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CLIO,     A     MUSE 

AND   OTHER   ESSAYS 
LITERARY   AND   PEDESTRIAN 


BV  THE  SAME  AUTHOR 

ENGLAND  IN  THE  AGE  OF 
WYCLIFFE.     8vo,  ds.  net. 

GARIBALDI'S  DEFENCE  OF  THE 
ROMAN  REPUBLIC  (1848-9).  With  7 
Maps  and  35  Illustrations.     Svo,  bs.  6d.  net. 

GARIBALDI   AND  THE  THOUSAND 

(May,   i860).     With  5  Maps  and  numerous 
Illustrations.     8vo,  75.  6d.  net. 

GARIBALDI  AND  THE  MAKING  OF 
ITALY  (May-November,  i860).  With  4 
Maps  and  numerous  Illustrations.  8vo, 
"js.  6d.  net. 

ENGLISH  SONGS  OF  ITALIAN 
FREEDOM.  Chosen  and  Arranged,  with 
an  Introduction,  by  George  M.  Trevelyan. 
Crown  8vo,  gilt  top,  3^.  6d,  net. 


LONGMANS,  GREEN  AND  CO. 

LONDON,  NEW  YORK,  BOMBAY,  AND  CALCUTTA 


CLIO,   A  MUSE 

AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 
LITERARY  AND  PEDESTRIAN 


BY 

GEORGE   MACAULAY   TREVELYAN 

LATE   FELLOW   OF   TRINITY  COLLEGE,   CAMBRIDGE 

AUTHOR   OF    "the    POETRY   AND   PHILOSOPHY   OF   GEORGE   MEREDITH" 

"garibaldi's    DEFENCE   OF   THE    ROMAN    REPUBLIC," 

"the   LIFE   OF   JOHN    BRIGHT,"    ETC. 


SECOND   IMPRESSION 


LONGMANS,    GREEN    AND    CO. 

39    PATERNOSTER    ROW,    LONDON 

NEW  YORK,  BOMBAY,  AND  CALCUTTA 

I913 

All  rights  reserved 


la  '  ? 


TO 

WALTER   MORLEY   FLETCHER 


The  essays  on  "Poetry  and  Rebellion"  and  the 
"  Middle  Marches  "  are  reprinted  from  the  Indepen- 
dent Review,  with  alterations ;  "  If  Napoleon  had 
Won  the  Battle  of  Waterloo "  is  reprinted  from  the 
Westminster  Gazette;  and  a  portion  of  the  essay 
on  "  George  Meredith  "  from  the  Nation.  My  best 
thanks  are  due  for  permission  to  reproduce  them. 


CONTENTS 


>'Clio,  a  Muse 

Walking     .... 

George  Meredith 

Poetry  and  Rebellion 

John  Woolman,  the  Quaker 

Poor  Muggleton  and  the  Classics 

The  Middle  Marches 

If  Napoleon  had  Won  the  Battle  of  Waterloo 


PAGE 

I 

56 
82 

lOI 

^33 
143 
153 
184 


Map  of  the  Middle  Marches 


157 


Wind  of  the  morning,  wind  of  the  gloaming,  wind  of  the  night, 

What  is  it  that  you  whisper  to  the  moor 

All  the  day  long  and  every  day  and  year, 

Resting  and  whispering,  rustling  and  whispering,  hastening  and 

whispering 
Around,  across,  beneath 
The  tufts  and  hollows  of  the  listening  heath  ? 

Geoffrey  Young,  Wind  and  Hill. 


CLIO,    A    MUSE 


AND   OTHER   ESSAYS,   LITERARY 
AND   PEDESTRIAN 

CLIO,   A    MUSE  W^-sV^^riA.! 

The  last  fifty  years    have   witnessed   great   changes 

in    the     manasement    of    Clio's    temple.    Changes  in 
*  ^  the  Temple 

Her   inspired   prophets   and   bards   have    of  Clio. 

passed  away  and  been  succeeded  by  the  priests  of 
an  established  church ;  the  vulgar  have  been  ex- 
cluded from  the  Court  of  the  Gentiles ;  doctrine 
has  been  defined  ;  heretics  have  been  excommuni- 
cated ;  and  the  tombs  of  the  aforesaid  prophets 
have  been  duly  blackened  by  the  new  hierarchy. 
While  these  changes  were  in  process  the  statue  of 
the  Muse  was  seen  to  wink  an  eye.  Was  it  in  ap- 
proval, or  in  derision  ? 

Two  generations  back,  history  was  a  part  of  our 
national  literature,  written  by  persons  moving  at 
large  in  the  world  of  letters  or  politics.  Among 
them  were  a  few  writers  of  genius,  and  many  of 
remarkable    talent,   who    did    much    to    mould    the 


2  CLIO,   AND   OTHER   ESSAYS 

thought  and  inspire  the  feeling  of  the  day.  Of 
recent  years  the  popular  influence  of  history  has 
greatly  diminished.  The  thought  and 
feeling  of  the  rising  generation  is  but 
little  affected  by  historians.  History  was,  by  her 
own  friends,  proclaimed  a  "science"  for  specialists, 
not  "  literature "  for  the  common  reader  of  books. 
And  the  common  reader  of  books  has  accepted  his 
discharge. 

That  is  one  half  of  the  revolution.  But  fortu- 
nately that  is  not  all.  Whereas  fifty  years  ago 
history  had  no  standing  in  higher  education,  and 
even  twenty  years  ago  but  little,  to-day 
Clio  is  driving  the  classical  Athene  out  of 
the  field,  as  the  popular  Arts  course  in  our  Universities. 
The  good  results  attained  by  University  historical 
teaching,  when  brought  to  bear  on  the  raw  product 
of  our  public  schools,  is  a  great  fact  in  modern 
education.  But  it  means  very  hard  work  for  the 
History  Dons,  who,  in  the  time  they  can  spare  from 
these  heavy  educational  tasks,  must  write  the  modern 
history  books.  Fifty  years  ago  there  were  no  such 
people ;  to-day  they  are  a  most  important  but  sadly 
overworked  class  of  men. 

Such  is  the  double  aspect  of  the  change  in  the 
status  of  history.  The  gain  in  the  deeper,  aca- 
demic life  of  the  nation  must  be  set  off  against  the 
loss  in  its  wider,  literary  life.  To  ignore  either  is 
to  be  most  partial.     But  must  we  always  submit  to 


CLIO,   A   MUSE  3 

the  loss  in  order  to  secure  the  gain  ?  Already 
during  the  last  decade  there  are  signs  in  the  highest 
quarters  of  a  reconciling  process,  of  a  synthesis 
of  the  scientific  to  the  literary  view  of  history. 
Streaks  of  whitewash  have  been  observed  on  the 
tombs  of  those  bards  and  prophets  whose  bones 
Professor  Seeley  burned  twenty  years  ago.  When 
no  less  an  authority  than  Professor  Firth  thinks 
it  worth  while  to  edit  Macaulay ;  when  Mr.  Gooch 
in  his  History  of  Historians  can  give  an  admirable 
appreciation  of  Carlyle,  times  are  evidently  chang- 
ing a  little  in  those  high  places  whence  ideas  gradu- 
ally filter  down  through  educational  England.  Isis 
and  Camus,  reverend  sires,  foot  it  slow — but  sure. 
It  is  then  in  no  cantankerous  spirit  against  the 
present  generation  of  academic  historians,  but  in  all 
gratitude,  admiration  and  personal  friendship  towards 
them,  that  I  launch  this  "delicate  investigation" 
into  the  character  of  history.  What  did  the  Muse 
mean  when  she  winked  ? 

These  new  History  Schools,  still  at  the  formative 
period  of  their  growth,  are  to  the  world  of  .^^^  ^^^  g.g 
older  learning  what  Western  Canada  is  to  *<>^  Schools. 
England  to-day.  Settlers  pour  into  the  historical 
land  of  promise  who,  a  generation  back,  would  have 
striven  for  a  livelihood  in  the  older  "schools"  and 
"  triposes."  The  danger  to  new  countries  with  a 
population  rapidly  increasing  is  lest  life  there  grow 


4  CLIO,   AND   OTHER  ESSAYS 

up  hastily  into  a  raw  materialism,  a  dead  level  of 
uniform  ambition  all  directed  to  the  mere  acquisition 
of  dollars.  In  the  historical  world  the  analogue  of 
the  almighty  dollar  is  the  crude  document.  If  a 
student  digs  up  a  new  document,  he  is  happy,  he 
has  succeeded  ;  if  not,  he  is  unhappy,  he  has  failed. 
There  is  some  danger  that  the  overwhelming  rush 
of  immigrants  into  the  new  History  Schools  may 
cause  us  to  lose  some  of  the  old  culture  and  the 
great  memories.  But  I  hope  that  we  shall  not  be 
forgetful  of  the  Mother  Country. 

And  who  is  the  Mother  Country  to  Anglo-Saxon 
historians  ?  Some  reply  "  Germany,"  but  others  of 
England  or  ^s  prefer  to  answer  "England."  The 
Germany.  methods  and  limitations  of  German  learn- 
ing presumably  suit  the  Germans,  but  are  certain 
to  prove  a  strait  waistcoat  to  English  limbs  and 
faculties.  We  ought  to  look  to  the  free,  popular, 
literary  traditions  of  history  in  our  own  land.  Until 
quite  recent  times,  from  the  days  of  Clarendon  down 
through  Gibbon,  Carlyle  and  Macaulay  to  Green 
and  Lecky,  historical  writing  was  not  merely  Qhe 
mutual  conversation  of  scholars  with  one  another^ 
but  was  the  means  of  spreading  far  and  wide  through- 
out all  the  reading  classes  a  love  and  knowledge  of 
history,  an  elevated  and  critical  patriotism  and 
certain  qualities  of  mind  and  heart.  But  all  that 
has  been  stopped,  and  an  attempt  has  been  made  to 
drill  us  into  so  many  Potsdam  Guards  of  learning. 


CLIO,   A   MUSE  5 

We   cannot,    however,  decide   this   question  on    a 

mere  point  of  patriotism.     It  is   necessary  to  ask  a 

priori  whether  the  modern  German  or  the  old  English 

ideal   was   the   right   one.      It   is    necessary   to   ask, 

"What  is  history  and  what  is  its  use?"     We  must 

"gang   o'er   the   fundamentals,"   as   the    old    Scotch 

lady  with  the  ear  trumpet  said  so  alarm-    The  Funda- 
mental 
ingly  to  the  new  minister  when  he  en-    questions. 

tered  her  room  on  his  introductory  visit.     So  I  now 

ask,  what  is  the  object  of  the  life  of  man  qud  historian  ? 

Is  it  to  know  the  past  and  enjoy  it  forever  ?     Or  is 

it  to  do  one's  duty  to  one's  neighbour  and  cause  him 

also  to  know  the  past  ?     The  answer  to  these  theoretic 

questions  must  have  practical  effects  on  the  teaching 

and  learning,  the  writing  and  reading  of  history. 

The  root  questions  can  be  put  in  these  terms  : — 
"  Ought  history  to  be  merely  the  Accumulation  of 
facts  about  the  past  ?  Or  ought  it  also  to  be  the 
Interpretation  of  facts  about  the  past  ?  Or,  one 
step  further,  ought  it  to  be  not  merely  the  Accumu- 
lation and  Interpretation  of  facts,  but  also  the  Exposi- 
tion of  these  facts  and  opinions  in  their  full  emotional 
and  intellectual  value  to  a  wide  public  by  the  difficult 
art  of  literature  ?  " 

The  words  in  italics  raise  another  question  which 
can  be  put  thus  : — 

"  Ought  emotion  to  be  excluded  from  history  on  the 
ground  that  history  deals  only  with  the  science  of 
cause  and  effect  in  human  affairs  ?  " 


[^ 


^ 


6  CLIO,   AND   OTHER   ESSAYS 

It  will  be  well  to  begin  the  discussion  by  consider- 
ing the  alleged  "science  of  cause  and  effect  in  human 
affairs."  This  alleged  "science"  does  not  exist,  and 
cannot  ever  exist  in  any  degree  of  accuracy  remotely 
deserving  to  be  described  by  the  word  "  science." 
Difference  be-  V^^  ideal  that  the  facts  of  history  are  of 
^^^^  ^"  value  as  part  of  an  exact  science  con- 
Science,  fined  to  specialists]  is  due  to  a  misapplica- 
tion of  the  analogy  of  physical  science.  Physical 
science  would  still  be  of  immense,  though  doubtless 
diminished  value,  even  if  the  general  public  had  no 
smattering  thereof,)even  if  Sir  Robert  Ball  had  never  *>£, 
lectured,  and  Huxley  had  never  slaughtered  bishops 
for  a  Roman  holiday. 

OThe  functions  of  physical  science  are  mainly  two. 
Direct  utility  in  practical  fields  ;  and  in  more  intel- 
lectual fields  the  deduction  of  laws  of  "  cause  and 
effect."  Now  history  can  perform  neither  of  these 
functions. 

In  the  first  place  it  has  no  practical  utility  like 
physical  science.  INo  one  can  by  a  knowledge  of 
history,  however  profound,  invent  the  steam-engine, 
or  light  a  town,  or  cure  cancer,  or  make  wheat  grow 
near  the  arctic  circle^  For  this  reason  there  is  not 
in  the  case  of  history,  as  there  is  in  the  case  of 
physical  science,  any  utilitarian  value  at  all  in  the 
accumulation  of  knowledge  by  a  small  number'  of 
students,  repositories  of  secrets  unknown  to  the 
vulgar. 


CLIO,   A   MUSE  7 

In  the  second  place  history  cannot,  Hke  physical 
science,  deduce  causal  laws  of  general  application,  t 
AH  attempts  have  failed  to  discover  laws  of  "  cause  /)[  \ 
and  effect"  which  are  certain  to  repeat  themselves 
in  the  institutions  and  affairs  of  men.\The  law  of 
gravitation  may  be  scientifically  proved  because  it  is 
universal  and  simple.  But  the  historical  law  that 
starvation  brings  on  revolt  is  not  proved  ;  indeed  the 
opposite  statement,  that  starvation  leads  to  abject 
submission,  is  equally  true  in  the  light  of  past  events. 
You  cannot  so  completely  isolate  any  historical  event 
from  its  circumstances  as  to  be  able  to  deduce  from 
it  a  law  of  general  application.  Only  politicians 
adorning  their  speeches  with  historical  arguments 
have  this  power ;  and  even  they  never  agree.  An 
historical  event  cannot  be  isolated  from  its  circum- 
stances, any  more  than  the  onion  from  its  skins, 
because  an  event  is  itself  nothing  but  a  set  of  circum- 
stances, none  of  which  will  ever  recur. 

To  bring  the  matter  to  the  test,  what  are  the 
"laws"  which  historical  "science"  has  discovered 
in  the  last  forty  years,  since  it  cleared  the  laboratory 
of  those  wretched  "  literary  historians "  ?  Medea 
has  successfully  put  the  old  man  into  the  pot,  but 
I  fail  to  see  the  fine  youth  whom  she  promised  us. 

Not  only  can  no  causal  laws  of  universal  appli- 
cation be  discovered  in  so  complex  a  subject,  but 
the  interpretation  of  the  cause  and  effect  of  any  one 
particular  event  cannot  rightly  be  called  "scientific." 


8  CLIO,    AND   OTHER   ESSAYS 

The  collection  of  facts,  the  weighing  of  evidence  as 
to  what  events  happened,  are  in  some  sense  scientific  ; 
but  not  so  the  discovery  of  the  causes  and  effects  of 
those  events.  In  dealing  even  with  an  affair  of  which 
the  facts  are  so  comparatively  well  known  as  those 
of  the  French  Revolution,  it  is  impossible  accurately 
to  examine  the  psychology  of  twenty-five  million 
different  persons,  of  whom — except  a  few  hundreds 
or  thousands — the  lives  and  motives  are  buried  in 
♦he  black  night  of  the  utterly  forgotten.  No  one, 
therefore,  can  ever  give  a  complete  or  wholly  true 
account  of  the  causes  of  the  French  Revolution. 
But  several  imperfect  readings  of  history  are  better 
than  none  at  all ;  and  he  will  give  the  best  inter- 
pretation who,  having  discovered  and  weighed  all 
the  important  evidence  obtainable,  has  the  largest 
grasp  of  intellect,  the  warmest  human  sympathy,  the 

highest  imaginative   powers.      Carlyle,  at 
Carlyle. 

least  in  his  greatest  work,  fulfilled  the  last 

two    conditions,    and    therefore    his    psychology    of 

the  mob  in  the  days  of  mob  rule,  his  flame-picture  of 

what  was  in  very  fact  a  conflagration,  his  portraits  of 

individual  characters — Louis,  Sieyes,  Danton,  Marat, 

Robespierre — are  in  the  most  important  sense  more 

true    than    the    cold    analysis    of    the    same    events 

and    the    conventional    summings    up    of    the    same 

]  persons    by    scientific    historians    who,    with    more 

■  knowledge  of  facts,  have  less  understanding  of  Man. 

It  was  not  till  later  in  his  life  that  Carlyle  went  mad 


CLIO,    A   MUSE  9 

with  Hero-worship  and  ceased  to  understand  his 
fellow-men  with  that  all-embracing  tolerance  and 
sympathy  which  is  the  spiritual  hall-mark  of  his 
French  Revolution : 

"The  Fireship  is  old  France,  the  old  French  Form 
''  of  Life  ;  her  crew  a  generation  of  men.  Wild  are 
"  their  cries  and  their  ragings  there,  like  spirits 
"tormented  in  that  flame.  But,  on  the  whole,  are 
"  they  not  gone,  O  Reader  ?  Their  fireship  and  they, 
"frightening  the  world,  have  sailed  away  ;  its  flame^ 
"and  its  thunders  quite  away,  into  the  Deep  of  Time. 
"One  thing  therefore  History  will  do  :  pity  them  all, 
"for  it  went  hard  with  them  all." 

But  the  fatal  weakness  even  of  that  great  book  is 
that  its  author  knew  nothing  in  detail  about  the  ancien 
regime  and  the  "  old  French  Form  of  Life."  He 
described  the  course  of  the  fire  but  he  knew  nothing 
of  the  combustibles  or  of  the  match. 

How  indeed  could  history  be  a  "  science  "  ?  You 
can  dissect  the  body  of  a  man,  and  argue  thence  the 
general  structure  of  the  bodies  of  other  men.  But 
you  cannot  dissect  a  mind  ;  and  if  you  could,  you 
could  not  argue  thence  about  other  minds.^  You  can 
know  nothing  scientifically  of  the  twenty  million 
minds  of  a  nation.  The  few  facts  we  know  may  or 
may  not  be  typical  of  the  rest.  Therefore,  in  the 
most  important  part  of  its  business,  history  is  not  a 
scientific  deduction,  but  an  imaginative  guess  at  the 
most  likely  generalisations. 


lo  CLIO,   AND   OTHER   ESSAYS 

History  is  only  in  part  a  matter  of  "  fact."  Collect 
the  "  facts  "  of  the  French  Revolution  !  You  must  go 
down  to  Hell  and  up  to  Heaven  to  fetch  them.[__The 
pride  of  the  physical  scientist  is  attacked,  and  often 
justly.  But  what  is  his  pride  compared  with  the 
pride  of  the  historian  who  thinks  that  his  collection 
of  "facts"  will  suffice  for  a  scientific  study  of  cause 
and  effect  in  human  affairs  ?  1  "The  economist,"  said 
Professor  Marshall,^  "  needs  imagination  above  all  to 
put  him  on  the  track  of  those  causes  of  events  which 
are  remote  or  lie  below  the  surface."  Now  if,  as 
Need  of  im-      Professor   Marshall  tells  us,  imagination 

agination  in 

History.  IS  necessary  for   the  economist,  by  how 

much  more  is  it  necessary  for  the  historian,  if  he 
wishes  to  discover  the  causes  of  man's  action,  not 
merely  as  a  bread-winning  individual,  but  in  all  his 
myriad  capacities  of  passion  and  of  thought.  The 
man  who  is  himself  devoid  of  emotion  or  enthusiasm 
can  seldom  credit,  and  can  never  understand,  the 
emotions  of  others,  which  have  none  the  less  played 
a  principal  part  in  cause  and  effect.  Therefore,  even 
if  history  were  a  science  of  cause  and  effect,  that 
would  be  a  reason  not  for  excluding  but  for  including 
emotion  as  part  of  the  historian's  method. 

It  was  no  unemotional  historian,  but  the  author  of 
Sartor  Resarius,  who  found  out  that  Cromwell  was 
not  a  hypocrite.     Carlyle  did  not  arrive  at  this  result 

1  Economic   Teaching  at  the  Universities  in  Relation  to  Public  Well- 
Being. 


CLIO,   A    MUSE  II 

by  a  strictly  deductive  process,  but  it  was  none  the 
less  true,  and,  unlike  many  historical  discoveries,  it  was 
of  great  value.  Carlyle,  indeed,  sometimes  neglected 
the  accumulation  of  facts  and  the  proper  sifting  of 
evidence.  He  is  not  to  be  imitated  as  a  model 
historian,  but  he  should  be  read  and  considered  by 
all  historical  students,  because  of  his  imaginative  and 
narrative  qualities.  While  he  lacks  what  modern 
historical  method  has  acquired,  he  possesses  in  the 
fullest  degree  what  it  has  lost. 

Carlyle  uses  constantly  an  historical  method  which 
Gibbon    and    Maitland    use    sometimes,    and    other 
historians  scarcely  at  all — humour.     The  "  dignity  of 
history,"  whether  literary  or  scientific,  is  too  often 
afraid   of   contact  with  the  comic  spirit.     Yet  there 
are  historical  situations,  just  as  there  are   domestic 
and  social  situations,  which  can  only  be       carlyie's 
treated    usefully    or    even    truthfully    by       l^^our. 
seeing  the  fun  of  them.     How  else  could  Anacharsis 
Clootz'  deputation  of  the  Human  Species  to  the  French 
Assembly   be   profitably   told  ?      "  From   bench   and 
"gallery  comes  'repeated  applause';  for  what  august 
"  Senator  but  is  flattered  even  by  the  very  shadow  of 
"  the  Human  Species  depending  on  him  ?    Anacharsis 
"  and  the  '  Foreigners'  Committee '  shall  have  place  at 
"the  Federation;  on  condition  of  telling  their  respective 
"Peoples  what  they  see  there.     In  the  meantime,  we 
"  invite  them  to  the  '  honours  of  the  sitting,  honneur  de 
"  la  stance.'    A  long-flowing  Turk,  for  rejoinder,  bows 


l^ 


12  CLIO,   AND   OTHER   ESSAYS 

"with  Eastern  solemnity,  and  utters  articulate  sounds  : 
"  but  owing  to  his  imperfect  knowledge  of  the  French 
"  dialect,  his  words  are  like  spilt  water  ;  the  thought 
"he  had  in  him  remains  conjectural  to  this  day." 

I  conclude,  therefore,  that  the  analogy  of  physical 

science  has  misled  many  historians  during  the  last 

thirty  years  right  away  from  the  truth   about  their 

profession.  /There  is  no  utilitarian  value  in  knowledge 

of   the   past,  and   there   is   no   way   of    scientifically 

deducing   causal   laws    about   the   action   of    human 

Value  of  beings   in  the  mass.     In  short,  the  value 

History  is  ° 

educational,      of  history  is  not  scientific.     Its  true  value 

is  educational.     It  can  educate  the  minds  of  men  by 

causing  them  to  reflect  on  the  past.\ 

Even  if  cause  and  effect  could  bfe  discovered  with 

accuracy,  they  still  would  not  be  the  most  interesting 

part  of  human  affairs.     It  is  not  man's  evolution  but 

his  attainment  that  is  the  great  lesson  of  the  past  and 

^  the  highest  theme  of  history.     The  deeds 

happened.        themselves  are  more  interesting  than  their 

causes  and  effects,  and  are  fortunately  ascertainable 

with  much  greater  precision.     "  Scientific  "  treatment 

of  the   evidence  (there  only  can  we  speak  to  some 

extent  of  "  science  ")  can  establish  with  reasonable 

certainty  that  such  and  such  events  occurred,  that 

one  man  did  this  and  another  said  that.     And  the 

story  of  great   events  is   itself  of   the  highest  value 

when  it  is  properly  treated  by  the  intellect  and  the 


CLIO,   A   MUSE  13 

imagination  of  the  historian.     The  feelings,  specula-  V 
tions  and  actions  of  the  soldiers  of  Cromwell's  army 
are  interesting  in  themselves,  not  merely  as  part  of 
a  process  of  "cause  and  effect."     Doubtless,  through 
the  long  succeeding  centuries  the  deeds  of  these  men 
had  their  effect,  as  one  amid  the  thousand  confused 
waves  that  give  the  impulse  to  the  world's  ebb  and 
flow.     But  how  great  or  small  their  effect  was,  must 
be  a  matter  of  wide  speculation  ;  and  their  ultimate 
success    or   failure,   whatever   that   may   have    been, 
was  largely  ruled  by  incalculable  chance.  \It  is  the 
business  of  the  historian  to  generalise  and  to  guess       "XA 
as  to  cause  and  effect,  but  he  should  do  it  modestly 
and  not  call  it  "  science,"  and  he  should  not  regard 
it  as  his  first  duty,  which  is  to  tell  the  story .\  For, 
irrespective  of  "  cause  and  efTect,"  we  want  to  know 
the  thoughts  and   deeds  of   Cromwell's  soldiers,  as 
one   of    the   higher   products    and   achievements    of 
the  human  race,  a  thing  never  to  be  repeated,  that 
once  took  shape  and  was.     And  so,  too,  with  Charles 
and  his  Cavaliers,  we  want  to  know  what  they  were 
like  and  what    they  did,  for   neither  will  they   ever 
come  again.     On  the  whole,  we  have  been  faithfully 
served  in  this  matter  by  Carlyle,  Gardiner  and  Pro- 
fessor Firth. 

It  is  the  tale  of  the  thing  done,  even  more  than 
its  causes  and  effects,  which  trains  the  political 
judgment  by  widening  the  range  of  sympathy  and 
deepening    the    approval    and    disapproval    of    con- 


14  CLIO,   AND   OTHER   ESSAYS 

science  ;  that  stimulates  by  example  youth  to  aspire 
and  age  to  endure  ;  that  enables  us  by  the  light  of  what 
men  once  have  been,  to  see  the  thing  we  are,  and  dimly 
to  descry  the  form  of  what  we  should  be.  "  Is  not  Man's 
history  and  Men's  history  a  perpetual  evangel  ?  " 

It  is  because  the  historians  of  to-day  were  trained 
by  the  Germanising  hierarchy  to  regard  history  not 
as  an  "  evangel "  or  even  as  a  "  story,"  but  as  a 
"  science,"  that  they  have  so  much  neglected  what 
Narrative  the  ^^  ^^^^^  ^^^  the  principal  craft  of  the 
histo^':°its  historian— the  art  of  narrative.  It  is  in 
neglect.  narrative  that   modern   historical    writing 

is  weakest,  and  to  my  thinking  it  is  a  very  serious 
weakness — spinal  in  fact.  Some  writers  would  seem 
never  to  have  studied  the  art  of  telling  a  story. 
There  is  no  "  flow  "  in  their  events,  which  stand  like 
ponds  instead  of  running  like  streams.  Yet  history 
is,  in  its  unchangeable  essence,  "a.  tale."  Round 
the  story,  as  flesh  and  blood  round  the  bone,  should 
be  gathered  many  different  things — character  draw- 
ing, study  of  social  and  intellectual  movements, 
speculations  as  to  probable  causes  and  effects,  and 
whatever  else  the  historian  can  bring  to  illuminate 
the  past.  But  the  art  of  history  remains  always  the 
art  of  narrative.     That  is  the  bed  rock. 

It  is  possible  that,  in  the  days  of  Carlyle  and 
Macaulay,  Motley  and  Michelet,  too  much  thought 
was  given  to  narrative,  at  least  in  comparison  with 
other  aspects  of  history,  for  absolutely  too  much  can 


CLIO,   A   MUSE  15 

never  be  given.  It  is  possible  that  when  Professor 
Seeley  said,  "  Break  the  drowsy  spell  of  narrative. 
Ask  yourself  questions,  set  yourself  problems,"  he 
may  have  been  serving  his  generation.  But  it  is 
time  now  for  a  swing  of  the  pendulum.  "  The  drowsy 
spell  of  narrative  "  has  been  broken  with  a  vengeance. 
Readers  find  little  "  spell "  in  historical  narrative 
nowadays — however  it  may  be  with  the  "drowsiness." 

One  day,  as  I  was  walking  along  the  side  of  Great 
Gable,  thinking  of  history  and  forgetting  the  mountains 
which  I  trod,  I  chanced  to  look  up  and  see  the  top 
of  a  long  green  ridge  outlined  on  the  blue  horizon. 
For  half  a  minute  I  stood  in  thoughtless  enjoyment 
of  this  new  range,  noting  upon  it  forms  of  beauty 
and  qualities  of  romance,  until  suddenly  I  remembered 
that  I  was  looking  at  the  top  of  Helvellyn  !  Instantly, 
as  by  magic,  its  shape  seemed  to  change  under  my 
eyes,  and  the  qualities  with  which  I  had  endowed 
the  unknown  mountain  to  fall  away,  because  I  now 
knew  what  like  were  its  hidden  base  and  its  averted 
side,  what  names  and  memories  clung  round  it.  The 
change  taking  place  in  its  aspect  seemed  physical, 
but  I  suppose  it  was  only  a  trick  of  my  own  mind. 
Even  so,  if  we  could  forget  for  a  while  all  that  had 
happened  since  the  Battle  of  Waterloo,  Difficulty  of 
we  should  see  it,  not  as  we  see  it  now,  o^^anc^sfors* 
with  all  its  time-honoured  associations  point  of  view, 
and  its  conventionalised  place  in  history,  but  as  our 


1 6  CLIO,   AND   OTHER   ESSAYS 

ancestors  saw  it  first,  when  they  did  not  know 
whether  the  "  Hundred  Days,"  as  we  now  call  them, 
would  not  stretch  out  for  a  Hundred  Years.  Every 
true  history  must{  by  its  human  and  vital  presentation 
of  events,  force  us  to  remember  that  the  past  was 
once  real  as  the  present  and  uncertain  as  the  future,  j 

Even  in  our  personal  experience,  we  have  probaBTy 
noticed  the  uncanny  difference  between  events  when 
they  first  appear  red  hot,  and  the  same  events  calmly 
reviewed,  cold  and  dead,  in  the  perspective  of  sub- 
sequent happenings.  I  sometimes  remember,  each 
time  with  a  shock  of  surprise,  how  the  Boer  War 
and  the  Election  of  1906  appeared  to  me  while  they 
were  still  portents,  unsettling  our  former  modes  of 
thought  and  expectation.  Normally  I  cannot  recol- 
lect what  I  then  felt.  It  comes  back  to  me  only  at 
chance  moments  when  my  mind  has  let  slip  all  forms 
and  pressures  stamped  on  it  in  later  days.  It  is  not 
that  my  worthless  "  opinions "  have  altered  since 
then.  I  am  speaking  of  something  much  more  subtle 
and  potent  than  "  opinions  "  ;  I  mean  the  pangs  felt 
by  the  soul  as  she  hastily  adapts  herself  to  new 
circumstances,  when  some  strange  joy  or  terror, 
with  face  half  hid,  ineluctably  advances.  I  have 
forgotten  most  of  it,  but  I  remember  some  of  it 
sometimes,  as  in  a  dream. 

Now,  if  so  great  a  change  of  emotional  attitude 
towards  an  event  can  take  place  in  the  same  person 
within  a  few  years,  how  very  different  must  our  view 


CLIO,   A   MUSE  17 

of  the  Battle  of  Waterloo  and  of  the  Reform  Bill  of 
1832  be  from  the  aspect  which  first  they  bore  to  our 
grandfathers  and  great-grandfathers,  men  so  very 
different  from  ourselves,  brought  up  in  habits  of 
thought  and  conduct  long  passed  away.  Deeply  are 
they  buried  from  our  sight 

"  Under  the  downtrodden  pall 
Of  the  leaves  of  many  years," 

and  sometimes  deeper  still  under  the  formulae  of  con- 
ventional history.  To  recover  some  of  our  ancestors' 
real  thoughts  and  feelings  is  the  hardest,  subtlest  and 
most  educative  function  that  the  historian  can  per- 
form. It  is  much  more  difficult  than  to  spin  guess- 
work generalisations,  the  reflex  of  passing  phases  of 
thought  or  opinion  in  our  own  day.  To  give  a  true 
picture  of  any  country,  or  man  or  group  of  men  in 
the  past  requires  industry  and  knowledge,  for  only 
the  documents  can  tell  us  the  truth,  but  it  requires 
also  insight,  sympathy  and  imagination  of  -pj^e  qualities 
the  finest,  and  last  but  not  least  the  art  requisite, 
of  making  our  ancestors  live  again  in  modern  narra- 
tive. Carlyle,  at  his  rare  best,  could  do  it.  If  you 
would  know  what  the  night  before  a  journee  in  the 
French  Revolution  was  like,  read  his  account  of  the 
eve  of  August  10,  in  the  chapter  called  "The  Steeples 
at  Midnight."  Whether  or  not  it  is  entirely  accurate 
in  detail,  it  is  true  in  effect :  the  spirit  of  that  long 
dead  hour  rises  on  us  from  the  night  of  time  past. 
Maitland,  too,  has  done  it  for  the  legal  side  of  the 


i8  CLIO,   AND   OTHER  ESSAYS 

English  mediaeval  mind — the  only  side  thereof  yet 
clearly  revealed  to  us  except  what  we  see  through 
Chaucer's  magic  little  window. 

On  a  somewhat  lower  imaginative  plane  Professor 
Pollard  is  doing  wonders  in  showing  us  how  the 
Professor  folks  in  Tudor  times  thought  about  their 
fheRefor^**  affairs,  political  and  religious.  This  is 
mation.  great    news,    for     hitherto    the     English 

Reformation  has  mainly  been  told  from  the  point 
of  view  either  of  priests,  curates  or  Orangemen  of 
the  nineteenth  century.  Professor  Pollard's  work  is 
a  credit  to  latter-day  history,  and  is  much  more  true 
than  that  of  Froude  or  his  opponents.  But,  although 
Professor  Pollard  is  one  of  the  most  popular  living 
historians,  he  does  not  arouse  the  same  amount  of 
public  interest  that  those  antagonists  used  to  excite. 
This  is  partly,  no  doubt,  because  the  public  is  less 
interested  in  religious  controversy.  But  it  is  also 
partly  because  the  public  is  less  interested  in  history, 
and  by  a  habit  of  mind  now  inbred,  thinks  that 
a  professional  historian  must  be  writing  his  best 
books  not  for  the  nation  but  for  his  fellow-students. 
And  the  worst  of  it  is  that  this  lamentable  error  was 
put  about  in  the  last  generation  by  the  historians 
themselves,  when  they  denounced  from  the  altar 
any  of  their  profession,  alive  or  dead,  who  had  had 
dealings  with  literature. 

But  since  history  has  no  properly  scientific  value, 
its    only    purpose    is   educative.      And  if    historians 


CLIO,   A   MUSE  19 

neglect  to  educate  the  public,  if  they  fail  to  interest 
it  intelligently  in  the  past,  then  all  their  historical 
learning  is  valueless  except  in  so  far  as  it  educates 
themselves. 

What,  then,  are  the  various  ways  in  which  history 
can  educate  the  mind  ? 

^The  first,  or  at  least  the  most  generally  acknow- 
ledged educational  effect  of  history,  is  to  train  the 
mind  of  the  citizen  into  a  state  in  which  History  as  a 
he  is  capable  of  taking  a  just  view  of  poh°t°ca/ 
political  problems^  But,  even  in  this  """isdom. 
capacity,  history  cannot  prophesy  the  future ;  it 
cannot  supply  a  set  of  invariably  applicable  laws 
for  the  guidance  of  politicians  ;  it  cannot  show,  by 
the  deductions  of  historical  analogy,  which  side  is 
in  the  right  in  any  quarrel  of  our  own  day.  It  can 
do  a  thing  less,  and  yet  greater  than  all  these.  [^^ 
can  mould  the  mind  itself  into  the  capability  of 
understanding  great  affairs  and  sympathising  with 
other  men.  The  information  given  by  history  is 
valueless  in  itself,  unless  it  produce  a  new  state  of 
mindTl  The  value  of  Lecky's  Irish  history  did  not 
consist  in  the  fact  that  he  recorded  in  a  book  the 
details  of  numerous  massacres  and  murders,  but 
that  he  produced  sympathy  and  shame,  and  caused 
a  better  understanding  among  us  all  of  how  the  sins 
of  the  fathers  are  often  visited  upon  the  children, 
unto  the  third  and  fourth  generations  of  them  that 


20  CLIO,   AND   OTHER   ESSAYS 

hate  each  other.  He  does  not  prove  that  Home 
Rule  is  right  or  wrong,  but  he  trains  the  mind  of 
Unionists  and  Home  Rulers  to  think  sensibly  about 
that  and  other  problems. 

For  it  is  in  this  political  function  of  history  that 
the  study  of  cause  and  effect  is  of  some  real  use. 
Though  such  a  study  can  be  neither  scientific  nor 
exact,  common  sense  sometimes  points  to  an  obvious 
causal  connection.  Thus  it  was  supposed,  even 
before  the  invention  of  scientific  history,  that  Alva's 
policy  was  in  some  causal  connection  with  the  revolt 
of  the  Netherlands,  that  Brunswick's  manifesto  had 
something  to  do  with  the  September  Massacres,  and 
the  September  Massacres  with  the  spread  of  reaction. 
Such  suggestions  of  cause  and  effect  in  the  past 
help  to  teach  political  wisdom.  When  a  man  of 
the  world  reads  history,  he  is  called  on  to  form  a 
judgment  on  a  social  or  political  problem,  without 
previous  bias,  and  with  some  knowledge  of  the  final 
protracted  result  of  what  was  done.  The  exercise 
of  his  mind  under  such  unwonted  conditions,  sends 
him  back  to  the  still  unsettled  problems  of  modern 
politics  and  society,  with  larger  views,  clearer  head 
and  better  temper.  The  study  of  past  controversies, 
of  which  the  final  outcome  is  known,  destroys  the 
spirit  of  prejudice.  It  brings  home  to  the  mind  the 
evils  that  are  likely  to  spring  from  violent  policy,  based 
on  want  of  understanding  of  opponents.  When  a 
man  has  studied  the  history  of  the  Democrats  and 


CLIO,   A   MUSE  21 

Aristocrats  of  Corcyra,  of  the  English  and  Irish, 
of  the  Jacobins  and  anti-Jacobins,  his  poHtical  views 
may  remain  the  same,  but  his  poUtical  temper  and 
his  way  of  thinking  about  politics  may  have 
improved,  if  he  is  capable  of  receiving  an  im- 
pression. 

[  And  so,  too,  in  a  larger  sphere  than  politics,  a 
review  of  the  process  of  historical  evolution  teaches 

a  man  to  see  his  own  age,  with  its  peculiar    History 

.  broadens  the 

ideals  and  uiterests,  ni  proper  perspective    outlook. 

as  one  among  other  ages.\  If  he  can  learn  to  under- 
stand that  other  ages  had  not  only  a  different  social 
and'  economic  structure  but  correspondingly  different 
ideals  and  interests  from  those  of  his  own  age,  his 
mind  will  have  veritably  enlarged.  I  have  hopes 
that  ere  long  the  Workers'  Educational  Association 
will  have  taught  its  historical  students  not  to  ask, 
"  What  was  Shakespeare's  attitude  to  Democracy  ?  " 
and  to  perceive  that  the  question  no  more  admits 
of  an  answer  than  the  inquiry,  "  What  was 
Dante's  attitude  to  Protestantism  ?  "  or,  "  What  was 
Archimedes'  attitude  to  the  steam-engine  ?  " 

The  study  of  cause  and  effect  is  by  no  means 
the  only,  and  perhaps  not  the  principal  means,  of 
broadening  the  mind.  History  does  most  to  cure 
a  man  of  political  prejudice,  when  it  enables  him, 
by  reading  about  men  or  movements  in  the  past, 
to  understand  points  of  view  which  he  never  saw 
before,  and  to  respect  ideals  which  he  had  formerly 


2a  CLIO,   AND   OTHER   ESSAYS 

despised.  Gardiner's  History  of  the  Civil  War  has 
done  much  to  explain  Englishmen  to  each  other, 
by  reveahng  the  rich  variety  of  our  national  life, 
far  nobler  than  the  unity  of  similitude.  Forms 
of  idealism,  considerations  of  policy  and  wisdom, 
are  acceptable  or  at  least  comprehensible,  when 
presented  by  the  historian  to  minds  which  would 
reject  them  if  they  came  from  the  political  opponent 
or  the  professed  sage. 

But  history  should  not  only  remove  prejudice,  it 
should  breed  enthusiasm.  To  many  it  is  an  important 
Should  breed  source  of  the  ideas  that  inspire  their  lives. 
an?s\'ggeTt  With  the  exception  of  a  few  creative 
ideals.  minds,  men  are  too  weak  to  fly  by  their 

own  unaided  imagination  beyond  the  circle  of  ideas 
that  govern  the  world  in  which  they  are  placed. 
ArxfTsince  the  ideals  of  no  one  epoch  can  in  them- 
selves be  sufficient  as  an  interpretation  of  life,  it  is 
fortunate  that  the  student  of  the  past  can  draw 
upon  the  purest  springs  of  ancient  thought  and 
feeling.)  Men  will  join  in  associations  to  propagate 
the  old-new  idea,  and  to  recast  society  again  in 
the  ancient  mould,  as  when  the  study  of  Plutarch 
and  the  ancient  historians  rekindled  the  breath  of 
liberty  and  of  civic  virtue  in  modern  Europe ;  as 
when  in  our  own  day  men  attempt  to  revive 
mediaeval  ideals  of  religious  or  of  corporate  life, 
or  to  rise  to  the  Greek  standard  of  the  individual. 
We   may   like   or   dislike  such  revivals,  but  at  least 


CLIO,   A   MUSE  23 

they  bear  witness  to  the  potency  of  history  as  some- 
thing quite  other  than  a  science.  And  outside  the 
circle  of  these  larger  influences,  history  supplies 
us  each  with  private  ideals,  only  too  varied  and 
too  numerous  for  complete  realisation.  One  may 
aspire  to  the  best  characteristics  of  a  man  of 
Athens  or  a  citizen  of  Rome  ;  a  Churchman  of  the 
twelfth  century,  or  a  Reformer  of  the  sixteenth  ;  a 
Cavalier  of  the  old  school,  or  a  Puritan  of  the  Inde- 
pendent party ;  a  Radical  of  the  time  of  Castle- 
reagh,  or  a  public  servant  of  the  time  of  Peel. 
Still  more  are  individual  great  men  the  model  and 
inspiration  of  the  smaller.  It  is  difficult  to  appro- 
priate the  essential  qualities  of  these  old  people 
under  new  conditions ;  but  whatever  we  study 
with  strong  loving  conception,  and  admire  as  a 
thing  good  in  itself  and  not  merely  good  for 
its  purpose  or  its  age,  we  do  in  some  measure 
absorb. 

This  presentation  of  ideals  and  heroes  from  other 
ages  is  perhaps  the  most  important  among  the  edu- 
cative functions  of  history.     For  this  purpose,  even 

more  than   for  the   purpose  of  teaching    Truth  re- 

quires  pas- 
political   wisdom,  it  is   requisite  that  the    sion. 

feyents  should  be  both  written  and  read  with  intel- 
lectual passion."\  Truth  itself  will  be  the  gainer, 
for  those  by  whom  history  was  enacted  were  in 
their  day  passionate. 

Another  educative  function  of  history  is  to  enable 


24  CLIO,   AND   OTHER   ESSAYS 

the  reader  to  comprehend  the  historical   aspect   of 

The  historical    Hterature    proper.       Literature    can     no 

aspect  of 

Literature.       doubt  be  enjoyed  in  its  highest  aspects 

even  if  the  reader  is  ignorant  of  history.  But  on 
those  terms  it  cannot  be  enjoyed  completely,  and 
much  of  it  cannot  be  enjoyed  at  all.  For  much 
of  literature  is  allusion,  either  definite  or  implied. 
And  the  allusions,  even  of  the  Victorian  age,  are 
by  this  time  historical.  For  example,  the  last  half 
dozen  stanzas  of  Browning's  Old  Pictures  in  Florence, 
the  fifth  stanza  of  his  Lovers'  Quarrel,  and  half  his 
wife's  best  poems  are  already  meaningless  unless 
we  know  something  of  the  continental  history  of  that 
day.  Political  authors  like  Burke,  Sydney  Smith,  and 
Courier,  the  prose  of  Milton,  one-half  of  Swift,  the  best 
of  Dryden,  and  the  best  of  Byron  (his  satires  and 
letters)  are  enjoyed  ceteris  paribus,  in  exact  proportion 
to  the  amount  we  know  of  the  history  of  their  times. 
And  since  allusions  to  classical  history  and  mytho- 
logy, and  even  to  the  Bible,  are  no  longer,  as  they 
used  to  be,  familiar  ground  for  all  educated  readers, 
there  is  all  the  more  reason,  in  the  interest  of  litera- 
ture, why  allusions  to  modern  history  should  be 
generally  understood.  History  and  literature  cannot 
be  fully  comprehended,  still  less  fully  enjoyed,  except 
in  connection  with  one  another.  I  confess  I  have 
little  love  either  for  "  Histories  of  Literature,"  or 
for  chapters  on  "  the  literature  of  the  period," 
hanging    at   the  end    of   history  books   like  the  tail 


CLIO,   A   MUSE  25 

from  a  cow.  I  mean,  rather,  that  those  who  write 
or  read  the  history  of  a  period  should  be  soaked  in 
its  Hterature,  and  that  those  who  read  or  expound 
Hterature  should  be  soaked  in  history.  The  "  scien- 
tific" view  of  history  that  discouraged  such  inter- 
change and  desired  the  strictest  speciahsation  by 
political  historians,  has  done  much  harm  to  our 
latter-day  culture.  The  mid-Victorians  at  any  rate 
knew  better  than  that. 

