Some authors : a collection of literary essays, 1896-1916

SOME AUTHORS

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SOME AUTHORS

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of
Literary Essays

1896-1916

By

WALTER RALEIGH

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OXFORD

AT THE CLARENDON PRESS

1923

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

London Edinburgh Glasgow Copenhagen

New York Toronto Melbourne Cape Town

Bombay Calcutta Madras Shanghai

HUMPHREY MILFORD

Publisher to the University

?NJ
- R3

Printed in England

(V)

NOTE

QIR WALTER RALEIGH at various times
^^ entertained the idea of gathering some of his
occasional essays, and particularly those which
had become obscure by being buried in old
periodicals or in large and costly editions. But
he did not make a final choice, and the scope of
the book remained in doubt until first the War,
and then its History, withdrew his interest from
literary and academic themes.

He left, however, a number of lists, of various
dates ; and the title Some Authors^ which was his
own, described the contents of some of these lists.
The composition of this volume has been deter-
mined by a comparison of these lists and by the
wish to bring together all his essays in literary
criticism that are difficult of access or scattered
in divers editions. If to his English Nove/y
Stevenson, Sty/e, Mi/ton, Wordsworth, Shakespeare,

Johnson, and Romance, the present volume be
2600

VI

NOTE

added, the tale of his published work in this
field will be virtually complete.

Permission to reprint has been given by The
English Review Ltd. (for Boccaccio), The Times
Publishing Company {Don Quixote), Philip Nutt,
Esq. {Hoby), Messrs. Heinemann {Harington,
Whistler), T. Fisher Unwin, Esq. [The Battle of
the Books), H. Young and Sons [Burns), George
Bell and Sons [Shelley), Messrs. Gowans and Gray

[Arnold).

Nothing has been included that the author did
not himself publish, except the essays on Dryden
and Political Satire and on Burke, of which it is '
known that he contemplated the publication. ''

The manuscript of the last piece was recovered
when the rest of this volume was in print, and
it therefore appears out of its natural sequence.
The manuscript, unUke that of Dryden, lacks the
author's final touches, and it was never revised
for the press. Some few additions, roughly
indicated in the margin, are here of necessity
ignored.

(vii)

CONTENTS

PAGE

Boccaccio .....

I

Don Quixote .....

27

Sir Thomas Hoby ....

41

Thomas Howell ....

122

.Sir John Harington

136

p John Dryden and Political Satire "^ .

156

Xjeorge Savile, First Marquess of Halifax

174

NThe Battle of the Books .

194

Robert Burns .- . .

220

-."William Blake "^^ .

. 251

Shelley ......

. 289

Matthew Arnold ....

. 300

James McNeill Whistler

• 311

\

Burke

31Z-

BOCCACCIO^

We know hardly anything of the intimate life of
Boccaccio except what he has told us, and almost all
that he has told us is presented to us under the guise
of fiction. Was he speaking of himself ? Here enter
the two eternal schools of literary criticism with their
tedious controversy. The early romances and poems
of Boccaccio — the Filocolo, the Filostrato, the Teseide,
the Ameto, the Amorosa Visione, the Fiammetta, the
Ninfale Fiesolano — are all romances, poems, and
allegories dealing with love ; all point to a love-
affair which reaches the summit of happiness and is
then broken by desertion and separation. There was
only one love-story, it seems, which interested Boc-
caccio ; what wonder if it was his own ? And his
own, so far as we have independent knowledge of it,
corresponds with the love-story of the romances and
poems. The Filostrato, in its dedication to Fiammetta,
asserts the identity :

' You are gone suddenly to Samnium, and ... I have sought
in the old histories what personage I might choose as messenger
of my secret and unhappy love, and have found Troilus, son
of Priam, who loved Cressida. His miseries are my history.
I have sung them in light rhymes and in my own Tuscan,
and so when you read the lamentations of Troilus and his
sorrow at the departure of his love, you shall know my tears,
my sighs, my agonies ; and if I vaunt the beauties and the
charms of Cressida, you will know that I dream of yours.'

Yet in these same works Boccaccio was inventing
the various literary art-forms which he bequeathed to

^ Reprinted from The English Review, 1913, pp. 209-29.

Originally one of a series of lectures planned by Raleigh and
delivered at Oxford in Hilary Term, 191 3. The other lectures in the
series were : Petrarch, by the late C. D. Fisher ; Erasmus, by P. S.
Allen ; Rabelais, by H. Belloc ; Montaigne, by C. Whibley.

2600 B

2 BOCCACCIO

Europe. The Filocolo is a prose romance after the
French fashion. The Filostrato and the Teseide are
epics of love {Troilus and Cressida and The Knight's
Tale) written in the ottava rima ; the Ameto is a
pastoral in prose and verse ; the Amorosa Vtstone is
a poem in terza rima ; the Fiammetta is a psycho-
logical novel. In all that he does, Boccaccio shows the
way to modern literature.

In his later life he was infected by the habits of the
learned, and produced heavy compilations in Latin,
encouraged thereto by his friend Petrarch. The De
Claris Mulieribus, the De Casihus Illustrium Vtrorurn,
the De Genealogiis Deorum, the De Monttbus, Stlvts,
Lacubus, Fluminibus, &c., were dictionaries of th^es,
mythological and geographical encyclopaedias. They
remind us how great a part of the business of the
Renaissance was concerned with knowledge rather than
art. Their influence has been enormous. The
Legends of Good Women, the Falls of Princes, the
Mirrors for Magistrates, the whole mythological
apparatus of poetry— all have Boccaccio for a chief
source. Indeed, his dull Latin works were in some
ways more influential than his perfect Itahan poems.
They supplied poets with raw material.

Between these two groups of works there falls
a greater thing than either : the hundred tales called
the Decameron. If all the rest were lost and forgotten,
we should lose many beautiful things, but the reputa-
tion of Boccaccio would be no lower than it is. I shaU
speak only of the Decameron and of its author. I believe
that English readers sometimes find it difficult to
understand how it is that the Decameron has placed
its author in the highest seat along with the few great
creators of modern literature. It is well to confront
this difficulty at once, so that we may not take our
own prejudices, and Umitations, and modern conven-
tions of sentiment as a measure of a wider world. Our

BOCCACCIO 3

taste must always be, more or less, the victim of our
limitations, but we should beware of glorying in it,
and, above all, we should beware of mistaking the
aversions of timidity and sensibility for critical
judgments.

Why has this writer of vain, light tales become an
immortal ? His success is not a success of scandal.
Other writers have been as gay as he was, and less
decent ; yet they have gone down to the pit. What
is his secret ?

I must speak at large of the Decameron, but here,
and at first, I will try to answer this question. The
secret of Boccaccio is no hidden talisman ; it is the
secret of air and light. A brilliant sunshine inundates
and glorifies his tales. The scene in which they are
laid is as wide and well-ventilated as the world. The
spirit which inspires them is an absolute humanity,
unashamed and unafraid. He is willing to pass his
time and cast in his lot with the brotherhood of men,
whether they be in rags or fine linen. He is no lone
thinker, living in those dark and fantastic recesses of
the soul where ideas are generated. As soon as you
open his book you are out of doors, subject to all
the surprising chances of the world, blown upon by
the wind and rain, carried hither and thither in our
crowded life, to drinking parties and secret assignations
and funerals. Shocked you may be, and incommoded
by the diversity of your experience, but you are never
melancholy and never outcast. The world, which is
the touchstone of sanity, is always with you. Indeed,
Boccaccio might be called the escape from Dante.
The dreamer awakes, and tastes the air, and sees the
colours of life, and feels the delight of moving his
limbs. He is among men and women. He has
touched ground after his dizzy flight of the spirit ;
he has come out of the prison-house of theological
system, nobly and grimly architected, and is abroad

B 2

4 BOCCACCIO

again in the homely disorder of our familiar world.
Small blame to him if he laughs.

The divine power, the highest wisdom, and the
primal love made Hell, says Dante, very profoundly.
But the world, which was also made by God, is a
lighter thing, with less of the symmetry of an institu-
tion. It is like one of those suddenly conceived works
(and this view has the warrant of orthodoxy) which are
thrown off by the artist in happy moments of careless
inspiration. Those who enter Hell, says Dante, must
abandon hope. But the world is made of hope ; and
the Decameron is a portrait of the world.

There is more than this sense of relief from system
in the Decameron. The world is wide ; and its width
supplies a kind of profundity in another dimension.
In a confined place life can raise itself and be high ;
in a low-lying plain it can extend itself and be broad.
The Decameron is so generous in its breadth, and so
various, that no criticism from without is needed :
it criticizes itself. Experience cannot be criticized by
our idea of what experience ought to be like ; it can
be criticized only by more experience. This is what
is called the irony of life, which, in its literary reflec-
tion, is found in all the best drama. Life criticizes
itself. If any one of us desires to have a criticism
of his own way of life, he will not find anything of
worth in the ideas of a secluded student, who often
enough is willing to tell his opinion of what such a life
ought to be. When the secluded student is a passionate
and eloquent creature, like Ruskin, his ideas often
produce a great effect, and a whole generation of the
weaker sort endeavours to conform itself, not to circum-
stances or the pressure of experience, but to the senti-
ments of a revered teacher. But this is only an echo,
a prolongation of the murmur of applause that greeted
the voice, and it soon dies. The life of, say, a professor
or a resident fellow of a college is to be effectively

BOCCACCIO 5

criticized not by the ideas of another professor or
another fellow of a college, but hy the mere juxta-
position of other dissimilar lives — the life, say, of
a soldier or a brewer's drayman. Boccaccio describes
so many kinds of lives that each of them is seen in
relation to all humanity ; and this is the truest
criticism ; it gives the right perspective. He knows
that the event of human actions is manifold and
incomprehensible ; he is very humble and very
humane ; so he accepts things as they are, and shows
how dire effects spring from trivial causes, how a gay
beginning may have a disgraceful and lamentable
ending, and how a disgraceful beginning may be turned
by the whim of Fate to laughter and ease. This is
what is called the mixture of tragic and comic effects.
The best of Boccaccio's stories are so entirely like
life that the strongest of the emotions awakened in
the reader is not sympathy or antipathy, not moral
approval or moral indignation, but a more primitive
passion than these — the passion of curiosity. We want
to see what happens. This is the passion of all watchers
of life who are not pedantic or foolish. They know
only that they are sure to be surprised. Life is an (
infinitely subtle game, delightful to watch, giving \
glimpses here and there of the underlying causes of j
things, luring on the gamesters who believe they .
have discovered a winning system, fortifying them in
their folly by granting them a short run of luck, and
then, by a turn of the wheel, overthrowing and mock- \
ing their calculations. The interest of the game
and the joy of its uncertainty give millions of readers
to the daily newspapers. Indeed, to suppress the
gambling news, you would have to suppress the news.
The same interest gave a large public also to Boccaccio
and the novelists, his followers. Here is set down
a lively record of the miseries and happiness that have
fallen to the lot of those who lived before us. In the

6 BOCCACCIO

world we see only scraps and fragments of the lives
of others ; in the book we may see the whole extent of
the good and bad fortune that falls to man in this
life. Often there is a moral, clear enough ; flightiness
and folly are seen to work their own punishment.
But not always ; and the moral is a very small part
of the story ; Boccaccio cares very little about it ;
he knows only that pleasure and sorrow chase each
other across the sky, that no one can be sure to escape
from suffering some of the bitterest and most awful
of life's chances except by escaping from life itself ; and
life is what he loves.

I must sketch his own life briefly ; and, in order to
be brief, I must avoid all those controversies with
which the narrative has been honeycombed. One
misfortune which attends the growth of universities is
that learned debates and investigations on the incidents
of the life of a great man are carried on by trained
bores, whom no one would dream of trusting to give
judgment on any incident in the life of any one who
is still alive. Yet they publish papers, and their
papers are quoted by others, so that the outlines of
the record are in a fair way to be snowed under by
masses of learned deposit. I shall state only the con-
clusions and inferences which I accept. They have
not been disproved, and they correspond in the main
with what I may call the traditional life of Boccaccio.

Giovanni Boccaccio (long ago naturalized in England
by the name of John Boccace) was born in Paris in 1 3 1 3 .
His father was a Florentine of humble birth, who
achieved importance as a banker and moneylender.
His mother's name was Jeanne, and she was a French-
woman. She was deserted by the elder Boccaccio,
who returned to Florence and took another to wife.
Boccaccio was sent to Florence in infancy or child-
hood, and passed his early time with his father and
stepmother. He was not preoccupied with books or

BOCCACCIO 7

studies in these years. Indeed, the impulse to litera-
ture came to him at Naples from the life of the city
and of the Court of King Robert. He was intended
by his father for business, but he showed no aptitude
for it, and (his home being perhaps an unhappy place
for a stepchild) he was sent to business in Naples, and
later on was put to learn the Canon Law as a means
of livelihood. * Naples ', he says, * was gay, peaceful,
rich, and splendid above any other Italian city, full
of festas, games, and shows.' In this city, for six years
of his youth, he * did nothing but waste irrecoverable
time '. By wasting time he means attending inter-
mittently to business and to the study of the Canon
Law. He began to know what he wanted, and to
think only of poetry as a profession.

It was probably in 1336, on the Vigil of Easter, in
the Church of S. Lorenzo of the Franciscans, that he
first saw Fiammetta, the lady ' who was ordained to
rule my mind, and who was promised me in my
dreams '. Her name was Maria D'Aquino, and she
was the natural daughter of King Robert of Naples.
She had been married at fifteen, and was famous for
her beauty ; in short, she was what would have been
called in Queen Anne's time * a reigning toast '.
The scene in the church has been very exactly
described by Boccaccio, and very exactly rendered or
adapted by Chaucer in Troilus and Cressida. But
Chaucer's Cressida is more modest and domestic than
her original. Fiammetta had that shining, glittering
beauty, those flashing eyes and bright red lips,
delicately moulded like Cupid's bow, which, if the
world is right, often indicate a cruel and sensual
temper. The rest of Boccaccio's love-story is made
up of a period of wooing, a short intoxication of com-
plete happiness, and then betrayal and despair. In
1338 Fiammetta left Naples for Baia, and forbade
him to follow her. By her excuses and her shifts

8 BOCCACCIO

to put him off, he gradually divined the truth. He
was in a transport of rage and tenderness, jealousy and
grief. At the same time he learned that his father
was ruined, and he returned in 1340 to Florence and
poverty.

The map of a lover's mind which Boccaccio has
given us in the Filostrato is one of the truest and
closest studies in all literature. Here is one passage,
translated almost literally by Chaucer :

Fro thennisforth he rideth up and doun,
And everything com him to remembraunce
As he rod for-by places of the toun
In which he whilom had al his plesaunce,
' Lo, yonder saw I last my lady daunce !
And in that temple with her eyen clere
Me caughte first my righte lady dere ! '

This is an extract from the love-story, not of
Chaucer, but of Boccaccio. And the later history of
Boccaccio is contained in the lines that follow :

Than thoughte he thus : ' O blisful Lord Cupide,
Whan I the proces have in my memorie,
How thou me hast werrey'd on every side,
Men mighte a book make of it, lik a storie.'

Boccaccio made many books of it, and within a few
years a name for himself.

The rest of his life was taken up with his unceasing
labours in literature, varied by ambassadorial work
for the Republic of Florence. In 1348 the great
plague, or Black Death, desolated Italy. Fiammetta
died of it in Naples ; at the same time Boccaccio's
father died in Florence, and he was alone in the world.
The description of the plague which he has prefixed
to the Decameron is perhaps the most vivid historical
document of that century. We can see the streets of
Florence as they were, the disorderly burials, and the
mad pleasures, for, as Bacon remarks in his essay
Of Love, * perils commonly ask to be paid in pleasures '.

BOCCACCIO 9

There is something more than artistic cunning in that
choice of a marvellous black background for the sun-
shine, mirth and ease of the tales in the garden. It is
consummate art ; how pathetic and frail and brilliant
the life of this world is seen to be when it is silhouetted
against the bulk of death ! But in Boccaccio's own
life-history the plague was like a dark band across the
very middle of its course. Everything was changed.
He survived, a comparatively old man for his thirty-six
years, deeply seen in suffering, disillusioned but not
embittered, somewhat aloof from life, a quick observer,
a lover of fair and noble things, above all a lover of
that comedy which may be seen almost everywhere
in human life by the eye of a dispassionate spectator,
that comedy which is the best febrifuge, or specific
against mania. He completed the Decameron in the
space of some five years, by the time he was forty ;
from that time onwards his life ran another course.
He first met Petrarch in Florence when Petrarch was
on his way to Rome in connection with the public
thanksgiving for the lifting of the plague, and his
friendship with Petrarch fills the last twenty-five
years of his life to his death in 1375. It Vv^as a happy
and honourable friendship, a great resource to both
men, and a means of developing what was most
amiable in both their characters. But literature owes
nothing to it on Boccaccio's account. I have praised
the Decameron ; I ought perhaps to quote what
Petrarch thought of it. Writing to Boccaccio in 1374,
about a month before he died, Petrarch says : * The
book you have composed in our maternal tongue,
probably during your youth, has fallen into my
hands, I do not know by what chance. I have seen
it, but if I should say I had read it, I should lie.
The work is very long, and it is written for the vulgar
— that is to say, in prose. Besides, I have been over-
whelmed with occupations.' Boccaccio was younger

lo BOCCACCIO

than Petrarch by nine years, and was a poor scholar
in comparison ; he was content to regard his own
talent as an inferior vernacular thing, not to be men-
tioned in the same day as the niceties and severities
of classical scholarship ; so he put himself to school to
Petrarch, who did not refuse the office of tutor.
The greatest novelist of the modern world was taken
in hand by a scholar, and in conformity with academic
usage was made to pursue researches into the genealogy
of the ancient gods. Boccaccio was quite simple and
modest in regard to himself ; he knew that some of
his stories had been censured by grave and learned
persons ; he was advised to undertake work of a more
exalted kind (namely, the investigation of the genealogy
of the ancient gods), he cheerfully submitted to the
discipline of his superiors, and breathed no word of
protest. During these years the man of letters was
dead, but the penman, who yet lived, an industrious
ghost, went on writing his weary posthumous works.
Ghosts are notorious for the dullness of their literary
output, and this, the ghost of Boccaccio, was no excep-
tion to the rule. Here and there, but not often, nor
for long, there is a gleam of the old splendour, a flush
of the old warmth and geniality. It has been said that
the periods of Italian literature during which the
influence of Petrarch was strongest are the weakest
periods of Italian literature. The life-history of Boc-
caccio throws some light on this statement.

One other event must be mentioned. In 1373 the
city of Florence founded a Dante Chair, and appointed
Boccaccio as the first holder. He produced a Life of
Dante, and a Commentary on part of the Inferno.
So Boccaccio was the first Professor of Modern
Literature, and incomparably the most distinguished
writer who ever took up with that uneasy trade.

The sources of Boccaccio's stories have been care-
fully investigated and catalogued. But this investiga-

BOCCACCIO II

tion does not belong to the study of Boccaccio, for
he did not know the sources of his stories. He picked
them up where he found them — the greater part,
perhaps, in conversation. A man who buys wares
and trinkets from a traveUing pedlar does not generally
concern himself much with the trade routes of Europe.
But it is possible to make a rough classification of the
stories — or of the plots, for the manner of telling
them is Boccaccio's own. About a third of them
are found among the fabliaux of the lower kind of
minstrels in Northern France. Another group con-
tains moral apologues. Oriental in origin and essence,
but scattered through many countries. Last, and
most important, there are the stories founded on real
incidents of Italian life, some of them belonging to
his own time. These are what I may call the news-
paper stories ; they have this enormous advantage
over the others, that they were not invented to
illustrate a moral lesson or to indulge a lewd fantasy ;
they are merely true. The Hundred Merry Tales, the
Seven Wise Masters : these are famous examples of
two kinds of popular anecdotes — the anecdotes of the
tavern and of the pulpit. The one kind is commonly
as extravagant as the other. Both are enormously
popular, for they write their lessons large. The coarse
jest is quite clear and intelligible ; the moral parable
is seldom elusive or subtle. But the truth of life is
a much more delicate affair ; it cannot be advertised
on hoardings or sandwich-boards. By far the most
precious of Boccaccio's bequests are those stories
which tell us what actually happened during his own
time, or not long before, in Italy and the Mediter-
ranean. These set the standard ; and the strange thing
is that he is not satisfied with the wooden framework
of the other stories, he tries to make them lifelike too,
so that the most elaborate art of modern portraiture
is applied to traditional indecencies and traditional

12 BOCCACCIO

moralities. Punch and Judy come to life. Let me
take one instance — the first story in the Decameron ;
it will serve as well as another. The first story of the
first day gives a notable example of hypocrisy ; the
last story of the last day, the famous story of Griselda,
celebrates the virtue of patience. Both are raised to
a height almost heroic, and yet both are almost brought
to the likeness of humanity.

The hypocrite of the first story was a certain notary
or small lawyer of Paris, called Master Chappelet du
Prat. He held it in high disdain that any of his con-
tracts should be found without falsehood. He bore
false witness, when he was thereto entreated, as if
it were the only pleasure in the world ; and often when
he was not entreated at all. He made no care or con-
science to be perjured, and thereby won many law-
suits. He delighted to cause enmities and scandals
between kindred and friends. If he were called upon
to kill any one, he would go to it very willingly. He
was a horrible blasphemer of God and His Saints. He
basely contemned the Church and counted religion
a vile and unprofitable thing, but he would very
joyfully visit taverns and places of dishonest repute.
He would steal both in public and private, as if it
were a gift of nature. He was a great glutton and
drunkard, also a confirmed gamester ; and carried false
dice, to cheat with them the very best friends he had.

* Why do I waste time ', says the narrator, ' in
adding many words ? To be brief : there never was
a worse man born.'

This lawyer was employed by a certain rich merchant
in France, who, having to recover debts from the Bur-
gundians, themselves versed in every deceit, chose
Chappelet as a fit instrument. In the course of his
collector's labours, Chappelet lodged in Dijon with
two Florentine brothers, moneylenders, and there fell
ill, so that the doctors despaired of his life.

BOCCACCIO 13

And now Boccaccio begins to get to work. He lets
you feel the anxiety of the two brothers and overhear
their whispered conversations. What are they to do ?
We lodged him, they say, when he was well ; to turn
him out now that he is mortally sick will do us no
credit. On the other hand, he has notoriously been
a bad man ; he probably will not make any confession
nor take the sacrament ; no Church will receive his
body ; he will have to be buried like a dog. Even if
he were to confess, no priest would dare to absolve
him from his many and monstrous sins. So he will
die, and must be cast into some ditch, and the people
of the town, who already do not like us, will mutiny
against us, and say, ' Why should we suffer these
Lombard dogs, whom the Church rejects, to live
among us ? ' Perhaps the people will attack our house
and rob our goods, and our lives will be in danger.
What are we to do ?

Now Master Chappelet lay in a neighbouring room,
and had quick ears. He called the brothers to him and
promised them that they should suffer no inconveni-
ence on his account. * Only send me ', he said, * the
most holy and religious man that you can find, and
I will take care of the rest.' So they sent to him an
aged, devout Friar, a master of the Holy Scriptures,
a very venerable person, of a sanctified life. The
Friar spoke words of comfort to him and asked how
often he had been at confession. Master Chappelet
(who had never been at confession in his life) replied,

* Holy Father, I commonly go to confession once a
week, sometimes much oftener, but it is true that
eight days have now passed since I was confessed, so
violent has been the extremity of my weakness.'

* My son,' said the good old man, ' you have done well ;
and since you have so often confessed youself, I shall
have the less labour in asking you questions.'

* O good Father,' said Chappelet, ' do not talk like

14 BOCCACCIO

that ; although I have been often confessed, I desire
now to make a general confession of all the sins that
come to my remembrance, from the very day of my
birth to this present hour. I entreat you, holy Father,
to question me closely, as if I had never been confessed
before. And take no account of my sickness, for I had
rather offend against my carnal welfare than hazard
the perdition of my soul.'

So the Friar questions him, and Master Chappelet
makes his marvellous confession. I take some extracts,
using, for the most part, the spirited English version
of 1620.

He confesses that he has been guilty of the sin of
gluttony, for he has drunk water with too great relish,
and has eaten salad with more pleasure than agrees
with the nature of fasting. The Friar says that these
sins are natural, and very light. ' O sir,' says Master
Chappelet, * never tell me this to comfort me, for
well you know, and I am not ignorant, that such
things as are done for the service of God ought all
to be performed purely, and without any blemish of
the mind.'

This is a promising beginning, and Master Chappelet
soon improves upon it. Asked whether he has often
been angry, * O sir,' says he, ' therein I assure you
I have often sinned. Alas ! what man is able to
forbear it, beholding the daily actions of men to be
so dishonest ? Many times in a day I have rather
wished myself dead than living, beholding youth
pursuing idle vanities, to swear and forswear themselves,
tippling in taverns, and never haunting churches, but
rather affecting the world's follies than any such
duties as they owe to God.' ' This is a good and
holy anger,' said the Friar ; ' but, tell me, hath not
rage or fury at any time so overruled thee as to com-
mit murder or manslaughter, or to speak evil of any
man, or to do any other such kind of injury ? ' * O

BOCCACCIO 15

Father,' answered Master Chappelet, * you that seem
to be a man of God, how dare you use such vile
words ? If I had had the least thought to do any
such act, do you think God would have suffered me
to live ? Those are deeds of darkness, fit for villains
and wicked livers ; when at any time I have met with
one of them, I have said, " Go, God amend thee." '

And so he carries on, confessing kind and good
actions under the guise of sins. He has spoken ill of
another, for when he saw a man continually beat his
wife he complained to the man's parents. He has
cheated in merchandise, for once a man brought him
money in a purse, and it was found later that there
was fourpence too much, so Master Chappelet gave
it to the poor. And once, when he was a very little
boy, he cursed his mother, which now gives him
occasion for an anguish of filial devotion. So, in the
end, the holy man absolves him, and adds his own
benediction, and believes him to be one of the saints
of the earth. * And who would not have done the like,'
says the story, * hearing a man to speak in this manner
when he was at the very point of death ? '

So Master Chappelet is buried in the convent and
sermons are preached upon him, and he is canonised,
and the crowd press about his bier for relics, and
a chapel is built for his tomb, and * for many days it
was strange to see how the country people came
thither in heaps, with holy candles and other offerings,
and images of wax fastened to the tomb, in sign of
sacred and solemn vows to this new-created Saint '.

I have quoted at some length to illustrate the zest
of Boccaccio and his generosity of treatment, if I may
so call it. Here is a hypocrite in the grand style ! It
is all done for a single end, to save himself and his
hosts from danger and discomfort. But the real
motive is the delight of the craftsman — hypocrisy
for art's sake.

i6 BOCCACCIO

Think of the slightness of the story. A wicked lawyer
makes a lying confession on his death-bed and dies in
the odour of sanctity. That is all. How many writers,
presented with that summary, would make a living
thing of it, full of humour and irony and delight ?
It is not even one of the best told of Boccaccio's stories ;
yet the vitality of his genius is in every part of it.

When he comes to narrate histories that are full of
incident, what a pageant of human adventure unrolls
itself before our eyes ! What dazzling and terrifying
possibilities seem to lie in wait for us at every corner !
And what a picture of Europe, and of its wayfaring
life, at a time so unlike our own, a time when man had
his face set towards liberty ! The short summaries of
the stories are full of life. Here is one of them :

' Three young men are in love with three sisters,
and elope with them into Crete. There the eldest
sister, urged by jealousy, kills her lover. The second
sister saves her from the penalty of death by yielding
to the suit of the Duke of Crete, but is herself there-
upon killed by her own lover, who flies away in com-
pany with the elder sister. The third couple, being
left behind, are charged with the murder, and being
unable to face the prospect of torture, confess them-
selves guilty, but bribe the keepers of the prison with
money and escape into Rhodes, where they die in
great poverty.'

It is like the record of a police case, yet it is all made
significant and vivid by Boccaccio. The eldest brother
sets the whole train of violence in motion by his
fickleness ; the others are involved by the passions of
anger and love, so that, however extravagant the
summary may sound, the events, as Boccaccio narrates
them, seem to follow one another naturally and
inevitably, linked in the chain of Fate.

The dangers of passion, the dangers of folly and
vanity, these certainly are morals to be found every-

F

BOCCACCIO 17

where in the Decameron. Boccaccio has a singularly-
light and happy touch in his treatment of foolish
persons. He has no acquaintance with the kind of
foolishness that confounds the wisdom of this world ;
he is never metaphysical in his treatment. Shake-
speare's fools are, many of them, also God's fools ;
they live in the deeper issues of things. But Boc-
caccio's fools and dunces are ordinary human creatures
in whom the human faculty of prudence and discern-
ment is quaintly and delightfully lacking. They are
a numerous and amiable family. There is the poor
simple-minded painter Calandrino, a troubled soul,
who was sadly duped time and again by his fellows,
Bruno and Buffalmaco, men of very recreative spirits.
There is the foolish young gentlewoman of Venice,
empty-headed and vain of her beauty, who was
induced to believe that the god Cupid himself had
fallen in love with her. There is the medical man.
Doctor Simon, who took a house in Florence and
watched the passers-by, in the hope that he might get
them for patients. Unfortunately he chanced to
fasten his attention on Bruno and Buffalmaco, and he
noticed that they lived merrily and with less care than
any one else in the city. When he heard that they
were poor men, and painters by profession, he won-
dered (knowing nothing of the artistic temperament)
how it was possible for them to live so jocundly and
in such poverty. So he asked them what hidden means
of livelihood they had. They, perceiving him to be
a loggerhead, plied him with tales of a secret club,
founded by a necromancer, frequented by Kings and
Empresses, and endowed with all the luxuries of the
world. Then the Doctor had them daily for guests,
and employed them to paint his dining-room and his
street-door and all the parts of his house with suitable
frescoes. And he besought them to admit him to
their club — the Pirates' Club, as they were pleased

3600 c

i8 BOCCACCIO

to call it. All the time that Bruno was painting the
Battle of the Rats and Cats in the gallery of the
Doctor's garden, the Doctor would stand by and hold
the candle for him, for he painted after dusk, and tease
him to be allowed to join the club. * Hold the candle
a little nearer,' said Bruno, ' till I have finished the
tails of these rats, then I will answer you.' The poor
Doctor ransacked his head for everything that might tell
in his favour. * I would do anything for you,' he said ;
* you might take me into your club. You can perfectly
well see what a handsome man I am, and how well my
legs are proportioned to my body, and I have a face
like a rose, and, more than that, I am a Doctor of
Medicine, and I think you have none of that profession
in your club, and I have a great store of anecdote,
and can sing a good song, and if you don't believe it,
I will sing you one.' With that he began to sing.
In the sequel Master Doctor was very shamefully
treated by the high-spirited painters. Folly never
triumphs in Boccaccio, and the practical jokes that are
put upon it often transgress the limits of delicate
taste.

If Boccaccio is the first of the moderns, the world
that he paints is more than half mediaeval. The
nobility and beauty of that older world of chivalry
shine out in the loftier tales. I must tell only one
of them, and in my own translation, for the transla-
tions that I have seen do not render the courtesies
of the original. Most of the effect is in the deliberate,
loving detail ; and no translation can present more
than a shadow. Here is the ninth story of the fifth
day, told by Fiammetta, who was elected queen for
that day's session : —

There once lived in Florence a young gentleman
named Federigo degli Alberighi, who was reputed
for courtesy and feats of arms above all the other
gallants in Tuscany. He fell in love with a lady called

BOCCACCIO 19

Monna Giovanna, the fairest and most gracious lady
in Florence, and to win her favour he launched out
into lavish expenses of every kind, feasts and banquets,
tilts and tournaments. But she, being as virtuous as
she was fair, made no account whatever of these things,
nor of the giver of them. So Federigo wasted all his
substance, and in the end had to retire to a single
poor little farm, where he lived with no companion
but his favourite hawk or falcon, one of the best in
the world ; and there living on what his falcon caught
for him, he passed his time in poverty and obscurity.

