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MY STUDY WINDOWS

BY

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL, A. M.

PROFESSOR OF BELLES-LETTRES IN HARVARD COLLEGE

BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1871,

BY JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL,
in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.

Copyright, 1899,
BY MABEL LOWELL BURNETT.

All rights reserved.

FORTY SECOND IMPRESSION

The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A.
Electrotyped and Printed by H. 0. Houghton & Co.

'

TO

PROFESSOR F. J. CHILD.

MY DEAR CHILD, —

You were good enough to like my Essay on Chaucer
(about whom you know so much more than I ), and I shall
accordingly so far presume upon our long friendship as to
inscribe the volume containing it with your name.
Always heartily yours,

J. R. LOWELL.
CAMBRIDGE, Christmas, 1870.

PREFATORY NOTE.

"IV yf~Y former volume of Essays has been so kindly
-L-*J- received that I am emboldened to make an
other and more miscellaneous collection. The papers
here gathered have been written at intervals during the
last fifteen years, and I knew no way so effectual to rid
my mind of them and make ready for a new departure,
as this of shutting them between two covers where
they can haunt me, at least, no more. I should have
preferred a simpler title, but publishers nowadays are
inexorable on this point, and I was too much occupied
for happiness of choice. That which I have desperately
snatched is meant to imply both the books within and
the world without, and perhaps may pass muster in the
case of one who has always found his most fruitful
study in the open air.

CONTENTS.

PAGE

MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE 1

A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER 24

ON A CERTAIN CONDESCENSION IN FOREIGNERS . . 54

A GREAT PUBLIC CHARACTER 83

CARLYLE 115

ABRAHAM LINCOLN 150

THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF JAMES GATES PERCIVAL . 178

THOREAU . 193

SWINBURNE'S TRAGEDIES 210

CHAUCER 227

LIBRARY OF OLD AUTHORS 290

EMERSON, THE LECTURER 375

POPS 385

MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE.

ONE of the most delightful books in my father's
library was White's Natural History of Selborne.
For me it has rather gained in charm with years. I used
to read it without knowing the secret of the pleasure 1
found in it, but as I grow older I begin to detect some of
the simple expedients of this natural magic. Open the
book where you will, it takes you out of doors. In our
broiling July weather one can walk out with this genially
garrulous Fellow of Oriel and find refreshment instead of
fatigue. You have no trouble in keeping abreast of him
as he ambles along on his hobby-horse, now pointing to a
pretty view, now stopping to watch the motions of a bird
or an insect, or to bag a specimen for the Honourable
Daines Barrington or Mr. Pennant. In simplicity of
taste and natural refinement he reminds one of Walton ;
in tenderness toward what he would have called the brute
creation, of Cowper. I do not know whether his descrip
tions of scenery are good or not, but they have made me
familiar with his neighborhood. Since I first read him,
I have walked over some of his favorite haunts, but I
still see them through his eyes rather than by any recol
lection of actual and personal vision. The book has also
the delightfulness of absolute leisure. Mr. White seems
never to have had any harder work to do than to study
the habits of his feathered fellow-townsfolk, or to watch
the ripening of his peaches on the wall. His volumes are
the journal of Adam in Paradise,

1 A

2 MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE.

" Annihilating all that's made
To a green thought in a green shade."

It is positive rest only to look into that garden of hie.
It is vastly better than to

" See great Diocletian walk
In the Salonian garden's noble shade,"

for thither ambassadors intrude to bring with them the
noises of Rome, while here the world has no entrance.
No rumor of the revolt of the American Colonies seems
to have reached him. " The natural term of an hog's
life " has more interest for him than that of an empire.
Burgoyne may surrender and welcome ; of what conse
quence is that compared with the fact that we can explain
the odd tumbling of rooks in the air by their turning over
" to scratch themselves with one claw " ? All the couriers
in Europe spurring rowel-deep make no stir in Mr.
White's little Chartreuse ; but the arrival of the house-
martin a day earlier or later than last year is a piece of
news worth sending express to all his correspondents.

Another secret charm of this book is its inadvertent
humor, so much the more delicious because unsuspected
by the author. How pleasant is his innocent vanity in
adding to the list of the British, and still more of the
Selbornian, fauna! I believe he would gladly have con
sented to be eaten by a tiger or a crocodile, if by that
means the occasional presence within the parish limits of
either of these anthropophagous brutes could have been
established. He brags of no fine society, but is plainly a
little elated by " having considerable acquaintance with
a tame brown owl." Most of us have known our share
of owls, but few can boast of intimacy with a feathered
one. The great events of Mr. White's life, too, have that
disproportionate importance which is always humorous.
To think of his hands having actually been thought
worthy (as neither Willoughby's nor Ray's were) to hold

MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE. 3

a stilted plover, the Cliaradrius himantopus, with no back
toe, and therefore " liable, in speculation, to perpetual
vacillations " ! I wonder, by the way, if metaphysicians
have no hind toes. In 1770 he makes the acquaintance
in Sussex of " an old family tortoise," which had then
been domesticated for thirty years. It is clear that he
fell in love with it at first sight. We have no means of
tracing the growth of his passion; but in 1780 we find
him eloping with its object in a post-chaise. " The rattle
and hurry of the journey so perfectly roused it that, when
I turned it out in a border, it walked twice down to the
bottom of my garden." It reads like a Court Journal :
" Yesterday morning H. R. H. the Princess Alice took an
airing of half an hour on the terrace of Windsor Castle."
This tortoise might have been a member of the Royal
Society, if he could have condescended to so ignoble an
ambition. It had but just been discovered that a surface
inclined at a certain angle with the plane of the horizon
took more of the sun's rays. The tortoise had always
known this (though he unostentatiously made no parade
of it), and used accordingly to tilt himself up against the
garden-wall in the autumn. He seems to have been more
of a philosopher than even Mr. White himself, caring for
nothing but to get under a cabbage-leaf when it rained,
or the sun was too hot, and to bury himself alive before
frost, — a four-footed Diogenes, who carried his tub on
his back.

There are moods in which this kind of history is infi
nitely refreshing. These creatures whom we affect to
look down upon as the drudges of instinct are members
of a commonwealth whose constitution rests on immov
able bases. Never any need of reconstruction there !
They never dream of settling it by vote that eight hours
are equal to ten, or that one creature is as clever as an
other and no more. They do not use their poor wits in

4 MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE.

regulating God's clocks, nor think they cannot go astray
so long as they carry their guide-board about with them,
— a delusion we often practise upon ourselves with our
high and mighty reason, that admirable finger-post which
points every way and always right. It is good for us now
and then to converse with a world like Mr. White's, where
Man is the least important of animals. But one who,
like me, has always lived in the country and always on
the same spot, is drawn to his book by other occult sym
pathies. Do we not share his indignation at that stupid
Martin who had graduated his thermometer no lower
than 4° above zero of Fahrenheit, so that in the coldest
weather ever known the mercury basely absconded into
the bulb, and left us to see the victory slip through our
fingers just as they were closing upon it 1 No man, I
suspect, ever lived long in the country without being
bitten by these meteorological ambitions. He likes to
be hotter and colder, to have been more deeply snowed
up, to have more trees and larger blown down than his
neighbors. With us descendants of the Puritans espe
cially, these weather-competitions supply the abnegated
excitement of the race-course. Men learn to value ther
mometers of the true imaginative temperament, capable
of prodigious elations and corresponding dejections. The
other day (5th July) I marked 98° in the shade, my high-
water mark, higher by one degree than I had ever seen
it before. I happened to meet a neighbor ; as we mopped
our brows at each other, he told me that he had just
cleared 100°, and I went home a beaten man. I had not
felt the heat before, save as a beautiful exaggeration of
sunshine ; but now it oppressed me with the prosaic vul
garity of an oven. What had been poetic intensity be
came all at once rhetorical hyperbole. I might suspect
his thermometer (as indeed I did, for we Harvard men
are apt to think ill of any graduation but our own) ; but

MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE. 5

it was a poor consolation. The fact remained that his
herald Mercury, standing a-tiptoe, could look down on
mine. I seem to glimpse something of this familiar
weakness in Mr. White. He, too, has shared in these
mercurial triumphs and defeats. Nor do I doubt that
he had a true country-gentleman's interest in the weather
cock ; that his first question on coming down of a morn
ing was, like Barabas's,

" Into what quarter peers my halcyon's bill? "
It is an innocent and healthful employment of the
mind, distracting one from too continual study of him
self, and leading him to dwell rather upon the indiges
tions of the elements than his own. " Did the wind
back round, or go about with the sun ? " is a rational
question that bears not remotely on the making of hay
and the prosperity of crops. I have little doubt that
the regulated observation of the vane in many different
places, and the interchange of results by telegraph, would
put the weather, as it were, in our power, by betraying
its ambushes before it is ready to give the assault. At
first sight, nothing seems more drolly trivial than the
lives of those whose single achievement is to record the
wind and the temperature three times a day. Yet such
men are doubtless sent into the world for this special
end, and perhaps there is no kind of accurate observa
tion, whatever its object, that has not its final use and
value for some one or other. It is even to be hoped
that the speculations of our newspaper editors and their
myriad correspondents upon the signs of the political at
mosphere may also fill their appointed place in a well-reg
ulated universe, if it be only that of supplying so many
more jack-o'-lanterns to the future historian. Nay, the
observations on finance of an M. C. whose sole knowledge
of the subject has been derived from a lifelong success in
getting a living out of the public without paying any

6 MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE.

equivalent therefor, will perhaps be of interest hereafter
to some explorer of our cloaca maxima, whenever it is
cleansed.

For many years I have been in the habit of noting
down some of the leading events of my embowered soli
tude, such as the coming of certain birds and the like, —
a kind of memoires pour servir, after the fashion of White,
rather than properly digested natural history. I thought
it not impossible that a few simple stories of my winged
acquaintances might be found entertaining by persons
of kindred taste.

There is a common notion that animals are better
meteorologists than men, and I have little doubt that in
immediate weather-wisdom they have the advantage of
our sophisticated senses (though I suspect a sailor or
shepherd would be their match), but I have seen nothing
that leads me to believe their minds capable of erecting
the horoscope of a whole season, and letting us know be
forehand whether the winter will be severe or the sum
mer rainless. I more than suspect that the clerk of the
weather himself does not always know very long in ad
vance whether he is to draw an order for hot or cold,
dry or moist, and the musquash is scarce likely to be
wiser. I have noted but two days' difference in the
coming of the song-sparrow between a very early and a
very backward spring. This very year I saw the linnets
at work thatching, just before a snow-storm which
covered the ground several inches deep for a number of
days. They struck work and left us for a while, no
doubt in search of food. Birds frequently perish from
sudden changes in our whimsical spring weather of
which they had no foreboding. More than thirty years
ago, a cherry-tree, then in full bloom, near my window,
was covered with humming-birds benumbed by a fall of
mingled rain and snow, which probably killed many of

MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE. 7

them. It should seem that their coming was dated by
the height of the sun, which betrays them into unthrifty
matrimony ;

" So nature pricketh hem in their corages " ;
but their going is another matter. The chimney-swal
lows leave us early, for example, apparently so soon as
their latest fledglings are firm enough of wing to at
tempt the long rowing-match that is before them. On
the other hand, the wild-geese probably do not leave the
North till they are frozen out, for I have heard their
bugles sounding southward so late as the middle of
December. What may be called local migrations are
doubtless dictated by the chances of food. I have once
been visited by large flights of cross-bills ; and whenever
the snow lies long and deep on the ground, a flock of
cedar-birds comes in midwinter to eat the berries on my
hawthorns. I have never been quite able to fathom the
local, or rather geographical partialities of birds. Never
before this summer (1870) have the king-birds, hand
somest of flycatchers, built in my orchard ; though I
always know where to find them within half a mile.
The rose-breasted grosbeak has been a familiar bird in
Brookline (three miles away), yet I never saw one here
till last July, when I found a female busy among my
raspberries and surprisingly bold. I hope she was pros
pecting with a view to settlement in our garden. She
seemed, on the whole, to think well of my fruit, and I
would gladly plant another bed if it would help to win
over so delightful a neighbor.

The return of the robin is commonly announced by
the newspapers, like that of eminent or notorious people
to a watering-place, as the first authentic notification of
spring. And such his appearance in the orchard and
garden undoubtedly is. But, in spite of his name of
migratory thrush, he stays with us all winter, and I

8 MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE.

have seen him when the thermometer marked 15 de
grees below zero of Fahrenheit, armed impregnably with
in, like Emerson's Titmouse, and as cheerful as he. The
robin has a bad reputation among people who do not
value themselves less for being fond of cherries. There is,
I admit, a spice of vulgarity in him, and his song is rather
of the Bloomfield sort, too largely ballasted with prose.
His ethics are of the Poor Richard school, and the main
chance which calls forth all his energy is altogether of
the belly. He never has those fine intervals of lunacy
into which his cousins, the catbird and the mavis, are
apt to fall. But for a' that and twice as muckle 's a'
that, I would not exchange him for all the cherries that
ever came out of Asia Minor. With whatever faults, he
has not wholly forfeited that superiority which belongs
to the children of nature. He has a finer taste in fruit
than could be distilled from many successive committees
of the Horticultural Society, and he eats with a relishing
gulp not inferior to Dr. Johnson's. He feels and freely
exercises his right of eminent domain. His is the earli
est mess of green peas ; his all the mulberries I had
fancied mine. But if he get also the lion's share of the
raspberries, he is a great planter, and sows those wild ones
in the woods, that solace the pedestrian and give a mo
mentary calm even to the jaded victims of the White
Hills. He keeps a strict eye over one's fruit, and knows
to a shade of purple when your grapes have cooked long
enough in the sun. During the severe drought a few
years ago, the robins wholly vanished from my garden.
I neither saw nor heard one for three weeks. Mean
while a small foreign grape-vine, rather shy of bearing,
Beemed to find the dusty air congenial, and, dreaming
perhaps of its sweet Argos across the sea, decked itself
with a score or so of fair bunches. I watched them
from day to day till they should have secreted sugar

MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE. 9

enough from the sunbeams, and at last made up my
mind that I would celebrate niy vintage the next morn
ing. But the robins too had somehow kept note of
them. They must have sent out spies, as did the Jews
into the promised land, before I was stirring. When I
went with my basket, at least* a dozen of these winged
vintagers bustled out from among the leaves, and alight
ing on the nearest trees interchanged some shrill re
marks about me of a derogatory nature. They had fairly
sacked the vine. Not Wellington's veterans made
cleaner work of a Spanish town ; not Federals or Con
federates were ever more impartial in the confiscation of
neutral chickens. I was keeping my grapes a secret to
surprise the fair Fidele with, but the robins made them
a profounder secret to her than I had meant. The tat
tered remnant of a single bunch was all my harvest-
home. How paltry it looked at the bottom of my
basket, — as if a humming-bird had laid her egg in an
eagle's nest ! I could not help laughing ; and the robins
seemed to join heartily in the merriment. There was a
native grape-vine close by, blue with its less refined
abundance, but my cunning thieves preferred the foreign
flavor. Could I tax them with want of taste 1

The robins are not good solo singers, but their chorus,
as, like primitive fire- worshippers, they hail the return
of light and warmth to the world, is imrivalled. There
are a hundred singing like one. They are noisy enough
then, and sing, as poets should, with no afterthought.
But when they come after cherries to the tree near my
window, they muffle their voices, and their faint pip,
pip, pop ! sounds far away at the bottom of the gar
den, where they know 1 shall not suspect them of rob
bing the great black-walnut of its bitter-rinded store.*

* The screech-owl, whose cry, despite his ill name, is one of the
Mveetest souiiil-; in nature, softens his voice in the same way with th«
most beguiling mockery of distance.

10 MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE.

They are feathered Pecksniffs, to be sure, but then how
brightly their breasts, that look rather shabby in the
sunlight, shine in a rainy day against the dark green of
the fringe-tree ! After they have pinched and shaken
all the life out of an earthworm, as Italian cooks pound
all the spirit out of a steak, and then gulped him, they
stand up in honest self-confidence, expand their red
•waistcoats with the virtuous air of a lobby member, and
outface you with an eye that calmly challenges inquiry.
" Do / look like a bird that knows the flavor of raw-
vermin 1 I throw myself upon a jury of my peers.
Ask any robin if he ever ate anything less ascetic than
the frugal berry of the juniper, and he will answer that
his vow forbids him." Can such an open bosom cover
such depravity 1 Alas, yes ! I have no doubt his breast
was redder at that very moment with 'the blood of my
raspberries. On the whole, he is a doubtful friend in the
garden. He makes his dessert of all kinds of berries,
and is not averse from early pears. But when we re
member how omnivorous he is, eating his own weight in
an incredibly short time, and that Nature seems exhaust-
less in her invention of new insects hostile to vegetation,
perhaps we may reckon that he does more good than
harm. For my own part, I would rather have his cheer
fulness and kind neighborhood than many berries.

For his cousin, the catbird, I have a still warmer re
gard. Always a good singer, he sometimes nearly equals
the brown thrush, and has the merit of keeping up his
music later in the evening than any bird of my familiar
acquaintance. Ever since I can remember, a pair of
them have built in a gigantic syringa, near our front
door, and I have known the male to sing almost unin
terruptedly during the evenings of early summer till
twilight duskened into dark. They differ greatly in
vocal talent, but all have a delightful way of crooning

MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE. 11

over, and, as it were, rehearsing their song in an under
tone, which makes their nearness always unobtrusive.
Though there is the most trustworthy witness to the
imitative propensity of this bird, I have only once,
during an intimacy of more than forty years, heard him
indulge it. In that case, the imitation was by no means
so close as to deceive, but a free reproduction of the
notes of some other birds, especially of the oriole, as a
kind of variation in his own song. The catbird is as
shy as the robin is vulgarly familiar. Only when his
nest or his fledglings are approached does he become
noisy and almost aggressive. I have known him to
station his young in a thick cornel-bush on the edge of
the raspberry-bed, after the fruit began to ripen, and
feed them there for a week or more. In such cases he
shows none of that conscious guilt which makes the
robin contemptible. On the contrary, he will maintain
his post in the thicket, and sharply scold the intruder
who ventures to steal his berries. After all, his claim is
only for tithes, while the robin will bag your entire crop
if he get a chance.

Dr. Watts's statement that " birds in their little nests
agree," like too many others intended to form the infant
mind, is very far from being true. On the contrary, the
most peaceful relation of the different species to each
other is that of armed neutrality. They are very jealous
of neighbors. A few years ago, I was much interested
in the housebuilding of a pair of summer yellow-birds.
They had chosen a very pretty site near the top of a tall
white lilac, within easy eye-shot of a chamber window.
A very pleasant thing it was to see their little home
growing with mutual help, to watch their industrious
skill interrupted only by little flirts and snatches of
endearment, frugally cut short by the common-sense
of the tiny housewife. They had brought their work

12 MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE.

nearly to an end, and had already begun to line it with
fern-down, the gathering of which demanded more dis
tant journeys and longer absences. But, alas ! the
syringa, immemorial manor of the catbirds, was not
more than twenty feet away, and these " giddy neigh
bors " had, as it appeared, been all along jealously watch
ful, though silent, witnesses of what they deemed an
intrusion of squatters. No sooner were the pretty
mates fairly gone for a new load of lining, than

" To their unguarded nest these weasel Scots .
Came stealing."

Silently they flew back and forth, each giving a vengeful
dab at the nest in passing. They did not fall-to and
deliberately destroy it, for they might have been caught
at their mischief. As it was, whenever the yellow-
birds came back, their enemies were hidden in their own
sight-proof bush. Several times their unconscious vic
tims repaired damages, but at length, after counsel taken
together, they gave it up. Perhaps, like other unlet
tered folk, they came to the conclusion that the Devil
was in it, and yielded to the invisible persecutions of
witchcraft.

The robins, by constant attacks and annoyances, have
succeeded in driving off the blue-jays who used to build
in our pines, their gay colors and quaint noisy ways
making them welcome and amusing neighbors. 1 once
had the chance of doing a kindness to a household of
them, which they received with very friendly condescen
sion. I had had my eye for some time upon a nest, and
was puzzled by a constant fluttering of what seemed
full-grown wings in it whenever I drew nigh. At last I
climbed the tree, in spite of angry protests from the
old birds against my intrusion. The mystery had a
very simple solution. In building the nest, a long piece
cf packthread had been somewhat loosely woven in.

MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE. 13

Three of the young had contrived to entangle them
selves in it, and had become full-grown without being
able to launch themselves upon the air. One was un
harmed ; another had so tightly twisted the cord about
its shank that one foot was curled up and seemed para
lyzed ; the third, in its struggles to escape, had sawn
through the flesh of the thigh and so much harmed
itself that I thought it humane to put an end to its
misery. When I took out my knife to cut their hempen
bonds, the heads of the family seemed to divine my
friendly intent. Suddenly ceasing their cries and
threats, they perched quietly within reach of my hand,
and watched me in my work of manumission. This,
owing to the fluttering terror of the prisoners, was an
affair of some delicacy ; but erelong I was rewarded by
seeing one of them fly away to a neighboring tree, while
the cripple, making a parachute of his wings, came light
ly to the ground, and hopped off as well as he could with
one leg, obsequiously waited on by his elders. A week
later I had the satisfaction of meeting him in the pine-
walk, in good spirits, and already so far recovered as to
be able to balance himself with the lame foot. I have
no doubt that in his old age he accounted for his lame
ness by some handsome story of a wound received at
the famous Battle of the Pines, when our tribe, over
come by numbers, was driven from its ancient camping-
ground. Of late years the jays have visited us only at
intervals ; and in winter their bright plumage, set off
by the snow, and their cheerful cry, are especially wel
come. They would have furnished ^Esop with a fable,
for the feathered crest in which they seem to take so
much satisfaction is often their fatal snare. Country
boys make a hole with their finger in the snow-crust
just large enough to admit the jay's head, and, hollow
ing it out somewhat beneath, bait it with a few kernels

14 MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE.

of corn. The crest slips easily into the trap, but refuses
to be pulled out again, and he who came to feast remains
a prey.

Twice have the crow-blackbirds attempted a settle
ment in my pines, and twice have the robins, who claim
a right of pre-emption, so successfully played the part
of border-ruffians as to drive them away, — to my great
regret, for they are the best substitute we have for
rooks. At Shady Hill (now, alas ! empty of its so long-
loved household) they build by hundreds, and nothing
can be more cheery than their creaking clatter (like a
convention of old-fashioned tavern-signs) as they gather
at evening to debate in mass meeting their windy poli
tics, or to gossip at their tent-doors over the events of
the day. Their port is grave, and their stalk across the
turf as martial as that of a second-rate ghost in Hamlet.
They never meddled with my corn, so far as I could
discover

For a few years I had crows, but their nests are an
irresistible bait for boys, and their settlement was broken
up. They grew so wonted as to throw off a great part
of their shyness, and to tolerate my near approach.
One very hot day I stood for some time within twenty
feet of a mother and three children, who sat on an elm
bough over my head, gasping in the sultry air, and
holding their wings half-spread for coolness. All birds
during the pairing season become more or less sentimen
tal, and murmur soft nothings in a tone very unlike the
grinding-organ repetition and loudness of their habitual
song. The crow is very comical as a lover, and to hear
him trying to soften his croak to the proper Saint Preux
standard, has something the effect of a Mississippi boat
man quoting Tennyson. Yet there are few things to my
ear more melodious than his caw of a clear winter morn
ing as it drops to you filtered through five hundred

MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE. 15

fathoms of crisp blue air. The hostility of all smaller
birds makes the moral character of the crow, for all his
deacoulike demeanor and garb, somewhat questionable.
He could never sally forth without insult. The golden
robins, especially, would chase him as far as I could fol
low with my eye, making him duck clumsily to avoid
their importunate bills. I do not believe, however, that
he robbed any nests hereabouts, for the refuse of the
gas-works, which, in our free-and-easy community, is
allowed to poison the river, supplied him with dead
alewives in abundance. I used to watch him making
his periodical visits to the salt-marshes and coming back
with a fish in his beak to his young savages, who, no
doubt, like it in that condition which makes it savory to
the Kanakas and other corvine races of men.

Orioles are in great plenty with me. I have seen
seven males flashing about the garden at once. A
merrv crew of them swing their hammocks from the
pendulous boughs. During one of these latter years,
when the canker-worms stripped our elms as bare as
winter, these birds went to the trouble of rebuilding
their unroofed nests, and chose for the purpose trees
which are safe from those swarming vandals, such as the
ash and the button-wood. One year a pair (disturbed,
I suppose, elsewhere) built a second nest in an elm,
within a few yards of the house. My friend, Edward E.
Hale, told me once that the oriole rejected from his web
all strands of brilliant color, and I thought it a striking
example of that instinct of concealment noticeable in
many birds, though it should seem in this instance that
the nest was amply protected by its position from all
marauders but owls and squirrels. Last year, however,
I had the fullest proof that Mr. Hale was mistaken.
A pair of orioles built on the lowest trailer of a weeping
elm, which hung within ten feet of our drawing-room

16 MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE.

window, and so low that I could reach it from the
ground. The nest was wholly woven and felted with
ravellings of woollen carpet in which scarlet predomi
nated. Would the same thing have happened in the
woods 1 Or did the nearness of a human dwelling
perhaps give the birds a greater feeling of security?
They are very bold, by the way, in quest of cordage,
and I have often watched them stripping the fibrous
bark from a honeysuckle growing over the very door.
But, indeed, all my birds look upon me as if I were a
laere tenant at will, and they were landlords. With
shame I confess it, I have been bullied even by a hum
ming-bird. This spring, as I was cleansing a pear-tree
of its lichens, one of these little zigzagging blurs came
purring toward me, couching his long bill like a lance,
his throat spai'kling with angry fire, to warn me oft" from
a Missouri-currant whose honey he was sipping. And
many a time he has driven me out of a flower-bed.
This summer, by the way, a pair of these winged
emeralds fastened their mossy acorn-cup upon a bough
of the same elm which the orioles had enlivened the
year before. We watched all their proceedings from the
window through an opera-glass, and saw their two nest
lings grow from black needles with a tuft of down at the
lower end, till they whirled away on their first short
experimental flights. They became strong of wing in a
surprisingly short time, and I never saw them or the
male bird after, though the female was regular as usual
in her visits to our petunias and verbenas. I do not
think it ground enough for a generalization, but in the
many times when I watched the old birds feeding their
young, the mother always alighted, while the father as
uniformly remained upon the wing.

The bobolinks are generally chance visitors, tinkling
through the garden in blossoming-time, but this year,

MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE. 17

owing to the long rains early in the season, their favorite
meadows were flooded, and they were driven to the up
land. So I had a pair of them domiciled in my grass-
field. The male used to perch in an apple-tree, then in
full bloom, and, while I stood perfectly still close by, he
would circle away, quivering round the entire field of
five acres, with no break in his song, and settle down
again among the blossoms, to be hurried away almost
immediately by a new rapture of music. He had the
volubility of an Italian charlatan at a fair, and, like him,
appeared to be proclaiming the merits of some quack
remedy. Of>odeldoc-opodeldoc-try-Doctor-Lincolris-opodel-
doc ! he seemed to repeat over and over again, with a
rapidity that would have distanced the deftest-tongued
Figaro that ever rattled. I remember Count Gurowski
saying once, with that easy superiority of knowledge
about this country which is the monopoly of foreigners,
that we had no singing-birds ! Well, well, Mr. Hepworth
Dixon has found the typical America in Oneida and
Salt Lake City. Of course, an intelligent European is
the best judge of these matters. The truth is there are
more Binging-birdfl in Europe because there are fewer
forests. These songsters love the neighborhood of man
because hawks and owls are rarer, while their own food
is more abundant. Most people seem to think, the more
trees, the more birds. Even Chateaubriand, who first
tried the primitive-forest-cure, and whose description of
the wilderness in its imaginative effects is immatched,
fancies the " people of the air singing their hymns to
him." So far as my own observation goes, the farther
one penetrates the sombre solitiides of the woods, the
more seldom does he hear the voice of any singing-bird.
Tn spite of Chateaubriand's minuteness of detail, in spite
of that marvellous reverberation of the decrepit tree
falling of its own weight, which he was the first to

B

18 MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE.

notice, I cannot help doubting whether he made his way
very deep into the wilderness. At any rate, in a letter
to Fontanes, written in 1804, he speaks of mes chevaux
paissant a quelque distance. To be sure Chateaubriand
was apt to mount the high horse, and this may have
been but an afterthought of the grand seigneur, but
certainly one would not make much headway on horse
back toward the druid fastnesses of the primaeval pine.

The bobolinks build in considerable numbers in a
meadow within a quarter of a mile of us. A houseless
lane passes through the midst of their camp, and in
clear westerly weather, at the right seaton, one may
hear a score of them singing at once. When they are
breeding, if I chance to pass, one of the male birds
always accompanies me like a constable, flitting from
post to post of the rail-fence, with a short note of re
proof continually repeated, till I am fairly out of the
neighborhood. Then he will swing away into the air
and run down the wind, gurgling music without stint
over the unheeding tussocks of meadow-grass and dark
clumps of bulrushes that mark his domain.

We have no bird whose song will match the nightin
gale's in compass, none whose note is so rich as that
of the European blackbird ; but for mere rapture I
have never heard the bobolink's rival. But his opera-
season is a short one. The ground and tree sparrows
are our most constant performers. It is now late in
August, and one of the latter sings every day and all
day long in the garden. Till within a fortnight, a pair
of indigo-birds would keep up their lively duo for an
hour together. While I write, I hear an oriole gay as
in June, and the plaintive may-be of the goldfinch tells
me he is stealing my lettuce-seeds. I know not what
the experience of others may have been, but the only
bird I have ever heard sing in the night has been the

MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE. 19

chip-bird. I should say he sang about as often during
the darkness as cocks crow. One can hardly help fancy
ing that he sings in his dreams.

" Father of light, what sunnie seed,
What glance of day hast thou confined
Into this bird? To all the breed
This busie ray thou hast assigned;
Their magnetism works all night, ,

And dreams of Paradise and light."

On second thought, I remember to have heard the cuckoo
strike the hours nearly all night with the regularity of a
Swiss clock.

The dead limbs of our elms, which I spare to that
end, bring us the flicker every summer, and almost
daily I hear his wild scream and laugh close at hand,
himself invisible. He is a shy bird, but a few days ago
I had the satisfaction of studying him through the
blinds as he sat on a tree within a few feet of me.
Seen so near and at rest, he makes good his claim to the
title of pigeon-woodpecker. Lumberers have a notion
that he is harmful to timber, digging little holes through
the bark to encourage the settlement of insects. The
regular rings of such perforations which one may see in
almost any apple-orchard seem to give some probability
to this theory. Almost every season a solitary quail
visits us, and, unseen among the currant-bushes, calls
Bob White, Bob White, as if he were playing at hide-and-
seek with that imaginary being. A rarer visitant is the
turtle-dove, whose pleasant coo (something like the
muffled crow of a cock from a coop covered with snow) I
have sometimes heard, and whom I once had the good
luck to see close by me in the mulberry -tree. The wild-
pigeon, once numerous, I have not seen for many years.*
Of savage birds, a hen-hawk now and then quarters him-
Belf upon us for a few days, sitting sluggish in a tree

* They made their appearance again this summer (1870).

20 MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE.

after a surfeit of poultry. One of them once offered me
a near shot from my study-window one drizzly day for
several hours. But it was Sunday, and I gave him the
benefit of its gracious truce of God.

Certain birds have disappeared from our neighborhood
within my memory. I remember when the whippoorwill
could be heard in Sweet Auburn. The night-hawk, once
common, is now rare. The brown thrush has moved far
ther up country. For years I have not seen or heard
any of the larger owls, whose hooting was one of my boy
ish terrors. The cliff-swallow, strange emigrant, that
eastward takes his way, has come and gone again in my
time. The bank-swallows, wellnigh innumerable during
my boyhood, no longer frequent the crumbly cliff of the
gravel-pit by the river. The barn-swallows, which once
swarmed in our barn, flashing through the dusty sun-
streaks of the mow, have been gone these many years.
My father would lead me out to see them gather on the
roof, and take counsel before their yearly migration, as
Mr. White used to see them at Selborne. Eheu, fugaces !
Thank fortune, the swift still glues his nest, and rolls his
distant thunders night and day in the wide-throated chim
neys, still sprinkles the evening air with his merry twit
tering. The populous heronry in Fresh Pond meadows
has been wellnigh broken up, but still a pair or two
haunt the old home, as the gypsies of Ellangowan their
ruined huts, and every evening fly over us riverwards,
clearing their throats with a hoarse hawk as they go, and,
in cloudy weather, scarce higher than the tops of the
chimneys. Sometimes I have known one to alight in
one of our trees, though for what purpose I never could
divine. Kingfishers have sometimes puzzled me in the
same way, perched at high noon in a pine, springing their
watchman's rattle when they flitted away from my curi
osity, and seeming to shove their top-heavy heads along
as a man does a wheelbarrow.

MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE. 21

Some birds have left us, I siippose, because the country
is growing less wild. I once found a summer duck's nest
within quarter of a mile of our house, but such a trou
vaille would be impossible now as Kidd's treasure. And
yet the mere taming of the neighborhood does not quite
satisfy me as an explanation. Twenty years ago, on my
way to bathe in the river, I saw every day a brace of
woodcock, on the miry edge of a spring within a few1 rods
of a house, and constantly visited by thirsty cows. There
was no growth of any kind to conceal them, and yet these
ordinarily shy birds were almost as indifferent to my
passing as common poultry would have been. Since
bird-nesting has become scientific, and dignified itself as
oology, that, no doubt, is partly to blame for some of our
losses. But some old friends are constant. Wilson's
thrush comes every year to remind me of that most poetic
of ornithologists. He flits before me through the pine-
walk like the very genius of solitude. A pair of pewees
have built immemorially on a jutting brick in the arched
entrance to the ice-house. Always on the same brick,
and never more than a single pair, though two broods of
five each are raised there every summer. How do they
settle their claim to the homestead ] By what right of
primogeniture *? Once the children of a man employed
about the place oologized the nest, and the pewees left us
for a year or two. I felt towards those boys as the mess
mates of the Ancient Mariner did towards him after he
had shot the albatross. But the pewees came back at
last, and one of them is now on his wonted perch, so near
my window that I can hear the click of his bill as he
enaps a fly on the wing with the unerring precision a
stately Trasteveriua shows iu the capture of her smaller
deer. The pewee is the iirst bird to pipe up in the morn
ing; and, during the early summer he preludes IPS
matutinal ejaculation of pewee with a slender whistle.

22 MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE.

unheard at any other time. He saddens with the sea
son, and, as summer declines, he changes his note to eheu,
pewee ! as if in lamentation. Had he been an Italian bird,
Ovid would have had a plaintive tale to tell about him.
He is so familiar as often to pursue a fly through the
open window into my library.

There is something inexpressibly dear to me in these
old friendships of a lifetime. There is scarce a tree of
mine but has had, at some time or other, a happy home
stead among its boughs, to which I cannot say,

" Many light hearts and wings,
Which now be dead, lodged in thy living bowers."

My walk under the pines would lose half its summer
charm were I to miss that shy anchorite, the Wilson's
thrush, nor hear in haying-time the metallic ring of
his song, that justifies his rustic name of scythe-ivhet.
I protect my game as jealously as an English squire.
If anybody had oblogized a certain cuckoo's nest I
know of (I have a pair in my garden every year),
it would have left me a sore place in my mind for
weeks. I love to bring these aborigines back to the man-
suetude they showed to the early voyagers, and before
(forgive the involuntary pun) they had grown accustomed
to man and knew his savage ways. And they repay your
kindness with a sweet familiarity too delicate ever to
breed contempt. I have made a Penn-treaty with them,
preferring that to the Puritan way with the natives,
which converted them to a little Hebraism and a great
deal of Medford rum. If they will not come near enough
to me (as most of them will), I bring them close with an
opera-glass, — a much better weapon than a gun. I
would not, if I could, convert them from their pretty
pagan ways. The only one I sometimes have savage
doubts about is the red squirrel. I think he oologizes.
I know he eats cherries (we counted five of them at one

MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE. 23

time in a single tree, the stones pattering down like the
sparse hail that preludes a storm), and that he gnaws off
the small end of pears to get at the seeds. He steals
the corn from under the noses of my poultry. But what
would you have 1 He will come down upon the limb of
the tree I am lying under till he is within a yard of me.
He and his mate will scurry up and down the great black-
walnut for my diversion, chattering like monkeys. Can
I sign his death-warrant who has tolerated me about his
grounds so long 1 Not I. Let them steal, and welcome.
I am sure I should, had I had the same bringing up and
the same temptation. As for the birds, I do not believe
there is one of them but does more good than harm ; and
of how many featherless bipeds can this be said ]

A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER.

" ~|V /TEN scarcely know how beautiful fire is," says
-LVJL Shelley ; and I am apt to think there are a
good many other things concerning which their knowl
edge might be largely increased without becoming burden
some. Nor are they altogether reluctant to be taiight,
— not so reluctant, perhaps, as unable, — and education
is sure to find one fulcrum ready to her hand by which
to get a purchase on them. For most of us, I have no
ticed, are not without an amiable willingness to assist at
any spectacle or entertainment (loosely so called) for
which no fee is charged at the door. If special tickets
are sent us, another element of pleasure is added in a
sense of privilege and pre-eminence (pitiably scarce in
a democracy) so deeply rooted in human nature that I
have seen people take a strange satisfaction in being
near of kin to the mute chief personage in a funeral. It
gave them a moment's advantage over the rest of us
whose grief was rated at a lower place in the procession.
But the words " admission free " at the bottom of a hand
bill, though holding out no bait of inequality, have yet
a singular charm for many minds, especially in the coun
try. There is something touching in the constancy with
which men attend free lectures, and in the honest
patience with which they listen to them. He who pays
may yawn or shift testily in his seat, or even go out with
an awful reverberation of criticism, for he has bought the
right to do any or all of these and paid for it. But gra-

A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER. 25

•

tuitous hearers are anaesthetized to suffering by a sense
ot virtue. They are performing perhaps the noblest, as
it is one of the most difficult, of human functions in get
ting Something (no matter how small) for Nothing.
They are not pestered by the awful duty of securing
their money's worth. They are wasting time, to do
which elegantly and without lassitude is the highest
achievement of civilization. If they are cheated, it is, at
worst, only of a superfluous hour which was rotting on
their hands. Not only is mere amusement made more
piquant, but instruction more palatable, by this univer
sally relished sauce of gratuity. And if the philosophic
observer finds an object of agreeable contemplation in
the audience, as they listen to a discourse on the proba
bility of making missionaries go down better with the
Feejee- Islanders by balancing the hymn-book in one
pocket with a bottle of Worcestershire in the other, or
to a plea for arming the female gorilla with the ballot,
he also takes a friendly interest in the lecturer, and ad
mires the wise economy of Nature who thus contrives
an ample field of honest labor for her bores. Even
when the insidious hat is passed round after one of these
eleemosynary feasts, the relish is but heightened by a
conscientious refusal to disturb the satisfaction's com
pleteness with the rattle of a single contributory penny.
So firmly persuaded am I of this (/m^s-instinct in our
common humanity, that I believe I could fill a house by
advertising a free lecture on Tupper considered as a
philosophic poet, or on my personal recollections of the
late James K. Polk. This being so, I have sometimes
wondered that the peep-shows which Nature provides
with such endless variety for her children, and to which
we are admitted on the bare condition of having eyes,
should be so generally neglected. To be sure, eyes
are not so common as people think, or poets would be

2

26 A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER.

plentier, and perhaps also these exhibitions of hers are
cheapened in estimation by the fact that in enjoying
them we are not getting the better of anybody else.
Your true lovers of nature, however, contrive to get
even this solace ; and Wordsworth looking upon moun
tains as his own pecxiliar sweethearts, was jealous of
anybody else who ventured upon even the most innocent
flirtation with them. As if such fellows, indeed, could
pretend to that nicer sense of what-d'ye-call-it which was
so remarkable in him ! Marry come up ! Mountains, no
doubt, may inspire a profounder and more exclusive pas
sion, but on the whole I am not sorry to have been born
and bred among more domestic scenes, where I can be
hospitable without a pang. I am going to ask you pres
ently to take potluck with me at a board where Winter
shall supply whatever there is of cheer.

I think the old fellow has hitherto had scant justice
done him in the main. We make him the symbol of old
age or death, and think we have settled the matter. As
if old age were never kindly as well as frosty ; as if it
had no reverend graces of its own as good in their way as
the noisy impertinence of childhood, the elbowing self-
conceit of youth, or the pompous mediocrity of middle
life ! As if there were anything discreditable in death,
or nobody had ever longed for it ! Suppose we grant
that Winter is the sleep of the year, what then 1 I take
it upon me to say that his dreams are finer than the
best reality of his waking rivals.

" Sleep, Silence1 child, the father of soft Rest,"

is a very agreeable acquaintance, and most of us are bet
ter employed in his company than anywhere else. For
my own part, I think Winter a pretty wide-awake old
boy, and his bluff sincerity and hearty ways are more
congenial to my mood, and more wholesome for me,

A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER. 27

than any charms of which his rivals are capable.
Spring is a fickle mistress, who either does not know her
own mind, or is so long in making it up, whether yon
shall have her or not have her, that one gets tired at
last of her pretty miffs and reconciliations. You go to
her to be cheered up a bit, and ten to one catch her in
the sulks, expecting you to find enough good-humor for
both. After she has become Mrs. Summer she grows a
little more staid in her demeanor ; and her abundant
table, where you are sure to get the earliest fruits and
vegetables of the season, is a good foundation for steady
friendship; but she has lost that delicious aroma of
maidenhood, and what was delicately rounded grace in
the girl gives more than hints of something like redun
dance in the matron. Autumn is the poet of the family.
He gets you up a splendor that you would say was
made out of real sunset ; but it is nothing more than a
few hectic leaves, when all is done. He is but a senti
mentalist, after all ; a kind of Lamartine whining along
the ancestral avenues he has made bare timber of, and
begging a contribution of good-spirits from your own
savings to keep him in countenance. But Winter has
his delicate sensibilities too, only he does not make them
as good as indelicate by thrusting them forever in your
face. He is a better poet than Autumn, when he has a
mind, but, like a truly great one as he is, he brings you
down to your bare manhood, and bids you understand
him out of that, with no adventitious helps of associa
tion, or he will none of you. He does not touch those
melancholy chords on which Autumn is as great a
master as Heine. Well, is there no such thing as
thrumming on them and maundering over them till
they get out of tune, and you wish some manly hand
would crash through them and leave them dangling
brokenly forever ? Take Winter as you find him, and he

28 A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER.

turns out to be a thoroughly honest fellow, with no non
sense in him, and tolerating none in you, which is a
great comfort in the long run. He is not what they
call a genial critic ; but bring a real man along with you,
and you will find there is a crabbed generosity about
the old cynic that you would not exchange for all the
creamy concessions of Autumn. "Season of mists and
mellow fruitfulncss," quotha? That 's just it; Winter
soon blows your head clear of fog and makes you see
things as they are ; I thank him for it ! The truth is,
between ourselves, I have a very good opinion of the
whole family, who always welcome me without making
me feel as if I were too much of a poor relation. There
ought to be some kind of distance, never so little, you
know, to give the true relish. They are as good com
pany, the worst of them, as any I know, and I am not a
little flattered by a condescension from any one of them;
but I happen to hold Winter's retainer, this time, and,
like an honest advocate, am bound to make as good a
showing as I can for him, even if it cost a few slurs upon
the rest of the household. Moreover, Winter is coming,
and one would like to get on the blind side of him.

The love of Nature in and for herself, or as a mirror
for the moods of the mind, is a modern thing. The flee
ing to her as an escape from man was brought into
fashion by Rousseau ; for his prototype Petrarch, though
he had a taste for pretty scenery, had a true antique
horror for the grander aspects of nature. He got once
to the top of Mont Ventoux, but it is very plain that he
did not enjoy it. Indeed, it is only within a century or so
that the search after the picturesque has been a safe em
ployment. It is not so even now in Greece or Southern
Italy. Where the Anglo-Saxon carves his cold fowl, and
leaves the relics of his picnic, the ancient or mediaeval
dan might be pretty confident that some ruffian would

A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER. 29

try the edge of his kuife on a chicken of the Platonic
sort, and leave more precious bones as an ottering to the
genius of the place. The ancients were certainly more
social than we, though that, perhaps, was natural
enough, when a good part of the world was still covered
with forest. They huddled together in cities as well for
safety as to keep their minds warm. The Romans had a
fondness for country life, but they had tine roads, and
Rome was always within easy reach. The author of the
Book of Job is the earliest I know of who showed any
profound sense of the moral meaning of the outward
world ; and I think none has approached him since,
though Wordsworth comes nearest with the first two
books of the " Prelude." But their feeling is not pre
cisely of the kind I speak of as modern, and which gave
rise to what is called descriptive poetry. Chaucer opens
his Clerk's Tale with a bit of landscape admirable for its
large style, and as well composed as any Claude.

" There is right at the west end of Itaille,
Down nt the root of Vesulus the cold,
A lusty plain abundant of vitaille,
Where many a tower and town tliou mayst behold,
That founded were in time of fathers old,
And many an other delectable sight;
And Saluces this noble country hight."

What an airy precision of touch there is here, and
what a sure eye for the points of character in landscape !
But the picture is altogether subsidiary. No doubt
the works of Salvator Rosa and Caspar Poussin show that
there rmist have been some amateur taste for the grand
and terrible in scenery ; but the British poet Thomson
(" sweet-souled " is Wordsworth's apt word) was the first
to do with words what they had done partially with
colors. He was turgid, no good metrist, and his English
is like a translation from one of those poets who wrote
in Latin after it was dead : but lie was a man of sincere

30 A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER.

genius, and not only English, but European literature is
largely in his debt. He was the inventor of cheap
amusement for the million, to be had of All-out-doors for
the asking. It was his impulse which unconsciously
gave direction to Rousseau, and it is to the school of Jean
Jacques that we owe St. Pierre, Cowper, Chateaubriand,
Wordsworth, Byron, Lamartme, George Sand, Ruskin, —
the great painters of ideal landscape.

So long as men had slender means, whether of keep
ing out cold or checkmating it with artificial heat,
Winter was an unwelcome guest, especially in the coun
try. There he was the bearer of a iettre de cachet,
which shut its victims in solitary confinement with few
resources bat to boose round the fire and repeat ghost-
stories, which had lost all their freshness and none of
their terror. To go to bed was to lie awake of cold,
with an added shudder of fright whenever a loose case
ment or a waving curtain chose to give yon the goose-
flesh. Bussy Rabutin, in one of his letters, gives us a
notion how uncomfortable it was in the country, with
green wood, smoky chimneys, and doors and windows
that thought it was their duty to make the wind whistle,
not to keep it out. With fuel so dear, it could not have
been much better in the city, to judge by Menage's
warning against the danger of our dressing-gowns taking
fire, while we cuddle too closely over the sparing blaze.
The poet of Winter himself is said to have written in
bed, with his hand through a hole in the blanket ; and
we may suspect that it was the warmth quite as much
as the company that first drew men together at the
coftee-house. Coleridge, in January, 1800, writes to
Wedge wood : "I am sitting by a fire in a rug great
coat It is most barbarously cold, and you, I fear,

can shield yourself from it only by perpetual imprison
ment." This thermometrical view of winter is, I grant, a

A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER. 31

depressing one ; for I think there is nothing so demoraliz
ing as cold. I know of a boy who, when his father, a
bitter economist, was brought home dead, said only,
" Now we can burn as much wood as we like." I would
not off-hand prophesy the gallows for that boy. I re
member with a shudder a pinch I got from the cold once
in a railroad-car. A born fanatic of fresh air, I found
myself glad to see the windows hermetically sealed by
the freezing vapor of our breath, and plotted the assassi
nation of the conductor every time he opened the door.
I felt myself sensibly barbarizing, and would have shared
Colonel Jack's bed in the ash-hole of the glass-furnace
with a grateful heart. Since then I have had more
charity for the prevailing ill-opinion of winter. It was
natural enough that Ovid should measure the years of
his exile in Pontus by the number of winters.

Ut sumus in Ponto, ter frigore constitit Ister,

Facta est Euxini dura ter unda maris:
Thrice hath the cold bound Ister fast, since I
In Poutus was, thrice Euxine's wave made hard.

Jubinal has printed an Anglo-Norman piece of doggerel
in which Winter and Summer dispute which is the better
man. It is not without a kind of rough and inchoate
humor, and I like it because old Whitebeard gets toler
ably fair play. The jolly old fellow boasts of his rate of
living, with that contempt of poverty which is the weak
spot in the burly English nature.

Ja Dieu ne place que me avyerge

Quo in3 face plus honour

Et plus despenz en un soul jour

Que vus en tote vostre vie :

Now God forbid it hap to me
That I make not more great display,
And spend more in a single day
Than you can do in all your life.

The best touch, perhaps, is Winter's claim for credit as a
mender of the highways, which was not without point

32 A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER.

when every road in Europe was a quagmire during a good
part of the year unless it was bottomed on some remains
of Roman engineering.

Je su, fet-il, seiguur et mestre

Et a bon droit le dey estre,

Quant de la bowe face cauce"

Par un petit de geele :

Master and lord I am, says he,

And of good right so ought to be,

Since I make causeys, safely crost,

Of mud, with just a pinch of frost.

But there is no recognition of Winter as the best of out
door company.

Even Emerson, an open-air man, and a bringer of it,
if ever any, confesses,

" The frost-king ties my fumbling feet,
Sings in my ear, my hands are stones,
Curdles the blood to the marble bones,
Tugs at the heartstrings, numbs the sense,
And hems in life with narrowing fence."

Winter was literally " the inverted year," as Thomson
called him ; for such entertainments as could be had
must be got within doors. What cheerfulness there was
in brumal verse was that of Horace's dissolve frigus ligna
super foco large reponens, so pleasantly associated with
the cleverest scene in Roderick Random. This is the
tone of that poem of Walton's friend Cotton, which won
the praise of Wordsworth : —

" Let us home,
Our mortal enemy is come:
Winter and all his blustering train
Have made a voyage o'er the main.

" Fly, fly, the foe advances fast:

Into our fortress let us haste.

Where all the roarers of the north

Can neither storm nor starve us forth.
** There underground a magazine

Of sovereign juice is cellared in.

Liquor that will the siege maintain

Should Phoebus ne'er return again.

A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER. 33

"Whilst we together jovial sit
Careless, and crowned with mirth and wit,
Where, though bleak winds confine us home
Our fancies round the world shall roam."

Thomson's view of Winter is also, on the whole, a hostile
one, though he does justice to his grandeur.

" Thus Winter falls,

A heavy gloom oppressive o'er the woild,
Through Nature shedding influence malign."

He finds his consolations, like Cotton, in the house,

though more refined : —

" While without

The ceaseless winds blow ice. be my retreat
Between the groaning forest and the shore
Beat by the boundless multitude of waves,
A rural, sheltered, solitary scene,
Wrhere ruddy fire and beaming tapers join
To cheer the gloom. There studious let me sit
And hold high converse with the mighty dead."

Doctor Akenside, a man to be spoken of with respect,
follows Thomson. With him, too, "Winter desolates
the year,'' and

"How pleasing wears the wintry night
Spent with the old illustrious dead !
While by the taper's trembling light
I seem those awful scenes to tread
Where chiefs or legislators lie," &c.

Akenside had evidently been reading Thomson. He
had the conceptions of a great poet with less faculty than
many a little one, and is one of those versifiers of whom
it is enough to say that we are always willing to break
him off in the middle with an &c., well knowing that
what follows is but the coming-round again of what went
before, marching in a circle with the cheap numerosity
of a stage-army. In truth, it is no wonder that the short
days of that cloudy northern climate should have added
to winter a gloom borrowed of the mind. We hardly
know, till we have experienced the contrast, how sensibly
our winter is alleviated by the longer daylight and the

34 A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER.

pellucid atmosphere. I once spent a winter in Dresden,
a southern climate compared with England, and really
almost lost my respect for the sun when 1 saw him grop
ing among the chimney-pots opposite my windows as he
described his impoverished arc in the sky. The enforced
seclusion of the season makes it the time for serious study
and occupations that demand fixed incomes of unbroken
time. This is why Milton said " that his vein never
happily flowed but from the autumnal equinox to the
vernal," though in his twentieth year he had written, oil
the return of spring, —

Fallor ? an et nobis recleunt in carmina vires
Ingeniumque mihi munere veris adest 'I

Err I V or do the powers of song return

To me, and genius too, the gifts of Spring ?

Goethe, so far as I remember, was the first to notice
the cheerfulness of snow in sunshine. His Harz-reise im
Winter gives no hint of it, for that is a diluted reminis
cence of Greek tragic choruses and the Book of Job in
nearly equal parts. In one of the singularly interesting
and characteristic letters to Frau von Stein, however,
written during the journey, he says : " It is beautiful in
deed ; the mist heaps itself together in light snow-clouds,
the sun looks through, and the snow over everything
gives back a feeling of gayety." But I find in Cowper
the first recognition of a general amiability in Winter.
The gentleness of his temper, and the wide charity of
his sympathies, made it natural for him to find good in
everything except the human heart. A dreadful creed
distilled from the darkest moments of dyspeptic solitaries
compelled him against his will to see in tkat the one evil
thing made by a God whose goodness is over all hia
works. Cowper's two walks in the morning and noon of
a winter's day are delightful, so long as he contrives t«
let himself be happy in the graciousness of the landscape,

A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER. 35

Your muscles grow spriugy, and your lungs dilate with
the crisp air as you walk along with him. You laugh
with him at the grotesque shadow of your legs lengthened
across the snow by the just-risen sun. I know nothing
that gives a purer feeling of out-door exhilaration than
the easy verses of this escaped hypochondriac. But
Cowper also preferred his sheltered garden-walk to those
robuster joys, and bitterly acknowledged the depressing
influence of the darkened year. In December, 1 780, he
writes : " At this season of the year, and in this gloomy
Uncomfortable climate, it is no easy matter for the owner
of a mind like mine to divert it from sad subjects, and to
fix it upon such as may administer to its amusement."
Or was it because he was writing to the dreadful Newton 1
Perhaps his poetry bears truer witness to his habitual
feeling, for it is only there that poets disenthral them
selves of their reserve and become fully possessed of their
greatest charm, — the power of being franker than other
men. In the Third Book of the Task he boldly affirms
his preference of the country to the city even in winter : —

" But are not wholesome airs, though nnperfumed
By roses, and clear suns, though scarcely felt,
And groves, if inharmonious, yet secure
From clamor, and whose very silence charms,
To be preferred to smoke ? . . . .
They would'be, were not madness in the head
And folly in the heart ; were England now
What England was, plain, hospitable kind,
And undebauched."

The conclusion shows, however, that he was thinking
mainly of fireside delights, not of the blusterous com
panionship of nature. This appears even more clearly in
the Fourth Book : —

" O Winter, ruler of the inverted year" ;

but I cannot help interrupting him to say how pleasant
it always is to track poets through the gardens of their

36 A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER.

predecessors and find out their likings by a flower
snapped off here and there to garnish their own nosegays.
Cowper had been reading Thomson, and "the inverted
year " pleased his fancy with its suggestion of that starry
wheel of the zodiac moving round through its spaces infi
nite. He could not help loving a handy Latinism (espe
cially with elision beauty added), any more than Gray,
any more than Wordsworth, — on the sly. But the
member for Olney has the floor : —

" 0 Winter, ruler of the inverted year,
Thy scattered hair with sleet like ashes filled,
Thy breath congealed upon thy lips, thy cheeks
Fringed with a beard made white with other snows
Than those of age, thy forehead wrapt in clouds,
A leafless branch thy sceptre, and thy throne
A sliding car, indebted to no wheels,
But urged by storms along its slippery way,
I love thee all unlovely as thou seem'st,
And dreaded as thou art ! Thou hold'st the sun
A prisoner in the yet nndawning east,
Shortening his journey between morn and noon,
And hurrying him, impatient of his stay,
Down to the rosy west, but kindly still
Compensating his loss with added hours
Of social converse and instructive ease,
And gathering at short notice, in one group,
The family dispersed, and fixing thought,
Not less dispersed by daylight and its cares.
I crown thee king of intimate delights,
Fireside enjoyments, homeborn happiness,
And all the comforts that the lowly roof
Of undisturbed Retirement, and the hours
Of long uninterrupted evening know."

I call this a good human bit of writing, imaginative,
too, — not so flushed, not so .... highfaluting (let me
dare the odious word !) as the modern style since poets
have got hold of a theory that imagination is common-
sense turned inside out, and not common-sense sublimed,
— but wholesome, masculine, and strong in the simplicity
of a mind wholly occupied with its theme. To me Cow-

A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER. 37

per is still the best of our descriptive poets for every-day
wear. And what unobtrusive skill he has ! How he
heightens, for example, your sense of winter-evening se^
elusion, by the twanging horn of the postman on the
bridge ! That horn has rung in my ears ever since I
first heard it, during the consulate of the second Adams.
Wordsworth strikes a deeper note ; but does it not some
times come over one (just the least in the world) that
one would give anything for a bit of nature pure and
simple, without quite so strong a flavor of \V. W. 1 W. W.
is, of course, sublime and all that — but ! For my part,
I will make a clean breast of it, and confess that I can't
look at a mountain without fancying the late laureate's
gigantic Roman nose thrust between me and it, and think
ing of Dean Swift's profane version of Romanos rerum
dominos into Roman nose ! a rare un ! dom your nose !
But do I judge verses, then, by the impression made on
me by the man who wrote them ] Not so fast, my good
friend, but, for good or evil, the character and its intel
lectual product are inextricably interfused.

If I remember aright, Wordsworth himself (except in
his magnificent skating-scene in the 'J Prelude") has not
much to say for winter out of doors. I cannot recall
any picture by him of a snow-storm. The reason may
possibly be that in the Lake Country even the winter
storms bring rain rather than snow. He was thankful
for the Christinas visits of Crabb Robinson, because they
"helped him through the winter." His only hearty
praise of winter is when, as General Fevrier, he defeats
the French : —

" Humanity, delighting to behold
A fond reflection of her own decay,
Hath painted Winter like a traveller old,
Propped on a stall', and. tlirnii^h the sullen day,
In hooded mantle, limping o'er the plain
As though his weakness were disturbed by pain:

38 A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER.

Or, if ajuster fancy should allow
An undisputed symbol of command,
The chosen sceptre is a withered bough
Infirmly grasped within a withered hand.
These emblems suit the helpless and forlorn;
But mighty Winter the device shall scorn."

The Scottish poet Grahame, in his " Sabbath," says
manfully : —

" Now is the time
To visit Nature in her grand attire " ;

and he has one little picture which no other poet has
surpassed : —

"High-ridged the whirled drift has almost reached
The powdered keystone of the churchyard porch:
Mute hangs the hooded bell; the tombs lie buried."

Even in our own climate, where the sun shows his win
ter face as long and as brightly as in central Italy, the
seduction of the chimney-corner is apt to predominate in
the mind over the severer satisfactions of muffled fields
and penitential woods. The very title of Whittier's de
lightful " Snow-Boimd " shows what he was thinking of,
though he does vapor a little about digging out paths.
The verses of Emerson, perfect as a Greek fragment
(despite the archaism of a dissyllabic fire), which he has
chosen for his epigraph, tell us, too, how the

" Housemates sit

Around the radiant fireplace, enclosed
In a tumultuous privacy of storm."

They are all in a tale. It is always the tristis Hiems
of Virgil. Catch one of them having a kind word for old
Barbe Fleurie, unless he whines through some cranny,
like a beggar, to heighten their enjoyment while they
toast their slippered toes. I grant there is a keen relish
of contrast about the bickering flame as it gives an
emphasis beyond Gherardo della Notte to loved faces, or
kindles the gloomy gold of volumes scarce less friendly,
especially when a tempest is blundering round the

A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER. 39

house. Wordsworth has a fine touch that brings home
to us the comfortable contrast of without and within,
during a storm at night, and the passage is highly
characteristic of a poet whose inspiration always has an
undertone of bourgeois : —

" How touching, when, at midnight, sweep
Snow-muffled winds, and all is dark,
To hear, — and sink again to sleep ! "

J. H., one of those choice poets who will not tarnish
their bright fancies by publication, always insists on a
snow-storm as essential to the true atmosphere of whist.
Mrs. Battles, in her famous rule for the game, implies
winter, and would doubtless have added tempest, if it
could be had for the asking. For a good solid read also,
into the small hours, there is nothing like that sense of
safety against having your evening laid waste, which
Euroclydon brings, as he bellows down the chimney,
making your fire gasp, or rustles snow-flakes against the
pane with a sound more soothing than silence. Emer
son, as he is apt to do, not only hit the nail on the
head, but drove it home, in that last phrase of the
" tumultuous privacy."

But I would exchange this, and give something to
boot, for the privilege of walking out into the vast blur
of a north-northeast snow-storm, and getting a strong
draught on the furnace within, by drawing the first fur
rows through its sandy drifts. I love those

" Noontide twilights which snow makes
With tempest of the blinding flakes."

If the wind veer too much toward the east, you get the
heavy snow that gives a true Alpine slope to the boughs
of your evergreens, and traces a skeleton of your elms in
•white ; but you must have plenty of north in your gale
if you want those driving nettles of frost that sting the
cheeks to a crimson manlier than that of fire. During

40 A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER.

the great storm of two winters ago, the most robustious
periwig-pated fellow of late years, I waded and floun
dered a couple of miles through the whispering night,
and brought home that feeling of expansion we have
after being in good company. " Great things doeth He
which we cannot comprehend ; for he saith to the snow,
' Be thou on the earth.' ''

There is admirable snow scenery in Judd's " Marga
ret," but some one has confiscated my copy of that ad
mirable book, and, perhaps, Homer's picture of a snow
storm is the best yet in its large simplicity : —

'• And as in winter-time, when Jove his cold sharp javelins throws
Amongst us mortals, and is moved to white the earth with snows,
The winds asleep, he freely pours till highest prominents,
Hill-tops, low meadows, and the fields that crown with most contents
The toils of men, seaports and shores, are hid, and every place,
But floods, that fair snow's tender flakes, as their own brood, em
brace."

Chapman, after all, though he makes very free with
him, comes nearer Homer than anybody else. There is
nothing in the original of that fair snow's tender flakes,
but neither Pope nor Cowper could get out of their
heads the Psalmist's tender phrase, " He giveth his snow
like wool," for which also Homer affords no hint. Pope
talks of "dissolving fleeces," and Cowper of a "fleecy
mantle." But David is nobly simple, while Pope is
simply nonsensical, and Cowper pretty. If they must
have prettiness, Martial would have supplied them with

it in his

Densum tacitarum vellus aquarum,

which is too pretty, though I fear it would have pleased
Dr. Donne. Eustatlmis of Thessalonica calls snow v8<ap
Ipi(o8(s, woolly water, which a poor old French poet,
Godeau, has amplified into this : —

Lorsque la froidure inhumaine
De leur verd ornement depouille les forets
Sous une neige epaisse il couvre les guerets,
Et la neige a pour eux la chaleur de la laine.

A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER. 41

In this, as in Pope's version of the passage in Homer,
there is, at least, a sort of suggestion of snow-storm in
the blinding drift of words. But, on the whole, if one
would know what snow is, I should advise him not to
hunt up what the poets have said about it, but to look
at the sweet miracle itself.

The preludings of Winter are as beautiful as those of
Spring. In a gray December day, when, as the farmers
say, it is too cold to snow, his numbed fingers will let
fall doubtfully a few star- shaped flakes, the snow-drops
and anemones that harbinger his more assured reign.
Now, and now only, may be seen, heaped on the hori
zon's eastern edge, those " blue clouds " from forth
which Shakespeare says that Mars " doth pluck the
masoned turrets." Sometimes also, when the sun is
low, you will see a single cloud trailing a flurry of snow
along the southern hills in a wavering fringe of purple.
And when at last the real snow-storm comes, it leaves
the earth with a virginal look on it that no other of the
seasons can rival, • — compared with which, indeed, they
seem soiled and vulgar.

And what is there in nature so beautiful as the next
morning after such confusion of the elements? Night
has no silence like this of busy day. All the batteries
of noise are spiked. We see the movement of life as a
deaf man sees it, a mere wraith of the clamorous exist
ence that inflicts itself on our ears when the ground is
bare. The earth is clothed in innocence as a garment.
Every wound of the landscape is healed ; whatever was
stiff has been sweetly rounded as the breasts of Aphro
dite ; what was unsightly has been covered gently with
a soft splendor, as if, Cowley would have said, Nature
had cleverly let fall her handkerchief to hide it. If the
Virgin (Notre Dame de la neige) were to come back, here
is an earth that would not bruise her foot nor stain it.

42 A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER.

It is

" The fanned snow

That 's bolted by the northern blasts twice o'er," —
Soffiata e stretta dai venti Schiavi,
Winnowed and packed by the Sclavonian winds, —

packed so hard sometimes on hill-slopes that it will bear
your weight. What grace is in all the curves, as if
every one of them had been swept by that inspired
thumb of Phidias's journeyman !

Poets have fancied the footprints of the wind in those
light ripples that sometimes scurry across smooth water
with a sudden blur. But on this gleaming hush the
aerial deluge has left plain marks of its course ; and
in gullies through which it rushed torrent-like, the eye
finds its bed irregularly scooped like that of a brook in
hard beach-sand, or, in more sheltered spots, traced with
outlines like those left by the sliding edges of the surf
upon the shore. The air, after all, is only an infinitely
thinner kind of water, such as I suppose we shall have
to drink when the state does her whole duty as a moral
reformer. Nor is the wind the only thing whose trail
you will notice on this sensitive surface. You will find
that you have more neighbors and night visitors than
you dreamed of. Here is the dainty footprint of a cat ;
here a dog has looked in on you like an amateur watch
man to see if all is right, slumping clumsily about in the
mealy treachery. And look ! before you were up in the
morning, though you were a punctual courtier at the
sun's levee, here has been a squirrel zigzagging to and
fro like a hound gathering the scent, and some tiny bird
searching for unimaginable food, — perhaps for the tinier
creature, whatever it is, that drew this slender continu
ous trail like those made on the wet beach by light
borderers of the sea. The earliest autographs were as
frail as these. Poseidon traced his lines, or giant birds
made their mark, on preadamite sea-margins ; and the

A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER. 43

thunder-gust left the tear-stains of its sudden passion
there ; nay, we have the signatures of delicatest fern-
leaves on the soft ooze of seons that dozed away their
dreamless leisure before consciousness came upon the
earth with man. Some whim of nature locked them fast
in stone for us after-thoughts of creation. Which of us
shall leave a footprint as imperishable as that of the
ornithorhyncus, or much more so than that of these
Bedouins of the snow-desert 1 Perhaps it was only be
cause the ripple and the rain-drop and the bird were not
thinking of themselves, that they had such luck. The
chances of immortality depend very much on that. How
often have we not seen poor mortals, dupes of a season's
notoriety, carving their names on seeming-solid rock of
merest beach-sand, whose feeble hold on memory shall
be washed away by the next wave of fickle opinion !
Well, well, honest Jacques, there are better things to be
found in the snow than sermons.

The snow that falls damp comes commonly in larger
flakes from windless skies, and is the prettiest of all to
watch from under cover. This is the kind Homer had
in mind ; and Dante, who had never read him, compares
the dilatate falde, the flaring flakes, of his fiery rain, to
those of snow among the mountains without wind. This
sort of snowfall has no fight in it, and does not challenge
you to a wrestle like that which drives well from the
northward, with all moisture thoroughly winnowed out
of it by the frosty wind. Burns, who was more out of
doors than most poets, and whose barefoot Muse got the
color in her cheeks by vigorous exercise in all weathers,
was thinking of this drier deluge, when he speaks of the
" whirling drift," and tells how

" Chanticleer
Shook off the powthery snaw."

But the damper and more deliberate falls have a choice

44 A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER.

knack ac draping the trees ; and about eaves or stone
walls, wherever, mdeed, the evaporation is rapid, and it
finds a chance to cling, it will build itself out in curves
of wonderful beauty. I have seen one of these dumb
waves, thus caught in the act of breaking, curl four feet
beyond the edge of my roof and hang there for days, as
if Nature were too well pleased with her work to let it
crumble from its exquisite pause. After such a storm,
if you are lucky enough to have even a sluggish ditch
for a neighbor, be sure to pay it a visit. You will find
its banks corniced with what seems precipitated light,
and the dark current down below gleams as if with an
inward lustre. Dull of motion as it is, you never saw
water that seemed alive before. It has a brightness,
like that of the eyes of some smaller animals, which
gives assurance of life, but of a life foreign and unintel
ligible.

A damp snow-storm often turns to rain, and, in our
freakish climate, the wind will whisk sometimes into the
northwest so suddenly as to plate all the trees with crys
tal before it has swept the sky clear of its last cobweb
of cloud. Ambrose Philips, in a poetical epistle from
Copenhagen to the Earl of Dorset, describes this strange
confectionery of Nature, — for such, I am half ashamed
to say, it always seems to me, recalling the " glorified
sugar-candy " of Lamb's first night at the theatre. It
has an artificial air, altogether beneath the grand ai'tist
of the atmosphere, and besides does too much mischief
to the trees for a philodendrist to take unmixed pleasure
in it. Perhaps it deserves a poet like Philips, who
really loved Nature and yet liked her to be mighty fine,
as Pepys would say, with a heightening of powder and
rouge : —

" And yet but lately have I seen e'en here
The winter in a lovely dress appear.

A GOOD WORD FOB WINTER. 45

Ere yet the clouds let fall the treasured snow,

Or winds begun through hazy skies to blow,

At even ing a keen eastern breeze arose,

And the descending rain unsullied froze.

Soon as the silent shades of night withdrew,

The ruddy noon disclosed at once to view

The face of Nature in a rich disguise,

And brightened every object to my eyes;

For every shrub, and every blade of grass,

And every pointed thorn, seemed wrought in glass;

In pearls and rubies rich the hawthorns show,

And through the ice the crimson berries glow;

The thick-sprung reeds, which watery marshes yield,

Seem polished lances in a hostile field;

The stag in limpid currents with surprise

Sees crystal branches on his forehead rise;

The spreading oak, the beech, the towering pine,

Glazed over in the freezing ether shine;

The frighted birds the rattling branches shun,

Which wave and glitter in the distant sun,

When, if a sudden gust of wind arise,

The brittle forest into atoms flies,

The crackling wood beneath the tempest bends

And in a spangled shower the prospect ends."

It is not uninstructive to see how tolerable Ambrose is,
so long as he sticks manfully to what he really saw,
The moment he undertakes to improve on Nature h<^
sinks into the mere court poet, and we surrender him to
the jealousy of Pope without a sigh. His " rattling
branches " and " crackling forest " are good, as truth al
ways is after a fashion ; but what shall we say of that
dreadful stag which, there is little doubt, he valued
above all the rest, because it was purely his own 1

The damper snow tempts the amateur architect and
sculptor. His Pentelicus has been brought to his very
door, and if there are boys to be had (whose company
beats all other recipes for prolonging life) a middle-aged
Master of the Works will knock the years off his ac
count and make the family Bible seem a dealer in foolish
fables, by a few hours given heartily to this business.
First comes the Sisyphean toil of rolling the clammy

46 A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER.

balls till they refuse to budge farther. Then, if you
would play the statuary, they are piled one upon the
other to the proper height ; or if your aim be masonry,
whether of house or fort, they must be squared and
beaten solid with the shovel. The material is capable
of very pretty effects, and your young companions mean
while are unconsciously learning lessons in aesthetics.
From the feeling of satisfaction with which one squats
on the damp floor of his extemporized dwelling, I have
been led to think that the backwoodsman must get a
sweeter savor of self-reliance from the house his own
hands have built than Bramante or Sansovino could ever
give. Perhaps the fort is the best thing, for it calls out
more masculine qualities and adds the cheer of battle
with that dumb artillery which gives pain enough to
test pluck without risk of serious hurt. Already, as I
write, it is twenty-odd years ago. The balls fly thick
and fast. The uncle defends the waist-high ramparts
against a storm of nephews, his breast plastered with
decorations like another Radetsky's. How well I recall
the indomitable good-humor under fire of him who fell
in the front at Ball's Bluff, the silent pertinacity of the
gentle scholar who got his last hurt at Fair Oaks, the
ardor in the charge of the gallant gentleman who, with
the death-wound in his side, headed his brigade at Cedar
Creek ! How it all comes back, and they never come !
I cannot again be the Vauban of fortresses in the inno
cent snow, but I shall never see children moulding their
clumsy giants in it without longing to help. It was a
pretty fancy of the young Vermont sculptor to make his
first essay in this evanescent material. Was it a figure
of Youth, I wonder ] Would it not be well if all artists
could begin in stuff as perishable, to melt away when the
sun of prosperity began to shine, and leave nothing be
hind but the gain of practised hands ] It is pleasant

A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER. 47

to fancy that Shakespeare served his apprenticeship at
this trade, and owed to it that most pathetic of despair*
ing wishes, —

* 0, that I were a mockery-king of snow,
Standing before the sun of Bolingbroke,
To melt myself away in water-drops! "

I have spoken of the exquisite curves of snow sur
faces. Not less rare are the tints of which they are
capable, — the faint blue of the hollows, for the shadows
in snow are always blue, and the tender rose of higher
points, as you stand with your back to the setting sun
and look upward across the soft rondure of a hillside.
I have seen within a mile of home effects of color as
lovely as any iridescence of the Silberhorn after sun
down. Charles II., who never said a foolish thing, gave
the English climate the highest praise when he said that
it allowed you more hours out of doors than any other,
and I think our winter may fairly make the same boast
as compared with the rest of the year. Its still morn
ings, with the thermometer near zero, put a premium on
walking. There is more sentiment in turf, perhaps, and
it is more elastic to the foot ; its silence, too, is wellnigh
as congenial with meditation as that of fallen pine-tassel ;
but for exhilaration there is nothing like a stiff snow-
crust that creaks like a cricket at every step, and com
municates its own sparkle to the senses. The air you
drink isfrappe, all its grosser particles precipitated, and
the dregs of your blood with them. A purer current
mounts to the brain, courses sparkling through it, and
rinses it thoroughly of all dejected stuff. There is
nothing left to breed an exhalation of ill-humor or
despondency. They say that this rarefied atmosphere
has lessened the capacity of our lungs. Be it so. Quart-
pots are for muddier liquor than nectar. To me, the
city in winter is infinitely dreary, — the sharp street-

48 A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER.

corners have such a chill in them, and the snow so soon
loses its maidenhood to become a mere drab, — " doing
shameful things," as Steele says of politicians, " without
being ashamed." I pine for the Quaker purity of my
country landscape. I am speaking, of course, of those
winters that are not niggardly of snow, as ours too often
are, giving us a gravelly dust instead. Nothing can be
unsightlier than those piebald fields where the coarse
brown hide of Earth shows through the holes of her
ragged ermine. But even when there is abundance of
snow, I find as I grow older that there are not so many
good crusts as there used to be. When 1 first observed
this, I rashly set it to the account of that general
degeneracy in nature (keeping pace with the same
melancholy phenomenon in man) which forces itself up
on the attention and into the philosophy of middle life.
But happening once to be weighed, it occurred to me
that an arch which would bear fifty pounds could hardly
be blamed for giving way under more than three times
the weight. I have sometimes thought that if theologians
would remember this in their arguments, and consider
that the man may slump through, with no fault of his
own, where the boy would have skimmed the surface in
safety, it would be better for all parties. However,
when you do get a cmst that will bear, and know any
brooklet that runs down a hillside, be sure to go and
take a look at him, especially if your crust is due, as it
commonly is, to a cold snap following eagerly on a thaw.
You will never find him so cheerful. As he shrank
away after the last thaw, he built for himself the most
exquisite caverns of ice to run through, if not " measure
less to man " like those of Alph, the sacred river, yet
perhaps more pleasing for their narrowness than those
for their grandeur. What a cunning silversmith is
Frost ! The rarest workmanship of Delhi or Genoa

A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER. 49

copies him but clumsily, as if the fingers of all other
artists were thumbs. Fern work and lacework and fila
gree in endless variety, and under it all the water tinkles
like a distant guitar, or drums like a tambourine, or
gurgles like the Tokay of an anchorite's dream. Be
yond doubt there is a fairy procession marching along
those frail arcades and translucent corridors.

" Their oaten pipes blow wondrous shrill,
The hemlock small blow clear."

And hark ! is that the ringing of Titania's bridle, or the
bells of the wee, wee hawk that sits on Oberon's wrist ]
This wonder of Frost's handiwork may be had every
winter, but he can do better than this, though I have
seen it but once in my life. There had been a thaw
without wind or rain, making the air fat with gray vapor.
Towards sundown came that chill, the avant-courier of
a northwesterly gale. Then, though there was no per
ceptible current in the atmosphere, the fog began to
attach itself in frosty roots and filaments to the southern
side of every twig and grass-stem. The very posts had
poems traced upon them by this dumb minstrel.
Wherever the moist seeds found lodgement grew an
inch-deep moss fine as cobweb, a slender coral-reef,
argentine, delicate, as of some silent sea in the moon,
such as Agassiz dredges when he dreams. The frost,
too, can wield a delicate graver, and in fancy leaves
Piranesi far behind. He covers your window-pane with
Alpine etchings, as if in memory of that sanctuary where
he finds shelter even in midsummer.

Now look down from your hillside across the valley.
The trees are leafless, but this is the season to study
their anatomy, and did you ever notice before how much
color there is in the twigs of many of them ] And the
smoke from those chimneys is so blue it seems like a
feeder of the sky into which it flows. Winter refines it
3 D

50 A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER.

and gives it agreeable associations. In summer it sug
gests cookery or the drudgery of steam-engines, but now
your fancy (if it can forget for a moment the dreary
usurpation of stoves) traces it down to the fireside and
the brightened faces of children. Thoreau is the only
poet who has fitly sung it. The wood-cutter rises before
day and

" First in the dusky dawn he sends abroad
His early scout, his emissary, smoke,
The earliest, latest pilgrim from his roof,
To feel the frosty air ; . . . .
And, while he crouches still beside the hearth,
Nor musters courage to unbar the door,
It has gone down the glen with the light wind
And o'er the plain unfurled its venturous wreath.
Draped the tree-tops, loitered upon the hill,
And warmed the pinions of the early bird ;
And now, perchance, high in the crispy air,
Has caught sight of the day o'er the earth's edge,
And greets its master's eye at his low door
As some refulgent cloud in the upper sky."

Here is very bad verse and very good imagination. He
had been reading Wordsworth, or he would not have
made tree-tops an iambus. In the Moretum of Virgil (or,
if not his, better than most of his) is a pretty picture
of a peasant kindling his winter-morning fire. He risea
before dawn,

Sollicitaque manu tenebras explorat inertes
Vestisratque focum laesus quem denique sensit.
Parvulus exusto remanebat stipite fumus,
Et cinis obductas celabat lumina prunse.
Admovet his pronam submissa fronte lucernam,
Et producit acu stupas humore carentes,
Excitat et crebris Innguentem flatibus ijrnem ;
Tandem concepto tenebrse fulgore recedunt,
Oppositaque manu lumen defendit ab aura.

With cautious hand he gropes the sluggish dark,
Tracking the hearth which, scorched, he feels erelong.
In burnt-out logs a slender smoke remained,
And raked-np ashes hid the cinders' eyes;
Stooping, to these the lamp outstretched he nears,

A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER 5]

And, with a needle loosening the dry wick,
With frequent breath excites the languid flame.
Before the gathering glow the shades recede,
And his bent hand the new-caught li^ht defends.

Ovid heightens the picture by a single touch : — •

Ipse genu poito flammas exsuscitat aura.
Kneeling, his breath calls back to life the flames.

If you walk down now into the woods, you may find a
robin or a blue-bird among the red-cedars, or a nuthatch
scaling deviously the trunk of some hardwood tree with
an eye as keen as that of a French soldier foraging for
the pot-au-feu of his mess. Perhaps a blue-jay shrills
cah call in his corvine trebles, or a chickadee

" Shows feats of his gymnastic play,
Head downward, clinging to the spray."

But both him and the snow-bird I love better to see.
tiny fluffs of feathered life, as they scurry about in a
driving mist of snow, than in this serene air.

Coleridge has put into verse one of the most beautiful
phenomena of a winter walk : —

'• The woodman winding westward up the glen
At wintry dawn, where o'er the sheep-track's maze
The viewless snow-mist weaves a glistening haze,
Sees full before him, gliding without tread,
An image with a halo round its head."

But this aureole is not peculiar to winter. I have noticed
it often in a summer morning, when the grass was heavy
with dew, and even later in the day, when the dewless
grass was still fresh enough to have a gleam of its own.
For my own part I prefer a winter walk that takes in
the nightfall and the intense silence that erelong follows
it. The evening lamps looks yellower by contrast with
the snow, and give the windows that hearty look of
which our secretive fires have almost robbed them. Tha
stars seem

52 A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER.

To hang, like twinkling winter lamps,
Among the branches of the leafless trees,"

or, if you are on a hill-top (whence it is sweet to watch
the home-lights gleam out one by one), they look nearer
than in summer, and appear to take a conscious part in
the cold. Especially in one of those stand-stills of the
air that forebode a change of weather, the sky is dusted
with motes of fire of which the summer-watcher never
dreamed. Winter, too, is, on the whole, the triumphant
season of the moon, a moon devoid of sentiment, if you
choose, but with the refreshment of a purer intellectual
light, — the cooler orb of middle life. Who ever saw
anything to match that gleam, rather divined than seen,
which runs before her over the snow, a breath of light,
as she rises on the infinite silence of winter night 1 High
in the heavens, also she seems to bring out some intenser
property of cold with her chilly polish. The poets have
instinctively noted this. When Goody Blake imprecates
a curse of perpetual chill upon Harry Gill, she has

" The cold, cold moon above her head " ;
and Coleridge speaks of

" The silent icicles,
Quietly gleaming to the quiet moon.1"

As you walk homeward, — for it is time that we should
end our ramble, — you may perchance hear the most
impressive sound in nature, unless it be the fall of a tree
in the forest during the hush of summer noon. It is the
stifled shriek of the lake yonder as the frost throttles it.
Wordsworth has described it (too much, I fear, in the
style of Dr. Armstrong) : —

" And, interrupting oft that eager game,
From under Esthwaite's splitting fields of ice,
The pent-up air, struggling to free itself,
Gave out to meadow-grounds and hills a loud
Protracted yelling, like the noise of wolves
Howling in troops along the Bothnic main."

A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER. 53

Thoreau (unless the English lakes have a different dia
lect from ours) calls it admirably well a " whoop." But
it is a noise like none other, as if Demogorgon were
moaning inarticulately from under the earth. Let us
get within doors, lest we hear it again, for there is some
thing bodeful and uncanny in it.

ON A CERTAIN CONDESCENSION IN
FOREIGNERS.