The  substitution  of  a  pseudo-scientific  for  a  literary 
atmosphere  in  historical  circles,  has  not  only  done 
much  to  divorce  history  from  the  outside  public, 
but  has  diminished  its  humanising  power  over  its 
own  devotees  in  school  and  university.  Not  a  few 
university  teachers  are  already  conscious  of  this 
and  are  trying  to  remedy  it,  having  seen  that  his- 
torical "  science  "  for  the  undergraduate  means  the 
text-book,  that  is,  the  "  crammer "  in  print.  At 
one  university  as  I  know,  and  at  others  I  dare 
say,  literature  already  plays  a  greater  part  in 
historical  teaching  and  reading  than  it  played 
some  years  ago.  Historical  students  are  now  en- 
couraged to  read  the  "  literary "  historians  of  old, 
who  were  recently  taboo,  and  still  more  to  read 
the  contemporary  literature  of  periods  studied. 
But  for  all  that,  there  is  much  leeway  to  be 
made  up. 

■  The  value  and  pleasure  of  travel,  whether  at  home 
or   abroad,   is   doubled  by   a   knowledge   of    history. 


26  CLIO,   AND   OTHER   ESSAYS 

For  places,  like  books,  have  an  interest  or  a  beauty 

History  and      of  association,  as  well  as  an  absolute  or 

local  associa-  «       •       , 

tion.  aesthetic    beauty.      Ihe   garden   front   of 

St.  John's,  Oxford,  is  beautiful  to  every  one  ;  but, 
for  the  lover  of  history,  its  outward  charm  is  blent 
with  the  intimate  feelings  of  his  own  mind,  with 
images  of  that  same  College  as  it  was  during  the 
Great  Civil  War.  Given  over  to  the  use  of  a  Court 
whose  days  of  royalty  were  numbered,  its  walks  and 
quadrangles  were  filled,  as  the  end  came  near,  with 
men  and  women  learning  to  accept  sorrow  as 
their  lot  through  life,  the  ambitious  abandoning 
hope  of  power,  the  wealthy  hardening  themselves 
to  embrace  poverty,  those  who  loved  England  pre- 
paring to  sail  for  foreign  shores,  and  lovers  to  be 
parted  forever.  There  they  strolled  through  the 
garden,  as  the  hopeless  evenings  fell,  listening, 
at  the  end  of  all,  while  the  siege-guns  broke  the 
silence  with  ominous  iteration.  Behind  the  cannon 
on  those  low  hills  to  northward  were  ranked  the 
inexorable  men  who  came  to  lay  their  hands  on 
all  this  beauty,  hoping  to  change  it  to  strength 
and  sterner  virtue.  And  this  was  the  curse  of  the 
victors,  not  to  die,  but  to  live,  and  almost  to  lose  their 
awful  faith  in  God,  when  they  saw  the  Restoration, 
not  of  the  old  gaiety  that  was  too  gay  for  them 
and  the  old  loyalty  that  was  too  loyal  for  them, 
but  of  corruption  and  selfishness  that  had  neither 
country   nor   king.      The   sound   of  the   Roundhead 


CLIO,    A   MUSE  27 

cannon  has  long  ago  died  away,  but  still  the  silence 
of  the  garden  is  heavy  with  unalterable  fate,  brooding 
over  besiegers  and  besieged,  in  such  haste  to  de- 
stroy each  other  and  permit  only  the  vile  to  survive. 
St.  John's  College  is  not  mere  stone  and  mortar, 
tastefully  compiled,  but  an  appropriate  and  mournful 
witness  between  those  who  see  it  now  and  those 
by  whom  it  once  was  seen.  And  so  it  is,  for  the 
reader  of  history,  with  every  ruined  castle  and 
ancient  church  throughout  the  wide,  mysterious 
lands  of  Europe. 

Battlefield  hunting,  a  sport  of  which  my  dear 
master,  Edward  Bowen,  was  the  most  Battlefield 
strenuous  and  successful  patron,  is  one  ^"^^mg. 
of  the  joys  that  history  can  afford  to  every  walker 
and  cyclist,  and  even  to  the  man  in  the  motor, 
if  he  can  stir  himself  to  get  out  to  see  the 
country  through  which  he  is  whirled.  The  charm 
of  an  historic  battlefield  is  its  fortuitous  character. 
Chance  selected  this  field  out  of  so  many,  that 
low  wall,  this  gentle  slope  of  grass,  a  windmill, 
a  farm  or  straggling  hedge,  to  turn  the  tide 
of  war  and  decide  the  fate  of  nations  and  of 
creeds.  Look  on  this  scene,  restored  to  its  rustic 
sleep  that  was  so  rudely  interrupted  on  that  one 
day  in  all  the  ages ;  and  looking,  laugh  at  the 
"  science  of  history."  But  for  some  honest  soldier's 
pluck  or  luck  in  the  decisive  onslaught  round  yonder 
village   spire,   the  lost   cause   would    now    be    hailed 


2  8  CLIO,   AND   OTHER   ESSAYS 

as  "  the  tide  of  inevitable  tendency "  that  nothing 
could  have  turned  aside !  How  charmingly  remote 
and  casual  are  such  places  as  Rosbach  and  Valmy, 
Senlac  and  Marston  Moor.  Or  take  the  case  of 
Morat.  There,  over  that  green  hill  beneath  the 
lowland  firwood,  the  mountaineers  from  alp  and 
glacier-foot  swept  on  with  thundering  feet  and 
bellowing  war  horns,  and  at  sight  of  their  levelled 
pikes  the  Burgundian  chivalry,  arrayed  in  all  the 
gorgeous  trappings  of  the  Renaissance  armourers, 
fled  headlong  into  Morat  lake  down  there.  From 
that  day  forward,  Swiss  democracy,  thrusting  aside 
the  Duke  of  Savoy,  planted  itself  on  the  Genevan 
shore,  and  Europe,  therefore,  in  the  fulness  of  time, 
got  Calvin  and  Rousseau.  A  fine  chain  of  cause 
and    effect,    which    I    lay    humbly    at    the    feet    of 


science 


"  1 


The  skilled  game  of  identifying  positions  on  a 
battlefield  innocent  of  guides,  where  one  must  make 
out  everything  for  oneself — best  of  all  if  no  one  has 
ever  done  it  properly  before — is  almost  the  greatest  of 
out-door  intellectual  pleasures.^  But  the  solution  of 
the  military  problem  is  not  all.  If  the  unsentimental 
tourist  thinks  of  the  men  who  fought  there  merely  as 
pawns  in  a  game  of  chess,  if  the  moral  issues  of  the 

^  Let  me  recommend  Mr.  Oman's  History  of  the  Art  of  War  to 
would-be  hunters  of  battlefields,  if  any  of  them  do  not  know  it.  That 
work  and  Gardiner's  Civil  War  will  set  them  to  work  the  right  way  on 
many  of  our  best  British  battlefields.  But  when  is  Mr.  Oman's  instructive 
and  delightful  book  to  be  completed  ? 


CLIO,   A   MUSE  29 

war  are  unknown  to  him  or  indifferent,  he  loses  half 
that  he  might  have  had.  To  be  perfect,  he  must  know 
and  feel  what  kind  of  men  they  were  who  climbed 
the  terraces  at  Calatafimi  or  stormed  the  rifle-pits  on 
Missionary  Ridge ;  who  marched  up  to  the  stockade 
at  Blenheim  to  the  sound  of  fife  and  drum  ;  who 
hacked  at  each  other  that  evening  on  Marston  Moor. 
And  it  is  best  of  all  when  the  battle  decided  some- 
thing great  that  still  has  a  claim  on  our  gratitude.  As 
a  humble  follower  of  Mr.  Norman  Angell,  I  regret  that 
the  well-meaning  poet  who  sang  long  ago  of  ''old 
Kaspar"  was  not  historically  better  informed.  To 
choose  Blenheim  as  an  example  of  a  useless  waste  of 
blood  and  treasure  was  unfortunate,  for  it  was  one  of 

the  few  battles  thoroughly  worth  fighting.    "OldKas- 

par's  "  mis- 
"  What    they   fought    each    other    for " !    take. 

Why,  to  save  us  all  from  belonging  to  the  French 
king  who  had  at  that  moment  got  Spain,  Italy, 
Belgium,  and  half  Germany  in  his  pocket.  To  pre- 
vent Western  Europe  from  sinking  under  a  Czardom 
inspired  by  the  Jesuits.  To  make  the  "  Sun  King's  " 
system  of  despotism  and  religious  persecution  look  so 
weak  and  silly  beside  English  freedom  that  all  the 
philosophers  and  wits  of  the  new  century  would  make 
mock  of  it.  Who  would  have  listened  to  Voltaire  and 
Rousseau,  or  even  to  Montesquieu,  if  Blenheim  had 
gone  the  other  way,  and  the  Grand  Monarch  had  been 
gathered  in  glory  to  the  grave  ?  We  are  always  tell- 
ing ourselves  "  How   England  saved  Europe "  from 


30  CLIO,   AND   OTHER  ESSAYS 

Napoleon — truly  enough,  though  incidentally  we 
handed  her  over  to  taskmasters  only  a  degree  less 
abominable.  But  we  hear  very  little  of  "how  Eng- 
land saved  Europe  "  from  Louis  XIV.  How  many 
Englishmen  have  ever  visited  Blenheim  ?  It  is  as 
good  a  field  as  Waterloo,  though  a  little  further  off  in 
time  and  space,  and  it  still  lies  undisfigured  by  monu- 
ments, its  villages  and  fields  still  as  old  Kaspar  knew 
them,  between  the  wooded  hills  above  and  the  reedy 
islands  of  slow  moving  Danube,  into  which  Tallard's 
horse  were  driven  headlong  on  that  day  of  deliver- 
ance to  mankind. 

In  this  vexed  question  whether  history  is  an  art  or 

j^^  Qj.  a  science,   let   us  call   it  both  or  call    it 

Science?  neither.     For  it  has  an  element  of  both. 

Neitner  or 

^o*^-  It  is  not  in  guessing  at  historical  "cause 

and  effect"  that  science  comes  in;  but  in  collecting 
and  weighing  evidence  as  to  facts,  something  of  the 
scientific  spirit  is  required  for  an  historian,  just  as  it 
is  for  a  detective  or  a  politician. 

To  my  mind,  there  are  three  distinct  functions  of 
history,  that  we  may  call  the  scientific,  the  imagina- 
The  three  tive  or  speculative,  2in6.  ihe  literary.  First 
history.  comes  what  we  may  call  the  scientific,  if 

we  confine  the  word  to  this  narrow  but  vital  function, 
the  day-labour  that  every  historian  must  well  and 
truly  perform  if  he  is  to  be  a  serious  member  of  his 
profession — the  accumulation  of  facts  and  the  sifting 


CLIO,   A   MUSE  31 

of  evidence.  "  Every  great  historian  has  been  his 
own  Dry-as-dust,"  said  Stubbs,  and  quoted  Carlyle 
as  the  example.  Then  comes  the  imaginative  or 
speculative,  when  he  plays  with  the  facts  that  he  has 
gathered,  selects  and  classifies  them,  and  makes  his 
guesses  and  generalisations.  And  last  but  not  least 
comes  the  literary  function,  the^  exposition  of  the 
results  of  science  and  imagination  in  a  form  that  will 
attract  and  educate  our  fellow-countrymen,  j  For 
this  last  process  I  use  the  word  literature,  because  I 
wish  to  lay  greater  stress  than  modern  historians  are 
willing  to  do,  both  on  the  difficulty  and  also  on  the 
importance  of  planning  and  writing  a  powerful  narra- 
tive of  historical  events.  Arrangement,  composition 
and  style  are  not  as  easily  acquired  as  the  art  of 
type-writing.  Literature  never  helps  any  man  at 
his  task  until,  to  obtain  her  services,  he  is  willing  to 
be  her  faithful  apprentice.  Writing  is  not,  therefore, 
a  secondary  but  one  of  the  primary  tasks  of  the 
historian. 

Another   reason   why   I    prefer    to    use    the    word 
''  literature  "  for  the  expository  side  of  the  historian's 

work,  is  that   literature   itself   is   in   our 

,        .  •   1      1  1      ii  i^i  .     .  "Literature." 

day  impoverished  by  these  attempts  to  cut 

it  off  from  scholarship  and  serious  thought.     It  would 

be  disastrous  if  the  reading  public  came  to  think  of 

literature  not  as  a  grave  matron,  but  as  a  mere  fille 

de  joie.    Until  near  the  end  of  the  nineteenth  century, 

literature  was  held  to  mean  not  only  plays,  novels 


32  CLIO,   AND   OTHER   ESSAYS 

and  belles  lettres,  but  all  writing  that  was  above  a 
certain  standard  of  excellence.  Novels,  if  they  are 
bad  enough,  are  not  literature.  Pamphlets,  if  they 
are  good  enough,  are  literature — for  example,  the 
pamphlets  of  Milton,  Swift  and  Burke.  Huxley's 
essays  and  Maine's  treatises  are  literature.  Even 
Maitland's  expositions  of  mediaeval  law  are  litera- 
ture. Maitland,  indeed,  wrote  well  rather  by  force 
of  genius,  by  natural  brilliancy,  than  by  any  great 
attention  paid  to  composition,  form  and  style.  But 
for  us  little  people  it  is  just  that  conscious  attention 
to  book-planning,  composition  and  style  that  I  would 
advocate. 

All  students  who  may  some  day  write  history, 
and  in  any  case  will  be  judges  of  what  is  written, 
should  be  encouraged  to  make  a  critical  study  of 
past  masters  of  English  historical  literature.  Yet 
there  were  many  places  a  little  time  ago  where  it 
was  tacitly  accepted  as  passable  and  even  praise- 
worthy in  an  historical  student  to  know  nothing  of 
the  great  English  historians  prior  to  Stubbs.  And, 
for  all  I  know,  there  are  such  places  still. 

In  France  historical  writing  is  on  a  higher  level 

than  in  England,  because  the  Frenchman  is  taught 

French  his-       to  write  his  own  language  as  part  of  his 

torical 

writing.  school   curriculum.      The  French  savant 

is  bred,  if   not  born,  a  prose  writer.     Consequently 

when  he  arrives  at  manhood  he  already  writes  well 

by  habit.     The  recent  union  effected  in  France  of 


CLIO,   A    MUSE  33 

German  standards  of  research  with  this  native  power 
of  composition  and  style,  has  produced  a  French 
historical  school  that  turns  out  yearly  a  supply  of 
history  books  at  once  scholarly  and  delightful.  Of 
course  any  attempt  to  assimilate  English  history 
to  the  uniform  French  pattern  would  be  as  foolish 
as  the  recent  attempt  to  assimilate  it  to  the  German. 
We  must  be  ourselves.  All  our  scholars  cannot 
be  expected  to  write  with  the  smooth  cadence  and 
lucid  sequence  of  idea  that  is  the  hall-mark  of 
the  commonest  French  writers.  But  many  more 
of  us,  if  we  held  it  our  duty  to  labour  at  writing 
well,  would  soon  rival  French  stylists  ;  and  not 
seldom,  in  the  future  as  in  the  past,  some  master 
of  our  language  might  arise  who  would  surpass 
them  far. 

French  is  in  any  case  an  easier  language  to  manipu- 
late than  our  own.  Apart  even  from  the  handicaps 
in  our  system  of  education,  it  is  probably  harder  for 
the  English  than  for  the  French  historian  to  write 
prose  up  to  a  certain  level  of  excellence.  But  if 
that  is  so,  it  is  only  an  added  reason  for  a  greater 
expenditure  of  effort  on  prose  composition  and  book- 
planning  by  the  rising  generation  of  English  his- 
torians. It  is  very  difficult  to  write  good  Literary  side 
English  prose  ;  and  to  tell  a  learned  story  ^^^^^£°h'Ir?" 
as  it  should  be  told  requires  both  Intel-  labour, 
lectual  and  artistic  effort.  The  idea  that  history  is 
a  "  soft  option  "  for  classics  and  science  still  subtly 


34  CLIO,    AND   OTHER   ESSAYS 

operates  to  keep  some  of  the  very  best  men  out  of 
the  history  schools.  This  would  cease  altogether  to 
be  the  case,  if  it  were  universally  recognised  that 
history  is  not  merely  the  accumulation  and  interpre- 
tation of  facts, — hard  enough  that,  in  itself  ! — but 
involves  besides  the  whole  art  of  book  composition 
and  prose  style.  Life  is  short,  art  is  long,  but  history 
is  longest,  for  it  is  art  added  to  scholarship. 

The  idea  that  histories  which  are  delightful  to  read 
must  be  the  work  of  superficial  temperaments,  and 
that  a  crabbed  style  betokens  a  deep  thinker  or 
conscientious  worker,  is  the  reverse  of  the  truth. 
What  is  easy  to  read  has  been  difficult  to  write. 
The  labour  of  writing  and  rewriting,  correcting  and 
recorrecting,  is  the  due  exacted  by  every  good  book 
from  its  author,  even  if  he  know  from  the  beginning 
exactly  what  he  wants  to  say.  A  limpid  style  is 
invariably  the  result  of  hard  labour,  and  the  easily 
flowing  connection  of  sentence  with  sentence  and 
paragraph  with  paragraph  has  always  been  won  by 
the  sweat  of  the  brow. 

Now  in  the  case  of  history,  all  this  artistic  work 
is  superimposed  on  the  labours  of  scholarship,  them- 
selves enough  to  fill  a  lifetime.  The  historical  archi- 
tect must  quarry  his  own  stones  and  build  with  his 
own  hands.  Division  of  labour  is  only  possible  in 
a  Umited  degree.  No  wonder  then  that  there 
have  been  so  few  historians  really  on  a  level  with 
the   opportunities   of  their  great   themes,   and   that, 


CLIO,   A   MUSE  35 

except  Gibbon^  every  one  of  them  is  imperfect  either 
in  science  or  in  art.  The  double  task,  hard  as  it  is, 
we  little  people  must  shoulder  as  best  we  may,  in  the 
temporary  absence  of  giants.  And  if  the  finest  intel- 
lects of  the  rising  generation  can  be  made  to  realise 
how  hard  is  the  task  of  history,  more  of  them  will 
become  historians. 

Writing  history  well  is  no  child's-play.  The  round- 
ing of  every  sentence  and  of  every  paragraph  has  to 
be  made  consistent  with  a  score  of  facts,  some  of 
them  known  only  to  the  author,  some  of  them  perhaps 
discovered  or  remembered  by  him  at  the  last  moment 
to  the  entire  destruction  of  some  carefully  erected 
artistic  structure.  In  such  cases  there  is  The  tempta- 
an  undoubted  temptation  to  the  artist  to  Jj^JJ-a^^Jis- 
neglect  such  small,  inconvenient  pieces  torian. 
of  truth.  That,  I  think,  is  the  one  strong  point  in 
the  scholar's  outcry  against  "  literary  history  "  ;  but  if 
we  wish  to  swim  we  must  go  into  the  water,  and  there 
is  little  use  in  cloistered  virtue,  nor  much  more  in 
cloistered  scholarship.  In  history,  as  it  is  now  written, 
art  is  sacrificed  to  science  ten  times  for  every  time 
that  science  is  sacrificed  to  art. 

It  will  be  well  here,  in  our  search  after  the  true 
__E^nglish  tradition,  to  hold  briefly  in  review  the  history 
of  history,  so  far  as  our  own  island  is  concerned. 

Clarendon    was    the    father    of    English    history. 
The   Chroniclers    and    Shakespeare,    Bacon   and   Sir 


36  CLIO,    AND   OTHER   ESSAYS 

Walter  Raleigh  had  prepared  the  way,  but  Clarendon, 
Development  ^Y  his  History  of  the  Great  Rebellion,  estab- 
His^tofJ?'^  lished  the  English  tradition,  which  lasted 
Clarendon.  {qj-  \y^Q  hundred  years :  the  tradition, 
namely,  that  history  was  a  part  of  the  national 
literature,  and  was  meant  for  the  education  and 
delight  of  all  who  read  books.  Like  Thucydides,  and 
Philippe  de  Comines  before  him,  Clarendon  wrote  a 
chronicle  of  great  events  in  which  he  had  himself 
taken  part.  For  in  those  early  days,  whether  in 
ancient  Athens,  mediaeval  France  or  Stuart  England, 
there  was  no  large  body  of  trained  antiquaries 
collecting,  sorting  and  studying  the  documents  of 
the  past ;  and  therefore  history,  if  it  was  to  be  in 
the  least  detailed  and  even  partially  reliable,  must 
needs  concern  itself  only  with  contemporary  affairs. 
That  w^as  a  grave  limitation  and  disadvantage ;  yet 
Clarendon's  partisan  history  of  his  own  time  was 
raised  by  the  dignity  of  its  author's  mind,  and  the 
grave  majestic  eloquence  of  his  style,  into  a  treasure- 
house  whence  five  successive  generations  of  the 
English  governing  class,  both  the  Tories  who  agreed 
and  the  Whigs  who  disagreed  with  his  principles, 
drew  their  first  deep  lessons  in  the  art  of  politics 
and  in  the  management  of  men,  their  pride  in  the 
institutions  of  the  country  which  they  were  called  upon 
to  govern,  and  their  detailed  knowledge  of  the  great 
events  in  the  past  by  which  those  institutions  had 
been   shaped   and  inspired.     There  is  no  class  that 


CLIO,   A   MUSE  37 

has  any  such  education  to-day.  When  I  was  at 
Harrow  I  came  across  an  antiquarian  survival  of  this 
Clarendon  regime:  the  Head  Master,  according  to  an 
excellent  old  custom,  used  faithfully  to  present  a 
copy  of  Clarendon's  history  to  every  sixth-form  boy 
when  he  left  the  school.  But  in  my  day  I  doubt 
whether  many  sixth-form  boys  of  their  own  free  will 
opened  that  or  any  other  history  book.  How  it  is 
now,  I  know  not. 

During  the  century  that  followed  Clarendon,  many 
people  wrote  political  memoirs  and  ''  histories  of  my 
own  time"  modelled  more  or  less  successfully  upon 
his  great  exemplar.  Of  these,  Burnet's  is  one  of  the 
best  known.  By  means  of  this  Clarendonian  litera- 
ture, most  educated  persons  were  admirably  trained  in 
the  history  of  the  earlier  and  later  Stuart  Revolutions. 

After  this  Clarendonian  epoch,  of  which  the  best 

products    were    contemporary   history    and    political 

memoirs,    there    followed,    in    the     middle    of     the 

eighteenth    century,    attempts    to    collect     evidence 

and  write  reliable  history  about  events   in  the    past 

altogether  outside  the  author's  own  experience.     This 

movement,  associated  with  the  names  of  Hume  and 

Robertson,  was  rendered  possible  by  the  antiquarian 

activity  and  scientific  spirit  of  the  "age  of  reason." 

The   new  school  quickly  culminated  in  the  perfect 

genius    of    Gibbon.      I    call    his    genius 

^  .     *=*  Gibbon. 

perfect  because,  though  limited,  it  had  no 

faults  in  its  kind.     As  all  historians  should  aspire  to 


38  CLIO,   AND   OTHER   ESSAYS 

1^  do,  Gibbon  united  accuracy  with  art.  If  proof  is 
needed  that  a  hterary  history  may  be  accurate,  it  is 
found  in  Gibbon.  His  scientific  work  of  sifting  all 
the  evidence  that  was  in  his  day  available,  has 
suffered  singularly  little  from  criticism,  even  in 
our  archaeological  age  when  the  spade  corrects 
the  pen.  His  literary  art  was  no  less  perfect,  and 
was  the  result  of  infinite  pains  to  become  a  great 
writer.  If  Gibbon  had  taken  as  little  trouble  about 
writing  as  later  historians,  his  volumes  would  have 
been  as  little  read,  and  would  have  perished  as 
quickly  as  theirs. 

I  have  said  that  Gibbon  had  his  limitations,  though 
his  science  and  his  art  were  alike  perfect  of  their 
kind.  His  limitations  were  those  of  his  age.  His 
friends  and  contemporaries,  the  encyclopaedist  philo- 
sophers, prepared  the  successes  and  errors  of  the 
French  Revolution  by  their  a  priori  conception  of 
society  in  all  countries  as  a  blank  sheet  for  the  pen  of 
I  pure  reason.  Like  them  Gibbon  conceived  mankind 
to  be  essentially  the  same  in  all  ages  and  in  all 
countries.  In  all  ages  and  in  all  countries  his  sceptical 
eye  detected  the  same  classes,  the  same  passions,  the 
same  follies.  For  him,  there  is  always  and  every- 
where the  ruler,  the  philosopher,  the  mob,  the  aristo- 
crat, the  fanatic  and  the  augur,  alike  in  ancient  Rome 
or  modern  France  and  England.  He  did  not  perceive 
that  the  thoughts  of  men,  as  well  as  the  framework  of 
society,  differ  from  age  to  age.     The  long  centuries 


CLIO,   A   MUSE  39 

of   diverse   human   experience    which   he   chronicled  / 

with  such  passionless  equanimity,  look  all  much  the 

same  in  the  cold,  classical  light  of  his  reason.  / 

But  Gibbon  was  scarcely  in  the  grave  when  a  genius 

arose  in  Scotland  who  once  and  probably  for   ever 

transformed  mankind's  conception  of  itself  from  the 

classical  to  the   romantic,  from  the   uniform  to  the 

variegated.     Gibbon's  cold,  classical  light  was  replaced 

by  the   rich    mediaeval   hues    of    Walter 

„         ,  Scott. 

Scott  s  stained  glass.     To  Scott  each  age, 

each  profession,  each  country,  each  province  had  its 
own  manners,  its  own  dress,  its  own  way  of  thinking, 
talking  and  fighting.  To  Scott  a  man  is  not  so  much  a 
human  being  as  a  type  produced  by  special  environ- 
ment whether  it  be  a  border-farmer,  a  mediaeval  abbot, 
a  cavalier,  a  covenanter,  a  Swiss  pikeman,  or  an 
Elizabethan  statesman.  No  doubt  Scott  exaggerated 
his  theme  as  all  innovators  are  wont  to  do.  But  he 
did  more  than  any  professional  historian  to  make  man- 
kind advance  towards  a  true  conception  of  history,  for 
it  was  he  who  first  perceived  tha^_Uie  history  of  man- 
kind is  not  simple  but  complex,  tliaf:' history  never 
repeats  itself  but  ever  creates  new  forms  differing 
according  to  time  and  place^  The  great  antiquarian 
and  novelist  showed  historians  that  history  must  be 
living,  many-coloured  and  romantic  if  it  is  to  be  a 
true  mirror  of  the  past.^     Macaulay,  who  was  a  boy 

^  Both  as  literature  and  as  social  history  his  Scotch  novels  are  his  best. 
They  are  the  real  truth  about  the  land  which  "the  Shirra  "  knew  so  well, 


40  CLIO,   AND   OTHER   ESSAYS 

while  Scott's  poems  and  novels  were  coming  out,  and 
who  knew  them,  Hterally,  by  heart,  was  not  slow  to 
learn  this  lesson. 

Then  followed  the  Victorian  age,  the  period  when 
history  in  England  reached  the  height  of  its  popularity 
and  of  its  influence  on  the  national  mind.  In  the 
eighteenth  century  the  educated  class  had  been 
numerically  very  small,  though  it  had  been  a  most 
powerful  and  discriminating  patron  of  letters  and 
The  Victorian  learning,  above  all  of  history.  No 
®^**  country    house   of    any    pretension    was 

without  its  Clarendon,  Robertson,  Hume,  and  Gibbon, 
as  can  be  seen  in  many  an  old  neglected  private 
library  to-day,  where  now  the  inhabitants,  in  the 
intervals  of  golf  and  motoring,  wear  off  the  edge  of 
their  intellects  on  magazines  and  bad  novels. 

In  the  Victorian  era  education  and  reading  was 
beginning  to  spread  from  the  few  to  the  many,  and 
the  modern  habit  of  reading  mainly  trash  had  not  yet 
set  in.  Therefore  it  was  a  golden  age  for  all  sorts  of 
literature,  including  history.  In  the  earlier  half  of 
the  Victorian  period,  when  Arnold  and  Milman, 
Grote  and  Merivale  flourished,  the  American  Motley 
and  Prescott  were  household  words  over  here  as  well 
as  in  their  own  country.     It  is  hard  for  us  to  conceive 

whereas  Ivanhoe,  Queniin  Durward  and  Woodstock  are  only  the  guess- 
work of  learning  and  genius,  in  every  way  less  valuable  now  than  they 
once  were.  But  when  first  published,  those  novels,  no  less  than  the 
Scotch  novels,  revealed  to  an  astonished  world  the  reality  and  variety  of 
past  ages. 


CLIO,   A    MUSE  41 

the  degree  to  which  serious  history  affected  our  grand- 
fathers. History  no  longer,  as  in  the  eighteenth 
century,  confined  its  influence  to  the  upper  classes. 
I  have  often  seen  Motley's  Dutch  Republic  on  the 
ancestral  shelf  of  a  country  cottage  or  an  inn  parlour, 
where  only  magazines  and  novels  are  now  added  to 
the  pile. 

Above  all  others  there  were  Macaulay  and  Carlyle. 
Of  Carlyle  I  have  spoken  already,  as  an  historian  not 
indeed  to  be  imitated  directly,  but  to  be  admired  and 
studied  because  he  was  a  man  of  genius,  and  because 
he  was  everything  good  and  bad  that  we  modern 
historians  are  not.  Of  Macaulay,  too,  something  must 
here  be  said,  because  an  undistinguishing  condemna- 
tion of  him  used  to  be  the  shibboleth  of  that  school 
of  English  historians  who  destroyed  the  habit  of 
reading  history  among  their  fellow-countrymen. 

In  "arrangement,"  that  is  to  say,  in  the  planning  of 

the   book,   in   the   way    subject  leads   on   to   subject 

and  paragraph  to  paragraph,  Macaulay's 

Macaulay. 
History  has  no   equal  and   ought  to   be 

carefully  studied  by  every  one  who  intends  to  write 

a   narrative   history.     His    "  style,"  the  actual  form 

of   his   sentences,  ought  not   to   be   imitated,   partly 

because    it    is   open   to   criticism,   still  more  because 

it    was    his    own    and    inimitable.      But    if    anybody 

could    imitate   his    "arrangement"  and  then   invent 

a   "  style "    as   effective    for    our   age   as   Macaulay's 

was   for   his,   he   would   be  able   to   make    the   best 


42  CLIO,    AND   OTHER   ESSAYS 

results  of  the  modern  history  school  familiar  to 
hundreds  of  thousands,  and  influential  on  all  the 
higher  thought  and  feeling  of  the  day. 

People  have  been  taught  to  suppose  that  Macaulay's 
Wiiiggism  was  his  worst  historical  fault.  I  wish  it 
had  been.  His  real  fault  was  an  inherent  over- 
certainty  of  temper,  flattered  by  the  easy  victories 
of  his  youth.  He  never  met  serious  historical  criti- 
cism or  resistance  until  he  was  too  old  to  change.^ 
But  in  his  view  of  history  he  was  not  such  a  Whig 
as  he  has  been  painted.  Not  only  does  he  per- 
petually fall  foul  of  the  Whigs  on  minor  issues,  but 
he  censures  them  on  the  point  of  their  main  policy 
at  the  end  of  Charles  II's  reign— the  candidature 
of  Monmouth  for  the  throne.  And  again,  when 
having  beaten  Louis  to  his  knees  they  refused  to 
make  peace  with  him,  their  supposed  apologist 
writes  :  "  It  seems  to  us  that  on  the  great  question 
which  divided  England  during  the  last  four  years 
of  Anne's  reign  the  Tories  were  in  the  right  and 
the  Whigs  were  in  the  wrong."  This  position  he 
maintained  against  his  Tory  friend  and  fellow- 
historian,  Lord  Mahon.  Shaftesbury,  the  founder  of 
the  Whig  party,  is  treated  by  this  "  Whig  historian  " 

'  The  same  may  be  said  of  other  great  Victorians — Carlyle  and  Ruskin 
in  particular.  Our  own  age  is  too  critical  to  be  highly  favourable  to 
creative  genius,  that  is  in  regions  where  there  are  any  literary  or  intel- 
lectual standards  at  all.  But  the  early  Victorian  age  had  not  enough 
criticism  to  trim  the  mighty  plants  that  grew  in  it  so  wild.  Matthew 
Arnold  came  twenty  years  too  late  for  this  purpose. 


CLIO,    A    MUSE  43 

with  marked  animosity,  and  even  unfairness.  Shaftes- 
bury is  accused  of  advising  "the  Stop  on  the 
Exchequer,"  which  in  fact  he  opposed  ;  and  is 
never  given  credit  for  any  disinterested  motive.  No 
doubt  Shaftesbury,  like  most  of  the  statesmen  of 
that  era,  was  a  very  bad  man,  but  modern  historians 
differ  from  Macaulay  in  ascribing  to  the  first  Whig 
some  quahties  not  wholly  devihsh.  It  is  clear  that 
in  this  case  at  least  Macaulay  was  misled  not  by 
his  "  Whiggism  "  but  by  a  too  simple-hearted  hatred 
of  knavery  and  by  the  artistic  instinct  to  paint  a 
study  in  black.  And  from  this  it  is  fair  arguing  that 
in  some  other  cases  where  the  paint  is  laid  on  too 
thick,  the  temptation  to  which  he  has  yielded  has 
not  been  political  but  artistic.  Antithesis  was  dear 
to  him  not  only  in  the  composition  of  his  sentences 
but  in  the  delineation  of  his  characters.  It  was  with 
him  a  matter  not  of  politics  but  of  unconscious 
instinct  to  contrast  as  vividly  as  possible  the  selfish- 
ness with  the  genius  of  Marlborough.  But  unfortu- 
nately he  lived  to  complete  only  the  least  important 
and  pleasing  half  of  the  picture.  He  had  blocked 
in  only  too  well  the  black  background,  but  died 
before  he  came  to  the  red  coat  and  eagle  eye  of  the 
victor  of  Blenheim.  If  Macaulay  had  lived  another 
five  years,  Marlborough  would  now  enjoy  the  full 
meed  of  admiration  and  gratitude  still  denied  to 
him  by  his  countrymen's  little  knowledge  of  what 
he  did. 


44  CLIO,    AND   OTHER   ESSAYS 

Mommsen  and  Treitschke,  at  whose  German 
shrines  we  have  been  instructed  to  sacrifice  the 
traditions  of  English  history,  were  partisans,  the  one 
of  Roman,  the  other  of  Prussian  Caesarism,  more 
bhnd  and  bitter  than  Macaulay  was  of  middle-class 
Parliamentary  government.  Macaulay's  historical 
sympathy  was,  more  often  than  not,  aroused  by 
courage,  honesty  or  literary  merit,  irrespective  of 
party  or  creed.  But  Mommsen's  treatment  of  Caesar's 
enemies  is  an  outrage  against  good  sense  and 
feeling.  Compare  his  unworthy  sneers  at  Cicero 
to  Macaulay's  reverence  for  the  genius  of  Dryden 
and  Swift,  the  piety  and  moral  courage  of  Jeremy 
Collier,  the  valour  of  Claverhouse  at  Killiecrankie  or 
Sarsfield  at  Limerick.  Macaulay's  generosity  of  mind 
— within  its  natural  limitations — the  glow  of  pride 
with  which  he  speaks  of  anything  and  anybody 
who  has  ennobled  the  annals  of  our  country  or  of 
European  civilisation,  his  indignation  with  knaves, 
poltroons  and  bullies  of  all  parties  and  creeds,  his 
intense  and  infectious  pleasure  in  the  annals  of  the 
past,  rendered  his  history  of  England  an  education 
in  patriotism,  humanity  and  statesmanship.  The 
book  made  men  proud  of  their  country,  it  made  them 
understand  her  institutions,  how  they  had  come  into 
existence  and  how  liberty  and  order  had  been  won 
by  the  wear  and  tear  of  contending  factions.  His 
Whiggism  in  the  historical  field  consisted  of  a  belief 
in  religious  toleration  and  Parliamentary  government, 


CLIO,   A   MUSE  45 

principles  in  which  an  historian  has  just  as  good  a 
right  to  believe,  as  in  absolutism  and  persecution. 

His  errors  as  an  historian  sprang  not  from  his 
opinions  on  Church  and  State  which,  right  or  wrong, 
were  commonplace  enough,  being  very  much  those 
of  a  moderate  free-trade  Unionist  of  the  present  day. 
Neither  did  his  errors  spring  from  any  limitation  in 
his  reading,  which  was  far  deeper  than  that  of  any 
English  historian  in  his  own  time.  Neither  was 
he  lacking  in  general  equipment  as  an  historian :  he 
was  a  very  good  linguist ;  he  was  a  man  of  the  world 
and  accustomed  to  great  public  affairs  ;  and  he  was 
a  fine  historical  lawyer  —  Maitland  one  day,  in 
praising  Macaulay,  said  to  me  that  he  was  always 
right  in  the  frequent  discussions  of  legal  points 
that  characterise  his  History,  It  was  not  then  from 
his  politics,  nor  from  lack  of  reading  his  authorities, 
nor  from  lack  of  general  equipment  that  his  errors 
sprang.  They  sprang  from  three  sources.  First,  from 
a  too  great  reliance  on  his  miraculous  memory  and 
an  insufBcient  use  of  notes.  Secondly,  from  too  great 
certainty  of  temper,  a  combined  precision  and  limita- 
tion of  intellectual  outlook  which  annoyed  men  like 
Matthew  Arnold  and  John  Morley  in  the  more 
sceptical  age  that  followed  his  own  and  will  continue 
in  a  less  degree  to  annoy  most  of  us,  though  we  can 
now  afford  to  be  more  fair  towards  him  than  were 
those  first  rebels  against  his  once  so  formidable  power. 
And,  lastly,  he  had  a  disastrous  habit  of  attributing 


46  CLIO,   AND   OTHER   ESSAYS 

motives  ;  he  was  never  content  to  say  that  a  man  did 
this  or  that,  and  leave  his  motives  to  conjecture  ;  he 
must  always  needs  analyse  all  that  had  passed  through 
the  mind  of  his  dramatis  personce  as  if  he  were  the 
God  who  had  created  them.  In  this  habit  of  always 
attributing  motives  as  if  they  were  known  matters 
of  fact,  Macaulay  is  "  a  warning  to  the  young." 

In  his  own  day  and  for  a  generation  after  his 
death  his  History  of  England  was  read  by  hundreds 
of  thousands  of  his  countrymen,  and  it  made  our 
history  and  institutions  familiar  to  all  the  world. 
If  I  have  been  right  in  arguing  that  the  ultimate 
value  of  history  is  not  scientific  but  educational,  then 
the  service  that  he  rendered  to  Clio  by  making  her 
known  to  the  people  was  the  most  essential  and 
pertinent  of  all. 

Indeed  in  the  period  immediately  following  on 
Macaulay's  death,  history  seemed  to  be  coming  to 
The  golden  ^^'^  own.  His  works  and  Carlyle's  con- 
age^  tinned  to  be  read,  and  those  of  Motley, 

Froude,  Lecky,  Green,  Symonds,  Spencer  Walpole, 
Leslie  Stephen,  John  Morley  and  others  carried  on 
the  tradition  that  history  was  related  to  literature. 
The  foundations  of  a  broad,  national  culture,  based 
upon  knowledge  of  our  history  and  pride  in  Eng- 
land's past,  seemed  to  be  securely  laid.  The  coming 
generation  of  historians  had  only  to  build  upon  the 
great  foundation  of  popularity  laid  for  them  by 
their  predecessors,  erecting  whatever  new  structures 


CLIO,    A   MUSE  47 

of  political  or  other  opinion  they  wished,  but  pre- 
serving the  basis  of  literary  history,  of  history  as 
the  educator  of  the  people.  But  they  preferred  to 
destroy  the  foundations,  to  sever  the  tie  between 
history  and  the  reading  public.  They  gave  it  out 
that  Carlyle  and  Macaulay  were  "  literary  historians" 
and  therefore  ought  not  to  be  read.  The  public, 
hearing  thus  on  authority  that  they  had  been  "ex- 
posed "  and  were  "  unsound,"  ceased  to 

The  reaction, 
read    them — or    anybody   else.      Hearing 

that  history  was  a  science,  they  left  it  to  scientists. 
The  craving  for  lighter  literature  which  characterised 
the  new  generation  combined  with  the  academic 
dead-set  against  literary  history  to  break  the  public 
of  its  old  habit  of  reading  history  books. 

At  the  present  moment  the  state  of  affairs  seems 
to  me  both  better  and  worse  than  it  was  twenty  years 
ago  when  I  came  to  Cambridge  as  an  undergraduate, 
and  was  solemnly  instructed  by  the  author  of  Ecce  Homo 
that  Macaulay  and  Carlyle  did  not  know  what  they 
were  writing  about  and  that  "literary  history"  was 
a  thing  of  nought.  The  present  genera-  Is  a  counter- 
tion  of  historians  at  O.xford  and  Cam-  ginning? 
bridge  have  ceased,  so  far  as  I  am  aware,  to  preach 
this  fanatical  crusade ;  they  recognise  that  history 
has  more  than  one  function  and  are  ready  to  welcome 
various  kinds  of  historians.  There  is  therefore  much 
hope  for  the  future,  because  ideas  on  such  matters 
in   the   end   spread   down   from   the    Universities   to 


48  CLIO,   AND   OTHER   ESSAYS 

the  schools  and  the  country,  and  gradually  permeate 
opinion  far  away. 

But  for  the  present  things  in  the  country  at  large 
are  scarcely  better  than  they  were  twenty  years  ago. 
We  are  still  suffering  the  consequence  of  the  anti- 
literary  campaign  carried  on  by  the  historical  chiefs 
of  the  recent  past.  Schoolmasters,  private  tutors 
and  other  purveyors  of  general  ideas  are  often  a 
generation  behind  the  time,  though  striving  hard 
to  say  and  do  what  they  imagine  to  be  the  "  correct 
thing."  The  camp-followers  of  the  historical  army 
of  to-day  sometimes  seek  an  easy  reputation  by 
repeating  as  the  last  word  of  wisdom  the  shibboleths 
of  the  anti-literary  movement,  which  appears  to  me 
to  be  regarded  as  somewhat  out  of  date  in  the  centre 
of  things  at  the  Universities.  I  have  more  than  once 
come  across  the  case  of  schoolboys  being  positively 
forbidden  to  read  Macaulay,  who,  whether  he  be  a 
guide  for  grown-ups  or  not,  is  certainly  an  admirable 
stimulus  to  the  sluggish  youthful  mind,  none  too 
apt  to  develop  enthusiasm  either  for  history  or  for 
literature.  And  I  have  known  a  history  book 
condemned  by  a  reviewer  on  the  ground  that  it 
would  read  aloud  well !  Often,  when  recommending 
some  readable  and  stimulating  history,  I  have  been 
answered  :  "  Oh  !  but  has  not  his  view  been  proved 
incorrect  ?  "  Or  "  Is  he  not  out  of  date  ?  I  am  told 
one  ought  not  to  read  him  now."  And  so,  the 
"  literary  historians  "   being    ruled  out  by   authority, 


CLIO,   A   MUSE  49 

the  would-be  student  declines  on  some  wretched  text- 
book, or  else  reads  nothing  at  all. 

This  attitude  of  mind  is  not  only  disastrous  in  its 
consequences  to  the  intellectual  life  of  the  country, 
but  radically  unsound  in  its  premises.  For  it  assumes 
that  history — "scientific  history" — has  "proved" 
certain  views  to  be  true  and  others  to  be  false.  Now 
history  can  prove  the  truth  or  falsehood  of  facts 
but  not  of  opinions.  When  a  man  begins  with 
the  pompous  formula — "The  verdict  of  "The Verdict 
history  is — "  suspect  him  at  once,  for  of  History." 
he  is  merely  dressing  up  his  own  opinions  in  big 
words.  Fifty  years  ago  the  "verdict  of  history" 
was  mainly  Whig  and  Protestant ;  twenty  years 
ago  mainly  Tory  and  Anglo-Catholic  ;  to-day  it  is, 
fortunately,  much  more  variegated.  Each  juror  now 
brings  in  his  own  verdict — generally  with  a  recom- 
mendation of  everyone  to  mercy.  There  is  even 
some  danger  that  history  may  encourage  the  idea 
that  all  sides  in  the  quarrels  of  the  past  were  equally 
right  and  equally  wrong. 