Meantime Monna Giovanna's husband died, leaving
all his property to their son, and if the son should die
without issue, to Monna Giovanna herself. Being
left a widow, she lived during the summer season at
a country house which happened to be near Federigo's
farm.

The young man, her son, who was fond of coursing
and hawking, struck up a friendship with Federigo, and
took especial delight in the wonderful flights of the
falcon. He greatly coveted to have the falcon for his
own, but seeing how dearly Federigo loved her, he
forbore to make the request. After a time the youth,
who was an only child, fell ill, and, in spite of his
mother's care, wasted away. She cherished him night
and day, and urged him to ask her for anything that
he had a fancy for, promising that she would get it for
him if by any means she could. So at last he said,
' If I could only have Federigo's falcon for my own,
I believe I should recover.'

The lady stood still for a long time on hearing this,
and thought of many things. What could she do ?
She remembered how Federigo loved the falcon, never
letting it go far from him. She remembered how
constant he had been in his affection to herself, and
how she had never shown him the least token of kind-
ness. ' How dare I send, or go,' she thought, * and

c 2

20 BOCCACCIO

ask him for the falcon, the best that ever flew ? How
can I be so churlish as to try to take away from this
gentleman his one remaining delight ? ' She knew
that she had only to ask for the falcon to have it, and
her mind was full of troubled thought. At last love for
her son prevailed, and she determined, whatever might
come of it, not to send, but to go herself and make
the request. So she promised her son that she would
bring it to him, and at once he began to amend.

The first thing in the morning she took a waiting
gentlewoman with her and walked to Federigo's
farm. He was in a little garden behind the house,
attending to the work of the place, but when he heard
that Monna Giovanna was there, he ran to welcome
her. She greeted him gently, and said, * I have come,
Federigo, to recompense a part of the loss you had
by me, when you offered me more love than it befitted
you to give or me to take. And the recompense is
this : I and this lady are willing to be your guests, and to
dine with you this morning.' Federigo made rever-
ence and said, * Madonna, I do not remember ever to
have had any loss by you, but rather so much gain that
if I am worth anything at all it is by virtue of your
worthiness and of the love that I bore to you. Your
generous visit is more to me than it would be if I had
all my riches to spend again, for now you have come
to a poor house.' So he received her with diffidence,
and took her into his little garden, and said, ' Madonna,
since I have no other retinue, this good woman here,
the wife of an honest labourer, will attend on you while
I make ready the dinner.' Though his poverty was
extreme, he had never felt it till now, for in the house
he found nothing to entertain the lady herself for
whose sake he had in times past feasted thousands ;
he was beside himself with distress, and ran hither and
thither, cursing his ill fortune, but found no money,
and nothing of value that he could sell for money.

BOCCACCIO 21

He could not bring himself to borrow from the

labouring people who served him, much less to beg

of any one else, when suddenly his eyes fell upon his

falcon, sitting on its perch in the little room in which

he lived. This was his only resource ; he took hold of

it, and, finding it plump, thought that it would make

a dish worthy of his lady. Without more ado he wrung

the falcon's neck, and gave it to a little maid to pluck it,

and truss it, and put it on the spit, while he laid the

table with the few white napkins which were left to

him. Then with a more cheerful countenance he

went to the lady in the garden and told her that

dinner, the best that he could provide, was served.

So they sat down, and Federigo waited on them, and,

without suspecting what they were eating, they ate the

falcon. When they had risen from the table and had

talked pleasantly on indifferent topics for a while, it

seemed to the lady that the time was come to tell her

errand ; so, looking kindly at Federigo, she said,

* Federigo, I daresay when I tell you what brought

me here you will be amazed at my presumption, and

will think of the past, and of my honourable rejection

of you, which perhaps seemed to you nothing but

cruelty and hardness of heart ; but if you had ever

had children, you would forgive me, at least in part,

for you would know how strong is the love that binds

us to them. Though you have none, I have an only

child. I must obey the law that is laid on mothers ;

I am forced, against my will, to make an unseemly

request and to ask you to give me something that is

very dear to you, and no wonder, for your hard fortune

has left you no other pleasure or comfort in life —

I mean your falcon, which has so infatuated my poor

boy that if I do not take it home to him he will grow

worse, and if complications set in I dread that I may

lose him. So I implore you, not for the love that you

once felt for me — that is no obligation at all — but in

k

22 BOCCACCIO

the name of your own generosity, which is greater than
ever I found in any one else, to give me the falcon,
so that when it has saved the life of my son he may be
your debtor for ever.'

Federigo, hearing what the lady asked, and knowing
that he could not help her, because he had given her
the falcon to eat, stood with the tears in his eyes, and
could not answer her a word. She thought that he
grieved at parting with the falcon, and very nearly
said she would not take it ; however, she controlled
herself, and waited to hear his reply. ' Madonna,'
he said, when he had mastered his grief, * since first
it pleased God that I should set my love on you,
I have often had to lament my fortune, which has
been adverse in many things, but all that ever I suffered
has been a trifle compared with this. How can I ever
forgive my hard fate, when I think that you have come
to my poor house, where you never would condescend
to come while I was rich, and have asked me for a little
tiny gift, and it is out of my power to give it you.
I will tell you why : When I heard that you were
pleased to dine with me, for which I cannot thank
you enough, I thought of your nobility and worth,
and I felt it only right to honour you, so far as I could,
with a dearer entertainment and choicer fare than is
offered on common occasions. So I remembered my
falcon, which now you ask me to give you, and I
thought how splendid a creature she was, and worthy
to lay before you. So this very morning you have had
her roasted upon a dish, and I felt I could not have
put her to a better use. But now that I know you
wanted her for quite another purpose, it is so great
a grief to me to be unable to serve you that I shall
never have peace again for thinking of it.' To witness
what he said, he sent for the feathers and talons and
beak, and laid them before her.

The lady, when she saw and heard all this, at first

BOCCACCIO 23

felt that he was much to blame for having killed so
noble a creature to give a woman something to eat,
but when she thought of his greatness of soul, which
poverty had no power to abase, she commended him
in her secret heart. Having no hope now of getting
the falcon, and fearing for her son's health, she took
her leave in very low spirits, and returned to her son,
who before many days, whether because he was
disappointed about the falcon, or perhaps because
his disease ran its natural course, died, and left his
mother inconsolable. And she, though she continued
in great sorrow, yet being rich and still in the flower
of her age, was urged by her brothers to marry again.
She had no mind to another marriage, yet being
plagued without ceasing by her brothers, she called
to mind Federigo's loftiness of character, and especially
the magnificence of his generosity in sacrificing so
noble a falcon to do her honour, and she said to them,
* I am well content to stay as I am, if only you would
leave me in peace ; but if you insist on my marrying
again, I must tell you that I will certainly never
marry any one unless it be Federigo degli Alberighi.'
Then her brothers laughed at her, and said, ' You silly
creature, do you know what you are talking about I
How can you take him for a husband ; he has not
a farthing in the world.' But she replied, * I know
that quite well, but I think it is better to marry a man
ill-provided with wealth, than to marry wealth ill-
provided with a man.' The brothers, seeing that her
mind was fixed, and knowing Federigo for a man of
mark, poor though he was, fell in with her wishes,
and gave her to him, with all that belonged to her.
And he seeing that a lady of such worth, whom he
had loved so long and so dearly, was now his wife, and
had brought him all her wealth, became a better
manager than before, and lived with her in all gladness
to the end of his days.

24 BOCCACCIO

It would be difficult to overpraise the delicacy and
beauty of that story. It is not tragic, yet it has a pathos
as lofty as tragedy. It is not well adapted for the stage,
as Tennyson's distortion of it shows ; the actual crisis
is dangerously trivial — a housekeeper's dilemma. It is
perfectly adapted for Boccaccio's narrative method
with interspersed speeches which take us into the con-
fidence of the characters. It is only one proof out of
many that he can take the stuff of daily life, stuff that
would be rejected off-hand by more ambitious writers,
and can wring from it effects that poetry might well
envy.

The prose style of Boccaccio was dominant in narra-
tive literature for centuries, yet it will disappoint
those who test it by modern standards, and it misled
many imitators. It is not a simple style — rather it
is curious and alembicated, but this was for a sufficient
purpose. The stories he had to tell were many of them
very plain broad folk-stories, but they were to be told
in a courtly circle. Boccaccio never uses a coarse
word. He is very sparing in his use of colloquial
expressions, which, when they do occur, have the
more effect from their rarity and their setting. In
this matter he is like Malory, who also preserves
a single atmosphere throughout all his tales. The
atmosphere of the Decameron is the atmosphere of the
polite garden ; if the exploits of clowns and rascals are
told, the language in which they are told sets the
speaker aloof from them in the attitude of a curious
student of human life. The reported speeches of
the characters, especially the longer speeches, are not
dramatic ; they are written to reveal thought and
motive. When Tancred, Prince of Salerno, finds that
his daughter has a secret lover, he causes the lover,
Guiscardo, to be seized, and reproaches Ghismonda
with her crime. She replies in a long speech, not truly
dramatic, but none the worse for that. It is a noble

BOCCACCIO 25

speech, full of faith and courage and defiance. She
knew that Guiscardo was as good as dead, and she felt
indescribable anguish ; she could have wept and cried
aloud, but the pride of her soul disdained tears and
entreaty, for she intended not to survive him ; where-
fore, not in the least like a weeping woman, or one
who accepts reproof for her sin, she answered her
father in high, careless fashion, frankly and coura-
geously, without a tear in her eyes, and without a sign
of perturbation in her soul. ' Tancred,' she said,
' I am in no mind either to deny or to entreat ; the
one way would bring me no help, and I seek no help
the other way ; moreover, I do not intend by act or
word to appeal to your love or mercy ; I shall confess
the truth, first vindicating my honour with sound
reasons, and then resolutely following the dictates of
my unconquered soul. It is true that I have loved
Guiscardo, and I do love him, and so long as I live,
which will not be long, I shall love him ; and if there
is love after death, I shall never cease to love him.
But it was not the frailty of woman that led me to
this, so much as the little care you had to marry me,
and the virtues of Guiscardo himself. You ought to
know, Tancred, since you are made of flesh and blood,
that the daughter you begot is also flesh and blood,
and not stone or iron ; and you ought to remember,
though now you are old, what are the laws of youth,
and how powerfully they work their effect.' These
are the opening sentences of this amazing speech, so
exalted in its temper, so fearless in its humanity, so
perfectly characteristic of Boccaccio. It could hardly
have been spoken at a tragic crisis ; it is too elaborate
for that ; but it sets forth the whole inward meaning
of the crisis, and some part of the creed of the author.
The story of Tancred and Ghismonda has been told
a hundred times since first it was told in Tuscan prose,
but the first telling has never been equalled.

26 BOCCACCIO

We make too little of Boccaccio. The splendid
palace that he built, with a hundred rooms, has not
been neglected, it is true, but it has been used as a
quarry by other builders. Chaucer, Shakespeare, and
how many more, took what they wanted from it, so
that we are sometimes tempted to regard Boccaccio
as if his chief use were to lend material to greater
men. It is not so ; he was as fine an artist as the best
of them ; his method was all his own ; he cannot be
superseded ; and his work has aged less than the work
of those who borrowed from him. He has the elixir
of life ; he is eternally joyous- and eternally young.

DON QUIXOTE^

A Spanish knight, about fifty years of age, who lived
in great poverty in a village of La Mancha, gave him-
self up so entirely to reading the romances of chivalry,
of which he had a large collection, that in the end they
turned his brain, and nothing would satisfy him but
that he must ride abroad on his old horse, armed with
spear and helmet, a knight-errant, to encounter all
adventures, and to redress the innumerable wrongs of
the world. He induced a neighbour of his, a poor and
ignorant peasant called Sancho Panza, mounted on
a very good ass, to accompany him as squire. The
knight saw the world only in the mirror of his beloved
romances ; he mistook inns for enchanted castles,
windmills for giants, and country wenches for exiled
princesses. His high spirit and his courage never
failed him, but his illusions led him into endless trouble.
In the name of justice and chivalry he intruded him-
self on all whom he met, and assaulted all whom he
took to be making an oppressive or discourteous use of
power. He and his poor squire were beaten, trounced,
cheated, and ridiculed on all hands, until in the end,
by the kindliness of his old friends in the village,
and with the help of some new friends who had
been touched by the amiable and generous character
of his illusions, the knight was cured of his whimsies
and was led back to his home in the village, there to die.

That is the story of Don Quixote : it seems a slight

1 Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, born at AlcalA de Henares, 1547 ;
died at Madrid, 23 April 1 61 6.

Reprinted from The Times Literary SuppUment, 27 April 1916.

28 DON QUIXOTE

framework for what, without much extravagance,
may be called the wisest and most splendid book in
the world. It is an old man's book ; there is in it all
the wisdom of a fiery heart that has learned patience.
Shakespeare and Cervantes died on the same day,
but if Cervantes had died at the same age as Shake-
speare we should have had no Don Quixote. Shake-
speare himself has written nothing so full of the diverse
stuff of experience, so quietly and steadily illuminated
by gentle wisdom, so open-eyed in discerning the
strength of the world ; and Shakespeare himself is not
more courageous in championing the rights of the
gallant heart. Suppose the Governor of Barataria had
been called on to decide the cause between these two
great authors. His judgments were often wonder-
fully simple and obvious. Perhaps he would have
ruled that whereas Shakespeare died at the age of
fifty-two and Cervantes lived seventeen years longer,
a man shall give his days and nights to the study of
Shakespeare until he is older than ever Shakespeare
was, and then, for the solace of his later years, shall pass
on to the graver school of Cervantes. Not every man
lives longer than Shakespeare ; and, of those who do,
not every man masters the art and craft of growing
older with the passage of years, so that, by this rule,
the Spanish gentleman would have a much smaller
circle of intimates than the High Bailiff's son of
Stratford. And so he has ; yet his world-wide
popularity is none the less assured. He has always
attracted, and will always attract, a great company of
readers who take a simple and legitimate delight in the
comic distresses of the deluded Don, in the tricks put
upon him, in the woful absurdity of his appearance,
in the many love-stories and love-songs that he hears,
in the variety of the characters that he meets, in the
wealth of the incidents and events that spring up,
a joyous crop, wherever he sets his foot, and not least,

DON QUIXOTE 29

perhaps, in the beatings, poundings, scratchings, and
tumblings in the mire that are his daily portion. That
is to say, those who care little or nothing for Don
Quixote may yet take pleasure in the life that is in his
book ; and his book is full of life.

We have no very ample record of the life experiences
of Cervantes, which are distilled in this, his greatest
book.* We know that he was a soldier, and fought
against the Turks at Lepanto, where his left hand
was maimed for life ; that he was made prisoner some
years later by the Moors, and suffered five years'
captivity at Algiers ; that he attempted with others to
escape, and when discovered and cross-examined took
the whole responsibility on himself ; that at last he
was ransomed by the efforts of his family and friends,
and returned to Spain, there to live as best he could
the life of a poor man of letters, with intermittent
Government employ, for thirty-six more years. He
wrote sonnets and plays, pawned his family's goods,
and was well acquainted with the inside of prisons.
He published the First Part of Don Quixote in 1605 —
that is to say, in his fifty-eighth year — and thence-
forward enjoyed a high reputation, though his poverty
continued. In 161 5 the Second Part of Don Quixote
appeared, wherein the author makes delightful play

^ The authentic facts concerning the life of Cervantes have been
collected and stated w^ith admirable scholarly precision by Professor
Fitzmaurice-Kelly, in his recent Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra,
a Memoir (Clarendon Press, 191 3). In this biography is embodied all
that can be learned from the large array of documents discovered and
published within the last twenty years by the late Cristobal Perez
Pastor. The resulting addition to our knowledge will disappoint
those who are not accustomed to the perspective of the law. A man's
small debts and worries are recorded on parchment ; the crucial
events of his life find no historian but himself. To compile a life of
Cervantes from this wilderness of documents is as difficult as it must
always be to write the life of a soldier and poet from the evidence
supplied by his washing-bills and tax-papers. Mr. Fitzmaurice-Kelly
has performed his task modestly and judiciously.

30 DON QUIXOTE

with the First Part by treating it as a book well known
to all the characters of the story. In the following
year he died, clothed in the Franciscan habit, and was
buried in the convent of the Barefooted Trinitarian
Nuns in Madrid. No stone marks his grave, but his
spirit still wanders the world in the person of the
finest gentleman of all the realms of fact and fable,
who still maintains in discourse with all whom he
meets that the thing of which the world has most
need is knights-errant, to do honour to women, to
fight for the cause of the oppressed, and to right the
wrong. * This, then, gentlemen,' he may still be
heard saying, ' it is to be a knight-errant, and what
I have spoken of is the order of chivalry, in the which,
as I have already said, I, though a sinner, have made
profession ; the same which these famous knights
profess do I profess ; and that is why I am travelling
through these deserts and solitary places, in quest of
adventures, with deliberate resolve to offer my arm
and my person to the most dangerous adventure which
fortune may present, in aid of the weak and needy.'
And the world is still incredulous and dazed. ' By
these words which he uttered ', says the author in
brief comment on the foregoing speech, * the travellers
were quite convinced that Don Quixote was out of
his wits.'

It has often been said, and is still sometimes repeated
by good students of Cervantes, that his main object
in writing Don Quixote was to put an end to the influ-
ence of the romances of chivalry. It is true that these
romances were the fashionable reading of his age, that
many of them were trash, and that some of them were
pernicious trash. It is true also that the very scheme
of his book lends itself to a scathing exposure of their
weaknesses, and that the moral is pointed in the
scene of the Inquisition of the Books, where the priest,
the barber, the housekeeper, and the niece destroy

I

DON QUIXOTE 31

the greater part of his library by fire. But how came
it that Cervantes knew the romances so well, and dwelt
on some of their incidents in such loving detail ?
Moreover, it is worth noting that not a few of them
are excluded by name from the general condemnation.
Amadis of Gaul is spared, because it is * the best of
all books of the kind '. Equal praise is given to
Palmerin of England ; while of Tirante the White the
priest himself declares that it is a treasure of delight
and a mine of pastime.

' Truly, I declare to you, gossip, that in its style this is the
best book in the world. Here the knights eat and sleep, and die
in their beds, and make their wiUs before they die, with other
things in which the rest of the books of this kind are wanting.'

But even stronger evidence of the esteem that Cer-
vantes felt for the best of the romances is to be found
in his habit of linking their names with the poems of
Homer and Virgil. So, in the course of instruction
given by Don Quixote to Sancho Panza, while they
dwelt in the wilds of the Sierra Morena, Ulysses is
cited as the model of prudence and patience, Aeneas
as the greatest of pious sons and expert captains, and
Amadis as the ' pole star, the morning star, the sun of
valiant and enamoured knights, whom all we have
to copy, who do battle under the banner of love and
chivalry '. It would indeed be a strange thing if
a book which is so brave an exercise of the creative
imagination, were mainly destructive in its aim, and
deserved no higher honour than a scavenger. The
truth is that the book is so many-sided that all kinds
of tastes and beliefs can find their warrant in it. The
soul of it is an irony so profound that but few of its
readers have explored it to the depths. It is like
a mine, deep below deep ; and much good treasure is
to be found at the more easily accessible levels. All
irony criticizes the imperfect ideas and theories of
mankind, not by substituting for them other ideas and

32 DON QUIXOTE

other theories, less imperfect, but by placing the
facts of life, in mute comment, alongside of the
theories. The Ruler of the World is the great master
of irony ; and man has been permitted to share some
part of his enjoyment in the purifying power of fact.
The weaker and more querulous members of the race
commonly try to enlist the facts in the service of their
pet ideas. A grave and deep spirit like Cervantes
knows that the facts will endure no such servitude.
They will not take orders from those who call for their
verdict, nor will they be content to speak only when
they are asked to speak. They intrude suddenly, in
the most amazing and irrelevant fashion, on the care-
fully ordered plans of humanity. They cannot be
explained away, and many a man who thought to
have guarded himself against surprise has been sur-
prised by love and death.

Every one sees the irony of Don Quixote in its first
degree, and enjoys it in its more obvious forms.
This absurd old gentleman, who tries to put his anti-
quated ideas into action in a busy, selfish, prosy world,
is a figure of fun even to the meanest intelligence.
But, with more thought, there comes a check to our
frivolity. Is not all virtue and all goodness in the same
case as Don Quixote ? Does the author, after all,
mean to say that the world is right, and that those
who try to better it are wrong ? If that is what he
means, how is it that at every step of our journey we
come to like the Don better, until in the end we can
hardly put a limit to our love and reverence for him ?
Is it possible that the criticism is double-edged, and
that what we are celebrating with our laughter is the
failure of the world ?

A wonderful thing in Cervantes's handling of his
story is his absolute honesty and candour. He does
not mince matters. His world behaves as the world
may be expected to behave when its daily interests

DON QUIXOTE 33

are violently disordered by a lunatic. Failure upon
failure dogs the steps of poor Don Quixote, and he has
no popularity to redeem his material disasters. * He
who writes of me ', says the Don pensively, in his
discussion with the bachelor Sampson, ' will please
very few ' ; and the only comfort the bachelor can
find for him is that the number of fools is infinite,
and that the First Part of his adventures has delighted
them all. As an example of Cervantes's treatment
take one of the earliest of these adventures, the rescue
of the boy Andres from the hands of his oppressor.
As he rode away from the. inn, on the first day of his
knighthood, while yet he was unfurnished with a
squire, Don Quixote heard cries of complaint from
a thicket near by. He thanked Heaven for giving him
so early an opportunity of service, and turned his
horse aside to where he found a farmer beating a boy.
Don Quixote, with all knightly formality, called the
farmer a coward, and challenged him to single combat.
The farmer, terrified by the strange apparition,
explained that the boy was his servant and by gross
carelessness had lost sheep for him at the rate of one
a day. The matter was at last settled by the farmer
liberating the boy and promising to pay him in full
his arrears of wages ; whereupon the knight rode
away, well pleased. Then the farmer tied up the boy
again, and beat him more severely than ever, till at the
last he loosed him, and told him to go and seek redress
from his champion. ' So the boy departed sobbing,
and his master stayed behind laughing, and after this
manner did the valorous Don Quixote right that
wrong.' Later on, when the knight and his squire
are in the wilds, with the company whom chance has
gathered around them, the boy appears again, and Don
Quixote narrates the story of his deliverance as an
illustration of the benefits conferred on the world by
knight-errantry.

3600 o

34 DON QUIXOTE

* All that your worship says is true,' replies the lad, * but
the end of the business was very much the contrary of what
your worship imagines.' * How contrary ? ' said Don Quixote.

* Did he not pay thee, then ? ' ' He not only did not pay me,*
said the boy, ' but as soon as your worship had got outside the
wood, and we were alone, he tied me again to the same tree, and
gave me so many lashes that he left me flayed like St. Bartholo-
mew ; and at every lash he gave me, he uttered some jest or
scoff, to make a mock of your worship ; and if I had not felt
so much pain, I would have laughed at what he said. . . . For
all this your worship is to blame, because if you had held on
your way, and had not meddled with other people's business,
my master would have been content to give me a dozen or
two lashes, and afterwards he would have released me and
paid me what he owed. But as your worship insulted him
and called him bad names, his anger was kindled, and as he could
not avenge himself on you, he let fly the tempest on me.'

Don Quixote sadly admits his error, and confesses that
he ought to have remembered that * no churl keeps the
word he gives if he finds that it does not suit him to
keep it \ But he promises Andres that he will yet see
him righted ; and with that the boy's terror awakes.

* For the love of God, sir knight-errant,' he says, ' if
you meet me again, and see me being cut to pieces,
do not rescue me, nor help me, but leave me to my
pain ; for, however great it be, it cannot be greater
than will come to me from the help of your worship —
whom, with all the knights-errant ever born into the
world, may God confound ! ' With that he ran away,
and Don Quixote stood very much abashed by his
story, so that the rest of the company had to take
great care that they did not laugh outright and put
him to confusion.

At no point in the story does Cervantes permit the
reader to forget that the righter of wrongs must not
look in this world for either success or praise. The
indignities heaped upon that gentle and heroic soul
almost revolt the reader, as Charles Lamb remarked.
He is beaten and kicked ; he has his teeth knocked out,

DON QUIXOTE ^5

and consoles himself with the thought that these
hardships are incident to his profession ; his face is
all bedaubed with mud, and he answers with grave
politeness to the mocks of those who deride him.
When he stands sentry on the back of his horse at the
inn, to guard the sleepers, the stable wench, Mari-
tornes, gets him to reach up his hand to an upper
window, or rather a round hole in the wall of the
hayloft, whereupon she slips a running noose over
his wrist and ties the rope firmly to a bar within the
loft. In this posture, and in continual danger of being
hung by the arm if his horse should move away, he
stands till dawn, when four travellers knock at the
gate of the inn. He at once challenges them for their
discourtesy in disturbing the slumbers of those whom he
is guarding. Even the Duke and the Duchess, who
feel kindly to Don Quixote and take him under their
care, are quite ready to play rough practical jokes on
him. It is while he is their guest that his face is all
scratched and clawed by frightened cats turned loose
in his bedroom at night. His friends in the village
were kinder than this, but they, to get him home,
carried him through the country in a latticed cage on
poles, like a wild beast, for the admiration of the popu-
lace ; and he bethought himself, * As I am a new
knight in the world, and the first that hath revived the
forgotten exercise of chivalry, these are newly invented
forms of enchantment.' His spirit rises superior to
all his misfortunes, and his mind remains as serene as
a cloudless sky.

But Don Quixote, it may be objected, is mad. Here
the irony of Cervantes finds a deeper level. Don
Quixote is a high-minded idealist, who sees all things
by the light of his own lofty preconceptions. To him
every woman is beautiful and adorable ; everything
that is said to him is worthy to be heard with attention
and respect ; every community of men, even the casual

P 2

36 DON QUIXOTE

assemblage of lodgers at an inn, is a society founded
on strict rules of mutual consideration and esteem.
He shapes his behaviour in accordance with these
ideas, and is laughed at for his pains. But he has
a squire, Sancho Panza, who is a realist and loves food
and sleep, who sees the world as it is, by the light of
common day. Sancho, it might be supposed, is sane,
and supplies a sure standard whereby to measure
his master's deviations from the normal. Not at all ;
Sancho, in his own way, is as mad as his master. If
the one is betrayed by fantasy, the other is betrayed,
with as ludicrous a result, by common sense. The
thing is well seen in the question of the island, the
government of which is to be intrusted to Sancho
when Don Quixote comes into his kingdom. Sancho,
though he would have seen through the pretences of
any merely corrupt bargainer, recognizes at once that
his master is disinterested and truthful, and he
believes all he hears about the island. He spends much
thought on the scheme, and passes many criticisms
on it. Sometimes he protests that he is quite unfit
for the position of a governor, and that his wife would
cut a poor figure as a governor's lady. At other
times he vehemently asserts that many men of much
less ability than himself are governors, and eat every
day off silver plate. Then he hears that, if an island
should not come to hand, he is to be rewarded with
a slice of a continent, and at once he stipulates that
his domain shall be situated on the coast, so that he
may put his subjects to a profitable use by selling them
into slavery. It is not a gloss upon Cervantes to say
that Sancho is mad ; the suggestion is made, with
significant repetition, in the book itself. * * As the
Lord liveth,' says the barber, addressing the squire,
* I begin to think that thou oughtest to keep him
company in the cage, and that thou art as much
enchanted as he. In an evil day wast thou impregnated

DON QUIXOTE 37

with his promises, and it was a sorrowful hour when the
island of thy longings entered thy skull.'

So these two, in the opinion of the neighbours, are
both mad, yet most of the wisdom of the book is
theirs, and when neither of them is talking, the book
falls into mere commonplace. And this also is many
times recognized and commented on in the book itself.
Sometimes it is the knight, and sometimes the squire,
whose conversation makes the hearers marvel that one
who talks with so much wisdom, justice, and discern-
ment should act so foolishly. Certainly the book is
a paradise of delightful discourse wherein all topics
are handled and are presented in a new guise. The
dramatic setting, which is the meaning of the book,
is never forgotten ; yet the things said are so good
that when they are taken out of their setting they
shine still, though with diminished splendour. What
could be better than Don Quixote's treatment of the
question of lineage, when he is considering his future
claim to marry the beautiful daughter of a Christian
or paynim King ? * There are two kinds of lineage,'
he remarks. * The difference is this — that some were
what they are not, and others are what they were not ;
and when the thing is looked into I might prove to
be one of those who had a great and famous origin,
with which the King, my father-in-law who is to be,
must be content.' Or what could be wiser than
Sancho's account of his resignation of the governor-
ship ? * Yesterday morning I left the island as I found
it, with the same streets, houses, and tiles which they
had when I went there. I have borrowed nothing
of nobody, nor mixed myself up with the making of
profits, and though I thought to make some profitable
laws, I did not make any of them, for I was afraid
they would not be kept, which would be just the same
as if they had never been made.' Many of those who
come across the pair in the course of their wanderings

38 DON QUIXOTE

fall under the fascination of their talk. Not only so,
but the world of imagination in which the two wanderers
live proves so attractive, the infection of their ideas
is so strong, that, long before the end of the story is
reached, a motley company of people, from the Duke
and Duchess down to the villagers, have set their own
business aside in order to take part in the make-believe,
and to be the persons of Don Quixote's dream. There
was never any Kingdom of Barataria ; but the hearts
of all who knew him were set on seeing how Sancho
would comport himself in the office of Governor, so
the Duke lent a village for the purpose, and it was put
in order and furnished with officers of State for the
part that it had to play. In this way some of the
fancies of the talkers almost struggle into existence,
and the dream of Don Quixote makes the happiness
it does not find.

Nothing in the story is more touching than the
steadily growing attachment and mutual admiration
of the knight and the squire. Each deeply respects the
wisdom of the other, though Don Quixote, whose
taste in speech is courtly, many times complains of
Sancho's swarm of proverbs. Each is influenced by the
other ; the knight insists on treating the squire with
the courtesies due to an equal, and poor Sancho, in
the end, declares that not all the governments of the
world shall tempt him away from the service of his
beloved master. What, then, are we to think, and
what does their creator think, of those two madmen,
whose lips drop wisdom ? * Mark you, Sancho,' said
Don Quixote, ' there are two kinds of beauty — one of
the soul, and another of the body. That of the soul
excelleth in knowledge, in modesty, in fine conduct,
in liberality and good breeding ; and all these virtues
are found in, and may belong to, an ugly man. . . .
I see full well, Sancho, that I am not beautiful, but
I know also that I am not deformed, and it is enough

DON QUIXOTE 39

for a man of honour to be no monster ; he may be
well loved, if he possesses those gifts of soul which
I have mentioned.' Sometimes, at the height of his
frenzy, the knight seems almost inspired. So, when
the shepherds have entertained him, he offers, by way
of thanks, to maintain against all comers the fame and
beauty of the shepherdesses, and utters his wonderful
little speech on gratitude :

' For the most part, he who receives is inferior to him who
gives ; and hence God is above all, because he is, above all,
the great giver ; and the gifts of man cannot be equal to those
of God, for there is an infinite distance between them ; and
the narrowness and insufficiency of the gifts of man is eked out
by gratitude.'

