every one must serve before
becoming a free brother of the guild which passes the
torch of life from age to age. There would be no dis-
pute about the advantages of that Greek culture which
Schiller advocated with such generous eloquence, if the
great authors of antiquity had not been degraded from
teachers of thinking to drillers in grammar, and made
the ruthless pedagogues of root and inflection, instead
of companions for whose society the mind must put on
her highest mood. The discouraged youth too naturally
transfers the epithet of dead from the languages to the
authors that wrote in them. What concern have we
with the shades of dialect in Homer or Theocritus, pro-
vided they speak the spiritual lingua franca that abol-
ishes all alienage of race, and makes whatever shore of
time we land on hospitable and homelike? There is
much that is deciduous in books, but all that gives them
a title to rank as literature in the highest sense is peren-
nial. Their vitality is the vitality not of one or another
blood or tongue, but of human nature ; their truth is
not topical and transitory, but of universal acceptation ;
and thus all great authors seem the coevals not only of
each other, but of whoever reads them, growing wiser
with him as he grows wise, and unlocking to him one
secret after another as his own life and experience give
him the key, but on no other condition. Their mean-

8*

178 SHAKESPEARE ONCE MORE.

ing is absolute, not conditional ; it is a property of theirs^
quite irrespective of manners or creed ; for the highest
culture, the development of the individual by observa-
tion, reflection, and study, leads to one result, whether
in Athens or in London. The more we know of ancient
literature, the more we are struck with its modernness,
just as the more we study the maturer dramas of
Shakespeare, the more we feel his nearness in certain
primary qualities to the antique and classical. Yet
even in saying this, I tacitly make the admission that it
is the Greeks who must furnish us with our standard of
comparison. Their stamp is upon all the allowed meas-
ures and weights of aesthetic criticism. Nor does a con-
sciousness of this, nor a constant reference to it, in any
sense reduce us to the mere copying of a bygone excel-
lence ; for it is the test of excellence in any department
of art, that it can never be bygone, and it is not mere
difference from antique models, but the way in which
that difference is shown, the direction it takes, that we
are to consider in our judgment of a modern work. The
model is not there to be copied merely, but that the
study of it may lead us insensibly to the same processes
of thought by which its purity of outline and harmony
of parts were attained, and enable us to feel that strength
is consistent with repose, that multiplicity is not abun-
dance, that grace is but a more refined form of power,
and that a thought is none the less profound that the
limpidity of its expression allows us to measure it at a
glance. To be possessed with this conviction gives us
at least a determinate point of view, and enables us to
appeal a case of taste to a court of final judicature,
whose decisions are guided by immutable principlea
When we hear of certain productions, that they are fee-
ble in design, but masterly in parts, that they are inco-
herent, to be sure, but have great merits of style, w«

SHAKESPEARE ONCE MORE. 179

know that it cannot be true ; for in the highest exam-
ples we have, the master is revealed by his plan, by his
power of making all accessories, each in its due relation,
subordinate to it, and that to limit style to the rounding
of a period or a distich is wholly to misapprehend its
truest and highest function. Donne is full of salient
verses that would take the rudest March winds of criti-
cism with their beauty, of thoughts that first tease us
like charades and then delight us with the felicity of
their solution; but these have not saved him. He is
exiled to the limbo of the formless and the fragmentary.
To take a more recent instance, — Wordsworth had, in
some respects, a deeper insight, and a more adequate
utterance of it, than any man of his generation. But
it was a piece-meal insight and utterance ; his imagina-
tion was feminine, not masculine, receptive, and not crea-
tive. His longer poems are Egyptian sand-wastes, with
here and there an oasis of exquisite greenery, a grand
image, Sphinx-like, half buried in drifting commonplaces,
or the solitary Pompey's Pillar of some towering thought.
But what is the fate of a poet who owns the quarry, but
cannot build the poem 1 Ere the century is out he will
be nine parts dead, and immortal only in that tenth part
of him which is included in a thin volume of " beauties."
Already Moxon has felt the need of extracting this es-
sential oil of him ; and his memory will be kept alive,
if at all, by the precious material rather than the work-
manship of the vase that contains his heart. And what
shall we forebode of so many modern poems, full of
splendid passages, beginning everywhere and leading no-
where, reminding us of nothing so much as the amateur
architect who planned his own house, and forgot the
staircase that should connect one floor with another,
putting it as an afterthought on the outside 1

Lichtenberg says somewhere, that it was the advan-

180 SHAKESPEARE ONCE MORE.

tage of the ancients to write before the great art of writ-
ing ill had been invented ; and Shakespeare may be said
to have had the good luck of coming after Spenser (to
whom the debt of English poetry is incalculable) had
reinvented the art of writing well. But Shakespeare
arrived at a mastery in this respect which sets him above
all other poets. He is not only superior in degree, but
he is also different in kind. In that less purely artistic
sphere of style which concerns the matter rather than
the form his charm is often unspeakable. How perfect
his style is may be judged from the fact that it never
curdles into mannerism, and thus absolutely eludes imi-
tation. Though here, if anywhere, the style is the man,
yet it is noticeable only, like the images of Brutus, by
its absence, so thoroughly is he absorbed in his work,
while he fuses thought and word indissolubly together,
till all the particles cohere by the best virtue of each.
With perfect truth he has said of himself that he writes

" All one, ever the same,
Putting invention in a noted weed,
That every word doth almost tell his name."

And yet who has so succeeded in imitating him as to re-
mind us of him by even so much as the gait of a single
verse?* Those magnificent crystallizations of feeling
and phrase, basaltic masses, molten and interfused by the
primal fires of passion, are not to be reproduced by the
slow experiments of the laboratory striving to parody
creation with artifice. Mr. Matthew Arnold seems to think
that Shakespeare has damaged English poetry. I wish
he had ! It is true he lifted Dryden above himself in "All

* " At first sight, Shakespeare and his contemporary dramatists
seem to write in styles much alike; nothing so easy as to fall into that
of Massinger and the others; whilst no one has ever yet produced one
scene conceived and expressed in the Shakespearian idiom. I suppos*
it is because Shakespeare is universal, and, in fact, has no manner. —
Coleridge's Tabletalk, 214.

SHAKESPEARE ONCE MORE. 181

for Love " ; but it was Dryden who said of him, by in-
stinctive conviction rather than judgment, that within
his magic circle none dared tread but he. Is he to blame
for the extravagances of modern diction, which are but
the reaction of the brazen age against the degeneracy of
art into artifice, that has characterized the silver period
in every literature 1 We see in them only the futile
effort of misguided persons to torture out of language
the secret of that inspiration which should be in them-
selves. We do not find the extravagances in Shake-
speare himself. We never saw a line in any modern poet
that reminded us of him, and will venture to assert that
it is only poets of the second class that find successful
imitators. And the reason seems to us a very plain one.
The genius of the great poet seeks repose in the expres-
sion of itself, and finds it at last in style, which is the
establishment of a perfect mutual understanding be-
tween the worker and his material.* The secondary in-
tellect, on the other hand, seeks for excitement in ex-
pression, and stimulates itself into mannerism, which is
the wilful obtrusion of self, as style is its unconscious
abnegation. No poet of the first class has ever left a
school, because his imagination is incommunicable; while,
just as surely as the thermometer tells of the neighbor-
hood of an iceberg, you may detect the presence of a
genius of the second class in any generation by the in'
fluence of his mannerism, for that, being an artificial
thing, is capable of reproduction. Dante, Shakespeare,
Goethe, left no heirs either to the form or mode of theti
expression ; while Milton, Sterne, and Wordsworth left
behind them whole regiments uniformed with all their
external characteristics. We do not mean that great

* Pheidias said of one of his pupils that he had an inspired thumb,
because the modelling-clay yielded to its careless sweep a grace o/
curre which it refused to the utmost pains of others.

182 SHAKESPEARE ONCE MORE.

poetic geniuses may not have influenced thought, (though
we think it would be difficult to show how Shakespeare
had done so, directly and wilfully,) but that they have
not infected contemporaries or followers with mannerism.
The quality in him which makes him at once so thoroughly
English and so thoroughly cosmopolitan is that aeration
of the understanding by the imagination which he has
in common with all the greater poets, and which is the
privilege of genius. The modern school, which mistakes
violence for intensity, seems to catch its breath when it
finds itself on the verge of natural expression, and to
say to itself, " Good heavens ! I had almost forgotten I
was inspired ! " But of Shakespeare we do not even sus-
pect that he ever remembered it. He does not always
speak in that intense way that flames up in Lear and
Macbeth through the rifts of a soil volcanic with passion.
He allows us here and there the repose of a common-
place character, the consoling distraction of a humorous
one. He knows how to be equable and grand without
effort, so that we forget the altitude of thought to which
he has led us, because the slowly receding slope of a
mountain stretching downward by ample gradations gives
a less startling impression of height than to look over
the edge of a ravine that makes but a wrinkle in its
flank.

Shakespeare has been sometimes taxed with the bar-
barism of profuseness and exaggeration. But this is to
measure him by a Sophoclean scale. The simplicity of
the antique tragedy is by no means that of expression,
but is of form merely. In the utterance of great pas-
sions, something must be indulged to the extravagance
of Nature ; the subdued tones to which pathos and sen-
timent are limited cannot express a tempest of the soul.
The range between the piteous " no more but so," in
which Ophelia compresses the heart-break whose com-

SHAKESPEARE ONCE MORE. 183

pression was to make her mad, and that sublime appeal
of Lear to the elements of Nature, only to be matched,
if matched at all, in the " Prometheus," is a wide one,
and Shakespeare is as truly simple in the one as in the
other. The simplicity of poetry is not that of prose,
nor its clearness that of ready apprehension merely.
To a subtile sense, a sense heightened by sympathy,
those sudden fervors of phrase, gone ere one can say it
lightens, that show us Macbeth groping among the com-
plexities of thought in his conscience-clouded mind, and
reveal the intricacy rather than enlighten it, while they
leave the eye darkened to the literal meaning of the
words, yet make their logical sequence, the grandeur of
the conception, and its truth to Nature clearer than
sober daylight could. There is an obscurity of mist
rising from the undrained shallows of the mind, and
there is the darkness of thunder-cloud gathering its
electric masses with passionate intensity from the clear
element of the imagination, not at random or wilfully,
but by the natural processes of the creative faculty, to
brood those flashes of expression that transcend rhet-
oric, and are only to be apprehended by the poetic in-
stinct.

In that secondary office of imagination, where it
serves the artist, not as the reason that shapes, but as
the interpreter of his conceptions into words, there is a
distinction to be noticed between the higher and lower
mode in which it performs its function. It may be
either creative or pictorial, may body forth the thought
or merely image it forth. With Shakespeare, for exam-
ple, imagination seems immanent in his very conscious-
ness ; with Milton, in his memory. In the one it sends,
AS if without knowing it, a fiery life into the verse,

" Sei die Braut das Wort,
Brautigam der Geist " ;

184 SHAKESPEARE ONCE MORE.

in the other it elaborates a certain pomp and elevation.
Accordingly, the bias of the former is toward over-inten-
sity, of the latter toward over-diffuseness. Shakespeare's
temptation is to push a willing metaphor beyond its
strength, to make a passion over-inform its tenement of
words; Milton cannot resist running a simile on into a
fugue. One always fancies Shakespeare in his best verses,
and Milton at the key-board of his organ. Shakespeare's
language is no longer the mere vehicle of thought, it has
become part of it, its very flesh and blood. The pleasure
it gives us is unmixed, direct, like that from the smell
of a flower or the flavor of a fruit. Milton sets every-
where his little pitfalls of bookish association for the
memory. I know that Milton's manner is very grand.
It is slow, it is stately, moving as in triumphal proces-
sion, with music, with historic banners, with spoils from
every time and every region, and captive epithets, like
huge Sicambrians, thrust their broad shoulders between
us and the thought whose pomp they decorate. But it
is manner, nevertheless, as is proved by the ease with
which it is parodied, by the danger it is in of degenerat-
ing into mannerism whenever it forgets itself. Fancy a
parody of Shakespeare, — I do not mean of his words,
but of his tone, for that is what distinguishes the master.
You might as well try it with the Venus of Melos. In
Shakespeare it is always the higher thing, the thought,
the fancy, that is pre-eminent ; it is Caesar that draws
all eyes, and not the chariot in which he rides, or the
throng which is but the reverberation of his supremacy.
If not, how explain the charm with which he dominates
in all tongues, even under the disenchantment of trans-
ration *? Among the most alien races he is as solidly at
home as a mountain seen from different sides by many
lands, itself superbly solitary, yet the companion of al]
thoughts and domesticated in all imaginations.

SHAKESPEARE ONCE MORE. 185

In description Shakespeare is especially great, and in
that instinct which gives the peculiar quality of any ob-
ject of contemplation in a single happy word that colors
the impression on the sense with the mood of the mind.
Most descriptive poets seem to think that a hogshead of
water caught at the spout will give us a livelier notion
of a thunder-shower than the sullen muttering of the
first big drops upon the roof. They forget that it is by
suggestion, not cumulation, that profound impressions
are made upon the imagination. Milton's parsimony (so
rare in him) makes the success of his

" Sky lowered, and, muttering thunder, some sad drops
Wept at completion of the mortal sin."

Shakespeare understood perfectly the charm of indi-
rectness, of making his readers seem to discover for
themselves what he means to show them. If he wishes
to tell that the leaves of the willow are gray on the
under side, he does not make it a mere fact of observa-
tion by bluntly saying so, but makes it picturesquely
reveal itself to us as it might in Nature : —

" There is a willow grows athwart the flood,
That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream."

Where he goes to the landscape for a comparison, he
does not ransack wood and field for specialties, as if he
were gathering simples, but takes one image, obvious,
familiar, and makes it new to us either by sympathy or
contrast with his own immediate feeling. He always
looked upon Nature with the eyes of the mind. Thus
he can make the melancholy of autumn or the gladness
of spring alike pathetic : —

" That time of year thou mayst in me behold,
When yellow leaves, or few, or none, do hang
Upon those boughs that shake against the cold,
Bare ruined choirs where late the sweet birds sang."

Or again : —

186 SHAKESPEARE ONCE MORE.

" From thee have I been absent in the spring,
When proud-pied April, dressed in all his trim,
Hath put a spirit of youth in everything,
That heavy Saturn leaped and laughed with him."

But as dramatic poet, Shakespeare goes even beyond
this, entering so perfectly into the consciousness of the
characters he himself has created, that he sees every-
thing through their peculiar mood, and makes every
epithet, as if unconsciously, echo and re-echo it. The-
seus asks Hermia, —

" Can you endure the livery of a nun,
For aye to be in shady cloister mewed,
To live a barren sister all your life,
Chanting faint hymns to the cold fruitless moon ? "

When Romeo must leave Juliet, the private pang of the
lovers becomes a property of Nature herself, and

" Envious streaks
Do lace the severing clouds in yonder east."

But even more striking is the following instance from

Macbeth : —

" The raven himself is hoarse
That croaks the fatal enterance of Duncan
Under your battlements."

Here Shakespeare, with his wonted tact, makes use of a
vulgar superstition, of a type in which mortal presenti-
ment is already embodied, to make a common ground on
which the hearer and Lady Macbeth may meet. After
this prelude we are prepared to be possessed by her
emotion more fully, to feel in her ears the dull tramp of
the blood that seems to make the raven's croak yet
hoarser than it is, and to betray the stealthy advance
of the mind to its fell purpose. For Lady Macbeth
hears not so much the voice of the bodeful bird as of
her own premeditated murder, and we are thus made
her shuddering accomplices before the fact. Every
image receives the color of the mind, every word throbs
with the pulse of one controlling passion. The epithet

SHAKESPEARE ONCE MORE. 187

fatal makes us feel the implacable resolve of the speaker,
and shows us that she is tampering with her conscience
by putting off the crime upon the prophecy of the Weird
Sisters to which she alludes. In the word battlements,
too, not only is the fancy led up to the perch of the
raven, but a hostile image takes the place of a hospita-
ble ; for men commonly speak of receiving a guest under
their roof or within their doors. That this is not over-
ingenuity, seeing what is not to be seen, nor meant to be
seen, is clear to me from what follows. When Duncan
and Banquo arrive at the castle, their fancies, free from
all suggestion of evil, call up only gracious and amiable
images. The raven was but the fantastical creation of
Lady Macbeth's over-wrought brain.

" This castle hath a pleasant seat, the air
Nimbly and sweetly doth commend itself
Unto our gentle senses.

This guest of summer,
The temple-haunting martlet, doth approve
By his loved mansionry that the heaven's breath
Smells wooingly here ; no jutty, frieze,
Buttress, or coigne of vantage, but this bird
Hath made his pendent bed and procreant cradle."

The contrast here cannot but be as intentional as it is
marked. Every image is one of welcome, security, and
confidence. The summer, one may well fancy, would be
a very different hostess from her whom we have just seen
expecting them. And why temple-haunting, unless because
it suggests sanctuary ? 0 immaginativa, che si ne rubi
delle cose difuor, how infinitely more precious are the in-
ward ones thou givest in return ! If all this be accident,
it is at least one of those accidents of which only this man
was ever capable. I divine something like it now and
then in ^Eschylus, through the mists of a language which
will not let me be sure of what I see, but nowhere else.
Shakespeare, it is true, had, as I have said, as re-
spects English, the privilege which only first-comers en

188 SHAKESPEARE ONCE MORE.

joy. The language was still fresh from those sources at
too great a distance from which it becomes fit only for
the service of prose. Wherever he dipped, it came up
clear and sparkling, undefiled as yet by the drainage of
literary factories, or of those dye-houses where the ma-
chine-woven fabrics of sham culture are colored up to
the last desperate style of sham sentiment. Those who
criticise his diction as sometimes extravagant should re-
member that in poetry language is something more than
merely the vehicle of thought, that it is meant to con-
vey the sentiment as much as the sense, and that, if
there is a beauty of use, there is often a higher use of
beauty.

What kind of culture Shakespeare had is uncertain ;
how much he had is disputed ; that he had as much
as he wanted, and of whatever kind he wanted, must
be clear to whoever considers the question. Dr. Farmer
has proved, in his entertaining essay, that he got every-
thing at second-hand from translations, and that, where
his translator blundered, he loyally blundered too.
But Goethe, the man of widest acquirement in modern
times, did precisely the same thing. In his charac-
ter of poet he set as little store by useless learning
as Shakespeare did. He learned to write hexameters,
not from Homer, but from Voss, and Voss found them
faulty ; yet somehow Hermann und Dorothea is more
readable than Luise. So far as all the classicism then
attainable was concerned, Shakespeare got it as cheap as
Goethe did, who always bought it ready-made. For
such purposes of mere sesthetic nourishment Goethe al-
ways milked other minds, — if minds those ruminators
and digesters of antiquity into asses' milk may be called.
There were plenty of professors who were forever assidu-
ously browsing in vales of Enna and on Pentelican slopes
among the vestiges of antiquity, slowly secreting lacteous

SHAKESPEARE ONCE MORE. 189

facts, and not one of them would have raised his head
from that exquisite pasturage, though Pan had made
music through his pipe of reeds. Did Goethe wish to
work up a Greek theme 1 He drove out Herr Bb'ttiger,
for example, among that fodder delicious to him for its
very dryness, that sapless Arcadia of scholiasts, let him
graze, ruminate, and go through all other needful pro-
cesses of the antiquarian organism, then got him quietly
into a corner and milked him. The product, after stand-
ing long enough, mantled over with the rich Goethean
cream, from which a butter could be churned, if not pre-
cisely classic, quite as good as the ancients could have
made out of the same material. But who has ever read
the Achilleis, correct in all un essential particulars as it
probably is 1

It is impossible to conceive that a man, who, in other
respects, made such booty of the world around him,
whose observation of manners was so minute, and whose
insight into character and motives, as if he had been one
of God's spies, was so unerring that we accept it without
question, as we do Nature herself, and find it more con-
soling to explain his confessedly immense superiority by
attributing it to a happy instinct rather than to the con-
scientious perfecting of exceptional powers till practice
made them seem to work independently of the will
which still directed them, — it is impossible that such a
man should not also have profited by the converse of
the cultivated and quick-witted men in whose familiar
society he lived, that he should not have over and over
again discussed points of criticism and art with them,
that he should not have had his curiosity, so alive to
everything else, excited about those ancients whom
university men then, no doubt, as now, extolled without
too much knowledge of what they really were, that he
Bhould not have heard too much rather than too little

190 SHAKESPEARE ONCE MORE.

of Aristotle's Poetics, Quinctilian's Rhetoric, Horace's Art
of Poetry, and the Unities, especially from Ben Jonson,
— in short, that he who speaks of himself as

" Desiring this man's art and that man's scope,
With what he most enjoyed contented least,"

and who meditated so profoundly on every other topic
of human concern, should never have turned his thought
to the principles of that art which was both the delight
and business of his life, the bread-winner alike for soul
and body. Was there no harvest of the ear for him
whose eye had stocked its garners so full as wellnigh to
forestall all after-comers? Did he who could so counsel
the practisers of an art in which he never arrived at
eminence, as in Hamlet's advice to the players, never
take counsel with himself about that other art in which
the instinct of the crowd, no less than the judgment of
his rivals, awarded him an easy pre-eminence 1 If he
had little Latin and less Greek, might he not have had
enough of both for every practical purpose on this side
pedantry ? The1 most extraordinary, one might almost
say contradictory, attainments have been ascribed to
him, and yet he has been supposed incapable of what
was within easy reach of every boy at Westminster
School. There is a knowledge that comes of sympathy
as living and genetic as that which comes of mere learn-
ing is sapless and unprocreant, and for this no profound
study of the languages is needed.

If Shakespeare did not know the ancients, I think
they were at least as unlucky in not knowing him. But
is it incredible that he may have laid hold of an edition
of the Greek tragedians, Graece et Latine, and then, with
such poor wits as he was master of, contrived to worry
some considerable meaning out of them 1 There are at
least one or two coincidences which, whether accidenta1
or not, are curious, and which I do not remember tc

SHAKESPEARE ONCE MORE. 191

have seen noticed. In the Electra of Sophocles, which
is almost identical in its leading motive with Hamlet, the
Chorus consoles Electra for the supposed death of Ores-
tes in the same commonplace way which Hamlet's uncle
tries with him.

as irarpds, 'HXexrp
'OpeVnjs • wore M Xcav areve,
TOUT' 6#eiAeToi naOeiv.

" Your father lost a father;
That father lost, lost his. . . . ,
But to perseVer

In obstinate condolement is a course
Of impious stubbornness .....

'T is common; all that live must die."

Shakespeare expatiates somewhat more largely, but the
sentiment in both cases is almost verbally identical.
The resemblance is probably a chance one, for common-
place and consolation were always twin sisters, whom
always to escape is given to no man ; but it is neverthe-
less curious. Here is another, from the (Edipus Colo-
neus : —

Tois TOI Sucoiois x*» I3?**** "**<? ^fyav,
" Thrice is he armed that hath his quarrel just."

Hamlet's "prophetic soul" may be matched with the
irpopavris 6vfMs of Peleus, (Eurip. Androm. 1075,) and
his " sea of troubles," with the KaicSiv neXayos of Theseus
in the Hippolytus, or of the Chorus in the Hercules
Furens. And, for manner and tone, compare the
speeches of Pheres in the Akestis, and Jocasta in the
Phcenissce, with those of Claudio in Measure for Measure,
and Ulysses in Troilus and Cressida.

The Greek dramatists were somewhat fond of a trick
of words in which there is a reduplication of sense as well
as of assonance, as in the Electra: —

"AAeKTpa yripoLarKovarav awfj.evata. re.

So Shakespeare : —

" Unhouseled, disappointed, unaneled " ;

192 SHAKESPEARE ONCE MORE.

and Milton after him, or, more likely, after the Greek : — .

" Unrespited, uupitied, unreprieved." *

I mention these trifles, in passing, because they have
interested me, and therefore may interest others. I lay
no stress upon them, for, if once the conductors of Shake-
speare's intelligence had been put in connection with
those Attic brains, he would have reproduced their mes-
sage in a form of his own. They would have inspired,
and not enslaved him. His resemblance to them is that
of consanguinity, more striking in expression than in
mere resemblance of feature. The likeness between the
Clytemnestra — yvvaiKos avSpofiovXov €\7ri£ov xeap — of
^Eschylus and the Lady Macbeth of Shakespeare was too
remarkable to have escaped notice. That between the
two poets hi their choice of epithets is as great, though
more difficult of proof. Yet I think an attentive student
of Shakespeare cannot fail to be reminded of something
familiar to him in such phrases as "flame-eyed fire/'
" flax-winged ships," " star-neighboring peaks," the rock
Salmydessus,

" Rude jaw of the sea,
Harsh hostess of the seaman, step-mother
Of ships,"

and the beacon with its " speaking eye of fire." Surely
there is more than a verbal, there is a genuine, similar-
ity between the dvrjpdpov yeXa^pa and " the uouumbered
beach" and "multitudinous sea." ^Eschylus, it seems
to me, is willing, just as Shakespeare is, to risk the pros-
perity of a verse upon a lucky throw of words, which
may come up the sices of hardy metaphor or the ambs-

* The best instance I remember is in the Frogs, where Bacchus
pleads his inexperience at the oar, and says he is

an-eipo;, dOaAaTTWTO?, do-aAa/uuViOf,

which might be rendered,

Unskilled, unsea-soned, and un-Salamised.

SHAKESPEARE ONCE MORE. 193

ace of conceit. There is such a difference between far-
reaching and far-fetching ! Poetry, to be sure, is always
that daring one step beyond, which brings the right man
to fortune, but leaves the wrong one in the ditch, and
its law is, Be bold once and again, yet be not over-bold.
It is true, also, that masters of language are a little apt
to play with it. But whatever fault may be found with
Shakespeare in this respect will touch a tender spot in
^Eschylus also. Does he sometimes overload a word, so
that the language not merely, as Dryden says, bends
under him, but fairly gives way, and lets the reader's
mind down with the shock as of a false step in taste 1
He has nothing worse than ntXayos avdovv veKpols. A
criticism, shallow in human nature, however deep in Camp-
bell's Khetoric, has blamed him for making persons, under
great excitement of sorrow, or whatever other emotion,
parenthesize some trifling play upon words in the very
height of their passion. Those who make such criticisms
have either never felt a passion or seen one in action, or
else they forget the exaltation of sensibility during such
crises, so that the attention, whether of the senses or the
mind, is arrested for the moment by what would be over-
looked in ordinary moods. The more forceful the cur-
rent, the more sharp the ripple from any alien substance
interposed. A passion that looks forward, like revenge
or lust or greed, goes right to its end, and is straight-
forward in its expression ; but a tragic passion, which is
in its nature unavailing, like disappointment, regret of
the inevitable, or remorse, is reflective, and liable to be
continually diverted by the suggestions of fancy. The
one is a concentration of the will, which intensifies the
character and the phrase that expresses it ; in the other,
the will is helpless, and, as in insanity, while the flow of
the mind sets imperatively in one direction, it is liable
to almost ludicrous interruptions and diversions upon

9 M

194 SHAKESPEARE ONCE MORE.

the most trivial hint of involuntary association. I am
ready to grant that Shakespeare sometimes allows his
characters to spend time, that might be better employed,
in carving some cherry-stone of a quibble ; * that he is
sometimes tempted away from the natural by the quaint ;
that he sometimes forces a partial, even a verbal, anal-
ogy between the abstract thought and the sensual image
into an absolute identity, giving us a kind of serious
pun. In a pun our pleasure arises from a gap in the
logical nexus too wide for the reason, but which the ear
can bridge in an instant. " Is that your own hare, or a
wig ? " The fancy is yet more tickled where logic is
treated with a mock ceremonial of respect.

" His head was turned, and so he chewed
His pigtail till he died."

Now when this kind of thing is done in earnest, the re-
sult is one of those ill-distributed syllogisms which in
rhetoric are called conceits.

" Hard was the hand that struck the blow,
Soft was the heart that bled."

I have seen this passage from Warner cited for its
beauty, though I should have thought nothing could be
worse, had I not seen General Morris's

" Her heart and morning broke together
In tears."

Of course, I would not rank with these Gloucester's

"What! will the aspiring blood of Lancaster
Sink in the ground ? I thought it would have mounted " ;

though as mere rhetoric it belongs to the same class, f

* So Euripides (copied by Theocritus, Id. xxvii.): —

HevOevs fi'oTnos /nrj irevBos eicroicrci 86/0101;. (BacchflB, 363.)
'E(rci><f>p6fr)<re»' OVK exova-a. <r<i><}>poi>eiv. (Hippol., 1037.)

So Calderon: " Y apenas llega, cuando llega a penas."

t I have taken the first passage in point that occurred to my mem-
ory. It may not be Shakespeare's, though probably his. The ques-
tion of authorship is, I think, settled, so far as criticism can do it, in
Mr. Grant White's admirable essay appended to the Second Part of
Henry VI.

SHAKESPEARE ONCE MORE. 195

It might be defended as a bit of ghastly humor charac-
teristic of the speaker. But at any rate it is not with-
out precedent in the two greater Greek tragedians. In
a chorus of the Seven against Thebes we have : —

ei> 6e yaia
Zu>d <f>ovopvr<a
Me/xiKTai, Kapra. &' el<r' 6 /u. a i/u, 01 .

And does not Sophocles make Ajax in his despair quibble
upon his own name quite in the Shakespearian fashion,
under similar circumstances 1 Nor does the coarseness
with which our great poet is reproached lack an ^Eschy-
lean parallel. Even the Nurse in Romeo and Juliet
would have found a true gossip in her of the Agamem-
non, who is so indiscreet in her confidences concerning
the nursery life of Orestes. Whether Raleigh is right
or not in warning historians against following truth too
close upon the heels, the caution is a good one for poets
as respects truth to Nature. But it is a mischievous
fallacy in historian or critic to treat as a blemish of the
man what is but the common tincture of his age. It ip
to confound a spatter of mud with a moral stain.

But I have been led away from my immediate pur-
pose. I did not intend to compare Shakespeare with
the ancients, much less to justify his defects by theirs.
Shakespeare himself has left us a pregnant satire on
dogmatical and categorical aesthetics (which commonly
in discussion soon lose their ceremonious tails and are
reduced to the internecine dog and cat of their bald
first syllables) in the cloud-scene between Hamlet and
Polonius, suggesting exquisitely how futile is any at-
tempt at a cast-iron definition of those perpetually
metamorphic impressions of the beautiful whose source
is as much in the man who looks as in the thing he sees.
In the fine arts a thing is either good in itself or it is
nothing. It neither gains nor loses by having it shown

196 SHAKESPEARE ONCE MORE.

that another good thing was also good in itself, any
more than a bad thing profits by comparison with an-
other that is worse. The final judgment of the world
is intuitive, and is based, not on proof that a work pos-
sesses some of the qualities of another whose greatness
is acknowledged, but on the immediate feeling that it
carries to a high point of perfection certain qualities
proper to itself. One does not natter a fine pear by
comparing it to a fine peach, nor learn what a fine peach
is by tasting ever so many poor ones. The boy who
makes his first bite into one does not need to ask his
father if or how or why it is good. Because continuity
is a merit in some kinds of writing, shall we refuse our-
selves to the authentic charm of Montaigne's want of it 1
I have heard people complain of French tragedies be-
cause they were so very French. This, though it may
not be to some particular tastes, and may from one point
of view be a defect, is from another and far higher a
distinguished merit. It is their flavor, as direct a telltale
of the soil whence they drew it as that of French wines
is. Suppose we should tax the Elgin marbles with be-
ing too Greek 1 When will people, nay, when will even
critics, get over this self-defrauding trick of cheapening
the excellence of one thing by that of another, this con-
clusive style of judgment which consists simply in be-
longing to the other parish ? As one grows older, one
loses many idols, perhaps comes at last to have none at
all, though he may honestly enough uncover in defer-
ence to the worshippers before any shrine. But for the
seeming loss the compensation is ample. These saints
of literature descend from their canopied remoteness to
be even more precious as men like ourselves, our com-
panions in field and street, speaking the same tongue,
though in many dialects, and owning one creed under
the most diverse masks of form.

SHAKESPEARE ONCE MORE. 197

Much of that merit of structure which is claimed foi
the ancient tragedy is due, if I am not mistaken, to cir-
cumstances external to the drama itself, — to custom,
to convention, to the exigencies of the theatre. It is
formal rather than organic. The Prometheus seems to
me one of the few Greek tragedies in which the whole
creation has developed itself in perfect proportion from
one central germ of living conception. The motive of
the ancient drama is generally outside of it, while in
the modern (at least in the English) it is necessarily
within. Goethe, in a thoughtful essay,* written many
years later than his famous criticism of Hamlet in
Wilhelm Meister, says that the distinction between the
two is the difference between sollen and wollen, that is,
between must and would. He means that in the Greek
drama the catastrophe is foreordained by an inexorable
Destiny, while the element of Freewill, and consequently
of choice, is the very axis of the modern. The defini-
tion is conveniently portable, but it has its limitations.
Goethe's attention was too exclusively fixed on the Fate
tragedies of the Greeks, and upon Shakespeare among
the moderns. In the Spanish drama, for example, cus-
tom, loyalty, honor, and religion are as imperative and
as inevitable as doom. In the Antigone, on the other
hand, the crisis lies in the character of the protagonist.
In this sense it is modern, and is the first example of
true character-painting in tragedy. But, from whatever
cause, that exquisite analysis of complex motives, and
the display of them in action and speech, which consti-
tute for us the abiding charm of fiction, were quite un-
known to the ancients. They reached their height in
Cervantes and Shakespeare, and, though on a lower
plane, still belong to the upper region of art in Le Sage,
MoliSre, and Fielding. The personages of the Greek

* Shakspeare und kein Ende.

198 SHAKESPEARE ONCE MORE.

tragedy seem to be commonly rather types than individ-
uals. In the modern tragedy, certainly in the four
greatest of Shakespeare's tragedies, there is still some-
thing very like Destiny, only the place of it is changed.
It is no longer above man, but in him ; yet the catas-
trophe is as sternly foredoomed in the characters of Lear,
Othello, Macbeth, and Hamlet as it could be by an in-
fallible oracle. In Macbeth, indeed, the Weird Sisters
introduce an element very like Fate ; but generally it
inay be said that with the Greeks the character is in-
volved in the action, while with Shakespeare the action
is evolved from the character. In the one case, the mo-
tive of the play controls the personages ; in the other,
the chief personages are in themselves the motive to
which all else is subsidiary. In any comparison, there-
fore, of Shakespeare with the ancients, we are not to
contrast him with them as unapproachable models, but
to consider whether he, like them, did not consciously en-
deavor, under the circumstances and limitations in which
he found himself, to produce the most excellent thing
possible, a model also in its own kind, — whether higher
or lower in degree is another question. The only fair
comparison would be between him and that one of his
contemporaries who endeavored to anachronize himself,
so to speak, and to subject his art, so far as might be, to
the laws of classical composition. Ben Jonson was a
great man, and has sufficiently proved that he had an
eye for the external marks of character ; but when he
would make a whole of them, he gives us instead either
a bundle of humors or an incorporated idea. With
Shakespeare the plot is an interior organism, in Jonson
an external contrivance. It is the difference between
man and tortoise. In the one the osseous structure is
out of sight, indeed, but sustains the flesh and blood
that envelop it, while the other is boxed up and impris-
oned in his bones.

SHAKESPEARE ONCE MORE. 199

I have been careful to confine myself to what may be
called Shakespeare's ideal tragedies. In the purely his-
torical or chronicle plays, the conditions are different,
and his imagination submits itself to the necessary re-
strictions on its freedom of movement. Outside the
tragedies also, the Tempest makes an exception worthy
of notice. If I read it rightly, it is an example of how
a great poet should write allegory, — not embodying
metaphysical abstractions, but giving us ideals abstracted
from life itself, suggesting an under-meaning everywhere,
forcing it upon us nowhere, tantalizing the mind with
hints that imply so much and tell so little, and yet keep
the attention all eye and ear with eager, if fruitless, ex-
pectation. Here the leading characters are not merely
typical, but symbolical, — that is, they do not illustrate
a class of persons, they belong to universal Nature.
Consider the scene of the play. Shakespeare is wont to
take some familiar story, to lay his scene in some place
the name of which, at least, is familiar, — well knowing
the reserve of power that lies in the familiar as a back-
ground, when things are set in front of it under a new
and unexpected light. But in the Tempest the scene is
laid nowhere, or certainly in no country laid down on
any map. Nowhere, then 1 At once nowhere and any-
where, — for it is in the soul of man, that still vexed
island hung between the upper and the nether world,
and liable to incursions from both. There is scarce a
play of Shakespeare's in which there is such variety of
character, none in which character has so little to do in
the carrying on and development of the story. But
consider for a moment if ever the Imagination has been
so embodied as in Prospero, the Fancy as in Ariel, the
brute Understanding as in Caliban, who, the moment
his poor wits are warmed with the glorious liquor of
Stephano, plots rebellion against his natural lord, the

200 SHAKESPEARE ONCE MORE.

higher Reason. Miranda is mere abstract Womanhood,
as truly so before she sees Ferdinand as Eve before she
was wakened to consciousness by the echo of her own
nature coming back to her, the same, and yet not the
same, from that of Adam. Ferdinand, again, is nothing
more than Youth, compelled to drudge at something he
despises, till the sacrifice of will and abnegation of self
win him his ideal in Miranda. The subordinate person-
ages are simply types ; Sebastian and Antonio, of weak
character and evil ambition ; Gonzalo, of average sense
and honesty ; Adrian and Francisco, of the walking
gentlemen who serve to fill up a world. They are not
characters in the same sense with lago, Falstaff, Shal-
low, or Leontius ; and it' is curious how every one of
them loses his way in this enchanted island of life, all
the victims of one illusion after another, except Pros-
pero, whose ministers are purely ideal. The whole play,
indeed, is a succession of illusions, winding up with those
solemn words of the great enchanter who had summoned
to his service every shape of merriment or passion,
every figure in the great tragi-comedy of life, and who
was now bidding farewell to the scene of his triumphs.
For in Prospero shall we not recognize the Artist him-
self,—

" That did not better for his life provide
Than public means which public manners breeds,
Whence comes it that his name receives a brand," —

who has forfeited a shining place in the world's eye by
devotion to his art, and who, turned adrift on the ocean
of life in the leaky carcass of a boat, has shipwrecked
on that Fortunate Island (as men always do who find
their true vocation) where he is absolute lord, making
all the powers of Nature serve him, but with Ariel and
Caliban as special ministers 1 Of whom else could he
have been thinking, when he says, —

SHAKESPEARE ONCE MORE. 201

" Graves, at my command,

Have waked their sleepers, oped, and let them forth,
By my so potent art " V

Was this man, so extraordinary from whatever side
we look at him, who ran so easily through the whole
scale of human sentiment, from the homely common-
sense of, " When two men ride of one horse, one must
ride behind," to the transcendental subtilty of,

" No, Time, thou shalt not boast that I do change j
Thy pyramids, built up with newer might,
To me are nothing novel, nothing strange;
They are but dressings of a former sight," —

was he alone so unconscious of powers, some part of
whose magic is recognized by all mankind, from the
school-boy to the philosopher, that he merely sat by and
saw them go without the least notion what they were
about 1 Was he an inspired idiot, votre bizarre Shake-
speare ? a vast, irregular genius 1 a simple rustic, war-
bling his native wood-notes wild, in other words, insensi-
ble to the benefits of culture 1 When attempts have
been made at various times to prove that this singular
and seemingly contradictory creature, not one, but all
mankind's epitome, was a musician, a lawyer, a doctor,
a Catholic, a Protestant, an atheist, an Irishman, a dis-
coverer of the circulation of the blood, and finally, that
he was not himself, but somebody else, is it not a little
odd that the last thing anybody should have thought of
proving him was an artist 1 Nobody believes any longer
that immediate inspiration is possible in modern times
(as if God had grown old), — at least, nobody believes it
of the prophets of those days, of John of Leyden, or
Reeves, or- Muggleton, — and yet everybody seems to
take it for granted of this one man Shakespeare. He,
somehow or other, without knowing it, was able to do
what none of the rest of them, though knowing it all
too perfectly well, could begin to do. Everybody seems
9*

202 SHAKESPEARE ONCE MORE.

to get afraid of him in turn. Voltaire plays gentleman
usher for him to his countrymen, and then, perceiving
that his countrymen find a flavor in him beyond that of
Zaire or Mahomet, discovers him to be a Sauvage ivre,
sans le moindre etincelle de bon gofit, et sans le moindre
connoissance des regies. Goethe, who tells us that Gotz
von Berlichingen was written in the Shakespearian man-
ner, — and we certainly should not have guessed it, if
he had not blabbed, — comes to the final conclusion,
that Shakespeare was a poet, but not a dramatist.
Chateaubriand thinks that he has corrupted art. " If,
to attain," he says, " the height of tragic art, it be
enough to heap together disparate scenes without order
and without connection, to dovetail the burlesque with
the pathetic, to set the water-carrier beside the monarch
and the huckster-wench beside the queen, who may not
reasonably flatter himself with being the rival of the
greatest masters'? Whoever should give himself the
trouble to retrace a single one of his days, .... to
keep a journal from hour to hour, would have made a
drama in the fashion of the English poet." But there
journals and journals, as the French say, and what goes
into them depends on the eye that gathers for them.
It is a long step from St. Simon to Dangeau, from
Pepys to Thoresby, from Shakespeare even to the Mar-
quis de Chateaubriand. M. Hugo alone, convinced that,
as founder of the French Romantic School, there is a
kind of family likeness between himself and Shake-
speare, stands boldly forth to prove the father as extrav-
agant as the son. Calm yourself, M. Hugo, you are
no more a child of his than Will Davenant was ! But,
after all, is it such a great crime to produce something
absolutely new in a world so tedious as ours, and so apt
to tell its old stories over again 1 I do not mean ne\f
in substance, but in the manner of presentation. Surety

SHAKESPEARE ONCE MORE. 203

the highest office of a great poet is to show us how
much variety, freshness, and opportunity abides in the
obvious and familiar. He invents nothing, but seems
rather to re-discover the world about him, and his pene-
trating vision gives to things of daily encounter some-
thing of the strangeness of new creation. Meanwhile
the changed conditions of modern life demand a change
in the method of treatment. The ideal is not a strait-
waistcoat. Because Alexis and Dora is so charming,
shall we have no Paul and Virginia ? It was the idle
endeavor to reproduce the old enchantment in the old
way that gave us the pastoral, sent to the garret now
with our grandmothers' achievements of the same sort in
worsted. Every age says to its poets, like a mistress to
her lover, " Tell me what I am like " ; and he who suc-
ceeds in catching the evanescent expression that reveals
character — which is as much as to say, what is intrin-
sically human — will be found to have caught something
as imperishable as human nature itself. Aristophanes,
by the vital and essential qualities of his humorous
satire, is already more nearly our contemporary than
Moliere ; and even the Trouvsres, careless and trivial as
they mostly are, could fecundate a great poet like
Chaucer, and are still delightful reading.

