Literary Sketches

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Thomas BA\Q/'her :g^

Literary Sketches

Hf S/ SALT.

SWAN SONNENSCHEIN, LOWREY & CO.,

PATERNOSTER SQUARE.

188&

.Ji

S. Cotoan d: Co., Qensral Printerif Perth,

CONTENTS.

X [The essays are reprinted, by permission, from the Magazines in which they were

^ first published, with a few slight additions and modifications.]

• PAG»

flC I. Two Kinds of Genius . . Progress, Nov.» 1883, i

2. Shelley as a Teacher . . Temple Bar y Nov., 1882. 14

3. The Tennyson I an Philosophy • To-day ^ Feb., 1884. 39

4. The Works of James Thomson (''RV.") The Gentle-

ffian^s Magazine, June, 1886. 59

5. On Certain Lyric Poets, and Their Critics.

7>/7i//<f-5flr, Jan., 1883. 93

6. Edgar Poe*s Writings . , Progress ^ July, 1887. 104

7. Henry D. Thoreau . . Temple Bar, Nov., 1886. 124

8. William Godwin • . . To-day, July, 1887. 167

9. Nathaniel Hawthorne's Romances Progress, Sept., 1887. 189

10. Some Thoughts on De Quincey . Time, Oct., 1887. 208

Two Kinds of Genius.

To attempt to subject a quality so mysterious
and variable as genius to any systematic
arrangement or precise definition would be, at
the best, a hopeless and foolish endeavour. But,
apart from any such arbitrary classification, there
are two main divisions of genius, apparent to
everyone who considers the question thought-
fully, which have always played an important
part in the history of the world. On the one
hand, there are the warm-hearted, sympathetic
lovers of mankind, who are inspired with a
generous impatience of the injustice and misery
with which the world is filled, and devote them-
selves to helping their fellow-creatures by some
special teaching and example. On the other
hand, there are the calm, philosophical minds,
which take a widely intellectual and passionless

Two Kinds of Genius.

of things, by denouncing with their utmost force
and passion the cause of the injustice. They
dwell rather on the enormity of the evil than on
its intermixture with good ; they are moralists
rather than artists ; philanthropists rather than
philosophers ; originators or advocates of one
special system rather than observers of man-
kind as a whole ; possessed of intense enthu-
siasm for one great idea, but perhaps for that
very reason unable to take a widely tolerant
and appreciative view of all ranks and classes
of society. This burning zeal for mankind,
this eager desire to right the wrong, has ap-
peared at all times and in many varieties of
character. It was in this spirit that the ancient
Jewish prophets uttered their fierce denuncia-
tions of present evil and promises of future
good. It was not part of their mission to
study nicely the characters of the offenders to
whom they were sent ; they were not com-
manded to weigh and ponder and suspend
judgment, but to denounce, startle, and over-
awe. So also with the founders of religious
sects and communities : in their earnest pro-
clamations of a new belief, it is no wonder if
they have sometimes done scant justice to
former institutions. The early propagators of
the Christian religion, whose whole attention
was absorbed in the new and glorious truths
which they were proclaiming to the world, had

Two Kinds of Genius.

little inclination to study philosophically the
old pagan creeds. When Mahomet, in his
turn, arose to sweep away the errors and
ambiguities that had crept into the Eastern
Church, and to establish a simpler faith, he felt
it no part of his duty to discriminate minutely
between the various sects of his opponents.
Again, when in later ages Luther rebelled
against the monstrous and overgrown tyranny
of Rome, he could not calmly set himself to
discover what truths, or fragments of truths,
might yet lurk in the very superstitions which
he cast off ; had he striven only to form an
unbiassed judgment of the papal authority, the
world might have been the richer by a great
critical or theological work, but it would have
missed the Reformation. And, lastly, in the
great humanitarian movement of still later times,
it cannot be doubted that the men who led the
way to the abolition of torture, slavery, and many
other forms of civil and religious oppression
from which the civilised world has not long been
released, were animated less by a calm judicial
spirit and dramatic insight into the general
character of the age, than by a fiery impatience
of the evils with which the world was infested,
and a conviction that those evils were un-
necessary and eradicable,

The merits and demerits, the advantages and
disadvantages, of this class of character are

Literary Sketches

Hf S/ SALT.

LONDON :

SWAN SONNENSOHEIN, LOWREY <t CO.,

PATEENOSTER SQUABE.

188&

Two Kinds of Genius.

almost inevitable, shortcomings of all enthusiasts,
and this is the penalty which they are condemned
to pay for them in the opinion of ordinary
people. Let us now turn to consider the other,
the philosophic, class of character.

To some minds it will always appear irrational
and unfair to draw a hard-and-fast line between
what is commendable and what is blameworthy,
in a world where the good and evil are so
strangely blended and intermixed. All must
alike deplore the evil, and all alike desire the
good ; but we must exercise a wise tolerance in
extirpating the one and a wise patience in
promoting the other. To root up violently the
tares from among the wheat may do more injury
than to let both grow together awhile. There
are many who believe that the man who by life-
long experience, and study of all phases of life
and every variety of character, is able to give to
the world some great artistic work, some faithful
copy of life, true to nature in the humblest
details, does far greater service to mankind than
those whose over-eager anticipation of the good
warps their minds and narrows their intellectual
vision. To such thinkers as these the true
teachers and reformers of mankind will always
appear to be those great objective poets and
many-sided philosophers who have taken this
wide and tolerant view of life, and who are able
to sympathise with every system and form of

Two Kinds of Genius,

human thought without any expression of
personal adherence or dissent. What can be
more liberal, more comprehensive, more world-
wide, than the poetry of Homer ? In him there
is no passion, no bias, no partiality, no half-views
of things ; his spirit is large and patient as the
spirit of nature herself. The words of Carlyle
about nature might be applied also to these
great natural poets :

" We are to remember what an umpire nature is ; what a
greatness, composure of depth and tolerance there is in her.
You take wheat to cast into the earth's bosom ; your wheat
may be mixed with chafl^ chopped straw, barn sweepings,
dust, and all imaginable rubbish ; no matter : you cast it
into the kind just earth ; she grows the wheat — the whole
rubbish she silently absorbs, shrouds it in, says nothing of
the rubbish. The yellow wheat is growing there ; the good
earth is silent about the rest — has silently turned all the rest
to some benefit too, and makes no complaint about it ! So
everywhere in nature ! She is true and not a lie ; and yet so
great, and just, and motherly in her truth."*

And if this is true of Homer, still more is it
true of the greatest of all poets, Shakspere ; the
secret of whose strength is the knowledge that
there is a soul of goodness in things evil. "He
seems to have been sent," says Mr. Ruskin, in
his estimate of Shakspere^s genius,f "essentially
to take universal and equal grasp of the human
nature ; and to have been far removed therefore

* On Heroes^ chap. ii. t Modem Painters^ vol. iv., p. 372.

8 Two Kinds of Genius.

from all influences which could in the least warp
or bias his thoughts. It was necessary that he
should lean no way ; that he should contemplate
with absolute equality of judgment the life of
the court, cloister, and tavern, and be able to
sympathise so completely with all creatures as to
deprive himself, together with his personal
identity, even of his conscience, as he casts him-
self into their hearts. . . . Not for him the
founding of institutions, the preaching of
doctrines, or the repression of abuses.*'

I have mentioned the greatest only, but in
addition to these many others might be cited as
illustrations of the same calm judicial spirit and
intellectual strength, all of them artists rather
than moralists, yet surely to those who feel with
them none the less excellent teachers of moral-
ity.

Yet this philosophical kind of genius, no less
than the more impassioned spirit of humanitarian
reformers, has its own special shortcomings and
imperfections. It cannot, indeed, be accused of
intellectual narrow-mindedness or religious fan-
aticism ; nor can we suppose that men of this
stamp had not well considered the deepest
problems of life, because they were not carried
away by personal predilection and enthusiasm ;
but it may, to some extent, lie open to the
suspicion of coldness and indifference to human
suffering. If it be true that inhumanity, tyranny,

Two Kinds of Genius.

and injustice have been amended by the
unceasing protests and earnest endeavours of
reformers and philanthropists, and if we unite in
praising those who have abolished these evils,
how can we consistently and entirely applaud
the equanimity of those writers who have
ignored them ? While there is so much real
evil in the world, it seems impossible to maintain
an attitude of calm impartiality without sacrificing
some of the noblest moral sympathies to the
maintenance of the dramatic proprieties. Was
there no suffering in Homer s time ? And must
not those who read between the lines of the
Odyssey and Iliad suspect that, in these faithful
pictures of an early stage of society, distance
often lends some of the enchantment to the
view ? We praise Chaucer for his wide human
sympathies and tolerant spirit, and the genial
pictures he draws of national life ; but was the
picture entirely a complete one ? Langland's
poem, Piers the Plowman, is a terrible witness
to the fact that in the midst of all that tale-telling
and merriment, there was even then a skeleton
in the cupboard in the form of deep suffering
and discontent among the down-trodden peasant
population. Shakspere is, in the main, well
content with his country, " This blessed spot,
this earth, this realm, this England ; " yet we can
see from Utopia, that, in the opinion of a thinker
no less profound than Sir Thomas More, the

I o Two Kinds of Genius.

state of ** this other Eden, demi-paradise," was
very far from being entirely blissful in the six-
teenth century. ** Is not this," he says, '* an
unjust and unkynde publyque weale, whyche
gyveth fees and rewardes to gentlemen, as they
call them, and to gold-smythes, and to each
other, whiche be either ydle persones, or
els onlye flatterers and devysers of vague plea-
sures : and of the contrary parte maketh no
gentle provision for poor plowmen, coliars,
laborers, carters, yron-smythes, and carpenters,
without whome no common wealthe can con-
tine we ? *' *

Again, if we look at the present century, we
shall see the same defects in the characters of
modern objective writers, such as Goethe, Scott,
Browning ; and this will become more apparent
if we contrast them with writers of the opposite
type, such as Hugo, Shelley, Swinburne. If we
recognise in Goethe the leading intellectual
figure of this century, it must not blind our eyes
to the fact that he is deficient in those emotional
and sympathetic qualities which constitute pre-
cisely the strength of Victor Hugo. If we
praise Scott for his close grasp of facts and
objective realities, we must remember also that
he had not a spark of that fiery enthusiasm for
suffering humanity which is Shelley's noblest
characteristic. Among poets of our own day

* " Utopia." Robinson's translation.

Two Kinds of Genius. 1 1

we must undoubtedly give the palm to Mr.
Browning for great dramatic power and wide
intellectual scope. Yet he cannot claim the
honour of having lent to the cause of liberty and
religious freedom such sympathy and assistance
as was given by the more impassioned lyric
inspiration of Mr. Swinburne's Songs Before
Sunrise,

It is important also to notice, as I said before,
that every thoughtful man leans naturally to one
or the other of these great lines of thought ; for,
though it is only by real genius that great ideas
are originated and expressed, yet the realisation
of such ideas, or at least the full recognition of
their author s merits, is often due to the efiforts
of less gifted men, who are drawn to this or that
theory which is more congenial with their own
natural inclination.

And thus it happens that while the virtues of
great men of the philanthropic or philosophic
stamp are often unduly extolled by their respec-
tive admirers, their faults are as often unduly
exaggerated by those of the contrary persua-
sion. To the sober-minded adherents of the
more practical and observant school there
often seems to be little else in the passionate
utterances of reformers than shallow enthus-
iasm and theatrical declamation. In like manner
the grave impartiality and quiet self-control
of the philosophic thinkers is often miscon-

1 2 Two Kinds of Genius.

strued by those who differ from them, into
mere callousness or indifference. In short,
each of these two kinds of genius has its own
deficiencies and imperfections, no less than its
advantages.

It is an error, however, to suppose that they
are necessarily antagonistic or contradictory ;
we are not driven to the alternative of pro-
nouncing one to be true and the other false. It
is far wiser to suppose that both are true, as far
as they go, though they view life from different
standpoints, and neither in itself can fully satisfy
the understanding. They each tell the truth,
and nothing but the truth ; but to know the
whole truth it is necessary to learn the double
lesson of their united teaching. The world is
full of grievous injustice, which is from time to
time redressed and righted by the genius of some
great reformer who devotes his life-work to the
service of his fellow-men. All that he teaches,
however burning his enthusiasm and zeal, is in
itself true and just ; but in the very enthusiasm
with which he is inspired there lies a new
danger, the danger of forgetting that the evil
was not all evil, but was interwoven and mingled
with good. Hence it is of the utmost import-
ance to keep before our eyes a wider and clearer,
though perhaps colder and less enthusiastic,
view of life and society ; and this is done by
those who show us a more complete and faith-

Two Kinds of Genius. 1 3

fully drawn picture of society. Thus a balance
is kept between the two extremes, and while
each kind of genius becomes, as it were, supple
mentary to the other, their united result is a solid
gain for the progress and happiness of mankind.

Shelley as a Teacher.

It is the object of this paper to exhibit Shelley
in the character of teacher rather than poet.
His poetical fame is now almost universally
acknowledged, but many of his admirers are
content to pass lightly over the matter of his
teaching, as though it were erroneous or un-
important ; even Mr. Symonds, in his other-
wise appreciative review,^ comes to the con-
clusion that the real lesson of his life and
writings ** is not to be sought in any of his
doctrines, but rather in his fearless bearing, his
resolute loyalty to an unselfish and in the
simplest sense benevolent ideal." My desire is
to show that this is an under-estimate of the
importance of Shelley *s doctrines, which, under
one form or another, seem to be destined to
play an important part in determining the
course of thought, and therefore cannot be so
lightly dismissed. It is perhaps natural enough

* «

English Men of Letters."

Shelley as a Teacher. 15

that such impassioned utterances as those of
Shelley should have met with scanty ap-
preciation. The sublime, we know, always
borders on the ridiculous ; and in estimating
such a character it is often difficult, as in the
case of Swedenborg, to draw the line between
enthusiasm and hallucination. But when en-
thusiasm is guided and tempered by the powers
of calm and sober reason, there results from
this union the most beautiful of all human
characters. So it was with Shelley, whose in-
tellect was in truth eminently keen and power-
ful, notwithstanding the assertion, so often
made, that he was a weak thinker. All his
biographers bear witness to the fact that he
was a profound and subtle disputant, and very
far from being the mere wild singer and vision-
ary that some would now wish him to appear.
This is well expressed by Dr. Garnett in his essay
on Shelley : *

** We must leam to think of Shelley not merely as gentle,
dreamy, unworldly, imprudently disinterested, and ideally
optimistic — though he was all this — but likewise as swift,
prompt, resolute, irascible, strong-limbed, and hardy, often
very practical in his views of politics, and endowed wiih
preternatural keeness of observation."

This being so, it is strange that we should
set such high value on his purely literary work,

* ** Fortnightly Review," 1878.

1 6 Shelley as a Teacher.

while we scarcely pause to examine the great
idea by which nearly all his poems are inspired.
His life-work was devoted to one clear and
definite end, which he kept steadily before his
eyes, and followed with singular firmness and
consistency. As he himself tells us in the
introduction to Prometheus Unbound^ he had
" a passion for reforming the world.'* This
reformation was to be affected not by bloodshed .
and civil strife, but by the gentler and surer
process of argument and education. It was by
his poems that he hoped to carry out the divine
mission with which he was entrusted. He says
in the preface to The Revolt of Islam\ '4 have
sought to enlist the harmony of metrical
language, the etherial combinations of the fancy

... in the cause of a liberal and compre-
hensive morality." Thus, like a second
Lucretius, he proposed to sweeten his doctrine
with the honey of melodious rhythm and
beautiful imagery. But it should always be
remembered that his primary object was to
teach and persuade, and that his poetry was
for the most part employed only to effect this
result.

There is a singular consistency between
Shelley's life and writings. In early boyhood
he solemnly dedicated himself to his task of phil-
anthropy and reformation, and throughout his
lifetime all his intellectual powers were devoted

i^

Shelley as a Teacher. 1 7

to this end. In the opening stanzas of The
Revolt of Islam he thus describes the first
awakening to the new life :

" I do remember well the hour which burst
My spirit's sleep : a fresh May dawn it was
When I walked forth upon the glittering grass,
And wept, I knew not why ; until there rose
From the near schoolroom voices that, alas !
Were but one echo from a world of woes —
The harsh and grating strife of tyrants and of foes.

And then I clasped my hands, and looked around.

But none was near to mock my streaming eyes.

Which poured their warm drops on the sunny ground ;

So, without shame, I spake — * I will be wise,

And just, and free, and mild, if in me lies

Such power ; for I grow weary to behold

The selfish and the strong still tyrannise

Without reproach or check.' I then controlled

My tears; my heart grew calm, and I was meek and bold."

The resolution thus earnestly made was
conscientiously kept. Some years later, in
reviewing his past life, Shelley could truly say
in his Hymn to Intellectual Beauty :

" I vowed that I would dedicate my powers
To thee and thine : have I not kept my vow ? "

This Hymn to Intellectu/il Beauty was
written shortly after what may be called the
close of the first part of Shelley's life. During
that period, he seems to have entertained the
belief that his theories for the regeneration of

B

1 8 Shelley as a Teacher,

man might be carried into effect even in the
present time, and accordingly we find him
personally advocating his doctrines with
extraordinary pertinacity. He is described
in the Shelley Memorials as a boyish enthusiast,

"Whose enthusiasm never wanes, and whose voice is
seldom silent ; who, with the eloquence of conviction,
obtrudes his doctrines at all times ; who seeks the young-
est daughter in the schoolroom, and the butler in the pantry,
to make them converts."

So too at Oxford, brought face to face with
the narrow orthodoxy of the College autho-
rities, he could not content himself with a silent
disbelief: he would neither conform, nor
abstain from proclaiming his non-conformity,
and the publication of a pamphlet, entitled The
Necessity of Atheism^ resulted in his expulsion
from the University. Then came his first
marriage, and his visit to Ireland, made in
order to take a practical part in the amelior-
ation of that country. Within a year after this
expedition, Queen Mab had been written, and
the equally remarkable notes to Queen Mab,
In the meantime, Shelley had put another of
his theories into practice, by the adoption of a
vegetarian diet.

Looking back over these years, Shelley must
indeed have felt that he had conscientiously
fulfilled the resolution of his boyhood. Yet he

Shelley as a Teacher. 1 9

must have felt also some disappointment at the
temporary failure of many cherished plans, for,
in spite of all his efforts, there was no visible
improvement among mankind. We can hardly
doubt that the following words of the Essay on
Love were written with reference to this time :

" I know not the internal constitution of other men, not
even thine, whom I now address. I see that in some
external attributes they resemble me ; but when, misled by
that appearance, I have thought to appeal to something in
common, and unburthen my inmost soul to them, I have
found my language misunderstood, like one in a distant
and savage land."

These words mark the sense of that loneli-
ness and disappointment and temporary failure
which have been felt by every true reformer.
But in the second period of Shelley's life, which
was mainly spent in Italy, he seems to have
looked to the future, and not the present, tor
the realisation of his schemes. Yet his firm
faith in the ultimate triumph of his principles
was never for an instant shaken ; nor did he
relax for an instant his efforts to ameliorate the
condition of mankind.

Let us proceed now to a consideration of the
religious and moral tendencies of Shelley's
teaching. The chief and cardinal doctrines of
Shelley s creed is Love, And by this is meant
love in its most universal sense, something
much more than individual affection or philan-

20 Shelley as a Teacher.

thropic benevolence — love not only of mankind,
but of all creation. This love of nature is the
central point, both of his religion and morality ;
his duty to God and duty to man are both alike
comprised in this.

And first, as regards Shelley's religious
views, I may here remark that the popular
opinion which represents him sometimes as an
atheist, sometimes as a sceptic, are both equally
fallacious. Shelley was no atheist, though in
the combative zeal of youth he may have
delighted so to style himself : he was rather a
pantheist, believing, as we learn from his
Adonais, in the all-pervading presence of
universal love. With still less truth could he
be called a sceptic ; since his religious, or anti-
religious convictions were fixed, decided, and
thoroughly sincere. On this point it is interest-
ing to compare his character with that of
Byron, the true sceptic, who had no fixed
belief, and little reverence, but ** flew about
from subject to subject like a will-o'-the-wisp,
touching them with a false fire, without throw-
ing any real or steady light on any."*^ Shelley,
on the contrary, had an essentially religious
nature, and was filled with profound veneration
for the good. Hogg says of him, that ** the devo-
tion, the reverence, the religion, with which he
was kindled towards all masters of intellect,

* Medwin, ii. 147,

Shelley as a Teacher. 2 1

cannot be described, and must be utterly in-
conceivable to minds less deeply enamoured with
the love of wisdom.'*^ We learn from the
Shelley Memorials that *' the more exalted
Platonical speculations of his later life made
Shelley discontented with the somewhat cold
though qualified materialism of Queen Maby''\
and about the year 181 5 he became an ad-
herent of the immaterial philosophy of Berkeley,
who asserted that matter itself is nothing but a
perception of the mind. But his great and
cardinal belief was undoubtedly in the perfecti-
bility of man, the belief that the good is more
potent than the evil, and that man's redemption
must be worked out by no external revelation,
but by the innate sense of virtue and love.
As a rule, he was indifferent to all theological
disputes and abstruse questions of religion.
He regarded all priestcraft with aversion, and
looked forward to the age of intellectual free-
dom and universal toleration, when, as he says
in the Ode to Liberty,

" Human thoughts might kneel alone,
Each before the judgment throne
Of its own aweless soul, or of the power unknown."

It is obvious, therefore, that Religion, in the
ordinary sense of the word, must hold a far less

* Hogg i. 242.
I Shelley Mem. 54.

22 Shelley as a Teacher.

important place in Shelley's teaching than
Morality, the relation of man to man. It was
to *' the cause of a liberal and comprehensive
morality," that, as I have already remarked, he
devoted all his poetical faculties.

There can be no greater mistake than to
suppose that Shelley's convictions were merely
the result of the thoughtlessness of youth, or
the imperfection of education, or, as a Cam-
bridge essayist has surmised, that ** if Shelley's
honest doubts had been openly and liberally
met by those with whom he first came in
contact, his after-life might have been very
different to that which it actually was."* The
fact is, that from the first Shelley was no
doubter, honest or dishonest, but was filled
with the absorbing conviction that while all
religious dogma is false and injurious, man may
yet attain to perfection by the light of his own
reason and his innate sense of gentleness and
love. In this belief Shelley never faltered : it
was this that upheld him through all the
struggles and sorrows of his life. We must
approve or condemn him, according as each
shall think right ; but the fact remains that this
was the secret of his strength.

Turning now to the question of morality, in
which Shelley was, for the most part, a pupil
of William Godwin, the author of Political

* Cambridge Prize Essay, 1877.

Shelley as a Teacher. 23

Justice, we find that here, as in religion, the
sole motive-power of Shelley's creed is Love.
Love is the one and only source of those two
great qualities, the bulwarks of morality,
gentleness and virtue. It is impossible to
prove to a man that gentleness is better than
cruelty, virtue than vice ; one can only appeal
to that intuitive sense of good, for which Love
is the most comprehensive name that can be
found. In Shelley's own words : ** If a man
persists to inquire why he ought to promote
the happiness of mankind, he demands a
mathematical or metaphysical reason for a
moral action."

Love is therefore the origin of all morality,
but there is another condition that is insepar-
able from a perfectly moral state, and that is
Freedom — for only those who are free can be
entirely and perfectly moral. If we say then
that Morality is the child of Love, we must
admit that it is the fosterchild of Freedom, for
by Freedom only can it attain to maturity and
perfection. Accordingly, in Shelley's poems,
we everywhere find Love and Liberty cele-
brated as the saviours of the human race.

The two moral qualities on which Shelley
most frequently dwells, and of which his own
life affords the most conspicuous example, are
those I before mentioned — gentleness and
virtue. Gentleness is perhaps more often in-

24 Shelley as a Teacher.

culcated by Shelley than any other quality.
And, rightly understood, it is the chief of all
virtues, as cruelty is the chief of all crimes.
For gentleness is identical with unselfishness :
it is that widely sympathetic spirit that prompts
us to injure no living thing. Among in-
dividuals true gentleness can only exist in
conjunction with simplicity of life, for in exact
proportion as a man lives in needless luxury,
he causes labour and degradation to his fellow-
men, and pain and suffering to the lower
animals. For this reason Shelley, the apostle
of gentleness, repeatedly insists on the necessity
of simplicity of life. In Epipsychidion he
says :

" Our simple life wants little, and true taste
Hires not the pale drudge Luxury to waste
The scene it would adorn, and therefore still
Nature, with all her children, haunts the hill."

And again in the Essay on Christianity : " The
man who has fewest bodily wants approaches
nearest to the Divine nature. Satisfy these
wants at the cheapest rate, and expend the
remaining energies of your nature in the attain-
ment of virtue and knowledge." For the same
reason Shelley himself, as all his biographers
bear witness, lived with the utmost frugality.
Leigh Hunt's account is as follows :

" This was the round of his daily life. He was up early,
breakfasted sparingly, wrote this Revolt of Islam all the

Shelley as a Teacher. 2 5

morning ; went out in his boat, or in the woods, with some
Greek author or the Bible in his hands ; came home to a
dinner of vegetables (for he took neither meat nor wine) ;
visited, if necessary, the sick and fatherless, whom others
gave Bibles to and no help ; wrote or studied again, or read
to his wife and friends the whole evening, took a crust of
bread, or a glass of whey for his supper, and went early to
bed."

Such was his life at Marlow in 181 7, and his
mode of living in Italy seems to have been
equally abstemious. " Bread," says Trelawny,
*' was literally his staff of life." **Wine," says
Medwin, **he never touched with his lips."

But the gentleness which Shelley teaches
does not only condemn what is openly cruel or
violent ; it sanctions nothing that is selfish or
uncharitable. There is an ^/^gentleness in
peaceful as in warlike occupations, and it is not
surprising that Shelley should dwell as strongly
on the][crime of selfishness as seen in modern
commerce as on cruelty itself. He says in
Queen Mab.

" Hence commerce springs, the venal interchange
Of all that human art or nature yield ;
Which wealth should purchase not, but want demand.
And natural kindness hasten to supply
From the full fountain of its boundless love.'*

This may sound Quixotic ; yet it is essentially
the same lesson as that which Ruskin has
taught us that the maxim of the political
economist, *' to buy in the cheapest market, and

26 Shelley as a Teacher.

sell in the dearest," is selfish and ungentle.
It may be worth while to quote his words : *

" They will find that commerce is an occupation which
gentlemen will every day see more need to engage in, rather
than in the businesses of talking to men or slaying them :
that in true commerce, as in true preaching or true fighting,
it is necessary to admit the idea ofoccasional voluntary loss ;
that sixpences have to be lost, as well as lives, uuder a sense
of duty."

It was this sense which made Shelley adopt
opinions which in the present day would be
called socialistic. He repeatedly urges that
there is no real wealth except in the labour of
man, and that the rich are in reality the pen-
sioners of the poor. The present system of
society, he thinks, '*must be overthrown from
the foundation, with all its superstructure of
maxims and forms." Like Godwin, however,
he trusted that this revolution might be brought
about without violence or bloodshed by the
spread of enlightenment and gentleness.

Virtue, according to Shelley's doctrine, must
be based solely on natural purity of heart.
There must be no restraint ; no fear ; no con-
sideration ol conventional propriety ; no hope
of reward, either in this world or the next ; for
an action is only virtuous when it is freely and
spontaneously performed. In his Essay on
Christianity, Shelley strongly enforces the

* Unto this Last, p. 30.

Shelley as a Teacher. 27

principle that virtue is its own reward, and that
it must be independent even of the hope of
immortality. Commenting on the words,
'* Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall
see God," he thus explains the latter expression :

" Whosoever is free from the contamination of luxury and
licence, may go forth to the fields and woods, inhaling joyous
renovation from the breath of spring, or catching from the
odour and sounds of autumn some diviner mood of sweetest
sadness, which improves the softened heart ; whosoever is
no deceiver or destroyer of his fellow-men — no liar, no
flatterer, no murderer — may walk among his species, deriving,
from the communion with all which they contain of beautiful
or of majestic, some intercourse with the universal God.
Whosoever has maintained with his own heart the strictest
correspondence of confidence, who dares to examine and to
estimate every imagination which suggests itself to his mind,
whosoever is that which he designs to become, and only
aspires to that which the divinity of his own nature shall
consider and approve — he has already seen God."

Shelley's life was consistently in accord with
his writings, and through all his career he in-
variably strove to practise what he preached.
In one point only has the virtue of his life been
seriously questioned, and that is on the question
of marriage. On this subject he held that all
legal constraint is foolish and immoral, and he
undoubtedly held this opinion in perfect honesty
and consistency. It will be sufficient to quote
his own words from the notes to Queen Mab :
" Love is inevitably consequent on the per-

28 Shelley as a Teacher.

ception of loveliness : its very essence is liberty :
it is compatible neither with obedience, jealousy,
nor fear : it is then most pure, perfect, and un-
limited, when its votaries live in confidence,
equality, and unreserve." I am aware that in
after-years Shelley refused to be held responsible
for the theories advanced in Queen Mab, which
was published without his consent ; but there is
no reason to suppose that he ever changed his
opinion on the question of the marriage-law.
It was formerly thought to be a sufficient con-
demnation of Shelley's views, to point to the
unhappy results of his first marriage. But the
publication of Professor Dowdens Life of
Shelley has now given us for the first time a re-
liable account of that portion of Shelley's career,
and the evidence which he adduces, though by
no means with the object of exculpating Shelley
from all blame, must at least have the effect of
relieving him of the charge of having ** deserted "
his wife, or having been in any way responsible
for her death.

Gentleness and virtue are, therefore, the two
qualities which, according to Shelley's teaching,
are inseparable from a moral state. But, as I
said before, true morality can only be developed
under favourable conditions, and of these liberty
is the chief. In the Ode to Liberty, it is liberty
that is described as bringing wisdom " from the
inmost cave of man s deep spirit." There is

Shelley as a Teacher. 29

probably no writer who has advocated liberty so
passionately as Shelley ; and his theories are in
consequence generally regarded as dangerous
and pernicious, or at best as the wild ravings of
a mere visionary and enthusiast. Yet it should
be remarked that in his strongest invectives
against kings and priests he never admits the
idea of vengeance or persecution : his doctrine
is always to overcome evil with good ; liberty
is to be gained not by violence but endurance.
He simply advocates the principle of universal
toleration.

On the subject of civil liberty, and the right
method of obtaining it, his views find their fullest
expression in The Masqtie of Anarchy, where
he calls upon the English people to overcome
the violence of their oppressors by passive and
indomitable endurance.

" Let a great assembly be,
Of the fearless and the free,
On some spot of English ground,
Where the plains stretch wide around.
. • .

And if then the tyrants dare.
Let them ride among you there.
Slash and stab and maim and hew ;
What they like, that let them do.
• • •

And that slaughter to the nation
Shall steam up like inspiration ;
Eloquent, oracular;
A volcano heard afar."

30 Shelley as a Teacher.

Such was Shelley's theory of passive protest-
The only occasion on which he took any practical
part in political matters was when he visited
Ireland in 1812, and published his Address to the
Irish People and other documents. As might
have been expected, his visit was a failure in its
immediate consequences ; but his address is in
itself very remarkable for its sagacity and
moderation. Indeed, as Mr. Symonds remarks,
*' Catholic emancipation has since been brought
about by the very measure he proposed, and
under the conditions he foresaw.'

In foreign policy Shelley was an equally
ardent champion of oppressed nations, and has
left in Hellas a splendid memorial of his love for
Greece. Here, too, time has shown the wisdom
of his views, as will appear from the following
passage in the preface to Hellas :

" Russia desires to possess, not to liberate Greece ; and
is contented to see the Turks, its natural enemies, and the
Greeks, its intended slaves, enfeeble each other, until one or
both fall into its net. The wise and generous policy of
England would have consisted in establishing the independ-
ence of Greece, and in maintaining it against both Russia
and the Turks."

But the kind of liberty which Shelley most
eloquently and urgently advocates is of course
freedom of thought. He is never weary of de-
claiming against religious intolerance and the
tyranny of social custom. These views find

Shelley as a Teacher. 3 1

their most impassioned expression in the Ode to
Liberty^ and are worked out at greater length
in The Revolt of Islam and Prometheus Unbound.
In all fiction there is scarcely a sublimer con-
ception than Shelley's Prometheus. In some
respects he resembles the Satan of Paradise
Lost^ and the Titans of Keats' Hyperion, but
the difference is still more striking. In these
we see the shadowy forms of great and colossal
heroes, who in their fallen state still cherish
lofty aspirations, though wild regret and frantic
indignation are now uppermost in their minds.
Prometheus, on the contrary, is calm and
passionless ; his subjection is only temporary,
and he is upheld through all his sufferings by a
serene and fearless expectation of his ultimate
triumph. In him we see a picture of the
eternal struggle of right against might, and in
this poem Shelley s ideal principle reaches its
highest development. Prometheus, the repre-
sentative of liberty and gentleness, ceaselessly
struggling against Jupiter, the representative of
despotism and cruelty, is the very incarnation of
all that Shelley ever thought, or said, or did.