TTT^ALKING one day toward the Village, as we used
V V to call it in the good old days when almost every
dweller in the town had been born in it, I was enjoying
that delicious sense of disenthralment from the actual
which the deepening twilight brings with it, giving
as it does a sort of obscure novelty to things familiar.
The coolness, the hush, broken only by the distant bleat
of some belated goat, querulous to be disburthened of her
milky load, the few faint stars, more guessed as yet than
seen, the sense that the coming dark would so soon fold
me in the secure privacy of its disguise, — all things
combined in a result as near absolute peace as can be
hoped for by a man who knows that there is a writ out
against him in the hands of the printer's devil. For the
moment, I was enjoying the blessed privilege of thinking
without being called on to stand and deliver what I
thought to the small public who are good enough to take
any interest therein. I love old ways, and the path I
was walking felt kindly to the feet it had known for al
most fifty years. How many fleeting impressions it had
shared with me ! How many times I had lingered to
study the shadows of the leaves mezzotinted upon the
turf that edged it by the moon, of the bare boughs etched
with a touch beyond Rembrandt by the same unconscioxis
artist on the smooth page of snow ! If I turned round,
through dusky tree-gaps came the first twinkle of even-

ON A CERTAIN CONDESCENSION IN FOREIGNERS. 55

ing lamps in the dear old homestead. On Corey's hill I
could see these tiny pharoses of love and home and sweet
domestic thoughts flash out one by one across the black
ening salt-meadow between. How much has not kerosene
added to the cheerfulness of our evening landscape ! A
pair of night-herons flapped heavily over me toward the
hidden river. The war was ended. I might walk town-
ward without that aching dread of bulletins that had
darkened the July sunshine and twice made the scarlet
leaves of October seem stained with blood. I remem
bered with a pang, half-proud, half-painful, how, so many
years ago, I had walked over the same path and felt
round my finger the soft pressure of a little hand that
was one day to harden with faithful grip of sabre. On
how many paths, leading to how many homes where proud
Memory does all she can to fill up the fireside gaps with
shining shapes, must not men be walking in just such
pensive mood as 1 1 Ah, young heroes, safe in immortal
youth as those of Homer, you at least carried your ideal
hence untarnished ! It is locked for you beyond moth or
rust in the treasure-chamber of Death.

Is not a country, I thought, that has had such as they
in it, that could give such as they a brave joy in dying
for it, worth something, then ] And as I felt more and
more the soothing magic of evening's cool palm upon my
temples, as my fancy came home from its revery, and my
senses, with reawakened curiosity, ran to the front win
dows again from the viewless closet of abstraction, and
felt a strange charm in finding the old tree and shabby
fence still there under the travesty of falling night, nay,
were conscious of an unsTispected newness in familiar
stars and the fading outlines of hills my earliest horizon,
I was conscious of an immortal soul, and could not but
rejoice in the unwaning goodliness of the world into which
I had been born without any merit of my own. I thought

56 ON A CERTAIN CONDESCENSION IN FOREIGNERS.

of dear Henry Vaughan's rainbow, " Still young and
fine ! " I remembered people who had to go over to the
Alps to learn what the divine silence of snow was, who
must run to Italy before they were conscious of the mir
acle wrought every day under their very noses by the
sunset, who must call upon the Berkshire hills to teach
them what a painter autumn was, while close at hand
the Fresh Pond meadows made all oriels cheap with
hues that showed as if a sunset-cloud had been wrecked
among their maples. One might be worse off than even
in America, I thought. There are some things so elastic
that even the heavy roller of democracy cannot flatten
them altogether down. The mind can weave itself
warmly in the cocoon of its own thoughts and dwell a
hermit anywhere. A country without traditions, with
out ennobling associations, a scramble of parvenus, with
a horrible consciousness of shoddy running through poli
tics, manners, art, literature, nay, religion itself? I con
fess, it did not seem so to me there in that illimitable
quiet, that serene self-possession of nature, where Collins
might have brooded his " Ode to Evening," or where
those verses on Solitude in Dodsley's Collection, that
Hawthorne liked so much, might have been composed.
Traditions 1 Granting that we had none, all that is worth
having in them is the common property of the soul, —
an estate in gavelkind for all the sons of Adam, — and,
moreover, if a man cannot stand on his two feet (the
prime quality of whoever has left any tradition behind
him), were it not better for him to be honest about it at
once, and go down on all fours 1 And for associations, if
one have not the wit to make them for himself out ofjiis
native earth, no ready-made ones of other men will avail
him much. Lexington is none the worse to me for not
being in Greece, nor Gettysburg that its name is not
Marathon. "Blessed old fields," I was just exclaiming

ON A CERTAIN CONDESCENSION IN FOREIGNERS. 57

to myself, like one of Mrs. Radcliff'e's heroes, " dear acres,
innocently secure from history, which these eyes first be
held, may you be also those to which they shall at last
slowly darken ! " when I was interrupted by a voice
which asked me in German whether I was the Herr Pro
fessor, Doctor, So-and-so 1 The " Doctor " was by brevet
i»r vaticination, to make the grade easier to my pocket.

One feels so intimately assured that he is made up,
in part, of shreds and leavings of the past, in part of
the interpolations of other people, that an honest man
would be slow in saying yes to such a question. But
" my name is So-and-so " is a safe answer, and I gave it-
While I had been romancing with myself, the street-
lamps had been lighted, and it was under one of these
detectives that have robbed the Old Road of its privilege
of sanctuary after nightfall that 1 was ambushed by my
foe. The inexorable villain had taken my description, it
appears, that I might have the less chance to escape
him. Dr. Holmes tells us that we change our substance,
not every seven years, as was once believed, but with
every breath we draw. Why had I not the wit to avail
myself of the subterfuge, and, like Peter, to renounce
my identity, especially, as in certain moods of mind, I
have often more than doubted of it myself? When a
man is, as it were, his own front-door, and is thus
knocked at, why may he not assume the right of that
sacred wood to make every house a castle, by denying
himself to all visitations'? I was truly not at home
when the question was put to me, but had to recall my
self from all out-of-doors, and to piece my self-conscious
ness hastily together as well as I could before I an
swered it.

I knew perfectly well what was coming. It is seldom
that debtors or good Samaritans waylay people under
gas-lamps in order to force money upon them, so far as I

58 ON A CERTAIN CONDESCENSION IN FOREIGNERS.

have seen or heard. I was also aware, from considerable
experience, that every foreigner is persuaded that, by
doing this country the favor of coming to it, he has laid
every native thereof under an obligation, pecuniary or
other, as the case may be, whose discharge he is entitled-
to on demand duly made in person or by letter. Too
much learning (of this kind) had made me mad in the
provincial sense of the word. I had begun life with the
theory of giving something to every beggar that came
along, though sure of never finding a native-born coun
tryman among them. In a small way, I was resolved
to emulate Hatem Tai's tent, with its three hundred
and sixty-five entrances, one for every day in the year,
— I know not whether he was astronomer enough to
add another for leap-years. The beggars were a kind
of German-silver aristocracy ; not real plate, to be sure,
but better than nothing. Where everybody was over
worked, they supplied the comfortable equipoise t of
absolute leisure, so aesthetically needful. Besides, I was
but too conscious of a vagrant fibre in myself, which too
often thrilled me in my solitary walks with the temp
tation to wander on into infinite space, and by a single
spasm of resolution to emancipate myself from the
drudgery of prosaic serfdom to respectability and the
regular course of things. This prompting has been at
times my familiar demon, and I could not bat feel a
kind of respectful sympathy for men who had dared
what I had only sketched out to myself as a splendid
possibility. For seven years I helped maintain one
heroic man on an imaginary journey to Portland, — as
fine an example as I have ever known of hopeless loyalty
to an ideal. I assisted another so long in a fruitless
attempt to reach Mecklenburg-Schwerin, that at last we
grinned in each other's faces when we met, like a couple
of augurs. He was possessed by this harmless mania

ON A CERTAIN CONDESCENSION IN FOREIGNERS. 59

as some are by the North Pole, and I shall never forget
his look of regretful compassion (as for one who was
sacrificing his higher life to the fleshpots of Egypt) when
I at last advised him somewhat strenuously to go to the

D , whither the road was so much travelled that he

oould not miss it. General Banks, in his noble zeal for
the honor of his country, would confer on the Secretary
of State the power of imprisoning, in case of war, all
these seekers of the unattainable, thus by a stroke of
the pen annihilating the single poetic element in our
humdrum life. Alas ! not everybody has the genius to
be a Bobbin-Boy, or doubtless all these also would have
chosen that more prosperous line of life ! But moralists,
sociologists, political economists, and taxes have slowly
convinced me that my beggarly sympathies were a sin
against society. Especially was the Buckle doctrine of
averages (so flattering to our free-will) persuasive with
me ; for as there must be in every year a certain num
ber who would bestow an alms on these abridged edi
tions of the Wandering Jew, the withdrawal of my quota
could make no possible difference, since some destined
proxy must always step forward to fill my gap. Just
so many misdirected letters every year and no more !
Would it were as easy to reckon up the number of men
on whose backs fate has written the wrong address, so
that they arrive by mistake in Congress and other places
where they do not belong! May not these wanderers
of whom I speak have been sent into the world without
any proper address at alH Where is our Dead-Letter
Office for such ? And if wiser social arrangements
should furnish us with something of the sort, fancy
(horrible thought !) how many a workingman's friend
(a kind of industry in which the labor is light and the
wages heavy) would be sent thither because not called
for in the office where he at present lies !

60 ON A CERTAIN CONDESCENSION IN FOREIGNERS.

But I am leaving my new acquaintance too long under
the lamp-post. The same Gano which had betrayed me
to him revealed to me a well-set young man of about
half my own age, as well dressed, so far as I could see,
as I was, and with every natural qualification for getting
his own livelihood as good, if not better, than my own.
He had been reduced to the painful necessity of calling
upon me by a series of crosses beginning with the Baden
Revolution (for which, I own, he seemed rather young,
— but perhaps he referred to a kind of revolution prac
tised every season at Baden-Baden), continued by re
peated failures in business, for amounts which must
convince me of his entire respectability, and ending with
our Civil War. During the latter, he had served with
distinction as a soldier, taking a main part in every im
portant battle, with a rapid list of which he favored me
and no doubt would have admitted that, impartial as
Jonathan Wild's great ancestor, he had been on both
sides, had I baited him with a few hints of conservative
opinions on a subject so distressing to a gentleman wish
ing to profit by one's sympathy and unhappily doubtful
as to which way it might lean. For all these reasons,
and, as he seemed to imply, for his merit in consenting
to be born in Germany, he considered himself my natural
creditor to the extent of five dollars, which he would
handsomely consent to accept in greenbacks, though he
preferred specie. The offer was certainly a generous
one, and the claim presented with an assurance that
carried conviction. But, unhappily, I had been led to
remark a curious natural phenomenon. If I was ever
weak enough to give anything to a petitioner of what
ever nationality, it always rained decayed compatriots
of his for a month after. Post hoc ergo propler hoc may
not be always safe logic, but here I seemed to perceive a
natural connection of cause and effect. Now, a few days

ON A CERTAIN CONDESCENSION IN FOREIGNERS. 61

before I had been so tickled with a paper (professedly
written by a benevolent American clergyman) certifying
that the bearer, a hard-working German, had long
" sofered with rheumatic paints in his limps," that, after
copying the passage into my note-book, I thought it but
fair to pay a trifling honorarium to the author. I had
pulled the string of the shower-bath ! It had been run
ning shipwrecked sailors for some time, but forthwith it
began to pour Teutons, redolent of lager-bier. I could
not help associating the apparition of my new friend
with this series of otherwise unaccountable phenomena.
I accordingly made up my mind to deny the debt, and
modestly did so, pleading a native bias towards impecu-
niosity to the full as strong as his own. He took a high
tone with me at once, such as an honest man would
naturally take with a confessed repudiator. He even
brought down his proud stomach so far as to join him
self to me for the rest of my townward walk, that he
might give me his views of the American people, and
thus inclusively of myself.

I know not whether it is because I am pigeon-livered
and lack gall, or whether it is from an overmastering
sense of drollery, but I am apt to submit to such bast
ings with a patience which afterwards surprises me,
being not without my share of warmth in the blood.
Perhaps it is because I so often meet with young per
sons who know vastly more than I do, and especially with
so many foreigners whose knowledge of this country is
superior to my own. However it may be, I listened for
some time with tolerable composure as my self-appointed
lecturer gave me in detail his opinions of my country
and its people. America, he informed me, was without
arts, science, literature, culture, or any native hope of
supplying them. We were a people wholly given to
money-getting, and who, having got it, knew no other

62 ON A CERTAIN CONDESCENSION IN FOREIGNERS.

use for it than to hold it fast. I am fain to confess that
I felt a sensible itching of the biceps, and that my fingers
closed with such a grip as he had just informed me was
one of the effects of our unhappy climate. But happen
ing just then to be where I could avoid temptation by
dodging down a by-street, I hastily left him to finish his
diatribe to the lamp-post, which could stand it better
than I. That young man will never know how near
he came to being assaulted by a respectable gentleman
of middle age, at the corner of Church Street. I have
never felt quite satisfied that I did all my duty by him
in not knocking him down. But perhaps he might have
knocked me down, and then ]

The capacity of indignation makes an essential part
of the outfit of every honest man, but I am inclined to
doubt whether he is a wise one who allows himself to act
upon its first hints. It should be rather, I suspect, a
latent heat in the blood, which makes itself felt in
character, a steady reserve for the brain, warming the
ovum of thought to life, rather than cooking it by a too
hasty enthusiasm in reaching the boiling-point. As my
pulse gradually fell back to its normal beat, I reflected
that I had been uncomfortably near making a fool of
myself, — a handy salve of euphuism for our vanity,
though it does not always make a just allowance to
Nature for her share in the business. What possible
claim had my Teutonic friend to rob me of my compo
sure'? I am not, I think, specially thin-skinned as to
other people's opinions of myself, having, as I conceive,
later and fuller intelligence on that point than anybody
else can give me. Life is continually weighing us in
very sensitive scales, and telling every one of us pre
cisely what his real weight is to the last grain of dust.
Whoever at fifty does not rate himself quite as low as
most of his acquaintance would be likely to put him,

ON A CERTAIN CONDESCENSION IN FOREIGNERS. 63

must be either a fool or a great man, and I humbly dis
claim being either. But if I was not smarting in per
son from any scattering shot of my late companion's
commination, why should I grow hot at any implication
of my country therein 1 Surely her shoulders are broad
enough, if yours or mine are not, to bear up under a
considerable avalanche of this kind. It is the bit of
truth in every slander, the hint of likeness in every
caricature, that makes us smart. " Art thou there, old
Truepenny1?" How did your blade know its way so
well to that one loose rivet in our armor 1 I wondered
whether Americans were over-sensitive in this respect,
whether they were more touchy than other folks. On
the whole, I thought we were not. Plutarch, who at least
had studied philosophy, if he had not mastered it, could
not stomach something Herodotus had said of Boeotia,
and devoted an essay to showing up the delightful old
traveller's malice and ill-breeding. French editors leave
out of Montaigne's " Travels " some remarks of his about
France, for reasons best known to themselves. Pachy
dermatous Deutschland, covered with trophies from
every field of letters, still winces under that question
which Pere Bouhours put two centuries ago, Si un Alle-
mand pent etre bel-esprit ? John Bull grew apoplectic
with angry amazement at the audacious persiflage of
Piickler-Muskau. To be sure, he was a prince, — but
that was not all of it, for a chance phrase of gentle
Hawthorne sent a spasm through all the journals of
England. Then this tenderness is not peculiar to its ?
Console yourself, dear man and brother, whatever you
may be sure of, be sure at least of this, that you are
dreadfully like other people. Human nature has a
much greater genius for sameness than for originality,
or the world would be at a sad pass shortly. The sur
prising thing is that men have such a taste for this

64 ON A CERTAIN CONDESCENSION IN FOREIGNERS.

somewhat musty flavor, that an Englishman, for exam
ple, should feel himself defrauded, nay, even outraged,
when he comes over here and finds a people speaking
what he admits to be something like English, and yet
so very different from (or, as he would say, to) those
he left at home. Nothing, I am sure, equals my thank
fulness when I meet an Englishman who is not like
every other, or, I may add, an American of the same
odd turn.

Certainly it is no shame to a man that he should be
as nice about his country as about his sweetheart, and
who ever heard even the friendliest appreciation of that
unexpressive she that did not seem to fall infinitely
short ? Yet it would hardly be wise to hold every one
an enemy who could not see her with our own enchanted
eyes. It seems to be the common opinion of foreigners
that Americans are too tender upon this point. Per
haps we are ; and if so, there must be a reason for it.
Have we had fair play 1 Could the eyes of what is
called Good Society (though it is so seldom true either to
the adjective or noun) look upon a nation of democrats
with any chance of receiving an undistorted image 1
Were not those, moreover, who found in the old order
of things an earthly paradise, paying them quarterly
dividends for the wisdom of their ancestors, with the
punctuality of the seasons, unconsciously bribed to mis
understand if not to misrepresent us 1 Whether at war
or at peace, there we were, a standing menace to all
earthly paradises of that kind, fatal underminers of the
very credit on which the dividends were based, all the
more hateful and terrible that our destructive agency was
so insidious, working invisible in the elements, as it
seemed, active while they slept, and coming upon them in
the darkness like an armed man. Could Laius have the
proper feelings of a father towards CEdipus, announced

ON A CERTAIN CONDESCENSION IN FOREIGNERS. 65

as his destined destroyer by infallible oracles, and felt to
be such by every conscious fibre of his soul 1 For more
than a century the Dutch were the laughing-stock of
polite Europe. They were butter-firkins, swillers of beer
and schnaps, and their vrouws from whom Holbein painted
the ail-but loveliest of Madonnas, Rembrandt the grace
ful girl who sits immortal on his knee in Dresden, and
Rubens his abounding goddesses, were the synonymes
of clumsy vulgarity. Even so late as Irving the ships
of the greatest navigators in the world were represented
as sailing equally well stern-foremost. That the aristo
cratic Venetians should have

" Riveted with gigantic piles
Thorough the centre their new-catched miles,"

was heroic. But the far more marvellous achievement
of the Dutch in the same kind was ludicrous even to re
publican Marvell. Meanwhile, during that very century
of scorn, they were the best artists, sailors, merchants,
bankers, printers, scholars, jurisconsults, and statesmen
in Europe, and the genius of Motley has revealed them
to us, earning a right to themselves by the most heroic
struggle in human annals. But, alas ! they were not
merely simple burghers who had fairly made themselves
High Mightinesses, and could treat on equal terms with
anointed kings, but their commonwealth carried in its
bosom the germs of democracy. They even unmuzzled,
at least after dark, that dreadful mastiff, the Press,
whose scent is, or otight to be, so keen for wolves in
sheep's clothing and for certain other animals in lions'
skins. They made fun of Sacred Majesty, and, what was
worse, managed uncommonly well without it. In an
age when periwigs made so large a part of the natural
dignity of man, people with such a turn of mind were
dangerous. How could they seem other than vulgar and
hateful ]

s

66 ON A CERTAIN CONDESCENSION IN FOREIGNERS.

In the natural course of things we succeeded to this
unenviable position of general butt. The Dutch had
thriven under it pretty well, and there was hope that we
could at least contrive to worry along. And we certainly
did in a very redoubtable fashion. Perhaps we deserved
some of the sarcasm more than our Dutch predecessors
in office. We had nothing to boast of in arts or letters,,
and were given to bragging overmuch of our merely ma
terial prosperity, due quite as much to the virtue of our
continent as to our own. There was some truth in Car-
lyle's sneer, after all. Till we had succeeded in some
higher way than this, we had only the success of physical
growth. Our greatness, like that of enormous Russia,
was greatness on the map, — barbarian mass only ; but
had we gone down, like that other Atlantis, in some vast
cataclysm, we should have covered but a pin's point on
the chart of memory, compared with those ideal spaces
occupied by tiny Attica and cramped England. At the
same time, our critics somewhat too easily forgot that
material must make ready the foundation for ideal tri
umphs, that the arts have no chance in poor countries.
But it must be allowed that democracy stood for a great
deal in our shortcoming. The Edinburgh Review never
would have thought of asking, " Who reads a Russian
book ] " and England was satisfied with iron from Sweden
without being impertinently inquisitive after her painters
and statuaries. Was it that they expected too much
from the mere miracle of Freedom 1 Is it not the highest
art of a Republic to make men of flesh and blood, and
not the marble ideals of such 1 It may be fairly doubted
whether we have produced this higher type of man yet.
Perhaps it is the collective, not the individual, humanity
that is to have a chance of nobler development among
us. We shall see. We have a vast amount of imported
ignorance, and, still worse, of native ready-made knowl-

ON A CERTAIN CONDESCENSION IN FOREIGNERS. 67

edge, to digest before even the preliminaries of such a
consummation can be arranged. We have got to learn
that statesmanship is the most complicated of all arts,
and to come back to the apprenticeship-system too hastily
abandoned. At present, we trust a man with making
constitutions on less proof of competence than we should
demand before we gave him our shoe to patch. We have
nearly reached the limit of the reaction from the old
notion, which paid too much regard to birth and station
as qualifications for office, and have touched the extreme
point in the opposite direction, putting the highest of
human functions up at auction to be bid for by any
creature capable of going upright on two legs. In some
places, we have arrived at a point at which civil society
is no longer possible, and already another reaction has
begun, not backwards to the old system, but towards fit.
ness either from natural aptitude or special training.
But will it always be safe to let evils work their own
cure by becoming unendurable1? Every one of them
leaves its taint in the constitution of the body-politic,
each in itself, perhaps, trifling, yet all together powerful
for evil.

But whatever we might do or leave undone, we were
not genteel, and it was uncomfortable to be continually
reminded that, though we should boast that we were the
Great West till we were black in the face, it did not bring
us an inch nearer to the world's West-End. That sacred
enclosure of respectability was tabooed to us. The Holy
Alliance did not inscribe us on its visiting-list. The Old
World of wigs and orders and liveries would shop with
us, but we must ring at the area-bell, and not venture to
awaken the more august clamors of the knocker. Our
manners, it must be granted, had none of those graces
that stamp the caste of Vere de Vere, in whatever mu
seum of British antiquities they may be hidden. In
short, we were vulgar.

68 ON A CERTAIN CONDESCENSION IN FOREIGNERS.

This was one of those horribly vague accusations, tha
victim of which has no defence. An umbrella is of no
avail against a Scotch mist. It envelops you, it pene
trates at every pore, it wets you through without seem
ing to wet you at all. Vulgarity is an eighth deadly sin,
added to the list in these latter days, and worse than all
the others put together, since it perils your salvation in
this world, — far the more important of the two in the
minds of most men. It profits nothing to draw nice dis
tinctions between essential and conventional, for the con
vention in this case is the essence, and you may break
every command of the decalogue with perfect good-breed
ing, nay, if you are adroit, without losing caste. We,
indeed, had it not to lose, for we had never gained it.
"How am I vulgar1?" asks the culprit, shudderingly.
" Because thou art not like unto Us," answers Lucifer,
Son of the Morning, and there is no more to be said.
The god of this world may be a fallen angel, but he has
us there ! We were as clean, — so far as my observation
goes, I think we were cleaner, morally and physically,
than the English, and therefore, of course, than every
body else. But we did not pronounce the diphthong ou
as they did, and we said eether and not eyther, following
therein the fashion of our ancestors, who imhappily could
bring over no English better than Shakespeare's ; and we
did not stammer as they had learned to do from the
courtiers, who in this way nattered the Hanoverian king,
a foreigner among the people he had come to reign over.
Worse than all, we might have the noblest ideas and
the finest sentiments in the world, but we vented them
through that organ by which men are led rather than
leaders, though some physiologists would persuade us
that Nature furnishes her captains with a fine handle to
their faces that Opportunity may get a good purchase ou
them for dragging them to the front.

ON A CERTAIN CONDESCENSION IN FOREIGNERS. 69

This state of things was so painful that excellent
people were not wanting who gave their whole genius to
reproducing here the original Bull, whether by gaiters,
the cut of their whiskers, by a factitious brutality in their
tone, or by an accent that was forever tripping and fail
ing flat over the tangled roots of our common tongue.
Martyrs to a false ideal, it never occurred to them that
nothing is more hateful to gods and men than a second-
rate Englishman, and for the very reason that this planet
never produced a more splendid creature than the first-
rate one, witness Shakespeare and the Indian Mutiny.
Witness that truly sublime self-abnegation of those pris
oners lately among the bandits of Greece, where average
men gave an example of quiet fortitude for which all
the stoicism of antiquity can show no match. If we
could contrive to be not too unobtrusively our simple
selves, we should be the most delightful of human be
ings, and the most original ; whereas, when the plating
of Anglicism rubs off, as it always will in points that
come to much wear, we are liable to very unpleasing
conjectures about the quality of the metal underneath.
Perhaps one reason why the average Briton spreads him
self here with such an easy air of superiority may be
owing to the fact that he meets with so many bad imi
tations as to conclude himself the only real thing in a
wilderness of shams. He fancies himself moving through
an endless Bloomsbury, where his mere apparition con
fers honor as an avatar of the court-end of the universe.
Not a Bull of them all but is persuaded he bears Europa
upon his back. This is the sort of fellow whose patron
age is so divertingly insufferable. Thank Heaven he it)
not the only specimen of cater-cousinship from the dear
old Mother Island that is shown to us ! Among genuine
things, 1 know nothing more genuine than the better
men whose limbs were made hi England. So manly-

70 ON A CERTAIN CONDESCENSION IN FOREIGNERS.

tender, so brave, so true, so warranted to wear, they
make us proud to feel that blood is thicker than water.

But it is not merely the Englishman ; every European
candidly admits in himself some right of primogeniture
in respect to us, and pats this shaggy continent on the
back with a lively sense of generous unbending. The
German who plays the bass-viol has a well-founded con
tempt, which he is not always nice in concealing, for a
country so few of whose children ever take that noble
instrument between their knees. His cousin, the Ph.
D. from Gottingen, cannot help despising a people who
do not grow loud and red over Aryans and Turanians,
and are indifferent about their descent from either. The
Frenchman feels an easy mastery in speaking his mother
tongue, and attributes it to some native superiority of
parts that lifts him high above us barbarians of the
West. The Italian prima donna sweeps a courtesy of
careless pity to the over-facile pit which unsexes her
with the bravo ! innocently meant to show a familiarity
with foreign usage. But all without exception make no
secret of regarding us as the goose bound to deliver
them a golden egg in return for their cackle. Such
men as Agassiz, Guyot, and Goldwin Smith come with
gifts in their hands ; but since it is commonly European
failures who bring hither their remarkable gifts and
acquirements, this view of the case is sometimes just
the least bit in the world provoking. To think what a
delicious seclusion of contempt we enjoyed till Califor
nia and our own ostentatious parvenus, flinging gold
away in Europe that might have endowed libraries at
home, gave us the ill repute of riches ! What a shabby
downfall from the Arcadia which the French officers of
our Revolutionary War fancied they saw here through
Rousseau-tinted spectacles ! Something of Arcadia there
really was, something of the Old Age ; and that divine

ON A CERTAIN CONDESCENSION IN FOREIGNERS. 71

i

provincialism were cheaply repurchased could we have
it back again in exchange for the tawdry upholstery
that has taken its place.

For some reason or other, the European has rarely
been able to see America except in caricature. Would
the first Review of the world have printed the niaiseries
of Mr. Maurice Sand as a picture of society in any civil
ized country ? Mr. Sand, to be sure, has inherited
nothing of his famous mother's literary outfit, except
the pseudonyme. But since the conductors of the
Revue could not have published his story because it was
clever, they must have thought it valuable for its truth.
As true as the last-century Englishman's picture of
Jean Crapaud ! We do not ask to be sprinkled with
rosewater, but may perhaps fairly protest against being
drenched with the rinsings of an unclean imagination.
The next time the Revue allows such ill-bred persons to
throw their slops out of its first-floor windows, let it
honestly preface the discharge with a gare de Feau ! that
we may run from under in season. And Mr. Duvergier
d'Hauranne, who knows how to be entertaining ! I
know le Franqais est plutot indiscret que conftant, and the
pen slides too easily when indiscretions will fetch so
much a page ; but should we not have been tant-soit-peu
more cautious had we been writing about people on the
other side of the Channel 1 But then it is a fact in the
natural history of the American long familiar to Euro
peans, that he abhors privacy, knows not the meaning
of reserve, lives in hotels because of their greater pub
licity, and is never so pleased as when his domestic
affairs (if he may be said to have any) are paraded in
the newspapers. Barnum, it is well known, represents
perfectly the average national sentiment in this respect.
However it be, we are not treated like other people, or
perhaps I should say like people who are ever likely to
be met with in society.

72 ON A. CERTAIN CONDESCENSION IN FOREIGNERS.

Is it in the climate ? Either I have a false notion of
European manners, or else the atmosphere affects them
strangely when exported hither. Perhaps they suffer
from the sea-voyage like some of the more delicate
wines. During our Civil War an English gentleman of
the highest description was kind enough to call upon
me, mainly, as it seemed, to inform me how entirely
he sympathized with the Confederates, and how sure he
felt that we could never subdue them, — " they were
the gentlemen of the country, you know." Another, the
first greetings hardly over, asked me hew I accounted
for the universal meagreness of my countrymen. To a
thinner man than I, or from a stouter man than he, the
question might have been offensive. The Marquis of
Hartington * wore a secession badge at a public ball in
New York. In a civilized country he might have been
roughly handled ; but here, where the bienseances are
not so well understood, of course nobody minded it. A
French traveller told me he had been a good deal in the
British colonies, and had been astonished to see how
soon the people became Americanized. He added, with
delightful bonhomie, and as if he were sure it would
charm me, that " they even began to talk through their
noses, just like you ! " I was naturally ravished with
this testimony to the assimilating power of democracy,
and could only reply that I hoped they would never
adopt our democratic patent-method of seeming to settle
one's honest debts, for they would find it paying through
the nose in the long-run. I am a man of the New

* One of Mr. Lincoln's neatest strokes of humor was his treatment
of this gentleman "when a laudable curiosity induced him to be pre
sented to the President of the Broken Bubble. Mr. Lincoln persisted
in calling him Mr. Partington. Surely the refinement of good-breed
ing could go no further. Giving the young man his real name (already
notorious in the newspapers) would have made his visit an insult
Had Henri IV. done this, it would have been famous.

ON A CERTAIN CONDESCENSION IN FOREIGNERS. 73

World, aud do not know precisely the present fashion of
May-Fair, but I have a kind of feeling that if an Ameri
can (mutato nomine, de te is always frightfully possible)
were to do this kind of thing under a European roof, it
would induce some disagreeable reflections as to the
ethical results of democracy. I read the other day in
print the remark of a British tourist who had eaten
large quantities of our salt, such as it is (I grant it has
not the European savor), that the Americans were
hospitable, no doubt, but that it was partly because they
longed for foreign visitors to relieve the tedium of their
dead-level existence, and partly from ostentation. What
shall we do? Shall we close our doors'? Not I, for one,
if I should so have forfeited the friendship of L. S.,
most lovable of men. He somehow seems to find us
human, at least, and so did Clough, whose poetry will
one of these days, perhaps, be found to have been the
best utterance in verse of this generation. And T. H.
the mere grasp of whose manly hand carries with it the
pledge of frankness and friendship, of *an abiding sim
plicity of nature as affecting as it is rare !

The fine old Tory aversion of former times was not
hard to bear. There was something even refreshing in
it, as in a northeaster to a hardy temperament. When
a British parson, travelling in Newfoundland while the
slash of our separation was still raw, after prophesying a
glorious future for an island that continued to dry its
fish under the segis of Saint George, glances disdainfully
over his spectacles in parting at tb~ U. S. A., and fore
bodes for them a " speedy relapse into barbarism," now
that they have madly cut themselves off from the
humanizing influences of Britain, I smile with barbarian
self-conceit. But this kind of thing became by degrees
an unpleasant anachronism. For meanwhile the young
giant was growing, was beginning indeed to feel tight in
4

74 ON A CERTAIN CONDESCENSION IN FOREIGNERS.

his clothes, was obliged to let in a gore here and there
in Texas, in California, in New Mexico, in Alaska, and
had the scissors and needle and thread ready for Can
ada when the time came. His shadow loomed like a
Brocken-spectre over against Europe, — the shadow of
what they were coming to, that was the unpleasant part
of it. Even in such misty image as they had of him, it
was painfully evident that his clothes were not of any
cut hitherto fashionable, nor conceivable by a Bond
Street tailor, — and this in an age, too, when everything
depends upon clothes, when, if we do not keep up ap
pearances, the seeming-solid frame of this universe, nay,
your very God, would slump into himself, like a mockery
king of snow, being nothing, after all, but a prevailing
mode. From this moment the young giant assumed the
respectable aspect of a phenomenon, to be got rid of if
possible, but at any rate as legitimate a subject of human
study as the glacial period or the silurian what-d'ye-call-
ems. If the man of the primeval drift-heaps is so ab
sorbingly interesting, why not the man of the drift that
is just beginning, of the drift into whose irresistible cur
rent we are just being sucked whether we will or no 1 If
I were in their place, I confess I should not be fright
ened. Man has survived so much, and contrived to be
comfortable on this planet after surviving so much ! I
am something of a protestant in matters of government
also, and am willing to get rid of vestments and cere
monies and to come down to bare benches, if only faith
in God take the pto^e of a general agreement to profess
confidence in ritual and sham. Every mortal man of us
holds stock in the only public debt that is absolutely
sure of payment, and that is the debt of the Maker of
this Universe to the Universe he has made. I have no
notion of selling out my stock in a panic.

It was something to have advanced even to the dignity

ON A CERTAIN CONDESCENSION IN FOREIGNERS. 75

of a phenomenon, and yet I do not know that the rela
tion of the individual American to the individual Euro
pean was bettered by it ; and that, after all, must adjust
itself comfortably before there can be a right under
standing between the two. We had been a desert, we
became a museum. People came hither for scientific
and not social ends. The very cockney could not com
plete his education without taking a vacant stare at iis
in passing. But the sociologists (I think they call them
selves so) were the hardest to bear. There was no es
cape. I have even known a professor of this fearful
science to come disguised in petticoats. We were cross-
examined as a chemist cross-examines a new substance.
Human 1 yes, all the elements are present, though ab
normally combined. Civilized ? Hm ! that needs a
stricter assay. No entomologist could take a more
friendly interest in a strange bug. After a few such ex
periences, I, for one, have felt as if I were merely one of
those horrid things preserved in spirits (and very bad
spirits, too) in a cabinet. I was not the fellow-being of
these explorers : I was a curiosity ; I was a specimen.
Hath not an American organs, dimensions, senses, affec
tions, passions even as a European hath ? If you prick
us, do we not bleed 1 If you tickle us, do we not laugh ?
I will not keep on with Shylock to his next question but
one.

Till after our Civil War it never seemed to enter the
head of any foreigner, especially of any Englishman, that
an American had what could be called a country, except
as a place to eat, sleep, and trade in. Then it seemed to
strike them suddenly. "By Jove, you know, fellahs
don't fight like that for a shop-till ! " No, I rather think
not. To Americans America is something more than a
promise and an expectation. It has a past and tradi
tions of its own. A descent from men who sacrificed

76 ON A CERTAIN CONDESCENSION IN FOREIGNERS.

everything and came hither, not to better their fortunes,
but to plant their idea in virgin soil, should be a good
pedigree. There was never colony save this that went
forth, not to seek gold, but God. Is it not as well to
have sprung from such as these as from some burly
beggar who came over with Wilhelmus Conquestor, un
less, indeed, a line grow better as it runs farther away
from stalwart ancestors ] And for history, it is dry
enough, no doubt, in the books, but, for all that, is of a
kind that tells in the blood. I have admitted that Car-
lyle's sneer had a show of truth in it. But what does
he himself, like a true Scot, admire in the Hohenzol-
lerns1? First of all, that they were canny, a thrifty,
forehanded race. Next, that they made a good fight
from generation to generation with the chaos around
them. That is precisely the battle which the English
race on this continent has been carrying doughtily on for
two centuries and a half. Doughtily and silently, for
you cannot hear in Europe " that crash, the death-song
of the perfect tree," that has been going on here from
sturdy father to sturdy son, and making this continent
habitable for the weaker Old World breed that has
swarmed to it during the last half-century. If ever men
did a good stroke of work on this planet, it was the fore
fathers of those whom you are wondering whether it
would not be prudent to acknowledge as far-off cousins.
Alas, man of genius, to whom we owe so much, could
you see nothing more than the burning of a foul chim
ney in that clash of Michael and Satan which flamed up
under your very eyes 1

Before our war we were to Europe but a huge mob of
adventurers and shop-keepers. Leigh Hunt expressed it
well enough when he said that he could never think of
America without seeing a gigantic counter stretched all
along the seaboard. Feudalism had by degrees made

ON A CERTAIN CONDESCENSION IN FOREIGNERS. 77

commerce, the great civilizer, contemptible. But a
tradesman with sword on thigh and very prompt of
stroke was not only redoubtable, he had become respect-
able also. Few people, I suspect, alluded twice to a
needle in Sir John Hawkwood's presence, after that
doughty fighter had exchanged it for a more dangerous
tool of the same metal. Democracy had been hitherto
only a ludicrous effort to reverse the laws of nature by
thrusting Cleon into the place of Pericles. But a democ
racy that could fight for an abstraction, whose members
held life and goods cheap compared with that larger life
which we call country, was not merely unheard-of, but
portentous. It was the nightmare of the Old World
taking upon itself flesh and blood, turning out to be
substance and not dream. Since the Norman crusader
clanged down upon the throne of the porphyro-geniti,
carefully-draped appearances had never received such a
shock, had never been so rudely called on to produce
their titles to the empire of the world. Authority has
had its periods not unlike those of geology, and at last
comes Man claiming kingship in right of his mere man
hood. The world of the Saurians might be in some
respects more picturesque, but the march of events is
inexorable, and it is bygone.

The young giant had certainly got out of long-clothes.
He had become the enfant terrible of the human house
hold. It was not and will not be easy for the world
(especially for our British cousins) to look upon us as
grown up. The youngest of nations, its people must also
be young and to be treated accordingly, was the syl
logism, — as if libraries did not make all nations equally
old in all those respects, at least, where age is an ad
vantage and not a defect. Youth, no doubt, has its good
qualities, as people feel who are losing it, but boyishness
is another thing. We had been somewhat boyish as a

78 ON A CERTAIN CONDESCENSION IN FOREIGNERS.

nation, a little loud, a little pushing, a little braggart.
But might it not partly have been because we felt that
we had certain claims to respect that were not admitted 1
The war which established our position as a vigorous
nationality has also sobered us. A nation, like a man,
cannot look death in the eye for four years, without some
strange reflections, without arriving at some clearer con
sciousness of the stuff it is made of, without some great
moral change. Such a change, or the beginning of it,
no observant person can fail to see here. Our thought
and our politics, our bearing as a people, are assuming a
manlier tone. We have been compelled to see what was
weak in democracy as well as what was strong. We
have begun obscurely to recognize that things do not go
of themselves, and that popular government is not in
itself a panacea, is no better than any other form except
as the virtue and wisdom of the people make it so, and
that when men undertake to do their own kingship, they
enter upon the dangers and responsibilities as well as
the privileges of the function. Above all, it looks as if
we were on the way to be persuaded that no government
can be carried on by declamation. It is noticeable also
that facility of communication has made the best Eng
lish and French thought far more directly operative
here than ever before. Without being Europeanized,
our discussion of important questions in statesmanship,
political economy, in aesthetics, is taking a broader scope
and a higher tone. It had certainly been provincial,
one might almost say local, to a very unpleasant extent.
Perhaps our experience in soldiership has taught us to
value training more than we have been popularly wont.
We may possibly come to the conclusion, one of these
days, that self-made men may not be always equally
skilful in the manufacture of wisdom, may not be
divinely commissioned to fabricate the higher qualities
of opinion on all possible topics of human interest.

ON \ CERTAIN CONDESCENSION IN FOREIGNERS. 79

So long as we continue to be the most common-
schooled and the least cultivated people in the world, I
suppose we must consent to endure this condescending
manner of foreigners toward us. The more friendly
they mean to be the more ludicrously prominent it be
comes. They can never appreciate the immense amount
of silent work that has been done here, making this
continent slowly fit for the abode of man, and which
will demonstrate itself, let us hope, in the character of
the people. Outsiders can only be expected to judge a
nation by the amount it has contributed to the civiliza
tion of the world • the amount, that is, that can be seen
and handled. A great place in history can only be
achieved by competitive examinations, nay, by a long
course of them. How much new thought have we con
tributed to the common stock 1 Till that question can
be triumphantly answered, or needs no answer, we must
continue to be simply interesting as an experiment, to
be studied as a problem, and not respected as an at
tained result or an accomplished solution. Perhaps, as
I have hinted, their patronizing manner toward us is the
fair result of their failing to see here anything more than
a poor imitation, a plaster-cast of Europe. And are
they not partly right 1 If the tone of the uncultivated
American has too often the arrogance of the barbarian,
is not that of the cultivated as often vulgarly apologetic 1
In the America they meet with is there the simplicity,
the manliness, the absence of sham, the sincere human
nature, the sensitiveness to duty and implied obligation,
that in any way distinguishes us from what our orators
caU "the effete civilization of the Old World"? Is
there a politician among us daring enough (except a
Dana here and there) to risk his future on the chance
of our keeping our word with the exactness of super
stitious communities like England 1 Is it certain that

80 ON A CERTAIN CONDESCENSION IN FOREIGNERS,

we shall be ashamed of a bankruptcy of honor, if we
can only keep the letter of our bond 1 I hope we shall
be able to answer all these questions with a frank yes.
At any rate, we would advise our visitors that we are
not merely curious creatures, but belong to the family
of man, and that, as individuals, we are not to be al
ways subjected to the competitive examination above
mentioned, even if we acknowledged their competence
as an examining boai'd. Above all, we beg them to re
member that America is not to us, as to them, a mere
object of external interest to be discussed and analyzed,
but in us, part of our very marrow. Let them not sup
pose that we conceive of ourselves as exiles from the
graces and amenities of an older date than we, though
very much at home in a state of things not yet all it
might be or should be, but which we mean to make so,
and which we find both wholesome and pleasant for men
(though perhaps not for dilettanti) to live in. " The full
tide of human existence " may be felt here as keenly as
Johnson felt it at Charing Cross, and in a larger sense.
I know one person who is singular enough to think
Cambridge the very best spot on the habitable globe.
" Doubtless God could have made a better, but doubtless
he never did."

It will take England a great while to get over her airs
of patronage toward us, or even passably to conceal
them. She cannot help confounding the people with the
country, and regarding us as lusty juveniles. She has a
conviction that whatever good there is in us is wholly
English, when the truth is that we are worth nothing ex
cept so far as we have disinfected ourselves of Anglicism.
She is especially condescending just now, and lavishes
sugar-plums on us as if we had not outgrown them. I
am no believer in sudden conversions, especially in sud
den conversions to a favorable opinion of people who

ON A CERTAIN CONDESCENSION IN FOREIGNERS. 81

have just proved you to be mistaken in judgment and
therefore unwise in policy. I never blamed her for not
wishing well to democracy, — • how should she 1 — but
Alabamas are not wishes. Let her not be too hasty in
believing Mr. Reverdy Johnson's pleasant words. Though
there is no thoughtful man in America who would not
consider a war with England the greatest of calamities,
yet the feeling towards her here is very far from cordial,
whatever our Minister may say in the effusion that
comes after ample dining. Mr. Adams, with his famous
" My Lord, this means war," perfectly represented his
country. Justly or not, we have a feeling that we have
been wronged, not merely insulted. The only sure way
of bringing about a healthy relation between the two
countries is for Englishmen to clear their minds of the
notion that we are always to be treated as a kind of
inferior and deported Englishman whose nature they
perfectly understand, and whose back they accordingly
stroke the wrong way of the fur with amazing persever
ance. Let them learn to treat us naturally on our
merits as human beings, as they would a German or a
Frenchman, and not as if we were a kind of counterfeit
Briton whose crime appeared in every shade of difference,
and before long there would come that right feeling
which we naturally call a good understanding. The
common blood, and still more the common language, are
fatal instruments of misapprehension. Let them give
up trying to understand us, still more thinking that
they do, and acting in various absurd ways as the
necessary consequence, for they will never arrive at that
devoutly-to-be-wished consummation, till they learn to
look at us as we are and not as they suppose us to be.
Dear old long-estranged mother-in-law, it is a great many
years since we parted. Since 1660, when you married
again, you have been a step-mother to us. Put on your

82 ON A CERTAIN CONDESCENSION IN FOREIGNERS.

spectacles, dear madam. Yes, we have grown, and
changed likewise. You would not let us darken your
doors, if you could help it. We know that perfectly
well. But pray, when we look to be treated as men,
don't shake that rattle in our faces, nor talk baby to us
any longer.

* Do, child, go to it grandam, child ;
Give grandam kingdom, and it grandam will
Give it a pluni, a cherry, and a fig! "

A GREAT PUBLIC CHARACTER."

IT is the misfortune of American biography that it
must needs be more or less provincial, and that,
contrary to what might have been predicted, this qual
ity in it predominates in proportion as the country
grows larger. Wanting any great and acknowledged
centre of national life and thought, our expansion has
hitherto been rather aggregation than growth ; reputa
tions must be hammered out thin to cover so wide a
eurface, and the substance of most hardly holds out to
the boundaries of a single State. Our very history
wants unity, and down to the Revolution the attention
is wearied and confused by having to divide itself among
thirteen parallel threads, instead of being concentred
on a single clew. A sense of remoteness and seclusion
comes over us as we read, and we cannot help asking
ourselves, " Were not these things done in a corner ? "
Notoriety may be achieved in a narrow sphere, but
fame demands for its evidence a more distant and pro
longed reverberation. To the world at large we were
but a short column of figures in the corner of a blue-
book, New England exporting so much salt-fish, timber,
and Medford rum, Virginia so many hogsheads of tobac
co, and buying with the proceeds a certain amount of
English manufactures. The story of our early coloniza
tion had a certain moral interest, to be sure, but was
altogether inferior in picturesque fascination to that of

* The Life of Josiah Quincy by his son.

84 A GREAT PUBLIC CHARACTER.

Mexico or Peru. The lives of our worthies, like that of
our nation, are bare of those foregone and far-reaching
associations with names, the divining-rods of fancy, which
the soldiers and civilians of the Old World get for
nothing by the mere accident of birth. Their historians
and biographers have succeeded to the good-will, as
well as to the long-established stand, of the shop of
glory. Time is, after all, the greatest of poets, and the
sons of Memory stand a better chance of being the heirs
of Fame. The philosophic poet may find a proud solace
in saying,

" Avia Pieridum peragro loca nullius ?nte
Trita solo " ;

but all the while he has the splendid centuries of Greece
and Rome behind him, and can begin his poem with in
voking a goddess from whom legend derived the planter
of his race. His eyes looked out on a landscape sstu-
rated with glorious recollections ; he had seen Ctesar,
and heard Cicero. But who shall conjure with Saugus
or Cato Four Corners, — with Israel Putnam or Return
Jonathan Meigs ] We have been transplanted, and for
us the long hierarchical succession of history is broken.
The Past has not laid its venerable hands upon us in
consecration, conveying to us that mysterious influence
whose force is in its continuity. We are to Europe aa
the Church of England to her of Rome. The latter old
lady may be the Scarlet Woman, or the Beast with ten
horns, if you will, but hers are all the heirlooms, hers
that vast spiritual estate of tradition, nowhere yet every
where, whose revenues are none the less fruitful for
being levied on the imagination. We may claim that
England's history is also ours, but it is a de jure, and not
a de facto property that we have in it, — something that
may be proved indeed, yet is a merely intellectual satis
faction, and does not savor of the realty. Have we not

A GREAT PUBLIC CHARACTER. 85

seen the mockery crown and sceptre of the exiled Stuarts
in St. Peter's] the medal struck so lately as 1784 with
its legend, HEN IX MAG BRIT ET HIB REX, whose con
tractions but faintly typify the scantness of the fact ?

As the novelist complains that jur society wants that
sharp contrast of character and costume which comes of
caste, so in the narrative of our historians we miss what
may be called background and perspective, as if the
events and the actors in them failed of that cumulative
interest which only a long historical entail can give. Rel
atively, the crusade of Sir William Pepperell was of more
consequence than that of St. Louis, and yet forgive us,
injured shade of the second American baronet, if we find
the narrative of Joinville more interesting than your de
spatches to Governor Shirley. Relatively, the insurrec
tion of that Daniel whose Irish patronymic Shea was
euphonized into Shays, as a set-off for the debasing of
French chaise into shay, was more dangerous than that
of Charles Edward ; but for some reason or other (as vice
sometimes has the advantage of virtue) the latter is more
enticing to the imagination, and the least authentic relic
of it in song or story has a relish denied to the painful
industry of Minot. Our events seem to fall short of that
colossal proportion which befits the monumental style.
Look grave as we will, there is something ludicrous in
Counsellor Keane's pig being the pivot of a revolution.
We are of yesterday, and it is to no purpose that our
political augurs divine from the flight of our eagles that
to-morrow shall be ours, and flatter us with an all-hail
hereafter. Things do really gain in greatness by being
acted on a great and cosmopolitan stage, because there
is inspiration in the thronged audience, and the nearer
match that puts men on their mettle. Webster was
more largely endowed by nature than Fox, and Fisher
Ames not much below Burke as a talker ; but what a

86 A GREAT PUBLIC CHARACTER.

difference in the intellectual training, in the literary cul
ture and associations, in the whole social outfit, of the
men who were their antagonists and companions ! It
should seem that, if it be collision with other minds and
with events that strikes or draws the tire from a man, then
the quality of those might have something to do with
the quality of the fire, — whether it shall be culinary or
electric. We have never known the varied stimulus, the
inexorable criticism, the many-sided opportunity of a
great metropolis, the inspiring reinforcement of an un
divided national consciousness. In everything but trade
we have missed the invigoration of foreign rivalry. We
may prove that we are this and that and the other, — •
our Fourth-of-July orators have proved it time and again,
— the census has proved it ; but the Muses are women,
and have no great fancy for statistics, though easily
silenced by them. We are great, we are rich, we are all
kinds of good things ; but did it never occur to you that
somehow we are not interesting, except as a phenomenon ?
It may safely be affirmed that for one cultivated man in
this country who studies American, there are fifty who
study Etiropean history, ancient or modern.

Till within a year or two we have been as distant and
obscure to the eyes of Europe as Ecuador to our own.
Every day brings us nearer, enables us to see the Old
World more clearly, and by inevitable comparison to
judge ourselves with some closer approach to our real
value. This has its advantage so long as our culture is,
as for a long time it must be, European ; for we shall be
little better than apes and parrots till we are forced to
measure our muscle with the trained and practised cham
pions of that elder civilization. We have at length es
tablished our claim to the noblesse of the sword, the first
step still of every nation that would make its entry into
the best society of history. To maintain ourselves there,

A GREAT PUBLIC CHARACTER. 87

we must achieve an equality in the more exclusive circle
of culture, and to that end must submit ourselves to the
European standard of intellectual weights and measures-
That we have made the hitherto biggest gun might ex
cite apprehension (were there a dearth of iron), but can
never exact respect. That our pianos and patent reapers
have won medals does but confirm us in our mechanic
and material measure of merit. We must contribute
something more than mere contrivances for the saving
of labor, which we have been only too ready to misapply
in the domain of thought and the higher kinds of inven
tion. In those Olympic games where nations contend for
truly immortal wreaths, it may well be questioned whether
a mowing-machine would stand much chance in the
chariot-races, — whether a piano, though made by a chev
alier, could compete successfully for the prize of music.

We shall have to be content for a good while yet with
our provincialism, and must strive to make the best of it.
In it lies the germ of nationality, and that is, after all,
the prime condition of all thorough-bred greatness of
character. To this choicest fruit of a healthy life, well
rooted in native soil, and drawing prosperous juices
thence, nationality gives the keenest flavor. Mr. Lincoln
was an original man, and in so far a great man ; yet it
was the Americanism of his every thought, word, and act
which not only made his influence equally at home in
East and West, but drew the eyes of the outside world,
and was the pedestal that lifted him where he could be
seen by them. Lincoln showed that native force may
transcend local boundaries, but the growth of such
nationality is hindered and hampered by our division
into so many half -independent communities, each with its
objects of county ambition, and its public men great to
the borders of their district. In this way our standard
of greatness is insensibly debased. To receive any na-

88 A GREAT PUBLIC CHARACTER.

tional appointment, a man must have gone through pre
cisely the worst training for it ; he must have so far
narrowed and belittled himself with State politics as to
be acceptable at home. In this way a man may become
chairman of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, because
he knows how to pack a caucus in Catawampus County,
or be sent ambassador to Barataria, because he has drunk
bad whiskey with every voter in Wildcat City. Should
we ever attain to a conscious nationality, it will have the
advantage of lessening the number of our great men, and
widening our appreciation to the larger scale of the two
or three that are left, — if there should be so many.
Meanwhile we offer a premium to the production of great
men in a small way, by inviting each State to set up the
statues of two of its immortals in the Capitol. What a
niggardly percentage ! Already we are embarrassed, not
to find the two, but to choose among the crowd of candi
dates. Well, seventy-odd heroes in about as many years
is pretty well for a young nation. We do not envy most
of them their eternal martyrdom in marble, their pillory
of indiscrimination. We fancy even native tourists paus
ing before the greater part of the effigies, and, after
reading the names, asking desperately, " Who was he?"
Nay, if they should say, " Who the devil was he ? " it
were a pardonable invocation, for none so fit as the
Prince of Darkness to act as cicerone among such pal
pable obscurities. We recall the court-yard of the Uffizj
at Florence. That also is not free of parish celebrities ;
but Dante, Galileo, Michael Angelo, Macchiavelli, — shall
the inventor of the sewing-machine, even with the button
holing improvement, let us say, match with these, or
with far lesser than these 1 Perhaps he was more prac
tically useful than any one of these, or all of them to
gether, but the soul is sensible of a sad difference some«
where. These also were citizens of a provincial capital ;

A GREAT PUBLIC CHARACTER. 89

so were the greater part of Plutarch's heroes. Did they
have a better chance than we moderns, — than we
Americans 1 At any rate they have the start of us, and
we must confess that

" By bed and table they lord tt o'er us,
Our elder brothers, but one in blood."

Yes, one in blood ; that is the hardest part of it. Is
our provincialism then in some great measure due to
our absorption in the practical, as we politely call it,
meaning the material, — to our habit of estimating
greatness by the square mile and the hundred weight 1
Even during our war, in the midst of that almost .unri
valled stress of soul, were not our speakers and newspa
pers so enslaved to the vulgar habit as to boast ten
times of the thousands of square miles it covered with
armed men, for once that they alluded to the motive
that gave it all its meaning and its splendor ? Perhaps
it was as well that they did not exploit that passion of
patriotism as an advertisement in the style of Barnum
or Perham. " I scale one hundred and eighty pounds,
but when I 'm mad I weigh two ton," said the Ken-
tuckian, with a true notion of moral avoirdupois. That
ideal kind of weight is wonderfully increased by a na
tional feeling, whereby one man is conscious that thirty
millions of men go into the balance with him. The
Roman in ancient, and the Englishman in modern times,
have been most conscious of this representative solidity,
and wherever one of them went there stood Rome or
England in his shoes. We have made some advance in
the right direction. Our civil war, by the breadth of its
proportions and the implacability of its demands, forced
us to admit a truer valuation, and gave us, in our own
despite, great soldiers and sailors, allowed for such by all
the world. The harder problems it has left behind may
in time compel us to have great statesmen, with views

90 A GREAT PUBLIC CHARACTER.

capable of reaching beyond the next election. The
criticism of Europe alone can rescue us from the provin
cialism of an over or false estimate of ourselves. Let us
be thankful, and not angry, that we must accept it as
our touchstone. Our stamp has so often been impressed
upon base metal, that we cannot expect it to be taken
on trust, but we may be sure that true gold will be
equally persuasive the world over. Real manhood and
honest achievement are nowhere provincial, but enter
the select society of all time on an even footing.

Spanish America might be a good glass for us to look
into. Those Catharine-wheel republics, always in revolu
tion while the powder lasts, and sure to burn the fingers
of whoever attempts intervention, have also their great
men, as placidly ignored by us as our own by jealous
Europe. The following passage from the life of Don
Simon Bolivar might allay many motus animorum, if
rightly pondered. Bolivar, then a youth, was travelling in
Italy, and his biographer tells us that " near Castiglione
he was present at the grand review made by Napoleon of
the columns defiling into the plain large enough to con
tain sixty thousand men. The throne was situated on
an eminence that overlooked the plain, and Napoleon on
several occasions looked through a glass at Bolivar and
his companions, who were at the base of the hill. The
hero Csesar could not imagine that he beheld the libera
tor of the world of Columbus ! " And small blame to
him, one would say. We are not, then, it seems, the
only foundling of Columbus, as we are so apt to take for
granted. The great Genoese did not, as we supposed,
draw that first star-guided furrow across the vague of
waters with a single eye to the future greatness of the
United States. And have we not sometimes, like the
enthusiastic biographer, fancied the Old World staring
through all its telescopes at us, and wondered that it did

A GREAT PUBLIC CHARACTER. 91

not recognize in us what we were fully persuaded we
were going to be and do ]

Our American life is dreadfully barren of those ele
ments of the social picturesque which give piquancy to
anecdote. And without anecdote, what is biography, or
even history, which is only biography on a larger scale 1
Clio, though she take airs on hersc-lf, and pretend to be
"philosophy teaching by example," is, after all, but a
gossip who has borrowed Fame's speaking-trumpet, and
should be figured with a tea-cup instead of a scroll in
her hand. How much has she not owed of late to the
tittle-tattle of her gillflirt sister Thalia 1 In what gut
ters has not Macaulay raked for the brilliant bits with
which he has put together his admirable mosaic picture
of England under the last two Stuarts 1 Even Mommsen
himself, who dislikes Plutarch's method as nmch as
Montaigne loved it, cannot get or give a lively notion of
ancient Rome, without running to the comic poets and
the anecdote-mongers. He gives us the very beef-tea
of history, nourishing and even palatable enough, excel
lently portable for a memory that must carry her own
packs, and can afford little luggage ; but for our own
part, we prefer a full, old-fashioned meal, with its side-
dishes of spicy gossip, and its last relish, the Stilton
of scandal, so it be not too high. One volume of con
temporary memoirs, stuffed though it be with lies, (for
lies to be good for anything must have a potential prob
ability, must even be true so far as their moral and
social setting is concerned,) will throw more light into
the dark backward of time than the gravest Camden or
Thuanus. If St. Simon is not accurate, is he any the
less essentially true ? No history gives us so clear an
understanding of the moral condition of average men
after the restoration of the Stuarts as the unconscious
blabbings of the Puritan tailor's son, with his two con-

92 A GREAT PUBLIC CHARACTER.

sciences, as it were, — an inward, still sensitive in spots,
though mostly toughened to India-rubber, and good
rather for rubbing out old scores than retaining them,
and an outward, alert, and termagantly effective in Mrs.
Pepys. But we can have no St. Simons or Pepysea
till we have a Paris or London to delocalize our gossip
and give it historic breadth. All our capitals are frac
tional, merely greater or smaller gatherings of ment
centres of business rather than of action or influence.
Each contains so many souls, but is not, as the word
" capital " implies, the true head of a community and
seat of its common soul.

Has not life itself perhaps become a little more prosaic
than it once was 1 As the clearing away of the woods
scants the streams, may not our civilization have dried
up some feeders that helped to swell the current of
individual and personal force 1 We have sometimes
thought that the stricter definition and consequent
seclusion from each other of the different callings in
modern times, as it narrowed the chance of developing
and giving variety to character, lessened also the interest
of biography. Formerly arts and arms were not divided
by so impassable a barrier as now. There was hardly
sxich a thing as a pekin. Csesar gets up from writing
his Latin Grammar to conquer Gaul, change the course
of history, and make so many things possible, — among
the rest our English language and Shakespeare. Horace
had be'en a colonel ; and from yEschylus, who fought at
Marathon, to Ben Jonson, who trailed a pike in the Low
Countries, the list of martial civilians is a long one. A
man's education seems more complete who has smelt
hostile powder from a less aesthetic distance than Goethe.
It raises our confidence in Sir Kenelm Digby as a physi
cist, that he is able to illustrate some theory of acous
tics in his Treatise of Bodies by instancing the effect of

A GREAT PUBLIC CHARACTER. 93

his guns in a sea-fight off Scanderoon. One would ex
pect the proportions of character to be enlarged by such
variety and contrast of experience. Perhaps it will by
and by appear that our own Civil War has done some
thing for us in this way. Colonel Higginson comes
down from his pulpit to draw on his jack-boots, and
thenceforth rides in our imagination alongside of John
Bunyan and Bishop Compton. To have stored moral
capital enough to meet the drafts of Death at sight,
must be an unmatched tonic. We saw our light-hearted
youth come back with the modest gravity of age, as if
they had learned to throw out pickets against a surprise
of any weak point in their temperament. Perhaps that
American shiftiness, so often complained of, may not
be so bad a thing, if, by bringing men acquainted with
every humor of fortune and human nature, it puts them
in fuller possession of themselves.

But with whatever drawbacks in special circumstances,
the main interest of biography must always lie in the
amount of character or essential manhood which the
subject of it reveals to us, and events are of import
only as means to that end. It is true that lofty and
far-seen exigencies may give greater opportunity to some
men, whose energy is more sharply spurred by the shout
of a multitude than by the grudging Well done ! of con
science. Some theorists have too hastily assumed that,
as the power of public opinion increases, the force of
private character, or what we call originality,, is ab
sorbed into and diluted by it. But we think Horace
was right in putting tyrant and mob on a level as the
trainers and tests of a man's solid quality. The amount
of resistance of which one is capable to whatever lies
outside the conscience, is of more consequence than all
other faculties together ; and democracy, perhaps, tries
this by pressure in more directions, and v>ith a more

94 A GREAT PUBLIC CHARACTER.

continuous strain, than any other form of society. In
Josiah Quincy we have an example of character trained
and shaped, under the nearest approach to a pure
democracy the world has ever seen, to a firmness, unity,
and self-centred poise that recall the finer types of anti
quity, in whom the public and private man were so
wholly of a piece that they were truly everywhere at
home, for the same sincerity of nature that dignified the
hearth carried also a charm of homeliness into the forum.
The phrase " a great public character," once common,
seems to be going out of fashion, perhaps because there
are fewer examples of the thing. It fits Josiah Quincy
exactly. Active in civic and academic duties till beyond
the ordinary period of man, at fourscore and ten his pen,
voice, and venerable presence were still efficient in pub
lic affairs. A score of years after the energies of even
vigorous men are declining or spent, his mind and char
acter made themselves felt as in their prime. A true
pillar of house and state, he stood unflinchingly upright
under whatever burden might be laid upon him. The
French Revolutionists aped what was itself but a parody
of the elder republic, with their hair a la Brutus and
their pedantic moralities d la Cato Minor, but this man
unconsciously was the antique Roman they laboriously
went about to be. Others have filled places more con
spicuous, few have made the place they filled so conspicu
ous by an exact and disinterested performance of duty.

In the biography of Mr. Quincy by his son there is
something of the provincialism of which we have spoken
as inherent in most American works of the kind. His
•was a Boston life in the strictest sense. But provincial
ism is relative, and where it has a flavor of its own, as
in Scotland, it is often agreeable in proportion to its
very intensity. The Massachusetts in which Mr. Quin
cy 's habits of thought were acquired was a very different

A GREAT PUBLIC CHARACTER. 95

Massachusetts from that in which we of later generations
have been bred. Till after he had passed middle life,
Boston was more truly a capital than any other city in
America, before or since, except possibly Charleston.
The acknowledged head of New England, with a popula
tion of wellnigh purely English descent, mostly derived
from the earlier emigration, with ancestral traditions and
inspiring memories of its own, it had made its name
familiar in both worlds, and was both historically and
politically more important than at any later period.
The Revolution had not interrupted, but rather given a
freer current to the tendencies of its past. Both by its
history and position, the town had what the French call
a solidarity, an almost personal consciousness, rare any
where, rare especially in America, and more than ever
since our enormous importation of fellow-citizens to
whom America means merely shop, or meat three times
a day. Boston has been called the "American Athens."
^Estheticaliy, the comparison is ludicrous, but politically
it was more reasonable. Its population was homogene
ous, and there were leading families ; while the form of
government by town-meeting, and the facility of social
and civic intercourse, gave great influence to popular
personal qualities and opportunity to new men. A wide
commerce, while it had insensibly softened the asperities
of Puritanism and imported enough foreign refinement
to humanize, not enough foreign luxury to corrupt, had
not essentially qualified the native tone of the town.
Retired sea-captains (true brothers of Chaucer's Ship-
man), whose exploits had kindled the imagination of
Burke, added a not unpleasant savor of salt to society.
They belonged to the old school of Gilbert, Hawkins,
Frobisher, and Drake, parcel-soldiers all of them, who
had commanded armed ships and had tales to tell of
gallant fights with privateers or pirates, truest represent-

96 A GREAT PUBLIC CHARACTER.

atives of those Vikings who, if trade in lumber or peltry
was dull, would make themselves Dukes of Dublin or
Earls of Orkney. If trade pinches the mind, commerce
liberalizes it ; and Boston was also advantaged with
the neighborhood of the country's oldest College, which
maintained the wholesome traditions of culture, — where
Homer and Horace are familiar there is a certain amount
of cosmopolitanism, — and would not allow bigotry to
become despotism. Manners were more self-respectful,
and therefore more respectful of others, and personal
sensitiveness was fenced with more of that ceremonial
with which society armed itself when it surrendered the
ruder protection of the sword. We had not then seen a
Governor in his chamber at the State-House with his
hat on, a cigar in his mouth, and his feet upon the stove.
Domestic service, in spite of the proverb, was not seldom
an inheritance, nor was household peace dependent on
the whim of a foreign armed neutrality in the kitchen.
Servant and master were of one stock ; there was decent
authority and becoming respect ; the tradition of the
Old World lingered after its superstition had passed
away. There was an aristocracy such as is healthful
in a well-ordered community, founded on public service,
and hereditary so long as the virtue which was its patent
was not escheated. The clergy, no longer hedged by
the reverence exacted by sacerdotal caste, were more
than repaid by the consideration willingly paid to supe
rior culture. What changes, many of them for the bet
ter, some of them surely for the worse, and all of them
inevitable, did not Josiah Quincy see in that wellnigh
secular life which linked the. war of independence to the
war of nationality ! We seemed to see a type of them
the other day in a colored man standing with an air of
comfortable self-possession while his boots were brushed
by a youth of catholic neutral tint, but whom nature had

A GREAT PUBLIC CHARACTER. 97

planned for white. The same eyes that had looked on
Gage's red-coats, saw Colonel Shaw's negro regiment
march out of Boston in the national blue. Seldom has a
life, itself actively associated with public affairs, spanned
so wide a chasm for the imagination. Oglethorpe's
offers a parallel, — the aide-de-camp of Prince Eugene
calling on John Adams, American Ambassador to Eng
land. Most long lives resemble those threads of gos
samer, the nearest approach to nothing unmeaningly
prolonged, scarce visible pathway of some worm from
his cradle to his grave ; but Quincy's was strung with
seventy active years, each one a rounded bead of useful
ness and service.

Mr. Quincy was a Bostonian of the purest type.
Since the settlement of the town, there had been a
colonel of the Boston regiment in every generation of his
family. He lived to see a grandson brevetted with the
same title for gallantry in the field. Only child of one
among the most eminent advocates of the Revolution,
and who but for his untimely death would have been a
leading actor in it, his earliest recollections belonged to
the heroic period in the history of his native town.
With that history his life was thenceforth intimately
united by offices of public trust, as Representative in
Congress, State Senator, Mayor, and President of the
University, to a period beyond the ordinary span of
mortals. Even after he had passed ninety, he would
not claim to be emeritus, but came forward to brace his
townsmen with a courage and warm them with a fire
younger than their own. The legend of Colonel GofFe
at Deerfield became a reality to the eyes of this genera
tion. The New England breed is running out, we are
told ! This was in all ways a beautiful and fortunate
life, — fortunate in the goods of this world, — fortunate,
above all, in the force of character which makes fortune

98 A GREAT PUBLIC CHARACTER.

secondary and subservient. We are fond in this country
of what are called self-made men (as if real success could
ever be other) ; and this is all very well, provided they
make something worth having of themselves. Otherwise
it is not so well, and the examples of such are at best
but stuff for the Alnaschar dreams of a false democracy.
The gist of the matter is, not where a man starts from,
but where he comes out. We are glad to have the
biography of one who, beginning as a gentleman, kept
himself such to the end, — who, with no necessity of
labor, left behind him an amount of thoroughly done
work such as few have accomplished with the mighty
help of hunger. Some kind of pace may be got out of
the veriest jade by the near prospect of oats ; but the
thorough-bred has the spur in his blood.

Mr. Edmund Quincy has told the story of his father's
life with the skill and good taste that might have been
expected from the author of " Wensley." Considering
natural partialities, he has shown a discretion of which
we are oftener reminded by missing than by meeting it.
He has given extracts enough from speeches to show
their bearing and quality, — from letters, to recall by
gone modes of thought and indicate many-sided friendly
relations with good and eminent men ; above all, he has
lost no opportunity to illustrate that life of the past,
near in date, yet alien in manners, whose current glides
so imperceptibly from one generation into another that
we fail to mark the shiftings of its bed or the change in
its nature wrought by the affluents that discharge into
it on all sides, — here a stream bred in the hills to
sweeten, there the sewerage of some great city to cor
rupt. We cannot but lament that Mr. Quincy did not
earlier begin to keep a diary. " Miss not the discourses
of the elders," though put now in the Apocrypha, is a
wise precept, but incomplete unless we add, " Nor cease

A GREAT PUBLIC CHARACTER. 99

from recording whatsoever thing thou hast gathered
therefrom," — so ready is Oblivion with her fatal shears.
The somewhat greasy heap of a literary rag-and-bone-
picker, like Athenseus, is turned to gold by time. Even
the Virgilium vidi tantum of Dryden about Milton, and
of Pope again about Dryden, is worth having, and gives
a pleasant fillip to the fancy. There is much of this
quality in Mr. Edmund Quincy's book, enough to make
us wish there were more. We get a glimpse of President
Washington, in 1795, who reminded Mr. Quincy "of
the gentlemen who used to come to Boston in those
days to attend the General Court from Hampden or
Franklin County, in the western part of the State. A
little stiff in his person, not a little formal in his mari
ners, not particularly at ease in the presence of strangers.
He had the air of a country-gentleman not accustomed
to mix much in society, perfectly polite, but not easy in
his address and conversation, and not graceful in his gait
and movements." Our figures of Washington have
been so long equestrian, that it is pleasant to meet him
dismounted for once. In the same way we get a card of
invitation to a dinner of sixty covers at John Hancock's,
and see the rather light-weighted great man wheeled
round the room (for he had adopted Lord Chatham's
convenient trick of the gout) to converse with his guests.
In another place we are presented, with Mr. Merry, the
English Minister, to Jefferson, whom we find in an un
official costume of studied slovenliness, intended as a snub
to haughty Albion. Slippers down at the heel and a
dirty shirt become weapons of diplomacy and threaten
more serious war. Thus many a door into the past, long
irrevocably shut upon us, is set ajar, and we of the
younger generation on the landing catch peeps of dis
tinguished men, and bits of their table-talk. We drive
in from Mr. Lyman's beautiful seat at Waltham (unique

100 A GREAT PUBLIC CHARACTER.

at that day in its stately swans and half-shy, half-familiar
deer) with John Adams, who tells us that Dr. Priestley
looked on the French monarchy as the tenth horn of the
Beast in Revelation, — a horn that has set more sober
wits dancing than that of Huon of Bordeaux. Those
were days, we are inclined to think, of more solid and
elegant hospitality than our own, — the elegance of
manners, at once more courtly and more frugal, of men
who had better uses for wealth than merely to display it.
Dinners have more courses now, and, like the Gascon in
the old story, who could not see the town for the houses,
we miss the real dinner in the multiplicity of its details.
We might seek long before we found so good cheer, so
good company, or so good talk as our fathers had at
Lieutenant-Governor Winthrop's or Senator Cabot's.

We shall not do Mr. Edmund Quiney the wrong of
picking out in advance all the plums in his volume,
leaving to the reader only the less savory mixture that
held them together, — a kind of filling unavoidable in
books of this kind, and too apt to be what boys at
boarding-school call stick-jaw, but of which there is no
more than could not be helped here, and that light and
palatable. But here and there is a passage where we
cannot refrain, for there is a smack of Jack Horner in all
of us, and a reviewer were nothing without it. Josiah
Quiney was born in 1772. His father, returning from a
mission to England, died in sight of the dear New Eng
land shore three years later. His young widow was
worthy of him, and of the son whose character she was
to have so large a share in forming. There is some
thing very touching and beautiful in this little picture
of her which Mr. Quiney drew in his extreme old age.

" My mother imbibed, as was usual with the women
of the period, the spirit of the times. Patriotism was
not then a profession, but an energetic principle beating

A GREAT PUBLIC CHARACTEK. 101

in the heart and active in the life. The death of my
father, under circumstances now the subject of history,
had overwhelmed her with grief. She viewed him as
a victim in the cause of freedom, and cultivated his
memory with veneration, regarding him as a martyr, fall
ing, as did his friend Warren, in the defence of the liber
ties of his country. These circumstances gave a pathos
and vehemence to her grief, which, after the first violence
of passion had subsided, sought consolation in earnest
and solicitous fulfilment of duty to the representative of
his memory and of their mutual affections. Love and
reverence for the memory of his father was early im
pressed on the mind of her son, anc1 worn into his heart
by her sadness and tears. She cultivated the memory of
my father in my heart and affections, even in my earliest
childhood, by reading to me passages from the poets, and
obliging me to learn by heart and repeat such as were
best adapted to her own circumstances and feelings.
Among others, the whole leave-taking of Hector and
Andromache, in the sixth book of Pope's Homer, was one
of her favorite lessons, which she made me learn and fre
quently repeat. Her imagination, probably, found con*
solation in the repetition of lines which brought to mind
and seemed to typify her own great bereavement.

' And think'st thou not how wretched we shall be, —
A widow I, a helpless orphan he ? '

These lines, and the whole tenor of Andromache's ad
dress and circumstances, she identified with her own
sufferings, which seemed relieved by the tears my repe
tition of them drew from her."

Pope's Homer is not Homer, perhaps ; but how many
noble natures have felt its elation, how many bruised
spirits the solace of its bracing, if monotonous melody ]
To us there is something inexpressibly tender in this in
stinct of the widowed mother to find consolation in the

102 A GREAT PUBLIC CHARACTER.

idealization of her grief by mingling it with those sor
rows which genius has turned into the perennial delight
of mankind. This was a kind of sentiment that was
healthy for her boy, refining without unnerving, and as
sociating his father's memory with a noble company un
assailable by time. It was through this lady, whose
image looks down on us out of the past, so full of
sweetness and refinement, that Mr. Quincy became of
kin with Mr. Wendell Phillips, so justly eminent as a
speaker. There is something nearer than cater-cousin-
ship in a certain impetuous audacity of temper common
to them both.

When six years old, Mr. Quincy was sent to Phillips
Academy at Andover, where he remained till he entered
college. His form-fellow here was a man of thirty, who
had been a surgeon in the Continental Army, and
whose character and adventures might almost seem bor
rowed from a romance of Smollett. Under Principal
Pearson, the lad, though a near relative of the founder
of the school, seems to have endured all that severity of
the old a posteriori method of teaching which still
smarted in Tusser's memory when he sang,

" From Paul's I went, to Eton sent,
To learn straight-ways the Latin phrase,
Where fifty-three stripes given to me
At once I had."

The yoxing victim of the wisdom of Solomon was boarded
with the parish minister, in whose kindness he found a
lenitive for the scholastic discipline he underwent. This
gentleman had been a soldier in the Colonial service, and
Mr. Quincy afterwards gave as a reason for his mildness,
that, " while a sergeant at Castle William, he had seen
something of mankind." This, no doubt, would be a
better preparative for successful dealing with the young
than is generally thought However, the birch was

A GREAT PUBLIC CHARACTER. 103

then the only classic tree, and every round in the ladder
of learning was made of its inspiring wood. Dr. Pear
son, perhaps, thought he was only doing justice to his
pupil's claims of kindred by giving him a larger share of
the educational advantages which the neighboring forest
afforded. The vividness with which this system is al
ways remembered by those who have been subjected to it
would seem to show that it really enlivened the attention,
and thereby invigorated the memory, nay, might even
raise some question as to what part of the person is chosen
by the mother of the Muses for her residence. With
an appetite for the classics quickened by " Cheever's
Accidence," and such other preliminary whets as were
then in vogue, young Quincy entered college, where he
spent the usual four years, and was graduated with the
highest honors of his class. The amount of Latin and
Greek imparted to the students of that day was not
very great. They were carried through Horace, Sallust,
and the De Oratoribus of Cicero, and read portions of
Livy, Xenophon, and Homer. Yet the chief end of clas
sical studies was perhaps as often reached then as now,
in giving young men a love for something apart from
and above the more vulgar associations of life. Mr.
Quincy, at least, retained to the last a fondness for-
certain Latin authors. While he was President of the
College, he told a gentleman, from whom we received
the story, that, "if he were imprisoned, and allowed
to choose one book for his amusement, that should
be Horace."

In 1797 Mr. Quincy was married to Miss Eliza Susan
Morton of New York, a union which lasted in imbroken
happiness for more than fifty years. His case might be
cited among the leading ones in support of the old poet's
axiom, that

" He never loved, that loved not at first sight ";

104 A GREAT PUBLIC CHARACTER.

for he saw, wooed, and won in a week. In later life he
tried in a most amusing way to account for this rash
ness, and to find reasons of settled gravity for the happy
inspiration of his heart. He cites the evidence of Judge
Sedgwick, of Mr. and Mrs. Oliver Wolcott, of the Rev.
Dr. Smith, and others, to the wisdom of his choice.
But it does not appear that he consulted them before
hand. If love were not too cunning for that, what
would become of the charming idyl, renewed in all its
wonder and freshness for every generation ] Let us be
thankful that in every man's life there is a holiday of
romance, an illumination of the senses by the soul, that
makes him a poet while it lasts. Mr. Quiricy caught
the enchantment through his ears, a song of Burns
heard from the next room conveying the infection, — a
fact still inexplicable to him after lifelong meditation
thereon, as he " was not very impressible by music " !
To us there is something very characteristic in this
rapid energy of Mr. Quincy, something very delightful
in his naive account of the affair. It needs the magic
of no Dr. Heidegger to make these dried roses, that
drop from between the leaves of a vohime shut for
seventy years, bloom again in all their sweetness. Mr.
Edmund Quincy tells us that his mother was " not hand
some " ; but those who remember the gracious dignity
of her old age will hardly agree with him. She must
always have had that highest kind of beauty which
grows more beautiful with years, and keeps the eyes
young, as if with the partial connivance of Time.

We do not propose to follow Mr. Quincy closely
through his whole public life, which, beginning with his
thirty-second, ended with his seventy-third year. He
entered Congress as the representative of a party pri
vately the most respectable, publicly the least sagacious,
among all those which undei different names have

A GREAT PUBLIC CHARACTER. 105

divided the country. The Federalists were the only
proper tories our politics have ever produced, whose
conservatism truly represented an idea, and not a mere
selfish interest, — men who honestly distrusted democ
racy, and stood up for experience, or the tradition which
they believed for such, against empiricism. During
his Congressional career, the government was little more
than an attache of the French legation, and the opposi
tion to which he belonged a helpless revenant from the
dead and buried Colonial past. There are some ques
tions whose interest dies the moment they are settled ;
others, into which a moral element enters that hinders
them from being settled, though they may be decided.
It is hard to revive any enthusiasm about the Embargo,
though it once could inspire the boyish Muse of Bryant,
or in the impressment quarrel, though the Trent diffi
culty for a time rekindled its old animosities. The stars
in their courses fought against Mr. Quincy's party,
which was not in sympathy with the instincts of the
people, groping about for some principle of nationality,
and finding a substitute for it in hatred of England.
But there are several things which still make his career
in Congress interesting to us, because they illustrate the
personal character of the man. He prepared himself
honestly for his duties, by a thorough study of whatever
could make him efficient in them. It was not enough
that he could make a good speech ; he wished also to
have something to say. In Congress, as everywhere else,
quod voluit valde voluit ; and he threw a fervor into the
most temporary topic, as if his eternal salvation de
pended upon it. He had not merely, as the French say,
the courage of his opinions, but his opinions became
principles, and gave him that gallantry of fanaticism
which made him always ready to head a forlorn hope, —
the more ready, perhaps, that it was a forlorn hope.

106 A GREAT PUBLIC CHARACTER.

This is not the humor of a statesman, — no, unless he
holds a position like that of Pitt, and can charge a
whole people with his own enthusiasm, and then we
call it genius. Mr. Quincy had the moral firmness
which enabled him to decline a duel without any loss
of personal prestige. His opposition to the Louisiana
purchase illustrates that Roman quality in him to which
we have alluded. He would not conclude the pur
chase till each of the old thirteen States had signified
its assent. He was reluctant to endow a Sabine city
with the privilege of Roman citizenship. It is worth
noting, that while in Congress, and afterwards in the
State Senate,- many of his phrases became the catch
words of party politics. He always dared to say what
others deemed it more prudent only to think, and what
ever he said he intensified with the whole ardor of his
temperament. It is this which makes Mr. Quincy's
speeches good reading still, even when the topics they
discussed were ephemeral. In one respect he is dis
tinguished from the politicians, and must rank with the
far-seeing statesmen of nis time. He early foresaw and
denounced the political danger with which the Slave
Power threatened the Union. His fears, it is true, were
aroused for the balance of power between the old States,
rather than by any moral sensitiveness, which would,
indeed, have been an anachronism at that time. But
the Civil War justified his prescience.

It was as Mayor of his native city that his remark
able qualities as an administrator were first called into
requisition and adequately displayed. He organized the
city government, and put it in working order. To him
we owe many reforms in police, in the management of
the poor, and other kindred matters, — much in the
way of cure, still more in that of prevention. The place
demanded a man of courage and firmness, and found

A GREAT PUBLIC CHARACTER. 107

those qualities almost superabundantly in him. His
virtues lost him his office, as such virtues are only too
apt to do in peaceful times, where they are felt more as
a restraint than a protection. His address on laying
down the mayoralty is very characteristic. We quote
the concluding sentences : —

" And now, gentlemen, standing as I do in this relation
for the last time in your presence and that of my fellow-
citizens, about to surrender forever a station full of diffi
culty, of labor and temptation, in which I have been
called to very arduous duties, affecting the rights, prop
erty, and at times the liberty of others ; concerning
which the perfect line of rectitude — though desired —
was not always to be clearly discerned ; in which great
interests have been placed within my control, under cir
cumstances in which it would have been easy to advance
private ends and sinister projects ; — under these cir
cumstances, I inquire, as I have a right to inquire, —
for in the recent contest insinuations have been cast
against my integrity, — in this long management of
your affairs, whatever errors have been committed, —
and doubtless there have been many, — have you found
in me anything selfish, anything personal, anything mer
cenary1? In the simple language of an ancient seer, I
say, ' Behold, here I am ; witness against me. Whom
have I defrauded 7 Whom have I oppressed 7 At
whose hands have I received any bribe 7 '

" Six years ago, when I had the honor first to address
the City Council, in anticipation of the event which has
now occurred, the following expressions were used : ' In
administering the police, in executing the laws, in pro
tecting the rights and promoting the prosperity of the
city, its first officer will be necessarily beset and assailed
by individual interests, by rival projects, by personal in
fluences, by party passions. The more firm and inflexi

108 A GREAT PUBLIC CHARACTER.

ble he is in maintaining the rights and in pursuing the
interests of the city, the greater is the probability of his
becoming obnoxious to the censure of all whom he
causes to be prosecuted or punished, of all whose pas
sions he thwarts, of all whose interests he opposes.'

" The day and the event have come. I retire — as in
that first address 1 told my fellow-citizens, ' If, in con
formity with the experience of other republics, faithful
exertions should be followed by loss of favor and confi
dence,' I should retire — 'rejoicing, not, indeed, with a
public and patriotic, but with a private and individual
joy ' ; for I shall retire with a consciousness weighed
against which all human suffrages are but as the light
dust of the balance."