There cannot be too much of this kind of madness.
Well may Don Antonio cry out on the bachelor
Sampson, who dresses himself as the Knight of the
Silver Moon and overthrows Don Quixote in fight :

' * O sir, may God forgive you the wrong you have done to all
the world in desiring to make a sane man of the most gracious
madman that the world contains ! Do you not perceive that
the profit which shall come from the healing of Don Quixote
can never be equal to the pleasure which is caused by his
ecstasies ? '

What if the world itself is mad, not with the ecstasy
of Don Quixote, nor with the thrifty madness of
Sancho, but with a flat kind of madness, a makeshift
compromise between faith and doubt ? All men have
a vein of Quixotry somewhere in their nature. They
can be counted on, in most things, to follow the beaten
path of interest and custom, till suddenly there comes
along some question on which they refuse to appeal
to interest ; they take their stand on principle, and
are adamant. All men know in themselves the mood
of Sancho, when he says :

* I have heard the preachers preach that we should love our
Lord for himself alone, without being moved to it by the hope

40 DON QUIXOTE

of glory or the fear of pain ; but, for my own part, I would love
him for what he is able to do for me.'

These two moods, the mood of Quixote and the mood
of Sancho, seem to divide between them most of the
splendours and most of the comforts of human life.
It is rare to find either mood in its perfection. A man
who should consistently indulge in himself the mood
of the unregenerate Sancho would be a rogue, though,
if he preserved good temper in his doings, he would
be a pleasant rogue. The man who should maintain
in himself the mood of Quixote would be something
very like a saint. The saints of the Church Militant
would find no puzzle and no obscurity in the character
of the Knight of La Mancha. Some of them, perhaps,
would understand, better than Don Quixote under-
stood, that the full record of his doings, compiled by-
Cervantes, is both a tribute to the saintly character,
and a criticism of it. They certainly could not fail
to discover the religious kernel of the book, as the world,
in the easy confidence of its own superiority, has failed
to discover it. They would know that whoso loseth
his life shall save it ; they would not find it difficult to
understand how Don Quixote, and, in his own degree,
Sancho, was willing to be a fool, that he, and the
world with him, might be made wise. Above all, they
would appreciate the more squalid misadventures of
Don Quixote, for, unlike the public, which recognizes
the saint by his aureole, they would know, none better,
that the way they have chosen is the way of contempt,
and that Christianity was nursed in a manger.

I

SIR THOMAS HOBY^

The Renaissance is the name of a European move-
ment so gradual, broad, manifold, and subtle, that
any attempt to reduce it to a single expression is
predestined to failure. No formula less vague and
magniloquent than Michelet's — * the discovery by man
of himself and of the world ' — can be stretched to
cover the diverse aspects of that great era of change.
On all sides there was a loosening of bonds, and
a widening of horizons, * deliverance to the captives,
and recovering of sight to the blind '. The extension
of man's territorial domain, and of his imaginative
prospect, by the discovery of the New World, the
shattering of his most familiar conceptions by the
brilliant conjectures of Copernicus, are two signal
achievements which may perhaps be taken as em-
blematic of all the rest. By these the mediaeval scheme
of the physical universe, and with it the mediaeval
theory of divinity and politics, to which it was so
delicately and symmetrically fitted, were to be finally
overthrown. At the same time the rediscovery and
reconstruction of classical antiquity by the labours of
scholars gave to imagination a new focus, and to
humanity a new model. St. Augustine's dream of
a City of God waxed pale and faint, like a student's
midnight taper, when the sun rose on those other
cities, wherein were harboured the beauty and the
strength of ancient Greece and Rome. In the zest
of the new interests and new possibilities that were
rising into view, the human kind shook off for a while
its old preoccupation with the idea of death, and,
undeterred by plague and famine, took for motto * It

^ The Introduction to The Book of the Courtier, from the Italian
of Count Baldassare Castiglione : done into English by Sir Thomas
Hohy, published in the Tudor Translations, 1900,

42 SIR THOMAS HOBY

is good for us to be here '. The old civilization was
passing away, and to the excited hopes of a younger
generation all things seemed possible. It was the hey-
day of the adventurer, the speculator, the promulgator
of new systems, the setter-up of new models. The
feudal order, with its elaborated rigid tiers and hier-
archies, culminating in Emperor and Pope, was
crumbling to destruction ; slowly and unperceived,
strong separate nations were being built up out of its
ruins. In the meantime there was room for a new
conception of the State, such as was set forth by
Sir Thomas More in his Utopia ; for a new conception
of the position of a Ruler, such as was set forth by
Machiavel in his Prince ; for a new conception of the
duties and opportunities of the individual in society,
such as was set forth by Count Baldassare Castiglione
in his Book of the Courtier.^

I

No single book can serve as a guide to the Renais-
sance, or as an index to all that is embraced by * the
comprehensive energy of that significant appellation '.
But if one, rather than another, is to be taken for an
abstract or epitome of the chief moral and social ideas
of the age, that one must be The Courtier. It is
far indeed from being the greatest book of its time ;
it is hardly among the greatest. But it is in many
ways the most representative. That dominant note
of the Renaissance, the individualism which sub-
ordinated all institutions to the free development of
human faculty, finds full expression in ^he Courtyer —

^ The Courtier, though not printed till 1528, was completed by
the author, as shall be seen hereafter, in 15 16, the year of the publica-
tion of More's Utopia and Ariosto's Orlando Furioso. The First
Edition of Thg Prince did not appear till 1532, after the death of
Machiavel, but the book was written in 151 3. To the same time
belongs another work of first importance in the history of scholarship
and letters : the version of the Greek Testament by Erasmus.

I

SIR THOMAS HOBY 43

nowhere with a stronger, simpler, and less conscious
emphasis than in the high exordium : * Let us therfore

* at length settle oure selves to begin that is oure

* purpose and drifte, and (if it be possible) let us

* facion such a Courtier, as the Prince that shalbe

* worthye to have him in his servyce, although hys

* state be but small, maye notwythstandynge be called

* a mightye Lorde.' The almost idolatrous reverence
for classical precedent, for the deeds and words of the
noble Grecians and Romans, which pervades Renais-
sance literature, has left its mark on every page of
The Courtier, and has, moreover, by a happy inspira-
tion, been allowed to determine the very form in
which the book is cast. Many of the matters discussed
by the writers of his time in separate treatises are dealt
with by Castiglione in those interwoven digressions
which are permitted to break the monotony of his
continued theme. Thus, for instance, the discourse
on jests and jesting, introduced into the second book,
compares creditably enough with the Facetiae of
Poggio the Florentine, Secretary of the Apostolic See,
or with the Detti e Fatti, piacevoli e gravi, di diversi
Principi, Filosofi e Cortigiani, compiled and * reduced
to morality ' by the sober Guicciardini, or with any
other in the estimable and prolific family of Renais-
sance jest-books. The discussion in the first book on
the true standards of vernacular literature, the use of
archaisms, and the relation between writing and speech,
is the author's contribution to a question which had
been broached by Dante in his treatise De Vulgari
Eloquentia, and which was hotly debated during the
sixteenth century, on the one side and the other,
by writers as considerable as Trissino, Machiavel,
and Bembo.* By his own age and the next, Casti-
glione rather than Dante was accepted as the most

1 See Trissino, // Castellano (1529) ; Machiavelli, Didogo suUa
Lingua ; Bembo, Prose (1525).

L

44 SIR THOMAS HOBY

distinguished champion, against the Tuscan purists, of
a courtly speech common to all Italy.^ The passionate
monologue, again, in praise of Platonic love, which is
assigned by the author to Bembo in the fourth book
of The Courtier, finds its precedent and parallel in
the works wherein Ficino and Pico treated the same
subject at large. And the lighter pieces of dialectic,
the debates, dramatically interrupted, on the com-
parative worthiness of the sexes and of the fine arts,
deal with topics which constantly exercised the wit
and the imagination of Renaissance society and Renais-
sance literature. Take it for all in all, the Book of
THE Courtier reflects as in a mirror the age that gave
it birth.

But rather than in these diversions and digressions
Castiglione's title to memory is to be found in his
treatment of his main theme, his admirable present-
ment of an ideal perhaps the most valuable and potent
of those bequeathed to us by the Renaissance. The
idea of the ' scholar-gentleman ' is nowhere set forth
with more likelihood and consistency of detail, nowhere
analysed with a finer skill, than in The Courtier.
The complete gentleman of Castiglione's portraying
differs from the pedantic scholars of the monasteries
in that he is to be skilled in the use of arms, a master
of all athletic crafts, well versed in affairs, a joyous
companion withal, and able to hold his own in the
gallant society of a court. His principal profession is
still chivalry. To see the world of men and action
chiefly through the spectacles of books may be excus-
able in a trencher-chaplain, or in an ascetic whose life
is dedicated to contemplation ; in a gentleman it is
ignoble. The sentiment of Castiglione's age upon this
point is very well expressed by his contemporary
Guevara in one of his familiar letters : * When amongst

* Claudio Tolomei in his dialogue, // Cesano (1554), introduces
Castiglione as the acknowledged protagonist for the lingua cortigiana.

I

SIR THOMAS HOBY 45

* Knights or Gentlemen talke is of armes, a Gentleman
' ought to have great shame to say, that he read it,

* but rather that he saw it. For it is very convenient

* for the Philosopher to recount what hee hath read,

* but the Knight or Gentleman it becommes to speake

* of things that hee hath done.' ^ On the other hand,
the gentleman of the Renaissance differs from the
mediaeval knight in that he is to be not only a warrior
and a councillor, but also a lover and follower of
learning and an adept in the fine arts. * Besyde good-

nesse,' says our author, * the true and principall

ornament of the mynde in everye manne (I beleave)

are letters.' That the ideal was new is evidenced

by the sentence that follows : ' The Frenchmen know

onelye the noblenesse of armes, and passe for nothing

beside : so that they do not onelye not sett by letters,

but they rather abhorre them, and all learned men

they count verie rascalles, and they thinke it a great

vilany when any one of them is called a clarke.' ^

But the new conception gained the day, and the figure

of a gentleman, as moulded and furnished forth by

Castiglione, speedily became a model for all Europe,

the North as well as the South. In this * Mirror of

Courtesy ' Sir Philip Sidney might have beheld his

own likeness. The same pattern was in Milton's mind

when he defined the true ends of education. * I call

* therefore a complete and generous education that
' which fits a man to perform justly, skilfully, and

* magnanimously all the offices, both private and

1 7he Familiar Epistles of Sir Antony of Guevara, Bishop of Mondo-
nedo. Preacher and Chronicler to Charles the Fifth. Translated by
Edward Hellowes (1574), P- ^9*

2 In the lettered circles of Renaissance Italy, on the other hand,
the tendency was rather to depreciate the virtues fostered by feudalism.
Petrarch ridicules tourneys, and Sacchetti speaks of chivalry as fitted
only for those who are unable to follow the arts. But Castiglione,
who had been a captain of horse, holds for chivalry. He will not
pluck o£E the spurs from a soldier.

46 SIR THOMAS HOBY

* public, of peace and war.' ^ It is a significant point
that this definition occurs in a treatise on education.
One of the chief problems of the age was how to
educate man for a society where a career was open to
the talents. Even Spenser's Faerie Queene deals with
this problem ; and if any one choose to call it a tractate
on education, the author, at least, would never have
demurred. We value the Elizabethans for their art ;
they prided themselves on their morality. The aim
of his book, said Spenser, was the Institution of a
Gentleman : * to fashion a gentleman or noble person
in vertuous and gentle discipline ' — mainly by incul-
cating on him the twelve private moral virtues of
Aristotle, as exemplified in the histories of twelve
knights. Earlier than Spenser, Sir Thomas Elyot, in
7he Boke named The Governour (1531), and Roger
Ascham in The Scholemaster (1570), had dealt with
the same question in a like temper. But the most
engaging and lively exposition of the new ideal (for
the Faerie Queene, when all is said, remains a poem)
is to be found in the Book of the Courtier. It is
the book of a lifetime ; amid all the press of affairs
that engaged Castiglione in his many capacities there
is none that did not help to qualify him for his task.
The record of his life has a double interest ; it shows
how the book grew up and shaped itself from the
matter of his experience and reading, and it also shows
(a thing not uncommon in the history of artists) how
the creature of his imagining assumed control of his
ambitions and purposes in the practical conduct of
life. He was accused in his own time of identifying
himself with his model. * Some again say that my

* meaning was to facion my self, perswading my self
' that all suche qualities as I appoint to the Courtier

* are in me.' He does not altogether refuse the
imputation. * Unto these men I will not cleane deny

* 0/ Education. Milton's Prose Works, Bohn's edition, iii, p. 467.

i

SIR THOMAS HOBY 47

* that I have attempted all that my mynde is the

* Courtier shoulde have knowleage in. And I thinke

* who so hath not the knowleage of the thinges in-

* treated upon in this booke, how learned so ever he

* be, he can full il write them. But I am not of so

* sclender a judgment in knowing my self, that I wil

* take upon me to know what soever I can wish.' ^
His biography is a curious comment on the opinions
of those French critics ^ who have found in his book
only a manual of finikin etiquette. Where he failed,
his good faith and lofty standards were to blame ; in
his allegiance to the high canons of behaviour which
he had laid down for his Courtier, he omitted to take
account of human duplicity and human baseness. An
honourable poHtician cannot meet these with their
own weapons, but he should be acquainted with their
existence ; and to see them, one must stoop.

Baldassare Castiglione ^ was born on December the

^ The Epistle of the Author, p. 23.

2 Quinet, for instance, in his Revolutions tTItalie. The view is
expressed in most extravagant fashion by M. Philarete Chasles in his
article ' Du Roman dans I'Europe Moderne ' (Revue des Deux Mondes,
Mai 1842) : ' II detruit les asperites, et les diversites, les nuances et

* les passions humaines ; il ne s'occupe qu'a raffiner la morale, qui
' s'evapore en politesse.' It is impossible to avoid the conclusion that
M. Chasles was avenging the slight put upon the culture of France
by the remarks cited above, and allowing a sentiment of nationality
to attempt the task of criticism.

' Apart from the barren Elogia of Paolo Giovio and other monu-
mental stonemasons, no serious critical life of Castiglione was
attempted until Bernardino Marliani produced one (in 1584), which
is prefixed to the Edition of The Courtier published at Padua in
1733. There followed the Life written by the Abate Serassi as preface
to an Edition of Castiglione's poetical works (Rome, 1760). The
LetUre Familiari and Lettere di Negozii (2 vols., Padua, 1769-71,
edited by Serassi) are a most valuable source of information. Marti-
nati (Notizie Storico-Biografiche intomo al Conte Bald. Castiglione,
Firenze, 1890) is the best recent biographer ; I desire to record my
obligation to him, but the interest of his work is almost exclusively
political. Separate studies on the man and the book have been pub-
lished by Alfred Reumont (in Vierteljahrsschrijt f&r Kultur und

48

SIR THOMAS HOBY

6th, 1478, at Casatico, in Mantuan territory. He
came of a family that had already attained to con-
sideration and honour in Church and State. His
father, Cristoforo Castiglione, was a captain of armed
troops in the service of the Marquis of Mantua. His
mother, Luigia, was of the house of Gonzaga, and so
related not only to the Marquis of Mantua, but also
to that Duchess of Urbino whose piety and virtue are
so eloquently recorded in the Book of the Courtier.
From this mother, who was the bosom friend of
Isabella d'Este, and was often consulted by her in
matters of state, Castiglione received his earliest educa-
tion at home. Thence he was sent to Milan, where
several of the Castiglioni, belonging to another branch
of the family, held posts of honour under Duke Ludo-
vico Sforza. He attended the best masters, among
them Demetrius Chalchondylas and Filippo Beroaldo.
His studies were no doubt wide enough in their range :
besides Greek and Latin, he acquired at least a dilet-
tante knowledge in music, painting, and sculpture,
architecture and archaeology. But the business of his
life was to be war and diplomacy, and he can hardly
have reached a professional skill in all the arts that
are claimed for him.

With the triumphant entry of Louis XH into
Milan in October 1499, witnessed by Castiglione and
described by him in a letter to a friend, this period
of his Hfe comes to a close. Thenceforth he was to
be tossed on that sea of troubled politics, of ever-
shifting leagues and counter-leagues between the Pope,
the Emperor, the French King, Venice, Florence, and
the smaller states of Italy, which neither rested nor
permitted those to rest who navigated it for necessity

Literatur der Renaissance, Jahrgang I, Heft 3), and by Professor Ercole
Bottari (in Annali delta R. Scuola Normale di Pisa, libro iii). The
general histories of Tiraboschi, Ginguene, and Gaspary all treat
Castiglione with some detail.

SIR THOMAS HOBY 49

or profit. He first entered the service of Francesco
Gonzaga, Marquis of Mantua, Captain-General of the
French forces in Naples, and was in action at Gari-
gliano. On the return of the forces northward he
received permission to stay in Rome for a season, and
it was there that he first made acquaintance with
Guidobaldo, Duke of Urbino. At this time both
Pope Julius n and Venice coveted the possession of
Romagna, and the frontier situation of Urbino made
Guidobaldo a desirable ally for either party. It has
been suggested that Castiglione, in transferring his
service from the Marquis of Mantua to the Duke of
Urbino, acted at the instigation of the Pope, and was
prepared to represent Papal interests at the Court of
his new master. Another less conjectural version has
it that he fell in liking with Guidobaldo at first sight,
and finding Cesare Gonzaga, his friend and cousin, in
the retinue of the Duke, volunteered to enter the
same service, and was accepted. Permission was sought
from the Marquis, who granted it in a letter brief,
courteous, and, in regard to Castiglione, studiously
contemptuous.^ It was many a year before the truant
was forgiven for his changed allegiance.

In the meantime he purchased for himself the few
golden years of his life. The Palace of Urbino, built
in its * hard and sharp situation ' on the summit of
a rock, became for him, from the time that he entered
it in September 1504 to the death of Duke Guidobaldo
in April 1508, a kind of island of the blest, * the verye
mansion place of Myrth and Joye ', glorified to the
end of his life in the light of imagination and memory.
Here he was graciously received by the Duchess, whose
idolater he forthwith became, and introduced to those

^ It is printed by Martina ti, and runs thus : ' lU*^ Sig. Duca.
Quando a Baldassare de Castione piacera il venire a servire V. Sig.
per la parte nostra siamo molto contenti e se in altro la possemo
compiacere siamo piu che mai disposti. Gonzaga, 9 junio 1504.
Francesco Gonzaga.'

3600 S

50 SIR THOMAS HOBY

noble personages, knights and gentlemen, poets, musi-
cians, and * all kinds of men of skill \ who haunted or
visited the Court. He was speedily advanced to offices
of high trust. We hear little of military service during
these years, much of missions to other Courts : to
Ferrara, where Duke Hercules entertained him hospi-
tably, to Mantua, where the Marquis, mindful of the
past, attempted to seize him, and whence, being fore-
warned, he beat a hasty retreat. Twice he was
intrusted with more important embassies : the first,
in the autumn of 1506, to the Court at London,
where he received from King Henry VH for his master
the Order of the Garter, and for himself a chain or
carcanet of price ; and again, in the following year,
to King Louis XH at Milan — which embassy brought
the ruler of Urbino into bad odour with Pope Julius.
His leisure time he spent at Urbino, wooing the Muse
in collaboration with Cesare Gonzaga, or devising
entertainments for the Court. To these years belong
the most of his poetical effusions in Latin and Italian.
His eclogue, Tirsi, like Bibbiena's much more note-
worthy comedy, Calandridy was written for the pastime
of that festive and lettered society.

Any historical description of the Court of Urbino
has been rendered vain by Castiglione's enduring por-
trait of it. No doubt but he heightened the reality :
he was an artist, not an annalist, and sought to embody
the most brilliant qualities of Renaissance Court life
in one convincing model. But he was sincere in his
opinion that the Court of Urbino excelled all other
Italian courts ; he was probably also right. The more
famous assembly that was brought together by Lorenzo
the Magnificent included in its number greater names :
Pulci, Ficino, Pico, Poliziano. The individual dis-
courses of these men were probably more weighty than
any pronounced at Urbino. But the atmosphere of
social ease, the free wit, and * sweet conversation that

SIR THOMAS HOBY 51

is occasioned of an amiable and loving company *
might be better tasted at Urbino than in a society
consisting mainly of savants. Many of the smaller
Italian Courts were given over to that * lightness and
vanity ', foppery and dissipation, vi^hich is censured by
Castiglione in his Fourth Book. The later Court of
Leo X at Rome was no pattern of a well-knit society.
It was a shrewd remark of Dr. Johnson's that manners
are best learned at a small Court : * You are admitted

* with great facility to the prince's company, and yet

* must treat him with much respect. . . . The best

* book that ever was written upon good breeding, //

* CortegianOy by Castiglione, grew up at the little Court

* of Urbino, and you should read it.' ^ In short, the
actual Court of Urbino was singularly free from the
pedantry of a literary society, and from the venality
and intrigue of a market for talent. The credit for
this is due in great measure to Federigo, the first
Duke, the true founder of the greatness of Urbino.
He had reigned, as Count and Duke, for nearly forty
years (1444-82), had built the palace, collected therein
a priceless library, bestowed his patronage freely on
artists and men of letters, and spent his considerable
revenues largely on the furtherance of scholarship and
education. His early tutor, Vittorino da Feltre, had
trained him at Mantua under a system of education
well adapted to foster the harmony of faculties which
Castiglione requires in his Courtier.^ Something also

^ Boswell, ed. Birkbeck Hill, v. 270. But Johnson does scant justice
to the book when he says that its object is ' to teach the minuter
' decencies and inferiour duties, to regulate the practice of daily con-
' versation, to correct those depravities which are rather ridiculous
' than criminal, and remove those grievances which, if they produce
' no lasting calamities, impress hourly vexation '. (Works, vii. 428.)
This is true of Delia Casa's Galateo, but not of Castiglione's Courtier.

2 See W. H. Woodward, Vittorino da Feltre and other humanist
educators, Cambridge, 1897. The history of Urbino is fully narrated
by James Dennistoun, in his Memoirs of the Dukes of Urbino, 3 vols.,
London, 185 1 — a useful, painstaking, diffuse, old-gentlemanly work.

E2

52 SIR THOMAS HOBY

of the character of the Court was impressed upon it
by the gravity and authority of the Duchess, Elizabeth
Gonzaga, whose presence checked wrangling, tempered
laughter, and set bounds to witty licence. If the
conversations recorded in Boccaccio, or Bandello (some
of whose novels were first told, he says, in just such
another company), or in the Heptameron of Margaret
of Navarre, be compared to those of The Courtier,
the seriousness and moral bias of the Court of Urbino
will be very easily felt. Castiglione dwells repeatedly
on the love and reverence inspired in her lieges by
the Duchess ; and when, in his Prefatory Epistle, he
records her death, it is with a sudden movement of
sorrow that almost breaks into a cry.

When Guidobaldo died, and Francesco Maria della
Rovere, his nephew and adopted son, succeeded,
Castiglione continued in the service of the Duchy.
That same year the League of Cambray was formed
against the power of Venice, the new Duke was
Captain-General of the Papal army, and Castiglione,
with his usual command of fifty men, was soon busy
"in the assault and capture of border fortresses. The
Venetians succeeded in holding Padua, and the Pope,
changing his tactics, suddenly threw himself into
opposition to the French. Castiglione was present at
the complete rout of the Papal troops when the French

His criticism of Castiglione is worthless. He finds the Duchess and
the Lady Emilia Pia to be lacking in true delicacy, and describes the
conversations at which they assist as * prurient twaddle '. Here is
the book : let the discerning reader judge. The influence of The
Courtier he thinks was ' fraught with evil ' : 'In the pages of that

* essay were first embodied precepts of tact, lessons of adulation, all

* repugnant to the stern manners and wholesome independence of

* antecedent generations.' This of a book which won praise for its
moral teaching from so grim a censor as Roger Ascham. It would
be interesting to learn where, in Renaissance Italy, the stern manners
and wholesome independence corruptible by The Courtier were to
be found. But there are no lengths to which the sleepy habit of
irrelevant edification will not carry its victims.

SIR THOMAS HOBY 53

took Bologna in 151 1. Thereafter Francesco Maria
was deprived by the Pope, and accused of treason by
the Cardinal Alidosio, whom he straightway killed with
his own hand. Castiglione accompanied him on his
penitential journey to Rome to seek pardon from the
Pope. The Duke was re-established in his dukedom ;
and when in the following year he had vindicated his
good faith by some military successes against the
French in Romagna, he was presented with the fief
of Pesaro. Castiglione, in his turn, as reward for his
services, received from the Duke the fortress of Nuvil-
laria, which he describes in an exultant letter to his
mother, written in the end of January 15 13. * May

* God of his grace,' he concludes, ' permit me to enjoy

* it with content.'

His enjoyment was to be brief. In February
Julius II died, and Castiglione, in the suite of his
master, was present in Rome at the election of Leo X.
The anxiety of Leo to provide for the scions of the
house of Medici was a source of constant disquiet to
other families : as a measure of precaution, Castiglione
was left to represent the Duke at the Papal Court.
It was during this prolonged residence in Rome that
he formed or renewed friendships with Raphael,
Michael Angelo, Bembo, Sadoleto, Giulio Romano,
and others of the artists and men of letters at the
Court of Leo. For a time he held the position suc-
cessfully, and kept the Papal greed at bay. He was
even formally invested by Leo as Count of Nuvillaria,
in a document which declares his vigils and toils to
be deserving of a richer reward. But in March 15 16
Giuliano dei Medici (the * Lord Julian ' of The
Courtyer, brother to the Pope, and a good friend to
the house of Urbino) died, and Leo, free now from
the last restraint, prepared to seize upon the Duchy
for his nephew Lorenzo. The neutrality of Francois 1
was already bespoken, the old accusations of treason

54 SIR THOMAS HOBY

and murder were raked up again, Francesco Maria was
summoned to Rome, and when he failed to appear, in
spite of all the efforts of Castiglione and the widowed
Duchess, who attended to plead his cause, he was
excommunicate^ and deprived. The Papal troops took
possession of Urbino, the Duke fled to Mantua, and
the ambassador lost his estate of Nuvillaria with that

* fair prospect over sea and land ' on which his eyes
had seldom rested.

In the meantime he had married Ippolita, daughter
of Count Guido Torello di Montechiarugolo. Sundry
earlier schemes of marriage, proposed by himself or
others, had come to nothing. He had been suitor for
a daughter of Count Girardo Rangone ; but when her
father hesitated, he broke off the negotiations with
a highly characteristic burst of pride : * The wife that

* I am to take, be she who she may, I desire that she

* should be given to me with as good a will as I take

* her withal, yea, if she were the daughter of a king.'
We find him in Venice, with his wife and sisters, in
15 17, entertained and honoured by the Doge. Two
years later he entered the service of Federigo, son and
successor to his early master, the Marquis of Mantua,
and again returned to Rome in an ambassadorial
capacity, to solicit the Captain-Generalship of the
Church for the Marquis. The mission was no delight
to him : it separated him from his wife ; and when,
on 7 April 1520, Raphael died, Rome seemed no
longer the same place.^ In August his wife died,
leaving him three children, and in December Leo X
was taken off, as Castiglione alleges, by poison. He
continued to represent Mantua at the Courts of
Adrian VI and Clement VII ; his good offices were
freely lent to get Francesco Maria reinstated ; but
although this was achieved, he did not regain his

1 Raphael painted at least two portraits of Castiglione ; one of
them is in the Louvre.

I

SIR THOMAS HOBY 55

own Nuvillaria. When the opposition between the
Emperor and Francois I grew to overshadow the
politics of Europe, he was intrusted with his last and
most difficult embassy by Clement VII, who begged him
from the Marquis of Mantua, and sent him as Apostolic
Nuncio to the Court of Charles V at Madrid.

To serve one master loyally and to speak truth to
him without fear or favour had been Castiglione's
practice throughout his career.^ As like as not, Pope
Clement had been attracted to him by his frankness
and honesty : two qualities which exercise a singular
fascination over men incapable of either. But it is
a desperate blunder for a double-dealer to imagine
that he can make an efficient tool of an honest man.
He cannot, for the simple and profoundly ironic reason
that he cannot bring himself to trust him. The
difficulty of Castiglione's mission may be judged from
the fact that on his way to Madrid he was commis-
sioned to visit the camp at Pavia with secret messages
to the French King. Arrived in Spain in March 1525,
he heard news of the victory which made Charles
master of Europe. He presented to the Emperor the
congratulations of Clement, and on behalf of the Holy
See urged him to undertake a war against the infidel,
an invitation to which Charles responded with vague
and pious sentiments.

From this time forth to the end of his life his
position at the Court of Spain was doubly futile.
The instructions received from Rome were scanty.
Believing in the good intentions of the Pope towards
Charles, and of Charles towards the Pope, he laboured,
in perfect good faith, to deceive them both. His own
hopes and efforts were sincerely and ardently directed

1 'We must praie unto God, answered Calmeta, to helpe us to

* good, for whan wee are once with them, wee muste take them with

* all theyr faultes, for infinite respectes constraine a gentleman after

* he is once entred into service with a Lorde, not to forsake him.' —
7 he Courtyer, p. 129.

56

SIR THOMAS HOBY

to the maintenance of European peace and the good
estate of the Catholic Church. When Clement made
open alliance with France and Venice, he poured out
the bitterness of his heart in a letter to the Archbishop
of Capua. There is nothing for it now, he says, but
war, which is ' the natural desire of the Most Christian

* King, who seeks for himself glory, and for things past

* revenge '. When the Pope upbraided Charles with
troubling the peace of the world by refusing to ally
himself with the Holy See, Charles repHed by asking
for a general Council, before which he might lay his

His chief desire, he said, was for peace and

case.

reconciUation with Clement, * and this ', writes the
unfortunate ambassador, * he affirmed more empha-

* tically than ever, and with an oath, so that I should

* be ashamed not to believe him '. Charles, he adds, has
such candour and benevolence, that God could never
permit malice to be veiled beneath so fair a cloak.

He continued in this simple belief up to the eve
of the sack of Rome. And when, in May 1527, the
Constable Bourbon, who certainly knew the mind of
the Emperor, stormed the holy city, Castiglione was
a discredited and broken man. He had to defend
himself from the reproaches of his master, and
reminded him in a piteous letter of his unflagging
devotion. * Many may surpass me in wisdom and

* ability,' he pleads, * but none in affection and good

* will, wherefore, since my fault is a fault of nature,

* which has made me what I am, I should the more

* easily be pardoned ; the rather that I acknowledge

* and confess my shortcomings.* The fact is that he
was no match for the accomplished dissimulation of
the Emperor, who deluded him with all the greater
ease by expressing what was a genuine affection and
regard for the nuncio himself. His few remaining
years were embittered by a controversy with Alfonso
de Valdez, a light of the early Reformation, who

SIR THOMAS HOBY 57

recognized the visible judgment of God in the
disasters of the other side.-^ It seems highly unlikely
that Paolo Giovio and Guicciardini are right in assert-
ing that Castiglione accepted the bishopric of Avila
from Charles, and was installed. It may have been
offered him, for it was vacant during the last year of
his life. He died, after a short illness, at Toledo, on
February 7, 1529. The Emperor ordered him a magni-
ficent funeral in the church of Sant' Elifonso, whence,
a year and a half later, his bones were removed to
the chapel of the Madonna delle Grazie at Mantua.
They lie beneath a red marble monument of Giulio
Romano, whom Castiglione himself had introduced
to Mantua. The tomb bears an elaborate, frigid
inscription by Bembo, as well as Castiglione's simple
and touching lines on his wife. There is no doubt
that the Emperor sincerely lamented the death of his
friend and dupe. ' I tell you,' he is reported to have
said, * one of the finest gentlemen in the world is
dead.' (' Yo vos digo que es muerto uno de los
mejores caballeros del mundo.') And tradition has it
that his favourite books, to the end of his life, were
the Histories of Polybius, the Prince of Machiavel,
and The Courtier of Castiglione.