Such, in the barest outline, are the main
features of Shelley's teaching. His opinions
will doubtless appear to many to be a strange
mass of wild, though philanthropic speculation,
and it must be admitted that he looks less at what
is practically and immediately attainable than

32 Shelley as a Teacher.

at what is positively just. Yet there are many
also in whose opinion a creed such as this is
destined to play a most important part in the
future of the world, standing as it does between
the two extremes of superstition and materialism.
It is not unfrequently said that there is no con-
sistent resting-place between these two, and that
men s choice must ultimately lie between the
ancient religious dogma, on the one side, with
all its treasury of fears and hopes, and modern
scepticism, on the other, with its cold and
passionless system, incapable alike of hope or
fear. There are some, however, who will not
accept this dilemma, but believe that the future
of the world belongs rather to this Shelleyan
idealism, which possesses the strength of both
creeds and the weakness of neither. It is
wholly free from the taint of superstition, while
it possesses love and enthusiasm, which supply
the only worthy motive for morality, and are a
continual source of thankfulness and joy. Again,
it can boast the perfect freedom of thought
which is the glory of modern science, while it
is free from the sad and joyless spirit, which is
hardly separable from a state of real scepticism.
In this belief alone can be found the complete
union of morality and reason : here alone can be
found the perfect religion of love. There is a
memorable passage in the Shelley Memorials^
where we read that when Shelley visited the

Shelley as a Teacher, 33

cathedral at Pisa, in company with Leigh Hunt,

" the noble music of the organ deeply affected Shelley,
who warmly assented to a remark of Leigh Hunt's, that a
divine religion might be found out, if charity were really
made the principle of it, instead of faith."

To end as I began, I will repeat that love is
the chief and cardinal doctrine of Shelley's
creed, and through love is to be wrought out the
perfection of the human race. It is easy to
brand such theories with the epithets ** senti-
mental *' and " Utopian.' Yet, after all, there is
not much to be proud of in the belief that the
human race is incapable of a regeneration which
has seemed possible to its most enthusiastic
children. If it be a fact that the perfectibility
of man is a mere dream, we should accept such
a conclusion with sober and saddened hearts,
and at least refrain from railing at those whose
utmost crime it has been to think too well of
their fellow-creatures. The philanthropic doc-
trines which Shelley advances are only im-
practicable in this strictly limited sense, that
men at present are not sufficiently unselfish to
practise them. We have, however, no right to
conclude beforehand that future generations will
be equally incapable of reformation. Time
may yet prove the truth of Shelley's lines :

" We might be otherwise ; we might be all
We dream of; happy, high, majestical"

c

34 Shelley as a Teacher.

Having now considered the general moral
tendencies of SheIIey*s teaching, it remains for
me to say a few words about the manner in
which that teaching was expressed. To an en-
thusiast such as Shelley, literary style must in
Itself have appeared a matter of secondary
importance ; and I need only notice here one or
two salient points in which his manner of writing
was directly influenced by the leading purpose
of his life. Owing to his enthusiastic devotion
to one great idea, the composition of most of
his poems is less finished and artistic than
would otherwise have been the case, herein
differing widely from that of Keats, whose
mind, undisturbed and undivided by strong
religious or political sympathies, was at leisure
to dwell entirely on what is beautiful and calm.
Shelley's sentences, on the contrary, are not
carefully weighed and polished and refined, but
are poured forth, like the song of his own sky-
lark, "in profuse strains of unpremeditated art."
He is too eager about the matter of his teaching
to be greatly concerned as to the precise method
of conveying it.

There is another noticeable defect in Shelley's
writings, this too caused by his intense serious-
ness and absorbing devotion to his cause. His
nature was by no means deficient in humour, as
may be seen from his satire on Wordsworth in
Peter Bell the Thirds and from other poems of

Shelley as a Teacher. 35

a similar vein. But the humour, though not
absent, was often latent and forgotten, and this
prevented his seeing the frailties of his fellow-
men from any but the saddest side. His
characters have great virtues or great vices, but
they have no small foibles or eccentricities : he
weeps at the littleness of human nature, but he
cannot smile. He has none of the playful yet
sympathetic humour which could draw such
characters as Sir Roger de Coverley or Colonel
Newcome. But these faults, if faults they be,
are after all insignificant when compared with
the immense benefits which Shelley derived from
his firm faith and unswerving devotion. It was
this faith alone that could inspire him with that
wonderful energy and inexhaustible flow of
language which make him unique among our
poets, and caused Lord Macaulay to write of
him as follows: "The words bard and in-
spiration^ which seem so cold and affected when
applied to other modern writers, have a perfect
propriety when applied to him. He was not an
author, but a bard. His poetry seems not to
have been an art, but an inspiration."

It should be remembered, too, that in spite
of these artistic defects in his didactic works,
Shelley has left poems which, even from an
artistic point of view, are scarcely inferior to
anything in our language. '* Not only did he
write the best lyrics, but the best tragedy, the

36 Shelley as a Teacher.

best translations, and the best familiar poems
of his century." So says his biographer in
' English Men of Letters/ and there is certainly
no exaggeration in the remark. Such high
lyrical inspiration has never yet been united
with such high artistic skill, as in the Ode to the
West Wind, the Question, the Ode to Liberty,
and a host of other odes and songs which I need
not here enumerate. Again though Shelley
cannot be called a great dramatist, yet The
Cenci is undoubtedly one of our greatest dramas ;
from beginning to end a masterpiece of artistic
perfection ; a marvel of objective writing by the
most subjective of poets. The Adonais^ too, is
a model of consummate art ; Keats himself has
left us nothing more faultlessly and symmetrically
beautiful than this. These two poems alone
are sufficient to prove that there is no natural
or inherent artistic blemish in Shelley's work.
But, writing in the full fervour of poetical in-
spiration, he for the most part could not pause
to elaborate and refine. It was better that his
poems should bear the stamp of genuine and
passionate conviction, than that they should be
free from faults of detail in their style and work-
manship.

And, lastly, a word about Shelley himself.
He had several characteristics that have en-
deared him to many readers beyond all other
poets of his generation. His beauty and youth ;

Shelley as a Teacher. 37

the freshness and simplicity of his life ; his
womanly purity of mind ; his unselfishness and
high devotion to his cause ; all these have con-
spired to invest his memory with a peculiar
charm. We look back to him with something
more than ordinary veneration and hero-worship ;
the least reminiscence of him is precious ; there
is something almost startling in the fact that
persons lately living had seen and conversed
with him. Of whom else could it have been
written as in Mr. Browning's Memorabilia ?

" Ah, did you once see Shelley plain,
And did he stop and speak to you,

And did you speak to him again ?
How strange it seems and new ! "

A reminiscence of Shelley is, indeed, as Mr.
Browning describes it, as it were a moulted
eagle-feather fallen upon the blank and barren
moorland of ordinary life. Still more beautiful
and reverential is the tribute paid to Shelley's
memory by the late James Thomson (" B.V ")
a writer who himself inherited no small share of
Shelley's rhythmic melody and rapturous in-
spiration. It is from his privately published
poem on Shelley that the following stanzas are
taken :

" A voice of right amidst a world gone wrong,

A voice of hope amidst a world's despair,
A voice instinct with such melodious song

J

3 8 Shelley as a Teacher.

As hardly until then had thrilled the air
Of this gross underworld wherein we fare
With heavenly inspirations, too divine
For souls besotted with earth's sensual wine. •

All powers and virtues that ennoble men —

The hero's courage and the martyrs' truth,

The saint's white purity, the prophet's ken,
The high unworldliness of ardent youth.
The poet's rapture, the apostle's ruth,

Informed the Song ; whose theme all themes above

Was still the sole supremacy of Love."

I
f

The Tennysonian Philosophy.

It is interesting to contrast the present reput-
ation of a great poet with the hostile criticism
to which he was subjected during his previous
career. Since the time when Coleridge declared
that he " could scarcely scan " some of Tenny-
son's verses, full fifty years have passed by, and
the Poet Laureate has now obtained a literary
eminence and wide-spread popularity such as
probably no poet has ever enjoyed in his own
lifetime. Almost every line that he now writes
is greeted with universal applause, and the
unsparing severity of former criticism has been
succeeded by the almost servile adulation of a
later age.

Lord Tennyson s claim to be the first poet of
our time is generally based on the ground that
he is the representative singer of the generation
in which he lives, and that he has appreciated
and expressed in his writings, more faithfully

40 The Tennysonian Philosophy.

and more delicately than any other poet, the
thoughts and feelings of his fellow-countrymen.
He stands before us less in the light of a great
teacher than a great singer ; and if the sound-
ness of his philosophical views be at any time
called in question, his admirers generally are
ready with the answer that the true function of
the poet is not to instruct, but to please ; not to
lead, but to represent the age in which he lives.
This may or may not be true as regards the duty
of poets in general, but it certainly is not the
course that has been followed by Lord Tennyson ;
it is not the view that he himself has taken of his
own duties and capabilities. It would have been
better for him and for all of us if he had thought
It well to follow the wise example of Gray, and
Collins, and Keats, and restrict himself to that
art of poetry in which he has so few rivals.
For if ever a poet has come near to perfection
in his work, Lord Tennyson has done so in those
poems where a great but simple thought had to
be expressed, and where was no room for the
introduction of any controversial matter. For
example, in Ulysses we have a splendid re-
presentation of the indomitable energy of the
will ; in the Lotos Eaters of rest ; in St, Agnes
Evey of purity and resignation ; in Rizpah, of
horror, and pity, and love. But, unfortunately,
the Poet Laureate was not content with this
simplicity of subject ; he has deliberately descend-

The Tennysonian Philosophy. 41

ed into the arena of strife, and must be judged
accordingly. Indeed, it was so obviously useless
to attempt to exonerate him from this criticism
that his earlier and more enthusiastic admirers
boldly took the bull by the horns and claimed for
him the position of a great teacher and thinker.*
It will be found, I fear, that his thoughts, when
sifted, are light as chaflf, and that his philosophical
system is a mixture of opportunism and shallow
optimist theories. In his delightful poem of Will
Waterproofs Lyrical Monologue, he has de-
scribed the process of his own poetic inspiration,
and the influence of his M use :

" Until the charm have power to make
New life-blood warm the bosom,
And barren common-places break
In full and kindly blossom."

One could hardly desire a more correct
description of Lord Tennyson*s poetical philo-
sophy. It is expressed in language of the
fullest and kindliest blossom ; but the common-
places of his thought will be found on investi-
gation to be very barren indeed.

Let us now proceed to consider the tendency
of the Poet Laureate's teaching on questions of
religion, morality, and politics. Lord Tenny-
son is often claimed as an ally by the orthodox

* Three Great Teachers of our Age, Smith and Elder, 1865.

42 The Tennysonian Philosophy.

church party ; but it may be doubted whether he
is at heart a very sound champion of the faith,
at any rate on the question of the truth of
Christian dogma. It should be noticed that on
this subject the assistance he has given to
orthodox belief has been less by any outspoken
avowal than by hints and suggestions, which
imply a sympathetic feeling, but are no guarantee
of personal adherence. He gives the Christian
the advantage, so to speak, of the best position
in his poems ; he loves to throw a favourable
light on the orthodox portions of the picture
and an unfavourable light on the reverse ; and
thus in an indirect way he has undoubtedly done
service to the church. But his attitude is
always such as to suggest the idea that he
believes Christian doctrine must be upheld less
for its own inherent truth, than because it is
bound up with some external advantage to man-
kind. As an instance of this indirect approval,
we may refer to the passage in Ihe Two Voices^
where the speaker, after long hesitation between
the advantages of death or life, is cheered by
the sweet and balmy airs of a lovely Sabbath
morning.

" Like softened winds that blowing steal.
When meres begin to uncongeal.
The sweet church bells began to peal.

On to God^s house the people prest :
Passing the place where each must rest,
Each entered like a welcome guest."

The Tennysonian Philosophy. 43

The sight of this solemn scene rescues the
would-be suicide from the gloomy depths of his
despair. It is a slight touch, but it is
characteristic of Lord Tennyson's narrow and
partial delineations of human nature.

Other examples will readily occur to the
mind ; perhaps the most striking is to be found
in one of his later poems, In the Children s
Hospital There, among various characters, we
have a description of a terrible doctor, with red
hair, big voice, big merciless hands, fresh from
the surgery-schools of France, and addicted to the
worst practices of vivisection, who roughly in-
forms the hospital nurse that one of the children
under her charge is dying and will need no more
of her care. When she timidly suggests that
there is the more need **to seek the Lord Jesus
in prayer," he treats her with brutal scorn ;

'^ Then he muttered half to himself, but I know what I heard

him say
* All very well — ^but the good Lord Jesus has had his day.' "

In this passage Lord Tennyson has deliber-
ately gone out of his way to couple disbelief with
roughness and brutality, and I cannot imagine
anything more disingenuous than to draw a
picture which may conceivably be true in itself,
but is calculated to suggest an absolutely
erroneous inference to the mind. There may be
doctors like the one described, devoid of all

44 T"^^ Tennysonian Philosophy,

gentleness and humanity ; but it is not their
belief or disbelief that has made them so.
Gentleness is not an invariable concomitant of
Christianity any more than of scepticism.

We shall come to still worse instances by-and-
bye on other questions, but this is no unfair
example of the illogical and indirect aid which
the Poei Laureate renders now and again to the
church party on the subject of Christianity.
He never meets the unbeliever face to face as
an avowed opponent, but he sneaks behind him
and trips him up unawares, or gives him a foul
blow ** below the belt," while posing all the time
as the impartial and philosophical by-stander
who wrote those famous lines (but that was
many a year ago),

" There lives more faith in honest doubt,
Believe me, than in half the creeds."

Such is Lord Tennyson's attitude with regard
to Christianity. But there is another question
in which he has taken a far more pronounced
part, and has shown himself more and more
intolerant and dogmatic in his advancing age ;
though, unfortunately, here also he has adopted
that circuitous and illogical method which I
have just noticed. The immortality of the soul
is not merely the cardinal belief of the Poet
Laureate's philosophy — in that he would be at
one with many of the best and noblest teachers

The Tennysonian Philosophy. 45

of mankind ; but it is the sine qud non of his mor-
ality, the condition without which life is worth-
less, the criterion by which he passes immutable
judgment on the characters of his fellow-men.
To illustrate this it will be necessary to touch
briefly on three or four of his poems, and first
on In Memoriam, the tenderest and noblest of
all his works. It is worthy of remark that in
this poem, where he himself felt most deeply, he
is least intolerant of the opinion of others. As
he himself says : —

" If these brief lays, of sorrow born,
Were taken to be such as closed
Grave doubts and answers here proposed,
Then these were such as men might scorn."

This is a true and sensible estimate of the
philosophical value not only of In Memorianty
but of all Lord Tennyson's poetry ; and had this
wise thought been kept in remembrance such a
poem as Despair would never have been written,
and that ill-starred drama The Promise of May
would never have made its brief appearance on
the stage. But even in In Memoriam, tender
and beautiful as the poem is, we may discover
the germs of that fatal fallacy, lately developed
to the full in the Poet Laureate's philosophy,
that happiness and morality in this present life
are dependent on a belief in a future existence.

" Not only cunning casts in clay :
Let Science prove we are, and then

46 The Tennysonian Philosophy.

What matters Science unto men —
At least, to me ? / would not stay.

Let him, the wiser man, who springs
Hereafter, up from childhood shape
His action like the greater ape,

But I was born to other things."

Passing over this astounding misrepresent-
ation of the theory of evolution, let the reader
note well the extraordinary idea of ''not stay-
ing;'' for therein is struck the key-note of
much of the Tennysonian philosophy. It is in-
deed sad that a great writer should lend his
sanction to the foolish clamour, so often raised
by those who cling desperately to some par-
ticular form of belief, that unless their special
doctrine be true, life would no longer be worth
living, and the call of duty would no longer fall
with authority on our ears. How different
from this cuckoo-cry are the noble words of
Frederick Robertson, himself a far firmer be-
liever than Lord Tennyson : —

*' If there be no God and no future state, yet.
even then, it is better to be generous than
selfish, better to be true than false, better to be
brave than to be a coward. Blessed beyond all
earthly blessedness is the man who, in the
tempestuous darkness of the soul, has dared to
hold fast to these venerable landmarks.'* *

This, however, is not the opinion of the Poet

* Address to Brighton working men.

Tfie Tennysonian Philosophy. 47

Laureate. With him there must be a sure
belief in futurity, or there can be no action in
the present. Virtue is not her own reward, as
we have lately been taught by some mistaken
moralists, but, as we learn from the poem
entitled WageSy needs

'* The glory of going on, and still to be."

But let me quote Lord Tennyson's own
words : —

"The wages of sin is death : if the wages of virtue be dust,
Would she have heart to endure for the life of the worm
or the fly ? "

One would have thought that even under
these depressing circumstances a really religious
and virtuous man would find much work to do
in the world, and many a duty to perform ; but
virtue, in the gospel according to Lord Tenny-
son, thinks otherwise. Take away the eternity
on which she has set her heart, and — " She will
not stay."

But if there is some faulty teaching in Wages
and In Memoriam, what shall we say when we
come to Despair and The Promise of May f
In the former of these we have a terrible picture
of a hopeless life and attempted suicide ; in the
latter of a life spent in deliberate vice and
heartless libertinism ; in both we are given to
understand that the evil is the direct con-
sequence of scepticism and unbelief. Can any-
thing be more grossly unfair and misleading

48 The Tennysonian Philosophy.

than this? No doubt cases may occur where,
in a peculiar class of character, loss of belieif
leads to unhappiness and even ruin ; but that
can hardly be held to justify a poet or dramatist
in taking such individual cases and representing
them as a general law. It would be at least
equally easy to produce instances where exactly
the contrary has occurred, where disbelief in the
supernatural has led to a surer morality, a
sounder judgment, and an altogether happier
estimate of life. But, we know, any stick is
good enough to beat a dog with ; and, in his
crusade against dogs of unbelievers, Lord
Tennyson has no scruples as regards his choice
of weapons.

Since morality, according to the Poet Lau-
reate's teaching, is thus dependent on the hold-
ing of certain religious beliefs, we shall not
be surprised if we find it taking strange forms
in some of the characters which he has delineated
in his poems. His treatment of the chief char-
acters in the Idylls of the King^ especially at
the close of the story, will furnish a remarkable
instance of his modus operandi. Anyone who
has read Sir Thomas Malory's History of King
Arthur, compiled about the year 1470 from
still earlier romances, must have noticed how
greatly Lord Tennyson is throughout indebted
to the old historian for the subject-matter and
even the words of his Epic. But there is one

The Tennysonian Philosophy. 49

important difference in his version of the
Arthurian legend, and that too in the most vital
and interesting part — the love of Lancelot and
Guinevere. In the old story, though the fatal
results of this guilty love are narrated sternly
and unsparingly, the fact is never lost sight of
that the lovers are true to each other to the
bitter end ; it is Lancelot and not the King
who visits Guinevere in the sanctuary ; it is
Lancelot who, after the Queen's death, bears
her body from Almesbury to its resting-place
at Glastonbury ; it is Lancelot who lingers and
agonizes over her tomb, until death relieves
him from his sorrow, and '* the angels heave up
Sir Lancelot towards heaven, and the gates of
heaven open against him." Nothing can exceed
the simple pathos and dignity of the story as
thus told by the ancient historian, and those
who know and love it cannot readily forgive
Lord Tennyson for the alterations he has
thought fit to introduce, however beautiful the
language, in his Idyll Guinevere. The sudden
repentance of the Queen ; the discovery that
Arthur, not Lancelot, is her own true lord ; the
one hope to be the mate of Arthur ** hereafter
in the heavens " — all this is very gratifying to
the cheap and easy-going morality of the
nineteenth century, but it is very untrue to
nature, and very unlike the work of a great
teacher.

50 The Tennysonian Philosophy,

When we come to consider the poems in
which Lord Tennyson treats of social subjects
we shall find that here, even less than in religious
questions, is he entitled to the position of a leader
of thought. Perhaps the theme which he has
handled most powerfully is the iniquity of
the loveless marriages of fashionable life, the
'* woman-markets of the west." In at least two
poems this is the direct cause of the tragic end-
ing, and in another and greater one it is closely
connected with it. All readers must admire the
noble scorn and indignation which are the key-
note of Ay Inzer's Field and the earlier Locksley
Hall, and in few other poems can one find such
splendour of language and imagery. Yet the
mingled weakness and violence of Leolin in
Ay Inter s i^^^/<a^ disgust us almost as much as the
amazing folly and selfishness of the hero of
Locksley Hall, and in both poems the moral
effect, which might otherwise have been very
great, is ruined by the utterly foolish and
immoral bearing of the most important character.
It is very interesting to compare Locksley Hall
with Mr. Brownings The Worst of It diud Mr.
Swinburne's The Triumph of Time, In all
these poems we find the same subject — the
character of a disappointed lover ; but while Mr.
Browning sand Mr. Swinburne's heroes bear their
sorrows with noble and unselfish magnanimity, we
find in Mr. Tennyson's hero such vulgar selfish-

The Tennysonian Philosophy. 5 1

ness and almost brutal violence as make the poem
unspeakably inferior in dignity and moral effect.
The subject of Maud is, of course, a much
wider and deeper one, but its defects are sub-
stantially the same. The surpassing charm of
this poem ought not to blind our eyes to the
strange moral blemishes which are the more
monstrous and unnatural owing to the beauty of
their surroundings. Maud herself is indeed
eminently pure and faultless, but the character
of her lover is so drawn as to make him almost
contemptible in the eyes of the reader. No
doubt his character was meant to be that of a
selfish solitary, redeemed by love and sorrow to
a sense of our common human fellowship ; but,
unfortunately for the moral of the poem, the
hero s conduct is even more insane at the end
than the beginning. The duel which brings
about the final catastrophe could not have taken
place but for his own wicked pride and childish
folly ; yet, amidst all his subsequent ravings, we
never find a trace of true repentance or remorse.
Then, again, the whole poem is saturated with
** Jingoism " of the worst description, which
reaches its culminating point when it is dis-
covered that the one event which can comfort
the bereaved lover, and restore him to a sphere
of usefulness and activity, is — the Crimean war !
What are we to think of the moral teaching of a
writer who was so carried away by the bellicose

52 The Tennysonian Philosophy,

spirit of the time as to use all the resources of
his art and poetical skill to vilify peace and
glorify war ?

I should like to remark, before leaving this
part of our subject, that the characters drawn by
Lord Tennyson are, with few exceptions, con-
spicuous for some grave defect, some moral flaw,
which is the more fatal because it is unintentional
on the part of the author. For of all faults to
which a teacher of morality is liable, the worst
is obviously that of not knowing whether he is
describing what is moral or the contrary. If we
study the Tennysonian characters, whether it be
the hero of Maud^ rushing off to the wars to
kill other people because he has been unfortunate
in his domestic career ; or the hero of Locksley
Hall, departing "seaward," and invoking a
thunderbolt on his Amy's residence ; or Leolin,
in Aylmers Field, committing suicide on the
news of Edith's death ; or the nurse in The
Children s Hospital passionately asserting that
she could not serve in the wards unless Chris-
tianity were true ; we shall recognise in all of
them the same moral defect, the same lack of
any solid faith and well-founded enthusiasm, such
as alone can enable a man to fight the battle of
life for the sake of virtue itself and without re-
ference to any selfish ulterior consideration.
They all mean well ; but they are all subject to
the same unfortunate weakness before alluded

The Tennysonian Philosophy, 53

to, that, under the stress of trial or disappoint-
ment, they cannot stay.

On the other hand, there is another class of
characters, of a less violent and unreasonable
type (and these are distinctly held up for our
admiration), in which we shall find defects which,
if not so glaring, are at least as inveterate and
dangerous. How is it that in the Arthurian
Idylls the sympathy of the reader is rather with
the erring Lancelot then the blameless King ?
Surely because in the character of Arthur there
is a deep blot of selfishness and unctuous self-
approval. That long sermon which he pro-
nounces over the prostrate Guinevere could
hardly have been uttered by a man of deep and
tender feeling ; a true-hearted husband could
hardly sum up his wife's offences with the sang
frotd oidi judge. The purity of Arthur is what
Carlyle calls ** the purity of dead dry sand ; " and
after reading his story one feels more strongly
than ever that " best men are often moulded out of
faults," and that the blameless Arthur is not one
of these.

In Enoch Ardeny we have, perhaps, the most
truly heroic of all Mr. Tennyson's heroes, though
I cannot agree with the critics who would regard
him as a similar conception to the Prometheus
of -^schylus or Shelley.* Yet the plot of the

* Cf. Three Great Teachers of our Age, " Enoch Arden
is, in fact, the Promethean poem of the day."

54 The ITennysonian Philosophy.

story, though the intent is pure, is strangely
unfortunate in its conclusion. The noble en-
durance and self-sacrifice of Enoch is, as far as
Annie s- peace of mind is concerned, spoiled and
stultified by the result. The object of com-
municating the news of Enoch's death is to re-
lieve Annie's mind of the fear that he may still
be living ; yet what would be the state of mind
of a wife who learned, not that her former
husband had long been dead, as she had hoped
and been assured, but that his funeral was even
now to take place ; that he had been dwelling
for a year in the same village as herself, and
haunting her window like a ghost ? It seems to
be overlooked that there could be nothing but
torture in such news as this, and that there is an
unpardonable artistic blemish in leaving the
story in such a helplessly morbid position.

If we turn to the political teaching of Lord
Tennyson, we shall find in it little more than a
mild optimism, and an attempt to strike the
golden mean by avoiding " the falsehood of
extremes."

" Ah yet, tho* all the world forsake,

Tho' fortune clip my wings,
I will not cramp my heart, nor take

Half views of men and things.
Let Whig and Tory stir their blood ;

There must be stormy weather ;
But for some true result of good

All parties work together."

The Tennysonian Philosophy. 55

The wisdom of such a doctrine is apparent
rather than real ; for history surely teaches us
that truth does not always, or of necessity, lie
between two extremes ; there have been great
questions as of Peace or War, Liberty or Slavery,
where one party has been wholly and entirely in
the right, and the other party wholly and en-
tirely in the wrong. There are some great prin-
ciples, even in politics, which one must accept
and believe altogether, or not at all, and which
one cannot afford to cahulate or compromise.
To be for ever straining to strike the balance
between rival parties, and to assume a position
of philosophic impartiality, is the characteristic
of one who follows and does not lead the age,
the mark of political scepticism rather than
political wisdom.

In short, the whole philosophy of Lord Tenny-
son's writings is that of a ** representative *' and
not an original poet. One may find in his works
the current theories and speculations of the age,
stated with marvellous force and unexampled
felicity of expression, but the man who, amid
the din of conflicting creeds, seeks for moral or
religious guidance and support, such as thousands
have sought and found in the teaching of Carlyle
and Browning and Ruskin, will look in vain for
such assistance in the writings of the Poet
Laureate.

56 The Tennysonian Philosophy.

" The man of science himself is fonder of glory and vain ;
An eye well practised in nature, a spirit bounded and poor ;
The passionate heart of the poet is whirled into folly and

vice.
I would not marvel at either, but keep a Umperate brainy

Such seems to be the leading and ever-present
idea of the Tennysonian philosophy. But in
this endeavour it may be that something more
is lost than is gained, for it is sometimes for-
gotten that the passionate hearts of poets are
whirled into other things besides folly and vice,
such things as noble enthusiasm, unshaken faith
in mankind, and uncompromising love of the
good. However temperate the brain may be,
no system of mild optimism, expressed in how-
ever magnificent language, can be weighed in
the balance against the wiser and truer, though
more passionate, utterances of those poets who
are the real teachers of mankind.

After what we have seen of the Poet Laureate's
opinions, religious, social, and political, I do not
think we can justly be surprised at his having
become a member of the House of Lords. He
was always a half-hearted Liberal in his youth ;
and in his old age he has become more and
more illiberal and dogmatic. He cannot cor-
rectly be called a '* Lost Leader," for he never
was a leader of thought, certainly not of advanced
thought ; yet, in one sense, he has done battle
for the party of progress, for all true poets, apart

The Tennysonian Philosophy. 57

from their teaching, must in some degree aid
the great cause. And, whatever we may think
of Lord Tennyson's philosophical teaching, we
must all alike admire and revere his grand poet-
ical gifts ; indeed it is just because we do so re-
vere them, because we have known his poems
from childhood, and have conned them over and
over till they have become almost a part of our
being, it is precisely for this reason that we de-
plore the intolerant tone of his later writings
and the final hallucination which has made him
deem it expedient to prefix to the name of
Alfred Tennyson an empty and inglorious title.
Yet it should be remembered that this last
act, which excited such widespread surprise
among almost all classes of Englishmen, was
nothing more than the culminating point of a
process which had long been going on. It can-
not be denied that during the last ten years the
whole weight of the Poet Laureate's influence has
been thrown more and more in favour of the
aristocratic and reactionary party ; while pro-
fessing to stand aloof from the troubled element
of politics, he has, for all practical purposes,
done all that he could to arrest the march of free
thought, and to hinder the awakening of the
people. The bigoted and intolerant tone of
many of his late poems, especially the sequel to
Locksley Hall, has caused sorrow and dis-
appointment to all true-hearted reformers, and

58 The Tennysonian Philosophy,

is the more deplorable and inconsistent since it
comes from one who formerly posed as himself
a champion of independent thought and a lover
of liberty. But, after all, it is perhaps better
that reformers should now have in Lord Tenny-
son a professed opponent rather than a luke-
warm friend ; and, in spite of his great and de-
served reputation as a poet, his loss to the cause
of liberty will be found to be less serious than
might at first sight be imagined. For, while we
fully admit the greatness of his purely poetical
powers, we have no hesitation in asserting that
the thought which runs through his writings is
as feeble as the expression is beautiful. His
philosophy, if such it can be called, was false
and hollow from the beginning, and has become
more and more unscientific with increasing age
and intolerance.

The Works of James Thomson.

C B. vr) *

The conditions which underlie the appearance
of poetic genius are proverbially mysterious and
inscrutable. Seldom, however, has Fate in-
dulged in a stranger and more whimsical freak
than in assigning one and the same name to two
writers of such widely diverse temperaments as
the placid, contented, and mildly optimistic poet
whose Castle of Indolence still remains the most
perfect expression of a life of leisured quietude,
and the unhappy pessimist who could write
Mater TenebraruTn and the City of Dread-
ful Night. One cannot but fear that this in-
congruous identity of name may in future years
be a cause of trouble and confusion to a be-
wildered posterity. It certainly seems a trifle

'''The City of Dreadful Nighty and other poems, 1880.
Van^s Story y and other poems, 1881. Essays and Phan-
tastes, 1 88 1. A Voice from the Nile, and other poems.
With a memoir, by Bertram Dobell, 1884. (Messrs. Reeves
& Turner.) Satires and Profanities, 1884. (Progressive
Publishing Company.) Shelley, a poem, with other writings
relating to Shelley. (Printed for private circulation, 1884.)

6o The Works of James Thomson (^^ B. V^)

hard on the elder poet, the respectability of
whose name has hitherto been beyond question
in the most orthodox quarters, that his reput-
ation should now be compromised, if not
eclipsed, by the brilliant but erratic genius of
his namesake, the youngest member of the
poetic brotherhood. Comparisons are odious,
but sometimes unavoidable. The Castle of hi-
dolence is indeed a splendid structure, which
none but a master-hand could have reared ;
but hereafter there may tower beside it — for
are not the names of the two architects identi-
cal ? — a City of still more colossal and
majestic proportions.

At present, however, there is little danger of
any such untoward confusion or comparison, for
the simple reason that the genius of the younger
James Thomson is still almost unknown to the
mass of English readers. It is true that some
first-rate critics have expressed strong interest
and admiration for ''B.V.'s'** poems; George
Eliot, W. M. Rossetti, George Meredith, and
George Saintsbury being among the earliest to
recognise the remarkable merits of the City of
Dreadful Night ; yet, in spite of many favour-
able notices from competent judges, there has
never been any general appreciation of Thom-
son's works. That he could ever become a

* Bysshe Vanolis^ a notn de plume^ said to have been
adopted in memory of Shelley and Novalis.

The Works of y antes Thomson (^' B. V^) 6r

popular poet was of course rendered impossible
by the nature of his writings ; but it is strange
nevertheless that in this, the fourth year since
his death, he should still be ignored or under-
rated in many literary cirdles where homage is
often paid to men of far less distinguished
genius.

James Thomson was pre-eminently a sub-
jective poet ; his life is the key to a proper
understanding of his writings ; and those who
read between the lines of his poems and essays
will not fail to discover that most of them are
more or less autobiographical. An interesting
account of Thomson's life may be found in Mr.
Dobell's Memoir, prefixed to A Voice from the
Nile. It is a sad record of a talented and
chivalrous spirit struggling in vain against over-
whelming misfortunes and afflictions, which
were aggravated partly by a constitutional
melancholia, probably inherited from his father ;
partly by the life-sorrow that dated from the
sudden death of a beautiful girl to whom he was
betrothed ; and partly, it must be admitted, by
the deplorable intemperance that darkened his
later years. There is a striking similarity in
the profound sadness of Thomson s career to
some of the incidents in the life of Edgar Poe :
the orphaned childhood ; the drudgery of an
uncongenial profession ; the untimely death of
one whose image thenceforth could never be

62 The Works of James Thomson ('' B, V.^')

banished from the mind or the writings ; the
poverty and privations of an unsuccessful litefary
life ; the use of stimulants as a desperate escape
from the tortures of memory ; and, lastly, the
sudden death, apart from all friends, in a strange
hospital — all this is common to the story of both
poets. But Thomson's melancholy was deeper
and more real than that of Poe : in lines such
as the following, wherein he sums up the story
of his life, there can be no suspicion of any
poetic exaggeration for artistic purposes : —

" For there my own good angel took my hand,

And filled my soul with glory of her eyes,
And led me through the love-lit Faerie Land

Which joins our common world to Paradise.
How soon, how soon, God called her from my side,

Back to her own celestial sphere of day !
And ever since she ceased to be my guide,

I reel and stumble on life's solemn way.
Ah, ever since her eyes withdrew their light,
I wander lost in blackest stormy night."