Of his mayoralty we have another anecdote quite
Roman in color. He was in the habit of riding early in
the morning through the various streets that he might
look into everything with his own eyes. He was once
arrested on a malicious charge of violating the city ordi
nance against fast driving. He might have resisted, but
he appeared in court and paid the fine, because it would
serve as a good example " that no citizen was above the
law."

Hardly had Mr. Quincy given up the government of
the city, when he was called to that of the College. It
is here that his stately figure is associated most inti
mately and warmly with the recollections of the greater
number who hold his memory dear. Almost everybody
looks back regretfully to the days of some Consul
Plancus. Never were eyes so bright, never had wine so
much wit and good-fellowship in it, never were we our
selves so capable of the various great things we have
never done. Nor is it merely the sunset of life that
casts such a ravishing light on the past, and makes the
western windows of those homes of fancy we have left

A GREAT PUBLIC CHARACTER. 109

forever tremble with a sentiment of such sweet regret.
We set great store by what we had, and cannot have
again, however indifferent in itself, and what is past is
infinitely past. This is especially true of college life,
when we first assume the titles without the responsibili
ties of manhood, and the President of our year is apt to
become our Plancus very early. Popular or not while
in office, an ex-president is always sure of enthusiastic
cheers at every college festival. Mr. Quincy had many
qualities calculated to win favor with the young, — that
one above all which is sure to do it, indomitable pluck.
With him the dignity was in the man, not in the office.
He had some of those little oddities, too, which afford
amusement without contempt, and which rather tend to
heighten than diminish personal attachment to superiors
in station. His punctuality at prayers, and in dropping
asleep there, his forgetfulness of names, his singular in
ability to make even the shortest off-hand speech to the
students, — all the more singular in a practised ora
tor, — his occasional absorption of mind, leading him to
hand you his sand-box instead of the leave of absence he
had just dried with it, — the old-fashioned courtesy of
his, " Sir, your servant," as he bowed you out of his
study, — all tended to make him popular. He had also
a little of what is somewhat contradictorily called dry
humor, not without influence in his relations with the
students. In taking leave of the graduating class, he
was in the habit of paying them whatever honest com
pliment he could. Who, of a certain year which shall
be nameless, will ever forget the gravity with which he
assured them that they were " the best-dressed class that
had passed through college during his administration " ]
How sincerely kind he was, how considerate of youthful
levity, will always be gratefully remembered by whoever
had occasion to experience it. A visitor not loug before

110 A GREAT PUBLIC CHARACTER.

his death found him burning some memoranda of college
peccadilloes, lest they should ever rise up in judgment
against the men eminent in Church and State who had
been guilty of them. One great element of his popu
larity with the students was his esprit de corps. How
ever strict in discipline, he was always on our side as re
spected the outside world. Of his efficiency, no higher
testimony could be asked than that of his successor, Dr.
Walker. Here also many reforms date from his time.
He had that happiest combination for a wise vigor in
the conduct of affairs, — he was a conservative with an
open mind.

One would be apt to think that, in the various offices
which Mr. Quincy successively filled, he would have
found enough to do. But his indefatigable activity over
flowed. Even as a man of letters, he occupies no incon
siderable place. His " History of Harvard College " is
a valuable and entertaining treatment of a subject not
wanting in natural dryness. His " Municipal History
of Boston," his " History of the Boston Athenaeum,"
and his " Life of Colonel Shaw " have permanent interest
and value. All these were works demanding no little
labor and research, and the thoroughness of their work
manship makes them remarkable as the by-productions
of a busy man. Having consented, when more than
eighty, to write a memoir of John Quincy Adams, to be
published in the " Proceedings " of the Massachusetts
Historical Society, he was obliged to excuse himself.
On account of his age 1 Not at all, but because the
work had grown to be a volume under his weariless
hand. Ohne Hast ohne Rast, was as true of him as of
Goethe. We find the explanation of his accomplishing
BO much in a rule of life which he gave, when President,
to a young man employed as his secretary, and who was
ft little behindhand with his work : " When you have a

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number of duties to perform, always do the most dis
agreeable one first." No advice could have been more
in character, and it is perhaps better than the great
German's, "Do the duty that lies nearest thee."

Perhaps the most beautiful part of Mr. Quincy's life
was his old age. What in most men is decay, was
in him but beneficent prolongation and adjournment.
His interest in affairs unabated, his judgment undimmed,
his fire unchilled, his last years were indeed " lovely as
a Lapland night." Till within a year or two of its fall,
there were no signs of dilapidation in that stately edifice.
Singularly felicitous was Mr. Winthrop's application to
him of Wordsworth's verses : —

" The monumental pomp of age
Was in that goodly personage.'*

Everything that Macbeth foreboded the want of, he had
in deserved abundance, — the love, the honor, the obe
dience, the troops of friends. His equanimity was beau-
tiful. He loved life, as men of large vitality always do,
but he did not fear to lose life by changing the scene of
it. Visiting him in his ninetieth year with a friend, he
said to us, among other things : "I have no desire to
die, but also no reluctance. Indeed, I have a considera
ble curiosity about the other world. I have never been
to Europe, you know." Even in his extreme senescence
there was an April mood somewhere in his nature "that
put a spirit of youth in everything." He seemed to feel
that he could draw against an unlimited credit of years.
When eighty-two, he said smilingly to a young man just
returned from a foreign tour, " Well, well, I mean to go
myself when I am old enough to profit by it." We have
seen many old men whose lives were mere waste and
desolation, who made longevity disreputable by their
untimely persistence in it; but in Mr. Quincy's length
of years there was nothing that was not venerable. To

112 A GREAT PUBLIC CHARACTER,

him it was fulfilment, not deprivation ; the days were
marked to the last for what they brought, not for what
they took away.

The memory of what Mr. Quincy did will be lost in
the crowd of newer activities ; it is the memory of what
he was that is precious to us. Bonum virum facile
crederes, magnum libmter. If John Winthrop be the
highest type of the men who shaped New England, we
can find no better one of those whom New England has
shaped than Josiah Quincy. It is a figure that we can
contemplate with more than satisfaction, — a figure of
admirable example in a democracy as that of a model
citizen. His courage and high-mindedness were personal
to him ; let us believe that his integrity, his industry,
his love of letters, his devotion to duty, go in some sort
to the credit of the society which gave him birth and
formed his character. In one respect he is especially
interesting to us, as belonging to a class of men of whom
he was the last representative, and whose like we shall
never see again. Born and bred in an age of greater
social distinctions than ours, he was an aristocrat in
a sense that is good even in a republic. He had the
sense of a certain personal dignity inherent in him, and
which could not be alienated by any whim of the popu
lar will. There is no stouter buckler than this for inde
pendence of spirit, no surer guaranty of that courtesy
which, in its consideration of others, is but paying a
debt of self-respect. During his presidency, Mr. Quincy
was once riding to Cambridge in a crowded omnibus. A
colored woman got in, and could nowhere find a seat.
The President instantly gave her his own, and stood the
rest of the way, a silent rebuke of the general rudeness.
He was a man of quality in the true sense, — of quality
not hereditary, but personal. Position might be taken
from him, but he remained where he was. In what he

A GREAT PUBLIC CHARACTER. 113

valued most, his sense of personal worth, the world's
opinion could neither help nor hinder. We do not
mean that this was conscious in him ; if it had been,
it would have been a weakness. It was an instinct, and
acted with the force and promptitude proper to such.
Let us hope that the scramble of democracy will give us
something as good ; anything of so classic dignity we
shall not look to see again.

Josiah Quincy was no seeker of office ; from first to
last he and it were drawn together by the mutual attrac
tion of need and fitness, and it clung to him as most
men cling to it. The people often make blunders in
their choice ; they are apt to mistake presence of speech
for presence of mind ; they love so to help a man rise
from the ranks, that they will spoil a good demagogue to
make a bad general ; a great many faults may be laid at
their door, but they are not fairly to be charged with
fickleness. They are constant to whoever is constant to
his real self, to the best manhood that is in him, and
not to the mere selfishness, the antica lupa so cunning to
hide herself in the sheep's fleece even from ourselves.
It is true, the contemporary world is apt to be the gull
of brilliant parts, and the maker of a lucky poem or
picture or statue, the winner of a lucky battle, gets per
haps more than is due to the solid result of his triumph.
It is time that fit honor should be paid also to him who
shows a genius for public usefulness, for the achieve
ment of character, who shapes his life to a certain classic
proportion, and comes oft conqueror on those inward
fields where something more than mere talent is de
manded for victory. The memory of such men should
be cherished as the most precious inheritance which one
generation can bequeath to the next. However it might
be with popular favor, public respect followed Mr.
Quincy unwaveringly for seventy years, and it was

114 A GREAT PUBLIC CHARACTER.

because he had never forfeited his own. In this, it
appears to us, lies the lesson of his life, and his claim
upon our grateful recollection. It is this which makes
him an example, while the careers of so many of our
prominent men are only useful for warning. As regards
history, his greatness was narrowly provincial ; but if
the measure of deeds be the spirit in which they are
done, that fidelity to instant duty, which, according to
Herbert, makes an action fine, then his length of years
should be very precious to us for its lesson. Talleyrand,
whose life may be compared with his for the strange
vicissitude which it witnessed, carried with him out of
the world the respect of no man, least of all his own ;
and how many of our own public men have we seen
whose old age but accumulated a disregard which they
would gladly have exchanged for oblivion ! In Quincy
the public fidelity was loyal to the private, and the with
drawal of his old age was into a sanctuary, — a diminu
tion of publicity with addition of influence.

" Conclude we, then, felicity consists

Not in exterior fortunes

Sacred felicity doth ne'er extend
Beyond itself. ....
The swelling of an outward fortune can
Create a prosperous, not a happy man."

CARLYLE.*

A FEELING of comical sadness is likely to come
over the mind of any middle-aged man who sets
himself to recollecting the names of different authors
that have been famous, and the number of contemporary
immortalities whose end he has seen since coming to man
hood. Many a light, hailed by too careless observers as
a fixed star, has proved to be only a short-lived lantern
at the tail of a newspaper kite. That literary heaven
which our youth saw dotted thick with rival glories, we
find now to have been a stage-sky merely, artificially
enkindled from behind ; and the cynical daylight which
is sure to follow all theatrical enthusiasms shows us
ragged holes where once were luminaries, sheer vacancy
instead of lustre. Our earthly reputations, says a great
poet, are the color of grass, and the same sun that
makes the green bleaches it out again. But next morn
ing is not the time to criticise the scene-painter's firma
ment, nor is it quite fair to examine coldly a part of
some general illusion in the absence of that sympathetic
enthusiasm, that self-surrender of the fancy, which made
it what it was. It would not be safe for all neglected
authors to comfort themselves in Wordsworth's fashion,
inferring genius in an inverse proportion to public favor,
and a high and solitary merit from the world's indiffer
ence. On the contrary, it would be more just to
argue from popularity a certain amount of real value,

* Apropos of his Frederick the Great.

116 CARLYLE.

though it may not be of that permanent quality which
insures enduring fame. The contemporary world and
Wordsworth were both half right. He undoubtedly
owned and worked the richest vein of his period ; but
he offered to his contemporaries a heap of gold-bearing
quartz where the baser mineral made the greater show,
and the purchaser must do his own crushing and smelt
ing, with no guaranty but the bare word of the miner.
It was not enough that certain bolder adventurers
should now and then show a nugget in proof of the
success of their venture. The gold of the poet must
be refined, moulded, stamped with the image and super
scription of his time, but with a beauty of design and
finish that are of no time. The work must surpass the
material. Wordsworth was wholly void of that shaping
imagination which is the highest criterion of a poet.

Immediate popularity and lasting fame, then, would
seem to be the result of different qualities, and not of
mere difference in degree. It is safe to prophesy a
certain durability of recognition for any author who
gives evidence of intellectual force, in whatever kind,
above the average amount. There are names in literary
history which are only names ; and the works associated
with them, like acts of Congress already agreed on in
debate, are read by their titles and passed. What is it
that insures what may be called living fame, so that a
book shall be at once famous and read ] What is it
that relegates divine Cowley to that remote, uncivil
Pontus of the " British Poets," and keeps garrulous
Pepys within the cheery circle of the evening lamp and
fire ] Originality, eloquence, sense, imagination, not
one of them is enough by itself, but only in some happy
mixture and proportion. Imagination seems to possess
in itself more of the antiseptic property than any other
single quality ; but, without less showy and more sub

CARLYLE. 117

etantial allies, it can at best give only deathlessness,
without the perpetual youth that makes it other than
dreary. It were easy to find examples of this Tithonus
immortality, setting its victims apart from both gods
and men; helpless duration, undying, to be sure, but
sapless and voiceless also, and long ago deserted by the
fickle Hemera. And yet chance could confer that gift
on Glaucus, which love and the consent of Zeus failed
to secure for the darling of the Dawn. Is it mere luck,
then ? Luck may, and often does, have some share in
ephemeral successes, as in a gambler's winnings spent as
soon as got, but not in any lasting triumph over time.
Solid success must be based on solid qualities and the
honest culture of them.

The first element of contemporary popularity is un
doubtedly the power of entertaining. If a man have
anything to tell, the world cannot be expected to listen
to him unless he have perfected himself in the best way
of telling it. People are not to be argued into a
pleasurable sensation, nor is taste to be compelled by
any syllogism, however stringent. An author may make
himself very popular, however, and even justly so, by
appealing to the passion of the moment, without having
anything in him that shall outlast the public whim
which he satisfies. Churchill is a remarkable example
of this. He had a surprising extemporary vigor of
mind ; his phrase carries great weight of blow ; he un
doubtedly surpassed all contemporaries, as Cowper says
of him, in a certain rude and earth-born vigor ; but his
verse is dust and ashes now, solemnly inurned, of course,
in the Chalmers columbarium, and without danger of
violation. His brawn and muscle are fading traditions,
while the fragile, shivering genius of Cowper is still a
good life on the books of the Critical Insurance Office.
" IB it not, then, loftiness of mind that puts one by the

118 CARLYLE.

side of Virgil 1 " cries poor old Cavalcanti at his wits'
end. Certainly not altogether that. There must he
also the great Mantuan's art ; his power, not only of
being strong in parts, but of making those parts cohe
rent in an harmonious whole, and tributary to it. Gray,
if we may believe the commentators, has not an idea,
scarcely an epithet, that he can call his own ; and yet
he is, in the best sense, one of the classics of English
literature. He had exquisite felicity of choice ; his
dictionary had no vulgar word in it, no harsh one, but
all culled from the luckiest moods of poets, and with a
faint but delicious aroma of association ; he had a per
fect sense of sound, and one idea without which all the
poetic outfit (si absit prudentia) is of little avail, — that
of combination and arrangement, in short, of art. The
poets from whom he helped himself have no more claim
to any of his poems as wholes, than the various beauties
of Greece (if the old story were true) to the Venus of
the artist.

Imagination, as we have said, has more virtue to keep
a book alive than any other single faculty. Burke is
rescued from the usual doom of orators, because his
learning, his experience, his sagacity are rimmed with a
halo by this bewitching light behind the intellectual eye
from the highest heaven of the brain. Shakespeare has
impregnated his common sense with the steady glow of
it, and answers the mood of youth and age, of high aad
low, immortal as that dateless substance of the soul he
wrought in. To have any chance of lasting, a book
must satisfy, not merely some fleeting fancy of the day,
but a constant longing and hunger of human nature ;
and it needs only a superficial study of literature to be
convinced that real fame depends rather on the sum of
an author's powers than on any brilliancy of special
parts. There must be wisdom as well as wit, sense n«

CARLYLE. 119

less than imagination, judgment in equal measure with
fancy, and the fiery rocket must be bound fast to the
poor wooden stick that gives it guidance if it would
mount and draw all eyes. There are some who think
that the brooding patience which a great work calls for
belonged exclusively to an earlier period than ours.
Others lay the blame on our fashion of periodical publi
cation, which necessitates a sensation and a crisis in
every number, and forces the writer to strive for start
ling effects, instead of that general lowness of tone
which is the last achievement of the artist. The sim
plicity of antique passion, the homeliness of antique
pathos, seem not merely to be gone out of fashion, but
out of being as well. Modern poets appear rather to
tease their words into a fury, than to infuse them with
the deliberate heats of their matured conception, and
strive to replace the rapture of the mind with a fervid
intensity of phrase. Our reaction from the decorous
platitudes of the last century has no doubt led us to ex
cuse this, and to be thankful for something like real fire,
though of stubble ; but our prevailing style of criticism,
which regards parts rather than wholes, which dwells on
the beauty of passages, and, above all, must have its
languid nerves pricked with the expected sensation at
whatever cost, has done all it could to confirm us in our
evil way. Passages are good when they lead to some
thing, when they are necessary parts of the building,
but they are not good to dwell in. This taste for the
startling reminds us of something which happened once
at the burning of" a country meeting-house. The build
ing stood on a hill, and, apart from any other considera
tions, the fire was as picturesque as could be desired.
When all was a black heap, licking itself here and there
with tongues of fire, there rushed up a farmer gasping
anxiously, "Hez the bell fell yitl" An ordinary fire

120 CARLYLE.

was no more to him than that on his hearthstone ; even
the burning of a meeting-house, .in itself a vulcanic
rarity, (so long as he was of another parish,) could not
tickle his outworn palate ; but he had hoped for a cer
tain tang in the downcome of the bell that might recall
the boyish flavor of conflagration. There was something
dramatic, no doubt, in this surprise of the brazen senti
nel at his post, but the breathless rustic has always
seemed to us a type of the prevailing delusion in aesthet
ics. Alas ! if the bell must fall in every stanza or every
monthly number, how shall an author contrive to stir us
at last, unless with whole Moscows, crowned with the
tintinnabulary crash of the Kremlin ] For ourselves, we
are glad to feel that we are still able to find content
ment in the more conversational and domestic tone
of our old-fashioned wood-fire. No doubt a great part
of our pleasure in reading is unexpectedness, whether in
turn of thought or of phrase ; but an emphasis out
of place, an intensity of expression not founded on
sincerity of moral or intellectual conviction, reminds one
of the underscorings in young ladies' letters, a wonder
even to themselves under the colder north-light of ma-
tronage. It is the part of the critic, however, to keep
cool under whatever circumstances, and to reckon that
the excesses of an author will be at first more attractive
to the many than that average power which shall win
him attention with a new generation of men. It is
seldom found out by the majority, till after a considera
ble interval, that he was the original man who contrived
to be simply natural, — the hardest lesson in the school
of art and the latest learned, if, indeed, it be a thing
capable of acquisition at all. The most winsome and
wayward of brooks draws now and then some lover's foot
to its intimate reserve, while the spirt of a bursting
water-pipe gathers a gaping crowd forthwith.

CARLYLE. 121

Mr. Carlyle is an author who has now been so long
before the world, that we may feel toward him some
thing of the unprejudice of posterity. It has long been
evident that he had no more ideas to bestow upon
us, and that no new turn of his kaleidoscope would give
us anything but some variation of arrangement in the
brilliant colors of his style. It is perhaps possible, then,
to arrive at some not wholly inadequate estimate of his
place as a writer, and especially of the value of the ideas
whose advocate he makes himself, with a bitterness and
violence that increase, as it seems to us, in proportion as
his inward conviction of their truth diminishes.

The leading characteristics of an author who is in any
sense original, that is to say, who does not merely repro
duce, but modifies the influence of tradition, culture, and
contemporary thought upon himself by some admixture
of his own, may commonly be traced more or less clearly
in his earliest works. This is more strictly true, no
doubt, of poets, because the imagination is a fixed quan
tity, not to be increased by any amount of study and
reflection. Skill, wisdom, and even wit are cumulative ;
but that diviner faculty, which is the spiritual eye,
though it may be trained and sharpened, cannot be
added to by taking thought. This has always been
something innate, unaccountable, to be laid to a happy
conjunction of the stars. Goethe, the last of the great
poets, accordingly takes pains to tell us under what
planets he was born ; and in him it is curious how
uniform the imaginative quality is from the beginning
to the end of his long literary activity. His early poems
show maturity, his mature ones a youthful freshness.
The apple already lies potentially in the blossom, as
that may be traced also in the ripened fruit. With
a mere change of emphasis, Goethe might be called an
old boy at both ends of his career.
6

122 CARLYLE.

In the earliest authorship of Mr. Carlyle we find some
not obscure hints of the future man. Nearly fifty years
ago he contributed a few literary and critical articles to
the Edinburgh Encyclopaedia. The outward fashion of
them is that of the period ; but they are distinguished
by a certain security of judgment remarkable at any
time, remai'kable especially in one so young. British
criticism has been always more or less parochial; has
never, indeed, quite freed itself from sectarian cant, and
planted itself honestly on the aesthetic point of view.
It cannot quite persuade itself that truth is of immortal
essence, totally independent of all assistance from quar
terly journals or the British army and navy. Carlyle,
in these first essays, already shows the influence of his
master, Goethe, the most widely receptive of critics. In
a compact notice of Montaigne, there is not a word as to
his religious scepticism. The character is looked at
purely from its human and literary sides. As illustrat
ing the bent of the author's mind, the following passage
is most to our purpose: "A modern reader will not
easily cavil at the patient and good-natured, though ex
uberant egotism which brings back to our view 'the
form and pressure ' of a time long past. The habits and
humors, the mode of acting and thinking, which character
ized a Gascon gentleman in the sixteenth century, cannot
fail to amuse an inquirer of the nineteenth; while the
faithful delineation of human feelings, in all their strength
and weakness, will serve as a mirror to every mind capable
of self-examination." We find here no uncertain indica
tion of that eye for the moral picturesque, and that
sympathetic appreciation of character, which within the
next few years were to make Carlyle the first in insight
of English critics and the most vivid of English histo
rians. In all his earlier writing he never loses sight of
his master's great rule, Den Gegenstand fest zu halten,

CARLYLE. 123

He accordingly gave to Englishmen tne first humanly
possible likeness of Voltaire, Diderot, Mirabeau, and
others, who had hitherto been measured by the usual
British standard of their respect for the geognosy of
Moses and the historic credibility of the Books of Chron
icles. What was the real meaning of this phenomenon ?
what the amount of this man's honest performance in the
world 1 and in what does he show that family -likeness,
common to all the sons of Adam, which gives us a fair
hope of being able to comprehend him 1 These were the
questions which Carlyle seems to have set himself hon
estly to answer in the critical writings which fill the first
period of his life as a man of letters. In this mood he
rescued poor Boswell from the unmerited obloquy of an
ungrateful generation, and taught us to see something
half-comically beautiful in the poor, weak creature, with
his pathetic instinct of reverence for what was nobler,
wiser, and stronger than himself. Everything that Mr.
Carlyle wrote during this first period thrills with the
purest appreciation of whatever is brave and beautiful
in human nature, with the most vehement scorn of
cowardly compromise with things base ; and yet, immit
igable as his demand for the highest in us seems to be,
there is always something reassuring in the humorous
sympathy with mortal frailty which softens condemna
tion and consoles for shortcoming. The remarkable
feature of Mr. Carlyle's criticism (see, for example, his
analysis and exposition of Goethe's ''Helena") is the
sleuth-hound instinct with which he presses on to the
matter of his theme, — never turned aside by a false
scent, regardless of the outward beauty of form, some
times almost contemptuous of it, in his hunger after the
intellectual nourishment which it may hide. The deli
cate skeleton of admirably articulated and related parta
which underlies and sustains every true work of art, and

124 CARLYLE.

keeps it from sinking on itself a shapeless heap, he
would crush remorselessly to come at the marrow of
meaning. With him the ideal sense is secondary to the
ethical and metaphysical, and he has but a faint con
ception of their possible unity.

By degrees the humorous element in his nature gains
ground, till it overmasters all the rest. Becoming al
ways more boisterous and obtrusive, it ends at last, as
such humor must, in cynicism. In " Sartor Resartus "
it is still kindly, still infused with sentiment ; and the
book, with its mixture of indignation and farce, strikes
one as might the prophecies of Jeremiah, if the marginal
comments of the Rev. Mr. Sterne in his wildest mood
had by some accident been incorporated with the text.
In " Sartor " the marked influence of Jean Paul is un
deniable, both in matter and manner. It is curious for
one who studies the action and reaction of national liter
atures on each other, to see the humor of Swift and
Sterne and Fielding, after filtering through Richter, re
appear in Carlyle with a tinge of Germanism that makes
it novel, alien, or even displeasing, as the case may be,
to the English mind. Unhappily the bit of mother from
Swift's vinegar-barrel has had strength enough to sour
all the rest. The whimsicality of " Tristram Shandy,"
which, even in the original, has too often the effect
of forethought, becomes a deliberate artifice in Richter,
and at last a mere mannerism in Carlyle.

Mr. Carlyle in his critical essays had the advantage
of a well-defined theme, and of limits both in the
subject and in the space allowed for its treatment, which
kept his natural extravagance within bounds, and com
pelled some sort of discretion and compactness. The
great merit of these essays lay in a criticism based on
wide and various study, which, careless of tradition,
applied its standard to the real and not the contem-

CARLYLE. 125

porary worth of the literary or other performance to be
judged, and in an unerring eye for that fleeting expres
sion of the moral features of character, a perception of
which alone makes the drawing of a coherent likeness
possible. Their defect was a tendency, gaining strength
with years, to confound the moral with the aesthetic
standard, and to make the value of an author's work
dependent on the general force of his nature rather
than on its special fitness for a given task. In propor
tion as his humor gradually overbalanced the other
qualities of his mind, his taste for the eccentric, amor
phous, and violent in men became excessive, disturbing
more and more his perception of the more common
place attributes which give consistency to portraiture.
His " French Revolution " is a series of lurid pictures,
unmatched for vehement power, in which the figures
of such sons of earth as Mirabeau and Danton loom
gigantic and terrible as in the glare of an eniption, their
shadows swaying far and wide grotesquely awful. But
all is painted by eruption-flashes in violent light and
shade. There are no half-tints, no gradations, and we
find it impossible to account for the continuance in
power of less Titanic actors in the tragedy like Robes
pierre, on any theory whether of human nature or of
individual character supplied by Mr. Carlyle. Of his
success, however, in accomplishing what he aimed at,
which was to haunt the mind with memories of a horri
ble political nightmare, there can be no doubt.

Goethe says, apparently thinking of Richter, " The
worthy Germans have persuaded themselves that the
essence of true humor is formlessness." Heine had not
yet shown that a German might combine the most airy
Immor with a sense of form as lelicate as Goethe's own,
and that there was no need to borrow the bow of Phi-
loctetes for all kinds of game. Mr. Carlyle's own

126 CARLYLE.

tendency was toward the lawless, and the attraction of
Jean Paul made it an overmastering one. Goethe, we
think, might have gone farther, and affirmed that nothing
but the highest artistic sense can prevent humor from
degenerating into the grotesque, and thence downwards
to utter anarchy. Rabelais is a striking example of
it. The moral purpose of his book cannot give it that
unity which the instinct and forethought of art only
can bring forth. Perhaps we owe the masterpiece of
humorous literature to the fact that Cervantes had been
trained to authorship in a school where form predomi
nated over substance, and the most convincing proof of
the supremacy of art at the highest period of Greek
literature is to be found in Aristophanes. Mr. Carlyle
has no artistic sense of form or rhythm, scarcely of
proportion. Accordingly he looks on verse with con
tempt as something barbarous, — a savage ornament
which a higher refinement will abolish, as it has tattoo
ing and nose-rings. With a conceptive imagination
vigorous beyond any in his generation, with a mastery
of language equalled only by the greatest poets, he wants
altogether the plastic imagination, the shaping faculty,
which would have made him a poet in the highest sense.
He is a preacher and a prophet, — anything you will, -
but an artist he is not, and never can be. It is always
the knots and gnarls of the oak that he admires, never
the perfect and balanced tree.

It is certainly more agreeable to be grateful for what
we owe an author, than to blame him for what he cannot
give us. But it is sometimes the business of a critic to
trace faults of style and of thought to their root in char
acter and temperament, — to show their necessary rela
tion to, and dependence on, each other, — and to find some
more trustworthy explanation than mere wantonness of
will for the moral obliquities of a man so largely moulded

CARLYLE. 127

and gifted as Mr. Carlyle. So long as he was merely an
exhorter or dehorter, we were thankful for such elo
quence, such humor, such vivid or grotesque images,
and such splendor of illustration as only he could give ;
but when he assumes to be a teacher of moral and polit
ical philosophy, when he himself takes to compounding
the social panaceas he has made us laugh at so often,
and advertises none as genuine but his own, we begin to
inquire into his qualifications and his defects, and to
ask ourselves whether his patent pill differs from others
except in the larger amount of aloes, or has any better
recommendation than the superior advertising powers of
a mountebank of genius. Comparative criticism teaches
us that moral and aesthetic defects are more nearly
related than is commonly supposed. Had Mr. Carlyle
been fitted out completely by nature as an artist, he
would have had an ideal in his work which would have
lifted his mind away from the muddier part of him, and
trained him to the habit of seeking and seeing the
harmony rather than the discord and contradiction of
things. His innate love of the picturesque, (which is
only another form of the sentimentalism he so scoffs at,
perhaps as feeling it a weakness in himself,) once turned
in the direction of character, and finding its chief satis
faction there, led him to look for that ideal of human
nature in individual men which is but fragmentary
represented in the entire race, and is rather divined
from the aspiration, forever disenchanted to be forever
renewed, of the immortal part in us, than found in any
example of actual achievement. A wiser temper would
have found something more consoling than disheartening
in the continual failure of men eminently endowed to
reach the standard of this spiritual requirement, would
perhaps have found in it an inspiring hint that it is
mankind, and not special men, that are to be shaped at

128 CARLYLE.

last into the image of God, and that the endless life of
the generations may hope to come nearer that goal of
which the short-breathed threescore years and ten fall
too unhappily short.

But Mr. Carlyle has invented the Hero-cure, and all
who recommend any other method, or see any hope of
healing elsewhere, are either quacks and charlatans or
their victims. His lively imagination conjures up the
image of an impossible he, as contradictorily endowed
as the chief personage in a modern sentimental novel,
and who, at all hazards, must not lead mankind like a
shepherd, but bark, bite, and otherwise worry them
toward the fold like a truculent sheep-dog. If Mr.
Carlyle would only now and then recollect that men are
men, and not sheep, — nay, that the farther they are
from being such, the more well grounded our hope of
one day making something better of them ! It is indeed
strange that one who values Will so highly in the
greatest, should be blind to its infinite worth in the least
of men ; nay, that he should so often seem to confound
it with its irritable and purposeless counterfeit, Wilful-
ness. The natural impatience of an imaginative tem
perament, which conceives so vividly the beauty and
desirableness of a nobler manhood and a diviner political
order, makes him fret at the slow moral processes by
which the All-Wise brings about his ends, and turns the
very foolishness of men to his praise and glory. Mr.
Carlyle is for calling down fire from Heaven whenever
he cannot readily lay his hand on the match-box. No
doubt it is somewhat provoking that it should be so easy
to build castles in the air, and so hard to find tenants
for them. It is a singular intellectual phenomenon to
see a man, who earlier in life so thoroughly appreciated
the innate weakness and futile tendency of the " storm
and thrust " period of German literature, constantly

CARLYLE. 1JO

assimilating, as he grows older, more and more nearly to
its principles and practice. It is no longer the sagacious
and moderate Goethe who is his type of what is highest in
human nature, but far rather some Gb'tz of the Iron Hand,
some assertor of the divine legitimacy of Faustrecht.
It is odd to conceive the fate of Mr. Carlyle under the
sway of any of his heroes, — how Cromwell would have
scorned him as a babbler more long-winded than Prynne,
but less clear and practical, — how Friedrich would have
scoffed at his tirades as dummes Zeuy not to be compared
with the romances of Crebillon fils, or possibly have
clapped him in a marching regiment as a fit subject for
the cane of the sergeant. Perhaps something of Mr.
Carlyle's irritability is to be laid to the account of his
early schoolmastership at Ecclefechan. This great booby
World is such a dull boy, and will not learn the lesson
we have taken such pains in expounding for the fiftieth
time. Well, then, if eloquence, if example, if the awful
warning of other little boys who neglected their acci
dence and came to the gallows, if none of these avail, the
birch at least is left, and we will try that. The dominie
spirit has become every year more obtrusive and in
tolerant in Mr. Carlyle's writing, and the rod, instead of
being kept in its place as a resource for desperate cases,
has become the alpha and omega of all successful train
ing, the one divinely-appointed means of human enlight
enment and progress, — in short, the final hope of that
absurd animal who fancies himself a little lower than
the angels. Have we feebly taken it for granted that
the distinction of man was reason 1 Never was there a
more fatal misconception. It is in the gift of unreason
that we are unenviably distinguished from the brutes,
whose nobler privilege of instinct saves them from our
blunders and our crimes.

But since Mr. Carlyle has become possessed with the

130 CARLYLE.

hallucination that he is head-master of this huge boys1
school which we call the world, his pedagogic birch has
grown to the taller proportions and more ominous as
pect of a gallows. His article on Dr. Francia was a
panegyric of the halter, in which the gratitude of man
kind is invoked for the self-appointed dictator who had
discovered in Paraguay a tree more beneficent than that
which produced the Jesuits' bark. Mr. Carlyle seems to
be in the condition of a man who uses stimulants, and
must increase his dose from day to day as the senses
become dulled under the spur. He began by admiring
strength of character and purpose, and the manly self-
denial which makes a humble fortune great by steadfast
loyalty to duty. He has gone on till mere strength has
become such washy weakness that there is no longer any
titillation in it ; and nothing short of downright violence
will rouse his nerves now to the needed excitement. At
first he made out very well with remarkable men ; then,
lessening the water and increasing the spirit, he took to
Heroes : and now he must have downright inhumanity,
or the draught has no savor ; — so he gets on at last to
Kings, types of remorseless Force, who maintain the
political views of Berserkers by the legal principles of
Lynch. Constitutional monarchy is a, failure, represen
tative government is a gabble, democracy a birth of the
bottomless pit ; there is no hope for mankind except in
getting themselves under a good driver who shall not
spare the lash. And yet, unhappily for us, these drivers
are providential births not to be contrived by any cun
ning of ours, and Friedrich II. is hitherto the last of
them. Meanwhile the world's wheels have got fairly
stalled in mire and other matter of every vilest consist
ency and most disgustful smell. What are we to do 1
Mr. Carlyle will not let us make a lever with a rail from
the next fence, or call in the neighbors. That would be

CARLYLE. 131

too commonplace and cowardly, too anarchical. No;
he would have us sit down beside him in the slough, and
shout lustily for Hercules. If that indispensable demi*
god will not or cannot come, we can find a useful and
instructive solace, during the intervals of shouting, in a
hearty abuse of human nature, which, at the long last,
is always to blame.

Since " Sartor Resartus " Mr. Carlyle has done little
but repeat himself with increasing emphasis and height
ened shrillness. Warning has steadily heated toward
denunciation, and remonstrance soured toward scolding.
The image of the Tartar prayer-mill, which he borrowed
from Richter and turned to such humorous purpose,
might be applied to himself. The same phrase comes
round and round, only the machine, being a little crank
ier, rattles more, and the performer is called on for a
more visible exertion. If there be not something very
like cant in Mr. Carlyle's later writings, then cant is not
the repetition of a creed after it has become a phrase by
the cooling of that white-hot conviction which once made
it both the light and warmth of the soul. We do not
mean intentional and deliberate cant, but neither is that
which Mr. Carlyle denounces so energetically in his fel
low-men of that conscious kind. We do not mean to
blame him for it, but mention it rather as an interesting
phenomenon of human nature. The stock of ideas
which mankind has to work with is very limited, like the
alphabet, and can at best have an air of freshness given
it by new arrangements and combinations, or by applica
tion to new times and circumstances. Montaigne is but
Ecclesiastes writing in the sixteenth century, Voltaire
but Lucian in the eighteenth. Yet both are original,
and so certainly is Mr. Carlyle, whose borrowing is
mainly from his own former works. But he does this so
often and so openly, that we may at least be sure that

\
132 CAELYLE.

he ceased growing a number of years ago, and is a
remarkable example of arrested development.

The cynicism, however, which has now become the
prevailing temper of his mind, has gone on expanding
with unhappy vigor. In Mr. Carlyle it is not, certainly,
as in Swift, the result of personal disappointment, and
of the fatal eye of an accomplice for the mean qualities
by which power could be attained that it might be used
for purposes as mean. It seems rather the natural cor
ruption of his exuberant humor. Humor in its first
analysis is a perception of the incongruous, and in its
highest development, of the incongruity between the
actual and the ideal in men and life. With so keen
a sense of the ludicrous contrast between what men
might be, nay, wish to be, and what they are, and with
a vehement nature that demands the instant realization
of his vision of a world altogether heroic, it is no wonder
that Mr. Carlyle, always hoping for a thing and always
disappointed, should become bitter. Perhaps if he
expected less he would find more. Saul seeking his
father's asses found himself turned suddenly into a king ;
but Mr. Carlyle, on the lookout for a king, always seems
to find the other sort of animal. He sees nothing on
any side of him but a procession of the Lord of Misrule,
in gloomier moments, a Dance of Death, where every
thing is either a parody of whatever is noble, or an aim
less jig that stumbles at last into the annihilation of the
grave, and so passes from one nothing to another. Is a
world, then, which buys and reads Mr. Carlyle's works
distinguished only for its " fair, large ears " 1 If he who
has read and remembered so much would only now and
then call to mind the old proverb, Nee deus, nee lupus,
sed homo! If he would only recollect that, from the
days of the first grandfather, everybody has remembered
a golden age behind him !

CARLYLE. 133

The very qualities, it seems to us, which came so near
making a great poet of Mr. Carlyle, disqualify him for
the office of historian. The poet's concern is with the
appearances of things, with their harmony in that whole
which the imagination demands for its satisfaction, and
their truth to that ideal nature which is the proper
object of poetry. History, unfortunately, is very far
from being ideal, still farther from an exclusive interest
in those heroic or typical figures which answer all the
wants of the epic and the drama and fill their utmost
artistic limits. Mr. Carlyle has an unequalled power and
vividness in painting detached scenes, in bringing out in
their full relief the oddities or peculiarities of character ;
but he has a far feebler sense of those gradual changes
of opinion, that strange communication of sympathy
from mind to mind, that subtile influence of very subor
dinate actors in giving a direction to policy or action,
which we are wont somewhat vaguely to call the progress
of events. His scheme of history is purely an epical one,
where only leading figures appear by name and are in any
strict sense operative. He has no conception of the peo
ple as anything else than an element of mere brute
force in political problems, and would sniff scornfully at
that unpicturesque common-sense of the many, which
comes slowly to its conclusions, no doubt, but compels
obedience even from rulers the most despotic when once
its mind is made up. His history of Frederick is, of
course, a Fritziad ; but next to his hero, the cane of the
drill-sergeant and iron ramrods appear to be the condi
tions which to his mind satisfactorily account for the
result of the Seven Years War. It is our opinion, which
subsequent events seem to justify, that, had there not
been in the Pmssian people a strong instinct of nation
ality, Protestant nationality too, and an intimate convic
tion of its advantages, the war might have ended quite

134 CARLYLE.

otherwise. Frederick II. left the machine of war which
he received from his father even more perfect than he
found it, yet within a few years of his death it went to
pieces before the shock of French armies animated by an
idea. Again a few years, and the Prussian soldiery, in
spired once more by the old national fervor, were victori
ous. Were it not for the purely picturesque bias of
Mr. Carlyle's genius, for the necessity which his epical
treatment lays upon him of always having a protagonist,
we should be astonished that an idealist like him should
have so little faith in ideas and so much in matter.

Mr. Carlyle's manner is not so well suited to the histo
rian as to the essayist. He is always great in single
figures and striking episodes, but there is neither grada
tion nor continuity. He has extraordinary patience and
conscientiousness in the gathering and sifting of his
material, but is scornful of commonplace facts and char
acters, impatient of whatever will not serve for one of his
clever sketches, or group well in a more elaborate figure-
piece. He sees history, as it were, by flashes of light
ning. A single scene, whether a landscape or an inte
rior, a single figure or a wild mob of men, whatever may
be snatched by the eye in that instant of intense illumi
nation, is minutely photographed upon the memory.
Every tree and stone, almost every blade of grass ; every
article of furniture in a room ; the attitude or expression,
nay, the very buttons and shoe-ties of a principal figure ;
the gestures of momentary passion in a wild throng, — -
everything leaps into vision under that sudden glare
with a painful distinctness that leaves the retina quiver
ing. The intervals are absolute darkness. Mr. Carlyle
makes us acquainted with the isolated spot where we
happen to be when the flash comes, as if by actual eye
sight, but there is no possibility of a comprehensive
view. No other writer compares with him for vividness.

CARLYLE. 135

fie is himself a witness, and makes us witnesses of what
ever he describes. This is genius beyond a question,
and of a very rare quality, but it is not history. He
has not the cold-blooded impartiality of the historian;
and while he entertains us, moves us to tears or laughter,
makes us the unconscious captives of his ever-changeful
mood, we find that he has taught us comparatively little.
His imagination is so powerful that it makes him the
contemporary of his characters, and thus his history
seems to be the memoirs of a cynical humorist, with
hearty likes and dislikes, with something of acridity in
his partialities whether for or against, more keenly sen
sitive to the grotesque than the simply natural, and who
enters in his diary, even of what comes within the range
of his own observation, only so much as amuses his
fancy, is congenial with his humor, or feeds his prejudice.
Mr. Carlyle's method is accordingly altogether picto
rial, his hasty temper making narrative wearisome to
him. In his Friedrich, for example, we get very little
notion of the civil administration of Prussia ; and when
he comes, in the last volume, to his hero's dealings with
civil reforms, he confesses candidly that it would tire him
too much to tell us about it, even if he knew anything
at all satisfactory himself.

Mr. Carlyle's historical compositions are wonderful
prose poems, full of picture, incident, humor, and char
acter, where we grow familiar with his conception of
certain leading personages, and even of subordinate ones,
if they are necessary to the scene, so that they come out
living upon the stage from the dreary limbo of names ;
but this is no more history than the historical plays of
Shakespeare. There is nothing in imaginative literature
superior in its own way to the episode of Voltaire in the
Fritziad. It is delicious in humor, masterly in minute
characterization. We feel as if the principal victim (for

136 CARLYLE.

we cannot help feeling all the while that he is so) of this
mischievous genius had been put upon the theatre before
us by some perfect mimic like Foote, who had studied
his habitual gait, gestures, tones, turn of thought,
costume, trick of feature, and rendered them with the
slight dash of caricature needful to make the whole
composition tell. It is in such things that Mr. Carlyle
is beyond all rivalry, and that we must go back to Shake
speare for a comparison. But the mastery of Shake
speare is shown perhaps more strikingly in his treatment
of the ordinary than of the exceptional. His is the
gracious equality of Nature herself. Mr. Carlyle's gift-
is rather in the representation than in the evolution of
character ; and it is a necessity of his art, therefore, to
exaggerate slightly his heroic, and to caricature in like
manner his comic parts. His appreciation is less psy
chological than physical and external. Grimm relates
that Garrick, riding once with Pre'ville, proposed to him
that they should counterfeit drunkenness. They rode
through Passy accordingly, deceiving all who saw them.
When beyond the town Preville asked how he had suc
ceeded. "Excellently," said Garrick, "as to your body;
but your legs were not tipsy." Mr. Carlyle would be as
exact in his observation of nature as the great actor, and
would make us see a drunken man as well ; but we
doubt whether he could have conceived that unmatch-
able scene in Antony and Cleopatra, where the tipsiness
of Lepidus pervades the whole metaphysical no less
than the physical part of the triumvir. If his sym
pathies bore any proportion to his instinct for catching
those traits which are the expression of character, but
not character itself, we might have had a great historian
in him instead of a history-painter. But that which is
a main element in Mr. Carlyle's talent, and does perhaps
more than anything else to make it effective, is a defect

CARLYLE. 137

of his nature. The cynicism which renders him so en
tertaining precludes him from any just conception of
men and their motives, and from any sane estimate of
the relative importance of the events which concern
them. We remember a picture of Hamon's, where be
fore a Punch's theatre are gathered the wisest of man
kind in rapt attention. Socrates sits on a front bench,
absorbed in the spectacle, and in the corner stands Dante
making entries in his note-book. Mr. Carlyle as an
historian leaves us in somewhat such a mood. The
world is a puppet-show, and when we have watched the
play out, we depart with a half-comic consciousness of
the futility of all human enterprise, and the ludicrous-
ness of all man's action and passion on the stage of the
world. Simple, kindly, blundering Oliver Goldsmith
was after all wiser, and his Vicar, ideal as Hector and
not less immortal, is a demonstration of the perennial
beauty and heroism of the homeliest human nature.
The cynical view is congenial to certain moods, and is so
little inconsistent with original nobleness of mind, that
it is not seldom the acetous fermentation of it ; but it
is the view of the satirist, not of the historian, and takes
in but a narrow arc in the circumference of truth.
Cynicism in itself is essentially disagreeable. It is the
intellectual analogue of the truffle ; and though it may
be very well in giving a relish to thought for certain
palates, it cannot supply the substance of it. Mr. Car-
lyle's cynicism is not that polished weariness of the out-
sides of life which we find in Ecclesiastes. It goes much
deeper than that to the satisfactions, not of the body or
the intellect, but of the very soul itself. It vaunts
itself; it is noisy and aggressive. What the wise master
ptits into the mouth of desperate ambition, thwarted of
the fruit of its crime, as the fitting expression of pas
sionate sophistry, seems to have become an article of his
creed. With him

138 CARLYLE.

" Life is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing."

He goes about with his Diogenes dark-lantern, professing
to seek a man, but inwardly resolved to find a monkey.
He loves to flash it suddenly on poor human nature in
some ridiculous or degrading posture. He admires still,
or keeps affirming that he admires, the doughty, silent,
hard-working men who, like Cromwell, go honestly about
their business ; but when we come to his later examples,
we find that it is not loyalty to duty or to an inward
ideal of high-mindedness that he finds admirable in
them, but a blind unquestioning vassalage to whomso
ever it has pleased him to set up for a hero. He would
fain replace the old feudalism with a spiritual counter
part, in which there shall be an obligation to soul-service.
He who once popularized the word flunkey by ringing
the vehement changes of his scorn upon it, is at last
forced to conceive an ideal flunkeyism to squire the
hectoring Don Belianises of his fancy about the world.
Failing this, his latest theory of Divine government
seems to be the cudgel. Poets have sung all manner of
vegetable loves ; Petrarch has celebrated the laurel,
Chaucer the daisy, and Wordsworth the gallows-tree ; it
remained for the ex-pedagogue of Ecclefechan to become
the volunteer laureate of the rod, and to imagine a
world created and directed by a divine Dr. Busby. We
cannot help thinking that Mr. Carlyle might have
learned something to his advantage by living a few years
in the democracy which he scoffs at as heartily a priori
as if it were the demagogism which Aristophanes derided
from experience. The Hero, as Mr. Carlyle understands
him, was a makeshift of the past ; and the ideal of man
hood is to be found hereafter in free communities, where
the state shall at length sum up and exemplify in itself

CARLYLE. 139

ftll those qualities which poets were forced to imagine
and typify because they could not find them in the
actual world.

In the earlier part of his literary career, Mr. Carlyle
was the denouncer of shams, the preacher up of sincer
ity, manliness, and of a living faith, instead of a dron
ing ritual. He had intense convictions, and he made
disciples. With a compass of diction unequalled by any
other public performer of the time, ranging as it did
from the unbooked freshness of the Scottish peasant to
the most far-sought phrase of literary curiosity, with
humor, pathos, and eloquence at will, it was no wonder
that he found eager listeners in a world longing for a
sensation, and forced to put up with the West-End
gospel of " Pelham." If not a profound thinker, he had
what was next best, — he felt profoundly, and his cry
came out of the depths. The stern Calvinism of his
early training was rekindled by his imagination to the
old fervor of Wishart and Brown, and became a new
phenomenon as he reproduced it subtilized by German
transcendentalism and German culture. Imagination,
if it lays hold of a Scotchman, possesses him in the old
demoniac sense of the word, and that hard logical
nature, if the Hebrew fire once gets fair headway in it,
burns unquenchable as an anthracite coal-mine. But to
utilize these sacred heats, to employ them, as a literary
man is always tempted, to keep the domestic pot a-boil
ing, — is such a thing possible? Only too possible, wo
fear; and Mr. Carlyle is an example of it. If the lan
guid public long for a sensation, the excitement of
making one becomes also a necessity of the successful
author, as the intellectual nerves grow duller and the
old inspiration that came unbidden to the bare garret
grows shier and shier of the comfortable parlor. As ho
himself said thirty years ago of Edward Irving, " Un-

140 CARLYLE.

consciously, for the most part in deep unconsciousness,
there was now the impossibility to live neglected, — to
walk on the quiet paths where alone it is well with us.
Singularity must henceforth succeed singularity. 0
foulest Circean draught, thou poison of Popular Ap
plause ! madness is in thee and death ; thy end is
Bedlam and the grave." Mr. Carlyle won his first suc
cesses as a kind of preacher in print. His fervor, his
oddity of manner, his pugnacious paradox, drew the
crowd ; the truth, or, at any rate, the faith that under
lay them all, brought also the fitter audience, though
fewer. But the curse was upon him ; he must attract,
he must astonish. Thenceforth he has done nothing
but revamp his telling things ; but the oddity has be
come always odder, the paradoxes more paradoxical.
No very large share of truth falls to the apprehension
of any one man ; let him keep it sacred, and beware of
repeating it till it turn to falsehood on his lips by be
coming ritual. Truth always has a bewitching savor of
newness in it, and novelty at the first taste recalls that
original sweetness to the tongue ; but alas for him who
would make the one a substitute for the other ! We
seem to miss of late in Mr. Carlyle the old sincerity.
He has become the purely literary man, less concerned
about what he says than about how he shall say it to
best advantage. The Muse should be the companion,
not the guide, says he whom Mr. Carlyle has pronounced
"the wisest of this generation." What would be a
virtue in the poet is a vice of the most fatal kind in the
teacher, and, alas that we should say it ! the very Draco
of shams, whose code contained no penalty milder than
capital for the most harmless of them, has become at
last something very like a sham himself. Mr. Carlyle
continues to be a voice crying in the wilderness, but no
longer a voice with any earnest conviction behind it

CARLYLE. 141

Hearing him rebuke us for being humbugs and impos
tors, we are inclined to answer, with the ambassador of
Philip II., when his master reproached him with for
getting siibstance in ceremony, " Your Majesty forgets
that you are only a ceremony yourself." And Mr. Car-
lyle's teaching, moreover, — if teaching we may call it,
— belongs to what the great German, whose disciple he
is, condemned as the "literature of despair." An apostle
to the gentiles might hope for some fruit of his preach
ing; but of what avail an apostle who shouts his
message down the mouth of the pit to poor lost souls,
whom he can positively assure only that it is impossible
to get out 1 Mr. Carlyle lights up the lanterns of his
Pharos after the ship is already rolling between the
tongue of the sea and the grinders of the reef. It is
very brilliant, and its revolving flashes touch the crests
of the breakers with an awful picturesqtieness ; but in
so desperate a state of things, even Dr. Syntax might
be pardoned for being forgetful of the picturesque. The
Toryism of Scott sprang from love of the past ; that of
Carlyle is far more dangerously infectious, for it is logi
cally deduced from a deep disdain of human nature.

Browning has drawn a beautiful picture of an old king
sitting at the gate of his palace to judge his people in
the calm sunshine of that past which never existed out
side a poet's brain. It is the sweetest of waking dreams,
this of absolute power and perfect wisdom in one su
preme ruler; but it is as pure a creation of human
want and weakness, as clear a witness of mortal limita
tion and incompleteness, as the shoes of swiftness, the
cloak of darkness, the purse of Fortunatus, and the
elixir vitce. • It is the natural refuge of imaginative tem
peraments impatient of our blunders and shortcomings,
and, given a complete man, all would submit to the
divine right of his despotism. But alas ! to every the

142 CARLYLE.

most fortunate human birth hobbles up that malign fairy
who has been forgotten, with her fatal gift of imperfec
tion ! So far as our experience has gone, it has been the
very opposite of Mr. Carlyle's. Instead of finding men
disloyal to their natural leader, nothing has ever seemed
to us so touching as the gladness with which they follow
him, when they are sure they have found him at last.
But a natural leader of the ideal type is not to be looked
for nisi dignus vindice nodus. The Divine Forethought
had been cruel in furnishing one for every petty occa
sion, and thus thwarting in all inferior men that price
less gift of reason, to develop which, and to make it one
with free-will, is the highest use of our experience on
earth. Mr. Carlyle was hard bestead and very far gone
in his idolatry of mere pluck, when he was driven to
choose Friedrich as a hero. A poet — and Mr. Carlyle
is nothing else — is unwise who yokes Pegasus to a pro
saic theme which no force of wing can lift from the dull
earth. Charlemagne would have been a wiser choice,
far enough in the past for ideal treatment, more mani
festly the Siegfried of Anarchy, and in his rude way the
refounder of that empire which is the ideal of despotism
in the Western world.

Friedrich was doubtless a remarkable man, but surely
very far below any lofty standard of heroic greatness.
He was the last of the European kings who could look
upon his kingdom as his private patrimony ; and it was
this estate of his, this piece of property, which he so
obstinately and successfully defended. He had no idea
of country as it was understood by an ancient Greek or
Roman, as it is understood by a modern Englishman or
American ; and there is something almost pitiful in see
ing a man of genius like Mr. Carlyle fighting painfully
over again those battles of the last century which settled
nothing but the continuance of the Prussian monarchy.

CARLYLE. 143

while he saw only the " burning of a dirty chimney " in
the war which a great people was waging under his very
eyes for the idea of nationality and orderly magistrature,
and which fixed, let us hope forever, a boundary-line on
the map of history and man's advancement toward self-
conscious and responsible freedom. The true historical
genius, to our thinking is that which can see the nobler
meaning of events that are near him, as the true poet is
he who detects the divine in the casual ; and we some
what suspect the depth of his insight into the past, who
cannot recognize the godlike of to-day under that dis
guise in which it always visits us. Shall we hint to Mr.
Carlyle that a man may look on an heroic age, as well as
an heroic master, with the eyes of a valet, as misappre-
ciative certainly, though not so ignoble ]

What Goethe says of a great poet, that he must be a
citizen of his age as well as of his country, m,ay be said
inversely of a great king. He should be a citizen of his
country as well as of his age. Friedrich was certainly
the latter in its fullest sense ; whether he was, or could
have been, the former, in any sense, may be doubted.
The man who spoke and wrote French in preference
to his mother-tongue, who, dying when Goethe was
already drawing toward his fortieth year, Schiller toward
his thirtieth, and Lessing had been already five years in
his grave, could yet see nothing but barbarism in Ger
man literature, had little of the old Teutonic fibre in his
nature. The man who pronounced the Nibelungen Lied
not worth a pinch of priming, had little conception of
the power of heroic traditions in making heroic men, and
especially in strengthening that instinct made up of so
many indistinguishable associations which we call love
of country. Charlemagne, when he caused the old songs
of his people to be gathered and written down, showed a
truer sense of the sources of national feeling and a

144 CARLYLE.

deeper political insight. This want of sympathy points
to the somewhat narrow limits of Friedrich's nature.
In spite of Mr. Carlyle's adroit statement of the case,
and the whole book has an air of being the plea of
a masterly advocate in mitigation of sentence, we feel
that his hero was essentially hard, narrow, and selfish.
His popularity will go for little with any one who has
studied the trifling and often fabulous elements that
make up that singular compound. A bluntness of speech,
a shabby uniform, a frugal camp equipage, a timely
familiarity, may make a man the favorite of an army or
a nation, — above all, if he have the knack of success.
Moreover, popularity is much more easily won from
above downward, and is bought at a better bargain by
kings and generals than by other men. We doubt if
Friedrich would have been liked as a private person, or
even as an unsuccessful king. He apparently attached
very few people to himself, fewer even than his brutal
old Squire AVestern of a father. His sister Wilhelmina
is perhaps an exception. We say perhaps, for we do not
know how much the heroic part he was called on to
play had to do with the matter, and whether sisterly
pride did not pass even with herself for sisterly affection.
Moreover she was far from him ; and Mr. Carlyle waves
aside, in his generous fashion, some rather keen com
ments of hers on her brother's character when she visited
Berlin after he had become king. Indeed, he is apt
to deal rather contemptuously with all adverse criticism
of his hero. We sympathize with his impulse in this re
spect, agreeing heartily as we do in Chaucer's scorn of
those who " gladlie demen to the baser end" in such
matters. But we are not quite sure if this be a safe
method with the historian. He must doubtless be the
friend of his hero if he would understand him, but he
must be more the friend of truth if he would understand

CARLYLE. 145

history. Mr. Carlylc's passion for truth is intense,
as befits his temper, but it is that of a lover for his
mistress. He would have her all to himself, and hus
a lover's conviction that no one is able, or even fit, to
appreciate her but himself. He does well to despise the
tittle-tattle of vulgar minds, but surely should not ig
nore all testimony on the other side. For ourselves, we
think it not unimportant that Goethe's friend Knebel, a
man not incapable of admiration, and who had served a
dozen years or so as an officer of Friedrich's guard,
should have bluntly called him " the tyrant."

Mr. Carlyle's history traces the family of his hero
down from its beginnings in the picturesque chiaro-scuro
of the Middle Ages. It was an able and above all a
canny house, a Scotch version of the word able, which
implies thrift and an eye to the main chance, the said
main chance or chief end of man being altogether of
this world. Friedrich, inheriting this family faculty in
full measure, was driven, partly by ambition, partly by
necessity, to apply it to war. He did so, with the
success to be expected where a man of many expedients
has the good luck to be opposed by men with few. He
adds another to the many proofs that it is possible to be
a great general without a spark of that divine fire which
we call genius, and that good fortune in war results from
the same prompt talent and unbending temper which
lead to the same result in the peaceful professions.
Friedrich had certainly more of the temperament of
genius than Maryborough or Wellington ; but not to go
beyond modern instances, he does not impress us with
the massive breadth of Napoleon, nor attract us with
the climbing ardor of Turenne. To compare him with
Alexander or Caesar were absurd. The kingship that
was in him, and which won Mr. Carlyle to be his biogra
pher, is that of will merely, of rapid and relentless
7 J

146 CARLYLE.

command. For organization he had a masterly talent j
but he could not apply it to the arts of peace, both be«
cause he wanted experience and because the rash decision
of the battle-field will not serve in matters which are
governed by natural laws of growth. He seems, indeed,
to have had a coarse, soldier's contempt for all civil dis
tinction, altogether unworthy of a wise king, or even
of a prudent one. He confers the title of Hofrath on
the husband of a woman with whom his General Wai-
rave is living in what Mr. Carlyle justly calls " bnitish
polygamy," and this at Walrave's request, on the ground
that " a general's drab ought to have a handle to her
j:ame." Mr. Carlyle murmurs in a mild parenthesis that
" we rather regret this " ! (Vol. III. p. 559.) This is
his usual way of treating unpleasant matters, sidling by
with a deprecating shrug of the shoulders. Not that
he ever wilfully suppresses anything. On the contrary,
there is no greater proof of his genius than the way in
which, while he seems to paint a character with all its
disagreeable traits, he contrives to win our sympathy for
it, nay, almost our liking. This is conspicuously true
of his portrait of Friedrich's father ; and that he does
not succeed in making Friedrich himself attractive is a
strong argument with us that the fault is in the subject
and not the artist.

The book, we believe, has been comparatively unsuc
cessful as a literary venture. Nor do we wonder at it.
It is disproportionately long, and too much made up of
those descriptions of battles to read which seems even
more difficult than to have won the victory itself, more
disheartening than to have suffered the defeat. To an
American, also, the warfare seemed Liliputian in the
presence of a conflict so much larger in its proportions
and significant in its results. The interest, moreover,
flags decidedly toward the close, where the reader cannot

CARLYLE. 147

help feeling that the author loses breath somewhat pain
fully under the effort of so prolonged a course. Mr.
Carlyle has evidently devoted to his task a labor that
may be justly called prodigious. Not only has he sifted
all the German histories and memoirs, but has visited
every battle-field, and describes them with an eye for
country that is without rival among historians. The
book is evidently an abridgment of even more abundant
collections, and yet as it stands the matter overburdens
the work. It is a bundle of lively episodes rather than
a continuous narrative. In this respect it contrasts
oddly with the concinnity of his own earlier Life of
Schiller. But the episodes are lively, the humor and
pathos spring from a profound nature, the sketches of
character are masterly, the seizure of every picturesque
incident infallible, and the literary judgments those of a
thorough scholar and critic. - There is, of course, the
usual amusing objurgation of Dryasdust and his rubbish-
heaps, the usual assumption of omniscience, and the
usual certainty of the lively French lady of being al
ways in the right ; yet we cannot help thinking that a
little of Dryasdust's plodding exactness would have saved
Foucniet eleven years of the imprisonment to which Mr.
Carlyle condemns him, would have referred us to St.
Simon rather than to Voltaire for the character of the
brothers Belle-He, and would have kept clear of a
certain ludicrous etymology of the name Antwerp, not
to mention some other trifling slips of the like nature.
In conclusion, after saying, as honest critics must, that
" The History of Friedrich II. called Frederick the
Great " is a book to be read in with more satisfaction
than to be read through, after declaring that it is open
to all manner of criticism, especially in point of moral
purpose and tendency, we must admit with thankful
ness, that it has the one prime merit of being the work

148 CARLYLE.

of a man who has every quality of a great poet except
that supreme one of rhythm which shapes both matter
and manner to harmonious proportion, and that where
it is good, it is good as only genius knows how to be.

With the gift of song, Carlyle would have been the
greatest of epic poets since Homer. Without it, to
modulate and harmonize and bring parts into their
proper relation, he is the most amorphous of humorists,
the most shining avatar of whim the world has ever seen.
Beginning with a hearty contempt for shams, he has
come at length to believe in brute force as the only
reality, and has as little sense of justice as Thackeray
allowed to women. We say brute force because, though
the theory is that this force should be directed by the
supreme intellect for the time being, yet all inferior wits
are treated rather as obstacles to be contemptuously
shoved aside than as ancillary forces to be conciliated
through their reason. But, with all deductions, he re
mains the profoundest critic and the most dramatic imagi
nation of modern times. Never was there a more striking
example of that ingenium perfervidum long ago said to be
characteristic of his countrymen. His is one of the
natures, rare in these latter centuries, capable of rising
to a white heat ; but once faii'ly kindled, he is like a
three-decker on fire, and his shotted guns go off, as the
glow reaches them, alike dangerous to friend or foe.
Though he seems more and more to confound material
with moral success, yet there is always something whole
some in his unswerving loyalty to reality, as he under
stands it. History, in the true sense, he does not and
cannot write, for he looks on mankind as a herd without
volition, and without moral force ; but such vivid pic
tures of events, such living conceptions of character, we
find nowhere else in prose. The figures of most histo
rians seem like dolls stuffed with bran, whose whole sub'

CARLYLE. 149

stance runs out through any hole that criticism may
tear in them, but Carlyle's are so real in comparison,
that, if you prick them, they bleed. He seems a little
wearied, here and there, in his Friedrich, with the mul
tiplicity of detail, and does his filling-in rather shabbily ;
but he still remains in his own way, like his hero, the
Only, and such episodes as that of Voltaire would make
the fortune of any other writer. Though not the safest
of guides in politics or practical philosophy, his value as
an inspirer and awakener cannot be over-estimated. It
is a power which belongs only to the highest order of
minds, for it is none but a divine fire that can so kindle
and irradiate. The debt due him from those who lis
tened to the teachings of his prime for revealing to them
what sublime reserves of power even the humblest may
find in manliness, sincerity, and self-reliance, can be paid
with nothing short of reverential gratitude. As a puri
fier of the sources whence our intellectual inspiration is
drawn, his influence has been second only to that of
Wordsworth, if even to his.

rpHERE have been many painful crises since the in>
-*- patient vanity of South Carolina hurried ten pros
perous Commonwealths into a crime whose assured ret
ribution was to leave them either at the mercy of the
nation they had wronged, or of the anarchy they had
summoned but could not control, when no thoughtful
American opened his morning paper without dreading to
find that he had no longer a country to love and honor.
Whatever the result of the convulsion whose first shocks
were beginning to be felt, there would still be enough
square miles of earth for elbow-room ; but that ineffable
sentiment made up of memory and hope, of instinct and
tradition, which swells every man's heart and shapes his
thought, though perhaps never present to his conscious
ness, would be gone from it, leaving it common earth
and nothing more. Men might gather rich crops from
it, but that ideal harvest of priceless associations would
be reaped no longer ; that fine virtue which sent up
messages of courage and security from every sod of
it would have evaporated beyond recall. We should be
irrevocably cut off from our past, and be forced to splice
the ragged ends of our lives upon whatever new con
ditions chance might leave dangling for us.

We confess that we had our doubts at first whether
the patriotism of our people were not too narrowly pro
vincial to embrace the proportions of national peril

ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 151

We felt an only too natural distrust of immense public
meetings and enthusiastic cheers.

That a reaction should follow the holiday enthusiasm
with which the war was entered-on, that it should follow
soon, and that the slackening of public spirit should
be proportionate to the previous over-tension, might well
be foreseen by all who had studied human nature .or
history. Men acting gregariously are always in ex
tremes ; as they are one moment capable of higher
courage, so they are liable, the next, to baser depression,
and it is often a matter of chance whether numbers shall
multiply confidence or discouragement. Nor does de
ception lead more surely to distrust of men, than self-
deception to suspicion of principles. The only faith that
wears well and holds its color in all weathers is that
which is woven of conviction and set with the sharp
mordant of experience. Enthusiasm is good material
for the orator, but the statesman needs something more
durable to work in, — must be able to rely on the delib
erate reason and consequent firmness of the people, with
out which that presence of mind, no less essential in
times of moral than of material peril, will be wanting at
the critical moment. Would this fervor of the Free
States hold out ] Was it kindled by a just feeling of the
value of constitutional liberty 1 Had it body enough to
withstand the inevitable dampening of checks, reverses,
delays 1 Had our population intelligence enough to
comprehend that the choice was between order and anar
chy, between the equilibrium of a government by law
and the tussle of misrule by pronuntiamiento ? Could a
war be maintained without the ordinary stimulus of
hatred and plunder, and with the impersonal loyalty of
principle ] These were serious questions, and with no
precedent to aid in answering them.

At the beginning of the war there was, indeed, occa-

152 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

sion for the most anxious apprehension. A President
known to be infected with the political heresies, and
Suspected of sympathy with the treason, of the Southern
conspirators, had just surrendered the reins, we will not
say of power, but of chaos, to a successor known only as
the representative of a party whose leaders, with long
training in opposition, had none in the conduct of affairs;
an empty treasury was called on to supply resources
beyond precedent in the history of finance ; the trees
were yet growing and the iron unmined with which a
navy was to be built and armored ; officers without dis
cipline were to make a mob into an army ; and, above
all, the public opinion of Europe, echoed and reinforced
with every vague hint and every specious argument of
despondency by a powerful faction at home, was either
contemptuously sceptical or actively hostile. It would
be hard to over-estimate the force of this latter element
of disintegration and discouragement among a people
•where every citizen at home, and every soldier in the
field, is a reader of newspapers. The pedlers of rumor
in the North were the most effective allies of the re
bellion. A nation can be liable to no more insidious
treachery than that of the telegraph, sending hourly its
electric thrill of panic along the remotest nerves of the
community, till the excited imagination makes every
real danger loom heightened with its unreal double.

And even if we look only at more palpable difficulties,
the problem to be solved by our civil war was so vast.
both in its immediate relations and its future conse
quences ; the conditions of its solution were so intricate
and so greatly dependent on incalculable and uncontrol
lable contingencies ; so many of the data, whether for
hope or fear, were, from their novelty, incapable of
arrangement under any of the categories of historical
precedent, that there were moments of crisis when the

ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 153

firmest believer in the strength and sufficiency of the
democratic theory of government might well hold his
breath in vague apprehension of disaster. Our teachers
of political philosophy, solemnly arguing from the pre
cedent of some petty Grecian, Italian, or Flemish city,
whose long periods of aristocracy were broken now and
then by awkward parentheses of mob, had always taught
us that democracies were incapable of the sentiment of
loyalty, of concentrated and prolonged effort, of far-reach
ing conceptions ; were absorbed in material interests ; im
patient of regular, and much more of exceptional restraint ;
had no natural nucleus of gravitation, nor any forces but
centrifugal ; were always on the verge of civil war, and
slunk at last into the natural almshouse of bankrupt
popular government, a military despotism. Here was
indeed a dreary outlook for persons who knew democ
racy, not by rubbing shoulders with it lifelong, but
merely from books, and America only by the report of
some fellow-Briton, who, having eaten a bad dinner or
lost a carpet-bag here, had written to the Times demand
ing redress, and drawing a mournful inference of demo
cratic instability. Nor were men wanting among our
selves who had so steeped their brains in London
literature as to mistake Cockneyism for European cul
ture, and contempt of their country for cosmopolitan
breadth of view, and who, owing all they had and all
they were to democracy, thought it had an air of high-
breeding to join in the shallow epicedium that our bub
ble had burst.

But beside any disheartening influences which might
affect the timid or the despondent, there were reasons
enough of settled gravity against any over-confidence of
hope. A war — which, whether we consider the expanse
of the territory at stake, the hosts brought into the field,
or the reach of the principles involved, may fairly be

154 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

reckoned the most momentous of modern times — was
to be waged by a people divided at home, unnerved by
fifty years of peace, under a chief magistrate without ex
perience and without reputation, whose every measure
was sure to be cunningly hampered by a jealous and
unscrupulous minority, and who, while dealing with un
heard-of complications at home, must soothe a hostile
neutrality abroad, waiting only a pretext to become war.
All this was to be done without warning and without
preparation, while at the same time a social revolution
was to be accomplished in the political condition of four
millions of people, by softening the prejudices, allaying
the fears, and gradually obtaining the co-operation, of
their unwilling liberators. Surely, if ever there were an
occasion when the heightened imagination of the histo
rian might see Destiny visibly intervening in human
affairs, here was a knot worthy of her shears. Never,
perhaps, was any system of government tried by so con
tinuous and searching a strain as ours during the last
. three years ; never has any shown itself stronger ; and
never could that strength be so directly traced to the
virtue and intelligence of the people, — to that general
enlightenment and prompt efficiency of public opinion
possible only under the influence of a political framework
like our own. We find it hard to understand how even
a foreigner should be blind to the grandeur of the com
bat of ideas that has been going on here, — to the heroic
energy, persistency, and self-reliance of a nation proving
that it knows how much dearer greatness is than mere
power ; and we own that it is impossible for us to con
ceive the mental and moral condition of the American
who does not feel his spirit braced and heightened by
being even a spectator of such qualities and achieve
ments. That a steady purpose and a definite aim have
been given to the jarring forces which, at the beginning

ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 155

of the war, spent themselves in the discussion of schemes
which could only become operative, if at all, after the
war was over ; that a popular excitement has been
slowly intensified into an earnest national will ; that
a somewhat impracticable moral sentiment has been
made the unconscious instrument of a practical moral
end ; that the treason of covert enemies, the jealousy of
rivals, the unwise zeal of friends, have been made not
only useless for mischief, but even useful for good ; that
the conscientious sensitiveness of England to the horrors
of civil conflict has been prevented from complicating a
domestic with a foreign war ; — all these results, any
one of which might suffice to prove greatness in a ruler,
have been mainly due to the good sense, the good-
humor, the sagacity, the large-mindedness, and the un
selfish honesty of the unknown man whom a blind for
tune, as it seemed, had lifted from the crowd to the
most dangerous and difficult eminence of modern times.
It is by presence of mind in untried emergencies that the
native metal of a man is tested ; it is by the sagacity to
see, and the fearless honesty to admit, whatever of truth
there may be in an adverse opinion, in order more con
vincingly to expose the fallacy that lurks behind it, that
a reasoner at length gains for his mere statement of a
fact the force of argument ; it is by a wise forecast
which allows hostile combinations to go so far as by the
inevitable reaction to become elements of his own power,
that a politician proves his genius for state-craft ; and
especially it is by so gently guiding public sentiment
that he seems to follow it, by so yielding doubtful points
that he can be firm without seeming obstinate in essen
tial ones, and thus gain the advantages of compromise
without the weakness of concession ; by so instinctively
comprehending the temper and prejudices of a people as
to make them gradually conscious of the superior wisdom

156 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

of his freedom from temper and prejudice, — it is by
qualities such as these that a magistrate shows himself
worthy to be chief in a commonwealth of freemen. And
it is for qualities such as these that we firmly believe
History will rank Mr. Lincoln among the most prudent
of statesmen and the most successful of rulers. If we
wish to appreciate him, we have only to conceive the in
evitable chaos in which we should now be weltering, had
a weak man or an unwise one been chosen in his stead.

" Bare is back," says the Norse proverb, " without
brother behind it " ; and this is, by analogy, true of an
elective magistracy. The hereditary ruler in any critical
emergency may reckon on the inexhaustible resources of
prestige, of sentiment, of superstition, of dependent in
terest, while the new man must slowly and painfully
create all these out of the unwilling material around
him, by superiority of character, by patient singleness
of purpose, by sagacious presentiment of popular ten
dencies and instinctive sympathy with the national char
acter. Mr. Lincoln's task was one of peculiar and
exceptional difficulty. Long habit had accustomed the
American people to the notion of a party in power, and
of a President as its creature and organ, while the more
vital fact, that the executive for the time being repre
sents the abstract idea of government as a permanent
principle superior to all party and all private interest,
had gradually become unfamiliar. They had so long
seen the public policy more or less directed by views of
party, and often even of personal advantage, as to bf
ready to suspect the motives of a chief magistrate com
polled, for the first time in our history, to feel himself
the head and hand of a great nation, and to act upon
the fundamental maxim, laid down by all publicists,
that the first duty of a government is to defend and
maintain its own existence. Accordingly, a powerful

ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 157

weapon seemed to be put into the hands of the opposi
tion by the necessity under which the administration
found itself of applying this old truth to new relations.
Nor were the opposition his only nor his most dangerous
opponents.

The Republicans had carried the country upon an
issue in which ethics were more directly and visibly
mingled with politics than usual. Their leaders were
trained to a method of oratory which relied for its ef
fect rather on the moral sense than the understanding.
Their arguments were drawn, not so much from experi
ence as from general principles of right and wrong.
When the war came, their system continued to be ap
plicable and effective, for here again the reason of the
people was to be reached and kindled through their sen
timents. It was one of those periods of excitement,
gathering, contagious, universal, which, while they last,
exalt and clarify the minds of men, giving to the mere
words country, human rights, democracy, a meaning and
a force beyond that of sober and logical argument.
They were convictions, maintained and defended by the
supreme logic of passion. That penetrating fire ran in
and roused those primary instincts that make their lair
in the dens and caverns of the mind. What is called
the great popular heart was awakened, that indefinable
something which may be, according to circumstances,
the highest reason or the most brutish unreason. But
enthusiasm, once cold, can never be warmed over into
anything better than cant, — and phrases, when once
the inspiration that filled them with beneficent power
has ebbed away, retain only that semblance of meaning
which enables them to supplant reason in hasty minds.
Among the lessons taught by the French Revolution
there is none sadder or more striking than this, that you
may make everything else out of the passions of men

158 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

except a political system that will work, and that there
is nothing so pitilessly and unconsciously cruel as sin
cerity formulated into dogma. It is always demoralizing
to extend the domain of sentiment over questions where
it has no legitimate jurisdiction ; and perhaps the
severest strain upon Mr. Lincoln was in resisting a ten
dency of his own supporters which chimed with his own
private desires while wholly opposed to his convictions
of what would be wise policy.

The change which three years have brought about ia
too remarkable to be passed over without comment, too
weighty in its lesson not to be laid to heart. Never did
a President enter upon office with less means at his
command, outside his own strength of heart and steadi
ness 'of understanding, for inspiring confidence in the
people, and so winning it for himself, than Mr. Lincoln.
All that was known of him was that he was a good
stump-speaker, nominated for his availability, — that is,
because he had no history, — and chosen by a party with
whose more extreme opinions he was not in sympathy.
It might well be feared that a man past fifty, against
whom the ingenuity of hostile partisans could rake up
no accusation, must be lacking in manliness of charac
ter, in decision of principle, in strength of will ; that
a man who was at best only the representative of a
party, and who yet did not fairly represent even that,
woiild fail of political, much more of popular, support.
And certainly no one ever entered upon office with so
few resources of power in the past, and so many mate
rials of weakness in the present, as Mr. Lincoln. Even
in that half of the Union which acknowledged him as
President, there was a large, and at that time dangerous
minority, that hardly admitted his claim to the office,
and even in the party that elected him there was also a
large minority that suspected him of being secretly a

ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 159

communicant with the church of Laodicea. All that he
did was sure to be virulently attacked as ultra by one
side ; all that he left undone, to be stigmatized as proof
of lukewarmness and backsliding by the other. Mean
while he was to carry on a truly colossal war by means
of both ; he was to disengage the country from diplo
matic entanglements of unprecedented peril undisturbed
by the help or the hinderance of either, and to win from
the crowning dangers of his administration, in the con
fidence of the people, the means of his safety and their
own. He has contrived to do it, and perhaps none of
our Presidents since Washington has stood so firm in
the confidence of the people as he does after three years
of stormy administration.

Mr. Lincoln's policy was a tentative one, and rightly
so. He laid down no programme which must compel
him to be either inconsistent or unwise, no cast-iron
theorem to which circumstances must be fitted as they
rose, or else be useless to his ends. He seemed to have
chosen Mazarin's motto, Le temps et moi. The moi, to
be sure, was not very prominent at first ; but it has
grown more and more so, till the world is beginning to
be persuaded that it stands for a character of marked
individuality and capacity for affairs. Time was his
prime-minister, and, we began to think, at one period,
his general-in-chief also. At first he was so slow that
he tired out all those who see no evidence of progress
but in blowing up the engine ; then he was so fast, that
he took the breath away from those who think there is
no getting on safely while there is a spark of fire under
the boilers. God is the only being who has time enough ;
but a pi'udent man, who knows how to seize occasion,
can commonly make a shift to find as much as he needs.
Mr. Lincoln, as it seems to iis in reviewing his career,
though we have sometimes in our impatience thought

160 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

otherwise, has always waited, as a wise man should, till
the right moment brought up all his reserves. Semper
nocuit differre paratis, is a sound axiom, but the really
efficacious man will also be sure to know when he is not
ready, and be firm against all persuasion and reproach
till he is.

One would be apt to think, from some of the criticisms
made on Mr. Lincoln's course by those who mainly agree
with him in principle, that the chief object of a states
man should be rather to proclaim his adhesion to certain
doctrines, than to achieve their triumph by quietly ac
complishing his ends. In our opinion, there is no more
unsafe politician than a conscientiously rigid doctrinaire,
nothing more sure to end in disaster than a theoretic
scheme of policy that admits of no pliability for contin
gencies. True, there is a popular image of an impossi
ble He, in whose plastic hands the submissive destinies
of mankind become as wax, and to whose commanding
necessity the toughest facts yield with the graceful
pliancy of fiction ; but in real life we commonly find
that the men who control circumstances, as it is called,
are those who have learned to allow for the influence of
their eddies, and have the nerve to turn them to account
at the happy instant. Mr. Lincoln's perilous task has
been to carry a rather shaky raft through the rapids,
making fast the unrulier logs as he could snatch oppor
tunity, and the country is to be congratulated that he
did not think it his duty to run straight at all hazards,
but cautiously to assure himself with his setting-pole
where the main current was, and keep steadily to that.
He is still in wild water, but we have faith that his skill
and sureness of eye will bring him out right at last.

A curious, and, as we think, not inapt parallel, might
be drawn between Mr. Lincoln and one of the most
striking figures in modern history, — Henry IV. of

ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 161

France. The career of the latter may be more pictur
esque, as that of a daring captain always is ; but in all
its vicissitudes there is nothing more romantic than that
sudden change, as by a rub of Aladdin's lamp, from the
attorney's office in a country town of Illinois to the helm
of a great nation in times like these. The analogy
between the characters and circumstances of the two
men is in many respects singularly close. Succeeding to
a rebellion rather than a crown, Henry's chief material
dependence was the Huguenot party, whose doctrines
sat upon him with a looseness distasteful certainly, if
not suspicious, to the more fanatical among them. King
only in name over the greater part of France, and with
his capital barred against him, it yet gradually became
clear to the more far-seeing even of the Catholic party
that he was the only centre of order and legitimate
authority round which France could reorganize itself.
While preachers who held the divine right of kings made
the churches of Paris ring with declamations in favor of
democracy rather than submit to the heretic dog of a
Bearnois, — much as our soi-disant Democrats have
lately been preaching the divine right of slavery, and
denouncing the heresies of the Declaration of Indepen
dence, — Henry bore both parties in hand till he was
convinced that only one course of action could possibly
combine his own interests and those of France. Mom-
while the Protestants believed somewhat doubtfully that
he was theirs, the Catholics hoped somewhat doubtfully
that he would be theirs, and Henry himself turned aside
remonstrance, advice, and curiosity alike with a jest
or a proverb (if a little high, he liked them none the
worse), joking continually as his manner was. We have
seen Mr. Lincoln contemptuously compared to Sancho
Panza by persons incapable of appreciating one of the
deepest pieces of wisdom in the profoundest romance

162 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

ever written; namely, that, while Don Quixote was
incomparable in theoretic and ideal statesmanship, San-
cho, with his stock of proverbs, the ready money of
human experience, made the best possible practical
governor. Henry IV. was as full of wise saws and
modern instances as Mr. Lincoln, but beneath all this
was the thoughtful, practical, humane, and thoroughly
earnest man, around whom the fragments of France
were to gather themselves till she took her place again
as a planet of the first magnitude in the European sys
tem. In one respect Mr. Lincoln was more fortunate
than Henry. However some may think him wanting in
zeal, the most fanatical can find no taint of apostasy
in any measure of his, nor can the most bitter charge
him with being influenced by motives of personal in
terest. The leading distinction between the policies of
the two is one of circumstances. Henry went over to
the nation ; Mr. Lincoln has steadily drawn the nation
over to him. One left a united France ; the other, we
hope and believe, will leave a reunited America. We
leave our readers to trace the further points of difference
and resemblance for themselves, merely suggesting a
general similarity which has often occurred to us. One
only point of melancholy interest we will allow ourselves
to touch upon. That Mr. Lincoln is not handsome nor
elegant, we learn from certain English tourists who
would consider similar revelations in regard to Queen
Victoria as thoroughly American in their want of bien-
seance. It is no concern of ours, nor does it affect his fit
ness for the high place he so worthily occupies ; but he
is certainly as fortunate as Henry in the matter of good
looks, if we may trust contemporary evidence. Mr.
Lincoln has also been reproached with Americanism by
some not unfriendly British critics ; but, with all defer
ence, we cannot say that we like him any the worse for

ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 163

it, or see in it any reason why he should govern Ameri
cans the less wisely.

People of more sensitive organizations may be shocked,
but we are glad that in this our true war of indepen
dence, which is to free us forever from the Old World,
we have had at the head of our affairs a man whom
America made, as God made Adam, out of the very
earth, unancestried, unprivileged, unknown, to show us
how much truth, how much magnanimity, and how much
statecraft await the call of opportunity in simple man
hood when it believes in the justice of God and the
worth of man. Conventionalities are all very well in
their proper place, but they shrivel at the touch of
nature like stiibble in the fire. The genius that sways
a nation by its arbitrary will seems less august to us
than that which multiplies and reinforces itself in the
instincts and convictions of an entire people. Autocracy
may have something in it more melodramatic than this,
but falls far short of it in human value and interest.