The Attic tragedy still keeps its hold upon the loy-
alty of scholars through their imagination, or their ped-
antry, or their feeling of an exclusive property, as may
happen, and, however alloyed with baser matter, this
loyalty is legitimate and well bestowed. But the do-
minion of the Shakespearian is even wider. It pushes
forward its boundaries from year to year, and moves no
landmark backward. Here Alfieri and Lessing own a
common allegiance ; and the loyalty to him is one not
of guild or tradition, but of conviction and enthusiasm.
Can this be said of any other modern 1 of robust Cor

204 SHAKESPEARE ONCE MORE.

neille 1 of tender Racine 1 of Calderon even, with his
tropical warmth and vigor of production 1 The Greeks
and he are alike and alone in this, and for the same rea-
son, that both are unapproachably the highest in their
kind. Call him Gothic, if you like, but the inspiring
mind that presided over the growth of these clustered
masses of arch and spire and pinnacle and buttress is
neither Greek nor Gothic, — it is simply genius lending
itself to embody the new desire of man's mind, as it
had embodied the old. After all, to be delightful is to
be classic, and the chaotic never pleases long. But
manifoldness is not confusion, any more than formalism
is simplicity. If Shakespeare rejected the unities, as I
think he who complains of " Art made tongue-tied by
Authority " might very well deliberately do, it was for
the sake of an imaginative unity more intimate than
any of time and place. The antique in itself is not the
ideal, though its remoteness from the vulgarity of every-
day associations helps to make it seem so. The true
ideal is not opposed to the real, nor is it any artificial
heightening thereof, but lies in it, and blessed are the
eyes that find it ! It is the mens divinior which hides
within the actual, transfiguring matter-of-fact -into mat-
ter-of-meaning for him who has the gift of second-sight.
In this sense Hogarth is often more truly ideal than
Raphael, Shakespeare often more truly so than the
Greeks. I think it is a more or less conscious percep-
tion of this ideality, as it is a more or less well-grounded
persuasion of it as respects the Greeks, that assures to
him, as to them, and with equal justice, a permanent
supremacy over the minds of men. This gives to his
characters their universality, to his thought its irradiat-
ing property, while the artistic purpose running through
and combining the endless variety of scene and charac-
ter will alone account for his power of dramatic effect

SHAKESPEARE ONCE MORE. 205

Goethe affirmed, that, without Schroder's primings and
adaptations, Shakespeare was too undramatic for the
German theatre, — that, if the theory that his plays
should be represented textually should prevail, he would
be driven from the boards. The theory has prevailed,
and he not only holds his own, but is acted oftener than
ever. It is not irregular genius that can do this, for
surely Germany need not go abroad for what her own
Werners could more than amply supply her with.

But I would much rather quote a fine saying than a
bad prophecy of a man to whom I owe so much. Goethe,
in one of the most perfect of his shorter poems, tells us
that a poem is like a painted window. Seen from with-
out, (and he accordingly justifies the Philistine, who
never looks at them otherwise,) they seem dingy and con-
fused enough ; but enter, and then

" Da ist's auf einmal farbig helle,
Geschicht' und Zierath glanzt in Schnelle."

With the same feeling he says elsewhere in prose, that
" there is a destructive criticism and a productive. The
former is very easy ; for one has only to set up in his mind
any standard, any model, however narrow " (let us say
the Greeks), "and then boldly assert that the work
under review does not match with it, and therefore is
good for nothing, — the matter is settled, and one must
at once deny its claim. Productive criticism is a great
deal more difficult ; it asks, What did the author propose
to himself 1 Is what he proposes reasonable and com-
prehensible ? and how far has he succeeded in carrying it
out 1 " It is in applying this latter kind of criticism to
Shakespeare that the Germans have set us an example
worthy of all commendation. If they have been some-
times over-subtile, they at least had the merit of first
looking at his works as wholes, as something that very
likely contained an idea, perhaps conveyed a moral, if v. o

206 SHAKESPEARE ONCE MORE.

could get at it. The illumination lent us by most of the
English commentators reminds us of the candles which
guides hold up to show us a picture in a dark place, the
smoke of which gradually makes the work of the artist
invisible under its repeated layers. Lessing, as might
have been expected, opened the first glimpse in the new
direction ; Goethe followed with his famous exposition of
Hamlet ; A. W. Schlegel took a more comprehensive
view in his Lectures, which Coleridge worked over into
English, adding many fine criticisms of his own on single
passages ; and finally, Gervinus has devoted four volumes
to a comment on the plays, full of excellent matter,
though pushing the moral exegesis beyond all reasonable
bounds.* With the help of all these, and especially of
the last, I shall apply this theory of criticism to Hamlet,
not in the hope of saying anything new, but of bringing
something to the support of the thesis, that, if Shake-
speare was skilful as a playwright, he was even greater as
a dramatist, — that, if his immediate business was to fill
the theatre, his higher object was to create something
which, by fulfilling the conditions and answering the re-
quirements of modern life, should as truly deserve to be
called a work of art as others had deserved it by doing
the same thing in former times and under other circum-
stances. Supposing him to have accepted — consciously
or not is of little importance — the new terms of the
problem which makes character the pivot of dramatic
action, and consequently the key of dramatic unity, how
far did he succeed 1

Before attempting my analysis, I must clear away a
little rubbish. Are such anachronisms as those of which
Voltaire accuses Shakespeare in Hamlet, such as the in-
troduction of cannon before the invention of gunpow-iet,

* I do not mention Ulrici's book, for it seems to me unwield; ^n4
dull, — zeal without knowledge.

SHAKESPEARE ONCE MORE. 207

and making Christians of the Danes three centuries too
soon, of the least bearing aesthetically 1 I think not ; but
as they are of a piece with a great many other criti-
cisms upon the great poet, it is worth while to dwell
upon them a moment.

The first demand we make upon whatever claims to be
a work of art (and we have a right to make it) is
that it shall be in keeping. Now this propriety is of two
kinds, either extrinsic or intrinsic. In the first I should
class whatever relates rather to the body than the soul
of the work, such as fidelity to the facts of history,
(wherever that is important.) congruity of costume, and
the like, — in short, whatever might come under the
head of picturesque truth, a departure from which would
shock too rudely our preconceived associations. I have
seen an Indian chief in French boots, and he seemed to
me almost tragic ; but, put upon the stage in tragedy, he
would have been ludicrous. Lichtenberg, writing front
London in 1 775, tells us that Garrick played Hamlet in
a suit of the French fashion, then commonly worn, and
that he was blamed for it by some of the critics ; but, he
says, one hears no such criticism during the play, nor on
the way home, nor at supper afterwards, nor indeed till
the emotion roused by the great actor has had time to
subside. He justifies Garrick, though we should not be
able to endure it now. Yet nothing would be gained by
trying to make Hamlet's costume true to the assumed
period of the play, for the scene of it is laid in a Den-
mark that has no dates.

In the second and more important category, I should
put, first, co-ordination of character, that is, a certain
variety in harmony of the personages of a drama, as in
the attitudes and coloring of the figures in a pictorial
composition, so that, while mutually relieving and set-
ting off each other, they shall combine in the total im-

208 SHAKESPEARE ONCE MORE.

pression ; second, that subordinate truth to Nature which
makes each character coherent in itself; and, third, such
propriety of costume and the like as shall satisfy the su-
perhistoric sense, to which, and to which alone, the
higher drama appeals. All these come within the scope
of imaginative truth. To illustrate my third head by
an example. Tieck criticises John Kemble's dressing for
Macbeth in a modern Highland costume, as being un-
graceful without any countervailing merit of historical
exactness. I think a deeper reason for his dissatis-
faction might be found in the fact, that this garb, with
its purely modern and British army associations, is out
of place on Fores Heath, and drags the Weird Sis-
ters down with it from their proper imaginative remote-
ness in the gloom of the past to the disenchanting glare
of the foot-lights. It is not the antiquarian, but the
poetic conscience, that is wounded. To this, exactness,
so far as concerns ideal representation, may not only not
be truth, but may even be opposed to it. Anachronisms
and the like are in themselves of no account, and become
important only when they make a gap too wide for our
illusion to cross unconsciously, that is, when they are
anacoluthons to the imagination. The aim of the artist
is psychologic, not historic truth. It is comparatively
easy for an author to get up any period with tolerable
minuteness in externals, but readers and audiences find
more difficulty in getting them down, though oblivion
swallows scores of them at a gulp. The saving truth in
such matters is a truth to essential and permanent
characteristics. The Ulysses of Shakespeare, like the
Ulysses of Dante and Tennyson, more or less harmonizes
with our ideal conception of the wary, long-considering,
though adventurous son of Laertes, yet Simon Lord Lovat
is doubtless nearer the original type. In Hamlet, though
there is no Denmark of the ninth century, Shakespeare

SHAKESPEARE ONCE MORE. 209

has suggested the prevailing rudeness of manners quite
enough for his purpose. We see it in the single combat
of Hamlet's father with the elder Fortinbras, in the vul-
gar wassail of the king, in the English monarch being
expected to hang Rosencrantz and Guildenstern out of
hand merely to oblige his cousin of Denmark, in Laertes,
sent to Paris to be made a gentleman of, becoming in-
stantly capable of any the most barbarous treachery to
glut his vengeance. We cannot fancy Ragnar Lodbrog
or Eric the Red matriculating at Wittenberg, but it was
essential that Hamlet should be a scholar, and Shake-
speare sends him thither without more ado. All through
the play we get the notion of a state of society in which
a savage nature has disguised itself in the externals of
civilization, like a Maori deacon, who has only to strip
and he becomes once more a tattooed pagan with his
mouth watering for a spare-rib of his pastor. Histori-
cally, at the date of Hamlet, the Danes were in the
habit of burning their enemies alive in their houses,
with as much of their family about them as might be
to make it comfortable. Shakespeare seems purposely
to have dissociated his play from history by changing
nearly every name in the original legend. The motive
of the play — revenge as a religious duty — belongs
only to a social state in which the traditions of barba-
rism are still operative, but, with infallible artistic judg-
ment, Shakespeare has chosen, not untamed Nature, as
he found it in history, but the period of transition, a
period in which the times are always out of joint, and
thus the irresolution which has its root in Hamlet's own
character is stimulated by the very incompatibility of
that legacy of vengeance he has inherited from the past
with the new culture and refinement of which he is the
representative. One of the few books which Shake-
speare is known to have possessed was Florio's Montaigne,

210 SHAKESPEARE ONCE MORE.

and he might well have transferred the Frenchman's
motto, Que s$ais je ? to the front of his tragedy ; nor
can I help fancying something more than accident in the
fact that Hamlet has been a student at Wittenberg,
whence those new ideas went forth, of whose results in
unsettling men's faith, and consequently disqualifying
them for promptness in action, Shakespeare had been
r\ot only an eye-witness, but which he must actually
have experienced in himself.

One other objection let me touch upon here, especially
as it has been urged against Hamlet, and that is the in-
troduction of low characters and comic scenes in tragedy.
Even Garrick, who had just assisted at the Stratford
Jubilee, where Shakespeare had been pronounced divine,
was induced by this absurd outcry for the proprieties of
the tragic stage to omit the grave-diggers' scene from
Hamlet. Leaving apart the fact that Shakespeare would
not have been the representative poet he is, if he had
not given expression to this striking tendency of the
Northern races, which shows itself constantly, not only
in their literature, but even in their mythology and their
architecture, the grave-diggers' scene always impresses
me as one of the most pathetic in the whole tragedy.
That Shakespeare introduced such scenes and characters
with deliberate intention, and with a view to artistic re-
lief and contrast, there can hardly be a doubt. We
must take it for granted that a man whose works show
everywhere the results of judgment sometimes acted
with forethought. I find the springs of the profoundest
sorrow and pity in this hardened indifference of the
grave-diggers, in their careless discussion as to whether
Ophelia's death was by suicide or no, in their singing
and jesting at their dreary work.

" A pickaxe and a spade, a spade,
For — and a shrouding-sheet:

SHAKESPEARE ONCE MORE." 211

0, a pit of clay for to be made
For such a guest is meet! "

We know who is to be the guest of this earthen hospi-
tality, — how much beauty, love, and heartbreak are to
be covered in that pit of clay. All we remember of
Ophelia reacts upon us with tenfold force, and we recoil
from our amusement at the ghastly drollery of the two
delvers with a shock of horror. That the unconscious
Hamlet should stumble on this grave of all others, that
it should be here that he should pause to muse humor-
ously on death and decay, — all this prepares us for the
revulsion of passion in the next scene, and for the frantic
confession, —

" I loved Ophelia ; forty thousand brothers
Could not with all their quantity of love
Make up my sum ! "

And it is only here that such an asseveration would be
true even to the feeling of the moment ; for it is plain
from all we know of Hamlet that he could not so have
loved Ophelia, that he was incapable of the self-aban-
donment of a true passion, that he would have analyzed
this emotion as he does all others, would have peeped
and botanized upon it till it became to him a mere mat-
ter of scientific interest. All this force of contrast, and
this horror of surprise, were necessary so to intensify his
remorseful regret that he should believe himself for once in
earnest. The speech of the King, "0, he is mad, Laertes,"
recalls him to himself, and he at once begins to rave : —

" Zounds ! show me what thou 'It do !

Woul't weep? woul't fight? woul't fast? woul't tear thyself ?
Woul't drink up eysil? eat a crocodile? "

It is easy to see that the whole plot hinges upon the
character of Hamlet, that Shakespeare's conception of
this was the ovum out of which the whole organism was
hatched. And here let me remark, that there is a kind

212 ' SHAKESPEARE ONCE MORE.

of genealogical necessity in the character, — a thing not
altogether strange to the attentive reader of Shakespeare.
Hamlet seems the natural result of the mixture of father
and mother in his temperament, the resolution and per-
sistence of the one, like sound timber wormholed and
made shaky, as it were, by the other's infirmity of will
and discontinuity of purpose. In natures so imperfectly
mixed it is not uncommon to find vehemence of -inten-
tion the prelude and counterpoise of weak performance,
the conscious nature striving to keep up its self-respect
by a triumph in words all the more resolute that it feels
assured beforehand of inevitable defeat in action. As ill
such slipshod housekeeping men are their own largest
creditors, they find it easy to stave off utter bankruptcy
of conscience by taking up one unpaid promise with
another larger, and at heavier interest, till such self-
swindling becomes habitual and by degrees almost pain-
less. How did Coleridge discount his own notes of this
kind with less and less specie as the figures lengthened
on the paper ! As with Hamlet, so it is with Ophelia
and Laertes. The father's feebleness comes up again
in the wasting heartbreak and gentle lunacy of the
daughter, while the son shows it in a rashness of im-
pulse and act, a kind of crankiness, of whose essential
feebleness we are all the more sensible as contrasted
with a nature so steady on its keel, and drawing so much
water, as that of Horatio, — the foil at once, in different
ways, to both him and Hamlet. It was natural, also,
that the daughter of self-conceited old Polonius should
have her softness stiffened with a fibre of obstinacy ; for
there are two kinds of weakness, that which breaks, and
that which bends. Ophelia's is of the former kind :
Hero is her counterpart, giving way before calamity, and
rising again so soon as the pressure is removed.

I find two passages in Dante that contain the exact

SHAKESPEARE ONCE MORE. 213

est possible definition of that habit or quality of Hamlet's
mind which justifies the tragic turn of the play, and
renders it natural and unavoidable from the beginning.
The first is from the second canto of the Inferno ; —

" E quale e quei che disvuol cio che voile,
E per nuovi pensier cangia proposta,
Si che del cominciar tutto si tolle ;
Tal mi fee' io in quella oscura costa:
Perche pensando consumai la impresa
Che fu nel cominciar cotanto tosta."

" And like the man who unwills what he willed,
And for new thoughts doth change his first intent,
So that he cannot anywhere begin,
Such became I upon that slope obscure,
Because with thinking I consumed resolve,
That was so ready at the setting out."

Again, in the fifth of the Purgatorio : —

" Che sempre 1' uomo in cui pensier rampoglia
Sovra pensier, da se dilunga il segno,
Perche la foga 1' un dell' altro insolla."

" For always he in whom one thought buds forth
Out of another farther puts the goal.
For each has only force to mar the other."

Dante was a profound metaphysician, and as in the
first passage he describes and defines a certain quality of
mind, so in the other he tells us its result in the charac-
ter and life, namely, indecision and failure, — the goal
farther off at the end than at the beginning. It is re-
markable how close a resemblance of thought, and even
of expression, there is between the former of these quota-
tions and a part of Hamlet's famous soliloquy : —

w Thus conscience [i. e. consciousness] doth make cowards of us all?
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pitch and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action ! "

It is an inherent peculiarity of a mind like Hamlet's
that it should be conscious of its own defect. Men of

214 SHAKESPEARE ONCE MORE.

his type are forever analyzing their own emotions and
motives. They cannot do anything, because they always
see two ways of doing it. They cannot determine en
any course of action, because they are always, as it were,
standing at the cross-roads, and see too well the disadvan-
tages of every one of them. It is not that they are
incapable of resolve, but somehow the band between the
motive power and the operative faculties is relaxed and
loose. The engine works, but the machinery it should
drive stands still. The imagination is so much in over-
plus, that thinking a thing becomes better than doing it,
and thought with its easy perfection, capable of every-
thing because it can accomplish everything with ideal
means, is vastly more attractive and satisfactory than
deed, which must be wrought at best with imperfect
instruments, and always falls short of the conception
that went before it. " If to do," says Portia in the
Merchant of Venice, — "if to do were as easy as to know
what 't were good to do, chapels had been churches, and
poor men's cottages princes' palaces." Hamlet knows
only too well what 't were good to do, but he palters
with everything in a double sense : he sees the grain of
good there is in evil, and the grain of evil there is in
good, as they exist in the world, and, finding that he can
make those feather-weighted accidents balance each other,
infers that there is little to choose between the essences
themselves. He is of Montaigne's mind, and says express-
ly that " there is nothing good or ill, but thinking makes
it so." He dwells so exclusively in the world of ideas
that the world of facts seems trifling, nothing is worth
the while ; and he has been so long objectless and pur-
poseless, so far as actual life is concerned, that, when
at last an object and an aim are forced upon him,
he cannot deal with them, and gropes about vainly for
a motive outside of himself that shall marshal his

SHAKESPEARE ONCE MORE. 215

thoughts for him and guide his faculties into the path
of action. He is the victim not so much of feebleness
of will as of an intellectual indifference that hinders the
will from working long in any one direction. He wishes
to will, but never wills. His continual iteration of re-
solve shows that he has no resolution. He is capable
of passionate energy where the occasion presents itself
suddenly from without, because nothing is so irritable as
conscious irresolution with a duty to perform. But of
deliberate energy he is not capable ; for there the im-
pulse must come from within, and the blade of his
analysis is so subtile that it can divide the finest hair
of motive 'twixt north and northwest side, leaving him
desperate to choose between them. The very conscious-
ness of his defect is an insuperable bar to his repairing
it ; for the unity of purpose, which infuses every fibre
of the character with will available whenever wanted,
is impossible where the mind can never rest till it has
resolved that unity into its component elements, and
satisfied itself which on the whole is of greater value.
A critical instinct so insatiable that it must turn upon
itself, for lack of something else to hew and hack, be-
comes incapable at last of originating anything except
indecision. It becomes infallible in what not to do.
How easily he might have accomplished his task is
shown by the conduct of Laertes. When he has a death
to avenge, he raises a mob, breaks into the palace, bul-
lies the king, and proves how weak the usurper really was.
The world is the victim of splendid parts, and is slow
to accept a rounded whole, because that is something
which is long in completing, still longer in demonstrating
its completion. We like to be surprised into admira-
tion, and not logically convinced that we ought to admire.
We are willing to be delighted with success, though we
ure somewhat indifferent to the homely qualities which

216 SHAKESPEARE ONCE MORE.

insure it. Our thought is sc filled with the rocket's burst
of momentary splendor so far above us, that we forget
the poor stick, useful and unseen, that made its climb-
ing possible. One of these homely qualities is continu-
ity of character, and it escapes present applause because
it tells chiefly, in the long run, in results. With his
usual tact, Shakespeare has brought in such a character
as a contrast and foil to Hamlet. Horatio is the only
complete man in the play, — solid, well-knit, and true ;
a noble, quiet nature, with that highest of all qualities,
judgment, always sane and prompt ; who never drags
his anchors for any wind of opinion or fortune, but grips
all the closer to the reality of things. He seems one of
those calm, undemonstrative men whom we love and
admire without asking to know why, crediting them
with the capacity of great things, without any test of
actual achievement, because we feel that their manhood
is a constant quality, and no mere accident of circum-
stance and opportunity. Such men are always sure of
the presence of their highest self on demand. Hamlet
is continually drawing bills on the future, secured by
his promise of himself to himself, which he can never
redeem. His own somewhat feminine nature recognizes
its complement in Horatio, and clings to it instinctively,
as naturally as Horatio is attracted by that fatal gift of
imagination, the absence of which makes the strength
of his own character, as its overplus does the weakness
of Hamlet's. It is a happy marriage of two minds
drawn together by the charm of unlikeness. Hamlet feels
in Horatio the solid steadiness ' which he misses in him-
self ; Horatio in Hamlet that need of service and sustain-
ment to render which gives him a consciousness of his own
value. Hamlet fills the place of a woman to Horatio,
revealing him to himself not only in what he says, but
by a constant claim upon his strength of nature ; and

SHAKESPEARE ONCE MORE. 217

there is great psychological truth in making suicide the
first impulse of this quiet, undemonstrative man, after
Hamlet's death, as if the very reason for his being were
taken away with his friend's need of him. In his grief,
he for the first and only time speaks of himself, is first
made conscious of himself by his loss. If this manly
reserve of Horatio be true to Nature, not less so are the
Communicativeness of Hamlet, and his tendency to so-
liloquize. If self-consciousness be alien to the one, it is
just as truly the happiness of the other. Like a musi-
cian distrustful of himself, he is forever tuning his in-
4trument, first overstraining this cord a little, and then
ihat, but unable to bring them into unison, or to profit
by it if he could.

We do not believe that Horatio ever thought he " was
not a pipe for Fortune's finger to play what stop she
please," till Hamlet told him so. That was Fortune's
affair, not his ; let her try it, if she liked. He is un-
conscious of his own peculiar qualities, as men of decis-
ion commonly are, or they would not be men of decision.
When there is a thing to be done, they go straight at it,
and for the time there is nothing for them in the whole
universe but themselves and their object. Hamlet, on
the other hand, is always studying himself. This world
and the other, too, are always present to his mind, and
there in the corner is the little black kobold of a doubt
making mouths at him. He breaks down the bridges
before him, not behind him, as a man of action would
do ; but there is something more than this. He is an
ingrained sceptic ; though his is the scepticism, not of
reason, but of feeling, whose root is want of faith in
himself. In him it is passive, a malady rather than a
function of the mind. We might call him insincere :
not that he was in any sense a hypocrite, but only that
he never was and never could be in earnest. Never
10

218 SHAKESPEARE ONCE MORE.

could be, because no man without intense faith in some-
thing ever can. Even if he only believed in himself,
that were better than nothing ; for it will carry a man a
great way in the outward successes of life, nay, will even
sometimes give him the Archimedean fulcrum for mov-
ing the world. But Hamlet doubts everything. He
doubts the immortality of the soul, just after seeing his
father's spirit, and hearing from its mouth the secrets of
the other world. He doubts Horatio even, and swears
him to secrecy on the cross of his sword, though prob-
ably he himself has no assured belief in the sacredness
of the symbol. He doubts Ophelia, and asks her, " Are
you honest 1 " He doubts the ghost, after he has had a
little time to think about it, and so gets up the play to
test the guilt of the king. And how coherent the whole
character is ! With what perfect tact and judgment
Shakespeare, in the advice to the players, makes him an
exquisite critic ! For just here that part of his charac-
ter which would be weak in dealing with affairs is strong.
A wise scepticism is the first attribute of a good critic.
He must not believe that the fire-insurance offices will
raise their rates of premium on Charles River, because
the new volume of poems is printing at Riverside or the
University Press. He must not believe so profoundly in
the ancients as to think it wholly out of the question
that the world has still vigor enough in its loins to be-
get some one who will one of these days be as good an
ancient as any of them.

Another striking quality in Hamlet's nature is his per-
petual inclination to irony. I think this has been gen-
erally passed over too lightly, as if it were something
external and accidental, rather assumed as a mask than
part of the real nature of the man. It seems to me to
go deeper, to be something innate, and not merely facti-
tious. It is nothing like the grave irony of Socrates,

SHAKESPEARE ONCE MORE. 219

•which was the weapon of a man thoroughly in earnest,
— the boomerang of argument, which one throws in the
opposite direction of what he means to hit, and which
seems to be flying away from the adversary, who will
presently find himself knocked down by it. It is not
like the irony of Timon, which is but the wilful refrac-
tion of a clear mind twisting awry whatever enters it, —
or of lago, which is the slime that a nature essentially
evil loves to trail over all beauty and goodness to taint
them with distrust : it is the half-jest, half-earnest of an
inactive temperament that has not quite made up its
mind whether life is a reality or no, whether men were
not made in jest, and which amuses itself equally with
finding a deep meaning iij trivial things and a trifling
one in the profoundest mysteries of being, because the
want of earnestness in its own essence infects everything
else with its own indifference. If there be now and then
an unmannerly rudeness and bitterness in it, as in the
scenes with Polonius and Osrick, we must remember that
Hamlet was just in the condition which spurs men to
sallies of this kind : dissatisfied, at one neither with the
world nor with himself, and accordingly casting about
for something out of himself to vent his spleen upon.
But even in these passages there is no hint of earnest-
ness, of any purpose beyond the moment; they are mere
cat's-paws of vexation, and not the deep-raking ground-
swell of passion, as we see it in the sarcasm of Lear.

The question of Hamlet's madness has been much dis-
cussed and variously decided. High medical authority
has pronounced, as usual, on both sides of the question.
But the induction has been drawn from too narrow
premises, being based on a mere diagnosis of the case,
and not on an appreciation of the character in its com-
pleteness. We have a case of pretended madness in the
Edgar of King Lear ; and it is certainly true that that

220 SHAKESPEARE ONCE MORE.

is a charcoal sketch, coarsely outlined, compared with
the delicate drawing, the lights, shades, and half-tints
of the portraiture in Hamlet. But does this tend to
prove that the madness of the latter, because truer to
the recorded observation of experts, is real, and meant
to be real, as the other to be fictitious 1 Not in the
least, as it appears to me. Hamlet, among all the
characters of Shakespeare, is the most eminently a meta-
physician and psychologist. He is a close observer, con-
tinually analyzing his own nature and that of others,
letting fall his little drops of acid irony on all who come
near him, to make them show what they are made of.
Even Ophelia is not too sacred, Osrick not too contempti-
ble for experiment. If such a man assumed madness,
he would play his part perfectly. If Shakespeare him-
self, without going mad, could so observe and remember
all the abnormal symptoms as to be able to reproduce
them in Hamlet, why should it be beyond the power of
Hamlet to reproduce them in himself] If you deprive
Hamlet of reason, there is no truly tragic motive left.
He would be a fit subject for Bedlam, but not for the
stage. We might have pathology enough, but no pathos.
Ajax first becomes tragic when he recovers his wits. If
Hamlet is irresponsible, the whole play is a chaos. That
he is not so might be proved by evidence enough, were
it not labor thrown away.

This feigned madness of Hamlet's is one of the few
points in which Shakespeare has kept close to the old
story on which he founded his play ; and as he never
decided without deliberation, so he never acted without
unerring judgment. Hamlet drifts through the whole
tragedy. He never keeps on one tack long enough to
get steerage- way, even if, in a nature like his, with those
electric streamers of whim and fancy forever wavering
across the vault of his brain, the needle of judgment

SHAKESPEARE ONCE MOR* 221

would point in one direction long enou^a to strike a
course by. The scheme of simulated insanity is pre-
cisely the one he would have been likely to hit upon, be-
cause it enabled him to follow his own bent, and to drift
with an apparent purpose, postponing decisive action by
the very means he adopts to arrive at its accomplish-
ment, and satisfying himself with the show of doing
something that he may escape so much the longer the
dreaded necessity of really doing anything at all. It
enables him to play with life and duty, insiead of tak-
ing them by the rougher side, where alone any firm grip
is possible, — to feel that he is on the vay toward ac-
complishing somewhat, when he is really paltering with
his own irresolution. Nothing, I think, could be more
finely imagined than this. Voltaire complains that he
goes mad without any sufficient object or result. Pe^
fectly true, and precisely what was mo&t natural for him
to do, and, accordingly, precisely what Shakespeare
meant that he should do. It was delightful to him to
indulge his imagination and humor, to prove his ca-
pacity for something by playing a part : the one thing he
could not do was to bring himself to act, unless when
surprised by a sudden impulse of suspicion, — as where
he kills Polonius, and there he could not see his victim.
He discourses admirably of suicide, but does not kill
himself ; he talks daggers, but uses none. He puts by
the chance to kill the king with the excuse that he will
not do it while he is praying, lest his soul be saved
thereby, though it is more than doubtful whether he be-
lieved it himself. He allows himself to be packed off to
England, without any motive except that it would for
the time take him farther from a present duty : the
more disagreeable to a nature like his because it was
present, and not a mere matter for speculative consider-
ation. When Goethe made his famous comparison of

222 SHAKESPEARE ONCE MORE.

the acorn planted in a vase which it bursts with Its
growth, and says that in like manner Hamlet is a na-
ture which breaks down under the weight of a duty too
great for it to bear, he seems to have considered the
character too much from one side. Had Hamlet actually
killed himself to escape his too onerous commission,
Goethe's conception of him would have been satisfactory
enough. But Hamlet was hardly a sentimentalist, like
Werther ; on the contrary, he saw things only too
clearly in the dry north-light of the intellect. It is
chance that at last brings him to his end. It would ap-
pear rather that Shakespeare intended to show us an
imaginative temperament brought face to face with actu-
alities, into any clear relation of sympathy with which
it cannot bring itself. The very means that Shakespeare
makes use of to lay upon him the obligation of acting —
the ghost — really seems to make it all the harder for him
to act ; for the spectre but gives an additional excitement
to his imagination and a fresh topic for his scepticism.

I shall not attempt to evolve any high moral signifi-
cance from the play, even if I thought it possible ; for
that would be aside from the present purpose. The
scope of the higher drama is to represent life, not every-
day life, it is true, but life lifted above the plane of
bread-and-butter associations, by nobler reaches of lan-
guage, by the influence at once inspiring and modulating
of verse, by an intenser play of passion condensing that
misty mixture of feeling and reflection which makes the
ordinary atmosphere of existence into flashes of thought
and phrase whose brief, but terrible, illumination prints
the outworn landscape of every-day upon our brains,
with its little motives and mean results, in lines of tell-
tale fire. The moral office of tragedy is to show us our
own weaknesses idealized in grander figures and more aw-
ful results, — to teach us that what we pardon in our-

SHAKESPEARE ONCE MORE. 223

selves as venial faults, if fchey seem to have but slight
influence on our immediate fortunes, have arms as long
as those of kings, and reach forward to the catastrophe
of our lives, that they are dry-rotting the very fibre of
will and conscience, so that, if we should be brought to
the test of a great temptation or a stringent emergency,
we must be involved in a ruin as sudden and complete
as that we shudder at in the unreal scene of the theatre.
But the primary object of a tragedy is not to inculcate a
formal moral. Representing life, it teaches, like life, by
indirection, by those nods and winks that are thrown
away on us blind horses in such profusion. We may
learn, to be sure, plenty of lessons from Shakespeare.
We are not likely to have kingdoms to divide, crowns
foretold us by weird sisters, a father's death to avenge,
or to kill our wives from jealousy ; but Lear may teach
us to draw the line more clearly between a wise gene-
rosity and a loose-handed weakness of giving ; Macbeth,
how one sin involves another, and forever another, by a
fatal parthenogenesis, and that the key which unlocks
forbidden doors to our will or passion leaves a stain on
the hand, that may not be so dark as blood, but that
will not out ; Hamlet, that all the noblest gifts of per-
son, temperament, and mind slip like sand through the
grasp of an infirm purpose ; Othello, that the perpetual
silt of some one weakness, the eddies of a suspicious
temper depositing their one impalpable layer after an-
other, may build up a shoal on which an heroic life and
an otherwise magnanimous nature may bilge and go to
pieces. All this we may learn, and much more, and
Shakespeare was no doubt well aware of all this and
more ; but I do not believe that he wrote his plays
with any such didactic purpose. He knew human na-
ture too well not to know that one thorn of experience
is worth a whole wilderness of warning, — that, where

224 SHAKESPEARE ONCE MORE.

one man shapes his life by precept and example, there
are a thousand who have it shaped for them by impulse
and by circumstances. He did not mean his great trage-
dies for scarecrows, as if the nailing of one hawk to
the barn-door would prevent the next from coming down
souse into the hen-yard. No, it is not the poor bleach-
ing victim hung up to moult its draggled feathers in the
rain that he wishes to show us. He loves the hawk-
nature as well as the hen-nature ; and if he is unequalled
in anything, it is in that sunny breadth of view, that
impregnability of reason, that looks down all ranks and
conditions of men, all fortune and misfortune, with the
equal eye of the pure artist.

Whether I have fancied anything into Hamlet which
the author never dreamed of putting there I do not
greatly concern myself to inquire. Poets are always en-
titled to a royalty on whatever we find in their works ;
for these fine creations as truly build themselves up in
the brain as they are built up with deliberate fore-
thought. Praise art as we wiD, that which the artist
did not mean to put into his work, but which found it-
self there by some generous process of Nature of which
he was as unaware as the blue river is of its rhyme with
the blue sky, has somewhat in it that snatches us into
sympathy with higher things than those which come by
plot and observation. Goethe wrote his Faust in its
earliest form without a thought of the deeper meaning
which the exposition of an age of criticism was to find
in it : without foremeaning it, he had impersonated in
Mephistopheles the genius of his century. Shall this
subtract from the debt we owe him ? Not at all. If
originality were conscious of itself, it would have lost its
right to be original. I believe that Shakespeare intended
to impersonate in Hamlet not a mere metaphysical entity,
but a man of flesh and blood : yet it is certainly curious

SHAKESPEARE ONCE MORE. 225

how prophetically typical the character is of that intro-
version of mind which is so constant a phenomenon of
these latter days, of that over-consciousness which wastes
itself in analyzing the motives of action instead of
acting.

The old painters had a rule, that all compositions
should be pyramidal in form, — a central figure, from
which the others slope gradually away on the two sides.
Shakespeare probably had never heard of this rule, and,
if he had, would not have been likely to respect it more
than he has the so-called classical unities of time and
place. But he understood perfectly the artistic advan-
tages of gradation, contrast, and relief. Taking Hamlet
as the key-note, we find in him weakness of character,
which, on the one hand, is contrasted with the feebleness
that springs from overweening conceit in Polonius and
with frailty of temperament in Ophelia, while, on the
other hand, it is brought into fuller relief by the steady
force of Horatio and the impulsive violence of Laertes,
who is resolute from thoughtlessness, just as Hamlet is
irresolute from overplus of thought.

If we must draw a moral from Hamlet, it would seem
to be, that Will is Fate, and that, Will once abdicating,
the inevitable successor in the regency is Chance. Had
Hamlet acted, instead of musing how good it would be
to act, the king might have been the only victim. As
it is, all the main actors in the story are the fortuitous
sacrifice of his irresolution. We see how a single great
vice of character at last draws to itself as allies and
confederates all other weaknesses of the man, as in civil
wars the timid and the selfish wait to throw themselves
upon the stronger side.

" In Life's small things be resolute and great
To keep thy muscles trained: know'st thou when Fate
Thy measure takes ? or when she '11 sav to thee,
1 1 find thee worthy, do this thing for me ' ? "

10* " O

226 SHAKESPEARE ONCE MORE.

I have said that it was doubtful if Shakespeare had
any conscious moral intention in his writings. I meant
only that he was purely and primarily poet. And
while he was an English poet in a sense that is true
of no other, his method was thoroughly Greek, yet
with this remarkable difference, — that, while the Greek
dramatists took purely national themes and gave them
a universal interest by their mode of treatment, he
took what may be called cosmopolitan traditions, le-
gends of human nature, and nationalized them by the
infusion of his perfectly Anglican breadth of character
and solidity of understanding. Wonderful as his ima-
gination and fancy are, his perspicacity and artistic
discretion are more so. This country tradesman's son,
coining up to London, could set high-bred wits, like
Beaumont, uncopiable lessons hi drawing gentlemen
such as are seen nowhere else but on the canvas of
Titian ; he could take Ulysses away from Homer and
expand the shrewd and crafty islander into a statesman
whose words are the pith of history. But what makes
him yet more exceptional was his utterly unimpeachable
judgment, and that poise of character which enabled
him to be at once the greatest of poets and so unnotice-
able a good citizen as to leave no incidents for biography.
His material was never far-sought ; (it is still disputed
whether the fullest head of which we have record were
cultivated beyond the range of grammar-school prece-
dent !) but he used it with a poetic instinct which we
cannot parallel, identified himself with it, yet remained
always its born and questionless master. He finds the
Clown and Fool upon the stage, — he makes them the
tools of his pleasantry, his satire, and even his pathos ;
he finds a fading rustic superstition, and shapes out of
it ideal Pucks, Titanias, and Ariels, in whose existence
statesmen and scholars believe forever. Always poet, he

SHAKESPEARE ONCE MORE. 227

subjects all to the ends of his art, and gives in Hamlet
the churchyard ghost, but with the cothurnus on, — the
messenger of God's revenge against murder ; always
philosopher, he traces in Macbeth the metaphysics of
apparitions, painting the shadowy Banquo only on the
o'erwrought brain of the murderer, and staining the
hand of his wife-accomplice (because she was the more
refined and higher nature) with the disgustful blood-spot
that is not there. We say he had no moral intention,
for the reason, that, as artist, it was not his to deal with
the realities, but only with the shows of things ; yet,
with a temperament so just, an insight so inevitable as
his, it was impossible that the moral reality, which un-
derlies the mirage of the poet's vision, should not always
be suggested. His humor and satire are never of the
destructive kind ; what he does in that way is suggestive
only, — not breaking bubbles with Thor's hammer, but
puffing them away with the breath of a Clown, or shiv-
ering them with the light laugh of a genial cynic. Men
go about to prove the existence of a God ! Was it a bit
of phosphorus, that brain whose creations are so real,
that, mixing with them, we feel as if we ourselves were
but fleeting magic-lantern shadows ?