There  is  no  "verdict  of  history,"  other  than  the 

private    opinion    of    the    individual.      And    no    one 

historian  can  possibly  see  more   than  a  fraction  of 

the  truth  ;   if  he  sees  all  sides,  he  will  probably  not 

see   very   deeply  into  any  one   of   them.     The   only 

way   in    which    a   reader    can    arrive    at   a   valuable 

judgment  on  some  historical  period  is  to  read  several 

good   histories,   whether    contemporary   or    modern, 

D 


NX 


50  CLIO,   AND   OTHER   ESSAYS 

written  from  several  different  points  of  view,  and  to 
think  about  them  for  himself. ^  But  too  often  the 
reading  of  good  books  and  the  exercise  of  individual 
judgment  are  shirked,  while  some  vacuous  text-book 
is  favoured  on  the  ground  that  it  is  "  impartial "  and 
No  short  cut  "  up-to-date."  But  no  book,  least  of  all 
to  truth.  a   text-book,   affords  a   short   cut   to   the 

historical  truth.  \fhe  truth  is  not  grey,  it  is  black 
and  white  in  patches.  And  there  is  nothing  black 
or  white  but  thinking  makes  it  so.y 

The  dispassionateness  of  the  historian  is  a  quality 
Dispassion-  ^'^ich  it  is  easy  to  value  too  highly,  and 
ateness,  [^  should  not  be  confused  with  the  really 

indispensable  qualities  of  accuracy  and  good  faith. 
We  cannot  be  at  too  great  pains  to  see  that  our 
passion  burns  pure,  but  we  must  not  extinguish  the 
flame.  Dispassionateness — ni/  adniirari — may  betray 
the  most  gifted  historian  into  missing  some  vital 
truth  in  his  subject.  In  Creighton's  treatment  of 
Luther,  all  that  he  says  is  both  fair  and  accurate, 
yet  from  Creighton  alone  you  would  not  guess  that 
Luther  was  a  great  man  or  the  German  Reformation 
a  stirring  and  remarkable  movement.  The  few  pages 
on  Luther  in  Carlyle's  Heroes  are  the  proper  comple- 


1  Biography  is  very  useful  for  this  purpose.  The  lives  of  rival  states- 
men, warriors  and  thinkers,  provided  they  are  good  books,  are  often  the 
quickest  route  to  the  several  points  of  view  that  composed  the  life  of  an 
epoch.  Ceteris  paribus,  a  single  biography  is  more  likely  to  mislead  than 
a  history  of  the  period,  but  several  biographies  are  often  more  deeply 
instructive  than  a  single  history. 


CLIO,   A   MUSE  51 

ment  to  this  excessively  dispassionate  history.     The 

two  should  be  read  together. 

Acton   is   sometimes    thought    of    by    the    outside 

public   as   an   impartial   and  dispassionate  historian. 

Yet  it  was  his  favourite  doctrine  that  history  ought 

always   to   be   passing   moral    judgments  —  generally 

very  severe  ones.     On  every  subject  that 

^  ■'  ■"  Acton, 

he  treated  historically  he  showed  himself 

a  strong  partisan,  although  his  "party"  in  Church 
and  State  seems  to  have  consisted  of  only  one 
member.  Nor  was  he  deficient  in  the  artistic  sense  : 
his  lectures  at  Cambridge  were  dramatic  perform- 
ances, with  surprises,  limelights  and  curtains.  He 
dearly  liked  to  "  make  your  flesh  creep."  No  doubt 
these  qualities  sometimes  misled  him,^  but  if  he  had 
not  had  in  him  ethical  passion  and  artistic  sense  he 
would  by  now  be  forgotten.  Lord  Acton's  opinions 
are  not  likely  to  be  accepted  by  anyone  en  masse,  and 
for  my  part  I  accept  only  a  small  portion  of  them  ; 
yet  I  firmly  believe  that  his  opinions  and  the  zeal 
with  which  he  held  them  were  the  spiritual  force  that 
made  him  not  only  a  great  man  but  a  great  historian. 

In   the  Victorian    age   the   influence   of  historians 
and  of   historical  thinkers  did   much   to    wantofhis- 
form  the  ideas  of  the  new  era,  though  less    gnceTregr^t- 
of   course  than  the   poets  and   novelists.    *^^ie. 
To-day  almost  all  that  is  characteristic  in  the  mind  of 

^  Sec  Edinburgh  Review,  April  1907. 


52  CLIO,   AND   OTHER   ESSAYS 

the  young  generation  is  derived  from  novelists  and 
playwrights.  It  is  natural  and  right  that  novelists  and 
playwrights  (provided  we  can  count  among  them 
poets !)  should  do  most  to  form  the  type  of  mind  of 
any  generation,  but  a  little  steadying  from  other 
influences  like  history  might  be  a  good  leaven  in 
modern  gospels  and  movements. 

The  public  has  ceased  to  watch  with  any  interest 
the  appearance  of  historical  works,  good  or  bad. 
The  Cambridge  Modern  History  is  indeed  bought  by 
the  yard  to  decorate  bookshelves,  but  it  is  regarded  like 
the  Encyclopcedia  Britannica  as  a  work  of  reference ; 
its  mere  presence  in  the  library  is  enough.  Publishers, 
meanwhile,  palm  off  on  the  public  books  manufactured 
for  them  in  Grub  Street, — "  publisher's  books,"  which 
Present  dis-  ^^^  neither  literature  nor  first  -  hand 
contents.  scholarship.     This  is  the  type  generically 

known  as  "Criminal  Queens  of  History,"spicy  memoirs 
of  dead  courts  and  pseudo-biographical  chatter  about 
Napoleon  and  his  family,  how  many  eggs  he  ate  and 
how  many  miles  he  drove  a  day.  And  Lady  Hamilton 
is  a  great  stand-by.  The  public  understands  that  this 
kind  of  prurient  journalism  is  history  lightly  served 
up  for  the  general  appetite,  whereas  serious  history  is 
a  sacred  thing  pinnacled  afar  on  frozen  heights  of 
science,  not  to  be  approached  save  after  a  long 
novitiate. 

By  itself,  this  picture  of  our  present  discontents 
would  be  exaggerated  and  one-sided.     There  is  much 


CLIO,   A   MUSE  53 

truth  in  it,  1  fear,  but  on  the  other  hand  there  is  much 
good  in  the  present  and  more  hope  in  the  future. 
For  a  new  pubHc  has  arisen,  a  vast  democracy  of  all 
classes  from  "  public  "  school  and  "  council  "  school 
alike,  taught  to  read  but  not  knowing  what  to  read  ; 
men  and  women  of  this  new  democracy  of  intellect, 
from  millionaire  to  mechanic,  refuse  to  be  bored 
in  a  world  where  the  means  of  amusement  have 
been  brought  to  every  door ;  but  subject  to  that 
condition,  the  best  of  them,  the  natural  leaders  of 
the  rest,  are  athirst  for  thought  and  knowledge  if 
only  it  be  presented  to  them  in  an  interesting 
form. 

To  meet  this  demand,  to  grasp  this  opportunity, 
several  great  movements  are  now  afoot.  Newmove- 
The  new  historical  teaching  at  universities  rightVire^c^-* 
and  public  schools  is  one  of  them.  The  *'^°°- 
Workers'  Educational  Association  is  another.  A 
third  is  the  movement  for  short  outline  books  written 
by  the  best  specialists  in  the  most  popular  style  they 
can  master.  The  Home  University  Library  is  the 
principal  of  these — organised  by  Mr.  Herbert  Fisher, 
and  supported  by  books  from  half  a  dozen  others 
among  our  very  best  historians.  All  this  is  magnificent. 
I  only  hope  that  yet  another  movement,  tending  in 
another  way  to  meet  the  opportunities  of  the  new 
age,  will  also  gradually  come  about.  I  mean  that 
not  merely  these  small  handbooks,  but  the  main 
works  of  our  historical  scholars  should  be  written  not 


^4         CLIO,   AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

merely  for  the  perusal  of  brother  historians  but  for  the 
best  portion  of  the  general  public;  in  other  words,  that 
they  should  be  written  as  literature.  And  above  all, 
One  thing  that  the  art  of  narrative  in  history  should 
8  1  needed,  j.^^  treated  with  much  greater  reverence, 
and  accorded  a  larger  portion  of  the  effort  and  brain- 
power which  our  modern  historians  dispend  so 
generously,  and  in  other  respects  so  fruitfully,  in  the 
service  of  Clio. 

If,  as  we  have  so  often  been  told  with  such  glee, 
the  days  of  "literary  history"  have  gone  never  to 
return,  the  world  is  left  the  poorer.  Self-congratula- 
tion on  this  head  is  but  the  mood  of  the  shorn  fox 
in  the  fable.  History  as  literature  has  a  function 
Value  of  lit-  ^^  ^^^  Own,  and  we  suffer  to-day  from  its 
erary  history,  atrophy,  [jine  English  prose,  when  de- 
voted to  the  serious  exposition  of  fact  and  argument, 
has  a  glory  of  its  ownjand  the  civilisation  that  boasts 
only  of  creative  fiction  on  one  side  and  science  on 
the  other  may  be  great  but  is  not  complete.  Prose 
is  seldom  equal  to  poetry  either  in  the  fine  manipula- 

ftion  of  words  or  in  emotional  content,  yet  it  can 
have  great  value  in  both  those  kinds,  and  when  to 
these  it  adds  the  intellectual  exactness  of  argument 
or  narrative  that  poetry  does  not  seek  to  rival,  then 
is  i^  sovereign  in  its  own  realm,]  To  read  sustained 
and  magnificent  historical  narrative  educates  the  mind 
and  the  character  ;  some  even,  whose  natures,  craving 
the  definite,  seldom  respond  to  poetry,  find  in  such 


CLIO,   A   MUSE  55 

writing  the  highest  pleasure  that  they  know.  Un- 
fortunately, historians  of  literary  genius  have  never 
been  plentiful,  and  we  are  told  that  there  will  never 
be  any  more.  Certainly  we  shall  have  to  wait  for 
them,  but  let  us  also  wish  for  them  and  work  for 
them.  If  we  confess  that  we  lack  something,  and 
cease  to  make  a  merit  of  our  chief  defect,  if  we 
encourage  the  rising  generation  to  work  at  the  art 
of  construction  and  narrative  as  a  part  of  the 
historian's  task,  we  may  at  once  get  a  better  level 
of  historical  writing,  and  our  children  may  live  to 
enjoy  modern  Gibbons,  judicious  Carlyles  and  scepti- 
cal Macaulays. 


WALKING 

"  La  chose  que  je  regrette  le  plus,  dans  les  details  de  ma  vie  dont  j'ai 
''  perdu  la  memoire,  est  de  n'avoir  pas  fait  des  journaux  de  mes  voyac:;es. 
"Jamais  je  n'ai  tant  pense,  tant  existe,  tant  vecu,  tant  ete  moi,  si  j'ose 
"ainsi  dire,  que  dans  ceux  que  j'ai  faits  seul  et  a  pied." — Rousseau, 
Confessions,  I.  iv. 

"  When  you  have  made  an  early  start,  followed  the  coastguard  track 
"  on  the  slopes  above  the  cliffs,  struggled  through  the  gold  and  purple 
"carpeting  ofgorse  and  heather  on  the  moors,  dipped  down  into  quaint 
"  little  coves  with  a  primitive  fishing  village,  followed  the  blinding  white- 
"  ness  of  the  sands  round  a  lonely  bay,  and  at  last  emerged  upon  a  headland 
"where  you  can  settle  into  a  nook  of  the  rocks,  look  down  upon  the 
"  glorious  blue  of  the  Atlantic  waves  breaking  into  foam  on  the  granite, 
"and  see  the  distant  sea-levels  glimmering  away  till  they  blend  imper- 
"  ceptibly  into  cloudland  ;  then  you  can  consume  your  modest  sandwiches, 
"  light  your  pipe,  and  feel  more  virtuous  and  thoroughly  at  peace  with  the 
"  universe  than  it  is  easy  even  to  conceive  yourself  elsewhere.  I  have 
"  fancied  myself  on  such  occasions  a  felicitous  blend  of  poet  and  saint — 
"  which  is  an  agreeable  sensation.  What  I  wish  to  point  out,  however,  is 
"  that  the  sensation  is  confined  to  the  walker." — Leslie  Stephen,  In 
Praise  of  Walking. 

I  HAVE  two  doctors,  my  left  leg  and  my  right.     When 

body  and  mind  are  out  of  gear  (and  those  twin  parts 

of  me  Hve  at  such  close  quarters  that  the  one  always 

catches   melancholy   from  the  other)  I  know  that  I 

have  only  to  call  in  my  doctors  and  I  shall  be  well 

again. 

Mr.   Arnold    Bennett  has  written   a  religious  tract 

called     The    Human     Machine.       Philosophers     and 

clergymen  are  always  discussing  why  we  should  be 

s6 


WALKING  57 

good — as  if  any  one  doubted  that  he  ought  to  be. 
But  Mr.  Bennett  has  tackled  the  real  problem  of 
ethics  and  religion  —  how  we  can  make  ourselves 
be  good.  We  all  of  us  know  that  we  ought  to  be 
cheerful  to  ourselves  and  kind  to  others,  but  cheerful- 
ness is  often  and  kindness  sometimes  as  unattainable 
as  sleep  in  a  white  night.  That  combination  of  mind 
and  body  which  I  call  my  soul  is  often  so  choked  up 
with  bad  thoughts  or  useless  worries,  that 

*'  Books  and  my  food,  and  summer  rain 
Knock  on  my  sullen  heart  in  vain." 

It  is  then  that  I  call  in  my  two  doctors  to  carry  me 
off  for  the  day. 

Mr.  Bennett's  recipe  for  the  blue  devils  is  different. 
He  proposes  a  course  of  mental  "  Swedish  exercises," 
to  develop  by  force  of  will  the  habit  of  "  concentrating 
thought"  away  from  useless  angers  and  obsessions 
and  directing  it  into  clearer  channels.  This  is  good, 
and  I  hope  that  every  one  will  read  and  practise 
Mr.  Bennett's  precepts.  It  is  good,  but  it  is  not  all. 
For  there  are  times  when  my  thoughts,  having  been 
duly  concentrated  on  the  right  spot,  refuse  to  fire, 
and  will  think  nothing  except  general  misery  ;  and 
such  times,  I  suppose,  are  known  to  all  of  us. 

On  these  occasions  my  recipe  is  to  go  for  a  long 
walk.  My  thoughts  start  out  with  me  like  blood- 
stained mutineers  debauching  themselves  on  board 
the  ship  they  have  captured,  but  I  bring  them  home 


58  CLIO,   AND   OTHER  ESSAYS 

at  nightfall,  larking  and  tumbling  over  each  other 
like  happy  little  boy-scouts  at  play,  yet  obedient  to 
every  order  to  "  concentrate "  for  any  purpose  Mr. 
Bennett  or  I  may  wish. 

"  A  Sunday  well  spent 
Means  a  week  of  content." 

That  is,  of  course,  a  Sunday  spent  with  both  legs 
swinging  all  day  over  ground  where  grass  or  heather 
grows.  I  have  often  known  the  righteous  forsaken 
and  his  seed  begging  their  bread,  but  I  never  knew 
a  man  go  for  an  honest  day's  walk,  for  whatever 
distance,  great  or  small,  his  pair  of  compasses  could 
measure  out  in  the  time,  and  not  have  his  reward 
in  the  repossession  of  his  own  soul. 

In  this  medicinal  use  of  Walking,  as  the  Sabbath- 
day  refection  of  the  tired  town  worker,  companion- 
ship is  good,  and  the  more  friends  who  join  us  on  the 
tramp  the  merrier.  For  there  is  not  time,  as  there 
is  on  the  longer  holiday  or  walking  tour,  for  body 
and  mind  to  attain  that  point  of  training  when  the 
higher  ecstasies  of  Walking  are  felt  through  the 
whole  being,  those  joys  that  crave  silence  and  soli- 
tude. And  indeed,  on  these  humbler  occasions,  the 
first  half  of  the  day's  walk,  before  the  Human 
Machine  has  recovered  its  tone,  may  be  dreary 
enough  without  the  laughter  of  good  company,  ring- 
ing round  the  interchange  of  genial  and  irresponsible 
verdicts  on  the  topics  of  the  day.     For  this  reason 


WALKING  59 

informal  Walking  societies  should  be  formed  among 
friends  in  towns,  for  week-end  or  Sabbath  walks  in 
the  neighbouring  country.  I  never  get  better  talk 
than  in  these  moving  Parliaments,  and  good  talk  is 
itself  something. 

But  here  I  am  reminded  of  a  shrewd  criticism 
directed  against  such  talking  patrols  by  a  good  walker 
who  has  written  a  book  on  Walking.^  "  In  such  a 
case,"  writes  Mr.  Sidgwick,  "  In  such  a  case  walking 
"goes  by  the  board;  the  company  either  loiters" 
[it  depends  who  is  leading]  "and  trails  in  clenched 
"controversy"  [then  the  trailers  must  be  left  behind 
without  pity]  "  or,  what  is  worse  sacrilege,  strides 
"blindly  across  country  like  a  herd  of  animals, 
"recking  little  of  whence  they  come  or  whither  they 
"  are  going,  desecrating  the  face  of  nature  with  sophism 
"and  inference  and  authority,  and  regurgitated  Blue 
"  Book."  [A  palpable  hit  !]  "  At  the  end  of  such  a 
"  day  what  have  they  profited  ?  Their  gross  and 
"  perishable  physical  frames  may  have  been  refreshed  : 
"  their  less  gross  but  equally  perishable  minds  may 
"  have  been  exercised  :  but  what  of  their  immortal 
"being?  It  has  been  starved  between  the  blind 
"swing  of  the  legs  below  and  the  fruitless  flicker- 
"ing  of  the  mind  above,  instead  of  receiving, 
"  through  the  agency  of  quiet  mind  and  a  co- 
-ordinated body,  the  gentle  nutriment  which  is  its 
"due." 

*  Sidgwick,  IValking  Essays,  pp.  lo-ll. 


6o  CLIO,   AND   OTHER   ESSAYS 

Now  this  passage  shows  that  the  author  thoroughly 
understands  the  high,  ultimate  end  of  Walking,  which 
is  indeed  something  other  than  to  promote  talk.  But 
he  does  not  make  due  allowance  for  times,  seasons, 
and  circumstances.  You  cannot  do  much  with  your 
"  immortal  soul "  in  a  day's  walk  in  Surrey  between 
one  fortnight's  work  in  London  and  the  next ;  if 
"body"  can  be  " refreshed "  and  "mind  exercised," 
it  is  as  much  as  can  be  hoped  for.  The  perfection 
of  Walking,  such  as  Mr.  Sidgwick  describes  in  the  last 
sentence  quoted,  requires  longer  time,  more  perfect 
training,  and,  for  some  of  us  at  least,  a  different 
kind  of  scenery.  Meanwhile  let  us  have  good  talk 
as  we  tramp  the  lanes. 

Nursery  lore  tells  us  that  "  Charles  I  walked  and 
talked  :  half  an  hour  after  his  head  was  cut  off." 
Mr.  Sidgwick  evidently  thinks  that  it  was  a  case  not 
merely  of  post  hoc  but  propter  hoc,  an  example  of 
summary  but  just  punishment.  Yet,  if  I  read  Crom- 
well aright,  he  no  less  than  his  royal  victim  would 
have  talked  as  he  walked.  And  Cromwell  reminds 
me  of  Carlyle,  who  carried  the  art  of  "  walking  and 
talking  "  to  perfection  as  one  of  the  highest  of  human 
functions.  Who  does  not  remember  his  description 
of  "  the  sunny  summer  afternoon "  when  he  and 
Irving  "  walked  and  talked  a  good  sixteen  miles  "  ? 
Those  who  have  gone  walks  with  Carlyle  tell  us 
that  then  most  of  all  the  lire  kindled.  And  because 
he  talked  well  when  he  walked  with  others,  he  felt 


WALKING  6 1 

and  thought  all  the  more  when  he  walked  alone, 
"  given  up  to  his  bits  of  reflections  in  the  silence 
"  of  the  moors  and  hills."  He  was  alone  when  he 
walked  his  fifty-four  miles  in  the  day,  from  Muirkirk 
to  Dumfries,  "the  longest  walk  I  ever  made,"  he 
tells  us.  Carlyle  is  in  every  sense  a  patron  saint 
of  Walking,  and  his  vote  is  emphatically  given  7iot 
for  the  "  gospel  of  silence  "  ! 

Though  I  demand  silent  walking  less,  I  desire 
solitary  walking  more  than  Mr.  Sidgwick.  Silence  is 
not  enough,  I  must  have  solitude  for  the  perfect  walk, 
which  is  very  different  from  the  Sunday  tramp.  When 
you  are  really  walking'^  the  presence  of  a  companion, 
involving  such  irksome  considerations  as  whether  the 
pace  suits  him,  whether  he  wishes  to  go  up  by  the 
rocks  or  down  by  the  burn,  still  more  the  haunting 
fear  that  he  may  begin  to  talk,  disturbs  the  harmony 
of  body,  mind,  and  soul  when  they  stride  along  no 
longer  conscious  of  their  separate,  jarring  entities, 
made  one  together  in  mystic  union  with  the 
earth,  with  the  hills  that  still  beckon,  with  the 
sunset  that  still  shows  the  tufted  moor  under  foot, 
with  old  darkness  and  its  stars  that  take  you  to 
their  breast  with  rapture  when  the  hard  ring- 
ing of  heels  proclaims  that  you  have  struck  the 
final  road. 

Yet  even  in  such  high  hours  a  companion  may  be 

^  Is  there  the  same  sort  of  difference  between  tramping  and  walkitig  as 
between /aflW/?«^  and  rowing,  scrambling  d,nd  climbing? 


62  CLIO,   AND   OTHER   ESSAYS 

good,  if  you  like  him  well,  if  you  know  that  he  likes 
you  and  the  pace,  and  that  he  shares  your  ecstasy  of 
body  and  mind.  Even  as  I  write,  memories  are 
whispering  at  my  ear  how  disloyal  I  am  thus  to 
proclaim  only  solitary  walks  as  perfect.  There 
comes  back  to  me  an  evening  at  the  end  of  a  stubborn 
day,  when,  full  of  miles  and  wine,  we  two  were 
striding  towards  San  Marino  over  the  crest  of  a  high 
limestone  moor  —  trodden  of  old  by  better  men 
in  more  desperate  mood  —  one  of  us  stripped  to 
the  waist,  the  warm  rain  falling  on  our  heads 
and  shoulders,  our  minds  become  mere  instru- 
ments to  register  the  goodness  and  harmony  of 
things,  our  bodies  an  animated  part  of  the  earth 
we  trod. 

And  again,  from  out  of  the  depth  of  days  and 
nights  gone  by  and  forgotten,  I  have  a  vision  not 
forgettable  of  making  the  steep  ascent  to  Volterra, 
for  the  first  time,  under  the  circlings  of  the  stars ; 
the  smell  of  unseen  almond  blossom  in  the  air ;  the 
lights  of  Italy  far  below  us  ;  ancient  Tuscany  just 
above  us,  where  we  were  to  sup  and  sleep  guarded 
by  the  giant  walls.  Few  went  to  Volterra  then,  but 
years  have  passed,  and  now  I  am  glad  to  think  that 
many  go yf ante  de  mieux,  in  motor  cars;  yet  so  they 
cannot  hear  the  silence  we  heard,  or  smell  the  almond 
blossom  we  smelt,  and  if  they  did  they  could  not  feel 
them  as  the  walker  can  feel.  On  that  night  was 
companionship   dear   to   my   heart,   as   also  on    the 


WALKING  63 

evening  when  together  we  lifted  the  view  of  distant 
Trasimene,  being  full  of  the  wine  of  Papal  Pienza  and 
striding  on  to  a  supper  washed  down  by  Monte 
Pulciano  itself  drawn  straight  from  its  native  cellars. 

Be  not  shocked,  temperate  reader  1  In  Italy  wine 
is  not  a  luxury  of  doubtful  omen,  but  a  necessary  part 
of  that  good  country's  food.  And  if  you  have  walked 
twenty-five  miles  and  are  going  on  again  afterwards, 
you  can  imbibe  Falstaffian  potions  and  still  be  as  lithe 
and  ready  for  the  field  as  Prince  Hal  at  Shrewsbury. 
Remember  also  that  in  the  Latin  village  tea  is  in 
default.  And  how  could  you  walk  the  last  ten  miles 
without  tea  ?  By  a  providential  ordering,  wine  in 
Italy  is  like  tea  in  England,  recuperative  and  innocent 
of  later  reaction.  Then,  too,  there  are  wines  in 
remote  Tuscan  villages  that  a  cardinal  might  envy, 
wines  which  travel  not,  but  century  after  century 
pour  forth  their  nectar  for  a  little  clan  of  peasants, 
and  for  any  wise  English  youth  who  knows  that  Italy 
is  to  be  found  scarcely  in  her  picture  galleries  and 
not  at  all  in  her  cosmopolite  hotels. 

Central  Italy  is  a  paradise  for  the  walker.  I  mean 
the  district  between  Rome  and  Bologna,  Pisa  and 
Ancona,  with  Perugia  for  its  headquarters,  the  place 
where  so  many  of  the  walking  tours  of  Umbria, 
Tuscany,  and  the  Marches  can  be  ended  or  begun. 1 

^  The  ordnance  maps  of  Italy  can  be  obtained  by  previous  order  at 
London  geographers,  time  allowed,  or  else  bought  in  Milan  or  Rome — and 
sometimes  it  is  possible  to  get  the  local  ordnance  maps  in  smaller  towns. 


64  CLIO,   AND   OTHER   ESSAYS 

The  "olive-sandalled  Apennine"  is  a  land  always  of 
great  views,  and  at  frequent  intervals  of  enchanting 
detail.  It  is  a  land  of  hills  and  mountains,  un- 
enclosed, open  in  all  directions  to  the  wanderer  at 
will,  unlike  some  British  mountain  game  preserves. 
And,  even  in  the  plains,  the  peasant,  unlike  some 
south -English  farmers,  never  orders  you  off  his 
ground,  not  even  out  of  his  olive  grove  or  vineyard. 
Only  the  vineyards  in  the  suburbs  of  large  towns 
are  concealed,  reasonably  enough,  between  high 
white  walls.  The  peasants  are  kind  and  generous 
to  the  wayfarer.  I  walked  alone  in  those  parts  with 
great  success  before  I  knew  more  than  twenty  words 
of  Italian.  The  pleasure  of  losing  your  way  on  those 
hills  leads  to  a  push  over  broken  ground  to  a  glimmer 
of  light  that  proves  to  come  from  some  lonely  farm- 
stead, with  the  family  gathered  round  the  burning 
brands,  in  honest,  cheerful  poverty.  They  will, 
without  bargain  or  demur,  gladly  show  you  the  way 
across  the  brushwood  moor,  till  the  lights  of  Gubbio 
are  seen  beckoning  down  in  the  valley  beneath. 
And  Italian  towns  when  you  enter  them,  though 
it  be  at  midnight,  are  still  half  awake,  and  every 
one  volunteers  in  the  search  to  find  you  bed  and 
board. 

April  and  May  are  the  best  walking  months  for 
Italy.  Carry  water  in  a  flask,  for  it  is  sometimes 
ten  miles  from  one  well  to  the  next  that  you  may 
chance  to  find.    A  siesta  in  the  shade  for  three  or 


WALKING  6s 

four  hours  in  the  midday  heat,  to  the  tune  of  cicada 
and  nightingale,  is  not  the  least  pleasant  part  of 
all  ;  and  that  means  early  starting  and  night  walking 
at  the  end,  both  very  good  things.  The  stars  out 
there  rule  the  sky  more  than  in  England,  big  and 
lustrous  with  the  honour  of  having  shone  upon  the 
ancients  and  been  named  by  them.  On  ItaUan 
mountain  tops  we  stand  on  naked,  pagan  earth, 
under  the  heaven  of  Lucretius  : 

"  Luna,  dies,  et  nox,  et  noctis  signa  severa." 

The  chorus-ending  from  Aristophanes,  raised  every 
night  from  every  ditch  that  drains  into  the  Medi- 
terranean, hoarse  and  primaeval  as  the  raven's  croak, 
is  one  of  the  grandest  tunes  to  walk  by.  Or  on  a 
night  in  May,  one  can  walk  through  the  too  rare 
Italian  forests  for  an  hour  on  end  and  never  be  out 
of  hearing  of  the  nightingale's  song. 

Once  in  every  man's  youth  there  comes  the  hour 
when  he  must  learn,  what  no  one  ever  yet  believed 
save  on  the  authority  of  his  own  experience,  that 
the  world  was  not  created  to  make  him  happy.  In 
such  cases,  as  in  that  of  Teufelsdrockh,  grim  Walking's 
the  rule.  Every  man  must  once  at  least  in  life  have 
the  great  vision  of  Earth  as  Hell.  Then,  while  his 
soul  within  him  is  molten  lava  that  will  take  some 
lifelong  shape  of  good  or  bad  when  it  cools,  let  him 
set  out  and  walk,  whatever  the  weather,  wherever  he 


66  CLIO,    AND   OTHER   ESSAYS 

is,  be  it  in  the  depths  of  London,  and  let  him  walk 
grimly,  well  if  it  is  by  night,  to  avoid  the  vulgar 
sights  and  faces  of  men,  appearing  to  him,  in  his 
then  daemonic  mood,  as  base  beyond  all  endurance. 
Let  him  walk  until  his  flesh  curse  his  spirit  for 
driving  it  on,  and  his  spirit  spend  its  rage  on  his 
tlesh  in  forcing  it  still  pitilessly  to  sway  the  legs. 
Then  the  fire  within  him  will  not  turn  to  soot  and 
choke  him,  as  it  chokes  those  who  linger  at  home 
with  their  grief,  motionless,  between  four  mean, 
lifeless  walls.  The  stricken  one  who  has,  more  wisely, 
taken  to  road  and  field,  as  he  plies  his  solitary 
pilgrimage  day  after  day,  finds  that  he  has  with  him 
a  companion  with  whom  he  is  not  ashamed  to  share 
his  grief,  even  the  Earth  he  treads,  his  mother  who 
bore  him.  At  the  close  of  a  well-trodden  day  grief 
can  have  strange  visions  and  find  mysterious 
comforts.  Hastening  at  droop  of  dusk  through  some 
remote  byway  never  to  be  found  again,  a  man  has 
known  a  row  of  ancient  trees  nodding  over  a  high 
stone  wall  above  a  bank  of  wet  earth,  bending  down 
their  sighing  branches  to  him  as  he  hastened  past 
for  ever,  to  whisper  that  the  place  knew  it  all  centuries 
ago  and  had  always  been  waiting  for  him  to  come 
by,  even  thus,  for  one  minute  in  the  night. 

Be  grief  or  joy  the  companion,  in  youth  and  in 
middle  age,  it  is  only  at  the  end  of  a  long  and  solitary 
day's  walk  that  I  have  had  strange  casual  moments 
of  mere  sight  and  feeling  more  vivid  and  less  for- 


WALKING  67 

gotten  than  the  human  events  of  Hfe,  moments  like 
those  that  Wordsworth  has  described  as  his  common 
companions  in  boyhood,  hke  that  night  when  he  was 
rowing  on  Esthwaite,  and  that  day  when  he  was 
nutting  in  the  woods.  These  come  to  me  only  after 
five-and-twenty  miles.  To  Wordsworth  they  came 
more  easily,  together  with  the  power  of  expressing 
them  in  words  !  Yet  even  his  vision  and  power 
were  closely  connected  with  his  long  daily  walks. 
De  Quincey  tells  us  :  "I  calculate,  upon  good  data, 
"  that  with  these  identical  legs  Wordsworth  must  have 
"traversed  a  distance  of  175,000  or  180,000  English 
"miles,  a  mode  of  exertion  which  to  him  stood  in  the 
"  stead  of  alcohol  and  all  stimulants  whatsoever  to 
"  the  animal  spirits  ;  to  which  indeed  he  was  indebted 
"  for  a  life  of  unclouded  happiness,  and  we  for  much 
"  of  what  is  most  excellent  in  his  writings." 

There  are  many  schools  of  Walking  and  none 
of  them  orthodox.  One  school  is  that  of  the  road- 
walkers,  the  Puritans  of  the  religion.  A  strain  of 
fine  ascetic  rigour  is  in  these  men,  yet  they  number 
among  them  at  least  two  poets.^  Stevenson  is  par 
excellence  their  bard  : 

"  Boldly  he  sings,  to  the  merry  tune  he  marches." 

It  is   strange    that   Edward    Bowen,  who  wrote   the 
Harrow    songs,   left    no   walking   songs,   though    he 

^  Of  the  innumerable  poets  who  were  walkers  we  know  too  little  to 
judge  how  many  of  them  were  road  walkers.  Shakespeare,  one  gathers, 
preferred  the  footpath  way  with  stiles  to  either  the  high  road  or  the  moor. 


68  CLIO,    AND   OTHER   ESSAYS 

himself  was  the  king  of  the  roads.  Bowen  kept 
at  home  what  he  used  to  call  his  "road-map,"  an 
index  outline  of  the  ordnance  survey  of  our  island, 
ten  miles  to  the  inch,  on  which  he  marked  his  walks 
in  red  ink.  It  was  the  chief  pride  of  his  life  to  cover 
every  part  of  the  map  with  those  red  spider  webs. 
With  this  end  in  view  he  sought  new  ground  every 
holiday,  and  walked  not  merely  in  chosen  hill  and 
coast  districts  but  over  Britain's  dullest  plains.  He 
generally  kept  to  the  roads,  partly  in  order  to  cover 
more  ground,  partly,  I  suppose,  from  preference  for 
the  free  and  steady  sway  of  leg  over  level  surface 
which  attracts  Stevenson  and  all  devotees  of  the  road. 
He  told  me  that  twenty-five  miles  was  the  least 
possible  distance  even  for  a  slack  day.  He  was 
certainly  one  of  the  Ironsides. 

To   my   thinking,    the    road-walkers   have   grasped 
one  part  of  the  truth.     The  road  is  invaluable   for 

Wordsworth  preferred  the  lower  fell  tracks,  above  the  high  roads  and  below 
the  tops  of  the  hills.  Shelley  we  can  only  conceive  of  as  bursting  over  or 
through  all  obstacles  cross-country  ;  we  know  he  used  to  roam  at  large 
over  Shotover  and  in  the  Pisan  forest.  Coleridge  is  known  to  have  walked 
alone  over  Scafell,  but  he  also  seems  to  have  experienced  after  his  own 
fashion  the  sensations  of  night -walking  on  roads  : 

"  Like  one  that  on  a  lonesome  road 
Doth  walk  in  fear  and  dread, 
And  having  once  turned  round  walks  on 
And  turns  no  more  his  head  ; 
Because  he  knows  a  frightful  fiend 
Doth  close  behind  him  tread." 

There  is  a  "personal  note"  in  that!  Keats,  Matthew  Arnold,  and 
Meredith,  there  is  evidence,  were  "  mixed  "  walkers — on  and  off  the  road- 


WALKING  69 

pace  and  swing,  and  the  ideal  walk  permits  or  even 
requires  a  smooth  surface  for  some  considerable 
portion  of  the  way.  On  other  terms  it  is  hard  to 
cover  a  respectable  distance,  and  the  change  of 
tactile  values  under  foot  is  agreeable. 

But  more  than  that  I  will  not  concede :  twenty-five 
or  thirty  miles  of  moor  and  mountain,  of  wood  and 
field-path,  is  better  in  every  way  than  five-and-thirty 
or  even  forty  hammered  out  on  the  road.  Early 
in  life,  no  doubt,  a  man  will  test  himself  at  pace 
walking  and  then  of  course  the  road  must  be  kept. 
Every  aspiring  Cantab,  and  Oxonian  ought  to  walk 
to  the  Marble  Arch  at  a  pace  that  will  do  credit  to 
the  College  whence  he  starts  at  break  of  day  :  ^  the 
wisdom  of  our  ancestors,  surely  not  by  an  accident, 
fixed  those  two  seats  of  learning  each  at  the  same 
distance  from  London,  and  at  exactly  the  right 
distance  for  a  test  walk.  And  there  is  a  harder  test 
than  that  ;  if  a  man  can  walk  the  eighty  miles  from 
St.  Mary  Oxon.  to  St.  Mary  Cantab,  in  the  twenty- 
four  hours,  he  wins  his  place  with  Bowen  and  a  very 
few  more. 

But  it  is  a  great  mistake  to  apply  the  rules  of 
such  test  Walking  on  roads  to  the  case  of  ordinary 
Walking.  The  secret  beauties  of  Nature  are  un- 
veiled only  to  the  cross-country  walker.  Pan  would 
not  have  appeared  to  Pheidippides  on  a   road.     On 

*  Start  at  five  from  Cambridge  and  have  a  second  breakfast  ordered 
beforehand  at  Royston  to  be  ready  at  eight. 


70         CLIO,   AND   OTHER  ESSAYS 

the  road  we  never  meet  the  "  moving  accidents  by 
flood  and  field "  :  the  sudden  glory  of  a  woodland 
glade ;  the  open  back-door  of  the  old  farmhouse 
sequestered  deep  in  rural  solitude  ;  the  cow  routed 
up  from  meditation  behind  the  stone  wall  as  we 
scale  it  suddenly ;  the  deep,  slow,  south-country 
stream  that  we  must  jump,  or  wander  along  to  find 
the  bridge ;  the  northern  torrent  of  molten  peat-hag 
that  we  must  ford  up  to  the  waist,  to  scramble, 
glowing  warm-cold,  up  the  farther  foxglove  bank  ;  the 
autumnal  dew  on  the  bracken  and  the  blue  straight 
smoke  of  the  cottage  in  the  still  glen  at  dawn  ;  the 
rush  down  the  mountain  side,  hair  flying,  stones  and 
grouse  rising  at  our  feet ;  and  at  the  bottom  the 
plunge  in  the  pool  below  the  waterfall,  in  a  place 
so  fair  that  kings  should  come  from  far  to  bathe 
therein — yet  is  it  left,  year  in  year  out,  unvisited  save 
by  us  and  "troops  of  stars."  These,  and  a  thousand 
other  blessed  chances  of  the  day,  are  the  heart  of 
Walking,  and  these  are  not  of  the  road. 

Yet  the  hard  road  plays  a  part  in  every  good  walk, 
generally  at  the  beginning  and  at  the  end.  Nor  must 
we  forget  the  "  soft "  road,  mediating  as  it  were 
between  his  hard  artificial  brother  and  wild  sur- 
rounding nature.  The  broad  grass  lanes  of  the  low 
country,  relics  of  mediaeval  wayfaring ;  the  green, 
unfenced  moorland  road  ;  the  derelict  road  already 
half  gone  back  to  pasture  ;  the  common  farm  track 
— these  and  all  their  kind  are  a  blessing  to  the  walker, 


WALKING  71 

to  be  diligently  sought  out  by  help  of  map  ^  and 
used  as  long  as  may  be.  For  they  unite  the  speed 
and  smooth  surface  of  the  harder  road  with  much 
at  least  of  the  softness  to  the  foot,  the  romance  and 
the  beauty  of  cross-country  routes. 

It  is  well  to  seek  as  much  variety  as  is  possible 
in  twelve  hours.  Road  and  track,  field  and  wood, 
mountain,  hill,  and  plain  should  follow  each  other 
in  shifting  vision.  The  finest  poem  on  the  effect 
of  variation  in  the  day's  walk  is  George  Meredith's 
The  Orchard  and  the  Heath.  Some  kinds  of  country 
are  in  themselves  a  combination  of  different  delights, 
as  for  example  the  sub-Lake  district,  which  walkers 
often  see  in  Pisgah-view  from  Bowfell  or  the  Old 
Man,  but  too  seldom  traverse.  It  is  a  land,  sounding 
with  streams  from  the  higher  mountains,  itself  com- 
posed of  little  hills  and  tiny  plains  covered  half  by 
hazel  woods  and  heather  moors,  half  by  pasture  and 
cornfields  ;  and  in  the  middle  of  the  fields  rise  lesser 
islands  of  rocks  and  patches  of  the  northern  jungle 
still  uncleared.  The  districts  along  the  foot  of  moun- 
tain ranges  are  often  the  most  varied  in  feature  and 
therefore  the  best  for  Walking. 

Variety,  too,  can  be  obtained  by  losing  the  way — 
a  half-conscious  process,  which  in  a  sense  can  no 
more  be  done   of  deliberate  purpose  than  falling  in 

^  Compass  and  coloured  half-inch  Bartholomew  is  the  walker's  vade- 
mecum  in  the  North  ;  the  one-inch  ordnance  is  more  desirable  for  the  more 
enclosed  and  less  hilly  south  of  England. 


72  CLIO,   AND   OTHER   ESSAYS 

love.  And  yet  a  man  can  sometimes  very  wisely  let 
himself  drift,  either  into  love,  or  into  the  wrong  path 
out  walking.  There  is  a  joyous  mystery  in  roaming 
on,  reckless  where  you  are,  into  what  valley,  road  or 
farm  chance  and  the  hour  is  guiding  you.  If  the 
place  is  lonely  and  beautiful,  and  if  you  have  lost  all 
count  of  it  upon  the  map,  it  may  seem  a  fairy  glen,  a 
lost  piece  of  old  England  that  no  surveyor  would 
find  though  he  searched  for  it  a  year.  I  scarcely 
know  whether  most  to  value  this  quality  of  aloofness, 
and  magic  in  country  I  have  never  seen  before  and 
may  never  see  again,  or  the  familiar  joys  of  Walking- 
grounds  where  every  tree  and  rock  are  rooted  in  the 
memories  that  make  up  my  life. 

Places  where  the  fairies  might  still  dwell  lie  for  the 
most  part  west  of  Avon.  Except  the  industrial  plain 
of  Lancashire  the  whole  West  from  Cornwall  to 
Carlisle  is,  when  compared  to  the  East  of  our  island, 
more  hilly,  more  variegated,  and  more  thickly  strewn 
with  old  houses  and  scenes  unchanged  since  Tudor 
times.  The  Welsh  border,  on  both  sides  of  it,  is  good 
ground.  If  you  would  walk  away  for  a  while  out  of 
modern  England,  back  and  away  for  twice  two 
hundred  years,  arrange  so  that  a  long  day's  tramp 
may  drop  you  at  nightfall  off  the  Black  Mountain 
onto  the  inn  that  nestles  in  the  ruined  tower  of  old 
Llanthony.     Then  go  on  through 

"  Clunton  and  Clunbury,  Clungunford  and  Clun 
The  quietest  places  under  the  sun," 


WALKING  73 

still  sleeping  their  Saxon  sleep,  with  one  drowsy  eye 
open  for  the  "  wild  Welsh  "  on  the  "  barren  mountains  " 
above.  Follow  more  or  less  the  line  of  Offa's  Dyke, 
which  passes,  a  disregarded  bank,  through  the  remotest 
loveliness  of  gorse-covered  down  and  thick  trailing 
vegetation  of  the  valley  bottoms.  Or  if  you  are  more 
leisurely,  stay  a  week  at  Wigmore  till  you  know  the 
country  round  by  heart.  You  will  carry  away  much, 
among  other  things  considerable  scepticism  as  to  the 
famous  sentence  at  the  beginning  of  the  third  chapter 
of  Macaulay's  History:  "Could  the  England  of  1685 
"  be,  by  some  magical  process,  set  before  our  eyes,  we 
"  should  not  know  one  landscape  in  a  hundred,  or  one 
"building  in  ten  thousand."  It  is  doubtful  even  now, 
and  I  suspect  that  it  was  a  manifest  exaggeration 
when  it  was  written  two  generations  ago.  But 
Macaulay  was  not  much  of  a  walker  across  country.^ 
One  time  with  another,  I  have  walked  twice  at  least 
round  the  coast  of  Devon  and  Cornwall,  following  for 
the  most  part  the  white  stones  that  mark  the  coast- 
guard track  along  the  cliff.  The  joys  of  this  method 
of  proceeding  have  been  celebrated  by  Leslie  Stephen 
in  the  paragraph  quoted  at  the  head  of  this  essay. 
But  I  note  that  he  used  to  walk  there  in  the  summer, 
when  the  heather  was  "  purple."  I  prefer  Easter  for 
that  region,  because  when  spring  comes  to  conquer 
our  island  he  lands  first  in  the  South-west.     That  is 

^  Like  Shelley,  he  used  to  read  as  he  walked.      I  do  not  think  Mr. 
Sidgwick  would  permit  that  ! 


74  CLIO,   AND   OTHER   ESSAYS 

when  the  gorse  first  smells  warm  on  the  cliff-top. 
Then,  too,  is  the  season  of  daffodils  and  primroses, 
which  are  as  native  to  the  creeks  of  Devon  and  Corn- 
wall as  the  scalded  cream  itself.  When  the  heather 
is  "purple  "  I  will  look  for  it  elsewhere. 

If  the  walker  seeks  variety  of  bodily  motion,  other 
than  the  run  down  hill,  let  him  scramble.  Scramb- 
ling is  an  integral  part  of  Walking,  when  the  high 
ground  is  kept  all  day  in  a  mountain  region.  To  know 
and  love  the  texture  of  rocks  we  should  cling  to  them  ; 
and  when  mountain  ash  or  holly,  or  even  the  gnarled 
heather  root,  has  helped  us  at  a  pinch,  we  are  thence- 
forth on  terms  of  affection  with  all  their  kind.  No 
one  knows  how  sun  and  water  can  make  a  steep  bank 
of  moss  smell  all  ambrosia  till  he  has  dug  foot,  fingers, 
and  face  into  it  in  earnest.  And  you  must  learn  to 
haul  yourself  up  a  rock  before  you  can  visit  those  fern- 
clad  inmost  secret  places  where  the  Spirit  of  the 
Gully  dwells. 