Experience would have bred in us a rooted distrust of
improvised statesmanship, even if we did not believe
politics to be a science, which, if it cannot always com
mand men of special aptitude and great powers, at least
demands the long and steady application of the best
powers of such men as it can command to master even
its first principles. It is curious, that, in a country
which boasts of its intelligence, the theory should be so
generally held that the most complicated of human con
trivances, and one which every day becomes more com
plicated, can be worked at sight by any man able to
talk for an hour or two without stopping to think.

Mr. Lincoln is sometimes claimed as an example of a
ready-made ruler. But no case could well be less in
point ; for, besides that he was a man of such fair-mind
edness as is always the raw material of wisdom, he had

164 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

in his profession a training precisely the opposite of that
to which a partisan is subjected. His experience as a
lawyer compelled him not only to see that there is a
principle underlying every phenomenon in human affairs,
but that there are always two sides to every question,
both of which must be fully understood in order to un
derstand either, and that it is of greater advantage to
an advocate to appreciate the strength than the weakness
of his antagonist's position. Nothing is more remarka
ble than the unerring tact with which, in his debate with
Mr. Douglas, he went straight to the reason of the ques
tion • nor have we ever had a more striking lesson in
political tactics than the fact, that, opposed to a man
exceptionally adroit in using popular prejudice and big
otry to his purpose, exceptionally unscrupulous in ap
pealing to those baser motives that turn a meeting of
citizens into a mob of barbarians, he should yet have won
his case before a jury of the people. Mr. Lincoln was
as far as possible from an impromptu politician. His
wisdom was made up of a knowledge of things as well as
of men ; his sagacity resulted from a clear perception
and honest acknowledgment of difficulties, which enabled
him to see that the only durable triumph of political
opinion is based, not on any abstract right, but upon so
much of jxistice, the highest attainable at any given
moment in human affairs, as may be had in the balance
of mutual concession. Doubtless he had an ideal, but it
was the ideal of a practical statesman, — to aim at the
best, and to take the next best, if he is lucky enough
to get even that. His slow, but singularly masculine,
intelligence taught him that precedent is only another
name for embodied experience, and that it counts for
even more in the guidance of communities of men than
in that of the individual life. He was not a man who
held it good public economy to pull down on the mere

ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 165

chance of rebuilding better. Mr. Lincoln's faith in God
was qualified by a very well-founded distrust of the
wisdom of man. Perhaps it was his want of self-confi
dence that more than anything else won him the unlim
ited confidence of the people, for they felt that there
would be no need of retreat from any position he had
deliberately taken. The cautious, but steady, advance
of his policy during the war was like that of a Roman
army. He left behind him a firm road on which public
confidence could follow ; he took America with him
where he went ; what he gained he occupied, and his
advanced posts became colonies. The very homeliness
of his genius was its distinction. His kingship was con
spicuous by its workday homespun. Never was ruler so
absolute as he, nor so little conscious of it ; for he was
the incarnate common-sense of the people. With all
that tenderness of nature whose sweet sadness touched
whoever saw him with something of its own pathos, there
was no trace of sentimentalism in his speech or action.
He seems to have had but one rule of conduct, always
that of practical and successful politics, to let himself
be guided by events, when they were sure to bring him
out where he wished to go, though by what seemed to
unpractical minds, which let go the possible to grasp at
the desirable, a longer road.

Undoubtedly the highest function of statesmanship is
by degrees to accommodate the conduct of communities to
ethical laws, and to subordinate the conflicting self-inter
ests of the day to higher and more permanent concerns.
But it is on the understanding, and not on the senti
ment, of a nation that all safe legislation must be based.
Voltaire's saying, that " a consideration of petty circum
stances is the tomb of great things," may be true of
individual men, but it certainly is not true of govern
ments. It is by a multitude of such considerations, each

166 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

in itself trifling, but all together weighty, that the framers
of policy can alone divine what is practicable and there
fore wise. The imputation of inconsistency is one to
which every sound politician and every honest thinker
must sooner or later subject himself. The foolish and
the dead alone never change their opinion. The course
of a great statesman resembles that of navigable rivers,
avoiding immovable obstacles with noble bends of con-'
cession, seeking the broad levels of opinion on which men
soonest settle and longest dwell, following and marking
the almost imperceptible slopes of national tendency,
yet always aiming at direct advances, always recruited
from sources nearer heaven, and sometimes bursting
open paths of progress and fruitful human commerce
through what seem the eternal barriers of both. It
is loyalty to great ends, even though forced to combine
the small and opposing motives of selfish men to accom
plish them ; it is the anchored cling to solid principles of
duty and action, which knows how to swing with the
tide, but is never carried away by it, — that we demand
in public men, and not sameness of policy, or a conscien
tious persistency in what is impracticable. For the im
practicable, however theoretically enticing, is always po
litically unwise, sound statesmanship being the applica
tion of that prudence to the public business which is the
safest guide in that of private men.

No doubt slavery was the most delicate and embarrass
ing question with which Mr. Lincoln was called on to deal,
and it was one which no man in his position, whatever his
opinions, could evade ; for, though he might withstand
the clamor of partisans, he must sooner or later yield to
the persistent importunacy of circumstances, which thrust
the problem upon him at every turn and in every shape.

It has been brought against us as an accusation
abroad, and repeated here by people who measure their

ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 167

country rather by what is thought of it than by what
it is, that our war has not been distinctly and avow
edly for the extinction of slavery, but a war rather for
the preservation of our national power and greatness, in
which the emancipation of the negro has been forced
upon us by circumstances and accepted as a necessity.
We are very far from denying this ; nay, we admit that
it is so far true that we were slow to renounce our con
stitutional obligations even toward those who had ab
solved us by their own act from the letter of our duty.
We are speaking of the government which, legally in
stalled for the whole country, was bound, so long as
it was possible, not to overstep the limits of orderly pre
scription, and could not, without abnegating its own
very nature, take the lead in making rebellion an ex
cuse for revolution. There were, no doubt, many ardent
and sincere persons who seemed to think this as simple
a thing to do as to lead off a Virginia reel. They forgot
what should be forgotten least of all in a system like
ours, that the administration for the time being repre
sents not only the majority which elects it, but the
minority as well, — a minority in this case powerful,
and so little ready for emancipation that it was opposed
even to war. Mr. Lincoln had not been chosen as
general agent of an antislavery society, but President of
the United States, to perform certain functions exactly
defined by law. Whatever were his wishes, it was no
less duty than policy to mark out for himself a line of
action that would not further distract the country, by
raising before their time questions which plainly wo\ild
soon enough compel attention, and for which every day
was making the answer more easy.

Meanwhile he must solve the riddle of this new
Sphinx, or be devoiired. Though Mr. Lincoln's policy
in this critical affair has not been such as to satisfy

168 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

those who demand an heroic treatment for even the
most trifling occasion, and who will not cut their coat
according to their cloth, unless they can borrow the
scissors of Atropos, it has been at least not unworthy of
the long-headed king of Ithaca. Mr. Lincoln had the
choice of Bassanio offered him. Which of the three
caskets held the prize that was to redeem the fortunes
of the country 1 There was the golden one whose showy
speciousness might have tempted a vain man ; the silver
of compromise, which might have decided the choice of
a merely acute one ; and the leaden, — dull and homely-
looking, as prudence always is, — yet with something
about it sure to attract the eye of practical wisdom.
Mr. Lincoln dallied with his decision perhaps longer than
seemed needful to those on whom its awful responsibility
was not to rest, but when he made it, it was worthy of
his cautious but sure-footed understanding. The moral
of the Sphinx-riddle, and it is a deep one, lies in the
childish simplicity of the solution. Those who fail in
guessing it, fail because they are over-ingenious, and
cast about for an answer that shall suit their own notion
of the gravity of the occasion and of their own dignity,
rather than the occasion itself.

In a matter which must be finally settled by public
opinion, and in regard to which the ferment of prejudice
and passion on both sides has not yet subsided to that
equilibrium of compromise from which alone a sound
public opinion can result, it is proper enough foi the
private citizen to press his own convictions with all pos
sible force of argument and persuasion ; but the popular
magistrate, whose judgment must become action, and
whose action involves the whole country, is bound to
wait till the sentiment of the people is so far advanced
toward his own point of view, that what he does shall
find support in it, instead of merely confusing it with

ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 169

new elements of division. It was not unnatural that
men earnestly devoted to the saving of their country,
and profoundly convinced that slavery was its only real
enemy, should demand a decided policy round which all
patriots might rally, — and this might have been the
wisest course for an absolute ruler. But in the then
unsettled state of the public mind, with a large party
decrying even resistance to the slaveholders' rebellion as
not only unwise, but even unlawful ; with a majority,
perhaps, even of the would-be loyal so long accustomed
to regard the Constitution as a deed of gift conveying to
the South their own judgment as to policy and instinct
as to right, that they were in doubt at first whether
their loyalty were due to the country or to slavery ; and
with a respectable body of honest and influential men
who still believed in the possibility of conciliation, — Mr.
Lincoln judged wisely, that, in laying down a policy in
deference to one party, he should be giving to the other
the very fulcrum for which their disloyalty had been
waiting.

It behooved a clear-headed man in his position not to
yield so far to an honest indignation against the brokers
of treason in the North as to lose sight of the materials
for misleading which were their stock in trade, and
to forget that it is not the falsehood of sophistry which
is to be feared, but the grain of truth mingled with
it to make it specious, — that it is not the knavery of
the leaders so much as the honesty of the followers they
may seduce, that gives them power for evil. It was
especially his duty to do nothing which might help the
people to forget the true cause of the war in fruitless
disputes about its inevitable consequences.

The doctrine of State rights can be so handled by an
adroit demagogue as easily to confound the distinction
between liberty and lawlessness in the minds of ignorant

170 ABRAHAM LINCOLN,

persons, accustomed always to be influenced by the
sound of certain words, rather than to reflect upon the
principles which give them meaning. For, though Seces
sion involves the manifest absurdity of denying to a
State the right of making war against any foreign power
while permitting it against the United States ; though
it supposes a compact of mutual concessions and guaran
ties among States without any arbiter in case of dissen
sion ; though it contradicts common-sense in assuming
that the men who framed our government did not know
what they meant when they substituted Union for Con
federation ; though it falsifies history, which shows that
the main opposition to the adoption of the Constitution
was based on the argument that it did not allow that
independence in the several States which alone would
justify them in seceding ; — yet, as slavery was univer
sally admitted to be a reserved right, an inference could
be drawn from any direct attack upon it (though only in
self-defence) to a natural right of resistance, logical
enough to satisfy minds untrained to detect fallacy, as
the majority of men always are, and now too much dis
turbed by the disorder of the times, to consider that the
order of events had any legitimate bearing on the argu
ment. Though Mr. Lincoln was too sagacious to give
the Northern allies of the Rebels the occasion they
desired and even strove to provoke, yet from the begin
ning of the war the most persistent efforts have been
made to confuse the public mind as to its origin and
motives, and to drag the people of the loyal States down
from the national position they had instinctively taken
to the old level of party squabbles and antipathies. The
wholly unprovoked rebellion of an oligarchy proclaim
ing negro slavery the corner-stone of free institutions,
and in the first flush of over-hasty confidence venturing
to parade the logical sequence of their leading dogma,

ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 171

" that slavery is right in principle, and has nothing to
do with difference of complexion," has been represented
as a legitimate and gallant attempt to maintain the true
principles of democracy. The rightful endeavor of an
established government, the least onerous that ever
existed, to defend itself against a treacherous attack on
its very existence, has been cunningly made to seem the
wicked effort of a fanatical clique to force its doctrines
on an oppressed population.

Even so long ago as when Mr. Lincoln, not yet con
vinced of the danger and magnitude of the crisis, was
endeavoring to persuade himself of Union majorities at
the South, and to carry on a war that was half peace in
the hope of a peace that would have been all war, —
while he was still enforcing the Fugitive Slave Law,
under some theory that Secession, however it might
absolve States from their obligations, could not escheat
them of their claims under the Constitution, and that
slaveholders in rebellion had alone among mortals the
privilege of having their cake and eating it at the same
time, — the enemies of free government were striving
to persuade the people that the war was an Abolition
crusade. To rebel without reason was proclaimed as
one of the rights of man, while it was carefully kept
out of sight that to suppress rebellion is the first duty
of government. All the evils that have come upon the
country have been attributed to the Abolitionists, though
it is hard to see how any party can become permanently
powerful except in one of two ways, — either by the
greater truth of its principles, or the extravagance of
the party opposed to it. To fancy the ship of state,
riding safe at her constitutional moorings, suddenly
engulfed by a huge kraken of Abolitionism, rising from
unknown depths and graspintr it with slimy tentacles, is
to look at the natural history of the matter with the

172 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

eyes of Pontoppidan. To believe that the leaders in
the Southern treason feared any danger from Abolition
ism, would be to deny them ordinary intelligence, though
there can be little doubt that they made use of it to
stir the passions and excite the fears of their deluded
accomplices. They rebelled, not because they thought
slavery weak, but because they believed it strong
enough, not to overthrow the government, but to get
possession of it ; for it becomes daily clearer that they
used rebellion only as a means of revolution, and if they
got revolution, though not in the shape they looked for,
is the American people to save them from its conse
quences at the cost of its own existence 1 The election
of Mr. Lincoln, which it was clearly in their power to
prevent had they wished, was the occasion merely, and
not the cause, of their revolt. Abolitionism, till within
a year or two, was the despised heresy of a few earnest
persons, without political weight enough to carry the
election of a parish constable ; and their cardinal prin
ciple was disunion, because they were convinced that
within the Union the position of slavery was impregna
ble. In spite of the proverb, great effects do not
follow from small causes, — that is, disproportionately
small, — but from adequate causes acting under certain
required conditions. To contrast the size of the oak
with that of the parent acorn, as if the poor seed had
paid all costs from its slender strong-box, may serve for
a child's wonder ; but the real miracle lies in that divine
league which bound all the forces of nature to the ser
vice of the tiny germ in fulfilling its destiny. Every
thing has been at work for the past ten years in the
cause of antislavery, but Garrison and Phillips have been
far less successful propagandists than the slaveholders
themselves, with the constantly-growing arrogance of
their pretensions and encroachments. They have forced

ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 173

the question upon the attention of every voter in the
Free States, by defiantly putting freedom and democracy
on the defensive. But, even after the Kansas outrages,
there was no wide-spread desire on the part of the North
to commit aggressions, though there was a growing
determination to resist them. The popular unanimity
in favor of the war three years ago was but in small
measure the result of antislavery sentiment, far less of
any zeal for abolition. But every month of the war,
every movement of the allies of slavery in the Free
States, has been making Abolitionists by the thousand.
The masses of any people, however intelligent, are very
little moved by abstract principles of humanity and
justice, until those principles are interpreted for them
by the stinging commentary of some infringement upon
their own rights, and then their instincts and passions,
once aroused, do indeed derive an incalculable reinforce
ment of impulse and intensity from those higher ideas,
those sublime traditions, which have no motive political
force till they are allied with a sense of immediate per
sonal wrong or imminent peril. Then at last the stars
in their courses begin to fight against Sisera. Had any
one doubted before that the rights of human nature are
unitary, that oppression is of one hue the world over,
no matter what the color of the oppressed, — had any
one failed to see what the real essence of the contest
was, — • the efforts of the advocates of slavery among
ourselves to throw discredit upon the fundamental
axioms of the Declaration of Independence and the
radical doctrines of Christianity, could not fail to sharp
en his eyes.

While every day was bringing the people nearer to the
conclusion which all thinking men saw to be inevitable
from the beginning, it was wise in Mr. Lincoln to leave
the shaping of his policy to events. In this country,

174 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

where the rough and ready understanding of the people
is sure at last to be the controlling power, a pi'ofound
common-sense is the best genius for statesmanship.
Hitherto the wisdom of the President's measures has
been justified by the fact that they have always resulted
in more firmly uniting public opinion. One of the
things particularly admirable in the public utterances
of President Lincoln is a certain tone of familiar dignity,
which, while it is perhaps the most difficult attainment
of mere style, is also no doubtful indication of personal
character. There must be something essentially noble
in an elective ruler who can descend to the level of con
fidential ease without losing respect, something very
manly in one who can break through the etiquette of
his conventional rank and trust himself to the reason
and intelligence of those who have elected him. No
higher compliment was ever paid to a nation than the
simple confidence, the fireside plainness, with which Mr.
Lincoln always addresses himself to the reason of the
American people. This was, indeed, a true democrat,
who grounded himself on the assumption that a democ
racy can think. " Come, let us reason together about
this matter," has been the tone of all his addresses to
the people ; and accordingly we have never had a chief
magistrate who so won to himself the love and at the
same time the judgment of his countrymen. To us,
that simple confidence of his in the right-mindedness of
his fellow-men is very touching, and its success is as
strong an argument as we have ever seen in favor of the
theory that men can govern themselves. He never
appeals to any vulgar sentiment, he never alludes to the
humbleness of his origin ; it probably never occurred to
him, indeed, that there was anything higher to start
from than manhood ; and he put himself on a level with
those he addressed, not by going down to them, but

ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 175

only by taking it for granted that they had brains and
would come up to a common ground of reason. In an
article lately printed in "The Nation," Mr. Bayard
Taylor mentions the striking fact, that in the foulest
dens of the Five Points he found the portrait of Lincoln.
The wretched population that makes its hive • there
threw all its votes and more against him, and yet paid
this instinctive tribute to the sweet humanity of his
nature. Their ignorance sold its vote and took its
money, but all that was left of manhood in them recog
nized its saint and martyr.

Mr. Lincoln is not in the habit of saying, "This is
my opinion, or my theory," but, " This is the conclusion
to which, in my judgment, the time has come, and to
which, accordingly, the sooner we come the better for
us." His policy has been the policy of public opinion
based on adequate discussion and on a timely recogni
tion of the influence of passing events in shaping the
features of events to come.

One secret of Mr. Lincoln's remarkable success in
captivating the popular mind is undoubtedly an un
consciousness of self which enables him, though under
the necessity of constantly using the capital /, to do it
without any suggestion of egotism. There is no single
vowel which men's mouths can pronounce with such
difference of effect. That which one shall hide away,
as it were, behind the substance of his discourse, or, if
he bring it to the front, shall use merely to give an
agreeable accent of individuality to what he says, another
shall make an offensive challenge to the self-satisfaction
of all his hearers, and an unwarranted intrusion upon
each man's sen^se of personal importance, irritating every
pore of his vanity, like a dry northeast wind, to a goose-
flesh of opposition and hostility. Mr. Lincoln has never
studied Quinctilian ; but he has, in the earnest sirn-

176 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

plicity and unaffected Americanism of his own character,
one art of oratory worth all the rest. He forgets him
self so entirely in his object as to give his / the sympa
thetic and persuasive effect of We with the great body
of his countrymen. Homely, dispassionate, showing all
the rough-edged process of his thought as it goes along,
yet arriving at his conclusions with an honest kind of
every-day logic, he is so eminently our representative
man, that, when he speaks, it seems as if the people
were listening to their own thinking aloud. The dig
nity of his thought owes nothing to any ceremonial
garb of words, but to the manly movement that comes
of settled purpose and an energy of reason that knows
not what rhetoric means. There has been nothing of
Cleon, still less of Strepsiades striving to underbid him
in demagogism, to be found in the public utterances of
Mr. Lincoln. He has always addressed the intelligence
of men, never their prejudice, their passion, or their
ignorance.

On the day of his death, this simple Western attor
ney, who according to one party was a vulgar joker,
and whom the doctrinaires among his own supporters
accused of wanting every element of statesmanship,
was the most absolute ruler in Christendom, and this
solely by the hold his good-humored sagacity had
laid on the hearts and understandings of his country
men. Nor was this all, for it appeared that he had
drawn the great majority, not only of his fellow-citizens,
but of mankind also, to his side. So strong and so
persuasive is honest manliness without a single quality
of romance or unreal sentiment to help it ! A civilian
during times of the most captivating military achieve'
ment, awkward, with no skill in the lower technicalities

ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 177

of manners, he left behind him a fame beyond that of
any conqueror, the memory of a grace higher than that
of outward person, and of a gentlemanliness deeper than
mere breeding. Never before that startled April morn
ing did such multitudes of men shed tears for the depth
of one they had never seen, as if with him a friendly
presence had been taken away from their lives, leaving
them colder and darker. Never was funeral panegyric
so eloquent as the silent look of sympathy which stran
gers exchanged when they met on that day. Their
common manhood had lost a kinsman.

THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF JAMES
GATES PERC1VAL.

is an interesting and in many respects instruc-
-_ tive book. Mr. Ward has done his work, as is
fitting, in a loving spirit ; and if he over-estimates both
what Percival was and what he did, he enables us to
form our own judgment by letting him so far as possible
speak for himself. The book gives a rather curious
picture of what the life of a man of letters is likely to
be in a country not yet ripe for literary production,
especially if he be not endowed with the higher qualities
which command and can wait for that best of all suc
cesses which comes slowly. In a generation where
everybody can write verses, and where certain modes of
thought and turns of phrase have become so tyrannous
that it is as hard to distinguish between the produc
tions of one minor poet and another as among those of
so many Minnesingers or Troubadours, there is a de
mand for only two things, — for what chimes with the
moment's whim of popular sentiment and is forgotten
when that has changed, or for what is never an anachro
nism, because it slakes or seems to slake the eternal thirst
of our nature for those ideal waters that glimmer before
us and still before us in ever-renewing mirage. Percival
met neither of these conditions. With a nature singu
larly unplastic, unsympathetic, and self-involved, he was
incapable of receiving into his own mind the ordinary
emotions of men and giving them back in music ; and

LIFE AND LETTERS OF JAMES GATES PERCIVAL. 179

with a lofty conception of the object and purposes of
poesy, he had neither the resolution nor the power
which might have enabled him to realize it. He offers
as striking an example as coxild be found of the poetic
temperament unballasted with those less obvious quali
ties which make the poetic faculty. His verse carries
every inch of canvas that diction and sentiment can
crowd, but the craft is cranky, and we miss that deep-
grasping keel of reason which alone can steady and give
direction. His mind drifts, too waterlogged to answer
the helm, and in his longer poems, like " Prometheus,"
half the voyage is spent in trying to make up for a lee
way which becomes at last irretrievable. If he had a
port in view when he set out, he seems soon to give up
all hope of ever reaching it ; and wherever we open the
log-book, we find him running for nowhere in particular,
as the wind happens to lead, or lying-to in the merest
gale of verbiage. The truth is, that Percival was led to
the writing of verse by a sentimental desire of the mind,
and not by that concurring instinct of all the faculties
which is a self-forgetting passion of the entire man.
Too excitable to possess his subject fully, as a man of
mere talent may often do, he is not possessed by it as
the man of genius is, and seems helplessly striving, the
greater part of the time, to make out what, in the name
of common or uncommon sense, he is after. With all
the stock properties of verse whirling and dancing about
his ears puffed out to an empty show of life, the reader
of much of his blank verse feels as if a mob of well-
draperied clothes-lines were rioting about him in all the
unwilling ecstasy of a thunder-gust.

Percival, living from 1795 to 1856, arrived at man
hood just as the last war with England had come to an
end. Poor, shy, and proud, there is nothing in his
earlier years that might not be paralleled in those of

180 LIFE AND LETTERS OF JAMES GATES PERCIVAL.

hundreds of sensitive boys who gradually get the non
sense shaken out of them in the rough school of life.
The length of the schooling needful in his case is what
makes it peculiar. Not till after he was fifty, if even
then, did he learn that the world never takes a man at
his own valuation, and never pays money for what it
does not want, or think it wants. It did not want his
poetry, simply because it was not, is not, and by no con
ceivable power of argument can be made, interesting, —
the first duty of every artistic product. Percival, who
would have thought his neighbors mad if they had in
sisted on his buying twenty thousand refrigerators mere
ly because they had been at the trouble of making them,
and found it convenient to turn them into cash, could
never forgive the world for taking this business view of
the matter in his own case. He went on doggedly,
making refrigerators of every possible pattern, and com
forted himself with the thought of a wiser posterity,
which should have learned that the purpose of poetry is
to cool and not to kindle. His "Mind," which is on
the whole perhaps the best of his writings, vies in cold
ness with the writings of his brother doctor, Akenside,
whose " Pleasures of Imagination" are something quite
other than pleasing in reality. If there be here and
there a semblance of pale fire, it is but the reflection of
moonshine upon ice. Akenside is respectable, because
he really had something new to say, in spite of his pom
pous, mouthing way of saying it ; but when Percival
says it over again, it is a little too much. In his more
ambitious pieces, — and it is curious how literally the
word " pieces " applies to all he did, — he devotes him
self mainly to telling us what poetry ought to be, as if
mankind were not always more than satisfied with any
one who fulfils the true office of poet, by showing them,
with the least possible fuss, what it is. Percival was a

LIFE AND LETTERS OF JAMES GATES PERCIVAL. 181

professor of poetry rather than a poet, and we are not
surprised at the number of lectures he reads us, when
we learn that in early life he was an excellent demon
strator of anatomy, whose subject must be dead before
his business with it begins. His interest in poetry was
always more or less scientific. He was forever trying
experiments in matter and form, especially the latter.
And these were especially unhappy, because it is plain
that he had no musical ear, or at best a very imperfect
one. His attempts at classical metres are simply un
readable, whether as verse or prose. He contrives to
make even the Sapphic so, which when we read it in
Latin moves featly to our modern accentuation. Let
any one who wishes to feel the difference between ear
and no ear compare Percival's specimens with those in
the same kind of Coleridge, who had the finest metrical
sense since Milton. We take this very experimenting
to be a sufficient proof that Percival's faculty, such as it
was, and we do not rate it highly, was artificial, and not
innate. The true poet is much rather experimented
upon by life and nature, by joy and sorrow, by beauty
and defect, till it be found out whether he have any
hidden music in him that can sing them into an accord
with the eternal harmony which we call (rod.

It is easy to trace the literary influences to which the
mind of Percival was in turn subjected. Early in life
we find a taint of Byronism, which indeed does not
wholly disappear to the last. There is among his poems
" An Imprecation," of which a single stanza will suffice
as a specimen : —

" Wrapped in shoots of gory lightning.
While cursed night-hags ring thy knell,
May the arm of vengeance bright'ning,
O'er thee wave the sword of hell ! "

If we could fancy Laura Matilda shut up tipsy in the

182 LIFE AND LETTERS OF JAMFS GATES 1'ERCIVAL.

watch-house, we might suppose her capable of this me
lodious substitute for swearing. We confess that we
cannot read it without laughing, after learning from Mr.
Ward that its Salmoneus-thunderbolts were launched at
the comfortable little city of Hartford, because the poet
fancied that the inhabitants thereof did not like him or
his verses so much as he himself did. There is some
thing deliciously ludicrous in the conception of night-
hags ringing the orthodox bell of the Second Congrega
tional or First Baptist Meeting-house to summon the
parishioners to witness these fatal consequences of not
reading Percival's poems. Nothing less than the fear
of some such catastrophe could compel the perusal of
the greater part of them. Next to Byron comes Moore,
whose cloying sentimentalism and too facile melody are
recalled by the subject and treatment of very many of
the shorter lyrics of Percival. In "Prometheus" it is
Shelley who is paramount for the time, and Shelley at
his worst period, before his unwieldy abundance of
incoherent words and images, that were merely words
and images without any meaning of real experience to
give them solidity, had been compressed in the stricter
moulds of thought and study. In the blank verse
again, we encounter Wordsworth's tone and sentiment.
These were no good models for Percival, who always
improvised, and who seems to have thought verse the
great distinction between poetry and prose. Percival
got nothing from Shelley but the fatal copiousness which
is his vice, nothing from Wordsworth but that tendency
to preach at every corner about a sympathy with nature
which is not his real distinction, and which becomes a
wearisome cant at second-hand. Shelley and Wrords-
worth are both stilted, though in different ways. Shel
ley wreathed his stilts with flowers; while Wordsworth,
protesting against the use of them as sinful, mounts his

LIFE AND LETTERS OF JAMES GATES PERCIVAL. 183

solemnly at last, and stalks away conscientiously eschew
ing whatever would serve to hide the naked wood, — •
nay, was it not Gray's only that were scandalous, and
were not his own, modelled upon those of the sainted
Cowper, of strictly orthodox pattern after all ? Percival,
like all imitators, is caught by the defects of what he
copies, and exaggerates them. With him the stilts are
the chief matter ; and getting a taller pair than either
of his predecessors, he lifts his commonplace upon them
only to make it more drearily conspicuous. Shelley has
his gleams of iinearthly wildfire, Wordsworth is by fits
the most deeply inspired man of his generation ; but
Percival has no lucid interval. He is pertinaciously and
unappeasably dull, — as dull as a comedy of Goethe.
He never in his life wrote a rememberable verse. We
should not have thought this of any consequence now,
for we need not try to read him, did not Mr. Ward with
amusing gravity all along assume that he was a great
poet. There was scarce timber enough in him for the
making of a Tiedge or a Hagedorn, both of whom he
somewhat resembles.

Percival came to maturity at an unfortunate time for
a man so liable to self-delusion. Leaving college with so
imperfect a classical training (in spite of the numerous
" testimonials " cited by Mr. Ward) that he was capable
of laying the accent on the second syllable of Pericles,
he seems never to have systematically trained even such
faculty as was in him, but to have gone on to the end
mistaking excitability of brain for wholesome exercise of
thought. The consequence is a prolonged immaturity,
which makes his latest volume, published in 1843, as
crude and as plainly wanting in enduring quality as the
first number of his " Clio." We have the same old com
plaints of neglected genius, — as if genius could ever be
neglected so long as it has the perennial consolation of

184 LIFE AND LETTERS OF JAMES GATES PERCIVAL.

its own divine society, — the same wilted sentiment, the
same feeling about for topics of verse in which he may
possibly find that inspiration from without which the
true poet cannot flee from in himself. These tedious
wailings about heavenly powers suffocating in the heavy
atmosphere of an uncongenial, unrecognizing world, and
Percival is profuse of them, are simply an advertisement
to whoever has ears of some innate disability in the man
•who utters them. Heavenly powers know very well how
to take care of themselves. The poor " World," meaning
thereby that small fraction of society which has any
personal knowledge of an author or his affairs, has had
great wrong done it in such matters. It is not, and
never was, the powers of a man that it neglects, — it
could not if it would, — but his weaknesses, and espe
cially the publication of them, of which it grows weary.
It can never supply any man with what is wanting
in himself, and the attempt to do it only makes bad
worse. If a man can find the proof of his own genius
only in public appreciation, still worse, if his vanity con
sole itself with taking it as an evidence of rare qualities
in himself that his fellow-mortals are unable to see them,
it is all up with him. The " World " resolutely refused
to find Wordsworth entertaining, and it refuses still, on
good grounds ; but the genius that was in him bore up
unflinchingly, would take no denial, got its claim admit
ted on all hands, and impregnated at last the literature
of an entire generation, though luibitans in sicco, if ever
genius did. But Percival seems to have satisfied him
self with a syllogism something like this : Men of genius
are neglected ; the more neglect, the more genius ; I am
altogether neglected, — ergo, wholly made up of that
priceless material.

The truth was that he suffered rather from over-
appreciation ; and " when," says a nameless old French*

LIFE AND LETTERS OF JAMES GATES PERCIVAL. 185

man, " I see a man go up like a rocket, I expect before
long to see the stick come down." The times were
singularly propitious to mediocrity. As in Holland one

had only to

" Invent a shovel and be a magistrate,"

so here to write a hundred blank verses was to be im
mortal, till somebody else wrote a hundred and fifty
blanker ones. It had been resolved unanimously that
we must and would have a national literature. England,
France, Spain, Italy, each already had one, Germany
was getting one made as fast as possible, and Ireland
vowed that she once had one far surpassing them all.
To be respectable, we must have one also, and that
speedily. That we were not yet, in any true sense, a
nation ; that we wanted that literary and social atmos
phere which is the breath of life to all artistic produc
tion; that our scholarship, such as it was, was mostly
of that theological sort which acts like a prolonged
drouth upon the brain ; that our poetic fathers were
Joel Barlow and Timothy Dwight, — was nothing to the
purpose ; a literature adapted to the size of the coun
try was what we must and would have. Given the
number of square miles, the length of the rivers, the
size of the lakes, and you have the greatness of the lit
erature we were bound to produce without further
delay. If that little dribble of an Avon had succeeded
in engendering Shakespeare, what a giant might we not
look for from the mighty womb of Mississippi ! Physical
Geography for the first time took her rightful place
as the tenth and most inspiring Muse. A glance at the
map would satisfy the most incredulous that she had
done her best for us, and should we be wanting to the
glorious opportunity ] Not we indeed ! So surely as
Franklin invented the art of printing, and Fulton the
steam-engine, we would invent us a great poet in time

186 LIFE AND LETTERS OF JAMES GATES PERCIVAL.

to send the news by the next packet to England, and
teach her that we were her masters in arts as well as
arms.

Percival was only too ready to be invented, and he
forthwith produced his bale of verses from a loom capa
ble of turning off a hitherto unheard-of number of yards
to the hour, and perfectly adapted to the amplitude of
our territory, inasmuch as it was manufactured on the
theory of covering the largest surface with the least
possible amount of meaning that would hold words
together. He was as ready te accept the perilous em
prise, and as loud in asserting his claim thereto, as
Sir Kay used to be, and with much the same result.
Our critical journals — and America certainly has led
the world in a department of letters which of course
requires no outfit but the power to read and write, gra
tuitously furnished by our public schools — received him
with a shout of welcome. Here came the true deliverer
at last, mounted on a steed to which he himself had
given the new name of " Pegasus," — for we were to be
original in everything, — and certainly blowing his own
trumpet with remarkable vigor of lungs. Solitary en
thusiasts, who had long awaited this sublime avatar,
addressed him in sonnets which he accepted with a
gravity beyond all praise. (To be sure, even Mr. Ward
seems to allow that his sense of humor was hardly equal
to his other transcendent endowments.) Hia path was
strewn with laurel — of the native variety, altogether
superior to that of the Old World, at any rate not pre
cisely like it. Verses signed " P.," as like each other as
two peas, and as much like poetry as that vegetable
is like a peach, were watched for in the corner of a news
paper as an astronomer watches for a new planet. There
was never anything so comically unreal since the crown
ing in the Capitol of Messer Francesco Petrarca, Grand

LIFE AND LETTERS OF JAMES GATES PERCIVAL. 187

Sentimentalist in Ordinary at the Court of King Robert
of Naples. Unhappily, Percival took it all quite seri
ously. There was no praise too ample for the efsy
elasticity of his swallow. He believed himself as gigan
tic as the shadow he cast on these rolling mists of insub
stantial adulation, and life-long he could never make out
why his fine words refused to butter his parsnips for
him, nay, to furnish both parsnips and sauce. While the
critics were debating precisely how many of the prime
qualities of the great poets of his own and preceding
generations he combined in his single genius, and in
what particular respects he surpassed them all, — a
point about which he himself seems never to have had
any doubts, — the public, which could read Scott and
Byron with avidity, and which was beginning even to
taste Wordsworth, found his verses inexpressibly weari
some. They would not throng and subscribe for a col
lected edition of those works which singly had been too
much for them. With whatever dulness of sense they
may be charged, they have a remarkably keen scent for
tediousness, and will have none of it unless in a tract or
sermon, where, of course, it is to be expected. Percival
never forgave the public ; but it was the critics that he
never should have forgiven, for of all the maggots that
can make their way into the brains through the ears,
there is none so disastrous as the persuasion that you
are a great poet. There is surely something in the con
struction of the ears of small authors which lays them
specially open to the inroads of this pest. It tickles
pleasantly while it cats away the fibre of will, and inca
pacitates a man for all honest commerce with realities.
Unhappily its insidious titillation seems to have born
Percival' s one great pleasure during life.

We began by saying that the book before us was
interesting and instructive ; but we meant that it was so

188 LIFE AND LETTERS OF JAMES GATES PERCIVAL.

not so much from any positive merits of its own as by
the lesson which almost every page of it suggests. To
those who have some knowledge of the history of litera
ture, or some experience in life, it is from beginning
to end a history of weakness mistaking great desires for
great powers. If poetry, in Bacon's noble definition of
it, "adapt the shows of things to the desires of the mind,"
sentimentalism is equally skilful in making realities
shape themselves to the cravings of vanity. The theory
that the poet is a being above the world and apart from
it is true of him as an observer only who applies to the
phenomena about him the test of a finer and more spirit
ual sense. That he is a creature divinely set apart from
his fellow-men by a mental organization that makes
them mutually unintelligible to each other, is in flat
contradiction with the lives of those poets universally
acknowledged as greatest. Dante, Shakespeare, Cer
vantes, Calderon, Milton, Moliere, Goethe, — in what
conceivable sense is it true of them that they wanted
the manly qualities which made them equal to the
demands of the world in which they lived ] That a poet
should assume, as Victor Hugo used to do, that he is a
reorganizer of the moral world, and that works cunningly
adapted to the popular whim of the time form part of
some mysterious system which is to give us a new heaven
and a new earth, and to remodel laws of art which are
as unchangeable as those of astronomy, can do no very
great harm to any one but the author himself, who will
thereby be led astray from his proper function, and from
the only path to legitimate and lasting success. But
when the theory is carried a step further, and we are
asked to believe, as in Percival's case, that, because
a man can write verses, he is exempt from that inexora
ble logic of life and circumstance to which all other men
ore subjected, and to which it is wholesome for them

LIFE AND LETTERS OF JAMES GATES PERCIVAL. 189

that they should be, then it becomes mischievous, and
calls for a protest from all those who have at heart the
interests of good morals and healthy literature. It is
the theory of idlers and dilettanti, of fribbles in morals
and declaimers in verse, which a young man of real
power may dally with during some fit of mental indiges
tion, but which when accepted by a mature man, and
carried along with him through life, is a sure mark
of feebleness and of insincere dealing with himself. Per-
cival is a good example of a class of authors unhappily
too numerous in these latter days. In Europe the
natural growth of a world ill at ease with itself and still
nervous with the frightful palpitation of the French
Revolution, they are but feeble exotics in our healthier
air. Without faith or hope, and deprived of that out
ward support in the habitual procession of events and in
the authoritative limitations of thought which in ordi
nary times gives steadiness to feeble and timid intellects,
they are turned inward, and forced, like Hudibras's
sword,

" To eat into themselves, for lack
Of other thing to hew and hack."

Compelled to find within them that stay which had hith
erto been supplied by creeds and institutions, they learned
to attribute to their own consciousness the grandeur
which belongs of right only to the mind of the human
race, slowly endeavoring after an equilibrium between
its desires and the external conditions under which they
are attainable. Hence that exaggeration of the individual,
and depreciation of the social man, which has become the
cant of modern literature. Abundance of such phenom
ena accompanied the rise of what was called Romanti
cism in Germany and France, reacting to some extent
even upon England, and consequently America. The
smaller poets ei'ected themselves into a kind of guild,

190 LIFE AND LETTERS OF JAMES GATES PERCIVAL.

into which all were admitted who gave proof of a certain
feebleness of character which rendered them superior to
their grosser fellow-men. It was a society of cripples
undertaking to teach the new generation how to walk.
Meanwhile, the object of their generous solicitude, what
Avith clinging to Mother Past's skirts, and helping itself
by every piece of household furniture it could lay hands
on, learned, after many a tumble, to get on its legs, and
to use them as other generations had done before it.
Percival belonged to this new order of bards, weak in the
knees, and thinking it healthy exercise to climb the peaks
of Dreamland. To the vague and misty views attaina
ble from those sublime summits into his own vast in
terior, his reports in blank verse and otherwise did ample
justice, but failed to excite the appetite of mankind. He
spent his life, like others of his class, in proclaiming him
self a neglected Columbus, ever ready to start on his
voyage when the public would supply the means of
building his ships. Meanwhile, to be ready at a moment's
warning, he packs his mind pellmell like a carpet-bag,
wraps a geologist's hammer in a shirt with a Byron collar,
does up Volney's " Ruins " with an odd volume of Words
worth, and another of Bell's " Anatomy " in a loose sheet
of Webster's Dictionary, jams Moore's poems between the
leaves of Bopp's Grammer, — and forgets only such small
matters as combs and brushes. It never seems to have
entered his head that the gulf between genius and its
new world is never too wide for a stout swimmer. Like
all sentimentalists, he reversed the process of nature,
which makes it a part of greatness that it is a simple
thing to itself, however much of a marvel it may be to
other men. He discovered his own genius, as he sup
posed, — a thing impossible had the genius been reaL
Donne never wrote a profounder verse than

" Who knows his virtue's name and place, hath none."

LIFE AND LETTERS OF JAMES GATES PEKCIVAL. 191

Percival's life was by no means a remarkable one, ex
cept, perhaps, in the number of chances that seem to
have been offered him to make something of himself,
if anything were possibly to be made. He was iie^er
without friends, never without opportunities, if he could
have availed himself of them. It is pleasant to see
Mr. Ticknor treating him with that considerate kindness
which many a young scholar can remember as shown so
generously to himself. But nothing could help Percival,
whose nature had defeat worked into its very composition.
He was not a real, but an imaginary man. His early
attempt at suicide (as Mr. Ward seems to think it) is
typical of him. He is not the first young man who, when
crossed in love, has spoken of " loupin o'er a linn," nor
will he be the last. But that any one who really meant
to kill himself should put himself resolutely in the way
of being prevented, as Percival did, is hard to believe.
Chateaubriand, the arch sentimentalist of these latter
days, had the same harmless velleity of self-destruction,
— enough to scare his sister and so give him a smack of
sensation, — but a very different thing from the settled
will which would be really perilous. Shakespeare, always
true to Nature, makes Hamlet dally with the same excit
ing fancy. Alas ! self is the one thing the sentimen
talist never truly wishes to destroy ! One remarkable
gift Percival seems to have had, which may be called
memory of the eye. What he saw he never forgot, and
this fitted him for a good geological observer. How great
his power of combination was, which alone could have
made him a great geologist, we cannot determine. But
he seems to have shown but little in other directions.
His faculty of acquiring foreign tongues we do not value
so highly as Mr. Ward. We have known many other
wise inferior men who possessed it. Indeed, the power
to express the same nothing in ten different languages is

192 LIFE AND LETTERS OF JAMES GATES PERCIVAL.

something to be dreaded rather than admired. It gives
a horrible advantage to dulness. The best thing to be
learned from Percival's life is that he was happy for the
first time when taken away from his vague pursuit of the
ideal, and set to practical work.

THOREAU.

WHAT contemporary, if he was in the fighting
period of his life, (since Nature sets limits about
her conscription for spiritual fields, as the state does in
physical warfare,) will ever forget what was somewhat
vaguely called the " Transcendental Movement " of thirty
years ago 1 Apparently set astirring by Carlyle's essays
on the " Signs of the Times," and on "History," the final
and more immediate impulse seemed to be given by
" Sartor Resartus." At least the republication in Boston
of that wonderful Abraham a Sancta Clara sermon on
Lear's text of the miserable forked radish gave the signal
for a sudden mental and moral mutiny. Ecce nunc tern-
pus acceptabile ! was shouted on all hands with every
variety of emphasis, and by voices of every conceivable
pitch, representing the three sexes of men, women, an,d
Lady Mary Wortley Montagues. The nameless eagle of
the tree Ygdrasil was about to sit at last, and wild-eyed
enthusiasts rushed from all sides, each eager to thrust
under the mystic bird that chalk egg from which the new
and fairer Creation was to be hatched in due time. Rc~
deunt Saturnia regna, — so far was certain, though in
what shape, or by what methods, was still a matter of
debate. Every possible form of intellectual and physical
dyspepsia brought forth its gospel. Bran had its proph
ets, and the presartorial simplicity of Adam its mar
tyrs, tailored impromptu from the tar-pot by incensed
9 M

194 THOREAU.

neighbors, and sent forth to illustrate the " feathered
Mercury," as denned by Webster and Worcester. Plain
ness of speech was carried to a pitch that would have
taken away the breath of George Fox ; and even swear
ing had its evangelists, who answered a simple inquiry
after their health with an elaborate ingenuity of impre
cation that might have been honorably mentioned by
Marlborough in general orders. Everybody had a mis
sion (with a capital M) to attend to everybody-else's
business. No brain but had its private maggot, which
must have found pitiably short commons sometimes. Not
a few impecunious zealots abjured the use of money (un
less earned by other people), professing to live on the
internal revenues of the spirit. Some had an assurance
of instant millennium so soon as hooks and eyes should be
substituted for buttons. Communities were established
where everything was to be common but common-sense.
Men renounced their old gods, and hesitated only whether
to bestow their furloughed allegiance on Thor or Budh.
Conventions were held for every hitherto inconceivable
purpose. The belated gift of tongues, as among the Fifth
Monarchy men, spread like a contagion, rendering its
victims incomprehensible to all Christian men ; whether
equally so to the most distant possible heathen or not
was unexperimented, though many would have sub
scribed liberally that a fair trial might be made. It was
the pentecost of Shinar. The day of utterances repro
duced the day of rebuses and anagrams, and there was
nothing so simple that uncial letters and the style of
Diphilus the Labyrinth could not turn into a riddle.
Many foreign revolutionists out of work added to the
general misunderstanding their contribution of broken
English in every most ingenious form of fracture. All
stood ready at a moment's notice to reform everything
but themselves. The general motto was : —

THOREAU. 195

" And we '11 talk with them, too,
And take upon 's the mystery of things
As if we were God's spies."

Nature is always kind enough to give even her clouds
a humorous lining. We have barely hinted at the comic
side of the affair, for the material was endless. This was
the whistle and trailing fuse of the shell, but there was
a very solid and serious kernel, full of the most deadly
explosiveness. Thoughtful men divined it, but the gen
erality suspected nothing. The word " transcendental "
then was the maid of all work for those who could not
think, as " Pre-Raphaelite " has been more recently for
people of the same limited housekeeping. The truth is,
that there was a much nearer metaphysical relation and
a much more distant aesthetic and literary relation be
tween Carlyle and the Apostles of the Newness, as they
were called in New England, than has commonly been
supposed. Both represented the reaction and revolt
against Philisterei, a renewal of the old battle begun in
modern times by Erasmus and Reuchlin, and continued
by Lessing, Goethe, and, in a far narrower sense, by
Heine in Germany, and of which Fielding, Sterne, and
Wordsworth in different ways have been the leaders in
England. It was simply a struggle for fresh air, in which,
if the windows could not be opened, there was danger
that panes would be broken, though painted with images
of saints and martyrs. Light colored by these reverend
effigies was none the more respirable for being pictu
resque. There is only one thing better than tradition, and
that is the original and eternal life out of which all tra
dition takes its rise. It was this life which the reformers
demanded, with more or less clearness of consciousness
and expression, life in politics, life in literature, life in
religion. Of what use to import a gospel from Ju<hra,
if we leave behind the soul that made it possible, the God

196 THOREAU.

who keeps it forever real and present 1 Surely Abana
and Pharpar are better than Jordan, if a living faith be
mixed with those waters and none with these.

Scotch Presbyterianism as a motive of spiritual prog
ress was dead ; New England Puritanism was in like
manner dead ; in other words, Protestantism had made
its fortune and no longer protested; but till Carlyle
spoke out in the Old World and Emerson in the New,
no one had dared to proclaim, Le roi est mart: vive le roi!
The meaning of which proclamation was essentially
this : the vital spirit has long since departed out of this
form once so kingly, and the great seal has been in com
mission long enough ; but meanwhile the soul of man,
from which all power emanates and to which it reverts,
still survives in undiminished royalty; God still sur
vives, little as you gentlemen of the Commission seem
to be aware of it, — nay, may possibly outlive the whole
of you, incredible as it may appear. The truth is, that
both Scotch Presbyterianism and New England Puritan
ism made their new avatar in Carlyle and Emerson, the
heralds of their formal decease, and the tendency of the
one toward Authority and of the other toward Indepen
dency might have been prophesied by whoever had
studied history. The necessity was not so much in the
men as in the principles they represented and the tradi
tions which overruled them. The Puritanism of the
past found its unwilling poet in Hawthorne, the rarest
creative imagination of the century, the rarest in some
ideal respects since Shakespeare ; but the Puritanism
that cannot die, the Puritanism that made New England
what it is, and is destined to make America what it
should be, found its voice in Emerson. Though holding
himself aloof from all active partnership in movements
of reform, he has been the sleeping partner who has
supplied a great part of their capital.

THOREAU. 197

The artistic range of Emerson is narrow, as every
well-read critic must feel at once ; and so is that of
^Eschylus, so is that of Dante, so is that of Montaigne,
so is that of Schiller, so is that of nearly every one
except Shakespeare ; but there is a gauge of height no
less than of breadth, of individuality as well as of
comprehensiveness, and, above all, there is the standard
of genetic power, the test of the masculine as distin
guished from the receptive minds. There are staminate
plants in literature, that make no fine show of fruit, but
without whose pollen, quintessence of fructifying gold,
the garden had been barren. Emerson's mind is emphat
ically one of these, and there is no man to whom our
aesthetic culture owes so much. The Puritan revolt had
made us ecclesiastically, and the Revolution politically
independent, but we were still socially and intellectually
moored to English thought, till Emerson cut the cable
and gave us a chance at the dangers and the glories of
blue water. No man young enough to have felt it can
forget, or cease to be grateful for, the mental and moral
nudge which he received from the writings of his high-
minded and brave-spirited countryman. That we agree
with him, or that he always agrees with himself, is aside
from the question ; but that he arouses in us something
that we are the better for having awakened, whether
that something be of opposition or assent, that he
speaks always to what is highest and least selfish in us,
few Americans of the generation younger than his own
would be disposed to deny. His oration before the Phi
Beta Kappa Society at Cambridge, some thirty years
ago, was an event without any former parallel in our
literary annals, a scene^ to be always treasured in the
memory for its picturesqueness and its inspiration.
What crowded and breathless aisles, what windows clus
tering with eager heads, what enthusiasm of approval,

198 THOREAU.

what grim silence of foregone dissent ! It was our Yan
kee version of a lecture by Abelard, our Harvard par
allel to the last public appearances of Schelling.

We said that the Transcendental Movement was the
protestant spirit of Puritanism seeking a new outlet and
an escape from forms and creeds which compressed
rather than expressed it. In its motives, its preaching,
and its results, it differed radically from the doctrine of
Carlyle. The Scotchman, with all his genius, and his
humor gigantesque as that of Rabelais, has grown shrill
er and shriller with years, degenerating sometimes into a
common scold, and emptying very unsavory vials of wrath
on the head of the sturdy British Socrates of worldly
common-sense. The teaching of Emerson tended much
more exclusively to self-culture and the independent de
velopment of the individual man. It seemed to many
almost Pythagorean in its voluntary seclusion from com
monwealth affairs. Both Carlyle and Emerson were
disciples of Goethe, but Emerson in a far truer sense ;
and while the one, from his bias toward the eccentric,
has degenerated more and more into mannerism, the
other has clarified steadily toward perfection of style, —
exquisite fineness of material, unobtrusive lowness of tone
and simplicity of fashion, the most high-bred garb of
expression. Whatever may be said of his thought,
nothing can be finer than the delicious limpidness of his
phrase. If it was ever questionable whether democracy
could develop a gentleman, the problem has been affirma
tively solved at last. Carlyle, in his cynicism and his
admiration of force in and for itself, has become at last
positively inhuman ; Emerson, reverencing strength,
seeking the highest outcome of Jhe individual, has found
that society and politics are also main elements in the
attainment of the desired end, and has drawn steadily
manward and worldward. The two men represent re-

THOREAU. 199

spectively those grand personifications in the drama of
yEschylus, Bm and Kpdros.

Among the pistillate plants kindled to fruitage by the
Emersonian pollen, Thoreau is thus far the most remark
able ; and it is something eminently fitting that his
posthumous works should be offered us by Emerson, for
they are strawberries from his own garden. A singu
lar mixture of varieties, indeed, there is ; — alpine, some
of them, with the flavor of rare mountain air ; others
wood, tasting of sunny roadside banks or shy openings
in the forest ; and not a few seedlings swollen hugely by
culture, but lacking the fine natural aroma of the more
modest kinds. Strange books these are of his, and in
teresting in many ways, — instructive chiefly as showing
how considerable a crop may be raised on a comparative
ly narrow close of mind, and how much a man may
make of his life if he will assiduously follow it, though
perhaps never truly finding it at last.

We have just been renewing our recollection of Mr.
Thoreau's writings, and have read through his six vol
umes in the order of their production. We shall try to
give an adequate report of their impression upon us
both as critic and as mere reader. He seems to us to
have been a man with so high a conceit of himself that
he accepted without questioning, and insisted on our
accepting, his defects and weaknesses of character as
virtues and powers peculiar to himself. Was he indolent,
he finds none of the activities which attract or employ
the rest of mankind worthy of him. Was he wanting
in the qualities that make success, it is success that
is contemptible, and not himself that lacks persistency
and purpose. Was he poor, money was an unmixed
evil. Did his life seem a selfish one, he condemns doin.ij
good as one of the weakest of superstitions. To be of
use was with him the most killing bait of the wily

200 THOREAU.

tempter Uselessness. He had no faculty of generaliza
tion from outside of himself, or at least no experience
which would supply the material of such, and he makes
his own whim the law, his own range the horizon of the
universe. He condemns a world, the hollowness of
whose satisfactions he had never had the means of test
ing, and we recognize Apemantus behind the mask of
Timon. He had little active imagination ; of the recep
tive he had much. His appreciation is of the highest
quality ; his critical power, from want of continuity of
mind, very limited and inadequate. He somewhere cites
a simile from Ossian, as an example of the superiority
of the old poetry to the new, though, even were the
historic evidence less convincing, the sentimental melan
choly of those poems should be conclusive of their mod-
ernness. He had no artistic power such as controls a
great work to the serene balance of completeness, but
exquisite mechanical skill in the shaping of sentences
and paragraphs, or (more rarely) short bits of verse for
the expression of a detached thought, sentiment, or
image. His works give one the feeling of a sky full of
stars, — something impressive and exhilarating certainly,
something high overhead and freckled thickly with spots
of isolated brightness ; but whether these have any
mutual relation with each other, or have any concern
with our mundane matters, is for the most part matter
of conjecture, — astrology as yet, and not astronomy.

It is curious, considering what Thoreau afterwards
became, that he was not by nature an observer. He
only saw the things he looked for, and was less poet
than naturalist. Till he built his Walden shanty, he
did not know that the hickory grew in Concord. Till
he went to Maine, he had never seen phosphorescent
wood, a phenomenon early familiar to most country
boys. At forty he speaks of the seeding of the pine as

THOREAU. 201

a new discovery, though one should have thought that
its gold-dust of blowing pollen might have earlier drawn
his eye. Neither his attention nor his genius was of
the spontaneous kind. He discovered nothing. He
thought everything a discovery of his own, from moon
light to the planting of acorns and nuts by squirrels.
This is a defect in his character, but one of his chief
charms as a writer. Everything grows fresh under his
hand. He delved in his mind and nature ; he planted
them with all manner of native and foreign seeds, and
reaped assiduously. He was not merely solitary, he
would be isolated, and succeeded at last in almost per
suading himself that he was autochthonous. He valued
everything in proportion as he fancied it to be exclusive
ly his own. He complains in " Walden," that there is
no one in Concord with whom he could talk of Oriental
literature, though the man was living within two miles
of his hut who had introduced him to it. This intel
lectual selfishness becomes sometimes almost painful in
reading him. He lacked that generosity of " communi
cation " which Johnson admired in Burke. De Quincey
tells us that Wordsworth was impatient when any one
else spoke of mountains, as if he had a peculiar property
in them. And we can readily understand why it should
be so : no one is satisfied with another's appreciation of
his mistress. Hut Thoreau seems to have prized a lofty
way of thinking (often we should be inclined to call it a
remote one) not so much because it was good in itself as
because he wished few to share it with him. It seems
now and then as if he did not seek to lure others up
" above our lower region of turmoil," but to leave his
«>wn name cut on the mountain peak as the first climber.
This itch of originality infects his thought and style.
To bo misty is IK it to be mystic. He turns common
places end for end, and fancies it makes something new

202 THOREAU.

of them. As we walk down Park Street, our eye is
caught by Dr. Windship's dumb-bells, one of which
bears an inscription testifying that it is the heaviest
ever put up at arm's length by any athlete ; and in
reading Mr. Thoreau's books we cannot help feeling as
if he sometimes invited our attention to a particular
sophism or paradox as the biggest yet maintained by
any single writer. He seeks, at all risks, for perversity
of thought, and revives the age of concetti while he
fancies himself going back to a pre-classical nature. " A
day," he says, "passed in the society of those Greek
sages, such as described in the Banquet of Xenophon,
would not be comparable with the dry wit of decayed
cranberry-vines and the fresh Attic salt of the moss-
beds." It is not so much the True that he loves as the
Out-of-the-Way. As the Brazen Age shows itself in
other men by exaggeration of phrase, so in him by ex
travagance of statement. He wishes always to trump
your suit and to ruff when you least expect it. Do you
love Nature because she is beautiful 1 He will find a
better argument in her ugliness. Are you tired of the
artificial man 1 He instantly dresses you up an ideal in
a Penobscot Indian, and attributes to this creature of
his otherwise-mindedness as peculiarities things that are
common to all woodsmen, white or red, and this simply
because he has not studied the pale-faced variety.

This notion of an absolute originality, as if one could
have a patent-right in it, is an absurdity. A man can
not escape in thought, any more than he can in language,
from the past and the present. As no one ever invents
a word, and yet language somehow grows by general
contribution and necessity, so it is with thought. Mr.
Thoreau seems to us to insist in public on going back to
flint and steel, when there is a match-box in his pocket
which he knows very well how to use at a pinch. Origt

THOREAU. 203

nality consists in power of digesting and assimilating
thought, so that they become part of our life and sub
stance. Montaigne, for example, is one of the most
original of authors, though he helped himself to ideas in
every direction. But they turn to blood and coloring in
his style, and give a freshness of complexion that is for
ever charming. In Thoreau much seems yet to be
foreign and unassimilated, showing itself in symptoms
of indigestion. A preacher-up of Nature, we now and
then detect under the surly and stoic garb something of
the sophist and the sentimental] zer. We are far from
implying that this was conscious on his part. But it is
much easier for a man to impose on himself when he
measures only with himself. A greater familiarity with
ordinary mwi would have done Thoreau good, by show
ing him how many fine qualities are common to the race.
The radical vice of his theory of life was, that he con
founded physical with spiritual remoteness from men.
One is far enough withdrawn from his fellows if he keep
himself clear of their weaknesses. He is not so truly
withdrawn as exiled, if he refuse to share in their
strength. " Solitude," says Cowley, " can be well fitted
and set right but upon a very few persons. They must
have enough knowledge of the world to see the vanity
of it, and enough virtue to despise all vanity." It is
a morbid self-consciousness that pronounces the world
of men empty and worthless before trying it, the
instinctive evasion of one who is sensible of some
innate weakness, and retorts the accusation of it before
any has made it but himself. To a healthy mind,
the world is a constant challenge of opportunity. Mr.
Thoreau had not a healthy mind, or he would not
have been so fond of prescribing. His whole life
was a search for the doctor. The old mystics had a
wiser sense of what the world was worth. They or-

204 THOREAU.

dained a severe apprenticeship to law, and even ceremo
nial, in order to the gaining of freedom and mastery over
these. Seven years of service for Rachel were to be
rewarded at last with Leah. Seven other years of faith
fulness with her were to win them at last the true bride
of their souls. Active Life was with them the only path
to the Contemplative.

Thoreau had no humor, and this implies that he was
a sorry logician. Himself an artist in rhetoric, he con
founds thought with style when he undertakes to speak
of the latter. He was forever talking of getting away
from the world, but he must be always near enough to
it, nay, to the Concord corner of it, to feel the impres
sion he makes there. He verifies the shrewd remark of
Sainte-Beuve, " On touche encore a son temps et tres-
fort, meme quand on le repousse." This egotism of his
is a Stylites pillar after all, a seclusion which keeps him
in the public eye. The dignity of man is an excellent
thing, but therefore to hold one's self too sacred and
precious is the reverse of excellent. There is something
delightfully absurd in six volumes addressed to a world
of such " vulgar fellows " as Thoreau affirmed his fellow-
men to be. We once had a glimpse of a genuine solitary
who spent his winters one hundred and fifty miles be
yond all human communication, and there dwelt with
his rifle as his only confidant. Compared with this, the
shanty on Walden Pond has something the air, it must
be confessed, of the Hermitage of La Chevrette. We do
not believe that the way to a true cosmopolitanism
carries one into the woods or the society of musquashes.
Perhaps the narrowest provincialism is that of Self ; that
of Kleinwinkel is nothing to it. The natural man, like
the singing birds, comes out of the forest as inevitably
as the natural bear and the wildcat stick there. To seek
to be natural implies a consciousness that forbids all

THOREAU. 205

naturalness forever. It is as easy — and no easier — to
be natural in a salon as in a swamp, if one do not aim at
it, for what we call unnaturalness always has its spring
in a man's thinking too much about himself. " It is
impossible," said Turgot, " for a vulgar man to be sim
ple."

We look upon a great deal of the modern sentimental-
ism about Nature as a mark of disease. It is one more
symptom of the general liver-complaint. To a man of
wholesome constitution the wilderness is well enough
for a mood or a vacation, but not for a habit of life.
Those who have most loudly advertised their passion for
seclusion and their intimacy with nature, from Petrarch
down, have been mostly sentimentalists, unreal men,
misanthropes on the spindle side, solacing an uneasy
suspicion of themselves by professing contempt for their
kind. They make demands on the world in advance
proportioned to their inward measure of their own merit,
and are angry that the world pays only by the visible
measure of performance. It is true of Rousseau, the
modern founder of the sect, true of Saint Pierre, hia
intellectual child, and of Chateaubriand, his grandchild,
the inventor, we might almost say, of the primitive forest,
and who first was touched by the solemn falling of a tree
from natural decay in the windless silence of the woods.
It is a very shallow view that affirms trees and rocks to
be healthy, and cannot see that men in communities
are just as true to the laws of their organization and
destiny ; that can tolerate the puffin and the fox, but
not the fool and the knave ; that would shun politics
because of -its demagogues, and snuiF up the stench of
the obscene fungus. The divine life of Nature is more
wonderful, more various, more sublime in man than
in any other of her works, and the wisdom that is gained
by commerce with men, as Montaigne and Shakespeare

206 THOREAU.

gained it, or with one's own soul among men, as Dante,
is the most delightful, as it is the most precious, of all.
In outward nature it is still man that interests us, and
we care far less for the things seen than the way in
which poetic eyes like Wordsworth's or Thoreau's see
them, and the reflections they cast there. To hear the
to-do that is often made over the simple fact that a man
sees the image of himself in the outward world, one
is reminded of a savage when he for the first time
catches a glimpse of himself in a looking-glass. " Ven
erable child of Nature," we are tempted to say, " to
whose science in the invention of the tobacco-pipe, to
whose art in the tattooing of thine undegenerate hide
not yet enslaved by tailors, we are slowly striving to
climb back, the miracle thou beholdest is sold in my
unhappy country for a shilling ! " If matters go on as
they have done, and everybody must needs blab of all
the favors that have been done him by roadside and
river-brink and woodland walk, as if to kiss and tell
were no longer treachery, it will be a positive refresh
ment to meet a man who is as superbly indifferent to
Nature as she is to him. By and by we shall have John
Smith, of No. -12 -12th Street, advertising that he
is not the J. S. who saw a cow-lily on Thursday last, as
he never saw one in his life, would not see one if he
could, and is prepared to prove an alibi on the day
in question.

Solitary communion with Nature does not seem to
have been sanitary or sweetening in its influence on
Thoreau's character. On the contrary, his letters show
him more cynical as he grew older. While he studied
with respectful attention the minks and woodchucks,
his neighbors, he looked with utter contempt on the
august drama of destiny of which his country was the
scene, and on which the curtain had already risen. He

THOREAU. 207

was converting us back to a state of nature " so elo
quently," as Voltaire said of Rousseau, "that he almost
persuaded us to go on all fours," while the wiser fates
were making it possible for us to walk erect for the first
time. Had he conversed more with his fellows, his
sympathies would have widened with the assurance that
his peculiar genius had more appreciation, and his writ
ings a larger circle of readers, or at least a warmer one/
than he dreamed of. We have the highest testimony *
to the natural sweetness, sincerity, and nobleness of his
temper, and in his books an equally irrefragable one to
the rare quality of his mind. He was not a strong
thinker, but a sensitive feeler. Yet his mind strikes us
as cold and wintry in its purity. A light snow has
fallen everywhere in which he seems to come on the
track of the shier sensations that would elsewhere leave
no trace. We think greater compression would have done
more for his fame. A feeling of sameness comes over us
as we read so much. Trifles are recorded with an over-
minute punctuality and conscientiousness of detail. He
records the state of his personal thermometer thirteen
times a day. We cannot help thinking sometimes of the
man who

" Watches, starves, freezes, and sweats
To learn but catechisms and alphabets
Of unconcerning things, matters of fact,"

and sometimes of the saying of the Persian poet, that
" when the owl would boast, he boasts of catching mice
at the edge of a hole." We could readily part with
some of his affectations. It was well enough for Py
thagoras to ,say, once for all, "When I was Euphorbus
at the siege of Troy " ; not so well for Thoreau to trav
esty it into " When I was a shepherd on the plains of

* Mr. Emerson, in the Biographical Sketch prefixed to the " Excur
sions."

208 THOREAU.

Assyria." A naive thing said over again is anything but
naive. But with every exception, there is no writing
comparable with Thoreau's in kind, that is comparable
with it in degree where it is best ; where it disengages
itself, that is, from the tangle'd roots and dead leaves of
a second-hand Orientalism, and runs limpid and smooth
and broadening as it runs, a mirror for whatever is grand
and lovely in both worlds.

George Sand says neatly, that " Art is not a study of
positive reality," (actuality were the fitter word,) "but a
seeking after ideal truth." It would be doing very inad
equate justice to Thoreau if we left it to be inferred that
this ideal element did not exist in him, and that too in
larger proportion, if less obtrusive, than his nature-wor
ship. He took nature as the mountain-path to an ideal
world. If the path wind a good deal, if he record too
faithfully every trip over a root, if he botanize somewhat
wearisomely, he gives us now and then superb outlooks
from some jutting crag, and brings us out at last into an
illimitable ether, where the breathing is not difficult for
those who have any true touch of the climbing spirit.
His shanty-life was a mere impossibility, so far as his
own conception of it goes, as an entire independency of
mankind. The tub of Diogenes had a sounder bottom.
Thoreau's experiment actually presupposed all that com
plicated civilization which it theoretically abjured. He
squatted on another man's land ; he borrows an axe ; his
boards, his nails, his bricks, his mortar, his books, his
lamp, his fish-hooks, his plough, his hoe, all turn state's
evidence against him as an accomplice in the sin of that
artificial civilization which rendered it possible that such
a person as Henry D. Thoreau should exist at all. Mag-
nis tamen excidit <fusis. His aim was a noble and a useful
one, in the direction of " plain living and high thinking."
It was a practical sermon on Emerson's text that " things

THOREAU. 209

are in the saddle and ride mankind," an attempt to
solve Carlyle's problem (condensed from Johnson) of
"lessening your denominator." His whole life was a
rebuke of the waste and aimlessness of our American
luxury, which is an abject enslavement to tawdry up
holstery. He had " fine translunary things " in him.
His better style as a writer is in keeping with the
simplicity and purity of his life. We have said that
his range was narrow, but to be a master is to be a mas
ter. He had caught his English at its living source,
among the poets and prose-writers of its best days ; his
literature was extensive and recondite ; his quotations
are always nuggets of the purest ore : there are sentences
of his as perfect as anything in the language, and thoughts
as clearly crystallized ; his metaphors and images are al
ways fresh from the soil ; he had watched Nature like a
detective who is to go upon the stand ; as we read him,
it seems as if all-out-of-doors had kept a diary and be
come its own Montaigne ; we look at the landscape as in
a Claude Lorraine glass ; compared with his, all other
books of similar aim, even White's " Selborne," seem dry
as a country clergyman's meteorological journal in an old
almanac. He belongs with Donne and Browne and No-
valis ; if not with the originally creative men, with the
scarcely smaller class who are peculiar, and whose leaves
shed their invisible thought-seed like ferns.

SWINBURNE'S TRAGEDIES.

ARE we really, then, to believe the newspapers f
once, and to doff our critical nightcaps, in which
we have comfortably overslept many similar rumors and
false alarms, to welcome the advent of a new poet 1 New
poets, to our thinking, are not very common, and the
soft columns of the press often make dangerous conces
sions, for which the marble ones of Horace's day were
too stony-hearted. Indeed, we have some well-grounded
doubts whether England is precisely the country from
which we have a right to expect that most precious of
gifts just now. There is hardly enough fervor of political
life there at present to ripen anything but the fruits of
the literary forcing-house, so fair outwardly and so flavor
less compared with those which grow in the hardier open
air of a vigorous popular sentiment. Mere wealth of
natural endowment is not enough ; there must be also
the co-operation of the time, of the public genius roused
to a consciousness of itself by the necessity of asserting
or defending the vital principle on which that conscious
ness rests, in order that a poet may rise to the highest
level of his vocation. The great names of the last gen
eration — Scott, Wordsworth, Byron — represent moods
of national thought and feeling, and are therefore more
or less truly British poets ; just as Goethe, in whose ca
pacious nature, open to every influence of earth and sky,
the spiritual fermentation of the eighteenth century set
tled and clarified, is a European one. A sceptic might

SWINBURNE'S TRAGEDIES. 211

say, we think, with some justice, that poetry in England
was passing now, if it have not already passed, into one
of those periods of mere art without any intense convic
tions to back it, which lead inevitably, and by no long
gradation, to the mannered and artificial. Browning, by
far the richest nature of the time, becomes more difficult,
draws nearer to the all-for-point fashion of the concettisti,
with every poem he writes ; the dainty trick of Tenny
son cloys when caught by a whole generation of versi
fiers, as the style of a great poet never can be ; and we
have a foreboding that Clough, imperfect as he was in
many respects, and dying before he had subdued his sen
sitive temperament to the sterner requirements of his
art, will be thought a hundred years hence to have been
the truest expression in verse of the moral and intellec
tual tendencies, the doubt and struggle towards settled
convictions, of the period in which he lived. To make
beautiful conceptions immortal by exquisiteness of phrase,
is to be a poet, no doubt ; but to be a new poet is to feel
and to utter that immanent life of things without which
the utmost perfection of mere form is at best only wax
or marble. He who can do both is the great poet.

Over " Chastelard, a Tragedy," we need not spend
much time. It is at best but the school exercise of a
young poet learning to write, and who reproduces in his
copy-book, more or less travestied, the copy that has been
set for him at the page's head by the authors he most
admires. Grace and even force of expression are not
wanting, but there is the obscurity which springs from
want of definite intention ; the characters are vaguely
outlined from memory, not drawn firmly from the living
and the nude in actual experience of life ; the working
of passion is an a priori abstraction from a scheme in the
author's mind ; and there is no thought, but only a ve
hement grasping after thought. The hand is the hand

212 SWINBURNE'S TRAGEDIES.

of Swinburne, but the voice is the voice of Browning.
With here and there a pure strain of sentiment, a genuine
touch of nature, the effect of the whole is unpleasant with
the faults of the worst school of modern poetry, — the
physically intense school, as we should be inclined to call
it, of which Mrs. Browning's " Aurora Leigh " is the worst
example, whose muse is a fast young woman with the
lavish ornament and somewhat overpowering perfume of
the demi-monde, and which pushes expression to the last
gasp of sensuous exhaustion. They forget that convul
sion is not energy, and that words, to hold fire, must first
catch it from vehement heat of thought, while no arti
ficial fervors of phrase can make the charm work back
ward to kindle the mind of writer or reader. An over
mastering passion no longer entangles the spiritual being
of its victim in the burning toils of a retribution fore
doomed in its own nature, purifying us with the terror
and pity of a soul in its extremity, as the great masters
were wont to set it before us ; no, it must be fleshly,
corporeal, must " bite with small white teeth " and draw
blood, to satisfy the craving of our modern inquisitors,
who torture language instead of wooing it to confess
the secret of its witchcraft. That books written on this
theory should be popular, is one of the worst signs of the
times ; that they should be praised by the censors of
literature shows how seldom criticism goes back to first
principles, or is even aware of them, — how utterly it
has forgotten its most earnest function of demolishing the
high places where the unclean rites of Baal and Ashta-
roth usurp on the worship of the one only True and Pure.
" Atalanta in Calydon " is in every respect better than
its forerunner. It is a true poem, and seldom breaks
from the maidenly reserve which should characterize the
higher forms of poetry, even in the keenest energy of
expression. If the blank verse be a little mannered and

SWINBURNE'S TRAGEDIES. 213

Btiff, reminding one of Landor in his attempts to repro
duce the antique, the lyrical parts are lyrical in the
highest sense, graceful, flowing, and generally simple in
sentiment and phrase. There are some touches of nature
in the mother's memories of Althea, so sweetly pathetic
that they go as right to the heart as they came from it,
and are neither Greek nor English, but broadly human.
And yet, when we had read the book through, we felt as
if we were leaving a world of shadows, inhabited by less
substantial things than that nether realm of Homer
where the very eidolon of Achilles is still real to us in its
longings and regrets. These are not characters, but out
lines after the Elgin marbles in the thinnest manner of
Flaxman. There is not so much blood in the whole of
them as would warm the little finger of one of Shake
speare's living and breathing conceptions. We could
not help thinking of those exquisite verses addressed by
Schiller to Goethe, in which, while he expresses a half-
truth so eloquently as almost to make it seem a whole
one, he touches unconsciously the weak point of their
common striving after a Grecian instead of a purely hu
man ideal.

" Doch leicht gezimmert nur ist Thespis Wagen,
Und er ist gleich dem acheront'schen Kahti;
Nur Schatteu und Idole kann er trap-n,
Und drsingt das rohe Leben sich herari,
So droht das Icichte Fahrzeug umzuschlagen
I»:i- nur die fliicht'gen Geister fassen kann;
' Der Scheiti soil nie die Wirkliclikoit orrciclicn

I'm I -ii'irt Natur, so muss die Kunst entweichen."

The actors in the drama are unreal and shadowy, the
motives which actxiate them alien to our modern modes
of thought and conceptions of character. To a Greek,
the element of Fate, with which his imagination \v:is
familiar, while it heightened the terror of the catastrophe,
would have supplied the place of that impulse in mere

214 SWINBURNE'S TRAGEDIES.

human nature which our habit of mind demands for ita
satisfaction. The fulfilment of an oracle, the anger of
a deity, the arbitrary doom of some blind and purpose
less power superior to man, the avenging of blood to
appease an injured ghost, any one of these might make
that seem simply natural to a contemporary of Sopho
cles which is intelligible to us only by study and reflec
tion. It is not a little curious that Shakespeare should
have made the last of the motives we have just men
tioned, and which was conclusive for Orestes, insufficient
for Hamlet, who so perfectly typifies the introversion
and complexity of modern thought as compared with
ancient, in dealing with the problems of life and action.
It was not perhaps without intention .(for who may
venture to assume a want of intention in the world's
highest poetic genius at its full maturity ?) that Shake
speare brings in his hero fresh from the University
of Wittenberg, where Luther, who entailed upon us the
responsibility of private judgment, had been Professor.
The dramatic motive in the " Electra " and " Hamlet "
is essentially the same, but what a difference between
the straightforward bloody-mindednQss of Orestes and
the metaphysical punctiliousness of the Dane ! Yet each
was natural in his several way, and each would have
been unintelligible to the audience for which the other
was intended. That Fate which the Greeks made to
operate from without, we recognize at work within in
some vice of character or hereditary predisposition.
Hawthorne, the most profoundly ideal genius of these
latter days, was contimially returning, more or less
directly, to this theme; and his " Marble Faun," whether
consciously or not, illustrates that invasion of the aes
thetic by the moral which has confused art by dividing
its allegiance, and dethroned the old dynasty without
as yet firmly establishing the new in an acknowledged
legitimacy.

SWINBURNE'S TRAGEDIES. 215

" Atalanta in Calydon " shows that poverty of thought
and profusion of imagery which are at once the defect
and the compensation of all youthful poetry, even of
Shakespeare's. It seems a paradox to say that there
can be too much poetry in a poem, and yet this is a
fault with which all poets begin, and which some never
get over. But "Atalanta" is hopefully distinguished,
in a rather remarkable way, from most early attempts,
by a sense of form and proportion, which, if seconded by
a seasonable ripening of other faculties, as we may fair
ly expect, gives promise of rare achievement hereafter.
Mr. Swinburne's power of assimilating style, which is,
perhaps, not so auspicious a symptom, strikes us as
something marvellous. The argument of his poem, in
its quaint archaism, would not need the change of a
word or in the order of a period to have been foisted on
Sir Thomas Malory as his own composition. The choos
ing a theme which ^Eschylus had handled in one of his
lost tragedies is justified by a certain ^Eschylean flavor
in the treatment. The opening, without deserving to be
called a mere imitation, recalls that of the " Agamemnon,"
and the chorus has often an imaginative lift in it, an
ethereal charm of phrase, of which it is the highest
praise to say that it reminds us of him who soars over
the other Greek tragedians like an eagle.

But in spite of many merits, we cannot help asking
ourselves, as we close the book, whether "Atalanta" can
be called a success, and if so, whether it be a success in
the right direction. The poem reopens a question which
in some sort touches the very life of modern literature.
We do not mean to renew the old quarrel of Fontenelle's
day as to the comparative merits of ancients and mod
erns. That, is an affair of taste, which docs not admit
of any authoritative settlement. Our concern is about
a principle which certainly demands a fuller discussion,

216 SWINBURNE'S TRAGEDIES.

and which is important enough to deserve it. Do we
show our appreciation of the Greeks most wisely in
attempting the mechanical reproduction of their forms,
or by endeavoring to comprehend the thoughtful spirit of
full-grown manhood in which they wrought, to kindle
ourselves by the emulation of it, and to bring it to bear
with all its plastic force upon our wholly new conditions
of life and thought 1 It seems 'to us that the question is
answered by the fact, patent in the history of all the fine
arts, that every attempt at reproducing a bygone excel
lence by external imitation of it, or even by applying the
rules which analytic criticism has formulated from the
study of it, has resulted in producing the artificial, and
not the artistic. That most subtile of all essences in
physical organization, which eludes chemist, anatomist,
and microscopist, the life, is in aesthetics not less shy of
the critic, and will not come forth in obedience to his
most learned spells, for the very good reason that it
cannot, because in all works of art it is the joint product
of the artist and of the time. Faust may believe he is
gazing on "the face that launched a thousand ships,"
but Mephistopheles knows very well that it is only
shadows that he has the skill to conjure. He is not
merely the spirit that ever denies, but the spirit also of
discontent with the present, that material in which every
man shall work who will achieve realities and not their
hollow semblance. The true anachronism, in our opin
ion, is not in Shakespeare's making Ulysses talk as Lord
Bacon might, but in attempting to make him speak in a
dialect of thought utterly dead to all present compre
hension. Ulysses was the type of long-headedness ; and
the statecraft of an Ithacan cateran would have seemed
as childish to the age of Elizabeth and Burleigh as it
was naturally sufficing to the first hearers of Homer.
Ulysses, living in Florence during the fifteenth century,

SWINBURNE'S TRAGEDIES. 217

might have been Macchiavelli ; in France, during the
seventeenth, Cardinal Richelieu ; in America, during the
nineteenth, Abraham Lincoln, but not Ulysses. Truth
to nature can be reached ideally, never historically ;
it must be a study from, the life, and not from the scho
liasts. Theocritus lets us into the secret of his good
poetry, when he makes Daphnis tell us that he preferred
his rock with a view of the Siculian Sea to the kingdom
of Pelops.

It is one of the marvels of the human mind, this
sorcery which the fiend of technical imitation weaves
about his victims, giving a phantasmal Helen to their
arms, and making an image of the brain seem substance.
Men still pain themselves to write Latin verses, matching
their wooden bits of phrase together as children do dis
sected maps, and measuring the value of what they have
done, not by any standard of intrinsic merit, but by the
difficulty of doing it. Petrarch expected to be known
to posterity by his Africa. Gray hoped to make a Latin
poem his monument. Goethe, who was classic in the
only way it is now possible to be classic, in his " Her
mann and Dorothea," and at least Propertian in his
" Roman Idyls," wasted his time and thwarted his crea
tive energy on the mechanical mock-antique of an un
readable "Achilleis." Landor prized his waxen " Ge-
birus Rex " above all the natural fruits of his mind ;
and we have no doubt that, if some philosopher should
succeed in accomplishing Paracelsxis's problem of an
artificial komvncultu, he would dote on this misbegotten
babe of his science, and think him the only genius of the
family. We cannot over-estimate the value of some of
the ancient classics, but a certain amount of superstition
about Greek and Latin has conic down to us from the
revival of learning, and seems to hold in mortmain the
intellects of whoever has, at some time, got a smattering
10

218 SWINBURNE'S TRAGEDIES.

of them. Men quote a platitude in either of those
tongues with a relish of conviction as droll to the un
initiated as the knighthood of free-masonry. Horace
Walpole's nephew, the Earl of Orford, when he was in
his cups, used to have Statins read aloud to him every
night for two hours by a tipsy tradesman, whose hic-
cupings threw in here and there a kind of csesural pause,
and found some strange mystery of sweetness in the dis-
quantitied syllables. So powerful is this hallucination
that wre can conceive offestina lente as the favorite maxim
of a Mississippi steamboat captain, and apiarov pev vSup
cited as conclusive by a gentleman for whom the bottle
before him reversed the wonder of the stereoscope, and
substituted the Gascon v for the b in binocular.

Something of this singular superstition has infected the
minds of those who confound the laws of conventional
limitation which governed the practice of Greek authors
in dramatic composition — laws adapted to the habits
and traditions and preconceptions of their audience —
with that sense of ideal form which made the Greeks
masters in art to all succeeding generations. Aristoph
anes is beyond question the highest type of pure comedy,
etherealizing his humor by the infusion, or intensifying
it by the contrast of poetry, and deodorizing the person
ality of his sarcasm by a sprinkle from the clearest
springs of fancy. His satire, aimed as it was at typical
characteristics, is as fresh as ever ; but we doubt whether
?tn Aristophanic drama, retaining its exact form, but
adapted to present events and personages, would keep
the stage as it is kept by " The Rivals," for example,
immeasurably inferior as that is in every element of
genius except the prime one of liveliness. Something
similar in purpose to the parabasis was essayed in one,
at least, of the comedies of Beaumont and Fletcher, and
in our time by Tieck ; but it took, of necessity, a differ

SWINBURNE'S TRAGEDIES. 219

ent form of expression, and does not seem to have been
successful. Indeed, the fact that what is called the
legitimate drama of modern times in England, Spain,
and France has been strictly a growth, and not a manu
facture, that in each country it took a different form,
and that, in all, the period of its culminating and be
ginning to decline might be measured by a generation,
seems to point us toward some natural and inevitable
law of human nature, and to show that, while the prin
ciples of art are immutable, their application must ac
commodate itself to the material supplied them by the
time and by the national character and traditions. The
Spanish tragedy inclines more toward the lyrical, the
French toward the epical, the English toward the histor
ical, in the representation of real life ; the Spanish and
English agree in the Teutonic peculiarity of admitting
the humorous offset of the clown, though in the one
case he parodies the leading motive of the drama, and
represents the self-consciousness of the dramatist, while
in the other he heightens the tragic effect by contrast,
(as in the grave-digging scene of Hamlet,) and suggfsts
that stolid but wholesome indifference of the general
life — of what, for want of a better term, we call Nature
— to the sin and suffering, the weakness and misfortunes
of the individual man. All these nations had the same
ancient examples before them, had the same reverence
for antiquity, yet they involuntarily deviated, more or
less happily, into originality, success, and the freedom
of a living creativeness. The higher kinds of literature,
the only kinds that live on because they had life at the
start, are not, then, it should seem, the fabric of scholar
ship, of criticism, diligently studying and as diligently
copying the best models, but are much rather born of
some genetic principle in the character of the people and
the age which produce them. One drop of ruddy human

220 SWINBURNE'S TRAGEDIES.

blood puts more life into the veins of a poem, than all
the delusive aurum potabiie that can be distilled out of
the choicest library.