But higher even than the genius we rate the charac-
ter of this unique man, and the grand impersonality of
what he wrote. What has he told us of himself 1 In
our self-exploiting nineteenth century, with its melan-
choly liver-complaint, how serene and high he seems !
If he had sorrows, he has made them the woof of ever-
lasting consolation to his kind ; and if, as poets are wont
to whine, the outward world was cold to him, its biting
air did but trace itself in loveliest frost-work of fancy on
the many windows of that self-centred and cheerful
souL

NEW ENGLAND TWO CENTIMES AGO."

THE history of New England is written imperishably
on the face of a continent, and in characters as benefi-
cent as they are enduring. In the Old World national
pride feeds itself with the record of battles and con-
quests ; — battles which proved nothing and settled
nothing ; conquests which shifted a boundary on the
map, and put one ugly head instead of another on the
coin which the people paid to the tax-gatherer. But
wherever the New-Englander travels among the sturdy
commonwealths which have sprung from the seed of the
Mayflower, churches, schools, colleges, tell him where
the men of his race have been, or their influence pene-
trated ; and an intelligent freedom is the monument of
conquests whose results are not to be measured in square
miles. Next to the fugitives whom Moses led out of
Egypt, the little ship-load of outcasts who landed at
Plymouth two centuries and a half ago are destined to
influence the future of the world. The spiritual thirst
of mankind has for ages been quenched at Hebrew foun-
tains ; but the embodiment in human institutions of

* History of New England during the Stuart Dynasty. By JOHN
GORHAM PALFREY. Vol. III. Boston : Little, Brown, & Co. 1864.
pp. xxii, 648.

Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society. Third Series,
Vols. IX. and X. Fourth Series, Vols. VI. and VII.

NEW ENGLAND TWO CENTURIES AGO. 229

truths uttered by the Son of man eighteen centuries
ago was to be mainly the work of Puritan thought
and Puritan self-devotion. Leave New England out in
the cold ! While you are plotting it, she sits by every
fireside in the land where there is piety, culture, and
free thought.

Faith in God, faith in man, faith in work, — this is
the short formula in which we may sum up the teaching
of the founders of New England, a creed ample enough
for this life and the next. If their municipal regula-
tions smack somewhat of Judaism, yet there can be no
nobler aim or more practical wisdom than theirs ; for it
was to make the law of man a living counterpart of the
law of God, in their highest conception of it. Were
they too earnest in the strife to save their souls alive ?
That is still the problem which every wise and brave
man is lifelong in solving. If the Devil take a less
hateful shape to us than to our fathers, he is as busy
with us as with them ; and if we cannot find it in our
hearts to break with a gentleman of so much worldly
wisdom, who gives such admirable dinners, and whose
manners are so perfect, so much the worse for us.

Looked at on the outside, New England history is dry
and unpicturesque. There is no rustle of silks, no wav-
ing of plumes, no clink of golden spurs. Our sympa-
thies are not awakened by the changeful destinies, the
rise and fall, of great families, whose doom was in their
blood. Instead of all this, we have the homespun fates
of Cephas and Prudence repeated in an infinite series of
peaceable sameness, and finding space enough for record
in the family Bible ; we have the noise of axe and ham-
mer and saw, an apotheosis of dogged work, where, re-
versing the fairy-tale, nothing is left to luck, and, if
there be any poetry, it is something that cannot be
helped, — the waste of the water over the dam. Ex-

230 NEW ENGLAND TWO CENTURIES AGO.

trinsically, it is prosaic and plebeian ; intrinsically, it is
poetic and noble ; for it is, perhaps, the most perfect in-
carnation of an idea the world has ever seen. That idea
was not to found a democracy, nor to charter the city
of New Jerusalem by an act of the General Court, as
gentlemen seem to think whose notions of history and
human nature rise like an exhalation from the good
things at a Pilgrim Society dinner. Not in the least.
They had no faith in the Divine institution of a system
which gives Teague, because he can dig, as much influ-
ence as Ralph, because he can think, nor in personal at
the expense of general freedom. Their view of human
rights was not so limited that it could not take in hu-
man relations and duties also. They would have been
likely to answer the claim, " I am as good as anybody,"
by a quiet " Yes, for some things, but not for others ; as
good, doubtless, in your place, where all things are good."
What the early settlers of Massachusetts did intend,
and what they accomplished, was the founding here of a
new England, and a better one, where the political super-
stitions and abuses of the old should never have leave to
take root. So much, we may say, they deliberately in-
tended. No nobles, either lay or cleric, no great landed
estates, and no universal ignorance as the seed-plot of
vice and unreason ; but an elective magistracy and clergy,
land for all who would till it, and reading and writing,
will ye nill ye, instead. Here at last, it would seem,
simple manhood is to have a chance to play his stake
against Fortune with honest dice, uncogged by those
three hoary sharpers, Prerogative, Patricianism, and
Priestcraft. Whoever has looked into the pamphlets
published in England during the Great Rebellion cannot
but have been struck by the fact, that the principles and
practice of the Puritan Colony had begun to react with
considerable force on the mother country ; and the pol-

NEW ENGLAND TWO CENTURIES AGO. 231

icy of the retrograde party there, after the Restoration,
in its dealings with New England, finds a curious par-
allel as to its motives (time will show whether as to its
results) in the conduct of the same party towards Amer-
ica during the last four years.* This influence and this
fear alike bear witness to the energy of the principles at
work here.

We have said that the details of New England his-
tory were essentially dry and unpoetic. Everything is
near, authentic, and petty. There is no mist of dis-
tance to soften outlines, no mirage of tradition to give
characters and events an imaginative loom. So much
downright work was perhaps never wrought on the
earth's surface in the same space of time as during the
first forty years after the settlement. But mere work
is unpicturesque, and void of sentiment. Irving in-
stinctively divined and admirably illustrated in his
" Knickerbocker " the humorous element which lies in
this nearness of view, this clear, prosaic daylight of
modernness, and this poverty of stage properties, which
makes the actors and the deeds they were concerned in
seem ludicrously small when contrasted with the semi-
mythic grandeur in which we have clothed them, as we
look backward from the crowned result, and fancy a
cause as majestic as our conception of the effect. There
was, indeed, one poetic side to the existence otherwise
so narrow and practical; and to have conceived this,
however partially, is the one original and American
thing in Cooper. This diviner glimpse illumines the
lives of our Daniel Boones, the man of civilization and
old-world ideas confronted with our forest solitudes, —
confronted, too, for the first time, with his real self, and
BO led gradually to disentangle the original substance of
his manhood from the artificial results of culture. Here*
* Written in December, 1864.

232 NEW ENGLAND TWO CENTURIES AGO.

was our new Adam of the wilderness, forced to namd
anew, not the visible creation of God, but the invisible
creation of man, in those forms that lie at the base of
social institutions, so insensibly moulding personal char-
acter and controlling individual action. Here is the pro-
tagonist of our New World epic, a figure as poetic as
that of Achilles, as ideally representative as that of Don
Quixote, as romantic in its relation to our homespun
and plebeian mythus as Arthur in his to the mailed and
plumed cycle of chivalry. We do not mean, of course,
that Cooper's " Leatherstocking " is all this or anything
like it, but that the character typified in him is ideally
and potentially all this and more.

But whatever was poetical in the lives of the early
New-Englanders had something shy, if not sombre,
about it. If their natures flowered, it was out of sight,
like the fern. It was in the practical that they showed
their true quality, as Englishmen are wont. It has
been the fashion lately with a few feeble-minded persons
to undervalue the New England Puritans, as if they
were nothing more than gloomy and narrow-minded
fanatics. But all the charges brought against these
large-minded and far-seeing men are precisely those which
a really able fanatic, Joseph de Maistre, lays at the door
of Protestantism. Neither a knowledge of human na-
ture nor of history justifies us in confounding, as is
commonly done, the Puritans of Old and New England,
or the English Puritans of the third with those of the
fifth decade of the seventeenth century. Fanaticism,
or, to call it by its milder name, enthusiasm, is only
powerful and active so long as it is aggressive. Estab-
lish it firmly in power, and it becomes conservatism,
whether it will or no. A sceptre once put in the hand,
the grip is instinctive ; and he who is firmly seated in
authority soon learns to think security, and not progress,

NEW ENGLAND TWO CENTURIES AGO. 233

the highest lesson of statecraft. From the summit of
power men no longer turn their eyes upward, but be-
gin to look about them. Aspiration sees only one side
of every question ; possession, many. And the English
Puritans, after their revolution was accomplished, stood
in even a more precarious position than most successful
assailants of the prerogative of whatever is to continue
in being. They had carried a political end by means
of a religious revival. The fulcrum on which they
rested their lever to overturn the existing order of things
(as history always placidly calls the particular forms of
disorder for the time being) was in the soul of man. They
could not renew the fiery gush of enthusiasm, when
once the molten metal had begun to stiffen in the mould
of policy and precedent. The religious element of Pu-
ritanism became insensibly merged in the political ; and,
its one great man taken away, it died, as passions have
done before, of possession. It was one thing to shout
with Cromwell before the battle of Dunbar, " Now, Lord,
arise, and let thine enemies be scattered ! " and to snuf-
fle, " Rise, Lord, and keep us safe in our benefices, our
sequestered estates, and our five per cent ! " Puritan-
ism meant something when Captain Hodgson, riding out
to battle through the morning mist, turns over the com-
mand of his troop to a lieutenant, and stays to hear the
prayer of a cornet, there was " so much of God in it."
Become traditional, repeating the phrase without the
spirit, reading the present backward as if it were writ-
ten in Hebrew, translating Jehovah by " I was " instead
of " I am," — it was no more like its former self than
the hollow drum made of Zisca's skin was like the grim
captain whose soul it had once contained. Yet the change
was inevitable, for it is not safe to confound the things
of Csesar with the things of God. Some honest repub-
licans, like Ludlow, were never able to comprehend the

234 NEW ENGLAND TWO CENTURIES AGO.

chilling contrast between the ideal aim and the material
fulfilment, and looked askance on the strenuous reign
of Oliver, — that rugged boulder of primitive manhood
lying lonely there on the dead level of the century, —
as if some crooked changeling had been laid in the era
die instead of that fair babe of the Commonwealth they
had dreamed. Truly there is a tide in the affairs of
men, but there is no gulf-stream setting forever in one
direction ; and those waves of enthusiasm on whose
crumbling crests we sometimes see nations lifted for a
gleaming moment are wont to have a gloomy trough
before and behind.

But the founders of New England, though they must
have sympathized vividly with the struggles and tri-
umphs of their brethren in the mother country, were
never subjected to the same trials and temptations,
never hampered with the same lumber of usages and
tradition. They were not driven to win power by
doubtful and desperate ways, nor to maintain it by any
compromises of the ends which make it worth having.
From the outset they were builders, without need of
first pulling down, whether to make room or to provide
material. For thirty years after the colonization of the
Bay, they had absolute power to mould as they would
the character of their adolescent commonwealth. Dur-
ing this time a whole generation would have grown to
manhood who knew the Old World only by report, in
whose habitual thought kings, nobles, and bishops would
be as far away from all present and practical concern as
the figures in a fairy-tale, and all whose memories and
associations, all their unconscious training by eye and
ear, were New English wholly. Nor were the men whose
Influence was greatest in shaping the framework and the
policy of the Colony, in any true sense of the word, fa-
natics. Enthusiasts, perhaps, they were, but with them

NEW ENGLAND TWO CENTURIES AGO. 235

the fermentation had never gone further than the ripe-
ness of the vinous stage. Disappointment had never
made it acetous, nor had it ever putrefied into the tur-
bid zeal of Fifth Monarchism and sectarian whimsey.
There is no better ballast for keeping the mind steady on
its keel, and saving it from all risk of crankiness, than
business. And they were business men, men of facts
and figures no less than of religious earnestness. The
sum of two hundred thousand pounds had been invested
in their undertaking, — a sum, for that time, truly enor-
mous as the result of private combination for a doubtful
experiment. That their enterprise might succeed, they
must show a balance on the right side of the counting-
house ledger, as well as in their private accounts with
their own souls. The liberty of praying when and how
they would, must be balanced with an ability of paying
when and as they ought. Nor is the resulting fact in
this case at variance with the a priori theory. They
succeeded in making their thought the life and soul of a
body politic, still powerful, still benignly operative, after
two centuries ; a thing which no mere fanatic ever did
or ever will accomplish. Sobejv, earnest, and thoughtful
men, it was no Utopia, no New Atlantis, no realization
of a splendid dream, which they had at heart, but the
establishment of the divine principle of Authority on
the common interest and the common consent ; the
making, by a contribution from the free-will of all, a
power which should curb and guide the free-will of each
for the general good. If they were stern in their deal-
ings with sectaries, it should be remembered that the
Colony was in fact the private property of the Massa-
chusetts Company, that unity was essential to its suc-
cess, and that John of Leyden had taught them how
unendurable by the nostrils of honest men is the cor-
ruption of the right of private judgment in the evil and

236 NEW ENGLAND TWO CENTURIES AGO.

selfish hearts of men when no thorough mental training
has developed the understanding and given the judg-
ment its needful means of comparison and correction.
They knew that liberty in the hands of feeble-minded
and unreasoning persons (and all the worse if they are
honest) means nothing more than the supremacy of
thoir particular form of imbecility ; means nothing less,
therefore, than downright chaos, a Bedlam-chaos of
monomaniacs and bores. What was to be done with men
and women, who bore conclusive witness to the fall of
man by insisting on walking up the broad-aisle of the
meeting-house in a costume which that event had put
forever out of fashion ? About their treatment of
witches, too, there has been a great deal of ignorant
babble. Puritanism had nothing whatever to do with it.
They acted under a delusion, which, with an exception
here and there (and those mainly medical men, like
Wierus and Webster), darkened the understanding of all
Christendom. Dr. Henry More was no Puritan ; and
his letter to Glanvil, prefixed to the third edition of the
" Sadducisnius Triumphatus," was written in 1678, only
fourteen years before the trials at Salem. Bekker's
" Bezauberte Welt " was published in 1693 ; and in the
Preface he speaks of the difficulty of overcoming " the
prejudices in which not only ordinary men, but the
learned also, are obstinate." In Hathaway's case, 1702,
Chief-Justice Holt, in charging the jury, expresses no
disbelief in the possibility of witchcraft, and the indict-
ment implies its existence. Indeed, the natural reaction
from the Salern mania of 1692 put an end to belief in
devilish compacts and demoniac possessions sooner in
New England than elsewhere. The last we hear of it
there is in 1720, when Rev. Mr. Turell of Medford de-
tected and exposed an attempted cheat by two girls.
Even in 1G92, it was the foolish breath of Cotton Mather

NEW ENGLAND TWO CENTURIES AGO. 237

and others of the clergy that blew the dying embers of
this ghastly superstition into a flame ; and they were
actuated partly by a desire to bring about a religious
revival, which might stay for a while the hastening lapse
of their own authority, and still more by that credulous
scepticism of feeble-minded piety which dreads the cut-
ting away of an orthodox tumor of misbelief, as if the
life-blood of faith would follow, and would keep even a
stumbling-block in the way of salvation, if only enough
generations had tripped over it to make it venerable.
The witches were condemned on precisely the same
grounds that in our day led to the condemnation of
" Essays and Reviews."

But Puritanism was already in the decline when such
things were possible. What had been a wondrous and
intimate experience of the soul, a flash into the very
crypt and basis of man's nature from the fire of trial,
had become ritual and tradition. In prosperous times
the faith of one generation becomes the formality of the
next. " The necessity of a reformation," set forth by
order of the Synod which met at Cambridge in 1679,
though no doubt overstating the case, shows how much
even at that time the ancient strictness had been loos-
ened. The country had grown rich, its commerce was
large, and wealth did its natural work in making life
softer and more worldly, commerce in deprovincializing
the minds of those engaged in it. But Puritanism had
already done its duty. As there are certain creatures
whose whole being seems occupied with an egg-laying
errand they are sent upon, incarnate ovipositors, their
bodies but bags to hold this precious deposit, their legs
of use only to carry them where they may safeliest be
rid of it, so sometimes a generation seems to have no
other end than the conception and ripening of certain
germs. Its blind stirrings, its apparently aimless seek-

238 NEW ENGLAND TWO CENTURIES AGO.

ing hither and thither, are but the driving of an instinct
to be done with its parturient function toward these prin-
ciples of future life and power. Puritanism, believing
itself quick with the seed of religious liberty, laid, with-
out knowing it, the egg of democracy. The English
Puritans pulled down church and state to rebuild Zion
on the ruins, and all the while it was not Zion, but
America, they were building. But if their millennium
went by, like the rest, and left men still human ; if
they, like so many saints and martyrs before them, lis-
tened in vain for the sound of that trumpet which was
to summon all souls to a resurrection from the body of
this death which men call life, — it is wt for us, at least,
to forget the heavy debt we owe them. It was the drums
of Naseby and Dunbar that gathered the minute-men on
Lexington Common ; it was the red dint of the axe on
Charles's block that marked One in our era. The Puri-
tans had their faults. They were narrow, ungenial ;
they could not understand the text, " I have piped to
you and ye have not danced," nor conceive that saving
one's soul should be the cheerfullest, and not the dreari-
est, of businesses. Their preachers had a way, like the
painful Mr. Perkins, of pronouncing the word damn with
such an emphasis as left a doleful echo in their auditors'
ears a good while after. And it was natural that men who
captained or accompanied the exodus from existing forms
and associations into the doubtful wilderness that led to
the promised land, should find more to their purpose in
the Old Testament than in the New. As respects the
New England settlers, however visionary some of their
religious tenets may have been, their political ideas sa-
vored of the realty, and it was no Nephelococcygia of
which they drew the plan, but of a commonwealth whose
foundation was to rest on solid and familiar earth. If
what they did was done in a corner, the results of it

NEW ENGLAND TWO CENTURIES AGO. 239

were to be felt to the ends of the earth j and the figure
of Winthrop should be as venerable in history as that
of Romulus is barbarously grand in legend.

I am inclined to think that many of our national char-
acteristics, which are sometimes attributed to climate
and sometimes to institutions, are traceable to the influ-
ences of Puritan descent. We are apt to forget how very
large a proportion of our population is descended from
emigrants who came over before 1660. Those emi-
grants were in great part representatives of that element
of English character which was most susceptible of re-
ligious impressions; in other words, the most earnest
and imaginative. Our people still differ from their
English cousins (as they are fond of calling themselves
when they are afraid we may do them a mischief) in a
certain capacity for enthusiasm, a devotion to abstract
principle, an openness to ideas, a greater aptness for
intuitions than for the slow processes of the syllogism,
and, as derivative from this, in minds of looser texture,
a light-armed, skirmishing habit of thought, and a posi-
tive preference of the birds in the bush, — an excellent
quality of character before you have your bird in the hand.

There have been two great distributing centres of the
English race on this continent, Massachusetts and Vir-
ginia. Each has impressed the character of its early
legislators on the swarms it has sent forth. Their ideas
are in some fundamental respects the opposites of each
other, and we can only account for it by an antagonism
of thought beginning with the early framers of their
respective institutions. New England abolished caste ;
in Virginia they still talk of " quality folks." But it
was in making education not only common to all, but in
some sense compulsory on all, that the destiny of the
free republics of America was practically settled. Every
man was to be trained, not only to the use of arms, but

240 NEW ENGLAND TWO CENTURIES AGO.

of his wits also ; and it is these which alone make the
others effective weapons for the maintenance of freedom.
You may disarm the hands, but not the brains, of a
people, and to know what should be defended is the first
condition of successful defence. Simple as it seems, it
was a great discovery that the key of knowledge could
turn both ways, that it could open, as well as lock, the
door of power to the many. The only things a New-
Englander was ever locked out of were the jails. It is
quite true that our Republic is the heir of the English
Commonwealth; but as we trace events backward to
their causes, we shall find it true also, that what made
our Revolution a foregone conclusion was that act of the
General Court, passed in May, 1647, which established
the system of common schools. " To the end that
learning may not be buried in the graves of our fore-
fathers in Church and Commonwealth, the Lord as-
sisting our endeavors, it is therefore ordered by this
Court and authority thereof, that every township in this
jurisdiction, after the Lord hath increased them to fifty
householders, shall then forthwith appoint one within
their towns to teach all such children as shall resort to
him to write and read."

Passing through some Massachusetts village, perhaps at
a distance from any house, it may be in the midst of a
piece of woods where four roads meet, one may sometimes
even yet see a small square one-story building, whose use
would not be long doubtful. It is summer, and the
flickering shadows of forest-leaves dapple the roof of the
little porch, whose door stands wide, and shows, hanging
on either hand, rows of straw hats and bonnets, that
look as if they had done good service. As yon pass the
open windows, you hear whole platoons of high-pitched
voices discharging words of two or three syllables with
wonderful precision and unanimity. Then there is 9

NEW ENGLAND TWO CENTURIES AGO. 241

pause, and the voice of the officer in command is heard
reproving some raw recruit whose vocal musket hung
fire. Then the drill of the small infantry begins anew, but
pauses again because some urchin — who agrees with
Voltaire that the superfluous is a very necessary thing —
insists on spelling " subtraction" with an s too much.

If you had the good fortune to be born and bred in
the Bay State, your mind is thronged with half-sad,
half-humorous recollections. The a-b abs of little voices
long since hushed in the mould, or ringing now in the
pulpit, at the bar, or in the Senate-chamber, come back
to the ear of memory. You remember the high stool
on which culprits used to be elevated with the tall paper
fool's-cap on their heads, blushing to the ears • and you
think with wonder how you have seen them since as
men climbing the world's penance-stools of ambition
without a blush, and gladly giving everything for life's
caps and bells. And you have pleasanter memories of
going after pond-lilies, of angling for horn-pouts, — that
queer bat among the fishes, — of nutting, of walking
over the creaking snow-crust in winter, when the warm
breath of every household was curling up silently in the
keen blue air. You wonder if life has any rewards
more solid and permanent than the Spanish dollar that
was hung around your neck to be restored again next day,
and conclude sadly that it was but too true a prophecy
and emblem of all worldly success. But your moral-
izing is broken short off by a rattle of feet and the pour-
ing forth of the whole swarm, — the boys dancing and
shouting, — the mere effervescence of the fixed air of
youth and animal spirits uncorked, — the sedater girls in
confidential twos and threes decanting secrets out of the
mouth of one cape-bonnet into that of another. Times have
changed since the jackets and trousers used to draw up
on one side of the road, and the petticoats on the other;

a p

242 NEW ENGLAND TWO CENTURIES AGO.

to salute with bow and courtesy the white neckcloth of
the parson or the squire, if it chanced to pass during
intermission.

Now this little building, and others like it, were an
original kind of fortification invented by the founders
of New England. They are the martello-towers that
protect our coast. This was the great discovery of our
Puritan forefathers. They were the first lawgivers who
saw clearly and enforced practically the simple moral and
political truth, that knowledge was not an alms to be
dependent on the chance charity of private men or the
precarious pittance of a trust-fund, but a sacred debt
which the Commonwealth owed to every one of her
children. The opening of the first grammar-school was
the opening of the first trench against monopoly in
church and state ; the first row of trammels and pot-
hooks which the little Shearjashubs and Elkanahs blotted
and blubbered across their copy-books, was the pream-
ble to the Declaration of Independence. The men who
gave every man the chance to become a landholder, who
made the transfer of land easy, and put knowledge
within the reach of all, have been called narrow-minded,
because they were intolerant. But intolerant of what 1
Of what they believed to be dangerous nonsense, which,
if left free, would destroy the last hope of civil and re-
ligious freedom. They had not come here that every
man might do that which seemed good in his own eyes,
but in the sight of God. Toleration, moreover, is some-
thing which is won, not granted. It is the equilibrium
of neutralized forces. The Puritans had no notion of
tolerating mischief. They looked upon their little com-
monwealth as upon their own private estate and home-
Btead, as they had a right to do, and would no more
allow the Devil's religion of unreason to be preached
therein, than we should permit a prize-fight in our gar

NEW ENGLAND TWO CENTURIES AGO. 243

dens. They were narrow ; in other words they had an
edge to them, as men that serve in great emergencies
must ; for a Gordian knot is settled sooner with a sword
than a beetle.

The founders of New England are commonly repre-
sented in the after-dinner oratory of their descendants
as men "before their time," as it is called; in other
words, deliberately prescient of events resulting from
new relations of circumstances, or even from circum-
stances new in themselves, and therefore altogether alien
from their own experience. Of course, such a class of
men is to be reckoned among those non-existent human
varieties so gravely catalogued by the ancient natural-
ists. If a man could shape his action with reference to
what should happen a century after his death, surely it
might be asked of him to call in the help of thatr easier
foreknowledge which reaches from one day to the next,
— a power of prophecy whereof we have no example. I
do not object to a wholesome pride of ancestry, though a
little mythical, if it be accompanied with the feeling
that noblesse oblige, and do not result merely in a placid
self-satisfaction with our own mediocrity, as if greatness,
like righteousness, could be imputed. We can pardon it
even in conquered races, like the Welsh and Irish, who
make up to themselves for present degradation by ima-
ginary empires in the past whose boundaries they can
extend at will, carrying the bloodless conquests of fancy
over regions laid down upon no map, and concerning
which authentic history is enviously dumb. Those long
beadrolls of Keltic kings cannot tyrannize over us, and
we can be patient so long as our own crowns are un-
cracked by the shillalah sceptres of their actual repre-
sentatives. In our own case, it would not be amiss, per-
haps, if we took warning by the example of Teague
and Taffy. At least, I think it would be wise in out

244 NEW ENGLAND TWO CENTURIES AGO.

orators not to put forward so prominently the claim of
the Yankee to universal dominion, and his intention to
enter upon it forthwith. If we do our duties as honest-
ly and as much in the fear of God as our forefathers did,
we need not trouble ourselves much about other titles to
empire. The broad foreheads and long heads will win
the day at last in spite of all heraldry, and it will be
enough if we feel as keenly as our Puritan founders did
that those organs of empire may be broadened and
lengthened by culture.* That our self-complacency
should not increase the complacency of outsiders is not
to be wondered at. As we sometimes take credit to
ourselves (since all commendation of our ancestry is in-
direct self-flattery) for what the Puritans fathers never
were, so there are others who, to gratify a spite against
their descendants, blame them for not having been what
they could not be ; namely, before their time in such
matters as slavery, witchcraft, and the like. The view,
whether of friend or foe, is equally unhistorical, nay,
without the faintest notion of all that makes history
worth having as a teacher. That our grandfathers
shared in the prejudices of their day is all that makes
them human to us ; and that nevertheless they could
act bravely and wisely on occasion makes them only the
more venerable. If certain barbarisms and supersti-
tions disappeared earlier in New England than else-
where, not by the decision of exceptionally enlightened
or humane judges, but by force of public opinion, that
is the fact that is interesting and instructive for us. I
never thought it an abatement of Hawthorne's genius that
he came lineally from one who sat in judgment on the
witches in 1692 ; it was interesting rather to trace some-

* It is curious, that, when Cromwell proposed to transfer a colony
from New England to Ireland, one of the conditions insisted on iy
Massachusetts was that a college should be established.

NEW ENGLAND TWO CENTURIES AGO. 245

thing hereditary in the sombre character of his imagina-
tion, continually vexing itself to account for the origin
of evil, and baffled for want of that simple solution in a
personal Devil.

But I have no desire to discuss the merits or de-
merits of the Puritans, having long ago learned the wis-
dom of saving my sympathy for more modern objects
than Hecuba. My object is to direct the attention of
my readers to a collection of documents where they may
see those worthies as they were in their daily living and
thinking. The collections of our various historical and
antiquarian societies can hardly be said to be published
in the strict sense of the word, and few consequently are
aware how much they contain of interest for the general
reader no less than the special student. The several
volumes of " Winthrop Papers," in especial, are a mine
of entertainment. Here we have the Puritans painted
by themselves, and, while we arrive at a truer notion of
the characters of some among them, and may according-
ly sacrifice to that dreadful superstition of being use-
fully employed which makes so many bores and bored,
we can also furtively enjoy the oddities of thought and
speech, the humors of the time, which our local histo-
rians are too apt to despise as inconsidered trifles. For
myself I confess myself heretic to the established the-
ory of the gravity of history, and am not displeased
with an opportunity to smile behind my hand at any
ludicrous interruption of that sometimes wearisome cere-
monial. I am not sure that I would not sooner give
up Raleigh spreading his cloak to keep the royal Dian's
feet from the mud, than that awful judgment upon the
courtier whose Atlantean thighs leaked away in bran
through the rent in his trunk-hose. The painful fact
that Fisher had his head cut off is somewhat mitigated
to me by the circumstance that the Pope should have

246 NEW ENGLAND TWO CENTURIES AGO.

sent him, of all things in the world, a cardinal's hat after
that incapacitation. Theology herself becomes less un-
amiable to me when I find the Supreme Pontiff writing
to the Council of Trent that "they should begin with
original sin, maintaining yet a due respect for the Em-
peror" That infallibility should thus courtesy to de-
corum, shall make me think better of it while I live.
I shall accordingly endeavor to give my readers what
amusement I can, leaving it to themselves to extract
solid improvement from the volumes before us, which in-
clude a part of the correspondence of three generations
of Winthrops.

Let me premise that there are two men above all
others for whom our respect is heightened by these let-
ters, — the elder John Winthrop and Roger Williams.
Winthrop appears throughout as a truly magnanimous
and noble man in an unobtrusive way, — a kind of great-
ness that makes less noise in the world, but is on the
whole more solidly satisfying than most others, — a man
who has been dipped in the river of God (a surer bap-
tism than Styx or dragon's blood) till his character is of
perfect proof, and who appears plainly as the very soul
and life of the young Colony. Very reverend and godly
he truly was, and a respect not merely ceremonious, but
personal, a respect that savors of love, shows itself in
the letters addressed to him. Charity and tolerance
flow so naturally from the pen of Williams that it is
plain they were in his heart. He does not show himself
a very strong or very wise man, but a thoroughly gentle
and good one. His affection for the two Winthrops is
evidently of the warmest. We suspect that he lived to
see that there was more reason in the drum-head relig-
ious discipline which made him, against his will, the
founder of a commonwealth, than he may have thought
at first. But for the fanaticism (as it is the fashion to

NEW ENGLAND TWO CENTURIES AGO. 247

call the sagacious straitness) of the abler men who knew
how to root the English stock firmly in this new soil on
either side of him, his little plantation could never have
existed, and he himself would have been remembered
only, if at all, as one of the jarring atoms in a chaos of
otherwise-mindedness.

Two other men, Emanuel Downing and Hugh Peter,
leave a positively unpleasant savor in the nostrils. Each
is selfish in his own way, — Downing with the shrewd-
ness of an attorney, Peter with that clerical unction
which in a vulgar nature so easily degenerates into
greasiness. Neither of them was the man for a forlorn
hope, and both returned to England when the civil war
opened prospect of preferment there. Both, we suspect,
were inclined to value their Puritanism for its rewards
in this world rather than the next. Downing's son, Sir
George, was basely prosperous, making the good cause
pay him so long as it was solvent, and then selling out
in season to betray his old commander, Colonel Okey,
to the shambles at Charing Cross. Peter became a colo-
nel in the Parliament's army, and under the Protecto-
rate one of Cromwell's chaplains. On his trial, after
the Restoration, he made a poor figure, in striking con-
trast to some of the brave men who suffered with him.
At his execution a shocking brutality was shown.
" When Mr Cook was cut down and brought to be quar-
tered, one they called Colonel Turner calling to the
Sheriff's men to bring Mr Peters near, that he might
see it ; and by and by the Hangman came to him all
besmeared in blood, and rubbing his bloody hands to-
gether, he tauntingly asked, Come, how do you like this,
Mr. Peters ? How do you like this work ? " * This Colo-

* State Trials, II. 409. One would not reckon too closely with a
man on trial for his life, but there is something pitiful in Peter's repre*
senting himself as coming back to England " out of the West Indias,"
in order to evade any complicity with suspefcled New England.

248 NEW ENGLAND TWO CENTURIES AGO.

nel Turner can hardly have been other than the one
who four years later came to the hangman's hands for
robbery ; and whose behavior, both in the dock and at
the gallows, makes his trial one of the most entertain-
ing as a display of character. Peter would seem to
have been one of those men gifted with what is some-
times called eloquence ; that is, the faculty of stating
things powerfully from momentary feeling, and not from
that conviction of the higher reason which alone can
give force and permanence to words. His letters show
him subject, like others of like temperament, to fits of
" hypocondriacal melancholy," and the only witness he
called on his trial was to prove that he was confined to
his lodgings by such an attack on the day of the king's
beheading. He seems to have been subject to this mal-
ady at convenience, as some women to hysterics. Hon-
est John Endicott plainly had small confidence in him,
and did not think him the right man to represent the
Colony in England. There is a droll resolve in the
Massachusetts records by which he is " desired to write
to Holland for 500/. worth of peter, & 40/. worth of
match." It is with a match that we find him burning
his fingers in the present correspondence.

Peter seems to have entangled himself somehow with
a Mrs. Deliverance Sheffield, whether maid or widow no-
where appears, but presumably the latter. The follow-
ing statement of his position is amusing enough : " I
have sent Mrs D. Sh. letter, which puts mee to new
troubles, for though shee takes liberty upon my Cossen
Downing's speeches, yet (Good Sir) let mee not be a foole
in Israel. I had many good answers to yesterday's worke
[a Fast] and amongst the rest her letter ; which (if her
owne) doth argue more wisedome than I thought shee
had. You have often sayd I could not leave her ; what
to doe is very considerable. Could I with comfort &

NEW ENGLAND TWO CENTURIES AGO. 249

credit desist, this seemes best : could I goe on & content

myselfe, that were good For though I now

seeme free agayne, yet the depth I know not. Had
shee come over with me, I thinke I had bin quieter.
This shee may know, that I have sought God earnestly,
that the nexte weeke I shall bee riper : — I doubt shee
gaynes most b}^ such writings : & shee deserves most
where shee is further of. If you shall amongst you
advise mee to write to hir, I shall forthwith ; our towne
lookes upon mee contracted & so I have sayd myselfe ;
what wonder the charge [change 1] would make, I know
not." Again : " Still pardon my offensive boldnes : I
know not well whither Mrs Sh. have set mee at liberty
or not : my conclusion is, that if you find I cannot
make an honorable retreat, then I shall desire to ad-
vance <rvv 0ew. Of you I now expect your last advise,
viz : whither I must goe on or of, saluo evangelij honor e :
if shee bee in good earnest to leave all agitations this
way, then I stand still & wayt God's mind concerning

mee If I had much mony I would part with it

to her free, till wee heare what England doth, supposing
I may bee called to some imployment that will not suit
a marryed estate " : (here another mode of escape pre-
sents itself, and he goes on :) " for indeed (Sir) some must
looke out & I have very strong thoughts to speake with the
Duitch Governor <fe lay some way there for a supply &c."
At the end of the letter, an objection to the lady herself
occurs to him : " Once more for Mrs Sh : I had from Mr
Hibbins & others, her fellowpassengers, sad discourage-
ments where they saw her in her trim. I would not
come of with dishonor, nor come on with griefe, or omi-
nous hesitations." On all this shilly-shally we have a
shrewd comment in a letter of Endicott : "I cannot but
acquaint you with my thoughts concerning Mr Peter
since hee receaued a letter from Mrs Sheffield, which
11*

250 NEW ENGLAND TWO CENTURIES AGO.

was yesterday in the eveninge after the Fast, shee seem-
ing in her letter to abate of her afFeccions towards him
& dislikinge to come to Salem vppon such termes as he
had written. I finde now that hee begins to play her
parte, & if I mistake not, you will see him as greatly
in loue with her (if shee will but hold of a little) as
euer shee was with him ; but he conceales it what he
can as yett. The begininge of the next weeke you
will heare further from him." The widow was evidently
more than a match for poor Peter.

It should appear that a part of his trouble arose from
his having coquetted also with a certain Mrs. Ruth,
about whom he was " dealt with by Mrs Amee, Mr
Phillips & 2 more of the Church, our Elder being one.
When Mr Phillips with much violence & sharpnes
charged mee home .... that I should hinder the
mayd of a match at London, which was not so, could
not thinke of any kindnes I euer did her, though shee
haue had above 3QOH. through my fingers, so as if God
uphold me not after an especiall manner, it will sinke me
surely .... hee told me he would not stop my in-
tended marriage, but assured mee it would not bee
good ..... all which makes mee reflect upon my rash
proceedings with Mrs Sh." Panurge's doubts and dif-
ficulties about matrimony were not more entertainingly
contradictory. Of course, Peter ends by marrying the
widow, and presently we have a comment on " her trim."
In January, 1639, he writes to Winthrop : "My wife
is very thankfull for her apples, & desires much the new
fashioned shooes." Eight years later we find him writ-
ing from England, where he had been two years : " I am
coming over if I must ; my wife comes of necessity to
New England, having run her selfe out of breath here " ;
and then in the postscript, " bee sure you never let my
wife come away from thence without my leave, & then

NEW ENGLAND TWO CENTURIES AGO. 251

you love mee." But life is never pure comedy, and the
end in this case is tragical. Roger Williams, after his
return from England in 1654, writes to John Win-
throp, Jr. : " Your brother flourisheth in good esteeme
& is eminent for maintaining the Freedome of the Con-
science as to matters of Beliefe, Religion, & Worship.
Your Father Peters preacheth the same Doctrine though
not so zealously as some years since, yet cries out against
New English Rigidities & Persecutions, their civil in-
juries & wrongs tohimselfe, & their unchristian dealing
with him in excommunicating his distracted wife. All
this he tould me in his lodgings at Whitehall, those
lodgings which I was tould were Canterburies [the Arch-
bishop], but he himselfe tould me that that Library
wherein we were together was Canterburies & given him
by the Parliament. His wife lives from him, not wholy but
much distracted. He tells me he had but 200 ayeare &
he allowed her 4 score per annum of it. Surely, Sir, the
most holy Lord is most wise in all the trialls he exercis-
eth his people with. He tould me that his affliction
from his wife stird him up to Action abroad, & when
successe tempted him to Pride, the Bitternes in his
bozome-comforts was a Cooler & a Bridle to him." Tru-
ly the whirligig of time brings about strange revenges.
Peter had been driven from England by the persecu-
tions of Laud ; a few years later he " stood armed on
the scaffold " when that prelate was beheaded, and now
we find him installed in the archiepiscopal lodgings.
Dr. Palfrey, it appears to me, gives altogether too favor-
able an opinion both of Peter's character and abilities.
I conceive him to have been a vain and selfish man.
He may have had the bravery of passionate impulse, but
he wanted that steady courage of character which has such
a beautiful constancy in Winthrop. He always professed
a longing to come back to New England, but it was only

252 NEW ENGLAND TWO CENTURIES AGO.

a way he bad of talking. That he never meant to come
is plain from these letters. Nay, when things looked
prosperous in England, he writes to the younger Win-
throp : " My counsell is you should come hither with
your family for certaynly you will bee capable of a com-
fortable living in this free Commonwealth. I doo seri-
ously advise it G. Downing is worth 5001. per

annum but 4:1. per diem — your brother Stephen worth
2000/. & a maior. I pray come." But when he is
snugly ensconced in Whitehall, and may be presumed
to have some influence with the prevailing powers, his
zeal cools. "I wish you & all friends to stay there &
rather looke to the West Indyes if they remoue, for
many are here to seeke when they come ouer." To me
Peter's highest promotion seems to have been that he
walked with John Milton at the Protector's funeral. He
was, I suspect, one of those men, to borrow a charita-
ble phrase of Roger Williams, who " feared God in the
main," that is, whenever it was not personally incon-
venient. William Coddington saw him in his glory in
1651 : "Soe wee toucke the tyme to goe to viset Mr
Petters at his chamber. I was mery with him & called
him the Arch Bp : of Canterberye, in regard to his ad-
tendance by ministers & gentlemen, & it passed very
well." Considering certain charges brought against Pe-
ter, (though he is said, when under sentence of death,
to have denied the truth of them,) Coddington's state-
ment that he liked to have " gentlewomen waite of
him " in his lodgings has not a pleasant look. One last
report of him we get (September, 1659) in a letter of
John Davenport, — " that Mr Hugh Peters is distracted
& under sore horrors of conscience, crying out of him-
selfe as damned & confessing haynous actings."