It was in 1508, while the savour of the virtues of
Duke Guidobaldo was fresh in his mind (to quote his
own statement), that Castiglione sketched, * in a few
days ', the first rough draft of his masterpiece. Twenty
years elapsed before it saw the light. The troubles
and wars of the time of Francesco Maria doubtless
impeded the progress of the work, and caused the
author to lay it aside for a time. He took it up again
in earnest during his leisure at Rome. The Fourth

* A full account of this controversy is contained in the Life and
Writings of Juan de V aides, by Benjamin B. Wiffen (Quaritch, 1865).
The tract on the sack of Rome, written by Juan, was attributed by
Castiglione to Alfonso, who did not disclaim it. Hence much con-
fusion.

58 SIR THOMAS HOBY

Book may be dated with some accuracy : in the
beginning the death of Cesare Gonzaga (who died in
15 1 2) is lamented, and the dignity conferred on Otta-
viano Fregoso (he was Doge of Genoa from 15 13 to
15 15) is also recorded. Giuliano dei Medici, on the
other hand, who died in 15 16, is numbered, in the
same passage, among the living. The book as we have
it was probably completed not later than the spring
of 15 16, at Rome. It was yet far from the press.
Where so many of the living were introduced, and
made to speak their minds, the author was naturally
anxious to submit his work to the judgment of his
friends. In 15 18 he sent it to Bembo, Sadoleto, and
Monsignore di Bajus, inviting their criticisms. Their
answers miscarried, or were delayed, and Castiglione,
who took pleasure in shaping and re-shaping the thing,
was glad of an excuse for further delay. But no pre-
cautions of his were sufficient to arrest a growing
private circulation by transcription. When he was in
Spain, he was vexed to hear that the Lady Vittoria
Colonna had been specially active in procuring copies
to be made and circulated in Naples. He wrote to
her, reproaching her in a fine strain of courteous irony
with her violated pledge of secrecy. * I am the more

* deeply obliged to your Ladyship,' he says, * because

* the necessity you have put me under of sending the

* book at once to the printer relieves me from the

* trouble of adding many things which I had already

* prepared in my mind, — things, I need hardly say, of

* little import, like the rest of the book ; so that your

* Ladyship has saved the reader from weariness, and

* the author from blame.' The Courtier was printed
in folio at Venice in 1528,^ and at once began its
rapid conquest of Italy and Europe.

* // Cortegiano del Conte Baldesar Castiglione. . . . In Venezia nelU
case di Aldo Romano di Andrea d^Asola suo suocero mlP anno mdxxviii
del mese di Aprile. The subsequent Italian Editions are legion.

I

SIR THOMAS HOBY 59

Everywhere it came as a herald of that potent
Italian influence which was to transform the art and
letters of other countries. The credit of introducing
Italian models into Spain belongs to Juan Boscan of
Barcelona and to his friend and fellow-poet Garcilaso
de la Vega.^ Boscan, it is said, met Andrea Navagiero,
ambassador to Spain from Venice, at Granada in 1526 ;
and being by him persuaded to attempt the Italian
forms of versification, produced the earliest Spanish
experiments in the sonnet, the canzone, terza rima,
blank verse, and the octave stanza. None of his
adventures in this kind was published until 1543, when
his works were collected for the press by his widow.
But his translation of The Courtier was issued during
his lifetime. The book had been sent to him, soon
after it appeared in Italy, by Garcilaso, who, as a friend
of Bembo and a frequenter of the Spanish Court, must
have known its author intimately. Boscan's Spanish
version appeared in 1540, with prefatory epistles by
the translator and Garcilaso.^ In France, as in Spain,
The Courtier found a godfather among the most
brilliant of the men of the Renaissance. It was trans-
lated by Jacques Colin, secretary to King Francois I,
and revised by the ill-fated scholar Etienne Dolet, who
commends it to his friend MeUin de Saint-Gelais in
a prefatory epistle.^ When the diction of this version

^ See James Fitzmaurice-Kelly, A History of Spanish Literature
(1898), pp. 138-9: who notes that Boscin's Cortesano, done from
Garcilaso's gift to him of the First Edition, is ' a triumph of rendering '
and ' an almost perfect performance '.

* Libra Llamado el Cortesano : traduzido nuevamente en nuestro vulgar
Castellano por Boscan, mdxl. The prefatory epistles are addressed,
' A la muy Magnifica Senora dona Geronima Palova de Almogavar '.
Both poets were in high esteem in Elizabethan England. Abraham
France in The Arcadian Rhetorike (1588) takes most of his modern
examples from ' Courtly makers ' — Tasso, Du Bartas, Sir Philip Sidney,
BoscAn, and Garcilaso furnishing the largest number of quotations.

* Le Courtisan de Messire Baltazar de CastilUm. NouvelUment reveu
et corrige. . . . Imprime de nouveau a Lyon par Francoys Juste demourant

6o SIR THOMAS HOBY

became antiquated, Gabriel Chapuis, who succeeded
Belleforest in his double quality of Historiographer-
Royal and jack-of-all-work, published another and
much inferior translation at Lyons in 1580.^ Last of
all, but still in the van of the Italian movement. The
Courtier crossed the Channel and became an English-
man. The translator was a pioneer of Italian studies
in England ; his book, reprinted again and again,
became one of the most influential books of the ensuing
age — the age of Shakespeare and Spenser and Sidney.
Piety demands that what can be learned of his life
should be here recorded.

II

Thomas Hoby ^ was born in 1530, the son of William
Hoby of Leominster, by his second wife Katherine
Forden. In 1545 he matriculated at Cambridge,
entering St. John's College, at that time the glory of

devant la grant porte nostre Dame de Consort. Lan 1538. Dolet alludes
to an earlier Edition of this version ; and the printer in his dedication
to ' Monseigneur Monsieur du Peirat, Lieutenant-General pour le
Roy a Lyon ', mentions a rival translation, newly published at Paris,
' in thick, heavy characters, such as have not been used this long time
' for printing good authors '. A desire to please the King, who is so
highly praised by Castiglione under his earlier title ' Monseigneur
d'Angoulesme ', may explain this tumbling of translators over one
another's necks.

^ Le Parjait Courtisan du Comte Baltasar Castillonois, Es deux
langues, respondans par deux colomnes, Vune a V autre. . . . De la traduc-
tion de Gabriel Chapuys, Tourangeau. A Lyon, Pour Loys Cloquemin,
1580. ITie printer, Thibauld Ancelin, dates his colophon 1579.
There are several later Editions,

* Short lives of Hoby are to be found in Cooper's Athenae and
the Dictionary of National Biography. Neither makes any use of the
principal authority, the bulky manuscript autograph diary in the
British Museum, entitled A Booke of the Iravaile and lief 0/ me Thomas
Hoby, with diverse things woorth the notinge. This diary covers the
years of Hoby's life from 1547, when he first went abroad, to 1564,
two years before his death. The entries after 1555 are scanty, and
chiefly personal. For its historical value, if for nothing else, the Diary
certainly deserves to be set in print. It is the chief source of the

SIR THOMAS HOBY 6i

the University, a chief stronghold of scholarship and
Protestant theology : * Yea, St. John's did then so

* flourish, as Trinity College, that princely house now,

* at the first erection was but colonia deducta out of

* St. John's.' ^ The College was * an Universitie within

* it selfe : shining so farre above all other Houses,

* Halls and Hospitalls whatsoever, that no Colledge in
' the Towne was able to compare with the tythe of

* her Students '.^ While Hoby was in residence at
St. John's, Trinity was founded, and John Redman,
a noted Johnian scholar, was appointed the first
Master. At the same time Roger Ascham was made
Public Orator. Perhaps the young student, well
recommended by all the points of character and
breeding which are required in The Scholemaster, made
his first acquaintance with Ascham at this time. Per-
haps he came under the notice of two other members
of the College, Thomas Lever, afterwards Master of
St. John's, and James Pilkington, afterwards Bishop
of Durham ; doubtless he was awed by the fame of

* the Exchequer of Eloquence, Sir John Cheke, a man
of men, supernaturally traded in all tongues '. These
are conjectures ; with the end of his college course
his diary and certainty begin. His time at Cambridge
was cut short in order that he might the sooner enter
upon that course of travel and study in foreign
countries which was beginning to be held a necessary
part of the education of a statesman. In conformity
with the approved practice he sought a Protestant
centre before venturing himself among the entice-
ments of Circe. He arrived in Strasburg on the
1 6th of October 1547, and found quarters in the house

ensuing life of Hoby. That insatiable academic patriot, Anthony
a Wood, claims Hoby for Oxford. But, in fact, Hoby is like Proser-
pine : ' His foot the Cumner cowslips never stirred.'

^ 7he Scholemaster, in Ascham's Works, ed. Giles (1865), iii, p. 235.

2 Nashe, Epistle To the Gentleman Students of both Universities
prefixed to Greene's Menaphon (1589).

62 SIR THOMAS HOBY

of Martin Bucer, ' a man of no less integrity and
pureness of lyving then of fame and learning '. * Him

* heard 1/ he writes, ' in the Schooles in Divinity, and

* sometime Peter Martir, Sturmius in humanity, Paulus

* Fagius in Hebrew.' Strasburg was on the highroad
to the South, and from time to time Hoby's curiosity
and interest were awakened by the reports of travellers
from Italy. In January 1548 he records that ' W'"

* Thomas came this waye owt of Italye towarde

* Englande. Also Sir Thomas Wyat arrived here to

* go towarde Italye.' It is pleasant to connect his
name, even in this passing fashion, with the first
English historian of Italy,^ and with the son of the
more famous importer of the Sonnet. His own earliest
literary work, undertaken out of reverence to his host
and teacher, was not sonneteering : ' When Bucer had

* finished the litle treatyse he made unto the Churche

* of Englande ... I translated it ymmediatlie into

* Englishe, and sent it to my Brother, where it was

* put in print.' ^ The author meanwhile, having stab-
lished himself in learning and the Protestant faith by
his winter's residence at Strasburg, took his way into
Italy, proceeding at once to Venice, where the ambas-
sador's house was the resort of many English travellers.

In Venice and Padua, with occasional expeditions to
Mantua and Ferrara, he remained for a year. Like all
the scholarly travellers of those times, not excepting
the facetious Coryat, he is much concerned with monu-

* The historic of Italic, a bokc excedyng profitable to be redde : because
it entrcateth of the astate of many and. divers common wealcs, how thei
have ben, and now be governed. 410. 1549. Thomas also wnrote an
Italian grammar, and a defence of King Henry VIII. His treatise
of the Vanity of this World and another of the Apparel of Women
are lost.

* The gratulation of M. Martin Bucer . . . unto the Churche of
Englande for the restitucion of Christes religion, and his Answere made
unto the two raylinge epistles of Steven Bishoppe of Winchester concerning
the unmaried state of priestes and cloysterars. 8vo. Lond. [1549].

SIR THOMAS HOBY 63

ments, epitaphs, and traditions of classical heroes. He
visits Livy's tomb, and remarks that the epitaph of
Antenor, the legendary founder of Padua, * doth not
seem to be of anie probable authoritie on antiquitie '.
Of course he studied at the University. * I applied

* myself,' he says, * as well to obtain the Italiane tunge

* as to have a farther entrance in the Latin. The

* most famous in this towne ' [Padua] * was Lazarus

* Bonamicus in humanitie, whose lectures I visited

* sumtimes.* More than two years later, passing
through Bassano, the birthplace of Bonamicus, he
remembers to pay tribute : * Here in our dayes was

* born the famous Clarke in letters of humanitie,

* Lazarus Bonamicus, stipended reader in the Schooles

* of Padoa of the Greeke and Latin tunge by the

* Siniory of Venice with a great stipend ' — words which
put it out of doubt that Bonamicus was remarkable
among men of his craft. But although he plied his
book diligently, Hoby had an eye for the manners and
life of the South. He saw Venice in her splendour,
while she was yet a great sovereign power, a city aglow
with colour, vibrating with the joy of life, tempestuous
with passion and with crime. He witnessed the annual
espousals celebrated between the city and the sea,
whereunto there came the Duke and Duchess of
Urbino,^ and were received into the vessel of triumph
called the Bucentoro. It must have been for Hoby, as
for other English travellers, a dazzling change to pass
from the sober community at Strasburg into the midst
of this carnival of the senses and the blood. Ascham
was in Italy nine days, * and yet ', he says, * I saw in

* that little time, in one city, more liberty to sin, than

* ever I heard tell of in our noble city of London in

* nine year. I saw it was there as free to sin, not only

^ Guidobaldo II of the Delia Rovere family. He was newly married
to his second Duchess, Vittoria Farnese, sister to the Cardinal. Hoby's
memory of the scene prompted the marginal note on p. 165.

64

SIR THOMAS HOBY

* without all punishment, but also without any man's

* marking, as it is free in the city of London, to chose

* without all blame, whether a man lust to wear shoe

* or pantocle.' ^ His words are vividly illustrated by
Hoby's account, given in statesmanlike fashion, with-
out comment, of an incident that befell during the
Shrovetide festival in 1549 : * There came to Venice,

to see the Citie, the Lustie yong duke of Ferrandine
well accompanied with noblemen and gentlemen ;
where he with his companions in Campo San Stefano
shewed great sporte and meerye pastime to the
Gentlemen and Gentlewomen of Venice, both on
horsbacke in running at the ring with faire Turks
and Cowrsars, being in a maskerie after the Turkishe
maner, and on foote casting of eggs into the windowes
among the Ladies, full of sweet waters and damask
poulders. At night, after all this Triumphe, in a
Bankett made purposelie at Mowrano, a litle owt of
Venice, by the Siniorye to honor him withall, he was
slaine by a varlett belonging to a gentleman of the
Citie. The occasion was this : The Duke cumming
in a brave maskerye with his companions went (as the
maner is) to a gentlewoman whom he most fansied
among all the rest (being assembled there together
a 1. or Ix.). This gentlewoman was wyffe to one
M. Michael Venier. There came in another com-
panye of Gentlemen Venetiens in another maskerie :
and one of them went in like maner to the same
gentlewoman that the Duke was entreating to daunse
with him, and somwhat shuldered the Duke, which
was a great injurie. Upon that, the Duke thrust
him from him. The gentleman owt with his Dagger
and gave him a strooke above the short ribbes with
the point, but it did him no hurt, bicause he had on
a jacke of maile. The Duke ymmediatlie feelinge
the point of his dagger, drue his rapire, whereupon
* Ihe SchoUmasUr, in Ascham's Works, ed. Giles, iii, p. 163.

SIR THOMAS HOBY 65

* the gentleman fledde into a chambere there at hand
' and shutt the dore to him. And as the Duke was
' shovinge to gete the dore open, a varlett of the

* gentlemannes came behinde him, and with apistolese '
[i.e. a short broadsword] * gave him his deathes wound
^ and clove his heade in such sort as the one side honge

* over his shoulder by a litle skynne. He lyved abowt

* two dayes after this stroke. There was no justice
' had against this gentleman, but after he had a while

* absented himself from the Citie the matter was for-
' gotten. The varlett fledd, and was no more heard
' of. This Gentleman was of the house of Giustiniani

* in Venice.'

Towards the end of August 1549 Hoby went forward
into Tuscany. After staying at Florence a few days
to see the principal buildings and to visit Valdarno,
he reached Siena, a place where ' the people are much
' geven to entertaine strangers gentlie ', and where

* most of the women are well learned, and write

* excellentlie well both in prose and verse '. The city
was less happy in its political conditions. Owing to
the internecine jealousies of the inhabitants, who were
divided into four distinct parties, the Emperor and the
French King were frequently solicited to intervene,
and usually accepted the invitation. Hoby arrived to
find the place in charge of a garrison of six hundred
Spanish soldiers, commanded by Don Diego Hurtado
de Mendoza, Governor of Siena, and Ambassador from
the Emperor to the Pope. Under Spanish military
rule, murder and privy feuds were no longer permitted
to run riot in the town ; no one, whether native or
stranger, was allowed to carry weapons ; so that the
garrison was soon cordially detested even by the party
that had brought it in. When Hoby's arrival was
known, he was at once invited to dine at the Governor's
palace, and to bring with him any Englishmen who
might chance to be in the town. Some stern non-

2600 F

66 SIR THOMAS HOBY

conformists among the English refused to go, but
Hoby and four others who accepted the Governor's
hospitaHty were ' greatlie feasted, and gentlie enter-
teyned '. So the young Englishman who was to
translate The Courtier talked and sat at meat with
this great and famous Spaniard. In Hurtado de
Mendoza, soldier and courtier and diplomatist, poet
and historian, Arabist and Hellenist, perhaps the
author of Lazarillo de TormeSy and so the ' only true
begetter ', so far as modern Europe is concerned, of
the picaresque novel, the Spanish Renaissance was
incarnate.^ At this banquet Hoby made acquaintance
also with the Marquis of Capistrano, who later showed
him the greatest kindness and courtesy at Amalfi and
Naples. Throughout his travels he observed that
prudent counsel, quoted by Sir Henry Wotton for
Milton's guidance, which enjoins an open countenance
and a guarded speech.

It were too long to tell in detail the history of his
subsequent travels. He hurried from Siena to Rome
that he might be present in the city during the elec-
tion of a Pope. Castiglione had left Rome a quarter
of a century before Hoby set foot in it, yet there was
still the veteran Michael Angelo, entrusted with the

* See A History of Spanish Literature, by James Fitzmaurice-Kelly,
passim. Hoby may well have conversed with his host in English, for
it is now demonstrated that Hurtado de Mendoza, as was long sus-
pected, knew England well. He was sent over here as Special Envoy
to arrange a marriage between the Princess Mary Tudor and Dom
Luiz de Portugal ; and, later, he was here for fifteen months, from
23 May 1537 to I September 1538, to conduct the negotiations for
a marriage between Henry VHI and Dorothea of Denmark, Duchess
of Milan, niece to the Emperor. For this information I am indebted
to the kindness of Mr. Fitzmaurice-Kelly, who refers me to the
Calendar of State Papers, Henry Fill, vol. xiii, parts I and 2, and
to the Spanish State Papers (1537-8), edited by Pascual de Gayangos,
and remarks that, as Chapuys was the regular Imperial Ambassador
in London at that time, and Mendoza's embassy failed, historians
have passed over the affair in silence.

SIR THOMAS HOBY 67

ordering of the Papal obsequies. From Rome he sailed
to Naples, and very narrowly escaped being taken by
Moorish or Turkish pirates. Here his travelling com-
panions, * Mr. Barker, Mr. Parker, and Mr. Whit-
horn ', with whom he had journeyed from Siena, took
ship for Sicily, while he held on by land through
Calabria : ' bothe to have a sight of the country, and
' also to absent myself for a while owt of Englishe-
* mennes companie for the tungs sake.' Wherever he
went he fell in with English travellers or adventurers.
It is instructive to read Hoby's account, written some
forty years before the Armada, of his meeting with
an English gunner, employed on board a Neapolitan
vessel, or with another, a certain Master Richard
Lucas, who was serving in a Maltese galley at Syracuse.
Hoby had intended to visit Malta, but Master Lucas
dissuaded him, alleging, like a good English gunner,
that there was nothing worth seeing there except the
knights, of whom, he added, there was good store on
board his own galley.

In May 1550 Hoby was back in Rome again, to
settle himself to study. But his half-brother. Sir
Philip Hoby, who was twenty-five years older than
Thomas, and would appear to have acted as his
guardian, was ambassador to the Emperor at Augs-
burg, and sent word for Thomas to go thither with
all convenient speed. The autumn was spent in Augs-
burg ; here Hoby translated The Tragedie of Free
Willy which he afterwards dedicated to the Marquis
of Northampton. When Sir Richard Morison, taking
Ascham with him as his secretary, superseded Sir Philip
as ambassador, the two brothers returned to England
with a great train of men and horses ; and on Christ-
mas Day, 1550, Thomas Hoby was introduced to the
Court of King Edward. He was twenty years of age,
and had been absent from England almost three years
and a half.

F2

68 SIR THOMAS HOBY

During the rest of the reign of Edward VI he was
servant to William, Marquis of Northampton. This
service took him abroad again in the train of the
Marquis, who was one of the Lords High Commis-
sioners for concluding a marriage between Edward VI
and Elizabeth, the eldest daughter of the French King.
Among the gentlemen whom Hoby names as accom-
panying the commission to Nantes and Chateaubriand,
were Mr. Nicholas Throgmorton, Mr. Henry Sidney,
and Sir Gilbert Dethick, Garter King at Arms.
William Thomas was secretary to the commission, and
Thomas Lever chaplain to the Marquis. There were
stately public ceremonies at Nantes ; at Chateau-
briand the pastimes were tennis, shooting, hunting of
the boar, ' palla malla ', and wrestling matches between
Bretons and Cornishmen. Every night there was
dancing in the great hall, and sometimes music in
the king's privy chamber. On his return to England,
Hoby found the Court almost deserted by reason of
the sweating sickness. Among the new-made knights
of the autumn were Sir Henry Sidney, Sir William
Cecil, and Sir John Cheke. After the execution of
the Duke of Somerset, Sir Philip Hoby was dispatched
to Flanders on a state errand, and Thomas, who had
been troubled with a quartan ague, caught by assiduous
attendance at Hampton Court, remained at home. It
is at this time, in the spring of 1552, that we first
hear of the translation of The Courtier : ' I returned
again to London the xxvi. of April, after I had bene
ridd of mine ague ; where I prepared myselfe to goo
into Fraunce and there to applie my booke for
a season. . . . After I had convayed my stuff to Paris
and settled myself there, the first thing I did was to
translate into Englishe the third booke of the Courti-
san, which my ladie marquess ^ had often willed me

^ She was Elizabeth Brooke, daughter to George, fourth Lord
Cobham, and second wife to the Marquis.

I

SIR THOMAS HOBY 69

* to do and for lacke of time ever differred it. And

* from thense I sent unto Sr. Henry Sidney the
' Epitome of the ItaHan tunge which I drue out there

* for him. This done, Mr. Henry Kingsmeale and

* I appHed ourselves to the reading of the institutes

* of the civill lawe, being bothe lodged in a house

* together.' ^ After the winter spent in this manner,
Hoby joined his brother at Brussels, whither, on July
the nth, there came the news of the death of King
Edward.

The accession of Mary was a heavy blow to Hoby
and his immediate circle of friends. The Marquis of
Northampton was deprived and imprisoned. William
Thomas was hanged for his part in the affair of Lady
Jane Grey. Most of Hoby's distinguished acquaintance
thought it best to go abroad for a time. Sir Philip
himself took leave of absence, for his health's sake, and
the two brothers started for Italy, reaching Padua in
August 1554. There they fell in with other English
exiles, and thenceforward they travelled and spent
their time in company with Sir Thomas Wroth, Sir
Anthony Cooke, and Sir John Cheke. Padua was
much frequented by the English, as the extant records
of the University show ; it is probably to this time
that Wilson alludes in his prefatory epistle to the
Three Orations of Demosthenes (1570), where he records
his debt to Cheke : ' Thinking of my being with him
' in Italie in that famous Universitie of Padua, I did

* cal to minde his care that he had over all the Englishe

^ It must not be inferred from Hoby's use of the word ' Courtisan '
that he translated from the French. There is no evidence in his book
of any use made of Dolet's Edition. That translation has many
omissions, where Hoby has none. The places where the two trans-
lators deviate from the original do not coincide ; and where the
French and Italian idioms both admit of a close rendering in good
English, Hoby follows the Italian. See The Epistle of the translator
(p. 11), where he complains of omissions by ' some interpreters of this
booke into other languages '.

70 SIR THOMAS HOBY

* men there, to go to their bokes, and how gladly he

* did reade to me and others certaine Orations of

* Demosthenes in Greeke, the interpretation wherof

* I and they had then from his mouth. ... I thinke

* there was never olde Priest more perfite in his

* Porteise, nor supersticious Monke in our Ladies

* Psalter, as they call it, nor yet good Preacher in the
' Bible or testament, than this man was in Demo-

* sthenes.' Sir John was also profoundly skilled, says
Wilson, in the English tongue, so that Hoby may have
made use of his advice in the completion of The
Courtyer. For it was during this winter, in all likeli-
hood, that the task was finished. * The writing begun

* the xviiith of November,' says the diarist, ' I ended

* the ixth of Februarie folowinge.'

That this writing was the translation of the Book
OF THE Courtier seems hardly open to question. The
translation must have been finished early in Mary's
reign. When the printer, William Seres, addresses his
greeting to the reader, in the Edition of 1561, he
remarks that the book would have been set forth long
since, * but that there were certain places in it whiche
of late yeares beeing misliked of some, that had the
perusing of it (with what reason judge thou), the
Authour thought it much better to keepe it in darknes
a while, then to put it in light unperfect and in
peecemeale to serve the time '. This can mean only
one thing. The witty licence of many of Castiglione's
anecdotes, wherein dignitaries of the Roman Church
are satirized, was not displeasing to the Rome of Leo X
or Clement VII ; but after the formidable rise of
Protestantism, the friends of the old Church saw these
things in a different and more serious light. In Italy
itself the book was mangled and expurgated. The
Edition of 1766 by the Abate Pierantonio Serassi
furnishes perhaps the most lamentable example. The
story of the * religious person ' and the five nuns

SIR THOMAS HOBY 71

(narrated with unholy glee by Bayle) disappears. So
does the witticism (p. 172) concerning the appointed
form of prayer to be used for cardinals. * Tua Roma ',
in the leonine verses on p. 171, becomes * locus iste '.
Don Giovanni di Cardona (p. 181) becomes ' un certo
Lepido ', who directs his scoff against the wicked
emperors of old time. Raphael's jest (p. 184) is
attributed to an anonymous artist of ancient Rome,
and the blushes of St. Peter and St. Paul are blushed
by Romulus and Remus ! Even the foolish country-
man who compared his venerable goat to St. Paul
(p. 163) is made to seek a more fitting comparison in
the person of Socrates. Had Hoby's book been printed
in the reign of Mary, some sort of expurgation would
certainly have been necessary. It is to his credit,
whether his conscientious motives were Protestant or
literary, that he refused to mangle his translation in
order to serve the time.

The brothers travelled back to England in the
autumn of 1555, passing through Frankfort, where
they found a community of exiled English Protestants
with ' a churche graunted them to preache in '.
During the Marian persecutions they lived quietly on
their estates at Evesham and Bisham. To the latter
place, at midsummer 1557, there came as visitors
Sir William and Lady Cecil, and Elizabeth Cooke,
daughter to Sir Anthony Cooke and sister to Lady
Cecil. When they left. Sir Philip went to Bath to
take the waters, while Thomas remained at Bisham
to see the new building there go forward. In the
following spring Sir Philip's life was despaired of ; he
went to London to make his will, and there Thomas
saw him for the last time. * The xi of Mali,' he
writes, ' I came to London, being sent for to set my
' hand to a recognisance, and retourned again the xiii,
' taking my way by Wimbleton, where I communed
* with Mrs. Elizabeth Cooke in the way of marriage.'

72 SIR THOMAS HOBY

The death of Sir Philip, in May 1558, left Thomas,
as perhaps he had foreseen, in possession of Bisham ;
he was married in June to Elizabeth Cooke, and they
passed the summer with the Cecils at Burghley.

His wife must have more than a passing mention,
for the virtues and learning of Sir Anthony Cooke
were eclipsed by the virtues and learning of his five
daughters, whom he made skilful in the Greek and
Latin. The eldest, Mildred, married Sir William
Cecil ; the second, Anne, married Sir Nicholas Bacon,
and so became the mother of Francis Bacon ; the
third, Elizabeth, became Lady Hoby ; the fourth,
Margaret, married Sir Ralph Rowlet ; the fifth,
Katharine, married Sir Ralph Killigrew. The wed-
dings of Elizabeth and Margaret were celebrated on
the same day, an event which drew from Dr. Walter
Haddon one of his too numerous essays in Latin verse.^
After the death of Hoby, Lady Hoby married Lord John
Russell : she lived to write Latin epitaphs on both her
husbands, and to be the literary adviser and friend of
Sir John Harington, who made use of her intercession to
avert the wrath that his ingenious and ill-famed Meta-
morphosis of Ajax (1596) had awakened in high places.

The remainder of Hoby's diary is concerned chiefly
with the children born to him,^ and the guests enter-
tained at Bisham. One entry is of a wider significance.
On November the 5 th, 1560, he went to London for

^ In Nuptias Rodolphi Rouleti et Thomae Hobaei, qui duas D. Antonii
Cocijilias duxere uxores eodem die, in Thomas Hatcher's Edition (1567)
of Haddon's Orations, Epistles, and Poems, printed by William Seres.
Haddon's circle of friends and acquaintances coincided very closely
with Hoby's ; he has letters addressed to Sir John Cheke,Sir Thomas
Smith, and Sturmius (to whom he was introduced by Ascham) ; with
obituary verses on Cheke, Bucer, and the Countess of Northampton
(who suggested to Hoby his task) ; as well as poems to Thomas Norton,
Thomas Wilson, and Ascham

* Edward, in 1560 ; Elizabeth, in 1562 ; Katharine, in 1564. Both
daughters died in early childhood. His second son, Thomas Postumus,
was born after Hoby's death in 1566.

SIR THOMAS HOBY 73

a stay of thirteen weeks, doubtless for the purpose of
seeing his book through the press. Its comparative
freedom from misprints makes it likely that he was
a frequent visitor, during these weeks, to * the Signe
of the Hedghogge ' at the west end of St. Paul's
Churchyard. There William Seres, who from his
choice of a sign is thought to have been an old servant
of the Sidney family,^ had carried on his labours for
some ten years. His output was chiefly Protestant
theology, and his most notable excursion into the
realm of polite letters was made when the Stationers'
Company, some time between 30th November 1560
and 8th March 1561, ' Recevyd of master Serys for
* his lycense for pryntinge of a boke Called Curtyssye '
the sum of twelve pence.

The Courtyer of Count Baldessar Castillo appeared
in 1 561 with a commendatory sonnet by Thomas
Sackville, and a letter of Sir John Cheke's, wherein
the right principles of translation into English are
authoritatively laid down. This letter was written in
1557, when The Epistle of the Translator was first sub-
mitted to Sir John. But the opinions it expresses
must have been well known to Hoby, who probably
solicited the letter and put it in the forefront of his
book as a confession of his literary faith. His own
Epistle is addressed to Lord Henry Hastings, another
strong Puritan, who came into his title of Earl of
Huntingdon that same year, and made himself con-
spicuous by his * lavish support of those hot-headed
preachers '. Hastings was probably chosen to receive
the dedication of the book because his grandfather had
been commissioned to meet and entertain Castiglione
at the time of the embassy from Urbino.

* Ames, Typographical Antiquities^ Ed. Herbert (1785-90), pp. 686-
705. Seres also printed works by Sir John Cheke and Walter Haddon,
and obtained from Ascham some tedious, brief verses in commendation
of Jhree Treatises by Thomas Blondeville (1561).