The opera is the closest approach we have to the
ancient drama in the essentials of structure and presen
tation ; and could we have a libretto founded on a
national legend and written by one man of genius to be
filled out and accompanied by the music of another, we
might hope for something of the same effect upon the
stage. But themes of universal familiarity and interest
are rare, — Don Giovanni and Faust, perhaps, most
nearly, though not entirely, fulfilling the required con
ditions, — and men of genius rarer. The oratorio seeks
to evade the difficulty by choosing Scriptural subjects,
and it may certainly be questioned whether the day of
popular mythology, in the sense in which it subserves
the purposes of epic or dramatic poetry, be not gone by
forever. Longfellow is driven to take refuge among the
red men, and Tennyson in the Cambro-Breton cyclus of
Arthur ; but it is impossible that such themes should
come so intimately homo to us as the semi-fabulous
stories of their own ancestors did to the Greeks. The
most successful attempt at reproducing the Greek trag
edy, both in theme and treatment, is the " Samson
Agonistes," as it is also the most masterly piece of Eng
lish versification. Goethe admits that it alone, among
modern works, has caught life from the breath of the
antique spirit. But he failed to see, or at least to give,
the reason of it ; probably failed to see it, or he would
never have attempted the " Iphigenia." Milton not
only subjected himself to the structural requirements
of the Attic tragedy, but with a true poetic instinct
availed himself of the striking advantage it had in the
choice of a subject. No popular tradition lay neai
enough to him for his purpose ; none united in itself

SWINBURNE'S TRAGEDIES.

the essential requisites of human interest and universal
belief. He accordingly chose a Jewish mythus, very
near to his own heart as a blind prisoner, betrayed by
his wife, among the Philistines of the Restoration, and
familiar to the earliest associations of his hearers. This
subject, and this alone, met all the demands both of
living poetic production and of antique form, — the
action grandly simple, the personages few, the pro
tagonist at once a victim of divine judgment and an ex
ecutor of divine retribution, an intense personal sympa
thy in the poet himself, and no strangeness to the
habitual prepossessions of those he addressed to be over
come before he could touch their hearts or be sure of
aid from their imaginations. To compose such a drama
on such a theme was to be Greek, and not to counterfeit
it ; for Samson was to Milton traditionally just what
Herakles was to Sophocles, and personally far more.
The "Agonistes" is still fresh and strong as morning,
but where are " Caractacus " and " Elfrida " 1 Nay,
where is the far better work of a far abler man, —
where is " Merope " 1 If the frame of mind which per
forms a deliberate experiment were the same as that
which produces poetry vitalized through and through by
the conspiring ardors of every nobler passion and power
of the soul, then " Merope " might have had some little
space of life. But without color, without harmonious
rhythm of movement, with less passion than survived in
an average Grecian ghost, and all this from the very
theory of her creation, she has gone back, a shadow, to
join her shadowy Italian and French namesakes in that
limbo of things that would be and cannot be. Mr.
Arnold but retraces, in his Preface to " Merope," the
arguments of Mason in the letters prefixed to his classi
cal experiments. What finds defenders, but not readers,
may be correct, classic, right in principle, but it is not

222 SWINBURNE'S TRAGEDIES.

poetry of that absolute kind which may and does help
men, but needs no help of theirs ; and such surely we
have a right to demand in tragedy, if nowhere else. We
should not speak so unreservedly if we did not set a
high value on Mr. Arnold and his poetic gift. But
" Merope " has that one fault against which the very
gods, we are told, strive in vain. It is dull, and the
seed of this dulness lay in the system on which it was
written.

Pseudo-classicism takes two forms. Sometimes, as
Mr. Landor has done, it attempts truth of detail to
ancient scenery and manners, which may be attained
either by hard reading and good memory, or at a cheaper
rate from such authors as Becker. The "Moretum,"
once attributed to Virgil, and the idyl of Theocritus
lately chosen as a text by Mr. Arnold, are interesting,
because they describe real things ; but the mock-antique,
if not true, is nothing, and how true such poems are
likely to be we can judge by "Punch's" success at
Yankeeisms, by all England's accurate appreciation of
the manners and minds of a contemporary people one
with herself in language, laws, religion, and literature.
The eye is the only note-book of the true poet ; but a
patchwork of second-hand memories is a laborious futil
ity, hard to write and harder to read, with about as much
nature in it as a dialogue of the Deipnosophists. Alex
ander's bushel of peas was a criticism worthy of Aristotle's
pupil. We should reward such writing with the gift of
a classical dictionary. In this idyllic kind of poetry
also we have a classic, because Goldsmith went to nature
for his " Deserted Village," and borrowed of tradition
nothing but the poetic diction in which he described it.
This is the only method by which a poet may surely
reckon on ever becoming an ancient himself. When we
heard it said once that a certain poem might have been

SWINBURNE'S TRAGEDIES. 223

written by Simonides, we could not help thinking that,
1C it were so, then it was precisely what Simonides could
never have written, since he looked at the world through
his own eyes, not through those of Linus or Hesiod, and
thought his own thoughts, not theirs, or we should never
have had him to imitate.

Objections of the same nature, but even stronger, lie
against a servile copying of the form and style of the
Greek tragic drama, and yet more against the selection
of a Greek theme. As we said before, the life we lead,
and the views we take of it, are more complex than
those of men who lived five centuries before Christ.
They may be better or worse, but, at any rate, they are
different, and irremediably so. The idea and the form
iu which it naturally embodies itself, mutually sustain
ing and invigorating each other, cannot be divided with
out endangering the lives of both. For in all real
poetry the form is not a garment, but a body. Our
very passion has become metaphysical, and speculates
upon itself. Their simple and downright way of think
ing loses all its savor when we assume it to ourselves
by an effort of thought. Human nature, it is true, re
mains always the same, but the displays of it change ;
the habits which are a second nature modify it inwardly
as well as outwardly, and what moves it to passionate
action in one age may leave it indifferent in the next.
Between us and the Greeks lies the grave of their
murdered paganism, making our minds and theirs irrec
oncilable. Christianity as steadily intensifies the self-
consciousness of man as the religion of the Greeks must
have turned their thoughts away from themselves to the
events of this life and the phenomena of nature. We
cannot even conceive of their conception of Phoibos
with any plausible assurance of coming near the truth.
To take lesser matters, since the invention of printing

224 SWINBURNE'S TRAGEDIES.

and the cheapening of books have made the thought of
all ages and nations the common property of educated
men, we cannot so dis-saturate our minds of it as to be
keenly thrilled in the modern imitation with those com
monplaces of proverbial lore in which the chorus and
secondary characters are apt to indulge, though in the
original they may interest us as being natural and
characteristic. In the German-silver of the modern we
get something of this kind, which does not please us the
more by being cut up into single lines that recall the
outward semblance of some pages in Sophocles. We
find it cheaper to make a specimen than to borrow one.

CHORUS. Foolish who bites off nose, his face to spite.
OUTIS. Who fears his fate, him Fate shall one day spurn.
CHORUS. The gods themselves are pliable to Fate.
OUTIS. The strong self-ruler dreads no other sway.
CHORUS. Sometimes the shortest way goes most about.
OUTIS. Why fetch a compass, having stars within?
CHORUS. A shepherd once, I know that stars may set.
OUTIS. That thou led'st sheep fits not for leading men.
CHORUS. To sleep-sealed eyes the wolf-dog barks in vain.

We protest that we have read something very like this,
we will not say where, and we might call it the battle-
door and shuttlecock style of dialogue, except that the
players do not seem to have any manifest relation to
each other, but each is intent on keeping his own bit
of feathered cork continually in the air.

The first sincerely popular yearning toward antiquity,
the first germ of Schiller's " Gotter Griechenland's " is
to be found in the old poem of Tanhauser, very near
ly coincident with the beginnings of the Reformation.
And if we might allegorize it, we should say that it
typified precisely that longing after Venus, under her
other name of Charis, which represents the relation in
which modern should stand to ancient art. It is the
grace of the Greeks, their sense of proportion, their dis-

SWINBURNE'S TRAGEDIES. 225

taste for the exaggerated, their exquisite propriety of
phrase, which steadies imagination without cramping it,
• — it is these that we should endeavor to assimilate
without the loss of our own individuality. We should
quicken our sense of form by intelligent sympathy with
theirs, and not stiffen it into formalism by a servile sur
render of what is genuine in us to what was genuine
in them. "A pure form," says Schiller, "helps and
sustains, an impure one hinders and shatters." But we
should remember that the spirit of the age must enter
as a modifying principle, not only into ideas, but into
the best manner of their expression. The old bottles
will not always serve for the new wine. A principle of
life is the first requirement of all art, and it can only be
communicated by the touch of the time and a simple
faith in it ; all else is circumstantial and secondary.
The Greek tragedy passed through the three natural
stages of poetry, — the imaginative in ^Eschylus, the
thoughtfully artistic in Sophocles, the sentimental in
Euripides, — and then died. If people could only learn
the general applicability to periods and schools of what
young Mozart says of Gellert, that " he had written no
poetry since his death " ! No effort to raise a defunct
past has ever led to anything but just enough galvanic
twitching of the limbs to remind us unpleasantly of life.
The, romantic movement of the school of German poets
which succeeded Goethe and Schiller ended in extrava
gant unreality, and Goethe himself with his enerring
common-sense, has given us, in the second part of Faust,
the result of his own and Schiller's common striving
after a Grecian ideal. Euphorion, the child of Faust
and Helen, falls dead at their feet ; and Helen herself
soon follows him to the shades, leaving only her mantle
in the hands of her lover. This, he is told, shall lift
him above the earth. We fancy we can interpret the
10* o

226 SWINBURNE'S TRAGEDIES.

symbol. Whether we can or not, it is certainly sugges
tive of thought that the only immortal production of
the greatest of recent poets was conceived and carried
out in that Gothic spirit and form from which he was aT
his life struggling to break loose.

CHAUCER.*

WILL it do to say anything more about Chaucer ?
Can any one hope to say anything, not new, but
even fresh, on a topic so well worn 1 It may well be
doubted ; and yet one is always the better for a walk in
the morning air, — a medicine which may be taken over
and over again without any sense of sameness, or any
failure of its invigorating quality. There is a pervading
wholesomeness in the writings of this man, — a vernal
property that soothes and refreshes in a way of which no
other has ever found the secret. I repeat to myself a
thousand times, —

" Whan that Aprile with his showres sote
The droughte of March hath perced to the rote,
And bathed every veine in swich licour
Of which vertue engendered is the flour, — "
When Zephyrus eek with his swete breth
Enspired hath in every holt and heth
The tender croppes, and the yonge sonne
Hath in the ram his halfe cors yronne,
And smale foules maken melodic," —

and still at the thousandth time a breath of uncontami-

* Publications of the Chaucer Society. London. 1869-70.

Etude tur G. Chaucer considere comme imitateur des Trouveres. Par
E. G. SANDRAS, Agrege" de 1'Universite. Paris: Augiiste Dusand.
1859. 8vo. pp. 298.

Geoffrey Chnucer's Canterbury- Geschickten, uebersetzt in den Vers-
maisen der Urtchrift, und durch Kinleituny und Anmerkungen erldutert.
Von WILHEI.M HEKTZKKKG. HOdbwgfeaiuen. 1866. 12mo. pp.674.

Chaucer in Seinen Heziehungen zur italienischen Literatur. Jnnugu-
rnl- Dissertation zur Erlangung der Doclorwiirde. Von ALFONS Kiss-
NKB. Bonn. 1867. 8vo pp. 81.

228 CHAUCER.

nate springtide seems to lift the hair upon my forehead.
If here be not the largior ether, the serene and motionless
atmosphere of classical antiquity, we find at least the
seclusum nemus, the domos placidas, and the oubliance,
as Froissart so sweetly calls it, that persuade us we are
in an Elysium none the less sweet that it appeals to our
more purely human, one might almost say domestic, sym
pathies. We may say of Chaucer's muse, as Overbury of
his milkmaid, " her breath is her own, which scents all
the year long of June like a new-made haycock." The
most hardened roue of literature can scarce confront these
simple and winning graces without feeling somewhat of
the unworn sentiment of his youth revive in him. Mod
ern imaginative literature has become so self-conscious,
and therefore so melancholy, that Art, which should be
" the world's sweet inn," whither we repair for refresh
ment and repose, has become rather a watering-place,
where one's own private touch of the liver-complaint is
exasperated by the affluence of other sufferers whose talk
is a narrative of morbid symptoms. Poets have forgot
ten that the first lesson of literature, no less than of life,
is the learning how to burn your own smoke ; that the
way to be original is to be healthy ; that the fresh color,
so delightful in all good writing, is won by escaping from
the fixed air of self into the brisk atmosphere of universal
sentiments ; and that to make the common marvellous,
as if it were a revelation, is the test of genius. It is good
to retreat now and then beyond earshot of the introspec
tive confidences of modern literature, and to lose our
selves in the gracious worldliness of Chaucer. Here was
a healthy and hearty man, so genuine that he need not
ask whether he were genuine or no, so sincere as quite to
forget his own sincerity, so tmly pious that he could be
happy in the best world that God chose to make, so hu
mane that he loved even the foibles of his kind. Hero

CHAUCER. 229

was a truly epic poet, without knowing it, who did not
waste time in considering whether his age were good or
bad, but quietly taking it for granted as the best that
ever was or could be for him, has left us such a picture
of contemporary life as no man ever painted. "A per
petual fountain of good-sense," Dry den calls him, yes,
and of good-humor, too, and wholesome thought. He
was one of those rare authors whom, if we had met him
under a porch in a shower, we should have preferred to
the rain. He could be happy with a crust and spring-
water," and could see the shadow of his benign face in a
flagon of Gascon wine without fancying Death sitting
opposite to cry Supernaculum ! when he had drained it.
He could look to God without abjectness, and on man
without contempt. The pupil of manifold experience,
— scholar, courtier, soldier, ambassador, who had known
poverty as a housemate and been the companion of
princes, — his was one of those happy temperaments
that could equally enjoy both halves of culture, — the
world of books and the world of men.

" Unto this day it doth mine herte boote,
That I have had my world as in my time! "

The portrait of Chaucer, which we owe to the loving
regret of his disciple Occleve, confirms the judgment of
him which we make from his works. It is, I think, more
engaging than that of any other poet. The downcast
eyes, half sly, half meditative, the sensuous mouth, the
broad brow, drooping with weight of thought, and yet
with an inexpugnable youth shining out of it as from the
morning forehead of a boy, are all noticeable, and not less
so their harmony of placid tenderness. We are struck,
too, with the smoothness of the face as of one who thought
easily, whose phrase flowed naturally, and who had never
puckered his brow over an unmanageable verse.

Nothing has been added to our knowledge of Chaucer's

230 CHAUCER.

life since Sir Harris Nicholas, with the help of original
records, weeded away the fictions by which the few facts
were choked and overshadowed. We might be sorry that
no confirmation has been found for the story, fathered
on a certain phantasmal Mr. Buckley, that Chaucer was
'•' fined two shillings for beating a Franciscan friar in
.t^eet Street," if it were only for the alliteration; but we
refuse to give up the meeting with Petrarch. All the
probabilities are in its favor. That Chaucer, being at
Milan, should not have found occasion to ride across so
far as Padua, for the sake of seeing the most famous lit
erary man of the day, is incredible. If Froissart could
journey on horseback through Scotland and Wales, surely
Chaucer, whose curiosity was as lively as his, might have
ventured what would have been a mere pleasure-trip in
comparison. I cannot easily bring myself to believe that
he is not giving some touches of his own character in
that of the Clerk of Oxford : -

" For him was liefer have at his bed's head
A twenty bookiis clothed in black and red
Of Aristotle and his philosophic
Than robes rich, or fiddle or psaltrie:
But although that he were a philosopher
Yet had he but a little gold in coffer:
Of study took lie moste care and heed;
Not one word spake he more than was need:
All that he spake it was of high prudence,
And short and quick, and full of great sentence ;
Sounding in moral virtue was his speech
And gladly would he learn and gladly teach."

That, himself as plump as Horace, he should have
described the Clerk as being lean, will be no objection to
those who remember how carefully Chaucer effaces his
own personality in his great poem. Our chief debt to
Sir Harris Nicholas is for having disproved the story that
Chaucer, imprisoned for complicity in the insurrection of
John of Northampton, had set himself free by betraying

CHAUCER. 231

his accomplices. That a poet, one of whose leading
qualities is his good sense and moderation, and who
should seem to have practised his own rule, to

" Fly from the press and dwell with soothfastness ;
Suffice thee thy good though it be small,"

should have been concerned in any such political excesses,
was improbable enough ; but that he should add to this
the baseness of broken faith was incredible except to
such as in a doubtful story

" Demen gladly to the badder end."

Sir Harris Nicholas has proved by the records that the
fabric is baseless, and we may now read the poet's fine

verse,

" Truth is the highest thing a man may keep,"

without a pang. We are thankful that Chaucer's shoul
ders are finally discharged of that weary load, " The
Testament of Love." * The later biographers seem in
clined to make Chaucer a younger man at his death in
1 400 than has hitherto been supposed. Herr Hertzberg
even puts his birth so late as 1340. But, till more con
clusive evidence is produced, we shall adhere to the re
ceived dates as on the whole more consonant with the
probabilities of the case. The monument is clearly right
as to the year of his death, and the chances are at least
even that both this and the date of birth were copied
from an older inscription. The only counter-argument
that has much force is the manifestly unfinished condi
tion of the " Cantertmry Tales." That a man of seventy
odd could have put such a spirit of youth into those

* Tyrwhitt doubted the authenticity of " The Flower and the Leaf"
and " The Cuckoo and the Nightingale." To these Mr. Bradshaw
(and there can be no higher authority) would add " The Court of Love,"
the "Dream." the " Praise of Woman," the " Komnunt ot'tlic Rose,"
and several of the shorter poems. To these doubtful productions there
is strong ground, both moral and aesthetic, for adding the " Parson's
Tale."

232 CHAUCER.

matchless prologues will not, however, surprise those who
remember Dryden's second spring-time. It is plain that
the notion of giving unity to a number of disconnected
stories by the device which Chaucer adopted was an after
thought. These stories had been written, and some of
them even published, at periods far asunder, and without
any reference to connection among themselves. The pro
logues, and those parts which internal evidence justifies
us in taking them to have been written after the thread
of plan to string them on was conceived, are in every way
more mature, — in knowledge of the world, in easy mas
tery of verse and language, and in the overpoise of senti
ment by judgment. They may with as much probability
be referred to a green old age as to the middle-life of a
man who, upon any theory of the dates, was certainly
slow in ripening.

The formation of a Chaucer Society, now four cen
turies and a half after the poet's death, gives suitable
occasion for taking a new observation of him, as of a
fixed star, not only in our own, but in the European
literary heavens, " whose worth 's unknown although his
height be taken." The admirable work now doing by
this Society, whose establishment was mainly due to the
pious zeal of Mr. Furnivall, deserves recognition from
all who know how to value the too rare union of accu
rate scholarship with minute exactness in reproducing
the text. The six-text edition of the " Canterbury Tales,"
giving what is practically equivalent to six manuscript
copies, is particularly deserving of gratitude from this
side the water, as it for the first time affords to Ameri
cans the opportunity of independent critical study and
comparison. This beautiful work is fittingly inscribed
to our countryman, Professor Child, of Harvard, a lover
of Chaucer, " so proved by his worde's and his werke,"

CHAUCER. 233

who has done more for the great poet's memory than
any man since Tyrwhitt. We earnestly hope that the
Society may find enough support to print all the re
maining manuscript texts of importance, for there can
hardly be any one of them that may not help us to a
valuable hint. The works of Mr. Sandras and Herr
Hertzberg show that this is a matter of interest not
merely or even primarily to English scholars. The in
troduction to the latter is one of the best essays on

•/

Chaucer yet written, while the former, which is an in
vestigation of the French and Italian sources of the
poet, supplies us with much that is new and worth
having as respects the training of the poet, and the
obstacles of fashion and taste through which he had to
force his way before he could find free play for his native
genius or even so much as arrive at a consciousness
thereof. M. Sandras is in every way a worthy pupil of
the accomplished M. Victor Leclerc, and, though he lays
perhaps a little too much stress on the indebtedness of
Chaucer in particulars, shows a singularly intelligent
and clear-sighted eye for the general grounds of his
claim to greatness and originality. It is these grounds
which I propose chiefly to examine here.

The first question we put to any poet, nay, to any
so-called national literature, is that which Farinata
addressed to Dante, Chi fur li magyior tui ? Here is no
question of plagiarism, for poems are not made- of words
and thoughts and images, but of that something in the
poet himself which can compel them to obey him and
move to the rhythm of his nature. Thus it is that the
•new poet, however late he conic, can never be forestalled,
and the ship-builder \\lu> I milt the pinnace of Columbus
has as much claim to the discovery of America as he
who suggests a thought by which some other man opens
aew worlds to us has to a share in that achievement by

234 CHAUCER.

him imconceived and inconceivable. Chaucer undoubt.
edly began as an imitator, perhaps as mere translator,
serving the needful apprenticeship in the use of his
tools. Children learn to speak by watching the lips and
catching the words of those who know how already, and
poets learn in the same way from their elders. They
import their raw material from any and everywhere, and
the question at last comes down to this, — whether an
author have original force enough to assimilate all he
has acquired, or that be so overmastering as to assimi^
late him. If the poet turn out the stronger, we allow
him to help himself from other people with wonderful
equanimity. Should a man discover the art of trans
muting metals and present us with a lump of gold as
large as an ostrich-egg, would it be in human nature to
inquire too nicely whether he had stolen the lead 1

Nothing is more certain than that great poets are not
sudden prodigies, but slow results. As an oak profits
by the foregone lives of immemorial vegetable races
that have worked-over the juices of earth and air into
organic life out of whose dissolution a soil might gather
fit to maintain that nobler birth of nature, so we may
be sure that the genius of every remembered poet drew
the forces that built it up out of the decay of a long
succession of forgotten ones. Nay, in proportion as the
genius is vigorous and original will its indebtedness be
greater, will its roots strike deeper into the past and
grope in remoter fields for the virtue that must sustain
it. Indeed, if the works of the great poets teach any
thing, it is to hold mere invention somewhat cheap. It
is not the finding of a thing, but the making something
out of it after it is found, that is of consequence. Ac
cordingly, Chaucer, like Shakespeare, invented almost
nothing. Wherever he found anything directed to
Geoffrey Chaucer, he took it and made the most of it

CHAUCER. 235

It was not the subject treated, but himself, that was
the new thing. Cela m'appartient de droit, Moliere is
reported to have said when accused of plagiarism.
Chaucer pays that " usurious interest which genius," as
Coleridge says, "always pays in borrowing." The char
acteristic touch is his own. In the famous passage
about the caged bird, copied from the " Romaunt of the
Rose," the "gon eten wormes" was added by him. We
must let him, if he will, eat the heart out of the litera
ture that had preceded him, as we sacrifice the mulberry-
leaves to the silkworm, because he knows how to convert
them into something richer and more lasting. The
question of originality is not one of form, but of sub
stance, not of cleverness, but of imaginative power.
Given your material, in other words the life in which
you live, how much can you see in it? For on that
depends how much you can make of it. Is it merely
an arrangement of man's contrivance, a patchwork of
expediencies for temporary comfort and convenience,
good enough if it last your time, or is it so much of the
surface of that ever-flowing deity which we call Time,
wherein we catch such fleeting reflection as is possible
for us, of our relation to perdurable things] This is
what makes the difference between ^Eschylus and Eurip
ides, between Shakespeare and Fletcher, between Goethe
and Heine, between literature and rhetoric. Some
thing of this depth of insight, if not in the fullest, yet
in no inconsiderable measure, characterizes Chaucer.
\\ V must not let his playfulness, his delight in the world
as mere spectacle, mislead us into thinking that he was
incapable of serious purpose or insensible to the deeper
meanings of life.

There are four principal sources from which Chaucer
may be presumed to have drawn for poetical suggestion
t>r literary culture, — the Latins, the Troubadours, the

236 CHAUCER.

Trouveres, and the Italians. It is only the two lattel
who can fairly claim any immediate influence in the
direction of his thought or the formation of his style.
The only Latin poet who can be supposed to have in
fluenced the spirit of mediaeval literature is Ovid. In
his sentimentality, his love of the marvellous and the
picturesque, he is its natural precursor. The analogy
between his Fasti and the versified legends of saints is
more than a fanciful one. He was certainly popular
with the poets of the thirteenth and fourteenth cen
turies. Virgil had wellnigh become mythical. The
chief merit of the Provengal poets is in having been the
first to demonstrate that it was possible to write with
elegance in a modern dialect, and their interest for us is
mainly as forerunners, as indications of tendency. Their
literature is prophecy, not fulfilment. Its formal senti
ment culminated in Laura, its ideal aspiration in Bea
trice. Shakespeare's hundred and sixth sonnet, if, for the
imaginary mistress to whom it was addressed, we substi
tute the muse of a truer conception and more perfected
utterance, represents exactly the feeling with which we
read Provengal poetry : —

" When in the chronicle of wasted Time
I see descriptions of the fairest wights
And beauty making beautiful old rhyme
In praise of ladies dead and lovely knights,

I see their antique pen would have expressed

Even such a beauty as you master now ;

So all their praises are but prophecies

Of this our time, all you prefiguring,

And, for tlipy looked but with divining eyes,

They had not skill enough your worth to sing."

It is astonishing how little of the real life of the time we
learn from the Troubadours except by way of inference
and deduction. Their poetry is purely lyric in its most
narrow sense, that is, the expression of personal and

CHAUCER. 237

momentary moods. To the fancy of critics who take
their cue from tradition, Provence is a morning sky of
early summer, out of which innumerable larks rain a
faint melody (the sweeter because rather half divined
than heard too distinctly) over an earth where the dew
never dries and the flowers never fade. But when we
open Raynouard it is like opening the door of an aviary.
We are deafened and confused by a hundred minstrels
singing the same song at once, and more than suspect
that the flowers they welcome are made of French cam
bric spangled with dewdrops of prevaricating glass.
Bernard de Ventadour and Bertrand de Born are well-
nigh the only ones among them in whom we find an
original type. Yet the Troubadours undoubtedly led
the way to refinement of conception and perfection of
form. They were the conduit through which the failing
stream of Roman literary tradition flowed into the new
channel which mediaeval culture was slowly shaping for
itself. Without them we could not understand Petrarca,
who carried the manufacture of artificial bloom and fic
titious dew-drop to a point of excellence where artifice,
if ever, may claim the praise of art. Without them we
could not understand Dante, in whom their sentiment
for woman was idealized by a passionate intellect MI id
a profound nature, till Beatrice becomes a half-human,
half-divine abstraction, a woman still to memory and
devotion, a disembodied symbol to the ecstasy of thought.
The Provencal love-poetry was as abstracted from all
sensuality as that of Petrarca, but it stops short of that
larger and more gracious style of treatment which has
secured him a place in all gentle hearts and refined
imaginations forever. In it also woman leads her ser
vants upward, but it is along the easy slopes of conven
tional sentiment, and no Troubadour so much as dreamed
of that loftier region, native to Daute, where the woman

238 CHAUCER.

is subtilized into das Euuig-Weibliche, type of man's finer
conscience and nobler aspiration made sensible to him
only through her.

On the whole, it would be hard to find anything more
tediously artificial than the Provencal literature, except
the reproduction of it by the Minnesingers. The Tedes-
chi lurchi certainly did contrive to make something heavy
as dough out of what was at least light, if not very satis
fying, in the canorous dialect of Southern Gaul. But its
doom was inevitably predicted in its nature and position,
nay, in its very name. It was, and it continues to be, a
strictly provincial literature, imprisoned within extreme
ly narrow intellectual and even geographical limits. It
is not race or language that can inflict this leprous isola
tion, but some defect of sympathy with the simpler and
more universal relations of human nature. You cannot
shut up Burns in a dialect bristling with archaisms, nor
prevent Beranger from setting all pulses a-dance in the
least rhythmic and imaginative of modern tongues. The
healthy temperament of Chaucer, with its breadth of inter
est in all ranks and phases of social life, could have found
little that was sympathetic in the evaporated sentiment
and rhetorical punctilios of a school of poets which, with
rare exceptions, began and ended in courtly dilettantism.

The refined formality with which the literary product
of Proven9e is for the most part stamped, as with a
trademark, was doubtless the legacy of Gallo-Roman cul
ture, itself at best derivative and superficial. I think,
indeed, that it may well be doubted whether Roman
literature, always a half-hardy exotic, could ripen the
seeds of living reproduction. The Roman genius was
eminently practical, and far more apt for the triumphs
of politics and jurisprudence than of art. Supreme ele
gance it could and did arrive at in Virgil, but, if I may
trust my own judgment, it produced but one original

CHAUCER. 239

poet, and that was Horace, who has ever since continued
the favorite of men of the world, an apostle to the Gen
tiles of the mild cynicism of middle-age and an after-
dinner philosophy. Though in no sense national, he was,
more truly than any has ever been since, till the same
combination of circumstances produced Beranger, an ur
bane or city poet. Home, with her motley life, her formal
religion, her easy morals, her spectacles, her luxury, her
suburban country-life, was his muse. The situation was
new, and found a singer who had wit enough to turn it
to account. There are a half-dozen pieces of Catullus
unsurpassed (unless their Greek originals should turn
up) for lyric grace and fanciful tenderness. The sparrow
of Lesbia still pecks the rosy lips of his mistress, im
mortal as the eagle of Pindar. One profound imagination,
one man, who with a more prosperous subject might
have been a great poet, lifted Roman literature above
its ordinary level of tasteful common-sense. The in
vocation of Venus, as the genetic force of nature, by
Lucretius, seems to me the one sunburst of purely poetic
inspiration which the Latin language can show. But
this very force, without which neque fit laetum neque
amabile quicquam was wholly wanting in those poets of
the post-classic period, through whom the literary in
fluences of the past were transmitted to the romanized
provincials. The works of Ausonius interest us as those
of our own Dwights and Barlows do. The " Conquest of
Canaan " and the " Columbiad " were Connecticut epics
no doubt, but still were better than nothing in theft
day. If not literature, they were at least memories of
literature, and such memories are not without effect in
reproducing what they regret. The provincial writers
of Latin devoted themselves with a dreary assiduity to
the imitation of models which they deemed classical,
but which were truly so only in the sense that they

240 CHAUCER.

were the more decorously respectful of the dead form in
proportion as the living spirit had more utterly gone out
of it. It is, I suspect, to the traditions of this purely
rhetorical influence, indirectly exercised, that we are to
attribute the rapid passage of the new Provencal poetry
from what must have been its original popular character
to that highly artificial condition which precedes total
extinction. It was the alienation of the written from
the spoken language (always, perhaps, more or less ma
lignly operative in giving Roman literature a cold-blooded
turn as compared with Greek), which, ending at length
in total divorce, rendered Latin incapable of supplying
the wants of new men and new ideas. The same thing,
I am strongly inclined to think, was true of the language
of the Troubadours. It had become literary, and so far
dead. It is true that no language is ever so far gone iii
consumption as to be beyond the great-poet-cure. Un
doubtedly a man of genius can out of his own super
abundant vitality compel life into the most decrepit
vocabulary. But it is by the infusion of his own blood,
as it were, and not without a certain sacrifice of power.
No such resciie came for the langite d'oc, which, it should
seem, had performed its special function in the devel
opment of modern literature, and would have perished
even without the Albigensian war. The position of the
Gallo-Romans of the South, both ethical and geographi
cal, precluded them from producing anything really great
or even original in literature, for that must have its root
in a national life, and this they never had. After the
Burgundian invasion their situation was in many respects
analogous to our own after the Revolutionary War. They
had been thoroughly romanized in language and culture,
but the line of their historic continuity had been broken.
The Roman road, which linked them with the only past
they knew, had been buried under the great barbarian

CHAUCER. 241

land-slide. In like manner we, inheriting the language,
the social usages, the literary and political traditions of
Englishmen, were suddenly cut adrift from our historical
anchorage. Very soon there arose a demand for a native
literature, nay, it was even proposed that, as a first step
toward it, we should adopt a lingo of our own to be called
the Columbian or Hesperian. This, to be sure, was never
accomplished, though our English cousins seem to hint
sometimes that we have made very fair advances toward
it ; but if it could have been, our position would have
been precisely that of the Provengals when they began to
have a literature of their own. They had formed a lan
guage which, while it completed their orphanage from
their imperial mother, continually recalled her,"and kept
alive their pride of lineage. Such reminiscences as they
still retained of Latin culture were pedantic and rhetor
ical,* and it was only natural that cut of these they
should have elaborated a code of poetical jurisprudence
with titles and subtitles applicable to every form of verse
and tyrannous over every mode of sentiment. The re
sult could not fail to be artificial and wearisome, except
where some man with a truly lyrical genhis could breathe
life into the rigid formula and make it pliant to his more
passionate feeling. The great service of the Provencals
was that they kept in mind the fact that poetry was not
merely an amusement, but an art, and long after their
literary activity had ceased their influence reacted bene
ficially upon Europe through their Italian pupils. They
are interesting as showing the tendency of the Romanic
races to a scientific treatment of what, if it be not
spontaneous, becomes a fashion and erelong an imperti
nence. Fauriel has endeavored to prove that they were
the first to treat the mediaeval heroic legends epically,
but the evidence is strongly against him. The testimony

* Fauriel, Hutoire de la Gaule Aferidionale, Vol. I. paisim.
11 P

242 CHAUCER.

of Dante on this point is explicit,* and moreover not a
single romance of chivalry has come down to us in a
dialect of the pure Provencal.

The Trouveres, on- the other hand, are apt to have
something naive and vigorous about them, something
that smacks of race and soil. Their very coarseness
is almost better than the Troubadour delicacy, because
it was not an affectation. The difference between the
two schools is that between a culture pedantically trans
mitted and one which grows and gathers strength from
natural causes. Indeed, it is to the North of France and
to the Trouveres that we are to look for the true origins
of our modern literature. I do not mean in their epi
cal poetry, though there is something refreshing in the
mere fact of their choosing native heroes and legends as
the subjects of their song. It was in their Fabliaux and
Lais that, dealing with the realities of the life about
them, they became original and delightful in spite of
themselves. Their Chansons de Geste are fine specimens
of fighting Christianity, highly inspiring for men like
Peire de Bergerac, who sings

" Bel m'es can aug lo resso

Que fai 1'ausbercs ab 1'arso,

Li bruit e il crit e il masan

Que il corn e las trombas fan " ;

but who after reading them — even the best of them,

* Allegat ergo pro se lingua Oilqnod propter sui faciliorem et delec-
tabiliorem vulgaritatem, quicquid redactum sive inventum est ad vul-
gare prosaicum, suum est; videlicet biblia cum Trojanorum, Roman-
orumque gestibus compilata et Arturi regis ambages pulcherrima3 et
quamplures alise historic ac doctrinse. That Dante by prosaicum did
not mean prose, but a more inartificial verse, numeros lege solutos, is
clear. Cf. Wolf, Ueber die Lais, pp. 92 seq. and notes. It has not, I
think, been remarked that Dante borrows his faciliorem et delectabilio-
vem from the plus diletable et comune of his master Brunetto Latini.
t " My ears no sweeter music know

Than hnuberk's clunk with saddlebow,
The noise, the cries, the tumult blown
From trumpet and from clarion."

CHAUCER. 243

the Song of Roland — can remember much more than a
cloud of battle-dust, through which the paladins loom
dimly gigantic, and a strong verse flashes here and there
like an angry sword1? What are the Roman d'avantures,
the cycle of Arthur and his knights, but a procession of
armor and plumes, mere spectacle, not vision like their
Grecian antitype, the Odyssey, whose pictures of life,
whether domestic or heroic, are among the abiding con
solations of the mind ? An element of disproportion, of
grotesqueness,* earmark of the barbarian, disturbs us,
even when it does not disgust, in them all. Except the
Roland, they all want adequate motive, and even in that
we may well suspect a reminiscence of the Iliad. They
are not without a kind of dignity, for manliness is always
noble, and there are detached scenes that are striking,
perhaps all the more so from their rarity, like the com
bat of Oliver and Fierabras, and the leave-taking of
Parise la Duchesse. But in point of art they are far
below even Firdusi, whose great poem is of precisely the
same romantic type. The episode of Sohrab and Rustem
as much surpasses the former of the passages just alluded
to in largeness and energy of treatment, in the true
epical quality, as the lament of Tehmine over her son
does the latter of them in refined and natural pathos.
In our revolt against pseudo-classicism we must not let
our admiration for the vigor and freshness which are the
merit of this old poetry tempt us to forget that our
direct literary inheritance conies to us from an ancestry
who would never have got beyond the Age of Iron but
for the models of graceful form and delicate workman
ship which they found in the tombs of an earlier race.

I recall but one passage (from Jourdain de Blaivies)
which in its simple movement of the heart can in any
way be compared with Chaucer. I translate it freely,

* Compare Floripar in Fierabrat with Nausikaa, for example.

244 CHAUCER.

merely changing the original assonance into rhyme.
Eremborc, to save the son of her liege-lord, has passed-
off her own child for his, only stipulating that he shall
pass the night before his death with her in the prison
where she is confined by the usurper Fromond. The
time is just as the dreaded dawn begins to break.

" ' Gamier, fair son,' the noble lady said,
' To save thy father's life must thou be dead;
And mine, alas, must be with sorrow spent,
Since thou must die, albeit so innocent !
Evening thou shalt not see that see'st the morn!
Woe worth the hour that I beheld thee born,
Whom nine long months within my side I bore!
Was never babe desired so much before.
Now summer will the pleasant clays recall
When I shall take my stand upon the wall
And see the fair young gentlemen thy peers
That come and go, and, as beseems their years
Run at the quintain, strive to pierce the shield,
And in the tourney keep their sell or yield;
Then must my heart be tearswoln for thy sake
That 't will be marvel if it do not break.'
At morning, when the day began to peer,
Matins rang out from minsters far and near,
And the clerks sang full well with voices high.
1 God,' said the dame, 'thou glorious in the sky,
These lingering nights were wont to tire me so!
And this, alas, how swift it hastes to go!
These clerks and cloistered folk, alas, in spite
So early sing to cheat me of my night! ' "

The great advantages which the langue d'oil had over
its sister dialect of the South of France were its wider
distribution, and its representing the national and unitary
tendencies of the people as opposed to those of provin
cial isolation. But the Trouveres had also this superi
ority, that they gave a voice to real and not merely
conventional emotions. In comparison with the Trou
badours their sympathies were more human, and their
expression more popular. While the tiresome ingenuity
of the latter busied itself chiefly in the filigree of wire-

CHAUCER. 245

drawn sentiment and supersubtilized conceit, the former
took their subjects from the street and the market as
well as from the chateau. In the one case language had
become a mere material for clever elaboration ; in the
other, as always in live literature, it was a soil from
which the roots of thought and feeling unconsciously
drew the coloring of vivid expression. The writers of
French, by the greater pliancy of their dialect and the
simpler forms of their verse, had acquired an ease which
was impossible in the more stately and sharply angled
vocabulary of the South. Their octosyllabics have not
seldom a careless facility not unworthy of Swift in his
best mood. They had attained the highest skill and
grace in narrative, as the lays of Marie de France and
the Lai de UOisekt bear witness.* Above all, they had
learned how to brighten the hitherto monotonous web of
story with the gayer hues of fancy.

It is no improbable surmise that the sudden and sur
prising development of the more strictly epical poetry in
the North of France, and especially its growing partiality
for historical in preference to mythical subjects, were
due to the Normans. The poetry of the Danes was much
of it authentic history, or what was believed to be so ;
the heroes of their Sagas were real men, with wives and
children, with relations public and domestic, on the
common levels of life, and not mere creatures of imagina
tion, who dwell apart like stars from the vulgar cares and
interests of men. If we compare Havelok with the least
ideali/.ed figures of Cwkmngian or Arthurian romance,
•we shall have a keen sense of this difference. Manhood
has taken the place of caste, and homeliness of exaggera
tion. Havelok says, —

I Will Witll tliPP

For to learn some good to get ;
If internal evidence may bo trusted, the Lai de tEtpine is not hers.

246 CHAUCER.

Swinken would I for my meat;
It is no shame for to swinken."

This Dane, we see, is of our own make and stature, a
being much nearer our kindly sympathies than his com
patriot Ogier, of whom we are told,

" Dix pies de lone avoit le chevalier."

But however large or small share we may allow to the
Danes in changing the character of French poetry and
supplanting the Romance with the Fabliau, there can be
little doubt either of the kind or amount of influence
which the Normans must have brought with them into
England. I am not going to attempt a definition of the
Anglo-Saxon element in English literature, for generaliza
tions are apt to be as dangerous as they are tempting.
But as a painter may draw a cloud so that we recognize
its general tmth, though the boundaries of real clouds
never remain the same for two minutes together, so amid
the changes of feature and complexion brought about
by commingling of race, there still remains a certain
cast of physiognomy which points back to some one
ancestor of marked and peculiar character. It is toward
this type that there is always a tendency to revert, to
borrow Mr. Darwin's phrase, and I think the general
belief is not without some adequate grounds which
in France traces this predominant type to the Kelt, and
in England to the Saxon. In old and stationary com
munities, where tradition has a chance to take root, and
where several generations are present to the mind of each
inhabitant, either by personal recollection or transmitted
anecdote, everybody's peculiarities, whether of strength
or weakness, are explained and, as it were, justified upon
some theory of hereditary bias. Such and such qualities
he got from a grandfather on the spear or a great-uncle
on the spindle side. This gift came in a right line from

CHAUCER. 247

So-and-so ; that failing came in by the dilution of the
family blood with that of Such-a-onc. In this way a
certain allowance is made for every aberration from some
assumed normal type, either in the way of reinforcement
or defect, and that universal desire of the human mind
to have everything accounted for — which makes the
moon responsible for the whimsies of the weathercock —
is cheaply gratified. But as mankind in the aggregate
is always wiser than any single man, because its experi
ence is derived from a larger range of observation and
experience, and because the springs that feed it drain a
wider region both of time and space, there is commonly
some greater or smaller share of truth in all popular
prejudices. The meteorologists are beginning to agree
with the old women that the moon is an accessary before
the fact in our atmospheric fluctuations. Now, although
to admit this notion of inherited good or ill to its fullest
extent would be to abolish personal character, and with
it all responsibility, to abdicate freewill, and to make
every effort at self-direction futile, there is no inconsid
erable alloy of truth in it, nevertheless. No man can
look into the title-deeds of what may be called his per
sonal estate, his faculties, his predilections, his failings,
— whatever, in short, sets him apart as a capital I, —
without something like a shock of dread to find how
much of him is held in mortmain by those who, though
long ago mouldered away to dust, are yet fatally alive
and active in him for good or ill. What is true of indi
vidual men is true also of races, and the prevailing belief
in a nation as to the origin of certain of its character
istics has something of the same basis in facts of obser
vation as the village estimate of the traits of particular
families. Intrril nm !'///<///.•< rtchnii. riJc/.

We are apt, it is true, to talk rather loosely about our
Anglo-Saxon ancestors, and to attribute to them in a

248 CHAUCER.

vague way all the pith of our institutions and the
motive power of our progress. For my own part, I
think there is such a thing as being too Anglo-Saxon,
and the warp and woof of the English national charac
ter, though undoubtedly two elements mainly predomi
nate in it, is quite too complex for us to pick out a
strand here and there, and affirm that the body of the
fabric is of this or that. Our present concern with the
Saxons is chiefly a literary one ; but it leads to a study
of general characteristics. What, then, so far as we can
make it out, seems to be their leading mental feature 1
Plainly, understanding, common-sense, — a faculty which
never carries its possessor very high in creative litera
ture, though it may make him great as an acting and
even thinking man. Take Dr. Johnson as an instance.
The Saxon, as it appears to me, has never shown any
capacity for art, nay, commonly commits ugly blunders
when he is tempted in that direction. He has made the
best working institutions and the ugliest monuments
among the children of men. He is wanting in taste,
which is as much as to say that he has no true sense of
proportion. His genius is his solidity, — an admirable
foundation of national character. He is healthy, in no
danger of liver-complaint, with digestive apparatus of
amazing force and precision. He is the best farmer and
best grazier among men, raises the biggest crops and the
fattest cattle, and consumes proportionate quantities of
both. He settles and sticks like a diluvial deposit on
the warm, low-lying levels, physical and moral. He has
a prodigious talent, to use our Yankee phrase, of staying
put. You cannot move him ; he and rich earth have a
natural sympathy of cohesion. Not quarrelsome, but
with indefatigable durability of fight in him, sound of
stomach, and not too refined in nervous texture, he ia
capable of indefinitely prolonged punishment, with a

CHAUCER. 249

singularly obtuse sense of propriety in acknowledging
himself beaten. Among all races perhaps none has
shown so acute a sense of the side on which its bread
is buttered, and so great a repugnance for having fine
phrases take the place of the butyraceous principle.
They invented the words " humbug," " cant," " sham,"
"gag," " soft-sodder," "flapdoddle," and other disen
chanting formulas whereby the devil of falsehood and
unreality gets his effectual apage Satana !

An imperturbable perception of the real relations of*
things is the Saxon's leading quality, — no sense what
ever, or at best small, of the ideal in him. He has no
notion that two and two ever make five, which is the
problem the poet often has to golve. Understanding,
that is, equilibrium of mind, intellectual good digestion,
this, with unclogged biliary ducts, makes him mentally
and physically what we call a very fixed fact ; but you
shall not find a poet in a hundred thousand square miles,
— in many prosperous centuries of such. But one
element of incalculable importance we have not men
tioned. In this homely nature, the idea of God, and of
a simple and direct relation between the All-Father and
his children, is deeply rooted. There, above all, will he
have honesty and simplicity ; less than anything else
will he have the sacramental wafer, — that beautiful
emblem of our dependence on Him who giveth the daily
bread ; iess than anything will he have this smeared
with that Barmecide butter of fair words. This is the
lovely and noble side of his character. Indignation at
this will make him forget crops and cattle ; and this,
after so many centuries, will give him at last a poet in
the monk of Kislelien, who shall cut deep on the memory
of mankind that brief creed of conscience, — " Here arn
I . God help me : I cannot otherwise." This, it seems to
me, with dogged sense of justice, — both results of that
11 •

250 CHAUCER.

equilibrium of thought which springs from clear-sighted
understanding,-*- makes the beauty of the Saxon nature.

He believes in another world, and conceives of it with
out metaphysical subtleties as something very much
after the pattern of this, but infinitely more desirable.
Witness the vision of John Bunyan. Once beat it into
him that his eternal well-being, as he calls it, depends
on certain conditions, that only so will the balance in
the ledger of eternity be in his favor, and the man who
seemed wholly of this world will give all that he has,
even his life, with a superb simplicity and scorn of the
theatric, for a chance in the next. Hard to move, his
very solidity of nature makes him terrible when once
fairly set agoing. He is the man of all others slow to
admit the thought of revolution ; but let him once admit
it, he will carry it through and make it stick, — a secret
hitherto undiscoverable by other races.

But poetry is not made out of the understanding ;
that is not the sort of block out of which you can carve
wing-footed Mercuries. The question of common-sense
is always, "What is it good for1?" — a question which
would abolish the rose and be answered triumphantly
by the cabbage. The danger of the prosaic type of
mind lies in the stolid sense of superiority which blinds
it to everything ideal, to the use of anything that does
not serve the practical purposes of life. Do we not re
member how the all-observing and all-fathoming Shake
speare has typified this in Bottom the weaver ] Sur
rounded by all the fairy creations of fancy, he sends
one to fetch him the bag of a humble-bee, and can find
no better employment for Mustard-seed than to help
< 'avalero Cobweb scratch his ass's head between the ears.
When Titania, queen of that fair ideal world, offers him
a feast of beauty, he says he has a good stomach to a
pottle of hay !

CHAUCER. 251

The Anglo-Saxons never had any real literature of
their own. They produced monkish chronicles in bad
Latin, and legends of saints in worse metre. Their
earlier poetry is essentially Scandinavian. It was that
gens inclytissima Northmannorum that imported the
divine power of imagination, — that power which, min
gled with the solid Saxon understanding, produced at
last the miracle of Stratford. It was to this adventur
ous race, which found America before Columbus, which,
for the sake of freedom of thought, could colonize in
hospitable Iceland, which, as it were, typifying the very
action of the imaginative faculty itself, identified itself
always with what it conquered, that we owe whatever
aquiline features there are in the national physiognomy
of the English race. It was through the Normans that
the English mind and fancy, hitherto provincial and
uncouth, were first infused with the lightness, grace,
and self-confidence of Romance literature. They seem
to have opened a window to the southward in that solid
and somewhat sombre insiilar character, and it was a
painted window all aglow with the figures of tradition
and poetry. The old Gothic volume, grim with legends
of devilish temptation and satanic lore, they illuminated
with the gay and brilliant inventions of a softer climate
and more genial moods. Even the stories of Arthur
and his knights, toward which the stern Dante himself
relented so far as to call them gratissimas ambages, most.
delightful circumlocutions, though of British original,
were first set free from the dungeon of a barbarous
dialect by the French poets, and so brought back to
England, and made popular there by the Normans.

Chaucer, to whom French must have been almost as
truly a mother tongue ;>s Kii<Jisli, was familiar with all
that had been done by Troubadour or Trouvere. In
him we see the first result of the Norman yeast upou

252 CHAUCER.

the home-baked Saxon loaf. The flour had been honest,
the paste well kneaded, but the inspiring leaven was
wanting till the Norman brought it over. Chaucer
works still in the solid material of his race, but with
what airy lightness has he not infused it 1 Without
ceasing to be English, he has escaped from being insular.
But he was something more than this ; he was a scholar,
a thinker, and a critic. He had studied the Divina
Commedia of Dante, he had read Petrarca and Boccaccio,
and some of the Latin poets. He calls Dante the great
poet of Italy, and Petrarch a learned clerk. It is plain
that he knew very well the truer purpose of poetry, and
had even arrived at the higher wisdom of comprehend
ing the aptitudes and limitations of his own genius.
He saw clearly and felt keenly what were the faults
and what the wants of the prevailing literature of his
country. In the " MonkV' Tale " he slyly satirizes the
long-winded morality of Gower, as his prose antitype,
Fielding, was to satirize the prolix sentimentality of
Richardson. In the rhyme of Sir Thopas he gives the
coup de grace to the romances of Chivalry, and in bis
own choice of a siibject he heralds that new world in
which the actual and the popular were to supplant the
fantastic and the heroic.

Before Chaucer, modern Europe had given birth to one
great poet, Dante ; and contemporary with him was one
supremely elegant one, Petrarch. Dante died only
seven years before Chaucer was born, and, so far as
culture is derived from books, the moral and intellect
ual influences they had been subjected to, the specu
lative stimulus that may have given an impulse to
their minds, — there could have been no essential differ
ence between them. Yet there are certain points of resem
blance and of contrast, and those not entirely fanci
ful, which seem to me of considerable interest. Both

CHAUCER. 253

were of mixed race, Dante certainly, Chaucer presum
ably so. Dante seems to have inherited on the Teutonic
side the strong moral sense, the almost nervous irrita
bility of conscience, and the tendency to mysticism which
made him the first of Christian poets, — first in point
of time and first in point of greatness. From the other
side he seems to have received almost in overplus a feel
ing of order and proportion, sometimes wellnigh harden
ing into mathematical precision and formalism, — a
tendency which at last brought the poetry of the Ro
manic races to a dead-lock of artifice and decorum.
Chaucer, on the other hand, drew from the South a
certain airiness of sentiment and expression, a felicity of
phrase, and an elegance of turn hitherto unprecedented
and hardly yet matched in our literature, but all the
while kept firm hold of his native soundness of under
standing, and that genial humor which seems to be the
proper element of worldly wisdom. With Dante, life
represented the passage of the soul from a state of na
ture to a state of grace ; and there would have been
almost an even chance whether (as Burns says) the
Divina Commedia had turned out a song or a sermon,
but for the wonderful genius of its author, which has
compelled the sermon to sing and the song to preach,
whether they would or no. With Chaucer, life is a pil
grimage, but only that his eye- may be delighted with
the varieties of costume and character. There are good
morals to be found in Chaucer, but they are always inci
dental. With Dante the main question is the saving of
the soul, with Chaucer it is the conduct of life. The
distance between them is almost that between holiness
and prudence. Dante applies himself to the realities
and Chaucer to the scenery of life, and the former is
consequently the more universal poet, as the latter is
the more truly national one. Dante represents the

254 CHAUCER.

justice of God, and Chaucer his loving-kindness. If
there is anything that may properly be called satire in
the one, it is like a blast of the divine wrath, before
which the wretches oower and tremble, which rends
away their cloaks of hypocrisy and their masks of worldly
propriety, and leaves them shivering in the cruel naked
ness of their shame. The satire of the other is genial
with the broad sunshine of humor, into which the vic
tims walk forth with a delightful unconcern, laying aside
of themselves the disguises that seem to make them un
comfortably warm, till they have made a thorough be
trayal of themselves so unconsciously that we almost
pity while we laugh. Dante shows us the punishment
of sins against God and one's neighbor, in order that we
may shun them, and so escape the doom that awaits them
in the other world. Chaucer exposes the cheats of the
transmuter of metals, of the begging friars, and of the
pedlers of indulgences, in order that we may be on our
guard against them in this world. If we are to judge of
what is national only by the highest and most charac
teristic types, surely we cannot fail to see in Chaucer
the true forerunner and prototype of Shakespeare, who,
with an imagination of far deeper grasp, a far wider
reach of thought, yet took the same delight in the
pageantry of the actual world, and whose moral is the
moral of worldly wisdom only heightened to the level
of his wide-viewing mind, and made typical by the dra
matic energy of his plastic nature.

Yet if Chaucer had little of that organic force of life
which so inspires the poem of Dante that, as he himself
says of the heavens, part answers to part with mutual
interchange of light, he had a structural faculty which
distinguishes him from all other English poets, his con
temporaries, and which indeed is the primary distinction
of poets properly so called. There is, to be sure, only

CHAUCER. 255

one other English writer coeval with himself who de
serves in any way to be compared with him, and that
rather for contrast than for likeness.

With the single exception of Langland, the English
poets, his contemporaries, were little else than bad
versifiers of legends classic or mediaeval, as happened,
without selection and without art. Chaucer is the first
who broke away from the dreary traditional style, and
gave not merely stories, but lively pictures of real life as
the ever-renewed substance of poetry. He was a re
former, too, not only in literature, but in morals. But
as in the former his exquisite tact saved him from all
eccentricity, so in the latter the pervading sweetness of
his nature could never be betrayed into harshness and
invective. He seems incapable of indignation. He
mused good-naturedly over the vices and follies of men,
and, never forgetting that he was fashioned of the same
clay, is rather apt to pity than condemn. There is no
touch of cynicism in all he wrote. Dante's brush seems
sometimes to have been smeared with the burning pitch
of his own fiery lake. Chaucer's pencil is dipped in the
cheerful color-box of the old illuminators, and he has
their patient delicacy of touch, with a freedom far be
yond their somewhat mechanic brilliancy.

English narrative poetry, as Chaucer found it, though
it had not altogether escaped from the primal curse of
long-windedness so painfully characteristic of its pro
totype, the French Romance of Chivalry, had certainly
shown a feeling for the picturesque, a sense of color, a
directness of phrase, and a simplicity of treatment which
give it graces of its own and a turn peculiar to itself.
In the easy knack of story-telling, the popular minstrels
cannot compare with Marie de France. The lightsome-
ness of fancy, that leaves a touch of sunshine and is
gone, is painfully missed in them all. Their incidents

256 CHAUCER.

enter dispersedly, as the old stage directions used to
say, and they have not learned the art of concentrating
their force on the key-point of their hearers' interest.
They neither get fairly hold of their subject, nor, what is
more important, does it get hold of them. But they
sometimes yield to an instinctive hint of leaving-off at
the right moment, and in their happy negligence achieve
an effect only to be matched by the highest successes of

art.

" That lady heard his mourning all
Right under her chamber wall,
In her oriel where she was,
Closed well with royal glass;
Fulfilled it was with imagery
Every window, by and by;
On each side had there a gin
Sperred with many a divers pin;
Auoii that hidj- lair and free
Undid a pin of ivory
And wide the window she open set,
The sun shone in at her closet."

It is true the old rhymer relapses a little into the habit
ual drone of his class, and shows half a mind to bolt
into their common inventory style when he comes to his
gins and pins, but he withstands the temptation man
fully, and his sunshine fills our hearts with a gush as
sudden as that which illumines the lady's oriel. Cole
ridge and Keats have each in his way felt the charm of
this winsome picture, but have hardly equalled its heartj
honesty, its economy of material, the supreme test of
artistic skill. I admit that the phrase " had there a
gin " is suspicious, and suggests a French original, but I
remember nothing altogether so good in the romances
from the other side of the Channel. One more passage
occurs to me, almost incomparable in its simple straight-
forward force and choice of the right word.

" Sir Graysteel to his death thus thraws,
He welters [wallows] and the grass updraws;

CHAUCER. , 257

A little while then lay he still,
(Friends that saw him liked full ill,)
And bled into his armor bright."

The last line, for suggestive reticence, almost deserves
to be put beside the famous

" Quel giorno piii non vi leggemmo avante "

of the great master of laconic narration. In the same
poem * the growing love of the lady, in its maidenliness
of unconscious betrayal, is touched with a delicacy and
tact as surprising as they are delightful. But such pas
sages, which are the despair of poets who have to work
in a language that has faded into diction, are exceptional.
They are to be set down rather to good luck than to art.
Even the stereotyped similes of these fortunate illiterates,
like " weary as water in a weir," or " glad as grass is of
the rain," are new, like nature, at the thousandth repe
tition. Perhaps our palled taste overvalues the wild
flavor of these wayside treasure-troves. They are wood-
strawberries, prized in proportion as we must turn over
more leaves ere we find one. This popular literature is
of value in helping us toward a juster estimate of Chaucer
by showing what the mere language was capable of, and
that all it wanted was a poet to put it through its paces.
For though the poems I have quoted be, in their present
form, later than he, they are, after all, but modernized
versions of older copies, which they doubtless reproduce
with substantial fidelity.

It is commonly assumed that Chaucer did for English
what Dante is supposed to have done for Italian and
Luther for German, that he, in short, in some hitherto
inexplicable way, created it. But this is to speak loosely
and without book. Languages are never made in any

* Sir Eger and Sir Grine in the Percy Folio. The passage quoted
i£ from Ellia.

258 CHAUCER.

such fashion, still less are they the achievement of any
single man, however great his genius, however powerful
his individuality. They shape themselves by laws as
definite as those which guide and limit the growth of
other living organisms. Dante, indeed, has told us that
he chose to write in the tongue that might be learned of
nurses and chafferers in the market. His practice shows
that he knew perfectly well that poetry has needs which
cannot be answered by the vehicle of vulgar commerce
between man and man. What he instinctively felt was,
that there was the living heart of all speech, without
whose help the brain were powerless to send will, motion,
meaning, to the limbs and extremities. But it is true
that a language, as respects the uses of literature, is lia
ble to a kind of syncope. No matter how complete its
vocabulary may be, how thorough an outfit of inflections
and case-endings it may have, it is a mere dead body
without a soul till some man of genius set its arrested
pulses once more athrob, and show what wealth of sweet
ness, scorn, persuasion, and passion lay there awaiting its
liberator. In this sense it is hardly too much to say
that Chaucer, like Dante, found his native tongue a dia
lect and left it a language. But it was not what he did
with deliberate purpose of reform, it was his kindly and
plastic genius that wrought this magic of renewal and
inspiration. It was not the new words he introduced,*
but his way of using the old ones, that surprised them
into grace, ease, and dignity in their own despite. In
order to feel fully how much he achieved, let any one
subject himself to a penitential course of reading in his
contemporary, Gower, who worked in a material to all
intents and purposes the same, or listen for a moment
to the barbarous jangle which Lydgate and Occleve con
trive to draw from the instrument their master had tuned

* I think he tried one now and then, like " eyen columbine.'1'1

CHAUCER. 259

so deftly. Gower has positively raised tediousness to the
precision of science, he has made dulness an heirloom for
the students of our literary history. As you slip to and
fro on the frozen levels of his verse, which give no foot
hold to the mind, as your nervous ear awaits the inevita
ble recurrence of his rhyme, regularly pertinacious as
the tick of an eight-day clock and reminding you of
Wordsworth's

" Once more the ass did lengthen out
The hard, dry, seesaw of his horrible bray,"

you learn to dread, almost to respect, the powers of this
indefatigable man. He is the undertaker of the fair
mediseval legend, and his style has the hateful gloss, the
seemingly unnatural length, of a coffin. Love, beauty,
passion, nature, art, life, the natural and theological vir
tues, — there is nothing beyond his power to disenchant,
nothing out of which the tremendous hydraulic press of
his allegory (or whatever it is, for I am not sure if it be
not something even worse) will not squeeze all feeling
and freshness and leave it a juiceless pulp. It matters
not where you try him, whether his story be Christian
or pagan, borrowed from history or fable, you cannot
escape him. Dip in at the middle or the end, dodge
back to the beginning, the patient old man is there to
take you by the button and go on with his imperturba
ble narrative. You may have left off with Clytemnes-
tra, and you begin again with Samson ; it makes no
odds, for you cannot tell one from tother. His tedious-
ness is omnipresent, and like Dogberry he could find in
his heart to bestow it all (and more if he had it) on your
worship. The word lengthy has been charged to our
American account, but it m\ist have been invented by
the first reader of Gower's works, the only inspiration of
which they were ever capable. Our literature had to lie
by and recruit for more than four centuries ere it could

260 CHAUCER.

give us an equal vacuity in Tupper, so persistent a uni
formity of commonplace in the " Recreations of a Coun
try Parson." Let us be thankful that the industrious
Gower never found time for recreation !

But a fairer as well as more instructive comparison lies
between Chaucer and the author of " Piers Ploughman."
Langland has as much tenderness, as much interest in
the varied picture of life, as hearty a contempt for hy
pocrisy, and almost an equal sense of fun. He has the
same easy abundance of matter. But what a difference !
It is the difference between the poet and the man of
poetic temperament. The abundance of the one is a con
tinual fulness within the fixed limits of good taste ; that
of the other is squandered in overflow. The one can be
profuse on occasion ; the other is diffuse whether he will
or no. The one is full of talk ; the other is garrulous.
What in one is the refined bonhomie of a man of the world,
is a rustic shrewdness in the other. Both are kindly in
their satire, and have not (like too many reformers) that
vindictive love of virtue which spreads the stool of re
pentance with thistle-burrs before they invite the erring
to seat themselves therein. But what in " Piers Plough
man " is sly fun, has the breadth and depth of humor in
Chaucer ; and it is plain that while the former was taken
up by his moral purpose, the main interest of the latter
turned to perfecting the form of his work. In short,
Chaucer had that fine literary sense which is as rare as
genius, and, united with it, as it was in him, assures an
immortality of fame. It is not merely what he has to
say, but even more the agreeable way he has of saying it,
that captivates our attention and gives him an assured
place in literature. Above all, it is not in detached pas
sages that his charm lies, but in the entirety of expression
and the cumulative effect of many particulars working
toward a common end. Now though ex ungue leonem be

CHAUCER. 261

a good rule in comparative anatomy, its application, ex
cept in a very limited way, in criticism is sure to mislead ;
for we should always bear in mind that the really great
writer is great in the mass, and is to be tested less by his
cleverness in the elaboration of parts than by that reach
of mind which is incapable of random effort, which selects,
arranges, combines, rejects, denies itself the cheap tri
umph of immediate effects, because it is absorbed by the
controlling charm of proportion and unity. A careless
good-luck of phrase is delightful ; but criticism cleaves to
the teleological argument, and distinguishes the creative
intellect, not so much by any happiness of natural endow
ment as by the marks of design. It is true that one may
sometimes discover by a single verse whether an author
have imagination, or may make a shrewd guess whether
he have style or no, just as by a few spoken words you
may judge of a man's accent ; but the true artist in
language is never spotty, and needs no guide-boards of
admiring italics, a critical method introduced by Leigh
Hunt, whose feminine temperament gave him acute per
ceptions at the expense of judgment. This is the Boeotian
method, which offers us a brick as a sample of the house,
forgetting that it is not the goodness of the separate
bricks, but the way in which they are put together, that
brings them within the province of art, and makes the
difference between a heap and a house. A great writer
does not reveal himself here and there, but everywhere.
Langland's verse runs mostly like a brook, with a beguil
ing and wellnigh slumberous prattle, but he, more often
than any writer of his class, flashes into salient lines, gets
inside our guard with the home-thrust of a forthright
word, and he gains if taken piecemeal. His imagery is
naturally and vividly picturesque, as where he says of
Old Age, —

262 CHAUCER.

" Eld the hoar

That was in the vauntward,
And bare the banner before death," —

and he softens to a sweetness of sympathy beyond Chau
cer when he speaks of the poor or tells us that Mercy is
" sib of all sinful " ; but to compare " Piers Ploughman"
with the " Canterbury Tales " is to compare sermon with
song.

Let us put a bit of Langland's satire beside one of
Chaucer's. Some people in search of Truth meet a pil
grim and ask him whence he comes. He gives a long
list of holy places, appealing for proof to the relics on his
hat : —

" ' I have walked full wide in wet and in dry
And sought saints for my soul's health.'
' Know'st thou ever a relic that is called Truth?
Couldst thou show us the way where that wight dwelleth? '
' Nay, so God help me,' said the man then,
4 1 saw never palmer with staff nor with scrip
Ask after him ever till now in this place.' "

This is a good hit, and the poet is satisfied ; but, in what
I am going to quote from Chaucer, everything becomes
picture, over which lies broad and warm the sunshine of
humorous fancy.

" In olde dayes of the King Artour
Of which that Britouns speken gret honour,
All was this lond fulfilled of faverie:
The elf-queen with herjoly compaignie
Danced ful oft in many a grene mede:
This was the old opinion as I rede;
I speke of many hundrid yer asro:
But now can no man see none elves mo,
For now the grete charite and prayeres
Of lymytours and other holy freres
That sechen every lond and every streem,
As thick as motis in the sonnebeam,
Blessyng hallos, ohnmbres, kieheneX and boures,
Citees and burghes, castels hihe and toures,
Thorpe's and bernes, shepnes and dayeries,
This makith that ther ben no fayeries.
For ther as wont to waHteu was an elf

CHAUCER. 263

There walkith none but the lymytour himself,

In undermeles and in morwenynges.

And sayth his raatyns and his holy thinges,

As he goth in his lymytatioun.

Wommen may now go saufly up and doun;

In every bush or under every tre

There is none other incubus but he,

And he ne wol doon hem no dishonour."

How cunningly the contrast is suggested here between
the Elf-queen's jolly company and the unsocial limiters,
thick as motes in the sunbeam, yet each walking by him
self ! And with what an air of innocent unconsciousness
is the deadly thrust of the last verse given, with its con
temptuous emphasis on the he that seems so well-mean
ing ! Even Shakespeare, who seems to come in after
everybody has done his best with a "Let me take hold
a minute and show you how to do it," could not have
bettered this.

"Piers Ploughman" is the best example I know of what
is called popular poetry, — of compositions, that is, which
contain all the simpler elements of poetry, but still in
solution, not crystallized around any thread of artistic
purpose. In it appears at her best the Anglo-Saxon Muse,
a first coxisin of Poor Richard, full of proverbial wisdom,
who always brings her knitting in her pocket, and seems
most at home in the chimney-corner. It is genial ; it
plants itself firmly on human nature with its rights and
wrongs ; it has a surly honesty, prefers the downright to
the gracious, and conceives of speech us a tool rather
than a musical instrument. If we should seek for a
single word that would define it most precisely, we should
not choose simplicity, but homeliness. There is more
or less of this in all early poetry, to be sure ; but I think
it especially proper to Knglish pools, and to the most
KiiLrlish among them, like Cowper, <Yal>l>o, and one in
tempted to add Wordsworth, — where he forgets Cole
ridge's private lectures. In reading such poets as Lang-

264 CHAUCER.

land, also, we are not to forget a certain charm of dis
tance in the very language they use, making it unhack
neyed without being alien. As it is the chief function
of the poet to make the familiar novel, these fortunate
early risers of literature, who gather phrases with the
dew still on them, have their poetry done for them, as
it were, by their vocabulary. But in Chaucer, as in all
great poets, the language gets its charm from him. The
force and sweetness of his genius kneaded more kindly
together the Latin and Teutonic elements of our mother
tongue, and made something better than either. The
necessity of writing poetry, and not mere verse, made
him a reformer whether he would or no ; and the instinct
of his finer ear was a guide such as none before him or
contemporary with him, nor indeed any that came after
him, till Spenser, could command. Gower had no notion
of the uses of rhyme except as a kind of crease at the
end of every eighth syllable, where the verse was to be
folded over again into another layer. He says, for ex
ample,

" This maiden Canacee was hight,
Both in the day and eke by night,"

as if people commonly changed their names at dark.
And he could not even contrive to say this without the
clumsy pleonasm of both and eke. Chaucer was put to
no such shifts of piecing out his metre with loose-woven
bits of baser stuff. He himself says, in the " Man of
Law's Tale,"-

" Me lists not of the chaff nor of the straw
To make so long a tale as of the corn."

One of the world's three or four great story-tellers, he
was also one of the best versifiers that ever made Eng
lish trip and sing with a gayety that seems careless, but
where every foot beats time to the tune of the thought.
By the skilful arrangement of his pauses he evaded the

CHAUCER. 265

monotony of the couplet, and gave to the rhymed pen
tameter, which he made our heroic measure, something
of the architectural repose of blank verse. He found
our language lumpish, stiff, unwilling, too apt to speak
Saxonly in grouty monosyllables; he left it enriched
with the longer measure of the Italian and Provencal
poets. He reconciled, in the harmony of his verse, the
English bluntness with the dignity and elegance of the
less homely Southern speech. Though he did not and
could not create our language (for he who writes to be
read does not write for linguisters), yet it is true that he
first made it easy, and to that extent modern, so that
Spenser, two hundred years later, studied his method
and called him master. He first wrote English ; and it
was a feeling of this, I suspect, that made it fashionable
in Elizabeth's day to " talk pure Chaucer." Already we
find in his works verses that might pass without question
in Milton or even Wordsworth, so mainly unchanged
have the language of poetry and the movement of verse
remained from his day to our own.

" Thou Polymnia

On P^rnaso. that, with * thy sisters glade,
By Helicon, not far from Cirrea,
Singest with voice memorial in the shade,
Under the laurel which that may not fade.'!
" And downward from a hill under a bent
There stood the temple of Mars omnipotent
Wrought all of burned steel, of which th1 ontre'e
Was long and strait and ghastly for to see:
The northern light in at the doore's shone
For window in the wall ne was there none
Through which men mighten any light discerne;
The dore was all of adamant eternc."

And here are some lines that would not seem out of
place in the " Paradise? of Dainty Devises" : —

" Hide, Abso|uin,'thy gilte [gilded] (reuses clear,
Esther lay thoti thy meekness all adown.

* Commonly printed hiUh.
12

266 CHAUCER.

Make of your wifehood no comparison ;
Hide ye your beauties Ysoude and Elaine,
My lady cometh, that all this may distain."

When I remember Chaucer's malediction upon his scriv
ener, and consider that by far the larger proportion of
his verses (allowing always for change of pronunciation)
are perfectly accordant with our present accentual sys
tem, I cannot believe that he ever wrote an imperfect
line. His ear would never have tolerated the verses of
nine syllables, with a strong accent on the first, at
tributed to him by Mr. Skeate and Mr. Morris. Such
verses seem to me simply impossible in the pentameter
iambic as Chaucer wrote it. A great deal of misappre
hension would be avoided in discussing English metres,
if it were only understood that quantity in Latin and
quantity in English mean very different things. Perhaps
the best quantitative verses in our language (better even
than Coleridge's) are to be found in Mother Goose, com
posed by nurses wholly by ear and beating time as they
danced the baby on their knee. I suspect Chaucer and
Shakespeare would be surprised into a smile by the
learned arguments which supply their halting verses
with every kind of excuse except that of being readable.
When verses were written to be chanted, more license
could be allowed, for the ear tolerates the widest devia
tions from habitual accent in words that are sung.
Segnius irritant demissa per aurem. To some extent the
same thing is true of anapaestic and other tripping
measures, but we cannot admit it in marching tunes like
those of Chaucer. He wrote for the eye more than for
the voice, as poets had begun to do long before.* Some

* Froissart's description of the book ,of trails nmpurenx et de
moralit^, which he had had engrossed for presentation to Richard II.
in 1394, is enough to bring tears to the eyes of a modern author. " Et
lui plut tres grandement; et plaire bien lui devoit car il <itait enluminei

CHAUCER. 267

loose talk of Coleridge, loose in spite of its affectation
of scientific precision, about " retardations " and the
like, has misled many honest persons into believing that
they can make good verse out of bad prose. Coleridge
himself, from natural fineness of ear, was the best
metrist among modern English poets, and, read with
proper allowances, his remarks upon versification are
always instructive to whoever is not rhythm-deaf. But
one has no patience with the dyspondeeuses, the pseon
primuses, and what not, with which he darkens verses that
are to be explained only by the contemporary habits of
pronunciation. Till after the time of Shakespeare we
must always bear in mind that it is not a language of
books but of living speech that we have to deal with.
Of this language Coleridge had little knowledge, except
what could be acquired through the ends of his fingers
as they lazily turned the leaves of his haphazard read
ing. If his eye was caught by a single passage that
gave him a chance to theorize he did not look farther.
Speaking of Massinger, for example, he says, " When a
speech is interrupted, or one of the characters speaks
aside, the last syllable of the former speech and first of
the succeeding Massinger counts for one, because both
are supposed to be spoken at the same moment.

' And felt the sweetness oft

' How her mouth runs over.' "
Now fifty instances may be cited from Massinger which

e'crit et historic' et convert de vermeil velours -i dis doux d'argont
dor^s d'or, et roses d'or nn milieu, et a deux grinds f'reuKiulx dorr* et
richement ouvre"s au milieu de rosier* d'or." How lovingly lie lingers
over it, hooking it together with et after tt .' Rut two centime* earlier.
while thejonylenrs were still in full song, poems were also read aloud.
" Pur retnembrer des anoessours
Le* fuits et le* dit* o.t Ics moiir*,
Deit Ten le* livres et les geste^
Et les estoires lire n festes." — Roman dn Rot*.
Bat Chaucer wrote for the private reading of the closet

268 CHAUCER.

tell against this fanciful notion, for one that seems, and
only seems, in its favor. Any one tolerably familiar with
the dramatists knows that in the passage quoted by
Coleridge, the how being emphatic, "how her" was pro
nounced how 'r. He tells us that " Massinger is fond of
the anapaest in the first and third foot, as : —

' T5 your more | than mas|culine rea|son that | commands 'em ||.f

Likewise of the second paeon (_ _ _ ^) in the first foot,
followed by four trochees (_ _), as : —

' So greedily | long for, | know their | tltlll|ati6ns.' "

In truth, he was no fonder of them than his brother
dramatists who, like him, wrote for the voice by the ear.
" To your " is still one syllable in ordinary speech, and
" masculine " and " greedily " were and are dissyllables
or trisyllables according to their place in the verse.
Coleridge was making pedantry of a very simple matter.
Yet he has said with perfect truth of Chaucer's verse,
" Let a few plain rules be given for sounding the final e
of syllables, and for expressing the terminations of such
words as ocean and nation, &c., as dissyllables, — or let
the syllables to be sounded in such cases be marked by
a competent metrist. This simple expedient would, with
a very few trifling exceptions, where the errors are in
veterate, enable any one to feel the perfect smoothness
and harmony of Chaucer's verse." But let us keep wide
ly clear of Latin and Greek terms of prosody ! It is also
more important here than even with the dramatists of
Shakespeare's time to remember that we have to do with
a language caught more from the ear than from books.
The best school for learning to understand Chaucer's
elisions, compressions, si urr ings-over and runnings-to
gether of syllables is to listen to the habitiial speech of
rustics with whom language is still plastic to meaning, and
hurries or prolongs itself accordingly. Here is a contrao

CHAUCER. 269

tion frequent in Chaucer, and still common in New Eng,
land : —

" But me were lever than [lever 'n] all this town, quod he."

Let one example suffice for many. To Coleridge's rules
another should be added by a wise editor ; and that is to
restore the final n in the infinitive and third person plural
of verbs, and in such other cases as can be justified by
the authority of Chaucer himself. Surely his ear could
never have endured the sing-song of such verses as

" I couthe telle for a gowne-cloth,"
or

" Than ye to me schuld breke youre trouthe."

Chaucer's measure is so uniform (making due allowances)
that words should be transposed or even omitted where
the verse manifestly demands it, — and with copyists so
long and dull of ear this is often the case. Sometimes
they leave out a needful word : —

" But er [the] thunder stynte, there cometh rain,"
" When [that] we ben yflattered and ypraised,"
u Tak [ye] him for the greatest gentleman."

Sometimes they thrust in a word or words that hobble
the verse : —

" She trowed he were yfel in [some] maladie,"

" Ye faren like a man [that] had lost his wit,"

" Then have I got of you the maystrie, quod she,"

(Then have I got the maystery, quod she,)

" And quod the juge [also] thou must lose thy head."

Sometimes they give a wrong word identical in mean«
ing:-

" And therwithal he knew [couthe] mo proverbes."

Sometimes they change the true order of the words : — •

" Therefore no woman of clerk iis is [is of clerkes] praised w
" His felaw lo, here he stont [stont he] hool on live."

" He that coveteth is a pore wight
For he wold have that is not in his might;
But he that nought hath no coveteth nought to have."

270 CHAUCER.

Here the " but " of the third verse belongs at the head
of the first, and we get rid of the anomaly of " coveteth"
differently accented within two lines. Nearly all the
seemingly unmetrical verses may be righted in this way.
I find a good example of this in the last stanza of " Troi-
lus and Creseide." As it stands, we read, —

" Thou one, two, and three, eterne on live
That raignast aie in three, two and one."

It is plain that we should read " one and two " in the
first verse, and " three and two " in the second. Re
membering, then, that Chaucer was here translating
Dante, I turned (after making the correction) to the
original, and found as I expected

" Quell' uno e due e tre che sempre vive
E regna sempre in tre e due ed uno." (Par. xiv. 28, 29.)

In the stanza before this we have, —

" To thee and to the philosophical strode,
To vouchsafe [vouchesafe] there need is, to correct " ;

and further on, —

" With all mine herte' of mercy ever I pray
And to the Lord aright thus I speake and say,"

where we must either strike out the second " I " or put
it after " speake."

One often finds such changes made by ear justified by
the readings in other texts, and we cannot but hope that
the Chaucer Society will give us the means of at last
settling upon a version which shall make the poems of
one of the most fluent of metrists at least readable. Let
anyone compare the " Franklin's Tale " in the Aldine
edition* with the text given by Wright, and he will find
both sense and metre clear themselves up in a surpris
ing way. A careful collation of texts, by the way, con-

* One of the very worst, be it said in passing.

CHAUCER. 271

firms one's confidence in Tyrwhitt's good taste and
thoroughness.

A writer in the " Proceedings of the Philological Soci
ety" has lately undertaken to prove that Chaucer did not
sound the final or medial e, and throws us back on the
old theory that he wrote " riding-rime," that is, verse to
the eye and not the ear. This he attempts to do by
showing that the Anglo-Norman poets themselves did
not sound the e, or, at any rate, were not uniform in so
doing. It should seem a sufficient answer to this merely
to ask whence modern French poetry derived its rules of
pronunciation so like those of Chaucer, so different from
those of prose. But it is not enough to prove that
some of the Anglo-Norman rhymers were bad versifiers.
Let us look for examples in the works of the best poet
among them all, Marie de France, with whose works
Chaucer was certainly familiar. What was her practice ?
I open at random and find enough to overthrow the
whole theory : —

"Odsafille*kelecela —
Tut li curages li fremi —
Di mei, fet-el£ par ta fei —
La Dameisele 1'aporta —
Kar ne li sembla mie boens —
La dame 1'aveit apele'e —
Et la mere Pareisuna."

But how about the elision 1

" Le pah'' esgarde sur le lit —
Et ele' est devant li ale"e —
Bele' amie [cf. mie, above] ne'il me celez.
La dame' ad sa fille' amende."

These are all on a single page f, and there are some to

* Whence came, pray, the Elizabethan comma ndement, chnpflain,
turety, and a score of others? Whence the Scottish boitny, and so
many English words of Romance derivation ending in y T

t Poesies de Marie de France, Tome I. p. 188.

272 CHAUCER.

spare. How about the hiatus ? On the same page
I find, —

"Kar 1'Erceveske i estoit —
Pur eus beneistre' e enseiner."

What was the practice of Wace ] Again I open at ran'
dom.

" N'osa remaindre' en Normandie,
Maiz, quant la guerre fu finie,
Od sou herneiz en Puille' ala —
Cil de Baienes lunge'ment —
Ne fl nes pout par force prendre —
Dune la vile mult amendout,
Prisons e preies amenout." *

Again we have the sounded final e, the elision, and the
hiatus. But what possible reason is there for supposing
that Chaucer would go to obscure minstrels to learn the
rules of French versification 1 Nay, why are we to sup
pose that he followed them at all ] In his case as in
theirs, as in that of the Italians, with the works of whose
two greater poets he was familiar, it was the language
itself and the usages of pronunciation that guided the
poet, and not arbitrary laws laid down by a synod of
versemakers. Chaucer's verse differs from that of Gower
and Lydgate precisely as the verse of Spenser differs
from that of Gascoigne, and for the same reason, — that
he was a great poet, to whom measure was a natural ve
hicle. But admitting that he must have formed his
style on the French poets, would he not have gone for
lessons to the most famous and popular among them, —
the authors of the " Roman de la Rose " 1 Wherever
you open that poem, you find Guillaume de Lorris and
Jean de Meung following precisely the same method, — a
method not in the least arbitrary, but inherent in the
material which they wrought. The e sounded or ab
sorbed under the same conditions, the same slurring of

* Le Roman de la Rose, Tome II. p. 390.

CHAUCER. 273

diphthongs, the same occasional hiatus, the same compres
sion of several vowels into one sound where they imme
diately follow each other. Shakespeare and Milton would
supply examples enough of all these practices that seem
so incredible to those who write about versification with
out stifficient fineness of sense to feel the difference be
tween Ben Jonson's blank verse and Marlow's. Some
men are verse-deaf as others are color-blind, — Messrs.
Malone and Guest, for example.

I try Rutebeuf in the same haphazard way, and chance
brings me upon his " Pharisian." This poem is in stan
zas, the verses of the first of which have all of them
masculine rhymes, those of the second feminine ones, and
so on in such continual alternation to the end, as to show
that it was done with intention to avoid monotony. Of
feminine rhymes we find ypocrisie, fame, justice, mesure,
yglise. But did Rutebeuf mean so to pronounce them 1
I open again at the poem of the Secrestain, which is writ
ten in regular octosyllabics, and read, —

" Envie fet home tuer,
Et si fait bonne remuer —
Envie greve', envie blece,
Envie' confont chnrite'
Envie' ocist humilite, —
Estoit en ce pais en vie
Sanz orgueil ere' et sanz envi£ —
La glorieuse, dame, chiere." *

Froissart was Chaucer's contemporary. What was his
usage 1

" J'avoie fait en ce voiuL""

Et jo li ill, ' Ma diiim" s'ni-je

I'our vous eu nmint souvenir';

Mais jr. no. sui pus him hunlis

De vous rcrnoustrcr, (lain/ rlijciv',

Par (jurl :irt IK- par qurl nuinicrd,

J'ai eu ce conionr.'mriit

De I'amourous atouchtimcnt.' "

* Rutebeuf, Tome I. pp. 203 seqq. 304 seqq.