Occasionally these letters give us interesting glimpses
of persons and things in England. In the letter of WiL

NEW ENGLAND TWO CENTURIES AGO.

liams just cited, there is a lesson for all parties raised to
power by exceptional causes. " Surely, Sir, youre Fa-
ther & all the people of God in England .... are now
in the sadle & at the helme, so high that non datus
descensus nisi cadendo : Some cheere up their spirits with
the impossibilitie of another fall or turne, so doth Major
G. Harrison .... a very gallant most deserving heav-
enly man, but most highflowne for the Kingdom of the
Saints & the 5th Monarchic now risen & their sun never
to set againe &c. Others, as, to my knowledge, the Pro-
tector .... are not so full of that faith of miracles,
but still imagine changes & persecutions & the very
slaughter of the witnesses before that glorious morning
so much desired of a worldly Kingdome, if ever such a
Kingdome (as literally it is by so many expounded) be
to arise in this present world & dispensation." Poor
General Harrison lived to be one of the witnesses so
slaughtered. The practical good sense of Cromwell is
worth noting, the English understanding struggling
against Judaic trammels. Williams gives us another
peep through the keyhole of the past : " It pleased the
Lord to call me for some time & with some persons to
practice the Hebrew, the Greeke, Latine, French &
Dutch. The secretarie of the Councell (Mr Milton) for
my Dutch I read him, read me many more languages.
Grammar rules begin to be esteemed a Tyrannic. I
taught 2 young Gentlemen, a Parliament man's sons, as
we teach our children English, by words, phrazes, &
constant talke, &c." It is plain that Milton had talked
over with Williams the theory put forth in his tract on
Education, and made a convert of him. We could wish
that the good Baptist had gone a little more into par-
ticulars. But which of us knows among the men he
meets whom time will dignify by curtailing him of the
" Mr.," and reducing him to a bare patronymic, as being

254 NEW ENGLAND TWO CENTURIES AGO.

a kind by himself ? We have a glance or two at Oliver,
who is always interesting. " The late renowned Oliver
confest to me in close discourse about the Protestants
affaires &c that he yet feard great persecutions to the
protestants from the Romanists before the downfall of
the Papacie," writes Williams in 1660. This "close
discourse " must have been six years before, when Wil-
liams was in England. Within a year after, Oliver inter-
fered to some purpose in behalf of the Protestants of
Piedmont, and Mr. Milton wrote his famous sonnet. Of
the war with Spain, Williams reports from his letters out
of England in 1656 : " This diversion against the Span-
iard hath turnd the face & thoughts of many English, so
that the saying now is, Crowne the Protector with gould,*
though the sullen yet cry, Crowne him with thornes."

Again in 1654: " I know the Protector had strong
thoughts of Hispaniola & Cuba. Mr Cotton's interpret-
ing of Euphrates to be the West Indies, the supply of
gold (to take off taxes), & the provision of a warmer
diverticulum & receptaculum then N. England is, will
make a footing into those parts very precious, & if it
shall please God to vouchsafe successe to this fleete, I
looke to hear of an invitation at least to these parts for
removall from his Highnes who lookes on N. E. only with
an eye of pitie, as poore, cold & useless." The mixture
of Euphrates and taxes, of the transcendental and prac-
tical, prophecy taking precedence of thrift, is character-
istic, and recalls Cromwell's famous rule, of fearing God
and keeping your powder dry. In one of the Protector's
speeches,! be insists much on his wish to retire to a pri-
vate life. There is a curious confirmation of his sincerity
in a letter of William Hooke, then belonging to his

* Waller put this into verse : —

" Let the rich ore forthwith be melted down

And the state fixed by making him a crown."
f The third in Carlyle, 1654.

NEW ENGLAND TWO CENTURIES AGO. 255

household, dated the 13th of April, 1657. The question
of the kingly title was then under debate, and Hooke's
account of the matter helps to a clearer understanding
of the reasons for Cromwell's refusing the title : " The
protector is urged utrinque & (I am ready to think) will-
ing enough to betake himself to a private life, if it
might be. He is a godly man, much in prayer & good
discourses, delighting in good men & good ministers,
self-denying & ready to promote any good work for
Christ." * On the 5th of February, 1654, Captain John
Mason, of Pequot memory, writes " a word or twoe of
newes as it comes from Mr Eaton, viz : that the Parlia-
ment sate in September last ; they chose their old
Speaker & Clarke. The Protectour told them they were
a free Parliament, & soe left them that day. They,
considering where the legislative power resided, con-
cluded to vote it on the morrow, & to take charge of the
militia. The Protectour hereing of it, sent for some
numbers of horse, went to the Parliament House, nayld
up the doores, sent for them to the Painted Chamber,
told them they should attend the lawes established, &
that he would wallow in his blood before he would part
with what wras conferd upon him, tendering them an
oath : 140 engaged." Now it is curious that Mr. Eaton
himself, from whom Mason got his news, wrote, only
two days before, an account, differing, in some particulars,
and especially in tone, from Mason's. Of the speech he
says, that it " gave such satisfaction that about 200
have since ingaged to owne the present Government."
Yet Carlyle gives the same number of signers (140) as
Mason, and there is a sentence in Cromwell's speech, as
reported by Carlyle, of precisely the same purport as
that quoted by Mason. To me, that " wallow in my
blood " has rather more of the Cromwellian ring in it,

* Collections, Third Series, Vol I. p. 183.

256 NEW ENGLAND TWO CENTURIES AGO.

more of the quality of spontaneous speech, than the
" rolled into my grave and buried with infamy " of the
official reporter. John Haynes (24th July, 1653) re-
ports " newes from England of astonishing nature," con-
cerning the dissolution of the Rump. We quote his
story both as a contemporaneous version of the event,
and as containing some particulars that explain the
causes that led to it. It differs, in some respects,
from Carlyle, and is hardly less vivid as a picture :
" The Parliament of England & Councell of State are
both dissolved, by whom & the manner this : The Lord
Cromwell, Generall, went to the house & asked the
Speaker & Bradshaw by what power they sate ther.
They answered by the same power that he woare his
sword. Hee replied they should know they did not, &
said they should sitt nos longer, demanding an account
of the vast sommes of money they had received of the
Commons. They said the matter was of great conse-
quence & they would give him accompt in tenn dayes. He
said, Noe, they had sate too long already (& might now
take their ease,) for ther inriching themselves & impov-
erishing the Commons, & then seazed uppon all the
Records. Immediatly Lambert, Livetenant Generall, &
Hareson Maior Generall (for they two were with him),
tooke the Speaker Lenthall by the hands, lift him out
of the Chaire, & ledd him out of the house, <fe com-
manded the rest to depart, which fortwith was obeied, &
the Generall tooke the keyes & locked the doore." He
then goes on to give the reasons assigned by different
persons for the act. Some said that the General
" scented their purpose " to declare themselves perpet-
ual, and to get rid of him by ordering him to Scotland.
" Others say this, that the cries of the oppressed pre-
veiled much with him .... & hastned the declaracion
of that ould principle, Salus populi suprema lex &c."

NEW ENGLAND TWO CENTURIES AGO. 257

The General, in the heat of his wrath, himself snatching
the keys and locking the door, has a look of being drawn
from the life. Cromwell, in a letter to General Fortescue
(November, 1655), speaks sharply of the disorders and
debauchedness, profaneness and wickedness, commonly
practised amongst the army sent out to the West Indies.
Major Mason gives us a specimen : " It is heere reported
that some of the soldiers belonging to the ffleet at Bos-
ton, ffell upon the watch : after some bickering they
comanded them to goe before the Governour ; they re-
torned that they were Cromwell's boyes." Have we not,
in these days, heard of " Sherman's boys " ^

Belonging properly to the " Winthrop Papers," but
printed in an earlier volume (Third Series, Vol. I. pp.
185 - 198), is a letter of John Maidstone, which contains
the best summary of the Civil War that I ever read.
Indeed, it gives a clearer insight into its causes, and a
better view of the vicissitudes of the Commonwealth
and Protectorate, than any one of the more elaborate
histories. There is a singular equity and absence of
party passion in it which gives us faith in the author's
judgment. He was Oliver's Steward of the Household,
and his portrait of him, as that of an eminently fair-
minded man who knew him well, is of great value.
Carlyle has not copied it, and, as many of my readers
may never have seen it, I reproduce it here : " Before
I pass further, pardon me in troubling you with the
character of his person, which, by reason of my near-
ness to him, I had opportunity well to observe. His
body was well compact and strong ; his stature under
six feet, (I believe about two inches ;) his head so shaped
as you might see it a store-house and shop both, of a
vast treasury of natural parts. His temper exceeding
fiery, as I have known, but the flame of it kept down
for the most part or soon allayed with those moral en-

Q

258 NEW ENGLAND TWO CENTURIES AGO.

dowments he had. He was naturally compassionate to-
wards objects in distress, even to an effeminate measure ;
though God had made him a heart wherein was left little
room for any fear but what was due to himself, of which
there was a large proportion, yet did he exceed in ten-
derness toward sufferers. A larger soul, I think, hath
seldom dwelt in a house of clay than his was. I do be-
lieve, if his story were impartially transmitted, and the
unprejudiced world well possessed with it, she would add
him to her nine worthies and make that number a
decemviri. He lived and died in comfortable communion
with God, as judicious persons near him well observed.
He was that Mordecai that sought the welfare of his
people and spake peace to his seed. Yet were his temp-
tations such, as it appeared frequently that he that hath
grace enough for many men may have too little for him-
self, the treasure he had being but in an earthen vessel
and that equally denied with original sin as any other
man's nature is." There are phrases here that may be
matched with the choicest in the life of Agricola ; and,
indeed, the whole letter, superior to Tacitus in judicial
fairness of tone, goes abreast of his best writing in con-
densation, nay, surpasses it in this, that, while in Taci-
tus the intensity is of temper, here it is the clear resid-
uum left by the ferment and settling of thought. Just
before, speaking of the dissolution of Oliver's last Par-
liament, Maidstone says : " That was the last which sat
during his life, he being compelled to wrestle with the
difficulties of his place so well as he could without par-
liamentary assistance, and in it met with so great a
burthen as (I doubt not to say) it drank up his spirits,
of which his natural constitution yielded a vast stock,
and brought him to his grave, his interment being the
seed-time of his glory and England's calamity." Hooke,
in a letter of April 16, 1658, has a passage worth quofc

NEW ENGLAND TWO CENTURIES AGO. 259

ing : " The dissolution of the last Parliament puts the
supreme powers upon difficulties, though the trueth is
the Nation is so ill spirited that little good is to be ex-
pected from these Generall Assemblies. They [the su-
preme powers, to wit, Cromwell] have been much in
Counsell since this disappointment, & God hath been
sought by them in the effectuall sense of the need of
help from heaven & of the extreme danger impendent
on a miscarriage of their advises. But our expences are
so vast that I know not how they can avoyde a recur-
rence to another Session & to make a further tryall.
. . , . The land is full of discontents, & the Cavaleerish
party doth still expect a day & nourish hopes of a Revo-
lution. The Quakers do still proceed & are not yet
come to their period. The Presbyterians do abound, I
thinke, more than ever, & are very bold & confident
because some of their masterpieces lye unanswered,
particularly theire Jus Divinum Regiminis Ecclesiastici
which I have sent to Mr. Davenporte. It hath been ex-
tant without answer these many years [only four, brother
Hooke, if we may trust the title-page]. The Anabap-
tists abound likewise, & Mr Tombes hath pretended to
have answered all the bookes extant against his opinion,
I saw him presenting it to the Protectour of late. The
Episcopall men ply the Common-Prayer booke with
much more boldness then ever since these turnes of
things, even in the open face of the City in severall
places. I have spoken of it to the Protectour but as
yet nothing is done in order to their being suppressed."
It should teach us to distrust the apparent size of ob-
jects, which is a mere cheat of their nearness to us, that
we are so often reminded of how small account things
seem to one generation for wliich another was ready to
die. A copy of the Jus Divinum held too close to the
eyes could shut out the universe with its infinite

260 NEW ENGLAND TWO CENTURIES AGO.

chances and changes, its splendid indifference to our
ephemeral fates. Cromwell, we should gather, had
found out the secret of this historical perspective, to dis-
tinguish between the blaze of a burning tar-barrel and
the final conflagration of all things. He had learned
tolerance by the possession of power, — a proof of hi&
capacity for rule. In 1652 Haynes writes : " Ther was
a Catechise lately in print ther, that denied the divinity
of Christ, yett ther was motions in the house by some,
to have it lycenced by authority. Cromwell mainly
oposed, & at last it was voted to bee burnt which causes
much discontent of somme." Six years had made
Cromwell wiser.

One more extract from a letter of Hooke's (30th
March, 1659) is worth giving. After speaking of Oli-
ver's death, he goes on to say : " Many prayers were
put up solemnly for his life, & some, of great & good

note, were too confident that he would not die I

suppose himselfe had thoughts that he should have
outlived this sickness till near his dissolution, perhaps a
day or two before ; which I collect partly by some
words which he was said to speak .... & partly from
his delaying, almost to the last, to nominate his succes-
sor, to the wonderment of many who began sooner to

despair of his life His eldest son succeedeth him,

being chosen by the Council, the day following his
father's death, whereof he had no expectation. I have
heard him say he had thought to have lived as a country
gentleman, & that his father had not employed him in
such a way as to prepare him for such employment ;
which, he thought, he did designedly. I suppose his
meaning was lest it should have been apprehended he
had prepared & appointed him for such a place, the bur-
then whereof I have several times heard him complain-
ing under since his coming to the Government, the

NEW ENGLAND TWO CENTURIES AGO. 261

weighty occasions whereof with continuall oppressing
cares had drunk up his father's spirits, in whose body
very little blood was found when he was opened : the
greatest defect visible was in his heart, which was flac-
cid & shrunk together. Yet he was one that could bear
much without complaining, as one of a strong constitution
of brain (as appeared when he was dissected) & likewise
of body. His son seemeth to be of another frame, soft
& tender, & penetrable with easier cares by much, yet
he is of a sweete countenance, vivacious & candid, as is
the whole frame of his spirit, only naturally inclined to
choler. His reception of multitudes of addresses from
towns, cities, & counties doth declare, among several
other indiciums, more of ability in him than could, ordi-
narily, have been expected from him. He spake also
with general acceptation & applause when he made his
speech before the Parliament, even far beyond the Lord
Fynes.* .... If this Assembly miss it, we are like to
be in an ill condition. The old ways & customs of Eng-
land, as to worshipe, are in the hearts of the most, who

long to see the days again which once they saw

The hearts of very many are for the house of the Stew-
arts, & there is a speech as if they would attempt to

call the late King's judges into question The

city, I hear is full of Cavaliers." Poor Richard appears
to have inherited little of his father but the inclination
to choler. That he could speak far beyond the Lord
Fynes seems to have been not much to the purpose.
Rhetoric was not precisely the medicine for such a case
as he had to deal with. Such were the glimpses which
the New England had of the Old. Ishmael must ere-
long learn to shift for himself.

The temperance question agitated the fathers very
much as it still does the children. We have never seen

* This speech may be found in the Annual Register of 1762-

262 NEW ENGLAND TWO CENTURIES AGO.

the anti-prohibition argument stated more cogently than
in a letter of Thomas Shepard, minister of Cambridge,
to Winthrop, in 1639 : " This also I doe humbly intreat,
that there may be no sin made of drinking in any case
one to another, for I am confident he that stands here
will fall & be beat from his grounds by his own argu-
ments ; as also that the consequences will be very sad,
and the thing provoking to God & man to make more
sins than (as yet is seene) God himself hath made." A
principle as wise now as it was then. Our ancestors
were also harassed as much as we by the difficulties of
domestic service. In a country where land might be
had for the asking, it was not easy to keep hold of ser-
vants brought over from England. Emanuel Downing,
always the hard, practical man, would find a remedy in
negro slavery. " A warr with the Narraganset," he
writes to Winthrop in 1645, "is verie considerable to
this plantation, ffor I doubt whither it be not synne
in us, having power in our hands, to suffer them to
maynteyne the worship of the devill which their paw-
wawes often doe ; 21ie, If upon a just warre the Lord
should deliver them into our hands, wee might easily
have men, woemen, & children enough to exchange
for Moores, which wilbe more gaynefull pilladge for us
than wee conceive, for I doe not see how wee can thrive
untill wee gett into a stock of slaves sufficient to doe all
our buisenes, for our childrens children will hardly see
this great Continent filled with people, soe that our ser-
vants will still desire freedome to plant for them selves,
& not stay but for verie great wages. And I suppose
you know verie well how wee shall maynteyne 20 Moores
cheaper than one Englishe servant." The doubt wheth-
er it be not sin in us longer to tolerate their devil-wor-
ship, considering how much need we have of them ag
merchandise, is delicious. The way in which Hugh Pe-

NEW ENGLAND TWO CENTURIES AGO. 263

ter grades the sharp descent from the apostolic to the
practical with an et cetera, in the following extract, has
the same charm : " Sir, Mr Endecot & myself salute
you in the Lord Jesus &c. Wee have heard of a divi-
dence of women & children in the bay & would bee glad
of a share viz : a young woman or girle & a boy if you
thinke good." Peter seems to have got what he asked
for, and to have been worse off than before ; for we find
him writing two years later : " My wife desires my
daughter to send to Hanna that was her mayd, now at
Charltowne, to know if shee would dwell with us, for
truly wee are so destitute (having now but an Indian)
that wee know not what to doe." Let any housewife of
our day, who does not find the Keltic element in domestic
life so refreshing as to Mr. Arnold in literature, imagine
a household with one wild Pequot woman, communi-
cated with by signs, for its maid of all work, and take
courage. Those were serious times indeed, when your
cook might give warning by taking your scalp, or chignon,
as the case might be, and making off with it into the
woods. The fewness and dearness of servants made it
necessar}^ to call in temporary assistance for extraordi-
nary occasions, and hence arose the common use of the
word help. As the great majority kept no servants at
all, and yet were liable to need them for work to which
the family did not suffice, as, for instance, in harvest,
the use of the word was naturally extended to all kinds
of service. That it did not have its origin in any false
shame at the condition itself, induced by democratic
habits, is plain from the fact that it came into use while
the word servant had a much wider application than now,
and certainly implied no social stigma. Downing and
Hooke, each at different times, one of them so late as
1667, wished to place a son as "servant" with one of
the Winthrops. Roger Williams writes of his daughter,

264 NEW ENGLAND TWO CENTURIES AGO.

that "she desires to spend some time in service & liked
much Mrs Brenton, who wanted." This was, no doubt,
in order to be well drilled in housekeeping, an example
which might be followed still to advantage. John Tink-
er, himself the " servant " or steward of the second
Winthrop, makes use of help in both the senses we have
mentioned, and shows the transition of the word from
its restricted to its more general application. " We
have fallen a pretty deal of timber & drawn some by
Goodman Rogers's team, but unless your worship have
a good team of your own & a man to go with them, I
shall be much distracted for help .... & when our
business is most in haste we shall be most to seek."
Again, writing at harvest, as appears both by the date and
by an elaborate pun, — "I received the sithes you sent
but in that there came not also yourself, it maketh me
to sigth" — he says : " Help is scarce and hard to get,
difficult to please, uncertain, &c. Means runneth out &
wages on & I cannot make choice of my help."

It may be some consolation to know that the com-
plaint of a decline in the quality of servants is no mod-
ern thing. Shakespeare makes Orlando say to Adam :

" 0, good old man, how well in thee appears
The constant service of the antique world,
When service sweat for duty, not for meed !
Thou art not of the fashion of these times,
When none will sweat but for promotion."

When the faithful old servant is brought upon the stage,
we may be sure he was getting rare. A century later,
we have explicit testimony that things were as bad in
this respect as they are now. Don Manuel Gonzales,
who travelled in England in 1 730, says of London ser-
vants : " As to common menial servants, they have
great wages, are well kept and cloathed, but are notwith-
standing the plague of almost every house in town.
They form themselves into societies or rather confeden

NEW ENGLAND TWO CENTURIES AGO. ^65

acies, contributing to the maintenance of each other
when out of place, and if any of them cannot manage
the family where they are entertained, as they please,
immediately they give notice they will be gone. There
is no speaking to them, they are above correction, and
if a master should attempt it, he may expect to be
handsomely drubbed by the creature he feeds and har-
bors, or perhaps an action brought against him for it.
It is become a common saying, If my servant ben't a
thief, if he be but honest, I can bear with other things.
And indeed it is very rare in London to meet with an
honest servant." * Southey writes to his daughter
Edith, in 1824, " All the maids eloped because I had
turned a man out of the kitchen at eleven o'clock on the
preceding night." Nay, Hugh Rhodes, in his Boke of
Nurture (1577), speaks of servants " ofte fleeting," i. e.
leaving one master for another.

One of the most curious things revealed to us in these
volumes is the fact that John Winthrop, Jr., was seeking
the philosopher's stone, that universal elixir which could
transmute all things to its own substance. This is plain
from the correspondence of Edward Howes. Howes
goes to a certain doctor, professedly to consult him about
the method of making a cement for earthen vessels, no
doubt crucibles. His account of him is amusing, and re-
minds one of Ben Jonson's Subtle. This was one of the
many quacks who gulled men during that twilight
through which alchemy was passing into chemistry.
" This Dr, for a Dr he is, brags that if he have but the
hint or notice of any useful thing not yet invented, he
will undertake to find it out, except some few which he
hath vowed not to meddle with as vitrum maliabile, per-
pet. motus, via proxima ad Indos & lapis philosi : all, or

* Collection of Voyages, &c., from the Library of the Earl of Ox-
ford, Vol. I. p. 151.
12

266 NEW ENGLAND TWO CENTURIES AGO.

anything else he will undertake, but for his private gain,
to make a monopoly thereof & to sell the use or knowl-
edge thereof at too high rates." This breed of pedlers
in science is not yet extinct. The exceptions made by
the Doctor show a becoming modesty. Again : " I have
been 2 or 3 times with the Dr & can get but small satis-
faction about your queries Yet I must confess

he seemed very free to me, only in the main he was
mystical. This he said, that when the will of God is you
shall know what you desire, it will come with such a
light that it will make a harmony among all your au-
thors, causing them sweetly to agree, & put you forever
out of doubt & question." In another letter : " I cannot
discover into terram incognitam, but I have had a ken of
it showed unto me. The way to it is, for the most part,
horrible & fearful, the dangers none worse, to them that are

destinati fi.lii : sometimes I am travelling that way

I think I have spoken with some that have been there."
Howes writes very cautiously : " Dear friend, I desire
with all my heart that I might write plainer to you, but
in discovering the mystery, I may diminish its majesty
& give occasion to the profane to abuse it, if it should
fall into unworthy hands." By and by he begins to
think his first doctor a humbug, but he finds a better.
Howes was evidently a man of imaginative temper, fit to
be captivated by the alchemistic theory of the unity of
composition in nature, which was so attractive to Goethe.
Perhaps the great poet was himself led to it by his Rosi-
crucian studies when writing the first part of Faust.
Howes tells his friend that "there is all good to be found
in unity, & all evil in duality & multiplicity. Phoe-
nix ilia admiranda sola semper existit, therefore while a
man & she is two, he shall never see her," — a truth
of very wide application, and too often lost sight of or
never seen at all. " The Arabian Philos. I writ to you

NEW ENGLAND TWO CENTURIES AGO. 267

uf, he was styled among us Dr Lyon, the best of all the
Rosicrucians * that ever I met withal, far beyond Dr
Ewer : they that are of his strain are knowing men ; they
pretend [i. e. claim] to live in free light, they honor God
& do good to the people among whom they live, & I con-
ceive you are in the right that they had their learning
from Arabia."

Howes is a very interesting person, a mystic of the
purest kind, and that while learning to be an attorney
with Emanuel Downing. How little that perfunctory
person dreamed of what was going on under his nose,
— as little as of the spiritual wonders that lay beyond
the tip of it ! Howes was a Swedenborgian before
Swedenborg. Take this, for example : " But to our
sympathetical business whereby we may communicate
our minds one to another though the diameter of the
earth interpose. Diana non est centrum omnium. I
would have you so good a geometrician as to know your
own centre. Did you ever yet measure your everlasting
self, the length of your life, the breadth of your love,
the depth of your wisdom & the height of your light 1
Let Truth be your centre, & you may do it, other ways
not. I could wish you would now begin to leave off be-
ing altogether an outward man ; this is but casa Regentis ;
the Ruler can draw you straight lines from your centre
to the confines of an infinite circumference, by which
you may pass from any part of the circumference to
another without obstacle of earth or secation of lines, if
you observe & keep but one & the true & only centre, to
pass by it, from it, & to it. Methinks I now see you
intus et extra & talk to you, but you mind me not be-
cause you are from home, you are not within, you look
as if you were careless of yourself ; your hand & your
voice differ ; 't is my friend's hand, I know it well ; but

* Howes writes the word symbolically*

268 NEW ENGLAND TWO CENTURIES AGO.

the voice is your enemy's. 0, my friend, if you love
me, get you home, get you in ! You have a friend as
well as an enemy. Know them by their voices. The
one is still driving or enticing you out ; the other would
have you stay within. Be within and keep within, &
all that are within & keep within shall you see know &
communicate with to the full, & shall not need to strain
your outward senses to see & hear that which is like
themselves uncertain & too-too often false, but, abiding
forever within, in the centre of Truth, from thence you
may behold & understand the innumerable divers ema-
nations within the circumference, & still within ; for
without are falsities, lies, untruths, dogs &c." Howes
was tolerant also, not from want of faith, but from depth
of it. " The relation of your fight with the Indians I
have read in print, but of the fight among yourselves,
bellum linyuarum the strife of tongues, I have heard
much, but little to the purpose. I wonder your people,
that pretend to know so much, doe not know that love
is the fulfilling of the law, & that against love there is
no law." Howes forgot that what might cause only a
ripple in London might overwhelm the tiny Colony in
Boston, Two years later, he writes more philosophically,
and perhaps with a gentle irony, concerning " two mon-
strous births & a general earthquake." He hints that
the people of the Bay might perhaps as well take these
signs to themselves as lay them at the door of Mrs.
Hutchinson and what not. " Where is there such
another people then [as] in New England, that labors
might & main to have Christ formed in them, yet would
give or appoint him his shape & clothe him too 1 It
cannot be denied that we have conceived many mon-
strous imaginations of Christ Jesus : the one imagination
says, Zo, here he is ; the other says, Lo, there he is ; mul-
tiplicity of conceptions, but is there any one true shape

NEW ENGLAND TWO CENTURIES AGO. 269

of Him 1 And if one of many produce a shape, 't is
not the shape of the Son of God, but an ugly horrid
metamorphosis. Neither is it a living shape, but a dead
one, yet a crow thinks her own bird the fairest, & most
prefer their own wisdom before God's, Antichrist before
Christ." Howes had certainly arrived at that " centre "
of which he speaks and was before his time, as a man
of speculation, never a man of action, may sometimes be.
He was fitter for Plotinus's colony than Winthrop's. He
never came to New England, yet there was always a
leaven of his style of thinkers here.

Howes was the true adept, seeking what spiritual ore
there might be among the dross of the hermetic philos-
ophy. What he says sincerely and inwardly was the
cant of those outward professors of the doctrine who
were content to dwell in the material part of it forever.
In Jonathan Brewster, we have a specimen of these
Wagners. Is it not curious, that there should have been
a balneum Marice at New London two hundred years
ago 1 that la recherche de VAbsolu should have been go-
ing on there in a log-hut, under constant fear that the
Indians would put out, not merely the flame of one lit-
tle life, but, far worse, the fire of our furnace, and so
rob the world of this divine secret, just on the point of
revealing itself 1 Alas ! poor Brewster's secret was one
that many have striven after before and since, who did
not call themselves alchemists, — the secret of getting
gold without earning it, — a chase that brings some men
to a four-in-hand on Shoddy Avenue, and some to the
penitentiary, in both cases advertising its utter vanity.
Brewster is a capital specimen of his class, who are bet-
ter than the average, because they do mix a little ima-
gination with their sordidness, and who have also their
representatives among us, in those who expect the Jen-
nings and other ideal estates in England. If Hawthorne

270 NEW ENGLAND TWO CENTURIES AGO.

had but known of him ! And yet how perfectly did his
genius divine that ideal element in our early New Eng-
land life, conceiving what must have been without ask-
ing proof of what actually was !

An extract or two will sufficiently exhibit Brewster in
his lunes. Sending back some alchemistic book to
Winthrop, he tells him that if his name be kept secret,
" I will write as clear a light, as far as I dare to, in find-
ing the first ingredience The first figure in Flamo-

nell doth plainly resemble the first ingredience, what it
is, & from whence it comes, & how gotten, as there you
may plainly see set forth by 2 resemblances held in a
man's hand ; for the confections there named is a delu-
sion, for they are but the operations of the work after
some time set, as the scum of the Red Sea, which is the
Virgin's Milk upon the top of the vessel, white. Red Sea
is the sun & moon calcinated & brought & reduced into
water mineral which in some time, & most of the whole
time, is red. 2ndly, the fat of mercurial wind, that is the
fat or quintessence of sun & moon, earth & water, drawn
out from them both, & flies aloft & bore up by the oper-
ation of our mercury, that is our fire which is our air or
wind." This is as satisfactory as Lepidus's account of
the generation of the crocodile : " Your serpent of Egypt
is bred now of your mud by the operation of your sun :
so is your crocodile." After describing the three kinds
of fire, that of the lamp, that of ashes, and that against
nature, which last " is the fire of fire, that is the secret
fire drawn up, being the quintessence of the sun &
moon, with the other mercurial water joined with & to-
gether, which is fire elemental," he tells us that " these
fires are & doth contain the whole mystery of the work."
The reader, perhaps, thinks that he has nothing to do
but forthwith to turn all the lead he can lay his hands
on into gold. But no : " If you had the first ingre-

NEW ENGLAND TWO CENTURIES AGO. 27X

dience & the proportion of each, yet all were nothing if
you had not the certain times & seasons of the planets
& signs, when to give more or less of this fire, namely
a hot & dry, a cold & moist fire which you must use in
the mercurial water before it comes to black & after
into white & then red, which is only done by these fires,
which when you practise you will easily see & perceive,
that you shall stand amazed, & admire at the great &
admirable wisdom of God, that can produce such a won-
derful, efficacious, powerful thing as this is to convert
all metallic bodies to its own nature, which may be
well called a first essence. I say by such weak simple
means of so little value & so little & easy labor & skill,
that I may say with Artephus, 200 page, it is of a
worke so easy & short, fitter for women & young chil-
dren than sage & grave men I thank the Lord, I

understand the matter perfectly in the said book, yet I
could desire to have it again 12 months hence, for about
that time I shall have occasion to peruse, whenas I come
to the second working which is most difficult, which
will be some three or [4] months before the perfect
white, & afterwards, as Artephus saith, I may burn my
books, for he saith it is one regiment as well for the red
as for the white. The Lord in mercy give me life to
see the end of it ! " — an exclamation I more than once
made in the course of some of Brewster's periods.

Again, under pledge of profound secrecy, he sends
Winthrop a manuscript, which he may communicate to
the owner of the volume formerly lent, because " it
gave me such light in the second work as I should not
readily have found out by study, also & especially how
to work the elixir fit for medicine & healing all maladies
which is clean another way of working than we held
formerly. Also a light given how to dissolve any hard
substance into the elixir, which is also another work.

272 NEW ENGLAND TWO CENTURIES AGO.

And many other things winch in Ribley [Ripley 1] 1
could not find out. More works of the same I would
gladly see .... for, Sir, so it is that any book of this
subject, I can understand it, though never so darkly
written, having both knowledge & experience of the
world,* that now easily I may understand their envi-
ous carriages to hide it You may marvel why I

should give any light to others in this thing before I
have perfected my own. This know, that my work
being true thus far by all their writings, it cannot fail
.... for if &c &c you cannot miss if you would, ex-
cept you break your glass." He confesses he is mista-
ken as to the time required, which he now, as well as I
can make out, reckons at about ten years. " I fear I
shall not live to see it finished, in regard partly of the
Indians, who, I fear, will raise wars, as also I have a
conceit that God sees me not worthy of such a blessing,
by reason of my manifold miscarriages." Therefore he
" will shortly write all the whole work in few words
plainly which may be done in 20 lines from the first to
the last & seal it up in a little box & subscribe it to
yourself .... & will so write it that neither wife nor
children shall know thereof." If Winthrop should suc-
ceed in bringing the work to perfection, Brewster begs
him to remember his wife and children. " I mean if
this my work should miscarry by wars of the Indians,
for I may not remove it till it be perfected, otherwise I
should so unsettle the body by removing sun & moon
out of their settled places, that there would then be no
other afterworking." Once more he inculcates secrecy,
and for a most comical reason : " For it is such a secret
as is not fit for every one either for secrecy or for parts
to use it, as God's secret for his glory, to do good there-
with, or else they may do a great deal of hurt, spend

* u World " here should clearly be " work."

NEW ENGLAND TWO CENTURIES AGO. 273

ing & employing it to satisfy sinful lusts. There-
fore, I iutreat you, sir, spare to use my name, & let my
letters I send either be safely kept or burned that I
write about it, for indeed, sir, I am more than before
sensible of the evil effects that will arise by the publish-
ing of it. I should never be at quiet, neither at home
nor abroad, for one or other that would be enquiring &
seeking after knowledge thereof, that I should be tired
out & forced to leave the place : nay, it would be blazed
abroad into Europe." How much more comic is nature
than any comedy ! Mutato nomine de te. Take heart,
ambitious youth, the sun and moon will be no more dis-
concerted by any effort of yours than by the pots and
pans of Jonathan Brewster. It is a curious proof of the
duality so common (yet so often overlooked) in human
character, that Brewster was all this while manager of
the Plymouth trading-post, near what is now New Lon-
don. The only professors of the transmutation of met-
als who still impose on mankind are to be found in what
is styled the critical department of literature. Their
materia prima, or universal solvent, serves equally for
the lead of Tupper or the brass of Swinburne.

In a letter of Sir Kenelm Digby to J. Winthrop, Jr.,
we find some odd prescriptions. " For all sorts of
agues, I have of late tried the following magnetical ex-
periment with infallible success. Pare the patient's
nails when the fit is coming on, & put the parings into
a little bag of fine linen or sarsenet, & tie that about a
live eel's neck in a tub of water. The eel will die & the
patient will recover. And if a dog or hog eat that eel,
they will also die."

" The man recovered ot the bite,
The dog it was that died! "

M I have known one that cured all deliriums & frenzies
whatsoever, & at once taking, with an elixir made of dew,

12* R

274 NEW ENGLAND TWO CENTURIES AGO.

nothing but dew purified & nipped up in a glass & di-
gested 15 months till all of it was become a gray powder,
not one drop of humidity remaining. This I know to
be true, & that first it was as black as ink, then green,
then gray, & at 22 months' end it was as white &
lustrous as any oriental pearl. But it cured manias at
15 months' end." Poor Brewster would have been the
better for a dose of it, as well as some in our day, who
expect to cure men of being men by act of Congress.
In the same letter Digby boasts of having made known
the properties of quinquina, and also of the sympathetic
powder, with which latter he wrought a " famous cure "
of pleasant James Ho well, author of the " Letters."
I do not recollect that Howell anywhere alludes to it.
In the same letter, Digby speaks of the books he had
sent to Harvard College, and promises to send more.
In all Paris he cannot find a copy of Blaise Viginere
Des Chiffres. " I had it in my library in England, but
at the plundering of my house I lost it with many other
good books. I have laid out in all places for it." The
words we have underscored would be called a Yankeeism
now. The house was Gatehurst, a fine Elizabethan
dwelling, still, or lately, standing. Digby made his
peace with Cromwell, and professes his readiness to
spend his blood for him. He kept well with both sides,
and we are not surprised to find Hooke saying that he
hears no good of him from any.

The early colonists found it needful to bring over a
few trained soldiers, both as drillmasters and engineers.
Underbill, Patrick, and Gardner had served in the Low
Countries, probably also Mason. As Paris has been
said to be not precisely the place for a deacon, so the
camp of the Prince of Orange could hardly have been
the best training-school for Puritans in practice, however
it may have been for masters of casuistic theology. The

NEW ENGLAND TWO CENTURIES AGO. 275

position of these rough warriors among a people like
those of the first emigration must have been a droll one.
That of Captain Underbill certainly was. In all our
early history, there is no figure so comic. Full of the
pedantry of his profession and fond of noble phrases, he
is a kind of cross between Dugald Dalgetty and Ancient
Pistol, with a slight relish of the miles gloriosus. Under-
bill had taken side with Mr. Wheelwright in his heretical
opinions, and there is every reason why he should have
maintained, with all the ardor of personal interest, the
efficiency of a covenant of grace without reference to
the works of the subject of it. Coming back from a
visit to England in 1638, he " was questioned for some
speeches uttered by him in the ship, viz : that they at
Boston were zealous as the scribes and pharisees were
and as Paul was before his conversion, which he deny-
ing, they were proved to his face by a sober woman
whom he had seduced in the ship and drawn to his opin-
ion ; but she was afterwards better informed in the
truth. Among other passages, he told her how he came
by his assurance, saying that, having long lain under a
spirit of bondage, and continued in a legal way near five
years, he could get no assurance, till at length, as he
was taking a pipe of the good creature tobacco, the
spirit fell home upon his heart, an absolute promise of
free grace, with such assurance and joy, as he never
doubted since of his good estate, neither should he,
whatsoever sin he should fall into, — a good preparative
for such motions as he familiarly used to make to some

of that sex The next day he was called again

and banished. The Lord's day after, he made a speech
in the assembly, showing that as the Lord was pleased to
convert Paul as he was persecuting &c, so he might mani^
fest himself to him as he was making moderate use of
the good creature called tobacco." A week later "he was

276 NEW ENGLAND TWO CENTURIES AGO.

privately dealt with upon suspicion of incontinency ....
but his excuse was that the woman was in great trouble of
mind, and some temptations, and that he resorted to
her to comfort her." He went to the Eastward, and,
having run himself out there, thought it best to come
back to Boston and reinstate himself by eating his leek.
" He came in his worst clothes (being accustomed to
take great pride in his bravery and neatness) without a
band, in a foul linen cap pulled close to his eyes, and,
standing upon a form, he did, with many deep sighs and
abundance of tears, lay open his wicked course, his
adultery, his hypocrisy &c. He spake well, save that
his blubbering &c. interrupted him." We hope he
was a sincere penitent, but men of his complexion
are apt to be pleased with such a tragi-comedy of self-
abasement, if only they can be chief actors and con-
spicuous enough therein. In the correspondence before
-•is Underbill appears in full turkey-cock proportions.
Not having been advanced according to his own opinion
of his merits, he writes to Governor Winthrop, with an
oblique threat that must have amused him somewhat :
" I profess, sir, till I know the cause, I shall not be
satisfied, but I hope God will subdue me to his will ; yet
this I say that such handling of officers in foreign parts
hath so far subverted some of them as to cause them
turn public rebels against their state & kingdom, which
God forbid should ever be found once so much as to
appear in my breast." Why, then the world 's mine
oyster, which I with sword will open ! Next we hear
him on a point of military discipline at Salem. " It
is this : how they have of their own appointment made
them a captain, lieutenant & ensign, & after such a
manner as was never heard of in any school of war, nor

in no kingdom under heaven For my part, if

there should not be a reformation in this disordered

NEW ENGLAND TWO CENTURIES AGO. 277

practise, I would not acknowledge such officers. If
officers should be of no better esteem than for consta-
bles to place them, & martial discipline to proceed dis-
orderly, I would rather lay down my command than to
shame so noble a prince from whom we came." Again :
" Whereas it is somewhat questionable whether the
three months I was absent, as well in the service of the
country as of other particular persons, my request there-
tore is that this honored Court would be pleased to de-
cide this controversy, myself alleging it to be the cus-
tom of Nations that, if a Commander be lent to another
State, by that State to whom he is a servant, both his
place & means is not detained from him, so long as he
doth not refuse the call of his own State to which he is
a servant, in case they shall call him home." Then
bringing up again his " ancient suit " for a grant of
land, he throws in a neat touch of piety : " & if the
honored Court shall vouchsafe to make some addition,
that which hath not been deserved, by the same power
of God, may be in due season." In a postscript, he gives
a fine philosophical reason for this desired addition which
will go to the hearts of many in these days of high
prices and wasteful taxation. " The time was when a
little went far ; then much was not known nor desired ;
the reason of the difference lieth only in the error of
judgment, for nature requires no more to uphold it now
than when it was satisfied with less." The valiant Cap-
tain interprets the law of nations, as sovereign powers
are wont to do, to suit his advantage in the special case.
We find a parallel case in a letter of Bryan Rosseter to
John Winthrop, Jr., pleading for a remission of taxes.
" The lawes of nations exempt allowed phisitians from
personall services, & their estates from rates & assess-
ments." In the Declaration of the town of Southamp-
ton on Long Island (1673), the dignity of constable is

278 NEW ENGLAND TWO CENTURIES AGO.

valued at a juster rate than Underbill was inclined to
put upon it. The Dutch, it seems, demanded of them " to
deliver up to them the badge of Civil & Military power ;
namely, the Constable's staffe & the Colonel's." Mayor
Munroe of New Orleans did not more effectually magnify
his office when he surrendered the city to General Butler.
Underbill's style is always of the finest. His spell-
ing was under the purest covenant of grace. I must
give a single specimen of it from a letter whose high
moral tone is all the more diverting that it was written
while he was under excommunication for the sin which
he afterwards confessed. It is addressed to Winthrop
and Dudley. " Honnored in the Lord. Youer silenc
one more admirse me. I youse chrischan playnnes. I
know you love it. Silenc can not reduce the hart of
youer loveg brother : I would the rightchous would smite
me, espeschali youer slfe & the honnored Depoti to whom
I also dereckt this letter together with youer honnored
slfe. Jesos Christ did wayt ; & God his Father did dig
and telfe bout the barren figtre before he would cast
it of : I would to God you would tender my soule
so as to youse playnnes with me." (As if anything
could be plainer than excommunication and banish-
ment !) "I wrot to you both, but now [no] answer ; &
here I am dayli abused by malischous tongse : John
Baker I here hath rot to the honnored depoti how as I
was dronck & like to be cild, & both falc, upon okachon
I delt with Wannerton for intrushon, & findding them
resolutli bent to rout out all gud a mong us & ad vane
there superstischous waye, <fe by boystrous words inde-
ferd to fritten men to acomplish his end, & he abusing
me to my face, dru upon him with intent to corb his in-
solent and dasterdli sperrite, but now [no] danger of
my life, although it might hafe bin just with God to
fiafe giffen me in the hanse of youer enemise &. mine,

NEW ENGLAND TWO CENTURIES AGO. 279

for they hat the wayse of the Lord & them that profes
them, & therfore layes trapes to cachte the pore into
there deboyst corses, as ister daye on Pickeren their
Chorch Warden cairn up to us with intent to inak some
of ourse drone, as is sospeckted, but the Lord soferd him
so to misdemen himslfe as he is likli to li by the hielse

this too month My hombel request is that you

will be charitabel of me Let justies and merci be

goyned You may plese to soggest youer will to

this barrer, you will find him tracktabel." The conclud-
ing phrase seems admirably chosen, when we consider the
means of making people "tractable" which the magis-
trates of the Bay had in their hands, and were not slow
to exercise, as Underhill himself had experienced.