74 SIR THOMAS HOBY

The rest of the story of Hoby's life is told by the
State Papers. He was knighted at Greenwich in March
1566 (new style), and sent ambassador to France in
succession to Sir Thomas Smith. One of his first tasks
was to deal with the disputes that were incessantly
arising between the fishermen of Rye and of Dieppe.
After some delay at Calais, he reached Paris, whence
he regularly communicated to Cecil his observations
on current politics. He died on July the 13th, 1566.
A statue was raised to his memory in the church at
Bisham, Dr. Haddon once more distilled from his pen
a learned melody,^ and the queen herself wrote a letter
of condolence to Lady Hoby.^

HI

The bare record of such facts concerning Hoby as
are recoverable is not altogether vain if it serve to
give a clearer idea of the circle in which he moved
and the events which touched him nearest. He was
not an Elizabethan. There is much to justify the
popular usage which extends the Elizabethan Age far
into the Seventeenth Century and numbers among its
glories the names of some who outlived Cromwell.
But the barrier that divides Spenser and Sidney and
Marlowe from the little group of scholars who laboured
for the Revival of Learning in England is less easily
passable. There are few writers of note whose active
life covers both ages. Thomas Sackville, who gave to
the English drama her first tragedy, and to poetry the
great Prologue to the Mirror for Magistrates^ lived on
into the next century, an honoured counsellor. But

^ In D. Thotnam Hobaeutn Equitetn, Parisiis duni legatione Jungeretur^
extinctum. It is twenty lines long, and concludes :

Et placidam mors est vitam tranquilla sequuta
Sic ego, sic vellem vivere sicque mori.
Haddon died in 1572.
* Ellis, Original Letters, i. ii, p. 229.

SIR THOMAS HOBY 75

his literary work had all been achieved ' while dawn's

left hand was in the sky ' ; the blaze of the sun struck

him silent. The men who were Hoby's teachers and

associates have little in common with the swashbucklers

and rufflers of the later time. Elyot, Cheke, Smith,

Ascham, Wilson, Udall, Haddon, and the rest, were

grave livers, Protestants and scholars, whose work it

was to bring home to the English people the recovered

treasures of classical wisdom. All of them were much

concerned with the establishing of a sound system of

education, which should instil the virtues of industry,

sobriety, and reverence in the youth. Some of them,

jealous for their country's good, were translators, and

patriotic champions, against a clamour of opposition,

for the right of the English speech to a place in the

world of letters. When Sir Thomas Elyot published

his medical observations in The Castell of Health, he

took occasion to defend the use of the mother-tongue.

If physicians ', he says, * be angry that I have written

physicke in Englishe, let them remember that the

Grekes wrate in Greke, the Romains in Latin, Avi-

cenna and the other in Arabike, whiche were their

own proper and maternall tongues. And if thei had

been as muche attached with envie and covetise as

some nowe seeme to be, they would have devised

some particuler language with a strange cypher or

forme of letters wherin they wold have written their

scyence, whiche language or letters no manne should

have knowen that had not professed and practised

physicke.' ^ The aim of these early foster-fathers of

the Renaissance was not to delight but to divulge, to

bring the material advantages and moral profit of

learning within reach of the humble people. When

Wilson translated Demosthenes into EngHsh he chose

the same line of defence, and developed it in a

^ Quoted from the Life of Elyot prefixed to The Govemour, Ed.
H. H. S. Croft, 2 vols., 1883, vol. i, p. ciiii.

^e SIR THOMAS HOBY

prefatory epistle to Sir William Cecil. * Some ', he
remarks, * are grieved with translated books. But all
' cannot weare Velvet, or feede with the best, and

* therefore such are contented for necessities sake to

* weare our Countrie cloth, and to take themselves
' to hard fare that can have no better.' The same
reasons are pleaded by him in the preface to his book
upon Logic, where he apologizes to King Edward for
expounding the arts in English : * I do herein take

upon me no more, but to be as a poore meane man,
or a simple persone, whose charge were to bee a lodes-
man, to conveigh some noble Princes into a straunge
lande, where she was never before, leavyng the enter-
teinyng, the enrichyng, and deckyng of her, to suche
as were of substaunce and furniture accordyng.' ^
Lodesmen they were, and little suspected what fiery
material lay concealed in their innocent-looking craft,
or how astonishing the claims of that alien princess
might prove to be if once she made good her footing in
the land. It was not the Elizabethan Age that the men
of that earlier time expected or desired. And when the
Elizabethan Age arrived, the noonday forgot the dawn.
Their doctrine concerning the fit choice of diction
is in exact consonance with the aims they set before
themselves. Sir John Cheke, dictator to his age in
matters of literary criticism, lays down the law most
absolutely in the letter to Hoby : *^ I am of this
' opinion, that our own tung shold be written cleane

* and pure, unmixt and unmangeled with borowing

* of other tunges.' ^ Wilson is of the same mind.
Writing of Demosthenes, he says : * I had rather
' follow his veyne, the whych was to speake simply and
' plainly to the common peoples uncierstanding, than
' to overflouryshe wyth superfluous speach, although
' I might therby be counted equall with the best that

^ Ihe Rule of Reason, by Thomas Wilson (1552).
'■^ See The Courtyer, p. 12.

SIR THOMAS HOBY 77

* ever wrate Englysh.' ^ To speak to the common
people's understanding was to eschew those latinisms
which were already beginning to make their way into
the English vocabulary. All the men of the school
were fanatical upholders of the Saxon, followers of
Latimer, whom Wilson elsewhere calls ' the father of
all preachers '. The matter of their writings was for
the most part homely and simple : good pastors and
masters as they were, they cut their sheep-hooks and
birch rods from English woods. It is also to be
remembered that most of these men were habitual
writers of Latin, and their natural tendency as trans-
lators was to avoid the use of cognate words. The
same tendency, leading to the same excess, may be
observed in many modern translations of the classics.
When the later generation of playwrights and artists
gave over the attempt to write Latin, and employed
it only as a well-spring to fertilize native thought and
to swell the native vocabulary, the fortune of the
English speech was made. But in Sir John Cheke's
day the highest virtue of style was the use of plain
English, and the avoidance of prevalent affectations.
On the one hand were the pedants and Ciceronians,
the inkhorn orators of a University. Wilson quotes
a begging letter which, as he alleges, he received from
an old schoolfellow, couched in these terms : * Ponder-

* ing, expending, and revoluting with myself your

* ingent affability and ingenious capacity for mundane
' affairs, I cannot but celebrate and extol your magni-
' fical dexterity above all other. ... I doubt not but

* you will adjuvate such poor adnichilate orphans as

* whilom were condisciples with you, and of antique

* famiHarity in Lincolnshire.' ^ Nor was the affecta-
tion out of date when Sidney wrote The Lady of the

^ The Three Orations of Demosthenes . . . by Thomas Wilson^ Doctor
of Civil Lawes (Henry Denham, 1570).
* The whole letter may be read in The Arte of Rhetor iqu€. Jot tbt

78 SIR THOMAS HOBY

May, or when Shakespeare wrote Love's Labour V Lost}
On the other hand were the fine courtiers who would
talk nothing but Chaucer,^ larding their speech with
archaic words. The immense influence of Chaucer on
the literature of the Sixteenth Century is visible long
before the date of the Shepheardes Calender ; ^ but
he was in bad odour with the graver sort, and was
befriended chiefly by the gallants of the Court.

Between these rocks of danger, Cheke, and Hoby in
his wake, steered a middle course. They held to the
Saxon, but disallowed such words and phrases as no
longer lived upon the lips of men. The result was
a certain restraint upon the development of English,
a certain rudeness and clumsiness in the expression of
thoughts noble or subtle. The miserable estate of
English verse during the greater part of the century
was not a little due to the obstinate rustic conservatism
which resolutely sought, in Cheke's too happy phrase,
* to ease its need with old-denizened words '. When

use of all suche as are studious of Eloquence, sette forth in English^ by
Thomas Wilson (R. Grafton, 1553).

^ It is even better satirized by Rabelais, Pantagruel, ii- 6. In
England (thanks partly to the efforts of Cheke and his school) it
remained a rare eccentricity.

^ Arte of Rhetorique, fol. 86.

^ There is evidence enough, to name no more, in Tottel's Songes
and Sonettes (1557). It is not merely that Chaucer's pre-eminence is
recognized (as where Surrey, elegizing Wyatt, says that he ' reft
Chaucer the glory of his wit ') ; nor that a piece of Chaucer's (' Flee
fro the press *) is included ; nor that the characters in Chaucer
(especially those in Troilus) are familiarly mentioned (as where Wyatt,
speaking of Pandarus, writes :

For he the fole of conscience was so nice
That he no gaine would have for all his payne) ;
nor that some of the pieces (as, for instance, that beginning, * Geve
place you Ladies and begon ', or that other, ' Full faire and white
she is and White by name ') sound reminiscent of Chaucer. Stronger
and more intimate is the evidence of diction : Surrey with his ' soote
season ' and ' flyes smale ', Wyatt with his ' do May some observance *,
and the other courtiers with their other echoes.

SIR THOMAS HOBY 79

Turbervile translated the Epistles of Ovid into English
verse, he observed the same canons of translation, with
the result that Paris is made to address Helen in this
fashion :

When thou thy daughter kist,

I would, the kiss to win,
Hermion's cheekes and cherrie lippes

Eftsoone to smack beginne.^

The one-legged poulter's measure is not responsible
for all the horrors of this. Phaer and Twyne, Golding,
Sir Thomas North himself, commit the like atrocities.
In prose there was a far larger and nobler tradition,
for Wiclif's cadences survived, where the prosody of
Chaucer was lost ; but prose, too, in all but the ablest
hands, suffered the injury of shackles wilfully endued.
And yet, seeing that a good Latin word, refused
admission, will knock at the door again, but a Saxon
word, once ousted, will hardly be brought back, Cheke
and his contemporaries, it is fair to say, saved the
English tongue from heavy losses.

The group of University wits who re-made English
poetry also broke the fetters put upon English prose
by Cheke and his school. The last word in the con-
troversy is spoken by George Pettie ; and although
the Petite Pallace of Pettie his Pleasure is a museum
of affectations, his arguments are none the less con-
vincing : * I mervaile how our English tongue hath

* crackt it credit, that it may not borrow of the Latine

* as wel as other tongues : and if it have broken it is
' but of late, for it is not unknowen to all men, how
' many wordes we have fetcht from thence within
' these few yeeres, which if they should be all counted

* ink-pot tearmes, I know not how we shall speake anie
' thing without blacking our mouthes with inke : for

^ The Heroycall Epistles of the learned Poet Publius Ovidius Naso.
In English verse : set out and translated by George Turbervile, Gent.

8o SIR THOMAS HOBY

what word can be more plain than this word (plain),
and yet what can come more neere to the Latine ?
What more manifest than (manifest) ? and yet in
a manner Latine : what more commune than (rare),
or lesse (rare) than (commune), and yet both of them
comming of the Latine ? But you will saie, long
use hath made these wordes currant : and why may
not use doe as much for these wordes which we shall
now devise ? Why should we not doe as much for
the posteritie as we have received of the antiquitie ?
. . . But how hardlie soever you deale with youre
tongue, how barbarous soever you count it, how little
soever you esteeme it, I durst myselfe undertake (if
I were furnished with learning otherwise) to write
in it as copiouslie for varietie, as compendiously
for brevitie, as choicely for words, as pithilie for
sentences, as pleasantlie for figures, and everie waie
as eloquentlie, as anie writer should do in anie vulgar
tongue whatsoever.' ^

Beneath the question of diction there lay (as there
always lies) a profounder question — of thought and
morals. The Protestant revivers of learning did not
contemplate any further revolution in these. Virgil
and Homer, Cicero and Demosthenes, might be
naturalized in England, and boys whipped for not
knowing what they meant, without the faintest change
in the intellectual and social habits of the English
people. The experience of subsequent generations has
shown how little the daily teaching of dead languages
by orthodox athletic grammarians to the youth of
England avails to arouse the imagination or to trouble
the intellect with questionings, doubts, or comparisons.

^ The Civile Conversation of M. Stephen Guazzo . . . translated by
G. Pettie out of French (1586). From The Preface to the Readers.
Pettie is here replying to Cheke's absurd contention (a metaphor run
mad) that the English tongue, ever borrowing and never paying, shall
in the end ' be fain to keep her house as bankrupt '.

SIR THOMAS HOBY 8i

The founders of that system of education scarcely-
intended that it should. The great pagan civilizations
march their eternal round, like weary ghosts, through
the schoolroom ; at the stroke of the clock they vanish,
and the activities of real life are resumed. By the
time that the child reaches manhood, he is so inured
to these habitual intruders that he regards them as
harmless and honourable appanages to an English
homestead ; hardly does the thought occur to him
that these too, like other restless spirits, have a message
to deliver, and are burning to speak. With the
literature that he reads by choice, the case is other-
wise. The novels, French or Italian, that are first
read in early manhood stir the blood and quicken the
brain : they are modern, actual, alive, and have a
potency that makes the reading of them an experience
rather than a literary exercise. The youth, whose
education was recently completed, has at last read
a book, and the first book that a man reads is more
than a book : it is an infection.

So it was in the sixteenth century. The first
generation of English scholars who made pilgrimage
to Italy went thither to seek help in the study of
Greek and Latin. They obtained what they sought,
and were glad to turn their backs on their helper.
But it was impossible that this insensibility, or this
stoical virtue, should continue when residence in Italy
came to be regarded as essential to a good education.
Italy was not only the head-quarters of the renewed
study of the classics : in those vivacious city com-
munities material and intellectual civilization had been
so perfected, that London in the comparison might
well seem a Gothic settlement, dark and barbarous.
The wonder is not that the Italian influence prevailed,
but that it was held in check so long. In all the
minor arts of civilized life, Italy had much to teach
the northerner. When Coryat, in a well-known

2600 G

82 SIR THOMAS HOBY

passage, records his first sight of forks, he adds : * This

* form of feeding I understand is generally used in all
' places of Italy. . . . The reason of this their curiosity

* is because the Italian cannot by any means endure

* to have his dish touched with fingers, seeing all men's

* fingers are not alike clean.' And this was in 1608.
Forty years earlier, the simplicity of English house-
keeping is well illustrated by Thomas Sackville, Lord
Buckhurst's, letter of explanation to the Lords of the
Privy Council when he had been ordered to entertain
the Cardinal de Chatillon at Shene. The Queen's
officers came to make arrangements. * Where they
' required plate of me,' says Sackville, * I told them,

* as troth is, I had no plate at all. Suche glasse vessell

* as I had I offred them, which they thought to base ;

* for naperie I cold not satisfie their turne, for they
' desired damaske worke for a long table, and I had

* none other but plain linnen for a square table. . . .

* One onlie tester and bedsted not occupied I had, and

* thos I delivered for the Cardinal him self, and when

* we cold not by any menes in so shorte a time procure
' another bedsted for the bushop, I assighned them

* the bedsted on which my wiefes waiting wemen did

* lie, and laid them on the ground. Mine own basen

* and ewer I lent to the Cardinall, and wanted me

* self. . . . When we saw that naperie and shetes could

* no where be had, I sent word thereof to the officers

* at the Courte, by which menes we received from my

* lord of Leceter 2 pair of fine shetes for the Cardinall,

* and from my lord Chamberlen, one pair of fine for

* the bushop.' ^ Compare Hoby's experience, eighteen
years earlier, in Italy, when, travelling as a private
gentleman, he was entertained at Salerno by the
Marquis of Capistrano. ' Whithorn and I ', he says,

^ Printed in the appendix to the Biographical Memoir of Lord
Buckhurst, prefixed to the edition of his Works edited by the Hon.
and Rev. R. W. Sackville West (1859).

SIR THOMAS HOBY 83

* were had into a chamber hanged with clothe of gold

* and vellett, wherin were two beddes, thon of silver
' worke, and the other of vellett, with pillowes, bol-
' sters, and the shetes curiouslie wrowght with neelde
' worke.' ^ In literature, again, while Caxton and his
successors were printing romances of chivalry, devo-
tional manuals, and books of practical farriery, from
the presses of Italy there had issued works that were
to become classics in the new age. Besides Boccaccio
and the novelists, Ariosto, Machiavelli, Guicciardini
are authors modern to the finger-tips, sceptical, con-
scious, artistic. Ariosto was first translated by Sir John
Harington in 1591 ; the chief work of Machiavelli,
7 he Prince, had to wait till 1640 for an English
rendering ; Guicciardini was translated by Fenton in
1579. Long before the earliest of these, on the very
threshold of the reign of Elizabeth, the novelists found
a translator in William Paynter, whose Palace of
Pleasure (1566) became the advanced standard of the
new Italian movement on English soil. Against this
book the men of the Revival, their eyes at last opened
to the nearness of the danger, directed their store of
invective. The hostility to the Italian influence arose
from two separate causes, often combined, but never-
theless distinguishable. Both motives inspired Ascham,
the doughtiest warrior of the old school. He feared
for English morals, and he feared for the solid scheme
of classical education which he had done so much to
build up. The old-world type of English character, * the
fine old English gentleman ' of the song, he would fain
have preserved, with a certain new tincture of sober
classical learning. That the young Elizabethan Courtier,

With his new study stuffed full of pamphlets and plays,

should step into the inheritance was altogether intoler-

* From A Booke of the TravaiU and Lief of me Thomas Hoby (MS.
Egerton 2148), sub anno 1550.

G2

84 SIR THOMAS HOBY

able to him.^ William Harrison, the author of the
Description of England in Holinshed's Chronicles, is
preoccupied chiefly with the integrity of English
morals, and directs his censure against those young
gallants who returned from Italy with a veneer of
courtly manners, their speech embroidered with foreign
oaths, and their moral standards sadly deteriorated.
The land of the new learning and the fine arts was
also the land of the poison-bowl and the vendetta.
Harrison laments the * atheism, vicious conversation,

* and proud and ambitious behaviour' that were brought
back by those who went there to complete their educa-
tion in its Universities and Courts. One young gentle-
man of his acquaintance, after a visit to the country
of Machiavel and Caesar Borgia, held discourse like
this : ' Faith and truth is to be kept where no loss

* or hindrance of a future purpose is sustained by

* holding of the same, and forgiveness only to be

* showed when full revenge is made.' ^ The worst of
the evils feared never came to pass : the feuds and
crimes of that brilliant, vdtty, and passionate people
left their mark on our imaginative literature rather
than on our national customs. The duel scene in
Hamlet, the plots of the terrible tragedies of Webster,
where the northern imagination throws a cloud of
metaphysical gloom around the quick animal simplicity
of southern hate, the choice of the hired bravo for the
central figure of their plays by Tourneur, Middleton,
and Webster ^ — these and many other instances attest
the influence of contemporary life in Italy on the
literature of England, and explain the nervous anti-

* See Ascham's Works, Ed. Giles, vol. iii, pp. 147-67, at the close
of Book I of The Scholemaster, The whole passage is worn trite with
quotation.

^ See Description of England, chap, i, in ' Camelot Classics * Edition,
with Introduction by F. J. Furnivall.

* Shakespeare never makes him more* than an accessory figure, as
in Macbeth.

SIR THOMAS HOBY 85

cipations of the older generation. Others, again, in
the name of the dignity of Hterature, protested against
the influx of Italian novels. Thomas Drant, who, with
Thomas Burke and Captain Boycott, has his memory
perpetuated among English verbs, poured forth the
indignation of his soul in the preface to his translation
of Horace.^ ' I feare me ', he says, * a number do so

* thincke of this booke, as I was aunswered by a prynter
' not longe agone. " Though," sayth he, " Sir, your

* " boke be wyse and ful of learnying, yet peradventure

* " it wyl not be so saileable " — signifying indeede that
' Aim flames, and gue gawes, be they never so sleight
' and slender, are soner rapte up thenne are those

* which be lettered and Clerkly makings. And no

* doubt the cause that bookes of learnynge seme so
' hard is, because such and so greate a scull of amarouse

* Pamphlets have so preoccupyed the eyes and eares

* of men, that a multytude beleve ther is none other

* style or phrase ells worthe gramercy. No bookes so

* ryfe or so frindly red, as be these bookes,

Hie meret aera liber sociisy et trans mare currit,
Et longum noto scriptori prorogat evumJ*

The printer whose remark is quoted was doubtless
Thomas Marshe, Drant's own printer, who produced
also two editions of Paynter's book, and Fenton's
Certaine Tragic all Discourses (1567). That Paynter is
pointed at becomes apparent when Drant takes up his
tale again to inveigh against the story of Romeo and
Juliet, which must have enjoyed an extraordinary
popularity, both in Paynter's collection and in Arthur
Brooke's earlier version of 1562: * Whether they be

* good or no, easy they are sure, and that by thys

* Argument. For good thyngs are hard, and evyl

* things are easye. But if the settyng out of the

^ Horace His Arte of Poetrie, pistles, and Satyrs Englished . . . by
Iho. Drant (1567). To the Reader.

86 SIR THOMAS HOBY

* wanton tricks of a payre of lovers, (as for example

* let theym be cawled Sir Chaunticleare and Dame

* Partilote) to tell how their firste combination of love
' began, how their eyes floted, and howe they anchored,

* their beames mingled one with the others bewtye :

* then of their perplexed thowghts, their throwes, their

* fancies, their dryrye driftes, now interrupted, now

* unperfyted, their love dayes, their gaude dayes, their

* sugred words, and their sugred j oyes. Afterward howe

* envyous fortune, through this chop or that chaunce

* turned their bliss to baile, severynge too such bewty-
' ful faces and dewtyful harts. Last at partying to ad

* to an oration or twane interchangeably had betwixt

* the two wobegone persons, the one thicke powdered

* wyth manly passionat pangs, the other watered wyth
' wominishe teares : Then to shryne them up to god

* Cupid, and make Martirres of them both, and there-

* wyth an ende of the matter. This and such lyke is

* easye to be understanded and easye to be indyted.
* ... I take them to be rype tounged tryfles, venemouse

* Allectyves, and sweete vanityes.'

^he Courtyer therefore holds a singular position in
the history of English letters. It is the literary first-
fruits in England of the Italian Renaissance proper.
Printed earlier than any of the much decried collec-
tions of novels, it yet was well received by the strictest
censors. Ascham's praise of it, if not quite consistent
with his contempt for ' the merry books of Italy \ is
highly discerning. * To join learning with comely

* exercises,' he says, ' Conte Baldesar Castiglione, in his
' book Cortegiane, doth trimly teach ; which book

* advisedly read and diligently followed but one year

* at home in England, would do a young gentleman

* more good, I wiss, than three years' travel abroad

* spent in Italy. And I marvel this book is no more

* read in the Court than it is, seeing it is so well

* translated into English by a worthy gentleman. Sir

SIR THOMAS HOBY 87

* Thomas Hobby, who was many ways well furnished

* with learning, and very expert in knowledge of divers

* tongues.' ^ Ascham forgot that Hoby himself had
spent more than three years abroad in the gaining of
these divers tongues, and that in The Courtyer there
are to be found, besides moral teaching, not a few
tales of passion and of mirth, written in the very vein
of the novelists. What he remembered was that the
translator was a scholar of the old type, a gentleman
of an approved morality and a sober bearing. He
was pleased too, no doubt, with the serious and lofty
temper of Castiglione's book, and perhaps was willing
to connive at the importation of a little contraband
along with so precious a cargo of warrantable com-
modities. So it came about that the history of The
Courtyer in England, and of its large influence on
Elizabethan thought and literature, begins with
Ascham's praises.

IV

In the main, those praises are deserved. Hoby's
translation, completed by the time he was twenty-
four, is conscientious, intelligent, and able. He follows
hard on the track of his author, phrase by phrase, and
word by word, and it is to the credit of our older
English speech that he generally succeeds in finding
some rough sort of vernacular equivalent for the
delicate turns of the courtly Italian. His knowledge
of the language, despite his long residence and hard
study, is far from perfect. To take some only of his
mistakes : where the Duchess is laughingly named by
M. Unico Aretino, verissima Sirena, Hoby translates it
(p. 38) ' a most perfect meremayden '. But this misses
the point, for Aretino goes on to suggest that the
company should amuse themselves by declaring in
turn what is the meaning of the letter S which the
1 7 he Scholemaster, Ed. Giles, vol. iii, p. 141.

88 SIR THOMAS HOBY

Duchess wore on her forehead. Again, where a man
on horseback is described, stirato su la sella {come noi
sogliam dire) alia Venitiana, Hoby translates (p. 60),

* bolt upright setled in saddle (as we use to say after
*the Venetian phrase) '. It is the Venetian manner,
not of speech, but of riding, that is described — a
manner well illustrated by the equestrian statue of
Bartolomeo Colleoni. A similar slip in the reading
of punctuation gives a false version on p. 90, where

* the unmanerly countrey-woman ' should be described
not as rising out of her sleep, but as defending herself
from sleep.^ Alcuna donna is not truly rendered by

* a woman in the world ' (p. 96), nor una donna by

* a certein woman '. The Lord Caesar is speaking of
female beauty in general, and Hoby's mistake spoils the
retort of Count Lewis, who slyly suggests the personal
application. Sometimes the meaning is wholly lost in
the rendering. ' Because therefore the minde of old

* age is without order subject to many pleasures, it

* can not taste them ', writes Hoby (p. 104), as if the
pleasures of age were lost in their own excess. The
literal meaning is that the mind of old age is a sub-
ject disproportioned, or ill adapted, to many of the
pleasures of life. Castiglione's Count Lewis, again,
does not commit himself to the highly questionable
statement that ' finenes hindreth not the easines of
understanding ' (p. 70). What he says is that ease is
no enemy to elegance — the very cardinal doctrine of
the true courtly style. ' Whoso hath grace, is gracious '
(p. 56) hardly expresses the meaning of Chi ha gratia,
quello e grato, which would be better rendered, * Whoso

^ The Italian reads : Con questo la inculta contadinella, che inanzi
al giorno afilare, e a tessere si leva, dal sonno si defende, e la suafatica
fa piacevole. Compare the lines quoted by Johnson :

Verse sweetens toil, however rude the sound :

AU at her work the village maiden sings ;
Nor while she turns the giddy wheel around,
Revolves the sad vicissitude of things.

SIR THOMAS HOBY 89

hath grace, findeth grace '. * It is a woorse matter not

* to dooe well then not to understande howe to dooe

* it ' (p. 43) fails to give the true sense — that to lack
the will is worse than to lack the power. ' Desperate
and pikinge ' (p. 324) is a wide aim at the meaning of
vili e fraudolenti. ' Palmastrers ' (p. 348) divine by
the hand, not by the visage ; the ItaHan word is
Fisionomi. Cortigiania, a word of cardinal importance
in the treatise, is rendered variously by * Courtiers*
trade ', ' Courtiership ', ' Courtlinesse ', and (worst of
all) by * Courting '. ' Solemnesse ' (p. 315) is not, and
was not in Hoby's day, an equivalent for insolentia.
Last, and most unhappy, * Stoutnesse of courage '
(p. 310), as a translation of magnanimitd, makes sad
havoc of that whole Aristotelian arch of virtues which
has highmindedness, or magnanimity, for its keystone.

Most of the obscurities of the English arise, not
from the translator's misunderstanding of the Italian,
but from his imperfect mastery of his own tongue.
Sometimes his syntax is merely slipshod, as, for instance,
when he writes (p. 293) : * For sins nature so sildome

* times bringeth furth such kinde of men, as she doeth.'
Here the Italian order, putting the phrase * so seldom
times ' after ' men ', makes all clear. A little later
(p. 295), the Lord Octavian is thought to have * gotten
' himself out of companye to think well upon that he

* had to saye without trouble '. Here again the original
avoids all ambiguity by the fit placing of the words
' without trouble '. Often the resolve of the translator
to do his business with Saxon words leads him into
snares. One of the great difficulties of native English
syntax is the right managing of prepositions and pre-
positional phrases. These are so numerous in idio-
matic, colloquial EngHsh that the utmost caution is
necessary to prevent ambiguity, for a preposition may
govern the word that follows, or may be a mere
enclitic. Thus, when Hoby writes (p. 53) : * For to

90 SIR THOMAS HOBY

* abide by, whoso loseth his conning at that time,

* sheweth that he hath firste loste his heart ' : the
translation of Certamente is vigorous (* to abide by '),
but the words are ill placed. Many passages must be
teased to yield their meaning, as this, for instance,
wherein it is argued that the Courtier may dance in
public, if only he be masked : * And though it were

* so that all menne knew him, it skilleth not, for there

* is no way to that, if a man will shewe himselfe in

* open sightes about such matters, whether it be in

* armes or out of armes.' * There is no way to that ',
for non e miglior via di quella^ is idiomatic, but,
standing where it does, it is not clear. The use of
these idioms sometimes has a curious effect : * I beleave
' therefore that it is well done to love and awaie with

* one more then another ' (p. 138). This seeming allu-
sion to an elopement puzzled Hoby's contemporaries ;
it is altered to * beare with ' by the printer (and self-
appointed editor) of the 1588 edition.

Sometimes the sense is imperilled by a servile verbal
transcription of the original. Since Hoby made bold
to translate fiu che humani by * more then manlye '
(p. 108), he was untrue to his own guiding principle
when he wrote * the journey of Cirignola ' (p. 182)
for la giornata delta Cirignola ; it should have been

* day ' or ' battle '. He writes ' for once, he is neyther
welfavoured ' (p. 282) where the Italian reads gid non
e hello ^ and habitually renders quasi by ' in a maner '.
' For (in a maner) alwayes a manne by sundrye wayes

* may clime to the toppe of all perfection ' is a clumsy
expression of the idea that there are almost always
more ways than one whereby perfection may be
reached. The whole section on Jests and Jesting is
confused by a bUnd following of the Italian. Casti-
glione, who borrowed his classification of jests from
Cicero's De Oratore, darkens the meaning of his
original ; in Hoby's translation the ecHpse, though of

SIR THOMAS HOBY 91

short duration, becomes total. * It provoketh much
' laughter (which nevertheles is conteined under
' declaration) whan a man repeteth with a good grace

* certein defaultes of other men.' What is the meaning
of the words between brackets ? They are an allusion
to the classification of jests previously given, and should
run somehow thus : ' Which nevertheless is included

* under the heading of narration.' ^

I To break off a long tale — for it is difficult * to repeat

" with a good grace the faults of other men ', when
those men have done well for their country, — ^Hoby's
command of the resources of the native element in
our speech remains to be praised. The teaching of
Sir John Cheke was not lost on him. He is blameless
when he says ' open ' rather than ' discover ', ' under-
ling ' for * inferior ', * set by ' rather than * esteem ',
and the like in a hundred cases. The vigour of his
diction is often admirable ; indeed at times it is
extravagant. ' Lothsomnesse ' (p. 166) is too strong
a word ioi fastidio, and the reader is forcibly reminded
of the roaring of a sucking dove when he finds the
mormorar soave of the Italian rendered ' the sweete
'roaringe of a plentifull and livelye springe' (p. 155).
Yet the strong, homely savour of many of Hoby's
phrases, though it be not, in his own words, ' a smack
of the right bliss ', is a good thing in itself. Forget
the quiet of the Italian courtly speech, which touches
lightly and suavely on all things ugly or excessive, and
there is pleasure to be had from the blunt emphasis
of our own unchastened tongue. The evil man and

^ For Cicero's classification, exactly followed by Castiglione, see
De Oratore, ii. 54 : ' Etenim cum duo genera sint facetiarum, alterum
' aequabiliter in omni sermone fusum, alterum peracutum et breve,
' ilia a veteribus superior cavillatio, haec altera dicacitas nominata est.'
And again, 11. 59 : ' Duo sunt enim genera facetiarum, quorum
' alterum re tractatur, alterum dicto.' The classification, which
attempts, in the opinion of some, to distinguish wit from humour,
can hardly afford to be robbed of meaning.