12* B

274 CHAUCER.

If we try Philippe Mouskes, a mechanical rhymer, if
ever there was one, and therefore the surer not to let go
the leading-strings of rule, the result is the same.

But Chaucer, it is argued, was not uniform in his prac
tice. Would this be likely 1 Certainly not with those ter
minations (like courtesie) which are questioned, and in
diphthongs generally. Dante took precisely the same
liberties.

" Facert le stelle a noi pr.rer piii radi,"
"Ne fu per fantasia giamma/ compreso"
" Pot pi'ovve dentro all 'alta fantasia,"
" Solea valor e cortesi« trovarsi,"
" Che ne 'nvogliava amor e cortesia."

Here we have fantasi' and fantasia, cortesl' and cortesid.
Even Pope has promiscuous, obsequious, as trisyllables,
individual as a quadrisyllable, and words like tapestry,
opera, indifferently as trochees or dactyls according to
their place in the verse. Donne even goes so far as to
make Cain a monosyllable and dissyllable in the same
verse : —

" Sister and wife to Cain, Cain that first did plough."

The caesural pause (a purely imaginary thing in ac
centual metres) may be made to balance a line like this
of Donne's,

" Are they not like | singers at doors for meat,"

but we defy any one by any trick of voice to make it
supply a missing syllable in what is called our heroic
measure, so mainly used by Chaucer.

Enough and far more than enough on a question about
which it is as hard to be patient as about the author
ship of Shakespeare's plays. It is easy to find all man
ner of bad metres among these versifiers, and plenty
of inconsistencies, many or most of them the fault of
careless or ignorant transcribers, but whoever has read

CHAUCER. 275

them thoroughly, and with enough philological knowledge
of cognate languages to guide him, is sure that they at
least aimed at regularity, precisely as he is convinced
that Raynouard's-rule about singular and plural termi
nations has plenty of evidence to sustain it, despite the
numerous exceptions. To show what a bad versifier
could make out of the same language that Chaucer used,
I copy one stanza from a contemporary poem.

"When Phebus fresh was in chare resplendent,
In the moneth of May erly in a morning,
I hard two lovers profer this argument
In the yeere of our Lord a M. by rekening,
CCCXL. and VIII. yeere following.
0 potent princesse conserve true lovers all
And grant them thy region and blisse celestial." *

Here is riding-rhyme, and on a very hard horse too!
Can any one be insensible to the difference between such
stuff as this and the measure of Chaucer] Is it possi
ble that with him the one halting verse should be the
rule, and the twenty musical ones the exception 1 Let
us take heed to his own words : —

" And, for there is so great diversite
In English, and in writing of our tong,
So pray I God t that none miswrite the
Ne the mismetre for defaut of tong,
And redde whereso thou be or elle's song
That thou be understood God I beseech."

Yet more. Boccaccio's ottava rima is almost as regu
lar as that of Tasso. Was Chaucer unconscious of this ]
It will be worth while to compare a stanza of the origi
nal with one of the translation.

" Era cortese Ettore di natura
Pero vedendo di costei il gran pianto,
Ch 'era piu bella ch 'altrn creatura.
Con pio parlare confortolla alquanto,

* From the " Craft of Lovers," attributed by Ritson to Lydgate, but
too bad even for him.

t Here the received texts give " So pray I to God." Cf. " But Rea
son said him." T. & C.

276 CHAUCER.

Dicendo, lascia con la ria ventura

Tuo padre andar die tulti ha offeso tanto,

E tu, sicura e lieta, scnza noia,

Mentre t'aggrada, coil noi resta in Troia." *

" Now was this Hector pitous of nature,
And saw that she was sorrowful begon
And that she was so faire a creature,
Of his goodnesse he gladed her anon
And said [saide] let your father's treason gon
Forth with mischance, and ye yourself in joy
Dwelleth with us while [that] you list in Troy."

If the Italian were read with the same ignorance that
has wreaked itself on Chaucer, the riding-rhyme would
be on its high horse in almost every line of Boccaccio's
stanza. The same might be said of many a verse in
Donne's satires. Spenser in his eclogues for February,
May, and September evidently took it for granted that
he had caught the measure of Chaucer, and it would be
rather amusing, as well as instructive, to hear the main-
tainers of the hop-skip-and-jump theory of versification
attempt to make the elder poet's verses dance to the tune
for which one of our greatest metrists (in his philological
deafness) supposed their feet to be trained.

I will give one more example of Chaucer's verse, again
making my selection from one of his less mature works.
He is speaking of Tarquin : —

" And ay the more he was in despair
The more he coveted and thought her fair;
His blinde lust was all his coveting.
On morrow when the bird began to sing
Unto the siege he cometh full privily
And by himself he walketh soberly
The image of her recording alway new:
Thus lay her hair, and thus fresh was her hue,
Thus sate, thus spake, thus span, this was her cheer,
Thus fair she was, and this was her manure.
All this conceit his heart hath new ytake,
And as the sea, with tempest all toshake,

* Corrected from Kissner, p. 18.

CHAUCER. 277

That after, when the storm is all ago,
Yet will the water quap a day or two,
Right so, though that her forme were absent,
The pleasance of her forme was present."

And this passage leads me to say a few words of
Chaucer as a descriptive poet ; for I think it a great
mistake to attribute to him any properly dramatic
power, as some have done. Even Herr Hertzberg, in
his remarkably intelligent essay, is led a little astray on
this point by his enthusiasm. Chaucer is a great narra
tive poet ; and, in this species of poetry, though the
author's personality should never be obtruded, it yet
unconsciously pervades the whole, and communicates an
individual quality, — a kind of flavor of its own. This
very quality, and it is one of the highest in its way and
place, would be fatal to all dramatic force. The narra
tive poet is occupied with his characters as picture, with
their grouping, even their costume, it may be, and he
feels for and with them instead of being they for the
moment, as the dramatist must always be. The story
teller must possess the situation perfectly in all its de
tails, while the imagination of the dramatist must be
possessed and mastered by it. The latter puts before
us the very passion or emotion itself in its utmost inten
sity ; the former gives them, not in their primary form,
but in that derivative one which they have acquired by
passing through his own mind and being modified by his
reflection. The deepest pathos of the drama, like the
quiet "no more but so?" with which Shakespeare tells
\is that Ophelia's heart is bursting, is sudden as a stab,
while iu narrative it is more or less suffused with pity,
— a feeling capable of prolonged sustention. This pres
ence of the author's own sympathy is noticeable in all
Chaucer's pathetic passages, as, for instance, in the
lamentation of Constance over her child iu the " Man of

278 CHAUCER.

Law's Tale." When he comes to the sorrow of his story,
he seems to croon over his thoughts, to soothe them and
dwell upon them with a kind of pleased compassion, as
a child treats a wounded bird which he fears to grasp too
tightly, and yet cannot make up his heart wholly to let
go. It is true also of his humor that it pervades his
comic tales like sunshine, and never dazzles the atten
tion by a sudden flash. Sometimes he brings it in par
enthetically, and insinuates a sarcasm so slyly as almost
to slip by without our notice, as where he satirizes pro
vincialism by the cock

" Who knew by nature each ascension
Of the equinoctial in his native town."

Sometimes he turns round upon himself and smiles at a
trip he has made into fine writing : —

" Till that the brighte sun had lost his hue,
For th' orisont had reft the sun his light,
(This is as much to sayen as ' it was night.') "

Nay, sometimes it twinkles roguishly through his very
tears, as in the

" ' Why wouldest thou be dead,' these women cry,
1 Thou haddest gold enough — and Emily? ' "

that follows so close upon the profoundly tender despair
of Arcite's farewell : —

" What is this world ? What asken men to have ?
Now with his love now in the colde grave
Alone withouten any company! "

The power of diffusion without being diffuse would seem
to be the highest merit of narration, giving it that easy
flow which is so delightful. Chaucer's descriptive style
is remarkable for its lowness of tone, — for that com
bination of energy with simplicity which is among the
rarest gifts in literature. Perhaps all is said in saying
that he has style at all, for that consists mainly in the
absence of undue emphasis and exaggeration, in the clear

CHAUCER. 279

uniform pitch which penetrates our interest and retains
it, where mere loudness would only disturb and irritate.
Not that Chaucer cannot be intense, too, on occasion ;
but it is with a quiet intensity of his own, that comes in
as it were by accident.

" Upon a thicke palfrey, paper-white,
With saddle red embroidered with delight,
Sits Dido:

And she is fair as is the brighte morrow
That healeth sicke folk of nightes sorrow.
Upon a courser startling as the fire,
^Eneas sits."

Pandarus, looking at Troilus,

" Took up a light and found his countenance
As for to look upon an old romance."

With Chaucer it is always the thing itself and not the
description of it that is the main object. His picturesque
bits are incidental to the story, glimpsed in passing ; they
never stop the way. His key is so low that his high
lights are never obtrusive. His imitators, like Leigh
Hunt, and Keats in his " Endymion," missing the nice
gradation with which the master toned everything down,
become streaky. Hogarth, who reminds one of him in
the variety and natural action of his figures, is like him
also in the subdued brilliancy of his coloring. When
Chaucer condenses, it is because his conception is vivid.
He does not need to personify Revenge, for personifica
tion is but the subterfuge of unimaginative and profes
sional poets ; but he embodies the very passion itself in
a verse that makes us glance over our shoulder as if wo
heard a stealthy tread behind us : —

" The smiler with the knife hid under the cloak." *

And yet how unlike is the operation of the imaginative
faculty in him and Shakespeare ! When the latter de-

* Compare this with the Mumbo-Jumbo Revenge in Collins's Ode.

280 CHAUCER.

scribes, his epithets imply always an impression on the
moral sense (so to speak) of the person who hears or sees.
The sun "flatters the mountain-tops with sovereign eye " ;
the bending " weeds lacquey the dull stream " ; the
shadow of the falcon " couch eth the fowl below " ; the
smoke is " helpless " ; when Tarquin enters the chamber
of Lucrece " the threshold grates the door to have him
heard." His outward sense is merely a window through
which the metaphysical eye looks forth, and his mind
passes over at once from the simple sensation to the
complex meaning of it, — feels with the object instead of
merely feeling it. His imagination is forever drama
tizing. Chaucer gives only the direct impression made
on the eye or ear. He was the first great poet who
really loved outward nature as the source of conscious
pleasurable emotion. The Troubadour hailed the return
of spring ; but with him it was a piece of empty ritual
ism. Chaucer took a true delight in the new green of
the leaves and the return of singing birds, — a delight
as simple as that of Robin Hood : —

" In summer when the shaws be sheen,

And leaves be large and long,
It is full merry in fair forest
To hear the small birds' song."

He has never so much as heard of the " burthen and the
mystery of all this unintelligible world." His flowers
and trees and birds have never bothered themselves
with Spinoza. He himself sings more like a bird than
any other poet, because it never occurred to him, as to
Goethe, that he ought to do so. He pours himself out
in sincere joy and thankfulness. When we compare Spen
ser's imitations of him with the original passages, we feel
that the delight of the later poet was more in the ex
pression than in the thing itself. Nature with him is only
good to be transfigured by art. We walk among Chau-

CHAUCER. , 281

cer's sights and sounds ; we listen to Spenser's musical
reproduction of them. In the same way, the pleasure
which Chaucer takes in telling his stories has in itself
the effect of consummate skill, and makes us follow all
the windings of his fancy with sympathetic interest. His
best tales run on like one of our inland rivers, sometimes
hastening a little and turning upon themselves in eddies
that dimple without retarding the current ; sometimes
loitering smoothly, while here and there a quiet thought,
a tender feeling, a pleasant image, a golden-hearted verse,
opens quietly as a water-lily, to float on the surface with
out breaking it into ripple. The vulgar intellectual pal
ate hankers after the titillation of foaming phrase, and
thinks nothing good for much that does not go off with a
pop like a champagne cork. The mellow suavity of more
precious vintages seems insipid : but the taste, in pro
portion as it refines, learns to appreciate the indefinable
flavor, too subtile for analysis. A manner has prevailed
of late in which every other word seems to be under
scored as in a school -girl's letter. The poet seems intent
on showing his sinew, as if the power of the slim Apollo
lay in the girth of his biceps. Force for the mere sake
of force ends like Milo, caught and held mockingly fast
by the recoil of the log he undertook to rive. In the race
of fame, there are a score capable of brilliant spurts for
one who comes in winner after a steady pull with wind
and muscle to spare. Chaucer never shows any signs of
effort, and it is a main proof of his excellence that he can
be so inadequately sampled by detached passages, — by
single lines taken away from the connection in which
they contribute to the general effect. He has that con
tinuity of thought, that evenly prolonged power, and that
delightful equanimity, which characterize the higher
orders of mind. There is something in him of the disin
terestedness that made the Greeks masters in art. His

282 CHAUCER.

phrase is never importunate. His simplicity is that of
elegance, not of poverty. The quiet unconcern with
which he says his best things is peculiar to him among
English poets, though Goldsmith, Addison, and Thack
eray have approached it in prose. He prattles inad
vertently away, and all the while, like the princess in the
story, lets fall a pearl at every other word. It is such a
piece of good luck to be natural ! It is the good gift
which the fairy godmother brings to her prime favorites
in the cradle. If not genius, it is alone what makes
genius amiable in the arts. If a man have it not, he will
never find it, for when it is sought it is gone.

When Chaucer describes anything, it is commonly by
one of those simple and obvious epithets or qualities that
are so easy to miss. Is it a woman ] He tells us she
is fresh ; that she has glad eyes ; that " every day her
beauty newed " ; that

" Methought all fellowship as naked
AYithouten her that I saw once,
As a corone without the stones."

Sometimes he describes amply by the merest hint, as
where the Friar, before setting himself softly down,
drives away the cat. We know without need of more
words that he has chosen the snuggest corner. In some
of his early poems he sometimes, it is true, falls into the
catalogue style of his contemporaries ; but after he had
found his genius he never particularizes too much, — a
process as deadly to all effect as an explanation to a pun.
The first stanza of the " Clerk's Tale " gives us a land
scape whose stately choice of objects shows a skill in
composition worthy of Claude, the last artist who painted
nature epically : —

" There is at the west ende of Itaile,
Down at the foot of Vesulus the cold,
A lusty plain abundant of vitaile,

CHAUCER. 283

Where many a tower and town thou may'st behold
That founded were in time of fathers old,
And many another delf table sight;
And Saluces this noble country hight."

The Pre-Raphaelite style of landscape entangles the eye
among the obtrusive weeds and grass-blades of the fore
ground which, in looking at a real bit of scenery, we
overlook ; but what a sweep of vision is here ! and what
happy generalization in the sixth verse as the poet turns
away to the business of his story ! The whole is full of
open air.

But it is in his characters, especially, that his manner
is large and free ; for he is painting history, though with
the fidelity of portrait. He brings out strongly the
essential traits, characteristic of the genus rather than
of the individual. The Merchant who keeps so steady a
countenance that

" There wist no wight that he was e'er in debt,"

the Sergeant at Law, " who seemed busier than he was,"
the Doctor of Medicine, whose " study was but little on
the Bible," — in all these cases it is the type and not the
personage that fixes his attention. William Blake says
truly, though he expresses his meaning somewhat clum
sily, "the characters of Chaucer's Pilgrims are the char
acters which compose all ages and nations. Some of the
names and titles are altered by time, but the characters
remain forever unaltered, and consequently they are the
physiognomies and lineaments of universal human life,
beyond which Nature never steps. Names alter, things
never alter. As Newton numbered the stars, and as
Linnaeus numbered the plants, so Chaucer numbered the
classes of men." In his outside accessaries, it is true, he
sometimes seems as minute as if he were illuminating a
missal. Nothing escapes his sure eye for the picturesque,
• — the cut of the beard, the soil of armor on the buff

284 CHAUCER.

jerkin, the rust on the sword, the expression of the eye.
But in this he has an artistic purpose. It is here that
he individualizes, and, while every touch harmonizes
with and seems to complete the moral features of the
character, makes us feel that we are among living men,
and not the abstracted images of men. Crabbe adds
particular to particular, scattering rather than deepening
the impression of reality, and making us feel as if every
man were a species by himself; but Chaucer, never for
getting the essential sameness of human nature, makes
it possible, and even probable, that his motley characters
should meet on a common footing, while he gives to
each the expression that belongs to him, the result of
special circumstance or training. Indeed, the absence of
any suggestion of caste cannot fail to strike any reader
familiar with the literature on which he is supposed
to have formed himself. No characters are at once so
broadly human and so definitely outlined as his. Belong
ing, some of them, to extinct types, they continue con
temporary and familiar forever. So wide is the difference
between knowing a great many men and that knowledge
of human nature which comes of sympathetic insight and
not of observation alone.

It is this power of sympathy which makes Chaucer's
satire so kindly, — more so, one is tempted to say, than
the panegyric of Pope. Intellectual satire gets its force
from personal or moral antipathy, and measures offences
by some rigid conventional standard. Its mouth waters
over a galling word, and it loves to say Thou, pointing
out its victim to public scorn. Indignatio facit versus,
it boasts, though they might as often be fathered on
envy or hatred. But imaginative satire, warmed through
and through with the genial leaven of humor, smiles
half sadly and murmurs We. Chaucer either makes one
knave betray another, through a natural jealousy of

CiIAUCER. 285

competition, or else expose himself with a naivete of
good-humored cynicism which amuses rather than dis
gusts. In the former case the butt has a kind of claim
on our sympathy ; in the latter, it seems nothing strange
if the sunny atmosphere which floods that road to Can
terbury should tempt anybody to throw off one disguise
after another without suspicion. With perfect tact, too,
the Host is made the choragus in this diverse company,
and the coarse jollity of his temperament explains, if it
does not excuse, much that would otherwise seem out of
keeping. Surely nobody need have any scruples with
him.

Chaucer seems to me to have been one of the most
purely original of poets, as much so in respect of the
world that is about us as Dante in respect of that which
is within us. There had been nothing like him before,
there has been nothing since. He is original, not in the
sense that he thinks and says what nobody ever thought
and said before, and what nobody can ever think and
say again, but because IHJ is always natural, because,
if not always absolutely new, he is always delightfully
fresh, because he sets before us the world as it honestly
appeared to Geoffrey Chaucer, and not a world as it
seemed proper to certain people that it ought to appear.
He found that the poetry which had preceded him had
been first the expression of individual feeling, then of
class feeling as the vehicle of legend and history, and
at last had wellnigh lost itself in chasing the mirage of
allegory. Literature seemed to have passed through
the natural stages which at regular intervals bring it to
decline. Even the lyrics of the jongleurs were all run
in one mould, and the Pastourelles of Northern France
had become as artificial as the Pastorals of Pope. The
Romances of chivalry had been made over into pr- -e,
and the Melu-siiie of his contemporary Jchan d'Arnus is

286 CHAUCER.

the forlorn hope of the modern novel. Arrived thus fa*
in their decrepitude, the monks endeavored to give them
a religious and moral turn by allegorizing them. Their
process reminds one of something Ulloa tells us of the
fashion in which the Spaniards converted the Mexicans :
" Here we found an old man in a cavern so extremely
aged as it was wonderful, which could neither see nor
go because he was so lame and crooked. The Father,
Friar Raimund, said it were good (seeing he was so
aged) to make him a Christian ; whereupon we baptized
him." The monks found the Romances in the same
stage of senility, and gave them a saving sprinkle with
the holy water of allegory. Perhaps they were only
trying to turn the enemy's own weapons against him
self, for it was the free-thinking " Romance of the Rose "
that more than anything else had made allegory fashion
able. Plutarch tells us that an allegory is to say one
thing where another is meant, and this might have been
needful for the personal security of Jean de Meung, as
afterwards for that of his successor, Rabelais. But,
except as a means of evading the fagot, the method has
few recommendations. It reverses the true office of
poetry by making the real imreal. It is imagination
endeavoring to recommend itself to the understanding
by means of cuts. If an author be in such deadly
earnest, or if his imagination be of such creative vigor
as to project real figures when it meant to cast only a
shadow upon vapor ; if the true spirit come, at once
obsequious and terrible, when the conjurer has drawn
his circle and gone through with his incantations merely
to produce a proper frame of mind in his audience, as
was the case with Dante, there is no longer any ques
tion of allegory as the word and thing are commonly
understood. But with all secondary poets, as with
Spenser for example, the allegory does not become of

CHAUCER. 287

one substance with, the poetry, but is a kind of carven
frame for it, whose figures lose their meaning, as they
cease to be contemporary. It was not a style that could
have much attraction for a nature so sensitive to the
actual, so observant of it, so interested by it as that of
Chaucer. He seems to have tried his hand at all the
forms in vogue, and to have arrived in his old age at the
truth, essential to all really great poetry, that his own
instincts were his safest guides, that there is nothing
deeper in life than life itself, and that to conjure an
allegorical significance into it was to lose sight of its
real meaning. He of all men could not say one thing
and mean another, unless by way of humorous contrast.

In thus turning frankly and gayly to the actual world,
and drinking inspiration from sources open to all ; in
turning away from a colorless abstraction to the solid
earth and to emotions common to every pulse ; in dis
covering that to make the best of nature, and not to
grope vaguely after something better than nature, was
the true office of Art ; in insisting on a definite purpose,
on veracity, cheerfulness, and simplicity, Chaucer shows
himself the true father and founder of what is character
istically English literature. He has a hatred of cant as
hearty as Dr. Johnson's, though he has a slier way of
showing it ; he has the placid common-sense of Franklin,
the sweet, grave humor of Addison, the exqiiisite taste
of Gray ; but the whole texture of his mind, though its
substance seem plain and grave, shows itself at every
turn iridescent with poetic feeling like shot silk. Above
all, he has an eye for character that seems to have caught
at once not only its mental and physical features, but
even its expression in variety of costume, — an eye, in
deed, second only, if it should be called second in some
respects, to that of Shakespeare.

I know of nothing *,hat may be compared with the

288 CHAUCER.

prologue to the "Canterbury Tales," and with that to tho
story of the " Chanoii's Yeoman" before Chaucer. Char
acters and portraits from real life had never been drawn
with such discrimination, or with such variety, never
with such bold precision of outline, and with such a
lively sense of the picturesque. His Parson is still un
matched, though Dryden and Goldsmith have both tried
their hands in emulation of him. And the humor also
in its suavity, its perpetual presence and its shy unob-
trusiveness, is something wholly new in literature. For
anything that deserves to be called like it in English we
must wait for Henry Fielding.

Chaucer is the first great poet who has treated To-day
as if it were as good as Yesterday, the first who held up
a mirror to contemporary life in its infinite variety of
high and low, of humor and pathos. But he reflected
life in its large sense as the life of men, from the knight
to the ploughman, — the life of every day as it is made
up of that curious compound of human nature with
manners. The very form of the " Canterbury Tales " was
imaginative. The garden of Boccaccio, the supper-party
of Grazzini, and the voyage of Giraldi make a good enough
thread for their stories, but exclude all save equals and
friends, exclude consequently human nature in its wider
meaning. But by choosing a pilgrimage, Chaucer puts
us on a plane where all men are equal, with souls to be
saved, and with another world in view that abolishes all
distinctions. By this choice, and by making the Host
of the Tabard always the central figure, he has happily
united the two most familiar emblems of life, — the
short journey and the inn. We find more and more as
we study him that he rises quietly from the conventional
to the universal, and may fairly take his place with
Homer in virtue of the breadth of his humanity.

In spite of some external stains, which those wh<i

CHAUCER. 289

/iave studied the influence of manners will easily account
for without imputing them to any moral depravity, wo
feel that we can join the pure-minded Spenser in calling
him " most sacred, happy spirit." If character may be
divined from works, he was a good man, genial, sincere,
hearty, temperate of mind, more wise, perhaps, for this
world than the next, but thoroughly humane, and friend
ly with God and men. I know not how to sum up what
we feel about him better than by saying (what would
have pleased most one who was indifferent to fame) that
we love him more even than we admire. We are sure
that here was a true brother-man so kindly that, in his
" House of Fame," after naming the great poets, he
throws in a pleasant word for the oaten-pipes

" Of the little herd-grooms
That keepen beasts among the brooms."

No better inscription can be written on the first page of
his works than that which he places over the gate in
his " Assembly of Fowls," and which contrasts so sweetly
with the stern lines of Dante from which they were
imitated : —

" Through me men go into the blissful place
Of the heart's heal and deadly woundes' cure;
Through me men go unto the well of Grace,
Where green and lusty May doth ever endure;
This is the way to all good aventure;
Be glad, thou Reader, and thy sorrow offcast,
All open am 1, pass hi, and speed thee fast! n

LIBRARY OF OLD AUTHORS.4

MANY of our older readers can remember the an
ticipation with which they looked for each suc
cessive volume of the late Dr. Young's excellent series
of old English prose-writers, and the delight with which
they carried it home, fresh from the press and the bind
ery in its appropriate livery of evergreen. To most of
us it was our first introduction to the highest society
of letters, and we still feel grateful to the departed
scholar who gave us to share the conversation of such
men as Latimer, More, Sidney, Taylor, Browne, Fuller,
and Walton. What a sense of security in an old book
which Time has criticised for us ! What a precious feel
ing of seclusion in having a double wall of centuries
between us and the heats and clamors of contemporary
literature ! How limpid seems the thought, how pure
the old wine of scholarship that has been settling for so
many generations in those silent crypts and Falernian
amphorae of the Past ! No other writers speak to us
with the authority of those whose ordinary speech was
that of our translation of the Scriptures ; to no modern
is that frank unconsciousness possible which was natural
to a period when yet reviews were not ; and no later
style breathes that country charm characteristic of days
ere the metropolis had drawn all literary activity to it
self, and the trampling feet of the multitude had banished
the lark and the daisy from the fresh privacies of Ian

* London : John Russell Smith. 1856 - 64.

LIBRARY OF OLD AUTHORS. 291

gnage. Truly, as compared with the present, these old
voices seem to come from the morning fields and not the
paved thoroughfares of thought.

Even the " Retrospective Review " continues to be
good reading, in virtue of the antique aroma (for wine
only acquires its bouquet by age) which pervades its pages.
Its sixteen volumes are so many tickets of admission to
the vast and devious vaults of the sixteenth and seven
teenth centuries, through which we wander, tasting a
thimbleful of rich Canary, honeyed Cyprus, or subacidu-
lous Hock, from what dusty butt or keg our fancy
chooses. The years during which this review was pub
lished were altogether the most fruitful in genuine ap
preciation of old English literature. Books were prized
for their imaginative and not their antiquarian value
by young writers who sate at the feet of Lamb and Cole
ridge. Rarities of style, of thought, of fancy, were
sought, rather than the barren scarcities of typography.
But another race of men seems to have sprung up, in
whom the futile enthusiasm of the collector predomi
nates, who substitute archaeologic perversity for fine-
nerved scholarship, and the worthless profusion of the
curiosity-shop for the sifted exclusiveness of the cabinet
of Art. They forget, in their fanaticism for antiquity, that
the dust of never so many centuries is impotent to trans
form a curiosity into a gem, that only good books absorb
mellowness of tone from age, and that a baptismal register
which proves a patriarchal longevity (if existence be life)
cannot make mediocrity anything but a bore, or garrulous
commonplace entertaining. There are volumes which
have the old age of Plato, rich with gathering expe
rience, meditation, and wisdom, which seem to have
sucked color and ripeness from the genial autumns of all
the select intelligences that have steeped them in the
sunshine of their love and appreciation ; — those quaint

292 LIBRARY OF OLD AUTHORS.

freaks of russet tell of Montaigne ; these stripes of
crimson fire, of Shakespeare ; this sober gold, of Sir
Thomas Browne ; this purpling bloom, of Lamb ; in
such fruits we taste the legendary gardens of Alcinoiis
and the orchards of Atlas ; and there are volumes again
which can claim only the inglorious senility of Old Parr
or older Jenkins, which have outlived their half-dozen of
kings to be the prize of showmen and treasuries of the
born-to-be-forgotten trifles of a hundred years ago.

We confess a bibliothecarian avarice that gives all
books a value in our eyes ; there is for us a recondite
wisdom in the phrase, " A book is a book " ; from the
time when we made the first catalogue of our library,
in which "Bible, large, 1 vol.," and "Bible, small, 1 vol.,"
asserted their alphabetic individuality and were the sole
.5s in our little hive, we have had a weakness even for
those checker-board volumes that only fill up ; we can
not breathe the thin air of that Pepysian self-denial,
that Himalayan selectness, which, content with one book
case, would have no tomes in it but porphyrogeniti, books
of the bluest blood, making room for choicer new-comers
by a continuous ostracism to the garret of present in
cumbents. There is to us a sacredness in a volume,
however dull; we live over again the author's lonely
labors and tremulous hopes ; we see him, on his first
appearance after parturition, " as well as could be ex
pected," a nervous sympathy yet surviving between the
late-severed umbilical cord and the wondrous offspring,
doubtfully entering the Mermaid, or the Devil Tavern^
or the Coffee-house of Will or Button, blushing under
the eye of Ben or Dryden or Addison, as if they must
needs know him for the author of the " Modest Enquiry
into the Present State of Dramatique Poetry," or of the
" Unities briefly considered by Philomusus," of which
they have never heard and never will hear so much as

LIBRARY OF OLD AUTHORS. 293

the names ; we see the ccmntry-gentlemen (sole cause of
its surviving to our day) who buy it as a book no gen
tleman's library can be complete without ; we see the
spendthrift heir, whose horses and hounds and Pharaonic
troops of friends, drowned in a Red Sea of claret, bring
it to the hammer, the tall octavo in tree-calf following
the ancestral oaks of the park. Such a volume is sacred
to us. But it must be the original foundling of the
book-stall, the engraved blazon of some extinct baron
etcy within its cover, its leaves enshrining memorial-
flowers of some passion which the churchyard smothered
ere the Stuarts were yet discrowned, suggestive of the
trail of laced ruffles, burnt here and there with ashes
from the pipe of some dozing poet, its binding worn
and weather-stained, that has felt the inquisitive finger,
perhaps, of Malone, or thrilled to the touch of Lamb,
doubtful between desire and the odd sixpence. When
it comes to a qxiestion of reprinting, we are more choice.
The new duodecimo is bald and bare, indeed, compared
with its battered prototype that could draw us with a
single hair of association.

It is not easy to divine the rule which has governed
Mr. Smith in making the selections for his series. A
choice of old authors should be &florilegium, and not a
botanist's hortm siccus, to which grasses are as important
as the single shy blossom of a summer. The old-maid
enly genius of antiquarianism seems to have presided
over the editing of the " Library." We should be in
clined to sxirmise that the works to be reprinted had
been commonly suggested by gentlemen with whom they
were especial favorites, or who wrjv Ambitious that their
own names should be signalized on the title-pages with
the suffix of EDITOR. The volumes ;ihv:idy published
are: Increase Mather's "Remarkable Providences " ;
the poems of Drummond of Hawthornden ; the " Vis*

294 . LIBRARY OF OLD AUTHORS.

ions of Piers Ploughman ; " the works in prose and
verse of Sir Thomas Overbury ; the " Hymns and Songs "
and the "Hallelujah " of George Wither; the poems of
Southwell; Selden's "Table-Talk" ; the " Enchiridion"
of Quarles ; the dramatic works of Marston, Webster, and
Lilly ; Chapman's translation of Homer ; Lovelace, and
four volumes of "Early English Poetry"! The vol
ume of Mather is curious and entertaining, and fit to
stand on the same shelf with the " Magnalia " of his book-
suffocated son. Cunningham's comparatively recent
edition, we should think, might satisfy for a long time
to come the demand for Drummond, whose chief value
to posterity is as the Boswell of Ben Jonson. Sir
Thomas Overbury's "Characters" are interesting illus
trations of contemporary manners, and a mine of foot
notes to the works of better men, — but, with the ex
ception of " The Fair and Happy Milkmaid," they are
dull enough to have pleased James the First ; his
" Wife " is a cento of far-fetched conceits, — here a tom
tit, and there a hen mistaken for a pheasant, like the
contents of a cockney's game-bag, and his chief interest
for us lies in his having been mixed up with an inexpli
cable tragedy and poisoned in the Tower, not without
suspicion of royal complicity. The " Piers Ploughman "
is a reprint, with very little improvement that we can
discover, of Mr. Wright's former edition. It would have
been very well to have republished the " Fair Virtue,"
and " Shepherd's Hunting " of George Wither, which
contain all the true poetry he ever wrote ; but we can
imagine nothing more dreary than the seven hundred
pages of his " Hymns and Songs," whose only use, that
we can conceive of, would be as penal reading for incor
rigible poetasters. If a steady course of these did not
bring them out of their nonsenses, nothing short of
hanging would. Take this as a sample, hit on by open
ing at random : —

LIBRARY OF OLD AUTHORS. 205

" Rottenness my bones possest;
Trembling fear possessed me;
I that troublous day might rest:
For, when his approaches be
Onward to the people made,
His strong troops will them invade."

Southwell is, if possible, worse. He paraphrases Da
vid, putting into his mouth such punning conceits as
"fears are my feres," and in his "Saint Peter's Com
plaint " makes that rashest and shortest-spoken of the
Apostles drawl through thirty pages of maudlin repent
ance, in which the distinctions between the north and
northeast sides of a sentimentality are worthy of Duns
Scotus. It does not follow, that, because a man is hanged
for his faith, he is able to write good verses. We would
almost match the fortitude that quails not at the good
Jesuit's poems with his own which carried him serenely
to the fatal tree. The stuff of which poets are made,
whether finer or not, is of a very different fibre from that
which is used in the tough fabric of martyrs. It is
time that an earnest protest should be uttered against
the wrong done to the religious sentiment by the greater
part of what is called religious poetry, and which is com
monly a painful something misnamed by the noun and
misqualified by the adjective. To dilute David, and
make doggerel of that majestic prose of the Prophets
which has the glow and wide-orbited metre of constel
lations, may be a iiseful occupation to keep country-gen
tlemen out of litigation or retired clergymen from polem
ics ; but to regard these metrical mechanics as sacred
because nobody wishes to touch them, as meritorious*
because no one can be merry in their company, — to
rank them in the same class with thoso ancient songs of
the Church, sweet with the breath of saints, sparkling
with the tears of forgiven penitents, and warm with the
fervor of martyrs, — nay, to set them up beside such

296 LIBRARY OF OLD AUTHORS.

poems as those of Herbert, composed in the upper
chambers of the soul that open toward the sun's rising,
is to confound piety with dulness, and the manna of
heaven with its sickening namesake from the apoth
ecary's drawer. The " Enchiridion " of Quarles is hardly
worthy of the author of the " Emblems," and is by no
means an unattainable book in other editions, — nor a
matter of heartbreak, if it were. Of the dramatic works
of Marston and Lilly it is enough to say that they are
truly works to the reader, but in no sense dramatic,
nor, as literature, worth the paper they blot. They
seem to have been deemed worthy of republication be
cause they were the contemporaries of true poets ; and
if all the Tuppers of the nineteenth century will buy
their plays on the same principle, the sale will be a
remunerative one. It was worth while, perhaps, to re
print Lovelace, if only to show what dull verses may be
written by a man who has made one lucky hit. Of the
''Early English Poetry," nine tenths had better never
have been printed at all, and the other tenth reprinted
by an editor who had some vague suspicion, at least, of
what they meant. The Homer of Chapman is so pre
cious a gift, that we are ready to forgive all Mr. Smith's
shortcomings in consideration of it. It is a vast placer,
full of nuggets for the philologist and the lover of poetry.
Having now run cursorily through the series of Mr.
Smith's reprints, we come to the closer question of
How are they edited ? Whatever the merit of the original
works, the editors, whether self-elected or chosen by the
publisher, should be accurate and scholarly. The edit
ing of the Homer we can heartily commend ; and Dr.
Ilirnbault, who carried the works of Overbury through
the press, has done his work well ; but the other vol
umes of the Library are very creditable neither to Eng
lish scholarship nor to English typography. The Intro-

LIBRARY OF OLD AUTHORS. 297

ductions to some of them are enough to make us think
that we are fallen to the necessity of reprinting our old
authors because the art of writing correct and graceful
English has been lost. William B. Turnbull, Esq., of
Lincoln's Inn, Barrister at Law, says, for instance, in his
Introduction to Southwell : " There was resident at
Uxendou, near Harrow on the Hill, in Middlesex, a
Catholic family of the name of Bellamy whom [which]
Southwell was in the habit of visiting and providing
with religious instruction when he exchanged his ordi
nary [ordinarily] close confinement for a purer atmos
phere." (p. xxii.) Again, (p. xxii,) " He had, in this
manner, for six years, pursued, with very great success,
the objects of his mission, when these were abruptly
terminated by his foul betrayal into the hands of his
enemies in 1592." We should like to have Mr. Turn-
bull explain how the objects of a mission could be termi
nated by a betrayal, however it might be with the mis
sion itself. From the many similar flowers in the In
troduction to Mather's " Providences," by Mr. George
Offor, (in whom, we fear, we recognize a countryman,)
we select the following : " It was at this period when,
[that,] oppressed by the ruthless hand of persecu
tion, our Pilgrim Fathers, threatened with torture and
death, succumbed not to man, but trusting on [in] an
almighty arm, braved the dangers of an almost un
known ocean, and threw themselves into the arms of
men called savages, who proved more beneficent than
national Christians." To whom or what our Pilgrim
Fathers did succumb, and what " national Christians "
are, we leave, with the song of the Sirens, to conjecture.
SpeaKing of the "Providences," Mr. Offor says, that
"they faithfully delineate the state of public opinion
two hundred years ;i<r<>, the most striking feature bring
an implicit faith in the power of the [in-]visible world to
13 •

298 LIBEARY OF OLD AUTHORS.

hold visible intercourse with man : — not the angels to
bless poor erring mortals, but of demons imparting
power to witches and warlocks to injure, terrify and de
stroy," — a sentence which we defy any witch or war
lock, though he were Michael Scott himself, to parse
with the astutest demonic aid. On another page, he
says of Dr. Mather, that " he was one of the first divines
who discovered that very many strange events, which
were considered preternatural, had occurred in the
course of nature or by deceitful juggling ; that the
Devil could not speak English, nor prevail with Protes
tants ; the smell of herbs alarms the Devil ; that medi
cine drives out Satan ! " We do not wonder that Mr.
Offor put a mark of exclamation at the end of this sur
prising sentence, but we do confess our astonishment
that the vermilion pencil of the proof-reader suffered it
to pass unchallenged. Leaving its bad English out of
the question, we find, on referring to Mather's text, that
he was never guilty of the absurdity of believing that
Satan was less eloquent in English than in any other
language ; that it was the British (Welsh) tongue which
a certain demon whose education had been neglected
(not the Devil) could not speak ; that Mather is not fool
enough to say that the Fiend cannot prevail with Prot
estants, nor that the smell of herbs alarms him, nor
that medicine drives him out. Anything more help
lessly inadequate than Mr. Offer's preliminary disser
tation on Witchcraft we never read ; but we could
hardly expect much from an editor whose citations from
the book he is editing show that he had either not read
or not understood it.

Mr. Offor is superbly Protestant and iconoclastic, —
not sparing, as we have seen, even Priscian's head
among the rest ; but, en revanche, Mr. Turnbull is ultra
montane beyond the editors of the Civiltct Cattolica,

LIBRARY OF OLD AUTHORS. 299

He allows himself to say, that, " after Southwell's death,
one of his sisters, a Catholic in heart, but timidly and
blamably simulating heresy, wrought, with some relics
of the martyr, several cures on persons afflicted with
desperate and deadly diseases, which had baffled the
skill of all physicians." Mr. Turnbull is, we suspect, a
recent convert, or it would occur to him that doctors
are still secure of a lucrative practice in countries full
of the relics of greater saints than even Southwell.
That father was hanged (according to Protestants) for
treason, and the relic which put the whole pharmaco
poeia to shame was, if we mistake not, his neckerchief.
But whatever the merits of the Jesuit himself, and how
ever it may gratify Mr. Turnbull's catechumenical en
thusiasm to exalt the curative properties of this integu
ment of his, even at the expense of Jesuits' bark, we
cannot but think that he has shown a credulity that
unfits him for writing a fair narrative of his hero's life,
or making a tolerably just estimate of his verses. It is
possible, however, that these last seem prosaic as a
necktie only to heretical readers.

We have singled out the Introductions of Messrs.
Turnbull and Offor for special animadversion because
they are on the whole the worst, both of them being
offensively sectarian, while that of Mr. Offor in particular
gives us ajmost no information whatever. Some of the
others are not without grave faults, chief among which
is a vague declamation, especially out of place in criti
cal essays, where it serves only to weary the reader and
awaken his distrust. In his Introduction to Wither's
" Hallelujah," for instance, Mr. Fair informs us that
"nearly all the best poets of the latter half of the six
teenth century — for that was the period when the.
Reformation was fully established — and the whole of the
seventeenth century were sacred poets," and that " eveu

300 LIBRARY OF OLD AUTHORS.

Shakespeare and the contemporary dramatists of his
age sometimes attuned their well-strung harps to the
songs of Zion." Comment on statements like these
would be as useless as the assertions themselves are
absurd.

We have quoted these examples only to justify us in
saying that Mr. Smith must select his editors with
more care if he wishes that his " Library of Old
Authors " should deserve the confidence and thereby gain
the good word of intelligent readers, — without which
such a series can neither win nor keep the patronage of
the public. It is impossible that men who cannot con
struct an English sentence correctly, and who do not
know the value of clearness in writing, should be able
to disentangle the knots which slovenly printers have
tied in the thread of an old author's meaning ; and it is
more than doubtful whether they who assert carelessly,
cite inaccurately, and write loosely are not by nature
disqualified for doing thoroughly what they undertake
to do. If it were unreasonable to demand of every one
who assumes to edit one of our early poets the critical
acumen, the genial sense, the illimitable reading, the
philological scholarship, which in combination would
alone make the ideal editor, it is not presumptuous to
expect some one of these qualifications singly, and we
have the right to insist upon patience and accuracy,
which are within the reach of every one, and without
which all the others are wellnigh vain. Now to this
virtue of accuracy Mr. Oflfor specifically lays claim in
one of his remarkable sentences : " We are bound to ad
mire," he says, " the accuracy and beauty of this speci
men of typography. Following in the path of my late
friend William Pickering, our publisher rivals the
Aldine and Elzevir presses, which have been so univer
sally admired." We should think that it was the pro

LIBRARY OF OLD AUTHORS. 301

duct of those presses which had been admired, and that
Mr. Smith presents a still worthier object of admiration
when he contrives to follow a path and rival a press at
the same time. But let that pass ; — it is the claim to
accuracy which we dispute ; and we deliberately affirm,
that, so far as we are able to judge by the volumes we
have examined, no claim more unfounded was ever set
up. In some cases, as we shall show presently, the
blunders of the original work have been followed with
painful accuracy in the reprint ; but many others have
been added by the carelessness of Mr. Smith's printers
or editors. In the thirteen pages of Mr. Offor's own In
troduction we have found as many as seven typographi
cal errors, — unless some of them are to be excused on
the ground that Mr. Offor's studies have not yet led him
into those arcana where we are taught such recondite mys
teries of language as that verbs agree with their nomi
natives. In Mr. Farr's Introduction to the " Hymns
and Songs" nine short extracts from other poems of
Wither are quoted, and in these we have found no less
than seven misprints or false readings which materially
affect the sense. Textual inaccuracy is a grave fault in
the new edition of an old poet ; and Mr. Farr is not
only liable to this charge, but also to that of making
blundering misstatements which are calculated to mis
lead the careless or uncritical reader. Infected by the
absurd cant which has been prevalent for the last dozen
years among literary sciolists, he says, — " The language
used by Wither in all his various works — whether
secular or sacred — is pure Saxon." Taken literally,
this assertion is manifestly ridiculous, and, allowing it
every possible limitation, it is not only untrue of With
er, but of every English poet, from Chaucer down. The
translators of our Bible made use of the German version.
and a poet versifying the English Scriptures would

302 LIBRARY OF OLD AUTHORS.

therefore be likely to use more words of Teutonic origin
than in his original compositions. But no English poet
can write English poetry except in English, — that is, in
that compound of Teutonic and Romanic which derives
its heartiness and strength from the one and its canor
ous elegance from the other. The Saxon language does
not sing, and, though its tough mortar serve to hold to
gether the less compact Latin words, porous with vowels,
it is to the Latin that our verse owes majesty, harmony,
variety, and the capacity for rhyme. A quotation of six
lines from Wither ends at the top of the very page on
which Mr. Farr lays down his extraordinary dictum, and
we will let this answer him, Italicizing the words of
Romance derivation : —

" Her true beauty leaves behind
Apprehensions in the mind,
Of more sweetness than all art
Or inventions can impart ;
Thoughts too deep to be expressed,
And too strong to be suppressed."

Mr. Halliwell, at the close of his Preface to the Works
of Marston, (Vol. I. p. xxii,) says, "The dramas now
collected together are reprinted absolutely from the
early editions, which were placed in the hands of our
printers, who thus had the advantage of following them
without the intervention of a transcriber. They are
given as nearly as possible in their original state, the
only modernizations attempted consisting in the alterna
tions of the letters i and j, and u and v, the retention of
which " (docs Mr. Halliwell mean the letters or the " al
ternations " 1) " would have answered no useful purpose,
while it would have unnecessarily perplexed the modern
reader."

This is not very clear ; but as Mr. Halliwell is a mem
ber of several learned foreign societies, and especially of

LIBRARY OF OLD AUTHORS. 303

the Royal Irish Academy, perhaps it would be unfair to
demand that he should write clear English. As one of
Mr. Smith's editors, it was to be expected that he should
not write it idiomatically. Some malign constellation
(Taurus, perhaps, whose infaust aspect may be supposed
to preside over the makers of bulls and blunders) seems
to have been in conjunction with heavy Saturn when the
Library was projected. At the top of the same page
from which we have made our quotation, Mr. Halliwell
speaks of " conveying a favorable impression on modern
readers." It was surely to no such phrase as this that
Ensign Pistol alluded when he said, " Convey the wise it
call."

A literal reprint of an old author may be of value in
two ways : the orthography may in certaki cases indicate
the ancient pronunciation, or it may put us on a scent
which shall lead us to the burrow of a word among the
roots of language. But in order to this, it surely is not
needful to undertake the reproduction of all the original
errors of the press ; and even were it so, the proofs of
carelessness in the editorial department are so glaring,
that we are left in doubt, after all, if we may congratu
late ourselves on possessing all these sacred blunders of
the Elizabethan type-setters in their integrity, and with
out any debasement of modern alloy. If it be gratifying
to know that there lived stupid men before our contem
porary Agamemnons in that kind, yet we demand abso
lute accuracy in the report of the phenomena in order to
arrive at anything like safe statistics. For instance, we
find (Vol. I. p. 89) " ACTUS SECUNDUS, SCENA PRIMUS,"
and (Vol. III. p. 174) " exit aw6o,"and we are interested
to know that in a London printing-house, two centuries
and a half ago, there was a philanthropist who wished
to simplify the study of the Latin language by reducing
all the nouns to one gender and all the verbs to ono

304 LIBRARY OF OLD AUTHORS.

number. Had his emancipated theories of grammar pre
vailed, how much easier would that part of boys which
cherubs want have found the school-room benches !
How would birchen bark, as an educational tonic, have
fallen in repute ! How white would have been the (now
black-and-blue) memories of Dr. Busby and so many
other educational lictors, who, with their bundles of rods,
heralded not alone the consuls, but all other Roman an
tiquities to us ! We dare not, however, indulge in the
grateful vision, since there are circumstances which lead
us to infer that Mr. Halliwell himself (member though
he be of so many learned societies) has those vague no
tions of the speech of ancient Rome which are apt to
prevail in regions which count not the betula in their
Flora. On page xv of his Preface, he makes Drummond
say that Ben Jonson " was dilated" (delated, — Gilford
gives it in English, accused) " to the king by Sir James
Murray,"-— Ben, whose corpulent person stood in so
little need of that malicious increment !

What is Mr. Halliwell's conception of editorial duty 1
As we read along, and the once fair complexion of the
margin grew more and more pitted with pencil-marks,
like that of a bad proof-sheet, we began to think that he
was acting on the principle of every man his own wash
erwoman, — that he was making blunders of set purpose,
(as teachers of languages do in their exercises,) in order
that we might correct them for ourselves, and so fit us
in time to be editors also, and members of various learned
societies, even as Mr. Halliwell himself is. We fancied,
that, magnanimously waving aside the laurel with which
a grateful posterity crowned General Wade, he wished
us " to see these roads before they were made," and de
velop our intellectual muscles in getting over them.
But no ; Mr. Halliwell has appended notes to his edi
tion, and among them are some which correct misprints,

LIBRARY OF OLD AUTHORS. 305

and therefore seem to imply that he considers that service
as belonging properly to the editorial function. We are
obliged, then, to give up our theory that his intention
was to make every reader an editor, and to suppose that
he wished rather to show how disgracefully a book might
be edited and yet receive the commendation of profes
sional critics who read with the ends of their fingers. If
this were his intention, Marston himself never published
so biting a satire.

Let us look at a few of the intricate passages, to help
us through which Mr. Halliwell lends us the light of his
editorial lantern. In the Induction to " What you Will "
occurs the striking and unusual phrase, " Now out up-
pont," and Mr. Halliwell favors us with the following
note : " Page 221, line 10. Up^pont. — That is, upon 't.*
Again in the same play we find —

" Let t wattling fame cheatd others rest,
I um no dish for rumors feast."

Of course, it should read, —

" Let twattling [twaddling] Fame cheate others' rest,
I am no dish for Rumor's feast."

Mr. Halliwell comes to our assistance thus : " Page 244,
line 21, [22 it should be,]/ um, — a printer's error for
/ am." Dignus vindice nodus ! Five lines above, we
have "whole" for "who'll," and four lines below, "helm-
eth " for " whelmeth " ; but Mr. Halliwell vouchsafes no
note. In the " Fawn " we read, " Wise neads use few
words," and the editor says in a note, "a misprint for
heads " ! Kind Mr. Halliwell !

Having given a few examples of our " Editor's " cor
rections, we proceed to quote a passage or two which, it
is to be presumed, he thought perfectly clear.

"A man can skarce put on a tuckt-up nip,
A hutton'd fri/.M<l<> suto, pk:iroo pate good meate,
Anchovee, caviare, but hee's satyred

T

306 LIBRARY OF OLD AUTHORS.

And term d phantasticall. By the muddy spawne

Of slymie neughtes, when troth, phantasticknesse

Tliat which the natural! sopliysters tearme

Pkantusia incomjjltxa — is a i'unction

Even of the bright immortal part of man.

It is the common passe, the sacred dore,

Unto the prive chamber of the soule :

That bar'd, nought passeth past the baser court

Of outward sceuce by it th' inamorate

Most lively thinkes he sees the absent beauties

Of his lov'd mistres." (Vol. I. p. 241.)

In this case, also, the true readings are clear enough : —

" And termed fantastical by the muddy spawn
Of slimy newts";

and

" . . . . past the baser court
Of outward sense " ; —

but, if anything was to be explained, why are we hero
deserted by our fida compagna ? Again, (Vol. II. pp.
55, 56,) we read, " This Granuffo is a right wise good
lord, a man of excellent discourse, and never speakes his
signes to me, and men of profound reach instruct aboun-
dantly ; hee begges suites with signes, gives thanks with
signes," etc. This Granuffo is qualified among the " In
terlocutors " as " a silent lord," and what fun there is in
the character (which, it must be confessed, is rather of a
lenten kind) consists in his genius for saying nothing.
It is plain enough that the passage should read, " a
man of excellent discourse, and never speaks ; his
signs to me and men of profound reach instruct abun
dantly," etc.

In both the passages we have quoted, it is not difficult
for the reader to set the text right. But if not difficult
for the reader, it should certainly not have been so for
the editor, who should have done what Broome was said
to have done for Pope in his Homer, — "gone before
and swept the way." An edition of an English author
ought to be intelligible to English readers, and, if the

LIBRARY OF OLD AUTHORS. 307

editor do not make it so, he wrongs the old poet, for two
centuries lapt in lead, to whose works he undertakes to
play the gentleman-usher. A play written in our own
tongue should not be as tough to us as ^Eschylus to
a ten years' graduate, nor do we wish to be reduced to
the level of a chimpanzee, and forced to gnaw our way
through a thick shell of misprints and mispointings only
to find (as is generally the case with Marston) a rancid
kernel of meaning after all. But even Marston some
times deviates into poetry, as a man who wrote in that
age could hardly help doing, and one of the few instances
of it is in a speech of Erichtho, in the first scene of the
fourth act of " Sophonisba," (Vol. I. p. 197,) which Mr.
Halliwell presents to us in this shape : —

-" hardby the reverent ( ! ) mines

Of a once glorious temple rear'd to Jove
Whose very rubbish

yet beares

A deathlesse majesty, though now quite rac'd, [razed,]
Hurl'd down by wrath and lust of impious kings,
So that where holy Flamins [Flamens] wont to sing
Sweet hymnes to Heaven, there the daw and crow,
The ill-voyc'd raven, and still chattering pye,
Send out ungratefull sounds and loathsome filth;
Where statues arid Joves acts were vively limbs,

Where tombs and beautious urnes of well dead men
Stood in assured rest," etc.

The last verse and a half are worthy of Chapman ; but
why did not Mr. Halliwell, who explains up-pont and /
um, change "Joves acts were vively limbs " to "Jove's
acts were lively limned," which was unquestionably \\liat
Marston wrote 1

In the "Scourge of Villanie," (Vol. III. p. 252,) there
is a passage which till lately had a modern application in
America, though happily archaic in England, which Mr.
Halliwell suffers to stand thus : —

308 LIBRARY OF OLD AUTHORS.

"Once Albion lived in such a cruel age
Than man did hold by servile vilenage :
Poore brats were slaves of bondmen that were borne,
And marted, sold: but that rude law is torne
And disannuld, as too too inhumane."

This should read —

" Man man did hold in servile villanage;

Poor brats were slaves (of bondmen that were born) ";
and perhaps some American poet will one day write in
the past tense similar verses of the barbarity of his fore
fathers.

We will give one more scrap of Mr. Halliwell's text : —

" Yfaith, why then, caprichious mirth,
Skip, light moriscoes, in our frolick blond,
Flagg'd veines, sweete, plump with fresh-infused joyes! "

which Marston, doubtless, wrote thus : —

" I' faith, why then, capricious Mirth,
Skip light moriscoes in our frolic blood !
Flagg'd veins, swell plump with fresh-infused joys! "

We have quoted only a few examples from among the
scores that we had marked, and against such a style of
" editing " we invoke the shade of Marston himself. In
the Preface to the Second Edition of the " Fawn," he
says, " Reader, know I have perused this coppy, to make
some satisfaction for the first faulty impression; yet sour-
gent hath been my business that some errors have styll passed,
which thy discretion may amend"

Literally, to be sure, Mr. Halliwell has availed him
self of the permission of the poet, in leaving all emen
dation to the reader ; but certainly he has been false to
the spirit of it in his self-assumed office of editor. The
notes to explain up^pont and / um give us a kind of
standard of the highest intelligence which Mr. Halliwell
dares to take for granted in the ordinary reader. Sup
posing this nousometer of his to be a centigrade, in what
hitherto unconceived depths of cold obstruction can ho
find his zero-point of entire idiocy 1 The expansive force

LIBRARY OF OLD AUTHORS. 309

of average wits cannot be reckoned upon, as we see, to
drive them up as far as the temperate degree of mis
prints in one syllable, and those, too, in their native
tongue. A fortiori, then, Mr. Halliwell is bound to lend
us the aid of his great learning wherever his author has
introduced foreign words and the old printers have
made pie of them. In a single case he has accepted his
responsibility as dragoman, and the amount of his suc
cess is not such as to give us any poignant regret that
he has everywhere else left us to our own devices. On
p. 119, Vol. II., Francischina, a Dutchwoman, exclaims,
" 0, mine aderliver love." Here is Mr. Halliwell' s note.
" Aderliver. — This is the speaker's error for alder-liever,
the best beloved by all." Certainly not " the sjjeaker's
error," for Marston was no such fool as intentionally to
make a Dutchwoman blunder in her own language. But
is it an error for alderliever ? No, but for alderliefster.
Mr. Halliwell might have found it in many an old Dutch
song. For example, No. 96 of Hoffmann von Fallersle-
ben's " Niederlandische Volkslieder " begins thus : —

" Mijn hert altijt heeft verlanghen
Naer u, die alderltejste mijn."

But does the word mean " best beloved by all " ? No
such thing, of course ; but " best beloved of all," -
that is, by the speaker.

In "Antonio and Mellida" (Vol. I. pp. 50, 51) occur
some Italian versos, ;u;<f here we hoped to tare better;
for Mr. Halliwell (as we learn from the title-page of his
Dictionary) is a member of the " Real? Acatlunin <li
Firenze." This is the Accademia dc//>t ( 'rn^-u. founded for
the conservation of the Italian language in its purity, and
it is rather a fatal symptom that Mr. Halliwell should in
dulge in the heresy of spelling Acraifei/ii/i with only one c.
But let us see .what our l)ell:i < Yusran's notions of con
serving are. Here is a specimen : —

310 LIBRARY OF OLD AUTHORS.

" Bassiammi, coglier 1' aura odorata
Che in sua neggia in quello dolce labra.
Dammi pimpero del tuo gradit' amore."

It is clear enough that we ought to read,
" Lasciami coglier, .... Che ha sua seggia, .... Dammi 1' impero."

A Delia Cruscan academician might at least have cor«
rected by his dictionary the spelling and number of
labra.

We think that we have sustained our indictment of
Mr. Halliwell's text with ample proof. The title of the
book should have been, " The Works of John Marston,
containing all the Misprints of the Original Copies,
together with a few added for the First Time in this
Edition, the whole carefully let alone by James Orchard
Halliwell, F. R. S., F. S. A." It occurs to us that Mr.
Halliwell may be also a Fellow of the Geological Society,
and may have caught from its members the enthusiasm
which leads him to attach so ' extraordinary a value to
every goose-track of the Elizabethan formation. It is
bad enough to be, as Marston was, one of those middling
poets whom neither gods nor men nor columns (Horace
had never seen a newspaper) tolerate ; but, really, even
they do not deserve the frightful retribution of being
reprinted by a Halliwell.

We have said that we could not feel even the dubious
satisfaction of knowing that the blunders of the old cop
ies had been faithfully followed in the reprinting. We
see reason for doubting whether Mr. Halliwell ever read
the proof-sheets. In his own notes we have found sev
eral mistakes. For instance, he refers to p. 159 when he
means p. 153 ; he cites " I, but her life," instead of
" lip " ; and he makes Spenser speak of " old Pithonus."
Marston is not an author of enough importance to make
it desirable that we should be put in possession of all
the corrupted readings of his text, were such a thing

LIBRARY OF OLD AUTHORS. 311

possible even with the most minute painstaking, and Mr.
Halliwell's edition loses its only claim to value the mo
ment a doubt is cast upon the accuracy of its inaccuracies.
It is a matter of special import to us (whose means
of access to originals are exceedingly limited) that the
English editors of our old authors should be faithful and
trustworthy, and we have singled out Mr. Halliwell's
Marston for particular animadversion only because we
think it on the whole the worst edition we ever saw of
any author.

Having exposed the condition in which our editor has
left the text, we proceed to test his competency in an
other respect, by examining some of the emendations
and explanations of doubtful passages which he proposes.
These are very few ; but had they been even fewer, they
had been too many.

Among the dramatis personce of the " Fawn," as we
said before, occurs " Granuffo, a silent lord." He speaks
only once during the play, and that in the last scene.
In Act I. Scene 2, Gonzago says, speaking to Granuffo, —

" Now, sure, thou art a man
Of a most learned scilence, and one whose words
Have bin most pretious to me."

This seems quite plain, but Mr. Halliwell annotates
thus : " Scilence. — Query, science ? Tli^ Common read
ing, xife/v, may, however, be what is intenacu. ' That
the spelling should have troubled Mr. Halliwell is re
markable ; for elsewhere we find "god-boy" for "good
bye," "seace" for "cease," "bodies" for " boddice,"
"pollice" for "policy," " pitittying" for "pitying,"
"scence" for "sense," "Misenzius" for " Mezentius,"
" Ferazes " for " Ferrarese," — and plenty beside, equal
ly odd. That, he should h;tv<- d«>ul>tf<I tin- inr.-miii',' is
no less strange ; for on p. 41 of the same play we read,
" My Lord Granuffo, you may likewise stay, for I know

312 LIBRARY OF OLD AUTHORS.

you'l say nothing" — on pp. 55, 56, " This Granuffo is
a right wise good lord, a man of excellent discourse and
never speaks," — and on p. 94, we find the following dia
logue : —

" Gon. My Lord Granuffo, this Fawne is an excellent fellow.

" Don. Silence.

" Gon. I warrant you for my lord here.

In the same play (p. 44) are these lines : —

" I apt for love ?
Let lazy idlenes fild full of wine
Heated with meates, high fedde with lustfull ease
Goe dote on culler [color]. As forme, why, death a sence,
I court the ladie ? "

This is Mr. Halliwell's note : " Death a sence. — ' Earth
a sense,' ed. 1633. Mr. Dilke suggests : 'For me, why,
earth's as sensible.' The original is not necessarily cor
rupt. It may mean, — why, you might as well think
Death was a sense, one of the senses. See a like phrase
at p. 77." What help we should get by thinking Death
one of the senses, it would demand another CEdipus to
unriddle. Mr. Halliwell can astonish us no longer, but
we are surprised at Mr. Dilke, the very competent
editor of the " Old English Plays," 1815. From him we
might have hoped for better things. " Death o' sense ! "
is an exclama on. Throughout these volumes we find a
for o', — as, "a clock" for "o'clock," "a the side" for
" o' the side." A similar exclamation is to be found in
three other places in the same play, where the sense
is obvious. Mr. Halliwell refers to one of them on
p. 77, — " Death a man ! is she delivered 1 " The others
are, — " Death a justice ! are we in Normandy] " (p. 98) ;
and " Death a discretion ! if I should prove a foole now,"
or, as given by Mr. Halliwell, " Death, a discretion ! "
Now let us apply Mr. Halliwell's explanation. " Death
a man ! " you might as well think Death was a man,

LIBRARY OF OLD AUTHORS. 313

that is, one of the men ! — or a discretion, that is, one
of the discretions ! — or a justice, that is, one of the
quorum ! We trust Mr. Halliwell may never have the
editing of Bob Acres's imprecations. " Odd's triggers ! "
he would say, "that is, as odd as, or as strange as, triggers."
Vol. III. p. 77, "the vote-killing mandrake." Mr.
Halliwell's note is, " vote-killing. — ' Voice-killing,' ed.
1613. It may well be doubted whether either be the
correct reading." He then gives a familiar citation from
Browne's " Vulgar Errors." " Vote-killing " may be a mere
misprint for " note-killing," but " voice-killing" is certain
ly the better reading. Either, however, makes sense. Al
though Sir Thomas Browne does not allude to the dead
ly property of the mandrake's shriek, yet Mr. Halliwell,
who has edited Shakespeare, might have remembered
the

" Would curses kill, as doth the mandrake's groan.'"

(Second Part of Henry VI., Act III. Scene 2.)

and the notes thereon in the variorum edition. In Ja
cob Grimm's " Deutsche Mythologie," (Vol. II. p. 1154,)
under the word Alraun, may be found a full account of
the superstitions concerning the mandrake. " When it
is dug up, it groans and shrieks so dreadfully that the dig
ger will surely die. One must, therefore, before sunrise
on a Friday, having first stopped one's ears with wax or
cotton-wool, take with him an entirely black dog without
a white hair on him, make the sign of the cross three
times over the alraun, and dig about it till the root
holds only by thin fibres. Then tie these by a string to
the tail of the dog, show him a piece of bread, and run
away as fust, as possible. The do^ runs c-.-igcrly after
the bread, pulls up the root, and falls stricken dead by
its groan of pain."

These, we believe, are the only instances in which Mr.
Halliwell has ventured to give any opinion upon the
14

314 LIBRARY OF OLD AUTHORS.

text, except as to a palpable misprint, here and there,
Two of these we have already cited. There is one other,
— " p. 46, line 10. Inconstant. — An error for incon
stant" Wherever there is a real difficulty, he leaves us
in the lurch. For example, in " What you Will," he
prints without comment, —

" Ha! he mount Chirall on the wings of fame ! "

(Vol. I, p. 239.)

which should be " mount cheval," as it is given in Mr.
Dilke's edition (Old English Plays, Vol. II. p. 222). We
cite this, not as the worst, but the shortest, example at
hand.

Some of Mr. Halliwell's notes are useful and interest
ing, — as that on " keeling the pot," and a few others,
— but the greater part are utterly useless. He thinks
it necessary, for instance, to explain that "to speak pure,
foole, is in sense equivalent to ' I will speak like a pure
fool,'" —that "belkt up" means "belched up," — that
" aprecocks " means " apricots." He has notes also upon
"meal-mouthed," "luxuriousnesse," "termagant," "fico,"
" estro," " a nest of goblets," which indicate either that
the " general reader " is a less intelligent person in Eng
land than in America, or that Mr. Halliwell's standard of
scholarship is very low. We ourselves, from our limited
reading, can supply him with a reference which will ex
plain the allusion to the " Scotch barnacle " much bet
ter than his citations from Sir John Maundeville and
Giraldus Cambrensis, — namely, note 8, on page 179
of a Treatise on Worms, by Dr. Ramesey, court physician
to Oharles II.

We tnrn now to Mr. Hazlitt's edition of Webster. We
wish he had chosen Chapman ; for Mr. Dyce's Webster
is hardly out of print, and, we believe, has just gone
through a second and revised edition. Webster was 3

LIBRARY OF OLD AUTHORS. 315

far more considerable man than Marston, and infinitely
above him in genius. Without the poetic nature of
Marlowe, or Chapman's somewhat unwieldy vigor of
thought, he had that inflammability of mind which, un-
tempered by a solid understanding, made his plays a
strange mixture of vivid expression, incoherent declama
tion, dramatic intensity, and extravagant conception of
character. He was not, in the highest sense of the word,
a great dramatist. Shakespeare is the only one of that
age. Marlowe had a rare imagination, a delicacy of
sense that made him the teacher of Shakespeare and
Milton in versification, and was, perhaps, as purely a
poet as any that England has produced ; but his mind
had no balance-wheel. Chapman abounds in splendid
enthusiasms of diction, and now and then dilates our
imaginations with suggestions of profound poetic depth.
Ben Jonson was a conscientious and intelligent workman,
whose plays glow, here and there, with the golden pollen
of that poetic feeling with which his age impregnated all
thought and expression; but his leading characteristic,
like that of his great namesake, Samuel, was a hearty
common sense, which fitted him rather to be a great
critic than a great poet. He had a keen and ready eye
for the comic in situation, but no humor. Fletcher was
as much a poet as fancy and sentiment can make any
man. Only Shakespeare wrote comedy and tragedy with
truly ideal elevation and breadth. Only Shakespeare
had that true sense of humor which, like the universal
solvent sought by the alchemists, so fuses together all
the elements of a character, (as in Falstaff,) that any
question of good or evil, of dignified or ridiculous, is
silenced by the apprehension of its thorough humanity.
Rabelais shows gleams of it in I'mmi-irc ; but, in our
opinion, no man ever possessed it in an equal degree
with Shakespeare, except Cervantes ; no man has since

316 LIBRARY OF OLD AUTHORS.

shown anything like an approach to it, (for Moliere's qual
ity was comic power rather than humor,) except Sterne,
Fielding, and perhaps Richter. Only Shakespeare was
endowed with that healthy equilibrium of nature whose
point of rest was midway between the imagination and
the imderstanding, — that perfectly unruffled brain
which reflected all objects with almost inhuman impar
tiality, — that outlook whose range was ecliptical, dom
inating all zones of human thought and action, — that
power of veri-similar conception which could take away
Richard III. from History, and Ulysses from Homer, —
and that creative faculty whose equal touch is alike vivi
fying in Shallow and in Lear. He alone never seeks in
abnormal and monstrous characters to evade the risks
and responsibilities of absolute truthfulness, nor to stim
ulate a jaded imagination by Caligulan horrors of plot.
He is never, like many of his fellow-dramatists, con
fronted with unnatural Frankensteins of his own making,
whom he must get off his hands as best he may. Given
a human foible, he can incarnate it in the nothingness
of Slender, or make it loom gigantic through the tragic
twilight of Hamlet. We are tired of the vagueness
which classes all the Elizabethan playwrights together
as "great dramatists," — as if Shakespeare did not dif
fer from them in kind as well as in degree. Fine poets
some of them were ; but though imagination and the
power of poetic expression are, singly, not uncommon
gifts, and even in combination not without secular ex
amples, yet it is the rarest of earthly phenomena to find
them joined with those faculties of perception, arrange
ment, and plastic instinct in the loving union which
alone makes a great dramatic poet possible. We suspect
that Shakespeare will long continue the only specimen
of the genus. His contemporaries, in their comedies,
either force what they call "a humor" till it becomes

LIBRARY OF OLD AUTHORS. 317

fantastical, or hunt for jokes, like rat-catchers, in the
sewers of human nature and of language. In their
tragedies they become heavy without grandeur, like Jon-
son, or mistake the stilts for the cothurnus, as Chapman
and Webster too often do. Every new edition of an Eliza
bethan dramatist is but the putting of another witness
into the box to prove the inaccessibility of Shakespeare's
stand-point as poet and artist.

Webster's most famous works are " The Duchess of
Malfy " and " Vittoria Corombona," but we are strongly
inclined to call " The Devil's Law-Case " his best play.
The two former are in a great measure answerable for
the " spasmodic " school of poets, since the extravagances
of a man of genius are as sure of imitation as the equa^
ble self-possession of his higher moments is incapable of
it. Webster had, no doubt, the primal requisite of a
poet, imagination, but in him it was truly untamed, and
Aristotle's admirable distinction between the Horrible
and the Terrible in tragedy was never better illustrated
and confirmed than in the "Duchess" and "Vittoria."
His nature had something of the sleuth-hound quality
in it, and a plot, to keep his mind eager on the trail,
must be sprinkled with fresh blood at every turn. We
do not forget all the fine things that Lamb has said of
Webster, but, when Lamb wrote, the Elizabethan drama
was an El Dorado, whose micaceous sand, even, was
treasured as auriferous, — and no wonder, in a genera
tion which admired the " Botanic Garden." Webster is
the Gherardo della Notte of his day, and himself calls
his "Vittoria Corombona" a " night-piece." Though ho
had no conception of Nature in its large sense, as some
thing pervading a whole character and making it consist
ent with itself, nor of Art, as that which dominates an
entire tragedy and makes all the characters foils to each
other and tributaries to the catastrophe, yet there are

318 LIBRARY OF OLD AUTHORS.

flashes of Nature in his plays, struck out by the collisions
of passion, and dramatic intensities of phrase for which
it would be hard to find the match. The " prithee, un
do this button " of Lear, by which Shakespeare makes us
feel the swelling of the old king's heart, and that the
bodily results of mental anguish have gone so far as to
deaden for the moment all intellectual consciousness and
forbid all expression of grief, is hardly finer than the
broken verse which Webster puts into the mouth of
Ferdinand when he sees the body of his sister, murdered
by his own procurement : —

" Cover her face: mine eyes dazzle: she died young."

He has not the condensing power of Shakespeare, who
squeezed meaning into a phrase with an hydraulic press,
but he could carve a cherry-stone with any of the concet-
tisti, and abounds in imaginative quaintnesses that are
worthy of Donne, and epigrammatic tersenesses that re
mind us of Fuller. Nor is he wanting in poetic phrases
of the purest crystallization. Here are a few examples : —

" Oh, if there be another world i' th' moon,
As some fantastics dream, I could wish all men,
The whole race of them, for their inconstancy,
Sent thither to people that! "

(Old Chaucer was yet slier. After saying that Lamech
was the first faithless lover, he adds, —

" And he invented tents, unless men lie," —
implying that he was the prototype of nomadic men.)

" Virtue is ever sowing of her seeds :
In the trenches, for the soldier; in the wakeful study,
For the scholar; in the furrows of the sea,
For men of our profession [merchants] •, all of which
Arise and spring up honor."

|" Of all which," Mr. Hazlitt prints it.)

" Poor Jolenta! should she hear of this,
She would not after the report keep fresh
So long as flowers on graves."

LIBRARY OF OLD AUTHORS. 319

" For sin and shame are ever tied together
With Gordian knots of such a strong thread spun,
They cannot without violence be undone."

" One whose mind

Appears more like a ceremonious chapel
Full of sweet music, than a thronging presence."

" What is death V

The safest trench i' th' world to keep man free
From Fortune's gunshot."

" It has ever been my opinion
That there are none love perfectly indeed,
But those that hang or drown themselves for love,"

says Julio, anticipating Butler's

" But he that drowns, or blows out 's brains,
The Devil's In him, If he feigns.''

He also anticipated La Rochefoucauld and Byron in their
apophthegm concerning woman's last love. In " The
Devil's Law-Case," Leonora says, —

" For, as we love our youngest children best,
So the last fruit of our affection,
Wherever we bestow it, is most strong,
Most violent, most unresistible;
Since 't is, indeed, our latest harvest-home,
Last merriment 'fore winter."

In editing Webster, Mr. Hazlitt had the advantage
(except in a single doubtful play) of a predecessor in the
Rev. Alexander Dyce, beyond all question the best living
scholar of the literature of the times of Elizabeth and
James I. If he give no proof of remarkable fitness for
his task, he seems, at least, to have been diligent and
painstaking. His notes are short and to the point, and
— which we consider a great merit — at the foot of the
page. If he had added a glossarial index, we should
have been still better pleased. Mr. Hazlitt seems to
have read over the text with some care, and he has h;nl
the good sense to modernize the orthography, or, as no
says, has "observed the existing standard of spelling

320 LIBRARY OF OLD AUTHORS.

throughout." Yet — for what reason we cannot imagine
— he prints "I" for "ay," taking the pains to explain
it every time in a note, and retains " banquerout " and
" coram " apparently for the sake of telling us that
they mean "bankrupt " and "quorum." He does not
seem to have a quick ear for scansion, which would
sometimes have assisted him to the true reading. We
give an example or two : —

" The obligation wherein we all stood bound
Cannot be concealed [cancelled] without great reproach."

" The realm, not they,

Must be regarded. Be [wej strong and bold,
We are the people's factors."

" Shall not be o'erburdened [overburdened] in our reign

" A merry heart
And a good stomach to [a] feast are all."

" Have her meat serv'd up by bawds and ruffians " [dele " up."J

" Brother or father
In [a] dishonest suit, shall be to me."

" What's she in Rome your greatness cannot awe,
Or your rich purse purchase? Promises and threats." [dele tha
second "your."]

" Through clouds of envy and disast [rous] change."
" The Devil drives, 'tis [it is] full time to go."

He has overlooked some strange blunders. What is the
meaning of

" Laugh at your misery, as foredeeming you
An idle meteor, which drawn forth, the earth
Would soon be lost i' the air " ?

We hardly need say that it should be

" An idle meteor, which, drawn forth the earth,
Would." &c.

"forwardness " for /rowardness," (Vol. II. p. 87,) " ten>
nis-balls struck and bam/ecT' for " bancZi'etZ," (Ib. p. 275,)
may be errors of the press ; but

" Come, I'll love you wisely:
That's jealousy,"

LIBRARY OF OLD AUTHORS. 321

has crept in by editorial oversight for " wisely, that 'a
jealously." So have

" Ay, the great emperor of [or] the mighty Cham ";

' This wit [with] taking long journeys ";

" Virginius, thou dost but supply my place,

I thine: Fortune hath lift me [thee] to my chair,
And thrown me headlong to thy pleading bar " ;

and

" I'll pour my soul into my daughter's belly, [body,]
And with my soldier's tears embalm her wounds."

We suggest that the change of an a to an r would
make sense of the following: "Come, my little punk,
with thy two compositors, to this unlawful painting-
house," [printing-house,] which Mr. Hazlitt awkwardly
endeavors to explain by this note on the word compos
itors, — " i. e. (conjecturally), making up the composition
of the picture " ! Our readers can decide for themselves ;
— the passage occurs Vol. I. p. 214.

We think Mr. Hazlitt's notes are, in the main, good ;
but we should like to know his authority for saying that
pench means "the hole in a bench by which it was taken
up," — that "descant" means " look askant on," — and
that " I wis " is equivalent to " 1 surmise, imagine,"
which it surely is not in the passage to which his note is
appended. On page 9, Vol. I., we read in the text,

" To whom, my lord, bends thus your awe,"

and in the note, " i. e. submission. The original has
aue, which, if it mean ave, is unmeaning here." Did Mr.
Ha/litt never see a picture of the Annunciation with <n>c.
written on the scroll proceeding from the bending angel's
mouth 1 We find the same word in Vol. III. p. 217 : —

" Whose station's built on avees and applause."

Vol. III. pp. 47, 48 : —

14* u

322 LIBRARY OF OLD AUTHORS.

" And then rest, gentle bones ; yet pray
That when by the precise you are view'd,
A supersedeas be not sued
To remove you to a place more airy,
That in your stead they may keep chary
Stockfish or seacoal, for the abuses
Of sacrilege have turned graves to viler uses."

To the last verse Mr. Hazlitt appends this note, " Than
that of burning men's bones for fuel." There is no allu
sion here to burning men's bones, but simply to the des
ecration of graveyards by building warehouses upon
them, in digging the foundations for which the bones
would be thrown out. The allusion is, perhaps, to the
" Churchyard of the Holy Trinity " ; — see Stow's Sur
vey, ed. 1603, p. 126. Elsewhere, in the same play,
Webster alludes bitterly to " begging church-land."

Vol. I. p. 73, " And if he walk through the street, he
ducks at the penthouses, like an ancient that dares not
flourish at the oathtaking of the prsetor for fear of the
signposts." Mr. Hazlitt's note is, " Ancient was a stand
ard or flag ; also an ensign, of which Skinner says it is a
corruption. What the meaning of the simile is the pres
ent editor cannot suggest." We confess we find no diffi
culty. The meaning plainly is, that he ducks for fear
of hitting the penthouses, as an ensign on the Lord
Mayor's day dares not flourish his standard for fear of
hitting the signposts. We suggest the query, whether
ancient, in this sense, be not a corruption of the Italian
word anziano.

Want of space compels us to leave many other pas
sages, which we had marked for comment, unnoticed.
We are surprised that Mr. Hazlitt, (see his Introduction
to " Vittoria Corombona,") in undertaking to give us
some information concerning the Dukedom and Castle of
Bracciano, should uniformly spell it Brachiano. Shake
speare's Petruchio might have put him on his guard.

LIBRARY OF OLD AUTHORS. 323

We should be glad also to know in what part of Italy
he places Malji.

Mr. Hazlitt's General Introduction supplies us with
no new information, but this was hardly to be expected
where Mr. Dyce had already gone over the field. We
wish that he had been able to give us better means
of distinguishing the three almost contemporary John
Websters one from the other, for we think the internal
evidence is enough to show that all the plays attributed
to the author of the "Duchess " and " Vittoria" could
not have been written by the same person. On the
whole, he has given us a very respectable, and certainly
a very pretty, edition of an eminent poet.

We could almost forgive all other shortcomings of Mr.
Smith's library for the great gift it brings us in the five
volumes of Chapman's translations. Coleridge, sending
Chapman's Homer to Wordsworth, writes, " What is
stupidly said of Shakespeare is really true and appropri
ate of Chapman ; mighty faults counterpoised by mighty

beauties It is as truly an original poem as the

Faery Queene ; — it will give you small idea of Homer,
though a far truer one than Pope's epigrams, or Cowper's
cumbersome most anti-Homeric Miltonism. For Chap
man writes and feels as a poet, — as Homer might have
written had he lived in England in the reign of Queen
Elizabeth. In short, it is an exquisite poem, in spite of
its frequent and perverse quaintnesses and harshnesses,
which are, however, amply repaid by almost unexampled
sweetness and beauty of language, all over spirit and
feeling."* From a passage of his Preface it would !i[>-
pear that Chapman had been criticised pretty sharply
in his own day for amplifying his author. " And this
one example I thought necessary to insert here to show
* Literary Remains, Vol. I. pp. 269, 260.

324 LIBRARY OF OLD AUTHORS.

my detractors that they have no reason to vilify my
circumlocution sometimes, when their most approved
Grecians, Homer's interpreters generally, hold him fit
to be so converted. Yet how much I differ, and with
what authority, let my impartial and judicial reader
judge. Always conceiving how pedantical and absurd
an affectation it is in the interpretation of any author
(much more of Homer) to turn him word for word, when
(according to Horace and other best lawgivers to trans
lators) it is the part of every knowing and judicial inter
preter not to follow the number and order of words, but
the material things themselves, and sentences to weigh
diligently, and to clothe and adorn them with words and
such a style and form of oration as are most apt for the
language in which they are converted." Again in his
verses To the Reader, he speaks of

" The ample transmigration to be shown
By nature-loving Poesy,"

and defends his own use of " needful periphrases," and
says that " word for word " translation is to

" Make fish with fowl, camels with whales, engender."

" For even as different a production
Ask Greek and English : since, as they in sounds
And letters shun one form and unison,
So have their sense and elegancy bounds
In their distinguished natures, and require
Only a judgment to make both consent
In sense and elocution."

There are two theories of translation, — literal para
phrase and free reproduction. At best, the translation
of poetry is but an imitation of natural flowers in cam
bric or wax ; and however much of likeness there may
be, the aroma, whose charm of indefinable suggestion in
the association of ideas is so powerful, is precisely what
is lost irretrievably. From where it lurked in the im
mortal verse, a presence divined rather than ascertained,

LIBRARY OF OLD AUTHORS. 325

baffling the ear which it enchanted, escaping the grasp
which yet it thrilled, airy, evanescent, imperishable,
beckoning the imagination with promises better than
any fulfilment,

" The parting genius is with sighing sent."

The paraphrase is a plaster-cast of the Grecian urn ; the
reproduction, if by a man of genius, is like Keats's ode,
which makes the figures move and the leaves tremble
again, if not with the old life, with a sorcery which de
ceives the fancy. Of all English poets, Keats was the
one to have translated Homer.

In any other than a mere prose version of a great
poem, we have a right to demand that it give us at
least an adequate impression of force and originality.
We have a right to ask, If this poem were published
now for the first time, as the work of a contemporary,
should we read it, not with the same, but with anything
like the same conviction of its freshness, vigor, and origi
nality, its high level of style and its witchery of verse,
that Homer, if now for the first time discovered, would
infallibly beget in us 1 Perhaps this looks like asking for
a new Homer to translate the old one ; but if this be too
much, it is certainly not unfair to insist that the feeling
given us should be that of life, and not artifice.

The Homer of Chapman, whatever its defects, alone
of all English versions has this crowning merit of being,
where it is most successful, thoroughly alive. He has
made for us the best poem that has yet been Englished
out of Homer, and in so far gives us a truer idea of him.
Of all translators he is farthest removed from the fault
with which he charges others, when he says that " our
divine master's most ingenious imitating the life of things
(which is the soul of a poem) is never respected nor per
ceived by his interpreters only standing pedantically on

326 LIBRARY OF OLD AUTHORS.

the grammar and words, utterly ignorant of the sens*
and grace of him." His mastery of English is something
•wonderful even in an age of masters, when the language
was still a mother-tongue, and not a contrivance of ped
ants and grammarians. He had a reverential sense of
"our divine Homer's depth and gravity, which will not
open itself to the curious austerity of belaboring art, but
only to the natural and most ingenious soul of our
thrice-sacred Poesy." His task was as holy to him as a
version of Scripture ; he justifies the tears of Achilles by
those of Jesus, and the eloquence of his horse by that of
Balaam's less noble animal. He does not always keep
close to his original, but he sins no more, even in this,
than any of his rivals. He is especially great in the
similes. Here he rouses himself always, and if his en
thusiasm sometimes lead him to heighten a little, or
even to add outright, he gives us a picture full of life
and action, or of the grandeur and beauty of nature, as
stirring to the fancy as his original. Of all who have
attempted Homer, he has the topping merit of being in
spired by him.