I cannot deny myself the pleasure of giving one
more specimen of the Captain's " grand-delinquent "
style, as I once heard such fine writing called by a per-
son who little dreamed what a hit he had made. So far
as I have observed, our public defaulters, and others who
have nothing to say for themselves, always rise in style
as they sink in self-respect. He is speaking of one
Scott, who had laid claim to certain lands, and had been
called on to show his title. " If he break the comand
of the Asembli & bring not in the counterfit portreture
of the King imprest in yello waxe, anext to his false per-
petuiti of 20 mile square, where by he did chet the
Town of Brouckhaven, he is to induer the sentance of
the Court of Asisies." Pistol would have been charmed
with that splendid amplification of the Great Seal. We
have seen nothing like it in our day, except in a speech
made to Mr. George Peabody at Danvers, if I recollect,
while that gentleman was so elaborately concealing from
his left hand what his right had been doing. As ex-
amples of Captain Underbill's adroitness in phonetic
spelling, I offer fafarabel and poseschonse, and reluc-
tantly leave him.

280 NEW ENGLAND TWO CENTURIES AGO.

Another very entertaining fellow for those who are
willing to work through a pretty thick husk of tiresome-
ness for a genuine kernel of humor underneath is Cod-
dington. The elder Winthrop endured many trials, but
I doubt if any were sharper than those which his son
had to undergo in the correspondence of this excellently
tiresome man. Tantce molis Romanam condere gentem !
The dulness of Coddington, always that of no ordinary
man, became irritable and aggressive after being stung
by the gadfly of Quakerism. Running counter to its
proper nature, it made him morbidly uneasy. Already
an Anabaptist, his brain does not seem to have been large
enough to lodge two maggots at once with any comfort
to himself. Fancy John Winthrop, Jr., with all the af-
fairs of the Connecticut Colony on his back, expected to
prescribe alike for the spiritual and bodily ailments of
all the hypochondriacs in his government, and with
Philip's war impending, — fancy him exposed also to
perpetual trials like this : " G. F. [George Fox] hath sent
thee a book of his by Jere : Bull, & two more now
which thou mayest communicate to thy Council & offi-
cers. Also I remember before thy last being in Eng-
land, I sent thee a book written by Francis Howgall
against persecution, by Joseph Nicallson which book
thou lovingly accepted and communicated to the Com-
missioners of the United Colonies (as I desired) also
J. N. thou entertained with a loving respect which en-
couraged me " (fatal hospitality !) — "As a token of that
ancient love that for this 42 years I have had for thee,
I have sent thee three Manuscripts, one of 5 queries,
other is of 15, about the love of Jesus &c. The 3d is
why we cannot come to the worship which was not set
up by Christ Jesus, which I desire thee to communicate
to the priests to answer in thy jurisdiction, the Massa-
chusetts, New Plymouth, or elsewhere, & send their

NEW ENGLAND TWO CENTURIES AGO. 281

answer in writing to me. Also two printed papers to set
up in thy house. It 's reported in Barbadoes that thy
brother Sammuell shall be sent Governour to Antego."
What a mere dust of sugar in the last sentence for such
a portentous pill ! In his next letter he has other writ-
ings of G. F., " not yet copied, which if thou desireth,
when I hear from thee, I may convey them unto thee.
Also sence G. Ffox departure William Edmondson is ar
rived at this Island, who having given out a paper to all
in authority, which, my wife having copied, I have here
inclosed presented thee therewith." Books and manu-
scripts were not all. Coddington was also glad to bestow
on Winthrop any wandering tediousness in the flesh that
came to hand. " I now understand of John Stubbs free-
dom to visit thee (with the said Jo : B.) he is a larned
man, as witness the battle door * on 35 languages," — a
terrible man this, capable of inflicting himself on three
dozen different kindreds of men. It will be observed
that Coddington, with his "thou desireths," is not quite
so well up in the grammar of his thee-and-thouing as
my Lord Coke. Indeed, it is rather pleasant to see that
in his alarm about "the enemy," in 1673, he backslides
into the second person plural. If Winthrop ever looked
over his father's correspondence, he would have read in
a letter of Henry Jacie the following dreadful example
of retribution : " The last news we heard was that the
Bores in Bavaria slew about 300 of the Swedish forces &
took about 200 prisoners, of which they put out the
eyes of some & cut out the tonges of others & so sent
them to the King of Sweden, which caused him to la-
ment bytterly for an hour. Then he sent an army <fe
destroyed those Bores, about 200 or 300 of their towns.
Thus we hear." Think of that, Master Coddington J

* The title-page of which our learned Marsh has cited for tho ety
mology of the word.

282 NEW ENGLAND TWO CENTURIES AGO.

Could the sinful heart of man always suppress the wish
that a Gustavus might arise to do judgment on the Bores
of Rhode Island ? The unkindest part of it was that,
on Coddington's own statement, Winthrop had never
persecuted the Quakers, and had even endeavored to save
Robinson and Stevenson in 1659.

Speaking of the execution of these two martyrs to
the bee in their bonnets, John Davenport gives us a
capital example of the way in which Divine "judgments "
may be made to work both ways at the pleasure of the
interpreter. As the crowd was goinghome from the hang-
ing, a drawbridge gave way, and some lives were lost. The
Quakers, of course, made the most of this lesson to the
pontifices in the bearing power of timber, claiming it as
a proof of God's wrath against the persecutors. This
was rather hard, since none of the magistrates perished,
and the popular feeling was strongly in favor of the vic-
tims of their severity. But Davenport gallantly cap-
tures these Quaker guns, and turns them against thft
enemy himself. " Sir, the hurt that befell so many, by
their own rashness, at the Draw Bridge in Boston, being
on the day that the Quakers were executed, was not
without God's special providence in judgment & wrath, I
fear, against the Quakers & their abettors, who will be
much hardened thereby." This is admirable, especially
as his parenthesis about " their own rashness " assumes
that the whole thing was owing to natural causes. The
pity for the Quakers, too, implied in the " I fear," is a
nice touch. It is always noticeable how much more lib-
eral those who deal in God's command without his power
are of his wrath than of his mercy. But we should
never understand the Puritans if we did not bear in
mind that they were still prisoners in that religion of
Fear which casts out Love. The nearness of God was
oftener a terror than a comfort to them. Yet perhap?

NEW ENGLAND TWO CENTURIES AGO. 283

in them was the last apparition of Faith as a wonder-
worker in human affairs. Take away from them what
you will, you cannot deny them that, and its constant
presence made them great in a way and measure of
which this generation, it is to be feared, can have but a
very inadequate conception. If men now-a-days find
their tone antipathetic, it would be modest at least to
consider whether the fault be wholly theirs, — whether
it was they who lacked, or we who have lost. Whether
they were right or wrong in their dealing with the Qua-
kers is not a question to be decided glibly after two cen-
turies' struggle toward a conception of toleration very
imperfect even yet, perhaps impossible to human nature.
If they did not choose what seems to us the wisest way
of keeping the Devil out of their household, they cer-
tainly had a very honest will to keep him out, which we
might emulate with advantage. However it be in other
cases, historic toleration must include intolerance among
things to be tolerated.

The false notion which the first settlers had of the
savages by whom the continent was beflead rather than
Inhabited, arose in part from what they had heard of
Mexico and Peru, in part from the splendid exaggera-
tions of the early travellers, who could give their readers
an El Dorado at the cheap cost of a good lie. Hence
the kings, dukes, and earls who were so plenty among
the red men. Pride of descent takes many odd shapes,
none odder than when it hugs itself in an ancestry of
filthy barbarians, who daubed themselves for ornament
with a mixture of bear's-grease and soot, or colored clay,
and were called emperors by Captain John Smith and
his compeers. The droll contrast between this imagi-
nary royalty and the squalid reality is nowhere exposed
with more ludicrous unconsciousness than in the follow-
ing passage of a letter from Fitz-John Winthrop to his

284 NEW ENGLAND TWO CENTURIES AGO.

father, November, 1674 : " The bearer hereof, Mr. Dan-
yell, one of the Royal Indian blood .... does desire
me to give an account to yourself of the late unhappy
accident which has happened to him. A little time
since, a careless girl playing with fire at the door, it im-
mediately took hold of the mats, & in an instant con-
sumed it to ashes, with all the common as well as his
lady's chamber furniture, & his own wardrobe & armory,
Indian plate, & money to the value (as is credibly re-
ported in his estimation) of more than an hundred
pounds Indian The Indians have handsomely al-
ready built him a good house & brought him in several
necessaries for his present supply, but that which takes
deepest melancholy impression upon him is the loss of
an excellent Masathuset cloth cloak <fe hat, which was
only seen upon holy days & their general sessions. His
journey at this time is only to intreat your favor & the
gentlemen there for a kind relief in his necessity, having
no kind of garment but a short jerkin which was chari-
tably given him by one of his Common-Councilmen. He
principally aims at a cloak & hat."

" King Stephen was a worthy peer,
His breeches cost him half a crown."

But it will be observed that there is no allusion to any
such article of dress in the costume of this prince of
Pequot. Some light is perhaps thrown on this deficien-
cy by a line or two in one of Williams's letters, where
he says: "I have long had scruples *>f selling the Na-
tives ought but what may tend or bring to civilizing : I
therefore neither brought nor shall sell them loose coats
nor breeches." Precisely the opposite course was
deemed effectual with the Highland Scotch, between
whom and our Indians there was a very close analogy.
They were compelled by law to adopt the usages of
Gallia £raccata, and sansculottism made a penal offence,

NEW ENGLAND TWO CENTURIES AGO. 285

What impediment to civilization Williams had discov-
ered in the offending garment it is hard to say. It is a
question for Herr Teufelsdrock. Royalty, at any rate, in
our day, is dependent for much of its success on the tailor.
Williams's opportunities of studying the Indian charac-
ter were perhaps greater than those of any other man
of his time. He was always an advocate for justice
toward them. But he seems to have had no better
opinion of them than Mr. Parkman,* calling them short-
ly and sharply, "wolves endowed with men's brains."
The same change of feeling has followed the same causes
in their case as in that of the Highlanders, — they have
become romantic in proportion as they ceased to be dan-
gerous.

As exhibitions of the writer's character, no letters in
the collection have interested us more than those of
John Tinker, who for many years was a kind of steward
for John Winthrop and his son. They show him to
have been a thoroughly faithful, grateful, and unselfish
servant. He does not seem to have prospered except
in winning respect, for when he died his funeral charges
were paid by the public. We learn from one of his let-
ters that John Winthrop, Jr., had a negro (presumably
a slave) at Paquanet, for he says that a mad cow there
" had almost spoiled the neger & made him ferfull to
tend the rest of the cattell." That such slaves must
have been rare, however, is plain from his constant com-
plaints about the difficulty of procuring " help," some
of which we have already quoted. His spelling of the
word " ferfull " shows that the New England pronuncia-
tion of that word had been brought from the old coun-
try. He also uses the word " creatures " for kine, and
the like, precisely as our farmers do now. There is one
very comical passage in a letter of the 2d of August,
* In his Jesuits in North America.

286 NEW ENGLAND TWO CENTURIES AGO.

1660, where he says : " There hath been a motion by
some, the chief of the town, (New London) for my keep-
ing an ordinary, or rather under the notion of a tavern,
which, though it suits not with my genius, yet am almost
persuaded to accept for some good grounds." Tinker's
modesty is most creditable to him, and we wish it were
more common now. No people on the face of the earth
suffer so much as we from impostors who keep incon-
veniences, " under the notion of a tavern," without any
call of natural genius thereto ; none endure with such
unexemplary patience the superb indifference of inn-
keepers, and the condescending inattention of their gen-
tlemanly deputies. We are the thralls of our railroads
and hotels, and we deserve it.

Richard Saltonstall writes to John Winthrop, Jr., in
1636 : " The best thing that I have to beg your thoughts
for at this present is a motto or two that Mr. Prynne
hath writ upon his chamber walls in the Tower." We
copy a few phrases, chiefly for the contrast they make
with Lovelace's famous verses to Althea. Nothing
could mark more sharply the different habits of mind
in Puritan and Cavalier. Lovelace is very charming,
but he sings

" The sweetness, mercy, majesty,
And glories of hit King,"

to wit, Charles I. To him " stone walls do not a prison
make," so long as he has " freedom in his love, and in
his soul is free." Prynne's King was of another and
higher kind : " Career excludit mundum, includit Deum.
Deus est turris etiam in turre : turris libertatis in turre

angustice : Turris quietis in turre molestioe Arc-

tari non potest qui in ipsa Dei infinita(e incarceratus spa-

tiatur Nil cms sentit in nervo si animus sit in

ccelo : nil corpus patitur in ergastulo, si anima sit in
Christo" If Lovelace has the advantage in fancy,

NEW ENGLAND TWO CENTURIES AGO. 287

Prynne has it as clearly in depth of sentiment. There
could be little doubt which of the parties represented
by these men would have the better if it came to a death-
grapple.

There is curiously little sentiment in these volumes.
Most of the letters, except where some point of doctrine
is concerned, are those of shrewd, practical men, busy
about the affairs of this world, and earnest to build
their New Jerusalem on something more solid than
cloud. The truth is, that men anxious about their souls
have not been by any means the least skilful in provid-
ing for the wants of the body. It was far less the en-
thusiasm than the common sense of the Puritans which
made them what they were in politics and religion.
That a great change should be wrought in the settlers by
the circumstances of their position was inevitable ; that
this change should have had some disillusion in it, that
it should have weaned them from the ideal and wonted
them to the actual, was equally so. In 1664, not much
more than a generation after the settlement, Williams
prophesies : " When we that have been the eldest are
rotting (to-morrow or next day) a generation will act, I
fear, far unlike the first Winthrops and their models of
love. I fear that the common trinity of the world
(profit, preferment, pleasure) will here be the tria omnia
as in all the world beside, that Prelacy and Papacy too
will in this wilderness predominate, that god Land will
be (as now it is) as great a god with us English as god
Gold was with the Spaniards. While we are here, no-
ble sir, let us viriliter hoc agere, rem agere humanam, di-
vinam, Christianam, which, I believe, is all of a most
public genius," or, as we should now say, true patriotism.
If Williams means no play on the word humanam and
divinam, the order of precedence in which he marshals
them is noticeable. A generation later, what Williams

288 NEtf ENGLAND TWO CENTURIES AGO.

had predicted was in a great measure verified. But
what made New England Puritanism narrow was what
made Scotch Cameronianism narrow, — its being se-
cluded from the great movement of the nation. Till
1660 the colony was ruled and mostly inhabited by Eng-
lishmen closely connected with the party dominant in
the mother country, and with their minds broadened by
having to deal with questions of state and European
policy. After that time they sank rapidly into provin-
cials, narrow in thought, in culture, in creed. Such a pe-
dantic portent as Cotton Mather would have been impossi-
ble in the first generation; he was the natural growth of
the third, — the manifest judgment of God on a genera-
tion who thought Words a saving substitute for Things.
Perhaps some injustice has been done to men like tho
second Governor Dudley, and it should be counted to
them rather as a merit than a fault, that they wished
to bring New England back within reach of the invigo-
rating influence of national sympathies, and to rescue it
from a tradition which had become empty formalism.
Puritanism was dead, and its profession had become a
•wearisome cant before the Revolution of 1688 gave it
that vital force in politics which it had lost in religion.

I have gleaned all I could of what is morally pictu-
resque or characteristic from these volumes, but New Eng-
land history has rather a gregarious than a personal inter-
est. Here, by inherent necessity rather than design, was
made the first experiment in practical democracy, and
accordingly hence began that reaction of the New World
upon the Old whose result can hardly yet be estimated.
There is here no temptation to make a hero, who shall
sum up in his own individuality and carry forward by
his own will that purpose of which we seem to catch such
bewitching glances in history, which reveals itself more
clearly and constantly, perhaps, in the annals of New

NEW ENGLAND TWO CENTURIES AGO. 28D

England than elsewhere, and which yet, at best, is but
tentative, doubtful of itself, turned this way and that by
chance, made up of instinct, and modified by circum-
stance quite as much as it is directed by deliberate fore-
thought. Such a purpose, or natural craving, or result
of temporary influences, may be misguided by a power-
ful character to his own ends, or, if he be strongly in
sympathy with it, may be hastened toward its own ful-
filment ; but there is no such heroic element m our
drama, and what is remarkable is, that, under whatever
government, democracy grew with the growth of the
New England Colonies, and was at last potent enough to
wrench them, and the better part of the continent with
them, from the mother country. It is true that Jeffer-
son embodied in the Declaration of Independence the
speculative theories he had learned in France, but the
impulse to separation came from New England ; and
those theories had been long since embodied there in the
practice of the people, if they had never been formu-
lated in distinct propositions.

I have little sympathy with declaimers about the Pil-
grim Fathers, who look upon them all as men of grand
conceptions and superhuman foresight. An entire ship's
company of Columbuses is what the world never saw.
It is not wise to form any theory and fit our facts to it,
as a man in a hurry is apt to cram his travelling-bag, with
a total disregard of shape or texture. But perhaps it may
be found that the facts will only fit comfortably together
on a single plan, namety, that the fathers did have a con-
ception (which those will call grand who regard simpli-
city as a necessary element of grandeur) of founding
here a commonwealth on those two eternal bases of Faith
and Work ; that they had, indeed, no revolutionary ideas
of universal liberty, but yet, what answered the purpose
quite as well, an abiding faith in the brotherhood of man

IS B

290 NEW ENGLAND TWO CENTURIES AGO.

and the fatherhood of God ; and that they did not so
much propose to make all things new, as to develop the
latent possibilities of English law and English character,
by clearing away the fences by which the abuse of the
one was gradually discommoning the other from the
broad fields of natural right. They were not in advance
of their age, as it is called, for no one who is so can ever
work profitably in it ; but they were alive to the highest
and most earnest thinking of their time.

LESSIM.

WHEN Burns's humor gave its last pathetic flicker in
his " John, don't let the awkward squad fire over me,"
was he thinking of actual brother-volunteers, or of pos-
sible biographers 1 Did his words betray only the rhyth-
mic sensitiveness of poetic nerves, or were they a fore-
boding of that helpless future, when the poet lies at the
mercy of the plodder, — of that bi-voluminous shape in
which dulness overtakes and revenges itself on genius at
last 1 Certainly Burns has suffered as much as most
large-natured creatures from well-meaning efforts to ac-
count for him, to explain him away, to bring him into
harmony with those well-regulated minds which, during
a good part of the last century, found out a way, through
rhyme, to snatch a prosiriess beyond the reach of prose.
Nay, he has been wronged also by that other want of
true appreciation, which deals in panegyric, and would
put asunder those two things which God has joined, —
the poet and the man, — as if it were not the same rash
improvidence that was the happiness of the verse and
the misfortune of the ganger. But his death-bed was

* G. E. LESSING. Sein Leben und seine Werke. Von ADOLF
STAHR. Vermehrte und verbesserte Volks-Ausgabe. Dritte Auflage.
Berlin. 1864.

The Same. Translated by E. P. EVANS, Ph. D., Professor, &c. in
the University of Michigan. Boston: W. V. Spencer. 1866. 2 vols.

G. E. Lessing's Sammtliche Schriften, herausgegeben von Karl
Lachmann. 1853-57. 12 Bande.

292 LESSING.

at least not haunted by the unappeasable apprehension
of a German for his biographer ; and that the fame of
Lessing should have four times survived this cunningest
assault of oblivion is proof enough that its base is broad
and deep-set.

There seems to be, in the average German mind, an
inability or a disinclination to see a thing as it really is,
unless it be a matter of science. It finds its keenest
pleasure in divining a profound significance in the most tri-
fling things, and the number of mare's-nests that have
been stared into by the German Gelehrter through his spec-
tacles passes calculation. They are the one object of con-
templation that makes that singular being perfectly hap-
py, and they seem to be as common as those of the stork.
In the dark forest of aesthetics, particularly, he finds
them at every turn, — "fanno tutto il loco varo." If
the greater part of our English criticism is apt only to
skim the surface, the German, by way of being profound,
too often burrows in delighted darkness quite beneath its
subject, till the reader feels the ground hollow beneath
him, and is fearful of caving into unknown depths of
stagnant metaphysic air at every step. The Commen-
tary on Shakespeare of Gervinus, a really superior man,
reminds one of the Roman Campagna, penetrated under-
ground in all directions by strange winding caverns, the
work of human borers in search of we know not what.
Above are the divine poet's larks and daisies, his incom-
municable skies, his broad prospects of life and nature ;
and meanwhile our Teutonic teredo worms his way be-
low, and offers to be our guide into an obscurity of his
own contriving. The reaction of language upon style,
and even upon thought, by its limitations on the one
hand, and its suggestions on the other, is so apparent to
any one who has made even a slight study of compara-
tive literature, that we have sometimes thought the Ger«

LESSING. 293

man tongue at least an accessory before the fact, if
nothing more, in the offences of German literature.
The language has such a fatal genius for going stern-
foremost, for yawing, and for not minding the helm with-
out some ten minutes' notice in advance, that he must
be a great sailor indeed who can safely make it the ve-
hicle for anything but imperishable commodities. Vis-
cher's ^Esthetik, the best treatise on the subject, ancient
or modern, is such a book as none but a German could
write, and it is written as none but a German could have
written it. The abstracts of its sections are sometimes
nearly as long as the sections themselves, and it is as
hard to make out which head belongs to which tail, as
in a knot of snakes thawing themselves into sluggish in-
dividuality under a spring sun. The average German
professor spends his life in making lanterns fit to guide
us through the obscurest passages of all the ologies and
ysics, and there are none in the world of such honest
workmanship. They are durable, they have intensifying
glasses, reflectors of the most scientific make, capital
sockets in which to set a light, and a handsome lump
of potentially illuminating tallow is thrown in. But, in
order to see by them, the explorer must make his own
candle, supply his own cohesive wick of common-sense,
and light it himself. And yet the admirable thorough-
ness of the German intellect ! We should be ungrateful
indeed if we did not acknowledge that it has supplied the
raw material in almost every branch of science for the
defter wits of other nations to work on ; yet we have a
suspicion that there are certain lighter departments of
literature in which it may be misapplied, and turn into
something very like clumsiness. Delightful as Jean
Paul's humor is, how much more so would it be if he
only knew when to stop ! Ethereally deep as is his sen-
timent, should we not feel it more if he sometimes gave

294 LESSING.

us a little less of it, — if he would only not always deal
out his wine by beer-measure 1 So thorough is the Ger-
man mind, that might it not seem now and then to work
quite through its subject, and expatiate in cheerful un-
consciousness on the other side thereof]

With all its merits of a higher and deeper kind, it
yet seems to us that German literature has not quite
satisfactorily answered that so long-standing question
of the French Abb6 about esprit. Hard as it is for a Ger-
man to be clear, still harder to be light, he is more than
ever awkward in his attempts to produce that quality of
style, so peculiarly French, which is neither wit nor
liveliness taken singly, but a mixture of the two that
must be drunk while the effervescence lasts, and will
not bear exportation into any other language. German
criticism, excellent in other respects, and immeasurably
superior to that of any other nation in its constructive
faculty, in its instinct for getting at whatever principle
of life lies at the heart of a work of genius, is seldom
lucid, almost never entertaining. It may turn its
light, if we have patience, into every obscurest cranny
of its subject, one after another, but it never flashes
light out of the subject itself, as Sainte-Beuve, for ex-
ample, so often does, and with such unexpected charm.
We should be inclined to put Julian Schmidt at the head
of living critics in all the more essential elements of his
outfit ; but with him is not one conscious at too fre-
quent intervals of the professorial grind, — of that Ger-
man tendency to bear on too heavily, where a French
critic would touch and go with such exquisite measure 1
The Great Nation, as it cheerfully calls itself, is in
nothing greater than its talent for saying little things
agreeably, which is perhaps the very top of mere cul-
ture, and in literature is the next best thing to the power
of saying great things as easily as if they were little

LESSING. 295

German learning, like the elephants of Pyrrhus, is
always in danger of turning upon what it was intended
to adorn and reinforce, and trampling it ponderously to
death. And yet what do we not owe it? Mastering
all languages, all records of intellectual man, it has been
able, or has enabled others, to strip away the husks of
nationality and conventionalism from the literatures of
many races, and to disengage that kernel of human
truth which is the germinating principle of them all.
Nay, it has taught us to recognize also a certain value
in those very husks, whether as shelter for the unripe or
food for the fallen seed.

That the general want of style in German authors is
not wholly the fault of the language is shown by Heine
(a man of mixed blood), who can be daintily light in
German • that it is not altogether a matter of race, is
clear from the graceful airiness of Erasmus and Reuch-
lin in Latin, and of Grimm in French. The sense of
heaviness which creeps over the reader from so many
German books is mainly due, we suspect to the lan-
guage, which seems wellnigh incapable of that aerial per-
spective so delightful in first-rate French, and even
English, writing. But there must also be in the national
character an insensibility to proportion, a want of that
instinctive discretion which we call tact. Nothing short
of this will account for the perpetual groping of German
imaginative literature after some foreign mould in which
to cast its thought or feeling, now trying a Louis Qua-
torze pattern, then something supposed to be Shake-
spearian, and at last going back to ancient Greece, or
even Persia. Goethe himself, limpidly perfect as are
many of his shorter poems, often fails in giving artistic
coherence to his longer works. Leaving deeper quali-
ties wholly out of the question, Wilhelm Meister seems
a mere aggregation of episodes if compared with such a

296 LESSING.

masterpiece as Paul and Virginia, or even with a happy
improvisation like the Vicar of Wakefield. The second
part of Faust, too, is rather a reflection of Geothe's
own changed view of life and man's relation to it, than
an harmonious completion of the original conception.
Full of placid wisdom and exquisite poetry it certainly
is ; but if we look at it as a poem, it seems more as if
the author had striven to get in all he could, than to
leave out all he might. We cannot help asking what
business have paper money and political economy and
geognosy here 1 We confess that Thales and the Ho-
munculus weary us not a little, unless, indeed, a poem be
nothing, after all, but a prolonged conundrum. Many
of Schiller's lyrical poems — though the best of them
find no match in modern verse for rapid energy, the
very axles of language kindling with swiftness — seem
disproportionately long in parts, and the thought too
often has the life wellnigh squeezed out of it in the
sevenfold coils of diction, dappled though it be with
splendid imagery.

In German sentiment, which runs over so easily into
sentimentalism, a foreigner cannot help being struck with
a certain incougruousness. What can be odder, for ex-
ample, than the mixture of sensibility and sausages in
some of Goethe's earlier notes to Frau von Stein, unless,
to be sure, the publishing them 1 It would appear that
Germans were less sensible to the ludicrous — and we
are far from saying that this may not have its compen-
satory advantages — than either the English or the
French. And what is the source of this sensibility, if it
be not an instinctive perception of the incongruous and
disproportionate 1 Among all races, the English has
ever shown itself most keenly alive to the fear of mak-
ing itself ridiculous ; and among all, none has produced
so many humorists, only one of them, indeed, so pro

LESSING. 297

found as Cervantes, yet all masters in their several ways.
What English-speaking man, except Boswell, could have
arrived at Weimar, as Goethe did, in that absurd Werther-
montirung ? And where, out of Germany, could he have
found a reigning Grand Duke to put his whole court into
the same sentimental livery of blue and yellow, leather
breeches, boots, and all, excepting only Herder, and that
not on account of his clerical profession, but of his age 1
To be sure, it might be asked also where else in Europe
was a prince to be met with capable of manly friendship
with a man whose only decoration was his genius 1 But
the comicality of the other fact no less remains. Certainly
the German character is in no way so little remarkable
as for its humor. If we were to trust the evidence of
Herr Hub's dreary Deutsche komische und humorintische
Dichtung, we should believe that no German had even
so much as a suspicion of what humor meant, unless the
book itself, as we are half inclined to suspect, be a joke
in three volumes, the want of fun being the real point
thereof. If German patriotism can be induced to find a
grave delight in it, we congratulate Herr Hub's publish-
ers, and for ourselves advise any sober-minded man who
may hereafter " be merry," not to " sing psalms," but to
read Hub as the more serious amusement of the two.
There are epigrams there that make life more solemn,
and, if taken in sufficient doses, would make it more pre-
carious. Even Jean Paul, the greatest of German hu-
morous authors, and never surpassed in comic conception
or in the pathetic quality of humor, is not to be named
with his master, Sterne, as a creative humorist. What
are Siebenkas, Fixlein, Schmelzle, and Fibel, (a single
lay-figure to be draped at will with whimsical sentiment
and reflection, and put in various attitudes,) compared
with the living reality of Walter Shandy and his brother
Toby, characters which we do not see merely as puppet*
13*

298 LESSING.

in the author's mind, but poetically projected from it in
an independent being of their own 1 Heine himself, the
most graceful, sometimes the most touching, of modern
poets, and clearly the most easy of German humorists,
seems to me wanting in a refined perception of that in-
ward propriety which is only another name for poetic
proportion, and shocks us sometimes with an Unflathig-
keit, as at the end of his Deutschland, which, if it make
Germans laugh, as we should be sorry to believe, makes
other people hold their noses. Such things have not
been possible in English since Swift, and the persifleur
Heine cannot offer the same excuse of savage cynicism
that might be pleaded for the Irishman.

I have hinted that Herr Stahr's Life of Lessing is
not precisely the kind of biography that would have
been most pleasing to the man who could not conceive
that an author should be satisfied with anything more
than truth in praise, or anything less in criticism. My
respect for what Lessing was, and for what he did, is
profound. In the history of literature it would be hard
to find a man so stalwart, so kindly, so sincere,* so ca-
pable of great ideas, whether in their influence on the in-
tellect or the life, so unswervingly true to the truth, so free
from the common weaknesses of his class. Since Luther,
Germany has given birth to no such intellectual athlete,
— to no son so German to the core. Greater poets she
has had, but no greater writer ; no nature more finely tem-
pered. Nay, may we not say that great character is as
rare a thing as great genius, if it be not even a nobler
form of it ? For surely it is easier to embody fine think-
ing, or delicate sentiment, or lofty aspiration, in a book
than in a life. The written leaf, if it be, as some few
are, a safe-keeper and conductor of celestial fire, is se-

* " If I write at all, it is not possible for me to write otherwise than
just as I think and feel." — Lessing to his father, 21st December, 1767

LESSING. 299

cure. Poverty cannot pinch, passion swerve, or trial
shake it. But the man Lessing, harassed and striving
life-long, always poor and always hopeful, with no patron
but his own right-hand, the very shuttlecock of fortune,
who saw ruin's ploughshare drive through the hearth
on which his first home-fire was hardly kindled, and who,
through all, was faithful to himself, to his friend, to his
duty, and to his ideal, is something more inspiring for
us than the most glorious utterance of merely intellec-
tual power. The figure of Goethe is grand, it is right-
fully pre-eminent, it has something of the calm, and
something of the coldness, of the immortals ; but the
Valhalla of German letters can show one form, in its
simple manhood, statelier even than his.

Manliness and simplicity, if they are not necessary
coefficients in producing character of the purest tone,
were certainly leading elements in the Lessing who is
still so noteworthy and lovable to us when eighty-six
years have passed since his bodily presence vanished
from among men. He loved clearness, he hated exagger-
ation in all its forms. He was the first German who
had any conception of style, and who could be full with-
out spilling over on all sides. Herr Stahr, we think, is
not just the biographer he would have chosen for him-
self. His book is rather a panegyric than a biography.
There is sometimes an almost comic disproportion be-
tween the matter and the manner, especially in the epic
details of Lessing's onslaughts on the nameless herd of
German authors. It is as if Sophocles should have given
a strophe to every bullock slain by Ajax in his mad foray
upon the Grecian commissary stores. He is too fond of
striking an attitude, and his tone rises unpleasantly near
a scream, as he calls the personal attention of heaven
and earth to something which Lessing himself would
have thought a very matter-of-course affair. He who

300 LESSING.

lays it down as an axiom, that "genius loves simplicity,"
would hardly have been pleased to hear the "Letters on
Literature " called the " burning thunderbolts of his an-
nihilating criticism," or the Anti-Gb'tze pamphlets, " the
hurtling arrows that sped from the bow of the immortal
hero." Nor would he with whom accuracy was a matter
of conscience have heard patiently that the Letters "ap-
peared in a period distinguished for its lofty tone of
mind, and in their own towering boldness they are a
true picture of the intrepid character of the age."* If
the age was what Herr Stahr represents it to have been,
where is the great merit of Leasing? He would have
smiled, we suspect, a little contemptuously, at Herr
Stahr's repeatedly quoting a certificate from the " histo-
rian of the proud Britons," that he was "the first critic
in Europe." Whether we admit or not Lord Macaulay's
competence in the matter, we are sure that Lessing
would not have thanked his biographer for this soup-
ticket to a ladleful of fame. If ever a man stood firmly
on his own feet, and asked help of none, that man was
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing.

Herr Stahr's desire to make a hero of his subject, and
his love for sonorous sentences like those we have
quoted above, are apt to stand somewhat in the way of
our chance at taking a fair measure of the man, and see-
ing in what his heroism really lay. He furnishes little
material for a comparative estimate of Lessing, or for
judging of the foreign influences which helped from time
to time in making him what he was. Nothing is harder
than to worry out a date from Herr Stahr's haystacks
of praise and quotation. Yet dates are of special value

* " I am sure that Kleist would rather have taken another wound
with him into his grave than have such stuff jabbered over him (sich
sotch Zeug nachschwatzen la»sen)." Lessing to Gleim, 6th September
1759.

LESSING. 301

in tracing the progress of an intellect like Lessing's,
which, little actuated by an imvard creative energy, was
commonly stirred to motion by the impulse of other
minds, and struck out its brightest flashes by collision
with them. He himself tells us that a critic should
" first seek out some one with whom he can contend,"
and quotes in justification from one of Aristotle's com-
mentators, Solet Aristoteles queer ere pugnam in suis libris.
This Lessing was always wont to do. He could only feel
his own strength, and make others feel it, — could only
<sall it into full play in an intellectual wrestling-bout.
He was always anointed and ready for the ring, but with
this distinction, that he was no mere prize-fighter, or
bully for the side that would pay him best, nor even a
contender for mere sentiment, but a self-forgetful cham-
pion for the truth as he saw it. Nor is this true of him
only as a critic. His more purely imaginative works —
his Minna, his Emilia, his Nathan — were all written,
not to satisfy the craving of a poetic instinct, nor to rid
head and heart of troublous guests by building them a
lodging outside himself, as Goethe used to do, but to
prove some thesis of criticism or morals by which Truth
could be served. His zeal for her was perfectly unselfish.
" Does one write, then, for the sake of being always in
the right? I think I have been as serviceable to Truth,"
he says, " when I miss her, and my failure is the occa-
sion of another's discovering her, as if I had discovered
her myself." * One would almost be inclined to think,
from Herr Stahr's account of the matter, that Lessing
had been an autochthonous birth of the German soil,
without intellectual ancestry or helpful kindred. That
this is the sufficient natural history of no original mind
we need hardly say, since originality consists quite as
much in the power of using to purpose what it finds

* Letter to Klotz, 9th June, 1766.

302 LESSING.

ready to its hand, as in that of producing what is abso-
lutely new. Perhaps we might say that it was nothing
more than the faculty of combining the separate, and
therefore ineffectual, conceptions of others, and making
them into living thought by the breath of its own organ-
izing spirit. A great man without a past, if he be not
an impossibility, will certainly have no future. He
would be like those conjectural Miltons and Croin wells
of Gray's imaginary Hamlet. The only privilege of the
original man is, that, like other sovereign princes, he
has the right to call in the current coin and reissue it
stamped with his own image, as was the practice of
Lessing.

Herr Stahr's over-intensity of phrase is less offensive
than amusing when applied to Lessing's early efforts in
criticism. Speaking of poor old Gottsched, he says :
" Lessing assailed him sometimes with cutting criticism,
and again with exquisite humor. In the notice of Gott-
sched's poems, he says, among other things, 'The exte-
rior of the volume is so handsome that it will do great
credit to the bookstores, and it is to be hoped that it
will continue to do so for a long time. But to give a
satisfactory idea of the interior surpasses our powers.'
And in conclusion he adds, ' These poems cost two tha-
lers and four groschen. The two thalers pay for the
ridiculous, and the four groschen pretty much for the
useful.'" Again, he tells us that Lessing concludes his
notice of Klopstock's Ode to God " with these inimitably
roguish words : * What presumption to beg thus ear-
nestly for a woman ! ' Does not a whole book of criticism
lie in these nine words 1 " For a young man of twenty-
two, Lessiug's criticisms show a great deal of indepen-
dence and maturity of thought; but humor he never had,
and his wit was always of the bluntest, — crushing
rather than cutting. The mace, and not the scymitar,

LESSING. 303

tfas his weapon. Let Herr Stahr put all Lessing's " in-
imitably roguish words " together, and compare them
with these few iutranslatable lines from Voltaire's letter
to Rousseau, thanking him for his Discours sur Vlne-
yalite : " On n'a jamais employe" tant d'esprit a vouloir
nous rendre betes; il prendenviede marcher a quatrepattes
quand on lit votre ouvrage." Lessing from the first was
something far better than a wit. Force was always
much more characteristic of him than cleverness. Some-
times Herr Stahr's hero-worship leads him into positive
misstatement. For example, speaking of Lessing's Pref-
ace to the "Contributions to the History and Reform
of the Theatre," he tells us that " his eye was directed
chiefly to the English theatre and Shakespeare." Less-
ing at that time (1749) was only twenty, and knew little
more than the names of any foreign dramatists except
the French. In this very Preface his English list skips
from Shakespeare to Dryden, and in the Spanish he
omits Calderon, Tirso de Molina, and Alarcon. Accord-
ingly, we suspect that the date is wrongly assigned to
Lessing's translation of Toda la Vida es Sueno. His
mind was hardly yet ready to feel the strange ^harm of
this most imaginative of Calderon's dramas.