92 SIR THOMAS HOBY

the foolish person (there are many in the world,
and the Italian speaks of them without heat) shall
not escape the Englishman — they are dubbed * the
naughtypacke ', and * the untowardly Asseheade '.
The blind become ' blinde buzzards ' ; the ill parts
of youth are called its ^ curst prankes ' ; decrepitude
is * age on the pittes brink ' ; to keep out of danger's
reach is * to slepe in a whole skinne ' ; to show grief
is * to fume and take on so ' ; to bear the head erect
and stiif is to carry it ' so like a malthorse ' ; a peasant
is * a lobbe of the Countrie ' ; to have worse hap is
' to come into a greater pecke of troubles ' ; to bear
mocking without retort is * to stand with a flea in
the eare ' ; troppo amorevoli is rendered * too loving
wormes ' ; and at contrario spells ' arsiversy '.

The free flourishes and profuse decoration of the
true Elizabethans are scarcely to be found in the plain
speech of Hoby. Sometimes he doubles the Italian
word, as when he writes * trade and maner ', * rule and
ensample ', * purpose and drift ', ' the aire or veyne of
it ', * wavering and unstedfast \^ Here and there, yet

^ This particular redundant habit of speech is best exemplified by
Lord Berners, whose preface to Froissart opens thus : ' What condigne
' graces and thankes ought men to give to the writers of historyes ?

* who with their great labors, have done so moch profyte to the
' humayne life. They shew, open, manifest and declare to the reder,
' by example of olde antyquyte : what we shulde enquere, desyre, and

* folowe. And also, what we shulde eschewe, avoyde and utterlye flye.
' For whan we (beynge unexperte of chaunces) se, beholde, and rede the

* aunchent actes, gestes, and dedes. Howe, and with what labours,

* daungers and paryls they were gested and done. They ryght greatly
' admonest, ensygne, and teche us : howe we maye lede forthe our lyves.

* And farther, he that hath the perfyte knowledge of others joye, welthe

* and hyghe prosperyte : hath thcxperte doctryne of all parylles.'

The doublets in the Prayer Book are often said to be due to a desire
for clearness ; but that craving for symmetry which finds expression
in all varieties of antithesis and balance probably has more to say to
them. Mr. Swinburne's adjectives and substantives hunt in fierce
couples through the rich jungle of his prose. The taste for pairs,
once acquired, like all tastes of the wealthy, is hard to put off.

SIR THOMAS HOBY 93

very seldom, he allows himself a more liberal expan-
sion. Freddissimi, used metaphorically, he renders

* very colde and without any grace or countenance '.
Women are not to be mocked at, says Castiglione,
because, being unable to defend themselves, they must
be reckoned with the wretched. * In this point *, says
his translator, * women are in the number of selie

* soules and persons in miserye, and therefore deserve

* not to be nipped in it.' These modest explanatory
licences are but another form of reduplication ; there
are to be found in Hoby's book only the first timid
beginnings of the later voluble manner.

In two or three places the translator, by his choice
of words, betrays the bias of the serious school of
thought to which he belonged. He translates novelle
by * triflyng tales ' (p. 37). He boggles at the word
divino, or divinamente, applied by the enthusiasm of
Italian criticism to the fairest works and deeds of man.
The glorious wits of ancient time, says Castiglione, of
a truth were godlike in every excellence : ' in very

* dede ', says Hoby, ' they were of most perfection in

* every vertue ' (p. 108). The divinity that is in music,
by a similar modification, becomes the * excellency '
(p. 119). To Virgil alone, by right perhaps of long
prescription, is the praise allowed of * so devine a witte
and judgemente ' (p. 66). But these scruples are not
proper to Hoby, for the mode of speech that he avoids
is altered or ponderously apologized for by the editor
in more than one of the Italian editions. And when
censure has said its last word, The Courtyer^ as done
into English by Thomas Hoby, is still the book of
a great age — the age that made Shakespeare possible.
It is rich in fine passages, and even its obscurest
recesses are graced by broken and reflected light,
thrown back upon it from the torches of those who
passed this way and went onward, leading the English
speech to a splendid destiny.

94 SIR THOMAS HOBY

Such as it was, it took its assured place among the
books of that age, and ran through four Editions during
the reign of Elizabeth. There are reissues dated 1577,
1588, and 1603.^ Ten years after the appearance of
Hoby's translation, one Bartholomew Gierke, a Fellow
of King's College, Cambridge, urged thereto by his
friend and patron Lord Buckhurst, completed a Latin
version of the original : it was printed by Henry
Bynneman in 1577,^ with a dedication to the Queen
and a commendatory epistle to the reader by Edward
Vere, Earl of Oxford. After the accession of James
the popularity of the book declined. The last of the
great Courtiers was executed in 161 8, and a new world
of parliament-men was growing up. There was a
revival of interest early in the eighteenth century,

^ I find myself, with regret, unable to certify the existence of the
Edition of 1565 mentioned by Cooper {Athenae Cantab., i. 242) and
the writer of the article on Hoby in the Dictionary of National Bio-
graphy. It would be of peculiar interest as the last edition published
in Hoby's lifetime. But there is no trace of it in the Stationers'
Register, nor in any of the authorities cited by the two writers men-
tioned above. The later editions are of no value for the text. That
of 1588 prints the Italian original and the French version of Chapuis
in parallel columns by the side of Hoby's English. The printer, John
Wolfe, or some one employed by him, has taken upon himself to
amend the English text. Thus, ' the L. Julian ' becomes ' the Ladie
Julian ' — a new character in the colloquy. The most picturesque
pieces of Saxon are removed. There are new misprints, as ' verie
Pilgrimes ' for ' wery pilgromes ' (p. 90). Wolfe's masterpiece of
emendation is his reading of the anecdote on p. 173. Hoby had
boldly anglicized the Italian word for ' heretic ', and had written ' to
nip him for a marrane '. Master Wolfe, proud of his French, makes
of this ' to nip him for a chesnut ' !

* Balthasaris Castilionis Comitis De Curiali sine Aidico Libri qua-
tuor, ex Italico sermone in Latinum conuersi. Bartholonueo Gierke
Anglo Cantabrigiensi Interprete. Novissime Alditi. Londini, apud Henri-
cum Bynneman Typographum. Anno Domini, 1577. The translator,
dating from Sackville's house, in 1571, speaks of the interruptions
caused by his journey with Sackville into France, and by his parlia-
mentary duties. In the following year he was appointed Dean of the
Arches. A fuller account of him may be found in Strype, Life of
Parker^ ii. 183-90.

SIR THOMAS HOBY 95

when two fresh translations appeared almost at the
same time. The better of these, by A. P. Castiglione,
Gent., who prefixed a botched-up life and added some
of the author's poetical pieces, appeared in 1727, and
reached a second edition in 1737. It gives Italian
and English throughout. The worse was a venture of
Curll's ; it appeared in 1729 with a dedication (dated
1723) by the translator, Robert Samber, to John, Duke
of Montagu. The scion of the house of Castiglione
does not mention Hoby ; Samber calls him ' Sir
Thomas Hobbes ', and very sagely remarks, in a pre-
face which is one conglomerated mass of error : * It

* is certain that Sir Thomas did not understand his

* Authour, or at least his Language is such, that I do
not understand him.' Castiglione's translation is dull
and flat, Samber's is dull and pert. In no respect does
either threaten the prerogative of Hoby, or impair his
title to be esteemed the first and last translator of the
Book of the Courtier.

V

That the vogue of the book in England should have
coincided exactly with the Elizabethan Age is some-
thing other than an accident. The literature of that
age was a literature of the Court, as surely as the
literature of the age of Anne was a literature of the
Town. The way to political influence, to social
advancement, to power and consideration and fame,
lay through the Court, in England as in Italy. Now
that the Court has dwindled into a drawing-room, it
is perhaps not wholly easy to realize what once it
meant to the nation. It was the centre, not of govern-
ment alone, but of the fine arts : the exemplar of
culture and civilization. Few great Englishmen of the
nineteenth century have been intimately connected
with the Court ; few indeed of the great Elizabethans
were not. The names of Charles Darwin, Robert

96 SIR THOMAS HOBY

Browning, and Charles George Gordon on the one
hand, of Francis Bacon, Edmund Spenser, and Sir
Philip Sidney on the other, sufficiently point the con-
trast. Even Shakespeare, the High Bailiff's son, was
something of a Courtier ; he paid the most magnificent
of courtly tributes to Queen Elizabeth in certain lines :

And the imperial votaress passed on
In maiden meditation, fancy free :

and he (or his editors) inserted in the play of Macbeth
sundry passages which can only be called skilful pieces
of flattery designed to gratify King James. In those
flourishing days of adventure, the successful adventurer
found himself, sooner or later, brought into contact
with the Court. Francis Drake, when he had sailed
round the world, entertained Queen Elizabeth on
board his ship at Deptford ; and William Lithgow,
the Scottish pedestrian, after escaping with his life
from the tortures of the Spanish Inquisition, was
carried on a feather-bed to Theobalds, that he might
narrate the wonders of his travels to King James.
The Courtier was the embodiment and type of the
civilization of the Renaissance, as the Orator was the
typical product of the civilization of ancient Rome.
And the treatises of Cicero and Quintilian, wherein
is set forth the character of the perfect orator, have
their exact counterpart in the books written by the
Italians of the sixteenth century for the instruction
of the Perfect Courtier.^

^ The domination of the idea of the Court is attested also by those
numerous ballads, poems, and treatises, in the vein of Guevara's
Menosprecio de corte or Spenser's Mother Hubbard's TaU, which
rail on Court life. An eloquent translation of the former, entitled,
^ Dispraise of the life of a Courtier, and a commendacion of the life of
the labouryng man (R. Grafton, 1548), was made by Sir Francis Bryant
and dedicated to Hoby's patron, William, Marquis of Northampton.

* The court is a perpetuall dreame, a bottomlesse whorlepole, an

* inchaunted phantasy, and a mase : when he is in, he cannot get out

* till he be morfounded. . . . God knowes (for example) how many

SIR THOMAS HOBY 97

The instruction given sometimes descended to the
minutest details of dress and deportment. The chief
rival to Castiglione's book, in its own century, was
written *by a bishop, Giovanni della Casa, about 1550,
under the title II Galateo. This book, much prized
by the Italians for the grace and purity of its diction,
speedily ran through the principal European languages ;
it was translated into English by Robert Peterson, of
Lincoln's Inn, and published in 1576.-^ It is the very
Sancho Panza to Castiglione's Don Quixote. A few
brief extracts may serve to show the nature of the
teaching imparted : * A man must leave to yawne

* muche ... as that it seemes to proceede of a certaine
' werynes, that shewes that he that yawneth could

* better like to be els where then there in that place :

* as wearied with the companie, their talke and their

* doings.'

* It is a rude fashion, (in my conceipte) that som

* men use, to lye lolling asleepe in that place where

* honest men be met together of purpose to talke. . . .

* Likewise doe they very yll, that now and then pull

* out a letter out of theyr pocket to reade it. . . . But

* gentle and good honest myndes labor in the villages, and how many
' foles and lubbers bragge it in palaices.' The railers were all courtiers,
just as most of those who inveigh against modern commercialism and
industrialism are (in the scientific sense of the word) parasites of the
industrial and commercial community. The last word on the con-
troversy Court versus Country is said by Touchstone in As Tou Like It.

^ Galateo of Maister John Della Casa, Archebishop of Beneventa.
Or rather, A treatise of the maners and behaviours, it hehoveth a man
to use and eschewe in his familiar conversation. . . . Lond. : Newbery,
1576. The popularity of the Galateo continued, under constantly
changing titles, long after the vogue of The Courtyer had ceased. The
Galateo Espagnol, or The Spanish Gallant (1640), so called because
Italian influence was on the wane, is another version of the same book.
So is The Refined Courtier (1663), of which some account will be found
in the Retrospective Review, vol. xvi, p. 375, where the book is some-
what absurdly treated as if it were an index to the state of manners
at the Court of Charles II. So late as 1774 there was published yet
another paraphrase, by the Rev. Richard Graves.

2600 H

98 SIR THOMAS HOBY

* they are much more to be blamed, that pull out

* theyr knyves or their scisers, and doe nothing els but
' pare their nayles.'

* There be other . . . never leave brauling with

* their servants, and rayling at them, and continually

* disturbe the company with their unquietnes : using

* such speeches : " Thou cauledst me well up this

* " morning. Looke heere how cleane thou hast made

* " these pynsons. Thou beaste, thou diddest waite
' " well uppon me to Churche. It were a good deede

* " to breake thy head." These be unsemely and very

* fowle fashions, suche as every honest man will hate

* to death.'

There is nothing of all this in The Courtier, which
indeed is to the GalaUo what a theory of jurisprudence
is to a record of the decisions of a police-court magis-
trate. Castiglione deals less with accomplishments and
decorum than with the temper and character which
beget decorum. The attraction of the book for Hoby
and the men of his time undoubtedly centred in its
singularly high and uncompromising morality, its
breadth of treatment and design. The perfect self-
dependence and implicit self-assertion of the Courtier,
although pagan in its essence, and modelled on pagan
examples, made a ready and powerful appeal to Pro-
testant thought. Here was a real bond of union
between the Italian humanists and the men of the
Reformation. A principle of self-assertion is inherent
in Protestantism, which, however it may exalt the
higher law, yet practically claims for the individual
the right to interpret that law. The self-assertion
of the humanists was open and unashamed : man was
to train himself like a racehorse, to cultivate himself
like a flower, that he might arrive, soul and body, to
such perfection as mortality may covet. This perfec-
tion had nowhere been more systematically described
and defined than in the works of the ancient philo-

SIR THOMAS HOBY 99

sophers ; and it is from Aristotle's Ethics that Casti-
glione borrows the framework of his ideal character.

The main outlines of that character are bold and
free. The Courtier, so far from being a time-server,
is * a fellow of an incorrigible and losing honesty '.
He is not to achieve his ends through by-ways : ' To

* purchase favour at great mens handes, there is no

* better waye then to deserve it ' (p. 127). When he
finds that he has a rival in love, * bicause I woulde
' not lyke that oure Courtier shoulde at anye tyme
' use anye deceyte, I woulde have him to withdrawe
' the good will of his maistresse from his felowlover

* with none other arte, but with lovinge, with servinge,

* and with beeinge vertuous, of prowesse, discreet,

* sober ' (p. 281). On the question of flattery it is
interesting to compare Castiglione with Machiavel.
' Of this kind of cattle ', says Machiavel, speaking of
flatterers, * all histories are full ', and he suggests to
the prince how they may be dealt with. It is one
of the chief misfortunes of princes that they seldom
hear free speech. But to encourage all inmates of the
palace to speak their mind is impossible. The prince
therefore must select certain discreet men for his
counsellors, and so bear himself towards them that
every one of them shall find, the more freely he speaks,
the more kindly his advice is received. The first
interest of the prince, according to Machiavel, is to
hear the truth.^ The chief end of the Courtier,
according to Castiglione (p. 297), is to tell it. He is
to endear himself to his prince by his gifts and graces
only that he may gain this invaluable liberty. And
that his motives may be untainted by suspicion, he is
never to ask anything for himself (p. 125).

The whole catalogue of the Aristotelian virtues is
added for a dower. The chief of these is Magna-
nimity : * But Magnanimity cannot stand alone,

' * The Prince^ chap, xxiii. See also 7he Courtyefy p. 298.

H 2

100 SIR THOMAS HOBY

* because no one can arrive to greatness of soul who

* hath not other virtues.' ^ Magnanimity is the soul
of the Courtier, for it preserves him, in a world of
minute observances, from laying stress on trifles, from
losing sight of the end in a sedulous study of the
means. It is only by virtue of magnanimity that the
Courtier can attain to that negligence, or ' reckless-
ness ', as Hoby not very happily translates it, which
is of the essence of good manners. Castiglione's treat-
ment of this grace of sprezzatura — the word has no
exact English equivalent — is his chief contribution to
a philosophy of manners. His profoundest truth is
this same paradox. To do the right thing is nothing,
unless the doer seem to value it not at all.^ The
precise, the punctilious, those who bend their whole
energies to the study of manners, and expend therein

* an infinite capacity for taking pains ', may attain to
correct behaviour ; they are pedants, dancing-masters,
esquire beadles in their very success. There is a grace
beyond the reach of art in ' that pure and amiable

* simplicity which is so agreeable to the minds of men '.
The author indeed tries to save earnest spirits from
despair by advising them to dissimulate their effort :

* to seme not to mynde the thing a man doeth excel-

* lently well.' It is a spurious consolation, and he has
discounted its value beforehand by quoting the pro-

* Mistranslated by Hoby, p. 310. The passage is a simple tran-
scription from Aristotle's Ethics, iv. 7, on fieyakoxpyxCa. Welldon's
translation runs : ' It seems then that high-mindedness is as it were
' the crown of the virtues, (koot/aos tis ruiv dperwv), as it enhances

* them and cannot exist apart from them.'

* Lord Chesterfield gives advice to the same effect : ' When you
' are once well dressed for the day, think no more of it afterwards ;

* and, without any stiflFness for fear of discomposing that dress, let all

* your motions be as easy and natural as if you had no clothes on at

* all ' — (30 December 1748). And again : ' Were you to converse with

* a King, you ought to be as easy and unembarrassed as with your

* own valet-de-chambre ; but yet every look, word, and action should

* imply the utmost respect ' — (13 June 1751).

SIR THOMAS HOBY loi

verb : ' Grace is not to be learned.' All teaching of
the arts seems to lead ultimately to the theological
doctrine of grace. ' Freedom under the law ' is the
beginning and end of good manners, and the com-
parative stress that Castiglione lays on freedom is the
distinction of his work. In the half-civilized societies
of modern cities the two extremes may be observed
unreconciled, a world of meaningless timidities and
restraints on the one part, of noxious and sickening
licence on the other. To mollify the savage is the
business of education. But education cannot rescue
a man from his own small mind, nor crown him with
the crown of the virtues. Magnanimity.

All the elaborate discussion of virtues, graces, and
policy, all the admirable precepts of tact, and maxims
of an enlightened and unselfish worldly wisdom, draw
to a point on the fourth evening, when the company
sets itself to determine the chief end of a Courtier.
The conversation is carried on far into the night, and
rises at its close to a strain of lyrical rapture in the
impassioned discourse of Bembo concerning Love and
Beauty. The transition to this theme, which might
seem to lie outside the scope of the book, is managed
with the perfection of dramatic and literary skill.
Some of the company feel a growing impatience with
the ' perfect monster whom the world ne'er saw '.

* I feare me,' says one of them, speaking of the Prince,
whose virtues are to match the virtues of the Courtier,

* I feare me he is like the Commune weale of Plato,
' and we shall never see suche a one, onlesse it be
' perhaps in heaven.' The objection, answered for
the nonce, rises again, and takes more specific shape.
It had been generally agreed that the Courtier should
be a lover. But when, in addition to all the arts and
graces, the wisdom of Aristotle and Plato (themselves
perfect Courtiers) are added unto him, the dilemma
becomes apparent. The experience and knowledge

102 SIR THOMAS HOBY

that are required can only come with years, and the
perfect Courtier must therefore of necessity be old.
But ' love frameth not with olde men ', and to insist
that he shall be a lover is to expose him to the con-
tempt of women and the mocking of boys. It is here
that Bembo interposes the quiet remark that there is
a love without any mixture of bitterness or regret,
seemly in men of all ages. Pressed to enlarge his
meaning, he breaks at last into the high mystical
exposition of Platonic love which closes the long debate
with the solemn harmonies of an unearthly music.

VI

The discourse of Bembo, by far the most notable
part of Castiglione's book, has to some readers and
critics seemed inapposite. It is really in perfect keep-
ing, and even essential to the scheme. The question,

* What is the chief end of a courtier ? ' had received
but a lame answer. He is to influence his Prince, and
consequently his Government, for good ; but it is
impossible not to feel that this is a minor end, an
accidental result, and that the Court exists for him
rather than he for the Court. * Indeed,' observes the
German historian of the Renaissance, * such a man

* would be out of place at any Court, because he him-

* self possesses all the gifts and bearing of an accom-

* plished ruler, and because his calm supremacy in all

* things, both outward and inward, implies a perfectly

* independent nature.' ^ He is true to his Prince, but
only because his mainspring of action is that maxim
of Polonius :

To thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.

The dangers of this ideal are easy to be seen, especially

^ Burckhardt, 7 he Renaissance in Italy, trans. Middlcmorc (1892),
p. 388.

SIR THOMAS HOBY 103

in such an academic model of perfection as Castiglione
had set himself to frame. It is not good for a man
to sit brooding on his own character, or to play the
fancier to his own virtues. Nothing great was ever
accomplished by one whose ruling passion was self-*
improvement, who busied himself chiefly about the
cultivation of his own mind or the condition of his
own soul. The harassed, self-conscious, preoccupied
air of the apostle of culture compares ill with the
forthright look of a sailor, whose mind is fixed on
outward things. It was perhaps a sense of this danger
that led Castiglione, as his book was approaching com-
pletion, to give over the attempt to illuminate his
model from the inside : he sought a cause, an oppor-
tunity of whole-hearted devotion, a religion, in which
even the perfect Courtier might lose himself, and be
abased. Where, in his own country and age, should
he find this if not in the religion of Love and Beauty?
And so, when the time seems come to knit up all and
make an end, we stumble suddenly on a greater matter
than all the rest — the Platonism of the Renaissance.

That Bembo should be chosen as high-priest of this
religion was natural enough. He was thirty-six years
old at the time of the colloquy in which he figures,
and, if history tell true, was deeply versed in the
theorick and practick parts of love. Only a few years
earlier, in 1505, he had produced his book of dialogues,
on the miseries and joys of lovers, entitled Gli Asolani,
and had dedicated it to Lucretia Borgia. In this book,
which probably furnished Castiglione with the imme-
diate suggestion for the close of The Courtier, there
are three principal speakers. The first, Perottino,
inveighs against Love in the finest vein of poetical
declamation : ' O bitter sweetness : O poisoned drug

* of healing for the insanity of lovers : O grievous joy,

* that entertainest thy possessors with no sweeter fruit

* than remorse : O beauty, that art no sooner seen,

104 SIR THOMAS HOBY

* than, like a thin smoke, thou vadest away, leaving to

* the eyes that beheld thee nothing but their tears :

* O wings, that for all ye raise us on high, yet when

* your frail fabric is melted in the sun, ye bring us to

* suffer the naked fate of Icarus, falling headlong in

* the sea ! ' The second, Gismondo, praises Love as
the giver of all good things to humanity. The third,
Lavinello, distinguishes the several kinds of love, and
repeats the discourse of an aged hermit who initiated
him in the mysteries of the true and eternal Love,^
whereof all earthly love is but a weak reflection. But
although The Courtier takes many hints from Bembo,*
the discourse attributed to him in Castiglione's book
soars a higher pitch and is more sustained than the
oration of Lavinello in his own. He had no cause to
complain of the part assigned to him, during his
lifetime, by his friend.

But although his friendship with Bembo left its
mark on his work, Castiglione was under no exclusive
obligation to Bembo for his knowledge of the Platonic
philosophy, as it was interpreted by the men of the
Renaissance. That philosophy had become a part of

* This is, of course, imitated from the Symposium, where Socrates
disclaims all knowledge of love save what Diotima has taught him.
Ficino concludes the prefatory epistle to his treatise on the Symposium
thus : ' May the Holy Spirit of Divine Love, which inspired Diotima,

* enlighten our minds and inflame our hearts in such wise, that we

* may love Him in all his fair works ; and thereafter love his works
' in Him ; and with an infinite joy taste and see the infinity of His
' Beauty.*

^ The loftiest passage of Bembo's speech in The Courtier seems
based on a part of Perottino's oration : ' Questi e quel Titio ; che
' pasce del suo fegato I'avoltoio ; anzi che il suo cuore a mille morsi

* sempre rinuova. Questi e quello Isione ; che nella ruota delle sue

* molte angoscie girando, hora nella cima, hora nel fondo portato, pure
' dal tormento non si scioglie giamai ' — {Degli Asolani, ed. 1530).
Here Castiglione takes up the tale, and echoes it, as it were, in praise
of the heavenly love : ' This is the great lire, in the which (the Poetes

* wryte) that Hercules was burned on the topp of the mountaigne
' Oeta,' &c. (see p. 361).

SIR THOMAS HOBY 105

the common inheritance of knowledge ; from Florence
the cult of Plato had spread over all Italy. The Greek
who gave to philosophy the form and beauty of poetry,
and to poetry the scope and depth of philosophy, was
in a fair way to be deified by lovers of art and specula-
tion. And of all Plato's Work the Dialogues concerning
Love and Beauty were strongest in their appeal to the
mind of the Renaissance. The transcendentalism and
mysticism of these dialogues, especially the Symposium
and the PhaedruSy made it easy to christianize them,
so that Plato became a great Christian philosopher, as
Virgil long before had become a great Christian poet.
Something, indeed, more than a philosopher, the
founder of a religion and a hierarchy. A ritual value
was attached to the banquet where Socrates, Alci-
biades, Aristophanes, Agathon, and the rest had dis-
cussed the nature of love. During Plato's lifetime,
according to the chief of the Platonists, Marsilio
Ficino, an annual commemoration was held, and after
his death it was regularly observed by his pupils and
followers until the time of Porphyrins. Then it fell
into disuse for twelve hundred years, until at last it
was reinstituted by Lorenzo the Magnificent and
Francesco Bandino. On the 7th of November (the
day traditionally assigned as the date of Plato's birth
and death) a company of Platonic enthusiasts met
together at the Villa di Careggi, near Florence, to
discuss and expound the principles set forth in the
Symposium. The system that was developed by these
Platonic enthusiasts is contained in Ficino's treatise
on Love,^ which is by way of being a report of the
conversation at Lorenzo's villa. The same system is
mapped out with more ostentation of symmetry in
the later commentary of Pico della Mirandola upon

^ Marsilio Ficino Sopra lo Amore over' Convito di Platone. Firenze,
1544. The translation is by Ficino himself, from his Latin De Volup-
tate, Venice, 1497.

io6 SIR THOMAS HOBY

a canzone of Girolamo Benivieni.^ These two treatises
furnish the best elucidation and illustration of the
rhapsody attributed to Bembo in The Courtier.

The habit of enormous metaphysical disquisition
upon the figures and fancies of a poet was older than
the new Platonism. The brief poem of Guido Caval-
canti, the contemporary and friend of Dante, beginning
Donna mi frega, had already been buried under a pile
of commentaries. Poets had been taught to esteem
themselves by the amount of strained divinity that
could be extracted from their love songs. The beauti-
ful figures and apologues of Plato lent themselves very
readily to a similar process, and the interest of the
works that emanated from the Platonic Academy lies,
not in their value as philosophy, but rather in their
large influence on the later poetry of Europe. The
Platonism of the Renaissance came by the poets, and
it went by the poets. The whole of the love poetry
of the Elizabethan age in England is shot through
and through with fibres of mystical philosophy. It is
impossible, for the most part, to identify particular
sources and origins. The history of the clothes a man
wears may be traced exactly : not so the history of
the air he breathes. All we may know is that the
treatment of love in, say, Shakespeare's Sonnets, is
steeped in the tide of the Italian influence. The
poetical imaginations of Plato, desiccated and pounded
into dust by the academicians, became a sovereign
salve for English poetry. The heavenly Love, raised
far above the clouds by the dialecticians, on an ascend-
ing structure of invisible platforms, came down again,
and once more walked the earth, simple, sensuous, and

^ Commento sopra una canzona de amore da Hieronimo Benivient,
Translated into English by Thomas Stanley under the title A Platonick
Discourse upon Love. Written in Italian by John Picus Mirandula,
In Explication of a Sonnet, by Hieronimo Benivieni. Printed in the
year 1651. Other works on the subject of Platonic Love are by Mario
Equicola, Leone Ebrco, and Francesco Cattani da Diaceto.

SIR THOMAS HOBY 107

passionate, but not unmindful of her strange aerial
adventures.^

It is Pico who gives the most comprehensive ordered
account of the system which Bembo displayed to the
Court of Urbino. All Love is a desire of Beauty.
Celestial Love is an Intellectual desire of Ideal Beauty.
All Ideas have their being in God, who impresses or
carves them on the Angelic Mind, which, at first
a chaos, so takes form and light, and turns in adoration
to its Maker. This is the beginning of Divine Love.
From the Angelic Mind the ideas descend into the
Rational Soul, whereby is generated Humane Love.
And below this again is Sensual Love, an appetite of
union with the divine idea as it is impressed, by
a further descent, upon corporeal species. Sensual
Love mistakes the body for the source of that beauty
which in truth the body reflects but remotely and
faintly. But as all light comes from the sun, so all
beauty is an emanation of the Divine Bounty, and is
wholly good : ' Plotinus himself averres that there was

* never any beautiful Person wicked, that this Grace-

* fulnesse in the Body is a certain signe of Perfection

* in the Soul.' ^ The assertion of Plotinus is repeated

^ Let one example suffice — Shakespeare's fifty-third Sonnet :

What is your substance, whereof are you made,

That millions of strange shadows on you tend?

The language of this Sonnet could have been addressed by the Italian

Platonists only to the Deity. But those who believe that Shakespeare

so addressed it have yet to read Shakespeare — from the beginning.

2 Quoted from Stanley's translation. Compare Mr. Birkbeck Hill's
anecdote : * In my undergraduate days at Oxford, when not unfre-
' quently I was in Rossetti's company, I one day heard him maintain

* that a beautiful young woman, who was on her trial on a charge of
' murdering her lover, ought not to be hanged, even if found guilty,
' as she was " such a stunner ". When I ventured to assert that
' I would have her hanged, beautiful or ugly, there was a general
' outcry of the artistic set. One of them, now famous as a painter,
' cried out, " Oh, Hill, you would never hang a stunner ! " '—Letters of
Dante Gabriel Rossetti to William Allingham, ed. by Birkbeck Hill. 1897.

io8 SIR THOMAS HOBY

by Bembo in The Courtier : * My Lordes (quoth he)

* I would not that with speakynge ill of beawtie, which

* is a holy thinge, any of us as prophane and wicked

* shoulde purchase him the wrath of God.' The objec-
tions that Bembo has to meet, Pico evades by a subtle
distinction between two kinds of corporeal beauty :
the one consisting in the material disposition of the
parts, proportion, form, colour, and the like ; the
other, called gracefulness, is the true life of beauty,
and alone kindles love.

Beauty, then, in all its manifestations is a certain
act, or ray, of the Divine Bounty, penetrating all
things. From this main conception Ficino draws many
inferences, which he builds into a complete system of
love-casuistry. Some of his arguments set a full chime
of Elizabethan echoes ringing in the memory. Here
is one passage : ' Of a truth the lover desireth not
this body nor that, but he desireth rather the bright-
ness of the majesty of God, which, shining in this
body or that, fiUeth his soul with wonder. Where-
fore those who love know not what it is that they so
desire and seek after, for they cannot know God. . . .
And hence also it ariseth that all lovers are fearful
and reverent in the sight of the person beloved ; and
this befalleth even to strong and wise men in the
presence of one beloved who is lesser than they.
Verily, that is nothing human which so terrifieth and
possesseth and breaketh them. For there is no human
thing greater than the strength and wisdom that is
in strong and wise men. But the brightness of the
Godhead, which shineth in a beautiful body, com-
pelleth these lovers to admire and fear and worship
the said person like as it were a statue of God. For
the same cause the lover despiseth riches and honour
for the sake of the person beloved, rightly preferring
divine things before things human. Oftentimes,
again, it faUeth out that the lover desireth to be

SIR THOMAS HOBY 109

* changed into his beloved ; and with reason, for he

* seeketh, by this means, of man to be made God.