Every reader of Thomson s poems must have
noticed and wondered at the two different tones
that are heard there ; it seems almost incredible
that the glad and exultant strains of A Happy
Poet and Sunday up the River can have been
written by the author of the City of Dreadful
Night, Yet the discrepancy is perhaps more
apparent than real ; for the fact that Thomson
was endowed with keen powers of enjoyment,

The Works of James Thomson (^' B, V.^') 63

and had tasted at times some of the sweets of
life, only serves to enhance the central and final
gloom. It may be said of him, as of Schopen-
hauer, that *' to be on the whole a believer in
the misery of life, and yet to be occasionally
visited by a vivid senseof its gleaming gladness,
is surely the worst of conceivable positions." *
This was precisely the position in which Thom-
son's lot was cast ; and there can be no doubt
that the general tenor of his writings is strongly
and distinctly pessimistic, in spite of occasional
intervals of hopefulness or enjoyment.

It is not, however, as a pessimist, but as a
poet that Thomson is destined to be known.
I will, therefore, begin by noticing his chief
poetical characteristics. Of the three volumes
of poetry now before the public, two were
published during Thomson s lifetime, and the
third in 1884, two years after his death. But
many of the poems had appeared at earlier
periods in Tail's Edinburgh Magazine, the
National Reformer, and other papers, while the
author's habit of prefixing to each poem the
date at which it was composed shows us that
some of his writings were kept in hand many
years before being published at all ; indeed,
there was one period of nearly seven years
(1875-1881) during which, in despair of obtain-

* Sully's Pessimism^ p. 81.

64 The Works of James Thomson ('' B. V:' )

ing any recognition of his work, he altogether
ceased to write poetry. This fulness of delibera-
tion and maturity of workmanship form one of
the most salient features in Thomson's style.
He seldom indulges in unpremeditated lyric
flights or irregularities of metre, and does not
possess that supreme imaginative faculty which
can create such poems as the odes of Coleridge
or Shelley. His peculiarity consists in the rare
combination of an exquisite harmony of tone,
and an almost perfect sense of rhythmic melody,
with a keen, strong, logical cast of mind. Con-
tradictory as it may seem, his genius was at one
and the same time both poetical and mathe-
matical ; he is the connecting link between
Shelley on the one hand and Browning on the
other ; and it is curious to observe that certain
of his poems — Vanes Story ^ for example — have
been described by some critics as an echo of
Shelley, by others as an echo of Browning.
In this respect his position is unique; he suc-
cessfully combines two mental qualities which
are usually found to be antagonistic. I do not
know of any other English poet who has been
able to express such stern logic of realistic
thought in such wonderfully subtle melody of
language.

That Thomson s poetry has also certain un-
fortunate mannerisms and blemishes of style
will not be denied by his warmest admirers.

The Works of James Thomson ('' B. VJ') 65

Of the morbid tone that pervades most of his
chief poems I shall have occasion to speak later
on : his most conspicuous artistic faults are an
excessive proneness to allegorical description,
which sometimes involves the meaning in con-
siderable obscurity ; and a great inequality in
the standard of his writing, which occasionally
lapses into mediocrity and commonplace. In
some of his poems his habit of coining double
words is indulged almost to affectation ; thus, in
the first few stanzas of Bertram to the Lady
Geraldine, we meet with the following :
** vision-strange," ** fuU-credentialled," '* world-
filled," ** dove-quick," ** calm-robed," ** dance-
ready," ** ethereal-lightly," *' whirl-wanton,"
** lightest-tender," *' dim-steadfast," *' drear-
barren ; " and many other equally strange com-
binations might be readily added to the list.
The complaint made by some critics that Thom-
son's muse is addicted to faulty rhymes seems
hardly justifiable ; at any rate, if he sins in
treating column and solemn as rhymes, and in
other similar instances, it may be pleaded that
he sins in excellent company ; though we could
wish perhaps that he had not extended the
same licence to war and more. It may be here
remarked that Thomson's mind seems to have
been impressionable and receptive almost to a
fault, for in reading his works we are constantly
arrested by a reminiscence of Shelley, or the

66 The Works of James Thomson (''B. V:')

Brownings, or Blake, or De Quincey, or some
other favourite author, though there is certainly
no trace of anything like deliberate imitation.

Thomson's purely poetic powers, apart from
his pessimistic teaching, may be studied in his
lyric pieces and translations from Heine, or such
narrative and artistic poems as Weddah and Om-
El Bonain and The Naked Goddess, The
former of these is a tragic story of Oriental love,
told in eight-lined stanzas of wonderful beauty
and vigour. Some of the more pathetic pass-
ages in this poem recall Keats's Isabella ;
but the movement, as a rule, is more rapid ; the
end is kept steadily in view throughout, and
there is little ornament or digression. It would
be impossible to do justice to Weddah and Om-
El Bonain by the quotation of any special
stanzas ; for its great merit consists in the con-
summate skill with which the different parts are
welded together and the thread of the story
preserved. It is a remarkable poem, and suffi-
cient in itself to win a lasting reputation for its
author : some readers will perhaps like it all the
better because it is free from all elements of a
personal and subjective nature. Shorter, and
less ambitious in its scope, yet scarcely less
delightful, is The Naked Goddess^ a splendid
allegory descriptive of the untameable wildness
of the Goddess of Nature, whom the votaries of
modern civilisation foolishly attempt to clothe.

The Works of James Thomson ("B. V.") 67

Vainly do the high-priest and the arch-sage, as
the spokesmen of the assembled citizens, who
have flocked out in crowds at the news of the
shining apparition, urge upon the haughty
goddess the desirability of conforming to the
laws of society and assuming the religious or
philosophic gown. She dismisses them with
contempt, and asks that some child may be sent
to her. Then follows a passage very suggestive
of Blake's style : —

" So two little children went,
Lingering up the green ascent,
Hand in hand, but grew the while
Bolder in her gentle smile.

* Tell me, darlings, now,* said she,

* What they want to say to me.'
Boy and girl then, nothing loth,
Sometimes one and sometimes both,
Prattled to her sitting there
Fondling with their soft young hair.
' Dear kind lady, do you stay

Here with always holiday ?
Do you sleep among the trees ?
People want you, if you please.
To put on your dress and come
With us to the City home.'

I )i

The Naked Goddess is the best of Thomson s
artistic poems ; but there are several others on
general subjects which deserve high praise,
especially In the Roomy a dramatic study full
of weird tragic force, and A Voice from the

68 The Works of James Thomson (" B. F")

NilCy one of the few specimens of Thomson s
blank verse. The quiet dignity -and latent
strength of the latter poem are well suited to the
subject ; in reading these slow and stately lines
we seem to breathe the same calm air as in
Landor's Gebir^ and to hear the majestic
river "lapsing along," as in Leigh Hunt's
famous sonnet. Unmistakable evidences of
true poetic genius may also be found in many of
Thomson's songs and short poems, among
which I would particularly mention the lines on
William Blake, A Requiem, E, B, B. —
memorial verses on the death of Mr3. Brown-
ing, and the two songs commencing The fire
that filled my heart of old and The nighting-
gale was not yet heard. In writing of Mrs.
Browning, Thomson seems to have uncon-
sciously caught an inspiration from the peculiar
style of the poetess, as in the lines : —

** Italy, you hold in trust
Very sacred English dust."

and the same extraordinary similarity of tone
may be observed in the verses on Blake, which
are apparently conceived in the very spirit of
Blake himself. The translations from Heine,
who, next to Shelley, was Thomson's favourite
author, have been approved by the best critics
as admirable attempts in a kind of writing where

The Works of James Thomson (*'' B. V.'^) . 69

complete success can scarcely be regarded as
possible,

But it is now time to turn to those more
characteristic poems in which Thomson gives
free play not only to his poetic genius but to
his own feelings and emotions. It may be con-
venient to consider these under two heads :
first, those which breathe a tone of hopefulness,
or at any rate of pensive resignation ; and,
secondly, those of a decidedly gloomy and
pessimistic cast. It will be found by those
readers who care to examine the dates of the
poems that the former belong mainly, though
not exclusively, to the earlier portion of his life,
and the latter rather to the dreary period of his
London career.

The two Idylls of Cockaigne, Sunday at
Hampsteady and Sunday up the River^ are
perhaps the best known of Thomson's writings
next to the City of Dreadful Night, There
is a rare charm in the complete abandon of these
poems and their entire disregard of the social
bugbear of respectability . They are conceived
in a spirit of boisterous and irrepressible merri-
ment, yet there is throughout an undertone 01
very true and deep feeling which redeems them
from any taint of coarseness or vulgarity.
Sunday up the River is decidedly the finer of
the two, being, indeed, a rich mine of lyric
poetry of a very high order, and the best con-

yo The Works of James Thomson (''B.V^)

tribution made for a very long time to the
literature of the Thames. Less exuberant in
tone than these two idylls, but nevertheless
contrasting strangely with the usual despondency
of Thomson's writings, are A Happy Poet
and 7 he Lord of the Castle of Indolence,
written in 1859. The former describes in lines
of singular beauty the duties and functions of
the ideal poet, while the latter depicts the
character of one of those true-born monarchs,
those '* right royal kings,"

" Whom all the laws of Life conspire to love and bless."

In reading The Lord of the Castle of In-
dolence it is difficult to feel sure whether the
writer is studying a purely ideal character, or
glancing at the capabilities of his own youth, or,
as the title of the poem seems to indicate, referr-
ing to his own namesake and predecessor in the
poetic art '* Jamie Thomson, of most peaceful
and blessed memory/' as he calls him elsewhere.
But however this may be, these two poems are
certainly remarkable as coming from the pen of
a confirmed pessimist. What could be more
optimistic than the following stanzas from The
Lord of the Castle of Indolence ? —

** While others fumed and schemed and toiled in vain
To mould the world according to their mood,
He did by might of perfect faith refrain
From any part in such disturbance rude.

The Works of James Thomson ('' B. V.") 71

The world, he said, indeed is very good,

Its Maker surely wiser far than we ;
Feed soul and flesh upon its bounteous food,

Nor fret because of ill ; All-good is He,
And worketh not in years but in eternity."

I n the same catholic spirit he writes of the
duties of A Happy Poet : —

" For I must sing : of mountains, deserts, seas.
Of rivers ever flowing, ever flowing ;
Of beasts and birds, of grass and flowers and trees

For ever fading and for ever growing ;
Of calm and storm, of night and eve and noon.
Of boundless space, and sun and stars and moon."'

And most supremely of my human kin ;

Their thoughts and deeds, their valours and their fears,
Their griefs and joys, their virtue and their sin.

Their feasts and wars, their cradles and their bierb.
Their temples, prisons, homes, and ships and marts.
The subtlest windings of their brains and hearts."

But, alas ! all poets are not happy poets ; and
as the years roll on and the troubles of life in-
crease, the subjects of song are apt to become
limited, as in James Thomson's case, to the
darker study of se/f. There is a noticeable
stanza elsewhere in A Happy Poet^ in which
this seems to be foreseen : —

" Is it not strange ? I could more amply tell
Such woes of men as I discern or dream.
Than this great happiness I know so well.

Which is in truth profounder than they seem ;
And which abides for ever pure and deep.
Beneath all dreams of wakefulness and sleep."

72 The Works of James Thomson ('^ B. V^)

We next come to a group of poems which
are all inspired to some extent by the same idea
— a soft and hallowed reminiscence of the lost
love who was ever present to Thomson's mind.
Bertram to the Lady Geraldine is a poetic
rhapsody, passionately conceived, and passion-
ately executed, and worthy to be placed beside
Mrs. Browning's wonderful poem, to which it is
akin in something more than name. The
Fadeless Bower^ on the other hand, is mqre
distinctly narrative and autobiographical, per-
haps the tenderest and most pathetic of all
Thomsons writings. Very simple yet very
beautiful are the words in which he recalls that
•* vision of the Long ago," '^the dear old bower,"
where he reached the crowning point of his life.

" I have this moment told my love ;

Kneeling, I clasp her hands in mine :
She does not speak, she does not move ;

The silent answer is divine.
The flood of rapture swells till breath
Is almost tranced in deathless death.

The simple folds of white invest
Her noble form, as purest snow

Some far and lovely mountain-crest,

Faint-flushed with all the dawn's first glow ;

Alone, resplendent, lifted high

Into the clear vast breathless sky."

Vanes Story ^ which gives its name to the
second volume of poems, is also a record of a

The Works of James Thomson (^' B. V.'') 73

vision of the same lost love, but told in a more
fantastic and imaginative style. It does not
seem to have left a very favourable impression
on the mind of most of its critics, some of whom
have not unnaturally taken offence at the re-
ligious speculations which have rather un-
necessarily been imported into the poem, while
others have been puzzled by the odd mixture of
the supernatural and commonplace, which often
remind the reader of Mr. Browning's Christrhas
Eve and Easter Day. Yet Vanes Story
contains passages of extraordinary beauty ;
where, for instance, since the days of Shelley,
could we discern anything more perfectly
melodious than this ? —

*' And thou shalt kneel and make thy prayer,

A childish prayer for simple boon ;

That soon and soon and very soon

Our lady of Oblivious Death

May come and hush my painful breath

And bear me thorough Lethe-stream,

Sleeping sweet sleep without a dream ;

And bring you also from that sphere

Where you grow sad without me, Dear ;

And bear us to her deepest cave

Under the Sea without a wave,

Where the eternal shadows brood

In the Eternal Solitude.

Stirring never, breathing never,

Silent for ever and for ever ;

And side by side, and face to face,

And linked as in a death-embrace,

Leave us absorbing thus the balm

Of most divinely perfect calm."

74 The Works of James Thomson f B, V.^')

Equally beautiful is the allegory of the
fountain, apparently typical of Thomson's own
life, and comparable in many ways with Shelley's
Sensitive Plant, by which it seems to have been
suggested. Vanes Story is especially interest-
ing as throwing much light on the peculiar
feelings and idiosyncrasies of its author ; it is, as
Mr. Dobell remarks, " when rightly read, as
candid and complete an autobiography as was
ever written," for it shows Thomson in the
familiar mood in which he was known to his
friends. But it does not carry us into that last
and saddest period of his life, when he seems to
have lost even those glimpses of consolatory
hope, shadowy and uncertain from the first, of
meeting his betrothed in some future existence.
The transition to this final phase of thought and
feeling may be best understood by reference to
his essay, entitled A Lady of Sorrow, which
is, in fact, the prose counterpart of The City
of Dreadful Night, We find there a de-
scription of three successive stages of grief,
which we cannot doubt to be in some measure
a record of Thomson's own experiences. First
comes the " Lady of Sorrow," typical of a pure
and hallowed grief, '* the image in beatitude of
her who died so young ; " secondly, *' the Siren,"
the period of less blameless sorrow, when the
"ignoble heart found ignobler companionship,"
being no longer worthy " to be comforted with

The Works of James Thomson ('' B. V.*') 75

angelic communion ; " and last, "the Shadow,*'
the spirit of total gloom ; ** never more an
Angel, seldom more a Siren, but now a formless
Shadow, pervading my soul as the darkness of
night pervades the air." In this dreary region
of desolation and despair the poet can find only
one consolatory thought, and that is the pro-
spect of death, that *' Lady of Oblivion " whom
he invokes with such solemnity and earnestness
in his singularly beautiful poem To our Ladies
of Death.

"O sweetest Sister, and sole Patron Saint

Of all the humble eremites who flee
From out life's crowded tumult, stunned and faint,

To seek a stern and lone tranquillity
In Libyan wastes of time : my hopeless life
With famished yearning craveth rest from strife ;

Therefore, thou Restful One, I call on Thee !

Take me and lull me into perfect sleep ;

Down, down, far-hidden in thy duskiest cave ;
While all the clamorous years above me sweep

Unheard, or like the voice of seas that rave
On far-off coasts, but murmuring o*er my trance
A dim vast monotone, that shall enhance

The restful rapture of the inviolate grave."

There are several minor poems that prefigure
the advent of The City of Dreadful Night.
Of these, the earliest is The Doom of a City^
written in 1857, which contains several fine
passages, but fails somewhat in its general

76 The Works of James Thomson ('^ B, V'')

effect, through being too discursive and alle-
gorical. Mater Tenebrarum (1859) is one
of the saddest and bitterest of all Thomson's
outbusts of grief, a cry of anguish from a soul
torn asunder between hope and despair, at one
moment almost venturing to believe in its own
immortality, and then again relapsing to the
creed of '*a blind and stony doom." It is al-
most a relief to turn from this poem to The
City of Dreadful Night, in which we feel at
once that we have reached Thomson's master-
piece, the work by which, more than any other,
he will be judged by posterity. We here see
the poetry of pessimism in its most attractive
garb ; for the reasoning which inspires the poem,
sad though it be, is calm and consistent
throughout, and is expressed in language of
consummate grace and tenderness. The City
of Dreadful Night is an allegorical description
of the dark side of human life, the '*sad
fraternity" who inhabit the city being those
whose hope and faith is dead, since they have
ventured to stand face to face with the stern
facts of existence. How they have arrived
there they cannot themselves determine, but,
once being citizens, they must " dree their
weird '' to the bitter end ; for their case is more
desperate than that of Bunyan's pilgrims who
were taken captives by Giant Despair, there
being no ** Key of Promise " which can open

The Works of y antes Thomson (^^ B,Vy) 77

the gates of this " dolent city." The imagery
under which the city is depicted was obviously
suggested by the poet's reminiscences of his
own London life, and the best clue to a right
understanding of the whole poem will be found
in the third part of A Lady of Sorrow, the
prose essay already mentioned. **And I
wandered about the city," he there writes, "the
vast Metropolis which was become as a vast
Necropolis. Desolate indeed I was, although
ever and anon, here and there, in wan haggard
faces, in wrinkled brows, in thin compressed
lips, in drooping frames, in tremulous gestures,
in glassy hopeless eyes, I detected the tokens
of brotherhood, I recognised my brethren, in
the great Freemasonry of Sorrow." It is to
these brethren, as he tells us in the Proem, that
the writer appeals.

" Yes, here and there some weary wanderer

In that same city of tremendous night
Will understand the speech, and feel a stir

Of fellowship in all-disastrous fight ;
I suffer mute and lonely, yet another
Uplifts his voice to let me know a brother

Travels the same wild paths though out of sight."

The City of Dreadful Night is arranged
in a series of short cantos where two metres are
used alternately, the first consisting of seven-
lined stanzas, of which the fifth and sixth lines

78 The Works of James Thomson ('' B. V.'')

.—■i t ■ »

always end in a dissyllable, as in the example
just quoted ; the second consisting of stanzas of
six lines, broken from time to time by the in-
terposition, for dramatic purposes, of other
metres. The seven-lined stanzas, into which
no variation is introduced, are devoted to
describing the appearance of the city and
moralising on the darker mysteries of its life.
The dense atmosphere, the baleful glooms
dimly lit by the struggling lamps, the sombre
mansions looming through the murky air, the
dreary streets where the inhabitants wander
like ghosts ; where the eye learns a new power
of vision, and the accustomed ear catches
muffled throbs of suffering, or the jar of phantom
wheels — all this is described with reality of
lurid word-painting, unequalled since the time
of Coleridge and De Quincey. The '* English
opium-eater" has himself recorded that the
chief '* virtue" of opium lies in **the faculty of
mental vision, the increased power of dealing
with the shadowy and the dark." This power
was undoubtedly possessed in an eminent degree
by the author of The City of Dreadful Nighty
though it may be that it was acquired by the
use of some less romantic but not less potent
drug than that which De Quincey has im-
mortalised. There is a dreadful and vivid
reality about Thomson*s dream-pictures, which
makes it difficult to suspect him for a moment

The Works of James Thomson ^ B. V^) 79

of cultivating a taste for this ** night-side of
human nature" by a voluptuous indulgence in
stimulants ; a charge which Coleridge advanced
against De Quincey, and which De Quincey
angrily retorts.^ However that may be, there
can be no question about the poetic excellence
of Thomson*s work. Here is an instance of a
short canto full of weird imagery which suggests
still more than it describes : —

<c

It is full strange to him who hears and feels,
When wandering there in some deserted street,

The booming and the jar of ponderous wheels.
The trampling clash of heavy ironshod feet :

Who in this Venice of the Black Sea rideth ?

Who in this city of the stars abideth

To buy or sell as those in daylight sweet ?

The rolling thunder seems to fill the sky
As it comes on ; the horses snort and strain,
■ The harness jingles, as it passes by ;

The hugeness of an overburthened wain :
A man sits nodding on the shaft or trudges
Three-parts asleep beside his fellow-drudges ;
And so it rolls into the night again.

What merchandise ? Whence, whither, and for whom ?

Perchance it is a Fate-appointed hearse.
Bearing away to some mysterious tomb

Or Limbo of the scornful universe

* " Ay, indeed ! Where did he learn that ? , . . Cole-
ridge began in rheumatic pains. What then ? This is no
proof that he did not end in voluptuousness." — De Quincey^
xi. 109.

8o The Works of James Thomson ('' B. V'')

The joy, the peace, the life-hope, the abortions
Of all things good which should have been our portions
But have been strangled by that City's curse."

The alternate cantos of six-lined stanzas are
employed for the dramatic introduction of
certain scenes and characters, which serve to
illustrate and enforce the hopeless condition
of the wanderers in the city. One citizen,
** shadow-like and frail/' is described as perpet-
ually revisiting the spots which had witnessed
successively the death of Faith, of Love, of
Hope. Another narrates how he "strode on
austere " through a desert filled with phantom
shapes and unimaginable horrors. A third has
reached the welcome portal of death, where
those who enter must leave all hope behind,
but, alas ! having no hope to leave, he is re-
jected until he can pay the fated toll. In an-
other scene a bereaved lover kneels beside the
body of his mistress, which lies in state in a
gloomy mausoleum. Elsewhere, in a mighty
cathedral, a preacher, with *' voice of solemn
stress,*' urges on his hearers the lesson that
'* the grave's most holy peace " is the sure con-
solation for the ills of existence ; but even this
comfort is rejected as a mockery by "a
vehement voice " which rises from the northern
aisle and narrates the brief story of a blank and
inconsolable life. In these and other similar

The Works of y antes Thomson (^' B, V'') 8i

scenes the same moral, though viewed from
different standpoints, is again and again stated
and reiterated : life is a cheat and delusion, and
the only comfort — if comfort it be — is the
certainty of death. Not even Keats could have
described the blissfulness of *' easeful death *'
with more softness of rhyme and unfeigned
yearning of heart than Thomson has done in
passage after passage of The City of Dreadful
Night. Even suicide is several times referred
to as a justifiable and praiseworthy escape from
intolerable misery ; one of the most splendid
cantos in the poem being that which describes
the *' River of the Suicides," where night by
night some wanderer finds relief: —

They perish from their suffering surely thus,
For none beholding them attempts to save,

The while each thinks how soon, solicitous,
He may seek refuge in the self-same wave ;

Some hour when tired of ever-vain endurance

Impatience will forerun the sweet assurance
Of perfect peace eventual in the grave.

The closing canto is devoted to a wonder-
fully vivid description of Albert Durer's ** Me-
lencolia," here identified with the goddess whose
bronze image presides over the city.

The most noticeable of Thomson's latest
poems are placed together at the beginning of
the volume entitled A Voice from the Nile.

F

82 The Works of James Thomson ('' B, V'')

Several of these are very good, especially
Richard Forest's Midsummer Night, He
heard her Sing, and Insomnia. The last-
mentioned is in many ways akin to, The City
of Dreadful Nighty but, if possible, is still more
painful and harrowing. It narrates, with
terrible vividness and all that sombre imagery
of which Thomson was so great a master, the
horrors of the sleepless night, every hour of
which is as a deep ravine which must be crossed
from ridge to ridge by the staggering, stumbl-
ing, foot-sore sufferer. This poem was written
in March 1882. Three months afterwards the
poet died.

To attempt to estimate Thomson's future
place among English writers would be a hope-
less and unprofitable task. That he was in the
truest sense a great poet will not, I think, be
denied by those who give his poems the atten-
tion they deserve, and. who are not prejudiced
against him at the outset, on account of his
heterodox teaching and unpopular connections.
Time is needed to remove these and similar
obstacles, which at present bar the way to a
right understanding and appreciation of his
genius. The thanks of all those who have
become acquainted with these wonderful poems
are due to Thomson's friend and biographer,
Mr. Dobell, by whose exertions the publication
of the three volumes was fortunately secured,

The Works of James Thomson ("B.V") 83

1 • • •• • — — - - -

and who will do yet another service to English
literature if he can hereafter arrange for the
production of a complete edition of Thomson s
writings.

As a prose writer Thomson is at present al-
most unknown. Yet ample evidence of his
power may be gathered from every page of the
two volumes already published,^ and it is under-
stood that there are also many uncollected articles
of great merit. His style is admirably clear
and forcible, at times reminding one strongly of
De Quincey, as when he gives free play to his
imaginative powers in A Lady of Sorrow, of
which I have already spoken, The Fair of St.
Sylvester^ In our Forest of the Past^ and other
essays. Perhaps the best of all his prose writ-
ings are the articles on Open Secret Societies^
and Indolence, which, though inspired by sincere
feeling and conviction, are pervaded by a subtle
and lambent humour which lend them a peculiar
charm. In satire also Thomson could wield a
keen and trenchant pen, as may readily be seen
by a study of his inimitable essay on The
Speedy Extinction of Evil and Misery^ a
splendid piece of ironical writing, something in
the style of Swift and of which even Swift him-
self might have been proud. In the collection
of articles reprinted after Thomson's death by
the Progressive Publishing Company, under the

Essays and Phantasies^ 1881. Satires and Frofanitics, 1884.

84 The Works of James Thomson (^^ B. V^)

title of Satires and Profanities^ there are
many other instances of rare satirical power ;
but the cause in which the satirist*s genius was
enlisted is not one which would commend itself
to the majority ol readers. Of Thomson's
abilities as a literary critic we find several ex-
amples in Essays and Phantasies^ especially
his Evening with Spenser and Note on
Forsters Life of Swift^ in the latter of which
he severely censures Lord Macaulay for his
exaggerated and distorted portrait of the famous
Dean. **This is really very fine," he exclaims,
** in the way of the dreadful, my rhetorical lord :
but if we could only have, to hang beside it.
Swift's portrait di you ! " Among contemporary
prose writers Thomson had a profound admira-
tion for Ruskin, George Eliot, and George
Meredith ; while he regarded Browning as the
greatest of living English poets. He speaks in
depreciating terms of the Poet Laureate's
*' hysterics and commonplace philosophy ; " and
words can hardly express his contempt for
Longfellow, the demi-god of popular mediocrity.
"The sublime Excelsior 1 '' h^ says, "is very
popular at present, but I doubt whether any
man (soft curates, Sunday-school teachers, and
tea-meeting muffs, who think beer and tobacco
certain perdition, are of course not included)
ever read the adventures of its lofty hero with-
out ejaculating : The ineffable ass ! The in-

The Works of James Thomson ('' B. V.'' ) 85

fernal idiot ! What possible good could he do
himself, or anybody else, by planting that
banner with the very strange device on the top
of that mountain ? Well, he perished, and I trust
that the coroner's jury found a verdict of, Serve
him right/'

One cannot help being struck by the re-
flection that the recognition of Thomson's
literary genius was absurdly inadequate (in the
case of his prose, perhaps, even more than his
poetry) to the actual merits of the writings.
The legend of the god Apollo doing menial service
for the mortal Admetus in this instance received
a fresh and signal illustration. For many years
he contributed almost exclusively to the The
National Reformer^ and when that engage-
ment failed him the author of The City of Dread-
fid Night thankfully accepted the chance of
transferring his services to Copes Tobacco Plant,
a periodical devoted to advertising the business
of a well-known Liverpool firm. In some ways,
however, this connection proved a very useful
one to Thomson ; for as he could not, or would
not, write to order, he was glad of a medium
through which he could publish his writings
without restraint. This he found in Copes
Tobacco Plant, in which he accordingly published
a number of reviews of new books, with essays
on Rabelais, Ben Jonson, Walt Whitman,
Baudelaire, Flaubert, and other authors.

86 The Works of James Thomson (''B. Vr)

When we come to sum up the leading points
of Thomson s life and character, we are na-
turally met by the consideration how far his
morbid despondency, which we call pessimism,
was due to his misfortunes, and how far to
physical causes. Coleridge, in his ode on De-
jection, to which, by-the-bye, many of Thomson's
poems bear a strong resemblance, gives It as his
opinion that outward forms and circumstances
can in no way affect **the passion and the life
whose fountains are within." Sydney Smith,
too, has somewhere remarked, in his inimitably
matter-of-fact fashion, that morbid melancholy
is usually the result of a bad digestion, and may
be best cured by a suitable dose of medicine.
The disease In Thomson s case hardly admitted
of so expeditious a remedy. It is the opinion of
one of his biographers that Thomson Inherited
a constitutional melancholia, and that his early
bereavement was ** not the cause of his life-long
misery, but merely the peg on which he hung
his raiment of sorrow.'*^ Mr. Dobell, however,
is Inclined to believe that '*no other affliction
could have affected him as he was affected by
this.*' One would probably be safe In conclud-
ing that the truth lies somewhere between these
two theories, and that Thomson's pessimistic
bent of mind was brought about partly by an

^ Vide Mr. Foote's Preface to Satires and Profanities*

The Works of James Thomson ('' B. Vr) 87

inherited disposition to melancholia, and partly
by the crushing misfortune of his early life.
It must not be supposed, however, that, pessi-
mist as he was, he was accustomed to make a pro-
fession and parade of his sufferings : on the con-
trary, all accounts agree in representing him as a
singularly cheerful companion, and one of the
most brilliant of talkers. Neither did his pes-
simism take a cynical and misanthropic turn,
as in the case of Schopenhauer, who regarded,
or affected to regard, his fellow-creatures and
fellow-sufferers (synonymous terms, as he
thought) with aversion and dislike. Thomson's
disposition, on the other hand, was always
benevolent and kindly, in which respect he
resembles Shelley, for whom he again and again
expresses the warmest feelings of reverence and
admiration,^ and to whom, as ** the poet of poets
and purest of men,*' Vanes Story, with its
accompanying poems, is dedicated. But, un-
fortunately, he could not share in the more
hopeful side of Shelley's philosophy, his Pro-
posals for the Speedy Extinction of Evil and
Misery being a proof of his total lack of be-
lief in the perfectibility of mankind and much
else that Shelley held dear. The influence of
Leopardi, to whom he appropriately dedicated

^ Vide especially the splendid poem on Shelley^ by
far the noblest of the many tributes offered to Shelley's
memory by later writers.

88 The Works of James Thomson ('' B. V:')

The City of Dreadful Night, was a strong
counter-attraction in the direction of pessimism,
from which nothing would have been more
likely to rescue him than his love for Shelley,
who, in spite of his '*wail for the world's
wrong," was anything rather than a pessimist.
So while Shelley's philanthropy took the form
of a life-protest against injustice and tyranny,
Thomson's message of glad tidings to his fellow-
sufferers is little more than a gospel of despair.
Yet, after all, Thomson was well aware that
in thus laying stress on the gloomy aspects of
existence he was stating less the absolute fact
than his own opinion, a half-view true as far as
it went, yet by no means the complete truth.
In the introductory note to A Lady of Sorrow
he speaks of himself under the title of ** my
friend Vane," and volunteers a criticism of his
own pessimistic philosophy. '* That this com-
position,'' he says, " is true in relation to the
author that it is genuine, I have no doubt, for
the poor fellow had large gifts for being un-
happy. But is it true in relation to the world
and general life } I think true, but not the
whole truth. There is truth of winter and black
night, there is truth of summer and dazzling
noonday. On the one side of the great medal
are stamped the glory and triumph of life, on
the other side are stamped the glory and
triumph of death ; but which is the obverse and

The Works of James Thomson ('' B. V:') 89

which the reverse none of us surely knows."
One could hardly desire a better piece of in-
sight and self-criticism than this. We may
well regret that Thomson's genius was not of
wide enough scope to depict both aspects of
life ; but we cannot deny that he has painted
** the glory and triumph of death " as it has
seldom been painted before. There is a spirit-
uality of tone pervading even his most despond-
ing poems which at once lifts him from the
class of ordinary materialists ; while, side by
side with the scathing satire which he launched
at the orthodox theology, there are many in-
dications in his writings of deep tenderness and
sympathy with true religious feeling.^

Thomson was a firm democrat and revolu-
tionist, as may be seen from such poems
as VAncien Regime ^ A Polish Insurgent,
Garibaldi Revisiting; England, and Despo-
tism tempered by Dynamite. His compassion
for all victims of social injustice was also very
keen, and finds expression in the verses on
Low Life, and the essay entitled In Our
Forest of the Past, He took a gloomy view,
however, of most kinds of philanthropic enter-
prises and endeavours to redress the wrongs of
society, being of opinion that '*all proselytism
is useless and absurd." He several times in-

^ Tide the Sonnet on A Recusant^ and Open Secret
Societies y pp. 200-203.