In the recent discussions of Homeric translation in
England, it has always been taken for granted that we
had or could have some adequate conception of Homer's
metre. Lord Derby, in his Preface, plainly assumes
this. But there can be no greater fallacy. No human
ears, much less Greek ones, could have endured what,
with our mechanical knowledge of the verse, ignorance
of the accent, and English pronunciation, we blandly ac
cept for such music as Homer chanted. We have utterly
lost the tune and cannot reproduce it. Mr. Newman
conjectures it to have been something like Yankee Doo
dle ; Mr. Arnold is sure it was the English hexameter ;
and they are both partly right so far as we may trust
our reasonable impressions ; for, after all, an impression

LIBRARY OF OLD AUTHORS. 327

is all that we have. Cowper attempts to give the ring
of the dpyvpfoto /3tolo by

" Dread-sounding, bounding on the silver bow,"

which only too fatally recalls the old Scottish dancing-
tune, —

" Amaisit I gaisit

To see, led at command,

A strampant and rampant

Ferss lyon in his hand."

The attempt was in the right direction, however, for
Homer, like Dante and Shakespeare, like all who really
command language, seems fond of playing with asso
nances. No doubt the Homeric verse consented at will
to an eager rapidity, and no doubt also its general char
acter is that of prolonged but unmonotonoxis roll. Every
body says it is like the long ridges of the sea, some
overtopping their neighbors a little, each with an inde
pendent undulation of its crest, yet all driven by a
common impulse, and breaking, not with the sudden
snap of an unyielding material, but one after the other,
with a stately curve, to slide back and mingle with those
that follow. Chapman's measure has the disadvantage
of an association with Sternhold and Hopkins, but it has
the merit of length, and, where he is in the right mood,
is free, spirited, and sonorous. Above all, there is every
where the movement of life and passion in it. Chap
man was a master of verse, making it hurry, linger, or
stop short, to suit the meaning. Like all great versifiers
he must be read with study, for the slightest change of
accent loses the expression of an entire passage. His
great fault as a translator is that he takes fire too easily
and runs beyond his author. Perhaps he intensifies too
much, though this be a fault on the right side ; lie cer
tainly sometimes weakens the force of passages by crowd
ing in particulars which Homer had wisely omitted, for

328 LIBRARY OF OLD AUTHORS.

Homer's simplicity is by no means mere simplicity of
thought, nor, as it is often foolishly called, of nature. It is
the simplicity of consummate art, the last achievement of
poets and the invariable characteristic of the greatest
among them. To Chapman's mind once warmed to its
work, the words are only a mist, suggesting, while it
hides, the divine form of the original image or thought ;
and his imagination strives to body forth that, as he
conceives it, in all its celestial proportions. Let us com
pare with Lord Derby's version, as the latest, a passage
where Chapman merely intensities (Book XIIL, begin
ning at the 86th verse in Lord Derby, the 73d of Chap
man, and the 76th of Homer) : —

" Whom answered thus the son of Telamon :
' My hands, too, grasp with firmer hold the spear,
My spirit, like thine, is stirred; I feel my feet
Instinct with fiery life; nor should I fear
With Hector, son of Priam, in his might
Alone to meet, and grapple to the death.' "

Thus Lord Derby. Chapman renders : —

" This Telamonius thus received: ' So, to my thoughts, my hands
Burn with desire to toss my lance; each foot beneath me stands
Bare on blight fire to use his speed ; my heart is raised so high,
That to encounter Hector's self I long insatiately.' "

There is no question which version is the more ener
getic. Is Lord Derby's nearer the original in being
tamer 1 He has taken the " instinct with fiery life "
from Chapman's hint. The original has simply " rest
less," or more familiarly "in a fidget." There is noth
ing about " grappling to the death," and " nor should I
fear " is feeble where Chapman with his " long insatiate
ly " is literal. We will give an example where Chap
man has amplified his original (Book XVI. v. 426 ;
Derby, 494 ; Chapman, 405) : -

" Down jumped he from his chariot; down leapt his foe as light;
And as, on some far-looking rock, a cast of vultures fight,

LIBRARY OF OLD AUTHORS. 329

Fly on each other, strike and truss, part, meet, and then stick by,
Tug both with crooked beaks and seres, cry, tight, and fight aud cry,
So fiercely fought these angry kings." *

Lord Derby's version is nearer : —

" He said, and from his car, accoutred, sprang;
Patroclus saw aud he too leaped to earth.
As on a lofty rock, with angry screams,
Hook-beaked, with talons curved, two vultures fight,
So with loud shouts these two to battle rushed."

Chapman has made his first line out of two in Homer,
but, granting the license, how rapid and springy is the
verse ! Lord Derby's " withs " are not agreeable, his
" shouts " is an ill-chosen word for a comparison with
vultures, " talons curved " is feeble, and his verse is, as
usual, mainly built up of little blocks of four syllables
each. "To battle" also is vague. With whom? Ho
mer says that they rushed each at other. We shall not
discuss how much license is loyal in a translator, but, as
we think his chief aim should be to give a feeling of that
life and spirit which makes the immortality of his origi
nal, and is the very breath in the nostrils of all poetry,
he has a right to adapt himself to the genius of his own
language. If he would do justice to his author, he must
make up in one passage for his unavoidable shortcomings
in another. He may here and there take for granted
certain exigencies of verse in his original which he feels
in his own case. Even Dante, who boasted that no word
had ever made him say what, he did not wish, should
have made an exception of rhyming ones, for these some
times, even in so abundant ;i language as the Italian,
have driven the most straightforward of poets into an
awkward detour.

\\ <• give one more passage1 from Chapman : —

* Clinpinnn himself was evidently pleased with this, for he cites it
as a sample of his version.

330 LIBRARY OF OLD AUTHORS.

" And all in golden weeds

He clothed himself; the golden scourge most elegantly done
He took and mounted to his seat; and then the god begun
To drive his chariot through the waves. From whirl-pits every yray
The whales exulted under him, and knew their king; the sea
For joy did open, and his horse so swift and lightly flew
The under axle-tree of brass no drop of water drew."

Here the first half is sluggish and inadequate, but what
surging vigor, what tumult of the sea, what swiftness,
in the last ! Here is Lord Derby's attempt : —

"All clad in gold, the golden lash he grasped
Of curious work, and, mounting on his car,
Skimmed o'er the waves; from all the depths below
Gambolled around the monsters of the deep,
Acknowledging their king ; the joyous sea
Parted her waves; swift flew the bounding steeds,
Nor was the brazen axle wet with spray."

Chapman here is truer to his master, and the motion is
in the verse itself. Lord Derby's is description, and not
picture. " Monsters of the deep " is an example of the
hackneyed periphrases in which he abounds, like all men
to whom language is a literary tradition, and not a living
gift of the Muses. " Lash " is precisely the wrong word.
Chapman is always great at sea. Here is another exam
ple from the Fourteenth Book : —

" And as, when with unwieldy waves the great sea forefeels urindt
That both ways murmur, and no way her certain current finds.
But pants and swells confusedly, here goes, and there will stay,
Till on it air casts one firm wind, and then it rolls away."

Observe how the somewhat ponderous movement of th*
first verse assists the meaning of the words.

He is great, too, in single phrases and lines : —

" And as, from top of some steep hill, the Lightener strips a cloud
And lets a great sky out of ffeaven, in whose delightsome light
All prominent foreheads, forests, towers, and temples cheer the sight.1

(Book XVI. v. 286.)

The lion "lets his rough brows down so low they hide
his eyes " ; the flames " wrastle " in the woods ; " rude

LIBRARY OF OLD AUTHORS. 331

feet dim the day with a fog of dust ; " and so in a hun
dred other instances.

For an example of his more restrained vigor, take the
speech of Sarpedon in the Twelfth Book of the Iliad,
and for poetic beauty, the whole story of Ulysses and
Nausikaa in the Odyssey. It was here that Keats made
himself Grecian and learned to versify.

Mr. Hooper has done his. work of editing well. But
he has sometimes misapprehended his author, and dis
torted his meaning by faulty punctuation. In one of
the passages already cited, Mr. Hooper's text stands
thus : " Lest I be prejudiced with opinion, to dissent,
of ignorance, or singularity." All the commas which
darken the sense should be removed. Chapman meant
to say, " Lest I be condemned beforehand by people
thinking I dissent out of ignorance or singularity." (Iliad
Vol. I. p. 23.) So on the next page the want of a hyphen
makes nonsense : " And saw the round coming [round-
coming] of this silver bow of our Phoebus," that is, the
crescent coming to the full circle. In the translations,
too, the pointing needs reformation now and then, but
shows, on the whole, a praiseworthy fidelity. We will
give a few examples of what we believe to be errors on
the part of Mr. Hooper, who, by the way, is weakest on
points which concern the language of Chapman's day.
We follow the order of the text as most convenient.

"Bid" (II. i.) is explained to mean "threaten, chal
lenge," where "offer" would be the right word.

" And ca^t
The offal of all to the deep." (II. i. 309.)

Surely a slip of Chapman's pen. He must have mtended
to write " Of all the offal," a transvcrsion common with
him and needed here to avoid a punning jingle.

wSo much I must aflirin our power ('xccc-ds th' inhabitant." (II. ii. 110.

332 LIBRARY OF OLD AUTHORS.

Mr. Hooper's note is " inhabiters, viz. of Troy." " In
habitant " is an adjective agreeing with " power." Our
power without exceeds that within.

" Yet all this time to stay,

Out of our judgments, for our end, and now to take our way
Without it were absurd and vile." (II. u. 257.)

A note on this passage tells us that " out of judgments"
means " against our inclinations." It means simply " in
accordance with our good judgment," just as we still say
" out of his wisdom." Compare 11. iii. 63,

u Hector, because thy sharp reproof is out of justice given,
I take it well."

" And as Jove, brandishing a star which men a comet call,
Hurls out his curled hair abroad, that from his brand exhals
A thousand sparks." (II. iv. 85.)

Mr. Hooper's note is " ' Which men a comet calV — so
both the folios. Dr. Taylor has printed ' which man a
comet calls.'' This certainly suits the rhyme, but I ad
here to Chapman's text." Both editors have misunder
stood the passage. The fault is not in " call " but in
" exhals," a clear misprint for " exhall," the spelling, as
was common, being conformed to the visible rhyme.
" That " means " so that " (a frequent Elizabethan con
struction) and "exhall" is governed by "sparks." The
meaning is, "As when Jove, brandishing a comet, hurls
out its curled hair so that a thousand sparks exhale
from its burning."

" The evicke skipping from the rock."

Mr. Hooper tells us, " It is doubtful what this word
really is. Dr. Taylor siiggests that it may probably
mean the evict, or doomed one — but 1 It is possible
Chapman meant to Anglicize the Greek at£ ; or should
we read Ibex, as the cu£ i£aXoy was such 1 " The word
means the chamois, and is merely the English form of the
French loiche. Dr. Taylor's -reading would ama/e us

LIBRARY OF OLD AUTHORS. 333

were we not familiar with the commentators on Shake
speare.

" And now they out-ray to your fleet." (II. v. 793.)

" Out-ray — spread out in array ; abbreviated from ar
ray. Dr. Taylor says 'rush out,' from the Anglo-
Saxon ' rean,' to flow ; but there seems no necessity for
such an etymology." We should think not ! Chapman,
like Pope, made his first sketch from the French, and
corrected it by the Greek. Those who would under
stand Chapman's English must allow for traces of his
French guide here and there. This is one of them, per
haps. The word is etymologically unrelated to array.
It is merely the old French oultreer, a derivative of
ultra. It means " they pass beyond their gates even to
your fleet." He had said just before that formerly
"your foes durst not a foot address urithout their ports."
The word occurs again II. xxiii. 413.

" When none, though many kings put on, could make his vaunt, he led
Tydides to renewed assault or issued first the dike." (.11- viii. 217.)

" Tydides. — He led Tydides, i. e. Tydides he led. An
unusual construction." Not in the least. The old print
ers or authors sometimes put a comma where some con
necting particle was left out. We had just now an in
stance where one took the place of so. Here it supplies
that. " None could make his vaunt that he led (that
is, was before) Tydides." We still use the word in the
same sense, as the " leading " horse in a race.
" And all did wilfully expect the silver-throned morn." (II. viii. 497 )
" Wilfully — willingly, anxiously." Wishfully, as elser
where in Chapman.

" And as, upon a rich man's crop of barley or of wheat,
Opposed for swiftness at their work, a sort of reapers sweat."

" Opposed — standing opposite to one another for expedi
tion's sake." We hope Mr. Hooper understood his owu

334 LIBRARY OF OLD AUTHORS.

note, for it baffles us utterly. The meaning is simply
" pitted against each other to see which will reap most
swiftly." In a note (II. xi. 417) we are told that "the
etymology [of lucerii\ seems uncertain." It is nothing
more than a corruption of the old French leucerve (loup-

cervier).

" I would then make-in in deed and steep
My income in their bloods." (II. xvii. 481.)

" Income — communication, or infusion, of courage from
the Gods. The word in this sense Todd says was a
favorite in Cromwell's time." A surprising note ! In
come here means nothing more than " onfall," as the con
text shows.

" To put the best in wre." (II. xvii. 545.)

" Ure — use. Skinner thinks it a contraction of usura.
It is frequent in Chaucer. Todd gives examples from
Hooker and L'Estrange." The word is common enough,
but how Mr. Hooper could seriously quote good old
Skinner for such an etymology we cannot conceive. It
does not mean " in use," but " to work," being merely
the English form of en oeuvre, as " manure " is of ma-
nceuvrer.

" So troop-meal Troy pursued a while." (II. xvii. 634.)
"Troop-meal — in troops, troop by troop. So piece
meal. To meal was to mingle, mix together ; from the
French meler The reader would do well to con
sult Dr. Jamieson's excellent ' Dictionary of the Scottish
Language ' in voce ' mell.' " No doubt the reader might
profit by consulting it under any other word beginning
with M, and any of them would be as much to the pur
pose as mell. Troop-meal, like inch-meal, piece-meal, im
plies separation, not mingling, and is from a Teutonic
root. Mr. Hooper is always weak in his linguistic.
In a note on II. xviii. 144, he informs us that " To sterve
is to die ; and the sense of starve, with cold or hunger

LIBRARY OF OLD AUTHORS. 335

originated in the 1 7th century." We would it had !
But we suspect that men had died of both these diseases
earlier. What he should have said was that the restric
tion of meaning to dying with hunger was modern.

II. xx. 239 we have " the God's " for " the Gods' " and
a few lines below " Anchisiades' " for " Anchisiades's " ;
II. xxi. 407, " press'd " for " prest."

We had noted a considerable number of other slips,
but we will mention only two more. " Treen broches "
is explained to mean "branches of trees." (Hymn to
Hermes, 227.) It means " wooden spits." In the
Bacchus (28, 29) Mr. Hooper restores a corrupt reading
which Mr. Singer (for a wonder) had set right. He
prints, —

" Nay, which of all the Pow'r fully-divined
Esteem ye him?"

Of course it should be powerfully-divined, for otherwise
we must read " Pow'rs." The five volumes need a very
careful revision in their punctuation, and in another edi
tion we should advise Mr. Hooper to strike out every
note in which he has been tempted into etymology.

We come next to Mr. W. C. Hazlitt's edition of Love
lace. Three short pieces of Lovelace's have lived, and
deserved to live : " To Lucasta from Prison," " To Lu-
casta on going to the Wars," and " The Grasshopper."
They are graceful, airy, and nicely finished. The last
especially is a charming poem, delicate in expression,
and full of quaint fancy, which only in the latter half is
strained to conceit. As the verses of a gentleman they
are among the best, though not of a very high order as
poetry. He is to be classed with the lucky authors who,
without great powers, have written one or two pieces so
facile in thought and fortunate in phrase as to be carried
lightly in the memory, poems in which analysis finds lit-

336 LIBRARY OF OLD AUTHORS.

tie, but which are charming in their frail completeness.
This faculty of hitting on the precise lilt of thought and
measure that shall catch the universal ear and sing them
selves in everybody's memory, is a rare gift. We have
heard many ingenious persons try to explain the cling of
such a poem as " The Burial of Sir John Moore," and
the result of ah1 seemed to be, that there were certain
verses that were good, not because of their goodness, but
because one could not forget them. They have the
great merit of being portable, and we have to carry so
much luggage through life, that we should be thankful
for what will pack easily and take up no room.

All that Lovelace wrote beside these three poems is
utterly worthless, mere chaff from the threshing of his
wits. Take oiit the four pages on which they are
printed, and we have two hundred and eighty-nine left
of the sorriest stuff that ever spoiled paper. The poems
are obscure, without anything in them to reward perse
verance, dull without being moral, and full of conceits so
far-fetched that we could wish the author no worse fate
than to carry them back to where they came from. We
are no enemies to what are commonly called conceits,
but authors bear them, as heralds say, with a difference.
And a terrible difference it is ! With men like Earle,
Donne, Fuller, Butler, Marvell, and even Quarles, con
ceit means wit ; they would carve the merest cherry
stone of thought in the quaintest and delicatest fashion.
But with duller and more painful writers, such as Gas-
coyne, Marston, Felltham, and a score of others, even
with cleverer ones like Waller, Crashawe, and Suckling,
where they insisted on being fine, their wit is conceit.
Difficulty without success is perhaps the least tolerable
kind of writing. Mere stupidity is a natural failing ;
we skip and pardon. But the other is Dulness in a
domino, that travesties its familiar figure, and lures us

LIBRARY OF OLD AUTHORS. 337

only to disappoint. These unhappy verses of Lovelace's
had been dead and lapt in congenial lead these two hun
dred years ; — what harm had they done Mr. Hazlitt that
he should disinter them ] There is no such disenchant-
er of peaceable reputations as one of these resurrection-
men of literature, who will not let mediocrities rest in
the grave, where the kind sexton, Oblivion, had buried
them, but dig them up to make a profit on their lead.

Of all Mr. Smith's editors, Mr. W. Carew Hazlitt
is the worst. He is at times positively incredible,
worse even than Mr. Halliwell, and that is saying a
good deal. Worthless as Lovelace's poems were, they
should have been edited correctly, if edited at all. Even
dulness and dirtiness have a right to fair play, and to
be dull and dirty in their own way. Mr. Hazlitt has
allowed all the misprints of the original (or by far the
greater part of them) to stand, but he has ventured on
many emendations of the text, and in every important
instance has blundered, and that, too, even where the
habitual practice of his author in the use of words might
have led him right. The misapprehension shown in some
of his notes is beyond the belief of any not familiar
with the way in which old books are edited in Eng
land by the job. We have broiight a heavy indictment,
and we proceed to our proof, choosing only cases where
there can be no dispute. We should premise that Mr.
Hazlitt professes to have corrected the punctuation.

" And though he sees it full of wound-:,
Cruel one, still he wounds it. (p. 34.)

Here the original reads, " Cruel still on," and the only
correction needed was a comma after " cruel."

" And by HIP glorious light

Of both tho*p st:u->, which of their spheres bereft,
Only the jelly 's left" (p. 41.)

The original has " of which," and rightly, for " their
15 Y

338 LIBRARY OF OLD AUTHORS.

spheres bereft " is parenthetic, and the sense is " of
which only the jelly 's left." Lovelace is speaking of the
eyes of a mistress who has grown old, and his image, con
fused as it is, is based on the belief that stars shooting
from their spheres fell to the earth as jellies, — a belief,
by the way, still to be met with in New England.

Lovelace, describing a cow (and it is one of the few
pretty passages in the volume), says, —

" She was the largest, goodliest beast
That ever mead or altar blest,
Round as her udder, and more white
Than is the Milky-Way in night." (p. 64.)

Mr. Hazlitt changes to " Round was her udder," thus
making that white instead of the cow, as Lovelace in
tended. On the next page we read, —

" She takes her leave o' th' mournful neat,
Who, by her toucht, now prizeth her life,
Worthy alone the hollowed knife."

Compare Chapman (Iliads, xviii. 480) : —

" Slew all their white fleec'd sheep and neat."

The original was " prize their life," and the use of
" neat " as a singular in this way is so uncommon, if
not unprecedented, and the verse as corrected so halt
ing, that we have no doubt Lovelace so wrote it. Of
course " hollowed " should be " hallowed," though the
broader pronunciation still lingers in our country pul
pits.

" What need she other bait or charm

But look? or angle but her arm ?" (p. 65.)

So the original, which Mr. Hazlitt, missing the sense,
has changed to " what hook or angle."

" Fly Joy on wings of Popinjays
To courts of fools where as your plays
Die laught at and forgot." (p. 67.)

The original has " there." Read, —

LIBRARY OF OLD AUTHORS. 339

" Fly, Joy, on wings of popinjays
To courts of fools; there, sis your plays,
Die," &c.

" Where as," as then used, would make it the " plays "
that were to die.

" As he Lucasta nara'd. a groan
Strangles the fainting passing tone;
But as she heard, Lucasta smiles,
Posses her round; she's slipt meanwhiles
Behind the blind of a thick bush." (p. 68.)

Mr. Hazlitt's note on "posses" could hardly be matched
by any member of the posse comitatus taken at ran
dom : —

" This word does not appear to have any very exact
meaning. See Halliwell's Dictionary of Archaic Words, art.
Posse, and Worcester's Diet, ibid., &c. The context here
requires to turn sharply or quickly."

The " ibid., &c." is delightful ; in other words, " find
out the meaning of posse for yourself." Though dark to
Mr. Hazlitt, the word has not the least obscurity in it.
It is only another form of push, nearer the French
pousser, from Latin pulsare, and " the context here re
quires " nothing more than that an editor should read a
poem if he wish to understand it. The plain meaning

is,—

" But, as she heard Luccuta, smiles
Possess her round."

That is, when she heard the name Lucasta, — for thus
Sar in the poem she has passed under the pseudonyme
of Amarantha. " Possess her round " is awkward, but
mildly so for Lovelace, who also spells " commandress "
in the same way with a single s. Process is spelt prosses
in the report of those who absented themselves from
Church in Stratford.

" 0 thon, that swing'st upon the waving eare,
Of some well-filled oaten beard." (p. 94.)

340 LIBRARY OF OLD AUTHORS.

Mr. Hazlitt, for some inscrutable reason, has changed
"haire" to " eare " in the first line, preferring the ear
of a beard to its hair J
Mr. Hazlitt prints, —

" Poor verdant foole ! and now green ice, thy joys
Large and as lasting as thy peirch of grass,
Bid us lay in 'gainst winter raine and poize
Their flouds with an o'erflowing glasse." (p. 95.)

Surely we should read : —

" Poor verdant foole and now green ice, thy joys,
Large and as lasting as thy perch of grass,
Bid," &c.

i. e. " Poor fool now frozen, the shortness of thy joys,
who mad'st no provision against winter, warns us to do
otherwise."

" The radiant gemme was brightly set
In as divine a carkanet;
Of which the clearer was not knowne
Her minde or her complexion." (p. 101.)

The original reads rightly " for which," &c., and, the
passage being rightly pointed, we have, —

" For which the clearer was not known,
Her mind or her complexion."

Of course " complexion " had not its present limited
meaning.

" . . . . my future daring bayes
Shall bow itself."" (p. 107.)

" We should read themselves" says Mr. Hazlitt's note
authoritatively. Of course a noun ending in s is plural !
Not so fast. In spite of the dictionaries, bays was often
used in the singular.

" Do plant a sprig of cypress, not of bays,"

says Robert Randolph in verses prefixed to his brother's
poems ; and Felltham in " Jonsonus Virbius,"

" A greener bays shall crown Ben Jonson's name."

But we will cite Mr. Bayes himself : —

LIBRARY OF OLD AUTHORS. 341

" And, where he took it up, resigns the bays."

" But we (defend us!) are divine,

[Not] female, but madam born, and come
From a right-honorable wombe." (p. 115.)

Here Mr. Hazlitt has ruined both sense and metre by
his unhappy " not." We should read " Female, but
madam-born," meaning clearly enough " tee are women,
it is true, but of another race."

" In every hand [let] a cup be found
That from all hearts a health may sound." (p. 121.)

Wrong again, and the inserted "let" ruinous to the meas
ure. Is it possible that Mr. Hazlitt does not understand
so common an English construction as this ?

" First told thee into th' ayre, then to the ground." (p. 141.)

Mr. Hazlitt inserts the " to," which is not in the original,
from another version. Lovelace wrote "aye'r." We
have noted two other cases (pp. 203 and 248) where he
makes the word a dissyllable. On the same page we
have " shewe's " changed to " shew " because Mr. Hazlitt
did not know it meant " show us " and not " shows." On
page 170, "their" is substituted for "her," which re
fers to Lucasta, and could refer to nothing else.

Mr. Hazlitt changes " quarrels the student Mercury "
to " quarrels with," not knowing that quarrels was once
used as a transitive verb. (p. 189.)

Wherever lie chances to notice it, Mr. Ha/.litt changes
the verb following two or more nouns connected by an
"and " from singular to plural. For instance : —

" You, sir, alone, fame, and all conquering rhyme
File the set teeth," &c. (p. 224.)

for "files." Lovelace commonly writes so ; — on p. 181,
where it escaped Mr. Hazlitt's grammatical eye, we
find,-

" But broken faith, ami tli' c:iii^<> of it,
All damning gold, was damned to the nit."

342 LIBRARY OF OLD AUTHORS.

Indeed, it was usual with writers of that day. Milton
in one of his sonnets has, —

" Thy worth and skill exempts thee from the throng," —

and Leigh Hunt, for the sake of the archaism, in one of
his, " Patience and Gentleness is power."

Weariness, and not want of matter, compels us to
desist from further examples of Mr. Hazlitt's emenda
tions. But we must also give a few specimens of his
notes, and of the care with which he has corrected the
punctuation.

In a note on " flutes of canary " (p. 76) too long to
quote, Mr. Hazlitt, after citing the glossary of Nares
(edition of 1859, by Wright and Halliwell, a very care
less book, to speak mildly), in which flute is conjectured
to mean cask, says that he is not satisfied, but adds,
" I suspect that a flute of canary was so called from
the cask having several vent-holes." But flute means
simply a tall glass. Lassel, describing the glass-making
ftt Murano, says, " For the High Dutch they have high
glasses called Flutes, a full yard long." So in Dryden's
Sir Martin Mar-all, " bring two flute-basses and some
stools, ho ! We '11 have the ladies' health." The origin
pf the word, though doubtful, is probably nearer to flood
than flute. But conceive of two gentlemen, members of
one knows not how many learned societies, like Messrs.
Wright and Halliwell, pretending to edit Nares, when
they query a word which they could have found in any
French or German dictionary !

On page 93 we have, —

" Hayle. holy cold! chaste temper, hayle! the fire
Raved o'er my purer thoughts I feel t' expire."

Mr. Hazlitt annotates thus : " Rav'd seems here to be
equivalent to reavd or bereav'd. Perhaps the correct
reading may be 'reav'd.' See Worcester's Dictionary,
art. liAjb, where Menage's supposition of affinity be-

LIBRARY OF OLD AUTHORS. 343

tween rave and bereave is perhaps a little too slightingly
treated."

The meaning of Lovelace was, " the fire that raved."
But what Mr. Hazlitt would make with " reaved o'er my
purer thoughts," we cannot conceive. On the whole, we
think he must have written the note merely to make his
surprising glossological suggestion. All that Worcester
does for the etymology, by the way, is to cite Richard
son, no safe guide.

" Where now one so so spatters, t'other: no! " (p. 112.)

The comma in this verse has, of course, no right there,
but Mr. Hazlitt leaves the whole passage so corrupt that
we cannot spend time in disinfecting it. We quote it
only for the sake of his note on " so so." It is marvel
lous.

" An exclamation of approval when an actor made a hit.
The corruption seems to be somewhat akin to the Italian, ' «f,
si,' a corruption of ' sia, sia.' "

That the editor of an English poet need not under
stand Italian we may grant, but that he should not
know the meaning of a phrase so common in his own
language as so-so is intolerable. Lovelace has been say
ing that a certain play might have gained applause un
der certain circumstances, but that everybody calls it
go-so, — something very different from " an exclamation
of approval," one should say. The phrase answers
exactly to the Italian cosi co.sl, while si (not si) is derived
from sic, and is analogous with the affirmative use of the
German so and the Yankee jes' so.

" Oh, how he hast'ned death, burnt to be fryed! " (p. 141.)
The note on fryed is, —

" I. e. freed. Free and freed were sometimes pronounced
like/?-// M\(\ fn/ed ; for Lord North, in his Forest of Varieties,
1645, has these lines : —

344 LIBRARY OF OLD AUTHORS.

' Birds that long have hved free,
Caught and cag'd, but pine and die.'

Here evidently free is intended to rhyme with die."

"Evidently!" An instance of the unsafeness of
rhyme as a guide to pronunciation. It was die that had
the sound of dee, as everybody (but Mr. Hazlitt) knows.
Lovelace himself rhymes die and she on p. 269. But
what shall we say to our editor's not knowing that fry
was used formerly where we should say burn ? Lovers
used to fry with love, whereas now they have got out of
the frying-pan into the fire. In this case a martyr is
represented as burning (i. e. longing) to be fried (i. e.
burned).

" Her beams ne'er shed or change like th' hair of day." (p. 224.)
Mr. Hazlitt's note is, —

" Hair is here used in what has become quite an obsolete
sense. The meaning is outward form, nature, or character.
The word used to be by no means uncommon ; but it is now,
as wa,s before remarked, out of fashion ; and indeed I do not
think that it is found even in any old writer used exactly in
the way in which Lovelace has employed it."

We should think not, as Mr. Hazlitt understands it !
Did he never hear of the golden hair of Apollo, — of the
intonmm Cynthium ? Don Quixote was a better scholar
where he speaks of las doradas hebras de sus hermosos
cabellos. But hair never meant what Mr. Hazlitt says it
does, even when used as he supposes it to be here. It
had nothing to do with " outward form, nature, or
character," but had a meaning much nearer what we
express by temperament, which its color was and is
thought to indicate.

On p. 232 " wild ink " is explained to mean " unre
fined." It is a mere misprint for " vttd."

Page 237, Mr. Hazlitt, explaining an illusion of Love
lace to the " east and west " in speaking of George

LIBRARY OF OLD AUTHORS. 345

Sandys, mentions Sandys's Oriental travels, but seems
not to know that he translated Ovid in Virginia.
Pages 251, 252:-

" And as that soldier conquest doubted not,
Who but one splinter had of Castriot,
But would assault ev'n death, so strongly charmed,
And naked oppose rocks, with this bone armed."

Mr. Hazlitt reads his for this in the last verse, and his
note on " bone " is : —

"And he found a new jawbone of an ass, and put forth
his hand and took it, and slew a thousand men therewith.
(Judges xv. 15.) "

Could the farce of " editing " go further 1 To make a
" splinter of Castriot " an ass's jawbone is a little too
bad. We refer Mr. Hazlitt to " The Life of George Cas
triot, King of Epirus and Albania," &c., <fcc., (Edinburgh,
1753,) p. 32, for an explanation of this profound diffi
culty. He will there find that the Turkish soldiers wore
relics of Scanderbeg as charms.

Perhaps Mr. Hazlitt's most astoimding note is on the
word pickear. (p. 203.)

" So within shot she doth pickear,
Now gall's [galls] the flank and now the rear."

" In the sense in which it is here used this word seems to
be peculiar to Lovelace. To pickear, or pickeer, means to
skirmish." And, pray, what other possible meaning can
it have herel

Of his corrections of the press we will correct a few
samples.

Page 34, for " Love nee're his standard," read " neere."
Page 82, for " fall too," read " fall to " (or, as we ought to
print such words, "fall-to"). Pn-r *•">. for "star-made
firmament," read "star, made firmament." Page 161,
for " To look their enemies in their hearse," read, both
for sense and metre, into. Page 176, for " the gods have
15*

346 LIBBAKY OF OLD AUTHORS.

kneeled," read had. Page 182, for "In beds they tum
bled off their own," read of. Page 184, for "in mine
one monument I lie," read owne. Page 212, for " Deu
calion's WacMung stone," read "backflung." Of the
punctuation we shall give but one specimen, and that a
fair average one : —

" Naso to his Tibullus flung the wreath,
He to Catullus thus did each bequeath.
This glorious circle, to another round,
At last the temples of a god it bound."

Our readers over ten years of age will easily correct this
for themselves.

Time brings to obscure authors* an odd kind of repa
ration, an immortality, not of love and interest and ad
miration, but of curiosity merely. In proportion as
their language was uncouth, provincial, or even barba
rous, their value becomes the greater. A book of which
only a single copy escaped its natural enemies, the pas
try-cook and trunk-maker, may contain one word that
makes daylight in some dark passage of a great author,
and its name shall accordingly live forever in a note. Is
not, then, a scholiastic athanasy better than none 1 And
if literary vanity survive death, or even worse, as Bru-
netto Latini's made him insensible for a moment to the
rain of fire and the burning sand, the authors of such
books as are not properly literature may still comfort
themselves with a non omnis moriar, laying a mournful
emphasis on the adjective, and feeling that they have
not lived wholly in vain while they share with the dodo
a fragmentary continuance on earth. To be sure, the
immortality, such as it is, belongs less to themselves
than to the famous men they help to illusti-ate. If they
escape oblivion, it is by a back door, as it were, and they

* Early Popular Poetry. Edited by W. Carew Harlitt

LIBRARY OF OLD AUTHORS. 347

survive only in fine print at the page's foot. At the
banquet of fame they sit below the salt. After all, per
haps, the next best thing to being famous or infamous
is to be utterly forgotten, for this also is to achieve a
kind of definite result by living. To hang on the peril
ous edge of immortality by the nails, liable at any mo
ment to drop into the fathomless ooze of oblivion, is at
best a questionable beatitude. And yet sometimes the
merest barnacles that have attached themselves to the
stately keels of Dante or Shakespeare or Milton have
an interest of their own by letting us know in what re
mote waters those hardy navigators went a pearl-fishing.
Has not Mr. Dyce traced Shakespeare's " dusty death "
to Anthony Copley, and Milton's "back resounded
Death ! " to Abraham Fraunce 1 Nay, is it not Bernard
de Ventadour's lark that sings forever in the diviner air
of Dante's Paradise 1

" Quan vey laudeta mover
De joi sas alas contra'I rai,
Que s'oblida e s laissa cazer
Per la doussor qu 'al cor li 'n vai."

" Qual lodoletta che in acre si spazia,
Prima cantando, e poi tace contents
Dell' ultima dolcezza che la sazia."

We are not sure that Bernard's " Que s'oblida e s
laissa cazer " is not sweeter than Dante's " tace conten-
ta," but it was plainly the doussor that gave its cue to
the greater poet's memory, and he has improved on it
with that exquisite ultima, as his master Virgil some
times did on Homer.

But authors whose interest for us is mainly biblio
graphic belong rather in such collections as Mr. Alli-
bone's. As literature they are oppressive ; as items of
literary history they find their place in that vast list
which records not only those named for promotion, but
also the killed, wounded, and missing in the Battle of

348 LIBRARY OF OLD AUTHORS.

the Books. There our hearts are touched with some
thing of the same vague pathos that dims the eye in
some deserted graveyard. The brief span of our earthly
immortalities is brought home to us as nowhere else.
What a necrology of notability ! How many a contro
versialist, terrible in his day, how many a rising genius
that somehow stuck on the horizon, how many a wither
ing satirist, lies here shrunk all away to the tombstone
brevity of a name and date ! Think of the aspirations,
the dreams, the hopes, the toil, the confidence (of him
self and wife) in an impartial and generous posterity, —
and then read "Smith J. [ohn?] 1713-1784 (1). The
Vision of Immortality, an Epique Poem in twelve books,
1740, 4to. See Lowndes" The time of his own death
less certain than that of his poem, (which we may fix
pretty safely in 1740,) and the only posterity that took
any interest in him .the indefatigable compiler to whom
a name was valuable in proportion as it was obscure.
Well, to have even so much as your title-page read after
it has rounded the corner of its first century, and to
enjoy a posthumous public of one is better than nothing.
This is the true Valhalla of Mediocrity, the Libro <Toro
of the onymi-anonymi, of the never-named authors who
exist only in name. Parson Adams would be here had
he found a printer for his sermons, and Mr. Primrose,
if a copy existed of his tracts on monogamy. Papyror-
cetes junior will turn here with justifiable pride to the
name of his respectable progenitor. Here we are secure
of perpetuity at least, if of nothing better, and are
sons though we may not be heirs, of fame. Here is a
handy and inexpensive substitute for the waxen imagines
of the Roman patriciate, for those must have been in
convenient to pack on a change of lodgings, liable to
melt in warm weather (even the elder Brutus himself
might soften in the dog-days) and not readily salable

LIBRARY OF OLD AUTHORS. 349

unless to some novus homo willing to buy a set of ances
tors ready-made, as some of our own enthusiasts in gene
alogy are said to order a family-tree from the heraldic
nurseryman, skilled to imp a slip of Scroggins on a
stock of De Vere or Montmorenci. Fame, it should
seem, like electricity, is both positive and negative, and
if a writer must be Somebody to make himself of perma
nent interest to the world at large, he must not less be
Nobody to have his namelessness embalmed by M. Gue-
rard. The benignity of Providence is nowhere more
clearly to be seen than in its compensations. As there
is a large class of men madly desirous to decipher cunei
form and other inscriptions, simply because of their il
legibility, so there is another class driven by a like irre
sistible instinct to the reprinting of unreadable books.
Whether these have even a philologic value for us de
pends on the accuracy and learning bestowed upon them
by the editor.

For there is scarcely any rubbish-heap of literature out
of which something precious may not be raked by the
diligent explorer, and the late Mr. Dyce (since Gifford,
the best editor of our literature of the Tudor and Jaco
bean periods) might well be called the Golden Dustman,
so many were the precious trifles sifted out by his intel
ligent industry. It would not be easy to name any
work more thoroughly done than his edition of Skelton.
He was not a philologist in the stricter sense, but no
man had such a commonplace-book as he, or knew so ex
actly the meaning with which words were used during
the period he did so much to illustrate. Elegant scholar
ship is no$ often, as in him, patient of drudgery and
conscientious in painstaking. Between such a man and
Mr. Carew Hazlittthe contrast is by no means agreeable.
The one was not more distinguished by modest accuracy
than the other is by the rash conceit of that half-knowi-

350 LIBRARY OF OLD AUTHORS.

edge which is more mischievous in an editor than down
right ignorance. This language is strong because it is
true, though we should not have felt called upon to use
it but for the vulgar flippancy with which Mr. Hazlitt
alludes depreciatingly to the labors of his predecessors,
— to such men as Ritson, Utterson, Wright, and Sir
Frederick Madden, his superiors in everything that goes
to the making of a good editor. Most of them are now
dead and nailed in their chests, and it is not for us to
forget the great debt we owe to them, and others like
them, who first opened paths for us through the tangled
wilderness of our early literature. A modern editor,
with his ready-made helps of glossary, annotation, and
comment, should think rather of the difficulties than
the defects of these pioneers.

How different is Mr. Hazlitt' s spirit from that of the
thorough and therefore modest scholar ! In the Preface
to his AltengliscJie S2)rackproben, Matzner says of an
editor, das Beste was er ist verdankt er Andern, an acci
dental pentameter that might seem to have dropped out
of Nathan der Weise. Mr. Hazlitt would profit much by
getting some friend to translate for him the whole para
graph in which it occurs.

We see it announced that Mr. Hazlitt is to superin
tend a new edition of Warton's History of English
Poetry, and are pained to think of the treatment that
robust scholar and genial poet is likely to receive at
the hands of an editor without taste, discrimination, or
learning. Of his taste a single specimen may suffice.
He tells us that " in an artistic and constructive point
of view, the Mylner of Abington is superior tp its prede
cessor," that predecessor being Chaucer's Reve's Tale,
which, with his usual inaccuracy, he assigns to the
Miller ! Of his discrimination we have a sufficient test
in the verses he has fathered upon Herrick in a late

LIBRARY OF OLD AUTHORS. 351

edition of the most graceful of our lyric poets. Perhaps
discrimination is not, after all, the right word, for we
have sometimes seen cause to doubt whether Mr. Hazlitt
ever reads carefully the very documents he prints. For
example, in the Biographical Notice prefixed to the
Herrick he says (p. xvii) : " Mr. W. Perry Herrick has
plausibly suggested that the payments made by Sir
William to his nephew were simply on account of the
fortune which belonged to Robert in right of his father,
and which his uncle held in trust ; this was about £ 400 ;
and I think from allusions in the letters printed else
where that this view may be the correct one." May be !
The poet says expressly, " I entreat you out of my little
possession to deliver to this bearer the customarye £ 10,
without which I cannot meate [1] my ioyrney." The
words we have italicized are conclusive. By the way,
Mr. Hazlitt's wise-looking query after " meate " is con
clusive also as to his fitness for editorship. Did he
never hear of the familiar phrase " to meet the expense " 1
If so trifling a misspelling can mystify him, what must
be the condition of his mind in face of the more than
Protean travesties which words underwent before they
were uniformed by Johnson and Walker 1 Mr. Hazlitt's
mind, to be sure, like the wind Cecias, always finds its
own fog. In another of Herri ck's letters we find, " For
what her mouie can be effected (sic) when there is di-
uision 'twixt the hart and hand ] " " Her monie " of
course means harmonic, and effected is therefore right.
What Mr. Hazlitt may have meant by his " (sic) " it
were idle to inquire.

We have already had occasion to examine some of
Mr. Hazlitt's work, and we are sorry to say that in the
four volumes before us we find no reason for changing
our opinion of his utter disqualification for the duties nf
editorship. He seldom clears up a real difficulty (never,

352 LIBRARY OF OLD AUTHORS.

we might say, with lights of his own), he frequently
creates a darkness where none was before, and the pecu
liar bumptiousness of his incapacity makes it particularly
offensive. We shall bring a few instances in proof of
what we assert, our only embarrassment being in the
superabundance of our material. In the Introduction to
the second volume of his collection, Mr. Hazlitt speaks
of "the utter want of common care on the part of pre
vious editors of our old poetry." Such oversights as he
has remarked upon in his notes are commonly errors
of the press, a point on which Mr. Hazlitt, of all men,
should have been charitable, for his own volumes are
full of them. We call his attention to one such which
is rather amusing. In his " additional notes " we find
" line 77, wylle. Strike out the note upon this word ;
but the explanation is correct. Be wroght was a mis
print, however, for he wrog/it." The error occurs in a
citation of three lines in which lather is still left for
tother. The original note affords us so good an example
of Mr. Hazlitt's style of editing as to be worth preserv
ing. In the " Kyng and the Hermit " we read, —

" He ne wyst w[h]ere that he was
Ne out of the forest for to passe,
And thus he rode all wylle."

And here is Mr. Hazlitt's annotation on the word
wylle : —

" i. e. evil. In a MS. of the Tale of the Basyn, sup
posed by Mr. Wright, who edited it in 1836, to be writ
ten in the Salopian dialect, are the following lines : —

' The lother hade litull thoght,
Off husbandry cowth he noght,
But alle his wyves willbe wroght.' " (Vol. I. p. 16.)

It is plain that he supposed will, in this very simple pas
sage, to mean evil ! This he would seem to rectify, but
at the same time takes care to tell us that "the expla-

LIBRARY OF OLD AUTHORS. 353

nation [of wylle\ is correct." He is willing to give up
one blunder, if only he may have one left to comfort
himself withal ! Wylle is simply a rhyming fetch for
loild, and the passage means that the king rode at ran
dom. The use of wild with this meaning is still com
mon in such phrases as "he struck wild." In " Have-
lok " we find it in the nearly related sense of being at a
loss, knowing not what to do : —

" To lincolne barfot he yede
Hwan he kam ther he was ful wit,
Ne hauede he no frend to gangen til."

All wylle, in short, means the kind of editing that is
likely to be done by a gentleman who picks up his mis
information as he goes along. We would hint that a
person must know something before he can use even a
glossary with safety.

In the " King and the Barker," when the tanner finds
out that it is the king whom Tie has been treating so
familiarly, and falls upon his knees, Mr. Hazlitt prints,

" He had no meynde of hes hode, uor cape, ne radell,"
and subjoins the following note : " Radell, or raddle,
signifies a side of a cart ; but here, apparently, stands
for the cart itself. Ritson printed ner adell." Mr.
Hazlitt's explanation of raddle, which he got from Halli-
well, is incorrect. The word, as its derivation (from O.
F. rastet) implies, means the side or end of a Aay-cart, in
which the uprights are set like the teeth of a rake. But
what has a cart to do here 1 There is perhaps a toxich
af what an editor of old doggerel would beiiignantly call
humor, in the tanner's forgetfulness of his raiment,
but the cart is as little to the purpose as one of Mr.
Hazlitt's own notes. The tanner was on horseback, as
the roads of the period required that he should be, and
good old Ritson was plainly on the right track in his
reading, though his text was muddled by a misprint.

354 LIBRARY OF OLD AUTHORS.

As it was, he got one word right, and so far has the
advantage of Mr. Hazlitt. The true reading is, of
course, ner a dell, never a deal, not a whit. The very
phrase occurs in another poem which Mr. Hazlitt has re
printed in his collection, —

" For never a dell
He wyll me love agayne." (Vol. III. p. 2.)

That adell was a misprint in Ritson is proved by the fact
that the word does not appear in his glossary. If we
were to bring Mr. Hazlitt to book for his misprints ! la
the poem we have just quoted he gravely prints, —

" Matter in dede,
My sides did blede,"

for " mother, indede," " through ryght wysenes " for
" though ryghtwisenes," " with man vnkynde " for " sith
man vnkynde," "ye knowe a parte " for "ye knowe
aperte," " here in " for "herein," all of which make non
sense, and all come within the first one hundred and
fifty lines, and those of the shortest, mostly of four syl
lables each. Perhaps they rather prove ignorance than
want of care. One blunder falling within the same
limits we have reserved for special comment, because it
affords a good example of Mr. Hazlitt 's style of editing : —

" Your herte souerayne
Clouen in twayne
By longes the blynde." (Vol. III. p. 7.)

Here the uninstructed reader would be as completely in
the dark as to what longes meant as the editor plainly
was himself The old rhymer no doubt wrote Longis,
meaning thereby Longinus, a personage familiar enough,
one should think, to any reader of mediaeval poetry.
Mr. Hazlitt absolves himself for not having supplied a
glossary by the plea that none is needed by the class
of readers for whom his volumes are intended. But this
will hardly seem a valid excuse for a gentleman who

LIBRARY OF OLD AUTHORS. 355

often goes out of his way to explain in his notes such
simple matters as that " shape " means " form," and that
" Johan of the golden mouthe " means " St. Chrysostom,"
which, indeed, it does not, any more than Johannes Bap-
tista means St. Baptist. We will supply Mr. Hazlitt
with an illustration of the passage from Bekker's Fera-
bras, the more willingly as it may direct his attention to
a shining example of how an old poem should be
edited : —

" en la crotz vos pendero li fals luzieu truun,
can Longis vos ferie de sa lansa trencan:
el non avia vist en trastot son vivan ;
lo sane li venc per 1'asta entro al punh colan;
e [el] toquet ne sos huelhs si vie el mantenan."

Mr. Hazlitt, to be sure (who prints sang parlez for sanz
parler) (Vol. I. p. 265), will not be able to form any no
tion of what these verses mean, but perhaps he will be
able to draw an inference from the capital L that longes
is a proper name. The word truan at the end of the first
verse of our citation may also suggest to him that truant
is not quite so satisfactory an explanation of the word
trewdt as he seems to think. (Vol. IV. p. 24, note.) In
deference to Mr. Hazlitt's presumed familiarity with an
author sometimes quoted by him in his notes, we will
point him to another illustration : —

" Ac ther cam forth a knyght,
With a kene spere y-grounde
Highte Longeus, as the lettre telleth,
And longe hadde lore his sighte."

Piers Ploughman, Wright, p. 374.

Mr. Hazlitt shows to peculiar advantage where old
French is in qhestion. Upon the word Osyll he favors
us with the following note : " The blackbird. In East
Cornwall ozell is used to signify the windpipe, and thence
the bird may have had its name, as Mr. Couch has sug
gested to me." (Vol. II. p. 25.) Of course the black-

356 LIBRARY OF OLD AUTHORS.

bird, alone among fowls, is distinguished by a windpipe 5
The name is merely another form of 0. F. oisil, and was
usurped naturally enough by one of the commonest
birds, just as pajaro (L. passer) in Spanish, by a similar
process in the opposite direction, came to mean bird in
general. On the very next page he speaks of "the Ro
mance which is vulgarly entitled Lybeaus Disconus, i. e.
Le Beau Disconnu." If he had corrected Disconus to
Desconus, all had been well ; but Disconnu neither is nor
ever was French at all. Where there is blundering to
be done, one stone often serves Mr. Hazlitt for two birds.
Ly beaus Disconus is perfectly correct old French, and
another form of the adjective (bius) perhaps explains the
sound we give to the first syllable of beauty and Beau
fort. A barrister at law, as Mr. Hazlitt is, may not be
called on to know anything about old English or modern
French, but we might fairly expect him to have at least
a smattering of Law French ! In volume fourth, page
129, a goodman trying his wife,

" Bad her take the pot that sod ouer the fire
And set it abooue vpon the astire."

Mr. Hazlitt's note iipon astire is " hearth, i. q. astre."
Knowing that the modern French was atre, he too
rashly inferred a form which never existed except in
Italian. The old French word is aistre or estre, but Mr.
Hazlitt, as usual, prefers something that is neither old
French nor new. We do not pretend to know what
astire means, but a hearth that should be abooue the pot
seething over the fire would be unusual, to say the least,
in our semi-civilized country.

In the "Lyfe of Roberte the Deuill" (Vol. I. p. 232),
Mr. Hazlitt twice makes a knight sentre his lance, and
tells us in a note that the "Ed. 1798 has /entered," a
very easy misprint for the right word /entered. What
Mr. Hazlitt supposed to be the meaning of sentre he has

LIBRARY OF OLD AUTHORS. 357

not vouchsafed to tell us. Fautre (sometimes faltre or
feutre) means in old French the rest of a lance. Thus
in the Roman du Renart (26517),

" Et mist sa lance sor lefautre."

But it also meant a peculiar kind of rest. In Sir F.
Madden's edition of Gawayne (to which Mr. Hazlitt
refers occasionally) we read,

" Theyfeutred their lances, these knyghtes good ";
and in the same editor's " William and the Werwolf,"
" With sper fastened in /eater, him for to spille."

In a note on the latter passage Sir F. Madden says,
" There seems no reason, however, why it [feuter] should
not mean the rest attached to the armour." But Roque
fort was certainly right in calling it a " garniture d'une
selle pour tenir la lance." A spear fastened to the sad
dle gave more deadly weight to the blow. The "him
for to spille " implies this. So in " Merlin " (E. E. Text
Soc., p. 488) : " Than thei toke speres grete and rude,
and putte hem in fewtre, and that is the grettest
crewelte that oon may do, ffor turnement oweth to be
with-oute felonye, and they meved to smyte hem as in
mortall werre." The context shows that the fewtre
turned sport into earnest. A citation in Raynouard's
Lexique Roman (though wrongly explained by him) di
rected us to a passage which proves that this particular
kind of rest for the lance was attached to the saddle, in
order to render the blow heavier : —

" Lances « [lege as] arsons afeutre"es
Pour plus de dures colees rendre."

Branche des Roynux Lignages, 4514, 4515.

Mr. Hazlitt, as we have said, lets no occasion slip to
insinuate the inaccuracy and carelessness of his pre
decessors. The long and useful career of Mr. Wright,

358 LIBRAKY OF OLD AUTHORS.

who, if he had given us nothing more than his excel
lent edition of " Piers Ploughman " and the volume of
"Ancient Vocabularies," would have deserved the grati
tude of all lovers of our literature or students of our
language, does not save him from the severe justice of
Mr. Hazlitt, nor is the name of Warton too venerable to
be coupled with a derogatory innuendo. Mr. Wright
needs no plea in abatement from us, and a mischance of
Mr. Hazlitt's own has comically avenged Warton. The
word prayer, it seems, had somehow substituted itself
for prayse in a citation by Warton of the title of the
" Schole-House of Women." Mr. Hazlitt thereupon
takes occasion to charge him with often " speaking at
random," and after suggesting that it might have been
the blunder of a copyist, adds, "or it is by no means
impossible that Warton himself, having been allowed
to inspect the production, was guilty of this oversight."
(Vol. IV. p. 98.) Now, on the three hundred and eigh
teenth page of the same volume, Mr. Hazlitt has allowed
the following couplet to escape his conscientious atten
tion : —

"Next, that no gallant should not ought suppose
Th&tp7-ayers and glory doth consist in cloathes."

Lege, nostro periculo, PRAYSE ! Were dear old Tom still
on earth, he might light his pipe cheerfully with any
one of Mr. Hazlitt's pages, secure that in so doing he
was consuming a brace of blunders at the least. The
word prayer is an unlucky one for Mr. Hazlitt. In the
"Knyght and his Wyfe" (Vol. II. p. 18) he prints: —

" And sayd, Syre, I rede we make
In this chapel oure prayers,
That God us kepe both in ferrus.*

Why did not Mr. Hazlitt, who explains so many things
that everybody knows, give us a note upon in ferrus 1
It would have matched his admirable elucidation of

LIBRARY OF OLD AUTHORS, 359

waygose, which we shall notice presently. Is it not
barely possible that the MS. may have read prayere and
in fere ? Prayere occurs two verses further on, and not
as a rhyme.

Mr. Hazlitt even sets Sir Frederick Madden right on
a question of Old English grammar, telling him super
ciliously that can, with an infinitive, in such phrases as
he can go, is used not " to denote a past tense, but an
imperfect tense." By past we suppose him to mean per
fect. But even if an imperfect tense were not a past
one, we can show by a passage in one of the poems in
this very collection that can, in the phrases referred
to, sometimes not only denotes a past but a perfect

tense : —

" And thorow that worde y felle in pryde;
As the aungelle can of hevyn glyde,
And with the tywnkling* of an eye
God for-dud alle that maystrye
And so hath he done for my gylte."

Now the angel here is Lucifer, and can of hevyn glyde
means simply fell from Jieaven, not was falling. It is in
the same tense as for-dud in the next line. The fall of
the angels is surely a, fait accompli. In the last line, by
the way, Mr. Hazlitt changes "my for" to "for my,"
and wrongly, the my agreeing with maystrye under
stood. In modern English we should use mine in the
same way. But Sir Frederick Madden can take care of
himself.

We have less patience with Mr. Hazlitt' s impertinence
to Kitson, a man of ample reading and excellent taste
in selection, and who, real scholar as he was, always
drew from original sources. We have a foible for Ritson
with his oddities of spelling, his acerb humor, his un
consciously depreciatory mister Tyrwhitts and mister
Bryants, and his obstinate disbelief in Doctor Percy's

* The careless Ritson would have printed this tioynkling.

360 LIBRARY OF OLD AUTHORS.

folio manuscript. Above all, he was a most conscien
tious editor, and an accurate one so far #s was possible
with the lights of that day. Mr. Hazlitt has reprinted
two poems, " The Squyr of Low Degre " and " The
Knight of Curtesy," which had already been edited by
Ritson. The former of these has passages that are un
surpassed in simple beauty by anything in our earlier
poetry. The author of it was a good versifier, and Rit
son, though he corrected some glaring errors, did not
deal so trenchantly with verses manifestly lamed by the
copyist as perhaps an editor should.* Mr. Hazlitt says
of Ritson's text, that " it offers more than an hundred
departures from the original," and of the "Knight of
Courtesy," that " Ritsou's text is by no means accurate."
Now Mr. Hazlitt has adopted nearly all of Ritson's
emendations, without giving the least hint of it. On
the contrary, in some five or six instances, he gives the
original reading in a foot-note with an " old ed. has " so
and so, thus leaving the reader to infer that the correc
tions were his own. Where he has not followed Ritson,
he has almost uniformly blundered, and that through
sheer ignorance. For example, he prints,

" Alas ! it tourned to wroth her heyle,"

where Ritson had substituted wrotherheyle. The meas
ure shows that Ritson was right. Wroth her heyle, more
over, is nonsense. It should have been wrother her heylc
at any rate, but the text is far too modern to admit of
that archaic form. In the " Debate of the Body and the
Soul " (Matzner's A. E. Sprachproben, 103) we have,

* For example : —

"And in the arber wa« a tre
A fairer in the world might none be,"

should certainly read,

" None fairer in the world might be."

LIBRARY OF OLD AUTHORS. 361

" Why schope thou me to wrother-hele,"
and in "Dame Siris" (Ibid., 110),

" To goder hele ever came thou hider."
Mr. Hazlitt prints,

" For yf it may be found in thee

• That thou them [de] fame for entiyte."

The emendation [de] is Ritson's, and is probably right,
though it would require, for the metre's sake, the elision
of that at the beginning of the verse. But what is
enuyte ? Ritson reads enmyte, which is, of course, the
true reading. Mr. Hazlitt prints (as usual either with
out apprehending or without regarding the sense),

" With browes bent and eyes full mery,"

where Ritson has brent, and gives parallel passages in
his note on the word. Mr. Hazlitt gives us

" To here the bugles there yblow,
With their bugles in that place,"

though Ritson had made the proper correction to begles.
Mr. Hazlitt, with ludicrous nonchalance, allows the Squire
to press into the throng

" With a bastard large and longe,"

and that with the right word (baslarde) 'staring him in
the face from Ritson's text. We wonder he did not gi ve
us an illustrative quotation from Faloonbridge ! Iiot.li
editors have allowed some gross errors to escape, such
as " come not " for " come " (v. 425) ; " so leue he be "
for " ye be " (v. 593) ; " vnto her chambre " for " vnto
your" (v. 993) ; but in general Ritson's is the better
and more intelligent text of the two. In the "Knight
of Curtesy," Mr. Hazlitt has followed Ritson's text
almost literatim. Indeed, i< is demonstrable that he
gave it to his printers as copy to set up from. The proof
is this : Ritson has accented a few words ending in tc.
16

362 LIBRARY OF OLD AUTHORS.

Generally he uses the grave accent, but now and then
the acute. Mr. Hazlitt's text follows all these variations
exactly. The main difference between the two is that
Ritson prints the first personal pronoun i, and Mr. Haz-
litt, I. Ritson is probably right ; for in the " Schole-
house of Women" (vv. 537, 538) where the text no
doubt was

" i [i. e. one] deuil a woman to speak may constrain,
But all that in hel be cannot let it again,"

Mr. Hazlitt changes "i" to "A," and says in a note,
" Old ed. has /." That by his correction he should miss
the point was only natural ; for he evidently conceives
that the sense of a passage does not in the least concern
an editor. An instance or two will suffice. In the
"Knyght and his Wyfe" (Vol. II. p. 17) we read,

" The fynd tyl hure hade myche tene
As hit was a sterfull we seme ! "

Mr. Hazlitt in a note explains tene to mean " trouble or
sorrow " ; but if that were its meaning here, we should
read made, and not hade, which would give to the word
its other sense of attention. The last verse of the coup
let Mr. Hazlitt seems to think perfectly intelligible as it
stands. We should not be surprised to learn that he
looked upon it as the one gem that gave lustre to a poem
otherwise of the dreariest. We fear we shall rob it of all
its charm for him by putting it into modern English : —
" As it was after full well seen."

So in the " Smyth and his Dame " (Vol. III. p. 204)
we read,

" It were a lytele maystry
To make a blynde man to se,"

instead of "as lytell." It might, indeed, be as easy to
perform the miracle on a blind man as on Mr. Hazlitt.
Again, in the same poem, a little further on,

LIBRARY OF OLD AUTHORS. 363

" For I tell the now trevely,
Is none so wyse ne to sle,
But ever ye may som what lere,"

which, of course, should be,

" ne so sle
But ever he may som what lere."

Worse than all, Mr. Hazlitt tells us (Vol. I. p. 158) that
when they bury the great Khaii, they lay his body in a
tabernacle,

" With sheld and spere and other wede
With a whit mere to gyf him in ylke."

We will let Sir John Maundeville correct the last verse :
" And they seyn that when he shale come into another
World .... the mare schalle gheven him mt/lk." Mr.
Hazlitt gives us some wretched doggerel by " Piers of
Fulham," and gives it swarming with blunders. We
take at random a couple of specimens : —

" And loveship goith ay to warke
Where that presence is put a bake," (Vol. II. pp. 13, 14,)

where we should read "love's ship," "wrake," and
" abake." Again, just below,

" Ffor men haue seyn here to foryn,
That love laughet when men be forsworn."

Love should be "love." Ovid is the obscure person
alluded to in the " men here to foryn " :

" Jupiter e crelo perjuria ridet amantum."
We dare say Mr. Hazlitt, if he ever read the pas
took it for granted that "to foryn" meant too foreign,
and gave it up in despair. But surely Shakespeare's

" At lovers* perjuries,
They say, Jove laughs,"

is not too foreign to have put him on the right scent.

Mr. Hazlitt is so particular in giving us v for u and
vice versa, that such oversights are a little annoying.

364 LIBRARY OF OLD AUTHORS.

Every man his own editor seems to be his theory of the
way in which old poetry should be reprinted. On this
plan, the more riddles you leave (or make) for the reader
to solve, the more pleasure you give him. To correct
the blunders in any book edited by Mr. Hazlitt would
give the young student a pretty thorough training in
archaic English. In this sense the volumes before us
might be safely recommended to colleges and schools.
When Mr. Hazlitt undertakes to correct, he is pretty
sure to go wrong. For example, in " Doctour Doubble
Ale " (Vol. III. p. 309) he amends thus : —

" And sometyme mikle strife is
Among the ale wyfes, [y-wis] ;

where the original is right as it stands. Just before, in
the same poem, we have a parallel instance : —

" And doctours dnlpatis
That falsely to them pratis,
And bring them to the gates."

The original probably reads (or should read) wyfis and
gatis. But it is too much to expect of Mr. Hazlitt that
he should remember the very poems he is editing from
one page to another, nay, as we shall presently show,
that he should even read them. He will change be into
ben where he should have let it alone (though his own
volumes might have furnished him with such examples
as " were go," " have se," " is do," and fifty more), but
he will sternly retain bene where the rhyme requires be,
and Ritson had so printed. Tn " Adam Bel " the word
pryme occurs (Vol. II. p. 140). and he vouchsafes us the
following note : " i. e. noon. It is commonly used by
early writers in this sense. In the Four P. P., by John
Hey wood, circa 1540, the apothecary says

'Tfhp tnsto tin's boxe nye ahonte the pryme
By the masse, he is in heven or even songe tyme.' "

LIBRARY OF OLD AUTHORS. 365

Let our readers admire with us the easy "it is com
monly used " of Mr. Hazlitt, as if he had store of other
examples in his note-book. He could an if he would !
But unhappily he borrowed this single quotation from
Nares, and, as usual, it throws no scintilla of light upon
the point in question, for his habit in annotation is to
find by means of a glossary some passage (or passages if
possible) in which the word to be explained occurs, and
then — why, then to give the word as an explanation of
itself. But in this instance, Mr. Hazlitt, by the time he
had reached the middle of his next volume (Vol. III.
p. 281) had wholly forgotten that pryme was "commonly
used by early writers " for noon, and in a note on the fol
lowing passage,

" I know not whates a clocke
But by the countre cocke,
The mono nor yet the pryme,
Vntyll the sonne do shyne,"

he informs us that it means " six o'clock in the morn
ing " ! Here again this editor, who taxes Ritson with
want of care, prints mone for none in the very verse he
is annotating, and which we may therefore presume
that he had read. A man who did not know the moon
till the sun showed it him is a match even for Mr. Haz
litt himself. We wish it were as easy as he seems to
think it to settle exactly what pryme means when used
by our " early writers," but it is at least absolutely cer
tain that it did not mean noon.

But Mr. Hazlitt, if these volumes are competent wit
nesses, knows nothing whatever about English, old or
new. In the " Mery Jest of Dane Hew " he finds the
following verses,

" Dame he said what shall we now doo
Sir she said so mote go
The munk in a corner ye shall lay **

366 LIBRARY OF OLD AUTHORS.

which we print purposely without punctuation. Mr.
Hazlitt prints them thus,

" Dame, he said, what shall we now doo ?
Sir, she said, so mote [it] go.
The munk," &c.,

and gives us a note on the locution he has invented to
this effect, " 1 so might it be managed." And the
Chancellor said, / doubt! Mr. Hazlitt's query makes
such a singular exception to his more natural mood of
immediate inspiration that it is almost pathetic. The
amended verse, as everybody (not confused by too great
familiarity with our " early writers " ) knows, should

read,

" Sir, she said, so might I go,"

and should be followed only by a comma, to show its
connection with the next. The phrase " so mote I go,"
is as common as a weed in the works of the elder poets,
both French and English ; it occurs several times in Mr.
Hazlitt's own collection, and its other form, " so mote I
fare," which may also be found there, explains its mean
ing. On the phrase point-device (Vol. III. p. 117) Mr.
Hazlitt has a positively incredible note, of which we
copy only a part : " This term, which is commonly used
in early poems " [mark once more his intimacy with our
earlier literature] " to signify extreme exactitude, origi
nated in the points which were marked on the astrolabe,
as one of the means which the astrologers and dabblers
in the black art adopted to enable them (as they pre
tended) to read the fortunes of those by whom they were
consulted in the stars and planetary orbs. The exces
sive precision which was held to be requisite in the
delineation of these points " [the delineation of a point
is good !] " &c. on the astrolabe, led to point-device, or
points-device (as it is sometimes found spelled), being
used as a proverbial expression for minute accuracy of

LIBRARY OF OLD AUTHORS. 367

any kind." Then follows a quotation from Gower, in
which an astrolabe is spoken of " with points and cercles
merveilous," and the note proceeds thus : " Shakespeare
makes use of a similar figure of speech in the Tempest,
I. 2, where the following dialogue takes place between
Prospero and Ariel : —

' Prosp. Hast thou, spirit,
Performed to point the tempest that I bade thee ?
Ar. In every article.' "

Neither the proposed etymology nor the illustration
requires any remark from us. We will only say that
point-device is excellently explained and illustrated by
Wedgwood.

We will give a few more examples out of many to
show Mr. Hazlitt's utter unfitness for the task he has
undertaken. In the " Kyng and the Hermyt " are the
following verses,

" A wyld wey, I hold, it were
The wey to wend, I you swere,
Bot ye the dey may se,"

meaning simply, " I think it would be a wild thing (in
you) to go on your way unless you wait for daylight."
Mr. Hazlitt punctuates and amends thus : —

" A wyld wey I hold it were,
The wey to wend, I you swere,
Ye bot [by] the dey may se." (Vol. I. p. 10.)

The word bot seems a stumbling-block to Mr. Hazlitt.
On page 54 of the same volume we have,

" Herd i neuere bi no leuedi
Hole hendinesse and curteysi."

The use of the word by as in this passage would seem
familiar enough, and yet in the " Hye Way to the
Spittel Hous" Mr. Hazlitt explains it as meaning be.
Any boy knows that urithout sometimes means unless
(Fielding uses it often in that sense), but Mr. Hazlitt

368 LIBRARY OF OLD AUTHORS.

seems unaware of the fact. In his first volume (p. 224)
he gravely prints : —

" They trowed verelye that she shoulde dye ;
With that our ladye wold her helpe and spede."

The semicolon after dye shows that this is not a mis
print, but that the editor saw no connection between the
first verse and the second. In the same volume (p.
133) we have the verse,

" He was a grete tenement man, and ryche of londe and lede,"

and to lede Mr. Hazlitt appends this note : " Lede, in early
English, is found in various significations, but here
stands as the plural of lad, a servant." In what con
ceivable sense is it the plural of lad? And does lad
necessarily mean a servant ] The Promptorium has
ladde glossed by garcio, but the meaning servant, as in
the parallel cases of irait, puer, garqon, and boy, was a
derivative one, and of later origin. The word means
simply man (in the generic sense) and in the plural peo
ple. So in the " Squyr of Low Degre,"

" I will forsake both land and lede,"

and in the " Smyth and his Dame,"

" That hath both land and lyth."

The word was not " used in various significations." Even
so lately as " Flodden Ffeild " we find,

" He was a noble leed of high degree."

Connected with land it was a commonplace in German
as well as in English. So in the Tristan of Godfrey of
Strasburg,

,,(?r ^Beba(d) fin Ufct i>nt>e fin lant

#11 fines* marfcalteflt Ijant."

Mr. Hazlitt is more nearly right than usual when he
says that in the particular case cited above lede means
servants. But were these of only one sex 1 Does he not
know that even in the middle of the last century when

LIBRARY OF OLD AUTHORS. 369

an English nobleman spoke of " my people," he meant
simply his domestics ?

Encountering the familiar phrase No do ! (Vol. IV.
p. 64), Mr. Hazlitt changes it to Not do ! He informs
us that Goddes are (Vol. I. p. 197) means " God's heir" 1
He says (Vol II. p. 146) : " To borrow, in the sense of
to take, to guard, or to protect, is so common in early
English that it is unnecessary to bring forward any illus
tration of its use in this way." But he relents, and
presently gives us two from Ralph Roister Doister, each
containing the phrase " Saint George to borrow ! " That
borrow means take no owner of books need be told, and
Mr. Hazlitt has shown great skill in borrowing other peo
ple's illustrations for his notes, but the phrase he quotes
has no such meaning as he gives it. Mr. Dyce in a note
on Skelton explains it rightly, " St. George being my
pledge or surety."

We gather a few more of these flowers of exposition
and etymology : —

" The while thou sittest in chirche, thi bedys schalt thou bidde."

(Vol. I. p. 181.)

i. e. thou shalt offer thy prayers. Mr. Hazlitt's note
on bidde is, " i. e. bead. So in Tin. Kyng and the Hermit,
line 111:-

' That herd an hermyte there within
Unto the gate he gan to wyn
Bedying his prayer.' "

Precisely what Mr. Hazlitt understands by beading (or
indeed by anything else) we shall not presume to divine,
but we should like to hear him translate " if any man
bidde the worshyp," which comes a few lines further on.
Now let xis turn to page 191 of the same volume.
* Maydenys ben loneliche and no thing sekir." Mr.
Hazlitt tells us in a note that " sekir or sicker " is a
very common form of secure, and quotes in illustration
16* x

370 LIBRARY OF OLD AUTHORS.

from the prose Morte Arthure, " A ! said Sir Launcelot,
comfort yourselfe, for it shall bee unto us as a great
honour, and much more then if we died in any other
places : for of death wee be sicker." Now in the text
the word means safe, and in the note it means sure.
Indeed sure, which is only a shorter form of secure, is its
ordinary meaning. " 1 mak sicker," said Kirkpatrick, a
not unfitting motto for certain editors, if they explained
it in their usual phonetic way.

In the " Frere and the Boye," when the old man has
given the boy a bow, he says : —

" Sliote therin, whan thou good thynke;
For yf thou shote and wynke,
The prycke thow shake hytte."

Mr. Hazlitt's explanation of wynke is " to close one eye
in taking aim," and he quotes a passage from Gascoigne
in support of it. Whatever Gascoigne meant by the
word (which is very doubtful), it means nothing of the
kind here, and is another proof that Mr. Hazlitt does
not think it so important to understand what he reads
as St. Philip did. What the old man said was, " even
if you shut both your eyes, you can't help hitting the
mark." So in " Piers Ploughman " (Whitaker's text),

" Wynkyng, as it were, wytterly ich saw hyt."

Again, for our editor's blunders are as endless as the
heads of an old-fashioned sermon, in the " Schole-House
of Women" (Vol. IV. p. 130), Mr. Hazlitt has a note on
the phrase " make it nice,"

(" And yet alwates they bible bable
Of euery matter and make it nice,")

which reads thus : " To make it pleasant or snug. I do
not remember to have seen the word used in this sense
very frequently. But Gascoigne has it in a precisely
similar way : —

LIBRARY OF OLD AUTHORS. 371

' The glosse of gorgeous Courtes by thee did please mine eye,
A stately sight me thought it was to see the braue go by,
To see their feathers flaunte, to make [marke!] their straunge deuise,
To lie along in ladies lappes, to lispe, and make it nice.' "

To make it nice means nothing more nor less than to
play the fool, or rather, to make a fool of yourself , faire le
niais. In old English the French niais and nice, from
similarity of form and analogy of meaning, naturally
fused together in the word nice, which, by an unusual
luck, has been promoted from a derogatory to a respect
ful sense. Gascoigne's lispe might have put Mr. Hazlitt
on his guard, if he ever considered the sense of what he
quotes. But he never does, nor of what he edits either.
For example, in the " Smyth and his Dame " we find
the following note : " Prowe, or proffe, is not at all un
common as a form of profit. In the ' Seven Names of
a Prison,' a poem printed in Reliquiae Antiquce, we
have, —

* Quintum nomen istius fovese ita probatum,
A place of proff for man to know bothe frend and foo.' "

Now proff and prow are radically different words. Proff
here means proof, and if Mr. Hazlitt had read the stanza
which he quotes, he would have found (as in all the
others of the same poem) the meaning repeated in Latin
in the last line, probacio amicorum.

But we wish to leave our readers (if not Mr. Hazlitt)
in good humor, and accordingly we have reserved two
of his notes as bonnes bouches. In " Adam Bel," when
the outlaws ask pardon of the king,

" They kneled downe without lettyng
And each helde vp his hande."

To this passage (tolerably plain to those not too familiar
with "our early literature") Mr. Hazlitt appends this
solemn note : ' To hold up the hand was formerly a sign
of respect or concurrence, or a mode of taking an oath ;

872 LIBRARY OF OLD AUTHORS.

and thirdly as a signal for mercy. In all these senses it
has been employed from the most ancient times ; nor is it
yet out of practice, as many savage nations still testify
their respect to a superior by holding their hand [either
their Jiands or the hand, Mr. Hazlitt !] over their head.
Touching the hat appears to be a vestige of the same
custom. In the present passage the three outlaws may
be understood to kneel on approaching the throne, and
to hold up each a hand as a token that they desire to
ask the royal clemency or favour. In the lines which are
subjoined it [what 1] implies a solemn assent to an oath :

' This swore the duke and all his men,
And all the lordes that with him tand,
And tharto to* held they up thaire hand.' "

Minot's Poems, ed. 1825, p. 9.

The admirable Tupper could not have done better than
this, even so far as the mere English of it is concerned.
Where all is so fine, we hesitate to declare a preference,
but, on the whole, must give in to the passage about
touching the hat, which is as good as " mobbled queen."
The Americans are still among the " savage nations "
who " imply a solemn assent to an oath " by holding
up the hand. Mr. Hazlitt does not seem to know that
the question whether to kiss the book or hold up the
hand was once a serious one in English politics.

But Mr. Hazlitt can do better even than thia ! Our
readers may be incredulous ; but we shall proceed to
show that he can. In the " Schole-House of Women,"
among much other equally delicate satire of the other
sex (if we may venture still to call them so), the satirist
undertakes to prove that woman was made, not of the
rib of a man, but of a dog : —

* The to is, we need not say, on addition of Mr. Hazlitt's. What
faith can we put in the text ot a man who so often copies even his
quotations inaccurately?

LIBRARY OF OLD AUTHORS. 373

•• And yet the rib, as I suppose,
That God did take out of the man
A dog vp caught, and a way gose
Eat it clene, so that as than
The woork to finish that God began
Could not be, as we haue said,
Because the dog the rib conuaid.

A remedy God found as yet;
Out of the dog he took a rib."

Mr. Hazlitt has a long note on way gose, of which the
first sentence shall suffice us : " The origin of the term
way-goose is involved in some obscurity." We should
think so, to be sure ! Let us modernize the spelling and
grammar, and correct the punctuation, and then see how
it looks : —

" A dog up caught and away goes,
Eats it up."

We will ask Mr. Hazlitt to compare the text, as he
prints it, with

" Into the hall he gose." (Vol. III. p. 67.)

We should have expected a note here on the "hall he-
goose." Not to speak of the point of the joke, such as
it is, a goose that could eat up a man's rib could only
be matched by one that could swallow such a note, — or
write it !

We have made but a small florilegium from Mr. Haz-
litt's remarkable volumes. His editorial method seems
to have been to print as the Lord would, till his eve \vns
caught by sonic word he did not understand, and then to
make the reader comfortable by a note showing that the
editor is as much in the dark as he. We are profoundly
thankful for the omission of a glossary. It would have
been a nursery and seminary of blunder. To expose pre
tentious charlatanry is sometimes the unpleasant duty of
a reviewer. It is a duty we never seek, and should not
have assumed iu this case but for the iinpertiucuce with

374 LIBRARY OF OLD AUTHORS.

which Mr. Hazlitt has treated dead and living scholars,
the latchets of whose shoes he is not worthy to unloose,
and to express their gratitude to whom is, or ought to be,
a pleasure to all honest lovers of their mother-tongue.
If he who has most to learn be the happiest man, Mr.
Hazlitt is indeed to be envied ; but we hope he will
learn a great deal before he lays his prentice hands on
Warton's " History of English Poetry," a classic in its
own way. If he does not learn before, he will be likely
to learn after, and in no agreeable fashion.

EMERSON THE LECTURER.

IT is a singular fact, that Mr. Emerson is the most
steadily attractive lecturer in America. Into that
somewhat cold- water ish region adventurers of the sensa
tional kind come down now and then with a splash, to
become disregarded King Logs before* the next season.
But Mr. Emerson always draws. A lecturer now for
something like a third of a century, one of the pioneers
of the lecturing system, the charm of his voice, his man
ner, and his matter has never lost its power over his
earlier hearers, and continually winds new ones in its
enchanting meshes. What they do not fully understand
they take on trust, and listen, saying to themselves, as
the old poet of Sir Philip Sidney, —

" A sweet, attractive, kind of grace,
A full assurance given by looks,
Continual comfort in a face,

The lineaments of gospel books."

We call it a singular fact, because we Yankees are
thought to be fond of the spread-eagle style, and noth
ing can be more remote from that than his. We are
reckoned a practical folk, who would rather hear about
a new air-tight stove than about Plato ; yet our favorite
teacher's practicality is not in the least of the Poor
Richard variety. If he have any Buncombe constit
uency, it is that unrealised commonwealth of philoso
phers which Plotinus proposed to establish ; and if he
were to niako an almanac, his directions to farmers would

376 EMERSON THE LECTURER.

be something like this: "OCTOBER: Indian Summer;
now is the time to get in your early Vedas." What,
then, is his secret1? Is it not that he out-Yankees us
alii that his range includes us all] that he is equally at
home with the potato-disease and original sin, with peg
ging shoes and the Over-soul ] that, as we try all trades,
so has he tried all cultures? and above all, that his
mysticism gives us a counterpoise to our super-practi
cality ]

There is no man living to whom, as a writer, so many
of us feel and thankfully acknowledge so great an in
debtedness for ennobling impulses, — none whom so
many cannot abide. What does he mean] ask these
last. Where is his system] What is the iise of it
all ] What the deuse have we to do with Brahma ?
I do not propose to write an essay on Emerson at this
time. I will only say that one may find grandeur
and consolation in a starlit night without caring to
ask what it means, save grandeur and consolation ;
one may like Montaigne, as some ten generations be
fore us have done, without thinking him so systematic
as some more eminently tedious (or shall we say te
diously eminent ]) authors ; one may think roses as
good in their way as cabbages, though the latter would
make a better show in the witness-box, if cross-examined
as to their usefulness ; and as for Brahma, why, he can
take care of himself, and won't bite us at any rate.

The bother with Mr. Emerson is, that, though he
writes in prose, he is essentially a poet. If you under
take to paraphrase what he says, and to reduce it to
words of one syllable for infant minds, you will make as
sad work of it as the good monk with his analysis of
Homer in the " Epistohe Obscurorum Virorum." We
look upon him as one of the few men of genius whom
our age has produced, and there needs no better proof

£MERSOX THE LECTURER. 377

of it than his masculine faculty of fecundating other
minds. Search for his eloquence in his books and you
will perchance miss it, but meanwhile you will find that
it has kindled all your thoughts. For choice and pith
of language he belongs to a better age than ours, and
might rub shoulders with Fuller and Browne, — though
he does use that abominable word reliable. His eye
for a fine, telling phrase that will carry true is like
that of a backwoodsman for a rifle ; and he will dredge
you up a choice word from the mud of Cotton Mather
himself. A diction at once so rich and so homely as
his I know not where to match in these days of writ
ing by the page ; it is like homespun cloth-of-gold.
The many cannot miss his meaning, and only the few
can find it. It is the open secret of all true genius.
It is wholesome to angle in those profound pools, though
one be rewarded with nothing more than the leap of
a fish that flashes his freckled side in the sun and as
suddenly absconds in the dark and dreamy waters again.
There is keen excitement, though there be no ponderable
acquisition. If we carry nothing home in our baskets,
there is ample gain in dilated lungs and stimulated
blood. What does he mean, quotha] He means in
spiring hints, a divining-rod to your deeper nature.
No doubt, Emerson, like all original men, has his pecu
liar audience, and yet I know none that can hold a
promiscuous crowd in pleased attention so long as he.
As in all original men, there is something for every
]>;il;ite. "Would you know," says Goethe, " the ripest
cherries? Ask the boys and the blackbirds."

The announcement that such a pleasure as a new
course of lectures by him is coming, to people as old as
I am, is something like those forebodings of spring that
prepare us every year for a familiar novelty, none the
less novel, when it arrives, because it is familiar. We

378 EMERSON THE LECTURER.

know perfectly well what we are to expect from Mr. Em
erson, and yet what he says always penetrates and stira
us, as is apt to be the case with genius, in a very un
looked-for fashion. Perhaps genius is one of the few
things which we gladly allow to repeat itself, — one of
the few that multiply rather than weaken the force of
their impression by iteration 1 Perhaps some of us hear
more than the mere words, are moved by something
deeper than the thoughts 1 If it be so, we are quite
right, for it is thirty years and more of " plain living
and high thinking " that speak to us in this altogether
unique lay-preacher. We have shared in the beneficence
of this varied culture, this fearless impartiality in criti
cism and speculation, this masculine sincerity, this sweet
ness of nature which rather stimulates than cloys, for a
generation long. If ever there was a standing testi
monial to the cumulative power and value of Character,
(and we need it sadly in these days,) we have it in thifc
gracious and dignified presence. What an antiseptic
is a pure life ! At sixty-five (or two years beyond his
grand climacteric, as he would prefer to call it) he has
that privilege of soul which abolishes the calendar, and
presents him to us always the unwasted contemporary
of his own prime. I do not know if he seem old to hia
younger hearers, but we who have known him so long
wonder at the tenacity with which he maintains himself
even in the outposts of youth. I suppose it is not the
Emerson of 1868 to whom we listen. For us the whole
life of the man is distilled in the clear drop of every
sentence, and behind each word we divine the force of a
noble character, the weight of a large capital of think
ing and being. We do not go to hear what Emerson
says so much as to hear Emerson. Not that we per
ceive any falling-off in anything that ever was essential
to the charm of Mr. Emerson's peculiar style of thought

EMERSON THE LECTURER. 379

or phrase. The first lecture, to be sure, was more dis
jointed even than common. It was as if, after vainly
trying to get his paragraphs into sequence and order, he
had at last tried the desperate expedient of shuffling
them. It was chaos come again, but it was a chaos full
of shooting-stars, a jumble of creative forces. The
second lecture, on " Criticism and Poetry," was quite up
to the level of old times, full of that power of strangely-
subtle association whose indirect approaches startle the
mind into almost painful attention, of those flashes of
mutual understanding between speaker and hearer that
are gone ere one can say it lightens. The vice of Em
erson's criticism seems to be, that while no man is so
sensitive to what is poetical, few men are less sensible
than he of what makes a poem. He values the solid
meaning of thought above the subtler meaning of style.
He would prefer Donne, I suspect, to Spenser, and some
times mistakes the queer for the original.