* And who is he that would not wish to be God rather

* than man ? Moreover it is seen that those who are

* taken in the snare of love sometimes sigh and other

* times rejoice. They sigh because they are leaving

* themselves to perish, and they rejoice because they

* are changed into a better. So also lovers feel hot

* and cold by turns, after the manner of those who

* have a tertian ague. They cannot but feel cold, for

* they have lost their proper warmth, and, again, they

* feel hot, being kindled by the supernal ray. From

* coldness proceedeth timidity, and from heat boldness,

* wherefore lovers are sometimes timid, and other times

* bold. Men also of a slow and heavy wit are quick

* and discerning in love ; for what eye is there which

* cannot see by aid of the celestial light ? ' ^

And here is the argument developed concerning
love simple, and love interchangeable : * Verily, when
I love thee who lovest me, I find myself again in
thy loving thought of me ; and myself, whom myself
despised, I regain in thy safe keeping. The same
dost thou by me. This also is wonderful to me, that
after I have lost myself, if by thee I regain myself,
it is by thy means that I possess myself ; but if by
thee I possess myself, I must needs possess thee rather
than myself, and hold thee dearer than myself, and
so am I closer to thee than to myself, seeing that
I cannot approach myself save through thee. Herein
the virtue of Cupid differeth from the strength of
Mars, inasmuch as mastery and love are of differing
natures. For he that wieldeth mastery holdeth power
over others by means of himself, but the lover by
means of others regaineth power over himself. And
where two love one another, each of them departeth
from himself to draw near unto the other, and dieth
1 Ficino, Sopra lo Amore^ Orazione ii, cap. 6,

no SIR THOMAS HOBY

in himself to revive in the other. In love inter-
changeable there is but one death, and two resurrec-
tions ; for whosoever loveth, dieth to himself once
for all when he loseth hold of himself, and straight-
way is raised again in the beloved who entertaineth
him in his glowing thoughts ; and again he is raised
when he finally recogniseth himself in the beloved,
and doubteth not but that he is loved. O twice
happy death that art followed by two lives ! O
marvellous contract whereby a man giveth himself in
exchange for another, and gaineth another, and loseth
not himself ! O inestimable advantage when two
become one in such wise that each of them, instead
of one, becometh two, and he who had but one life,
undergoing death, gaineth a twofold life, seeing that
dying but once he is twice raised, so that without
doubt he gaineth two lives for one, and for himself,
two selves ! ' ^

These two extracts, which may be matched fifty
times over from the discourses of the Renaissance upon
love, are enough to show how difficult a task it is to
trace the passage of ideas from book to book. And
yet it is hardly rash to attribute to the printed Book
OF THE Courtier a direct and real influence on English
letters. When divine Spenser platonizing sings, the
matter of his song, in all likelihood, is drawn from
the oration of Bembo. His Hymns, 0/ Heavenly Love
and Of Heavenly Beautie, are, in many of their stanzas,
merely metrical versions of parts of that oration.^ The
assertion of Plotinus is once more repeated :

The meanes, therefore, which unto us is lent
Him to behold, is on his workes to looke,
Which he hath made in beauty excellent,
And in the same, as in a brasen booke,

^ Sopra lo Amore, Orazione ii, cap. 8.

^ First pointed out by Mr. George Wyndham, in his edition of the
Poems of Shakespeare.

SIR THOMAS HOBY in

To reade enreglstred in every nooke

His goodnesse, which his beautie doth declare ;

For all thats good is beautiful! and faire.

And Bembo's rapturous invocation is echoed in the
proem :

Vouchsafe then, O thou most Almightie Spright !
From whom all guifts of wit and knowledge flow,
To shed into my breast some sparkling light
Of thine eternall Truth, that I may show
Some litle beames to mortall eyes below
Of that immortall beautie, there with thee,
Which in my weake distraughted mynd I see ;

That with the glorie of so goodly sight

The hearts of men, which fondly here admyre

Faire seeming shewes, and feed on vaine dehght,

Transported with celestiall desyre

Of those faire formes, may lift themselves up hyer,

And learne to love, with zealous humble dewty,

Th' eternall fountaine of that heavenly beauty .^

The Platonic doctrine of beauty is set forth yet
again in English poetry by Shelley, who imbibed it
from its source.^ Shelley is the true inheritor of
Spenser, for the Platonists of the seventeenth century,
although they practised verse Spenserian in form,
smothered all beauty, both earthly and heavenly, under
the weight of their metaphysical lumber.

^ A maimed version of this stanza is inscribed around the interior
of the dome at Burlington House :

The hearts of men that fondly here admire
Fair seeming shows may lift themselves up higher,
And learn to love with zealous humble duty,
Th' eternal fountain of that heavenly beauty.

That the hearts of men could be raised by the * fond ' admiration
of ' fair seeming ' shows was not Spenser's idea. But perhaps the
abbreviator knew English, and meant what his words mean : that
devotion to the source of all true beauty is a better thing than the
foolish admiration of what seems, but is not, fair.
' See the Hymn to Intellectual Beauty.

112 SIR THOMAS HOBY

VII

There is evidence enough, apart from these high
matters, of the vogue and repute of the Book of the
Courtier in England. Florio mentions * Castilion's
Courtier and Guazzo his dialogues ' as the two books
most commonly read by those who desired to learn
a little Italian.^ Marston, in his Satires (1598),
describes the character of the exactly ceremonious
courtier under the title of * the absolute Castillo '.^
In his Skialetheia (1598), Guilpin uses the Christian
name of Castiglione in a like sense :

Come to the court, and Balthazar affords
Fountains of holy and rose-water words.^

Ben Jonson, offering advice upon style, remarks that
life and quickness are added to writing by resort
to pretty sayings, similitudes, conceits, and the like,

* such as are in The Courtier, and the second book

* of Cicero De Oratore '.* And before ever Jonson gave
the advice, it had been freely taken. The Courtier
proved an excellent book to steal from, and some
of its stories reappear during the Elizabethan age in
several versions. Castiglione had borrowed many of his
jests from Cicero, and had adapted them, not always
happUy, to the manners of his own age. Cicero's
story of Marcus Lepidus, lying stretched at ease on
the grass while his companions exercised themselves in

^ Florios Second Frutes, 1591. Dedication to Nicholas Sanders.

^ Satire i, 11. 27-50. Ed. BuUen, vol. iii, p. 264.

' The Courtier is also quoted from, or mentioned in terms of
familiarity by, G. Fenton in his Monophylo (1572), and by John Grange
in his romance of The Golden Aphroditis (1577).

* Timber, or Discoveries made upon Men and Matter (1641). It is
a curious testimony to the oblivion fallen upon Castiglione's book
that Professor Felix Schelling, in his excellent annotated edition of
the Discoveries (Boston, U.S.A., 1892), explains the above allusion by
reference to a trivial Elizabethan pamphlet entitled The English
Courtier and the Country Gentleman, &c.

SIR THOMAS HOBY 113

martial feats, and sighing forth the aspiration, ' I wish
that this were work ! ' is weakened in the adaptation
(p. 188). But the best stories told in The Courtier
are not taken from Cicero : some of them probably-
first reached England in Hoby's translation. The story
of the penurious farmer (p. 179) is told by Henry
Peacham (in ^ruth of our Times Revealed, 1638), by
John Taylor, the Water Poet (in Part of this Summer's
Travels) ; it is alluded to by Nashe, and by Hall
{Satires, iv. 6), and is made use of by Ben Jonson in
Every Man out of his Humour, iii. ii. The porter in
Macbeth was thinking of the same story when he said,

* Here 's a farmer, that hanged himself on th' expecta-

* tion of plenty : come in time *. And yet it is not
clear that Shakespeare knew The Courtier. The
advice of Polonius to his son is in some points very-
close to the teaching of Castiglione, particularly in the
matter of dress. Some of Shakespeare's noblest praise
of music sounds not unlike a multiplied echo of Count
Lewis's eulogy (pp. 89-91). On the other side it may
be remarked that, while The Courtier is singularly
rich in stories of Gothamites, simpletons, ninnies, and
noodles, Shakespeare's work shows no trace of any of
these stories. Shakespeare loved a fool, and it may be
plausibly maintained that had he known the foolish
Abbot (p. 163) who recommended the digging of a pit
for the bestowal of superfluous rubbish, he would
never have been content to let him pass into the night
unsung. Either way the argument is frail : it may be
that The Courtyer was a book too widely read to
furnish comic surprises. But if Shakespeare evade us,

* others abide our question '. Reminiscences of The
Courtier are to be found in more than one of the
sixteenth-century masters. Where the Lord Octavian
describes how the Courtier is to win the mind of his
Prince by offering him honest pleasure, *beeguilinge

* him with a holsome craft, as the warie phisitiens do,

3600 I

114 SIR THOMAS HOBY

* who manye times whan they minister to yonge and

* tender children in ther sickenesse a medicin of a bitter

* taste, annoint the cupp about the brimm with some

* sweete licour ' (p. 302), there rises to the memory
the apology of Tasso, and the lines wherein he too
pleads that the mixture of a lie doth ever add pleasure :

For truth convey'd in verse of gentle kind
To read perhaps will move the dullest hearts ;

So we, if children young diseas'd we find.

Anoint with sweets the vessel's foremost parts.

To make them taste the potions sharp we give ;

They drink deceiv'd ; and so deceiv'd they live.i

Where Count Lewis, again, argues for nobleness of
birth in the Courtier, not because high virtues may
not consist with low degree, but for the much better
reason that prejudice plays a large part in all human
affairs, and that nobility of descent carries with it
a favourable expectation, he illustrates his meaning
from the attitude of spectators at a trial of skill :

* Forsomuch as our mindes are very apte to love and

* to hate : as in the sightes of combates and games

* and in all other kinde of contencion one with an

* other, it is scene that the lookers on many times

* beare affeccion without any manifest cause why, unto

* one of the two parties, with a gredy desire to have

* him get the victorie, and the other to have the over-

* throw ' (p. 48). It is impossible to avoid the suspicion
that Marlowe may have had this passage lurking in his
remembrance when he wrote those excellent lines,
honoured, as few lines of verse are honoured, by
Shakespeare's indubitable quotation of one of them :

It lies not in our power to love or hate,
For will in us is over-rul'd by fate.
When two are stript, long ere the course begin
We wish that one should lose, the other win ;

* Fairfax's Tasso, i. 3

SIR THOMAS HOBY 115

And one especially do we affect
Of two gold ingots, like in each respect :
The reason no man knows, let it suffice
What we behold is censur'd by our eyes.
Where both deliberate, the love is slight :
Who ever lov'd, that lov'd not at first sight ? ^

Last of all, the author of the Anatomy of Melancholy
was well acquainted with Castilio's treatise, and found
therein a large number of passages out of which he
sucked melancholy, reducing them to his contemplative
purpose.^

In one notable regard The Courtyer may well have
served as a model for the nascent Elizabethan drama.
The dramatic form of colloquy in which the book is
cast was the most popular of literary forms at the time
of the Renaissance. It was borrowed, of course, from
the ancients, from Plato, and Cicero, and Lucian.

* We will not in these bookes ', says the author, * folow

* any certaine order or rule of appointed preceptes, the

* whiche for the moste part is wont to be observed in

* the teaching of anye thinge whatsoever it be : but

* after the maner of men of olde time, renuinge a

* grateful] memorye, we will repeat certaine reasoninges

* that were debated in times past betwene men verye

* excellent for that purpose ' (p. 28). To escape from
the appointed order, the categories, partitions, and
theses of scholasticism, into a freer air ; to redeem the
truths of morals and philosophy from their servitude
to system, and to set them in motion as they are seen
in the live world, soft and elastic, bandied hither and
thither, the playthings of circumstance and tempera-
ment, was in itself a kind of humanism, a reaching
after the more perfect expressiveness of the drama.

^ Hero and Le under. First Sestiad, 11. 167-76.

* It would make a good study of the temper of Burton, which is
both his genius and his style, to compare the borrowed passages as
they stand in the Anatomy with the same in their original context.
The change of setting alters them completely.

12

ii6 SIR THOMAS HOBY

The truth that by the lonely student, trained in the
methods of a school, had been fixed and frozen, was
once more liberated, dissolved in the humours of life,
made supple and mobile, to serve as a battle-gage in
the play of character and opinion. Philosophy herself
assumed a social habit, and ministered endless matter
for talk. The themes -were diverse and many, at
a time when the whole solid-seeming fabric of ancient
knowledge was reeling into vapour and changing form
like a cloud. But wherever a real society of men and
women is gathered together, at ease with itself, and
enjoying that liberty of speech which is the reward of
good breeding and lively intelligence, one inexhaustible
subject always tends to assert its old predominance :
before long the company is found discussing the nature
and surprising chances of love — ' pleasantly arguyng ',
as one Elizabethan author phrases it, * of Veneriall
disputations '. And this, at least, is a subject from
which the eccentricities of individual character and
conduct will never be eliminated. So that it is small
matter for wonder if the beginnings of true social
comedy in modern literature be found in these same
colloquies. The Decameron, the Canterbury Tales, the
Heptameron, the conversations in the palace at Urbino,
not to mention a host of less famous examples, are all
alike in this. In each of them the framework, as it is
called, is the most lifelike part of the book, and has
been strongest in its influence on later writers. The
stories of classical and mediaeval antiquity, of Tancred
and Gismunda, of Griselda, or of Camma and Sinorix,
when they are seen in their settings, are like some
beautifully wrought faded tapestry surrounded by
a bold bas-relief of figures in action, modelled from
the life. The characters of Chaucer's Prologue take
hold of the memory as the characters of his Tales do
not. Boccaccio is praised by Bembo chiefly for the
skill with which he varies the links or proems of his

SIR THOMAS HOBY 117

hundred novels.^ And no praise is too high for the

gracious interludes of The Courtier, the dramatic

episodes that diversify the long abstract discussion, or

the brief wit combats whereby the characters and bias

of the several speakers are given the semblance of

reality. These are transcripts from life ; and, in point

of fact, Castiglione is allowing a literary convention

of modesty to vanquish truth when he pretends that

he himself was not present at those four evening

colloquies in the palace. His best skill is spent on the

vivid setting of his dialogues. Now it is the sudden

arrival of the Lord General while Cesare Gonzaga is

expounding his views on the beauty of women : * Then

was there hard a great scraping of feet in the floore

with a cherme of loud speaking, and upon that every

man tourninge him selfe about, saw at the Chambre

doore appeare a light of torches, and by and by after

entred in the L. Generall, who was then retourned

from accompaninge the Pope a peece of the way.'

Or it is the intrusion of dawn upon the long colloquy

of the last night, and * whan the windowes then were

* opened on the side of the Palaice that hath his

* prospect toward the high top of Mount Catri, they

* saw alredie risen in the East a faire morninge like

* unto the coulour of roses, and all sterres voided,

* savinge onelye the sweete Governesse of the heaven,

* Venus, whiche keapeth the boundes of the nyght and

* the day, from whiche appeered to blowe a sweete

* blast, that filling the aer with a bytinge cold, begane

* to quicken the tunable notes of the prety birdes,
' emong the hushing woodes of the hilles at hande.

* Whereupon they all, taking their leave with reverence

1 ' Gran maestro fu a fuggirne la satieta il Boccaccio nelle sue
' Novelle : il quale havendo a far loro cento proemi, in modo tutti
' gli vario ; che gratioso diletto danno a chi gli ascolta : senza che in
' tanti finimenti e rientramenti di ragionari tra dieci persone fatti

* schifare il fastidio non fu poco.' — Prose, ed. 1530, p. 88.

ii8 SIR THOMAS HOBY

* of the Dutchesse, departed toward their lodginges

* without torche, the light of the day sufficing ' (p. 365).

The civil retorts, delicate interruptions, and fencing-
matches of wit that are scattered throughout the book
had an even higher value as models for English writing.
Where could English courtly comedy learn the trick of
its trade better than from this gallant realism? At the
time when Hoby's Courtyer was published, and during
the ensuing years, the favourite characters of our native
Comic Muse were Ralph Roister Doister, Diccon the
Bedlam, Huff, Ruff, Snuff, and Grim the Collier of
Croydon. The speeches that she best loved were loud
lies and vain boasts ; her chosen actions were the
frustrated clouting of old breeches, the rank deceits
of tricksters and parasites, the rough and tumble of
clown, fool, and vice in villainous disorder. Yet this
same English comic stage was soon to echo to the wit
of Beatrice and Benedick, of Rosalind and Orlando.
The best models of courtly dialogue available for Lyly
and Shakespeare were to be sought in Italy : not in
the Italian drama, which was given over to the classical
tradition, but in just such natural sparkling conversa-
tions as were recorded in the dialogue form of Italian
prose. And of these the best are to be tasted in The
Courtier. It matters little if the English courtly
dramatists be found to have taken none of their many
jests from Castiglione ; without appropriating passages
from his book they might yet learn his dramatic veri-
similitude, his grace and polish of manner, to use it
for their own ends. So that Castiglione, Bembo,
Aretino, Guazzo, Pasquier, Speroni, and many others
of those who shaped the dialogue for argumentative
and dramatic purposes may fairly claim a place in the
genealogy of English Comedy.

SIR THOMAS HOBY 119

VIII

To trace the later fortunes of the ideal of character
set forth by Castiglione and Hoby would be to write
a social history of modern Europe.^ In England the
division into Cavalier and Puritan, cleaving all politics
and religion, left its mark also on manners. No single
book was acceptable to these two schools. In the
seventeenth century the inheritance and influence of
The Courtier were parcelled out among rival teachers.
The most popular book in Cavalier circles was Henry
Peacham's Compleat Gentleman (1622), which ran
through many editions, and was held in high esteem
by the courtiers of the Restoration. Richard Brath-
waite in his English Gentleman (1630) and English
Gentlewoman (1631) presented the Puritans with the
draft of a character by no means destitute of polite
accomplishments yet grounded at all points on religious
precepts. The beginnings of later impoverishment and
confusion of thought are plainly to be seen in these
two books. Peacham makes it a great part of the duty
of a gentleman to be able to blazon his own coat-of-
arms : Brathwaite writes long pulpit homilies, proving
from the Bible that clothes are the mark of man's
corruption, that there is no greatness which has not
a near relation to goodness, and that the only armoury
that can truly deblazon a gentleman is to be found
in acts of charity and devotion. The brief section on
jests in the English Gentleman is borrowed, without
any sort of acknowledgement, from The Courtier.

* A history of the literature of courtesy, from the Babees Book to
those columns in latter-day journals devoted to the instruction of
anxious inquirers who wish to conform and prosper, would make
a good commentary on social changes. I had designed something of
the sort, but an Introduction is no place for it. The only attempt,
so far as I know, yet made in English is a short treatise by Mr. W. M.
Rossetti on Italian Courtesy-Books (Early English Text Society, 1869).

120 SIR THOMAS HOBY

The vogue of the book had passed away with the
passing of the society which gave birth to it.

The steady decadence of the EngHsh Court, in
power and splendour, inevitably wrought a gradual
emaciation in the ideal of the Courtier. When Lord
Chesterfield attempts to make a perfect Courtier of
his son, the changed conditions are felt at every line.
Compared to the Courts of Duke Guidobaldo and
Queen Elizabeth, where all manly virtues and serious
ambitions found a breathing-place, the Courts of
Louis XV and of George II are paltry schools for
scandal, oppressive with the close odours of the back-
stairs. The Courtier, by an insensible diminution, has
become * the man of fashion *. Where the men of the
Renaissance held that the perfect Courtier should be
versed in all generous accomplishments, a warrior,
a man of letters, a statesman, and skilled in all arts
and pastimes. Lord Chesterfield makes it the duty of
the man of fashion to be unable to do most things.
' Eat game,' he says, ' but do not be your own butcher
' and kill it.' And again : * If you love music, hear

* it ; go to operas, concerts, and pay fiddlers to play

* to you ; but I insist upon your neither piping nor

* fiddling yourself.' Even scholarship is looked on with
suspicion : * Buy good books, and read them : the

* best books are the commonest, and the last editions

* are always the best if the editors are not blockheads '
(a large proviso !)...* But take care not to under-

* stand editions and title-pages too well.' In brief,
scholarship and the arts, the whole of human know-
ledge and human skill, are to be made subservient to
the art of pleasing in an elegant and vacant society.

And then, predicted by Chesterfield himself, came
the French Revolution. The wild man of the woods
stormed the high places of literature : the moral
theorist, by a process of destructive chemical analysis,
demonstrated that these once fair and flourishing

SIR THOMAS HOBY 121

notions of honour, gentility, and decorum were nothing
but smoke and ash ; while the doomed Courtier,
advancing one stage farther in his degradation, from
a man of fashion became a beau or dandy, brave enough
still in his pride, but detached altogether from the age
in which he figured as a protest and a relic. And yet,
even in the world of manners, the Revolutionary ideal,
as it is embodied, for instance, by one of its latest
exponents, Walt Whitman, in the tanned and blowzy
son of the soil, * hankering, gross, mystical, nude ',
never won the day, nor put to sleep the memory of
the older order. In our own time, if the very existence
of the Scholar-Gentleman be threatened, it is not so
much by revolutionary morals as by the enormous
growth of specialized knowledge, which divides human
life into many departments, organized under learned
barbarism. But the many-sided ideal has always been
strong in England. Even in the eighteenth century,
Congreve surprised and disgusted Voltaire by refusing
the status of a professional author ; and it is a criticism
of modern France, passed upon English painters, that
they aspire to be grands seigneurs. There was some-
thing profoundly sane, after all, in the ambitions that
built New Place and Abbotsford. At the close of
a revolutionary century, now that the fogs of a crude
moral theory are dissipating, and the dream of a
mechanical Utopia, a mere nightmare produced by
a surfeit of science, is passing away, it is time to
remember our ancestry. Our proudest title is not
that we are the contemporaries of Darwin, but that
we are the descendants of Shakespeare ; we too are
men of the Renaissance, inheritors of that large and
noble conception of humanity and art to which a
monument is erected in this Book of the Courtier.

THOMAS HOWELL^

Thomas Howell, the author of this volume of
verse, belonged to that scattered company of amateurs
— gentlemen adventurers, soldiers of fortune, and
students of the Inns of Court — who maintained the
traditions of English poetry in the barren years
between the death of Surrey and the rise of Spenser.
It was a time of preparation rather than achievement.
The mind of the nation was preoccupied with religious
controversy and rumours of war. A multitude of
translators were labouring to bring English readers
acquainted with the masterpieces of ancient and
modern literature. The drama was alive with experi-
ment, every year contriving some new thing for the
approval of the learned or the delight of the populace.
At the Court and the Universities imitations of Seneca
and Plautus were presented by young gentlemen of
parts. In the open spaces around London, in the
town-halls or inn-yards of the provinces, and in the
country-houses of the nobility, wandering companies
of gentlemen's servants exercised, in interludes and
farces, the unchanging comic art of the mimic and the
buffoon. Poetry, aiming at a like popularity, appealed
to the people in the hobbling narratives of the ballad-
singers, the agricultural ditties of Thomas Tusser, and
the sacred psalmody of Sternhold and Hopkins. Yet
the refined and gallant school of Surrey, whose amorous
songs, used in the Court of Henry VIII, had scandalized
Thomas Sternhold, was not without loyal disciples.
It was in the school of Surrey that the great poets of
the Elizabethan age learned the elements of their
craft. Sackville and Gascoigne, Churchyard and
Turberville, Edwardes and Hunnis, Phaer and Golding,
the Lord Vaux and the Earl of Oxford, although none

* Introduction to HowelVs Devises, Oxford (Tudor and Stuart
Library), 1906.

THOMAS HOWELL 123

of their works ascends the highest heaven of invention,
showed the way to greater poets than themselves. If
Thomas Howell deserves to be rescued from oblivion,
it is because he too belonged to this company of
heralds, and his imperfect work is full of presages of
the great things that were to come.

The building of regular theatres in London, and
their capture by the University wits and poets, opened
a new career to men of letters. By supplying the
booksellers with novelettes, and the theatre with plays,
a poet might hope to support himself when patronage
failed him. Greene, and Shakespeare, and not a few
of their contemporaries, gained the best part of their
living by their pens. Howell belongs to an earlier
time, when the writing of verse was a strictly honorary
employment, and patronage was its justification and
reward. We know nothing of his life save what we
can gather from the tributes he pays to those in whose
service it was passed. Like Keats, whom he does not
much resemble in other respects, he had not the
slightest feeling of humility towards the public. His
verses were written * for his own exercise and his
friends' pleasure '. He commemorates many of his
private friends in the verses which he exchanged with
them, but, as few of them were notable or famous
persons, their names help us but little. R. Hussie and
T. Hooper, Henry Lassels, M. Staplee, and J. Nedham
must rest content with such fame as may accrue to
them from the mention of their names in one or other
of the three small volumes of poetry which Howell
produced during his lifetime. Francis Flower, who
is mentioned in The Arbor of Amitie, Howell's first
collection of poems, is perhaps the Francis Flower who
was elected Demy of Magdalen College, Oxford, in
1560, and Fellow in 1565. A. M., who contributes
to the Devises^ is perhaps Anthony Munday. John
Keper, with whom Howell exchanged many poems,

124 THOMAS HOWELL

has been Identified with a gentleman of Somerset who
was entered at Hart Hall, Oxford, in 1564, * aged
seventeen or thereabouts ', and subsequently lived in
the Close at Wells. A poem included in ^he Arbor
of Amitie, under the title ' The Opinion he hath of
his Friend absent ', is perhaps addressed to Keper, and
gives us our only clue to Howell's place of birth :

Loe what mishap hath maymed me so sore,
Like one of thine that there I may not dwell :

Esteeme me not the less of Dunster store.

Since hart is there where care doth corps expell.

These obscure lines have been interpreted by
Dr. Grosart to mean that Howell and his friend were
both natives of Dunster, a conjecture which receives
some support from the occurrence in The Arbor of
Amitie of a poem in the West-country dialect. A
further vague allusion, occurring in another poem of
the same volume, may possibly refer to Oxford. In
* A farewell to his friend T. Hooper ', Howell writes —

If will were now in force.

To thee my flight should be :
Where are the Muses nine that sing

In heavenly harmonie.

Born, it may be, in Somerset, and educated, it seems
likely, in Oxford, Thomas Howell comes into clearer
light as a retainer of the noble family of Herbert. In
1562 the Lady Anne Herbert, daughter of William
Earl of Pembroke, was married to Francis, Lord
Talbot, the eldest son of George, sixth Earl of Shrews-
bury, who acted for fifteen arduous years as custodian
of Mary Queen of Scots. Not long after the marriage
Howell is found in the Lady Anne's retinue. In the
dedication of his first book to her he says : ' But now
(right honourable Ladie) I have by experience proved
of myselfe, being in your daylie presence, the fame of
your worthiness and virtues to be certain true, which

THOMAS HOWELL 125

eftsoons before I had heard reported by others.' In
1566 Gertrude, Countess of Shrewsbury, died, and
was mourned by Howell in an epitaph which is printed
in The Arbor of Amitie (1568). About the time that
Howell was revising his epitaph for the press, the
bereaved Earl fell a victim to the charms of Bess of
Hardwick, daughter and co-heir of John Hardwick
of Hardwick. This celebrated and single-minded
woman was now in her third widowhood, having been
married successively to Robert Barlow of Derbyshire ;
Sir William Cavendish of Chatsworth ; and Sir William
St. Loe, Captain of the Guard to Queen Elizabeth.
All the later part of her life was devoted to the
aggrandizement of the children whom she had borne
to Sir William Cavendish. When one of the wealthiest
and most powerful of English earls proffered her
marriage she was not slow to recognize that the chance
of her life had come. Before yielding to his suit she
drove a hard bargain, stipulating for a double marriage
of their children. In February 1567/8 Henry, the
eldest son of Sir William Cavendish, took to wife
the Lady Grace Talbot, and Gilbert, the second son
of the Earl of Shrewsbury, married the youngest of
Sir William's daughters. Last of all Bess was married
also, and entered with zeal into the administration of
the Talbot estates.

In the service of this family the gentleman-retainer
of the Lady Anne must have passed many years of his
life. The Earl of Shrewsbury had three daughters,
all of whom their poet celebrated in the poem called
* A New Yeares Gyfte ' {Devises, pp. 77-9). The
eldest, the Lady Katherine Talbot, was married to
Henry Herbert, Earl of Pembroke ; so that the
Herbert family, like the family of Cavendish, was con-
nected with the Talbots by more than one marriage.
The second daughter, the Lady Mary Talbot, was
married to Sir George Savile, of Thornhill, Yorkshire.

126 THOMAS HOWELL

The third, the Lady Grace, as already narrated, was
married to the heir of Sir William Cavendish. When
the Lady Katherine died, Howell bemoaned her in
verse {Devises, pp. 36-8), and he seems thereafter to
have renewed his service to his original patrons of the
house of Pembroke. In his poem called * Helpe best
welcome, when most needeful ' (Devises, p. 51) he tells
how his own kin had failed him :

And he that hath and should by nature ayde
Withdrawes his hande, and sayth he may no more.

The Devises, his volume of 1581, is dedicated to the
Lady Mary, Countess of Pembroke, and contains, in
the lines * Written to a most excellent Booke, full of
rare invention ', the earliest extant notice of Sir Philip
Sidney's Arcadia. The Arcadia was not printed till
1590, but Howell had doubtless seen it in manuscript
at Wilton. His allusions to its * filed phrase ' and
* choice conceits ', to its lovers and shepherds, to the
wisdom of its author.

Whose prime of youth grave deeds of age displaies,

and to its very title — 7he Countess of Pembroke's
Arcadia — make the reference unmistakable. In a short
poem (Devises, p. 30) he celebrates the motto of the
Pembroke family — Ung je servirey. Under the pro-
tection of that family Howell ended, as he had begun,
his career of authorship. When and where he died
we do not know.

The titles of his books are as follows :

The Arbor of Amitie, wherein is comprised pleasant
Poems and pretie Poesies, set foorth by Thomas Howell
Gentleman. London, Henry Benham, 1568.

Newe Sonets, and pretie Pamphlets, Written by
Thomas Howell, Gentleman. Newly augmented, cor-
rected and amended. London, Thomas Colwell. Un-
dated, but licensed 1567/8.

THOMAS HOWELL 127

H. His Devises, for his ozvne exercise and his Friends
pleasure. London, H. Jackson, 1581.

There is only a single copy known of each of these
volumes : the Newe Sonets and pretie Pamphlets is in
the Capell Collection, Cambridge ; the other two are
in the Bodleian. All three were reprinted in his
Occasional Issue by Dr. Grosart (1879).

The Devises, here reprinted, is the latest, and, on
the whole, the best, of Howell's books of verse. He
included in it a certain number of pieces from his two
earlier volumes, with numerous alterations and amend-
ments, bearing witness to the care and pains which he
spent upon his work.

Howell's masters and guides in poetry were Surrey
and Wyatt, and the group of courtly makers who
acknowledged them for leaders. The book of Songes
and Sonettes, printed by Richard Tottel in the year
1557, was his handbook of English verse. From this
book he borrowed many of his themes and the better
part of his metrical effects. Here, for instance, in
Tottel's Songes and Sonettes, thought and phrase are
interwoven in a melody which is re-echoed through
all the lyrical collections of the sixteenth century :

Come, gentle death, the ebbe of care.

The ebbe of care, the flood of lyfe,

The flood of lyfe, the joyfull fare,

The joyfull fare, the end of strife :

The end of strife, that thing wishe I :
Wherefore come death, and let me dye.