Even where Herr Stahr undertakes to give us light on
the sources of Lessing, it is something of the dimmest.
He attributes "Miss Sara Sampson" to' the influence
of the " Merchant of London," as Mr. Evans translates
it literally from the German, meaning our old friend,
" George Barnwell." But we are strongly inclined to
suspect from internal evidence that Moore's more recent
" Gamester " gave the prevailing impulse. And if Herr
Stahr must needs tell us anything of the Tragedy of
Middle-Class Life, he ought to have known that on the
English stage it preceded Lillo by more than a century,
i— witness the " Yorkshire Tragedy," — and that some-

304 LESSING.

thing very like it was even much older in France We
are inclined to complain, also, that he does not bring
out more clearly how much Lessing owed to Diderot both
as dramatist and critic, nor give us so much as a hint of
what already existing English criticism did for him in
the way of suggestion and guidance. But though we
feel it to be our duty to say so much of Herr Stahrs
positive faults and negative short-comings, yet we leave
him in very good humor. While he is altogether too
full upon certain points of merely transitory importance,
— such as the quarrel with Klotz, — yet we are bound
to thank him both for the abundance of his extracts
from Lessing, and for the judgment he has shown in the
choice of them. Any one not familiar with his writings
will be able to get a very good notion of the quality of
his mind, and the amount of his literary performance,
from these volumes ; and that, after all, is the chief
matter. As to the absolute merit of his works other
than critical, Herr Stahr's judgment is too much at the
mercy of his partiality to be of great value.

Of Mr. Evans's translation we can speak for the most
part with high commendation. There are great diffi^
culties in translating German prose ; and whatever other
good things Herr Stahr may have learned from Lessing,
terseness and clearness are not among them. We have
seldom seen a translation which read more easily, or was
generally more faithful. That Mr. Evans should nod
now and then we do not wonder, nor that he should
sometimes choose the wrong word. We have only com-
pared him with the original where we saw reason for
suspecting a slip ; but, though we have not found much
to complain of, we have found enough to satisfy us that
his book will gain by a careful revision. We select a few
oversights, mainly from the first volume, as examples.
On page 34, comparing Lessing with Goethe on arriving

LESSING. 305

at the University, Mr. Evans, we think, obscures, if he
does not wholly lose the meaning, when he translates
Leben by " social relations," and is altogether wrong in
rendering Patrizier by " aristocrat." At the top of the
next page, too, " suspicious " is not the word for beden-
klich. Had he been writing English, he would surely
have said " questionable." On page 47, " overtrodden
shoes " is hardly so good as the idiomatic " down at the
heel." On page 104, " A very humorous representation "
is oddly made to " confirm the documentary evidence."
The reverse is meant. On page 115, the sentence be-
ginning " the tendency in both " needs revising. On
page 138, Mr. Evans speaks of the " Poetical Village-
younker of Destouches." This, we think, is hardly th&
English of Le Poete Campagnard, and almost recalls
Lieberkiihn's theory of translation, toward which Les-
sing was so unrelenting, — " When I do not understand
a passage, why, I translate it word for word." On page
149, "Miss Sara Sampson" is called " the first social
tragedy of the German Drama." All tragedies surely
are social, except the " Prometheus." Burgerliche Tra-
godie means a tragedy in which the protagonist is taken
from common life, and perhaps cannot be translated
clearly into English except by " tragedy of middle-class
life." So on page 170 we find Emilia Galotti called a
" Virginia bourgeoise" and on page 1 72 a hospital be-
comes a lazaretto. On page 190 we have a sentence end-
ing in this strange fashion : " in an episode of the Eng-
lish original, which Wieland omitted entirely, one of its
characters nevertheless appeared in the German tragedy."
On page 205 we have the Seven Years' War called " a
bloody process" This is mere carelessness, for Mr.
Evans, in the second volume, translates it rightly " law-
suit" What English reader would know what " You are
intriguing me " means, on page 228 ] On page 264,

T

306 LESSING.

Vol. II., we find a passage inaccurately rendered, which
we consider of more consequence, because it is a quota*
tion from Lessing. " 0, out upon the man who claims,
Almighty God, to be a preacher of Thy word, and yet so
impudently asserts that, in order to attain Thy purposes,
there was only one way in which it pleased Thee to make
Thyself known to him ! " This is very far from nur den
einzigen Weg gehabt den Du Dir gef alien lassen ihm kund
zu machen ! The ihm is scornfully emphatic. We hope
Professor Evans will go over his version for a second
edition much more carefully than we have had any occa-
sion to do. He has done an excellent service to our lit-
erature, for which we heartily thank him, in choosing a
book of this kind to translate, and translating it so well.
We would not look such a gift horse too narrowly in the
mouth.

Let us now endeavor to sum up the result of Les-
sing's life and labor with what success we may.

Gotthold Ephraim Lessing was born (January 22,
1729) at Camenz, in Upper Lusatia, the second child
and eldest son of John Gottfried Lessing, a Lutheran
clergyman. Those who believe in the persistent qual-
ities of race, or the cumulative property of culture,
will find something to their purpose in his Saxon blood
and his clerical and juristic ancestry. It is worth men-
tioning, that his grandfather, in the thesis for his doc-
tor's degree, defended the right to entire freedom of
religious belief. The name first comes to the surface in
Parson Clement Lessigk, nearly three centuries ago, and
survives to the present day in a painter of some distinc-
tion. It has almost passed into a proverb, that the
mothers of remarkable children have been something
beyond the common. If there be any truth in the the-
ory, the case of Lessing was an exception, as might have
been inferred, perhaps, from the peculiarly masculine

LESSING. 307

type of his character and intellect. His mother was in
no wise superior, but his father seems to have been a
man somewhat above the pedantic average of the pro-
vincial clergymen of his day, and to have been a scholar
in the ampler meaning of the word. Besides the clas-
sics, he had possessed himself of French and English,
and was somewhat versed in the Oriental languages.
The temper of his theology may be guessed from his hav-
ing been, as his son tells us with some pride, one of " the
earliest translators of Tillotson," We can only conjec-
ture him from the letters which Lessing wrote to him,
from which we should fancy him as on the whole a de*
cided and even choleric old gentleman, in whom the wig,
though not a predominant, was yet a notable feature,
and who was, like many other fathers, permanently
astonished at the fruit of his loins. He would have
preferred one of the so-called learned professions for his
son, — theology above all, — and would seem to have
never quite reconciled himself to his son's distinction,
as being in none of the three careers which alone were
legitimate. Lessing's bearing towards him, always in-
dependent, is really beautiful in its union of respectful
tenderness with unswerving self-assertion. When he
wished to evade the maternal eye, Gotthold used in his
letters to set up a screen of Latin between himself and
her; and we conjecture the worthy Pastor Primarius
playing over again in his study at Camenz, with some
scruples of conscience, the old trick of Chaucer's fox : — .

"Mulier est hominis confusio;
Madam, the sentence of this Latin is.
Woman is mannes joy and mannes bliss."

He appears to have snatched a fearful and but ill-con-
cealed joy from the sight of the first collected edition
of his son's works, unlike Tillotson as they certainly
were. Ah, had they only been Opera ! Yet were they

308 LESSING.

not volumes, after all, and able to stand on their own
edges beside the immortals, if nothing more ?

After grinding with private-tutor Mylius the requisite
time, Lessing entered the school of Camenz, and in his
thirteenth year was sent to the higher institution at
Meissen. We learn little of his career there, except
that Theophrastus, Plautus, and Terence were already
his favorite authors, that he once characteristically dis-
tinguished himself by a courageous truthfulness, and
that he wrote a Latin poem on the valor of the Saxon
soldiers, which his father very sensibly advised him to
shorten. In 1750, four years after leaving the school,
he writes to his father : " I believed even when I was at
Meissen that one must learn much there which he can-
not make the least use of in real life (der Welt), and I
now [after trying Leipzig and Wittenberg] see it all the
more clearly," — a melancholy observation which many
other young men have made under similar circumstances.
Sent to Leipzig in his seventeenth year, he finds himself
an awkward, ungainly lad, and sets diligently to perfect-
ing himself in the somewhat unscholastic accomplish-
ments of riding, dancing, and fencing. He also sedulously
frequents the theatre, and wrote a play, " The Young
Scholar," which attained the honor of representation.
Meanwhile his most intimate companion was a younger
brother of his old tutor Mylius, a young man of more
than questionable morals, and who had even written a
satire on the elders of Camenz, for which — over-confi-
dently trusting himself in the outraged city — he had
been fined and imprisoned ; so little could the German
Muse, celebrated by Klopstock for her swiftness of foot,
protect her son. With this scandalous person and with
play-actors, more than probably of both sexes, did the
young Lessing share a Christmas cake sent him by hia
mother. Such news was not long in reaching Camenz,

LESSING. 309

and we can easily fancy how tragic it seemed in the
little parsonage there, to what cabinet councils it gave
rise in the paternal study, to what ominous shaking of
the clerical wig in that domestic Olympus. A pious
fraud is practised on the boy, who hurries home thinly
clad through the winter weather, his ill-eaten Christmas
cake wringing him with remorseful indigestion, to receive
the last blessing, if such a prodigal might hope for it,
of a broken-hearted mother. He finds the good dame
in excellent health, and softened toward him by a cold
he has taken on his pious journey. He remains at home
several months, now writing Anacreontics of such warmth
that his sister (as volunteer representative of the com-
mon hangman) burns them in the family stove ; now
composing sermons to convince his mother that "he
could be a preacher any day," — a theory of that sacred
office unhappily not yet extinct. At Easter, 1747, he
gets back to Leipzig again, with some scant supply
of money in his pocket, but is obliged to make his es-
cape thence between two days somewhere toward the
middle of the next year, leaving behind him some his-
trionic debts (chiefly, we fear, of a certain Mademoiselle
Lorenz) for which he had confidingly made himself se-
curity. Stranded, by want of floating or other capital,
at Wittenberg, he enters himself, with help from home,
as a student there, but soon migrates again to Berlin,
which had been his goal when making his hegira from
Leipzig. In Berlin he remained three years, applying
himself to his chosen calling of author at all work, by
doing whatever honest job offered itself, — verse, crit-
icism, or translation, — and profitably studious in a very
wide range of languages and their literature. Above
all, he learned the great secret, which his stalwart
English contemporary, Johnson, also acquired, of being
able to " dine heartily " for threepence.

310 LESSING.

Meanwhile he continues in a kind of colonial depend-
ence on the parsonage at Camenz, the bonds gradually
slackening, sometimes shaken a little rudely, and always
giving alarming hints of approaching and inevitable au-
tonomy. From the few home letters of Lessing which
remain, (covering the period before 1753, there are only
eight in all,) we are able to surmise that a pretty con-
stant maternal cluck and shrill paternal warning were
kept up from the home coop. We find Lessing defend-
ing the morality of the stage and his own private mor-
als against charges and suspicions of his parents, and
even making the awful confession that he does not con-
sider the Christian religion itself as a thing " to be taken
on trust," nor a Christian by mere tradition so valuable
a member of society as " one who has prudently doubted,
and by the way of examination has arrived at conviction,
or at least striven to arrive." Boyish scepticism of the
superficial sort is a common phenomenon enough, but
the Lessing variety of it seems to us sufficiently rare in
a youth of twenty. What strikes us mainly in the let-
ters of these years is not merely the maturity they show,
though that is remarkable, but the tone. We see already
in them the cheerful and never overweening self-confi-
dence which always so pleasantly distinguished Lessing,
and that strength of tackle, so seldom found in literary
men, which brings the mind well home to its anchor, en-
abling it to find holding-ground and secure riding in any
sea. " What care I to live in plenty," he asks gayly,
" if I only live ] " Indeed, Lessing learned early, and
never forgot, that whoever would be life's master, and
not its drudge, must make it a means, and never allow it
to become an end. He could say more truly than
Goethe, Mein Acker ist die Zeit, since he not only sowed
in it the seed of thought for other men and other times,
but cropped it for his daily bread. Above all, we find

LESSING. 311

Lessing even thus early endowed with the power of
keeping his eyes wide open to what he was after, to what
would help or hinder him, — a much more singular gift
than is commonly supposed. Among other jobs of this
first Berlin period, he had undertaken to arrange the
library of a certain Herr Riidiger, getting therefor his
meals and " other receipts," whatever they may have
been. His father seems to have heard with anxiety that
this arrangement had ceased, and Lessing writes to him :
" I never wished to have anything to do with this old
man longer than until I had made myself thoroughly ac-
quainted with his great library. This is now accom-
plished, and we have accordingly parted." This was in
his twenty-first year, and we have' no doubt, from the
range of scholarship which Lessing had at command so
young, that it was perfectly true. All through his life
he was thoroughly German in this respect also, that he
never quite smelted his knowledge clear from some slag
of learning.

In the early part of the first Berlin residence, Pastor
Primarius Lessing, hearing that his son meditated a
movement on Vienna, was much exercised with fears of
the temptation to Popery he would be exposed to in that
capital. We suspect that the attraction thitherward
had its source in a perhaps equally catholic, but less
theological magnet, — the Mademoiselle Lorenz above
mentioned. Let us remember the perfectly innocent
passion of Mozart for an actress, and be comforted.
There is not the slightest evidence that Lessing's life at
this time, or any other, though careless, was in any way
debauched. No scandal was ever coupled with his name,
nor is any biographic chemistry needed to bleach spots
out of his reputation. What cannot be said of Wieland,
of Goethe, of Schiller, of Jean Paul, may be safely af-
firmed of this busy and single-minded man. The pa-

312 LESSING.

rental fear of Popery brought him a seasonable supply
of money from home, which enabled him to clothe
himself decently enough to push his literary fortunes,
and put on a bold front with publishers. Poor enough
he often was, but never in so shabby a pass that he was
forced to write behind a screen, like Johnson.

It was during this first stay in Berlin that Lessing was
brought into personal relations with Voltaire. Through
an acquaintance with the great man's secretary, Richier,
he was employed as translator in the scandalous Hirschel
lawsuit, so dramatically set forth by Carlyle in his Life
of Frederick, though Lessing's share in it seems to have
been unknown to him. The service could hardly have
been other than distasteful to him ; but it must have
been with some thrill of the anche io ! kind that the
poor youth, just fleshing his maiden pen in criticism,
stood face to face with the famous author, with whose
name all Europe rang from side to side. This was in
February, 1751. Young as he was, we fancy those cool
eyes of his making some strange discoveries as to the
real nature of that lean nightmare of Jesuits and
dunces. Afterwards the same secretary lent him the
manuscript of the Siecle de Lou-is XIV., and Lessiug
thoughtlessly taking it into the country with him, it was
not forthcoming when called for by the author. Vol-
taire naturally enough danced with rage, screamed all
manner of unpleasant things about robbery and the
like, cashiered the secretary, and was, we see no reason
to doubt, really afraid of a pirated edition. This time
his cry of wolf must have had a quaver of sincerity in it.
Herr Stahr, who can never keep separate the Lessing as
he then was and the Lessing as he afterwards became,
takes fire at what he chooses to consider an unworthy
suspicion of the Frenchman, and treats himself to some
rather cheap indignation on the subject. For ourselves,

LESSING. 313

We think Voltaire altogether in the right, and we respect
Lessing's honesty too much to suppose, with his biogra-
pher, that it was this which led him, years afterwards,
to do such severe justice to Merope, and other tragedies
of the same author. The affair happened in December,
1751, and a year later Lessing calls Voltaire a "great
man," and says of his Amalie, that "it has not only
beautiful passages, it is beautiful throughout, and the
tears of a reader of feeling will justify our judgment."
Surely there is no resentment here. Our only wonder
would be at its being written after the Hirschel business.
At any rate, we cannot allow Herr Stahr to shake our
faith in the sincerity of Lessing's motives in criticism, —
he could not in the soundness of the criticism itself, —
by tracing it up to a spring at once so petty and so
personal.

During a part of 1752,* Lessing was at Wittenberg
again as student of medicine, the parental notion of a
strictly professional career of some kind not having yet
been abandoned. We must give his father the credit of
having done his best, in a well-meaning paternal fashion,
to make his son over again in his own image, and to
thwart the design of nature by coaxing or driving him
into the pinfold of a prosperous obscurity. But Gott-
hold, with all his gifts, had no talent whatever for con-
tented routine. His was a mind always in solution,
which the divine order of things, as it is called, could
not precipitate into any of the traditional forms of crys-

* Herr Stahr heads the fifth chapter of his Second Book, " Lessing
at Wittenberg. December, 1751, to November, 1752." But we never
feel quite sure of his dates. The Richier affair puts Lessing in Berlin
in December, 1751, and he took his Master's degree at Wittenberg,
29th April, 1752. We are told that he finally left Wittenberg " toward
the end " of that year. He himself writing from Berlin in 1754, says
that he has been absent from that city nur ein halbes Jahr since 1748
There is only one letter for 1752, dated at Wittenberg, 9th June.
14

314 LESSING.

tallization, and in which the time to come was already
fermenting. The principle of growth was in the young
literary hack, and he must obey it or die. His was to
the last a natura naturans, never a naturata. Lessing
seems to have done what he could to be a dutiful fail-
ure. But there was something in him stronger and
more sacred than even filial piety; and the good old
pastor is remembered now only as the father of a son
who would have shared the benign oblivion of his own
theological works, if he could only have had his wise
way with him. Even after never so many biographies
and review articles, genius continues to be a marvellous
and inspiring thing. At the same time, considering the
then condition of what was pleasantly called literature
in Germany, there was not a little to be said on the pa-
ternal side of the question, though it may not seem now
a very heavy mulct to give up one son out of ten to
immortality, — at least the Fates seldom decimate in
this way. Lessing had now, if we accept the common
standard in such matters, "completed his education,"
and the result may be summed up in his own words to
Michaelis, 16th October, 1754 : "I have studied at the
Fiirstenschule at Meissen, and after that at Leipzig and
Wittenberg. But I should be greatly embarrassed if I
were asked to tell ivhat" As early as his twentieth
year he had arrived at some singular notions as to the
uses of learning. On the 20th of January, 1749, he
writes to his mother : " I found out that books, indeed,
would make me learned, but never make me a man."
Like most men of great knowledge, as distinguished
from mere scholars, he seems to have been always a
rather indiscriminate reader, and to have been fond, as
Johnson was, of " browsing " in libraries. Johnson nei-
ther in amplitude of literature nor exactness of scholar-
ship could be deemed a match for Lessing ; but they

LESSING. 315

were alike in the power of readily applying whatever
they had learned, whether for purposes of illustration or
argument. They resemble each other, also, in a kind of
absolute common-sense, and in the force with which they
could plant a direct blow with the whole weight both of
their training and their temperament behind it. As a
critic, Johnson ends where Lessing begins. The one is
happy in the lower region of the understanding : the
other can breathe freely in the ampler air of reason
alone. Johnson acquired learning, and stopped short
from indolence at a certain point. Lessing assimilated
it, and accordingly his education ceased only with his
life. Both had something of the intellectual sluggish-
ness that is apt to go with great strength ; and both had
to be baited by the antagonism of circumstances or
opinions, not only into the exhibition, but into the pos-
session of their entire force. Both may be more properly
called original men than, in the highest sense, original
writers.

From 1752 to 1760, with an interval of something
over two years spent in Leipzig to be near a good thea-
tre, Lessing was settled in Berlin, and gave himself
wholly and earnestly to the life of a man of letters. A
thoroughly healthy, cheerful nature he most surely had,
with something at first of the careless light-heartedness
of youth. Healthy he was not always to be, not always
cheerful, often very far from light-hearted, but manly
from first to last he eminently was. Downcast he could
never be, for his strongest instinct, invaluable to him
also as a critic, was to see things as they really are.
And this not in the sense of a cynic, but of one who
measures himself as well as his circumstances, — who
loves truth as the most beautiful of all things and the
only permanent possession, as being of one substance
with the soul. In a man like Lessing, whose character

316 LESSING.

is even more interesting than his works, the tone and
turn of thought are what we like to get glimpses of.
And for this his letters are more helpful than those of
most authors, as might be expected of one who said of
himself, that, in his more serious work, " he must profit
by his first heat to accomplish anything." He began,
we say, light-heartedly. He did not believe that "one
should thank God only for good things." " He who is
only in good health, and is willing to work, has nothing
to fear in the world." " What another man would call
want, I call comfort." " Must not one often act thought-
lessly, if one would provoke Fortune to do something
for him1?" In his first inexperience, the life of "the
sparrow on the house-top " (which we find oddly trans-
lated "roof") was the one he would choose for himself.
Later in life, when he wished to marry, he was of another
mind, and perhaps discovered that there was something
in the old father's notion of a fixed position. " The life
of the sparrow on the house-top is only right good if one
need not expect any end to it. If it cannot always last,
every day it lasts too long," — he writes to Ebert in
1770. Yet even then he takes the manly view. " Ev-
erything in the world has its time, everything may be
overlived and overlooked, if one only have health."
Nor let any one suppose that Lessing, full of courage as
he was, found professional authorship a garden of Alci-
noiis. From creative literature he continually sought
refuge, and even repose, in the driest drudgery of mere
scholarship. On the 26th of April, 1768, he writes to
his brother with something of his old gayety : " Thank
God, the time will soon come when I cannot call a penny
in the world my own but I must first earn it. I am un-
happy if it must be by writing." And again in May,
1771 : "Among all the wretched, I think him the most
wretched who must work with his head, even if he is

LESSING. 317

not conscious of having one. But what is the good of
complaining]" Lessing's life, if it is a noble example,
so far as it concerned himself alone, is also a warning
when another is to be asked to share it. He too would
have profited had he earlier learned and more constantly
borne in mind the profound wisdom of that old saying,
Si sit prudentia. Let the young poet, however he may
believe of his art that " all other pleasures are not worth
its pains," consider well what it is to call down fire from
heaven to keep the pot boiling, before he commit him-
self to a life of authorship as something fine and easy.
That fire will not condescend to such office, though it
come without asking on ceremonial days to the free ser-
vice of the altar.

Lessing, however, never would, even if he could, have
so desecrated his better powers. For a bare livelihood,
he always went sturdily to the market of hack-work,
where his learning would fetch him a price. But it was
only in extremest need that he would claim that benefit
of clergy. " I am worried," he writes to his brother
Karl, 8th April, 1773, "and work because working is
the only means to cease being so. But you and Vcss
are very much mistaken if you think that it could ever
be indifferent to me, under such circumstances, on what
I work. Nothing less true, whether as respects the
work itself or the principal object wherefor I work. I
have been in my life before now in very wretched cir-
cumstances, yet never in such that I would have written
for bread in the true meaning of the word. I have be-
gun my ' Contributions ' because this work helps me
.... to live from one day to another." It is plain that
he does not call this kind of thing in any high sense
writing. Of that he had far other notions ; for though
he honestly disclaimed the title, yet his dream was al-
ways to be a poet. But he was willing to work, as he

318 LESSINCL

claimed to be, because he. had one ideal higher than that
of being a poet, namely, to be thoroughly a man. To
Nicolai he writes in 1758 : "All ways of earning his
bread are alike becoming to an honest man, whether to
split wood or to sit at the helm of state. It does not
concern his conscience how useful he is, but how useful
he would be." Goethe's poetic sense was the Minotaur
to which he sacrificed everything. To make a study, he
would soil the maiden petals of a woman's soul ; to get
the delicious sensation of a reflex sorrow, he would wring
a heart. All that saves his egoism from being hateful
is, that, with its immense reaches, it cheats the sense
into a feeling of something like sublimity. A patch of
sand is unpleasing ; a desert has all the awe of ocean.
Lessing also felt the duty of self-culture ; but it was not
so much for the sake of feeding fat this or that faculty
as of strengthening character, — the only soil in which
real mental power can root itself and find sustenance.
His advice to his brother Karl, who was beginning to
write for the stage, is two parts moral to one literary.
" Study ethics diligently, learn to express yourself well
and correctly, and cultivate your own character. With-
out that I cannot conceive a good dramatic author."
Marvellous counsel this will seem to those who think
that wisdom is only to be found in the fool's paradise
of Bohemia !

We said that Lessing's dream was to be a poet. In
comparison with success as a dramatist, he looked on all
other achievement as inferior in kind. In 1767 he
writes to Gleim (speaking of his call to Hamburg) :
" Such circumstances were needed to rekindle in me an
almost extinguished love for the theatre. I was just be-
ginning to lose myself in other studies which would
have made me unfit for any work of genius. My
Laocoon is now a secondary labor." And yet he never

LESSING. 319

fell into the mistake of overvaluing what he valued so
highly. His unflinching common-sense would have
saved him from that, as it afterwards enabled him to see
that something was wanting in him which must enter
into the making of true poetry, whose distinction from
prose is an inward one of nature, and not an outward
one of form. While yet under thirty, he assures Men-
delssohn that he was quite right in neglecting poetry for
philosophy, because " only a part of our youth should
be given up to the arts of the beautiful. We must prac-
tise ourselves in weightier things before we die. An old
man, who lifelong has done nothing but rhyme, and an old
man who lifelong has done nothing but pass his breath
through a stick with holes in it, — I doubt much whether
such an old man has arrived at what he was meant for."
This period of Lessing's life was a productive one,
though none of its printed results can be counted of
permanent value, except his share in the " Letters on
German Literature." And even these must be reckoned
as belonging to the years of his apprenticeship and
training for the master-workman he afterwards became.
The small fry of authors and translators were hardly
fitted to call out his full strength, but his vivisection of
them taught him the value of certain structural princi-
ples. " To one dissection of the fore quarter of an ass,"
says Hay don in his diary, " I owe my information."
Yet even in his earliest criticisms we are struck with the
same penetration and steadiness of judgment, the same
firm grasp of the essential and permanent, that were
afterwards to make his opinions law in the courts of
taste. For example, he says of Thomson, that, " as a
dramatic poet, he had the fault of never knowing when to
leave oft' ; he lets every character talk so long as anything
can be said ; accordingly, during these prolonged con-
versations, the action stands still, and the story becomes

320 LESSING.

tedious." Of " Roderick Random," he says that " its
author is neither a Richardson nor a Fielding ; he is one
of those writers of whom there are plenty among the
Germans and French." We cite these merely because
their firmness of tone seems to us uncommon in a youth
of twenty-four. In the " Letters," the range is much
wider, and the application of principles more consequent.
He had already secured for himself a position among the
literary men of that day, and was beginning to be feared
for the inexorable justice of his criticisms. His " Fa-
bles " and his " Miss Sara Sampson " had been trans-
lated into French, and had attracted the attention of
Grimm, who says of them (December, 1754) : " These
Fables commonly contain in a few lines a new and pro-
found moral meaning. M. Lessing has much wit, genius,
and invention ; the dissertations which follow the Fables
prove moreover that he is an excellent critic." In Ber-
lin, Lessing made friendships, especially with Men-
delssohn, Von Kleist, Meolai, Gleim, and Ramler. For
Mendelssohn and Von Kleist he seems to have felt a real
love ; for the others at most a liking, as the best ma-
terial that could be had. It certainly was not of the
juiciest. He seems to have worked hard and played
hard, equally at home in his study and Baumann's wine-
cellar. He was busy, poor, and happy.

But he was restless. We suspect that the necessity
of forever picking up crumbs, and their occasional
scarcity, made the life of the sparrow on the house-top
less agreeable than he had expected. The imagined free-
dom was not quite so free after all, for necessity is as
short a tether as dependence, or official duty, or what
not, and the regular occupation of grub-hunting is as
tame and wearisome as another. Moreover, Lessing had
probably by this time sucked his friends dry of any in-
tellectual stimulus they could yield him; and when

LESSING/ 321

friendship reaches that pass, it is apt to be anything but
inspiring. Except Mendelssohn and Von Kleist, they
were not men capable of rating him at his true value ;
and Lessing was one of those who always burn up the
fuel of life at a fearful rate. Admirably dry as the sup-
plies of Ramler and the rest no doubt were, they had
not substance enough to keep his mind at the high tem-
perature it needed, and he would soon be driven to the
cutting of green stuff from his own wood-lot, more rich
in smoke than fire. Besides this, he could hardly have
been at ease among intimates most of whom could not
even conceive of that intellectual honesty, that total dis-
regard of all personal interests where truth was concerned,
which was an innate quality of Lessing's mind. Their
theory of criticism was, Truth, or even worse if possible,
for all who do not belong to our set ; for us, that deli-
cious falsehood which is no doubt a slow poison, but
then so very slow. Their nerves were unbraced by that
fierce democracy of thought, trampling on all prescrip-
tion, all tradition, in which Lessing loved to shoulder his
way and advance his insupportable foot. " What is
called a heretic," he says in his Preface to Berengarius,
" has a very good side. It is a man who at least wishes
to see with his own eyes." And again, " I know not if
it be a duty to offer up fortune and life to the truth ;
.... but I know it is a duty, if one undertake to teach
the truth, to teach the whole of it, or none at all."
Such men as Gleim and Ramler were mere dilettanti,
and could have no notion how sacred his convictions are
to a militant thinker like Lessing. His creed as to the
rights of friendship in criticism might be put in the
words of Selden, the firm tread of whose mind was like
his own : " Opinion and affection extremely differ.
Opinion is something wherein I go about to give reason
why all the world should think as I think. Affection is

322 LESSINQ.

a thing wherein I look after the pleasing of myself."
How little his friends were capable of appreciating this
view of the matter is plain from a letter of Ramler to
Gleim, cited by Herr Stahr. Lessing had shown up the
weaknesses of a certain work by the Abbe Batteux (long
ago gathered to his literary fathers as conclusively as
poor old Ramler himself), without regard to the impor-
tant fact that the Abbe's book had been translated by a
friend. Horrible to think of at best, thrice horrible
when the friend's name was Ramler ! The impression
thereby made on the friendly heart may .be conceived.
A ray of light penetrated the rather opaque substance
of Herr Ramler's mind, and revealed to him the danger-
ous character of Lessing. " I know well," he says,
" that Herr Lessing means to speak his own opinion,
and " — what is the dreadful inference 1 — " and, by
suppressing others, to gain air, and make room for him-
self. This disposition is not to be overcome." * For-
tunately not, for Lessing's opinion always meant some-
thing, and was worth having. Gleim no doubt sympa-
thized deeply with the sufferer by this treason, for he
too had been shocked at some disrespect for La Fontaine,
as a disciple of whom he had announced himself.

Berlin was hardly the place for Lessing, if he could
not take a step in any direction without risk of treading
on somebody's gouty foot. This was not the last time
that he was to have experience of the fact that the critic's
pen, the more it has of truth's celestial temper, the more
it is apt to reverse the miracle of the archangel's spear,
and to bring out whatever is toadlike in the nature of
him it touches. We can well understand the sadness
with which he said,

" Der Blick des Forscher's fand
Nicht selten mehr als er zu finden wiinschte."

* " Ramler," writes Georg Forster, " ist die Ziererei, die Eigenliebe^
die Eitelkeit in eigener Person."

LESSING. 323

Here, better than anywhere, we may cite something
which he wrote of himself to a friend of Klotz. Les-
sing, it will be remembered, had literally " suppressed "
Klotz. " What do you apprehend, then, from me 1 The
more faults and errors you point out to me, so much
the more I shall learn of you ; the more I learn of

you, the more thankful shall I be I wish you

knew me more thoroughly. If the opinion you have
of my learning and genius (Geist) should perhaps
suffer thereby, yet I am sure the idea I would like
you to form of my character would gain. I am not
the insufferable, unmannerly, proud, slanderous man
Herr Klotz proclaims me. It cost me a great deal
of trouble and compulsion to be a little bitter against
him."* Ramler and the rest had contrived a nice
little society for mutual admiration, much like that
described by Goldsmith, if, indeed, he did not con-
vey it from the French, as was not uncommon with
him. " ' What, have you never heard of the ad-
mirable Brandellius or the ingenious Mogusius, one
the eye and the other the heart of our University,
known all over the world 1 ' ' Never,' cried the travel-
ler ; ' but pray inform me what Brandellius is particu-
larly remarkable for.' 'You must be little acquainted
with the republic of letters,' said the other, 'to ask such
a question. Brandellius has written a most sublime
panegyric on Mogusius.' 'And, prithee, what has Mo-
gusius done to deserve so great a favor V 'He has
written an excellent poem in praise of Brandellius.' "
Lessing was not the man who could narrow himself to
the proportions of a clique ; lifelong he was the terror
of the Brandellii and Mogusii, and, at the signal given
by him,

* Lessing to Von Murr, 25th November, 1768. The whole letter is
well worth reading.

324 LESSING.

" They, but now who seemed
In bigness to surpass Earth's giant sons,
Now less than smallest dwarfs in narrow room
Throng numberless."

Besides whatever other reasons Lessing may have had
for leaving Berlin, we fancy that his having exhausted
whatever means it had of helping his spiritual growth
was the chief. Nine years later, he gave as a reason for
not wishing to stay long in Brunswick, " Not that I do
not like Brunswick, but because nothing conies of being
long in a place which one likes."* Whatever the rea-
son, Lessing, in 1 760, left Berlin for Breslau, where the
post of secretary had been offered him under Frederick's
tough old General Tauentzien. " I will spin myself in
for a while like an ugly worm, that I may be able to
come to light again as a brilliant winged creature," says
his diary. Shortly after his leaving Berlin, he was
chosen a member of the Academy of Sciences there.
Herr Stahr, who has no little fondness for the foot-light
style of phrase, says, " It may easily be imagined that
he himself regarded his appointment as an insult rather
than as an honor." Lessing himself merely says that it
was a matter of indifference to him, which is much more
in keeping with his character and with the value of the
intended honor.

The Seven Years' War began four years before Lessing
took up his abode in Breslau, and it may be asked how
he, as a Saxon, was affected by it. We might answer,
hardly at all. His position was that of armed neu-
trality. Long ago at Leipzig he had been accused of
Prussian leanings ; now in Berlin he was thought too
Saxon. Though he disclaimed any such sentiment as

* A favorite phrase of his, which Egbert has preserved for us with
Us Saxon accent, was, Es komml dock nlscht dabey keraus, imp1 y ing
that one might do something better for a constancy than shearing
»wine.

LESSING. 325

patriotism, and called himself a cosmopolite, it is plain
enough that his position was simply that of a German.
Love of country, except in a very narrow parochial way,
was as impossible in Germany then as in America during
the Colonial period. Lessing himself, in the latter years
of his life, was librarian of one of those petty princelets
who sold their subjects to be shot at in America, —
creatures strong enough to oppress, too weak to protect
their people. Whoever would have found a Germany to
love must have pieced it together as painfully as Isis
did the scattered bits of Osiris. Yet he says that " the
true patriot is by no means extinguished " in him. It
was the noisy ones that he could not abide ; and, writing
to Gleim about his " Grenadier " verses, he advises him
to soften the tone of them a little, he himself being a "de-
clared enemy of imprecations," which he would leave al-
together to the clergy. We think Herr Stahr makes too
much of these anti-patriot flings of Lessing, which, with
a single exception, occur in his letters to Gleim, and with
reference to a kind of verse that could not but be dis-
tasteful to him, as needing no more brains than a drum,
nor other inspiration than serves a trumpet. Lessing
undoubtedly had better uses for his breath than to spend
it in shouting for either side in this " bloody lawsuit,"
as he called it, in which he was not concerned. He
showed himself German enough, and in the right way,
in his persistent warfare against the tyranny of French
taste.

He remained in Breslau the better part of five years,
studying life in new phases, gathering a library, which,
as commonly happens, he afterwards sold at great loss,
and writing his Minna and his Laocoon. He accompa-
nied Tauentzien to the siege of Schweidnitz, where Fred-
erick was present in person. He seems to have lived a
rather free-and-easy life during his term of office, kept

326 LESSING.

shockingly late hours, and learned, among other things,
to gamble, — a fact for which Herr Stahr thinks it need-
ful to account in a high philosophical fashion. We pre-
fer to think that there are some motives to which re-
markable men are liable in common with the rest of
mankind, and that they may occasionally do a thing
merely because it is pleasant, without forethought of
medicinal benefit to the mind. Lessing's friends (whose
names were not, as the reader might be tempted to sup-
pose, Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar) expected him to make
something handsome out of his office ; but the pitiful
result of those five years of opportunity was nothing
more than an immortal book. Unthrifty Leasing, to
have been so nice about your fingers, (and so Dear the
mint, too,) when your general was wise enough to make
his fortune ! As if ink-stains were the only ones that
would wash out, and no others had ever been covered
with white kid from the sight of all reasonable men ! In
July, 1764, he had a violent fever, which he turned to
account in his usual cheerful way : " The serious epoch
of my life is drawing nigh. I am beginning to become
a man, and flatter myself that in this burning fever I
have raved away the last remains of my youthful follies.
Fortunate illness ! " He had never intended to bind him-
self to an official career. To his father he writes : " I have
more than once declared that my present engagement
could not continue long, that I have not given up my
old plan of living, and that I am more than ever resolved
to withdraw from any service that is not wholly to my
mind. I have passed the middle of my life, and can
think of nothing that could compel me to make myself a
slave for the poor remainder of it. I write you this,
dearest father, and must write you this, in order that
you may not be astonished if, before long, you should
see me once more very far removed from all hopes of, OT

LESSING. 327

claims to, a settled prosperity, as it is called." Before
the middle of the next year he was back in Berlin again.
There he remained for nearly two years, trying the
house-top way of life again, but with indifferent success,
as we have reason to think. Indeed, when the metaphor
resolves itself into the plain fact of living just on the
other side of the roof, — in the garret, namely, • — and
that from hand to mouth, as was Lessing's case, we need
not be surprised to find him gradually beginning to see
something more agreeable in a fixirtes Gliick than he had
once been willing to allow. At any rate, he was willing,
and even heartily desirous, that his friends should suc-
ceed in getting for him the place of royal librarian. But
Frederick, for some unexplained reason, would not ap-
point him. Herr Stahr thinks it had something to do
with the old Siecle manuscript business. But this seems
improbable, for Voltaire's wrath was not directed against
Lessing : and even if it had been, the great king could
hardly have carried the name of an obscure German au-
thor in his memory through all those anxious and war-
like years. Whatever the cause, Lessing early in 1767
accepts the position of Theatrical Manager at Hamburg,
as usual not too much vexed with disappointment, but
quoting gayly

" Quod non dant proceres, dabit histrio."

Like Burns, he was always " contented wi' little and
canty wi' mair." In connection with his place as Man-
ager he was to write a series of dramatic essays and crit-
icisms. It is to this we owe the Dramaturgic, — next
to the Laocoon the most valuable of his works. But
Lessing — though it is plain that he made his hand as
light as he could, and wrapped his lash in velvet — soon
found that actors had no more taste for truth than au-
thors. He was obliged to drop his remarks on the spe-

328 LESSING.

cial merits or demerits of players, and to confine himself
to those of the pieces represented. By this his work
gained in value ; and the latter part of it, written with-
out reference to a particular stage, and devoted to the
discussion of those general principles of dramatic art on
which he had meditated long and deeply, is far weightier
than the rest. There are few men who can put forth
all their muscle in a losing race, and it is characteristic
of Lessing that what he wrote under the dispiritment
of failure should be the most lively and vigorous. Cir-
cumstances might be against him, but he was incapable
of believing that a cause could be lost which had once
enlisted his conviction.

The theatrical enterprise did not prosper long; but
Lessing had meanwhile involved himself as partner in a
publishing business which harassed him while it lasted,
and when it failed, as was inevitable, left him hampered
with debt. Help came in his appointment (1770) to take
charge of the Duke of Brunswick's library at Wolfenbiit-
tel, with a salary of six hundred thalers a year. This
was the more welcome, as he soon after was betrothed
with Eva Kb'nig, widow of a rich manufacturer.* Her
husband's affairs, however, had been left in confusion,
and this, with Lessing's own embarrassments, prevented
their being married till October, 1776. Eva Konig was

* I find surprisingly little about Laesing in such of the contempo-
rary correspondence of German literary men as I have read. A let-
ter of Boie to Merck (10 April, 1775) gives us a glimpse of him. " Do
vou know that Lessing will probably marry Reiske's widow and come
to Dresden in place of Hagedorn? The restless spirit! How he will

get along with the artists, half of them, too, Italians, is to be seen

!iffert and he have met and parted good friends. He has worn ever
since on his finger the ring with the skeleton and butterfly which Lif-
fert gave him. He is reported to be much dissatisfied with the theat-
rical filibustering of Goethe and Lenz, especially with the remarks on
the drama in which so little respect is shown for his Aristotle, and th»
Leipzig folks are said to be greatly rejoiced at getting such an ally."