It  may  be  argued  that  scrambling  and  its  elder 
brother  climbing  are  the  essence  of  Walking  made 
perfect.  I  am  not  a  climber  and  cannot  judge.  But 
I  acknowledge  in  the  climber  the  one  person  who, 
upon  the  whole,  has  not  good  reason  to  envy  the 
walker.  On  the  other  hand,  those  stalwart  Britons 
who,  for  their  country's  good,  shut  themselves  up 
in  one  flat  field  all  day  and  play  there,  surrounded 
by  ropes  and  a  crowd,  may  keep  themselves  well  and 


WALKING  75 

happy,  but  they  are  divorced  from  nature.  Shooting 
does  well  when  it  draws  out  into  the  heart  of  nature 
those  who  could  not  otherwise  be  induced  to  go  there. 
But  shooters  may  be  asked  to  remember  that  the 
moors  give  as  much  health  and  pleasure  to  others 
who  do  not  carry  guns.  They  may,  by  the  effort  of 
a  very  little  imagination,  perceive  that  it  is  not  well 
to  instruct  their  gamekeepers  to  turn  every  one  off 
the  most  beautiful  grounds  in  Britain  on  those  350 
days  in  the  year  when  they  themselves  are  not  shoot- 
ing. Their  actual  sport  should  not  be  disturbed,  but 
there  is  no  sufficient  reason  for  this  dog-in-the- 
manger  policy  when  they  are  not  using  the  moors. 
The  closing  of  moors  is  a  bad  habit  that  is  spreading 
in  some  places,  though  I  hope  it  is  disappearing  in 
others.  It  is  extraordinary  that  a  man  not  otherwise 
selfish  should  prohibit  the  pleasures  of  those  who 
delight  in  the  moors  for  their  own  sakes,  on  the  off- 
chance  that  he  and  his  guests  may  kill  another  stag, 
or  a  dozen  more  grouse  in  the  year.  And  in  most 
cases  an  occasional  party  on  the  moor  makes  no 
difference  to  the  grouse  at  all.  The  Highlands  have 
very  largely  ceased  to  belong  to  Britain  on  account 
of  the  deer,  and  we  are  in  danger  of  losing  the 
grouse  moors  as  well.  If  the  Alps  were  British,  they 
would  long  ago  have  been  closed  on  account  of  the 
chamois. 

The  energetic  walker  can  of  course  in  many  cases 
despise  notice-boards  and  avoid  gamekeepers  on  the 


76  CLIO,   AND   OTHER   ESSAYS 

moors,  but  I  put  in  this  plea  on  behalf  of  the  majority 
of  holiday-makers,  including  women  and  children. 
One  would  have  thought  that  mountains  as  well  as 
seas  were  a  common  pleasure-ground.  But  let  us 
register  our  thanks  to  the  many  who  do  not  close 
their  moors. 

And  the  walker,  on  his  side,  has  his  social  duties. 
He  must  be  careful  not  to  leave  gates  open,  not  to 
break  fences,  not  to  walk  through  hay  or  crops,  and 
not  to  be  rude  to  farmers.  In  the  interview,  always 
try  to  turn  away  wrath,  and  in  most  cases  you  will 
succeed. 

A  second  duty  is  to  burn  or  bury  the  fragments 
that  remain  from  lunch.  To  find  the  neighbourhood 
of  a  stream-head,  on  some  well-known  walking  route 
like  Scafell,  littered  with  soaked  paper  and  the  relics 
of  the  feast  is  disgusting  to  the  next  party.  And  this 
brief  act  of  reverence  should  never  be  neglected,  even 
in  the  most  retired  nooks  of  the  world.  For  all  nature 
is  sacred,  and  in  England  there  is  none  too  much  of  it. 

Thirdly,  though  we  should  trespass  we  should  tres- 
pass only  so  as  to  temper  law  w'ith  equity.  Private 
gardens  and  the  immediate  neighbourhood  of  in- 
habited houses  must  be  avoided  or  only  crossed  when 
there  is  no  fear  of  being  seen.  All  rules  may  be  thus 
summed  up  :  "  Give  no  man,  woman,  or  child  just 
''reason  to  complain  of  your  passage." 

If  I  have  praised  wine  in  Italy,  by  how  much  more 


WALKING  77 

shall  I  praise  tea  in  England  ! — the  charmed  cup  that 
prolongs  the  pleasure  of  the  walk  and  often  its  actual 
distance  by  the  last,  best  spell  of  miles.  Before 
modern  times  there  was  Walking,  but  not  the  perfec- 
tion of  Walking,  because  there  was  no  tea.  They  of 
old  time  said, ''  The  traveller  hasteth  towards  evening," 
but  it  was  then  from  fear  of  robbers  and  the  dark, 
not  from  the  joy  of  glad  living  as  with  us  who  swing 
down  the  darkling  road  refreshed  by  tea.  When  they 
reached  the  Forest  of  Arden,  Rosalind's  spirits  and 
Touchstone's  legs  were  weary — but  if  only  Corin 
could  have  produced  a  pot  of  tea,  they  would  have 
walked  on  singing  till  they  found  the  Duke  at  dinner. 
In  that  scene  Shakespeare  put  his  unerring  finger  fine 
on  the  want  of  his  age — tea  for  walkers  at  evening. 

Tea  is  not  a  native  product,  but  it  has  become  our 
native  drink,  procured  by  our  English  energy  at  sea- 
faring and  trading,  to  cheer  us  with  the  sober  courage 
that  fits  us  best.  No,  let  the  swart  Italian  crush  his 
grape  !  But  grant  to  me,  ye  Muses,  for  heart's  ease, 
at  four  o'clock  or  five,  wasp-waisted  with  hunger  and 
faint  with  long  four  miles  an  hour,  to  enter  the  open 
door  of  a  lane-side  inn,  and  ask  the  jolly  hostess  if 
she  can  give  me  three  boiled  eggs  with  my  tea — and 
let  her  answer  "yes."  Then  for  an  hour's  perfect 
rest  and  recovery,  while  I  draw  from  my  pocket  some 
small,  well-thumbed  volume,  discoloured  by  many 
rains  and  rivers,  so  that  some  familiar,  immortal 
spirit  may  sit  beside  me  at  the  board.     There  is  true 


78  CLIO,   AND   OTHER   ESSAYS 

luxury  of  mind  and  body !  Then  on  again  into  the' 
night  if  it  be  winter,  or  into  the  dusk  falling  or  still 
but  threatened — joyful,  a  man  remade. 

Then  is  the  best  yet  to  come,  when  the  walk  is 
carried  on  into  the  night,  or  into  the  long,  silent, 
twilight  hours  which  in  the  northern  summer  stand 
in  night's  place.  Whether  I  am  alone  or  with  one 
fit  companion,  then  most  is  the  quiet  soul  awake ; 
for  then  the  body,  drugged  with  sheer  health,  is  felt 
only  as  a  part  of  the  physical  nature  that  surrounds 
it  and  to  which  it  is  indeed  akin;  while  the  mind's 
sole  function  is  to  be  conscious  of  calm  delight. 
Such  hours  are  described  in  Meredith's  Night  Walk : 

*'  A  pride  of  legs  in  motion  kept 
Our  spirits  to  their  task  meanwhile, 
And  what  was  deepest  dreaming  slept : 
The  posts  that  named  the  swallowed  mile; 
Beside  the  straight  canal  the  hut 
Abandoned ;  near  the  river's  source 
Its  infant  chirp ;  the  shortest  cut ; 
The  roadway  missed  were  our  discourse  ; 
At  times  dear  poets,  whom  some  view 
Transcendent  or  subdued  evoked  .  .  . 
But  most  the  silences  were  sweet  T^ 

Indeed  the  only  reason,  other  than  weakness  of 
the  flesh,  for  not  always  walking  until  late  at  night, 
is  the  joy  of  making  a  leisurely  occupation  of  the 
hamlet  that  chance  or  whim  has  selected  for  the 
night's  rest.  There  is  much  merit  in  the  stroll  after 
supper,   hanging   contemplative   at   sunset    over   the 


WALKING  79 

little  bridge,  feeling  at  one  equally  with  the  geese 
there  on  the  common  and  with  the  high  gods  at 
rest  on  Olympus.  After  a  day's  walk  everything  has 
twice  its  usual  value.  Food  and  drink  become 
subjects  for  epic  celebration,  worthy  of  the  treatment 
Homer  gave  them.  Greed  is  sanctified  by  hunger 
and  health.  And  as  with  food,  so  with  books.  Never 
start  on  a  walking  tour  without  an  author  whom  you 
love.  It  is  criminal  folly  to  waste  your  too  rare  hours 
of  perfect  receptiveness  on  the  magazines  that  you 
may  find  cumbering  the  inn.  No  one,  indeed,  wants 
to  read  long  after  a  long  walk,  but  for  a  few  minutes, 
at  supper  or  after  it,  you  may  be  in  the  seventh 
heaven  with  a  scene  of  Henry  7V,  a  chapter  of 
Carlyle,  a  dozen  "Nay,  Sirs"  of  Dr.  Johnson,  or 
your  own  chosen  novelist.  Their  wit  and  poetry 
acquire  all  the  richness  of  your  then  condition,  and 
that  evening  they  surpass  even  their  own  gracious 
selves.  Then,  putting  the  volume  in  your  pocket, 
go  out,  and  godlike  watch  the  geese. 

On  the  same  principle  it  is  good  to  take  a  whole 
day  off  in  the  middle  of  a  walking  tour.  It  is  easy 
to  get  stale,  yet  it  is  a  pity  to  shorten  a  good  walk 
for  fear  of  being  tired  next  day.  One  day  off  in  a 
well-chosen  hamlet,  in  the  middle  of  a  week's  "hard," 
is  often  both  necessary  to  the  pleasure  of  the  next 
three  days,  and  good  in  itself  in  the  same  kind  of 
excellence  as  that  of  the  evening  just  described.  All 
day  long,  as  we  lie  perdu  in  wood  or  field,  we  have 


8o  CLIO,    AND   OTHER   ESSAYS 

perfect  laziness  and  perfect  health.  The  body  is 
asleep  like  a  healthy  infant — or,  if  it  must  be  doing 
for  one  hour  of  the  blessed  day,  let  it  scramble  a 
little ;  while  the  powers  of  mind  and  soul  are  at 
their  topmost  strength  and  yet  are  not  put  forth, 
save  intermittently  and  casually,  like  a  careless  giant's 
hand.  Our  modern  life  requires  such  days  of  "  anti- 
worry,"  and  they  are  only  to  be  obtained  in  perfection 
when  the  body  has  been  walked  to  a  standstill. 

George  Meredith  once  said  to  me  that  we  should 
"  love  all  changes  of  weather."  That  is  a  true  word 
for  walkers.  Change  in  weather  should  be  made 
as  welcome  as  change  in  scenery.  "Thrice  blessed 
is  our  sunshine  after  rain."  I  love  the  stillness  of 
dawn,  and  of  noon,  and  of  evening,  but  I  love  no 
less  the  "winds  austere  and  pure."  The  fight  against 
fiercer  wind  and  snowstorm  is  among  the  higher 
joys  of  Walking,  and  produces  in  shortest  time  the 
state  of  ecstasy.  Meredith  himself  has  described 
once  for  all  in  the  Egoist  the  delight  of  Walking 
soaked  through  by  rain.  Still  more  in  mist  upon 
the  mountains,  to  keep  the  way,  or  to  lose  and 
find  it,  is  one  of  the  great  primaeval  games,  though 
now  we  play  it  with  map  and  compass.  But  do 
not,  in  mountain  mist,  "lose  the  way"  on  purpose, 
as  I  have  recommended  to  vary  the  monotony  of 
less  exciting  walks.  I  once  had  eight  days'  walking 
alone  in  the  Pyrenees,  and  on  only  one  half-day 
saw   heaven  or  earth.     Yet  I    enjoyed  that   week   in 


WALKING  8 1 

the  mist,  for  I  was  kept  hard  at  work  finding  the 
unseen  way  through  pine  forest  and  gurgling  Alp, 
every  bit  of  instinct  and  hill-knowledge  on  the  stretch. 
And  that  one  half-day  of  sunlight,  how  I  treasured 
it !  When  we  see  the  mists  sweeping  up  to  play 
with  us  as  we  walk  the  mountain  crests,  we  should 
"rejoice,"  as  it  was  the  custom  of  Cromwell's  soldiers 
to  do  when  they  saw  the  enemy.  Listen  while  you 
can  to  the  roar  of  waters  from  behind  the  great  grey 
curtain,  and  look  at  the  torrent  at  your  feet  tumbling 
the  rocks  down  gully  and  glen,  for  there  will  be  no 
such  sights  and  sounds  when  the  mists  are  with- 
drawn into  their  lairs,  and  the  mountain,  no  longer 
a  giant  half  seen  through  clefts  of  scudding  cloud, 
stands  there,  from  scree-foot  to  cairn,  dwarfed  and 
betrayed  by  the  sun.  So  let  us  "  love  all  changes 
of  weather." 

I  have  now  set  down  my  own  experiences  and 
likings.  Let  no  one  be  alarmed  or  angry  because 
his  ideas  of  Walking  are  different.  There  is  no 
orthodoxy  in  Walking.  It  is  a  land  of  many  paths 
and  no-paths,  where  every  one  goes  his  own  way 
and  is  right. 


GEORGE    MEREDITH 

On  Mafeking  night  a  Briton  of  the  older  school  was 
found  roaming  about  in  the  quiet  streets  behind 
Westminster  Abbey,  and  sorrowfully  exclaiming,  at 
intervals  between  the  yelpings  of  six  millions  of  his 
more  festive  countrymen,  "  We're  getting  Frenchi- 
fied !  We're  getting  Frenchified ! "  The  city-bred 
Englishman  of  to-day  is  certainly  more  light  in  hand 
than  the  Briton  immortalised  by  Gillray.  If  that 
artist  has  not  libelled  both  us  and  our  lively 
neighbours,  we  were  then  strong,  brutal,  and  stupid 
like  bulls,  while  the  French  were  clever,  silly,  and 
nasty  like  apes.  The  apes  had  their  guillotine  and 
the  bulls  had  their  prize-ring.  To-day  the  contrast 
is  less  striking.  The  lower  forms  of  our  popular 
reading  and  of  our  stage  (I  will  not  say  of  our 
literature  and  drama)  would  seem  to  be  composed 
for  the  delight  of  a  bull-ape,  wonderfully  blending 
much  that  is  least  admirable  in  both  beasts.  But  in 
the  higher  forms  of  art  the  "  Frenchifying"  has  done 
us  good  :  the  union  of  Paris  and  the  Five  Towns 
has  been  blessed  with  a  notable  progeny.  But  our 
own    "Celtic    Fringe"   has    done    even    more    than 


GEORGE   MEREDITH  83 

France  to  stir  our  sluggish  blood,  in  literature,  drama, 
and  life. 

It  was  a  custom  of  George  Meredith  to  boast  of 
his  Welsh-Irish  origin.  Yet,  to  quote  his  own  words, 
"  it  is  England  nourishing,  England  protecting  him, 
"  England  clothing  him  in  the  honour  he  wears." 
He  devoted  his  wild  Celtic  imagination  to  the  praise 
of  the  English  landscape,  and  his  Celtic  wit  to  the 
comedy  of  English  society.  Luckily  for  us  Saxons, 
there  was  no  Abbey  Theatre  when  he  started  author, 
so  we  took  him  to  ourselves,  or,  more  exactly,  he 
gave  himself  to  us.  It  is  because  he  is  a  Celt  that 
his  style  is  that  unruly  compound  of  wit  and  poetry, 
grotesque  fun  and  tragedy,  borne  along  on  a  perpetual 
flood  of  metaphors  and  similes,  following  each  other 
fast  as  the  waves  of  the  sea.  The  river  of  his  genius 
drew  its  source  from  those  distant  mountain  springs 
whence  flowed  the  Welsh  and  Irish  legends,  the 
speech  of  the  peasants  in  Synge's  plays,  the  fantastic 
fun  of  such  a  book  as  the  Crock  of  Gold.  But  unlike 
the  other  Celts,  Meredith  joined  himself  to  our 
larger  English  world,  to  show  us  our  follies  and  to 
glorify  our  most  distinctive  virtues ;  to  gibbet  for 
us  our  own  Willoughby ;  to  exhibit  in  all  their  worth 
our  Vernons,  our  Roses,  our  Janets,  and  our  Beau- 
champs  ;  to  teach  our  raw  Wilfreds  and  Evans  the 
true  choice  of  the  path  between  duty  and  egoism, 
love  and  sentimentality  ;  to  make  our  English  land- 
scape  glow  with   a  redoubled  glory,  and  to  people 


84  CLIO,   AND   OTHER   ESSAYS 

it  with  our  Richards  and  Lucies  ;  to  make  our  English 
days  and  nights,  dewy  fields  and  nightingale-haunted 
thickets,  breathe  into  our  hearts  our  old  fighting  faith 
that  life  is  well  worth  the  living.  Such  are  the  uses 
to  which  this  Celtic  poet  has  turned  his  gifts  of  wild 
vision  and  of  winged  words.  All  this  Walpurgis 
night  of  the  intellect  and  imagination  to  show  us 
plain  Vernon  Whitford  !  All  the  wonder  and 
wealth  of  the  Hall  of  Aklis,  to  turn  the  barber's  con- 
ceited young  nephew  into  a  true  man  !  Diana  to  fall 
at  last  into  the  arms  of  Tom  Redworth  !  Surely  none 
but  we  English,  to  whom,  in  the  words  of  one  of 
our  preachers,  *'  conduct  is  three-fourths  of  life," 
would  hold  such  a  set  of  conclusions  to  be  anything 
but  lame  and  impotent.  It  is  to  be  observed  that 
they  contented  Meredith. 

Thus,  with  an  imagination  so  brilliant  as  to  verge 
sometimes  on  the  insane,  he  preaches  truest  sanity. 
He  stands  for  morality  and  the  serious  study  of 
conduct,  for  the  social  order  and  the  social  spirit. 
Even  his  Essay  on  Comedy  turns  upon  these  themes. 
The  need  is  felt  of  such  a  man.  Our  great  modern 
writers  are  more  interested  in  analysis  for  its  own 
sake,  hke  Mr.  Henry  James,  or  in  new  ideas  and 
plenty  of  them,  like  Mr.  Shaw,  than  in  character  and 
in  the  conduct  of  life  as  we  find  it.  But  the  problem 
of  character — what  it  is  and  how  it  is  to  be  obtained 
— was  of  prime  interest  to  Meredith.  And  he  has 
more  Hght  to  throw  on  the  problem  of  conduct  than 


GEORGE   MEREDITH  85 

had  Carlyle  or  Tolstoi.  In  Sartor  Resartus  there  is 
an  immense  force,  which  renders  it  an  inspiration 
to  youth  in  trouble  for  all  ages  to  come  ;  but  there 
is  more  inspiration  than  guidance.  Tolstoi  again,  at 
least  in  his  old  age,  seemed  to  consider  conduct  in 
its  narrowest  sense  2.sfour  parts  of  life,  and  proposed 
to  sacrifice  at  its  shrine  literature,  art,  and  the  in- 
nocent pleasures.^  Tolstoi,  like  so  many  of  his 
countrymen,  is  an  irruption  of  the  fifth  into  the 
twentieth  century.  But  Meredith  knows  well  the 
essential  place  in  any  true  scheme  of  morality  of 
those 

"Pleasures  that  through  blood  run  sane, 
Quickening  spirit  from  the  brain." 

He  links  up  the  old  Puritan  in  us  with  the  modern 
moralist  of  a  broader  and  more  rational  school. 

This  Celtic  Englishman  has  made  us  feel  the  poetic 
beauty  of  life,  not  only  on  the  solitary  hills  of  Wales 
or  Ireland,  but  in  the  heart  of  civilised  life,  wherever 
there  is  effort  made,  however  blindly,  to  live  it  well. 
Most  Celtic  poetry  is  a  pure  rushing  stream,  yet  it 
turns  no  wheel.  But  the  great  flood  that  Meredith 
has   guided   turns   tha  wheels   of    our   daily   life    in 

*  The  effect  of  Tolstoi's  teachings  is  sometimes  startling.  I  was  told  in 
Italy  the  following  story  about  a  devotee  of  Shakespeare  who  was  going 
round  lecturing  on  the  bard.  He  was  billed  to  lecture  at  a  certain  Italian- 
speaking  university,  but  he  could  not  go  there,  being  warned  that  the 
students  had  sworn  to  do  him  grievous  bodily  injury,  if  he  ventured  to 
appear.  The  young  gentlemen,  it  seemed,  had  been  reading  Tolstoi,  and 
had  learnt  irom  the  Russian  prophet  that  Shakespeare  was  all  wrong.  I 
was  told  this  as  true :  it  is  at  any  rale  ben  trovalo. 


86  CLIO,   AND   OTHER   ESSAYS 

England.  The  solitudes  of  nature  fill  that  true  Irish 
poet,  Mr.  Yeats,  with  an  added  horror  of  London 
and  its  "pavements  grey"  by  contrast  with  his  "bee- 
loud  glade"  in  Innisfree.  The  solitudes  of  nature 
are  no  less  the  breath  of  life  to  Meredith,  but  they 
fill  him,  not  with  a  horror  of  London,  but  with  a 
desire  to  return  to  its  strife,  where  also  Nature  is  to 
be  seen  at  her  eternal  work  of  creation,  no  less  than 
in  the  fields,  only  moved  onto  a  more  intellectual 
plane  by  the  evolution  of  man.  (Perhaps  if  Meredith 
had  really  lived  in  London  he  would  have  liked  it  as 
Uttle  as  Mr.  Yeats  ;  but  that  is  neither  here  nor  there.) 
In  two  of  his  noblest  poems  of  nature,  the  Thrush  in 
February  and  the  Lark  Ascending,  those  birds  send 
him  back  in  thought  to  London  and  its  "heroes 
many."  So,  too,  in  an  early  and  less  well-known 
poem  addressed  to  his  friend  Captain  Maxse,  he  de- 
scribes his  thoughts  by  the  side  of  an  Alpine  torrent : 

"  The  old  grey  Alp  has  caught  the  cloud, 
And  the  torrent  river  sings  aloud ; 
The  glacier-green  Rosanna  sings 
An  organ  song  of  its  upper  springs. 
Foaming  under  the  tiers  of  pine, 
I  see  it  dash  down  the  dark  ravine, 
And  it  tumbles  the  rocks  in  boisterous  play, 
With  an  earnest  will  to  find  its  way. 
Sharp  it  throws  out  an  emerald  shoulder, 

And,  thundering  ever  of  the  mountain, 
Slaps  in  sport  some  giant  boulder, 

And  tops  it  in  a  silver  fountain. 
A  chain  of  foam  from  end  to  end, 


GEORGE   MEREDITH  87 

And  a  solitude  so  deep,  my  friend. 

You  may  forget  that  man  abides 

Beyond  the  great  mute  mountain-sides. 

Yet  to  me,  in  this  high-walled  solitude 

Of  river  and  rock  and  forest  rude, 

The  roaring  voice  through  the  long  white  chain 

Is  the  voice  of  the  world  of  bubble  and  brain. 

I  find  it  where  I  sought  it  least ; 
I  sought  the  mountain  and  the  beast, 
The  young  thin  air  that  knits  the  nerves, 
The  chamois  ledge,  the  snowy  curves ; 
Earth  in  her  whiteness  looking  bold 
To  Heaven  for  ever  as  of  old. 

And  lo  !  if  I  translate  the  sound 
Now  thundering  in  my  ears  around, 
'Tis  London  rushing  down  a  hill. 
Life,  or  London  ;  which  you  will ! 

How  often  will  these  long  lines  of  foam 

Cry  to  me  in  my  English  home. 

To  nerve  me,  whenever  I  hear  them  bellow 

Like  the  smack  of  the  hand  of  a  gallant  fellow  ! " 

We  find  from  one  of  his  letters  in  the  recently 
published  collection,  that  these  lines  on  the  Rosanna 
were  inspired  by  a  likeness  which  he  conceived 
between  the  Tyrolese  river  and  his  English  friend  at 
home,  the  original  of  Beauchamp.  "  The  Rosanna," 
he  writes  to  Captain  Maxse,  "  put  me  in  mind  of  you 
" — nay,  sang  of  you  with  a  mountain  voice,  some- 
"  how,  I  don't  know  how.  Perhaps  because  it  is  both 
"  hearty  and  gallant,  subtle  and  sea-green.  You  never 
"saw  so  lovely  a  brawling  torrent." 


88  CLIO,   AND   OTHER   ESSAYS 

It  is  always  so  with  Meredith.  The  inspiring 
touches  of  his  portraits  of  men  and  women  come 
when  he  has  them  "anew  in  Nature  dipped."  The 
characters  in  his  novels  put  on  their  full  grandeur  or 
charm  only  when  they  stand  in  direct  contact  with 
Nature  :  Vernon  Whitford  in  his  sleep  under  the 
wild  white  cherry  tree  ;  Diana  by  the  mountain  pool 
above  the  Italian  lake  ;  Beauchamp  at  sea  or  under  the 
Alps  at  dawn  ;  Ottilia  at  sea  or  in  the  thunderstorm  : 
Emilia  by  Wilming  Weir  or  in  the  moonlit  fir-tree 
glade  ;  Carinthia  Jane  when  she  goes  out  to  "call  the 
morning"  in  her  mountain  home;  Lucy  by  the 
plunging  weir,  amid  the  bilberries,  long  grass,  and 
meadowsweet.  It  is  at  such  moments,  not  when 
they  are  bandying  epigrams  in  the  drawing-room, 
that  they  leave  their  eternal  impression  upon  us. 
And  Richard  Feverel  learns  the  lesson  of  life — too 
late,  it  is  true — on  his  walk  through  the  thunderstorm 
at  night  in  Rhineland,  when  he  feels  all  Nature 
drinking  in  the  glad  rain. 

Thus  it  is  in  the  novels.  And  most  of  Meredith's 
finest  poems  are  inspired  by  this  connection  of  human 
life  and  passion  with  the  life  of  nature.  It  is  so  in 
the  two  greatest  poems  he  ever  wrote,  The  Day  of  the 
Daughter  of  Hades  2Lnd  Love  in  the  Valley.  Once,  in 
his  old  age,  he  was  talking  in  a  slighting  manner  of 
Love  in  the  Valley,  placing  it  below  other  more  didactic 
poems  in  which  he  took  an  interest  obstinate  in  pro- 
portion to  the  world's  refusal  to  be  taught  by  them. 


GEORGE   MEREDITH  89 

I  expostulated,  and  to  humour  him  in  his  love  of 
doctrine,  suggested  that  Love  in  the  Valley  gave  us 
human  passions  inspired  by  the  contact  with  Nature. 
This  seemed  to  please  him,  and  he  replied  :  "  Well, 
perhaps  it  has  something  of  down  there  in  it " — point- 
ing through  the  floor — not  at  the  nether  regions,  I 
presume,  but  at  his  mother  Earth  "  down  there."  All 
his  best  work  comes  from  "down  there,"  or  at  least 
from  "out  there"  on  the  right  side  of  door  and 
window.  Within  the  four  walls  of  the  drawing-room 
he  often  gets  wearisome.  I  confess  I  dread  the  entry 
of  Lady  Busshe  and  Lady  Culmer,  and  sometimes 
(low  be  it  spoken)  of  Mrs.  Mount  Stewart  herself,  and 
before  their  invading  presence  would  fain  rush  out 
with  Crossjay  into  the  woods,  whither  Vernon  always 
slinks  away  with  a  pipe  and  book  when  the  front 
door  bell  rings,  if  he  has  not  already  started  off  on  a 
thirty-mile  walk. 

In  this  preference  for  the  outdoor  to  the  indoor 
Meredith,  I  differ  from  one  whose  perceptions  of 
literature  were  very  much  finer  than  my  own.  But  I 
still  have  the  courage  of  my  opinion,  because  I  dis- 
agree with  Verrall's  estimate  of  George  Meredith  not 
as  to  anything  that  he  has  said  but  on  the  point  of 
his  omission  to  notice  the  element  of  imagination  or 
poetry  in  the  novels.  The  essay  to  which  I  refer  is 
printed  at  the  end  of  Verrall's  posthumous  volume. 
Literary  Essays,  Classical  and  Modern.  All  lovers  of 
literature  or  of  scholarship  should  buy  that  volume 


90  CLIO,   AND   OTHER   ESSAYS 

and  cherish  it,  reading  first  the  memoir  of  Verrall  at 
the  beginning  if  they  would  draw  inspiration  from  the 
living  picture  of  a  man  far  greater  in  powers  of  mind 
and  in  perfection  of  character  than  many  world- 
famous  saints  and  sages.  Of  the  classical  essays  that 
occupy  the  middle  part  of  the  volume  I  can  say 
nothing  except  that  they  entrance  the  mind  of  the 
layman.  But  the  last  two  pieces,  which  have  added 
something  new  to  the  development  of  English  literary 
criticism,  are  on  the  subject  of  Scott  and  Meredith. 
Here  at  least  I  am  not  disqualified  for  full  enjoyment 
by  ignorance  of  the  subject. 

One  half  of  Meredith's  prose,  his  wit,  is  here 
analysed  and  appraised  by  Verrall  once  and  for  ever. 
But  the  other  half  of  his  prose,  namely  the  poetry 
of  it,  is  ignored.  If  Verrall's  definition  of  George 
Meredith  is  accepted  as  the  last  word — as  might 
well  happen,  for  do  we  not  all  "  leave  off  talking 
when  we  hear  a  master  play  " — then  it  would  be  a 
very  incomplete  Meredith,  a  man  dexterous  in  the 
manipulation  of  language,  but  nothing  more,  who 
would  become  traditional  with  posterity. 

The  following  passages  from  Verrall's  essay  on 
Meredith  are  supremely  well  said  and  true — except 
that  they  make  no  mention  of  the  poetic  element, 
and  by  implication  rule  it  out : 

"  What  may  safely  and  rightly  be  said  is  that, 
<'  if  we  do  not  take  pains  to  appreciate  Meredith  so 
'*far  as  may  be  possible  for  us,   we   miss  the  best 


GEORGE   MEREDITH  91 

"chance  that  Englishmen  have,  or  ever  had,  to 
"  cultivate  a  valuable  faculty  which  is  of  all  least 
"  natural  to  us.  This  faculty  is  wit — wit  in  the  sense 
"  which  it  bore  in  our  ^Augustan  '  age  of  Pope  and  Prior  "^ 
"  and  should  always  bear  if  it  is  to  be  definite  enough 
"  for  utility  : — wit  or  subtlety,  on  the  part  of  the  artist, 
"  in  the  manipulation  of  meanings,  and  on  the  part 
"  of  the  recipient  or  critic  the  enjoyment  of  such 
"  subtlety  for  its  own  sake,  and  as  the  source  of  a 
"distinct  intellectual  pleasure." 

"  Now,  since  wit  always  makes  a  part,  and  a  very 
"large  part,  of  Mr.  Meredith's  interest  in  his  subject, 
"  whatever  that  subject  may  on  the  surface  appear 
"  to  be,  and  since — to  repeat  once  more  the  only 
"point  on  which  I  care  to  insist — the  reader  who  does 
"  not  appreciate  linguistic  dexterity,  and  does  not  rate 
"  it  highly  among  human  capacities,  had  much  better 
^^  let  Mr.  Meredith  alone,  it  is  well  that  on  this  point 
"our  attention  should  be  challenged  at  once.  Doubt- 
"less  there  are  many  aspects  in  which  Diana  of  the 
"  Crossways  may  be  regarded.  It  is  a  study  in  the 
"  development  of  character  ;  it  exhibits  many  pleasant 
"  pictures  ;  it  has  scenes,  two  at  least,  of  elaborate 
"  and  nevertheless  effective  pathos ;  its  plot  turns 
"upon  the  deep  problem  of  marriage.  In  these 
"matters  among  others,  and  especially  in  the  last 
"mentioned,    it   is    possible,   it    may    just    now    be 

*  The  italics  are  my  own. 


92  CLIO,   AND   OTHER   ESSAYS 

"fashionable,  to  see  the  essential  and  most  signifi- 
"cant  element.  But  none  of  these  things  are  the 
"  essential — no,  not  the  problem  of  marriage.  If 
"you  want  pathos,  or  pictures,  or  social  problems, 
"you  can  get  them  elsewhere,  you  will  find  them 
"  more  easily  elsewhere  ;  which  is  practically  to  say 
"that  you  will  find  them  better.  What  you  have 
"  here  is  a  touchstone  which,  were  it  not  for  other 
"  volumes  from  the  same  hand,  would  be  in  its  kind 
"  unique  among  the  products  of  England,  to  ascertain 
"whether  you  have  the  faculty  of  enjoying  dexterity 
"  in  the  manipulation  of  language ;  this  you  have, 
"  and  also  an  instrument  with  which  to  cultivate 
"that  faculty,  if  you  happen  to  possess  it." 

The  question,  to  my  mind,  is  whether  there  is  not 
another  quaUty  as  well  as  "wit"  that  raises  Meredith's 
novels  to  the  place  they  hold.  I  quite  agree  that 
"pathos,"  "pictures,"  and  "social  problems"  can  be 
found  elsewhere  than  in  Meredith,  as  pathetic,  as 
pictorial,  and  as  socially  problematic.  But  in  no 
other  novels,  not  even  in  Mr.  Hardy's  own,  is  the 
element  of  poetry  so  strong.  It  is  for  this  reason 
that  the  "  pathos "  in  the  chapter  of  Diana  where 
the  stricken  heroine  is  comforted  by  her  friend, 
rises  to  something  above  the  pathetic.  For  this 
reason  the  "  picture "  of  Diana  beside  the  mountain 
pool  is  a  great  deal  more  than  pretty  ;  and  often  the 
"social  problem"  itself  is  raised  to  the  level  of 
poetry,  as  for    instance    in  the   passage    quoted   by 


GEORGE   MEREDITH  93 

Verrall  as  an  example  of  "wit"  which  seems  to  me 
also  an  example  of  *'  wit "  inspired  by  poetry  : 

"  With  her,  or  rather  with  his  thought  of  her  soul, 
"  he  understood  the  right  union  of  women  and  men 
"  from  the  roots  to  the  flowering  heights  of  that  rare 
"graft.  She  gave  him  comprehension  of  the  meaning 
"of  love — a  word  in  many  mouths,  not  often  ex- 
"  plained.  With  her,  wound  in  his  idea  of  her,  he 
"  perceived  it  to  signify  a  new  start  in  our  existence, 
"a  finer  shoot  of  the  tree  stoutly  planted  in  good 
"gross  earth  ;  the  senses  running  their  live  sap,  and 
"  the  minds  companioned,  and  the  spirits  made  one 
"  by  the  whole-natured  conjunction.  In  sooth,  a 
"  happy  prospect  for  the  sons  and  daughters  of 
"  Earth,  divinely  indicating  more  than  happiness : 
"  the  speeding  of  us,  compact  of  what  we  are,  between 
"  the  ascetic  rocks  and  the  sensual  whirlpools,  to 
"  the  creation  of  certain  nobler  races,  now  very 
"dimly  imagined." 

That  is  a  wonderful  piece  of  penmanship,  as 
Verrall  points  out ;  but  there  is  a  poet  behind  the 
pen. 

Other  novels  of  Meredith's  are  more  poetical  than 
Diana.  The  Egoist  indeed  is  first  and  foremost  a 
feast  of  "wit."  But  what  of  Vittoi-ia?  There  is 
more  than  "linguistic  dexterity"  in  the  first  page  of 
Vittoria,  the  view  from  Motterone  ; — that  passage,  by 
the  way,  Verrall  admired  and  loved,  thereby  showing 
that   he    was   in    fact   far    from   insensible    to    those 


94  CLIO,   AND   OTHER  ESSAYS 

qualities  in  Meredith  that  I  call  "  poetical."  The 
scenes  in  the  Milan  opera  house  are  the  creation  of 
a  poet.  Harry  Richmond  s  father  is  Falstaffian  in 
his  proportions  :  that  is,  he  moves  in  an  atmosphere 
where  wit  and  farce  are  fired  by  poetic  imagination. 
The  love  scenes  of  Lucy  and  Richard  are  poetry  ; 
chapter  xix.  of  Richard  Feverel,  entitled  "A  diversion 
played  on  a  penny  whistle,"  is  a  poem  and  nothing 
else  at  all.  A  hundred  other  scenes  and  a  thousand 
other  phrases,  scattered  throughout  the  sometimes 
wearisome  psychology  and  often  halting  plot  of  the 
novels,  raise  us  into  the  finer  air  breathed  by  the 
poet.  There  is  no  reason  why  we  should  not  look 
for  poetry  in  a  novel  if  it  happens  to  be  there.  Mr. 
Hardy's  Return  of  the  Native  is,  first  and  foremost, 
an  epic  poem  about  a  moor.  Judged  otherwise  it 
is  a  poor  melodrama,  but  judged  so  it  is  immortal. 

No  doubt  there  are  many  passages  in  all  our  greatest 
authors  which  are  both  "  wit "  and  "  poetry."  The 
dispute  is  partly,  though  not  indeed  entirely,  a 
question  of  nomenclature.  Every  poet  must  have 
"wit"  in  the  sense  of  "linguistic  dexterity"  or  remain 
a  mute  inglorious  Milton.  Even  Wordsworth  was 
in  this  sense  a  "wit."  It  may  be  quite  legitimate, 
and  even  usefully  suggestive,  for  once  to  call  all 
good  poetry  "  wit."  Most  of  Hamlet's  remarks  in 
prose  and  verse  display  wit  or  linguistic  dexterity 
in  the  highest  perfection ;  and  yet  we  commonly 
call  them  "poetry,"  more  especially  such  a  passage 


GEORGE   MEREDITH  95 

in  prose  as  that  beginning,  "  What  a  piece  of  work 
is  man  ! "  Of  course  in  Ha^nlet  the  poetry  and  the 
wit  are  both  continuous.  In  Meredith  both  are 
intermittent,  and  so  far  as  they  can  be  distinguished 
one  from  the  other,  the  poetry  is  more  intermittent 
than  the  wit.  Yet  it  is  the  seasoning  of  poetry  that 
keeps  many  of  his  novels  good  to  read.  I  therefore 
propose  an  amendment  to  Verrall's  sentence,  which 
should  run  as  follows  : 

"  The  reader  who  does  not  appreciate  either  linguistic 
"  dexterity  or  poetry,  and  does  not  rate  either  of  them 
"  highly  among  human  capacities^  had  better  leave  Mr. 
"  Meredith  alone." 

And  this  would  be  perfectly  true  even  if  he  had 
never  written  a  line  of  verse.  Meredith  and  Brown- 
ing go  together  in  our  minds,  because  the  merit 
of  both  is  the  combination  of  poetry  with  "  wit." 

In  the  recently  published  letters  of  George  Meredith 
occurs  a  passage,  one  among  many,  which  Verrall 
would  call  "  wit "  but  which  I  should  call  "  poetry," 
and  we  should  both  be  right.  It  is  typical  of 
hundreds  in  his  novels.  Meredith  is  writing  from 
Italy  to  a  friend  in  England  who  has  fallen  in 
love  : 

"  I  have  been  in  Venice.  I  have  followed  Byron's 
"  and  Shelley's  footsteps  there  on  the  Lido.  I  have 
"  seldom  felt  melancholy  so  strongly  as  when  standing 
"there.  You  know  I  despise  melancholy,  but  the 
"feeling  came.     I   love  both  those  poets;  and  with 


96  CLIO,   AND   OTHER   ESSAYS 

"  my  heart  given  to  them  I  felt  as  if  I  stood  in  a  dead 
"  and  useless  time.  So  are  we  played  with  sometimes  ! 
"  At  that  hour  your  heart  was  bursting  with  a  new 
"  passion,  and  the  past  was  as  smoke  flitting  away  from 
"  a  Hred-off  old  contemptible  gtcn." 

That  last  sentence,  descriptive  of  the  lover's  state 
of  mind  towards  the  past,  is  it  to  count  as  "wit"  or 
as  poetry  ?     Surely  it  is  both. 

Or  again,  let  us  take  two  passages  at  random  out 
of  Beauchamp's  Career.  They  shall  be  of  the  very 
texture  of  the  story,  not  purple  patches  inserted 
like  chapter  xix.  of  Richard  Feverei.     This  is  the  first : 

"Cecilia's  lock  of  hair  lying  at  Steynham  hung 
"in  the  mind.  He  saw  the  smooth,  flat  curl  lying 
"secret  like  a  smile.  And  as  when  life  rolls  back 
"on  us  after  the  long  ebb  of  illness,  little  whispers 
"and  diminutive  images  of  the  old  joys  and  prizes 
"  of  life  arrest  and  fill  our  hearts  ;  or  as,  to  men  who 
"  have  been  beaten  down  by  storms,  the  opening  of 
"  a  daisy  is  dearer  than  the  blazing  orient  which  bids 
"it  open;  so  the  visionary  lock  of  Cecilia's  hair 
"  became  Cecilia's  self  to  Beauchamp,  yielding  him  as 
"much  of  her  as  he  could  bear  to  think  of,  for  his 
"  heart  was  shattered." 

The  other  passage  describes  the  delirium  of  fever. 
Earl  Romfrey,  walking  in  the  garden  of  Dr.  Shrapnel's 
house,  hears  the  voice  of  Beauchamp  raving  : 

"  He  heard  the  wild  scudding  voice  imperfectly : 
"  it  reminded  him  of  a  string  of  winter  geese  changing 


GEORGE    MEREDITH  97 

"waters.  Shower  gusts,  and  the  wail  and  hiss  of 
"the  rows  of  fir  trees  bordering  the  garden,  came 
"between,  and  allowed  him  a  moment's  incredulity 
"as  to  its  being  a  human  voice.  Such  a  cry  will 
"often  haunt  the  moors  and  wolds  from  above  at 
"nightfall.  The  voice  hied  on,  sank,  seemed  swal- 
"  lowed  ;  it  rose,  as  if  above  water,  in  a  hush  of  wind 
"and  trees.  The  trees  bowed  their  heads  raging, 
"the  voice  drowned;  once  more  to  rise,  chattering 
"thrice  rapidly,  in  a  high-pitched  key,  thin,  shrill, 
"weird,  interminable,  like  winds  through  a  crazy 
"chamber-door  at  night."  i 

The  value  of  these  two  passages  is  not  wit  but 
poetry,  and  they  are  typical  of  Meredith  the  novelist. 

Meredith's  "Last  Poems,"  like  those  of  Browning, 
Tennyson,  and  others,  have  interest  because  they 
show  what  kind  of  spiritual  profit  he  drew  from  old 
age,  and  with  what  countenance  he  sat  in  the  shadow 
of  death.  Did  earth  grow  dark  and  terrible  to  him 
as  he  watched  it  from  the  sentinel  chair  to  which 
illness  confined  him  in  that  last,  long  watch  ? 
Or  did  all  our  affairs  grow  far  away,  and  dim  and 
foolish  in  the  light  of  some  higher  reality  drawing 
near  ?  Did  the  new  world  of  machines  and  mobs 
and  vulgarity  that  had  grown  up  since  his  youth 
seem  to  him  at  the  last,  as  it  did  to  Carlyle  and  to 
Tennyson,  just  a  bad  mistake  and  nothing  more,  a 
driving  of  the  car  of  humanity  into  the  ditch  ?     Or 


98  CLIO,   AND   OTHER   ESSAYS 

did  he,  like  Browning,  fixing  his  eye  on  the  curtain 
behind  which  he  himself  was  about  to  pass,  "greet 
the  unseen  with  a  cheer"  ? 

Meredith  did  none  of  these  things.  Although  in 
its  hearty  cheerfulness  his  attitude  resembles  that  of 
Browning  more  closely  than  that  of  Tennyson  or 
Carlyle,  yet  to  him  the  unseen  remains  unseen,  and 
if  he  had  his  last  thoughts  on  it  he  carried  them 
away  with  him.  But,  indeed,  he  had  already  said 
what  he  had  to  say  about  death  and  the  beyond,  in 
his  earlier  works,  when  he  was  more  speculatively 
interested  in  such  questions.  Only  when  the 
question  of  death  became  personal  to  him,  it  ceased 
to  occupy  his  mind.  It  was  many  years  before 
that  he  had  asked  in  a  rapturous  irony : 

"Into  the  breast  that  gives  the  rose 
Shall  I  with  shuddering  fall  ?  " 

And  then  again  he  had  written  : 

"  If  there  is  an  eternal  rest  for  us,  it  is  best  to 
"  believe  that  Earth  knows,  to  keep  near  her,  even  in 
"  our  utmost  aspirations." 

And  there  he  left  the  matter,  peacefully  at  rest. 
During  the  long  years  when  he  waited  with  kindly 
patience  for  death,  he  was  entirely  preoccupied  with 
fears  and  hopes,  not  for  himself,  but  for  the  actual 
world  that  he  was  to  leave  behind.  Here,  on  Mother 
Earth,  would  live  the  race  of  Man,  with  whom  he 
had,  in  his  altruistic  philosophy,  absolutely  identified 


GEORGE   MEREDITH  99 

himself.  And  so  we  find  that  Meredith's  "  Last 
Poems"  are  ahuost  entirely  concerned  with — history 
and  politics  !  There  is  no  "  Crossing  the  Bar,"  no 
"Epilogue."  With  a  characteristic  touch  of  in- 
dependence and  dislike  for  curiosity,  he  squares  his 
own  accounts  with  death  in  private.  But  he  is 
gravely  concerned  in  these  last  poems  with  such 
workaday  questions  as  Home  Rule  and  Conscription, 
His  last  voice  is  raised  to  commemorate  Nelson  and 
Garibaldi,  and  to  proclaim  sympathy  with  the  struggle 
for  Russian  freedom.  There  is  a  valour  and  a  jollity 
in  this  way  of  ending  life  that  is  infinitely  touching, 
in  view  of  the  grave,  beautiful  things  that  he  had 
formerly  written  about  death  in  the  fourteenth  chapter 
of  Lord  Ormont,  and  again  and  again  in  his  other 
novels;  in  ''The  Ballad  of  Past  Meridian,"  in  the 
"Faith  on  Trial,"  and  in  the  sonnet  on  "A  Friend 
Lost." 