To be young is surely the best, if the most precarious,
gift of life ; yet there are some of us who would hardly
consent to be young again, if it were at the cost of our
recollection of Mr. Emerson's first lectures during the
consulate of Van Buren. We used to walk in from the
country to the Masonic Temple (I think it was), through
the crisp winter night, and listen to that thrilling voice
of his, so charged with subtle meaning and subtle music,
as shipwrecked men on a raft to the hail of a ship that
came with unhoped-for food and rescue. Cynics might
say what they liked. Did our own imaginations trans
figure dry remainder-biscuit into ambrosia1? At any
rate, he brought us life, which, on the whole, is no bad
thing. Was it all transcendentalism 1 magic-lantern
pictures on mist? As you will. Those, thru, were just
what we wanted But it was not so. The delight and
the benefit were that he put us in communication with

380 EMERSON THE LECTURER.

a larger style of thought, sharpened our wits with a
more pungent phrase, gave us ravishing glimpses of an
ideal under the dry husk of our New England ; made us
conscious of the supreme and everlasting originality of
whatever bit of soul might be in any of us ; freed us,
in short, from the stocks of prose in which we had sat
so long that we had grown welmigh contented in our
cramps. And who that saw the audience will ever for
get it, where every one still capable of fire, or longing
to renew in them the half-forgotten sense of it,. was
gathered 1 Those faces, young and old, agleam with
pale intellectual light, eager with pleased attention, flash
upon me once more from the deep recesses of the years
with an exquisite pathos. Ah, beautiful young eyes,
brimming with love and hope, wholly vanished now in
that other world we call the Past, or peering doubtfully
through the pensive gloaming of memory, your light
impoverishes these cheaper days ! I hear again that
rustle of sensation, as they turned to exchange glances
over some pithier thought, some keener flash of that
humor which always played about the horizon of his
mind like heat-lightning, and it seems now like the sad
whisper of the autumn leaves that are whirling around
me. But would my picture be complete if I forgot that

ample and vegete countenance of Mr. R of W ,

— how, from its regular post at the corner of the front
bench, it turned in ruddy triumph to the profaner audi
ence as if he were the inexplicably appointed fugleman
of appreciation ] I was reminded of him by those hearty
cherubs in Titian's Assumption that look at you as who
should say, " Did you ever see a Madonna like that ?
Did you ever behold one hundred and fifty pounds of
womanhood mount heavenward before like a rocket ? "

To some of us that long-past experience remains as the
most marvellous and fruitful we have ever had. Emerson

EMERSON THE LECTURER. 381

awakened us, saved us from the body of this death. It
is the sound of the trumpet that the young soul longs
for, careless what breath may fill it. Sidney heard it in
the ballad of " Chevy Chase," and we in Emerson. Nor
did it blow retreat, but called to us with assurance of
victory. Did they say he was disconnected ? So were
the stars, that seemed larger to our eyes, still keen with
that excitement, as we walked homeward with prouder
stride over the creaking snow. And were they not knit
together by a higher logic than our mere sense could
master? Were we enthusiasts'? 1 hope and believe we
were, and am thankful to the man who made us worth
something for once in our lives. If asked what was left ]
what \ve carried home 1 we should not have been careful
for an answer. It would have been enough if we had
said that something beautiful had passed that way. Or
we might have asked in return what one brought away
from a symphony of Beethoven 1 Enough that he had
set that ferment of wholesome discontent at work in us.
There is one, at least, of those old hearers, so many of
whom are now in the fruition of that intellectual beauty
of which Emerson gave them both the desire and the
foretaste, who will always love to repeat : —

" Che in la mente m'o fitta, ed or m'accuora
La cara e bunna immaginc patorna
l>i voi, quando ncl in«inl<> ad ora ad ora
M'inMgnavMta come 1'uom s'eterna.'1

I am unconsciously thinking, as I write, of the third
lecture of the present course, in which Mr. Emerson
gave some delightful reminiscences of the intellectual
influences in whose movement he had shared. It was
like hearing Goethe read some passages of the " Wahr-
heit aus seinem Leben." Not that there w:is not a little
Dichtung, too, here and there, as the lecturer built up
so lofty a pedestal under certain figures as to lift them

382 EMERSON THE LECTURER.

into a prominence of obscurity, and seem to masthead
them there. Everybody was asking his neighbor who
this or that recondite great man was, in the faint hope
that somebody might once have heard of him. There
are those who call Mr. Emerson cold. Let them revise
their judgment in presence of this loyalty of his that
can keep warm for half a century, that never forgets a
friendship, or fails to pay even a fancied obligation to
the uttermost farthing. This substantiation of shadows
was but incidental, and pleasantly characteristic of the
man to those who know and love him. The greater part
of the lecture was devoted to reminiscences of things
substantial in themselves. He spoke of Everett, fresh
from Greece and Germany ; of Channing ; of the trans
lations of Margaret Fuller, Ripley, and Dwight ; of the
Dial and Brook Farm. To what he said of the latter
an undertone of good-humored irony gave special zest.
But what every one of his hearers felt was that the pro
tagonist in the drama was left out. The lecturer was
no ^Eneas to babble the quorum magna pars fui, and, as
one of his listeners, I cannot help wishing to say how
each of them was commenting the story as it went along,
and filling up the necessary gaps in it from his own pri
vate store of memories. His younger hearers could not
know how much they owed to the benign impersonality,
the quiet scorn of everything ignoble, the never-sated
hunger of self-culture, that were personified in the man
before them. But the older knew how much the coun
try's intellectual emancipation was due to the stimulus
of his teaching and example, how constantly he had kept
burning the beacon of an ideal life above our lower
region of turmoil. To him more than to all other causes
together did the young martyrs of our civil war owe the
sustaining strength of thoughtful heroism that is so
touching in every record of their lives. Those who are

EMERSON THE LECTURER. 383

grateful to Mr. Emerson, as many of us are, foi what
they feel to be most valuable in their culture, or perhaps
I should say their impulse, are grateful not so much for
any direct teachings of his as for that inspiring lift which
only genius can give, and without which all doctrine is
chaff.

This was something like the caret which some of us
elder boys wished to fill up on the margin of the master's
lecture. Few men have been so much to so many, and
through so large a range of aptitudes and temperaments,
and this simply because all of us value manhood beyond
any or all other qualities of character. We may suspect
in him, here and there, a certain thinness and vagueness
of quality, but let the waters go over him as they list,
this masculine fibre of his will keep its lively color and its
toughness of texture. I have heard some great speakers
and some accomplished orators, but never any that so
moved and persuaded men as he. There is a kind of
undertow in that rich baritone of his that sweeps our
minds from their foothold into deeper waters with a
drift we cannot and would not resist. And how artfully
(for Emerson is a long-studied artist in these things)
does the deliberate utterance, that seems waiting for the
fit word, appear to admit us partners in the labor of
thought and make us feel as if the glance of humor were
a sudden suggestion, as if the perfect phrase lying writ
ten there on the desk were as unexpected to him as to
us ! In that closely-filed speech of his at the Bums
centenary dinner every word seemed to have just dropped
irnvn to him from the clouds. He looked far away over
the heads of his hearers, with a vague kind of expecta
tion, as into some private heaven of invention, and the
winged period came at last obedient to his spell "My
dainty Ariel ! " he seemed murmuring to himself as he
cast down his eyes as if in deprecation of the frenzy <>f

384 EMERSON THE LECTURER.

approval and caught another sentence from the Sibylline
leaves that lay before him ambushed behind a dish of
fruit and seen only by nearest neighbors. Every sen
tence brought down the house, as I never saw one
brought down before, — and it is not so easy to hit Scots
men with a sentiment that has no hint of native brogue
in it. I watched, for it was an interesting study, how
the quick sympathy ran flashing from face to face down
the long tables, like an electric spark thrilling as it went,
and then exploded in a thunder of plaudits. I watched
till tables and faces vanished, for I, too, found myself
caught up in the common enthusiasm, and my excited
fancy set me under the bema listening to him who ful-
mined over Greece. I can never help applying to him
what Ben Jonson said of Bacon : " There happened in
my time one noble speaker, who was full of gravity in
his speaking. His language was nobly censorious. No
man ever spake more neatly, more pressly, more weight
ily, or suffered less emptiness, less idleness, in what he
uttered. No member of his speech but consisted of
his own graces. His hearers could not cough, or look
aside from him, without loss. He commanded where he
spoke." Those who heard him while their natures were
yet plastic, and their mental nerves trembled under the
slightest breath of divine air, will never cease to feel
and say : —

" Was never eye did see that face,

Was never ear did hear that tongue,
Was never mind did mind his grace,
That ever thought the travail Jong;
But eyes, and ears, and every thought,
Were with his sweet perfections caught"

IN 1675 Edward Phillips, the elder of Milton's
nephews, published his Theatrum Poetarum. In his
Preface and elsewhere there can be little doubt that he
reflected the aesthetic principles and literary judgments
of his now illustrious uncle, who had died in obscurity
the year before.* The great poet who gave to English
blank verse the grandeur and .compass of organ-music,
and who in his minor poems kept alive the traditions of
Fletcher and Shakespeare, died with no foretaste, and
yet we may believe as confident as ever, of that " im
mortality of fame " which he tells his friend Diodati he
was " meditating with the help of Heaven " in his youth.
He who may have seen Shakespeare, who doubtless had
seen Fletcher, and who perhaps personally knew Jon-
son, f lived to see that false school of writers whom he
qualified as " good rhymists, but no poets," at once the
idols and the victims of the taste they had cormpted.
As he saw, not without scorn, how they found universal
hearing, while he slowly won his audience fit though few,
did he ever think of the hero of his own epic at the ear
•>f Eve1! It is not impossible; but however that may
be, he sowed in his nephew's book the dragon's teeth of
that long war which, after the lapse of a century and a.

* This wns Thomas \Varti m's opinion.

f Milton, u London hoy, \v;is in his eighth, seventeenth, and twenty-
xiinth yenrs, respectively, when Slnikf«i>r;iri! (1616), Fletcher (1625),
ind B. Jonson(ltJ37) died.

17 T

386 POPE.

half, was to end in the expulsion of the usurping dynasty
and the restoration of the ancient and legitimate race
whose claim rested on the grace of God. In the follow
ing passage surely the voice is Milton's, though the hand
be that of Phillips : " Wit, ingenuity, and learning in
verse, even elegancy itself, though that comes nearest,
are one thing ; true native poetry is another, in which
there is a certain air and spirit, which, perhaps, the
most learned and judicious in other arts do not perfectly
apprehend ; much less is it attainable by any art or
study." The man who speaks of elegancy as coming
nearest, certainly shared, if he was not repeating, the
opinions of him who thirty years before had said that
" decorum " (meaning a higher or organic unity) was
" the grand masterpiece to observe " in poetry.*

It is upon this text of Phillips (as Chalmers has re
marked) that Joseph Warton bases his classification of
poets in the dedication to Young of the first volume of
his essay on the Genius and Writings of Pope, published
in 1756. That was the earliest public and official dec
laration of war against the reigning mode, though pri
vate hostilities and reprisals had been going on for some
time. Addison's panegyric of Milton in the Spectator
was a criticism, not the less damaging because indirect,
of the superficial poetry then in vogue. His praise of
the old ballads condemned by innuendo the artificial
elaboration of the drawing-room pastoral by contrasting
it with the simple sincerity of nature. Himself inca
pable of being natural except in prose, he had an in
stinct for the genuine virtues of poetry as sure as that
of Gray. Thomson's " Winter " (1726) was a direct pro
test against the literature of Good Society, going as it
did to prove that the noblest society was that of one's
own mind heightened by the contemplation of outward
* In his Tractate on Education.

POPE. 387

nature. What Thomson's poetical creed was may be
surely inferred from his having modelled his two prin
cipal poems on Milton and Spenser, ignoring rhyme
altogether in the "Seasons," and in the "Castle of
Indolence " rejecting the stiff mould of the couplet.
In 1744 came Akenside's "Pleasures of Imagination,"
whose very title, like a guide-post, points away from the
level highway of commonplace to mountain-paths and
less domestic prospects. The poem was stiff and unwil
ling, but in its loins lay the seed of nobler births, and
without it the " Lines written at Tintern Abbey " might
never have been. Three years later Collins printed his
little volume of Odes, advocating in theory and ex
emplifying in practice the natural supremacy of the
imagination (though he called it by its older name of
fancy) as a test to distinguish poetry from verse-making.
The whole Romantic School, in its germ, no doubt, but
yet unmistakably foreshadowed, lies already in the
" Ode on the Superstitions of the Highlands." He
was the first to bring back into poetry something of the
antique fervor, and found again the long-lost secret of
being classically elegant without being pedantically cold.
A skilled lover of music,* he rose from the general
sing-song of his generation to a harmony that had been
silent since Milton, and in him, to use his own words,

" The force of energy is found,
And the sense rises on the wings of sound.'1

But beside his own direct services in the reformation
of our poetry, we owe him a still greater debt as the
inspirer of Gray, whose " Progress of Poesy," in reach,
variety, and loftiness of poise, overflies all other Eng
lish lyrics like an eagle. In spite of the dulness of con
temporary ears, preoccupied with the continuous hum

* Milton, Collins, and Gray, our three great masters of harmony
were nil musicians.

388 POPE.

of the popular hurdy-gurdy, it was the prevailing blast
of Gray's trumpet that more than anything else called
men back to the legitimate standard.* Another poet,
Dyer, whose " Fleece " was published in 1753, both in
the choice of his subject and his treatment of it gives
further proof of the tendency among the younger gen
eration to revert to simpler and purer models. Plainly

* Wordsworth, who recognized forerunners in Thomson, Collins,
Dyer, and Burns, and who chimes in with the popular superstition
about Chatterton, is always somewhat niggardly in his appreciation
of Gray. Yet he owed him not a little. Without Gray's tune in his
ears, his own noblest Ode would have missed the varied modulation
which is one of its main charms. Where he forgets Gray, his verse
sinks to something like the measure of a jig. Perhaps the suggestion
of one of his own finest lines,

(u The light that never was on land or sea,")
was due to Gray's

" Orient hues unborrowed of the sun."

I believe it has not been noticed that among the verses in Gray's
" Sonnet on the Death of West," which Wordsworth condemns as of
no value, the second —

" And reddening Phoebus lifts his golden fires" —

is one of Gray's happy reminiscences from a poet in some respects
greater than either of them: —

Jamque rubrum tremulis jubar ignibus erigere alte
Cum cceptat uatura.

LUCRET., iv. 404, 405.

Gray's taste was a sensitive divining-rod of the sources whether of
pleasing or profound emotion in poetry Though he prized pomp, he
did not undervalue simplicity of subject or treatment, if only the
witch Imagination had cast her spell there. Wordsworth loved soli
tude in his appreciations as well as in his daily life, and was the
readier to find merit in obscurity, because it gave him the pleasure of
being a first discoverer all by himself. Thus he addresses a sonnet to
John Dyer. But Gray was one of " the pure and powerful minds "
who had discovered Dyer during his lifetime, when the discovery of
poets is more difficult. In 1753 he writes to Walpole: " Mr. Dyer has
more poetry in his imagination than almost any of our number, but
rough and injudicious. " Dyer has one fine verse, —

" On the dark level of adversity."

POPE. 389

enough, Thomson had been his chief model, though
there are also traces of a careful study of Milton.

Pope had died in 1744, at the height of his renown,
the acknowledged monarch of letters, as supreme as Vol
taire when the excitement and exposure of his corona
tion-ceremonies at Paris hastened his end a generation
later. His fame, like Voltaire's, was European, and the
style which he had carried to perfection was paramount
throughout the cultivated world. The new edition of
the " Dunciad," with the Fourth Book added, published
the year before his death, though the substitution of
Cibber for Theobald made the poem incoherent, had yet
increased his reputation and confirmed the sway of the
school whose recognized head he was, by the poignancy
of its satire, the lucidity of its wit, and the resounding,
if somewhat uniform march, of its numbers. He had
been translated into other languages living and dead.
Voltaire had long before pronounced him " the best poet
of England, and at present of all the world." * It was
the apotheosis of clearness, point, and technical skill, of
the ease that comes of practice, not of the fulness of
original power. And yet, as we have seen, while hr was
in the very plenitude of his power, there was already a
widespread discontent, a feeling that what "comes near
est," as Phillips calls it, may yet be infinitely fur from
giving those profounder and incalculable satisfactions of
which the soul is capable in poetry. A movement was
gathering strength which prompted

" The age to quit their clogs
By the known rules of virtuous liberty."

Nor was it wholly confined to England. Symptoms of a
similar reaction begun to show themselves on the Conti-

* M.S. letter of Voltaire, cited by Wnrburton in his edition of Popn,
Vol. IV p. 38, note. The date is' 15th Octobe/, 1726. 1 do not find
it in Voltaire's Correspondence.

390 POPE.

nent, notably in the translation of Milton (1732) and the
publication of the Nibelungen Lied (1757) by Bodmer,
and the imitations of Thomson in France. Was it pos
sible, then, that there was anything better than good
sense, elegant diction, and the highest polish of style 1
Could there be an intellectual appetite which antithesis
failed to satisfy 1 If the horse would only have faith
enough in his green spectacles, surely the straw would
acquire, not only the flavor, but the nutritious proper
ties of fresh grass. The horse was foolish enough to
starve, but the public is wiser. It is surprising how pa
tiently it will go on, for generation after generation,
transmuting dry stubble into verdure in this fashion.

The school which Boileau founded was critical and not
creative. It was limited, not only in its essence, but by
the capabilities of the French language and by the natu
ral bent of the French mind, which finds a predominant
satisfaction in phrases if elegantly turned, and can make
a despotism, political or aesthetic, palatable with the pep
per of epigram. The style of Louis XIV. did what his
armies failed to do. It overran and subjugated Europe.
It struck the literature of imagination with palsy, and
it is droll enough to see Voltaire, after he had got some
knowledge of Shakespeare, continually endeavoring to re
assure himself about the poetry of the grand siede, and
all the time asking himself, " Why, in the name of all
the gods at once, is this not the real thing 1 " He seems
to have felt that there was a dreadful mistake somewhere,
when poetry must be called upon to prove itself inspired,
above all when it must demonstrate that it is interesting,
all appearances to the contrary notwithstanding. Diffi
culty, according to Voltaire, is the tenth Muse ; but how
if there were difficulty in reading as well as writing 1 It
was something, at any rate, which an increasing number
of persons were perverse enough to feel in attempting

POPE. 391

the productions of a pseudo-classicism, the classicism of
red heels and periwigs. Even poor old Dennis himself
had arrived at a kind of muddled notion that artifice was
not precisely art, that there were depths in human nature
which the most perfectly manufactured line of five feet
could not sound, and passionate elations that could not
be tuned to the lullaby seesaw of the couplet. The sat
isfactions of a conventional taste were very well in their
own way, but were they, after all, the highest of which
men were capable who had obscurely divined the Greeks,
and who had seen Hamlet, Lear, and Othello upon the
stage 1 Was not poetry, then, something which delivered
us from the dungeon of actual life, instead of basely
reconciling us with it 1

A century earlier the school of the cultists had estab
lished a dominion, ephemeral, as it soon appeared, but
absolute while it lasted. Du Bartas, who may, perhaps,
as fairly as any, lay claim to its paternity,* had been
called divine, and similar honors had been paid in turn
to Gongora, Lilly, and Marini, who were in the strictest
sense contemporaneous. The infection of mere fashion
will hardly account satisfactorily for a vogue so sudden
and so widely extended. It may well be suspected that
there was some latent cause, something at work more
potent than the fascinating mannerism of any single au
thor in the rapid and almost simultaneous diifusion of
this purely cutaneous eruption. It is not improbable
that, in the revival of letters, men whose native tongiu-s
had not yet attained the precision and grace only to
be acquired by long literary usage, should have learned
from a study of the Latin poets to value the form above

* Its taste for verbal affectations is to he found in the Roman de In
Rose, and (yet more absurdly forced) in Gauthier de Coinsy; hut in
Du Bartas the research of effect not seldom subjugates the thought as
Well as the phrase.

392 POPE.

the substance, and to seek in mere words a conjuring
property which belongs to them only when they catch
life and meaning from profound thought or powerful
emotion. Yet this very devotion to expression at the
expense of everything else, though ito excesses were fatal
to the innovators who preached and practised it, may
not have been without good results in refining language
and fitting it for the higher uses to which it, was des
tined. The cultists went down before the implacable
good sense of French criticism, but the defect of this
criticism was that it ignored imagination altogether, and
sent Nature about her business as an impertinent bag
gage whose household loom competed unlawfully with
the machine-made fabrics, so exquisitely uniform in pat
tern, of the royal manufactories. There is more than a
fanciful analogy between the style which Pope brought
into vogue and that which for a time bewitched all ears
in the latter half of the sixteenth century. As the mas
ter had made it an axiom to avoid what was mean or
low, so the disciples endeavored to escape from what was
common. This they contrived by the ready expedient
of the periphrasis. They called everything something
else. A boot with them was

" The shining leather that encased the limb";
coffee became

" The fragrant juice of Mocha's berry brown " ;

and they were as liberal of epithets as a royal christen
ing of proper names. Two in every verse, one to bal
ance the other, was the smallest allowance. Here are
four successive verses from " The Vanity of Human
Wishes " : —

" The encumbered oar scarce leaves the dreaded coast
Through purpl* billows and a floating host.
The bold Bavarian in a luckless hour
Tries the dread summits of Qssarian power."

POPE. 393

This fashion perished also by its own excess, but the
criticism which laid at the door of the master all the
faults of his pupils was unjust. It was defective, more
over, in overlooking how much of what we call natural
is an artificial product, above all in forgetting that Pope
had one of the prime qualities of a great poet in exactly
answering the intellectual needs of the age in which he
lived, and in reflecting its lineaments. He did in some
not inadequate sense hold the mirror up to nature. His
poetry is not a mountain-tarn, like that of Wordsworth ;
it is not in sympathy with the higher moods of the
mind ; yet it continues entertaining, in spite of all
changes of mode. It was a mirror in a drawing-room,
but it gave back a faithful image of society, powdered
and rouged, to be sure, and intent on trifles, yet still us
human in its own way as the heroes of Homer in theirs.
For the popularity of Pope, as for that of Marini and
his sect, circumstances had prepared the way. English
literature for half a century after the Restoration showed
the marks both of a moral reaction and of an artistic
vassalage to France. From the compulsory saintship
and cropped hair of the Puritans men rushed or sneaked,
as their temperaments dictated, to the opposite cant of
sensuality and a wilderness of periwig. Charles II. had
brought back with him from exile French manners,
French morals, and above all French taste. Misfortune
makes a shallow mind sceptical. It had made the king
so ; and this, at a time when court patronage was the
main sinew of authorship, WHS fatal to the higher quali
ties of literature. That Charles should have preferred
the stately decorums of the French school, and should
have mistaken its polished mannerism for style, was
natural enough. But there was something also in the
texture of the average British mind which prepared it
tor this subjugation from the other side of the ChaunoL
17*

394 POPE.

No observer of men can have failed to notice the clumsy
respect which the understanding pays to elegance of
manner and savoir-faire, nor what an awkward sense of
inferiority it feels in the presence of an accomplished
worldliness. The code of society is stronger with most
persons than that of Sinai, and many a man who would
not scruple to thrust his fingers in his neighbor's pocket
would forego green peas rather than use his knife as a
shovel. The submission with which the greater number
surrender their natural likings for the acquired taste of
what for the moment is called the World is a highly
curious phenomenon, and, however destructive of origi
nality, is the main safeguard of society and nurse of
civility. Any one who has witnessed the torments of an
honest citizen in a foreign gallery before some hideous
martyrdom which he feels it his duty to admire, though
it be hateful to him as nightmare, may well doubt
whether the gridiron of the saint were hotter than that of
the sinner. It is only a great mind or a strong charac
ter that knows how to respect its own provincialism and
can dare to be in fashion with itself. The bewildered
clown with his " Am I Giles 1 or am I not 1 " was but a
type of the average man who finds himself uniformed,
drilled, and keeping step, whether he will or no, with
the company into which destiny or chance has drafted
him, and which is marching him inexorably away from
everything that made him comfortable.

The insularity of England, while it fostered pride and
reserve, entailed also that sensitiveness to ridicule which
haunts pride like an evil genius. " The English," says
Barclay, writing half a century before the Restoration,
"have for the most part grave minds and withdrawn,
as it were, into themselves for counsel ; they won
derfully admire themselves and the manners, genius,
and spirit of their own nation. In salutation or in

POPE. 395

writing they endure not (unless haply imbued with for
eign manners) to descend to those words of imaginary
servitude which the refinement (blandities) of ages hath
invented." * Yet their fondness of foreign fashions had
long been the butt of native satirists. Every one re
members Portia's merry picture of the English lord :
" How oddly he is suited ! I think he bought his doub
let in Italy, his round hose in France, his bonnet in
Germany, and his behavior everywhere." But while
she laughs at his bungling efforts to make himself a cos
mopolite in externals, she hints at the persistency of
his inward Anglicism : " He hath neither Latin, French,
nor Italian." In matters of taste the Anglo-Saxon mind
seems always to have felt a painful distrust of itself,
which it betrays either in an affectation of burly con
tempt or in a pretence of admiration equally insincere.
The young lords who were to make the future court of
Charles II. no doubt found in Paris an elegance beside
which the homely bluntness of native manners seemed
rustic and underbred. They frequented a theatre where
propriety was absolute upon the stage, though license
had its full swing behind the scenes. They broiight
home with them to England debauched morals and
that urbane discipline of manners which is so agree
able a substitute for discipline of mind. The word
" genteel " came back with them, an outward symptom
of the inward change. In the last generation, the men
whose great aim was success in the Other World had
wrought a political revolution ; now, those whose ideal
was prosperity in This World were to have their turn
and to accomplish with their lighter weapons ;is great a
change. Before the end of the seventeenth century
John Bull was pretty well persuaded, in a bewildered
kind of way, that he had been vulgar, and especially

* Barclaii &ityriam, p. 382. Bnrclny had lired in Franc*.

396 POPE.

that his efforts in literature showed marks of native vig
or, indeed, but of a vigor clownish and tmcouth. He
began to be ashamed of the provincialism which had
given strength, if also something of limitation, to his
character.

Waller, who spent a whole summer in polishing the
life out of ten lines to be written in the Tasso of the
Duchess of York, expresses the prevailing belief as re
garded poetry in the prologue to his " improvement " of
the " Maid's Tragedy " of Beaumont and Fletcher. He
made the play reasonable, as it was called, and there is
a pleasant satire in the fact that it was refused a license
because there was an immoral king in it. On the throne,
to be sure, — but on the stage ! Forbid it, decency !

" Above our neighbors' our conceptions are,
But faultless writing is the effect of care;
Our lines reformed, and not composed in haste,
Polished like marble, would like marble last.

Were we but less indulgent to our fau'ts,
And patience had to cultivate our thoughts,
Our Muse would flourish, and a nobler rage
Would honor this than did the Grecian stage."

It is a curious comment on these verses in favor of care
ful writing, that Waller should have failed even to ex
press his own meaning either clearly or with propriety.
He talks of " cultivating our thoughts," when he means
" pruning our style " ; he confounds the Muse with the
laurel, or at any rate makes her a plant, and then goes
on with perfect equanimity to tell us that a nobler
" rage " (that is, madness) than that of Greece would
follow the horticultural devices he recommends. It
never seems to have occurred to Waller that it is the
substance of what you polish, and not the polish itself,
that insures duration. Dryden, in his rough-aud-ready
way, has hinted at this in his verses to Congreve on tho

POPE. 397

" Double Dealer." He begins by stating the received
theory about the improvement of English literature un
der the new regime, but the thin ice of sophistry over
which Waller had glided smoothly gives way under his
greater weight, and he finds himself in deep water ere
he is aware.

"Well, then, the promised hour has come at last,
The present age in wit obscures the past;
Strong were our sires, and ns they fought they writ,
Conquering with force of arm * and dint of wit.
Theirs was the giant race before the Flood ;
And thus when Charles returned our Empire stood;
Like Janus he the stubborn soil manured,
With rules of husbandry the rankness cured,
Tamed us to manners when the stage was rude.
And boisterous English wit with art endued;
Our age was cultivated thus at length,
But what we gained in skill we lost in strength ;
Our builders were with want of genius curst,
The second temple was not like the first."

There would seem to be a manifest reminiscence of
Waller's verse in the half-scornful emphasis which Dry-
den lays on " cultivated." Perhaps he was at first led to
give greater weight to correctness and to the restraint
of arbitrary rules from a consciousness that he had a
tendency to hyperbole and extravagance. But he after
wards became convinced that the heightening of dis
course by passion was a very different thing from tlio
exaggeration which heaps phrase on phrase, and that
genius, like beauty, can always plead its privilege. Dry-
den, by his powerful example, by the charm of his verse
which combines vigor and fluency in a measure perhaps
never reached by any other of our poets, and above nil
because it is never long before the sunshine of his cheer
ful good sense breaks through the clouds of rhetoric,

* Usually printed armi, but Dryden certainly wrote arm, to corre
spond with dint, which he used in its old meaning of a downright
blow.

398 POPE.

and gilds the clipped hedges over which his thought
clambers like an unpruned vine, — Dryden, one of the
most truly English of English authors, did more than
all others combined to bring about the triumphs of
French standards in taste and French principles in crit
icism. But he was always like a deserter who cannot
feel happy in the victories of the alien arms, and who
would go back if he could to the camp where he natu
rally belonged. Between 1660 and 1700 more French
words, I believe, were directly transplanted into our
language than in the century and a half since. What
was of more consequence, French ideas came with them,
shaping the form, and through that modifying the spirit,
of our literature.

Voltaire, though he came later, was steeped in the
theories of art which had been inherited as traditions
of classicism from the preceding generation. He had
lived in England, and, I have no doubt, gives us a very
good notion of the tone which was prevalent there in
his time, an English version of the criticism imported
from France. He tells us that Mr. Addison was the
first Englishman who had written a reasonable tragedy.
And in spite of the growling of poor old Dennis, whose
sandy pedantry was not without an oasis of refreshing
sound judgment here and there, this was the opinion of
most persons at that day, except, it may be suspected,
the judicious and modest Mr. Addison himself. Vol
taire says of the English tragedians, — and it will be
noticed that he is only putting, in another way, the
opinion of Dryden, — " Their productions, almost all
barbarous, without polish, order, or probability, have
astonishing gleams in the midst of their night ; . . . .
it seems sometimes that nature is not made in England
as it is elsewhere." Eh bien, the inference is that we
must try and make it so ! The world must be uniform

POPE. 399

in order to be comfortable, and what fashion so becom
ing as the one we have invented in Paris ] It is not a
little amusing that when Voltaire played master of cer
emonies to introduce the bizarre Shakespeare among his
countrymen, that other kind of nature made a profound-
er impression on them than quite pleased him. So he
turned about presently and called his whilome protege a
buffoon.

The condition of the English mind at the close of the
seventeenth century was such as to make it particularly
sensitive to the magnetism which streamed to it from
Paris. The loyalty of everybody both in politics and
religion had been put out of joint. A generation of
materialists, by the natural rebound which inevitably
follows over -tension, was to balance the ultra-spiritualism
of the Puritans. As always when a political revolution
has been wrought by moral agencies, the plunder had
fallen mainly to the share of the greedy, selfish, and un
scrupulous, whose disgusting cant had given a taint of
hypocrisy to piety itself. Religion, from a burning con
viction of the soul, had grown to be with both parties a
political badge, as little typical of the inward man as
the scallop of a pilgrim. Sincerity is impossible, unless
it pervade the whole being, and the pretence of it saps
the very foundation of character. There seems to have
been an universal scepticism, and in its worst form,
that is, with an outward conformity in the interest of
decorum and order. There was an unbelief that did
not believe even in itself.

The difference between the leading minds of the
former age and that which was supplanting it went to
the very roots of the soul. Milton was willing to peril
the success of his crowning work by making the poetry
of it a stalking-horse for his theological convictions.
What was that Fame

400 POPE.

" Which the clear spirit doth raise
To scorn delights and live laborious days,"

to the crown of a good preacher who sets

" The hearts of men on fire
To scorn the sordid world and unto heaven aspire " ?

Dean Swift, who aspired to the mitre, could write a
book whose moral, if it had any, was that one religion
was as good as another, since all were political devices,
and accepted a cure of souls when it was more than
doubtful whether he believed that his fellow-creatures
had any souls to be saved, or, if they had, whether they
were worth saving. The answer which Pulci's Margutte
makes to Morgante, when asked if he believed in Christ
or Mahomet, would have expressed well enough the
creed of the majority of that generation : —

" To tell thee truly,

My faith in black 's no greater than in azure,
But I believe in capons, roast-meat, bouilli,
And in good wine my faith 's beyond all measure." *

It was a carnival of intellect without faith, when men
could be Protestunt or .Catholic, both at once, or by
turns, or neither, as suited their interest, when they
could swear one allegiance and keep on safe terms with
the other, when prime ministers and commanders-in-
chief could be intelligencers of the Pretender, nay,
when even Algernon Sidney himself could be a pen
sioner of France. What morality there was, was the
morality of appearances, of the side that is turned
toward men and not toward God. The very shameless-
ness of Congreve is refreshing in that age of sham.

It was impossible that anything truly great, that is,
great on the moral and emotional as well as the intellec
tual side, should be produced by such a generation.
But something intellectually great could be and was.

* Morgante, xviii. 116.

POPE. 401

The French mind, always stronger in perceptive and
analytic than in imaginative qualities, loving precision,
grace, and finesse, prone to attribute an almost magical
power to the scientific regulation whether of politics or
religion, had brought wit and fancy and the elegant arts
of society to as great perfection as was possible by the
a priori method. Its ideal in literature was to conjure
passion within the magic circle of courtliness, or to
combine the appearance of careless ease and gayety of
thought with intellectual exactness of statement. The
eternal watchfulness of a wit that never slept had made
it distrustful of the natural emotions and the uncon
ventional expression of them, and its first question about
a sentiment was, Will it be safe ? about a phrase, Will
it pass with the Academy 1 The effect of its example
on English literature would appear chiefly in neatness
and facility of turn, in point and epigrammatic compact
ness of phrase, and these in conveying conventional
sentiments and emotions, in appealing to good society
rather than to human nature. Its influence would be
greatest where its success had been most marked, in
what was called moral poetry, whose chosen province
was manners, and in which satire, with its avenging
scourge, took the place of that profounder art whose
office it was to purify, not the manners, but the source
of them in the soul, by pity and terror. The mistake
of the whole school of French criticism, it seems to me,
lay in its tendency to confound what was common with
what was vulgar, in a too exclusive deference to authority
at the expense of all free movement of the mind.

There are certain defects of taste which correct them
selves by their own extravagance. Language, I suspect,
is more apt to be reformed by the charm of some master
of it, like Milton, than by any amount of precept. The
influence of second-rate writers for evil is at best ephem-

402 POPE.

eral, for true style, the joint result of culture and natu
ral aptitude, is always in fashion, as line manners always
are, in whatever clothes. Perhaps some reform was
needed when Quarles, who had no mean gift of poesy,
could write,

" My passion has no April in her eyes:
I cannot spend in mists; I cannot mizzle;
My fluent brains are too severe to drizzle
Slight drops." *

Good taste is an excellent thing when it confines itself
to its own rightful province of the proprieties, but when
it attempts to correct those profound instincts out of
whose judgments the higher principles of aesthetics have
been formulated, its success is a disaster. During the
era when the French theory of poetry was supreme, we
notice a decline from imagination to fancy, from pas
sion to wit, from metaphor, which fuses image and
thought in one, to simile, which sets one beside the
other, from the supreme code of the natural sympathies
to the parochial by-laws of etiquette. The imagination
instinctively Platonizes, and it is the essence of poetry
that it should be unconventional, that the soul of it
should subordinate the outward parts ; while the arti
ficial method proceeds from a principle the reverse of
tli is, making the spirit lackey the form.

Waller preaches up this new doctrine in the epilogue
to the " Maid's Tragedy " : —

" Nor is 't less strange such mighty wits as those
Should use a style in tragedy like prose;
Well-sounding verse, where princes tread the stage,
Should speak their virtue and describe their rage."

* Elegie on Doctor Wilson. But if Quarles had been led astray by
the vices of Donne's mariner, he had good company in Herbert and
Vaughan. In common with them, too, he had that luck of simpleness
Winch is even more delightful than wit. In the same poem he says, —
" Go, glorious soul, and lay thy temples down
In Abram's bosom, in the sacred down
Qf toft eternity."

POPE. 403

That it should be beneath the dignity of princes to
speak in anything but rhyme can only be paralleled by
Mr. Puff's law that a heroine can go decorously mad
only in white satin. Waller, I suppose, though with so
loose a thinker one cannot be positive, uses " describe"
in its Latin sense of limitation. Fancy Othello or Lear
confined to this go-cart ! Phillips touches the true
point when he says, "And the truth is, the use of
measure alone, without any rime at all, would give more
scope and liberty both to style and fancy than can pos
sibly be observed in rime." * But let us test Waller's
method by an example or two. His monarch made
reasonable, thus discourses : —

" Courage our greatest failings does supply,
And makes all good, or handsomely we die.
Life is a thing of common use ; by heaven
As well to insects as to monarchs given ;
But for the crown, 't is a more sacred thing;
I '11 dying lose it, or I '11 live a king.
Come, Diphilus, we must together walk
And of a matter of importance talk." [Exeunt.

Blank verse, where the sentiment is trivial as here,
merely removes prose to a proper ideal distance, where
it is in keeping with more impassioned parts, but com
monplace set to this rocking-horse jog irritates the
nerves. There is nothing here to remind us of the older
tragic style but the exeunt at the close. Its pithy
conciseness and the relief which it brings tis from his
majesty's prosing give it an almost poetical savor. As-
patia's reflections upon suicide (or " suppressing our
breath," as she calls it), in the same play, will make few
readers regret that Shakespeare was left to his own un
assisted barbarism when he wrote Hamlet's soliloquy on
the same topic : —

" 'T was in compassion of our woe
That nature first made poisons grow,

* Preface to the Thtatrwn.

404 POPE.

For hopeless wretches such as I
Kindly providing means to die:
As mothers do their children keep,
So Nature feeds and makes us sleep.
The indisposed she does invite
To go to bed before 't is night."

Correctness in this case is but a synonyme of monotony,
and words are chosen for the number of their syllables,
for their rubbishy value to fill-in, instead of being forced
upon the poet by the meaning which occupies the mind.
Language becomes useful for its diluting properties,
rather than as the medium by means of which the
thought or fancy precipitate themselves in crystals upon
a connecting thread of purpose. Let i;s read a few
verses from Beaumont and Fletcher, that we may feel
fully the difference between the rude and the reformed
styles. This also shall be a speech of Aspatia's. An-
tiphila, one of her maidens, is working the story of
Theseus and Ariadne in tapestry, for the older masters
loved a picturesque background and knew the value of
fanciful accessaries. Aspatia thinks the face of Ariadne
not sad enough : —

" Do it by me,

Do it again by me, the lost Aspatia,
And you shall find all true but the wild island.
Suppose I stand upon the seabeach now,
Mine arms thus, and my hair blown with the wind,
Wild as that desert; and let all about me
Be teachers of my story. Do my face
(If ever thou hadst feeling of a sorrow)
Thus, thus, Antiphila : strive to make me look
Like sorrow's monument; and the trees about me
Let them be dry and leafless ; let the rocks
Groan with continual surges; and behind me
Make all a desolation."

What instinctive felicity of versification ! what sobbing
breaks and passionate repetitions are here !

We see what the direction of the new tendency was,
but it would be an inadequate or a dishonest criticism

POPE. 405

that shjuld hold Pope responsible for the narrow com
pass of the instrument which was his legacy from his
immediate predecessors, any more than for the weari
some thrumming-over of his tune by those who came
after him and who had caught his technical skill without
his genius. The question properly stated is, How much
was it possible to make of the material supplied by the
age in which he lived1? and how much did he make of
it ? Thus far, among the great English poets who pre
ceded him, we have seen actual life represented by
Chaucer, imaginative life by Spenser, ideal life by Shake
speare, the interior life by Milton. But as everything
aspires to a rhythmical utterance of itself, so conven
tional life, itself a new phenomenon, was waiting for its
poet. It found or made a most fitting one in Pope. He
stands for exactness of intellectual expression, for per
fect propriety of phrase (I speak of him at his best), and
is a striking instance how much success and permanence
of reputation depend on conscientious finish as well as
on native endowment. Butler asks, —

" Then why should those who pick and choose
The best of all the best compose,
And join it by Mosaic art,
In graceful order, part to part,
To make the whole in beauty suit,
Not merit as complete repute
As those who, with less art and pain,
Can do it with their native brain? "

Butler knew very well that precisely what stamps a man
as an artist is this power of finding out what is " the
best of all the best."

I confess that I come to the treatment of Pope with
diffidence. I was brought up in tin- old superstition
that he was the greatest poet that ever lived ; and when
I came to find that I had instincts of my own, and my
mind was brought in contact with the apostles of a more

406 POPE.

esoteric doctrine of poetry, I felt that ardent desire for
smashing the idols I had been brought up to worship,
without any regard to their artistic beauty, which char
acterizes youthful zeal. What was it to me that Pope
was called a master of style ] I felt, as Addison says
in his Freeholder when answering an argument in favor
of the Pretender because he could speak English and
George I. could not, " that I did not wish to be tyran
nized over in the best English that ever was spoken."
The young demand thoughts that find an echo in their
real and not their acquired nature, and care very little
about the dress they are put in. It is later that we
learn to like the conventional, as we do olives. There
was a time when I could not read Pope, but disliked him
on principle as old Roger Ascham seems to have felt
about Italy when he says, " I was once in Italy myself,
but I thank God my abode there was only nine days."

But Pope fills a very important place in the history of
English poetry, and must be studied by every one who
would come to a clear knowledge of it. I have since
read over every line that Pope ever wrote, and every
letter written by or to him, and that more than once.
If I have not come to the conclusion that he is the
greatest of poets, I believe that I am at least in a con
dition to allow him every merit that is fairly his. I
have said that Pope as a literary man represents pre
cision and grace of expression ; but as a poet he repre
sents something more, — nothing less, namely, than one
of those eternal controversies of taste which will last
as long as the imagination and understanding divide
men between them. It is not a matter to be settled
by any amount of argument or demonstration. There
are born Popists or Wordsworthians, Lockists or Kant'
ists, and there is nothing more to be said of the matter,

Wordsworth was not in a condition to do Pope justica

POPE. 40}

A man brought up in sublime mountain solitudes, and
whose nature was a solitude more vast than they, walk
ing an earth which quivered with the throe of the
French Revolution, the child of an em of profound
mental and moral movement, it could not be expected
that he should be in sympathy with the poet of artificial
life. Moreover, he was the apostle of imagination, and
came at a time when the school which Pope founded
had degenerated into a mob of mannerists who wrote
with ease, and who with their congenial critics united at
once to decry poetry which brought in the dangerous
innovation of having a soul in it.

But however it may be with poets, it is very certain
that a reader is happiest whose mind is broad enough
to enjoy the natural school for its nature, and the artifi
cial for its artificiality, provided they be only good of
their kind. At any rate, we must allow that the man
who can produce one perfect work is either a great gen
ius or a very lucky one ; and so far as we who read are
concerned, it is of secondary importance which. And
Pope has done this in the " Rape of the Lock." For
wit, fancy, invention, and keeping, it has never been
surpassed. I do not say there is in it poetry of the high
est order, or that Pope is a poet whom any one would
choose as the companion of his best hours. There is no
inspiration in it, no trumpet-call, but for pure t'ntcrtain-
ment it is unmatched. There are two kinds of genius.
The first and highest may be said to speak out of the
eternal to the present, and must compel its age to un
derstand it; the second understands its ULTO, and tells it
what it wishes to be told. Let us find strength and in
spiration in the one, amusement and instruction in the
other, and be honestly thankful for both.

The very earliest of Pope's productions give- indications
rf that sense and discretion, as well as wit, which after-

408 POPE.

ward so eminently distinguished him. The facility of
expression is remai'kable, and we find also that perfect
balance of metre, which he afterward carried so far as to
be wearisome. His pastorals were written in his six
teenth year, and their publication immediately brought
him into notice. The following four verses from his
first pastoral are quite characteristic in their antithetic
balance : —

" You that, too wise for pride, too good for power,
Enjoy the glory to be great no more,
And carrying with you all the world can boast,
To all the world illustriously are lost! "

The sentiment is affected, and reminds one of that future
period of Pope's Correspondence with his Friends, when
Swift, his heart corroding with disappointed ambition at
Dublin, Bolingbroke raising delusive turnips at his farm,
and Pope pretending not to feel the lampoons which
imbittered his life, played together the solemn farce of
affecting indifference to the world by which it would
have agonized them to be forgotten, and wrote letters
addressed to each other, but really intended for that
posterity whose opinion they assumed to despise.

In these pastorals there is an entire want of nature.
For example in that on the death of Mrs. Tempest : —

" Her fate is whispered by the gentle breeze
And told in sighs to all the trembling trees;
The trembling trees, in every plain and wood,
Her fate remurmur to the silver flood:
The silver flood, so lately calm, appears
Swelled with new passion, and o'erflows with tears;
The winds and trees and floods her death deplore
Daphne, our grief! our glory now no more! "

All this is as perfectly professional as the mourning
of an undertaker. Still worse, Pope materializes and
makes too palpably objective that sympathy which our
grief forces upon outward nature. Milton, before mak
ing the echoes mourn for Lycidas, puts our feelings in

POPE. 409

tune, as it were, and hints at his own imagination as the
source of this emotion in inanimate things, —

" But, 0 the heavy change now thou art gone ! "
In " Windsor Forest " we find the same thing again : —

" Here his first lays majestic Denham sung,
There the last numbers flowed from Cowley's tongue;
0 early lost, what tears the river shed
When the sad pomp along his banks was led!
His drooping swans on every note expire,
And on his willows hung each muse's >yre ! "

In the same poem he indulges the absurd conceit
that,

" Beasts urged by us, their fellow-beasts pursue,
And learn of man each other to undo";

and in the succeeding verses gives some striking in
stances of that artificial diction, so inappropriate to
poems descriptive of natural objects and ordinary life,
which brought verse-making to such a depth of absurd
ity in the course of the century.

" With slaughtering guns, the unwearied fowler roves
Where frosts have whitened all the naked groves;
Where doves in flocks the leafless trees o'ershade,
And lonely wookcocks haunt the watery glade;
He lifts the tube and levels with his eye,
Straight a short thunder breaks the frozen sky:
Oft as in airy ring< they skim the heath,
The clamorous lapwings feel the leaden death;
Oft as the mounting larks their notes prepare,
They fall and leave their little lives in air."

Now one would imagine that the tube of the fowler was
a telescope instead of a grin. And think of the larks
preparing their notes like a country choir ! Yet even
here there are admirable lines, —

" Oft a« in airy rings they skim the heath,"
" They fall and leave their little lives in air,"

/or example.

In Pope's next poem, the " Essay on Criticism," the
18

410 POPE.

wit and poet become apparent. It is full of clear
thoughts, compactly expressed. In this poem, written
when Pope was only twenty-one, occur some of those
lines which have become proverbial ; such as

" A little learning is a dangerous thing ";

" For fools rush in where angels fear to tread " ;

" Tme wit is Nature to advantage dressed,
What 6ft was thought, but ne'er so well expressed."

" For each ill author is as bad a friend."

In all of these we notice that terseness in which (re
gard being had to his especial range of thought) Pope
has never been equalled. One cannot help being struck
also with the singular discretion which the poem gives
evidence of. I do not know where to look for another an*
thor in whom it appeared so early, and, considering the
vivacity of his mind and the constantly besetting temp
tation of his wit, it is still more wonderful. In his
boyish correspondence with poor old Wycherley, one
would suppose him to be the man and Wycherley the
youth. Pope's understanding was no less vigorous
(when not the dupe of his nerves) than his fancy was
lightsome and sprightly.

I come now to what in itself would be enough to have
immortalized him as a poet, the " Rape of the Lock,"
in which, indeed, he appears more purely as poet than
in any other of his productions. Elsewhere he has
shown more force, more wit, more reach of thought, but
nowhere such a truly artistic combination of elegance
and fancy. His genius has here found its true direction,
and the very same artificiality, which in his pastorals
was unpleasing, heightens the effect, and adds to the
general keeping. As truly as Shakespeare is the poet
of man, as God made him, dealing with great passions
and innate motives, so truly is Pope the poet of society,

POPE. 411

the delineator of manners, the exposer of those motives
which may be called acquired, whose spring is in insti
tutions and habits of purely worldly origin.

The "Rape of the Lock" was written in Pope's twenty-
fourth year, and the machinery of the Sylphs was
added at the suggestion of Dr. Garth, — a circumstance
for which we can feel a more unmixed gratitude to him
than for writing the "Dispensary." The idea was taken
from that entertaining book " The Count de Gabalis," in
which Fouque afterward found the hint for his "Un
dine " ; but the little sprites as they appear in the poem
are purely the creation of Pope's fancy.

The theory of the poem is excellent. The heroic is
out of the question in fine society. It is perfectly true
that almost every door we pass in the street closes upon
its private tragedy, but the moment a great passion
enters a man he passes at once out of the artificial into
the human. So long as he continues artificial, the sub
lime is a conscious absurdity to him. The mock-heroic
then is the only way in which the petty actions and
sufferings of the fine world can be epically treated, and
the contrast continually suggested with subjects of larger
scope and more dignified treatment, makes no small
part of the pleasure and sharpens the point of the wit.
The invocation is admirable : —

" Say, what strange motive, Goddess, conld compel,
A well-bred lord to assault a gentle belle ?
O say what stranger cause, yet unexplored,
Could make a gentle belle reject a lord? "

The keynote of the poem is here struck, and we are able
to put ourselves in tune with it. It is not a parody of
the heroic style, but only a setting it in satirical juxta
position with cares and events and modes of thought
with which it is in comical antipathy, and while it is
not degraded, they are shown in their triviality. Tha

412 POPE.

"clouded cane," as compared with the Homeric spear,
indicates the difference of scale, the lower plane of
emotions and passions. The opening of the action, too,
is equally good : — -

" Sol through white curtains shot a timorous ray,
And oped those eyes that must eclipse the day,
Now lapdogs give themselves the rousing shake,
And sleepless lovers just at twelve awake;
Thrice rung the bell, the slipper knocked the ground,
And the pressed watch returned a silver sound."

The mythology of the Sylphs is full of the most fanciful
wit ; indeed, wit infused with fancy is Pope's peculiar
merit. The Sylph is addressing Belinda : —

" Know, then, unnumbered spirits round thee fly,
The light militia of the lower sky;
These, though unseen, are ever on the wing,
Hang o'er the box and hover round the ring.
As now your own our beings were of old,
And once enclosed in woman's beauteous mould ;
Think not, when woman's transient breath is fled,
That all her vanities at once are dead;
Succeeding vanities she still regards,
And, though she plays no more, o'erlooks the cards.
For when the fair in all their pride expire,
To their first elements their souls retire ;
The sprites of fiery termagants in flame
Mount up and take a salamander's name;
Soft yielding nymphs to water glide away
And sip, with nymphs, their elemental tea;
The graver prude sinks downward to a gnome,
In search of mischief still on earth to roam;
The light coquettes in sylphs aloft repair
And sport and flutter in the fields of air."

And the contrivance by which Belinda is awakened is
also perfectly in keeping with all the rest of the machin
ery : —

" He said : when Shock, who thought she slept too long,
Leaped up and waked his mistress with his tongue;
'T was then, Belinda, if report say true,
Thy eyes first opened on a billet-doux."

POPE. 413

Throughout this poem the satiric wit of Pope peeps out
in the pleasantest little smiling ways, as where, in de
scribing the toilet-table, he says : —

"Here files of pins extend their shining rows.
Puffs, powders, patches, Bibles, billet-doux."

Or when, after the fatal lock has been severed,

" Then flashed the living lightning from her eyes,
And screams of horror rend the affrighted skies,
Not louder shrieks to pitying Heaven are cast
When husbands or when lapdogs breathe their last |
Or when rich china-vessels, fallen from high,
In glittering dust and painted fragments lie! "

And so, when the conflict begins : —

"Now Jove suspends his golden scales in air;
Weighs the men's wits against the ladies' hair;
The doubtful beam long nods from side to side;
At length the wits mount up, the hairs subside."

But more than the wit and fancy, I think, the perfect
keeping of the poem deserves admiration. Except a
touch of grossness, here and there, there is the most
pleasing harmony in all the conceptions and images.
The punishments which he assigns to the sylphs who
neglect their duty are charmingly appropriate and in
genious : —

" Whatever spirit, careless of his charge,
His post neglects, or leaves the fair at large,
Shall feel sharp vengeance soon o'ertake his sins;
Be stopped in vials or transfixed with pins,
Or plunged in lakes of bitter washes lie,
Or wedged whole ages in a bodkin's eye;
Gums and pomatums shall his flight restrain,
While clogged he beats his silver wings in vain;
Or alum styptics with contracting power,
Shrink his thin essence like a rivellecl flower;
Or as Ixion fixed the wretch shall feel
The giddy motion of the whirling wheel,
In fumes of burning chocolate shall glow.
And tremble at the sea that froths below'. "

414 POPE.

The speech of Thalestris, too, with its droll climax,
is equally good : —

" Me thinks already I your tears survey,
Already hear the horrid things they say,
Already see you a degraded toast,
And all your honor in a whisper lost !
How shall I then your helpless fame defend ?
'T will then be infamy to seem your friendl
And shall this prize, the inestimable prize,
Exposed through crystal to the gazing eyes,
And heightened by the diamond's circling rays,
On that rapacious hand forever blaze ?
Sooner shall grass in Hydepark Circus grow,
And wits take lodging in the sound of Bow,
Sooner let earth, air, sea, in chaos fall,
Men, monkeys, lapdogs, parrots, perish all ! "

So also Belinda's account of the morning omens : —

" 'T was this the morning omens seemed to tell;
Thrice from my trembling hand the patch-box fell;
The tottering china shook without a wind;
Nay, Poll sat mute, and Shock was most unkind."

The idea of the goddess of Spleen, and of her palace,
where

" The dreaded East is all the wind that blows,"

was a very happy one. In short, the whole poem more
truly deserves the name of a creation than anything
Pope ever wrote. The action is confined to a world of
his own, the supernatural agency is wholly of his own
contrivance, and nothing is allowed to overstep the
limitations of the subject. It ranks by itself as one of
the purest works of human fancy ; whether that fancy
be strictly poetical or not is another matter. If we
compare it with the " Midsummer-night's Dream," an
uncomfortable doubt is suggested. The perfection of
form in the " Rape of the Lock " is to me conclusive
evidence that in it the natural genius of Pope found
fuller and freer expression than in any other of hia
poems. The others are aggregates of brilliant passages
Vather than harmonious wholes.

POPE. . 415

It is a droll illustration of the inconsistencies of
human nature, a more profound satire than Pope him
self ever wrote, that his fame should chiefly rest upon
the " Essay on Man." It has been praised and admired
by met" or the most opposite beliefs, and men of no
belief at all. Bishops and free-thinkers have met hen?
on a common ground of sympathetic approval. And,
indeed, there is no particular faith in it. It is a droll
medley of inconsistent opinions. It proves only two
things beyond a question, — that Pope was not a great
thinker ; and that wherever he found a thought, nc
matter what, he could express it so tersely, so clearly,
and with such smoothness of versification as to give it
an everlasting currency. Hobbes's unwieldy Leviathan,
left stranded there on the shore of the last age, and
nauseous with the stench of its selfishness, — from this
Pope distilled a fragrant oil with which to fill the
brilliant lamps of his philosophy, — lamps like those in
the tombs of alchemists, that go out the moment the
healthy air is let in upon them. The only positive
doctrines in the poem are the selfishness of Hobbes set
to music, and the Pantheism of Spinoza brought down
from mysticism to commonplace. Nothing can be more
absurd than many of the dogmas taught in this " Essay
on Man." For example, Pope affirms explicitly that
instinct is something better than reason : —

" See him from Nature rising slow to art,
To copy instinct then wa< realm's part;
Thus, then, to man the voice of nature spake; —
Go, from the creatures thy instructions take;
Learn from the beasts what food the thickets yield;
Learn from the birds the physic of the field;
The arts of building from the bee receive;
Learn of the mole to plough, the worm to weare;
Learn of the little nautilu* to sail,
Spread the thin oar, or catch the driving gale."

I say nothing of the quiet way in which the genenu

416 POPE.

term " nature " is substituted for God, but how unut
terably void of reasonableness is the theory that Nature
would have left her highest product, man, destitute ot
that instinct with which she had endowed her other
creatures ! As if reason were not the most sublimated
form of instinct. The accuracy on which Pope prided
himself, and for which he is commended, was not ac
curacy of thought so much as of expression. And he
cannot always even claim this merit, but only that of
correct rhyme, as in one of the passages I have already
quoted from the " Rape of the Lock " he talks of cast
ing shrieks to heaven, — a performance of some diffi
culty, except when cast is needed to rhyme with last.

But the supposition is that in the " Essay on Man"
Pope did not himself know what he was writing. He
was only the condenser and epigrammatizer of Boling-
broke, — a very fitting St. John for such a gospel. Or,
if he did know, we can account for the contradictions by
supposing that he threw in some of the commonplace
moralities to conceal his real drift. Johnson asserts
that Bolmgbroke in private laughed at Pope's having
been made the mouthpiece of opinions which he did not
hold. But this is hardly probable when we consider the
relations between them. It is giving Pope altogether
too little credit for intelligence to suppose that he did
not understand the principles of his intimate friend.
The caution with which he at first concealed the author
ship would argue that he had doubts as to the reception
of the poem. When it was attacked on the score of in-
fidp,:ty, he gladly accepted Warburton's championship,
and assumed whatever pious interpretation he contrived
to thrust upon it. The beginning of the poem is famil
iar to everybody : —

" Awake, my St. John, leave nil meaner things
To low ambition and the pride ot kings;

POPE. 417

Let us (since life can little more supply
Than just to look about us and to die)
Expatiate free o'er all this scene of man,
A mighty maze, — but not without a plan ";

To expatiate o'er a mighty maze is rather loose writing
but the last verse, as it stood in the original editions,

was,

" A mighty maze of walks without a plan " ;

and perhaps this came nearer Pope's real opinion than
the verse he substituted for it. Warburton is careful
not to mention this variation in his notes. The poem is
everywhere as remarkable for its confusion of logic as it
often is for ease of verse and grace of expression. An
instance of both occurs in a passage frequently quoted : —

" Heaven from all creatures hides the book of fate;
All but the page prescribed, their present state ;
From brutes what men, from men what spirits know,
Or who would suffer being here below?
The lamb thy riot dooms to bleed to-day,
Had he thy reason, would he skip and play?
Pleased to the last, he crops the flowery food,
And licks the hand just raised to shed his blood.
0, blindness to the future kindly given
That each may fill the circle meant by heaven!
Who sees with equal eye, as God of all,
A hero perish or a sparrow fall,
Atoms or systems into ruin hurled,
And now a bubble burst, and now a world ! '*

Now, if "heaven from all creatures hides the book of
fate," why should not the lamb " skip and play," if he
had the reason of man 1 Why, because he would then
be able to read the book of fate. But if man himself
cannot, why, then, could the lamb with the reason of
man? For, if the lamb had the reason of man, the
book of fate would still be hidden, so far as himself was
concerned. If the inferences we can draw from appear
ances are equivalent to a knowledge of destiny, the
knowing enough to take an umbrella in cloudy weather
18* A.A

418 POPE.

might be called so. There is a manifest confusion be
tween what we know about ourselves and about other
people ; the whole point of the passage being that we
are always mercifully blinded to our own future, how
ever much reason we may possess. There is also inac
curacy as well as inelegance in saying,

" Heaven,

Who sees with equal eye, as God of all,
A hero perish or a sparrow fall."

To the last verse Warburton, desirous of reconciling his
author with Scripture, appends a note referring to Mat
thew x. 29 : "Are not two sparrows sold for one farthing]
and one of them shall not fall to the ground without
your Father." It would not have been safe to have
referred to the thirty-first verse : " Fear ye not, there
fore, ye are of more value than many sparrows."

To my feeling, one of the most beautiful passages
in the whole poem is that familiar one : —

" Lo, the poor Indian whose untutored mind
Sees God in clouds, or hears him in the wind,
His soul proud science never taught to stray
Far as the solar walk or milky way:
Yet simple Nature to his hope has given
Behind the cloud-topt hill a humbler heaven;
Some safer world in depth of woods embraced,
Some happier island in the watery waste,
Where slaves once more their native land behold,
No fiends torment, no Christians thirst for gold.
To be contents his natural desire,
He asks no angel's wing, no seraph's fire,
But thinks, admitted to tliat equal sky,
His faithful dog shall bear him company."

But this comes in as a corollary to what went just
before : —

" Hope springs eternal in the human breast,
Man never is but always to be blest;
The soul, uneasy, and confined from home,
Rests and expatiates in a life to come."

POPE. 419

Then follows immediately the passage about the poor
Indian, who, after all, it seems, is contented with merely
being, and whose soul, therefore, is an exception to the
general rule. And what have the "solar walk" (as he
calls it) and "milky way" to do with the affair1? Does
our hope of heaven depend on our knowledge of astron
omy? Or does he mean that science and faith are neces
sarily hostile ? And, after being told that it is the " un
tutored mind" of the savage which "sees God in clouds
and hears him in the wind," we are rather surprised
to find that the lesson the poet intends to teach is that

" All are but parts of one stupendous whole,
Whose body Nature is, and God the soul.
That, changed through all, and yet in all the same,
Great in the earth, as in the ethereal frame,
Warms in the sun, refreshes in the breeze,
Glows in the stars, and blossoms in the trees."

So that we are no better off than the untutored Indian,
after the poet has tutored us. Dr. Warburton makes a
rather lame attempt to ward off the charge of Spinozism
from this last passage. He would have found it harder
to show that the acknowledgment of any divine revela
tion would not overturn the greater part of its teach
ings. If Pope intended by his poem all that the bishop
takes for granted in his commentary, we must deny him
what is usually claimed as his first merit, — clearness.
If he did not, we grant him clearness as a writer at the
expense of sincerity as a man. Perhaps a more charita
ble solution of the difficulty would be, that Pope's pre
cision of thought was no match for the fluency of his
verse.

Lord Byron goes so far as to say, in speaking of Pope,
that he who executes the best, no matter what his
department, will rank the highest. I think there aro
enough indications in these letters of Byron's, however,
that they were written rather more against Wordsworth

420 POPE.

than for Pope. The rule he lays down -would make Vol
taire a greater poet, in some respects, than Shakespeare.
Byron cites Petrarch as an example ; yet if Petrarch had
put nothing more into his sonnets than execution, there
are plenty of Italian sonneteers who would be his match.
But, in point of fact, the department chooses the man and
not the man the department, and it has a great deal to
do with our estimate of him. Is the department of Mil
ton no higher than that of Butler ] Byron took especial
care not to write in the style he commended. But I
think Pope has received quite as much credit in respect
even of execution as he deserves. Surely execution is
not confined to versification alone. What can be worse
than this ?

*• At length Erasmus, that great, injured name,
(The glory of the priesthood and the shame,)
Stemmed the wild torrent of a barbarous age,
And drove those holy vandals off the stage."

It would have been hard for Pope to have found a pret
tier piece of confusion in any of the small authors he
laughed at than this image of a great, injured name
stemming a torrent and driving vandals off the stage.
And in the following verses the image is helplessly con
fused : —

"Kind self-conceit to some her glass applies,
Which no one looks in with another's eyes,
But, as the flatterer or dependant paint,
Beholds himseif a patriot, chief, or saint."

The use of the word " applies " is perfectly un-English ;
and it seems that people who look in this remarkable
glass see their pictures and not their reflections. Often,
also, when Pope attempts the sublime, his epithets be
come curiously unpoetical, as where he says, in the
Dunciad,

" As, one by one, at dread Medea's strain,
The sickening stars fade off the ethereal plain."

POPE. 421

And not seldom he is satisfied with the music of the
verse without much regard to fitness of imagery ; in the
" Essay on Man," for example : — ,

" Passions, like elements, though born to fight,
Yet, mixed and softened, in his work unite;
These 't is enough to temper and employ;
But what composes m;ui can man destroy?
Suffice that Reason keep to Nature's road,
Subject, compound them, follow her and God.
Love, Hope, and Joy, fair Pleasure's smiling train,
Hate, Fear, and Grief, the family of Pain,
These, mixed with Art, and to due bounds confined,
Make and maintain the balance of the mind."

Here reason is represented as an apothecary compound
ing pills of " pleasure's smiling train " and the " family
of pain." And in the Moral Essays,

" Know God and Nature only are the same;
In man the judgment shoots at flying game,
A bird of passage, gone as soon as found,
Now in the moon, perhaps, now under ground."

The "judgment shooting at flying game " is an odd
image enough ; but I think a bird of passage, now in
the moon and now under ground, could be found no
where — out of Goldsmith's Natural History, perhaps.
An epigrammatic expression will also tempt him into
saying something without basis in truth, as where he
ranks together " Macedonia's madman and the Swede,"
and says that neither of them " looked forward farther
than his nose," a slang phrase which may apply we'll
enough to Charles XII., but certainly not to the pupil
of Aristotle, who showed himself capable of a large
political forethought. So, too, the rhyme, if correct, is
a sufficient apology for want of propriety in phrase, as
where he makes "Socrates hl<r<l."

But it is in his Moral Essays and parts of his Satires
that Pope deserves the praise which he himself de
sired : —

422 POPE.

" Happily to steer

From grave to gay, from lively to severe,
Correct with spirit, eloquent with ease,
Intent to reason, or polite to please."

Here Pope must be allowed to have established a style
of his own, in which he is without a rival. One can
open upon wit and epigram at any page.

" Behold, if Fortune or a mistress frowns,
Some plunge in business, other shave their crowns;
To ease the soul of one oppressive weight,
This quits an empire, that embroils a state;
The same adust complexion has impelled,
Charles to the convent, Philip to the field."

Indeed, I think one gets a little tired of the invariable
this set off by the inevitable that, and wishes antithesis
would let him have a little quiet now and then. In the
first couplet, too, the conditional " frown " would have
been more elegant. But taken as detached passages,
how admirably the different characters are drawn, so
admirably that half the verses have become proverbial.
This of Addison will bear reading again : —

" Peace to all such: but were there one whose fires
True genius kindles and fair fame inspires;
Blest with each talent and each art to please,
And born to write, converse, and live with ease;
Should such a man, too fond to rule alone,
Bear like the Turk no brother near the throne,
View him with scornful yet with jealous eyes,
And hate for arts that caused himself to rise,
Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer,
And, without sneering, teach the rest to sneer;
Willing to wound and yet afraid to strike,
Just hint a fault and hesitate dislike,
Alike reserved to blame or to commend,
A timorous foe and a suspicious friend;
Dreading e'en fools, by flatterers besieged,
And so obliging that he ne'er obliged;
Like Cato give his little Senate laws,
And sit attentive to his own applause,
While wits and templars every sentence raise,
And wonder with a foolish face of praise; —

POPE. 423

Who but must laugh if such a man there be?
Who would not weep if Attlcus were he?"

With the exception of the somewhat technical image
in the second verse of Fame blowing the fire of genius,
which too much puts us in mind of the frontispieces of
the day, surely nothing better of its kind was ever writ
ten. How applicable it was to Addison I shall consider
in another place. As an accurate intellectual observer
and describer of personal weaknesses, Pope stands by
himself in English verse.

In his epistle on the characters of women, no one who
has ever known a noble woman, nay, 1 should almost
say no one who ever had a mother or sister, will find
much to please him. The climax of his praise rather
degrades than elevates.

" 0, blest in temper, whose unclouded ray
Can make to-morrow cheerful as to-day,
She who can love a sister's charms, or hear
Sighs for a daughter with unwonnded ear,
She who ne'er answers till a husband cools,
Or, if she rules him, never shows she rules,
Charms by accepting, by submitting sways,
Yet has her humor most when she obeys;
Lets fops or fortune fly which way they will,
MNdains all loss of tickets or codille,
Spleen, vapors, or smallpox, above them all
And mistress of herself, though china fall."

The last line is very witty and pointed, — but consider
what an ideal of womanly nobleness he must have had,
who praises his heroine for not being jealous of her
daughter. Addison, in commending Pope's " Essay uii
Criticism," says, speaking of us " who live in the latter
ages of the world " : " We have little else to do left us
but to represent the common sense of mankind, in more
strong, more beautiful, or more uncommon lights." I
think he has here touched exactly the point of Pope's
merit, and, in doing so, tacitly excludes him from the

424 POPE.

position of poet, in the highest sense. Take two of
Jeremy Taylor's prose sentences about the Countess of
Carbery, the lady in Milton's "Comus" : "The religion,
of this excellent lady was of another constitution : it
took root downward in humility, and brought forth fruit
upward in the substantial graces of a Christian, in
charity and justice, in chastity and modesty, in fair
friendships and sweetness of society. . . . And though
she had the greatest judgment, and the greatest experi
ence of things and persons I ever yet knew in a person
of her youth and sex and circumstances, yet, as if she
knew nothing of it, she had the meanest opinion of her
self, and like a fair taper, when she shined to all the
room, yet round about her station she had cast a shadow
and a cloud, and she shined to everybody but herself."
This is poetry, though not in verse. The plays of the
elder dramatists are not without examples of weak and
vile women, but they are not without noble ones either.
Take these verses of Chapman, for example : —

" Let no man value at a little price
A virtuous, woman's counsel : her winged spirit
Is feathered oftentimes with noble words
And, like her beauty, ravishing and pure;
The weaker body, still the stronger soul.
0, what a treasure is a virtuous wife,
Discreet and loving. Not one gift on earth
Makes a man's life so nighly bound to heaven.
She gives him double forces to endure
And to enjoy, being one with him,
Feeling his joys and griefs with equal sense:
If he fetch sighs, she draws her breath as short;
If he lament, she melts herself in tears;
If he be glad, she triumphs; if he stir,
She moves his way, in all things his sweet ape,
Himself divinely varied without change
All store without her leaves a man but poor,
And with her poverty is exceeding store."

Pope in the character I have read was drawing his ideal
woman, for he says at the end that she shall be his

POPE. 425

muse. The sentiments are those of a bourgeois and of
the back parlor, more than of the poet and the muse's
bower. A man's mind is known by the company it
keeps.

Now it is very possible that the women of Pope's
time were as bad as they could be ; but if God made
poets for anything, it was to keep alive the traditions of
the pure, the holy, and the beautiful. I grant the in-
luence of the age, but there is a sense ip which the
poet is of no age, and Beauty, driven from every other
home, will never be an outcast and a wanderer, while
there is a poet's nature left, will never fail of the tribute
at least of a song. It seems to me that Pope had a
sense of the neat rather than of the beautiful. His
nature delighted more in detecting the blemish than in
enjoying the charm.

However great his merit in expression, I think it im
possible that a true poet could have written such a
satire as the Dunciad, which is even nastier than it is
witty. It is filthy even in a filthy age, and Swift him
self could not have gone beyond some parts of it. One's
mind needs to be sprinkled with some disinfecting fluid
after reading it. I do not remember that any other
poet ever made poverty a crime. And it is wholly with
out discrimination. De Foe is set in the pillory forever;
and George Wither, the author of that charming poem,
" Fair Virtue," classed among the dunces. And was it
not in this age that loose Dick Steele paid his wife the
finest compliment ever paid to woman, when he said
"that to love her was a liberal education"]

Even in the " Rape of the Lock," the fancy is that of
a wit rather than of a poet. It might not be just to
compare his Sylphs with the Fairies of Shakespeare ;
but contrast the kind of fancy shown in the poem
with that of Drayton's Nymphidia, for example, I will

426 POPE.

give one stanza of it, describing the palace of the
Fairy: —

" The walls of spider's legs were made,
Well mortised, and finely Jaid;
(He was the master of his trade
It curiously that builded:)
The windows of the eyes of cats,
And, for the roof, instead of slats
*T is covered with the skins of bats,
With moonshine that are gilded."

In the last line the eye and fancy of a poet are recog
nized.

Personally we know more about Pope than about any
of our poets. He kept no secrets about himself. If he
did not let the cat out of the bag, he always contrived
to give her tail a wrench so that we might know she
was there. In spite of the savageness of his satires, his
natural disposition seems to have been an amiable one,
and his character as an author was as purely factitious
as his style. Dr. Johnson appears to have suspected his
sincerity ; but artifice more than insincerity lay at the
basis of his character. I think that there was very
little real malice in him, and that his " evil was wrought
from want of thought." When Dennis was old and
poor, he wrote a prologue for a play to be acted for his
benefit. Except Addison, he numbered among his friends
the most illustrious men of his time.

The correspondence of Pope is, on the whole, less in
teresting than that of any other eminent English poet,
except that of Southey, and their letters have the same
fault of being labored compositions. Southey's are, on
the whole, the more agreeable of the two, for they
inspire one (as Pope's certainly do not) with a sincere
respect for the character of the writer. Pope's are
altogether too full of the proclamation of his own
virtues to be pleasant reading. It is plain that thej

POPE. 427

were mostly addressed to the public, perhaps even to
posterity. But letters, however carefully drilled to be
circumspect, are sure to blab, and those of Pope leave
in the reader's mind an unpleasant feeling of circum
spection, — of an attempt to look as an eminent literary
character should rather than as the man really was.
They have the unnatural constraint of a man in full
dress sitting for his portrait and endeavoring to look his
best. We never catch him, if he can help it, at un
awares. Among all Pope's correspondents, Swift shows
in the most dignified and, one is tempted to say, the
most amiable light. It is creditable to the Dean that
the letters which Pope addressed to him are by far the
most simple and straightforward of any that he wrote.
No sham could encounter those terrible eyes in Dublin
without wincing. I think, on the whole, that a revision
of judgment would substitute " discomforting conscious
ness of the public " for " insincerity " in judging Pope's
character by his letters. He could not shake off the
habits of the author, and never, or almost never, in
prose, acquired that knack of seeming carelessness that
makes Wai pole's elaborate compositions such agreeable
reading. Pope would seem to have kept a common
place-book of phrases proper to this or that occasion ;
and he transfers a compliment, a fine moral sentiment,
nay, even sometimes a burst of passionate ardor, from
one correspondent to another, with the most cold-blooded
impartiality. Were it not for this curious economy of
his, no one could read his letters to Lady Wortley Mon
tague without a conviction that they were written by a
lover. Indeed, I think nothing short of the spretae in-
juria formce will account for (though it will not excuse)
the savage vindictiveness he felt and showed towards
her. It may be suspected also that the bitterness of
caste added gall to his resentment. His enemy wore

428 POPE.

that impenetrable armor of superior rank which ren
dered her indifference to his shafts the more provoking
that it was unaffected. Even for us his satire loses its
sting when we reflect that it is not in human nature for a
woman to have had two such utterly irreconcilable charac
ters as those of Lady Mary before and after her quarrel
with the poet. In any view of Pope's conduct in this
affair, there is an ill savor in his attempting to degrade
a woman whom he had once made sacred with his love.
Spenser touches the right chord when he says of the
Rosalind who had rejected him,

" Not, then, to her, that scorned thing so base,
But to myself the blame, that lookt so high;
Yet so much grace let her vouchsafe to grant
To simple swain, sith her I may not love,
Yet that I may her honor paravant
And praise her worth, though far my wit above;
Such grace shall be some guerdon of the grief
And long affliction which I have endured."

In his correspondence with Aaron Hill, Pope, pushed
to the wall, appears positively mean. He vainly en
deavors to show that his personalities had all been writ
ten in the interests of literature and morality, and from
no selfish motive. But it is hard to believe that Theo
bald would have been deemed worthy of his disgustful
pre-eminence but for the manifest superiority of his
edition of Shakespeare, or that Addison would have
been so adroitly disfigured unless through wounded self-
love. It is easy to conceive the resentful shame which
Pope must have felt when Addison so almost contempt
uously disavowed all complicity in his volunteer defence
of Colo in a brutal assault on Dennis. Pope had done
a mean thing to propitiate a man whose critical judg
ment he dreaded ; and the great man, instead of thank
ing him, had resented his interference as impertinent
In the whole portrait of Atticus one cannot help feeling

POPE. 429

that Pope's satire is not founded on knowledge, but
rather on what his own sensitive suspicion divined of
the opinions of one whose expressed preferences in po
etry implied a condemnation of the very grounds of the
satirist's own popularity. We shall not so easily give
up the purest and most dignified figure of that some
what vulgar generation, who ranks with Sidney and
Spenser, as one of the few perfect gentlemen in our lit
erary annals. A man who could command the unswerv
ing loyalty of honest and impulsive Dick Steele could
not have been a coward or a backbiter. The only justi
fication alleged by Pope was of the flimsiest kind, namely,
that Addison regretted the introduction of the sylphs in
the second edition of the " Rape of the Lock," saying that
the poem was merum sal before. Let any one ask him
self how he likes an author's emendations of any poem
to which his ear had adapted itself in its former shape,
and he will hardly think it needful to charge Addison
with any mean motive for his conservatism in this mat
ter. One or two of Pope's letters are so good as to
make us regret that he did not oftener don the dressing-
gown and slippers in his correspondence. One in par
ticular, to Lord Burlington, describing a journey on
horseback to Oxford with Lintot the bookseller, is full
of a lightsome humor worthy of Cowper, almost worthy
of Gray.

Joseph Warton, in summing up at the end of his
essay on the genius and writings of Pope, says that the
largest part of his works " is of the didactic, moral, and
satiric ; and, consequently, not of the most poetic species
of poetry ; whence it is manifest that good sense and
judgment were his characteristical excellences rather than
fancy and invention." It is plain that in any strict
definition there can be only one kind of poetry, and
that what Warton really meant to say was that Pope

430 POPE.

was not a poet at all. This, I think, is shown by what
Johnson says in his " Life of Pope," though he does not
name Warton. The dispute on this point went on with
occasional lulls for more than a half-century after War-
ton's death. It was renewed with peculiar acrimony
when the Rev. W. L. Bowles diffused and confused War-
ton's critical opinions in his own peculiarly helpless way
in editing a new edition of Pope in 1806. Bowles en
tirely mistook the functions of an editor, and maladroitly
entangled his judgment of the poetry with his estimate
of the author's character.* Thirteen years later, Camp
bell, in his " Specimens," controverted Mr. Bowles's esti
mate of Pope's character and position, both as man and
poet. Mr. Bowles replied in a letter to Campbell on
what he called " the invariable principles of poetry."
This letter was in turn somewhat sharply criticised by
Gilchrist in the Quarterly Review. Mr. Bowles made an
angry and unmannerly retort, among other things charg
ing Gilchrist with the crime of being a tradesman's son,
whereupon the affair became what they call on the
frontier a free fight, in which Gilchrist, Roscoe, the elder
Disraeli, and Byron took part with equal relish, though
with various fortune. The last shot, in what had grown
into a thirty years' war, between the partisans of what
was called the Old School of poetry and those of the
New, was fired by Bowles in 1826. Bowles, in losing
his temper, lost also what little logic he had, and though,
in a vague way, aesthetically right, contrived always to
be argumentatively wrong. Anger made worse confu
sion in a brain never very clear, and he had neither the

* Bowles's Sonnets, wellnigh forgotten now, did more than his con
troversial writings for the cause he advocated. Their influence upon
the coming generation was great (greater than we can well account
for) and beneficial. Coleridge tells us that he made forty copies of
them while at Christ's Hospital. Wordsworth's prefaces first made
imagination the true test of poetry, in its more modern sense. But
they drew little notice till later.

POPE. 431

scholarship nor the critical faculty for a vigorous expo
sition of his own thesis. Never was wilder hitting than
his, and he laid himself open to dreadful punishment, espe
cially from Byron, whose two letters are masterpieces of
polemic prose. Bowles most happily exemplified in his
own pamphlets what was really the turning-point of the
whole controversy (though all the combatants more or
less lost sight of it or never saw it), namely, that with
out clearness and terseness there could be no good writ
ing, whether in prose or verse ; in other words that,
while precision of phrase presupposes lucidity of thought,
yet good writing is an art as well as a gift. Byron alone
saw clearly that here was the true knot of the question,
though, as his object was mainly mischief, he was not
careful to loosen it. The sincerity of Byron's admira
tion of Pope has been, it seems to me, too hastily
doubted. What he admired in him was that patience
in careful finish which he felt to be wanting in himself
and in most of his contemporaries. Pope's assailants
went so far as to make a defect of what, rightly consid
ered, was a distinguished merit, though the amount of
it was exaggerated. The weak point in the case was
that his nicety concerned itself wholly about the phrase,
leaving the thought to be as faulty as it would, and that
it seldom extended beyond the couplet, often not beyond
a single verse. His serious poetry, therefore, at its best,
is a succession of loosely strung epigrams, and no poet
more often than he makes the second line of the couplet
a mere trainbearer to the first. His more ambitious works
may be defined as careless thinking carefully versified.
Lessing was one of the first to see this, and accordingly
he tells us that " his great, I will not say greatest, merit
lay in what we call the mechanic of poetry." * Lessing,

* Briefe die neueote Litterntnr betreffend, 1759,11. Brief. See nlso
his more elaborate criticism of the " Essay on Mail" ^ope ein Meta-
physiker), 1756.

432 POPE.

with his usual insight, parenthetically qualifies his state
ment ; for where Pope, as in the " Rape of the Lock,"
found a subject exactly level with his genius, he was
able to make what, taken for all in all, is the most per
fect poem in the language.

It will hardly be questioned that the man who writes
what is still piquant and rememberable, a century and
a quarter after his death, was a man of genius. But
there are two modes of uttering such things as cleave to
the memory of mankind. They may be said or sung.
I do not think that Pope's verse anywhere sings, but it
should seem that the abiding presence of fancy in his
best work forbids his exclusion from the rank of poet.
The atmosphere in which he habitually dwelt was an
essentially prosaic one, the language habitual to him
was that of conversation and society, so that he lacked
the help of that fresher dialect which seems like inspira
tion in the elder poets. His range of associations was
of that narrow kind which is always vulgar, whether
it be found in the village or the court. Certainly he
has not the force and majesty of Dryden in his better
moods, but he has a grace, a finesse, an art of being
pungent, a sensitiveness to impressions, that would in
cline us to rank him with Voltaire (whom in many ways
he so much resembles), as an author with whom the
gift of writing was primary, and that of verse secondary.
No other poet that I remember ever wrote prose which
is so purely prose as his ; and yet, in any impartial crit
icism, the " Rape of the Lock " sets him even as a poet
far above many men more largely endowed with poetic
feeling and insight than he.

A great deal must be allowed to Pope for the age in
which he lived, and not a little, I think, for the influence
of Swift. In his own province he still stands unapproach
ably alone. If to be the greatest satirist of individual

POPE. 433

men, rather than of human nature, if to be the highest
expression which the life of the court and the ball-room
has ever found in verse, if to have added more phrases
to our language than any other but Shakespeare, if to
have charmed four generations make a man a great poet,
— then he is one. He was the chief founder of an arti
ficial style of writing, which in his hands was living and
powerful, because he used it to express artificial modes
of thinking and an artificial state of society. Measured
by any high standard of imagination, he will be found
wanting ; tried by any test of wit, he is unrivalled.

THE END.

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