LESSING. 329

every way worthy of him. Clever, womanly, discreet,
with just enough coyness of the will to be charming
when it is joined with sweetness and good sense, she was
the true helpmate of such a man, — the serious compan.
ion of his mind and the playfellow of his affections.
There is something infinitely refreshing to me in the
love-letters of these two persons. Without wanting sen-
timent, there is such a bracing air about them as breathes
from the higher levels and strong-holds of the soul.
They show that self-possession which can alone reserve
to love the power of new self-surrender, — of never cloy-
ing, because never wholly possessed. Here is no invax
sion and conquest of the weaker nature by the stronger,
but an equal league of souls, each in its own realm still
sovereign. Turn from such letters as these to those of
St. Preux and Julie, and you are stifled with the heavy
perfume of a demirep's boudoir, — to those of Herder to
his Caroline, and you sniff no doubtful odor of profes-
sional unction from the sermon-case. Manly old Dr.
Johnson, who could be tender and true to a plain woman,
knew very well what he meant when he wrote that sin-
gle poetic sentence of his, — " The shepherd in Virgil
grew at last acquainted with Love, and found him to be
a native of the rocks."

In January, 1778, Lessing's wife died from the effects
of a difficult childbirth. The child, a boy, hardly sur-
vived its birth. The few words wrung out of Lessing
by this double sorrow are to me as deeply moving as any-
thing in tragedy. " I wished for once to be as happy
(es so gut haben) as other men. But it has gone ill
with me ! " " And I was so loath to lose him, this son ! "
" My wife is dead ; and I have had this experience also.
I rejoice that I have not many more such experiences
left to make, and am quite cheerful" " If you had
known her ! But they say that to praise one's wife is

330 LESSING.

self-praise. Well, then, I say no more of her ! But if
you had known her ! " Quite cheerful ! On the 10th of
August he writes to Elise Reimarus, — he is writing to
a woman now, an old friend of his and his wife, and will
be less restrained : "I am left here all alone. I have
not a single friend to whom I can wholly confide myself.
.... How often must I curse my ever wishing to be
for once as happy as other men ! How often have I
wished myself back again in my old, isolated condition,
. — to be nothing, to wish nothing, to do nothing, but
what the present moment brings with it ! .... Yet I
am too proud to think myself unhappy. I just grind
my teeth, and let the boat go as pleases wind and waves.
Enough that I will not overset it myself." It is plain
from this letter that suicide had been in his mind, and,
with his antique way of thinking on many subjects, he
would hardly have looked on it as a crime. But he was
too brave a man to throw up the sponge to fate, and had
work to do yet. Within a few days of his wife's death
he wrote to Eschenburg : "I am right heartily ashamed
if my letter betrayed the least despair. Despair is not
nearly so much my failing as levity, which often ex-
presses itself with a little bitterness and misanthropy."
A stoic, not from insensibility or cowardice, as so many
are, but from stoutness of heart, he blushes at a mo-
ment's abdication of self-command. And he will not
roil the clear memory of his love with any tinge of the
sentimentality so much the fashion, and to be had so
cheap, in that generation. There is a moderation of sin-
cerity peculiar to Lessing in the epithet of the following
sentence : " How dearly must I pay for the single year
I have lived with a sensible wife ! " Werther had then
been published four years. Lessing's grief has that pa-
thos which he praised in sculpture, — he may writhe,
but he must not scream. Nor is this a new thing with

LESSING. 331

him. On the death of a younger brother, he wrote to
his father, fourteen years before : " Why should those
who grieve communicate their grief to each other pur-
posely to increase it '?.... Many mourn in death what
they loved not living. I will love in life what nature
bids me love, and after death strive to bewail it as little
as T can."

We think Herr Stahr is on his stilts again when he
speaks of Lessing's position at Wolfenbiittel. He calls
it an "assuming the chains of feudal service, being
buried in a corner, a martyrdom that consumed the best
powers of his mind and crushed him in body and spirit
forever." To crush forever is rather a strong phrase,
Herr Stahr, to apply to the spirit, if one must ever give
heed to the sense as well as the sound of what one is
writing. But eloquence has no bowels for its victims.
We have no doubt the Duke of Brunswick meant well
by Lessing, and the salary he paid him was as large as
he would have got from the frugal Frederick. But one
whose trade it was to be a Duke could hardly have had
much sympathy with his librarian after he had once found
out what he really was. For even if he was not, as Herr
Stahr affirms, a republican, and we doubt very much if
he was, yet he was not a man who could play with ideas
in the light French fashion. At the ardent touch of
his sincerity, they took fire, and grew dangerous to what
is called the social fabric. The logic of wit, with its
momentary flash, is a very different thing from that con-
sequent logic of thought, pushing forward its deliberate
sap day and night with a fixed object, which belonged to
Lessing. The men who attack abuses are not so much
to be dreaded by the reigning house of Superstition as
those who, as Dante says, syllogize hateful truths. As
for " the chains of feudal service," they might serve a
Fenian Head-Centre on a pinch, but are wholly out of

332 LESSING.

place here. The slavery that Lessing had really taken
on him was that of a great library, an Alcina that could
always too easily witch him away from the more serious
duty of his genius. That a mind like his could be
buried in a corner is mere twaddle, and of a kind that
has done great wrong to the dignity of letters. Where-
ever Lessing sat, was the head of the table. That he
suffered at Wolfenbiittel is true ; but was it nothing to
be in love and in debt at the same time, and to feel that
his fruition of the one must be postponed for uncertain
years by his own folly in incurring the other 1 If the
sparrow-life must end, surely a wee bush is better than
nae beild. One cause of Lessing's occasional restless-
ness and discontent Herr Stahr has failed to notice. It
is evident from many passages in his letters that he had
his share of the hypochondria which goes with an im-
aginative temperament. But in him it only serves to
bring out in stronger relief his deep-rooted manliness.
He spent no breath in that melodious whining which,
beginning with Rousseau, has hardly yet gone out of
fashion. Work of some kind was his medicine for the
blues, — if not always of the kind he would have chosen,
then the best that was to be had ; for the useful, too,
had for him a sweetness of its own. Sometimes he
found a congenial labor in rescuing, as he called it, the
memory of some dead scholar or thinker from the wrongs
of ignorance or prejudice or falsehood ; sometimes in
fishing a manuscript out of the ooze of oblivion, and
giving it, after a critical cleansing, to the world. Now
and then he warmed himself and kept his muscle in
trim with buffeting soundly the champions of that shal-
low artificiality and unctuous wordiness, one of which
passed for orthodox in literature, and the other in the-
ology. True religion and creative genius were both so
beautiful to him that he could never abide the mediocre

LESSING. 333

counterfeit of either, and he who put so much of his
own life into all he wrote could not but hold all scripture
sacred in which a divine soul had recorded itself. It
would be doing Lessing great wrong to confound his con-
troversial writing with the paltry quarrels of authors.
His own personal relations enter into them surprisingly
little, for his quarrel was never with men, but with
falsehood, cant, and misleading tradition, in whomsoever
incarnated. Save for this, they were no longer reada-
ble, and might be relegated to that herbarium of Bil-
lingsgate gathered by the elder Disraeli.

So far from being " crushed in spirit " at Wolfenbut-
tel, the years he spent there were among the most pro-
ductive of his life. "Emilia Galotti," begun in 1758,
was finished there and published in 1771. The contro-
versy with Gotze, by far the most important he was en-
gaged in, and the one in which he put forth his maturest
powers, was carried on thence. His " Nathan the Wise "
(1779), by which almost alone he is known as a poet
outside of Germany, was conceived and composed there.
The last few years of his life were darkened by ill-health
and the depression which it brings. His Nathan had
not the success he hoped. It is sad to see the strong,
self-sufficing man casting about for a little sympathy,
even for a little praise. " It is really needful to me that
you should have some small good opinion of it [Nathan],
in order to make me once more contented with myself,"
he writes to Elise Reimarus in May, 1779. That he was
weary of polemics, and dissatisfied with himself for let-
ting them distract him from better things, appears from
his last pathetic letter to the old friend he loved and
valued most, — Mendelssohn. t( And in truth, dear
friend, I sorely need a letter like yours from time to
time, if I am not to become wholly out of humor. I
think you do not know me as a man that has a very hot

334 LESSING.

hunger for praise. But the coldness with which the
world is wont to convince certain people that they do
not suit it, if not deadly, yet stiffens one with chill. I
am not astonished that all I have written lately does not

please you At best, a passage here and there may

have cheated you by recalling our better days. I, too,
was then a sound, slim sapling, and am now such a rot-
ten, gnarled trunk ! " This was written on the 19th of
December, 1780; and on the 15th of February, 1781,
Lessing died, not quite fifty-two years old. Goethe was
then in his thirty-second year, and Schiller ten years
younger.

Of Lessing's relation to metaphysics the reader will
find ample discussion in Herr Stahr's volumes. We are
not particularly concerned with them, because his in-
terest in such questions was purely speculative, and
because he was more concerned to exercise the powers
of his mind than to analyze them. His chief business,
his master impulse always, was to be a man of letters in
the narrower sense of the term. Even into theology he
only made occasional raids across the border, as it were,
and that not so much with a purpose of reform as in
defence of principles which applied equally to the whole
domain of thought. He had even less sympathy with
heterodoxy than with orthodoxy, and, so far from join-
ing a party or wishing to form one, would have left
belief a matter of choice to the individual conscience.
" From the bottom of my heart I hate all those people
who wish to found sects. For it is not error, but sec-
tarian error, yes, even sectarian truth, that makes men
unhappy, or would do so if truth would found a sect." *
Again he says, that in his theological controversies he is
u much less concerned about theology than about sound

* To his brother Karl, 20th April, 1774.

LESSING. 335

Common-sense, and only therefore prefer the old ortho-
dox (at bottom tolerant) theology to the new (at bottom
intolerant), because the former openly conflicts with
sound common-sense, while the latter would fain corrupt
it. I reconcile myself with my open enemies in order
the better to be on my guard against my secret ones." *
At another time he tells his brother that he has a wholly
false notion of his (Lessing's) relation to orthodoxy.
" Do you suppose I grudge the world that anybody
should seek to enlighten it? — that I do not heartily
wish that every one should think rationally about relig-
ion ? I should loathe myself if even in my scribblings
I had any other end than to help forward those great
views. But let me choose my own way, which I think
best for this purpose. And what is simpler than this
way 1 I would not have the impure water, which has
long been unfit to use, preserved ; but I would not have
it thrown away before we know whence to get purer.
.... Orthodoxy, thank God, we were pretty well done
with ; a partition-wall had been built between it and Phi-
losophy, behind which each could go her own way with-
out troubling the other. But what are they doing now ?
They are tearing down this wall, and, under the pretext
of making us rational Christians, are making us very

irrational philosophers We are agreed that our

old religious system is false ; but I cannot say with you
that it is a patchwork of bunglers and half-philosophers.
I know nothing in the world in which human acuteness
has been more displayed or exercised than in that."f
Lessing was always for freedom, never for looseness, of
thought, still less for laxity of principle. But it must
be a real freedom, and not that vain struggle to become
a majority, which, if it succeed, escapes from heresy

* To the same, 20th March, 1777.
\ To the same, 2d February, 1774.

336 LESSING.

only to make heretics of the other side. Abire ad plures
would with him have meant, not bodily but spiritual
death. He did not love the fanaticism of innovation a
whit better than that of conservatism. To his sane un-
derstanding, both were equally hateful, as different masks
of the same selfish bully. Coleridge said that toleration
was impossible till indifference made it worthless. Les-
sing did not wish for toleration, because that implies
authority, nor could his earnest temper have conceived
of indifference. But he thought it as absurd to regu-
late opinion as the color of the hair. Here, too, he
would have agreed with Selden, that " it is a vain
thing to talk of an heretic, for a man for his heart can-
not think any otherwise than he does think." Herr
Stahr's chapters on this point, bating a little exaltation
of tone, are very satisfactory ; though, in his desire to
make a leader of Lessing, he almost represents him as
being what he shunned, — the founder of a sect. The
fact is, that Lessing only formulated in his own way a
general movement of thought, and what mainly interests
us is that in him we see a layman, alike indifferent to
clerisy and heresy, giving energetic and pointed utter-
ance to those opinions of his class which the clergy are
content to ignore so long as they remain esoteric. At
present the world has advanced to where Lessing stood,
while the Church has done its best to stand stock-still ;
and it would be a curious were it not a melancholy spec-
tacle, to see the indifference with which the laity look on
while theologians thrash their wheatless straw, utterly
unconscious that there is no longer any common term
possible that could bring their creeds again to any point
of bearing on the practical life of men. Fielding never
made a profounder stroke of satire than in Squire West-
ern's indignant " Art not in the pulpit now ! When art
got up there, I never mind what dost say."

LESSING. 337

As an author, Lessing began his career at a period
when we cannot say that German literature was at its
lowest ebb, only because there had not yet been any
flood-tide. That may be said to have begun with him.
When we say German literature, we mean so much of it
as has any interest outside of Germany. That part of
the literary histories which treats of the dead waste and
middle of the eighteenth century reads like a collection
of obituaries, and were better reduced to the conciseness
of epitaph, though the authors of them seem to find a
melancholy pleasure, much like that of undertakers, in the
task by which they live. Gottsched reigned supreme on
the legitimate throne of dulness. In Switzerland, Bod-
mer essayed a more republican form of the same author-
ity. At that time a traveller reports eight hundred
authors in Zurich alone ! Young aspirant for lettered
fame, in imagination clear away the lichens from their
forgotten headstones, and read humbly the " As I am,
so thou must be," on all ! Everybody remembers how
Goethe, in the seventh book of his autobiography, tells
the story of his visit to Gottsched. He enters by mis-
take an inner room at the moment when a frightened
servant brings the discrowned potentate a periwig large
enough to reach to the elbows. That awful emblem of
pretentious sham seems to be the best type of the liter-
ature then predominant. We always fancy it set upon
a pole, like Gessler's hat, with nothing in it that was not
wooden, for all men to bow down before. The periwig
style had its natural place in the age of Louis XIV.,
and there were certainly brains under it. But it had
run out in France, as the tie-wig style of Pope had in
England. In Germany it was the mere imitation of an
imitation. Will it be believed that Gottsched recom-
mends his Art of Poetry to beginners, in preference to
Breitinger's, because it " will enable them to produce every

338 LESSING.

species of poem in a correct style, while out of that no one
can learn to make an ode or a cantata " ? " Whoever,"
he says, " buys Breitinger's book in order to learn how to
make poems, will too late regret his money."* Gott-
sched, perhaps, did some service even by his advocacy
of French models, by calling attention to the fact that
there was such a thing as style, and that it was of some
consequence. But not one of the authors of that time
can be said to survive, nor to be known even by name ex-
cept to Germans, unless it be Klopstock, Herder, Wieland,
and Gellert. And the latter's immortality, such as it is,
reminds us somewhat of that Lady Gosling's, whose obit-
uary stated that she was " mentioned by Mrs. Barbauld
in her Life of Richardson ' under the name of Miss M.,
afterwards Lady G.' " Klopstock himself is rather re-
membered for what he was than what he is, — an im-
mortality of uureadableness ; and we much doubt if
many Germans put the " Oberon " in their trunks when
they start on a journey. Herder alone survives, if
not as a contributor to literature, strictly so called, yet
as a thinker and as part of the intellectual impulse
of the day. But at the time, though there were two
parties, yet within the lines of each there was a loyal
reciprocity of what is called on such occasions appre-
ciation. Wig ducked to wig, each blockhead had a
brother, and there was a universal apotheosis of the
mediocrity of our set. If the greatest happiness of the
greatest number be the true theory, this was all that
could be desired. Even Lessing at one time looked up
to Hagedorn as the German Horace. If Hagedorn were
pleased, what mattered it to Horace 1 Worse almost
than this was the universal pedantry. The solemn bray
of one pedagogue was taken up and prolonged in a thou-
sand echoes. There was not only no originality, but no
* Gervinus, IV. 62.

LESSING. 339

desire for it, — - perhaps even a dread of it, as something
that would break the entente cordiale of placid mutual
assurance. No great writer had given that tone of good-
breeding to the language which would gain it entrance
to the society of European literature. No man of genius
had made it a necessity of polite culture. It was still
as rudely provincial as the Scotch of Allan Ramsay.
Frederick the Great was to be forgiven if, with his prac-
tical turn, he gave himself wholly to French, which had
replaced Latin as a cosmopolitan tongue. It had light-
ness, ease, fluency, elegance, — in short, all the good
qualities that German lacked. The study of French
models was perhaps the best thing for German literature
before it got out of long-clothes. It was bad only when
it became a tradition and a tyranny. Lessing did more
than any other man to overthrow this foreign usurpa-
tion when it had done its work.

The same battle had to be fought on English soil also,
and indeed is hardly over yet. For the renewed out-
break of the old quarrel between Classical and Romantic
grew out of nothing more than an attempt of the mod-
ern spirit to free itself from laws of taste laid down
by the Grand Siede. But we must not forget the
debt which all modern prose literature owes to France.
It is true that Machiavelli was the first to write
with classic pith and point in a living language ; but
he is, for all that, properly an ancient. Montaigne
is really the first modern writer, — the first who as-
similated his Greek and Latin, and showed that an
author might be original and charming, even classical,
if he did not try too hard. He is also the first modern
critic, and his judgments of the writers of antiquity are
those of an equal. He made the ancients his servants,
to help him think in Gascon French ; and, in spite of
his endless quotations, began the crusade against ped

340 LESSING.

antry. It was not, however, till a century later, that the
reform became complete in France, and then crossed the
Channel. Milton is still a pedant in his prose, and not
seldom even in his great poem. Dryden was the first
Englishman who wrote perfectly easy prose, and he owed
his style and turn of thought to his French reading.
His learning sits easily on him, and has a modern cut.
So far, the French influence was one of unmixed good,
for it rescued us from pedantry. It must have done
something for Germany in the same direction. For its
effect on poetry we cannot say as much ; and its tradi-
tions had themselves become pedantry in another shape
when Lessing made an end of it. He himself certainly
learned to write prose of Diderot ; and whatever Herr
Stahr may think of it, his share in the " Letters on Ger-
man Literature " got its chief inspiration from France.

It is in the Dramaturgie that Lessing first properly
enters as an influence into European literature. He may
be said to have begun the revolt from pseudo-classicism
in poetry, and to have been thus unconsciously the
founder of romanticism. Wieland's translation of Shake-
speare had, it is true, appeared in 1762; but Lessing
was the first critic whose profound knowledge of the
Greek drama and apprehension of its principles gave
weight to his judgment, who recognized in what the true
greatness of the poet consisted, and found him to be
really nearer the Greeks than any other modern. This
was because Lessing looked always more to the life than
the form, — because he knew the classics, and did not
merely cant about them. But if the authority of Les-
sing, by making people feel easy in their admiration for
Shakespeare, perhaps increased the influence of his
works, and if his discussions of Aristotle have given a
new starting-point to modern criticism, it may be doubted
whether the immediate effect on literature of his own

LESSING. 341

critical essays was so great as Herr Stahr supposes.
Surely " Gotz " and " The Robbers " are nothing like
what he would have called Shakespearian, and the whole
Sturm und Drang tendency would have roused in him
nothing but antipathy. Fixed principles in criticism
are useful in helping us to form a judgment of works al-
ready produced, but it is questionable whether they are
not rather a hindrance than a help to living production.
Ben Jonson was a fine critic, intimate with the classics
as few men have either the leisure or the strength of
mind to be in this age of many books, and built regular
plays long before they were heard of in France. But he
continually trips and falls flat over his metewand of
classical propriety, his personages are abstractions, and
fortunately neither his precepts nor his practice influ-
enced any one of his greater coevals.* In breadth of un-
derstanding, and the gravity of purpose that comes of
it, he was far above Fletcher or Webster, but how far
below either in the subtler, the incalculable, qualities of
a dramatic poet ! Yet Ben, with his principles off, could
soar and sing with the best of them ; and there are
strains in his lyrics which Herrick, the most Catullian
of poets since Catullus, could imitate, but never match.
A constant reference to the statutes which taste has
codified would only bewilder the creative instinct. Crit-
icism can at best teach writers without genius what is to
be avoided or imitated. It cannot communicate life ;

* It should be considered, by those sagacious persons who think
that the most marvellous intellect of which we have any record could
not master so much Latin and Greek as would serve a sophomore, that
Shakespeare must through conversation have possessed himself of
whatever principles of art Ben Jonson and the other university men
had been able to deduce from their study of the classics. That they
should not have discussed these matters over their sack at the Mer-
maid is incredible; that Shakespeare, who left not a drop in any
orange he squeezed, could not also have got all the juice out of this
one, is even more so.

342 LESSING.

and its effect, when reduced to rules, has commonly been
to produce that correctness which is so praiseworthy and
so intolerable. It cannot give taste, it can only demon-
strate who has had it. Lessing's essays in this kind
were of service to German literature by their manliness
of style, whose example was worth a hundred treatises,
and by the stimulus there is in all original thinking.
Could he have written such a poem as he was capable of
conceiving, his influence would have been far greater.
It is the living soul, and not the metaphysical abstrac-
tion of it, that is genetic in literature. If to do were
as easy as to know what were good to be done ! It was
out of his own failures to reach the ideal he saw so
clearly, that Lessing drew the wisdom which made him
so admirable a critic. Even here, too, genius can profit
by no experience but its own.

For, in spite of Herr Stahr's protest, we must ac-
knowledge the truth of Lessing's own characteristic con-
fession, that he was no poet. A man of genius he
unquestionably was, if genius may be claimed no less for
force than fineness of mind, — for the intensity of con-
viction that inspires the understanding as much as for
that apprehension of beauty which gives energy of will
to imagination, — but a poetic genius he was not. His
mind kindled by friction in the process of thinking, not
in the flash of conception, and its delight is in demon-
stration, not in bodying forth. His prose can leap and
run, his verse is always thinking of its feet. Yet in his
" Minna " and his " Emilia " * he shows one faculty of

* In " Minna" and " Emilia " Lessing followed the lead of Diderot.
In the Preface to the second edition of Diderot's Theatre, he says: " I
am very conscious that my taste, without Diderot's example and
teaching, would have taken quite another direction. Perhaps one
more my own, yet hardly one with which my understanding would in
the long run have been so well content." Diderot's choice of prose
was dictated and justified by the accentual poverty of his mother.

LESSING. 343

the dramatist, that of construction, in a higher degree
than any other German.* Here his critical deductions
served him to some purpose. The action moves rapidly,
there is no speechifying, and the parts are coherent.
Both plays act better than anything of Goethe or Schil-
ler. But it is the story that interests us, and not the
characters. These are not, it is true, the incorporation
of certain ideas, or, still worse, of certain dogmas, but
they certainly seem something like machines by which
the motive of the play is carried on ; and there is noth-
ing of that interplay of plot and character which makes
Shakespeare more real in the closet than other drama-
tists with all the helps of the theatre. It is a striking
illustration at once of the futility of mere critical insight
and of Lessing's want of imagination, that in the Emilia
he should have thought a Roman motive consistent with
modern habits of thought, and that in Nathan he should
have been guilty of anachronisms which violate not only
the accidental truth of fact, but the essential truth of

tongue. Lessing certainly revised his judgment on this point (for it
was not equally applicable to German), and wrote his maturer " Na-
than " in what he took for blank verse. There was much kindred be-
tween the minds of the two men. Diderot always seems to us a kind
of deboshed Lessing. Lessing was also indebted to Burke, Hume, the
two Wartons, and Kurd, among other English writers. Not that he
borrowed anything of them but the quickening of his own thought. It
should be remembered that Rousseau was seventeen, Diderot and
Sterne sixteen, and Winckelmann twelve years older than Lessing.
Wieland was four years younger.

* Goethe's appreciation of Lessing grew with his years. He writes
to Lavater, 18th March, 1781: " Lessing's death has greatly depressed
me. I had much pleasure in him and much hope of him." This is a
little patronizing in tone. But in the last year of his life, talking with
Eckermann, he naturally antedates his admiration, as reminiscence is
wont to do: " You can conceive what an effect this piece (Minna') had
upon us young people. It was, in fact, a shining meteor. It made us
aware that something higher existed than anything whereof that feeble
literary epoch had a notion. The first two acts are truly a masterpiece
of exposition, from which one learned much and can always learn."

344 LESSING.

character. Even if we allowed him imagination, it must
be only on the lower plane of prose; for of verse as any-
thing more than so many metrical feet he had not the
faintest notion. Of that exquisite sympathy with the
movement of the mind, with every swifter or slower
pulse of passion, which proves it another species from
prose, the very d^podirr) KOI \vpa of speech, and not
merely a higher one, he wanted the fineness of sense to
conceive. If we compare the prose of Dante or Milton,
though both were eloquent, with their verse, we see at
once which was the most congenial to them. Lessing
has passages of freer and more harmonious utterance
in some of his most careless prose essays, than can be
found in his Nathan from the first line to the last. In
the numeris lege solutis he is often snatched beyond him-
self, and becomes truly dithyrambic ; in his pentameters
the march of the thought is comparatively hampered
and irresolute. His best things are not poetically deli-
cate, but have the tougher fibre of proverbs. Is it not
enough, then, to be a great prose-writer ? They are as
rare as great poets, and if Lessing have the gift to stir
and to dilate that something deeper than the mind which
genius only can reach, what matter if it be not done to
music 1 Of his minor poems we need say little. Verse
was always more or less mechanical with him, and his
epigrams are almost all stiff, as if they were bad trans-
lations from the Latin. Many of them are shockingly
coarse, and in liveliness are on a level with those of our
Elizabethan period. Herr Stahr, of course, cannot bear
to give them up, even though Gervinus be willing. The
prettiest of his shorter poems (Die Namen) has been ap-
propriated by Coleridge, who has given it a grace which
it wants in the original. His Nathan, by a poor trans-
lation of which he is chiefly known to English readers,
is an Essay on Toleration in the form of a dialogue. As

LESSING. 345

a play, it has not the interest of Minna or Emilia, though
the Germans, who have a praiseworthy national stoicism
where one of their great writers is concerned, find in
seeing it represented a grave satisfaction, like that of
subscribing to a monument. There is a sober lustre of
reflection in it that makes it very good reading ; but it
wants the molten interfusion of thought and phrase
which only imagination can achieve.

As Lessing's mind was continually advancing, — always
open to new impressions, and capable, as very few are,
of apprehending the many-sidedness of truth, — as he
had the rare quality of being honest with himself, — >
his works seem fragmentary, and give at first an im-
pression of incompleteness. But one learns at length
to recognize and value this very incompleteness as char-
acteristic of the man who was growing lifelong, and to
whom the selfish thought that any share of truth could
be exclusively his was an impossibility. At the end of
the ninety-fifth number of the Dramaturgie he says : " I
remind my readers here, that these pages are by no
means intended to contain a dramatic system. I am
accordingly not bound to solve all the difficulties which
I raise. I am quite willing that my thoughts should
seem to want connection, — nay, even to contradict each
other, — if only there are thoughts in which they [my
readers] find material for thinking themselves. I wish
to do nothing more than scatter ihefermenta cognitionis"
That is Lessing's great praise, and gives its chief value
to his works, — a value, indeed, imperishable, and of
the noblest kind. No writer can leave a more precious
/egacy to posterity than this; and beside this shining
merit, all mere literary splendors look pale and cold.
There is that life in Lessing's thought which engenders
life, and not only thinks for us, but makes us think.
Not sceptical, but forever testing and inquiring, it is
15*

346 LESSING.

out of the cloud of his own doubt that the flash comes
at last with sudden and vivid illumination. Flashes
they indeed are, his finest intuitions, and of very differ-
ent quality from the equable north-light of the artist. He
felt it, and said it of himself, " Ever so many flashes of
lightning do not make daylight." We speak now of
those more rememberable passages where his highest
individuality reveals itself in what may truly be called
a passion of thought. In the " Laocoon " there is day-
light of the serenest temper, and never was there a bet-
ter example of the discourse of reason, though even
that is also a fragment.

But it is as a nobly original man, even more than as
an original thinker, that Lessing is precious to us, and
that he is so considerable in German literature. In a
higher sense, but in the same kind, he is to Germans
what Dr. Johnson is to us, — admirable for what he was.
Like Johnson's, too, but still from a loftier plane, a great
deal of his thought has a direct bearing on the immedi-
ate life and interests of men. His genius was not a St.
Elmo's fire, as it so often is with mere poets, — as it
was in Shelley, for example, playing in ineffectual flame
about the points of his thought, — but was interfused
with his whole nature and made a part of his very be-
ing. To the Germans, with their weak nerve of senti-
mentalism, his brave common-sense is a far wholesomer
tonic than the cynicism of Heine, which is, after all,
only sentimentalism soured. His jealousy for maintain-
ing the just boundaries whether of art or speculation
may warn them to check with timely dikes the tendency
of their thought to diffuse inundation. Their fondness
in aesthetic discussion for a nomenclature subtile enough
to split a hair at which even a Thomist would have de-
spaired, is rebuked by the clear simplicity of his style.*

* Nothing can be droller than the occasional translation by Vischei
of a sentence of Lessing into his own jargon.

LESSING. 347

he is no exclusive property of Germany. As a com-
plete man, constant, generous, full of honest courage,
as a hardy follower of Thought wherever she might lead
him, above all, as a confessor of that Truth which is
forever revealing itself to the seeker, and is the more
loved because never wholly revealable, he is an ennobling
possession of mankind. Let his own striking words
characterize him : —

" Not the truth of which any one is, or supposes him-
self to be, possessed, but the upright endeavor he has
made to arrive at truth, makes the worth of the man.
For not by the possession, but by the investigation, of
truth are his powers expanded, wherein alone his ever-
growing perfection consists. Possession makes us easy,
indolent, proud.

" If God held all truth shut in his right hand, and in
his left nothing but the ever-restless instinct for truth,
though with the condition of for ever and ever erring,
and should say to me, Choose ! I should bow humbly to
his left hand, and say, Father, give ! pure truth is for
Thee alone ! "

It is not without reason that fame is awarded only
after death. The dust-cloud of notoriety which follows
and envelopes the men who drive with the wind bewil-
ders contemporary judgment. Lessing, while he lived,
had little reward for his labor but the satisfaction in-
herent in all work faithfully done ; the highest, no doubt,
of which human nature is capable, and yet perhaps not
so sweet as that sympathy of which the world's praise is
but an index. But if to perpetuate herself beyond the
grave in healthy and ennobling influences be the noblest
aspiration of the mind, and its fruition the only reward
she would have deemed worthy of herself, then is Lessing
to be counted thrice fortunate. Every year since he
was laid prematurely in the earth has seen his power

348 LESSING.

for good increase, and made him more precious to the
hearts and intellects of men. " Lessing," said Goethe,
" would have declined the lofty title of a Genius ; but
his enduring influence testifies against himself. On the
other hand, we have in literature other and indeed im-
portant names of men who, while they lived, were es-
teemed great geniuses, but whose influence ended with
their lives, and who, accordingly, were less than they and
others thought. For, as I have said, there is no genius
without a productive power that continues forever opera-
tive." *

* Eckermann, Gesprache mit Goethe, III. 229.

ROUSSEAU AND THE SENTIMENTALISTS/

" WE have had the great professor and founder of the
philosophy of Vanity in England. As I had good op-
portunities of knowing his proceedings almost from day
to day, he left no doubt in my mind that he entertained
no principle either to influence his heart or to guide his
understanding but vanity ; with this vice he was pos-
sessed to a degree little short of madness. Benevolence
to the whole species, and want of feeling for every indi-
vidual with whom the professors come in contact, form
the character of the new philosophy. Setting up for an
unsocial independence, this their hero of vanity refuses
the just price of common labor, as well as the tribute
which opulence owes to genius, and which, when paid,
honors the giver and the receiver, and then pleads his
beggary as an excuse for his crimes. He melts with
tenderness for those only who touch him by the remotest
relation, and then, without one natural pang, casts away,
as a sort of offal and excrement, the spawn of his dis-
gustful amours, and sends his children to the hospital of
foundlings. The bear loves, licks, and forms her young ;
but bears are not philosophers."

This was Burke's opinion of the only contemporary

* Histoire des Idees Morales et Politiques en France au XVIII™*
Siecle. Par M. JULES BARM, Professeur a TAcad^mie de
Toms II. Paris. 1867.

350 ROUSSEAU AND THE SENTIMENTALIST*.

who can be said to rival him in fervid and sustained elo-
quence, to surpass him in grace and persuasiveness of
style. Perhaps we should have been more thankful to
him if he had left us instead a record of those " proceed-
ings almost from day to day " which he had such " good
opportunities of knowing," but it probably never entered
his head that posterity might care as much about the
doings of the citizen of Geneva as about the sayings of
even a British Right Honorable. Vanity eludes recogni-
tion by its victims in more shapes, and more pleasing,
than any other passion, and perhaps had Mr. Burke been
able imaginatively to translate Swiss Jean Jacques into
Irish Edmund, he would have found no juster equivalent
for the obnoxious trisyllable than " righteous self-esteem."
For Burke was himself also, in the subtler sense of the
word, a sentimentalist, that is, a man who took what
would now be called an aesthetic view of morals and poli-
tics. No man who ever wrote English, except perhaps
Mr. Ruskin, more habitually mistook his own personal
likes and dislikes, tastes and distastes, for general prin-
ciples, and this, it may be suspected, is the secret of all
merely eloquent writing. He hints at madness as an
explanation of Rousseau, and it is curious enough that
Mr. Buckle was fain to explain him in the same way. It
is not, we confess, a solution that we find very satisfac-
tory in this latter case. Burke's fury against the French
Revolution was nothing more than was natural to a des-
perate man in self-defence. It was his own life, or, at
least, all that made life dear to him, that was in dan-
ger. He had all that abstract political wisdom which
may be naturally secreted by a magnanimous nature
and a sensitive temperament, absolutely none of that
rough-and-tumble kind which is so needful for the con-
duct of affairs. Fastidiousness is only another form of
egotism ; and all men wh& know not where to look fox

ROUSSEAU AND THE SENTIMENTALISTS. 351

truth save in the narrow well of self will find their own
image at the bottom, and mistake it for what they are
seeking. Burke's hatred of Rousseau was genuine and
instinctive. It was so genuine and so instinctive as no
hatred can be but that of self, of our own weaknesses as
we see them in another man. But there was also some-
thing deeper in it than this. There was mixed with it
the natural dread in the political diviner of the political
logician, — in the empirical, of the theoretic statesman.
Burke, confounding the idea of society with the form of
it then existing, would have preserved that as the only
specific against anarchy. Rousseau, assuming that so-
ciety as it then existed was but another name for anar-
chy, would have reconstituted it on an ideal basis. The
one has left behind him some of the profoundest aphor-
isms of political wisdom ; the other, some of the clearest
principles of political science. The one, clinging to Di«
vine right, found in the fact that things were, a reason
that they ought to be ; the other, aiming to solve the
problem of the Divine order, would deduce from that ab-
straction alone the claim of anything to be at all. There
seems a mere oppugnancy of nature between the two,
and yet both were, in different ways, the dupes of their
own imaginations.

Now let us hear the opinion of a philosopher who was
a bear, whether bears be philosophers or not. Boswell
had a genuine relish for what was superior in any way,
from genius to claret, and of course he did not let Rous-
seau escape him. "-One evening at the Mitre, Johnson
said sarcastically to me, ' It seems, sir, you have kept
very good company abroad, — Rousseau and Wilkes ! '
I answered with a smile, ' My dear sir, you don't call
Rousseau bad company ; do you really think him a bad
man 1 ' JOHNSON. ' Sir, if you are talking jestingly of
this, I don't talk with you. If you mean to be serious.

352 ROUSSEAU AND THE SENTIMENTALISTS.

I think him one of the worst of men, a rascal who ought to
be hunted out of society, as he has been. Three o '/our
nations have expelled him, and it is a shame that he is
protected in this country. Rousseau, sir, is a very bad
man. I would sooner sign a sentence for his transpor-
tation, than that of any felon who has gone from the
Old Bailey these many years. Yes, I should like to have
him work in the plantations.' " We were the plantations
then, and Rousseau was destined to work there in an-
other and much more wonderful fashion than the gruif
old Ursa Major imagined. However, there is always a
refreshing heartiness in his growl, a masculine bass with
no snarl in it. The Doctor's logic is of that fine old
crusted Port sort, the native manufacture of the British
conservative mind. Three or four nations have, there-
fore England ought. A few years later, had the Doctor
been living, if three or four nations had treated their
kings as France did hers, would he have thought the
ergo a very stringent one for England 1

Mr. Burke, who could speak with studied respect of
the Prince of Wales, and of Ms vices with that charity
which thinketh no evil and can afford to think no evil
of so important a living member of the British Constitu-
tion, surely could have had no unmixed moral repugnance
for Rousseau's "disgustful amours." It was because
they were his that they were so loathsome. Mr. Burke
was a snob, though an inspired one. Dr. Johnson, the
friend of that wretchedest of lewd fellows, Richard Sav-
age, and of that gay man about town, Topham Beau-
clerk, — himself sprung from an amour that would have
been disgustful had it not been royal, — must also have
felt something more in respect of Rousseau than the
mere repugnance of virtue for vice. We must sometimes
allow to personal temperament its right of peremptory
challenge. Johnson had not that fine sensitiveness to

ROUSSEAU AND THE SENTIMENTALISTS. 353

the political atmosphere which made Burke presageful
of coming tempest, but both of them felt that there was
something dangerous in this man. Their dislike has in
it somewhat of the energy of fear. Neither of them had
the same feeling toward Voltaire, the man of supreme
talent, but both felt that what Rousseau was possessed by
was genius, with its terrible force either to attract or

repel.

" By the pricking of my thumbs,
Something wicked this way comes."

Burke and Johnson were both of them sincere men,
both of them men of character as well as of intellectual
force ; and we cite their opinions of Rousseau with the
respect which is due to an honest conviction which has
apparent grounds for its adoption, whether we agree with
it or no. But it strikes us as a little singular that one
whose life was so full of moral inconsistency, whose char-
acter is so contemptible in many ways, in some we
might almost say so revolting, should yet have exercised
so deep and lasting an influence, and on minds so various,
should still be an object of minute and earnest discus-
sion, — - that he should have had such vigor in his intel-
lectual loins as to have been the father of Chateaubriand,
Byron, Lamartine, George Sand, and many more in liter'
ature, in politics of Jefferson and Thomas Paine, — that
the spots he had haunted should draw pilgrims so unlike
as Gibbon and Napoleon, nay, should draw them still,
after the lapse of near a century. Surely there must
have been a basis of sincerity in this man seldom
matched, if it can prevail against so many reasons for
repugnance, aversion, and even disgust. He could not
have been the mere sentimentalist and rhetorician for
which the rough-and-ready understanding would at first
glance be inclined to condemn him. In a certain sense
he was both of these, but he was something more. It

354 ROUSSEAU AND THE SENTIMENTALISTS.

will bring us a little nearer the point we are aiming at if
we quote one other and more recent English opinion of
him.

Mr. Thomas Moore, returning pleasantly in a travel-
ling-carriage from a trip to Italy, in which he had never
forgotten the poetical shop at home, but had carefully
noted down all the pretty images that occurred to him
for future use, — Mr. Thomas Moore, on his way back
from a visit to his noble friend Byron, at Venice, who
had there been leading a life so gross as to be talked
about, even amid the crash of Napoleon's fall, and who
was just writing " Don Juan " for the improvement of
the world, — Mr. Thomas Moore, fresh from the read-
ing of Byron's Memoirs, which were so scandalous that,
by some hocus-pocus, three thousand guineas afterward
found their way into his own pocket for consenting to
suppress them, — Mr. Thomas Moore, the ci-devant friend
of the Prince Regent, and the author of Little's Poems,
among other objects of pilgrimage visits Les Charmettes,
where Rousseau had lived with Madame de Warens. So
good an opportunity for occasional verses was not to be
lost, so good a text for a little virtuous moralizing not
to be thrown away ; and accordingly Mr. Moore pours
out several pages of octosyllabic disgust at the sensual-
ity of the dead man of genius. There was no horror
for Byron. Toward him all was suavity and decorous
bienseance. That lively sense of benefits to be received
made the Irish Anacreon wink with both his little e}res.
In the judgment of a liberal like Mr. Moore, were not
the errors of a lord excusable 1 But with poor Rousseau
the case was very different. The son of a watchmaker, an
outcast from boyhood up, always on the perilous edge of
poverty, — what right had he to indulge himself in any
immoralities ? So it is always with the sentimentalists.
It is never the thing in itself that is bad or good, but

ROUSSEAU AND THE SENTIMENTALISTS. 355

the thing in its relation to some conventional and mostly
selfish standard. Moore could be a moralist, in this
case, without any trouble, and with the advantage of
winning Lord Lansdowne's approval ; he could write
some graceful verses which everybody would buy, and
for the rest it is not hard to be a stoic in eight-syllable
measure and a travelling-carriage. The next dinner at
Bowood will taste none the worse. Accordingly he

speaks of

«* The mire, the strife
And vanities of this man's life,
Who more than all that e'er have glowed
With fancy's flame (and it was his
In fullest warmth and radiance) showed
What an impostor Genius is;
How, with that strong mimetic art
Which forms its life and soul, it takes
All shapes of thought, all hues of heart,
Nor feels itself one throb it wakes ;
How, like a gem, its light may shine,
O'er the dark path by mortals trod,
Itself as mean a worm the while
As crawls at midnight o'er the sod;

How, with the pencil hardly dry

From coloring up such scenes of love

And beauty as make young hearts sigh,

And dream and think through heaven they rove," &c., &c.