No  murmur  or  complaint  was  heard  from  this 
athlete  and  lover  of  life,  as  he  sat  crippled  alike  by 
disease  and  age.  He  was  the  man  who  had  written, 
"  There  is  nothing  the  body  suffers  that  the  soul  may 
not  profit  by."  His  soul  enriched  itself  with  all  the 
pleasures  and  activities  that  his  once  splendid  body 
was  now  compelled  to  forgo.  Youth  never  left  him, 
but  became  transformed  into  a  gracious  spiritual 
repossession  of  youth's  joys,  by  memory  and  by 
seeing  others  enjoy  them  in  their  turn.  He  loved 
the  presence  of  the  young,  to  hear  how  they  fared 


loo        CLIO,    AND   OTHER   ESSAYS 

in  their  work,  and  in  the  sane  pursuit  of  Artemis 
and  Aphrodite.  I  have  seen  him  watching  the 
esplanade  from  a  seaside-lodging  window.  To  most 
of  us  it  would  have  seemed  a  very  ordinary  lodging- 
house  window  indeed,  but  to  him,  and  to  those  who 
heard  him  talk,  it  was  a  peephole  on  glorious  life. 
A  girl  passing  on  a  bicycle  set  him  prophesying  the 
fuller  life  that  was  now  setting  in  for  women.  A 
boy  leading  a  pet  goat  up  and  down  aroused  his 
envy  and  delight,  made  him  again  in  spirit  a  boy, 
a  Crossjay.  To  listen  to  him  was  to  be  plunged  by 
Esculapius  into  the  healing  waters  of  youth. 

There  is  only  one  intimate  personal  confession  in 
his  last  poems.  It  is  a  perfect  expression  of  what 
old  age  was  to  him,  and  what  we  may  pray  that 
it  will  be  to  each  of  us.  The  poem  is  called  Youth 
in  Age  : — 

"  Once  I  was  part  of  the  music  I  heard 

On  the  boughs  or  sweet  between  earth  and  sky, 
For  joy  of  the  beating  of  wings  on  high 
My  heart  shot  into  the  breast  of  the  bird. 

I  hear  it  now  and  I  see  it  fiy 

And  a  life  in  wrinkles  again  is  stirred, 

My  heart  shoots  into  the  breast  of  the  bird, 

As  it  will  for  sheer  love  till  the  last  long  sigh." 


POETRY   AND   REBELLION  ^ 

When  a  foreign  author,  counted  among  the  most 
distinguished  critics  in  Europe,  has  written  a  book 
on  a  great  period  of  our  national  poetry,  it 
is  certain  to  contain  some  views  not  altogether 
English,  and  therefore  all  the  more  instructive  for 
Englishmen.  We  have  previously  heard  George 
Brandes  on  Shakespeare  :  we  have  now  the  oppor- 
tunity, thanks  to  this  translation  of  a  work  which 
appeared  thirty  years  ago  in  the  original  Danish,  to 
hear  him  on  that  other  poetical  constellation  which 
has  no  central  sun,  but  which,  in  its  total  force  of 
light  and  heat,  perhaps  rivals  the  Elizabethan — on 
Wordsworth,  Coleridge,  Scott,  Keats,  Shelley,  Byron, 
and  those  lesser  planets  (the  foils  to  their  brightness), 
Southey,  Moore,  Campbell,  Landor.  In  these  Mr. 
Brandes  finds  his  theme  ;  but  the  fiery  comet  Blake 
apparently  never  swam  into  his  ken. 

If  we  had  to  give  up  either  these  or  the  Eliza- 
bethans, there  are  some  reasons,  not  indeed  sufficient, 
why   we    should    prefer    to    part    with    Shakespeare. 

1  Main  Currents  in  Nineteenth  Century  Literature.  George  Brande* 
IV.  Naturalism  in  Engtand.  (Heinemann.  1905.)  (Translated  from 
Danish  of  1875.)  This  essay  is  revised  from  an  article  which  appeared  in 
the  Indepettdent  Review  in  1905. 


I02        CLIO,    AND   OTHER   ESSAYS 

They  are  six  giants  against  one  colossus.  And 
although  the  body  of  Shakespeare's  work  is  left,  he 
himself  is  but  dimly  known  to  us,  while  the  lives  of 
the  moderns  are  as  familiar  as  their  poems.  They 
were  fortunate  in  their  friends,  at  least  they  were 
posthumously  fortunate  in  their  friends'  biographi- 
cal powers ;  the  records  of  Hogg,  Trelawny,  De 
Quincey,  Lamb,  Leigh  Hunt,  Lockhart, — and  Keats' 
and  Byron's  own  letters, — show  to  what  height 
of  beauty  and  power,  if  also  at  times  of  folly,  it 
has  been  possible  for  the  human  spirit  to  attain. 
But  no  one  looks  to  find  such  matter  in  the 
gleanings  which  Mr.  Sidney  Lee  has  so  scrupu- 
lously gathered  behind  the  harvest  that  time  has 
carried  away.  Further  we  suspect  that  even  if  we 
knew  him,  Shakespeare,  unlike  his  poetry,  would 
prove  too  perfect,  too  wise,  and  too  bourgeois  in 
the  best  sense  to  have  the  picturesque  charm  of 
the  Inspired  Charity  Boy,  the  Ineffectual  Angel  or 
the  Pilgrim  of  Eternity.  But  this  we  shall  never 
know.  For  however  many  thousands  of  years  our 
civiHsation  may  last,  neither  we  nor  our  remotest 
descendants  will  ever  see  into  the  Mermaid  Tavern. 
Its  doors  are  closed,  its  windows  shuttered,  Time  Past 
has  got  the  key,  and  our  scholars  can  only  sweep 
the  doorstep. 

Then,  too,  Shakespeare  did  not  take  part  in  the 
Gunpowder  Plot,  or  WTite  satires  on  James  and  Cecil, 
or    sail    with    the    Sea    Beggars,    or    die    defending 


POETRY   AND   REBELLION  103 

Rochelle.  But  the  moderns,  whether  or  not  they 
prove  to  be  "  for  all  time,"  were  at  least  no  small 
part  of  their  own  stirring  age.  The  times  were  great 
and  the  literary  gentlemen  were  not  small.  Their 
alchemy  has  resolved  each  of  the  dark,  hot  and  heavy 
political  passions  of  their  own  day  into  its  corres- 
ponding poetical  essence.  They  are  the  Radicals 
and  the  Tories  of  Eternity.  They  founded  Pantiso- 
cratic  Societies  and  Quarterly  Reviews.  They  were 
stalked  over  the  Quantock  Hills  by  Pitt's  spies,  as 
they  plotted  the  downfall  of  Pope  beside  "  the  ribbed 
sea  sand."  They  sang  of  Highland  clansmen  and  of 
knights  in  armour,  and  poetic  Toryism  sprang  on 
to  the  stage,  fully  bedizened,  out  of  Sir  Walter's  head. 
Others  of  them  defied  the  gods  of  the  Holy  Alliance, 
concentrated  on  their  own  heads  the  whole  weight 
of  tyranny's  anathema,  and  rode  down  the  Pisan 
Lungarno  in  the  face  of  Austria,  England  and  Italy, 

"  Dower'd  with  the  hate  of  hate,  the  scorn  of  scorn, 
The  love  of  love." 

Four  things,  rarely  united,  combine  to  enhance 
their  story  :  great  poetic  genius  ;  great  personal  eccen- 
tricity and  power ;  great  principles  come  to  issue 
in  poUtics ;  and  the  picturesque  surroundings  of 
the  old  world  in  its  last  generation  of  untarnished 
beauty.  Except  Tolstoi  with  his  smock  and  his 
weather-beaten  face,  standing  among  the  Russian 
snows  and  revolutions,  there  has  been   no  figure   in 


104        CLIO,   AND   OTHER   ESSAYS 

our  own  time  that  exerted  the  same  sway  over  the 
imagination  of  Europe.  Even  in  the  Victorian  era, 
our  great  poets  paid  their  debt  to  society  by  inspecting 
Board  Schools  instead  of  heading  Mediterranean 
revolutions.  And  so,  for  centuries  to  come,  the  eyes 
of  men  somewhat  weary  with  the  dull  drab  of  their 
own  generations,  will  be  turned  to  the  funeral  pyre 
on  the  shore  of  the  blue  Mediterranean,  with  the 
marble  mountains  of  Carrara  behind,  "  touching  the 
air  with  coolness,"  the  heart  of  hearts  unconsumed 
in  the  flame,  and  the  doomed  figure  beside  it  looking 
out  to  sea.  The  prayer  of  old  Europe  for  liberty 
and  new  life  seems  to  rise  up  to  the  skies  in  that 
sacrificial  flame  "  waving  and  quivering  with  a  bright- 
ness of  inconceivable  beauty."  ^  Such  is  the  romance 
that  England  once  gave  mankind,  to  show  what 
poetry  she  can  create  when  her  heart  is  turned  for 
a  moment  from  the  cares  of  the  world  to  the  things 
of  the  imagination  and  the  mind. 

It  is  these  outward  suits  and  trappings  of  poetry — 
its  historical,  political,  and  personal  accidents — of 
which  Mr.  Brandes'  book  gives  a  brilliant  survey. 
Not  a  paragraph  is  unmeaning  or  trite.  His  method 
of  treating  the  poetry  itself  is  to  analyse  these  external 
accompaniments.  He  scarcely  attempts  to  judge 
the  style  but  only  the  content  ;  he  does  not  place 
the  writers  in  order  of  their  merit  as  poets,  but  in 
order  of   their  effectiveness   as  revolutionaries.     For 

^  Leigh  Hunt,  Recollection!,  p.  200. 


POETRY   AND   REBELLION         105 

instance,  Wordsworth  is  introduced  as  the  tyrannicide 
who  slew  Pope,  and  led  the  exodus  of  the  English 
poets  back  to  nature ;  but  he  is  cast  aside,  when 
he  invests  himself  in  the  "strait-jacket  of  orthodox 
piety."  That  is  Mr.  Brandes'  account  of  the  matter, 
where  most  people  are  content  to  say  that  Wordsworth 
first  wrote  good  poetry  and  then  bad  : 

"Two  voices  are  there  :  one  is  of  the  deep  ; 
And  one  is  of  an  old  half-witted  sheep, 
And,  Wordsworth,  both  are  thine." 

Mr.  Brandes  makes  it  his  task  to  appraise  each 
poet  in  turn,  according  as  he  adds  some  new  element 
to  the  rebellious  growth  of  literary,  religious  or 
political  "  naturalism."  Wordsworth  begins  the  re- 
turn to  nature  ;  Coleridge  adds  "  naturalistic  roman- 
ticism "  ;  Scott  "  historical  naturalism  "  ;  Keats 
"all-embracing  sensuousness "  ;  Landor  "republican 
humanism  "  ;  Shelley  "  radical  naturalism  "  ;  but  Byron 
is  the  "  culmination  of  naturalism  "  and  has  seven 
whole  chapters  to  himself,  while  none  of  the  com- 
moners has  more  than  two.  Each  new  element  is 
analysed,  each  character  and  personality  described 
with  an  insight  that  never  fails,  and  a  sympathy 
that  fails  only  in  the  case  of  Wordsworth. 

Now  this  method,  which  really  consists  in  talking 
all  round  the  subject  of  poetry  but  never  plucking 
out  its  heart,  is  the  best  as  a  means  of  stimulating 


io6        CLIO,   AND   OTHER   ESSAYS 

the  love  of  poetry  in  the  young,  and  of  introducing 
readers  to  a  particular  group  of  poets.  It  is  in- 
teresting, picturesque,  alive.  It  gives  the  colour, 
the  setting,  the  intellectual  formulas  that  contained 
the  poetic  essence.  But  that  essence  it  does  not 
attempt  to  define. 

By  thus  limiting  the  range  of  his  inquiry,  Mr. 
Brandes  has  saved  himself  from  disaster,  for  we  are 
left  with  the  impression  that  if  he  had  told  us  which 
were  the  best  poems,  we  should  have  been  asked 
to  regard  Cain  and  Don  Juan  as  the  "  culmination  " 
not  only  of  "naturalism,"  but  of  English  poetry. 
Incidentally  he  lets  it  slip  out  that  Burns  was  a 
"much  more  gifted  poet"  than  Wordsworth.  But 
these  views  are  of  no  consequence,  because  not 
obtruded.  The  brilliant  and  suggestive  analysis  of 
the  content,  fortified  by  long  and  well-chosen  quota- 
tions, enable  the  reader  to  form  his  own  judgment 
on  the  style.  Now  one's  own  judgment  on  poetry 
is  the  only  judgment  worth  having,  not  because  it  is 
necessarily  right,  but  because  it  alone  is  strongly  felt. 
The  value  of  the  appreciation  of  poetry  lies,  not  in 
mere  correctness  of  opinion,  but  in  combined  right- 
ness  and  depth  of  feeling.  Therefore  the  critic, 
even  if  he  were  infallible,  would  do  well  to  leave  the 
final  judgment  to  the  reader. 

For  these  reasons,  I  believe  that  Mr.  Brandes'  book 
is  the  best  existing  introduction  to  the  poets  and 
poetry  of  this  period  as  a  whole.     The  errors  of  the 


POETRY   AND   REBELLION         107 

book  are  not  such  as  could  possibly  deceive  our 
present  literary  public,  while  its  truth  would  add 
something  new  to  their  stock  of  ideas.  It  is  only  if 
people  understand  what  the  system  of  political  and 
religious  persecution  was  like  when  these  poets  were 
young,  that  they  can  do  justice  to  the  merits,  while 
they  detect  the  errors,  of  Mr.  Brandes'  book.  What 
was  it  (other  than  the  law  of  marriage)  against  which 
Shelley  and  Byron,  as  formerly  Wordsworth  and 
Coleridge,  declared  themselves  rebels  ?  What  justi- 
fication has  Mr.  Brandes  for  such  language  as  this  ? — 

"  The  neutral  qualities  of  the  nation  were  educated 
"  into  bad  ones.  Self-esteem  and  firmness  were  nursed 
"into  that  hard-heartedness  of  the  aristocratic,  and 
"  that  selfishness  of  the  commercial  classes  which 
"  always  distinguish  a  period  of  reaction  ;  loyalty  was 
"excited  into  servility,  and  patriotism  into  the  hatred 
"  of  other  nations.  And  the  national  <5«(^  qualities  were 
"  over-developed.  The  desire  for  outward  decorum  at 
"  any  price,  which  is  the  shady  side  of  the  moral 
"  impulse,  was  developed  into  hypocrisy  in  the  domain 
"  of  morality  ;  and  that  determined  adherence  to  the 
"established  religion,  which  is  the  least  attractive 
"outcome  of  a  practical  and  not  profoundly  reasoning 
"  turn  of  mind,  was  fanned  either  into  hypocrisy  or 
"active  intolerance"  (p.  16). 

This  is  the  picture,  the  "political  background," 
which  Mr,  Brandes  has  sketched  for  his  panorama. 
Is   it  overcharged  ?     I   think  not ;  but  to  show  this 


io8        CLIO,    AND   OTHER   ESSAYS 

I  must  call  attention  to  a  few  facts  not  generally 
emphasised  in  our  historical  text-books.  And  before 
doing  this,  I  will  quote  another  passage,  which  clearly 
shows  that  Mr.  Brandes  is  not  prejudiced  against 
England.  He  sees  the  faults  of  Englishmen,  but 
he  admires  the  Englishman. 

"  Beneath  that  attachment  to  the  soil,  and  that 
"delight  in  encountering  and  mastering  the  fitful 
"  humours  of  the  sea,  which  are  the  deep-seated  causes 
"of  Naturalism,  there  is  in  the  Englishman  the  still 
"deeper-seated  national  feeling  which,  under  the 
"  peculiar  historical  conditions  of  this  period,  naturally 
"  led  the  cleverest  men  of  the  day  in  the  direction  of 
"  Radicalism.  No  nation  is  so  thoroughly  penetrated 
"  by  the  feeling  of  personal  independence  as  England. 

"  It  took  an  Englishman  to  do  what  Byron  did,  stem 
"  alone  the  stream  which  flowed  from  the  fountain  of 
"the  Holy  Alliance.  .  .  .  But  an  Englishman,  too, 
"was  needed  to  fling  the  gauntlet  boldly  and  defiantly 
"in  the  face  of  his  own  people"  (p.  12). 

And  Mr.  Brandes  appreciates  no  less  warmly  the 
character  of  the  Tory  Scott, — all  in  him  that  was  "racy 
of  the  soil "  of  North  Britain. 

In  the  generation  following  1792  Britain  was  not  a 
free  country.  The  island  was  governed  by  a  certain 
number  of  privileged  persons,  and  the  bulk  of  the 
inhabitants  not  only  had  no  share  of  any  sort  in  the 


POETRY   AND    REBELLION         109 

government,  but  they  were  debarred  from  demanding 
a  share,  by  laws  specially  enacted  for  this  purpose 
and  savagely  administered.  In  politics  and  religion, 
a  system  like  Strafford's  "  thorough "  ruled  the  land 
under  the  forms  of  Statute  and  Common  Law. 

This  revived  Straffordism  had  two  periods  of 
activity  :  one  in  the  last  decade  of  the  eighteenth 
century,  in  the  radical  days  of  Coleridge  and  Words- 
worth :  the  other  after  Waterloo,  in  the  time  of 
Shelley  and  Byron.  In  the  intervening  years,  1800 
to  181 5,  British  liberty,  gagged  by  Pitt's  previous 
legislation,  gave  no  sign  of  life ;  and  indeed  every  one 
was  preoccupied  with  the  pressing  danger  of  conquest 
by  Napoleon.  After  Waterloo  came  the  second  period 
of  conflict  ;  but  then  the  Tory  ministers  were  only 
acting  on  the  principles  and  re-enforcing  the  measures 
of  twenty  years  before.  It  is  therefore  to  the  earlier 
period  that  we  must  look  for  the  heroic  age  of  tyranny, 
when  Burke,  finding  in  the  French  Revolution  a  subject 
as  great  as  his  own  genius,  first  inspired  our  statesmen 
with  the  un-English  desire  to  prevent  all  further 
development  of  religious  and  political  thought,  and  to 
root  out  the  spirit  of  independence. 

An  agitation  for  Parliamentary  Reform,  begun  by 
the  middle  classes  of  Yorkshire  in  the  'eighties,  had 
spread,  under  the  influence  of  the  French  Revolution, 
to  some  of  the  lower  classes  in  London  ;  these  men 
began,  in  1793  and  1794,  to  hold  orderly  public  meet- 
ings in  the  suburbs,  where  speeches  were  delivered  in 


no        CLIO,   AND   OTHER   ESSAYS 

favour  of  Parliamentary  Reform  and  of  the  new 
principle  of  Democracy.  Thereupon  Acts  were  passed 
enabling  a  single  magistrate  to  disperse  a  meeting  at 
will,  and  making  death  the  penalty  for  disobedience 
to  his  orders.  The  result  was  that  no  one  attempted 
to  hold  such  meetings  again  till  after  Waterloo.  The 
upper  classes  were  mad,  inevitably  and  perhaps  ex- 
cusably mad  with  fear  of  the  French  Revolution.  In 
their  blind  panic  they  saw  Englishmen  as  Jacobins 
walking. 

They  so  little  knew  their  countrymen  and  so  little 
understood  the  causes  of  what  was  going  on  in  France 
that  they  feared  a  repetition  of  the  same  phenomena 
in  this  island,  where  there  was  neither  the  fuel  nor 
the  fire  for  such  a  conflagration.  Pitt  put  a  stop  even 
to  lectures  given  by  his  opponents,  and  soon  after- 
wards Political  Associations  and  Trade  Unions 
were  universally  suppressed  by  law.  All  Liberal 
politicians,  except  the  few  who  held  seats  in  Parlia- 
ment, were  driven  back  into  private  life,  and  even 
there  they  were  followed  by  government  spies — 
sinister  figures  unfamiliar  to  the  freeborn  Englishman, 
but  evoked  by  the  passions  of  that  unhappy  time. 
Meanwhile  the  Press  was  effectually  gagged,  for  the 
juries  readily  sent  publishers  to  prison,  at  the  dicta- 
tion of  the  law  officers  of  the  crown.  The  demand 
for  Parliamentary  Reform  was  punished  in  Scotland 
by  transportation,  in  England  by  imprisonment  for 
sedition.     Under  this   treatment   it   ceased  to   make 


POETRY   AND   REBELLION         iii 

itself  heard  before  the  century  of  enlightenment 
closed  in  darkness  and  in  fear.i 

Such  was  the  system  which  Fox  denounced  as 
destructive  to  "the  spirit,  the  fire,  the  freedom,  the 
boldness,  the  energy  of  the  British  character,  and 
with  them  its  best  virtue."  The  man  who  used  this 
language  was  more  truly  a  Briton  than  the  ministers 
who  sent  spies  to  betray  the  private  conversation  of 
their  countrymen,  and  taught  the  English  for  a  while 
to  abase  their  spirit  like  the  tame  nations  who  fawned 
on  Napoleon  and  Metternich.  Fox  "  a  Briton  died," 
but  he  also  lived  a  Briton  :  his  traducers,  who  then 
and  since  have  assumed  to  themselves  all  the 
"patriotic"  virtues,  did  not  seem  to  understand  that 
to  be  a  Briton  means  to  speak  your  mind  without 
fear. 

The  measures  of  coercion,  as  Mr.  Brandes  points 
out,  killed  independence  of  character  and  made  an 
end  of  the  free  play  of  intellect  and  imagination. 
The  revival,  twenty  years  later,  could  only  be  effected 
by  violent,  and  not  altogether  wholesome,  literary 
stimulants.  And  if  Byron  attacked  morality  as  well 
as  despotism,  he  had  at  least  been  provoked  to  this 
unfortunate  conflict  by  the  hypocrisy  which  had  long 
pretended,  for  party  purposes,  that  morals  were  the 

^  So  abject  was  the  terrorism  produced  by  the  prosecutions  that  in  179S 
even  honest  old  Major  Cartwright,  "  the  father  of  constitutional  re- 
formers," could  not  get  any  publisher  to  take  his  word  in  favour  of 
Parliamentary  Keform,  but  had  to  "hire  a  shop  and  servant"  to  sell  it. 
See  Mock  and  Constitutional  Keform  (1810),  p.  47. 


112        CLIO,    AND   OTHER   ESSAYS 

peculiar  preserve  of  orthodoxy  and  Toryism.  The 
whole  movement  of  coercion  had  been  a  religious 
movement,  as  can  be  seen  in  the  government  writers 
from  Burke  and  the  Anti-Jacobin  downwards.  There 
was  much  that  was  noble  in  the  evangelicalism  that 
defied  Napoleon  and  afterwards  freed  the  slave.  But, 
closely  connected  with  this,  and  often  indistinguish- 
able from  it,  was  religion  in  its  most  odious  form,  not 
a  moral  influence,  but  an  influence  pretending  to  a 
monopoly  in  morals  ;  not  a  martyr  defying  the  strong, 
but  an  inquisitor  punishing  the  weak.  An  attempt 
was  made,  with  considerable  success,  to  eradicate  the 
very  slight  traces  of  free  thought  then  observable  in 
England,  and  to  reduce  by  persecution  the  power 
even  of  orthodox  dissent.  A  few  examples  will  serve 
to  illustrate  the  spirit  of  the  system. 

Paine's  Age  of  Reason,  an  argument  grounding 
religion  on  Deism  and  the  belief  in  Immortality,  was 
directed  equally  against  the  Atheism  then  prevalent 
in  France,  and  the  Biblical  literalism  then  universal 
in  England  ;  it  was  highly  moral  and  earnest  in  its 
tone,  but  sometimes  violent  in  its  language  against 
the  ethics  of  the  Old  Testament  and  the  miraculous 
elements  in  the  New.  In  1797  an  English  publisher 
of  this  work,  Williams  by  name,  was  prosecuted  by  the 
Society  for  the  Suppression  of  Vice  and  Immorality. 
Williams  was  himself  a  Christian  ;  he  had  a  large 
family ;  he  was  abjectly  poor  ;  he  repented,  and  he 
begged,   after  the  case  had  gone  against   him,  that 


POETRY   AND   REBELLION         113 

Wilberforce  and  his  Committee  of  Bishops  would  not 
bring  him  up  for  judgment.  This  prayer  was  urged 
on  humanitarian  grounds  by  Erskine,  on  this  occa- 
sion counsel  for  the  prosecution,  who  had  found  his 
victim  stitching  tracts  in  a  wretched  little  room,  where 
his  children  were  suffering  with  small-pox.  But  the 
godly  men  were  "  firm,"  as  Wilberforce  boasts  in  his 
diary,  and  proceeded  to  ruin  the  miserable  family  in 
the  name  of  Christ.  If  this  was  the  spirit  of  Wilber- 
force, when  impelled  by  fanaticism,  we  can  imagine 
what  was  the  spirit  of  less  humane  men.  Twenty 
years  later,  times  had  not  changed  ;  for  in  the  year 
of  Peterloo,  Richard  Carlile,  his  wife  and  shop  assis- 
tants, were  imprisoned  for  republishing  Paine's  A^e 
of  Reason. 

Meanwhile  the  campaign  of  slander  was  carried  on 
in  the  alleged  interests  of  morality.  One  instance  will 
suffice,  from  the  very  highest  type  of  Tory  literature — 
the  Beauties  of  the  Anti-facobin  (1799).  In  a  note  on 
Canning's  wittiest  poem.  The  New  Morality,  we  read 
that  Coleridge  "  has  now  quitted  the  country,  become 
a  citizen  of  the  world,  left  his  little  ones  fatherless, 
and  his  wife  destitute.  Ex  uno  disce  his  associates 
Southey  and  Lambe  "  {sic).  Here  is  Anti-Jacobin  accu- 
racy and  logic  in  a  nutshell.  In  the  cause  of  religion 
and  morality  a  lie  is  told — that  Coleridge  in  1799  had 
deserted  his  wife  and  children.  In  the  next  sentence 
the  deduction  is  made.     It  is  stated  that  Southey  and 

Lamb,   because  they  associate  with  a  Unitarian  and 

H 


114        CLIO,    AND   OTHER   ESSAYS 

radical  like  Coleridge,  may  be  pilloried  as  the  sort  of 
people  who  desert  their  wives  and  children.  Society 
is  duly  warned  against  a  scoundrel  like  Charles  Lamb  ! 
He  is  the  sort  of  person  who  breaks  up  family  life ! 

Priestley  was  a  scientist  of  European  reputation, 
and  a  Unitarian  of  the  biblical  school,  an  avowed 
opponent  of  Paine  and  the  Deists.  He  was  driven 
from  the  country  by  the  social  persecution  roused 
against  him  by  the  clergy  and  the  "  Church  and 
King"  mob,  who  would  not  suffer  a  Socinian  to 
live  in  England.  And  if  Priestley  had  to  retire  to 
America,  we  can  imagine  how  unendurable  life  was 
made  to  his  humbler  followers.  Nor  were  orthodox 
dissenters  under  cover.  Not  only  did  nonconformists 
remain  excluded  from  the  Universities  and  from 
numerous  civil  rights,  but  a  social  persecution  was 
now  directed  against  them  ;  some  were  forced  to 
abandon  their  business  in  the  towns  and  to  fly  to 
America,  while  the  position  of  dissenters  on  the 
estates  of  Tory  landowners  was  often  rendered  un- 
tenable. To  this  persecution  it  was  the  design  of 
the  Cabinet  in  the  year  1800  to  give  legislative  force. 
The  design  to  go  back  on  the  Toleration  Act  of 
1688  so  far  got  a  hold  of  Pitt's  mind  that  he  was 
only  diverted  from  his  purpose  by  the  appeals  of 
Wilberforce.  The  hypocrites  and  formalists  were 
stopped  from  further  progress  on  the  path  of  perse- 
cution by  the  man  of  real  religion.  For  Wilberforce, 
while  he  pursued  Deism  with  the  sharpest  edge  of 


POETRY   AND   REBELLION         115 

the  law,  while  he  stirred  up  the  educated  classes  to 
regard  Priestley's  views  with  a  horror  of  which  their 
Laodicean  ancestors  had  been  innocent,  knew  that 
the  Gospel  had  true  though  erring  friends  in  the 
orthodox  nonconformists.  He  therefore  checked  the 
design,  which  would,  as  he  said,  at  once  have  filled 
the  gaols  with  the  best  of  the  dissenting  ministers. 
But  that  the  Cabinet  should  have  seriously  considered 
such  iniquity,  shows  what  was  the  spirit  of  the  age. 

The  legal  persecution  of  nonconformity  had  been 
suggested  to  Pitt  by  Bishop  Pretyman,^  the  type 
of  the  clergyman  of  that  day,  hostile  to  every  earnest 
movement  within  the  Church,  whether  evangelical 
or  other,  but  stringent  to  put  down  the  unorthodox 
and  the  dissenters  by  law,  and  shameless  in  the 
pursuit  of  the  loaves  and  fishes.  He  finally  made 
use  of  his  position  as  Pitt's  old  tutor  and  friend 
to  ask  his  pupil  to  make  him  Archbishop  of  Canter- 
bury ;  2  the  best  use  of  the  prerogative  ever  made  by 
George  III  was  to  veto  this  scandalous  job.  In  Ireland 
the  Bishops  added  open  vice  to  the  characteristics 
of  their  English  brethren.  "In  the  north,"  wrote 
the  Primate  of  Ireland  in  1801,  "I  have  six  bishops 
under  me.  Three  are  men  of  tolerable  moral  charac- 
ter, but  are  inactive  and  useless,  and  two  are  of 
acknowledged  bad  character.  Fix  Mr.  Beresford  at 
Kilmore  and  we  shall  then  have  three  very  inactive 

1  Life  of  Wilberforce,  ii.  pp.  360-5. 

2  Rose's  Diaries,  ii.  pp.  82-9. 


ii6        CLIO,   AND   OTHER   ESSAYS 

bishops,  and,  what  I  trust  the  world  has  not  yet 
seen,  three  bishops  in  one  district  reported  to  be 
the  most  profligate  men  in  Europe."  ^  At  Kilmore 
Mr.  Beresford  was  duly  fixed. 

Such  was  the  Church  which  in  the  name  of  morality 
urged  the  State  to  suppress  every  movement  of 
thought.  For  the  cry  had  been  raised  which  used 
most  easily  to  appeal  to  the  English  ear,  that  the 
foundations  of  morality  were  m  danger.  In  the  full 
eighteenth  century  the  governing  class  had  been 
openly  profligate,  and  some  of  George  Ill's  favourite 
ministers  had  been  among  the  worst.  That  caused 
no  alarm.  But  when  democracy  showed  its  head, 
the  Tories  became  the  patrons,  though  not  always 
the  examples,  of  morality.  The  silly  marriage  theory 
promulgated  by  the  philosopher  Godwin,  gave  his 
enemies  their  cue.  Family  life  was  being  undermined 
by  the  Jacobins  !  If  the  standard  of  English  morals 
was  not  high  the  continental  standard  was  lower  still, 
and  it  was  easy  therefore  for  our  alarmists  to  call 
attention  to  the  continental  standard,  and  to  ascribe 
to  the  teaching  of  Jacobinism  evils  that  had  been 
rampant  in  the  days  of  Louis  XIV.  Canning's  satires 
are  full  of  this  idea ;  and  one  of  the  most  distin- 
guished men  of  learning  in  the  United  Kingdom 
solemnly  wrote  a  book  to  prove  that  Frederick 
William  II  of  Prussia  was  the  saviour  of  social 
morality,   because   he   had    suppressed   free   thought 

*  MacDonagh,  The  Viceroys  Post-Bag,  p.  99. 


POETRY   AND    REBELLION         117 

in  his  dominions  by  force  ;  Frederick  William,  religi- 
ous mystic  and  voluptuary,  who  even  in  his  de- 
bauches never  forgot  to  be  pious,  and  who  caused 
the  Lutheran  clergy  solemnly  to  legalise  and  sanctify 
his  bigamy  !  ^  With  Frederick  William  thus  recog- 
nised by  the  Tories  as  a  saviour  of  society,  we  can 
understand  why  Byron  afterwards  plunged  to  the 
assault  of  throne,  altar  and  hearth  together. 

Hypocrisy  was  the  order  of  the  day.  The  word 
"  freedom  "  was,  by  a  masterpiece  of  irony,  retained 
in  the  official  cant.  When  Pitt  introduced  his  Sedi- 
tious Meetings  Bill  into  the  House,  he  spoke  large 
words  on  the  undoubted  right  of  the  people  to  that 
freedom  of  speech  of  which  the  measure  was  designed 
to  deprive  them.  "The  perfect  freedom,  civil  and 
religious,  which  we  enjoy  in  this  happy  country,"  be- 
came the  cant  phrase  of  the  persecutors.  Even  Scotch 
writers,  the  countrymen  of  Muir  and  Palmer,  in  books 
written  to  argue  that  religious  persecution  is  a  duty 
of  the  State,  could  talk  of  our  Constitution  as  one 
in  which  each  man  sits  "under  his  own  vine,  and 
under  his  own  fig-tree,  and  there  is  none  to  make 
him  afraid."  2  Language  like  this  has  to  a  large 
extent  imposed  upon  posterity,  but  it  goaded  con- 
temporaries like  Byron  to  madness. 

^  Proofs  of  Conspiracy,  Robinson,  1797  (dedicated  to  Secretary 
Windham),  pp.  90-2,  276,  283,  316-7.  For  the  private  life  and  public 
policy  of  Frederick  William  II,  see  Sorel,  V Europe  et  la  K&v.  Fr.  /., 
478-496. 

*  Proofs  of  Conspiracy,  pp.  94,  446. 


ii8        CLIO,   AND   OTHER   ESSAYS 

Another  form  of  hypocrisy  was  to  inveigh  perpetu- 
ally against  the  cruelties  exercised  by  the  French 
revolutionists  as  being  the  peculiar  results  of  liberal 
principles,  while  our  allies,  the  despots,  were  perpetra- 
ting like  acts  in  Poland  without  even  a  shadow  of 
excuse,  and  threatening  them  against  France  in 
Brunswick  manifestos  ;  and  while  we  ourselves  were 
torturing  the  Irish  by  flogging  and  pitchcapping  as  a 
regular  system.  The  torture  was  condoned  over  here, 
just  as  the  Terror  was  condoned  in  France,  as  being 
the  only  means  of  self-preservation  in  time  of  deadly 
peril.  Whether  massacre  without  torture,  or  torture 
reduced  to  a  system,  be  the  worst,  it  is  for  casuists 
to  decide.  But  whereas  Robespierre  and  Carrier 
of  Nantes  paid  the  penalty  of  their  crimes  at  the 
hands  of  their  fellow  revolutionists  as  soon  as  the 
worst  danger  of  civil  war  and  invasion  had  passed, 
Judkin  Fitzgerald  was  shielded  by  special  Act  of 
Parliament  from  the  natural  legal  consequence  of 
his  crimes,  and  was  raised  to  the  Honourable 
Order  of  Baronets.  That  men  who  condoned  and 
rewarded  Fitzgerald  should  accuse  the  Jacobins  of 
inhumanity,  is  the  kind  of  thing  that  astounds  those 
who  have  not  been  brought  up  in  the  English  tradi- 
tion.    And  it  has  not  escaped  Mr.  Brandes.^ 

This  system  of  hypocrisy  and  tyranny,  in  the  course 
of   its    long   struggle   with   the   yet   more   tyrannical 

^  Brandes,  pp.  154-5.  Lecky,  History  of  England,  ed.  1890,  viii.  pp. 
22-30.     State  Trials,  xxvii.  pp.  759-820. 


POETRY   AND    REBELLION         119 

though  possibly  more  useful  revolutionary  govern- 
ments of  France,  successfully  smothered  the  first 
stirrings  of  radical  and  free  thought.  The  appalling 
failure  of  the  French  Revolution  to  establish  liberty 
turned  over  Coleridge,  Wordsworth,  Southey  and 
many  others  to  join  the  reaction  here.  Fox  died. 
Then  came  Waterloo  and  the  restoration  of  the  ancien 
regime  throughout  the  European  world.  Thereupon 
Radicalism  in  England  again  attempted  to  lift  its 
head,  jstung  by  the  economic  miseries  of  the  mass 
of  the  people,  but  was  stamped  down  once  more  by 
repressive  measures  associated  in  the  minds  of  the 
victims  with  the  name  of  Castlereagh,  who  introduced 
the  "Six  Acts"  into  the  House  of  Commons.  That 
was  the  era  when  Byron's  poetry  suddenly  became 
a  force  in  politics. 

I  have  set  down  these  few  facts  to  explain  what 
Mr.  Brandes  calls  "  the  political  background  "  of  his 
book,  and  to  justify  the  high  importance  and  value 
which  he  attaches  to  Byron's  place  in  history.  The 
true  splendour  of  Byron  lay  in  his  instinct  to  re- 
bellion, in  which  the  pride  of  the  aristocrat  and  the 
self-assertion  of  the  egoist  against  the  society  that 
rebukes  him  were  compounded  with  a  generous  rage 
for  public  justice  and  a  democratic  sympathy  with 
the  poor.  His  service  to  mankind  was  this,  that  in 
the  hour  of  universal  repression  and  discourage- 
ment, he  made  all  England  and  all  Europe  hear  the 


I20        CLIO,   AND   OTHER   ESSAYS 

note  of  everlasting  defiance.  He  was  called  Satanic  : 
there  have  been  moments  in  history  when  the  quali- 
ties of  Milton's  Satan  are  needed  to  save  mankind. 

"  Yet,  Freedom  !  yet  thy  banner,  torn,  but  flying, 
Streams  like  the  thunderstorm  against  the  wind." 

He  spoke,  and  the  oppressor  looked  pitiable,  and 
the  inquisitor  stood  naked  to  the  scorn  of  the  world ; 
the  laugh  at  last  was  turned  against  the  anti-Jacobin. 
The  government  no  more  dared  silence  him  than 
the  Russian  government  dared  silence  Tolstoi.  His 
previous  literary  fame,  his  personal  prestige,  the  very 
force  of  the  offending  satires  made  it  impossible  to 
institute  proceedings  against  the  Dedication  of  Don 
Juan,  or  the  Vision  of  Judgment.  But  although  the 
first  crash  of  Byron's  thunder  could  scarcely  have 
been  louder  or  more  electric,  the  destructive  bolts 
might  have  been  more  wisely  aimed.  He  might  then 
have  exerted  a  more  lasting  influence  upon  England, 
where  even  liberals  soon  said  that  the  "  thunder's 
roll  "  had  "  taught  them  little."  ^  And  though  abroad 
the  Byronic  cult  has  had  length  of  days  that  are  not 
yet  at  an  end,  it  might  well  have  been  the  religion 
of  a  purer  humanity.  Mr.  Brandes  sees  this,  but  he 
will  not  call  attention  to  the  spots  on  his  sun. 

I  have  already  indicated,  in  describing  the  claim 

^  I  am  not  raising  the  question  whether  Matthew  Arnold  is  to  be 
counted  as  a  "liberal"  or  not.  It  is  characteristic  of  him  that  he  has 
packed  into  two  sonneis,  "  To  a  Republican  P^iend,  1848,"  the  higher 
faith  of  Liberalism  and  the  higher  wisdom  of  Conservatism  in  lines  so 
admirable  that  every  good  citizen  ought  to  know  them  by  heart. 


POETRY   AND   REBELLION         ill 

set  up  by  the  reactionaries  to  be  considered  as  the 
high  priests  of  virtue,  how  the  atmosphere  of  the 
time  provoked  Byron  to  confound  the  hearth  with 
the  altar  and  the  throne.  The  temptation  no  doubt 
was  strong,  but  he  could  have  resisted  it  if  there 
had  not  been  a  weak  place  in  his  own  armour. 
His  cynical  view  of  private  morals,  so  different  from 
the  generosity  of  his  political  passions,  was  connected 
with  his  old-fashioned  and  essentially  aristocratic 
ideas  of  women.  This  deficiency  in  his  equipment 
as  a  rebel  has  escaped  Mr.  Brandes'  attention.  Byron 
was  not  revolutionary  enough :  his  ideas  of  male 
supremacy  were  those  of  the  ancien  regime.  He 
understood  the  rights  of  man,  but  he  seems  never 
to  have  heard  of  the  rights  of  woman.  Yet  the 
idea  had  already  been  set  afloat  among  our  English 
radicals,  though  only  in  the  crudest  form.  Shorn 
of  its  coarseness  and  hardness,  Mary  WoUstonecraft's 
Rights  of  Women  was  in  her  day  a  great  advance  in 
social  thought.  It  is  a  vulgar  error  to  suppose  that 
the  book  contains  a  single  word  against  marriage  ; 
but  it  claims  education  for  women,  on  the  ground 
that  the  relation  of  the  sexes  must  be  essentially  in- 
tellectual and  moral,  not  sensual  and  trivial.  All 
such  ideas  were  to  the  creator  of  Juan  and  Haidee 
no  less  ridiculous  than  to  Lord  Eldon  or  George  III. 
"You  must  have  observed,"  says  Byron,  "that  I 
give  my  heroines  extreme  refinement,  joined  to  great 
simplicity    and    want    of    education " :     this    cheap 


122        CLIO,   AND    OTHER   ESSAYS 

surrender  to  the  "manly"  ideal  of  "the  fair  sex" 
largely  accounts  for  the  popularity  of  his  works 
with  the  vulgar  and  the  conventional.  The  moment 
he  touched  on  women  Byron  was  the  dandy  and 
grand  seigneur.  He  thus  writes  (November  8, 
1819)  of  the  Countess  Guiccioli  :  "  As  neither  her 
birth,  nor  her  rank,  nor  connections  of  birth  or 
marriage  are  inferior  to  my  own,  I  am  in  honour 
bound  to  support  her  through."  What  revolutionary 
sentiments!  What  justice  and  equality  is  here 
implied  to  the  Guiccioli's  humbler  sisters !  The 
truth  is  that  the  deliverer  of  Greece  had  not  "  doubled 
Cape  Turk."  Mr.  Brandes  might  have  pointed  out 
this  fact  in  one  of  his  seven  chapters  on  Byron,  with- 
out sinning  against  the  rigidity  of  his  own  liberalism. 

Again,  Mr.  Brandes  treats  the  Byronic  philosophy 
of  life  with  the  same  respect  with  which  he  treats 
the  Byronic  politics.  This  seems  a  mistake.  So, 
too,  some  of  the  pages  devoted  to  the  content  of 
Byron's  nature  poetry,  might  have  been  better  spent 
on  Wordsworth's.  Is  Manfred  really  "matchless  as 
an  Alpine  landscape "  ?  (p.  302).  It  has  some 
formidable  rivals  1  The  true  poetry  of  nature  and 
of  the  then  newly  discovered  Alps,  may  rather  be 
sought  in  Coleridge's  Hymn  to  Mont  Blanc;  in  Shelley's 
Prometheus  (Act  II.  sc.  3),  and  above  all  in  the 
Sixth  Book  of  the  Prelude,  with  all  the  absurd,  pleasing, 
trivial  realism  of  the  walking  tour,  lighted  by  oc- 
casional   gleams    of    solemn    grandeur    wherein    the 


POETRY   AND   REBELLION         123 

mountains   are  revealed  as  the  symbol  of  something 
too  great  for  our  comprehension. 

Mr.  Brandes  in  no  way  under-estimates  the  value 
of  the  content  of  Shelley's  poetry.  He  says,  speaking 
of  the  birth  at  Field  Place  in  August  1792,  that  his 
"life  was  to  be  of  greater  and  more  enduring  signi- 
ficance in  the  emancipation  of  the  human  mind  than 
all  that  happened  in  France"  even  in  that  great 
month.  Here,  surely,  he  is  more  in  the  right  than 
Matthew  Arnold,  Because  Shelley  does  not,  like 
Byron,  deal  with  politics  and  daily  life,  he  is  not 
therefore  "  ineffectual."  It  is  through  his  poetry  that 
we  occasionally  get  glimpses  into  that  other  sphere 
of  passions  not  of  this  earth. 

"Nor  seeks  nor  finds  he  mortal  blisses, 
But  feeds  on  the  aerial  kisses 
Of  shapes  that  haunt  thought's  wildernesses." 

It  is,  indeed,  true  that  whenever  Shelley  tried  to 
apply  the  standards  of  his  world  to  the  hard  facts 
of  ours,  he  made  himself,  at  best,  ridiculous.  As 
an  influence  on  politics  in  his  own  day,  he  was 
nothing.  His  cry  after  "  something  afar  from  the 
sphere  of  our  sorrow,"  died  away  like  faint  music 
over  the  heads  of  the  men  whom  Byron  summoned 
to  the  barricades, 

"  Ad  arma,  cessantes  ad  arma 
Concitet,  imperiumque  frangat." 