90 The Works of James Thomson ('' B. V.'')

veighs against the restlessness of the present
age. '*In our time and country we have a
plague of busy-bodyism, certainly more annoy-
ing and perhaps more noxious than the plague
of idleness. One comes across many earnest
and energetic characters who are no longer men
but simply machines for working out their
* missions. " ^ How far this feeling of Thom-
son s was due to his pessimistic creed, which,
like fatalism, must tend to some extent to
paralyse action, we need not pause to inquire,
but it should in justice be noted that the ** in-
dolence " of which he speaks with approbation
in several of his essays is very far from mean-
ing a culpable neglect of duty, but is simply an
equivalent for that philosophic love of leisure
the value of which is too apt to be forgotten in
the excitement of a busy world.

What, then, will be the final impression left
on our minds by the study of James Thomson's
character and writings ? That, I think, will
depend mainly on the readers individual bias
of thought, and will vary accordingly. Some
will see the cause of Thomson's errors and
misery in his agnostic philosophy, which cut
him off from the hopes and consolation of re-
ligious faith. Others will deplore the moral
weakness which could allow a whole life to be

^ Indolence — A Moral Essay, p. i6o.

The Works of James Thomson (^' B. V.^') 91

blighted on account of an early sorrow, and will
point to cases where a similar affliction has not
only been borne with resignation but has even
stimulated heroic service in the cause of man-
kind. Such criticism is natural and inevitable,
yet it can scarcely be accepted as satisfactory
or conclusive, for a character such as Thomson's
is too complex and many-sided to be thus sum-
marily estimated. That he erred grievously in
the excesses of his later years is unfortunately
undeniable ; yet it may be, that if we could
realise the full history of his life, and the many
difficulties under which he laboured, we should
feel impelled to express pity rather than blame.
For my part, I should find it impossible to re-
gret that he followed to the last that line of
thought which his own conscience told him was
the true one, although it could not lead him to
the hopes which his heart desired ; or that he
faithfully cherished the memory of his early love,
even at the cost of a life-long unhappiness.
There are plenty of men in the world who have
philosophy enough to enable them to forget
such bereavements ; it is refreshing now and
again to meet a man of a more passionate and
constant temperament. Whatever his faults
may have been, it seems that Thomson's
character was one that endeared him to all his
acquaintances ; all alike bear testimony to the
gentleness and chivalry of his nature, and to the

92 The Works of y antes Thomson ('' B, F."j

extraordinary charm of his manner and con-
versation. Very striking and very pathetic is
the account of his personal appearance, as given
by one who knew him. ^ *' He looked like a
veteran scarred in the fierce affrays of life's war,
and worn by the strain of forced marches. . . .
You could see the shadow that 'tremendous
fate ' had cast over that naturally buoyant
nature. It had eaten great furrows into his
broad brow, and cut tear-tracks downward, from
his wistful eyes, so plaintive and brimful of un-
speakable tenderness as they opened wide when
in serious talk.'' Such was James Thomson,
the author of The City of Dreadful Night, a
poet who, in spite of his present obscurity, is
perhaps destined some day to take a high place
in English literature. He lies buried in a
humble grave in High gate Cemeteiy ; and
we may speak of him, in conclusion, in the
words of his own Requiem : —

Thou hast lived in pain and woe.

Thou hast lived in grief and fear ;
Now thine heart can dread no blow,
Now thine eye can shed no tear :
Storms round us shall beat and rave ;
Thou art sheltered in the grave.

1 Essay in Secular Review^ by Mr. Flaws.

On Certain Lyric Poets, and their

Critics.

The poet and the critic have been at variance
from time immemorial, yet I 'doubt if any
modern poetical work has been subjected to so
much mistaken criticism as the imaginative and
impassioned style of poetry of which Shelley and
Swinburne are perhaps the most notable repre-
sentatives. It has at all times been a common
complaint against such writers that they
subordinate the true and natural to the unreal
and mystical, and that their poetry is con-
sequently of only secondary value. As a typical
instance of this kind of criticism, I will quote
the opinion of Sir Henry Taylor, as given in
the Preface to Philip Van Artevelde.

Speaking of Shelley and his followers, whom
he calls the " Phantastic school," he says :

'* Much beauty, exceeding splendour of diction and
imagery, cannot but be perceived in his poetry, as well as
exquisite charms of versification ; and a reader of an appre-
hensive fancy will doubtless be entranced while he reads ; but
when he shall have closed the volume, and considered within
himself what it has added to his stock of permanent

94 On certain Lyric Poets, and their Critics.

impressions, of recurring thoughts, of pregnant recollections,
he will probably find his stores in this kind no more enriched
by having read Mr. Shelley's poems, than by having gazed on
so many gorgeously-coloured clouds in an evening sky."

Again, in another passage, he finds fault with
the *' new poets," of whom Byron and Shelley
were the chief, on the ground that they did not
attempt to " thread the mazes of life in all its
classes and under all its circumstances, common
as well as romantic ; " and he comes to the con-
clusion that such poetry, '* though it may be
excellent of its kind, will not long be reputed to
be poetry of the highest order. It may move
the feelings and charm the fancy, but failing to
satisfy the understanding it will not take
permanent possession of the strongholds of
fame."

This criticism undoubtedly expresses the
views of a large class of critics and readers.
And in a certain limited sense it is an undisputed
fact, that Shelley, like others of the ** new poets/'
did not study life under all its circumstances, as
Shakspere or Goethe studied it. But when Sir
Henry Taylor, and those who think with him,
proceed to assert that such j)oetry is therefore a
failure, or at any rate worthy only of partial and
limited approval, they are arriving at a most
unjust and unwarrantable conclusion. For lyric
poetry is valuable, not as a philosophic study of
every phase and condition of life, but as an

On certain Lyric Poets ^ and their Critics. 95

■i ■ -

expression of certain spiritual emotions which
are none the less real because they are not
universal. Poetry is a many-sided art ; and it
is absurd to lay down a strict rule, and define
that as the only poetry, or as the only noble
poetry, which takes a purely dispassionate and
philosophical view of life. All this must ever
be a matter of individual opinion ; and therefore
those who attempt to judge lyric poetry by the
alien standard of practical utility or philosophic
precision, must stand condemned of being
naturally incapable of comprehending the very
essence of the lyrical spirit. Their criticism
may be perfectly true in its merely negative
assertions, while all the time it entirely fails to
understand the object and motive power of the
poetry it assails, and furnishes us with another
illustration of what Macaulay describes as **the
irrational laws which bad critics have framed for
the government of poets."

In short, there is a natural deficiency in the
minds of some critics, however acute they may
be in other respects. In applying the ordinary
rules of literary criticism to the ethereal subtleties
of lyric poetry, they are engaged in a hopeless
task of beating the air. They grasp the
impalpable, and complain that it is light and
unsubstantial ; they stare at the invisible, and
pronounce it mystic and obscure ; they listen
diligently for the inaudible, and are mightily

96 On certain Lyric Poets, and their Critics.

offended because they hear nothing. They
accordingly pronounce certain styles of poetry to
be unreal, shallow, meaningless ; and never for
a moment suspect that they themselves are in
fault, owing to their own inherent inability to
appreciate certain delicate emotions. When a
disciple of the common-sense school finds him-
self, as Sir Henry Taylor says, in no way en-
riched by reading Shelley's poems, we are
inevitably reminded of Peter Bell and his very
disparaging opinion as to the utility of wild-
flowers :

" A primrose by a river's brim
A yellow primrose was to him,
And it was nothing more."

But, before we go farther, it may be well here
to inquire what is this hidden charm in the spirit
of lyrical poetry, so vague and unreal to some,
yet so true and ever-present to others. We can
scarcely hope to define it successfully, for it is
well-nigh indefinable : we can only appeal to the
intuitive perception of those who have felt it,
and who can bear witness what a reality it has
been to them. It is the charm of expressing by
language something far more than what is con-
veyed by the mere meaning or the mere sound ;
the power of evoking an echo from the spiritual
world, such as music can often give us, or the
clash of distant bells. It is the miracle o

On certain Lyric Poets, and their Critics. 97

kindling by words that divine sympathy with
the inarticulate voice of the elements, which we
feel in the presence of the wind, the sea, the
mountains. It is that communion with the
spirit of nature of which Shelley writes, as none
other could have written :

" Fair are others ; none beholds thee ;
But thy voice sounds low and tender
Like the fairest, for it folds thee

From the sight, that liquid splendour ;
And all feel, yet see thee never, —
As I feel now, lost for ever ! "

Such sympathy is instinctive, heaven-sent,
unattainable by human diligence or philosophic
speculation ; those who feel it not will for ever
fail to comprehend it, and those who have once
felt it will value it above all mortal possessions.
It is of such as these that Swinburne speaks :

" For these have the toil and the guerdon ^
That the wind has eternally ; these
Have part in the boon and the burden

Of the sleepless unsatisfied breeze,
That finds not, but seeking rejoices

That possession can work him no wrong :
And the voice at the heart of their voice is

The sense of his song.

For the wind's is their doom and their blessing
To desire, and have always above

A possession beyond their possessing,
A love beyond reach of their love.

1 By the North Sea.
G

98 On certain Lyric Poets, and their Critics.

Green earth has her sons and her daughters,

And these have their guerdons ; but we
Are the wind's and the sun's and the water's,

Elect of the sea."

While speaking on this subject I could hardly
have quoted from a more appropriate source
than from the writings of the poet who, next to
Shelley, has been endowed with the largest share
of impassioned lyric inspiration ; and who has
certainly been not less misconstrued and mis-
understood than was his great predecessor.
Critics are never weary of harping on the
so-called aberrations and extravagances of Mr.
Swinburne's genius ; but those who have an ear
for the subtler harmonies of lyric poetry, know
well that in all Mr. Swinburne's writings,
in spite of obvious mannerisms, and minor
blemishes, there is an intense reality of sublime
spiritual feeling, which alone is sufficient to
mark him as one of our greatest poets. If we
compare his poems with those of his chief
contemporaries, we shall find that although he
may be inferior to them in many respects, and
especially in those points on which our orthodox
critics mostly insist, yet he has one poetical
quality which is peculiarly and eminently his
own. He does not possess Mr. Browning's
great dramatic insight and wide scope of in-
tellectual vision, nor Lord Tennyson's idyllic
composure and exquisite felicity of expression ;

On certain Lyric Poets^ and their Critics, 99

but in place of these he has in an eminent
degree a gift which they do not possess — the
spirit of deep and passionate sympathy with all
that is natural, elemental, primeval, and the
power of expressing this spirit in words which
themselves seem to be absolutely spontaneous
and unpremeditated.

It would not be difficult to multiply instances
of this lyric faculty ; but it will be sufficient here
to allude to two or three other most striking
examples. It is to this same passionate inspir-
ation that Mrs. Browning's poetry owes its
unspeakable charm ; it is this same spirit that at
times exalts the Bronte novels (for prose has its
lyrics as well as poetry) to heights untouched
by other English novelists. No deep learning,
no wide experience, no patient observation, no
mere artistic skill, could have availed to produce
such poems as Lady Geraldines Courtships
Cowpers Grave, Bianca among the Nightingales^
and a host of others which I need not here
enumerate. The following lines, taken from
Bianca among the Nightingales, will give a
powerful instance of that divine afflatus with
which all true lyric poetry is animated :

"The cypress stood up like a church,

That night we felt our love would hold,

And saintly moonlight seemed to search
And wash the whole world clean as gold ;

The olives crystallised the vales,

lOO On certain Lyric Poets ^ and their Critics.

Broad slopes until the hills grew strong :
The fireflies and the nightingales
Throbbed each to either, flame and song.

The nightingales, the nightingales.

We paled with love, we shook with love,

We kissed so close we could not vow ;
Till Giulio whispered, * Sweet, above

God's Ever guarantees this Now.'
And through his words the nightingales

Drove straight and full their long clear call.
Like arrows through heroic mails,

And love was awful in it all.

The nightingales, the nightingales."

Again, if the writings of Charlotte Bronte be
compared with those of George Eliot, we shall
see very clearly the marked contrast between
the lyrical and philosophical spirit. There is
probably more thoughtful judgment and mature
wisdom in a single page of Middlemarch than
in all the works of Charlotte Bronte ; yet we
might look in vain through all George Eliot's
writings for a passage such as the following,
taken from the last pages of Villette :

" The skies hang full and dark — a rack sails from the west ;
the clouds cast themselves into strange forms — arches and
broad radiations ; there rise resplendent mornings — glorious,
royal, purple as monarch in his state ; the heavens are one
flame ; so wild are they, they rival battle at its thickest — so
bloody, they shame Victory in her pride. I know some signs
of the sky ; I have noted them ever since childhood. God
watch that sail ! Oh ! guard it !

" The wind shifts to the west. Peace, peace, * Banshee '

On certain Lyric Poets, and their Critics. loi

— ^keening at every window ! It will rise — it will swell — it
shrieks out long : wander as I may through the house this
night, I cannot lull the blast. The advancing hours make it
strong ; by midnight all sleepless watchers hear and fear a
wild south-west storm."

To appreciate at their true value such words
as these, one has need of much more than a
sound intellect and good poetical ** taste/* The
lyric spirit is possessed, as it were, of a new
sense ; and its independence of eye and ear may
most aptly be illustrated by what naturalists tell
us of the formation of a bat's wing, the nerves
of which are of such fine and exquisite sensibility,
as to enable it to avoid all objects in its nocturnal
flight, though it receives no assistance from the
sight or hearing.

But here many persons will doubtless assert
that this lyrical faculty, even if we grant its
existence, is by no means so valuable a gift to a
writer as that of calm philosophical observation
and dispassionate judgment ; common sense,
they say, must come first, and inspiration after-
wards. I am not now concerned to disprove
this assertion ; my present object has been
merely to show that there exists in lyric poetry
something beside and beyond the ordinary poetic
qualities, and totally different in kind. It is
therefore idle to attempt to bind down this spirit
by any critical rules, or to assert that such
poetry, because it does not satisfy some arbitrary

I02 On certain Lyric Poets^ and their Critics.

standard of criticism, is therefore inferior or
valueless. Critics always perform a useful task
when they point out literary defects, and so purge
away the dross, more or less of which is to be
found in every poetical work ; but they must not
forget that a still higher and more important
task is to discover the gold : the good and not
the bad should be the main object of our search.
It is certainly a serious error to overlook the
faults of a poem which we admire ; but to fail to
discern the excellencies of a poem we dislike is
a far graver and more irreparable blunder. For
this reason the sincerest admirers are on the
whole the truest critics ; they alone can fully
appreciate and sympathise with the spirit of the
author.

In speaking of this lyrical spirit as vague and
impalpable, I have not meant to imply that it is
necessarily purposeless and aimless. On the
contrary, it has many times been enlisted in a
noble cause ; seldom in any that is not noble.
It is seen in its most glorious aspect when it is
united with lofty and unselfish philanthropy, as
in Shelley's Prometheus Unbound, or with ardent
love of liberty, as in Swinburne's Songs before
Sunrise. But in many cases it is like the wind,
that bloweth where it listeth : and a wise critic
will then allow free scope to what he cannot
control, and, if he himself cannot appreciate or
understand, will at least recognise the fact that

On certain Lyric Poets y and their Critics. 103

others may be able to do so. At present it con-
stantly happens that poems are ridiculed and
disparaged for no better reason than that the
critic has not the power of comprehending the
subject on which he writes. Whenever I hear
a critic harping on the ** weakness " of Shelley's
style, or the '* poverty of thought " in Swinburne,
or the various *^ fatal shortcomings " of other
great poets, I am irresistibly tempted to draw
his attention to that suggestive passage in Pick-
wick in which Mr. Winkle criticises so severely
the quality of his skates :

" * These are very awkward skates ; ain*t they Sam ? ' in-
quired Mr. Winkle, staggering.

" Tm afeerd there's an orkard gen'Fman in 'em, sir,' replied
Sam."

Edgar Pods Writings.

Although the interest excited by some of
Edgar Poe*s poems, and by still more of his
prose tales, may be taken as a sign that he has
attained a certain kind of popularity, yet there
are probably few writers who have been more
strangely misjudged and misunderstood in
English literary circles. Unfortunate in the
circumstances of his life, he seems destined to be
equally unlucky in his posthumous reputation, to
which the homage of his less discriminating
admirers has often been as injurious as the
animadversions of hostile critics. It may
sound paradoxical, yet it is none the less a fact,
that he has been generally read and admired for
what is least valuable in his writings, while he
has been slighted or censured for what is most
characteristic and original. The mere jingle of
his alliterative verse, and the morbid sensation-
alism of his tales — these are the points which
have exercised a strong fascination on some
readers who have no true taste for poetry or

Edf^ar Poes Writings, 105

fiction ; while on the other hand his adverse
critics have been too quick to set him down as
a mere rhymester and poetaster, not perceiving
that they themselves are at fault in their inability
to appreciate those mysteries of the poetic art,
the subtle undertones and half-lights, in which
Poe was so great a master. The fact is, we
have been accustomed to hear at once too much
of Poe and too little ; too much of some partic-
ular writings and special incidents of his life
which have been perseveringly forced on our
notice till they lose all real significance by being
isolated from the rest ; too little of the general
tenor of his character and style. But now with
the help of Mr. Woodberry's excellent Life of
Poe in the ** American Men of Letters Series,"
and Mr. Ingram's English edition of his works,
it is at least possible for every reader to arrive
at a just estimate of Poe's genius.

It is no part of my purpose to dwell on the
vexed story of Poe's life, involved as it is in
countless difficulties and contradictions. It is
sufficient here to say that the stories so widely
circulated by Poe's *' friend,'* Griswold, and so
readily believed both in America and England,
about the enormity of his misdemeanours and his
orgies of intemperance, appear, on the best
authority, to be always greatly exaggerated, and
in many cases absolute fabrications. His life
was throughout a sad one, and towards its close

1 06 Edgar Poe's Writings.

it was tenfold darkened and saddened by the use
of stimulants ; yet he has at least the same
excuse as that advanced by De Quincey, when
seeking to palliate his own use of opium, that he
erred through a desperate desire to find a tem-
porary escape from the pangs of poverty and
sickness.

There are one or two events of Poe's life
which call for special notice as having strongly
influenced his writings in a particular direction.
Of these the first is the death of Mrs. Helen
Siannard, the mother of a young scoolfellow,
and the friend and adviser of Poe in his boyish
sorrows. It has been pointed out that the ex-
treme grief which he felt at the death of this
lady, a grief which drove him to haunt her grave
nightly for months, may furnish an explanation
of much that is otherwise unaccountably gloomy
and terrible in the character of his works, and
especially of the too frequent descriptions of
churchyard scenes and premature burials. One
cannot but call to mind those words of Keats, so
eminently applicable to Poe :

** Who hath not loiter*d in a green churchyard,

And let his spirit, like a demon mole,
Work through the clayey soil and gravel hard,

To see skull, coffin'd bones, and funeral stole ? "

Poe had often loitered thus, and his mind was
consequently tinged, even from boyhood, with a

Edgar Poes Writings. 107

sombre and funereal cast. But still more im-
portant in their effects on his imagination were
the lingering illness and death of his young wife,
Virginia. The idea of the loss of a fair being,
slowly dying of consumption in the bloom of
youth and beauty, is one that strikes the key-
note of many of his poems and tales, especially
Annabel Lee and Eleonora ; while the fact that
some of the tales referring to this subject were
written before the death of his wife shows that
there was already in Poe s mind an intuitive fore-
knowledge of the calamity that was destined to
befall him ; indeed, he expressly states in one of
his letters ^ that for six years, during the recur-
rences of his wife's illness, he felt all the agonies
of her death. We see both in his poetry and
his prose how constantly he hovers round this
subject, the great central sorrow of his life and
writings.

Death being the power that chiefly influenced
the early imagination of the young poet, it is
not to be wondered that his style is often melan-
choly and morbid. There is much that is sur-
passingly beautiful in Poe's work, but there is
also much that is distressing and unwholesome.
The atmosphere of his writings is sickly and
artificial, more so than that of either Coleridge
or De Quincey, to whom in several respects he is
somewhat akin. He has a certain grim humour

^ Woodberry's "Li'b of Poe," p. 170.

io8 Edgar Pees Writings.

of his own, which lends a racy charm to many
of the tales ; but on the whole the sadness of
tone is largely predominant, the luxuriant splen-
dour of his word-painting serving only to bring
out more strongly the great central gloom. He
possesses much intensity and concentration of
power, but little freedom or width of scope in the
choice and treatment of his subjects ; there is,
accordingly, nothing to relieve the oppressive
sense of disaster and despair which broods over
most of his works. Yet, in spite of these in-
herent failings, it would be a great mistake to
conclude hastily, as some English critics have
done, that Poes writings can be set aside
as wholly faulty and unimportant. Many read-
ers are doubtless unable to sympathise with a
writer whose choice of subjects is so limited and
whose methods are so peculiar ; yet to others it
will appear that the narrowness of scope is com-
pensated for by the minuteness and perfection of
the workmanship. Nor can it be justly urged
that the morbid tendency of Poe's writings is in
itself a sufficient plea for their condemnation ;
for if we were to admit that what is known as
'* a healthy tone " is not only desirable but absol-
utely essential to literary excellence, we should
find ourselves compelled to reject also the
masterpieces of Coleridge and De Quincey,
whose writings show traces of the power of
opium quite as clearly as do those of Poe.

Edgar Poes Writings. 109

In his essays on The Poetic Principle 2Xi^ The
Philosophy 0/ Composition^ Poe has stated his
own opinion on the question of poetry ; and it is
interesting to read his account of the several
stages in the conception and execution of his
best known poem The Raven. The main
principle he lays down is that a poem should be
short, and that it should be so thought out and
prearranged, before being actually written, as to
produce on the mind of the reader a clear,
sudden, and complete impression. The sole legi-
timate province of a poem he declares to be
Beauty, and the tone of the highest manifesta-
tion of Beauty he finds to be Sadness ; finally
he selects the Refrain as the most suitable
vehicle for the expression of his poetical ideas.
On this narrow and arbitrary principle Poe
worked in the composition not only of his Raven^
but of nine-tenths of his other writings. It is
not surprising that writing under such conditions
he produced much that is of little value ; but
none the less it is futile to deny the excellence
of his best work. We may say of Poe, as it has
been said of Coleridge, that ** all he did excell-
ently might be bound up in twenty pages, but it
should be bound in pure gold." In this class
must be placed such poems as Lenore^ Annabel
Lee, Ulalumey The Sleeper, The Raven^ and To
One in Paradise, which are all inspired by the
leading idea already mentioned, the untimely

1 1 o Edgar Poes Writings.

death of a beautiful and beloved woman. Add
to this list a few other poems, on more general
subjects such as Dreamland, For Annie, To
Helen, The Haunted Palace, The Conqueror
Worm^ and we can scarcely refuse to give Poe
credit for high poetical genius. It is some-
times asserted that these poems are little
better than ** sense swooning into non^nse."
That may be true, if we use the negative term
in its literal and not opprobrious meaning ; but
then it is equally true of Kubla Khan, and much
of Coleridge's poetry, true also of some of
Shelley*s writings and not a little of Swinburne's.
The measure of success in poetry is ultimately
the impression created on the mind of the reader,
and this impression may be made by what is
mysterious and indefinite, as well as by what is
logical and well defined. It is beside the point
to insist that such poems as Annabel Lee and
Ulalume are filmy and impalpable ; their details
are undoubtedly so, but the final and ultimate im-
pression is not necessarily a feeble one, to those
at any rate who have an ear for the subtle
melodies of lyric poetry. In the case of Ulalume,
for example, the poem which is most often sel-
ected for adverse criticism, the general meaning
is surely not quite so obscure as the critics ap-
pear to find it. The subject is the same as that of
which Wordsworth has treated in one of his finest
sonnets, the sudden recollection of a heavy

Edgar Poe^s Writings. 1 1 1

calamity, the anniversary of a death, which had
been for the moment forgotten. The Psyche of
Poe*s Ulalume is the same as the ** faithful love "
of Wordsworth's sonnet, the trusty monitor who
first recalls what the mind of the bereaved poet
had otherwise overlooked.

** Love, faithful love, recalled thee to my mind —
But how could I forget thee ? Through what power,
Even for the least division of an hour,
Have I been so beguiled as to be blind
To my most grievous loss ? "

If this leading idea be kept in view, I do not
think the readers of Ulalume need be reduced to
regarding it as mere sound without sense, though
it may be admitted that its details baffle critical
explanation, and that the use of the Refrain is
here carried to its extreme limits. Foe must
indeed be considered the poet of the Refrain, for
who has ever used it so persistently yet so
successfully as he ? Four of his chief poems.
The Raven, The Bells, Annabel Lee, and Ula-
lume, owe their effect directly to this metrical
arrangement ; while in many others the ear of
the reader is charmed from time to time by a
rhythmical recurrence of sound, which seems to
breathe an echo from some spiritual world. To
those who are gifted with the power of appre-
ciating it, this mystic tone is the most valuable
quality possessed by Poe as a writer ; though

1 1 2 Edgar Poes Writings.

there have always been, and will always continue
to be, critics who, for this very reason, take him
to task for his lack of distinctness and coherence.
Turning now to Poe s prose tales, we find
his own opinion on this form of composition
very clearly stated in his essay on Nathaniel
Haw^thorne. He strongly urges that a tale,
like a poem, should be brief, ** requiring from
half an hour to one or two hours in its perusal."
The author is thus able, and thus only, to create
a concise and lasting effect ; for ** during the
hour of perusal the soul of the reader is at the
writer's control ; there are no external or
extrinsic influences resulting from weariness or
interruption." This brevity is the quality that
Poe admired in Hawthorne's Twice-told Tales ;
and on this principle most of his own prose-
writing was based, though there is certainly an
exception — and, in the opinion of most readers,
rather an unfortunate one — in the case of his
rather long and wearisome story, Arthur Gordon
Pym. In prose, as in poetry, the most import-
ant element in the composition of Poe's works
was mystery. A large portion of his most
remarkable tales are essentially mysterious, many
of them tinged with the same love of death-
scenes and funereal shadows which is so marked
a characteristic of his poems. He must surely
have been thinking of himself when he penned
the following passage in The Murders in the

Edgar Poes Writings. 113

Rue Morgue ; at any rate, one could not desire
a more accurate description of his genius. ** It
was a freak of fancy in my friend (for what else
shall I call it ?) to be enamoured of the Night for
her own sake. At the first dawn of the morning
we closed all the massive shutters of our old
building, lighting a couple of tapers, which,
strongly perfumed, threw out only the ghastliest
and feeblest of rays. By the aid of these we
then busied our souls in dreams, reading, writing,
or conversing, until warned by the clock of the
advent of the true darkness," All who have
read Ligeia^ or The Fall of the House of Usher ^
or The Masque of the Red Death, will remem-
ber those weird effects of lurid word-painting,
the pentagonal chambers ; the vaulted and
fretted ceilings, with their elaborate carving ;
the blackness of oaken floors ; the armorial
trophies hung on the lofty walls ; the vast folds
of the massive velvet tapestry ; the long narrow-
pointed windows, with trellised and tinted panes,
through which fall mysterious gleams of en-
crimsoned light ; the huge censer ; the ottomans ;
the golden candelabra ; the gigantic ebony
clocks ; and all the rest of the ghostly nocturnal
paraphernalia with which Poe loved to bedeck
his stories. In this unnatural and, it must be
added, unwholesome atmosphere, amid this
strange scenery and grotesque imagery, is laid
the plot of many a wild and startling tale, among

1 14 Edgar Poes Writings,

which no subjects are commoner than those of
premature burial and sentience after death. Of
all such stories the best is probably Ihe Fall of
the House of Usher^ in which the absorbing
interest is skilfully maintained from beginning
to end, while each phase of the tragedy serves
in its turn to lend additional weight to the final
impression. With breathless attention and
increasing awe, we follow the fortunes of the
ill-fated house, as narrated by the friend who
has been summoned to cheer his old school-
fellow, Roderick Usher, in his morbid and
unhappy isolation. We feel from the first the
foreboding of intolerable gloom ; from the
journey through the dreary tract, where the
clouds hung low in the sky, to the arrival at the
melancholy mansion, surrounded by its dark,
peculiar atmosphere, and the meeting with
Usher himself, a prey to constitutional malady
and superstition. Very powerful, too, are the
descriptions of Ushers solitary studies, his
strange improvised dirges, and mysterious
pictures " bathed in a ghastly and inappropriate
splendour;" and, above all, the references to the
Lady Madeline. The manner in which the
interest of the tale is made to centre on Usher's
ill-fated sister, without her actual introduction
on the scene ; the account of her burial in the
vault, and the storm that afterwards shook the
casements of the house — all this is marvellously

Edgar Poe's Writings. 115

contrived to suggest and enhance the final
catastrophe, and may challenge comparison with
the best work of the great masters of mystery
and horror, from Webster to Hawthorne. Next
to The Fall of the House of Usher should be
placed William Wilson, a piece of allegorical
autobiography which in conception and style
bears a singular resemblance to some of
Hawthorne's writings. Its subject is the
struggle between the Will and the Conscience,
terminating in the death of the latter, and the
consequent degradation of the former. The
story is told in Poe's most effective manner,
and there is a strange charm and fascination in
his account of the mysterious stranger, his alter
ego, his second self, who, bearing the same name
and resembling him in voice and feature, dogs
his steps and thwarts his plans from childhood
to manhood, until, in a fit of fury, he strikes his
persecutor dead, only to find that he has de-
stroyed all that was most dear to him in himself.
Perhaps the best-known of all Poe's tales is
The Murders in the Rue Morgue^ which, together
with The Mystery of Marie RogH, was the out-
come of his natural liking for the enigmatical
and his extraordinary acuteness in unravelling
the secrets of the human mind It is Poe's
misfortune, or perhaps we shouM say his
punishment, that the morbidly sensational
element of his stories should have proved to be

1 1 6 Edgar Poes Writings.

their chief attraction for posterity ; but even
those readers who have little relish for anything
that savours of the " Newgate Calendar/* must
admire the wonderful analytic power by which
the plot of these stories is step by step disclosed,
and the literary genius which lends a charm to
what would otherwise be merely hideous and
repulsive. In this respect The Murders in the
Rue Morgue and The Mystery of Marie Roget
are scarcely surpassed in English literature,
except by De Quincey's Postcript to his essay
on Murder^ which stands unique and inimitable
among all histories of crime. Under the same
heading of mysterious tales must be classed
Ligeia, — which Poe himself, not without some
reason, regarded as his masterpiece — Morella^
The Masque of the Red Death ^ and several other
stories, including those where the influence of
Dickens is observable, as in The Pit and the
Pendulum and the Tell-tale Heart, some of the
passages of which might easily pass for the
handiwork of the author of Bamaby Rudge and
the Madman s Story,

It is a relief to turn from works of this kind
to the tender and pathetic Eleonora^ the
loveliest and most beautiful of all Poe*s prose
writings, perfect both in the purity of its con-
ception and the delicacy of its workmanship.
Its subject is almost the same as that of
Annabel Lee^ of which it is, in fact, a prose

Edgar Pois Writings. 1 1 7

counterpart, describing, though in a some-
what more allegorical form, the calmest and
happiest portion of Poe's life, until the loss of
his child- wife, Virginia. It is a rhapsody of
melodious sound, inspired by purest feeling, and
makes us regret that Poe did not write more in
the same style.

The second class of Poe's tales may be
called the scientific, or, more correctly, the
pseudo-scientific. The leading characteristic of
these is the manner in which he handles some
scientific data^ making them the groundwork of
his fabric, on which he so skilfully builds up a
fiction that it is difficult to determine the exact
point at which fact ends and fancy begins. Of
these stories by far the best is The Descent into
the Maelstrom^ in every way one of his most effec-
tive tales, based on the scientific deduction that
a cylindrical body, revolving in a whirlpool,
must offer more resistance to the suction of the
water than other bodies of equal bulk. On
this basis he founds his story of a sailor's safe
descent into the great Norwegian whirlpool by
means of clinging to a cylindrical water-cask ;
and preposterous as the idea seems, when thus
baldly stated, such is the power of literary
genius that in Poe's story it seem scarcely im-
probable or grotesque. In the same category,
though greatly inferior in power, must be placed
Tfie Adventure of Hans Pfaal, and the other

1 1 8 Edgar Poes Writings.

ballooning stories ; also those that deal with the
subjects of alchemy, mesmerism, and crypto-
graphy. The Gold Bug for instance, is one of
Poe*s best tales, and exhibits his extraordinary
ingenuity in constructing and solving enigma-
tical ciphers, a mental quality doubtless closely
akin to the power he possessed of unravelling
criminal secrets. In The Gold-Bug as well as in
his essay on cryptography, he asserts that
** human ingenuity cannot concoct a cipher which
human ingenuity cannot resolve." The stories
that treat of mesmeric phenomena are the most
terrible that Poe wrote, and I think that even
his warmest admirers must admit that he was
guilty of unpardonable bad taste in such tales
as The Facts in the Case of M, Valdemary and
Mesmeric Revelation, Some Words with a
Mummy is less objectionable, on account of the
humorous spirit that pervades it, and relieves it
of the sense of horror that makes the two other
stories well-nigh intolerable.