Very spirited, is it not 1 One has only to overlook a
little threadbareness in the similes, and it is very good
oratorical verse. But would we believe in it, we must
never read Mr. Moore's own journal, and find out how
thin a piece of veneering his own life was, — how he
lived in sham till his very nature had become subdued
to it, till he could persuade himself that a sham could
be written into a reality, and actually made experiment
thereof in his Diary.

One verse in this diatribe deserves a special com

ment, —

" What an impostor Genius is 1 "

356 ROUSSEAU AND THE SENTIMENTALISTS.

In two respects there is nothing to be objected to in it.
It is of eight syllables, and " is " rhymes unexception-
ably with "his." But is there the least filament of
truth in it 1 We venture to assert, not the least. It
was not Rousseau's genius that was an impostor. It was
the one thing in him that was always true. We grant
that, in allowing that a man has genius. Talent is that
which is in a man's power ; genius is that in whose
power a man is. That is the very difference between
them. We might turn the tables on Moore, the man of
talent, and say truly enough, What an impostor talent is !
Moore talks of the mimetic power with a total misappre-
hension of what it really is. The mimetic power had
nothing whatever to do with the affair. Rousseau had
none of it ; Shakespeare had it in excess ; but what dif-
ference would it make in our judgment of Hamlet or
Othello if a manuscript of Shakespeare's memoirs should
turn up, and we should find out that he had been a piti-
ful fellow 1 None in the world ; for he is not a professed
moralist, and his life does not give the warrant to his
words. But if Demosthenes, after all his Philippics,
throws away his shield and runs, we feel the contempti-
bleness of the contradiction. With genius itself we
never find any fault. It would be an over-nicety that
would do that. We do not get invited to nectar and
ambrosia so often that we think of grumbling and say-
ing we have better at home. No ; the same genius that
mastered him who wrote the poem masters us in reading
it, and we care for nothing outside the poem itself. How
the author lived, what he wore, how he looked, — all
that is mere gossip, about which we need not trouble
ourselves. Whatever he was or did, somehow or other
God let him be worthy to write this, and that is enough
for us. We forgive everything to the genius ; we are
inexorable to the man. Shakespeare, Goethe, Burns, —

ROUSSEAU AND THE SENTIMENTALISTS. 357

what have their biographies to do with us ? Genius is
not a question of character. It may be sordid, like the
lamp of Aladdin, in its externals ; what care we, while
the touch of it builds palaces for us, makes us rich as
only men in dream-land are rich, and lords to the utmost
bound of imagination 1 So, when people talk of the
ungrateful way in which the world treats its geniuses,
they speak unwisely. There is no work of genius which
has not been the delight of mankind, no word of genius
to which the human heart and soul have not, sooner or
later, responded. But the man whom the genius takes
possession of for its pen, for its trowel, for its pencil, for
its chisel, him the world treats according to his deserts.
Does Burns drink ] It sets him to gauging casks of gin.
For, remember, it is not to the practical world that the
genius appeals ; it is the practical world which judges of
the man's fitness for its uses, and has a right so to judge.
No amount of patronage could have made distilled liq-
uors less toothsome to Robbie Burns, as no amount of
them could make a Burns of the Ettrick Shepherd.

There is an old story in the Gesta Romanorum of a
priest who was found fault with by one of his parish-
ioners because his life was in painful discordance with
his teaching. So one day he takes his critic out to a
stream, and, giving him to drink of it, asks him if he
does not find it sweet and pure water. The parishioner,
having answered that it was, is taken to the source, and
finds that what had so refreshed him flowed from be-
tween the jaws of a dead dog. " Let this teach thee,"
said the priest, " that the very best doctrine may take
its rise in a very impure and disgustful spring, and that
excellent morals may be taught by a man who has no
morals at all." It is easy enough to see the fallacy here.
Had the man known beforehand from what a carrion
fountain-head the stream issued, he could not hava

358 ROUSSEAU AND THE SENTIMENTALISTS,

drunk of it without loathing. Had the priest merely
bidden him to look at the stream and see how beautiful
it was, instead of tasting it, it would have been quite
another matter. And this is precisely the difference be-
tween what appeals to our aesthetic and to our moral
sense, between what is judged of by the taste and the
conscience.

It is when the sentimentalist turns preacher of morals
that we investigate his character, and are justified in so
doing. He may express as many and as delicate shades
of feeling as he likes, — for this the sensibility of his
organization perfectly fits him, no other person could do
it so well, — but the moment he undertakes to establish
his feeling as a rule of conduct, we ask at once how far
are his own life and deed in accordance with what he
preaches 1 For every man feels instinctively that all
the beautiful sentiments in the world weigh less than a
single lovely action ; and that while tenderness of feeling
and susceptibility to generous emotions are accidents of
temperament, goodness is an achievement of the will
and a quality of the life. Fine words, says our homely
old proverb, butter no parsnips ; and if the question be
how to render those vegetables palatable, an ounce of
butter would be worth more than all the orations of
Cicero. The only conclusive evidence of a man's sin-
cerity is that he give himself for a principle. Words,
money, all things else, are comparatively easy to give
away ; but when a man makes a gift of his daily life and
practice, it is plain that the truth, whatever it may be,
has taken possession of him. From that sincerity his
words gain the force and pertinency of deeds, and his
money is no longer the pale drudge 'twixt man and man,
but, by a beautiful magic, what erewhile bore the image
and superscription of Csesar seems now to bear the image
and superscription of God. It is thus that there is a

ROUSSEAU AND THE SENTIMENTALISTS. 359

genius for goodness, for magnanimity, for self-sacrifice,
as well as for creative art ; and it is thus that by a more
refined sort- of Platonism the Infinite Beauty dwells in
and shapes to its own likeness the soul which gives it
body and individuality. But when Moore charges genius
with being an impostor, the confusion of his ideas is piti-
able. There is nothing so true, so sincere, so downright
and forthright, as genius. It is always truer than the
man himself is, greater than he. If Shakespeare the
man had been as marvellous a creature as the genius
that wrote his plays, that genius so comprehensive in its
intelligence, so wise even in its play, that its clowns are
moralists and philosophers, so penetrative that a single
one of its phrases reveals to us the secret of our own
character, would his contemporaries have left us so
wholly without record of him as they have done, distin-
guishing him in no wise from his fellow-players 1

Rousseau, no doubt, was weak, nay, more than that,
was sometimes despicable, but yet is not fairly to be
reckoned among the herd of sentimentalists. It is
shocking that a man whose preaching made it fashion-
able for women of rank to nurse their own children
should have sent his own, as soon as born, to the found-
ling hospital, still more shocking that, in a note to his
Discours sur Vlnegalite, he should speak of this crime
as one of the consequences of our social system. But
for all that there was a faith and an ardor of conviction
in him that distinguish him from most of the writers of
his time. Nor were his practice and his preaching al-
ways inconsistent. He contrived to pay regularly, what-
ever his own circumstances were, a pension of one hun-
dred livres a year to a maternal aunt who had been kind
to him in childhood. Nor was his asceticism a sham.
He might have turned his gift into laced coats and
Mteaux as easily as Voltaire, had he not held it too

360 ROUSSEAU AND THE SENTIMENTALISTS.

sacred to be bartered away in any such losing ex-
change.

But what is worthy of especial remark is this, — that
in nearly all that he wrote his leading object was the
good of his kind, and that through all the vicissitudes
of a life which illness, sensibility of temperament, and
the approaches of insanity rendered wretched, — the as-
sociate of infidels, the foundling child, as it were, of an
age without belief, least of all in itself, — he professed
and evidently felt deeply a faith in the goodness both of
man and of God. There is no such thing as scoffing in
his writings. On the other hand, there is no stereotyped
morality. He does not ignore the existence of scepti-
cism ; he recognizes its existence in his own nature,
meets it frankly face to face, and makes it confess that
there are things in the teaching of Christ that are
deeper than its doubt. The influence of his early edu-
cation at Geneva is apparent here. An intellect so acute
as his, trained in the school of Calvin in a republic where
theological discussion was as much the amusement of
the people as the opera was at Paris, could not fail to be
a good logician. He had the fortitude to follow his logic
wherever it led him. If the very impressibility of char-
acter which quickened his perception of the beauties of
nature, and made him alive to the charm of music and
musical expression, prevented him from being in the
highest sense an original writer, and if his ideas were
mostly suggested to him by books, yet the clearness, con-
secutiveness, and eloquence with which he stated and
enforced them made them his own. There was at least
that original fire in him which could fuse them and run
them in a novel mould. His power lay in this very
ability of manipulating the thoughts of others. Fond
of paradox he doubtless was, but he had a way of put-
ting things that arrested attention and excited thought

ROUSSEAU AND THE SENTIMENTALISTS. 361

It was, perhaps, this very sensibility of the surround-
ing atmosphere of feeling and speculation, which made
Rousseau more directly influential on contemporary
thought (or perhaps we should say sentiment) than any
writer of his time. And this is rarely consistent with
enduring greatness in literature. It forces us to remem-
ber, against our will, the oratorical character of his
works. They were all pleas, and he a great advocate,
with Europe in the jury-box. Enthusiasm begets enthu-
siasm, eloquence produces conviction for the moment,
but it is only by truth to nature and the everlasting in-
tuitions of mankind that those abiding influences are
won that enlarge from generation to generation. Rous-
seau was in many respects — as great pleaders always
are — a man of the day, who must needs become a
mere name to posterity, yet he could not but have had
in him some not inconsiderable share of that principle
by which man eternizes himself. For it is only to such
that the night cometh not in which no man shall work,
and he is still operative both in politics and literature
by the principles he formulated or the emotions to which
he gave a voice so piercing and so sympathetic.

In judging Rousseau, it would be unfair not to take
note of the malarious atmosphere in which he grew up.
The constitution of his mind was thus early infected
with a feverish taint that made him shiveringly sensi-
tive to a temperature which hardier natures found bra-
cing. To him this rough world was but too literally a
rack. Good-humored Mother Nature commonly imbeds
the nerves of her children in a padding of self-conceit
that serves as a buffer against the ordinary shocks to
which even a life of routine is liable, and it would seem
at first sight as if Rousseau had been better cared for
than usual in this regard. But as his self-conceit was
enormous, so was the reaction from it proportionate,
16

362 ROUSSEAU AND THE SENTIMENTALISTS.

and the fretting suspiciousness of temper, sure mark of
an unsound mind, which rendered him incapable of inti-
mate friendship, while passionately longing for it, became
inevitably, when turned inward, a tormenting self-dis-
trust. To dwell in unrealities is the doom of the senti-
mentalist ; but it should not be forgotten that the same
fitful intensity of emotion which makes them real as the
means of elation, gives them substance also for torture.
Too irritably jealous to endure the rude society of men,
he steeped his senses in the enervating incense that
women are only too ready to burn. If their friendship
be a safeguard to the other sex, their homage is fatal to
all but the strongest, and Rousseau was weak both by in-
heritance and early training. His father was one of
those feeble creatures for whom a fine phrase could always
satisfactorily fill the void that non-performance leaves
behind it. If he neglected duty, he made up for it by
that cultivation of the finer sentiments of our common
nature which waters flowers of speech with the brineless
tears of a flabby remorse, without one fibre of resolve in
it, and which impoverishes the character in proportion as
it enriches the vocabulary. He was a very Apicius in
that digestible kind of woe which makes no man leaner,
and had a favorite receipt for cooking you up a sorrow ft
la douleur inassouvie that had just enough delicious sharp-
ness in it to bring tears into the eyes by tickling the pal-
ate. " When he said to me, ' Jean Jacques, let us speak
of thy mother,' I said to him, ' Well, father, we are going
to weep, then,' and this word alone drew tears from him.
' Ah ! ' said he, groaning, ' give her back to me, console
me for her, fill the void she has left in my soul ! ' '
Alas ! in such cases, the void she leaves is only that she
found. The grief that seeks any other than its own
society will erelong want an object. This admirable
parent allowed his son to become an outcast at sixteen,

ROUSSEAU AND THE SENTIMENTALISTS. 363

without any attempt to reclaim him, in order to enjoy
unmolested a petty inheritance to which the boy was
entitled in right of his mother. " This conduct," Rous-
seau tells us, " of a father whose tenderness and virtue
were so well known to me, caused me to make reflections
on myself which have not a little contributed to make
my heart sound. I drew from it this great maxim of
morals, the only one perhaps serviceable in practice, to
avoid situations which put our duties in opposition to
our interest, and which show us our own advantage in
the wrong of another, sure that in such situations, how-
ever sincere may be one's love of virtue, it sooner or later
grows weak without our perceiving it, and that we become
unjust and wicked in action without having ceased to be
just and good in soul."

This maxim may do for that " fugitive and cloistered
virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies
out and seeks its adversary," which Milton could not
praise, — that is, for a manhood whose distinction it is
not to be manly, — but it is chiefly worth notice as be-
ing the characteristic doctrine of sentimentalism. This
disjoining of deed from will, of practice from theory, is
to put asunder what God has joined by an indissoluble
sacrament. The soul must be tainted before the action
become corrupt ; and there is no self-delusion more fatal
than that which makes the conscience dreamy with the
anodyne of lofty sentiments, while the life is grovelling
and sensual, — witness Coleridge. In his case we feel
something like disgust. But where, as in his son Hart-
ley, there is hereditary infirmity, where the man sees
the principle that might rescue him slip from the clutch
of a nerveless will, like a rope through the fingers of a
drowning man, and the confession of faith is the moan
of despair, there is room for no harsher feeling than pity.
Rousseau showed through life a singular proneness for

364 ROUSSEAU AND THE SENTIMENTALISTS.

being convinced by his own eloquence ; he was always
his own first convert ; and this reconciles his power as a
writer with his weakness as a man. He and all like him
mistake emotion for conviction, velleity for resolve, the
brief eddy of sentiment for the midcurrent of ever-
gathering faith in duty that draws to itself all the
affluents of conscience and will, and gives continuity
of purpose to life. They are like men who love the
stimulus of being under conviction, as it is called, who,
forever getting religion, never get capital enough to
retire upon and spend for their own need and the com-
mon service.

The sentimentalist is the spiritual hypochondriac,
with whom fancies become facts, while facts are a dis-
comfort because they will not be evaporated into fancy.
In his eyes, Theory is too fine a dame to confess even a
country-cousmship with coarse-handed Practice, whose
homely ways would disconcert her artificial world. The
very susceptibility that makes him quick to feel, makes
him also incapable of deep and durable feeling. He
loves to think he suffers, and keeps a pet sorrow, a blue-
devil familiar, that goes with him everywhere, like Para-
celsus's black dog. He takes good care, however, that
it shall not be the true sulphurous article that sometimes
takes a fancy to fly away with his conjurer. Rene says :
" In my madness I had gone so far as even to wish I
might experience a misfortune, so that my suffering
might at least have a real object." But no ; selfishness
is only active egotism, and there is nothing and nobody,
with a single exception, which this sort of creature will
not sacrifice, rather than give any other than an imagi-
nary pang to his idol. Vicarious pain he is not unwill-
ing to endure, nay, will even commit suicide by proxy^
like the German poet who let his wife kill herself to give
him a sensation. Had young Jerusalem been anything

ROUSSEAU AND THE SENTIMENTALISTS. 365

like Goethe's portrait of him in Werther, he would have
taken very good care not to blow out the brains which
he would have thought only too precious. Real sorrows
are uncomfortable things, but purely aesthetic ones are
by no means unpleasant, and I have always fancied
the handsome young Wolfgang writing those distracted
letters to Auguste Stolberg with a looking-glass in front
of him to give back an image of his desolation, and finding
it rather pleasant than otherwise to shed the tear of
sympathy with self that would seem so bitter to his fair
correspondent. The tears that have real salt in them
will keep ; they are the difficult, manly tears that are
shed in secret ; but the pathos soon evaporates from
that fresh-water with which a man can bedew a dead
donkey in public, while his wife is having a good cry
over his neglect of her at home. We do not think the
worse of Goethe for hypothetically desolating himself
in the fashion aforesaid, for with many constitutions
it is as purely natural a crisis as dentition, which the
stronger worry through, and turn out very sensible,
agreeable fellows. But where there is an arrest of de-
velopment, and the heartbreak of the patient is audibly
prolonged through life, we have a spectacle which the
toughest heart would wish to get as far away from as
possible.

We would not be supposed to overlook the distinction,
too often lost sight of, between sentimentalism and sen-
timent, the latter being a very excellent thing in its way,
as genuine things are apt to be. Sentiment is intellec-
tualized emotion, emotion precipitated, as it were, in
pretty crystals by the fancy. This is the delightful sta-
ple of the ^>oets of social life like Horace and Beranger,
or Thackeray, when he too rarely played with verse. It
puts into words for us that decorous average of feeling
to the expression of which society can consent without

366 ROUSSEAU AND THE SENTIMENTALISTS.

danger of being indiscreetly moved. It is excellent for
people who are willing to save their souls alive to any
extent that shall not be discomposing. It is even satis-
fying till some deeper experience has given us a hunger
which what we so glibly call " the world " cannot sate,
just as a water-ice is nourishment enough to a man who
has had his dinner. It is the sufficing lyrical interpreter
of those lighter hours that should make part of every
healthy man's day, and is noxious only when it palls
men's appetite for the truly profound poetry whish is
very passion of very soul sobered by afterthought and
embodied in eternal types by imagination. True senti-
ment is emotion ripened by a slow ferment of the mind
and qualified to an agreeable temperance by that taste
which is the conscience of polite society. But the senti-
mentalist always insists on taking his emotion neat, and,
as his sense gradually deadens to the stimulus, increases
his dose till he ends in a kind of moral deliquium. At
first the debaucher, he becomes at last the victim of his
sensations.

Among the ancients we find no trace of sentimental-
ism. Their masculine mood both of body and mind left
no room for it, and hence the bracing quality of their
literature compared with that of recent times, its tonic
property, that seems almost too astringent to palates re-
laxed by a daintier diet. The first great example of the
degenerate modern tendency was Petrarch, who may be
said to have given it impulse and direction. A more
perfect specimen of the type has not since appeared.
An intellectual voluptuary, a moral dilettante, the first
instance of that character, since too common, the gen-
tleman in search of a sensation, seeking a solitude at
Vaucluse because it made him more likely to be in de-
mand at Avignon, praising philosophic poverty with a
sharp eye to the next rich benefice in the gift of his

ROUSSEAU AND THE SENTIMENTALISTS. 367

patron, commending a good life but careful first of a
good living, happy only in seclusion but making a dan-
gerous journey to enjoy the theatrical show of a corona-
tion in the Capitol, cherishing a fruitless passion which
broke his heart three or four times a year and yet could
not make an end of him till he had reached the ripe age
of seventy and survived his mistress a quarter of a cen-
tury, — surely a more exquisite perfection of inconsis-
tency would be hard to find.

When Petrarch returned from his journey into the
North of Europe in 1332, he balanced the books of his
unrequited passion, and, finding that he had now been
in love seven years, thought the time had at last come
to call deliberately on Death. Had Death taken him at
his word, he would have protested that he was only in
fun. For we find him always taking good care of an ex-
cellent constitution, avoiding the plague with commend-
able assiduity, and in the very year when he declares it
absolutely essential to his peace of mind to die for good
and all, taking refuge in the fortress of Capranica, from
a wholesome dread of having his throat cut by robbers.
There is such a difference between dying in a sonnet
with a cambric handkerchief at one's eyes, and the pro-
saic reality of demise certified in the parish register !
Practically it is inconvenient to be dead. Among other
things, it puts an end to the manufacture of sonnets.
But there seems to have been an excellent understanding
between Petrarch and Death, for he was brought to that
grisly monarch's door so often, that, otherwise, nothing
short of a miracle or the nine lives of that animal whom
love also makes lyrical could have saved him. " I con-
sent," he cries, "to live and die in Africa among its
serpents, upon Caucasus, or Atlas, if, while I live, to
breathe a pure air, and after my death a little corner
of earth where to bestow my body, may be allowed me,

368 ROUSSEAU AND THE SENTIMENTALISTS.

This is all I ask, but this I cannot obtain. Doomed al-
ways to wander, and to be a stranger everywhere, 0
Fortune, Fortune, fix me at last to some one spot ! I
do not covet thy favors. Let me enjoy a tranquil pov-
erty, let me pass in this retreat the few days that remain
to me ! " The pathetic stop of Petrarch's poetical organ
was one he could pull out at pleasure, — and indeed we
soon learn to distrust literary tears, as the cheap subter-
fuge for want of real feeling with natures of this qual-
ity. Solitude with him was but the pseudonyme of no-
toriety. Poverty was the archdeaconry of Parma, with
other ecclesiastical pickings. During his retreat at Vau-
cluse, in the very height of that divine sonneteering love
of Laura, of that sensitive purity which called Avignon
Babylon, and rebuked the sinfulness of Clement, he was
himself begetting that kind of children which we spell
with a 6. We believe that, if Messer Francesco had been
present when the woman was taken in adultery, he
would have flung the first stone without the slightest
feeling of inconsistency, nay, with a sublime sense of
virtue. The truth is, that it made very little difference
to him what sort of proper sentiment he expressed, pro-
vided he could do it elegantly and with unction.

Would any one feel the difference between his faint
abstractions and the Platonism of a powerful nature
fitted alike for the withdrawal of ideal contemplation
and for breasting the storms of life, — would any one
know how wide a depth divides a noble friendship based
on sympathy of pursuit and aspiration, on that mutual
help which souls capable of self-sustainment are the
readiest to give or to take, and a simulated passion, true
neither to the spiritual nor the sensual part of man, — •
let him compare the sonnets of Petrarch with those which
Michel Angelo addressed to Vittoria Colonna. In them
the airiest pinnacles of sentiment and speculation are bufr

ROUSSEAU AND THE SENTIMENTALISTS. 369

tressed with solid mason-work of thought, and of an
actual, not fancied experience, and the depth of feeling
is measured by the sobriety and reserve of expression,
while in Petrarch's all ingenuousness is frittered away
into ingenuity. Both are cold, but the coldness of the
one is self-restraint, while the other chills with pretence
of warmth. In Michel Angelo's, you feel the great
architect ; in Petrarch's the artist who can best realize
his conception in the limits of a cherry-stone. And yet
this man influenced literature longer and more widely
than almost any other in modern times. So great is
the charm of elegance, so unreal is the larger part of
what is written !

Certainly I do not mean to say that a work of art
should be looked at by the light of the artist's biogra-
phy, or measured by our standard of his character. Nor
do I reckon what was genuine in Petrarch — his love
of letters, his refinement, his skill in the superficial
graces of language, that rhetorical art by which the
music of words supplants their meaning, and the verse
moulds the thought instead of being plastic to it —
after any such fashion. I have no ambition for that
character of valet de chambre which is said to disenchant
the most heroic figures into mere every-day personages,
for it implies a mean soul no less than a servile condi-
tion. But we have a right to demand a certain amount
of reality, however small, in the emotion of a man who
makes it his business to endeavor at exciting our own.
We have a privilege of nature to shiver before a painted
flame, how cunningly soever the colors be laid on. Yet
our love of minute biographical detail, our desire to
make ourselves spies upon the men of the past, seems
so much of an instinct in us, that we must look for the
spring of it in human nature, and that somewhat deeper
than mere curiosity or love of gossip. It should seem
16* ' x

370 ROUSSEAU AND THE SENTIMENTALISTS.

to arise from what must be considered on the whole a
creditable feeling, namely, that we value character more
than any amount of talent, — the skill to be something,
above that of doing anything but the best of its kind.
The highest creative genius, and that only, is privileged
from arrest by this personality, for there the thing pro-
duced is altogether disengaged from the producer. But
in natures incapable of this escape from themselves, the
author is inevitably mixed with his work, and we have
a feeling that the amount of his sterling character is
the security for the notes he issues. Especially we feel
so when truth to self, which is always self-forgetful, and
not truth to nature, makes an essential part of the value
of what is offered us ; as where a man undertakes to
narrate personal experience or to enforce a dogma. This
is particularly true as respects sentimentalists, because
of their intrusive self-consciousness ; for there is no more
universal characteristic of human nature than the in-
stinct of men to apologize to themselves for themselves,
and to justify personal failings by generalizing them into
universal laws. A man would be the keenest devil's
advocate against himself, were it not that he has always
taken a retaining fee for the defence ; for we think that
the indirect and mostly unconscious pleas in abatement
which we read between the lines in the works of many
authors are oftener written to set themselves right in
their own eyes than in those of the world. And in the
real life of the sentimentalist it is the same. He is un-
der the wretched necessity of keeping up, at least in
public, the character he has assumed, till he at last
reaches that last shift of bankrupt self-respect, to play
the hypocrite with himself. Lamartine, after passing
round the hat in Europe and America, takes to his bed
from wounded pride when the French Senate votes him
ft subsidy, and sheds tears of humiliation. Ideally, h«

ROUSSEAU AND THE SENTIMENTALISTS. 371

resents it ; in practical coin, he will accept the shame
without a wry face.

George Sand, speaking of Rousseau's "Confessions,"
says that an autobiographer always makes himself the
hero of his own novel, and cannot help idealizing, even
if he would. But the weak point of all sentimentalists
is that they always have been, and always continue un-
der every conceivable circumstance to be, their own
ideals, whether they are writing their own lives or no.
Rousseau opens his book with the statement: "I am not
made like any of those I have seen ; I venture to believe
myself unlike any that exists. If I am not worth more,
at least I am different." 0 exquisite cunning of self-
flattery ! It is this very imagined difference that makes
us worth more in our own foolish sight. For while all
men are apt to think, or to persuade themselves that
they think, all other men their accomplices in vice or
weakness, they are not difficult of belief that they are
singular in any quality or talent on which they hug
themselves. More than this ; people who are truly
original are the last to find it out, for the moment we
become conscious of a virtue it has left us or is getting
ready to go. Originality does not consist in a fidgety
assertion of selfhood, but in the faculty of getting rid
of it altogether, that the truer genius of the man, which
commerces with universal nature and with other souls
through a common sympathy with that, may take all
his powers wholly to itself, — and the truly original
man could no more be jealous of his peculiar gift, than
the grass could take credit to itself for being green.
What is the reason that all children are geniuses,
(though they contrive so soon to outgrow that dan-
gerous quality,) except that they never cross-examine
themselves on the subject? The moment that process
begins, their speech loses its gift of unexpectedness,

372 ROUSSEAU AND THE SENTIMENTALISTS.

and they become as tediously impertinent as the rest
of us.

If there never was any one like him, if he constituted
a genus in himself, to what end write confessions in
which no other human being could ever be in a condi-
tion to take the least possible interest 7 All men are
interested in Montaigne in proportion as all men find
more of themselves in him, and all men see but one
image in the glass which the greatest of poets holds up
to nature, an image which at once startles and charms
them with its familiarity. Fabulists always endow their
animals with the passions and desires of men. But if
an ox could dictate his confessions, what glimmer of un-
derstanding should we find in those bovine confidences,
unless on some theory of pre-existence, some blank mis*
giving of a creature moving about in worlds not realized 1
The truth is, that we recognize the common humanity
of Rousseau in the very weakness that betrayed him into
this conceit of himself; we find he is just like the rest
of us in this very assumption of essential difference, for
among all animals man is the only one who tries to pass
for more than he is, and so involves himself in the con-
demnation of seeming less.

But it would be sheer waste of time to hunt Rousseau
through all his doublings of inconsistency, and run him
to earth in every new paradox. His first two books at-
tacked, one of them literature, and the other society.
But this did not prevent him from being diligent with
his pen, nor from availing himself of his credit with per-
sons who enjoyed all the advantages of that inequality
whose evils he had so pointedly exposed. Indeed, it is
curious how little practical communism there has been,
how few professors it has had who would not have gained
by a general dividend. It is perhaps no frantic effort of
generosity in a philosopher with ten crowns in his pocket

ROUSSEAU AND THE, SENTIMENTALISTS. 373

when he offers to make common stock with a neighbor
who has ten thousand of yearly income, nor is it an un-
common thing to see such theories knocked clean out of
a man's head by the descent of a thumping legacy.
But, consistent or not, Rousseau remains permanently
interesting as the highest and most perfect type of the
sentimentalist of genius. His was perhaps the acutest
mind that was ever mated with an organization so dis-
eased, the brain most far-reaching in speculation that
ever kept itself steady and worked out its problems amid
such disordered tumult of the nerves.* His letter to the
Archbishop of Paris, admirable for its lucid power and
soberness of tone, and his Rousseau juge de Jean Jacques,
which no man can read and believe him to have been
sane, show him to us in his strength and weakness,
and give us a more charitable, let us hope therefore a
truer, notion of him than his own apology for himself.
That he was a man of genius appears unmistakably in
his impressibility by the deeper meaning of the epoch in
which he lived. Before an eruption, clouds steeped
through and through with electric life gather over the
crater, as if in sympathy and expectation. As the
mountain heaves and cracks, these vapory masses are
seamed with fire, as if they felt and answered the dumb
agony that is struggling for utterance below. Just such
flashes of eager sympathetic fire break continually from
the cloudy volumes of Rousseau, the result at once and
the warning of that convulsion of which Paris was to be
the crater and all Europe to feel the spasm. There are
symptoms enough elsewhere of that want of faith in the
existing order which made the Revolution inevitable, — •
even so shallow an observer as Horace Walpole could
forebode it so early as 1765, — but Rousseau more than
all others is the unconscious expression of the groping
* Perhaps we should except Newton.

374 ROUSSEAU AND THE SENTIMENTALISTS.

after something radically new, the instinct for a change
that should be organic and pervade every fibre of the
social and political body. Freedom of thought owes far
more to the jester Voltaire, who also had his solid kernel
of earnest, than to the sombre Genevese, whose earnest-
ness is of the deadly kind. Yet, for good or evil, the
latter was the father of modern democracy, and with-
out him our Declaration of Independence would have
wanted some of those sentences in which the imme-
morial longings of the poor and the dreams of soli-
tary enthusiasts were at last affirmed as axioms in
the manifesto of a nation, so that all the world might
hear.

Though Kousseau, like many other fanatics, had a re-
markable vein of common sense in him, (witness his
remarks on duelling, on landscape-gardening, on French
poetry, and much of his thought on education,) we can-
not trace many practical results to his teaching, least of
all in politics. For the great difficulty with his system,
if system it may be called, is, that, while it professes to
follow nature, it not only assumes as a starting-point
that the individual man may be made over again, but
proceeds to the conclusion that man himself, that human
nature, must be made over again, and governments re-
modelled on a purely theoretic basis. But when some-
thing like an experiment in this direction was made in
1789, not only did it fail as regarded man in general, but
even as regards the particular variety of man that in-
habited France. The Revolution accomplished many
changes, and beneficent ones, yet it left France peopled,
not by a new race without traditions, but by French-
men. Still, there could not but be a wonderful force in
the words of a man who, above all others, had the secret
of making abstractions glow with his own fervor ; and
his ideas — dispersed now in the atmosphere of thought

ROUSSEAU AND THE SENTIMENTALISTS. 375

— have influenced, perhaps still continue to influence,
speculative minds, which prefer swift and sure generali'
zation to hesitating and doubtful experience.

Rousseau has, in one respect, been utterly misrepre-
sented and misunderstood. Even Chateaubriand most
unfilially classes him and Voltaire together. It appears
to me that the inmost core of his being was religious.
Had he remained in the Catholic Church he might have
been a saint. Had he come earlier, he might have
founded an order. His was precisely the nature on
which religious enthusiasm takes the strongest hold, — a
temperament which finds a sensuous delight in spiritual
things, and satisfies its craving for excitement with
celestial debauch. He had not the iron temper of a
great reformer and organizer like Knox, who, true Scotch-
man that he was, found a way to weld this world and
the other together in a cast-iron creed ; but he had as
much as any man ever had that gift of a great preacher
to make the oratorical fervor which persuades himself
while it lasts into the abiding conviction of his hearers.
That very persuasion of his that the soul could remain
pure while the life was corrupt, is not unexampled among
men who have left holier names than he. His " Con-
fessions," also, would assign him to that class with whom
the religious sentiment is strong, and the moral nature
weak. They are apt to believe that they may, as special
pleaders say, confess and avoid. Hawthorne has admi-
rably illustrated this in the penance of Mr. Dimmesdale.
With all the soil that is upon Rousseau, I cannot help
looking on him as one capable beyond any in his genera-
tion of being divinely possessed ; and if it happened
otherwise, when we remember the much that hindered
and the little that helped in a life and time like his, we
shall be much readier to pity than to condemn. It was
his very fitness for being something better that makes

376 ROUSSEAU AND THE SENTIMENTALISTS.

him able to shock us so with what in too many respects
he unhappily was. Less gifted, he had been less hardly
judged. More than any other of the sentimentalists,
except possibly Sterne, he had in him a staple of sincer-
ity. Compared with Chateaubriand, he is honesty, com-
pared with Lamartine, he is manliness itself. His near-
est congener in our own tongue is Cowper.

In the whole school there is a sickly taint. The
strongest mark which Rousseau has left upon literature
is a sensibility to the picturesque in Nature, not with
Nature as a strengthener and consoler, a wholesome
tonic for a mind ill at ease with itself, but with Nature
as a kind of feminine echo to the mood, flattering it
with sympathy rather than correcting it with rebuke or
lifting it away from its unmanly depression, as in the
wholesomer fellow-feeling of Wordsworth. They seek
in her an accessary, and not a reproof. Tt is less a sym-
pathy with Nature than a sympathy with ourselves as
we compel her to reflect us. It is solitude, Nature for
her estrangement from man, not for her companionship
with him, — it is desolation and ruin, Nature as she has
triumphed over man, — with which this order of mind
seeks communion and in which it finds solace. It is
with the hostile and destructive power of matter, and
not with the spirit of life and renewal that dwells in it,
that they ally themselves. And in human character it
is the same. St. Preux, Rene, Werther, Manfred, Quasi-
modo, they are all anomalies, distortions, ruins, — so
much easier is it to caricature life from our own sickly
conception of it, than to paint it in its noble simplicity ;
so much cheaper is unreality than truth.

Every man is conscious that he leads two lives, — the
one trivial and ordinary, the other sacred and recluse ;
one which he carries to society and the dinner-table, the
dther in which his youth and aspiration survive for him,

ROUSSEAU AND THE SENTIMENTALISTS. 377

and which is a confidence between himself and God.
Both may be equally sincere, and there need be no con-
tradiction between them, any more than in a healthy man
between soul and body. If the higher life be real and
earnest, its result, whether in literature or affairs, will
be real and earnest too. But no man can produce great
things who is not thoroughly sincere in dealing with
himself, who would not exchange the finest show for the
poorest reality, who does not so love his work that he is
not only glad to give himself for it, but finds rather a
gain than a sacrifice in the surrender. The sentimental-
ist does not think of what he does so much as of what
the world will think of what he does. He translates
should into would, looks upon the spheres of duty and
beauty as alien to each other, and can never learn how
life rounds itself to a noble completeness between these
two opposite but mutually sustaining poles of what we
long for and what we must.

Did Rousseau, then, lead a life of this quality 1 Per-
haps, when we consider the contrast which every man
who looks backward must feel between the life he planned
and the life which circumstance within him and without
him has made for him, we should rather ask, Was this
>he life he meant to lead 1 Perhaps, when we take into
Account his faculty of self-deception, — it may be no
greater than our own, — we should ask, Was this the
life he believed he led 1 Have we any right to judge
this man after our blunt English fashion, and condemn
him, as we are wont to do, on the finding of a jury of
average householders *? Is French reality precisely our
reality'? Could we tolerate tragedy in rhymed alexan-
drines, instead of blank verse ? The whole life of Rous-
seau is pitched on this heroic key, and for the most
trivial occasion he must be ready with the sublime senti-
ments that are supposed to suit him rather than it. It

378 ROUSSEAU AND THE SENTIMENTALISTS.

is one of the most curious features of the sentimental
ailment, that, while it shuns the contact of men, it
courts publicity. In proportion as solitude and com-
munion with self lead the sentimentalist to exaggerate
the importance of his own personality, he conies to
think that the least event connected with it is of conse-
quence to his fellow-men. If he change his shirt, he
would have mankind aware of it. Victor Hugo, the
greatest living representative of the class, considers it
necessary to let the world know by letter from time
to time his opinions on every conceivable subject about
which it is not asked nor is of the least value unless
we concede to him an immediate inspiration. We
men of colder blood, in whom self-consciousness takes
the form of pride, and who have deified mauvaise honte
as if our defect were our virtue, find it especially hard
to understand that artistic impulse of more southern
races to pose themselves properly on every occasion, and
not even to die without some tribute of deference to the
taste of the world they are leaving. Was not even
mighty Caesar's last thought of his drapery ? Let us
not condemn Rousseau for what seems to us the inde-
cent exposure of himself in his " Confessions."

Those who allow an oratorical and purely conventional
side disconnected with our private understanding of the
facts, and with life, in which everything has a wholly
parliamentary sense where truth is made subservient to
the momentary exigencies of eloquence, should be chari-
table to Rousseau. While we encourage a distinction
which establishes two kinds of truth, one for the world,
and another for the conscience, while we take pleasure in
a kind of speech that has no relation to the real thought
of speaker or hearer, but to the rostrum only, we must
not be hasty to condemn a sentimentalism which we do
our best to foster. We listen in public with the gravity

ROUSSEAU AND THE SENTIMENTALISTS. 379

Oi augurs to what we smile at when we meet a brother
adept. France is the native land of eulogy, of truth
padded out to the size and shape demanded by comme-il-
faut. The French Academy has, perhaps, done more
harm by the vogue it has given to this style, than it has
done good by its literary purism ; for the best purity of
a language depends on the limpidity of its source in
veracity of thought. Rousseau was in many respects a
typical Frenchman, and it is not to be wondered at if he
too often fell in with the fashion of saying what was ex-
pected of him, and what he thought due to the situation,
rather than what would have been true to his inmost
consciousness. Perhaps we should allow something also
to the influence of a Calvinistic training, which certainly
helps men who have the least natural tendency towards
it to set faith above works, and to persuade themselves
of the efficacy of an inward grace to offset an outward
and visible defection from it.

As the sentimentalist always takes a fanciful, some-
times an unreal, life for an ideal one, it would be too
much to say that Rousseau was a man of earnest convic-
tions. But he was a man of fitfully intense ones, as
suited so mobile a temperament, and his writings, more
than those of any other of his tribe, carry with them
that persuasion that was in him while he wrote. In
them at least he is as consistent as a man who admits
new ideas can ever be. The children of his brain he
never abandoned, but clung to them with paternal fidel-
ity. Intellectually he was true and fearless ; constitu-
tionally, timid, contradictory, and weak ; but never, if
we understand him rightly, false. He was a little too
credulous of sonorous sentiment, but he was never, like
Chateaubriand or Lamartine, the lackey of fine phrases.
If, as some fanciful physiologists have assumed, there
be a masculine and feminine lobe of the brain, it would

380 ROUSSEAU AND THE SENTIMENTALISTS.

seem that in men of sentimental turn the masculine half
fell in love with and made an idol of the other, obeying
and admiring all the pretty whims of this folle da logis.
In Rousseau the mistress had some noble elements of
character, and less taint of the demi-monde than is visi-
ble in more recent cases of the same illicit relation.

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THE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SANTA CRUZ

This book is due on the last DATE stamped below.

NOV6 1968

5RSI

JUN2 '83

DEC 61982R£C'0

DEC 6'92

DEC 09 1992 !C'

8,'65(F6282s8)2373