But  now  that  Metternich  and  Castlereagh  are  no 


124        CLIO,   AND   OTHER   ESSAYS 

more,  and  Garibaldi's  statue  is  safe  on  the  Janiciilum, 
and  the  ages  still  go  by  bringing  to  Western  Europe 
subtler  oppressions  and  larger  liberties ;  now  that 
we  must  apply  our  minds  to  "  Riddles  of  death 
Thebes  never  knew";  now  it  is  that  we  find  best 
of  all  in  Shelley's  poetry  the  atmosphere  which  can 
truly  be  called  Freedom,  the  zeal  for  the  unfettered 
pursuit  of  truth  and  of  justice  and  of  beauty ;  in 
each  fresh  generation,  youth  will  for  ever  be 
setting  out  on  some  new  voyage  for  which  the  last 
chorus  in  Hellas  is  the  sailors'  chant  of  departure. 
This  idea  Mr.  Brandes  has  well  expressed  as 
follows  : — 

"  When  Shelley  sings  to  liberty,  we  feel  that  this 
"  liberty  is  not  a  thing  which  we  can  grasp  with  our 
"hands,  or  confer  as  a  gift  in  a  constitution,  or 
"inscribe  among  the  articles  of  a  state  church,"  or, 
one  might  surely  add,  on  the  programme  of  a  revolu- 
tionary club !  "  It  is  the  eternal  cry  of  the  human 
"  spirit,  its  never-ending  requirement  of  itself  ;  it  is 
"the  spark  of  heavenly  fire  which  Prometheus  placed 
"  in  the  human  heart  when  he  formed  it,  and  which 
"  it  has  been  the  work  of  the  greatest  among  men  to 
"fan  into  the  flame  that  is  the  source  of  all  light,  and 
'all  warmth  in  those  who  feel  that  life  would  be 
"dark  as  the  grave  and  cold  as  stone  without  it." 

But  liberty,  even  Shelley's  liberty,  is  not  an  end 
but  a  means.  This  brings  us  at  last  to  issue  with 
the   central    idea   of    Mr.    Brandes'    book.     Liberty, 


POETRY   AND   REBELLION         125 

indeed,  is  the  indispensable  condition  of  any  noble 
function  of  the  soul — a  condition  so  seldom  realised, 
to  be  won  in  the  first  instance  only  by  such  deter- 
mined and  painful  warfare,  and  retained  only  by 
so  constant  a  watch  upon  our  conduct  and  its 
motives,  that  it  is  no  wonder  if  those  few  who  know 
the  value  and  the  rarity  of  freedom,  sometimes  make 
the  error  of  supposing  it  to  be  the  end  of  life.  Yet 
it  is  not  the  end  but  the  means.  The  mischief  is 
that  the  majority  of  men,  who  do  not  regard  it  as 
an  end,  greatly  under-estimate  its  importance  as  a 
means,  or  think  that  they  have  got  it  when  they 
are  only  following  some  conventional  standard. 

And  as  with  life,  so  with  poetry,  which  is  the 
essence  of  life.  The  condition  of  poetry  is  freedom, 
but  the  content  of  poetry  is  joy,  sorrow,  beauty,  love, 
man's  awe  at  the  strength  and  his  hope  in  the 
beneficence  of  those  unknown  powers  upon  whose 
lap  all  living  things  are  cradled.  Poetry  must  speak 
not  merely  or  even  chiefiy,  as  Mr.  Brandes  seems 
to  think,  of  liberty,  but  of  all  that  the  human  spirit 
desires  and  fears.  It  is  because  Shelley  has  created 
his  goddess  Liberty  in  the  image  of  all  these  things, 
that  she  has  some  reality  as  an  object  for  our 
devotion  ;  there  is  little  to  distinguish  his  liberty  from 
those  spiritual  and  material  forces  of  nature  to  which 
he  appeals  in  the  Ode  to  the  West  Wind.  And  all  the 
great  passions  of  the  heart  and  of  the  intellect  find 
expression    in    Wordsworth,   Coleridge,  Shelley,  and 


126        CLIO,   AND   OTHER   ESSAYS 

Keats.  Mr.  Brandes  comprehends  all  these  passions, 
but  his  heart  is  stirred  most  deeply  by  the  note 
of  rebellion.  Hence,  after  doing  full  justice  to 
Coleridge,  Scott,  Keats  and  Shelley,  he  dwells  longer 
and  more  lovingly  on  Byron.  "  In  the  First  Canto 
"of  Childe  Harold^'  he  says,  "we  already  find  the  love 
"  of  freedom  exalted  as  the  one  force  capable  of  emanci- 
"pating  from  the  despair  with  which  the  universal 
"misery  (the  Weltschmerz,  as  the  Germans  call  it) 
"has  overwhelmed  the  soul  "  (p.  296).  The  prescrip- 
tion is  too  limited  to  cope  with  a  disease  so  general. 
It  is  only  for  particular  individuals  in  special  epochs 
of  history  that  the  love  of  liberty  by  itself  alone  can 
be  enough  to  ennoble  life.  Byron  in  the  age  of 
Metternich  was  perhaps  a  case  in  point,  but  Byron 
was  neither  an  ordinary  person,  nor  ordinarily  situ- 
ated,— nor  altogether  satisfactory.  And,  after  all, 
the  reason  why  it  was  good  to  overthrow  Metternich 
was  that  we  might  advance  freely  to  the  positive 
values  of  life  which  Byron  so  often  afifected  to 
deny. 

Liberty,  then,  is  not  the  last,  but  the  first,  word  in 
human  affairs.  Its  spirit  must  envelope  and  preserve 
the  poet,  lest  he  suffer  decay,  like  Wordsworth  and 
Tennyson  growing  thistle-headed  in  old  age.  But 
his  eye  must  be  fixed  on  things  of  more  positive 
value.  In  an  age  of  tyranny  and  hypocrisy  such  as 
I  have  described,  this  atmosphere  of  liberty  had 
perforce  to  materialise  into  rebellion,  as  in  Coleridge 


POETRY   AND   REBELLION         127 

and  Wordsworth  in  their  youth,  and  in  Shelley  and 
Byron.  Keats,  indeed,  with  that  wonderful  artist's 
sanity  of  his,  remained  an  onlooker  with  strong 
liberal  sympathies,  rather  than  an  active  rebel.  He 
never  belonged  to  a  "  Pantisocratic  "  society.  And  it 
was  easy  for  Browning  and  Meredith  to  find  "liberty" 
enough  in  this  attitude,  in  an  age  of  comparative 
freedom.  But  by  whatever  means,  whether  by 
rebellion  or  otherwise,  each  kept  the  windows  of  his 
mind  clear,  the  chief  value  of  their  work  (except  only 
in  Byron's  case)  lay  not  in  the  wars  they  waged,  but 
in  the  things  for  which  alone  it  is  worth  while  to 
wage  war. 

Blessed  be  the  Quantock  Hills,  blazing  with  bell- 
heather  above  Somerset's  green  lanes,  and  sea,  and 
blessed  among  English  summers  be  that  of  1797  ! 
For  there  and  then  did  Coleridge  and  Wordsworth, 
no  less  creative  than  young  Buonaparte  in  the  Italian 
fields,  plan  out  the  downfall  of  Pope  and  of  the  ancien 
regime  in  letters.  If  the  spy  whom  Pitt  sent  to 
watch  them  had  fathomed  their  real  design  and  its 
ultimate  effect  on  the  established  order  of  things 
literary  and  spiritual,  what  a  report  the  honest  fellow 
might  have  sent  his  master  !  Perhaps  in  the  style 
of  Carlyle's  Cagliostro  s  Prophecy : — "  Ha  !  What  see 
I  ?  All  the  Alexandrines  in  creation  are  burnt 
up  !  .  .  ." 

And  yet  it  was  not  by  rebellion  but  by  creation 
that   Wordsworth    and    Coleridge   triumphed.      How 


128        CLIO,   AND   OTHER   ESSAYS 

many   times  have  young  men,   seemingly   as    clever 
and  foolish  as  those  two,  hopefully  sworn  to 

"  Run  amuck 
With  this  old  wodd  for  want  of  strife 
Sound  asleep." 

And  how  often  has  the  poor  sequel  been 

"  No  work  done,  but  great  works  undone." 

But  those  two  actually  performed  all  that  they 
promised  to  each  other  upon  the  Quantock  heaths. 
And  the  marvellous  Coleridge  did  the  greater  part 
of  his  share  in  the  revolution  that  very  winter  before 
they  parted !  For  there  and  then  he  wrote  The 
Ancient  Mariner  and  the  first  part  of  Christabel.  He 
wrote  them  to  illustrate  his  new  theory  of  poetry ; 
how  it  should  thrill  men  with  tales  of  antique  glamour. 
If  more  of  us  could  just  sit  down  and  "  illustrate " 
our  new  theories  of  literature  as  happily  as  Samuel 
Taylor  on  that  occasion,  what  a  world  it  would  be  ! 
Wordsworth,  on  the  other  hand,  proposed  as  the 
proper  substitute  for  Pope  something  very  different 
from  a  revival  of  mediaeval  supernaturalism.  He 
aspired  to  give  us  the  inner  life  of  man  in  contempla- 
tion of  nature.  His  mountain  ash  took  a  few  months 
longer  to  grow  to  perfection  than  Coleridge's  magic 
gourd.  In  the  Quantocks  the  principal  products 
of  his  Muse,  according  to  his  own  account  of  it  in 
the  Prelude,  were  Peter  Bell  and  The  Thorn.  There 
are   fine   passages   in    both    poems,   but    both   failed 


POETRY   AND   REBELLION         129 

to  show  their  author's  full  strength — not  merely  or 
even  chiefly  because  they  contained  lines  immortally 
absurd,  like 


and 


"  The  Ass  turned  round  his  head,  and  grinned. 
Appalling  process ! " 

"  I've  measured  it  from  side  to  side  : 
'Tis  three  feet  long,  and  two  feet  wide," 


— but  for  the  larger  reason  that  both  poems  contain 
too  much  of  incident,  glamour  and  violence,  which 
assort  ill  with  the  true  genius  of  Wordsworth.  The 
fact  was  that,  although  he  was  writing  to  illustrate 
a  principle  opposed  to  Coleridge's  theory,  he  was 
nevertheless  for  the  moment  too  much  under  his 
friend's  influence.  But  in  those  same  months  on 
the  Quantocks  he  also  wrote  minor  poems  entirely 
in  his  own  best  manner  : — "  I  heard  a  thousand 
blended  notes  "  ;  "  It  is  the  first  mild  day  of  March  "  ; 
the  last  two  lines  of  Simon  Lee;  and  "Up  !  up!  my 
Friend,  and  quit  your  books."  And  he  had  scarcely 
left  the  Quantocks  and  Coleridge  in  the  summer  of 
1798,  before  he  wrote  the  first  of  his  masterpieces, 
Tintern  Abbey.  In  the  next  half-dozen  years  followed 
nearly  all  his  greatest  work  replete  with  "  vital  feelings 
of  delight."  He  had  in  that  short  while  done  more 
for  the  happiness  and  perfection  of  mankind  than 
all  the  Pantisocratic  Societies  that  ever  talked.  His 
poems  dwell  in  us,  while  the  Ancient  Mariner,  a  greater 
miracle  of  art  perhaps,  is  a  tale  told  us  by  a  strange 


I30        CLIO,   AND   OTHER   ESSAYS 

man  from  a  far  country.  Mediaeval  magic  is  outside 
our  daily  experience,  a  recreation,  not  a  sustenance ; 
but  Wordsworth's  poems  are  the  inner  life  we  live 
if  we  are  wise  : — 

"  Under  such  banners  militant,  the  soul 
Seeks  for  no  trophies,  struggles  for  no  spoils 
That  may  attest  her  prowess,  blest  in  thoughts 
That  are  their  own  perfection  and  reward, 
Strong  in  herself  and  in  beatitude 
That  hides  her,  like  the  mighty  flood  of  Nile 
Poured  from  his  fount  of  Abyssinian  clouds 
To  fertilise  the  whole  Egyptian  plain." 

It  is,  then,  more  desirable  than  Mr.  Brandes  thinks, 
that  the  Truce  of  Poetry  should  be  observed,  when- 
ever the  spirit  of  liberty  can  honestly  exist  without 
open  rebellion.  The  best  poetry  should  be  the 
common  ground  of  all  creeds  and  of  all  parties. 
What  a  blessing  it  is  that  we  do  not  know  what 
"party"  or  "Church"  or  no-Church  Shakespeare 
"  belonged  to "  ;  and  the  innate  conservatism  of 
Paradise  Lost  so  neatly  balances  Milton's  Republi- 
canism that  he  remains  a  national  instead  of  a  party 
asset.  Poetry  unites  those  whom  all  other  writing 
divides.  It  is  a  body  of  scripture,  almost  a  religion, 
common  to  those  who,  though  not  of  one  opinion 
in  everything,  seek  some  method  by  which  to 
approach  one  another  on  subjects  of  deepest  feeling 
and  importance.  Liberal  spirits  and  pious  souls 
would  have  greater  difficulty  in  understanding  each 
other,   if   it    were    not   for   Milton,  Wordsworth  and 


POETRY   AND   REBELLION         131 

Shelley,  and  the  emotions  to  which  they  give  the  most 
perfect  expression.  If  poetry  were  at  all  widely 
understood  and  loved,  we  should  find  among  men 
more  of  those  several  qualities  to  engender  which 
is  the  true  function  of  religion  and  of  free  thought, 
of  conservative  and  liberal  movements. 

For  this  reason,  and  for  many  others  besides, 
there  is  truth  in  the  old  saying  about  the  songs 
and  the  laws  ;  yes,  the  songs  of  the  people  would 
indeed  be  more  important  than  their  laws,  if  only 
they  learnt  the  songs  and  lived  by  them,  as  they 
learn  and  observe  the  laws  !  But  how  little  is  this 
condition  fulfilled,  even  among  us  English  whose 
greatest  achievement  among  so  many  great  achieve- 
ments is  the  body  of  poetry  we  have  produced.  Of 
how  much  real  account  is  this  heritage  of  ours  in 
the  spiritual  life  even  of  our  educated  class  ?  What 
percentage  of  persons  in  any  section  of  the  com- 
munity has  read  Wordsworth's  Resolution  and  Inde- 
pendence twice  through  for  love  of  it  ? 

There  is  also  another  and  potentially  a  vaster 
sphere  of  influence  for  our  poets,  in  America,  where 
for  thousands  of  years  to  come,  innumerable  millions 
will  be  brought  up  to  speak  our  common  tongue. 
Let  us  hope  that  at  least  some  thousands  of  them 
in  every  generation  may  be  endowed  with  the 
qualities  of  mind  and  spirit  necessary  to  make 
Shakespeare  and  Milton,  Wordsworth  and  Keats 
more  to  them  than   names  of  people  whose  houses 


132        CLIO,    AND   OTHER   ESSAYS 

are  to  be  visited  on  tour.  May  these  poets  exert 
over  us  and  our  remote  descendants  the  same 
enormous  and  enduring  influence  that  Virgil  and 
Dante  exerted  over  old  Europe.  Otherwise,  whatever 
successes  may  attend  on  Democracy  or  on  Empire, 
the  Anglo-Saxon  race  will  have  failed  in  its  chief 
mission  of  spreading  in  widest  commonalty  the 
highest  pleasures  which  the  human  spirit  can  enjoy. 


JOHN  WOOLMAN,  THE  QUAKER 

There  are  three  religious  autobiographies  that  I 
think  of  together — the  Confessions  of  St.  Augustine 
and  of  Rousseau  and  the  Journal  of  John  Woolman, 
the  Quaker.  Each  of  these  men  had  soul-life 
abundantly,  and  the  power  of  recording  his  experi- 
ences in  that  kind  ;  and  each  gave  the  impulse  to 
a  great  current  in  the  world's  affairs — the  Mediaeval 
Church,  the  French  Revolution,  and  the  Anti-Slavery 
Movement.  But  Woolman  is  to  me  the  most  at- 
tractive, and  I  am  proud  to  think  that  it  was  he 
who  was  the  Anglo-Saxon — the  "  woolman "  of  old 
English  trader  stock. 

There  is  an  element  of  self  in  the  finest  ecstasies 
of  St.  Augustine,  the  spiritual  parent  of  Johamies 
Agricola  in  Meditation  as  depicted  by  Robert  Brown- 
ing, and  of  all  that  hard  soul-saving  clan.  He  begins 
religion  at  the  opposite  end  from  Francis  of  Assisi, 
and  they  never  meet.  The  African  Saint  started 
Western  Europe  on  the  downward  course  of  religious 
persecution  proper.  Before  him  there  had,  indeed, 
been  persecution  of  religions  for  racial  or  political 
reasons,  but  St.  Augustine  was  perhaps  the  chief  of 

those  who  supplied  the  religious  motive  for  religious 

133 


134        CLIO,    AND   OTHER   ESSAYS 

persecution,  and  turned  God  Himself  into  Moloch, 
a  feat  which  no  one  but  a  really  "  good  "  man  could 
have  performed.  Thenceforth,  until  the  age  of  the 
much  abused  Whigs  and  sceptics,  all  the  best  people 
in  the  world  were  engaged  in  torturing  each  other 
and  making  earth  into  hell.  It  was  through  St. 
Augustine  rather  than  through  Constantine  that  the 
Church  drank  poison.  The  torch  was  handed  down 
from  him  through  St.  Dominic  and  St.  Ignatius  till 
it  scorched  the  hand  of  St,  John  of  Geneva  by  the 
pyre  of  Servetus.  They  were  all,  at  least  after  their 
conversions,  unusually  "  good "  men,  but  not  good 
all  through  like  John  Woolman. 

Rousseau,  at  any  rate,  was  not  "good."  We  all 
ought  to  read  his  Confessions,  but  I  fear  the  reason 
why  many  of  us  perform  this  duty  is  not  always 
the  highest.  For  this  great  spiritual  reformer  owns 
up  to  common  weaknesses  indulged  to  degrees  that 
rise  to  an  epic  height.  The  story  of  the  piece  of 
ribbon  thrills  us  with  a  moment's  illusion  that  we 
are  morally  superior  to  the  man  who  started  the 
"religious  reaction"  and  the  love  of  mountains,  as 
well  as  the  French  Revolution.  And  then  he  fulfilled 
the  social  contract  by  leaving  his  babies  at  the  door 
of  the  foundling  hospital.  The  imaginary  story  of 
the  youth  and  manhood  of  one  of  those  unfathered 
children  of  genius,  say  during  the  French  Revolution, 
would  be  a  fine  theme  for  an  historical  fictionist  of 
imagination  and    humour :    Stevenson,  for   instance, 


JOHN   WOOLMAN,   THE   QUAKER     135 

would  have  loved  to  show  by  what  strange  routes 
through  the  Quartier  Latin  or  elsewhere  that  deserted 
brood  of  the  "  old  Serpent  of  Eternity "  found  their 
way  to  the  Morgue — or  perhaps  to  a  bourgeois'  easy- 
chair.  O  "  Savoyard  Vicar,"  first  lover  of  the  moun- 
tains, brother  of  the  poor,  shaker  down  of  empires, 
how  from  such  weakness  as  yours  was  born  such 
strength  ?  No  wonder  he  puzzles  his  biographers, 
of  whom  himself  was  the  first.  No  one  can  under- 
stand the  people  who  do  not  understand  themselves. 

Rousseau,  having  puzzled  himself,  inevitably  puzzled 
Lord  Morley,  who  had  caught  hold  of  simple  Voltaire 
and  packed  him  neatly  into  one  small  volume  (with 
Frederic  thrown  in  to  keep  him  company),  while  the 
insoluble  problem  of  Rousseau  trails  on  through  two 
volumes — the  more  interesting  but  the  less  "  final " 
of  the  twin  biographies.  Carlyle,  though  he  posed 
Rousseau  for  "  Hero  as  man  of  letters  "  did  not  even 
touch  the  problem.  But  the  uncouth,  rebellious  child 
of  nature  struck  in  him  sympathetic  chords,  and 
evoked  outbursts  of  grim  Carlylean  humour,  thus  : — 

"  He  could  be  cooped  into  garrets,  laughed  at 
"as  a  maniac,  left  to  starve  like  a  wild  beast  in  his 
"cage; — but  he  could  not  be  hindered  from  setting 
"the  world  on  fire.  His  semi-delirious  speculations 
"on  the  miseries  of  civilised  life,  and  suchlike,  helped 
"  well  to  produce  a  whole  delirium  in  France  generally. 
"True,  you  may  well  ask, — what  could  the  world,  the 
"governors  of  the  world,  do  with  such  a  man  ?    Diffi- 


136        CLIO,   AND   OTHER   ESSAYS 

"cult  to  say  what  the  governors  of  the  world  could 
"do  with  him  !  What  he  could  do  with  them  is  un- 
"  happily  clear  enough, — guillotine  a  great  many  of 
« them ! " 

On  another  occasion,  it  is  said,  at  a  very  English 
dinner  table,  Carlyle  was  bored  by  a  tribe  of 
Philistines  who  were  reiterating  over  their  port 
our  great  insular  doctrine  that  "  political  theories 
make  no  difference  to  practice."  After  listening 
long  in  silence  he  growled  out,  "There  was  once 
"a  man  called  Rousseau.  He  printed  a  book  of 
"political  theories,  and  the  nobles  of  that  land 
"laughed.  But  the  next  edition  was  bound  in  their 
"skins."  And  so  with  a  big  Scottish  peasant's 
chuckle,  he  fell  silent  again  amid  the  apologetic 
coughs  of  the  discomposed  dinner-party. 

John  Woolman  was  a  contero.porary  of  Voltaire 
and  Rousseau  though  he  scarcely  knew  it.  And  the 
spirit  of  that  age,  "dreaming  on  things  to  come," 
spoke  a  new  word  through  him  also,  bidding  men 
prepare  the  ground  for  what  we  may  call  the  Anglo- 
Saxon  Revolution,  the  abolition  of  negro  slavery. 
Woolman's  Journal  tells  how  this  humblest  and 
quietest  of  men  used  to  travel  round  on  foot,  year 
after  year,  among  those  old-fashioned  American 
Quakers,  stirring  their  honest  but  sleepy  consciences 
on  this  new  point  of  his  touching  "  the  holding  their 
fellow   men  as  property."     A  Quaker  Socrates,  with 


JOHN   WOOLMAN,   THE   QUAKER     137 

his  searching,  simple  questions,  he  surpassed  his 
Athenian  prototype  in  love  and  patience  and  argu- 
mentative fairness,  as  much  as  he  fell  below  him  in 
intellect.  And  when  the  Friends  found  that  they 
could  not  answer  John's  questions,  instead  of  poison- 
ing him  or  locking  him  up  as  an  anarchist,  they  let 
their  slaves  go  free  !  Truly,  a  most  surprising  out- 
come for  the  colloquy  of  wealthy  and  settled  men  with 
a  humble  and  solitary  pedestrian  !  Incredible  as  it 
may  seem,  they  asked  no  one  for  "  Compensation  "  ! 
But  then  the  Quakers  always  were  an  odd  people. 

Woolman's  religious  experience,  from  first  to  last 
concerned  his  love  and  duty  toward  his  fellow 
creatures,  and  not  the  selfish  salvation  of  his  own 
soul.  His  conversion,  we  may  say,  dated  from  the 
following  incident  in  his  childhood  : — 

"  On  going  to  a  neighbour's  house,  I  saw  on  the 
"way  a  robin  sitting  on  her  nest,  and  as  I  came  near 
"  she  went  off  ;  but  having  young  ones,  she  flew  about 
"and  with  many  cries  expressed  her  concern  for 
"  them.  I  stood  and  threw  stones  at  her,  and  one 
"  striking  her  she  fell  down  dead.  At  first  I  was 
"  pleased  with  the  exploit,  but  after  a  few  minutes 
"  was  seized  with  horror,  at  having,  in  a  sportive  way, 
"killed  an  innocent  creature  while  she  was  careful 
"  for  her  young.  I  beheld  her  lying  dead,  and  thought 
"  those  young  ones,  for  which  she  was  so  careful, 
''  must  now  perish  for  want  of  their  dam  to  nourish 
"  them.     After   some    painful    considerations   on    the 


138        CLIO,   AND   OTHER   ESSAYS 

"subject,  I  climbed  up  the  tree,  took  all  the  young 
"birds  and  killed  them,  supposing  that  better  than 
"  to  leave  them  to  pine  away  and  die  miserably.  In 
"this  case  I  believed  that  Scripture  proverb  was  ful- 
"  filled,  The  tender  mercies  of  the  wicked  are  cruel.  I 
"  then  went  on  my  errand,  and  for  some  hours  could 
"think  of  little  else  but  the  cruelties  I  had  committed, 
"and  was  much  troubled.  Thus  He  whose  tender 
"  mercies  are  over  all  His  works  hath  placed  a  principle 
"in  the  human  mind,  which  incites  to  exercise  good- 
"  ness  towards  every  living  creature." 

He  was  so  filled  with  the  spirit  of  love  that  he 
became,  as  it  were,  unconscious  of  danger  and  suffer- 
ing when  he  was  about  the  work  dictated  by  this 
impelling  force. 

"Twelfth  of  sixth  month,"  1763,  in  time  of  war 
with  the  Red  Indians,  "  being  the  first  of  the  week 
"  and  a  rainy  day,  we  continued  in  our  tent,  and  I  was 
"  led  to  think  on  the  nature  of  the  exercise  which  hath 
"attended  me.  Love  was  the  first  motion,  and  thence 
"  a  concern  arose  to  spend  some  time  with  the  Indians, 
"that  I  might  feel  and  understand  their  fife  and  the 
"  spirit  they  live  in,  if  haply  I  might  receive  some  in- 
"  struction  from  them,  or  they  might  be  in  any  degree 
"  helped  forward  by  my  following  the  leadings  of  truth 
"  among  them  ;  and  as  it  pleased  the  Lord  to  make 
"way  for  my  going  at  a  time  when  the  troubles  of 
"war  were  increasing,  and  when  by  reason  of  much 
"wet  weather  travelling  was  more  difficult  than  usual 


JOHN   WOOLMAN,    THE   QUAKER     139 

"  at  that  season,  I  looked  upon  it  as  a  more  favourable 
"opportunity  to  season  my  mind,  and  to  bring  me 
"  into  a  nearer  sympathy  with  them."  And  so  he  went 
among  the  Indians  to  exchange  with  them  what  we 
should  now  call  "  varieties  of  religious  experience," 
at  a  time  when  one  section  of  them  had  proclaimed 
"war  with  the  English,"  and  were  actually  bringuig 
back  English  scalps. 

His  objections  to  luxury,  which  he  carried  to  the 
greatest  lengths  in  his  own  case,  were  based  not 
on  any  ascetic  feeling,  but  on  the  belief  that  luxury 
among  the  well-to-do  was  a  cause  of  their  rapacity  and 
therefore  of  their  oppression  of  the  poor.  "  Expensive 
"living,"  he  writes,  "hath  called  for  a  large  supply, 
"and  in  answering  this  call  the  faces  of  the  poor 
"  have  been  ground  away  and  made  thin  through 
"  hard  dealing."  He  was  himself  a  man  of  but  slender 
means,  yet  on  this  ground  he  denied  himself  things 
which  he  regarded  as  luxuries,  and  others  would  call 
common  comforts.  Humanity  he  thought  of  as  a 
whole,  not  as  a  collection  of  individuals  each  busy 
saving  his  own  soul  or  amassing  his  own  fortune. 
The  rich,  he  held,  were  responsible  for  the  miseries 
of  the  poor,  and  the  "  good "  for  the  sins  of  the 
reprobate.  "  The  law  of  Christ,"  he  said,  "  consisted 
"in  tenderness  towards  our  fellow-creatures,  and  a 
"concern  so  to  walk  that  our  conduct  may  not  be  the 
"  means  of  strengthening  them  in  error." 

If   the   world    could   take    John    Woolman   for   an 


HO        CLIO,    AND    OTHER   ESSAYS 

example  in  religion  and  politics  instead  of  St.  Augustine 
and  Rousseau,  we  should  be  doing  better  than  we 
are  in  the  solution  of  the  problems  of  our  own  day. 
Our  modern  conscience-prickers  often  are  either  too 
"clever"  or  too  violent.  What  they  have  said  in 
one  play  or  novel,  they  must  contradict  in  the  next 
for  fear  of  appearing  simple.  Or  if  they  are  frankly 
simple,  they  will  set  fire  to  your  house  to  make  you 
listen  to  their  argument.  "  Get  the  writings  of  John 
Woolman  by  heart,"  said  Charles  Lamb — sound  advice 
not  only  for  lovers  of  good  books  but  for  would-be 
reformers. 

They  say  John  Brown  in  the  ghost  went  marching 
along  in  front  of  the  Northern  armies.  Then  I  guess 
John  Woolman  was  bringing  up  the  ambulance  behind. 
He  may  have  lent  a  spiritual  hand  to  Walt  Whitman 
in  the  flesh,  bandaging  up  those  poor  fellows.  As 
to  John  Brown,  to  use  a  Balkan  expression,  he  was 
a  comitadji  "undaunted,  true  and  brave."  He  could 
knock  up  families  at  night  and  lead  out  the  fathers  and 
husbands  to  instant  execution,  or  be  hung  himself, 
with  an  equal  sense  of  duty  done,  all  in  the  name  of 
the  Lord,  who  he  reckoned  was  antagonistic  to  negro 
slavery.  And  then  came  the  war,  those  slaughterings 
by  scores  of  thousands  of  the  finest  youthful  manhood 
in  the  world,  the  grinding  up  of  the  seed-corn  of 
Anglo-Saxon  America,  from  which  racially  she  can 
never  wholly  recover.  And  all  because  the  majority 
of  slave-owners,  not  being  Quakers,  had  refused  to 


JOHN   WOOLMAN,   THE   QUAKER     141 

listen  to  John  Woolman.  Close  your  ears  to  John 
Woolman  one  century,  and  you  will  get  John  Brown 
the  next,  with  Grant  to  follow. 

The  slave-owners  in  the  British  Empire  were  not 
Quakers,  but  fortunately  for  us  they  were  a  feeble 
folk,  few  enough  to  be  bought  out  quietly.  One  of 
England's  characteristic  inventions  is  Revolution  by 
purchase.  It  saves  much  trouble,  but  it  is  a  luxury 
that  only  rich  societies  can  afford.  It  was  lucky  for 
England  that  George  III  did  not  keep  the  Southern 
colonies  when  he  lost  us  New  England.  It  very 
nearly  happened  so,  and  if  it  had,  then  would  Old 
England  have  been  wedded  to  slavery.  As  it  is  she 
became  John  Woolman's  best  pupil. 

The  Anti-Slavery  movement  was  quite  as  important 
as  the  French  Revolution.  For  if  the  "  industrial 
revolution "  had  been  fully  developed,  all  the  world 
over,  while  men  still  thought  it  right  to  treat  black 
men  as  machines,  the  exploitation  of  the  tropics 
by  the  modern  Company  promoter  on  "  Congo " 
lines  would  have  become  the  rule  instead  of  the 
exception.  Central  America,  Africa,  perhaps  India 
and  ultimately  China,  would  be  one  hell,  and  Europe 
would  be  corrupted  as  surely  as  old  Rome  when 
she  used  the  conquered  world  as  a  stud-farm  to 
breed  slaves  for  her  latifundia.  The  Anti-Slavery 
movement  came  in  the  nick  of  time,  just  before 
machinery  could  universalise  the  slave  system. 
Slavery  on  the  scale  of  our  modern  industries,  bind- 


142        CLIO,    AND   OTHER   ESSAYS 

ing  all  the  continents  together  in  one  wicked  system 
of  exploitation,  would  have  been  too  big  an  "  interest  " 
for  reformers  to  tackle.  Even  as  it  was,  America  was 
very  nearly  strangled  by  "  cotton "  in  the  Southern 
States,  a  more  evil  and  a  far  more  formidable  thing 
than  the  old  eighteenth-century  domestic  slavery  in 
the  same  region.  But  Wilberforce  had  by  that  time  set 
the  main  current  of  the  world's  opinion  the  other  way. 
So  it  was  too  late.  But  even  now  Congo  and  Putu- 
mayo  and  the  Portuguese  Colonies  remind  us  how 
narrow  was  the  world's  escape  and  how  incomplete 
is  the  victory.  We  still  need  men  like  Mr.  Morel  and 
Sir  Roger  Casement  to  cut  the  bandages  from  our 
eyes,  or  we  stand  blindfold  holding  the  clothes  to  the 
never-ending  wickedness  of  Mammon.  How  then 
would  it  have  gone  with  the  world  if  that  poor  Quaker 
clerk  had  kept  to  himself  those  first  queer  questionings 
of  his  about  "  holding  fellow-men  as  property "  ? 
Woolman  was  not  a  bigwig  in  his  own  day,  and  he 
will  never  be  a  bigwig  in  history.  But  if  there  be  a 
"  perfect  witness  of  all-judging  Jove,"  he  may  expect 
his  meed  of  much  fame  in  heaven.  And  if  there  be 
no  such  witness,  we  need  not  concern  ourselves.  He 
was  not  working  for  "  fame  "  either  here  or  there. 


POOR  MUGGLETON  AND  THE  CLASSICS 

Poor  Muggleton  was  a  failure  at  the  classics.  With- 
out the  help  of  Mr.  Bohn's  translations  he  never  could 
read  Greek  or  any  but  the  simplest  Latin,  though  he 
had  studied  little  else  save  those  two  languages  during 
eight  years  at  school  ;  so  he  had  to  be  rescued 
ignominiously  by  some  new-fangled  tripos  at  Cam- 
bridge. Hence  he  writes  with  the  proverbial  bitter- 
ness of  the  incompetent,  on  a  subject  of  which  he 
really  knows  nothing.  Only  to-day  I  received  from 
him  the  following  precious  lucubration  about  our 
methods  of  classical  teaching,  written  in  complete 
ignorance  of  the  reforms  that  have  taken  place  in 
it  since  he  was  a  boy  : — 

"  Greek  tragedy,  unlike  Homer  and  Aristophanes,  is 
the  hardest  thing  in  the  world  of  letters  to  be  ap- 
preciated by  an  Englishman  with  Shakespeare  in  his 
blood.  The  plays  require  a  Verrall  to  turn  them  inside 
out  and  a  Gilbert  Murray  to  translate  them  into  Swin- 
burnian,  before  I  can  see  something  they  might  have 
meant, — and  didn't  according  to  some  critics  !  And 
these  masterpieces,  requiring  the  finest  subtlety  of 
literary  feeling  and  scholarship  in  the  reader,  are 
selected    for    the    perusal    of    boys    who    have    not 


144        CLIO,   AND   OTHER   ESSAYS 

yet  mastered  Greek  grammar  and  are  ignorant  of 
the  real  values  even  of  English  literature.  I  was 
actually  turned  on  to  read  Hecuba  when  I  was  ten  ! 
What  was  Hecuba  to  me  or  I  to  Hecuba  ?  I  remember 
feeling  vaguely  depressed  by  a  mental  picture  of  the 
poor  old  lady  sitting  in  the  dust  at  a  tent  door,  but  I 
was  not  purified  by  fear  and  pity.  I  thought  it  all 
strangely  dull,  whereas  Homer  and  Aristophanes  I 
always  understood  and  felt,  even  when  I  had  to  look 
out  every  second  word.  I  daresay  the  age  for  begin- 
ning Greek  tragedy  has  since  been  raised  to  eleven, 
or  even  twelve  !  Who  knows  ?  For  Reform  is  afoot 
in  the  scholastic  world  nowadays. 

"  I  am  sometimes  told  that  Greek  tragedy  has  to  be 
put  thus  early  into  boys'  hands,  in  order  to  provide 
examples  of  the  Iambic  verse  which  they  are  shortly 
afterwards  required  to  compose.  But  why  are  they 
asked  to  compose  poetry  in  a  language  they  have 
not  yet  mastered  ?  In  the  case  of  any  modern 
language,  no  schoolmaster  would  dream  of  adopt- 
ing a  method  so  absurd.  I  only  wish  I  had  been 
taught  to  read  Greek  fluently,  instead  of  being  com- 
pelled to  translate  English  into  Greek  verse.  That 
process  was,  with  my  schoolfellows  and  me,  a  very 
remarkable  kind  of  literary  occupation.  We  first 
looked  out  all  the  English  words  in  a  dictionary  and 
wrote  down  the  Greek  equivalents  in  their  English 
order  ;  and  then  we  tried  to  transpose  the  words  thus 
collected  into  an  order  consonant  with  the  rules  of 


MUGGLETON   AND   THE   CLASSICS     145 

Iambic  metre,  which  were  to  us  purely  arbitrary  and 
meaningless.  It  was  neither  more  nor  less  educative 
than  putting  together  the  pieces  of  a  Chinese  puzzle. 
I  have  certainly  been  helped  in  my  understanding 
of  the  construction  of  sentences  and  the  subtlety  of 
language  by  a  rigid  course  of  Latin  Prose  composi- 
tion ;  but  Greek  composition  was  quite  beyond  me, 
and  I  believe  that  only  the  best  scholars  have  time 
to  learn  both  properly. 

"The  fact  is,"  continues  Muggleton — [Whenever 
a  man  writes  "the  fact  is,"  or  "doubtless,"  he  is 
always  going  to  rush  into  the  realms  of  purest  fancy 
or  conjecture,  as  Muggleton  now] — "  The  fact  is  that 
the  scheme  of  education  now  made  to  serve  for  the 
average  English  upper  class  boy  was  devised  in  its 
main  outlines  in  the  time  of  Erasmus,  in  the  glorious 
days  when  Learning  like  a  stranger  came  from  far  and 
lodged  in  Queen's  College,  Cambridge.  The  scheme 
was  then  devised,  not  for  many  stupid  boys,  but  for 
a  few  clever  boys  ;  not  to  prepare  them  for  business, 
government  or  general  culture,  but  to  enable  them  to 
edit  '  brown  Greek  manuscripts,'  to  *  give  us  the 
doctrine  of  the  enclitic  De,'  and  rout  the  Scotists. 
Almost  the  sole  duty  of  the  learned  at  that  moment 
in  the  world's  affairs,  was  to  master  Greek  and  Latin 
grammar  and  edit  Greek  and  Latin  texts.  And  into 
this  ancient  mould,  contrived  for  a  special  purpose  long 
ago  fulfilled  and  done  with,  the  mind  of  the  average 
little  Englishman  is  still  in  great  measure  forced.    The 


146        CLIO,   AND   OTHER   ESSAYS 

thing  was  already  an  anachronism  and  a  scandal  as 
long  ago  as  the  reign  of  Charles  II,  when  Eachard,  in 
his  famous  Contempt  of  the  Clergy,  pronounced  in  quite 
the  modern  spirit  against  the  methods  of  classical 
education  common  to  his  day  and  our  own. 

"  I  cannot  join  in  the  wish  often  expressed  that  a 
classical  education  may  be  preserved  for  the  ordinary 
boy,  because  he  has  never  had  one  yet.  But  I  hope 
he  may  get  one  soon.  Hitherto  he  has  always  been 
sacrificed  to  the  real  or  supposed  needs  of  a  scholarly 
minority.  The  present  system  is  skilfully  contrived 
to  enable  a  boy  of  average  talents  to  spend  eight 
years  almost  exclusively  at  Latin  and  Greek,  and 
leave  off  unable  to  read  at  sight  either  of  those 
languages,  save  the  very  simplest  Latin." 

Poor  old  Muggleton  !  This  is  one  of  the  subjects 
on  which  he  is  like  a  bear  with  a  sore  head — and  an 
uncommonly  thick  one  at  that !  Yet  his  bitterness 
against  classical  education  is  not  extended  to  the 
classics.  Hellas  herself,  the  mistress  whom  he  has 
wooed  in  vain,  he  follows  with  the  "  old-dog "  faith- 
fulness of  the  rejected  lover  in  comedy.  As  one  who 
has  ceased  to  hope  but  not  to  sigh,  finds  it  his  chief 
bliss  to  watch  the  lady  drive  past  in  the  Park,  so  does 
Muggleton  still  sit  down  to  his  Homer, — Greek  and 
English, — opening  it  ever  with  a  secret  thrill  of 
reverence.  He  is  often  found  sitting  in  front  of  the 
Elgin  Marbles.     And  he  loves  to  listen  to  tales  of  the 


MUGGLETON   AND   THE   CLASSICS     147 

spades  of  Crete.  He  would  never  go  to  Athens  in 
company,  or  at  a  season  when  others  were  there. 
But  last  summer  he  cunningly  designed  and  executed 
a  feint  of  visiting  the  Balkans,  ostensibly  to  see  how 
the  Christians  in  those  parts  loved  one  another,  but 
really  to  emerge  thence  at  Salonika  and  make  a  bolt 
for  Athens  in  the  hot  season,  when  no  one  else  would 
be  on  the  Acropolis  !  All  seems  to  have  gone  well, 
for  I  received  the  following  from  him,  written  at 
Salonika  : — 

"No,  I  don't  care  whether  the  Bulgarian  troops 
round  the  corner  have  their  throats  cut,  or  cut  the 
throats  of  the  Greeks,  though  clearly  one  or  the  other 
will  happen  before  the  month  is  out.  I  am  sitting  on 
the  balcony,  looking  over  the  busy  little  modern  port 
at  a  better  world  and  a  greater  epoch  in  Levantine 
history,  looking  at  Olympus  across  the  shining  waters 
of  the  Aegean,  across  the  bay  where  Xerxes'  fleet  rode 
at  anchor  when  it  had  come  through  the  canal  of 
Athos ;  I  am  on  the  spot — it  may  be — where  he  sat 
to  review  it.  His  army  must  have  been  camped  in 
the  great  plain  behind,  across  which  our  slow  train 
dragged  us  yesterday  from  Monastir.  It  was  as  he  ap- 
proached Therma  (  =  Salonika)  that  the  lions  attacked 
his  camels.  And  then,  says  Herodotus,  Xerxes  seeing 
from  The^nna  the  mountains  of  Thessalj,  0/ywpus — 
Well,  there  across  the  bay  is  Olympus,  seen  from 
Therma  still,  though  no  longer  by  Xerxes,  crowned 
with   snow   in   June,    girdled   with  rocks,  cleft  with 


148        CLIO,   AND   OTHER   ESSAYS 

gullies  and  wrapped  round  its  base  with  white 
morning  clouds,  which  leave  it  above,  alone  in  aether, 
in  a  world  far  from  ours.  So  it  stood  for  aeons  before 
the  first  fair-haired  Achaean  warriors  came  across 
the  plain  from  the  north,  seeking  sunnier  lands  by 
this  gay  blue  sea.  So  it  stood  when  they  looked  at  it 
and  wondered  what  lands  lay  beyond,  hidden  by  it, 
and  went  south  to  see,  and  stayed,  for  the  lands  were 
good  and  they  and  their  children  might  dwell  there. 
So  it  stood,  when  Xerxes  looked  at  it  from  here,  and 
his  courtiers,  it  may  be,  told  him  that  the  Hellenes 
deemed  that  their  gods  dwelt  on  the  summit.  By  the 
issue  of  that  happier  Turkish  war  of  old,  when  first 
'the  barbarian'  came,  it  was  decided  whether  that 
mountain  should  be  as  other  mountains  which  have 
been  clothed  with  legends  by  the  valley-dwellers  and 
seafarers  at  their  base, — legends  that  rested  on  them 
awhile  and  melted  off  like  the  summer  snow  and  were 
forgotten  ;  or  whether  after  some  2500  years  the  bare 
sight  of  that  mountain  and  the  knowledge  of  its  name 
should  be  to  a  traveller  from  an  island  beyond  the 
limits  of  the  world  the  one  sight  that  he  could  not 
endure  to  see  without  tears,  though  he  had  passed 
through  lands  just  liberated  and  villages  desolated  by 
war, — because  no  place  on  earth  could  win  of  him 
such  reverence,  were  it  not  that  there  is  a  city  beyond 
that  mountain." 

From   a  subsequent   letter   I   gather  that  the  city 
referred  to  is  Athens.     Muggleton  was  not  seasick  on 


MUGGLETON   AND   THE   CLASSICS     149 

the  voyage  from  Salonika  to  Chalcis,  so  he  was  able 
to  imagine  himself  on  board  an  Athenian  trireme  at 
Artemisium,  beating  up  and  down  the  straits  of 
Euboea  in  alternate  fits  of  pluck  and  panic  during 
Thermopylae  week.  Luckily  it  was  midnight  when  he 
went  by  Thermopylae,  so  he  missed  the  disillusion- 
ment of  seeing  the  famous  pass  now  broadened  by 
the  retirement  of  the  sea.  He  saw  it  all,  vaguely,  by 
a  Byronic  moon,  weaving  "  her  bright  chain  o'er  the 
deep,"  and  could  imagine  that  the  lights  at  the  foot 
of  the  mountains  were  the  torches  of  the  barbarians 
preparing  to  attack  Leonidas  at  dawn. 

So  next  week  I  got  this  letter  from  Muggleton, 
dated  7  A.M.,  from  "  the  roof  of  the  Parthenon." 