This mention of Foe's humour brings us to the
third class of his writing, the humorous. These,
though inconsiderable in number, are so excel-
lent in quality that it is odd they should be so
little known among the many readers who, in
their search for amusing literature, are fain to
content themselves with far less salientj wit.
The Devil m the Belfry is a masterpiece of
good-humoured satire on the ludicrous sSde of

\

Edgar Poes Writings. 119

Dutch life. Nothing could be better than the
description of the borough of Vondervotteimittis,
with its tiny red-brick houses and prim in-
habitants, who have little else to do but attend
to their clocks and cabbages, until they, suffer
an overwhelming calamity in the mysterious
derangement of their belfry and striking of
** dirteen o'clock." Scarcely less admirable in
their keen humour are ** The System of Dr, Tarr
and Professor Fether^ How to Write a Black-
wood Article, Never Bet the Devil your Heady
and Hop-Fro^, which, however, has also a strong
admixture of the mysterious and horrible.

In addition to his poems and prose-tales, Poe
left a considerable number of miscellaneous
essays and criticisms. In his essays on The
Philosophy of Composition^ 7 he Poetic Principle,
and The Rationale of Verse, his views on poetry
and the laws of metre are fully set forth. Of
the numerous critiques on contemporary authors,
chiefly American, the most noteworthy are those
on Nathaniel Hawthorne, Charles Dickens, and
Mrs. Browning. Poe had a high admiration of
Mrs. Brownings genius, and in the essay in
question awards her no stinted praise ; yet
there is also much temperate criticism of certain
mannerisms and blemishes which so exact and
methodical a writer as Poe could not fail to re-
sent. We are not surprised to find from several
passages in his works that he considered

1 20 Edgar Poes Writings.

Tennyson the greatest of all poets ; for Poe was
himself essentially an artist, and artistic finish and
perfection were the foremost qualities, accord-
ing to his judgment, in poetic composition.
The essay on Dickens is chiefly taken up with
an analysis of Barnaby Rttdge — a novel es-
pecially interesting to Poe, and closely akin to
his own writings both in subject and style, as
may be seen by the introduction of that **grim,
ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and ominous bird,"
the raven, and other points of similarity. It is
said that after the publication of the earlier
chapters of Barnaby Rudge Poe wrote a ** pro-
spective notice " of the story, in which the
events that were to come were foretold with ex-
traordinary precision. Almost the last literary
work on which Poe was occupied was Eureka,
at once the most ambitious and the most inex-
plicable of his productions. In the pathetic
dedication " to the few who love me and whom
I love,*' he expressly states that he wishes this
''book of truths,'* to be regarded as a poem
rather than a scientific treatise ; yet it may
fairly be doubted if an attempt to '* take a
survey of the universe " offers a very suitable
field for poetic enterprise.

I have already remarked that Poe's works
present some points of similarity to Haw-
thorne's. There are, in fact, several of Poe's
stories which one could almost believe to have

Edgar Poe's Writings. 1 2 1

been written by Hawthorne, while it would not
be difficult to make selections from Twice-told
Tales and Mosses from an Old Manse, which
might well pass as the writings of Poe. It can
hardly be questioned that Hawthorne was the
greater genius ; for he is distinctly superior to
Poe, both in the scope of his imaginative power
and in delicacy of sentiment. This may per-
haps be partly accounted for by the fact that
while Hawthorne led a life of unbroken leisure
and opportunity for quiet contemplation, Poe
was seldom free from pressing embarrassments
and domestic anxiety ; the former wrote for the
actual pleasure of writing and to gratify his
literary taste, while the latter was chiefly con-
cerned in staving off poverty and imminent
want. It is not surprising therefore, that Poe
should have been less scrupulous in his choice
and treatment of subjects for his pen, and that
he should more often have violated the laws of
literary taste. In spite of his strong predilection
for the mysterious, he did not possess the art
of enshrouding his characters in that filmy and
half-spiritual phantasy which lends so great a
charm to Hawthorne's romances ; on the con-
trary, his stories, being more sensational than
those of Hawthorne, tend rather to degenerate
into the horrible and grotesque. The same
difference is observable in their humorous writ-
ings ; Poe's humour being keen, pungent, and

12 2 Edgar Poe^s Writings.

sharply defined, while Hawthorne s is shy,
delicate, and unobtrusive. Nevertheless, in-
ferior though he is in these points, Poe is no
unworthy rival of his gifted contemporary and
fellow-countryman, with whom he may share the
merit of having developed and perfected the
short prose story in a way few English writers
have done.

To those who intelligently and sympatheti-
cally study any or all of Poe's writings one thing
must, I think, become abundantly evident : that
they are reading the works of a man of real
genius. Whatever his defects and peculiarities
may be — and they are certainly nnmerous
enough — it can hardly be denied that he
possesses the rare faculty, which no accomplish-
ments can teach and no diligence can acquire,
of giving life and reality to the scenes and
characters he depicts. It must be confessed it
is a strange, uncanny, twilight world to which
he introduces us ; a region filled with an op-
pressive sense of death and decay :

" The air is damp, and hushed, and close
As a sick man's room when he taketh repose
An hour before death."

Yet though we are everywhere haunted, in
the poems and prose stories alike, by this morbid
and autumnal atmosphere, which chills the heart
and fills it with a presage of wintry desolation,

Edgar Poes Writings. 123

we cannot refuse our tribute of praise to the
author of so vivid an impression. The spirit
of Poe*s genius was narrow, concentrated, in-
tense ; his success is largely due to the power
with which he harped on a few particular
themes, and to the fantastic beauty of the weird
imagery in which he clothed his ideas. His
place in literature is, in fact, unique ; both in
the matter of his writings and in his methods of
expression he stands alone. It would be
affectation to claim for him a position in the
foremost rank ; but though he cannot be classed
among the greatest, he cannot fairly be excluded
from the company of the great. He has the
merit of doing whatever he attempts to do with
exquisite harmony and conciseness ; and it is
this perfection of workmanship, aided by the
subtle and suggestive melody of his language,
that constitutes his chief claim to immortality.

Henry D. Thoreau.

" Mr. Thoreau dined with us. He is a singular character
— a young man with much of wild, original nature still
remaining in him ; and so far as he is sophisticated, it is in
a way and method of his own. He is as ugly as sin, long-
nosed, queer-mouthed, and with uncouth and somewhat
rustic, though courteous, manners, corresponding very well
with such an exterior. But his ugliness is of an honest and
agreeable fashion and becomes him much better than
beauty."

This extract from Nathaniel Hawthorne's
Diary in 1842 describes Thoreau as he appeared,
three years before his retirement to Walden, to
one who was scarcely likely to do full justice to
a genius so widely dissimilar to his own. ' The
gifted inhabitant of the Old Manse, whose
recent experiences at Brook Farm had led him
to look with suspicion on all that savoured of
enthusiasm for social reform, and to view
everything from a purely literary and artistic
standpoint, could scarcely be expected to ap-
preciate very warmly the character of a young
enthusiast who had declared open war against

Henry D. Thoreau. 125

custom and society and was preaching a crusade
against every sort of luxury and self-indulgence.
Still less could the ordinary American citizen
understand that novel gospel which bid him
dispense with most of those things which he
had been brought up to regard as the necessary
comforts of life. Accordingly we are not
surprised to find that Thoreau s doctrines
obtained but little recognition during his life-
time ; he was regarded with profound respect
by a few select friends, Emerson among the
number ; but to the many he appeared merely
eccentric and quixotic, his sojourn at Walden
gaining him the reputation of a hermit and mis-
anthrope. Even now, a quarter of a century
after his death, he is not known as he deserves
to be either in America or this country ; most
readers ignore or misunderstand him ; and it is
left to a small but increasing number of
admirers to do justice to one of the most re-
markable and original characters that America
has yet produced. Thoreau was pre-eminently
the apostle of " plain living and high thinking ; "
and to those who are indifferent to this doctrine
he must ever appeal in vain : on the other hand,
those who have realized the blessings of a simple
and heathful life can never feel sufficient
gratitude or admiration for such a book as
Walden, which is rightly regarded as the
masterpiece of Thoreau s genius.

126 Henry D. Thoreau.

One of the causes that have contributed to
the general lack of interest in Thoreau's writ-
ings is the want of a good memoir of his life.
Emerson s account of him* is excellent as far as
it goes, but it is very short and cursory ; while
the other lives,f though each is not without
some merit of its own, are hardly satisfactory
enough to become really popular. As so little
is known of Thoreau by most people, it may be
well, before I proceed to an examination of his
writings and philosophy, to enumerate very
briefly the leading facts of his life. He was
born in 1817 in Concord, Massachusetts, his
father being a manufacturer of lead pencils in
that place. He was educated at Harvard
College, and after leaving the University taught
for a short time in a private school, but soon
becoming weary of the educational profession
he devoted himself to his father s trade till he
had completely mastered it in all its details.
Then, finding that the true aim and object of
his ambition was to live a simple, natural, open-
air life, he became, as he himself has humorously
recorded, '* self-appointed inspector of snow-

* Prefxed to Thoreau's Excursions, Messrs. Ticknor
and Fields : Boston.

t Thoreau^ His Life and Aims^ by H. A. Page. Chatto
and Windus. Thoreau^ The Poet-Naturalist^ by W. Ellery
Channing. Boston. Life of Thoreau (in American Men of
Letters Series), by F. B. Sanborn.

Henry D. Thoreau, 127

storms and rain-storms/' and gave himself up to
that intimate communion with nature from which
he seemed to derive all his intellectual strength.
In 1845 ^^ built himself a hut on the shores of
Walden Pond, a short distance from Concord,
and there lived for over two years. After this
sojourn in the woods he returned to Concord,
and the quiet tenor of his life was afterwards
only interrupted by occasional visits to the
Maine Woods, Canada, Cape Cod, and other
places of interest, of which journeys he has
left an account in his books. He died in 1862 /
from a disease of the lungs, the result of a severe
cold taken through unwise exposure in winter.

It has been remarked by some critics, who
take an unfavourable view of Thoreau's philo-
sophy, that his life was strikingly devoid of
those wide experiences and opportunities of
studying mankind, which alone can justify an
individual in arraigning, as Thoreau did, the
whole system of modern society.*^ It should be'
remembered, however, that he possessed that
keen native wisdom and practical insight, which,
combined with fearless self-inspection, are often
a better form of education than the most ap-
proved methods. Like all other enthusiasts,
Thoreau sometimes taught a half-truth rather
than a whole one ; but that does not alter the

* Tide LowelFs Essay on Thoreau, in My Study Windows.

128 Henry D. Thoreau.

fact that his teaching was true as far as it went.
In his life-protest against the luxury and self-
indulgence which he saw everywhere around
him, he no doubt occasionally over-stated his
own case, and ignored some objections which
might reasonably have been raised against his
doctrines ; but in the main his conclusions are
generally sound and unimpeachable. Self-
taught, time-saving, and laconic, he struck by a
sort of unerring instinct at the very root of the
question which he chanced to be discussing, not
pausing to weigh objections, or allowing any
difficulties to divert him from his aim. We
may now proceed to consider the chief features
of his philosophy.

As regards religious views, we find that
Thoreau unhesitatingly rejected all theological
dogmatism, being convinced of the hollowness
of all traditionary belief ; "no way of thinking
or doing," he says, " however ancient, can be
trusted without proof." In a remarkable
passage in the Week he expressly states his
disbelief in the doctrines of Christianity, for
which, in all his wanderings, he '* never came
across the least vestige of authority." But it
must not be supposed from this that Thoreau
was deficient in reverence and the true religious
spirit ; on the contrary, he was, in the highest
and truest sense, a proloundly religious man.
"If any one doubts this, let him read Thoreau's

Henry D. Thoreau, 129

account of his visit to the cathedral of Notre
Dame at Montreal,* and his emotion on passing
from the noisy mob and rattling carriages into
the quiet religious atmosphere of this "great
cave in the midst of a city," this church "where
the priest is the least part, where you do your
own preaching, where the universe preaches to
you and can be heard." Equally profound was
Thoreau's reverence for the old primeval phil-
osophies and religions. Confucius and Buddha
were not mere names to him ; he was never
weary of reading and quoting the " Bhagvat
Geeta,"the "Vishnu Purana," "Sarma," "Saadi,"
and similar books. The new Testament he
pronounces *' an invaluable book," which had
the greater charm for him because he began to
study it later than the rest, having at first been
prejudiced against it by the infliction of Sabbath-
school teaching ; he used to read it again and
again, and naively remarks that he should have
loved dearly to read it aloud to his friends, had
they not shown evident signs of weariness under
the ordeal. From this, and many other passages
in his works, it appears that Thoreau was far
from holding any materialistic or anti-religious
ways of thought ; he had unbounded belief in
the perfectibility of man, and the resurrection of
a new and beautiful life. " Poet- Naturalist " as

« a

A Yankee in Canada," p. 12.

X

X

1 30 Henry D. Thoreau.

he was, he drew deep lessons from his obser-
vation of the power and kindliness of nature.

"As I stand over the insect crawling amid the pine
needles on the forest floor, and endeavouring to conceal it-
self from my sight, and ask myself why it will cherish those
humble thoughts, and hide its head from me who might,
perhaps, be its benefactor, and impart to its race some cheer-
ing information, I am reminded of the greater Benefactor
and Intelligence that stands over me, the human insect."

But he declines to take man's word on subjects
that are beyond man's intelligence; he will allow
no schemes and formulas to obstruct his view
of the sky ; he will see *' no rafter, not even a
cobweb, against the heavens/' A religious man
Thoreau certainly was, but not in the sectarian
sense of " religious.*' '* There is more religion,"
he says, ** in men's science than there is science
in their religion."

Thoreau has been called a Stoic ; and there
is undoubtedly much in his philosophy that is
akin to the spirit of ancient Stoicism. With
him, as with Epictetus, conformity to nature is
the basis of his teaching, and he has been finely
called by Emerson the " Bachelor of Nature,"
a term which might well have been applied to
many of the old Greek and Roman Stoics. It
is a remarkable fact that there is rarely any
mention of love in his writings, but friendship,
as with the Stoics, is a common theme, this
subject being treated of at considerable length

Henry D. Thoreau. 131

in the WeekJ^ His main point of similarity,
however, to the Stoic philosophers is to be found
in his ceaseless protest against all kinds of luxury
and superfluous comforts. Like Socrates, he
could truly say, on seeing the abundance of
other people's possessions, " How many things
are there that I do not desire ! " and every page
of Walden bears testimony to the sincerity of
this feeling. The keynote of the book is the
sentiment expressed in Goldsmith's words, " Man
wants but little here below," with the difference
that Thoreau did not merely talk of Arcadian
simplicity, in the manner that was so common
with literary men a century ago, but carried his
theories into practical effect. His furniture at
Walden consisted of a bed, a table, a desk, three
chairs, a looking-glass, a pair of tongs, and a few
plates, knives, forks, and cooking-utensils. He
had three pieces of limestone on his desk, but
finding they required to be dusted daily, he threw
them out of the window, preferring to spend the
time in dusting "the furniture of his mind." A
lady once offered him a mat, but for the same
reason this offer was declined. His dress, diet,
and whole system of life were framed on similar

* It is stated in the Preface to Mr. Stevenson's essay on
Thoreau (Familiar Studies of Men and Books) on the
authority of Dr. Japp, that Thoreau had been disappointed
in love, and that the discourse on friendship was in reality
an " anodyne to lull his pains."

132 Henry D. Thoreau.

principles. When asked at table what dish he
preferred, he answered " the nearest," and he
was surprised at the anxiety which people
usually manifest to have new and unpatched
clothes rather than a sound conscience. I n short,
his utterances on this subject of superfluous com-
forts were such as would have made Dr. Samuel
Johnson's hair stand on end with amazement
and indignation had they been promulgated on
one of the many occasions when the Doctor
used to demonstrate to his audience the bene-
ficial results of luxury, in the full confidence that
he was teaching a great economic truth ! Free-
dom from artificial wants, and a life in harmony
with nature, are again and again insisted upon
by Thoreau as the basis of all true happiness ;
and these he certainly pursued with unfaltering
consistency through his own singular career.
In this sense he was a true Stoic philosopher.
But there arealso important differences. Thoreau
was free from that coldness of heart which was
too often a characteristic of the Stoics of old,
and was animated by a far wider and nobler
spirit of humanity. It is true that there was a
certain reserve in his manner which made his
acquaintances a little afraid of him, and caused
one of his friends to remark, *' I lave Henry, but
I cannot like him." But this existed only in his
manner ; in heart he was at all times thoroughly
kindly and sympathetic. There is a passage in

Henry D. Tkoreau, 133

his diary* where he regrets his own tendency
to use more harsh and cynical expressions about
mankind than he really intended, owing to the
somewhat paradoxical style of conversation in
which he indulged, and which his friends seemed
to expect from him. But his enthusiastic ad-
miration for the heroes of the anti-slavery
agitation was a proof that he was quite free from
the coldness of a merely theoretic Stoicism ;
indeed he has a just claim to be considered one
of the leaders of the great humanitarian move-
ment of this century, his sympathy with the
lower animals being one of the most extra-
ordinary features of his character. He had been
influenced far too deeply by the teaching of
Channing, Emerson, and the transcendental
school, to permit of his being classed as a mere
cynic or misanthrope.

** Simplify, simplify," was the cry that was for
ever on Thoreau's lips, in his life-protest against
the increasing luxury and extravagance and
hypocrisy of the age. The lesson taught us by
Walden is that there are two ways of becoming
rich ; one — the method usually adopted — by
conforming to the conventional laws of society,
and amassing sufficient money to enable one to
purchase all the *' comforts '* of which men think
they have need ; the other — a simpler and more

* Early Spring in Massachusetts, p. 214,

r

1 34 Henry D. Tkoreau.

expeditious process — by limiting one's desires
to those things which are really necessary ; in
Thoreau s own words, ** A man is rich in pro-
portion to the number of things which he can
afford to let alone." It is habit only which
makes us regard as necessary a great part of
the equipment of civilized life, and an experience
such as that of Thoreau during his sojourn at
Walden goes to prove that we might be healthier
and happier if we could bring ourselves to dis-
pense with many of our superfluous and artificial
wants, and thus substitute a manly independence
for our present childish dependence on the
labour of others. Thoreau was not a foolish
champion of savage and barbarous isolation
against the appliances and improvements of
civilized society ; it is not denied by him that
on the whole the civilized state is far preferable
to the savage condition ; but he shows that in
some ways the increase of artificial wants, and
of skill in supplying them, has proved a curse
rather than a blessing to the human race, and
he points out an easy and perfectly practicable
way out of this difficulty. Every one may add
to his own riches, and may lessen his own labour,
and that of others, in the treadmill of competitive
existence, by the simple expedient of living less
artificially. There are few indeed who, if they
go to the root of the matter, and cast aside the
prejudices of custom and convention, will not

Henry D. Thoreau. 135

discover that they could be equally happy — nay,
far happier, without much of what is now most
expensive in their houses, in the way of furni-
ture, clothing, and diet. Thoreau discovered
by his own experiment,* that by working about
six weeks in the year, he could meet all the
expenses of living, and have free for study the
whole of his winters as well as most of his
summers, a discovery which may throw con-
siderable light on the solution of certain social
problems in our own country. Even if we allow
an ample margin for the peculiarity of his case,
and the favourable conditions under which he
made his experiment, the conclusion seems to be
unavoidable that the burden of labour which falls
on the majority of the human race is not only
very unfairly distributed, but in itself un-
necessarily heavy.

Thoreau cannot be called a Socialist ; he was
rather an Individualist of the most uncom-
promising type. One of his most striking
characteristics was his strong contempt for the
orthodox social virtues of ** charity " and ** phil-
anthropy," which lead men — so he thought — to
attempt a cheap method of improving their
fellow-creatures without any real sacrifice or
reform on their own side. In no part of Walden
is the writing more vigorous and trenchant than
when Thoreau is discussing the '* philanthropic

* Walden^ pp. 75-77.

136 Henry D. Tkoreati.

enterprises " in which some of his fellow-towns-
men reproachfully invited him to join. " Doing
good," he declares, is one of the professions that
are full ; and if he knew for a certainty that a
man was coming to his house with the design
of doing him good, he should run for his life,
for he would rather suffer evil the natural way.
So too with charity :

" It may be that he who bestows the largest amount of
time and money on the needy, is doing the utmost by his
mode of life to produce that misery which he strives in vain
to relieve. Some show their kindness to the poor by em-
ploying them in their kitchens. Would they not be kinder
if they employed themselves there ? "

We are not surprised to find that Thoreau's
favourite modern author was Carlyle, the philo-
sophy of Work (not in the commercial sense)
being one that would eminently commend itself
to the very practical mind of the author of
Walcien. With Ruskin he is in some respects
even more akin ; indeed, as a castigator of the
faults of modern civilization and artificial society,
he occupies in America a position very similar
to that of Ruskin in England. There are many
whole passages in Walden which are strikingly
Ruskinian in their manner of thought and
expression ; as for instance the following : *

'* Nature has no human inhabitant who appreciates her.
The birds with their plumage and their notes are in harmony
with the flowers, but what youth or maiden conspires with

* Page 216.

Henry D. Thoreau. 1 3 ;

the wild luxuriant beauty of Nature? She flourishes most
alone, afar from the towns where they reside. Talk of
heaven ! ye disgrace earth."

Again the resemblance is very striking when
we find Thoreau inveighing against the luxury
of the railroad car, with its divans and ottomans
and velvet cushions and " a malaria all the way.**

" That devilish Iron Horse," he exclaims,* " whose ear-
rending neigh is heard throughout the town, he it is that has
browsed off" all the woods on Walden shore : that Trojan
horse, with a thousand men in his belly, introduced by
mercenary Greeks."

Many, too, are his strictures on the
monstrous ugliness of recent American archi-
tecture, and his meditations on the sacred delight
of a man building his own dwelling, as he him-
self did at Walden, and lingering lovingly over
foundation, doors, windows, hearth, and every
other detail. When he considers how flimsily
modern houses are in general built, paid for or
not paid for, as the case may be, he expresses
his wonder that ** the floor does not give way
under the visitor while he is admiring the
gewgaws upon the mantelpiece, and let him
through to the cellar, to some solid and honest,
though earthy, foundation.*' Like Ruskin again,
Thoreau declines to yield homage to the
supremacy of the nineteenth century, even on

* Page 208.

138 Henry D. Thoreau.

the score of such boasted modern inventions as
\ the Telegraph and Post Office, for he insists
\ that he only received one or two letters in all
V his life that were worth the postage, and that
the Telegraph cannot greatly benefit those who,
it may be, have nothing important to communi-
cate. For newspapers also, and all the trivialities
of newspaper gossip, he had a profound contempt,
caring nothing to read of men robbed or mur-
dered, houses blown up, vessels wrecked, or
cows run over on the railroad, because he could
discover nothing memorable in this. Even
books were not always found desirable : there
being times when he " could not afford to
sacrifice the bloom of the present moment to
any work," — a remark which reminds one of
Ruskin's statement that he never reads in the
spring-time. In like manner Thoreau was in
no way interested in the ordinary conversation
of ** society ; *' for, as he characteristically
observes, '* a goose is a goose still, dress it as
you will." The author of Fors Clavigera has
there put it oh record that he could never con-
template a visit to a country which has no castles ;
if however he had visited America during
Thoreau s lifetime, I think he might have found
a compensation even for this great disadvantage.
At any rate, he might have met one kindred
spirit across the Atlantic, one man who cared
so little for party politics that he never voted,

Henry D. Thoreau. 1 39

and who, amidst all the hurry and fluster of his
enterprising countrymen, preferred travelling on
foot to being jerked along on a railroad.

Mr. Lowell, in an essay on Thoreau in My
Study Windows^ finds fault with him for this
hostility to the tendency of his age. He com-
plains of his exaggerated idea of self-import-
ance, which led him (according to the critic's
view) to prize a lofty way of thinking, **not so
much because it was good in itself as because
he wished few to share it with him." I think
this is very unfair to Thoreau, and due to a
complete lack of sympathy with the spirit in
which he wrote. Still more surprising is the
assertion that Thoreau was the victim of a
morbid self-consciousness, and that his didactic
style was the outcome of an unhealthy mind !
It is an unprofitable task for an admirer of a
great man to combat charges such as these,
which are only another proof, if proof were
needed, of the fact that one man of genius is often
lamentably and ludicrously unable to recognise
and appreciate the merits of another, and that
the best writers are often the most erroneous
critics. It is impossible to estimate rightly any
literary work, unless one is to some extent in
sympathy with the aims and objects of the
author ; a qualification which Mr. Lowell
certainly does not possess in the case of
Thoreau. The culminating absurdity of his

140 Henry D, Thoreau.

criticism is reached when he asserts that
Thoreau " had no humour." The author of
J^/<ai?;^ destitute of humour ! Even Mr. Mat-
thew Arnolds recent dictum, that Shelley's
literary immortality will be due to his prose
writings rather than his poems, must yield the
place of honour among the curiosities of
criticism to this amazing and unsurpassable
utterance on the part of the author of the
Biglow Papers.

There is one aspect of Thoreau s teaching
which is scarcely mentioned by his biographers,
though it is of considerable importance in form-
ing a just estimate of his character ; I refer to
his humanitarian views. His hatred of war is
very strongly expressed in those passages
where he condemns the iniquitous attack which
the United States werfe then making on
Mexico; war, he says, is "a damnable busi-
ness ; " since those concerned in it, ** soldiers,
colonel, captain, corporal, powder-monkeys, and
all/' are in reality peaceably inclined, and are
forced to fight against their common sense and
consciences.*^ Of his detestation of the system
of slavery I shall have occasion to speak further
on. But Thoreau went much further than
this ; his humanity was shown not only in his
relation to men, but also in his dealings with

* Essay on Civil Disobedience.

Henry D. Thoreau. 141

the lower animals. Emerson tells us that,
though a naturalist, Thoreau used neither trap
nor gun — a fact which must have been inde-
pendently noticed by all readers of Walden or
the diaries. It was his habit to eat no flesh :
though with characteristic frankness he con-
fesses to having once slaughtered and devoured
a wood-chuck which ravaged his bean field. He
laughs at the farmer who tells him that it is not
possible to live on vegetable food alone, walk-
ing at that very time behind the oxen, ** which,
with vegetable-made bones, jerk him and his
lumbering plough along in spite of every
obstacle." Yet at the same time, it must be
admitted that he was not a consistent vege-
tarian, for we find constant mention of his
fishing in Walden Pond, and his dinner was
sometimes composed of **a mess offish." This
apparent contradiction in Thoreaus dietetic
philosophy is explained in that chapter of
Walden which is headed '* Higher Laws,"
where we find the fullest statement of his views
on the humanitarian question. He begins by
remarking that he finds in himself two instincts —
one towards a higher and more spiritual life ; the
other, the hunting-instinct, towards a primitive
and savage state. He reverences both of these
instincts, being of opinion that there is "a
period in the history of individuals, as of the
race, when the hunters are the best men." It

/

142 Henry D. Thoreau.

is natural, he thinks, that boys and youths
should wish to shoulder a fowling-piece and
betake themselves to the woods ; but (and here
is the essence of Thoreaus teaching on this
subject) *'at last, if he has the seeds of a better life
in him, he distinguishes his proper objects, as a
poet or naturalist it may be, and leaves the gun
and fish-pole behind." Thoreau himself had
sold his gun long before his sojourn at Walden,
and though he did not feel the same scruple
about fishing, he nevertheless confesses that he
could not fish '^without falling off a little in self-
respect/' This leads him to dwell on the
whole question of food, and he states his own
opinion as being very strongly in favour of a
purely vegetarian diet, which is at once more
cleanly, more economical, and more moral than
the usual system of flesh-food.*^ ''Whatever
my own practice may be," he adds "I have no
doubt that it is a part of the destiny of the
human race, in its gradual inprovement, to
leave off" eating animals, as surely as the savage
tribes have left off" eating each other when
they came in contact with the more civilized."
This is Thoreau's testimony to that particular
branch of the humanitarian movement ; and it
is perhaps the more valuable testimony as
coming from a perfectly unprejudiced witness,

• Vide^ especially pp. 230-235.

Henry D. Thoreau. 143

one who, as he himself says, could at times
" eat a fried rat with good relish/'

The last point connected with Thoreau's
teaching on which it will be necessary to
enter, is the subject of politics. And here
one might be tempted to state briefly, and
once for all, that Thoreau had nothing to do
with politics ; and thus follow the example
of that writer on. natural history, mentioned
by De Quincey, who, after heading a chapter
with the words '* Concerning the Snakes of
Iceland," proceeded to remark, '' There are
no snakes in Iceland." But though Thoreau
was no politician in the ordinary use of the
word, and never voted in his life, yet, in an-
other sense, he took a good deal of interest
in American state-affairs, especially during
the latter years of his life, and left several
pamphlets and lectures of the highest possible
merit.. In his essay on Civil Disobedience y
he gives expression to that strong feeling of
individualism which caused him to resent the
meddling and muddling propensities, as they
seemed to him, of American government, as
seen in the Mexican war abroad, and slavery
at home. *' Must the citizen," he asks, " resign
his conscience to the legislator }^' In one way
he felt he could make a vigorous protest, and
that was on the occasion when he confronted
the Government in the person of its tax-col-

T44 Henry D. Tkoreau.

I actor. He refused to pay the poll-tax, and
was on this account put into prison, the true
place, as he says, for a just man, *' under a
Government that imprisons any unjustly."
His own account of his own incarceration, and
the night he spent in prison, may be found, told
in his best and most incisive style, in this same
essay on Civil Disobedience. The two main
causes of his withdrawal of his allegiance to
the state were, as I have already said, the
aggressive war waged on Mexico and the
maintenance of slavery in Massachusetts ; he
did not care " to trace the course of his dollar,"
paid in taxes to the State, ** till it buys a man,
or a musket to shoot one with." On the
subject of slavery he was strongly and pro-
foundly moved. There is reason to believe
that his hut at Walden was used as '* a station
on the great under-ground railway — a refuge
for the victims of the slave trade.*' * No more
powerful and eloquent indictment of the in-
iquities of that unholy traffic was ever published
than in his three papers on Slavery in Massa-
chusetts, A Plea for Captain John Brown, and
The Last Days of John Brown. Those who
have hitherto imagined Thoreau to have been a
mere recluse, interesting only as a hermit in an

* Vide Preface to Mr. Stevenson's Familiar Studies of
Men and Books.

Henry D. Tkoreau. 145

age when hermits were somewhat out of date,
will be obliged to reconsider their opinion,
if they take into consideration these splendid
essays, so full of sound common sense,
trenchant satire, and noble enthusiasm for
humanity.

But it is time now to bid farewell to Thoreau
in his character of philosopher and moralist,
and to view him awhile in another light. He
has been well called by Ellery Channing the
" Poet- Naturalist ; " for to the ordinary quali-
fications of the naturalist — patience, watchful-
ness, and precision — he added in a rare degree
the genius and inspiration of the poet. He
may be described as standing midway between
old Gilbert White of Selborne, the naturalist
par excellence^ and Michelet, the impassioned
writer of that wonderful book VOiseau.
He had all that amazing knowledge of the
country, its Fauna and Flora, which character-
ised Gilbert .White, his familiarity with every
bird, beast, insect, fish, reptile, and plant,
being something little less than miraculous to
the ordinary unobservant townsman. Very
suggestive of Selborne, too, was that pocket-
diary of Thoreau's, in which were entered the
names of all the native Concord plants, and the
date of the day on which each would bloom.
** His power of observation," Emerson tells
us, '* seems to indicate additional senses."