"  You  are  still  in  bed.  I  am  on  the  high  top  gallant 
of  the  world.  The  Acropolis  opens  at  dawn  and  I 
have  had  an  hour  here  alone  !  There  was  one  guardian 
on  the  scene,  with  whom  I  made  friends  over  a  little 
wild  bird  he  had  caught  and  was  nursing.  He  let 
me  into  the  staircase  that  leads  onto  the  roof  of  the 
Parthenon  and  locked  me  in.  I  say  'roof,'  though 
roof  there  is  none,  but  I  am  sitting  on  the  top  of  the 
unroofed  marble  walls.  A  few  inches  under  my  left 
foot  is  the  riders'  frieze, — for  Elgin  left  the  west  side 
of  it.  I  crossed  onto  the  top  of  the  outer  or  pedi- 
ment wall  and  thence  looked  back  and  saw  the  frieze 
at  close  quarters,  hailing  the  youth  in  the  felt  hat 
whom  I  have  long  loved  in  casts  and  photographs. 
There  he  still  rides,  as  Phidias  taught  him,  with  head 


150        CLIO,   AND   OTHER   ESSAYS 

half  bent ;  only  the  back  rim  of  his  hat  is  broken  off 
into  mere  outline  by  Time.  Then  I  crossed  by  a 
breach  in  the  marble  cliffs  onto  the  pediment — the 
ledge  where  the  Elgin  Marbles  used  to  sit — and  made 
m.y  way  along  it,  like  a  mortal  on  Olympus  while  the 
Gods  are  away.  At  the  other  end  of  the  pediment 
are  the  two  remaining  statues,  male  and  female,  in  an 
awful  and  religious  solitude.  There  these  two  now  sit 
alone,  '  strength  and  beauty  met  together,'  looking 
over  Aegina  and  Salamis,  and  waiting  for  the  end  of 
the  world.  Now  I  have  stood  beside  them  ;  I  have 
made  my  pilgrimage  and  touched  the  gods  of  my 
idolatry. 

"No  description  can  give  you  Athens.  If  you  feel 
that  these  were  the  greatest  people  in  the  world,  who 
invented  freedom,  art,  literature  and  thought,  and  if,  so 
feeling,  you  stand  on  the  Acropolis  and  see  all  the 
undoubted  places  in  which  they  did  it,  with  the  old 
school-familiar  names  upon  them — Pnyx,  Parthenon, 
Dionysus'  Theatre,  Salamis  Bay — all  blent  together  in 
a  harmony  of  reds  and  greys,  yellows  and  olive-greens, 
with  purple  hills  beyond  to  crown  Cephisus'  vale  as 
yesterday  at  sunset, — why  then  not  Rome  has  any- 
thing like  it  to  show  the  heart. 

"A  stone's-throw  from  the  Parthenon  stands  the 
Erechtheum,  loveliest  of  buildings  in  the  Ionic  style 
as  the  Parthenon  is  the  grandest  in  the  Doric.  Fifty 
years  only  parts  them,  the  second  great  fifty  years  of 
Athenian  history,  yet  the  change  from  one  perfect  form 


MUGGLETON   AND  THE   CLASSICS     151 

of  architecture  and  ornament  to  another  was  made  as 
easily  as  when  a  sleeper  turns  on  his  side. 

"  The  modern  town  has  kindly  built  itself  far  away 
not  merely  from  the  summit  of  the  Acropolis  but 
from  the  site  of  the  greatest  places  below.  There,  for 
instance,  is  the  Areopagus,  a  kopje  or  limestone  outcrops 
as  naked  and  as  primeval  to-day  as  it  was  when  Orestes 
and  other  less  mythical  personages  were  tried  there. 
The  cave  underneath  was  where  the  Furies  lived. 
The  modern  town,  where  it  is  permitted  to  appear,  is 
most  inoffensive  and  does  duty  in  the  spectacle  for 
the  old  one,  its  tiles  forming  part  of  the  colour 
scheme  in  the  view  from  up  here.  Nothing  in  the 
landscape  distracts  the  eye  in  its  leap  from  the 
Acropolis  to  the  hills  and  islands  on  the  horizon, — 
corresponding  to  Alban  and  Sabine  hills  in  the  Jani- 
culan  view.  Aegina,  in  the  middle  distance,  is  really 
as  far  away  from  here  as  Dover  from  Calais,  but  in  this 
clear  atmosphere  the  distance  only  begins  with  Argolis 
beyond. 

"  It  is  half-past  eight,  and  already  as  I  sit  up  here 
the  sun  is  reverberating  off  Pericles'  huge  marble 
blocks.  The  birds  are  going  in  and  out  of  the  holes 
in  the  smooth,  white  walls.  Not  that  the  walls  are 
ruinous,  for  what  is  left  of  the  Parthenon  is  most 
beautifully  cared  for  and  repaired.  New  marble 
blocks,  carefully  dated  i8y2y  igo2,  iQii,  as  the  case 
may  be,  are  put  in  where  required  to  hold  it  together. 

"  What  irony  that  this,  the  central  hall  of  the  civi- 


152        CLIO,   AND   OTHER  ESSAYS 

lised  world,  should  have  stood  complete  during  the 
1200  years  when  mankind  was  too  barbarous  to  care 
about  it,  and  was  blown  up  by  Christians  and  Moslems 
between  them  in  1678,  just  before  the  West  returned 
to  worship  it.  Think  of  those  thousand  years,  when 
the  sun  rose  and  set  every  day  on  the  Parthenon 
standing  in  perfect  beauty,  uncared  for  by  the  savage 
tribes  of  men.  Even  the  ruins  are  worth  to  us  any 
othtr  ten  buildings.  For  here  the  plant  '  man  '  first 
shot  up  aloft  into  aether.  From  primal  brushwood 
suddenly  he  grew  up  straight  into  an  oak  of  which  the 
head  touched  heaven ;  and  in  the  branches  such 
birds  sang  and  such  fruits  hung  as  never  since  are 
seen  or  heard.  Since  then  we  have  all  been  smaller 
offshoots  of  that  tree,  save  when  the  brushwood 
reconquers  territory,  as  it  often  does  and  has  most 
sadly  here,  with  its  squat  Turkish  fungus,  followed 
by  the  merry  little  scrub-oak  Greek  of  to-day,  to 
whom  I  wish  all  good  things.      But  here,  where  for 

once  the  holy  spirit  of  man " 

Here  Muggleton  grows  speculative,   and   I    return 
his  letter  to  my  pocket. 


THE    MIDDLE    MARCHES 

"  On  Keilder-side  the  wind  blaws  wide  ; 

There  sounds  nae  hunting-horn 
That  rings  sae  sweet  as  the  winds  that  beat 

Round  banks  where  Tyne  is  born. 
The  Wansbeck  sings  with  all  her  springs, 

The  bents  and  braes  give  ear ; 
But  the  wood  that  rings  wi'  the  sang  she  sings 

I  may  not  see  nor  hear  ; 
For  far  and  far  thae  blithe  burns  are, 

And  strange  is  a'thing  near." 

Swinburne,  A  Jacobite^ s  Exile. 

The  glories  of  cloudland,  the  white  mountains  with 
their  billowy  clefts,  lie  along  the  horizon,  rather 
than  in  the  dome  of  the  sky.  They  are  frescoes 
on  the  walls,  rather  than  on  the  ceihng,  of  heaven. 
Sunrise  and  sunset  often  paint  upon  them  their 
pictures  of  an  hour,  unseen  by  us,  behind  some 
neighbouring  grove  or  hill.  Still  more  often  do 
Alpine  or  Cumbrian  mountains,  from  their  very 
height  and  the  nearness  of  one  giant  to  another, 
hide  the  wealth  of  heaven  from  the  climber  on 
the  hill-side,  who  has,  however,  in  those  lands 
his  terrestrial  compensations.  In  fen  country,  the 
clouds  are  seen,  but  at  the  price  of  an  earth  of  flat 
disillusionment.      In     Northumberland    alone,    both 

'53 


154        CLIO,    AND   OTHER   ESSAYS 

heaven  and  earth  are  seen  ;  we  walk  all  day  on 
long  ridges,  high  enough  to  give  far  views  of  moor 
and  valley,  and  the  sense  of  solitude  above  the  world 
below,  yet  so  far  distant  from  each  other,  and  of 
such  equal  height,  that  we  can  watch  the  low  skirt- 
ing clouds  as  they  "  post  o'er  land  and  ocean  without 
rest."  It  is  the  land  of  the  far  horizons,  where  the 
piled  or  drifted  shapes  of  gathered  vapour  are  for 
ever  moving  along  the  furthest  ridge  of  hills,  like 
the  procession  of  long  primeval  ages  that  is  written 
in  tribal  mounds  and  Roman  camps  and  Border 
towers,  on  the  breast  of  Northumberland. 

The  foreground  between  us  and  the  horizon  view 
is  sometimes  heather,  alive  with  the  call  and  flight 
of  grouse  ;  more  often  the  "  bent,"  as  the  ballad 
writers  called  the  rough  white-grass  moor,  home  of 
sparse  broods  of  black  game.  The  silence  is  only 
broken  by  water's  ancient  song,  as  the  burn  makes 
its  way  down  rocky  hollows  towards  the  haymakers 
at  work  under  the  sycamore  beside  the  grey  stone 
farm  below.  Up  above  here,  on  the  moor,  the 
silent  sheep  browse  all  day  long,  filling  the  mind 
with  thoughts  of  peace  and  safety ;  they  seem  diligent 
to  compensate  themselves  for  a  thousand  years  of 
raids  and  interrupted  pasture.  The  farms  are  so 
large,  that  often,  in  spite  of  good  shepherding,  the 
bones  of  a  sheep  are  found  behind  some  "  auld  fail 
dyke"* — an  old-world  landmark  of  this  oozy  desert. 

^  Fail  =  turf. 


THE   MIDDLE   MARCHES  155 

In  the  great  days,  the  Border  poets  used  to  find 
skeletons,  not  of  sheep  only,  thus  derelict  under  the 
wasting  wind. 

"  In  behint  yon  auld  fail  dyke, 
I  wot  their  lies  a  new-slain  Knight ; 
And  naebody  kens  that  he  lies  there 
But  his  hawk,  his  hound,  and  his  lady  fair. 

Mony  a  one  for  him  makes  mane, 
But  nane  sail  ken  whae  he  is  gane ; 
O'er  his  white  banes,  when  they  are  bare. 
The  wind  sail  blaw  for  evermair." 

Still  the  west  wind  blows  over  Northumberland, 
bending  seaward  each  lonely  tree.  And  if  it  no 
longer  parches  the  bones  of  men,  around  us  and 
under  our  feet  in  the  covering  "bent"  are  strewn 
the  bones  of  sheep,  and  of  the  lesser  victims  of  the 
hovering  birds  of  prey.  The  ungarnished  moorland 
tells  no  flattering  tale.  For  on  it  we  see  written  the 
everlasting  alternation  of  life  and  death.  Peace  and 
beauty  reign,  but  sternly  mindful  of  the  conditions 
of  their  tenure,  the  eternal  law  that  the  generations 
must  live  by  devouring  each  other.     So  on  the  moor, 

"  We  wot  of  life  through  death. 
How  each  feeds  each  we  spy." 

Northumberland  throws  over  us,  not  a  melancholy, 
but  a  meditative  spell. 

"  It  gives  us  homeliness  in  desert  air, 
And  sovereignty  in  spaciousness." 


156        CLIO,   AND   OTHER   ESSAYS 

For  the  distance,  the  illimitable,  is  seldom  out  of 
sight.  The  far  ridge,  the  horizon  rich  with  cloud 
shapes,  is  always  there.  Like  all  the  greatest  things, 
like  the  universe  itself,  this  land  does  not  easily  yield 
up  the  truth,  whether  its  secret  heart  is  of  joy  or 
of  sorrow.  It  heightens  both,  till  they  are  fused,  and 
the  dispute  between  them  loses  meaning.  The  great 
silence  is  too  profound  to  be  broken  with  a  question. 
The  distance  is  so  grand,  that  we  cannot  wish  it 
near.     We  are  satisfied  by  we  know  not  what. 

One  of  the  greatest  of  these  far  views,  and  the 
central  one  of  all  for  the  right  geographical  compre- 
hension of  Northumbrian  history,  is  to  be  had  from 
a  ridge  two  miles  south-east  of  Elsdon,  where  the 
Harwood  road  from  the  east  reaches  the  summit, 
pauses  appropriately  under  Winter's  Gibbet  to  take 
in  the  western  view,  and  then  begins  to  fall  down 
rapidly  to  Elsdon  and  Redesdale.  It  is  markedly  a 
water-shed,  as  will  be  seen  on  the  map  ;  for  it  divides 
the  sources  of  Font  and  Wansbeck  that  flow  directly 
eastward  to  the  sea  through  the  pale  of  civilisation, 
from  the  Rede  Water  and  North  Tyne  Valleys,  that 
here  turn  and  sweep  southward  for  a  while  through 
the  old  lawless  borderland,  till  at  last  they  reach  the 
South  Tyne,  and  turn  to  flow  down  with  it  to  New- 
castle and  the  sea.  Behind  the  traveller,  as  he  comes 
up  to  the  Gibbet,  lie  a  few  miles  of  "  bent "  and 
moorland  sloping  east  towards  the  agricultural  wealth 
of  seaward  Northumberland  ;  before  him,  to  the  west, 


THE   MIDDLE   MARCHES 


157 


158        CLIO,   AND   OTHER   ESSAYS 

suddenly  revealed  as  he  breasts  the  ridge,  is  the 
Border  country — Redesdale  coming  down  out  of  the 
Cheviot  hills  in  a  straight  line  for  twenty  miles,  and 
at  its  head  the  massive  bluff  of  Carter  Fell,  under 
whose  northern  edge  the  great  road  passes  into 
Scotland. 

Thus  the  Gibbet  seems  the  flag  of  war  hung  out 
on  the  ramparts  by  civil  against  savage  man. 
Yet,  in  fact,  it  was  only  set  up  in  1791,  when 
the  shepherds  of  Redesdale  and  Tynedale  were  no 
longer  lawless,  but  had  become  honest  Presby- 
terians, true  to  the  faith  of  Burns  and  the  Bible. 
The  corpse  of  an  unheroic  tramp  named  Winter 
was  hanged  here  to  rot  in  chains  (and  finally, 
when  he  fell  to  pieces,  in  a  sack) — the  last  case  of 
this  legal  barbarity  perpetrated  in  England,  they  say. 
He  had  done  a  sordid  murder  in  these  parts,  which 
struck  such  a  horror  through  the  law-abiding  North 
England  of  that  later  day,  that  the  great  Here- 
fordshire pugilist,  Tom  Winter,  when  he  arrived  at 
a  national  reputation,  had  to  change  his  ill-omened 
name  for  the  world-renowned  title  of  Tom  Spring. 
The  heroic  Border  thieves  of  an  earlier  age  swung 
for  it  often  at  Hexham  or  "at  that  weary  Carlisle," 
or  on  the  numerous  "  Gallows  Hills  "  hereabouts  ;  but 
in  their  time  this  spot  was  marked,  not  as  now  by 
a  wooden  gibbet,  but  by  a  stone  cross,  of  which 
the  pedestal  still  lies  sunk  in  the  moss  hard  by. 
Sting  Cross,  as  it  was  called,  stood  where  its  grim 


THE   MIDDLE   MARCHES  159 

successor  stands  now,  high  on  the  water-shed,  far 
seen  against  the  sky  line,  a  guide  and  encouragement 
to  the  traveller  seeking  his  adventurous  way  westward 
on  business  among  the  Redesdale  thieves,  or  bound 
to  pass  up  their  long  valley  into  Scotland.  Sting 
Cross  must  have  been  a  landmark  well  known  to 
the  waggonless  armies  of  the  Border,  who  rode  their 
thirty  miles  a  day  over  the  moorland.  The  chivalry 
of  Scotland  must  have  passed  it,  on  their  raids,  when 
they  came  over  " Ottercap  Hills"  and  "  lighted  down 
at  Greenleighton."  A  rough  road  now  runs  by  the 
Gibbet ;  but  then  only  bridle  tracks  crossed  the 
water-shed,  several  probably  converging  at  the  Cross, 
to  fall  thence  into  the  marshy  bottom  of  Redesdale. 

From  the  water-shed  on  which  the  Gibbet  stands, 
another  and  greater  water-shed  is  clearly  visible, 
twenty  miles  away  at  the  head  of  Redesdale.  This 
is  the  curving  sweep  of  the  Border  Ridge  dividing 
Scotland  and  England,  sweeping  down  from  the 
north-east  to  the  south-west  corner  of  Northumberland, 
like  the  curve  of  England's  head.  The  view  from 
the  Gibbet  embraces  the  north-eastern  half  of  this 
arc,  from  the  Great  Cheviot  Hill  itself  to  Carter 
Fell.  There  stand  the  finest  of  the  English  Cheviots, 
ranged  round  the  head-waters  of  Coquet,  Redesdale, 
and  North  Tyne.  This  country,  the  Middle  Marches 
of  Border  times,  once  beyond  the  pale  of  civilisation, 
is  now  perhaps  the  safest  and  most  hospitable  district 
in  the   whole  world,  but  is  still  difficult   of   access, 


i6o        CLIO,   AND   OTHER   ESSAYS 

except  to  the  pedestrian,  for  it  lacks  roads  and  inns. 
In  old  days,  there  was  no  road  in  it  along  which  a 
wheeled  vehicle  could  pass  over  the  Border.  The 
moss-troopers  rode  up  the  length  of  Redesdale  by  a 
track  that  forded  the  Rede  Water  again  and  again  ; 
such,  till  1777,  was  the  only  way  into  Scotland 
through  the  Middle  Marches.  Even  to-day  there 
are  only  two  roads,  one  up  the  North  Tyne  by 
Deadwater,  and  one  up  the  Rede  under  Carter  Fell, 
ever  swarming  with  tramps  and  motors.  But  the 
tramp  who  seeks,  not  work  but  pleasure  and  medita- 
tion, penetrates  on  foot  the  recesses  of  these  hills 
and  walks  along  the  sharp  Border  Ridge  south-west- 
wards from  Great  Cheviot,  with  the  Scottish  view 
of  the  Eildon  Hills  and  Tweed  over  his  right  shoulder, 
and  Northumbrian  moors  over  his  left.  When  his 
high-level  walk  has  led  him  past  the  camp  where 
the  Romans  shivered  Ad  fines,  and  over  Carter  Fell, 
he  will  reach  the  summit  of  Peel  Fell,  where  the 
western  view  opens  before  him  down  Liddesdale 
to  the  Solway.  In  order  to  avoid  leaving  the  ridge, 
and  going  ten  miles  down  stream  in  search  of  the 
nearest  inn,  he  will  gladly  seek  lodging  at  night  with 
the  Cheviot  farmers,  true  descendants  of  Dandie 
Dinmont,  hospitable  as  the  Arabs  of  the  desert, — 
Scots  and  Presbyterians  for  the  most  part,  even  on 
the  English  side.  These  men,  assembling  from  both 
sides  of  the  Border,  still  at  the  New  Year  hunt  the 
fox  in  the  Bezzle  and  Henhole,  two  rocky  gashes  on 


THE   MIDDLE   MARCHES  i6i 

the  round  sides  of  Great  Cheviot  Hill,  in  the  tradi- 
tional manner  recorded  long  ago  by  Scott  in  the 
XXVth  chapter  of  Guy  Mannering.  A  run  on  foot 
after  the  fox,  among  the  moss-hags,  on  the  very  top 
of  Great  Cheviot  itself,  on  a  frosty  morning,  with 
both  kingdoms  full  in  view,  is  no  ill  way  to  begin 
the  year. 

Walter  Scott,  from  this  encircling  Cheviot  Ridge, 
threw  a  few  lines  and  phrases  at  our  English  streams, 
— Coquet  and  Rede  picked  crumbs  from  the  table 
he  spread  for  Ettrick  and  Teviot  and  Yarrow.  Also 
he  gave  us  Diana  Vernon ;  her  hunt  upon  the 
mountain  side  was  above  Biddlestone  Hall,  where  the 
spurs  of  the  English  Cheviots,  green,  round,  and 
steep  in  that  district,  overlook  the  Coquet,  as  it 
breaks  from  the  hills  and  spreads  down  over  the 
plain  towards  Rothbury. 

The  English  Border  was  divided  for  administrative 
and  military  purposes  into  the  East,  Middle,  and 
West  Marches.  The  East  Marches  contained  the 
lands  between  Berwick  and  the  great  Cheviot  Hill, 
that  is,  the  plain  where  Till  flows  into  Tweed  and 
Tweed  into  the  sea,  the  spacious  Thermopylae  of 
the  war  between  the  two  great  kingdoms,  studded 
with  famous  castles — Etal,  Wark,  Norham ;  and 
famous  battlefields — Homildon  Hill  and  Flodden. 
This  was  one  of  the  two  royal  routes  into  Scotland. 
The  East  Marches  also  included  a  piece  of  mountain 


1 62        CLIO,    AND   OTHER   ESSAYS 

district,  the  great  Cheviot  Hill  and  its  purHeus,  known 
as  the  Forest  of  Cheviot. 

The  West  Marches  corresponded  in  general  nature 
to  the  East.  The  plain  of  Carlisle  was  the  only  other 
route,  beside  the  plain  of  Berwick,  by  which  the  royal 
armies  with  trains  of  waggons  could  be  passed 
over  the  Border  ;  and  there  too  were  famous  castles, 
like  Naworth ;  famous  battlefields,  like  Solway  Moss. 
And  the  West  Marches,  like  the  East,  contained  a 
piece  of  wild  country,  the  Bewcastle  and  Gilsland 
wastes,  less  mountainous,  but  more  lawless  than  the 
Cheviot  Forest. 

The  East  and  the  West  Marches  have  much 
the  same  history.  From  the  beginning  of  the  long 
wars  in  the  days  of  Bruce,  down  to  the  union  of 
the  Crowns,  they  were  perpetually  subject  to  Scottish 
invasion.  But  the  plain  by  the  Northern  Ocean, 
and  the  plain  by  the  Solway  Firth,  was  each  inhabited 
by  a  well-ordered  society,  necessarily  pre-occupied 
with  the  military  aspects  of  life,  but  highly  organised 
by  the  King's  deputies  for  purposes  of  internal  police 
and  external  warfare.  Only  the  Cheviot  Forest  in 
the  East,  and  Bewcastle  Waste  in  the  West  March, 
shared  the  geographical  and  political  character  of 
the  notorious  Middle  Marches. 

The  Middle  Marches  included  Redesdale,  North 
Tynedale,  and  upper  Wansbeck  and  Coquetdale.  Two 
long  Reports  of  Royal  Commissioners,  one  in  1542 
and  another  in  1550,  give  a  minute  and  fascinating 


THE   MIDDLE   MARCHES  163 

account  of  the  society  of  these  districts  towards  the 
close  of  the  long  centuries  of  Border  warfare,  early 
in  the  period  celebrated  by  the  Lay  of  the  Last 
Minstreiy  The  Commissioners  tell  the  King  that, 
in  the  Middle  Marches,  the  enemy  whose  raids  are 
most  frequent  and  most  formidable,  is  not  the  Scots, 
but  the  English  robbers  of  North  Tynedale  and 
Redesdale.  The  reason  is  not  far  to  seek.  The  in- 
habitants of  these  two  valleys  were  cut  off  from  the 
rest  of  the  world,  as  a  glance  at  the  map  shows,  by 
the  high  moorland  rampart  on  which  stood  Sting 
Cross  ;  they  were  thus  divided  from  Coquetdale  and 
Wansbeck,  and  the  plains  beyond.  They  lived 
secluded,  under  the  influence  of  perpetual  Border 
warfare,  from  which  the  rest  of  Northumberland 
was  partly  sheltered.  North  Tynedale  and  Redesdale, 
as  the  Commissioners  report,  are  inhabited  by  a 
population,  sparse  according  to  some  standards,  but 
thick  out  of  all  proportion  to  the  meagre  soil ;  and 
as,  in  North  Tynedale  at  least,  very  little  effort  is 
made  at  tillage,  a  great  surplus  population  has  to 
find  its  subsistence  by  raiding  the  country  outside 
the  valley  bounds.^  In  Redesdale,  although  it  is 
reported  to  have  the  poorer  soil  of  the  two,  there 
is  more  tillage,  and  more  wealth  lawfully  acquired. 
But  in  both  valleys  the  surplus  population  lives  by 

^  Hodgson's  Nor thttmber land.  III.  ii.  pp.  171-248. 
2  Pp.  233,  237-8.     The   Commission   reports    1500  able-bodied   men, 
ready  for  war  and  robbery,  inhabiting  the  two  valleys. 


164        CLIO,    AND   OTHER   ESSAYS 

raiding  the  settled  country  to  the  east.  The  raiders 
were  in  close  league  with  those  of  Scottish  Liddesdale, 
where  a  very  similar  state  of  society  existed.  The 
national  feud  was  often  set  aside  for  the  convenience 
of  uniting  to  prey  upon  the  honest  roen  of  the  two 
kingdoms.  Thieves,  when  hard  pressed  by  a  foray 
of  the  King's  officers,  could  cross  the  border  at 
Deadwater,  and  defy  extradition. 

Indeed  the  only  racial  and  national  allegiance 
which  the  warrior  of  these  districts  really  felt,  was 
loyalty  towards  his  own  clan.  Family  feeling  served, 
more  than  anything  else,  to  protect  culprits  and  defy 
the  law.  Stolen  property  could  not  be  followed  up 
and  recovered  in  the  thieving  valleys,  because  each 
raider  was  protected  by  the  revengeful  jealousy  of  a 
large  and  warlike  tribe.  The  inhabitants  of  these 
valleys  were  grouped  in  communities  based  upon 
the  tie  of  kinship.  Small  families  came  for  protection 
under  the  rule  of  the  Charltons,  who  answered  for 
half  of  North  Tyne.  The  Halls,  Reeds,  Hedleys, 
and  Fletchers  of  Redesdale,  the  Charltons,  Dodds, 
Robsons,  and  Milbournes  of  North  Tynedale,  were 
the  real  political  units  within  a  society  that  had  little 
other  organisation.  The  King,  when  he  raised  taxes 
from  these  districts,  sometimes  secured  the  tribute 
through  the  agency  of  the  great  families.^  They 
united  for  raids  into  foreign  territory ;  but  they 
stained  their  native  valley  with  the  blood  of  intestine 

*  Pp.  229-235  and  243-4,  sub.  1550. 


THE   MIDDLE   MARCHES  165 

feuds.  The  most  famous  of  these  is  celebrated  in  the 
Ballad  of  Percy  Reed,  whom  the  "  fause-hearted 
'Ha's'"  did  to  death  at  the  famous  hunting,  high 
in  Bateinghope,  under  the  Carter  Fell.^ 

In  North  Tynedale,  more  entirely  given  over  to 
thieving,  and  less  addicted  to  agriculture  than  Redes- 
dale,  the  whole  valley  wore  a  barbarous  and  martial 
appearance.  The  clans  lived  in  strong  houses,  placed 
in  positions  of  natural  security  among  the  soft  deep 
mosshags  up  on  the  moor,  or  behind  "  banks  and 
"cleughs  of  wood  wherein  of  old  time  for  the  more 
"strength  great  trees  have  been  felled  and  laid  so 
"athwart  the  ways  and  passages,  that  in  divers  places 
"  (unless  it  be  by  such  as  know  and  have  experience 
"  of  those  strait  and  evil  ways  and  passages)  it  will 
"  be  hard  for  strangers  having  no  knowledge  thereof 
"  to  pass  thereby  in  any  order  and  especially  on 
"horseback."  In  this  savage  and  unsettled  com- 
munity, preyed  upon  by  its  own  feuds,  by  the  Scots 
and  by  the  English  Keeper  from  Chipchase,  the 
military  architects  built  these  "  strong  houses "  not 
of  stone  but  of  great  oak  beams.  (Were  there 
then  oak  forests  in  the  neighbourhood?)  "The 
"outer  sides  or  walls  be  made  of  great  sware  {sic) 
"  oak  trees,  strongly  bound  together  with  great  tenors 
"of  the  same,  so  thick  mortressed  that  it  will  be 
"very  hard  without  great  force  and  labour  to  break 

^  Apparently  because  Percy  Reed  had,  in  an  evil  hour,  allowed  himself 
to  be  made  Royal  Keeper  of  his  native  valley  of  Redesdale. 


1 66        CLIO,   AND   OTHER  ESSAYS 

"or  cast  down  any  of  the  said  houses  ;  the  timber  as 
"well  of  the  said  walls  as  roofs  be  so  great,  and 
"  covered  most  part  with  turfs  and  earth  that  they  will 
"not  easily  burn."  In  Redesdale  the  houses  were 
"not  set  in  so  strong  places  as  they  be  in  Tynedale, 
"nor  the  passages  into  them  so  strait  or  dangerous."^ 
By  the  pleasant  banks  of  Coquet,  another  state  of 
society  was  found.  Coquetdale  was  not,  like  the  two 
thieving  valleys,  cut  off  by  any  moorland  rampart 
from  the  rest  of  Northumberland.  Once  the  river 
emerges  from  the  hills  at  Alwynton,  it  flows  down 
through  fertile  country  direct  to  the  sea.  Civilisation 
had  therefore  spread  quietly  up  along  the  course  of 
its  tranquil  waters,  past  Brinkburn  and  Rothbury, 
up  through  the  plain  of  Harbottle,  till  it  reached  the 
foot  of  the  hills.  So  it  is  natural  that  the  Commis- 
sioners should  have  to  report  :  "  The  people  of 
"  Coquetdale  be  best  prepared  for  defence,  and  most 
"defensible  people  of  themselves,  and  of  the  truest 
"and  best  sort  of  any  that  do  inhabit  endlong  all  the 
"frontier  or  border  of  the  said  Middle  Marches  of 
"  England."  But  security  went  no  further  up  the 
stream  than  Alwynton.  The  King's  Peace  did  not 
extend  to  the  sources  of  the  Coquet  and  its  tribu- 
taries, the  Alwyn  and  Usway.  These  streams  come 
down  through  the  green  Cheviot  Hills  from  the 
Border  Ridge,  curving  and  sweeping  in  "great 
number  of  hoops  and  valleys,"  as  the  Commissioners 

*  Hodgson,  III.  ii.  pp.  232-3,  237,  sub.  1542. 


THE   MIDDLE   MARCHES  167 

say.  This  ground  of  Kidland  Lee,  the  most  beautiful 
part  of  the  English  Border,  does  not,  like  the  wastes 
round  Rede  Water  and  North  Tyne,  consist  of  long 
straight  ridges,  gradually  and  slightly  raised  above 
valleys  several  miles  across  and  prairies  of  long  white 
rough  grass.  The  Coquet  sources  are  an  exception  from 
this  general  character  of  the  Northumbrian  scenery  ; 
their  streams  come  down  through  green  rounded 
hills,  cutting  for  themselves  winding  passages,  scarcely 
a  hundred  yards  broad,  whose  high  and  slippery 
walls,  clad  in  turf  and  bracken,  are  too  steep  for  the 
pedestrian.  He  is  forced  to  keep  either  the  valley 
bottom  or  the  hill  top  ;  and,  if  he  walks  along  by  the 
burn  bank,  he  sees  nothing  but  the  steep  green  wall 
on  each  side,  and  the  blue  dome  of  sky  above. 

This  country  was  considered  to  contain  "  reason- 
able good  pasture,"  then  as  now.  But,  while  now 
grey  stone  farms  are  scattered  at  intervals  of  a  few 
miles  along  these  deep  valley  bottoms,  then  no 
one  dared  live  in  them,  for  fear  of  the  murderous 
raids  of  the  Scots  and  the  men  of  Redesdale.  The 
Commissioners  attribute  some  of  these  difficulties 
to  the  peculiar  nature  of  the  ground  : — 

"  The  said  valleys  or  hoops  of  Kydland  lie  so 
"  distant  and  divided  by  mountains  one  from  another, 
"  that  such  as  inhabit  in  one  of  these  hoops,  valleys, 
"  or  graynes,  can  not  hear  the  fray,  outcry,  or  exclama- 
"  tion  of  such  as  dwell  in  another  hoop  or  valley 
"  upon  the  other  side  of  the  said  mountain,  nor  come 


1 68        CLIO,   AND   OTHER   ESSAYS 

"  or  assemble  to  their  assistance  in  time  of  necessity. 
"Wherefore,  we  can  not  find  any  of  the  neighbours 
"thereabouts  willing  continually  to  inhabit  or  plenish 
"within  the  said  ground  of  Kydland,  and  especially 
"  in  winter  time ;  although  they  might  have  stone 
"  houses  builded  thereupon  for  their  defence,  and 
"also  have  the  said  ground  free  without  paying  rent 
"  for  the  same.  The  dangers  afore  recited  be  so  great 
"and  manifest."  ^ 

In  the  summer  time,  indeed,  the  law-abiding  men 
of  Coquetdale  drove  their  flocks  a-field  up  these 
higher  valleys,  and  lived  out  in  "  sheals,"  watching 
them.  This  practice,  then  common  in  Northumber- 
land, of  "  shealing  "  or  "  summering,"  analogous  to 
the  high  summer  pasturage  of  Alpine  districts,  was, 
however,  impossible  round  the  headwaters  of  Coquet 
and  Usway  in  time  of  "  war  or  troublous  peace." 
So,  in  time  of  war  with  Scotland,  or  in  years  when 
the  men  of  Redesdale  were  in  an  evil  humour,  no 
bleating  of  sheep  was  heard  all  the  summer  long 
amid  the  winding  passages  of  the  hills ;  and  the 
blackcock  strutted  through  the  bracken  on  the  steep 
bank  above,  and  the  heron  fished  beside  the  sparkling 
stream,  month  after  month,  undisturbed  by  man, 
save  when  now  and  again  a  hungry  spearman 
rode  swiftly  and  silently  through  the  silent  land. 
In  happier  days  to  come,  these  steep,  slippery 
banks  of  Alwyn  and  Usway  were  hunted  by  Diana 

^  Hodgson,  III.  ii.  223. 


THE   MIDDLE   MARCHES  169 

and  the  Osbaldistone  pack  ;  and  these  passages  of 
the  hills  were  threaded  by  Andrew  Fairservice  and 
his  friends  the  smugglers,  and  his  enemies  the 
Jacobites. 

A  few  miles  below  the  place  where  Coquet  and 
its  tributaries  at  length  break  out  into  the  plain, 
stand  the  ruins  of  Harbottle  Castle,  on  a  green  hill 
by  the  river.  It  was  from  this  comparatively  well- 
ordered  and  secure  district  that  the  short  arm  of 
the  King  was  occasionally  extended  into  Redesdale. 
Harbottle  Castle  was  the  headquarters  of  the  Keeper 
of  Redesdale  ;  he  dared  live  no  nearer  to  the  valley 
of  which  he  had  charge,  for  fear  of  the  fate  that 
befell  Percy  Reed.  The  Commissioners  of  1542 
advised,  that  if  thirty  horsemen  were  kept  in  Harbottle 
Castle,  ever  ready  to  mount  and  ride  behind  the 
Keeper  over  the  steep  Elsdon  Hill  into  Redesdale, 
that  turbulent  valley  might  be  kept  in  order.  At 
Chipchase,  fifty  mounted  men  would  be  required 
for  like  service  by  the  Keeper  of  North  Tynedale. 
Meanwhile,  stones  and  mortar  were  as  much  required 
as  men  and  horses :  Harbottle  Castle  had  "  for  lack 
of  necessary  reparations  fallen  into  extreme  ruin 
and  decay."  ^ 

But,  since  the  impoverished  State  could  not  afford 
to  take  these  necessary  measures  to  extend  its  control 

1  This  was  in  1542.  In  1550  it  had  been  partly  repaired,  but  had  still 
no  hall,  kitchen,  or  brewhouse,  or  enough  room  for  prisoners.  (Hodgson, 
III.  ii.  pp.  212,  237,  243.) 


fjo       CLIO,   AND   OTHER   ESSAYS 

into  the  two  thieving  valleys,  it  attempted  to  isolate 
them  by  an  elaborate  system  of  local  watch  and 
ward.  The  farmers  and  gentlemen  bordering  along  the 
lower  reaches  of  Rede  Water  and  North  Tyne,  were 
expected  to  keep  nightly  watch  at  their  own  expense, 
to  prevent  the  thieves  from  passing  down  towards 
the  coast,  or  into  the  civilised  valleys  of  Coquet 
and  Wansbeck.  A  watch  is  "  to  be  surely  kept  upon 
the  night  time,  that  is  to  say  from  the  sunset  until 
the  sunrise  at  diverse  places,  passages,  and  fords, 
endlong  all  the  said  Middle  Marches,  for  the  better 
preservation  of  the  same  from  thieves  and  spoils." 
Henry  VIII's  Commissioners  presented  him  with  a 
list  of  the  places  where  two  horsemen  are  supposed 
to  be  stationed  every  night.  Roughly,  the  line  runs 
along  the  water-shed  on  the  top  of  which  the  Sting 
Cross  was  so  prominent  a  feature.  The  charge  of 
maintaining  the  watchmen  was  laid  on  the  men  of 
this  district.  The  "  townships"  (some,  like  Hartington, 
Greenleighton,  Catcherside,  scarcely  more  than  a 
group  of  farm  buildings),  standing  in  lonely  places 
along  the  eastern  slope  of  the  water-shed,  had  to 
maintain  the  nightly  guard  for  the  protection  of 
the  rich  seaward  districts.  Naturally,  complaint 
and  recrimination  arose,  and  the  Commissioners  of 
1542  were  faced  by  an  interesting  problem  of  the 
proper  incidence  of  local  rates.  The  Borderers  of  the 
hill  townships  complained,  that  all  the  expense  of 
the  ward  fell  on  them,  and  the  advantage  to  the  low 


THE   MIDDLE   MARCHES  171 

country.  The  men  of  the  low  country  replied,  that 
the  watch  was  so  ill  kept,  that  they  themselves  had 
to  maintain  night  watches  in  their  seaward  townships 
against  the  frequent  invasions  of  the  men  of  Redes- 
dale  and  North  Tyne.^  We  may  well  believe  that 
the  thieves  found  it  no  hard  matter  to  ride  eastward 
through  the  line  at  night,  avoiding  each  of  the  widely 
scattered  points  where,  as  all  the  world  knew,  two 
shivering  watchmen  were  eagerly  hoping  that  day 
would  dawn  before  they  had  met  with  any  unpleasant 
encounter.  The  difficulty  of  the  thieves  in  effecting 
their  return  journey  with  large  droves  of  cattle  would 
no  doubt  be  more  severe  ;  and  it  was,  perhaps,  at 
this  latter  part  of  the  "fray"  that  the  watchmen  were 
expected  to  make  themselves  most  useful. 

The  first  social  and  political  duty  of  the  English 
and  Scottish  Borderer  was  to  "  follow  the  fray,"  that 
is,  to  mount  at  a  moment's  notice,  and  ride  in  pursuit 
of  plunderers.  As  the  "riding"  ballads,  such  as 
Jamie  Telfer,  show,  personal  affection  was  not  always 
strong  enough  to  induce  the  farmer,  awakened  in 
the  small  hours  of  the  morning,  to  turn  out  and  en- 
danger his  life  on  behalf  of  a  neighbour  who  had 
**  brought  him  the  fray." 

"  The  sun  was  na  up,  but  the  moon  was  down, 
It  was  the  gryming  o'  a  new  fa'n  snaw, 
Jamie  Telfer  has  run  three  myles  a-foot, 
Between  the  Dodhead  and  the  Stob's  Ha'. 

^  Hodgson,  III.  ii.  238-242. 


172        CLIO,   AND   OTHER   ESSAYS 

And  when  he  cam  to  the  fair  tower  gett, 
He  shouted  aloud,  and  cried  weel  hie, 

Till  out  bespak  auld  Gibby  Elliot — 

'  Wha's  this  that  brings  the  fraye  to  me  ?  ' 

'  It's  I,  Jamie  Telfer  o'  the  fair  Dodhead, 

And  a  harried  man  I  think  I  be ! 
There's  naething  left  at  the  fair  Dodhead, 

But  a  waefu'  wife  and  bairnies  three.' 

'  Gae  seek  you  succour  at  Branksome  Ha', 

For  succour  ye'se  get  nane  frae  me ; 
Gae  seek  your  succour  where  ye  paid  blackmail. 

For,  man  !  ye  ne'er  paid  money  to  me.'  " 

The  scene  of  this  suggestive  dialogue  is  laid  in 
Scotland  ;  but  there  must  often  have  been  the  same 
story  to  tell  in  Northumberland.  The  repeated 
efforts  of  the  Tudor  Government  to  make  the  duty 
of  "following  the  fray"  a  State  obligation  enforceable 
by  fine,  were,  in  the  end,  largely  successful,  though, 
even  towards  the  close  of  Elizabeth's  reign,  the 
average  of  murders  on  the  English  side  was 
estimated  at  over  a  hundred,  and  the  average  of 
property  stolen  at  over  ^10,000,  in  a  year.^ 

But  all  this  talk  of  "thieves"  is  beside  the  point 
which  gives  value  to  the  history  of  the  Borderland. 
What  is  it  that  has  brought  our  cultured  and  com- 
mercial  society   to   collect   the   relics   of    these    cut- 

1  Creighton,  Historical  Essays,  "The  Northumbrian  Border,"  pp. 
256,  263-5. 


THE   MIDDLE   MARCHES  173 

throats  ?     If  we  ascribe  it  all  to  Scott,  why  did  he 
make   them   his   stock-in-trade  ?      It   is    not  that  the 
moss-troopers  can  claim   any   monopoly  in   robbery 
and  murder.     There  is  a  murder  every  night  in  our 
evening  papers ;    and  our  thefts  are  too  plentiful  to 
bear   recording.     If,   again,   it   is   armed    lawlessness 
and   cruelty    that   we    want,   or   the   primitive   social 
state,  we  can  find  these  in  the  history  of  any  barbar- 
ous  people ;    and   if   we  want  them  in  a  setting  of 
mountain  scenery,  there  are  the  Balkans  to  our  hand 
to-day.     What  then  was  peculiar  to  the  Border  life 
which    Scott    celebrated  ?      It    was   this :     that    the 
Border  people  wrote  the  Border  Ballads.     Like  the 
Homeric   Greeks,   they   were    cruel,   coarse    savages, 
slaying  each  other  as  the  beasts  of  the  forest ;    and 
yet  they  were  also  poets  who  could  express  in  the 
grand  style  the  inexorable  fate  of  the  individual  man 
and  woman,  and  infinite  pity  for  all  the  cruel  things 
which  they  none  the  less  perpetually  inflicted  upon 
one  another.     It  was  not  one  ballad-maker  alone  but 
the  whole  cut-throat  population  who  felt  this  magna- 
nimous   sorrow,   and    the    consoling   charm    of    the 
highest   poetry.      A   large    body   of   popular   ballads 
commemorated   real    incidents   of   this   wild   life,   or 
adapted  folklore  stories  to  the  places  and  conditions 
of   the    Border.     The  songs  so  constructed  on  both 
sides   of  the  Cheviot   Ridge  were  handed   down  by 
oral  tradition  among  the  shepherds,  and  among  the 
farm   girls   who,   for   centuries,   sang   them   to   each 


174        CLIO,   AND   OTHER   ESSAYS 

other  at  the  milking.  If  the  people  had  not  loved 
the  songs,  many  of  the  best  would  have  perished. 
The  Border  Ballads,  for  good  and  for  evil,  express 
this  society  and  its  quality  of  mind,  as  well  and  truly 
as  the  daily  Press  and  the  Music  Hall  Stage  express 
that  of  the  majority  of  the  town-dwellers  of  to-day. 

The  Border  Ballads  are  distinguished  from  the 
old  ballads  of  South  England,  similar  in  form  and 
often  based  upon  the  same  folk-legends,  by  a 
tenser  poetic  strain,  and  a  far  deeper  melan- 
choly. Their  more  tragic  mood  may  be  in  some 
part  due  to  the  real  conditions  of  Hfe  prevailing  in 
the  Border  country,  where  violent  death  dogged 
man's  footsteps  every  day.  To  be  a  lover  in  a  South 
English  ballad  is  to  run  a  fair  chance  of  "living 
happily  ever  afterwards "  ;  but  to  assume  the  part 
in  a  Border  Ballad  is  a  desperate  undertaking. 
No  father,  mother,  brother,  or  rival  will  have  pity 
before  it  is  too  late ;  they  are  "  more  fanged  than 
wolves  and  bears."  And  chance  is  generally  in 
league  with  the  Tragic  Muse.  When  her  brother 
determines  to  burn  Lady  Maisry  for  loving  an 
Englishman  too  well.  Lord  William  rides  up  just 
too  late  to  do  anything  but  burn  her  whole  family 
in  revenge.  Even  when  the  ballad  ends  well,  there 
has  generally  been  blood  shed,  as  in  the  original 
Lochinvar,  which  has  none  of  the  rollicking  canter 
and  swagger  of  Scott's  modern  rendering.^    And  the 

*  /Catherine /anfarie  (Aytoun's  Ballads,  1858,  ii.  p.  75). 


THE   MIDDLE   MARCHES  175 

best  ballads  are  the  most  tragic.  Something  grand 
and  inevitable,  like  the  doom  impending  over  the 
Lion  Gate  at  Mycenae,  broods  over  each  of  these 
stone  peel-towers  high  upon  the  "  bent,"  and  rude 
forts  of  "great  svvare  oak  trees,"  "covered  with 
turfs."  Even  the  most  wicked  and  horrible  stories 
are  not  sordid,  but  tragic. 