146 Henry D. Thoreau.

On the other hand, he equalled Michelet — and
it is scarcely possible to give him greater praise
than this — in that still higher creative power,
which can draw from a scientific fact of natural
history a poetical thought or image to be
applied to the life of man. As Michelet could
see in the heron the type of fallen grandeur,
the dispossessed monarch still haunting the
scenes of his former glory ; or in the wood-
pecker the sturdy solitary workman of the
forest, neither gay nor sad in mood, but happy
in the performance of his ceaseless task ; so
Thoreau delighted in idealising and moralising
on the facts which he noted in his daily rambles
by forest, river, or pond. He sees the pin-
cushion galls on the young white oaks in early
summer, the most beautiful object of the woods,
though but a disease and excrescence, ''beauti-
ful scarlet sins, they may be.'' *' Through our
temptations," he adds, *' ay, and our falls, our
virtues appear." Countless instances of this
kind of thought could be picked out from his
diaries and the pages of Walden; in fact,
Thoreau has been blamed, and not altogether
without reason, for carrying this moralising
tendency to excess — a fault which he perhaps
acquired through the influence of the Transcen-
dental movement. In love of birds he cer-
tainly yielded no whit to Michelet himself;
and he is never weary of recording his en-

Henry D. Thoreau. 147

counters with the bob-o'-links, cat-birds, whip-
poor-wills, chickadees, and numerous other
species. His paper on the Natural History of
Massachusetts gives a short and pithy summary
of his experience in this subject ; but he had
usually a strange dislike of writing detached
memoirs, preferring to let the whole subject
rest undivided in his mind. His studies
as naturalist were too much a part of his whole
character to be kept separate from the rest, and
must therefore be sought for throughout the
whole body of his works. This intense love of
woodcraft, together with his taste for all Indian
lore, and all hunting adventure, gives a wild
and racy charm to Thoreau's books which often
reminds one of Defoe and other early writers.
On the subject of fishing not even Izaak
Walton himself could write as Thoreau has
done, though one is somewhat reminded of the
father of the "gentle craft*' in reading
passages such as the following : * ** Who knows
what admirable virtue of fishes may be below
low-water mark, bearing up against a hard
destiny } Thou shalt ere long have thy way
up all the rivers, if I am not mistaken. Yea,
even thy dull watery dream shall be more than
realized. Keep a stiff fin then, and stem all the
tides thou mayst meet." Still more wonderful
are the descriptions of the weird and mysterious
♦ «« A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers," p. 44*

148 Henry D. Thoreau.

characteristics of fishing — the cork that goes
dancing down the stream when suddenly
** emerges this fabulous inhabitant of another
element, a thing heard of but not seen, as if it
were the creation of an eddy, a true product of
the running stream ; " or, still more memorable,
the midnight fishing on Walden Pond when
the angler, anchored in forty feet of water,
*' communicated with a long flaxen line with
mysterious nocturnal fishes" below, now and
then feeling a vibration along the line ** indicativ/
of some life prowling about its extremity, sonr^
dull uncertain blundering purpose." If Thore*fS
could thus sympathise with the mysteries ?s
fish-life, we are the better able to believe wh^"
his biographers more than once tell us, thlX
fishes often swam into his hand and would allq^»
him to lift them out of the water, to the u?"
speakable amazement of his companions in t?^
boat. His influence over animals seems indei^^
to have been little less than miraculous, and i*s
calls many of the legends of the anchorites ^^
the Middle Ages, and of St. Francis d'Assi^»
As Kingsley has pointed out in his Hermits, t -^
power of attracting wild animals was doubtkS
in large measure due to the hermits' habit ?^
sitting motionless for hours, and their perfc*"
freedom from anger or excitement, so that th^"
is nothing absurd or improbable in such storj* »
as those of the swallows sitting and singing ^"

V

Henry D. Tkoreau. 1 49

the knees of St. Guthlac, or the robin building

its nest in St Karilef s hood. Much the same

is recorded of Thoreau's habitual patience and

immobility. Emerson tells us that *'he knew

how to sit immovable, a part of the rock he

rested on, until the bird, the reptile, the fish,

which had retired from him, should come back

and resume its habits, nay, moved by curiosity,

should come to him and watch him." Of all

' -. such stories of strange sympathy between men

H and the lower animals none are so beautiful as

w-those recorded in the life of St. Francis ; but

lo certainly Thoreau may claim the honour of hav-

arng approached nearest in modern times to that

rejense of perfect brotherhood and sympathy with

0=111 innocent creatures. There is a singular re-

^^semblance between the legend of the tench

dcvhich followed the boat in which St. Francis

fawas praying ; and some of the anecdotes told

paibout Thoreau.

w^k Thoreau*s retirement to Walden has naturally
lo^^d many people to consider him as a sort of
denodern hermit, and the attraction he exercised
uj»ver the inhabitants of the woods and waters
ev^vas only one of many points of resemblance,
rp, There was the same recognition of the universal
tici>rotherhood of men, the same scorn of the sel-
a.rt.ish luxury and childish amusements of society,
♦ «cnd the same impatience of the farce which men
all ** politics," the same desire of self-concentra-

1 50 Henry D. Thoreau.

tion and undisturbed thought. Thoreau also
possessed, in a marked degree, that power of
suddenly and strongly influencing those who
conversed with him, which was so characteristic
of the hermits. Young men who visited him
were often converted in a moment to the belief
**that this was the man they were in search of, the
man of men, who could tell them all they should
do." ^ But it would be a grievous wrong to
Thoreau to allow this comparison, a just one up
to a certain point, to be drawn out beyond its
fair limits. He was something more than
a solitary. He had higher aims than the
anchorites of old. He went to the woods, as
he himself has told us, because he wished " to live
deliberately, to front only the essential facts of
life." So far he was like the hermits of the east.
But it was only a two-years' sojourn, not a life-
visit, that he made to Walden ; his object was
not merely to retire, but to fit himself for a
more perfect life. He left the woods ^* for as
good reason as he went there," feeling that he
had several more lives to live, and could not
spare more time for that one. Even while he
lived at Walden he visited his family and
friends at Concord every two or three days ;
indeed, one of his biographers t asserts that he

* Emerson's " Memoir of Thoreau," p. 18.
t Ellery Channing's " Memoir,'* p. 18.

Henry D. Thoreau. 151

** bivouacked *' at Walden rather than actually
lived there, though this is hardly the impression
conveyed by Thoreau himself or other author-
ities. Very different also was Thoreau in his
complete freedom from the morbid asceticism
and unhealthy habit of body, which too often
distinguished the hermits. His frugality was
deliberate and rational, based on the belief that
the truest health and happiness must be sought
in wise and unvarying moderation ; but there
was no trace of any unreasoning asceticism ; his
object being to vivify, not mortify, the flesh.
His nature was essentially simple and vigorous ;
he records in his diary * that he thought bath-
ing one of the necessaries of life, and wonders
what kind of religion could be that of a certain
New England farmer, who told him he had not
had a bath for fifteen years. Now we read of
St. Antony — and the same is told of most other
hermits — that he never washed his body with
water, and could not endure even to wet his
feet ; dirtiness therefore must be considered a
sine qua non in the character of a true hermit,
and this would entirely disqualify Thoreau for
being ranked in that class. It is at once
pleasanter and more correct, if we must make
any comparisons at all, to compare him to the
philosopher Epictetus, who lived in the vicinity

* "Summer," pp. 352, 353.

152 Henry D. Thoreau.

of Rome in a little hut which had not so much
as a door, his only attendant being an old
servant-maid, and his property consisting of
little more than an earthen lamp. Thoreau had
the advantage over the Stoic in having no ser-
vant-maid at Walden ; but as he indulged him-
self in a door, we may fairly set one luxury
against the other, and the two philosophers may
be classed on the whole as equally praiseworthy
examples of a consistent simplicity and hardi-
hood.

Before proceeding to consider the literary
value of Thoreau s writings, I will say a few
words more about his character and general
mode of life. His bodily vigour is mentioned
by all who have written of him,* and all lay
stress on his wonderful fitness of body and
mind, which remind us of some of Charles
Kingsley s best features of character. He ate
little flesh, drank no wine, seldom used tea,
coffee, butter, milk, and refused to be ** upset
and overwhelmed in that terrible rapid and
whirlpool called a dinner." At Walden he
often made a satisfactory meal off a dish of
purslane boiled and salted, or the ears of green
sweet-corn. He baked his own bread, leavened
at first, but afterwards without yeast, according
to a recipe of M. P. Cato, published two centur-

* Vide Emerson's " Memoir," p. 13,

Henry D. Thoreau. 153

les before Christ. Side by side with this sturdy
independence, he possessed a wide catholic
spirit of humanity and sympathy with the whole
human race ; he will not be better or worse than
his fellow-men. We are reminded of the writ-
ings of Walt Whitman himself, the greatest
literary figure among all Thoreau's fellow-
countrymen, when we hear him saying, *' I
never dreamed of any enormity greater than I
have committed. I never knew, and never
shall know, a worse man than myself."* I have
already said that Thoreau was full of reverence
for all religion and antiquity. He was deeply
interested in all that related to the aboriginal
Ijidian tribes, of whom there is much mention
in his account of his visits to the Maine Woods ;
and he often records in his diary the finding of
arrow-heads and spear-points. It is curious
also to find him speaking favourably of class-
ical learning in the chapter of Walden on Read-
ing. Nevertheless he owned his full share of
American self-assertion and pugnacity. In writ-
ing his Walden he proposes *' to brag as lustily
as chanticleer in the morning/* if only to wake
up his neighbours ; and he does not omit to
chronicle the fact that he took up his abode in
the woods on Independence Day. A more
provoking habit was his whim of extolling his
native Concord as superior to all other locali-

* Walden^ p. 84.

1 54 Henry D. Thoreau.

ties, and of asserting that most of the pheno-
menaobserved elsewhere, even in the Arctic circle,
might be found there. This, as Emerson has
pointed out, was no doubt in great measure
meant as a playful exaggeration, by way of
indicating that there is plenty to be learnt in all
places ; but it was perhaps also due in some
degree to that tendency to paradox in convers-
ation which I have already mentioned. His
love of liberty was at all times genuine and
profound, and appeared both in his personal
resistance to the demands of a corrupt govern-
ment, and in the ready assistance he lent to the
cause of emancipation. Yet he was no empty
enthusiast for the mere name of liberty, but
could well discern the true freedom from the
false. The behaviour of his fellow-citizens who
could restore an escaped slave to his master,
at the very time when they were celebrating
their national independence, strikes him as
ludicrously incongruous. ** Now-a-days,'' he
remarks — in his essay on Slavery in Massa-
cktcsettSy — ** men wear a fool's-cap and call it a
liberty-cap. I do not know but there are some
who, if they were tied to a whipping-post, and
could get but one hand free, would use it to
ring the bells and fire the cannons, to celebrate
their liberty." This independence of character
was maintained unbroken not only throughout
all the active years of his life, but also through

Henry D. Thoreau. 155

the long sad months of illness that preceded his
death. Though suffering terribly from sleep-
lessness, he refused to take any opiate drug ;
preferring, like a true Stoic, to face the
full reality of his destiny without shrinking.
Wrapped in his usual reserve, he worked on
unfalteringly to the last, completing in his Maine
Woods the stories of his favourite Indian tribes,
whose traditional characteristic of silent forti-
tude and passive resignation to fate he himself
was then equalling.

The earliest written of Thoreau's books was
the Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers^
a record of a holiday-trip made in 1839 in com-
pany with his brother. The Week is prefaced
by a short account of the river Concord, which
may be compared with Hawthorne's description
in The Old Manse^ and is divided by days into
seven chapters, each full of accounts of the
scenery through which the brothers passed,
notes and observations on natural history,
quotations from poets, and general moral reflec-
tions. Next to Walden, it seems to have become
in America the best known of Thoreau's books,
and is highly praised by EUery Channing in his
life of Thoreau, though it is but a poor precursor
of his great work. Those who look to the
Week for anything comparable to Walden will
be disappointed, the incidents recorded being
often too trivial, the moralising tendency exces-

156 Henry D. Thoreau.

sive, and the style of the writing crude and im-
mature. There is something rather wearisome,
and even pedantic (a strange fault in Thoreau),
in the too numerous classical allusions and
references to Homer, Sophocles, Persius, and
other ancient writers, while the number of quot-
ations from English poets is something posi-
tively overwhelming, and furnishes a notable
example of that literary fault which, under the
appellation oijlicxe de bouche, has been so justly
censured by De Quincey in the case of Hazlitt.
None the less, there are some splendid passages
in the book, worthy to be set beside anything
that Thoreau ever wrote, especially the dis-
courses on religion and friendship already re-
ferred to, and a critical estimate of Chaucer s
genius.

Omitting for the present any mention of
Thoreau s shorter essays and studies, many of
which were written early in his life and published
in the *' Dial " and other American magazines,
afterwards to be reprinted under the title of
Excursions^ I will now speak briefly of Walden,
which alone of Thoreau's books can be said to
be at all popular in this country. It has been
truly remarked that Thoreau's retirement to
Walden was only one of many incidents in his
life, and therefore ought not to be invested with
too much significance apart from the rest. It
was, however, undeniably the most character-

Henry D. Thoreau. 157

istic and important epoch in his career; the
time when his powers were in. their very prime ;
on the description of which he has lavished the
utmost wealth of his rare and wayward genius.
Walden is by far the finest of Thoreau s books,
pre-eminent alike for the supreme interest of
the subject-matter and the excellence of style
and expression. We here see Thoreau at his
very best, revelling in the perfect freedom of a
simple and healthy life, and enjoying unlimited
opportunities for his favourite pursuits ; his
philosophical and moral teaching is here most
lofty and uncompromising ; his style of writing
peculiarly pithy and trenchant ; nowhere else
do we find such felicity of illustration or so rich
a vein of humour. Those critics who have
accused Thoreau of a lack of humour must
surely have forgotten such passages of Walden
as that where, after describing the profound
darkness of the woods on a starless night, he
quietly remarks, ** I believe that men are gener-
ally still a little afraid of the dark, though the
witches are all hung, and Christianity and
candles have been introduced ; " or, again, the
inimitable account of his purchase for building
purposes of an Irishman's shanty, where there
were ** good boards all around, and a good
window, of two whole squares originally, only
the cat had passed out that way lately ; " or the
picturesque description of the wretched habit-
ation of John Field, another Irish labourer,

158 Henry D. Thoreau.

where he saw

'* a wrinkled, sibyl-like, cone-headed infant, that sat upon its
father's knee as in the palaces of nobles, and looked out
from its home in the midst of wet and hunger inquisitively
upon the stranger, with the privilege of infancy, not knowing
but it was the last of a noble line, and the hope and cynosure
of the world, instead of John Field's poor starveling brat."

Nothing perhaps in Walden is more humor-
ous than the accounts of the visits of uninvited
guests, and their entertainment by Thoreau.
If one came he was heartily welcome to share
the frugal meal ; but if many came, nothing was
said about dinner, *'the waste and decay of
physical life " appearing to be *' miraculously
retarded in such a case." ** So easy is it," adds
Thoreau, ** though many housekeepers doubt it,
to establish new and better customs in the place
of the old." Sometimes there would arrive
more troublesome and pertinacious guests, **men
who did not know when their visit had termin-
ated, though I went about my business again,
answering them from greater and greater re-
moteness." There are passages on every page
of Walden full of this rare and subtle power,
and manifesting that ** concentrated and nutty "
style of writing at which Thoreau confessedly
aimed. Nor did he disdain an occasional play
on words, seldom used without good effect, as
in the case of Flint's Pond, when he deplores
the poverty of American nomenclature, which

*

Henry D. Thoreau. 1 59

could desecrate a beautiful sheet of water with
the name of some stingy farmer, some ancestral
skin-flint by whom its banks had been ruthlessly
laid bare ; or when he records the fact that
while he was building his hut at Walden, a heap
of bricks often served him for a pillow, adding,
** yet I did not get a stiff neck for it that I re-
member ; my stiff neck is of older date/' Occa-
sionally, too, he loved, in the same manner as
Ruskin, to analyse and dwell on some particular
word ; for instance, when scornfully rejecting
the advice of critics to keep his style within
bounds, he insists on the merits of literary extra-
vagance. ** I fear chiefly lest my expression be
not extra-vagant enough, may not wander far
enough beyond the narrow limits of my daily ex-
perience. Extra-vagance 1 It depends on how
you are yarded." Walden^ like all Thoreau s
writings, has its faults. His vein of dry humour
is sometimes liable to be misunderstood, and his
fondness for epigram and paradox is occasion-
ally overdone ; the didactic tendency also is apt
to make him too discursive, and most of the
poetical quotations might well be dispensed with.
But these blemishes are small in comparison
with the immense merits of this book — merits
which have not yet received one-thousandth
part of the recognition they deserve.

Of Thoreau s three other books, The Maine
Woods, A Yankee in Canada^ and Cape Cod^ it

i6o Henry D. Thoreau.

is not necessary to say much. The Maine
Woods will probably be considered the most
interesting, dealing as it does with the wild
Indian tribes whom Thoreau loved so much,
and the primitive forests, the savage desolation
of which he was well fitted to appreciate and
describe. There is little that is remarkable in
the two other books, which are pleasant accounts
of short tours made by Thoreau, and make no
pretence of being important works like Walden.
At the beginning of the Yankee in Canada
Thoreau tells us that he is aware he has not got
much to say about that country ; ** What I got
by going to Canada was a cold.'* This is a can-
did confession, and, if truth be told, a critical
reader would not be unlikely to find much that
is frigid in the Yankee in Canada^ as if the
author's malady had reacted on the book.

Next to Walden Thoreau is seen at his best
in the short lectures and essays, which have
been collected and reprinted under the titles
of Excursions and Anti-Slavery and Reform
Papers, I n the Excursions there is less of the
didactic and moralising vein than in most of
Thoreau s writings, and more of pure descrip-
tion and word-painting ; the most interesting
essays being those on A Winter s Walk^ Walk-
ing, and Night and Moonlight. The impor-
tance to Thoreau of his daily walk was greater
than most men would be able to realize ; he

Henry D. Thoreau. 1 6 1

could not preserve his health and spirits unless
he spent at least four hours a day among his
favourite woods and fields and marshes ; and he
did not scruple to reject unwelcome offers of
companionship from intrusive visitors, on the
ground that there was nothing so important to
him as his walk ; he had no walks to throw
away on company. His tendency in his saunt-
erings was ever towards the west, the region of
the wild and mysterious, in preference to the
more civilized east ; an instinctive feeling which
has also been noticed by John Burroughs, an
American Essayist in several ways akin to
Thoreau. Latterly he discovered a still more
novel charm in the nocturnal rambles of which he
gives an account in Night and Moonlight^ during
the hours when " instead of the sun there are
the moon and stars ; instead of the wood-
thrush there is the whip-poor-will ; instead of
butterflies in the meadows, fireflies — winged
sparks of fire. Above all the wonderful trump
of the bull-frog, ringing from Maine to Georgia."
The Anti-Slavery Papers are inferior to nothing
that Thoreau ever wrote, Walden perhaps
excepted, being written \n his most telling style,
terse, pointed, satirical, yet evidently inspired
by the sincerest enthusiasm and devotion to a
great cause. The best of all is his Plea J or
Captain John Brown ^ a splendid eulogy of a
truly noble man, which was spoken in a public

i62 Henry D. Thoreau,

hall at Concord after John Brown's arrest in
1859, at a time when such a view of the slave
question was neither common nor popular. It
is so fine throughout that it is difficult to single
out any particular passages as specially worthy
of praise, but I cannot help quoting the follow-
ing: *

** Wlio is it whose safety requires that Captain Brown be
hung ? If you do not wish it, say so distinctly. While these
things are being done, beauty stands veiled, and music is a
screeching lie. Think of him ; of his rare qualities ! — such a
man as it takes ages to make, and ages to understand ; no
mock hero, nor the representative of any party — such as the
sun may not rise upon again in this benighted land. To
whose making went the costliest material, the finest adamant ;
sent to be the redeemer of those in captivity ; and the only
use to which you can put him is to hang him at the end of a
rope ! You who pretend to care for Christ crucified, con-
sider what you are about to do to him who offered himself
to be the saviour of four millions of men."

The other paper on The Last Days of John
Brown is almost as fine. So too is Civil Dis-
obedience^ of which I have before spoken. A
few miscellaneous essays are included with this
collection, a criticism of Carlyle being among
the number.

Thoreau's diaries afford much delightful
reading, and give us a good insight into his
character and mode of life. They abound in
notes of his observations on Natural History,

♦ Page 178.

Henry D. Thoreau. 163

with here and there some poetical thought or
moral reflection attached ; sometimes there is
an account of a voyage up the Assabet River,
or a walking tour to Monadnock or some
other neighbouring mountain. These diaries
have been recently edited by Mr. Blake, a
friend of Thoreau, who has arranged them
according to seasons,* not years, various pas-
sages written in different years being grouped
together under the same day of the month,
thus giving a more connected picture of the
climate under which Thoreau lived, and the
scenes in which he took such delight.

Thoreau's poems are certainly the least
successful part of his work. ^ They were
published in various American magazines, and
he is fond of interpolating parts of them in
his books. Some selections from them may
be found in Page's Life of Thoreau. But it
must be confessed that /though Thoreau had a
truly poetical mind, and though he may justly
be styled the ** Poet-Naturalist," he had not
that power of expression in verse which is a
necessary attribute of the true poet. He was
a clear-headed, fearless thinker, whose force
of native shrewdness and penetration led him
to test the value of all that is regarded as
indispensable in artificial life, and to reject
much of it as unsound ; he was gifted also with
* Early Spring in Masscuhusetts^ Summer^ &c.

1 64 Henry D. Thoreau.

an enthusiastic love of nature, and with Hterary
powers, which, if not of a wide and extensive
range, were peculiarly appropriate — in an al-
most unrivalled degree — to the performance
of that life-duty which he set before him as
his ideal. He was in the truest sense an
original writer ; his work is absolutely unique.
Walden alone is sufficient to win him a place
among the immortals, for it is incomparaWt^
alike in matter and in style, and deserves to be
a sacred book in the library of every cultured
and thoughtful man ; it is, as Thoreau himself
describes the pond from which it derives its
name, *'a gem of the first water which Concord
wears in her coronet." Concord is indeed rich
in literary associations and reminiscences of
great men. Emerson — Hawthorne — Thoreau ;
these are mighty names, a trinity of illustrious
writers,/ and it is not the least of Thoreau s
honours that he has won a place in this literary
brotherhood ; but perhaps his greatest claim to
immortality will be found in the fact that there
is a natural affinity and fellowship between his
genius and that of Walt Whitman, the great
poet-prophet of the large-hearted democracy
that is to be. We see in Walt Whitman the
very incarnation of all that is free, healthy,
natural, sincere. A leviathan among modern
writers, he proclaims with titanic and oceanic
strength the advent of the golden age of

Henry D. Thoreau. 165

Liberty and Nature. He proclaims ; but he
will not pause to teach or rebuke ; he leaves it
to others to explain by what means this
glorious democracy, this ** love of comrades,"
may be realized, and contents himself with a
mighty and irresistible expression of the fact.
Thoreau, though less catholic and sanguine in
tone, but rather an iconoclast, a prophet of
warning and remonstrance, and, as such,
narrower and intenser in scope, nevertheless
shares to the full all Walt Whitman's enthusiasm
and hardihood and sincerity. He sets himself
to apply this same new doctrine of simplicity to
the facts of everyday life, and by his practice
and example teaches how the individual may
realize that freedom of which the poet sings.
While America produces such writers as these,
there seems nothing exaggerated or improbable
in the most sanguine forecast of the great future
that awaits American literature, a future to
which Thoreau, himself American to the back-
bone, looked forward with earnest and trustful
anticipation.

" If the heavens of America," he says, " appear infinitely
higher, and the stars brighter, I trust that these facts are
symbolical of the height to which the philosophy, and
poetry, and religion of her inhabitants may one day soar.
At length, perchance, the immaterial heaven will appear as
much higher to the American mind, and the intimations
that star it as much brighter." *

* Excursions^ p. 182.

1 66 Henry D. Thoreau.

Certain it is that of all philosophers, whether
in the old world or the new, few have read the
mysteries of this immaterial heaven and its starry-
intimations more truthfully and faithfully than
Thoreau.

William Godwin.

William Godwin's life is a remarkable in-
stance of how the longevity of a man of genius
may, under certain circumstances, be a positive
obstacle to his fame. Had he died at the close
of the eighteenth century, instead of living to
see thirty-six years of the nineteenth, it seems
probable that his reputation with posterity as a
thinker and a writer would have stood higher
than it stands at present, or is ever likely to
stand. For in the acquisition of fame, as of
other things, opportunity is often an important
consideration ; and it cannot be denied that the
actors on this stage of life may gain as much
advantage from a graceful and timely exit as
from an opportune entry. In this matter
Godwin was unquestionably unfortunate ; his
great, striking, and original works were all
written before 1 800 ; while his later writings,
excellent and conscientious as they were, can-
not be said to have added in any way to his
permanent repute, except perhaps in the case

1 68 William Godwin,

of his reply to Malthus* Essay on Population.
In more than one sense the year 1800 was
the turning-point in his previously brilliant
career ; for it was then that his drama
Antonio on which he had rashly built his
hopes, met with complete failure : while from
about this time may be dated the commence-
ment of the money troubles which so greatly
embittered his later life. Henceforth he was
seen in the character of the needy book-maker
rather than the keen literary enthusiast ; out-
living, as the years went by, not only his early
friends and political associates, but, which was
still more sad, his own stern philosophical self-
respect, and the high hopes and aspirations
which had inspired his Political Justice,
Under these circumstances it is not surprising
that the familiarity of so near a view should
have bred, in the public estimation of Godwin's
genius, a certain measure of contempt, and that
the philosopher who was somewhat over-rated
in the outset of his career should afterwards
have been unduly depreciated. The loss of
his wife, the talented and noble-minded Mary
Wollstonecraft, in the first year of their
married life, was in every way an irreparable
blow to Godwin ; for the woman who died in
the zenith of her intellectual and moral enthu-
siasm was surely less to be pitied than the man
who survived his happiness by nearly forty years.

William Godwin. 169

If we keep in mind this fact, that the
Godwin of the closing years of the last century,
the author of Political Justice^ and husband of
Mary Wollstonecraft, was a very different
person from the impecunious bookseller of
twenty or thirty years later, whose correspond-
ence with his more generous and open-
handed son-in-law, Shelley, shows him in a far
from favourable light, we shall be less surprised
when we note the wide divergence of opinion
that seems to have existed, and still to exist,
respecting Godwin's character. While some
have spoken of him as a philosopher of stern,
unflinching disposition, and one of the leading
pioneers of modern thought — a view, which,
as I hope to show, finds justification in the
nobler passages of his life — others have been
able to see in him nothing more than a cold-
blooded, unemotional sophist, preaching a
doctrine which he himself was by no means
careful to practise in his actual intercourse with
mankind. Nor can it be denied that there is
some basis of truth in the unfavourable, as
well as in the favourable judgment ; though I
think that the total and final impression
conveyed by a study of Godwin s character in
all its phases should be a more pleasant and
charitable one. Two leading features are

♦ Vide Prof. Dowden's " Life of Shelley," vol. ii.

170 William Godwin.

easily discernible in his nature, both in the
earlier and the later period of his life. One
is the strong didactic tendency, which was
fostered even in childhood by the Calvinistic
atmosphere of his surroundings ; the other is
the predominance of the purely intellectual
element, which he cultivated to a great ex-
tent at the expense of the emotional. The
description given by Godwin's biographer *
of his early piety and the severity of his
religious training may make the reader smile
at the odd contrast with his later convictions,
but it accounts for that serious tone which
prevades all Godwin's thoughts and writings.
The boy whose earliest books were the
Pilgrinis Progress and the Account of the
Pious Deaths of Many Godly Children,
who was seriously reproved for his levity when
he happened one Sunday to take the cat in his
arms, soon developed the habit of preaching to
other lads of his acquaintance, and is said to
have dwelt so powerfully on the subject of
" sin and damnation *' that he drew tears from
the eyes of his audience. As he grew older
his religious belief was changed, but he always
retained somewhat of the preacher s earnestness^
and gravity, together with that characteristic
spirit of mild, yet indomitable pertinacity,

♦ a

Life of William Godwin," by C. Kegan Paul, 1876.

William Godwin. 171

which shows itself so amusingly in the history
of his relations with Tom Cooper, the high-
spirited pupil who not unnaturally rebelled
against the course of rigid discipline and un-
remitting benevolence to which Godwin sub-
jected him. The habit of minute self-in-
spection is illustrated by many passages in
the diary which Godwin always kept with
marked care and regularity ; and as he
persisted in examining his own mind, so he
persisted in probing every intellectual question
with the cold clear logic of a calm and unim-
passioned reason. To such an extent did he
carry this exaltation of the reasoning faculties
over the emotional impulses, that he was some-
times led astray by it into ludicrous and ex-
travagant assertions, as when, in his insistence
on the absolute power of the will in maintaining
complete self-control, he speaks disparagingly
of sleep as " one of the most conspicuous infir-
mities of the human frame.'* On the whole,
however, too much has been made of this defi-
ciency of the sentimental element in Godwin s
character: if he was "cold-blooded," it was in
the outer appearance far more than the inward
reality ; and though it was his wont thus to mask
himself in a cloud of philosophical imperturba-
bility, there are many indications that the emotion
was latent and not absent. In a fragmentary an-
alysis of his own character he speaks of himself as

172 William Godwin.

nervous, timid, and embarrassed in the presence
of strangers ; while the strength and warmth
of his friendships, especially those with young
men, for whom he seems always to have had a
considerable attraction, and above all, his deep
affection for Mary Wellstonecraft, show that
he was by no means devoid of the usual
human sympathies. Nor was he free from the
corresponding sentimental faults ; his egotism
and vanity making him extraordinarily sensitive
to criticism, unless most guardedly expressed,
and apt to take offence on slight provocation
from even his best friends. In brief, he was a
strange mixture of philosophic strength and
human weakness ; though it must be remem-
bered that these inconsistencies became far more
manifest in his latter years than in the prime of
his manhood. His conduct during the state-
trials in 1 794 proved him to be gifted with high
courage and sincere conviction ; and if it be
right, as I believe it to be, to judge a great man
by his best work rather than his worst, the
period of Godwin's life which demands most
consideration from those who wish to understand
him is the last decade of the eighteenth century,
in which were written his great work, Political
yusticBy and his best novel, Caleb Williams.
It is in those two books that his philosophical
opinions and his literary powers may be most
conveniently studied.

William Godwin. 173

Political yustice is one of those books
which exercise a permanent influence on the
social and political opinion of the country in
which they are written, yet fail to win for them-
selves a permanent and individual fame. To-
wards the close of the last century the expectation
of great and radical changes in the near future
had taken powerful hold of men's minds, and the
publication of Godwin's book, which gave ex-
pression to the vague sentiments and revolution-
ary aspirations then afloat, carried, as De Quin-
cey has described it, ** one single shock into the
bosom of Englishsociety, fearful but momentary."
Yet fifty years later Godwin's philosophic system
was practically forgotten ; not merely because
a good deal of it had been weighed in the balance
and found wanting, or even toned down and
withdrawn by Godwin himself in subsequent
writings ; but because most of its best teaching
had silently but effectually done its work, being
absorbed into the minds of other thinkers and
writers, and thus leavening the whole mass of
Radical philosophy, In these days of political
enfranchisement and liberty of thought, we are
in danger of forgetting how deeply the modern
Radical school is indebted to its forerunners of
a hundred years back, and how much of the
speculation of a book such as Political yustice
has passed unrecognised into the current opinion
of to-day, while still more is advanced, in almost

174 William Godwin,

the same words as those used by Godwin, by
social reformers who are struggling to bring on
a more drastic change.

'* It is an old observation," says Godwin,
'* that the history of mankind is little else than
a record of crimes." It seems to have been
supposed from this that Godwin was animated
by a foolish and unscientific dislike of historical
study ; such, however, was not the case ; for he
himself draws an argument from the improve-
ments effected in the past in favour of further
improvement in the future, while he distinctly
asserts, not that society has been wholly useless
in defending mankind from want and incon-
venience, but that *' it effects this purpose in a
very imperfect degree." His indictment of the
evils of the present social system is powerful
and, in the main, unanswerable. Whatever
may be thought of the remedies which he
proposes to apply, he was not guilty of the
absurdity, sometimes attributed to him, of
picturing the past and present of man's destiny
as a scene of unrelieved blackness and misery,
and at the same time holding out a promise of
the immediate realization of a golden future.
His doctrine of the perfectibility of man does
not differ in essential points from the belief held
by the elder Mill, that outward circumstances
are more powerful than innate principles, and
that, therefore, the possibility of improvement

William Godwin. 175

is practically unlimited. He is also careful
to state that by perfectibility he does not
mean perfection ; the latter idea being incon-
ceivable, while the former is merely the recogni-
tion of the fact that all improvements which can
be conceived can also be realised. In short, so
far from placing himself in opposition to the
lessons of history and what is now known as
evolution, Godwin, who was himself a student
and writer of history, finds in these lessons the
strongest corroboration of his theories. The
knowledge that the present defective society
has been evolved from a still more defective
state in the past, is a poor argument for sup-
posing that we have now arrived at the ne plus
ultra of civilisation. It points rather to the
certainty of still further and further reform, or
in other words, to the perfectibility of mankind.
The instrument by which this perfectibility
can be best promoted is, according to Godwin,
the spread of intellectual enlightenment. That
vice is an error of judgment is his fundamental
doctrine, from which it follows that as men be-
come wiser, they will also become more virtuous
and just, justice and virtue being regarded as
synonymous terms. Godwin does not hesitate
to express his opinion that the aim of justice is
the general good, apart from every private or
personal consideration ; and that utility, by
which is meant the welfare of the greatest

176 William Godwin.

number, is the true standard of virtue ; he even
ventures to carry this doctrine to its logical con-
clusion, and to insist on the suppression of all the
domestic affections when they clash with the
public interests. To love one's neighbour as
oneself is, he tells us, a comprehensive maxim,
'* possessing considerable merit as a popular
principle," but he complains that it '* is not
modelled with the strictness of philosophical
accuracy," since justice prompts us to consider
neither one's neighbour nor oneself, but simply
what is conducive to the good of the community.
This doctrine, however, though highly charac-
teristic of Godwin s logical, matter-of-fact mind,
is not an essential part of his philosophy ; for he
strongly asserts that each individual must deter-
mine for himself in what manner he will be acting
most in accordance with the demands of justice,
since ** there is no criterion of duty to any man
but in the exercise of his private judgment.*'
This is one of the most important points in all
Godwin's teaching, containing, as it does, the
assertion of the incompatibility of tyranny and
justice. '* To a rational being," he says, ** there
can be but one rule of conduct — justice ; and one
mode of ascertaining that rule — the exercise of
his understanding." The understanding, to be
worthy of its name, must be free and unfettered,
and must not yield its assent to any proposition
which rests merely on a basis of law and author-

William Godwin. 177

ity ; since free judgment is the very essence and
foundation of all virtuous action ; while, on the
other hand, tyranny, which commands the assent
without convincing the reason, is absolutely
fatal to morality. This brings us back to the
point from which we started ; that the means by
which a reformation can be worked out, whether
in societies or individuals, must be sought
primarily in the spread of enlightened opinion ;
and in connection with this subject it becomes
necessary to consider what are the chief obstacles
which stand in the way of such an enlighten-
ment, and why men are prevented from discern-
ing the true principles of morality and justice.