"  Why  does  your  brand  sae  drop  wi'  blude, 

Edward,  Edward  ? 
Why  does  your  brand  sae  drop  wi'  blude, 
And  why  sae  sad  gang  ye,  O  ?  " 

"01  hae  killed  my  father  dear, 

Mither,  mither; 
O  I  hae  killed  my  father,  dear, 
Alas  !  and  wae  is  me,  O !  " 

"  And  what  will  ye  do  wi'  your  tow'rs  and  your  ha', 

Edward,  Edward? 
And  what  will  ye  do  wi'  your  tow'rs  and  your  ha'. 

That  were  sae  fair  to  see,  O  ?  " 
"  I'll  let  them  stand  till  they  doun  fa', 

Mither,  mither ; 
I'll  let  them  stand  till  they  doun  fa', 
For  here  never  mair  maun  I  be,  O." 

Or  again,  when  Helen  of  Kirkconnel  has  been 
killed  by  a  shot  aimed  at  her  lover,  not  even  a  herce 
revenge  can  give  him  any  ease. 

"  As  I  went  down  the  water  side. 
None  but  my  foe  to  be  my  guide, 

None  but  my  foe  to  be  my  guide, 
On  fair  Kirkconnell  Lee, 


176       CLIO,   AND   OTHER   ESSAYS 

I  lighted  down,  my  sword  did  draw, 

I  hack'd  him  into  pieces  sma', 
I  hack'd  him  into  pieces  sma', 

For  her  sake  that  died  for  me. 

I  wish  I  were  where  Helen  lies ! 

Night  and  day  on  me  she  cries, 
And  I  am  weary  of  the  skies. 

For  her  sake  that  died  for  me." 

Lyke-Wake  Dirge  is  perhaps  the  most  awful  and 
solemn  expression  that  was  ever  given  to  the  bar- 
barous popular  religion  of  the  Dark  Ages,  as  dis- 
tinct from  the  higher  flights  of  more  cultivated 
Italian  and  French  Catholicism.  Yet  in  nine  Border 
Ballads  out  of  ten,  there  is  no  religious  motif ; 
and  consolation  is  hardly  ever  sought  in  expectation 
of  a  meeting  in  heaven.  The  sense  of  human  life, 
its  passions,  its  love,  its  almost  invariable  tragedy, 
seem  the  abiding  thoughts  of  this  savage  but  great- 
souled  people.  The  supernatural  world  consists  of 
ghosts  of  the  departed,  and  of  the  fairies — those 
friends,  with  whom  the  poets  go  on  mysterious  rides 
like  that  of  Thomas  the  Rhymer. 

"  O  they  rade  on,  and  farther  on, 

And  they  waded  through  rivers  aboon  the  knee, 
And  they  saw  neither  sun  nor  moon. 
But  they  heard  the  roaring  of  the  sea. 

It  was  mirk,  mirk  night,  and  there  was  nae  stern  ^  light. 
And  they  waded  thro'  red  blude  to  the  knee. 

For  a'  the  blude  that's  shed  on  earth, 

Rins  through  the  springs  o'  that  countrie." 

^  Stern  =  star. 


THE    MIDDLE   MARCHES  177 

In  another  ballad,  the  Queen  of  Fairies  steals  a 
young  mother  from  a  farm  to  be  Elphin  Nourice 
(Elf  nurse)  to  the  little  Prince  of  Fairies.  The  poor 
woman  hears  out  of  fairyland  a  noise  of  the  dear 
world  she  has  left,  and  remembers  her  own  son. 

"  I  heard  a  cow  low,  a  bonnie  cow  low, 
An'  a  cow  low  doun  in  yon  glen  ; 

Land,  lang,  will  my  young  son  greet, 
Or  his  mither  bid  him  come  ben. 

"  I  heard  a  cow  low,  a  bonnie  cow  low, 
An'  a  cow  low  doun  in  yon  fauld  ; 

Land  lang,  will  my  young  son  greet, 
Or  his  mither  take  him  frae  cauld. 

"  Waken,  Queen  of  Elfan, 

An'  hear  your  Nourice  moan." 
"  O  moan  ye  for  your  meat, 

Or  moan  ye  for  your  fee, 
Or  moan  ye  for  the  ither  bounties, 

That  ladies  are  wont  to  gie  ?  " 

"  I  moan  na  for  my  meat, 

Nor  yet  for  my  fee. 
But  I  mourn  for  Christen  land — 

It's  there  I  fain  would  be." 

The  Border  life,  at  any  rate  in  its  most  highly  de- 
veloped form  in  the  thieving  valleys,  had  no  set 
object,  no  political  or  social  end  to  attain.  It  was  a 
life  good  or  bad  in  itself  alone.  These  people  have 
left  nothing  behind,  except  these  ballads,  which  have 
made  all  their  meaningless  and  wicked  ways  interest- 
ing for  all  time.     Law-making,   road-laying,  bridge- 

M 


178        CLIO,   AND   OTHER   ESSAYS 

building — everything  which  Carlyle  would  have  ap- 
proved— had  no  place  in  their  ambitions.  Their  life 
was  a  game  with  Death,  in  which  each  in  turn  was 
sure  soon  to  pay  forfeit ;  it  was  played  according  to 
certain  rules  of  family  honour,  varied  and  crossed  by 
lovers'  passions.  All  classes  of  a  sparse  population 
joined  in  this  game  with  Death,  and  relished  it  as  the 
poetry  and  breath  of  life.  It  is  useless  to  wish  the 
conditions  of  that  life  back,  in  the  hope  of  getting 
ballads  instead  of  music-hall  songs ;  men  often  drive 
away  cattle  without  writing  immortal  poetry,  and  to 
drive  cattle  and  leave  the  owner  dead  on  his  hearth- 
stone is  in  itself  a  very  bad  thing. 

The  inhabitants  of  the  Cheviot  Hills  to-day  are  a 
fine  people,  and,  upon  the  whole,  greatly  preferable 
to  the  moss-troopers.  Burns  and  the  Bible  long 
ago  superseded  the  Ballads ;  and  vulgarity  has  not 
yet  invaded  from  the  cities.  In  the  course  of  the  last 
three  centuries,  the  Scottish  farmers  have  moved  into 
and  occupied  the  English  Cheviot  valleys.  The 
origin  of  this  movement  is  said  to  have  been  the 
persecution  in  the  "killing  times"  of  Claverhouse, 
when  a  Covenanter  had  a  better  chance  of  safety  on 
the  English  side  of  the  Border.  But  the  movement 
has  not  yet  come  to  an  end  ;  and  it  is  difficult  to  say 
how  far  the  inhabitants  of  Redesdale  are  descendants 
of  the  Englishmen  of  the  sixteenth  century,  and  how 
far  of  Scottish  immigrants. 


THE    MIDDLE    MARCHES  179 

The  social  and  religious  state  of  the  valley  half  way 
between  the  Border  times  and  our  own,  is  described 
in  a  most  amusing  letter  written  from  the  fine  old 
peel-tower  of  Elsdon,  then,  as  now,  used  as  the 
Rectory,  where  the  unfortunate  incumbent,  Mr. 
Dodgson,  has  been  snowed  up.  He  is  the  best  type 
of  an  eighteenth  century  clergyman  and  letter- 
writer,  a  worthy  contemporary  of  Sterne  and  Horace 
Walpole.  Of  course  it  has  never  entered  his  head 
that  moorland  scenery  is  anything  but  a  horror.^ 

"There  is  not  a  town  in  all  the  parish,  except 
"  Elsdon  itself  be  called  one  ;  the  farmhouses,  where 
"  the  principal  families  live,  are  five  or  six  miles  distant 
"  from  one  another  ;  and  the  whole  country  looks  like  a 
"  desert.  The  greater  part  of  the  richest  farmers  are 
"  Scotch  dissenters,  and  go  to  a  meeting-house  at 
"  Birdhope  Craig,  about  ten  miles  from  Elsdon  ;  how- 
"ever,  they  don't  interfere  in  ecclesiastical  matters,  or 
"  study  polemical  divinity.  Their  religion  descends 
"  from  father  to  son,  and  is  rather  a  part  of  the  personal 
"  estate  than  the  result  of  reasoning,  or  the  effect  of 
"enthusiasm.  Those  who  live  near  Elsdon  come  to 
"  the  church,  those  at  a  greater  distance  towards  the 
"  west  go  to  the  meeting-house  at  Birdhope  Craig ; 
"  others,  both  Churchmen  and  Presbyterians,  at  a  very 
'<  great  distance,  go  to  the  nearest  church  or  conventicle 
"in  the  neighbouring  parish.  There  is  a  very  good 
"  understanding  between  the  parties  ;  for  they  not  only 

^  Northumberland  Table  Book.     Legendary  Division,  vol.  i.  p.  232. 


i8o        CLIO,   AND   OTHER   ESSAYS 

"  intermarry  with  each  other,  but  frequently  do  penance 
"  together  in  a  white  sheet  with  a  white  wand,  barefoot, 
"in  one  of  the  coldest  churches  in  England,  and  at 
"the  coldest  seasons  of  the  year.  I  dare  not  finish 
"  the  description  for  fear  of  bringing  on  a  fit  of  the 
"  ague  ;  indeed,  the  ideas  of  sensation  are  sufficient  to 
"starve  a  man  to  death  without  having  recourse  to 
"  those  of  reflection.  If  I  was  not  assured  by  the  best 
"authority  upon  earth  that  the  world  was  to  be  de- 
"stroyed  by  fire,  I  should  conclude  that  the  day  of 
"  destruction  is  at  hand,  and  brought  on  by  means  of 
"  an  agent  very  opposite  to  that  of  heat.  There  is  not 
"a  single  tree  or  hedgerow  within  twelve  miles  to 
"  break  the  force  of  the  wind  ;  it  sweeps  down  like  a 
"deluge  from  hills  capped  with  everlasting  snow,  and 
"  blasts  almost  the  whole  country  into  one  continued 
"barren  desert.  The  whole  country  is  doing  pen- 
"  ance  in  a  white  sheet ;  for  it  began  to  snow  on 
"  Sunday  night,  and  the  storm  has  continued  ever 
"  since." 

Yet,  for  all  this,  Elsdon  lays  firm  hold  on  the 
imagination  of  those  who  are  not  intimidated  by 
moorland  scenery,  and  who  love  the  Northumbrian 
ridges.  It  remains  to-day  as  the  spiritual  capital  of 
the  Middle  Marches,  the  yet  unviolated  shrine  of  the 
tradition  of  the  English  Border.  It  served  the  Redes- 
dale  clans  for  their  common  place  of  burial  and  of 
religious  rites,  their  market  and  assembly  place,  as 
Bellingham  served  the  men  of  North  Tynedale.     But, 


THE   MIDDLE   MARCHES  i8i 

whereas  Bellingham  has  now  a  railway,  and  has 
suffered  change.  Elsdon  is  the  same  as  ever.  It  Hes 
low  in  a  green  hollow,  visible  from  many  surrounding 
heights  ;  and  one  glance  at  it  from  far  off  recalls  the 
life  of  innumerable  generations.  The  famous  Mote 
Hills,  green  mound-circles  towering  above  the  burn, 
tell  that  Elsdon  was  the  capital  of  Redesdale  in  days 
when  neither  Scotland  nor  England  existed,  before 
the  Romans  camped  in  the  valley,  and  long  before 
the  monks  of  Lindisfarne,  in  their  wandering  flight 
from  the  Danes,  halted  for  a  while  with  the  relics  of 
St.  Cuthbert  on  what  is  now  the  site  of  Elsdon 
Church.  That  church,  beneath  which  lie  the  dead  of 
Otterburne,  and  the  peel-tower  thrusting  up  through 
the  scant  trees  its  battlements  and  its  stone  roof,  call 
back  the  Border  life,  while  the  stone  houses  scattered 
round  the  broad  village  green  mark  the  civilising 
progress  of  the  eighteenth  century, 

Otterburne,  the  glorified  Border  foray  of  1388,  was 
fought  a  few  miles  higher  up  the  Rede  valley.  It  was 
there  that  they  "  bickered  on  the  bent."  The  Douglas 
himself  had  come  over  the  Border  with  an  army  of 
picked  men,  burnt  Northumberland  and  Durham, 
and  had,  before  the  closed  gates  of  Newcastle,  given 
Harry  Percy  a  challenge  to  follow  and  fight  him 
before  he  recrossed  the  Border.  It  was  chivalry  and 
love  of  the  game,  and  no  military  considerations,  that 
made  Douglas  wait  for  Percy ;  he  occupied  an  old 
tribal  entrenchment,  still  clearly  traceable  on  a  knoll 


1 82        CLIO,   AND   OTHER   ESSAYS 

above  Greenchesters,  beyond  Otterburne.  It  was 
chivalry  that  made  Hotspur  attack  the  camp  at 
nightfall,  when  his  English  bowmen  could  not  show 
their  skill,  when  all  his  men  were  wearied  with  a 
forced  march  of  thirty  miles  that  day  from  Newcastle, 
when  reinforcements  under  the  Bishop  of  Durham 
were  scarcely  twelve  hours  behind.^  The  result  was 
the  midnight  battle  of  heroes,  ending  in  an  English 
rout.  Douglas  was  killed  ;  but  Hotspur  was  taken, 
and  the  remainder  of  his  men  fled  back  past  Elsdon, 
hotly  pursued,  but  often  turning  fiercely  on  their 
pursuers.  As  the  August  day  dawned,  they  were 
struggling  up  the  side  of  the  high  ridges,  to  south  and 
east  of  Elsdon,  in  broken  parties  of  wounded  and 
wearied  men.  Some  of  the  fliers  and  pursuers  were 
met  by  the  Bishop  of  Durham's  forces,  who  had 
marched  hard  over  the  moors  and  streams  by  the 
light  of  that  moon  which  was  glinting  on  the  flash 
of  swords  at  Otterburne. 

The  skeletons  of  a  regiment  of  men,  mostly  in  the 
prime  of  life,  many  of  them  with  skulls  cleft,  have 
been  found  under  Elsdon  Church,  and  are  believed 
to  be  the  English  killed  on  that  famous  night.  The 
main  part  of  the  aisle  was  built  about  that  date, 
perhaps  in  memorial  of  them.  But  at  the  western 
end  there  still  stand  two  massive  Norman  pillars, 
black    and    dripping   with    age ;    beneath   them,    we 

^  A  good  authority  on  the  locality,  time,  and  circumstances  of  the 
battle,  is  Robert  White's  Battle  of  Otterburn,  1857. 


THE    MIDDLE   MARCHES  183 

may  fairly  suppose,  were  laid  out  the  long  lines 
of  the  dead,  brought  there  on  the 

"biers 
Of  birch  and  hazel  grey," 

which  the  mourners  had  hastily  torn  from  the  clefts 
of  the  burns  that  empty  themselves  into  the  Rede. 
And  there  is  preserved  in  the  church  a  slab  of 
time-blackened  stone,  whereon  is  carved,  in  rude  and 
barbarous  fashion,  a  nameless  knight  in  the  armour 
of  that  time.  The  church  is  the  tomb  of  the  old 
Border  life  ;  and  the  hills  around  are  the  everlasting 
monument.  One  form  of  life  has  passed  away ;  but 
another  has  come  to  take  its  place.  As  we  climb  the 
steep  green  road  again  towards  the  Gibbet  at  Sting 
Cross,  we  see  the  clouds  still  moving  along  the  far 
horizon  ridges ;  the  sun  sets  over  Carter  Fell ;  the 
stars  come  out  against  the  blackness  : 

"  Life  glistens  on  the  river  of  the  death." 


IF  NAPOLEON  HAD  WON  THE 
BATTLE  OF  WATERLOO ^ 

The  day  of  the  signature  of  the  Convention  of 
Brussels,  June  26,  1815,  is  the  point  of  time  that 
divides  into  two  strangely  contrasted  halves  the 
greatest  career  of  modern  times,  and  ushers  in 
the  reign  of  the  Napoleon  of  Peace.  When,  in  that 
little  room  in  the  Hotel  de  Ville,  now  filled  every 
morning  by  crowds  of  tourists,  the  red-coated 
patrician,  who  had  once  been  regarded  by  his  partial 
countrymen  as  the  rival  of  the  lord  of  armies,  sat 
listening  in  proud  and  stoical  humiliation  to  the 
torrent  of  words  poured  forth  in  dispraise  of  war 
by  his  perambulatory  host,  who,  with  clenched  fists, 
invoked  the  Goddess  of  Peace,  the  laconic  English- 
man probably  thought  that  he  was  present  at  a 
Napoleonic  farce  of  the  usual  character.  He  did  not 
guess  that  his  conqueror  had  in  all  truth  drained  the 
cup  of  Peace,  a  draught  as  bitter  to  Napoleon  as 
Defeat  was  bitter  to  his  conquered  foe.  Wellington, 
indeed,  during  the  terrible  week  between  the  battle 
and  the  Convention,  had  not  uttered  one  complaint 

'  In  July  1907  the  Westminster  Gazette  offered  a  prize  for  an  essay  on 
this  subject.     This  was  the  successful  essay. 


IF  NAPOLEON  HAD  WON  WATERLOO  185 

against  Bluchcr  for  breaking  tryst,  nor  shown  to 
his  staff-officers  one  sign  of  his  agony — beyond  the 
disuse  of  his  customary  oaths. 

A  new  Napoleon  had  been  evolved,  the  Napoleon 
of  Peace,  a  mere  shadow,  in  spiritual  and  intellectual 
force,  of  his  former  self.  The  Buonaparte  of  1796 
would  have  urged  the  advance  of  Ney's  columns 
until  they  had  destroyed  the  last  of  Wellington's 
regiments,  and  would  himself,  with  the  bulk  of  his 
army,  have  fallen  on  the  traces  of  Blucher,  instead 
of  suffering  him  to  effect  a  junction  with  the  Austrians 
and  Russians,  and  so  present  a  barrier  to  the  French 
reconquest  of  Germany.  Nor  would  the  Napoleon 
of  1813,  who  refused,  in  defeat,  the  most  favourable 
offers  of  a  settlement,  have  hesitated  after  such  a 
victory  as  that  of  Mont  St.  Jean  to  undertake  with 
a  light  heart  the  subjugation  of  Central  and  Eastern 
Europe.  But  the  Napoleon  of  1815,  one  week  after 
his  triumphal  entry  into  Brussels,  was  offering  to 
Wellington  the  same  facilities  to  evacuate  the  seat 
of  war  which  the  English  general  had  offered  at 
Cintra,  seven  years  before,  to  the  defeated  lieutenant 
of  the  Emperor.  And  this  unexpected  clemency  was 
extended  to  England,  in  order  as  easily  and  as 
quickly  as  possible  to  remove  from  the  scene  of 
affairs  and  from  the  counsels  of  the  Continental 
monarchs  the  paymaster  and  inveterate  instigator  of 
war,  and  so  to  clear  the  stage  for  Napoleon  and 
the  time-serving  Metternich  to  arrange  by  collusion 


1 86        CLIO,   AND   OTHER   ESSAYS 

a  permanent   and  lasting  peace  for  all  Europe,  not 
exclusive  of  England  herself. 

Whence  came  this  extraordinary  change  in  the 
intentions,  one  might  say  in  the  character,  of  the 
French  Emperor  ?  The  history  of  what  passed  in 
the  headquarters  at  Brussels  between  June  i6  and  26 
can  never  be  fully  known,  though  whole  libraries  have 
been  written  upon  the  subject.  Secret  agents  of 
Metternich  had  been  in  Brussels  as  early  as  June  14, 
with  orders,  in  case  Wellington  were  defeated, 
instantly  to  offer  Napoleon  the  Rhine  frontier  and 
the  bulk  of  the  Italian  Peninsula,  and  to  represent  to 
him  how  utterly  impossible  it  was  that  he  should  hold 
down  Germany  after  the  national  movement  of  1813. 
The  latter  argument,  though  based  upon  a  just  insight 
into  the  condition  of  the  Fatherland,  would  have  had 
little  effect  upon  the  man  to  whom  it  was  addressed 
had  he  been  sure  of  support  from  France  herself. 
But,  so  far  from  being  dazzled  by  the  news  of  Mont 
St.  Jean,  Paris,  on  June  20,  formed  a  determined 
alliance  of  all  classes  and  all  parties — Liberals, 
Jacobins,  Royalists,  and  old  servants  of  the  Empire — 
to  insist  upon  peace.  The  representatives  commis- 
sioned by  the  Chambers  and  by  other  bodies,  official 
and  unofficial  alike,  were  welcomed  in  the  Belgian 
capital,  and  supported  in  their  petition  by  all  the 
marshals  and  by  almost  every  superior  officer.  But 
Napoleon's  will,  it  appears,  was  not  finally  overcome 
until  the  great  review  of  June  24,  held  outside  the 


IF  NAPOLEON  HAD  WON  WATERLOO  187 

town  for  the  purpose  of  testing  the  attitude  of  the 
common  soldiers.  Though  most  of  them  were 
veterans,  they  had  too  lately  rejoined  the  camp  to  be 
altogether  insensible  to  the  national  feeling  ;  many  of 
them  had  come  out  to  liberate  France,  not  to  subju- 
gate Europe — a  task  which  no  longer  seemed  as  easy 
as  before  the  days  of  Borodino  and  Leipzig.  The 
long  shout  for  "  Peace  "  that  ran  down  the  lines  seems 
to  have  dazed  the  Emperor.  He  spoke  no  word  to 
the  assembled  troops  to  thank  them  for  the  late 
victory,  rode  slowly  back  like  one  in  a  trance,  dis- 
mounted in  the  square,  passed  through  the  ante- 
chamber staring  vacantly  at  his  marshals  and  Ministers 
as  if  on  men  whom  he  had  never  seen  before.  As  he 
reached  the  threshold  of  his  cabinet  his  eye  lit  upon 
the  Mameluke  by  the  door,  who  alone  in  all  the  crowd 
was  gazing  with  intense  devotion  on  his  master.  The 
Corsican  stopped,  and  still  in  a  reverie,  interpellated 
the  Oriental  :  "  The  Franks  are  tired  of  war,  and  we 
two  cannot  ride  out  alone.  Besides,  we  are  growing 
old.  One  grows  old  and  dies.  The  Pyramids  they 
grow  old,  but  they  do  not  die."  Then,  with  intense 
energy,  he  added  :  "  Do  you  think  one  will  be 
remembered  after  forty  centuries  ?  "  He  stood  for  a 
moment,  as  if  waiting  for  an  answer  from  the  mute, 
then  dashed  through  the  door,  flung  himself  at  the 
table,  and  began  dictating  messages  of  peace  to 
Wellington  and  the  allied  Sovereigns. 

Napoleon's  physical  condition  probably  contributed 


1 88        CLIO,   AND   OTHER   ESSAYS 

no  less  than  the  attitude  of  the  French  army  and 
people  to  the  formation  of  his  great  resolution  ;  during 
the  critical  week,  the  decision  between  peace  and 
war  seems  to  have  been  as  much  as  he  could  attend 
to  in  his  waking  hours,  which  were  greatly  curtailed 
by  his  peculiar  malady.  Hence  it  was  that  he  made 
no  serious  effort  to  follow  Bliicher's  retreat  through 
Namur,  beyond  leaving  a  free  hand  to  Grouchy. 
Though  he  was  not  yet  sufficiently  cognisant  of 
his  growing  feebleness  to  delegate  to  anyone  either 
his  military  or  political  duties,  he  seems  to  have  been 
subconsciously  aware  that  the  two  together  were 
beyond  his  strength.  It  is,  therefore,  not  strange 
that  he  decided  to  accept  the  Rhine  frontier  and  the 
hegemony  in  the  Italian  Peninsula  as  the  basis  of 
a  permanent  peace,  and  that  his  ever-increasing 
lassitude  of  body  kept  him  faithful  to  the  decision 
during  the  last  twenty  years  of  his  life. 

Those  years  were  a  period  of  but  slight  change 
for  Europe.  Monarchs  and  peoples  were  too  much 
exhausted  to  engage  in  war  for  the  alteration  of 
frontiers  ;  internal  reform  or  revolution  was  rendered 
impossible  by  the  great  standing  armies,  which  the 
very  existence  of  Napoleon  on  the  French  throne, 
valetudinarian  though  he  was  known  to  be,  rendered 
necessary,  or  at  least  excusable,  in  England,  Austria, 
and  the  German  States.  Hatred  of  the  crowned 
Jacobin,  and  fear  of  renewed  French  invasions,  gave 
to  the  Governments  of  the  ancien  regime  a  measure 


IF  NAPOLEON  HAD  WON  WATERLOO  189 

of  popularity  with  the  middle  classes  which  they 
would  not  otherwise  have  enjoyed  ;  it  has  even  been 
suggested  that  reform  might  have  made  some  notable 
step  forward  in  England  within  twenty  years  of 
Mont  St.  Jean,  had  the  great  Tory  champion  succeeded 
in  overthrowing  the  revolutionary  Emperor  on  the 
field  of  battle. 

As  it  was,  the  condition  of  England  was  most 
unhappy.  In  spite  of  the  restoration  of  trade  with 
the  Continent,  impeded  indeed  by  the  extravagantly 
high  tariffs  due  to  Napoleon's  military  ideas  of 
economic  science,  in  spite  of  our  continued  supremacy 
at  sea,  the  distress  grew  yearly  more  intolerable,  both 
among  the  rural  and  industrial  populations.  The 
taxation  necessary  for  the  maintenance  of  both  fleet 
and  army  on  a  war  footing  allowed  no  hope  of 
amelioration  ;  yet  while  Napoleon  lived  and  paraded 
his  own  army  and  fleet  as  the  expensive  toys  of 
his  old  age,  the  Tory  Ministers  could  see  no  possibility 
of  reduction  on  their  part.  Probably  they  were  glad 
of  the  excuse,  for  the  great  army  enabled  them  to 
defy  the  Reformers,  who  became  ever  more  violent 
as  year  after  year  passed  by  without  prospect  of 
change.  If  Mont  St.  Jean  had  been  a  victory  for 
England,  and  if  it  had  been  followed  by  that  general 
disarmament  to  which  Wellington  himself  had  looked 
forward  as  the  natural  consequence  of  Napoleon's 
downfall,  Catholic  Emancipation  must  have  been 
granted   to    Ireland,    and   this    concession    would   at 


I90        CLIO,   AND   OTHER  ESSAYS 

least  have  averted  the  constant  revolts  and  massacres 
in  that  unhappy  country  which  so  sorely  tempted 
Napoleon  to  resume  hostilities  during  the  last  ten 
years  of  his  life.  In  Great  Britain,  where  starvation 
and  repression  were  the  order  of  the  day,  there 
occurred  in  1825  the  ill-advised  but  romantic  rebellion 
of  Lord  Byron,  in  whose  army  the  rank  and  file 
consisted  almost  entirely  of  working  men,  and  the 
leaders  (except  Napier)  had  no  more  knowledge  of 
war  than  was  possessed  by  such  ruffians  as  Thistle- 
wood  and  the  ex-pirate  Trelawny.  The  savage  re- 
prisals of  Government  established  the  blood-feud 
between  one  half  of  England  and  the  other.  The 
execution  of  Lord  Byron  made  a  greater  noise  in 
the  world  than  any  event  since  the  fall  of  the  Bastille, 
though  it  was  not  immediately  followed  by  political 
changes.  After  two  years  of  terror.  Canning,  who 
was  always  suspected  by  his  colleagues  of  semi- 
popular  sympathies,  restored  partial  freedom  of  the 
Press  in  1827,  and  it  became  apparent  in  the  literature 
of  the  next  decade  that  all  young  men  of  spirit  were 
no  longer  anti-Jacobins — no  longer  even  Whigs,  but 
Radicals.  The  worship  of  the  dead  poet  went  side 
by  side  with  the  worship  of  the  living.  The  writings 
of  Shelley,  especially  after  his  long  imprisonment, 
obtained  a  popularity  which  was  one  of  the  most 
curious  symptoms  of  the  time.  His  ^^  Men  of  Englatid, 
wherefore  plough  ?"  was  sung  at  all  Radical  gatherings, 
and  his  ode  on  the   death  of   Napoleon  {The  Dead 


IF  NAPOLEON  HAD  WON  WATERLOO  191 

Anarch,  1836)  passed  through  twenty-five  editions 
in  a  year.  The  younger  literary  stars,  like  Tennyson 
and  Arthur  Hallam,  blazed  with  revolutionary  ardour. 
Excluded  from  Oxford  and  Cambridge,  the  Dissenters 
and  Radicals  formed  a  University  at  Manchester, 
which  soon  almost  monopolised  the  talent  of  the 
country.  Meanwhile  serious  politicians  like  Lord 
John  Russell  and  the  irrepressible  Mr.  Brougham 
abandoned  the  older  Whig  creed  and  declared  for 
Universal  Suffrage.  No  wise  man,  in  the  year  after 
Napoleon's  death,  would  have  foretold  with  confidence 
whether  England  was  destined  to  tread  the  path  of 
revolution  or  to  continue  in  the  beaten  track  of 
tyranny  and  obscurantism.  At  least,  it  was  clear 
that  there  was  no  longer  any  third  way  open  to  her, 
and  that  the  coming  era  would  be  stained  with  blood 
and  violence.  Whiggery  died  with  Grey — that  pathetic 
and  futile  figure,  who  had  waited  forty  years  in  vain. 
The  English  character  was  no  longer  one  of  com- 
promise ;  it  was  being  forced  by  foreign  circum- 
stances into  another  and  more  violent  mould. 

Similarly  in  the  Continental  States  outside  the 
limits  of  the  Napoleonic  Empire,  the  ancien  regime 
was  not  only  triumphant  but  to  some  extent  popular 
and  national,  because  the  late  persecutor  of  the 
German  and  Spanish  peoples  still  remained  as  their 
dangerous  neighbour,  and  was  still  by  far  the  most 
powerful  prince  in  Europe.  In  Spain  the  Liberals 
and  Freethinkers  were  extirpated  with  an  efficiency 


192        CLIO,    AND   OTHER   ESSAYS 

which  Torquemada  might  have  approved ;  the  In- 
quisition was  indeed  abolished  in  consequence  of 
Napoleon's  threat  of  war  in  1833,  a  year  in  which 
the  Tories  were  unable  to  give  Spain  diplomatic 
support,  because  the  execution  of  the  eccentric 
"gypsy-Englishman"  for  smuggling  Bibles  into 
Andalusia  had  raised  a  momentary  storm  among 
their  Evangelical  supporters  in  the  House  and 
country.  But  the  disappearance  of  the  Inquisition 
made  no  real  difference  to  the  methods  of  Church 
and  State  in  Spain,  and  the  diplomatic  incident 
only  served,  as  it  was  intended,  to  restore  the  old 
Emperor's  popularity  with  the  French  Liberals. 

Meanwhile  the  revolted  Spanish  colonies  in  South 
America  continued  their  efforts  for  freedom  with 
ever-increasing  success  until  the  interference  of  the 
English  army,  sent  out  by  Government  on  pure  anti- 
Jacobin  principles,  against  the  wish  and  the  interest 
of  the  British  merchants  trading  in  those  parts. 
"  We  must  preserve,"  said  Castlereagh,  "  the  balance 
between  monarchy  and  Republicanism  in  the  New 
World  as  in  the  Old."  But  not  enough  troops  could 
be  spared  from  policing  the  British  Islands  to  do 
more  than  prolong  the  agony  of  the  Transatlantic 
struggle.  The  vast  expanses  of  the  Pampas  became 
a  permanent  Field  of  Mars,  where  Liberal  exiles  and 
adventurers  of  all  countries,  principally  English  and 
Italian,  side  by  side  with  the  well-mounted  Gauchos, 
waged  a  ceaseless  guerilla  war  on  the  English  and 


IF  NAPOLEON  HAD  WON  WATERLOO  193 

Spanish  regulars.  Here  Napier's  brothers  avenged 
his  death  on  the  army  of  which  they  had  once  been 
the  ornaments ;  and  Murat,  riding-whip  in  hand, 
was  seen  at  the  head  of  many  a  gallant  charge,  lead- 
ing on  the  Italians  whose  idol  he  had  now  become 
in  either  hemisphere.  "  The  free  life  of  the  Pampas  " 
became  to  the  young  men  of  Europe  the  symbol  of 
that  spiritual  and  political  emancipation  which  could 
be  realised  only  in  exile  and  secured  in  rebellion  and 
in  war.  Hence  it  is  that  the  note  of  the  Pampas 
is  as  prevalent  as  the  note  of  Byron  in  the  literature 
and  art  of  that  epoch. 

In  Germany  the  national  hopes  of  union  and 
liberty  were  cheated  by  the  monarchs,  who  continued 
however,  to  enjoy  safety,  prestige,  and  the  bodyguard 
of  those  great  standing  armies  which  were  necessary 
to  secure  French  respect  for  the  Rhine  frontier.  The 
reforms  previously  effected  in  those  German  States 
which  had  been  either  subject  to  Napoleon's  rule  or 
moved  by  his  example,  were  permitted  to  remain, 
wherever  they  made  for  the  strength  of  the  monarchic 
principle.  The  Prussian  peasants  were  not  thrust 
back  into  serfdom  ;  the  reformed  Civil  Service  was 
kept  in  some  of  the  "Westphalian"  States ;  the  Act  of 
Mediation  and  the  Abolition  of  the  Prince-Bishoprics 
were  maintained  for  the  benefit  of  the  larger  princes. 
But  all  traces  of  the  Code  Napoleon  were  abolished 
in  Hesse-Cassel  and  Hanover  ;  while  the  University 
and  National  movements  were  effectively  suppressed 


194        CLIO,   AND   OTHER   ESSAYS 

throughout  the  Fatherland  under  Austrian  influence, 
paramount  since  the  faikire  of  Blucher  in  Flanders 
and  the  deal  between  Metternich  and  Napoleon  at 
the  Conference  of  Vienna  in  1815.  If  Prussia 
obtained  nothing  else,  she  recovered  her  share  of 
Poland,  whose  cries  were  smothered  by  the  Christian 
Powers  of  the  East  as  easily  as  Greece  was  put  down 
by  the  Turk. 

The  only  Germans  who  were  at  once  contented  and 
well  governed  were  those  on  the  left  bank  of  the 
Rhine,  who  continued  to  be,  in  peace  as  in  war,  the 
quietest  and  most  loyal  of  all  Napoleon's  subjects. 
The  French  were  less  easy  to  satisfy ;  they  had, 
indeed,  forced  their  lord  to  make  peace,  but  could 
they  also  compel  him  to  grant  that  measure  of  liberty 
which  they  now  claimed  ?  The  solution  of  that 
question  would  scarcely  have  been  possible  except  by 
violent  means  had  the  Emperor  retained  half  of  his 
old  health  and  vigour.  But  it  was  solved  provision- 
ally from  year  to  year,  because  the  energies  of  the 
autocrat  decreased  in  almost  exact  proportion  to  the 
increase  of  his  subjects'  demand  for  freedom.  He 
cared  not  who  wielded  powers  which  he  was  no 
longer  in  a  condition  to  exercise  himself,  and  was 
ready,  out  of  sheer  indifference,  to  hand  them  scorn- 
fully over  to  Ministers  more  or  less  in  sympathy  with 
the  Chambers.  So  long  as  he  could  keep  his  own 
eye  on  the  censorship,  it  was  rigid ;  but  when  he 
became   too    ill   to   read   anything   except    the    most 


IF  NAPOLEON  HAD  WON  WATERLOO   195 

important  despatches,  the  censorship  was  again  as 
feebly  administered  as  in  the  days  of  the  last  two 
Bourbons.  Under  these  conditions  of  irritating  but 
ineffectual  repression,  French  literature  and  thought 
were  stimulated  into  a  life  almost  as  flourishing  as  in 
the  days  of  the  Encyclopaedists.  The  Romantic 
movement  undermined  the  Imperial  idea  with  the 
intellectuals  ;  the  "  breath  of  the  Pampas  "  was  felt 
in  the  Qiiartier  Latin.  It  was  in  vain  that  the  police 
broke  the  busts  of  Byron  and  forbade  plays  in  which 
the  unities  were  violated. 

Yet  as  long  as  Napoleon  lived  and  let  live  the 
Liberals,  the  quarrel  of  the  ruled  against  their  ruler 
v/as  but  half  serious.  The  movement  towards  a  fresh 
revolution  was  rather  a  preparation  for  his  death  than 
a  very  deliberate  disloyalty  to  the  man  who  had  saved 
France  from  the  ancien  regime.  And  whatever  the 
W'Orkmen  and  students  might  think,  the  peasants  and 
soldiers  regarded  the  political  and  social  condition  cf 
France  after  Mont  St.  Jean  as  almost  perfect.  The 
soldiers  were  still  the  favourites  of  Government  ;  the 
peasants  at  length  tilled  in  peace  and  security  the 
lands  which  their  fathers  had  seized  from  the  nobles 
and  the  clergy.  The  religion  of  the  vast  majority  of 
Frenchmen  was  respected,  but  the  priest  was  con- 
fined to  the  church ;  the  home  and  the  women 
belonged  to  the  father  of  the  family,  and  the  school 
to  the  State. 

Indeed,    the    chief     cause    of     complaint    against 


196        CLIO,   AND   OTHER   ESSAYS 

Napoleon's  government,  in  the  eyes  of  the  majority 
of  his  subjects,  was  not  political,  social,  or  religious, 
but  administrative.  The  executive  machine  at  Paris, 
to  which  the  life  of  the  remotest  hamlets  was  *'  mor- 
tised and  adjoined,"  worked  with  an  inefficiency 
resultant  on  the  bad  health  of  the  autocrat.  His 
personal  attention  to  business  became  more  and  more 
irregular,  and  since  the  ineradicable  tradition  of  the 
Imperial  service  was  to  wait  upon  his  initiative, 
France  was  scarcely  better  governed  from  the  Tuileries 
in  1820  than  she  had  been  in  1807  from  the  camp-fires 
of  Poland. 

in  the  treaties  of  Autumn  1815  the  wily  Metternich 
had  succeeded,  by  a  masterpiece  of  cunning,  in  re- 
taining the  Venetian  territories  for  Austria  as  the 
price  of  abandoning  at  the  conference  the  claims  of 
Prussia  to  expansion  in  Germany.  As  in  Northern 
Europe  the  Rhine,  so  in  Italy  the  Mincio,  became  the 
geographic  boundary  between  the  Napoleonic  system 
and  the  ancien  regime  —  both  as  yet  rather  feebly 
threatened  by  the  rising  spirit  of  Italian  nationality. 
Murat,  who  had  by  his  recent  conduct  fairly  sacri- 
ficed the  goodwill  of  both  parties,  lost  his  kingdom 
and  fled  to  South  America.  No  one  dared  to  proposF 
to  Napoleon  the  restoration  of  the  temporal  power 
of  the  Pope ;  it  had,  indeed,  no  more  claim  to  recog- 
nition than  that  of  the  Prince-Bishops,  whose  recently 
secularised  territories  none  of  the  German  Princes 
proposed  to  restore.     Sicily,  protected  by  the  British 


IF  NAPOLEON  HAD  WON  WATERLOO  197 

ships,  remained  to  the  House  of  Bourbon.  From  the 
moment  that  the  signature  of  peace  removed  the 
fear  of  the  French  invasion,  British  influence  waned 
at  Palermo,  and  the  old  methods  of  Sicilian  despotism 
returned.  But  the  fact  that  the  King  of  Sicily  was 
obliged  by  the  Powers  to  renounce  all  his  claims 
to  the  throne  of  Naples  stood  him  in  good  stead 
with  his  insular  subjects,  whose  jealousy  was  ap- 
peased by  this  act  of  separation. 

All  the  Italian  Peninsula,  except  the  territory  of 
Venice,  was  subject  to  the  unifying  influence  of  the 
French  Imperial  system.  The  Code  Napoleon,  the 
encouragement  of  the  middle  class,  the  abeyance 
of  clerical  influence  in  government  and  education 
in  favour  of  military  and  official  ideals,  continued 
as  before  the  peace.  The  Clerical  and  Liberal  forces, 
still  divided  by  the  deadliest  enmity,  which  would 
certainly  break  out  in  bloodshed  if  the  foreigner  were 
ever  to  be  expelled  from  Italy,  were  alike  hostile  to 
the  French.  But,  whereas  the  Clericals  hoped  to 
restore  the  ancien  regime,  either  by  extending  the 
Austrian  dominions  or  calling  back  the  native  Princes, 
and  especially  the  Pope,  the  Liberals,  on  the  other 
hand,  dreamed  of  an  Italian  Republic.  These  two 
movements  were  represented  to  Italy  and  to  the 
world,  the  one  by  the  Prince  of  the  House  of  Savoy, 
the  hope  of  the  reactionaries  ;  and  the  other  by  the 
son  of  the  Genoese  doctor,  the  founder  of  the  formid- 
able "  Societa  Savonarola,"  in  which  many  of  the  rising 


198        CLIO,   AND   OTHER   ESSAYS 

generation  hastened  to  enlist  themselves.  In  1832  both 
these  romantic  young  men  fell  victims  to  Napoleon's 
police;  Charles  Albert  was  detected  in  disguise  in  Turin, 
and  suffered  the  fate  of  the  Due  d'Enghien.  Mazzini, 
who  had  the  year  before  escaped  with  difficulty  from 
the  Venetian  Alps,  where  he  had  raised  the  national 
flag  against  Austria,  attempted  a  rising  against 
Napoleon  in  the  streets  of  Genoa,  but  being  opposed 
by  the  Italian  soldiery,  who  found  all  that  they  wanted 
in  the  existing  regime,  was  captured  and  shot,  with 
twelve  of  his  followers. 

The  executions  of  the  Savoyard  Prince  and  the 
Genoese  prophet  served  to  remind  Europe  that 
Napoleon,  in  his  old  age,  still  remained,  as  in  his 
youth,  the  enemy  alike  of  the  ancien  regime  and  of 
democratic  liberty.  Which  of  the  two  would  be 
the  chief  gainer  by  his  death  it  was  impossible  to 
predict. 

On  the  evening  of  June  4,  1836,  Napoleon  was 
presiding,  with  even  more  than  his  habitual  invalid's 
lethargy,  at  one  of  his  Councils  of  State.  The  latest 
reports  from  Italy  were  presented,  and  a  closer  entente 
with  the  Austrian  police  was  under  discussion.  The 
Emperor  had  been  sitting,  silent  and  distracted,  his 
head  sunk  on  his  breast.  Suddenly  the  word  "  Italy" 
penetrated  to  his  consciousness.  He  looked  up  with 
fire  in  his  eyes.  "  Italy ! "  he  said  ;  "  we  march  to- 
morrow. The  army  of  the  Alps  will  deserve  well  of 
the  Republic."  Then,  more  distractedly,  he  murmured  : 


IF  NAPOLEON  HAD  WON  WATERLOO  199 

"  I  must  leave  Josephine  behind.  She  will  not  care." 
He  had  often  of  late  been  talking  thus  of  his  first 
Empress,  whom  he  seemed  to  imagine  to  be  some- 
where in  the  palace,  but  unwilling  to  see  him.  It 
was  the  custom  of  the  Council,  dictated  by  the 
physicians,  to  adjourn  as  soon  as  he  mentioned  her 
name.     The  Ministers  therefore  retired. 

The  rest  of  the  story  can  best  be  told  by  M.  Ville- 
bois,  physician  of  the  Imperial  Household  : 

"While  the  Council  sat  I  was  walking  in  the 
"Tuileries  Gardens  below.  It  was  a  hot  and  silent 
"night  of  June.  The  city  was  at  rest  and  the  trees 
"  slept  with  her.  Suddenly  from  the  open  window 
"  of  the  Council  Chamber,  a  noise,  inconceivably  un- 
"  melodious,  makes  itself  heard.  I  look  up,  and  behold 
"the  Emperor  standing  alone  at  the  balcony,  with 
"the  lights  behind  him  framing  him  like  a  picture. 
"With  the  gestures  of  a  wild  animal  just  set  free,  he 
"  is  intoning,  in  a  voice  of  the  most  penetrating  dis- 
"cord,  the  Revolutionary  hymn  of  France,  which  he 
"has  forbidden  under  penalty  of  the  law  to  the  use 
"of  his  subjects.  But  to  him,  I  know  it,  it  is  not  a 
"  hymn  of  revolution  but  a  chant  dii  depart.  I  rush 
"  upstairs,  and  find  a  group  of  Ministers  and  lackeys 
"  trembling  outside  the  door.     No  one  dares  enter. 

"  '  Doctor,'  said  old  Marshal , '  he  sang  that  cursed 

"song  like  that  the  night  before  we  crossed  into 
"Russia.  On  that  occasion  we  stood  in  the  room 
"below  and  trembled,  and  one  told  me  that  he  had 


200        CLIO,   AND   OTHER   ESSAYS 

"sung  it  thus,  in  solitude,  on   the  night   before  he 
"first  crossed  into  Italy.' 

"  Pushing  past  the  brave  old  man,  I  opened  the  door 
"  and  entered  alone.  The  sound  had  now  ceased,  but 
"  the  song  had  penetrated  through  the  summer  night, 
"and  in  the  Rue  de  Rivoli  a  drunken  ouvrier  had 
"caught  it  up  and  was  thundering  it  out.  1  looked 
"round  for  my  master,  and  did  not  at  first  see  him. 
"  Suddenly  I  perceived  that  Napoleon  was  lying  dead 
"at  my  feet.  I  heard  the  oaths  of  the  ouvrier  as  the 
"police  seized  him  under  the  arcade." 


THE   END 


Printed  by  Ballantvne,  Hanson  is'  Co. 
at  Paul's  Work,  Edinburgh 


/     X^Jn.  X 


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