In the first place, Godwin strongly deprecates
every form of coercion, except such force as is
necessarily employed in self-defence, as for in-
stance in repelling a foreign invader or domestic
tyrant with whom argument is useless. Govern-
ment he considers to be only justifiable ** so far
as it is requisite for the suppression of force by
force." ' No punishment is allowable except loss
of personal liberty, and this should be inflicted
solely for the general benefit, as a restraint im-
posed on the individual offender, and not as a
penalty or deterrent. All such institutions as
oaths, tests, promises, religious codes, obedience,
confidence, and the like, are condemned as in-
terfering with the free exercise of private judg-
ment and thus establishing a fictitious standard

178 William Godwin.

of morality. Even in education Godwin objects
to all manner of compulsion, and looks forward
to the time when "no creature in human form
will be expected to learn anything, unless be-
cause he desires it and has some conception of
its value." The marriage-laws meet with his
most emphatic disapproval, as constituting ** a
monopoly and the worst of monopolies," and he
strongly advocates the abolition of the marriage-
bond, so that marriage, ** like every other affair
in which two persons are concerned, may be re-
gulated by the unforced consent of the parties."
The sum of Godwin^s teaching on this subject
of tyranny amounts to an uncompromising
assertion of the rights of Individualism, any
curtailment of which must tend to deprave that
independence of thought by which alone men
can attain to a right sense of political justice.
But strongly as he condemns coercion, he re-
serves his severest censures of all for the insti-
tution of property, the subject of which he
declares to be the key-stone of his philosophical
fabric. Premising that the good things of the
world are a common stock, from which each man
has the right to draw what he needs, provided
that he respects the equal right of his neigh-
bour to these same '* means of improvement and
pleasure," he points out at great length and
with great clearness the many evils of the pre-
sent system of inequality. Foremost among

William Godwin. 179

these evils are the spirit of subservience which
is brought home to every house in the nation
by the juxtaposition of poverty and wealth ; the
spectacle of gross injustice perpetually presented
to men's eyes by the ostentation of the rich,
which engenders a universal passion for a simi-
lar acquisition of luxuries ; the loss of that in-
tellectual advancement which might be enjoyed
by the great mass of mankind instead of being
monopolised by a few ; the immense encourage-
ment of vice, owing to '* one man's possessing
in abundance that of w^hich another man is
destitute ; '' and last, but not least, the tendency
of large accumulations of property to promote
aggressive and calamitous wars through the
thirst for adding kingdom to kingdom. ** Her-
editary wealth,'" says Godwin, **is in reality a
premium paid to idleness, an immense annuity
expended to retain mankind in brutality and
ignorance. The poor are kept in ignorance by
the want of leisure. The rich are furnished in-
deed with the means of cultivation and literature,
but they are paid for being dissipated and in-
dolent." In the Enquirer^ written a few years
later than Political Justice^ the same doctrine is
reiterated. ** It is a gross and ridiculous error
to suppose that the rich pay for anything.
There is no wealth in the world except this —
the labour of man. What is misnamed wealth
is merely a power, vested in certain individuals

1 80 William Godwin,

by the institution of society, to compel others
to labour for their benefit." Property is thus
considered by Godwin to be a fatal hindrance
to a clear-sighted appreciation of justice and
therefore to the improvement of the human race.
A study of the history of Socialism during the
past century will afford proof that while God-
win's name has been to a great extent forgotten,
his teaching has certainly not fallen into abey-
ance.

It is not surprising that the promulgation of
such opinions as these, together with many other
accessory doctrines equally revolutionary in their
tendency, should have caused Godwin to be
looked upon as a dangerous innovator. But it
ought not to be overlooked that the man who
held these advanced views concerning govern-
ment, marriage, education, property, and other
social institutions, was in his own character the
very contrary of a lawless or violent agitator,
being especially remarkable for his calm, judicial
temperament and dispassionate nature. It has
been complained that Godwin "with the utmost
calmness sweeps away one restraint after
another." * But though this is quite true of
Godwin as a speculator, it must be pointed out
on the other hand that it is equally untrue of
him as a social reformer ; on the contrary, he is

* Stephen's English Thought of the Eighteenth Century^
vol. ii

William Godwin. i8i

cautious to a singular degree in the many safe-
guards with which he hedges round his revolu-
tionary schemes. He regards massacre as " the
too possible attendant upon revolution," and
massacre ** is the most hateful scene, allowing
for its momentary duration, that any imagination
can suggest." He consequently deprecates the
use of any sort of violence, or anything that can
tend to produce violence, in his crusade against
tyranny and law ; his reformation is to be in
every sense an intellectual and voluntary one,
even political associations being discountenanced
by him as likely to promote disorder. " The
proper method," he says, **for hastening the
decline of error and producing uniformity of
judgment, is not by brute force or by regulation,
which is one of the classes of force, but on the
contrary, by teaching every man to think for
himself." He has an unlimited confidence in
the ultimate efficacy of the truth, which he be-
lieves will be able to produce a spirit of dis-
interestedness even in the matter of property.
On this point he is as distinctly at variance
with the communists of the present century as
he is in agreement with them on general prin-
ciples.

As regards individual conduct, Godwin's
teaching is a kind of benevolent stoicism. The
human will can and ought to be all-powerful,
not only in questions of morality, but also in

i82 William Godwin.

counteracting the infirmities of nature. Like
Bacon he seems to dream of an age when mind
shall be supreme over matter ; in the meantime
he insists that there are intellectual medicines as
well as physical, and that when we suffer
maladies it is often because we consent to suffer
them. Side by side with this stoic hardihood
he inculcates the duty of a sympathetic benevo-
lence, since ** there is no true joy, but in the
spectacle and contemplation of happiness."
How this moral exhortation, together with the
mass of similar precepts which are scattered
throughout the pages of Political Justice, can be
reconciled with the doctrine of Necessity which
he deliberately adopts, he fails, like other
necessarians, to make clear ; in fact, herein con-
sists the weak point of Godwin's treatise, that
in aiming at giving it a precise and scientific
basis in preference to an emotional one, he de-
feats his own object and renders himself liable
to argumentative attack on the very point where
he professes to be invulnerable. He commits
the error of attempting to give " mathematical
reasons for moral actions " — to quote a phrase
used by Shelley, who followed Godwin's philo-
sophy while avoiding his method of imparting it
— whereas, if he had been less anxious to give
his work the appearance of perfect symmetry
and complete logical consistency, and if he had
ventured to rely more on that intuitive senti-

William Godwin. 183

ment of humanity, which is after all his strongest
weapon, he might have created a still more
powerful effect. So clear a thinker and so
shrewd a critic as Mr. Leslie Stephen * has
succeeded in finding some weak places in
Godwin's philosophical system ; yet he has
failed, I think, to shake that part of the struc-
ture which alone is of vital importance, while his
whole criticism is harsh in tone and too literal in
its application. It is scarcely fair to say that
Godwin '^ placidly ignores all inconvenient facts,"
or that he *' believes as firmly as any Christian
in the speedy revolution of a New Jerusalem,
four-square and perfect in its plan," when
Godwin, grave and dispassionate thinker that
he was, expressly provided against any such
misunderstanding of his views regarding the
future of mankind. "After all," he wrote, ''it
may not be utterly impossible that the nature of
man will always remain for the most part un-
altered, and that he will be found incapable of
that degree of knowledge and constancy which
seems essential to a liberal democracy or a pure
equality. ... A careful enquirer is always de-
tecting his past errors ; each year of his life
produces a severe comment upon the opinions
of the last ; he suspects all his judgments and is
certain of none." f We may rest assured that

* English Ihought of the Eighteenth Century, voL ii.,
264 — 281.

t Book viii., ch. x., second edition.

184 William Godwin.

Godwin was as far from being a crazy enthusiast
as he was from being a reckless incendiary, and
that though he was so far foredoomed to failure
in his attempt to demonstrate scientifically
moral and social truths incapable of logical
proof or disproof, he was not writing of what he
did not understand when he pointed to thfe
present evils of society and to the absolute
necessity of discovering a remedy. Opinions
must differ as to the value of the remedy he
suggests ; but none can deny that the social
questions to which Godwin drew attention
nearly a century ago have become of more and
more pressing importance in the years that have
since elapsed, and that his manner of discussing
them is singularly clear and suggestive. In
the very choice of the word Justice as the title
for his book, he struck a true note and showed
that he had instinctively hit upon the right track ;
for we have already begun to discover that this
question of justice, whether between man and
man, or between the state and the individual, is
destined to be the great crtix of modern politics.
Caleb Williams, the novel which Godwin
published a year later than his Political Justice^
is interesting to us for two reasons ; first for
its intrinsic merits as a work of fiction, and
secondly as furnishing a further illustration
of the views expressed in its more important
predecessor. It is a striking instance of a sue-

William Godwin. 185

cessful novel written by one who cannot be said
to have been as a rule a successful novelist. Of
the various characters introduced into the book
the only two that have any real vitality are those
of Caleb Williams himself and his master,
Falkland ; but these two personages are so
vividly drawn, and the position in which they
stand towards one another is so graphically and
impressively described, that the book possesses
for many readers a charm which they can find
in none other of Godwin's writings. In his
delineation of Falkland, the chivalrous and
courtly gentleman, whose life was poisoned by
the secret guilt of a terrible crime committed
years before under the direst provocation,
Godwin was able to strike a blow at the so-
called ** code of honour '* which looked to the
chances of the duel for the settlement of per-
sonal disputes where calm reason and argument
alone could be of any avail. In Caleb Williams,
who partly by accident, partly by design,
becomes the sharer of Falkland's secret, we see
the embodiment of that mild pertinacity and
irrepressible love of enquiry which were con-
spicuous features in Godwin's own character ;
while the persecution inflicted on the servant
who ventures to pry into the affairs of his
master serves to illustrate how simplicity and
thirst for knowledge, when they run counter to
the pleasure of the powerful, are sure to bring

1 86 William Godwin.

calamity on their possessor. It is small wonder
that Godwin wrote well on such a theme as this,
for it was a theme after his own heart — this
struggle of one individual, whose only fault was
a too observant habit and stubborn independ-
ence of mind, against all the forces of wealth
and authority wielding the pains and penalties
of a corrupt and venal law. The involuntary
and irresistible attraction by which Caleb
Williams is drawn on and on to the fatal dis-
covery which ruins the happiness of his life is a
fine feature of the story, and is probably the
only indication in Godwin's novels of any
imaginative power. As regards expression and
style, the narrative, though not free from a some-
what stilted and pompous phraseology, has the
merit of being thoroughly lucid and direct, a
quality which is observable in all Godwin's
writings, whether literary or philosophic.

When we look at Godwin's teaching as a
whole, and ask wherein consists his chief merit
as a thinker and his claim to be remembered by
posterity, we shall probably come to the con-
clusion that out of the wide field of moral, social,
and political topics over which his intellect
ranged, three points stand out conspicuous as
striking illustrations of his mental sagacity and
the foresight with which he in some measure
anticipated the Radical opinion of a later time.
First, the shrewd instinct by which he laid his

William Godwin. 187

finger on the question of property as the one
which, more than any other, is apt to influence
and warp the rectitude of private judgment, and
which is therefore destined to demand the closest
attention of all legislators and philosophers.
Secondly, his uncompromising assertion of the
freedom of individual opinion and the right of
every citizen to shape his life as he chooses,
with due respect to the similar rights of others.
Communist though he was in principle, Godwin
felt strongly that co-operation may have its
drawbacks as well as its advantages, and this
led him to point out that the system of equality
which he advocated must not become in any
way a system of repression, under which it
might be difficult for each individual to follow
the dictates of his own taste and judgment. To
enable individuality to gather new strength and
vindicate its claim to continued existence, he
urges the adoption of frugality and simplicity of
living, declaring that the wise course is for men
'* to reduce their wants to the fewest possible,
and as much as possible to simplify the mode of
supplying them " — a doctrine still more clearly
enforced half a century later in the writings of
the Emersonian school. Thirdly, his unswerv-
ing belief in the power of truth, and his con-
fident appeal to the higher rather than the
lower instincts of mankind, are well worthy of
attention in this age of cynical indifferentism

i88 William Godwin.

and commercial money-making. He insists that
*' men are not so entirely governed by self-
interest as has frequently been supposed," in
which conviction we see an anticipation of some
of the best features of the Comtist philosophy.
With ** Justice " as the watchword of his creed,
and the perfectibility of man (in the sense of un-
limited intellectual progress) set before him as
the object of his hopes, he became the author
of a philosophical system, which, though perhaps
over-elaborate in its general scope and faulty in
some of its details, has certainly the merit of
having powerfully influenced the opinions and
stimulated the enthusiasm of many to whom the
cause of Humanity is dear. It was from God-
win that Shelley drew much of that zeal for
truth and freedom, without which his most im-
portant poems would never have been written ;
and it is to Godwin that we in great measure
owe our recognition of the fact that both in state
policy and individual conduct the only true
morality must be looked for in the study of
justice. As a prophet and fore-runner of the
religion of Humanity, Godwin has a distinct
claim on the memory and gratitude of the
present age.

Nathaniel Hawthorne s
Romances.

*• Hawthorne rides well his horse of the night."
This remark of Emerson's, in allusion to the
reticence of one of his guests at a social meet-
ing, is happily descriptive of the literary charac-
teristics by which the author of The Scarlet
Letter has won himself a peculiar place among
the immortals. There is something spectral
and elusive about the creations of Hawthorne's
genius. The reader of his tales is haunted
throughout by a weird, indefinable sense of
nocturnal phantasy, which seems to brood over
these writings as over no other works of fiction.
There have been greater and more powerful
masters of the emotions of pity and terror ; other
novelists have depicted the mysteries and
sorrows of human existence in darker and
stronger colours, and with a far wider range ;
but no other writer has ever succeeded in dis-
playing his conceptions through the medium of

1 90 Nathaniel Hawthorne s JRomances.

that twilight glimmer and filmy half-light, which
affects our minds so strangely in reading Haw-
thorne's romances.

The combination of stern Calvinistic principles
with some sort of classical refinement or artistic
culture has often been observed to produce a
character possessed of certain rich and pic-
turesque qualities. In Hawthorne s case we
see an instance of a similar effect. His genius
resulted from a mixture of rigid Puritanism with
the highest imaginative faculty. His Puritan
sympathies — inherited from a line of ancestors
who, as he himself loved to record, were famous
for their persecution of Quakers and witches —
had been fostered still further in boyhood by his
intense study of The PilgrinHs Progress and
other Puritan books. On the other hand, his
love of the mysterious and romantic was derived
partly from his sensitive organisation and partly
from the circumstances of his early life — the
lonely days spent in skating on Sebago Lake
or shooting in the Maine woods, amid scenes
full of traditionary legends and superstitions.
His imagination, quickened by these youthful
experiences — these '* cursed habits of solitude,*'
as he calls them — enabled him to live afresh in
the stern old Puritan times, and realise in vision
the scenes with which his forefathers had been
acquainted. '* Every phase of early New
England life," writes one of his American

Nathaniel Hawthornis Romances. 191

admirers,* every type of early New England
character, is familiar to him. The sea, the sky,
the air, the storms, the winds, the seasons, the
blazing hearth, the deep snows, the dark forest
over which superstition had thrown its terrors,
thanksgiving day, the election sermon, Thurs-
day lecture, the solemn Sunday — all the
memories of New England crowd his pages.*'
Thus equipped, he appeared early in life on the
field of literature, choosing as his special and
congenial theme the mystery of Sin, in which
subject his two natural proclivities, the religious
and the imaginative, could meet and harmonise.
To estimate the working of the moral law ; to
note how the germ of evil sown by one man
can result in a crop of calamities to others ; to
track the secret effect of sin on the soul, and to
question if it may be, like sorrow, a step in
man's education — all this could give an outlet
both to Hawthorne's innate Puritan tenden-
cies and his love of imaginative speculation.
Among his reminiscences of England, published
in Our Old Home^ there is an account of a
certain doctor of divinity, '* a perfect model of
clerical propriety,'* who, having just come over
from America for a tour in Europe, paid
Hawthorne a visit at the Liverpool con-
sulate. A week later he again presented
himself, but this time transformed in appear-
* J. W. Symonds' Oration on Hawthorne^ 1878.

192 Nathaniel Hawthorne s Romances.

ance ** from the most decorous of metropolitan
clergymen into the rowdiest and dirtiest of
disbanded officers," having fallen into some
pitfall *' not more of vice than terrible calamity."
This tragedy, which Hawthorne says was the
deepest he ever witnessed, was nothing more
than an illustration from actual life of the topic
on which he so often dwelt in his romances.

Hawthorne's literary career was singularly
and fortunately deficient in stirring and exciting
incidents, the unruffled happiness of his domestic
life contrasting strongly with the proverbial
troubles of men of genius. Yet there was in
him a restlessness of disposition which caused
him to make many changes and migrations.
In America, as his son tells us in his biography,
he was ever shifting his quarters between
Concord, Salem, and Lenox ; in England he
yearned for the climate of Italy ; but when he
found himself at Rome his affections reverted
to England and America. '* I should like to
sail on and on for ever " — so he said to a fellow-
voyager — **and never touch the shore again ; "
and those who study his life will probably come
to the conclusion that this roving tendency, in-
herited perhaps from his seafaring ancestors,
was the main cause of the gloomy depression
of his later years, which seems otherwise un-
accountable. At any rate, two very distinct
periods may be observed, without any fanciful

Nathaniel Hawthorne s Rcmtances. 193

arrangement, in Hawthorne's career ; the for-
mer comprising the sixteen years preceding his
visit to Europe, and the latter consisting of the
last ten years of his life. It will be observed
that almost all his most valuable work was done
during the first, the American period ; once
uprooted from his native soil, and sent a wander-
ing tourist through the regular European beat,
he could produce nothing comparable to his
^reat early romances. Twice-told Tales^ Mosses
from an Old Manse^ The Scarlet Letter^ The
House of the Seven Gables^ and The Blithedale
Romance were all published between 1837 and
1853. Then Hawthorne was made American
Consul at Liverpool, and henceforth wrote
nothing better than Transformation^ Our Old
Home, and the fragmentary stories of which
Septimius is the chief. It is obvious that for
some reason he had partly lost the cunning of
his hand in these later years, and the explana-
tion must probably be sought in the prolonged
absence from his native soil, the desultory kind
of life he led in Europe, and the unintellectual
nature of his employment at Liverpool. It is
odd to think of the author of The Blithedale
Romance as an inmate of " Mrs. Blodgett's
boarding-house " at Liverpool, where, as Haw-
thorne's son and biographer apologetically
remarks, " the company, though not consisting
of the most cultivated persons, imaginable, was

N

1 94 Nathaniel Hawthorne s Romances.

very hearty and genuine." Hawthorne seems
to have done his best in good-fellowship at
Liverpool, as at Brook Farm ; but his character
was scarcely adapted for boarding in a nautical
establishment, where the conversation "savoured
of tar and bilge- water," and where sea-captains
sat enveloped in a blue cloud of smoke. *' It is
rather comfortless," he wrote in his English
Notebook^ ** to think of home as three years off,
and three thousand miles away. With what a
sense of utter weariness, not fully realised till
then, shall we sink down on our own threshold
when we reach it." No doubt these words
were written in a mood between jest and
earnest, but there was, nevertheless, a prophetic
truth in them which was only too literally ful-
filled in the sadness of the last few years in his
old home at Concord.

Surprise has sometimes been expressed that
the Puritan element in Hawthorne's character,
together with the matter-of-fact system of
American life, were not fatal obstacles to the
production of highly imaginative work. In the
Preface to The Blithedale Romance Hawthorne
himself says that he chose the Brook Farm
episode as the most romantic of his own life,
and as offering a kind of enchanted atmosphere
usually unavailable to an American novelist.
Again, in the Preface to Transformation he
remarks that Italy, where the scene of the story

Nathaniel Hawthorne's Romances. 195

is laid, was *' a sort of poetic or fairy precinct
where actualities would not be so terribly in-
sisted upon, as they are, and needs must be, in
America.'* "No author,'* he adds, *' without a
trial can conceive of the difficulty of writing a
romance about a country where there is no
shadow, no antiquity, no mystery, no pic-
turesque and gloomy wrong.*' Yet surely this
idea is confuted by Hawthorne's own best
writings. Nothing could be more truly poetical
and imaginative than his admirable treatment
of the prim Puritan villages, surrounded by the
primeval forests where the witches were thought
to assemble on dark nights ; the occasional
glimpses into Indian character and customs ;
the unexplored mountains, where *^the great
carbuncle '* might possibly be sighted by some
adventurous pilgrim ; the calm slow-flowing
rivers, with their broad prairies, long meadow-
grass, and yellow water-lilies. All these scenes
he describes with a measured and meditative
delight, which proves that his imagination drew
more strength than he himself was aware of
from the influence and traditions of his native
soil. On the other hand, the Italian novel
Transformation, is distinctly inferior in all
essential qualities to its great American pre-
decessors. Nor need we be surprised at this ;
for books written in a foreign country, under
the impulse of travel and passing observation

196 Nathaniel Hawthorne s Romances.

rather than life-long intimacy, can seldom attain
to the same excellence as those which are in-
spired by the natural objects which the writer
has known from childhood. There never lived
a closer observer than George Eliot ; yet how
slight and artificial is her Italian study, Romola^
elaborate as it is, compared with her simple,
but immortal, delineations of homely English
life. So, too, it was with Hawthorne. He set
himself with great earnestness and considerable
success to study Italian art ; yet, with all his
pains in founding a romance on this subject, he
failed to wield the same power as in his stories
of Puritan life.

It can hardly be doubted that The Scarlet
Letter is the best of all Hawthorne's produc-
tions. It is, indeed, one of the greatest of all
works of fiction ; for in the whole range of
English literature there are few things more
tragic and more sublime than this simple tale.
The resemblance of its general structure to
that of Lockhart s Adam Blair has more than
once been commented on ; it is also worth
remark that The Scarlet Letter offers one or
two very striking points of comparison with
George Eliot's Adam Bede, The relation
existing between the two guilty characters are
almost identical in the two books ; a forbidden
love ; a fatal secret ; a disgrace borne at first
by the woman alone, but finally shared by- her

Nathaniel Hawthorne s Romances. 197.

lover — these form a strange coincidence in the
plans of the novels, which is maintained even in
the names of the characters, Hester Prynne and
Hester Sorrel, Arthur Dimmesdale and Arthur
Donnithorne. But with the names and situa-
tion of the characters the similarity ends ; for
Hawthorne's beautiful and pathetic story is
happily free from the sensational incidents which
so sadly mar the latter ^^^xx. oi Adam Bede, In
The Scarlet Letter the moral is not obtruded
on the reader, yet the tone is altogether more
lofty and spiritual, and aided by a power of
poetical imagination of which George Eliot was
wholly destitute. Nor can it be said that
Hawthorne, on his side, was deficient in that
keen insight and subtle analysis of character for
which George Eliot is justly renowned. In-
deed, this is one of the most striking features
of 7 he Scarlet Letter ^ after the publication of
which Hawthorne is said to have been often
consulted by various criminals and ** spiritual
invalids," who thus bore unconscious testimony
to the keenness of his observation.

Opinions vary as to the comparative merits
of The House of the Seven Gables and The
Blithedale Romance. The former certainly
contains passages and scenes which equal any-
thing which Hawthorne ever wrote, foremost
among such being the description of the old
house, which ** affected the beholder like a

1 98 Nathaniel Hawthorne s Romances,

human countenance," with its acutely pointed
gables and huge clusters of chimneys, but on
the whole it is perhaps somewhat lacking in that
mysterious glamour which Hawthorne usually
contrived to throw over his romances, and it
labours under the disadvantage of dealing with
several generations of the same family, which
renders the plot a little complicated and difficult
to keep in mind. The Blithedale Romance is
free from these blemishes, and it is hard to say
which of the four chief characters in this book
is most worthy of praise, Zenobia is one of
the richest and most gorgeous studies ever pro-
duced by novelist or poet, and there is some-
thing scarcely less impressive in the delinea-
tion of the inexplicable yet persistent curiosity
which impels Miles Coverdale to fathom the
mystery of her life. Readers of Godwin's
novel, Caleb Williams, will not fail to. notice the
singular resemblance between the strange
infatuation which led Williams to pry into the
terrible secret of his master and benefactor,
Falkland, and those passages of The Blithedale
Romance where Zenobia turns furiously to bay
under the scrutiny of her too inquisitive friend.
** You know not what you do ! It is dangerous,
sir, believe me, to tamper thus with earnest
human passions, out of your mere idleness and
for your sport.*' In The Blithedale Romance,
as in The Scarlet Letter and Transformation^

Nathaniel Hawthorne s Romances. 199

may be noticed Hawthorne's odd partiality for
a quartette of characters ; and there is also a
certain amount of resemblance between the
characters of Zenobia and Priscilla in the one
book and Miriam and Hilda in the other.

Hawthorne's position among novelists is
wholly unique, for though some of the short
tales, by which he first became known as an
author, bear a resemblance to those of Poe, his
maturer style is absolutely his own. It is worthy
of remark that the short prose story has flour-
ished far more on American than on English
soil. No first-rate English writers seem to
have thought it worth their while to cultivate it
to any great extent ; and though there are a
few masterpieces of this style scattered here and
there, as, for instance, in Dicken's books, it
cannot be said to have reached any high degree
of excellence in this country as it did in the
hands of Hawthorne and Poe. Perhaps of all
English writers De Quincey is, on the whole,
the one who is least dissimilar to Hawthorne,
and it is disappointing to learn that two prose-
poets never found an opportunity of meeting,
though Hawthorne often spoke with warm
appreciation of De Quincey. In one point they
were closely akin : they both had a keen sense
of the impressiveness of a great city. No
writer has done justice to the poetry of London
life so fully as De Quincey ; and it is interest-

200 Nathaniel Hawthorne s Romances.

^~^^^^^^^~ ~^~^^— ^~~^"" ~ ■■■"^^^^"^^■^ ■

ing to find that the London streets, with their
countless thousands of unknown faces, exercised
the same kind of spell over Hawthorne's
imagination as over that of " the English
opium-eater.'* " The bustle of London," he
writes, in his English Note-Book, **may weary,
but never can satiate me. By night London
looks wild and dreamy, and fills me with a kind
of pleasant dread." St. Paul's Cathedral, we
are not surprised to find, had a special fascina-
tion for Hawthorne. *' There cannot," he
thinks, ** be anything else in its way so good in
the world as just this effect of St. Paul's, in the
very heart and densest tumult of London."
He loved to go out and lose himself in the
labyrinth of streets, in the same way that De
Quincey used to roam at random through the
network of crowded passages and alleys. In
Wakefield y one of the Twice-told Tales y we have
a fine example of Hawthorne's vivid perception
of the mystery of a great city, where the next
street may mean practically another world.

Like De Quincey again, Hawthorne was a
pure artist, being quite devoid of all those feel-
ings which may be comprised under the name
of enthusiasm. He was a quietist in his de-
votion to literary leisure, a lotus-eater in his
enjoyment of calm. His attitude towards
idealism, and everything that savoured of
transcendental philosophy, if not posititively

Nathaniel Hawthornis R&mances. 201.

hostile, was very far from being friendly, and
was certainly in some cases contemptuous and
narrow-minded. His inability to sympathise
with those whose opinions are in conflict with
the conventional laws of society appears unmis-
takably in many parts of his biography, and is
one of the few unpleasant traits in his character.
" The sooner the sect is extinct the better, I
think/' is the concluding sentence in his diary
for a day in which he had visited an American
Quaker establishment. He spoke of slavery as
*' one of those evils which Divine Providence
does not leave to be remedied by human con-
trivance.'' That he should have been a member
of the Socialistic circle at Brook Farm has
always been, and must continue to be, a matter
of wonder and astonishment ; and though none
can regret an episode which furnished him with
such good material for artistic treatment in
The Blithedale Romance, it is evident that he
was by nature incapable of doing justice to
the higher aims of that ideal community.
Very characteristic, too, is his criticism of
Shelley in one of the most humorous stories of
the Mosses from an Old Manse. Had he been
able to understand more clearly the ideals
which Shelley had in view, he could hardly
have adopted, even in his humorous vein, the
theory that the poet of Freethought, if he had
lived to mature age, would have been reconciled

202 Nathaniel Hawthorne s Romances.

to the orthodox faith, or, as he inimitably
expresses it, would have written a defence of
Christianity on the basis of the thirty-nine
articles. It is obvious that when Hawthorne
touches on great social questions, he does so
merely from the artistic point of view ; there is
no sign either in his life or writings that he felt
anything more than an intellectual interest, or
rather indifference, in all such inquiries.

If it were possible for a moment that we could
wish Hawthorne's genius to have been other than
it was, we might be tempted to regret that he
had not a dash of healthy enthusiasm. His
admirers have been at great pains to show that
there was nothing ** morbid " in his character
or style of writing ; * but unless we are prepared
to define the term in a sense altogether different
from that in which it is generally understood, I
do not think we can justly exonerate Hawthorne
from the charge of morbidness. It is undeniable
that his favourite study was that of decay rather
than growth ; sickness rather than health : fail-
ure rather than success ; in a word, the mortal-
ity rather than the vitality of man ; and this is
not the less true because he has scattered
throughout his books, by way of contrast to the
prevailing gloom, many delightful pictures of
purity and happiness. But it need not be

* Vide C. G. P. Lathrop's ** Study of Hawthorne," Boston,
U. S., 1876.

Nathaniel Hawthorne s Romances. 203

assumed that in saying Hawthorne's genius was
of a sopiewhat morbid cast, we are in any sense
disparaging it. The morbid has its place in
literature as well as in nature, and it will be
neither possible nor desirable to eliminate it al-
together from the domain of art as long as
mankind remains in its present condition.

As I have already said, the most peculiar of
all Hawthorne's artistic features is the filmy haze
of mystery with which he so dexterously con-
trives to invest his principal characters. This
effect is partly gained by his strange habit of
suggesting, rather than stating, his fanciful ideas,
side by side with the option of some matter-of-
fact explanation — a peculiarity which must have
arrested the attention of all careful readers of
his books ; as, for instance, in his description of
the mysterious and fatal connection existing
between Miriam and the Spectre of the Cata-
combs ; or the unaccountably sudden manner
of death hereditary in the Pyncheon family ; or
the various surmises about the scarlet letter
branded on Arthur Dimmesdale*s breast ; or the
numerous references to witches and witchcraft ; or
lastly, thebeliefthat Dr. Grimshawes huge spider
was the devil in disguise, ** a superstition,'* as
Hawthorne drily informs us, ** which deserves
absolutely no countenance.*' It has been well
remarked that Hawthorne possessed a power
of abstracting himself, as it were, from his own

20'4 Nathaniel Hawthorne's Romances.

genius, and viewing himself, his family, his cir-
cumstances of life, and his writings from an
external standpoint, as if he were two persons,
the one surveying and commenting on the other.
Some of his short stories, notably Rappacinis
Daughter — which is, perhaps, as fine a specimen
of its author's power as anything he ever wrote
— are cast in that half-imaginative, half scientific
style, of which Poe was also a great exponent,
wherein the charm consists in the subtle tran-
sition from the real to the fanciful. Given the
fact that certain flowers may exercise a strange
and deleterious influence on the human senses,
and we are led on, step by step, and stage by
stage, without any particular revolt of our reason
against the improbability of the tale, to the weird
conception of a human being whose whole exist-
ence is so impregnated with the breath of
poisonous flowers that the poison itself has be-
come life, and the antidote death. Here, too,
may be noticed that mysterious attraction to the
study of flowers in their relation to mankind,
which appears in so many of Hawthorne's writ-
ings ; as in the description of the effect produced
on Miles Coverdaleby the splendid exotic which
Zenobia wore in her hair ; the continual re-
currence to the subject of the sanguinea san-
guinissima in Septimius ; the many touches by
which ** Alice's Posies " are wrought into the plot
of The House of the Seven Gables \ and the beau-^ \,

Nathaniel Hawthorne s Romances, 20^

tiful references in The Dolliver Romance to the
tropical plant in the old Doctor's garden, which
was so connected with memories of his long-lost
wife, who had once worn its flowers in her
bosom, that it had become ** a kind of talisman
to bring up her image.'*

It need not be supposed, however, that Haw-
thorne's romances are unreal or unnatural, be-
cause they are surrounded by this halo of
mystery. It is but a thin and transparent veil,
which softens and tones down the broad glare
of every-day life, yet at the same time leaves
the outlines of the characters clear and well-
defined. It is, in fact, what Wordsworth has
described as

" The light that never was on sea or land.
The consecration, and the poet's dream."

For Hawthorne's genius, if we would judge
him aright, was something loftier and more in-
spired than that of a mere prose-writer or
novelist — he was rather a prose-poet, a drama-
tist and lyrist in one. His books were in the
highest degree works of imagination, to which
was added the most elaborate and careful finish
which their author was capable of bestowing on
them. None but a real poet could have written
that description of Hester Prynne's feelings
when she sees her lover pass by "in the pro-
cession of majestic and venerable fathers," with-

2o6 Nathaniel Hawthorne s Romances.

out sign of recognition, "enveloped, as it were,
in the rich music," while at the same time ** the
heavy footstep of their approaching fate might
be heard, nearer, nearer, nearer/' Not less
poetical is the account of the storm which raged
over the House of the Seven Gables after the
death of its owner. Many poets have sung of
the wind, but few have ever described it better
than this. "It is not to be conceived before-
hand what wonderful wind-instruments are these
old timber mansions, and how haunted with the
strangest noises ; which immediately begin to
sing, and sigh, and sob, and shriek, and to smite
with sledge-hammer, airy but ponderous, in some
distant chamber, and to tread along the entries,
as with stately footsteps, and to rustle up and
down the staircase, as with silks miraculously-
stiff, whenever the gale catches the house with a
window open, and gets fairly into it." It is
interesting to observe that this rare poetical
quality was the one that remained with Haw-
thorne to the end, even during that sad period
of failing power and increasing dejection when
he was no longer able to work out more than
the disjointed fragments of a romance. There
is scarcely in all his writings a more char-
acteristic and imaginative passage than the des-
cription in The Dolliver Romance of the aged
doctor's patch-work gown, of which the original
material was '* the embroidered front of his own

Nathaniel Hawthorne s Romances. 207

wedding waistcoat and the silken skirt of his
wife's bridal attire," into which the spinsters
of succeeding generations had *' quilted their
duty and affection in the shape of patches upon
patches, rose-colour, crimson, blue, violet, and
green, and then (as their hopes faded, and their
life kept growing shadier, and their attire took
a sombre hue) sober grey, and great fragments
of funereal black ; until the doctor could revive
the memory of most things that had befallen
him by looking at his patch-work gown as it
hung upon a chair."

It would be easy to multiply instances drawn
from Hawthorne's works of this gift of brilliant
imagination ; but enough has now been said.
His rare and subtle intellect, high creative
powers, and singularly pure and lucid style of
expression alike qualify him to rank among the
great masters of English fiction.

Some Thoughts on De Quincey.

De Quincey is of those writers who win the
approbation of the literary critic by the brilliancy
of their style, but at the same time incur the
censures of the moralist by their shortcomings
in matters of conduct and teaching. Intellectual
Hedonism, or lotus-eating, is the crime which
has been generally laid to his charge, and to
which he has himself in some measure pleaded
guilty ; his indulgence in opium and his failure
to complete any work of magnitude being re-
garded as the direct result of that ** vein of
effeminacy" by which, according to one of his
critics, ** his mind was traversed." His philo-
sophy has been described by Gilfillan* as nothing
better than *' a sublime gossip '' ; while, in spite
of the somewhat qualified blessing bestowed on
him by the Quarterly Review^, earnest politicians,
even on the Tory side, have usually looked
with distrust on the transcendental Toryism of

* "Gallery of Literary Portraits."
t July i86i.

Some Thoughts on De Quincey. 209

which he was an exponent. It cannot be denied
that there was a certain instability in De
Quincey's character which partly justifies the
adverse judgment so often passed on him ; great
as his powers were, he seems to have been in-
capable of turning them to any immediate
practical purpose ; he was diffident, dilatory, un-
businesslike. In him, if ever in mortal man,

" The native hue of resolution
Was sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought ; "

and, as a consequence of this, he was utterly defi-
cient in practical enterpriseand moral enthusiasm.
*' At my time of life," he says (six-and-thirty
years of age), " it cannot be supposed that I
have much energy to spare ; and therefore let
no man expect to frighten me, by a few hard
words, into embarking any part of it upon
desperate adventures of morality." But though
the weakness of De Quincey in moral fibre is
thus unhappily placed beyond dispute, there is
nevertheless something rather ridiculous in the
solemn and admonitory tone which many of his
critics have thought it advisable to adopt in
reference to his use of opium and his outspoken
confession of that habit. A nation which for
commercial purposes forces the import of opium
on other countries, in spite of the protest of
their native rulers, ought not to be squeamish
on the subject of opium-eating, as discussed by

2 1 o Some Thoughts on De Quincey.

one who has practised it ; and the position of
De Quincey on this point is that of a literary
Publican among Pharisaic critics. Nor is it
at all clear that his censors are right in supposing
that his intellectual productions were injuriously
affected by his opium-eating. It is true that
in his autobiographical writings he drew a
terrible picture of " the pains of opium," and
that in one passage he attributes to opium the
failure of his desire to construct a great philo-
sophical work which was to have been entitled
De Emendatione Humani Intellectus ; " but on
the other hand we may well doubt if De Quincey's
genius was really suited to a labour of this kind,
or if the work, supposing it had ever been ac-
complished, would have been half as valuable
as the Confessions of an Opium-eater^ and the
Suspiria de Profundis, For, after all, it is
surely a mere quibble and play upon words to
say that De Quincey left no ** great work," as if
great works were measured only by the number
of their pages or the consistency of their philo-
sophic teaching ! That is a very true and im-
portant distinction, which De Quincey himself
pointed out,* between the ''literature of know-
ledge," whose function is merely to teach^ and
the ** literature of power * which is able to move.
It is to the latter class that De Quincey's prose-

* Collected Works, viii. 3-n.

Some Thoughts on De Quincey. 211

poems belong, and though their mere bulk is
not great, they may justly claim to be one of
the supreme achievements of nineteenth-century
literature, We can hardly doubt that De
Quincey was partly thinking of his own case
when, in his article on Professor Wilson, he
defended his friend from this same charge of
desultory writing. He admits that by increased
energy and steadier application he might have
produced an enormous and systematic book, but
then he remembers the Greek proverb — " Big
book, big nuisance,'* and concludes that the
Professor did wisely in leaving his works in
short and detached papers, instead of **con-
glutinating them into one vast block." Let us
therefore not grieve overmuch at the loss of the
De Emendatione Humani IntellectuSy for we may
rest assured that in his " impassioned prose "
De Quincey has left us the best work of which
he was capable ; and if it was through opium-
eating that he expressed his thoughts in this
form instead of in a philosophical treatise, it
must be admitted that literature owes some-
thing to opium. But most great writers have
a habit of thus meditating and musing on some
phantom work, beside and beyond their actual
achievements ; witness the Eureka of Edgar
Poe, and the Complete Theory of Mind with
which Shelley hoped some day to enrich the
philosophical world, — and the cautious critic

2 1 2 Same Thoughts on De Quincey.

will be on his guard against attributing too much
importance to any such unrealized intentions.

De Quincey's admirers have been at some
pains to refute the fallacious yet rather pre-
valent notion that he was only a sublime dreamer
and prose-poet ; and certainly the wide scope
of his genius is almost the first point that arrests
the attention of a careful reader. From earliest
youth he had read books of all sorts, with ex-
traordinary avidity, and, as he himself tells us,
could never enter a great library without '* pain
and disturbance of mind," when he sorrowfully
calculated that even a long life would only
suffice for a perusal of a very small portion of
existing literature. Aided by a marvellous
memory, he thus accumulated a vast store of
knowledge on a great variety of subjects, and
being also possessed of a keen critical instinct,
he was enabled to use his encyclopaedic treasures
of information with great judgment and
effect. Whether recording personal studies and
anecdotes ; or giving his opinion on some
weighty question of theology or political
economy ; or throwing light on some point
of classical learning, which had baffled the
grammarians themselves ; or expounding the
mysteries of casuistry, secret societies, and the
'* dark sciences " of the Middle Ages ; or hold-
ing forth on the elegancies of rhetoric and style ;
or introducing English readers to German

Some Thoughts on De Quincey. 2 1 3

literature ; — in any and all of these subjects he
was equally at his ease. Had he lived six
centuries earlier, he would have been a mighty
sage and alchemist ; living in the nineteenth
century, he was the magazine-writer par ex-
cellence^ and found a ready medium for his
oracular utterances in the columns of Blackwood,
Tait^ and the Old London magazine. In none
of his essays, perhaps, is his multifarious learn-
ing so apparent as in the Letters to a Young
Man whose education has been neglected. How
any such belated youth could be expected to
follow De Quincey in the various branches and
avenues of knowledge to which his attention is
invited, must remain a matter of conjecture ;
Lord Macaulay s schoolboy himself would have
been scarcely equal to De Quincey's require-
ments ; and it might even be conjectured that
the ** Young Man '* in question was Lord
Macaulay 's schoolboy, whose education, accord-
ing to De Quincey*s severe standard, needed
complete readjustment and revision.

The juxtaposition in De Quincey's genius of
imaginative and critical powers is a very
noticeable and important characteristic ; in all his
chief writings we see, as his biographer* has
clearly pointed out, *' the logical or quantitative
faculty, working alongside the dreaming, or
purely abstractive faculty, without sense of
* "Life of De Quincey," by H. A. Page. 1877.

214 Some Thoughts on De Quincey.

discord." The grave and stately Suspiria de
Profundis are thiis relieved by occasional flashes
of humour and intellectual subtlety ; while the
critical essays, on their part, are full of passages
of high poetical power. Yet it must be admitted
that De Quincey's chief and final claim to literary
immortality must be based less on this analytic
faculty, in which he has been equalled or ex-
celled by many other writers, than on that
peculiar phantasy, that meditative and imagin-
ative spirit in which he has few rivals. His
various writings are valuable chiefly in propor-
tion to the presence of this spirit ; the vast range
of learning and the discriminating judgment,
indispensable though they were even in the
elaboration of the prose-poems, are of secondary
and subsidiary importance, and his contributions
to literature in this department might have been
supplied equally well from other sources ; but
as a dreamer and prose-poet he occupies a
position from which he is not likely to be
deposed.

The key to a correct appreciation of De
Quincey s philosophical opinions is by no
means difficult to discover. The venerable
and the picturesque — these were the two
qualities that profoundly influenced the emo-
tional element in his nature, and enlisted his
services as a general rule in the orthodox an4
constitutional cause. He tells us that his mind,

Some Thoughts on De Quincey. 215

like that of Sir Thomas Browne, "almost
demanded mysteries," and that his faith was
that •* though a great man may, by a rare
possibility, be an infidel, an intellect of the
highest order must build upon Christianity."
He heartily joined in the royalist sentiment that
the Puritan creed *'was not a religion for a
gentleman," since all sectarianism *'must appear
spurious and mean in the eye of him who has
been bred up in the grand classic forms of the
Church of England or the Church of Rome."
His politics, for the same reason, were those
rather of a mystic than of one personally
interested in the questions at stake ; and though
his regard for rank and his veneration for
solemn ceremonies and traditional form made
him nominally a Tory, there are many indica-
tions in his writings that he had a keen eye
for any picturesque elements even in the
Radicalism which he denounced. He warmly
defended the characters of Milton and Crom-
well from the aspersions cast on them by
Royalist writers, and argued, in his essay on
the Falsification of English History^ that in
the seventeenth century democratic or popular
politics were identical with patriotism, though
he would not make the same admission con-
cerning the events of his own age. But,
however contemptuously earnest-minded re-
formers may look on such half-hearted princi-

2 1 6 Some Thoughts on De Quincey.

pies as these, none can deny De Quincey the
merit of possessing one solid quality, which
must be held to outweigh many political sins.
Little liking as he had for the programme of
modern democracy, his personal sympathies
were at all times warm and sincere, for, owing
to his own intimacy with poverty and suffer-
ing, he was quite free from the least taint of
Pharisaism or class prejudice. " Homo sum ;
humani nihil a me alienum puto^' — this was
his creed in all personal intercourse, whatever
transcendental Toryism he might preach in his
politics. ** Plain human nature," he says, **in
its humblest and most homely apparel, was
enough for me ; " and there are few nobler
passages in his Confessions than those which
show him in this humane aspect, whether comfort-
ing the friendless child in the deserted house
in Greek Street, or pacing Oxford Street in
company with the outcast Ann, or haunting
the London markets on a Saturday night and
advising some poor family as to the best mode
of laying out their scanty wages. How
keenly he sympathised with the sufferings
of the poor may be seen from a remark
recorded by one who knew him in his
later life.* "All that I have ever had
enjoyment of in life, the charms of friendship

* "Personal Recollections of De Quincey," by J. R.
Findlay. i886.

Some Thoughts on De Quincey. 217

the smiles of women, and the joys of wine,
seem to rise up to reproach me for my happi-
ness when I see such misery, and think there is
so much of it in the world." In one passage of
his works he speaks of the brutal spirit of the
world which can look " lightly and indulgently
on the afflicting spectacle of female prostitution
as it exists in London and in all great cities; "
in another he rejoices at the interference of
Parliament to amend the " ruinous social evil "
of female labour in mines. Corporal punish-
ment was another barbarism, utterly distasteful
to his humane and gentle disposition ; he insists,
as a great principle of social life, that "all cor-
poral punishments whatsoever, and upon whom-
soever inflicted, are hateful, and an indignity to
our common nature," and adds that among the
many cases of reforms destined to failure, *' this
one, at least, never can be defeated, injured, or
eclipsed." This noble pity for suffering human-
ity was one of the most striking features of De
Quincey's character, and ought not to be lightly
passed over by those who would gain a clear
impression of him. It will be found that he
was not altogether the mere Hedonist that the
reader is tempted at first sight to believe him.

In his literary criticism, as in his political
opinions, De Quincey was a worshipper of the
grand and the sublime. He regarded Jeremy
Taylor and Sir Thomas Browne as the richest

2 1 8 Same Thoughts on De Quincey.

and loftiest of English prose authors ; while in
poetry he paid especial homage to the
sovereignty of Shaksperes power, the sub-
limity of Milton's conceptions, and Wordsworth's
meditative beauty. His dislike of the eighteenth
century school was so strong as to make him
unjust in some of his criticisms, notably those
on Pope and Samuel Johnson ; and though he
is always interesting and acute in his literary
judgments, and sometimes, as in his essay on
Shelley, shows an instinctive insight and sym-
pathy which was scarcely to be expected where
there was such diversity of character between
the critic and his subject, he was as a rule too
wayward to be a very trustworthy authority.
His love of paradox often led him into difficult
or untenable positions ; as when he pronounced
the sect of the Essenes to be identical with that
of the early Christians ; or in his still more
famous contention that Judas Iscariot was no
traicor, but a single-hearted and over-eager en-
thusiast who sought to precipitate his Master
into action under the belief that he was aiming
at an earthly and political kingdom ; or, once
again, in his defence of the principle of duelling
as one of the glories of modern times, tlie ab-
sence of which in antiquity was a " foul blot "
on the moral grandeur of the Greeks and
Romans. Owing to his length of life De
Quincey was able, when publishing the collected

Some Thoughts on De Quincey. 219

edition of his writings, to take a retrospect of
his various criticisms, and in some cases, as in
that of Dr. Parr, he had the satisfaction of
pointing to the fulfilment of a literary prophecy.
But there were some points, especially his de-
preciation of Goethe, in which he must have
felt that his early judgment was very far from
being confirmed by the general verdict of time
and public opinion.

A belief has sometimes been expressed that
De Quincey was capable of writing a great his-
torical work, as, for instance, on the fall of the
Roman Empire. " Especially was he qualified,"
says Gilfillan,* " by his superb classical learning,
by the taste and tendency of his mind, by the
graver graces of his diction, by his intimacy
with the spirit and philosophy of Roman story,
and by his belief in the Christian faith, for the
proud task of writing the history of the Fourth
Monarchy. Gibbon has not nearly exhausted
the magnificent theme.'* It is worth noting, in
connection with this opinion, that De Quincey
himself referred to this epoch as the greatest of
historical subjects ; *' On its own separate
account," he wrote in his essay on The Ccesars,
" the decline of this throne-shattering power
must and will engage the foremost place among
all historical reviews." But there are many
reasons which make it difficult to believe that

♦ " Gallery of Literary Portraits."

220 Some Thoughts on De Quincey.

De Quincey was the right person for such a
task. In the first place he had not the patience
and accuracy of research which are indispens-
able to the historian ; colossal as his memory
was, his characteristic disdain of books of refer-
ence must inevitably have led him astray.
Then, again, he has no real belief in the sub-
stantial truth of history, which, as he says, ** being
built partly, and some of it altogether, upon
anecdotage, must be a tissue of falsehoods,"
since all dealers in anecdotes are tainted with
exaggeration. It would certainly have been
vain to expect strict historical impartiality in a
writer of De Quincey s emotional temperament,
as may be inferred from his outspoken remarks
on the rights and wrongs of Richard Bentley's
long struggle with Trinity College, where after
stating his own opinion that Bentley was in the
right and the College in the wrong, he proceeds
as follows : * — " But, even if not, I would pro-
pose that at this time of day Bentley should be
pronounced right, and his enemies utterly in the
wrong. Whilst living, indeed, or whilst sur-
viving in the persons of his friends and relations,
the meanest of little rascals has a right to rigor-
ous justice. But when he and his are bundled
off to Hades, it is far better, and more consider-
ate to the feelings of us public, that a little dog
should be sacrificed than a great one ; for by

* '* Essay on Richard Bentley."

Some Thoughts on De Quincey. 221

this means the current of one's sympathy with
an illustrious man is cleared of ugly obstructions."
This is no doubt partly humorous, yet it is really
illustrative of the spirit of much of De Quincey 's
work, and it suggests alarming reflections as to
what would have been the fate of the '' little
dogs " of the Roman Empire, under a historian
whose conscience was so elastic and accommod-
ating. He himself has divided history into
three classes, the narrative, the philosophic, and
the scenical — to the last-mentioned of which his
own historical sketches undoubtedly belong.
"Histories of this class," he says, ** proceed
upon principles of selection, presupposing in the
reader a general knowledge of the great cardin-
al incidents, and bringing forward into especial
notice those only which are susceptible of being
treated with distinguished effect." On this
principle De Quincey seized on the picturesque
characters and striking scenes of the period of
which he treated, and it is this that lends so
great a charm to his historical essays on The
CcesarSy Charlemagne^ Joan of Arc ^ The Revolt
of the Tartars^ and other subjects. There is
little doubt that in confining himself to this sort
of ** scenical history" he gauged his own powers
accurately.

In his views of nature De Quincey was a
mystic, like Hawthorne, rather than a close
observer. He had wandered much in his early

222 Some Thoughts on De Quincey.

days about the coach-roads and by-paths of
England and Wales, but his knowledge of
foreign lands was derived solely from books of
travel, of which he was a great reader. In this
way his mind had become familiar with ** those
sublime natural phenomena *' to which there
are so many references in his books — the sandy
deserts of Africa ; the solitary steppes of Asia ;
the silence of Lapland ; the Canadian forests ;
the gorgeous sunsets of the West Indies ; and
other similar scenes. It has been remarked*
that he is fond^of using similitudes drawn from
characteristics of animal life ; and in his account
of the exhibitions in the Roman amphitheatre
he enumerates with much zest the strange
animals, *' specious miracles of nature brought
together from arctic and from tropic deserts,*'
then first presented to the gaze of the Roman
populace. But this knowledge was certainly
derived almost exclusively from book-lore ;
indeed, he candidly admits in one of the foot-
notes which he frequently appended to his
writings that ** grosser ignorance than his own
in most sections of natural history is not easily
imagined," though he claims to be possessed of
various odd fragments of this kind of know-
ledge, gleaned here and there in his solitary

* Cf. Chapter on De Quincey in Professor Minted
Manual of Prose ZMeraAurt*

Some Thoughts on De Quincey. 223

rambles. In the Appendix to his Confessions
he wrote a beautiful and pathetic account of the
death of a little bird, which had been given to
one of his children by a neighbour, but he was
compelled to confess that he could not " orni-
thologically describe or classify the bird,"
beyond the suggestion that it belonged to the
family of finches, '* either a goldfinch, bullfinch,
or at least something ending in inch.'' In fact.
Dr. Johnson's famous remark about Goldsmith's
zoological knowledge might be equally well
applied to De Quincey, though it must be
remembered to the credit of the latter that he
did not attempt to write a History of Ani-
mated Nature. His treatment of nature, as
of history, was " scenical " ; he seized with
rapid intuition on such majestic or picturesque
features as struck his fancy in his reading or
observation, and reproduced them with wonder-
ful effect in the gorgeous imagery of his prose
poems.

But whatever doubts we may reasonably
feel concerning De Quincey's capabilities as
critic, historian, and naturalist, there can be no
question of his supremacy in one branch of
psychology which he made peculiarly his own
— the study of dreams and certain solemn and
mysterious phenomena of the human mind.
The inclination to reverie, strongly ingrained
in his nature, was quickened and fostered by

224 Some Thoughts on De Quincey.

various circumstances and incidents of his
boyhood, of which he has given us an account
in his autobiographical sketches, love, grief,
and solitude being foremost among these in-
fluences ; while the habit of opium-eating,
acquired in early manhood, gave an additional
stimulus to the meditative and dreaming faculty.
No writer has ever analysed and reproduced
these mental phenomena so marvellously as
De Quincey has done in his Suspiria de Pro-
fundis, and many passages of his ConfesstonSy
Autobiography^ and other works. His eye is
extraordinarily keen to mark those sublime
aspects and phases of external nature which
exercise a potent though inexplicable influence
on the thoughtful mind — the deep unbroken
quietude of the early summer morning ; the
solemn thoughts of death aroused by the pomp
of the summer noon, or the hours immediately
succeeding to sunset ; the sense of pathos
excited by the appearance of the earliest spring
flowers, or by the occasional brief resurrection
of summer in the closing autumn days. ** It is
all but inconceivable," he says, ** to men of
unyielding and callous sensibilities, how pro-
foundly others find their reveries modified and
overruled by the external character of the
immediate scene around them." His ear, too,
was almost preternaturally sensitive to the in-
fluences of sound ; whether in listening to the

Some Thoughts on De Quincey, 225

"pealing anthems" of some mountain stream,
or to the music of Beethoven, or to the thrilling
voice of Grassini, or to the melody of the
Italian language talked by Italian women in the
gallery of the Opera House. ** Impassioned
dancing, sustained by impassioned music," so
he tells us in his Autobiography, was the most
interesting and affecting scene which the world
could offer him, "exciting and sustaining the
very grandest emotions of philosophic melan-
choly to which the human spirit is open."
Again, what writer has noted with such pro-
found insight those grand and pathetic features
of modern life, which escape the remark of less
imaginative observers, such as the sense of
mystery and immensity inspired by a great
city, and the magnetic attraction it exercises on
the surrounding country ; or the " glory of
motion," revealed to De Quincey in the fiery
speed, picturesque surroundings, and perfect
organization of the English mail-coaches? Nor
is this peculiar faculty of De Quincey's genius
manifested only in the elaborate dream-fugues
and opium-visions by which his name is best
known ; but also in his record of many passing
incidents amidst the wanderings and reveries
of his early life, where themes otherwise trivial
and commonplace are glorified and exalted by
the power of this poetic gift. To take one
instance out of many, there is the account given

226 Some Thovghts ofi De Quincey.

in the Confessions of De Quincey's departure
from Wales, when he deemed it necessary to
commence a London life — an important occa-
sion, no doubt, in the career of a young man,
but by no means a rare or unusual experience.
Yet on this seemingly slight foundation how
wonderful a structure is reared of '' tumultuous
vision " and dim presentiment ! There is
nothing in all his writings more impressive
than the description of that calm, pensive>
ghost-like November day, on which he set out
on his journey with thoughts divided between
the pastoral solitudes of Wales and the fierce
tumults of London ; or the night of storm that
followed, as, filled with ** heart-shaking reflec-
tions," he waited at the Shrewsbury inn for the
mail-coach that was to carry him from this
point to his destination. It is this power of
suggesting mysterious analogies between the
realms of sense and the realms of spirit that
constitutes De Quincey one of the supreme
mystics of literature ; it is this that makes
his best writings unique and imperishable, in
spite of his desultory methods of workmanship
and lack of philosophic steadfastness. ** Of
this,'' he says, *' let every one be assured — that
he owes to the impassioned books which he has
read many a thousand more of emotions than
he can consciously trace back to them. Dim
by their origination, these, emotions yet arise

Some Thoughts on De Quincey, 227

in him, and mould him through life like for-
gotten incidents of his childhood." A similar
importance is claimed by De Quincey for the
phenomena of dreams, as, being the ** one great
tube through which man communicates with
the shadowy/* on which account the dreaming
faculty was to him a possession of the utmost
dignity and consequence. He considered even
Richter too elaborate and too artificial ** to
realize the grandeur of the shadow " in his
dream-studies ; and he complains of Sweden-
borg as '* rending the veil " from the spiritual
world, and carrying an earthy atmosphere **into
regions which, by early connections with the
sanctities of death, have a hold upon the rever-
ential affections such as they seldom lose."
There is a sublime pathos and intellectual gran-
deur in De Quincey's visions which is not to
be found in the fantastic conceptions of Cole-
ridge or any other member of the opium-eating
brotherhood of dreamers.

Well adapted for powerful expression of this
meditative psychology was De Quincey 's
literary style. According to his own defin-
ition of rhetoric as *' the art of aggrandizing
and bringing out into strong relief, by means
of various and striking thoughts, some aspect
of truth which of itself is supported by no
spontaneous feelings, and therefore rests upon
artificial aids," he must himself be classed as

228 Some Tlioughts on De Quincey.

a rhetorician, the follower of Jeremy Taylor
and Sir Thomas Browne, to whom he awards
the spoha opima of English prose literature.
Among the artificial aids of which he not
unfrequently availed himself, the foremost were
that ** elaborate stateliness," the use of which,
provided that the occasion be seasonable, he
expressly approves in his essay on Rhetoric;
and that ornate and effective *' word-painting "
which is a well-known feature of his writings.
Though he was not in the strict sense a poet, —
having even in his youthful days discovered that,
possible as it would be for him to win a place
among the soi-disant poets of the day, poetry
was not his natural vocation, — he none the less
devoted all a poet's care to the structure of his
sentences, and the arrangement of his words,
and felt all a poet's jealous regard for the
sanctity of his mother-tongue. ** If there is
one thing in this world," he says, *' which, next
after the flag of his country and spotless
honour, should be holy in the eyes of a young
poet, it is the language of his country." It
has been recorded of De Quincey * that he had
a strange habit of smoothing and cleaning the
greasy Scotch paper-money which offended
his fastidious taste, and of polishing and bright-
ening silver before he parted with it — a
practice which may be regarded as typical of

* Cf, Page's " Life of De Quincey," ii. 145.

Some Thoughts on De Quincey. 229

the indefatigable care lavished on his writings
before he gave them currency. In his essay
on Style he speaks with unusual severity of
the carelessness and lazy indifference shown by
most writers in the moulding of their sentences,
adding, with obvious reference to himself,
that he had known an author " so laudably
fastidious in this subtle art as to have recast
one chapter of a series no less than seventeen
times ; so difficult was the ideal or model of
excellence which he kept before his mind."
Some readers, perhaps, will think that De
Quincey employed the ornament derived from
the inversion of words till it became almost an
affectation : especially in such phrases as that
in which he describes opium as *' an engine so
awful of consolation and support ; *'* or, ** simply
as an anodyne it was, under the mere coercion
of pain the severest ; *' a form of sentence
of which countless examples might be gathered
from his writings. Nor is his own grammatical
accuracy, strict as he was in theory, at all times
unimpeachable ; his weakness consisting, as
Professor Minto has pointed out, in a careless
and ambiguous use of the participle, almost
inexplicable in a writer of De Quincey 's
calibre. An instance may be seen in the
following sentence, from which the subordinate
parts are omitted. *' I remember even yet that
when first arrayed, at four years old, in

230 Some Thoughts on De Quincey.

nankeen trousers, all my female friends filled
my pockets with half-crowns," — a remark which,
while testifying to the generosity of the ladies
in question, seems to leave their age and
costume open to grave misconstruction. But a
more serious fault in De Quincey 's literary
style, inasmuch as it was not, like that I have
just mentioned, an occasional peccadillo, but a
natural and ineradicable blemish, was his
frequent discursiveness, springing no doubt
from the immense stores of anecdote and
general knowledge with which his mind was
filled, and of which he was too often tempted to
disburden himself. His so-called Autobio-
graphy^ for example, does indeed contain a
good deal of information about himself, but
there is als© a vast amount of gossip on a
variety of other subjects, one whole chapter
being devoted to a description of an eccentric
young woman whom De Quincey styles '* the
Female InfideV and two others to a history of
the Irish Rebellion of 1798. It might have
been better for De Quincey if, like Demos-
thenes, he had had a Phocion to ^* prune his
periods." '* The body has an awfu sight o*
words," was the remark of a Scotch cook who
had been accustomed to receive her orders direct
from De Quincey ; and if he used circumlocu-
tion in the process of ordering dinner, he
indulged in far wider flights in his literary and

Some Thoughts on De Quincey. 231

biographical essays. It is somewhat amusing
to find him, in his article on Style^ insisting
strongly on the ** vast importance of compres-
sion/* and the "culture of an unwordy diction."
I have already remarked on the co-existence
in De Quincey's mind of the imaginative and
logical faculties, once thought to be antagonistic
and incompatible. A similar conjunction of
opposite qualities is observable in his literary
style, where a vein of broad humour, expressed
in familiar and colloquial language, runs side
by side with the gravity of his most solemn
imagery, recalling the reader now and again
from the phantasies of the dreamer to the actu-
alities of every-day life, much in the same way
as the '* knocking at the gate " in Macbeth, ac-
cording to De Quincey*s own analysis, serves
to re-establish, in the minds of the audience, the
existence of the world in which they live, after
a parenthesis of the world of darkness. There
is, and will probably always be, considerable
difference of opinion concerning the quality of
De Quincey*s peculiar and characteristic humour,
some of his critics being inclined to value it very
highly, while others will allow him credit for
nothing better than a *' sarcastic pungency" of
a distinctly second rate order.* In this respect
he certainly appears in quite a different character
from that which is usually ascribed to the opium-

*Cf. Westminster ReifieWy h^ui^ 1854.

232 Some Thoughts on De Quincey.

m- - - - -^ — ■ ■

eating visionary ; for his humour, if such it is to
be called, so far from being pensive or subdued
in tone, is keen, bold, and at times almost irre-
pressible, harping persistently on the subject of
merriment, and recurring to it again and again
with manifest enjoyment. This humorous spirit
is seen at its best and brightest in the essays on
Murder considered as one of the Fine Arts^
Coleridge and Opium-eating^ Sortilege and As-
trology^ or the tale of The Spanish Military
Nun ; but it will be found scattered here and
there throughout all De Quincey's writings, and
it must be admitted that it occasionally degene-
rates into something very like mere boisterous
slang and badinage, offending the taste of the
reader, whose mind has perhaps been just at-
tuned to the stately rhythm of some highly-
wrought passage, by the bathos of the sudden
descent from the celestial to the commonplace.
But such cases are the exception ; for as a rule
De Quincey's humour is not only delightful in
itself, but does good service by acting as a foil
to his higher qualities.

In one of his many footnotes De Quincey has
given an excellent definition of genius as dis-
tinguished from talent. '* Talent," he asserts,
**is intellectual power of every kind, which acts
and manifests itself by and through the will and
the active forces. Genius, as the verbal origin
implies, is that much rarer species of intellectual

Some Thoughts on De Quincey^ 233

power which is derived from the genial nature
— from the spirit of suffering and enjoyment,
from the spirit of pleasure and pain, as organised
more or less perfectly ; and this is independent
of will. It is a function of the passive nature."
Judged by this distinction — and it would be
difficult to find a sounder one — De Quincey
must always be classed with men of genius
rather than with men of talent, for the spon-
taneity of his writings is fully as apparent as
their power. Though he was largely indebted
to the accession of learning and literary taste,
and to the external embellishments of his bril-
liant rhetorical fancy, yet his success was prim-
arily due to his imaginative subtlety, to the
inspiration that is inborn, rather than to the
culture that can be acquired. Thus it was that
though his life was cast in an age of mighty
intellects, with some of whom he was himself
closely associated, he preserved to the end his
own individuality and independence, setting the
stamp of his peculiar genius clearly and unmis-
takably upon every page of his works. The
only writer of this century, or indeed of any
century, to whom he bears much affinity, is Cole-
ridge; and even here the similarity, though very
striking as regards the general disposition and
mode of life, does not extend to the manner of
thought and expression. A reader of De Quinr

cey's biographical essay on Coleridge* must be

*Vor. ii. "Uke Poets."

234 Sovte Thoughts on De Quincey.

struck by the fact that much of what he says of
Coleridge's dreamy nature and dilatory habits
would apply equally well to himself ; and in both
cases the use of opium brought an aggravation
of the evil. The same resemblance may be
traced in the prodigious memory, great conver-
sational powers, and general literary scope of
the two authors. De Quincey has himself re-
marked that he *'read for thirty years in the
same track as Coleridge — that track in which
few of any age will ever follow us, such as Ger-
man metaphysicians, Latin schoolmen, thauma-
turgic Platonists, religious mystics." Finally,
the same reproach has been commonly urged
against both, of having wasted their fine powers
in trivial and desultory occupations, and of hav-
ing left no great monumental work. It has
been my endeavour to show that this assertion,
as regards De Quincey at any rate, is only true
in the very limited sense that he instinctively
preferred to throw his writings into the form of
short papers, rather than bulky volumes. Those
who condemn him on this account should re-
member Addisons satire on the tendency to
estimate the value of books by their quantity
rather than their quality. *' I have observed,"*
he says, '^ that the author of ^.folio^ in all com-
panies and conversations, sets himself above the
author of a quarto ; the author of a quarto above

* Spectator^ No. 529.

Some Thoughts on De Quincey. 235

the author of an octavo, and so on, by a gradual
descent and subordination to an author in
twenty 'fours. In a word, authors are usually-
ranged in company after the same manner as
their works are upon a shelf/* It is only by the
adoption of some such criterion as this, that De
Quincey's masterpieces can be ruled out of the
category of great works.

THE END

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