Howell practises the same device of iteration in
such pieces as * No greater contrariety, then in the
passions of Love ' (Devises, p. 16), or * Ever sought,
never founde ' (Devises, p. 48) :

The more I strive, the stronger is my thrall,
The stronger thrall, the weaker still mine ayde :
The weaker ayde, the greater griefe doth fall,
The greater griefe, the more with doubt dismayde.

128 THOMAS HOWELL

Certain of his poems, like some of those in Tottel's
Miscellany, irresistibly suggest the accompaniment of
a stringed instrument. So * To his Lady of her
doubtfull aunswere ' {Devises, p. 50) :

'Twixt death and doubtfulnesse,
'Twixt paine and pensivenesse,
'Twixt Hell and heavynesse,
Rests all my carefulnesse.

And he abounds in the stock conceits and antitheses
which Petrarch taught to a multitude of French and
English pupils :

Still pynde in colde, I parched am with heate,
As fyre I flye, upon the flame I runne :
I swelling gleames, my chylly corps I beate,
Congealde to Ice, where shynes the clearest sunne,
Loe thus I lyve, and lyving thus I dye,
Drownde in dispayre, with hope advaunced hye.

{Devises^ p. 48).

There is none of the pleasure of surprise in these
time-honoured paradoxes ; no man could possibly
imagine that he had found them for himself. Hot
and cold, lost and found, rich and poor, hard and
soft, heavy and light, kind and cruel, false and true,
living and dead, up and down, to and fro — these are
the simple contrasts presented by Petrarch to his
followers, and used by them to express the bewilder-
ment of love and the sorrows of unstable Fortune.
It was no part of the poet's business to seek for new
comparisons ; his art was sufficiently approved by the
deftness with which he handled the old, and wove
them into gracious patterns.

It is one of the great merits of Surrey and Wyatt
that they led the way back to those authentic fires
whence their own light was borrowed. Chaucer and
Petrarch, largely by their means, became the great
masters of the English poets of the sixteenth century.

THOMAS HOWELL 129

George Gascoigne acknowledges no other. * I venture
my good will,' he says,

In barren verse to do the best I can,

Like Chaucer's boy, and Petrarch's journeyman.

The poems of Petrarch were issued in innumerable
editions, and studied by many English poets. Sir John
Harington, writing news of the Court to his lady, in
1602, asks her for the book that was his daily reading :
* Send me up, by my man Combe, my Petrarch.
Adieu, sweet Mall.' Reminiscences of Petrarch are to
be found on every other page of Howell's poems, and
the famous Sonnet 88 — S^amor non e — translated by
Chaucer in Troilus and Cressida, is translated again by
Howell in the Devises (' Of Love ', p. 36). Howell's
last published verses, to be found in J. Swan's transla-
tion of the tract De Antichristo (1589), are three
renderings of Petrarch's invectives against the Court
of Rome.

As for Chaucer, his was the paramount influence
in all the versifying and story-telling of Shakespeare's
predecessors. Howell borrows phrase after phrase
from him. For instance —

Tis light t'outrunne, but not to outread the wise,

says Howell {Devises, p. 88).

Men may the wyse at-renne, and not at-rede,

says Chaucer {troilus, iv. 1456). Again —

My taste of love is lost, as you may gesse,
That know how sick men savour bitternesse,

says Howell {Devises, p. 89).

For thou of love hast lost thy taste, I gesse.
As sick man hath of swete and bitternesse,

says Chaucer {Parlement of Foules, 1. 160). The reading
of Chaucer's works, set forth in a new and complete
edition by William Thynne in the year 1532, caught

3600 K

130 THOMAS HOWELL

the imagination of the poets at the Court of Queen
Anne Boleyn, and furnished them with half their lore.
It was in this volume that Howell read the story of
Cressida, with its moral sequel, written by Robert
Henryson and long attributed to Chaucer. Howell's
poem * Ruine the rewarde of Vice ' {Devise s, p. i8)
points the moral of the story once again, in the stanza
made famous by Chaucer. His conclusion is modelled,
not on Henryson's poem, which ends with a grim
epitaph, but on the half-passionate, half-humorous
rhetoric wherewith Chaucer rounds his tale of love
and perjury. It is a testimony to the greatness of
Chaucer that he is loved by many who never tasted
the delicacy of his irony. Howell echoes his cadences,
but makes them the vehicle of flat sermonizing :

Loe here the end of foule defyled lyfe,
Loe here the fruite that sinne both sowes and reapes :
Loe here of Vice the right rewarde and knyfe,
That cuttes of cleane and tumbleth downe in heapes
All such as tread Dame Cressid's cursed steppes :
Take heed therefore how you your pryme do spende,
For Vice brings plagues, and Vertue happy ende.

With Chaucer and Petrarch, Surrey and Wyatt, to
study and imitate, Howell is well furnished as a toler-
able minor poet. But he was touched also by later
influences, and his verses bear witness to his interest
in the literature of his own time. In one of his poems
{Devises, p. 33), anticipating Shakespeare, he likens the
life of man to a stage-play. In another {Devises, p. 92)
he borrows from Gascoigne {The Arraignment of a
Lover) an elaborate parable of a Law-court and the
trial of a prisoner. His poem ' Discorde makes weake,
what Concorde left stronge ' {Devises, p. 91) is probably
a reminiscence of one of the dumb-shows interpolated
in the fashionable tragedy of Gorboduc. He is never
very happy with his borrowings, and it would be vain
to attempt to claim for him a place among notable
English poets. He is an average and typical Eliza-

THOMAS HOWELL 131

bethan rhymer, of fair accomplishments, one of a great
multitude of pleasant sonneteering young gentlemen
who practised poetry as an added social grace. Like
a true Elizabethan, he uses a high-wrought and con-
ceited style to express the everyday conclusions of
sound sense and homely wisdom. ' I scorn and spue
out', says E. K., in his introductory epistle to The
Shepheards Calendar, ' the rakehelly rout of our ragged
rymers (for so themselves use to hunt the letter) which
without learning boste, without judgement jangle,
without reason rage and fome, as if some instinct of
poeticall spirite had newly ravished them above the
meannesse of common capacitie.' In his enthusiasm
for Spenser, E. K. would no doubt have scorned and
spued out Howell (who is much given to alliteration)
along with the rest of the rout. But we who live in
a later time, when the country is no longer ' pestered
with infinite fardles of printed pamphlets tending in
some respect to poetry ', can afford to pass a milder
judgment. For us the value of Howell's faded finery
is that it reminds us of that many-coloured world of
music and idleness, and gallantry and romance, where
the great Elizabethan poets had their nurture. Howell
is one of the choristers of the days of Shakespeare's
youth, when ' wild music burdened every bough ',
when lutes and gitterns hung in every barber's shop
for the use of the customers, and when every gentle-
man could bear his part in a glee or madrigal. The
ordinaries of London and the aisles of St. Paul's were
frequented by young gallants who wore their fortunes
on their backs, and stuffed their heads with legends
and fantasies. Guiscard and Gismunda, Luna and
Endymion, Troilus and Cressida, were the saints of
their idolatry. Every noble family maintained its
journeyman versifier. If Howell deserves to be remem-
bered as a poet, it is because there were hundreds like
him, and because Shakespeare gained the better part
of his education not on the benches of an academy,

K 2

132 THOMAS HOWELL

but at the court, and in the tavern, and on the
street.

The poetry that dressed itself in these new Italianate
trappings of far-fetched form and phrase was old-
fashioned and rustic at heart. The squire's or farmer's
son might make himself glorious in courtly apparel,
but his wisdom of life was the wisdom of the ancient
homestead ; and his speech was ' full of wise saws and
modern instances '. The Euphuism of Lyly is a com-
pound of all that is extravagant in expression with all
that is homely and commonplace in thought. Howell's
work, like Lyly's, is a mine of popular proverbs, which
he utters not without a certain air of pride, as if they
were the gains of his own experience. His message to
his age is the message of Polonius :

That lyfe is lyke a Bubble blowne, or smoke that soone doth

passe,
That all our pleasures are but paynes, our glorie brittle glasse,
That Fortune's fruites are variable, no holde in Princely mace,
That women's myndes are mutable, that death drawes on

apace ;
That worldly pompe Is vanity, that youth unwares decayes.
That high estate is slipperie, that onely vertue stayes.

(Devises y p. ii.)

His adages are scattered over his pages with a lavish
hand. He offers to his patrons and friends wholesome
advice, fresh from the country, where it is held in
high esteem.

Count not the birds that undisclosed be,

he says, translating the common lore of the country-
side into the magniloquence of scholarly diction.
From him we learn that —

Not all that glistereth bright may bear the name of gold ;
that —

Wante makes the olde wyfe trot, the yong to run outright ;
that —
Neede hath no lawe, some say ; extremes, extremes doe urge ;

THOMAS HOWELL 133

that —

The Cat would faine eate fishe, yet loth her foot to wet ;

and he takes to himself credit for promulgating these
humble truths, which might have perished from the
neglect of the great :

Feare not (quoth Hope) to shewe thy wylling will,
(Smale seedes sometyme may light on gratefuU grounde :)
If none had wrote by Clarks of Tullies skill,
Sweete sawes had suncke, which now aflote are founde ;
Then cast of dread, dispayre no whyt at all,
Diseases great are cured with medicins small.

For all the triteness of his matter, Howell has some
command over diverse forms of verse. In these pages
are to be found the popular Chaucerian stanza, which
Shakespeare used in The Rape of Lucrece, the six-lined
stanza of Venus and Adonis, and a large variety of
lyrical measures, including {Devises, p. 23) a song set
to the refrain * All of green Willow ' which was made
immortal by Shakespeare. The poem called A Dreame
{Devises, p. 80) is written in a Quatorzain stanza the
invention of which has commonly been attributed to
Alexander Montgomerie, who used it in his poem of
The Cherrie and the Slae. The Devises were published
some sixteen years earlier than Montgomerie's poem,
but the clumsiness and imperfection of Howell's
handling of the metre show that he was not the
inventor of the stanza. Perhaps it came to him from
Scotland in the retinue of Queen Mary ; perhaps both
Montgomerie and Howell are copying, with very
different degrees of metrical skill, from some unknown
original. In any case, here is the first appearance in
print of a metre which gave Montgomerie a great
part of his fame, and which was used by Burns in
the Jolly Beggars. Further, the Sonnet, as Howell
practises it, has the arrangement of rhymes and the
cadences which are found in the Sonnets of Shake-

134 THOMAS HOWELL

speare, and in hardly any of the Sonnets of his
contemporaries.

Without any claim, then, to be an artist in verse,
Howell shows himself alert in the business of noting
and imitating new-found measures. If his thoughts
are not equally novel, that is not always a fault in
poetry. Most of the great poetry of the world con-
tains no original or surprising turns of thought, but
gives perfect expression to ideas that are the common
property of mankind. In this matter of expression
Howell was earnest enough, continually amending and
altering his epithets and phrases. But, after all, he is
an apprentice, and no master ; his merits are deri-
vative, and he has set no stamp of his own on the
plastic language that he handled. He who walks in
the sun (to apply to him one of the proverbs that he
loved) must needs be sunburnt ; and he who has the
music of ancient poets ringing in his ears, must needs,
in singing, hit upon some of their tunes. There is
store enough, in these * Delightful Discourses ', of
good poetic material, some of which was put to nobler
uses by later and better artificers. In ' Bewtie the
bayte of Vanitie ' Howell discourses on the text of not
a few of Shakespeare's Sonnets, and anticipates Shake-
speare's sentiments :

Yet Time on face so faire shall furrows plow,
And writhed wrinkles peer on blemisht brow.

So two of the lines run in The Arbor of Amitie. Howell
was not satisfied with them, and in the Devises he
substitutes * polisht forme ' for ' face so faire '. And
then the same idea fell to be expressed by a great poet :

Time doth transfix the flourish set on youth,
And delves the parallels on beauty's brow.

(Shakespeare, Sonnet Ix.)

Amend and polish as he might, Howell could not
write like this. To treat him to another of his pro-
verbs, it was his to beat about the bush, while otners

THOMAS HOWELL 135

caught the birds. In the dramatic soliloquy of the
betrayed and deserted girl {Devises^ p. 64) there is an
anticipation of some of the finest things in The Afflic-
tion of Margaret. The sense of friendlessness, and the
fear of natural sights and sounds, to which Words-
worth has given high imaginative expression, is con-
ceived with less energy by Howell, and is expressed,
not without a certain grace of fancy, in the terms of
a conventional mythology.

At strife to whom I might

Commit my secret tears,
My heart the mountains' sight

And hollow Echo fears.

I doubt the Dryades

Amidst the forest chace,
And thinking on the Seas,

I dread the Mermaids' grace.

What shall I trust the Skies ?
' Then me the Winds bewray ;

Poor soul, whom Jove denies
Each captive doth betray.

There is some gift of imagination in this ; and those
students of poetry who can take pleasure even in
undistinguished verse when it bears an accidental like-
ness to some of the great poetry of the world, will
not be intolerant of Thomas Howell. If he is not
loved for himself, he will be entertained in the name
of his family, the poets of the age of Elizabeth.
A modest apology for him might be entered in the
words of one of those extemporary rhymes wherewith
Richard Tarlton, the father of low comedians, was
wont to delight his audience in the earliest London

theatres :

This one, perchance, you might know
By his dress and his shape,
{Squeakingy gibbering, of every degree :)

Is a poet : or, if he 's not so.
He 's a poet's ape :
{He comes of a rare witty family.)

SIR JOHN HARINGTON^

It is a commonplace of criticism to lament the
little that we know of the greatest age of English
literature. Regret for the loss of whole books, poems,
and plays may find solace in the thought that the best
remain to us ; if Raleigh's Cynthia has perished, we
have Spenser's Faerie Queene, if the disappearance of
Jonson's Richard Crookback has denied to us the
pleasure of comparing rival exercises on the same
theme by the two greatest of English dramatists, at
least we know how unlikely a thing it is that Jonson's
handling of history in dramatic form should ever have
equalled the creations of his robust Comic Muse.
A greater loss than these lies behind in the lost talk
of that age of fire and wit. Registers kept by the
parish or by the Stationers' Company must be searched
if we would know anything of the talkers, what they
said has gone down the wind long since. The Mermaid
is become a name, the Devil Tavern a myth, the
conversational alacrity of Shakespeare or of Beaumont
claims our pious belief, but leaves the capability for
large discourse to fust in us unused. The very men
to whom the spirit of the living Shakespeare would
have been least intelligible and least tolerable have
built themselves a respectable monument out of his
bones. So that we are driven by sheer stress of
calamity, if we would make acquaintance with his wit,
to take Jonson's advice, and ' look not on his picture,
but his book '. Disciples and admirers of Charles
Lamb or of Doctor Samuel Johnson can still regain
their very tricks of speech and join the circle of their

* Reprinted from The New Review, September 1896, pp. 277-91

SIR JOHN HARINGTON 137

listeners ; Pope and Swift and Gay may yet be sur-
prised in undress ; even Dryden and the wits of King
Charles's Court, if the personal records of them are
all too few, filtered their talk into their writings in
the effort to write as they would speak. But that
earlier literary society, beside which the brilliancy of
these later clubs and groups might well grow pale
with envy and their thunder dwindle to the rattle of
a dice-box, lives only in reputation, with the faintness
of remembered colours and sounds.

There is no doubt but the reasons of our ignorance
were the conditions of their greatness. They let fame
* live registered upon their brazen tombs ' and talked,
not for all time, but for a supper-party. The reporter
and the interviewer, the inscrutable gift of the Gods
to a later age, then were not ; but their originals,
the loquacious gull and the foolish busybody, were
excluded by statute from the Apollo room where the
laureate presided. Choice spirits among women, by
a no less admirable law, were admitted. The company
there assembled talked for fun, and he who dropped
pearls from his lips had none of the uneasy conscious-
ness that he was doing business with posterity. The
disrepute, moreover, that attached to the name and
calling of player or playwright did good service in
repelling the vulgar. The servants of the Court, the
enemies of the City, Shakespeare and his fellows lived
in an enchanted isolation, and attained that paradise
of mingled patronage and disregard which in later
times artists have coveted, only to find that they
cannot have both, that they must sacrifice their privacy
or their livelihood. So there existed a real society, as
it never can exist when the house where it sits is
besieged, before the company has risen, by a crowd,
eager, inquisitive, and odious. And a real society is
the only begetter of real talk.

But these considerations are not the full account of

138 SIR JOHN HARINGTON

our ignorance concerning the great men that lived
when Elizabeth was Queen. Their reticence was not
put upon them by public life ; their temper more
than their circumstances forbade the confidences of
garrulity. The world of knowledge was theirs to
conquer, the world of thought theirs to express, and
they had scant sympathy with what they knew to be
trivial. Sir Walter Raleigh, when the day of a tem-
pestuous life was * drawn on to the very evening ', sat
down to write the History, not of his own times, but
of the World. He alleges prudence as the reason of
his choice, for that * whosoever in writing a Modern
History shall follow Truth too near the heels, it may
haply strike out his teeth '. But it is easy to be seen
that England was too small a stage for the exhibition
of all those varieties and contrarieties of fate, those
' natural and unnatural, wise, foolish, manly, and
childish affections and passions in mortal men '. The
lust of greatness, of universality, guided his pen as it
guided his life. Therein he was the child of his age.
The meanest scribblers of that day had a passion for
the wise saw, the maxim of unfailing validity, whether
law or proverb. The greater writers, whose eagerness
and volubility of speech was prompted by their
absorption in what they had to say, aimed at the
same wide mark. Shakespeare, let it be said boldly,
had something better to do than the recording of his
birth and breeding. He wrote no * Confessions ', no
* Autobiography ', and a younger world, curious in
matters of debt and diet, finds that he has no per-
sonality, that he hides himself behind a mask. His
secret, never to be understood save by artists, is that
the mask is Shakespeare. For knowledge is through
expression, and that lump of chaotic feelings and
thoughts that is a man's self can be known only from
the side that has taken the shape of the mould, to
wit, the outside.

SIR JOHN HARINGTON 139

Nevertheless, the craving for a more detailed know-
ledge of the lives and times of these great men, if it
be not allowed to confuse larger issues, is in itself
a natural desire. We catch the breath in their deeds
and writings of a fuller and freer life than ours, a life
of which art was an inseparable accident, when grave
statesmen and ambitious adventurers, Oxford and
Essex, Raleigh and Dorset, were poets of repute, when
gentlemen played the bandora and handled the sonnet,
and poets accompanied the buccaneers that they
applauded, and fought or starved on the Spanish
main. The distractions and contradictions of Victorian
England seem there to find reconciliation, passion was
not yet severed from action, and thought went hand-
in-hand with humour — which is thought out of office.
We strain after an explanation of this bygone catho-
licity and magnificence, but when we seem on the
point of wresting from the age its secret we run our
heads full tilt against the wall of our own ignorance.
And we have been hardly dealt with by time and the
chances of time. If only we had Thomas Heywood's
Lives of the Poets, or the History of His Own Times
that was meditated, but never achieved, by that all-
worthy knight. Sir John Harington, it were something.
Bereft as we are of such intimate records, we must go
a less direct way to work, and gather what scraps we
may from the colloquial inadvertences of annalists or
translators, the scurrilities of pamphleteers, the records
of lawsuits, and the horde of documents that have
been preserved, not because they were written by men
of letters, but because they were addressed to men of
business. It would puzzle many an Elizabethan worthy
if he could know what strange chases are run through
the didactic thickets of his works in quest of game
that took chance refuge there. A lover of letters will
give a place in his library to Master Beard's Theatre
of God's Judgments, not so much honouring Master

I40 SIR JOHN HARINGTON

Beard as cherishing a passionate reverence for the
memory of Christopher Marlowe, who makes a last
appearance in that coroner's court. The scholar who
reads through the works of the Fathers and Schoolmen
in search of allusions to artificial fireworks is a pretty
emblem of the courageous labours of a Shakespeare
Society. Among writers who have come to be valued
for their irrelevances, for their impatience with the
severe preoccupations of that age, not the least esti-
mable is Sir John Harington, poet, scholar, and trans-
lator, courtier and adventurer, epigrammatist, letter-
writer, privileged jester, and irrepressible gossip. If
only he had kept a diary, like Pepys — his interest in
himself was hardly less ; if only he had devoted a work
to the men and women he had known, like Brantome
— his coign of vantage was as commanding, his zest
in humours and characters as real. The one disability
he lay under for the office of recorder to the Eliza-
bethan age has been of service to his memory. He
belonged wholly to the Court circle of poets, and
cared little for the professional men of letters. Gabriel
Harvey, whom he knew at Cambridge, was degraded,
he thought, by entering into controversy with Nash.
Sir PhiHp Sidney, who was the lodestar of his admira-
tion. Master Samuel Daniel, and Master Henry Con-
stable, whom he calls his ' very good friends ', and
a score of others, including not a few poetasters of
noble birth or of collegiate education, were all to be
come at in the immediate neighbourhood of the Court.
Hence the records of his life are recoverable. ' To be
well born and of a good stock,' is the first essential
required by Ascham for his scholar, by Castiglione for
his courtier. It is certainly a protection against
oblivion, for it brings a man under the tutelage of
politics and within the meshes of the State papers.
And this advantage is helped out, in Sir John Haring-
ton's case, by the tender solicitude that he felt for

SIR JOHN HARINGTON 141

himself and everything that was his, so that his remini-
scences are scattered through his discourses on Church
and State, or appended as notes to his translation of
Ariosto.

He was born in the year 1561, in all probability at
his father's house in Stepney. Kelston, near Bath,
with which his name is chiefly connected, did not
become a residential estate until some twenty years
later. The Haringtons had distinguished themselves
on the Yorkist side in the Wars of the Roses, and had
suffered attainder and decline after Bosworth Field.
The family fortune was to make again, and at the
Court of King Henry VHI John Harington, the elder,
father to the poet, made it. He married Audrey
Make, the king's natural daughter, and on her early
death became possessed of all the estates, among them
Kelston, with which the king had recompensed the
adoption of the girl by John Make, citizen and
merchant-tailor. He attached himself later to the
service of the Lord Admiral Seymour, fell in love with
Isabella Markham, one of the Princess Elizabeth's
maids of honour, suffered adversity with Elizabeth,
and was rewarded by her gratitude in prosperity. His
second marriage seems to have taken place shortly
after her accession, and when his eldest son John was
born, Harington found distinguished godparents for
him. The queen herself stood godmother, the two
godfathers were the Duke of Norfolk and William,
Earl of Pembroke. The family continued to live at
the * Prebende howse neere the Bishop's Pallace of
London ', and the farthest of Sir John's memories in
later times went back to the place. He tells how the
Lord Hastings came to the house as a guest and
' walked out into the garden while prayers were
saying ', whereupon the zealous Protestantism of his
mother broke out in the declaration that guests that
* scorned to pray with her she would scorn they should

142 SIR JOHN HARINGTON

eat with her '. His mother was of the queen's privy
chamber until the year 1578, and his father's later
career was one of moderate prosperity. There is
a grant of arms to John Harington, of Kelston, in
the year 1568, and the later period of his life was
spent in accumulating property and erecting on the
Somersetshire estate the lordly mansion-house that
was occupied by his son. He died at Lambeth in
1582, and was buried in the Church of St. Gregory
by St. Paul's. The piety of his son included a stanza
made by him in the translation of Ariosto, which is also
adorned, by way of elucidation, with commendatory
stanzas on Mistress Isabella Harington.

In the meantime John Harington, the younger, and
more famous, was educated at Eton and Cambridge.
He has many stories to tell of his school and College
days, how William Wickham, Vice-Provost of Eton,
and afterwards Bishop of Winchester, would teach the
scholars himself in the absence of the head master ;
how William Day, the Provost, brake his leg with
a fall from a horse, ' whereupon some waggish scholars,
of which I think myself was in the quorum, would say
it was a just punishment because the horse was given
him by a gentleman to place his son in Eton ' ; how
one of his earliest tasks was the translation into Latin
of a story out of Foxe's Book, of Martyrs, for presenta-
tion to his Royal godmother, * as M. Thomas Arundell
and Sir Edward Hoby can tell, who had their parts
in the same task, being then scholars in Eton as
I was '. At Cambridge he became a fellow-commoner
of King's College in 1575, and remained in residence
until 1 58 1. His tutor. Doctor Samuel Fleming, was
a grave and learned man, a great defender of classical
learning against the attacks of the more bigoted
Protestants, a censurer, nevertheless, of the ' Italian
toys ' whereby his pupil was already enticed. One of
the most interesting occurrences of his time belongs

SIR JOHN HARINGTON 143

to the summer of 1578, when the University attended
upon the queen, who was staying at Audley End.
Mr. Bridgewater, of King's College, made an * oration
gratulatory *, the scholars kneeling behind him in their
black gowns and hoods ; Mr. Fleming, Harington's
tutor, maintained, in formal disputation against
Gabriel Harvey, that the stars put no compulsion
upon men ; Mr. Fletcher, also of King's College,
was Moderator of the disputation. But the Lord
Treasurer, Burleigh, took upon himself to moderate
and to enforce the use of syllogism. It is likely, on
the whole, that Harington was present on this occa-
sion, for his godmother had maintained her interest
in the progress of his education, and Burleigh, who
was connected by marriage with the Harington family,
had written to him only six weeks before, urging on
him the necessity of study and holding up to him the
example of Sir John Cheke, formerly Provost of King's,
* who was one of the sweetest flowers that hath comen
in my time out of the garden that you grow in '.
Many years later, Harington alludes to the queen's
visit in a cursory fashion. He states expressly that he
was present at Ely, in 1581, at the funeral of Bishop
Cox, one of the fiercer early upholders of the Protestant
Reformation. But although his loyalty to his College
and University finds frequent expression in his writings,
his reminiscences of the place suggest that an incon-
siderable part of his time was spent in attending
lectures, disputations, and sermons, that he was, as
himself phrases it, ' a truantly scholar ', and had ' as
good a conscience as other of my pew-fellows, to take
but a little learning for my money '. Such an one was
that ' old school-fellow of mine in Cambridge, that
having lost five shilHngs abroad at cards, would boast
he had saved two candles at home by being out of
his chamber '.

In 7he Metamorphosis of Ajax some Cambridge

144 SIR JOHN HARINGTON

scenes are drawn vividly, in few words. With his
interpolation of sacred matter into that profane work,
the author compares the treatment he experienced
' at our commencement feasts and such-like, in Cam-
bridge ; that when we have been in the midst of
some pleasant argument, suddenly the Bibler hath
come, and with a loud and audible voice began with
Incipit lihri Deuteronomium, caput vicesimum tertium.
And then suddenly we have been all ^st tacete^ and
hearkened to the Scripture.' Or again, he tells of
the policy of ' our stage-keepers in Cambridge, that
for fear lest they should want company to see their
comedies, go up and down with vizors and lights,
puffing and thrusting, and keeping out all men so
precisely, till all the town is drawn by this revel to
the place ; and at last, tag and rag, freshmen and sub-
sizers, and all be packed in together so thick, as now
is scant left room for the prologue to come upon the
stage '. The suggestions conveyed by these remini-
scences are borne out by the evidence that has come
down to us. After taking his Bachelor of Arts degree,
by special grace, he appears to have given dissatisfac-
tion to his father, and in a letter addressed in 1580
to Sir Edward Dyer he seeks reconciliation with the
elder man. His letter, couched in an extravagant
euphuistic vein, is suspiciously vague and rhetorical.
If only his doings were taken as they were meant, says
the writer, others ' should rather have cause to com-
mend my discretion than reason to rebuke my rash-
ness '. * As for my Tutor's letter,' he goes on, * I know
not what was in it, and it may be that he, for the good
affection, great love, and special care he hath of me,
would doubt the worst, fear the hardest, and write
the most.' Protestations of reverence and duty to his
father are followed by a passage which plainly indicates
that what was most feared by his seniors and advisers
was a hasty and ill-assorted marriage. He repels the

SIR JOHN HARINGTON 145

suspicion and passes into moral aphorisms. * Youth
is slippery, flesh is frail, love is light, wedding is
destiny.' What more can be said ? Perhaps it was
in consequence of this encounter that he took more
seriously to the study of law, reading Justinian under
Doctor Thomas Bynge, the Regius Professor of Civil
Law, and assuring his friend and patron, Sir Francis
Walsingham, by letter, that he has entered in earnest
on that study. In the following year he took his
M.A. degree, and proceeded to the Inns of Court,
where he enjoyed the ministrations of Thomas Egerton,
at that time Reader at Lincoln's Inn, subsequently
Lord High Chancellor and Earl of Ellesmere. There
he studied Littleton, as he wittily alleged years after,
but * to the title of discontinuance ', and it seems
certain that the death of his father changed his pro-
spects and his plans. He was now a landed proprietor,
rich in friends, amply endowed with natural wits, and
the world was all before him. His neglect of the
graver studies of the University implies no lack of
ability or even of application ; in the sixteenth century
those poets were few indeed who took kindly to the
discipline of the schools. In the newer learning of
that age he might be called erudite, and his favour
with the queen, together with the protection and
friendship of men like Burleigh, Walsingham, and Sir
Walter Mildmay, must have marked him out at Court
for a brilliant career.

The history of his life hardly fulfilled these high
expectations. In part he was unlucky. With the best
goodwill in the world to come out a winner, he had
a knack of attaching himself to the losing faction. It
was not a deep fetch of policy for a godson of the
queen's to accept a knighthood from Essex, even
though the honour were thrust upon him. But his
disasters began at an earlier date. At Court he gained
the dangerous reputation of a wit. His worldly ambi-

2600 L

146 SIR JOHN HARINGTON

tions, sincerely enough entertained, were never allowed
to curb the fatal faculty of expression. His valour
and his labour were sufficient, but * that damnable
uncovered honesty ', with which his cousin reproached
him, marred his fortunes. The theory and practice
of time-serving, to which Francis Bacon applied the
whole energies of a mighty intellect, seemed to him
a holiday task ; to the end of his life he failed to
recognize that candour is a luxury. When the thing
is, why not say the word ? There is something pathetic
about the child-like simplicity which clung to him
through life. That the breaking of a jest may break
a friendship, that the time, place, and circumstances
of its utterance lend their colour to truth, were pro-
positions that he never mastered. A courtier and
a politician by birth and opportunity, he thought
that these professions might be reconciled with the
licences of poetry and the freedoms of wit. He paid
the price of that honest delight in free speech which
insists on assuming that what is not ill meant shall be
well taken. His dwindling patrimony kept him from
penury, but he belongs, by right of kinship, to the
* threadbare, goldless genealogy ' of those who indulge
themselves with that most costly dish — speech for its
own sake.

Before he left Eton his wanton Muse had taken her
first flights. Early in life he wrote a dialogue on
Marriage, now lost, with the purpose, perhaps, of
allaying the paternal disquietude on this topic. Some
of his epigrams, which range over many years, seem
to belong to his earlier time at Court. He makes
a definite appearance in July 1586, in company with
Edward Rogers, who was, or was soon to be, his
brother-in-law, as one of the ' undertakers ' for the
repeopling and inhabiting of the province of Munster.
This, his first absence from England, lasted only a few
months, during which time he showed himself inqui-

SIR JOHN HARINGTON 147

sitive of popular opinion concerning St. Patrick and
picked up some lore in the matter of witchcraft. In
later years he alleged truly that his very genius fitted
him for that country, and if he gave too little atten-
tion to the ' inhabiting, storing, and manuring ' of
lands and tenements, he loved the simple people, and
noted, with a sagacity rare in statesmen, the essentials
of the political situation. But the expedition was
a failure, and on his return he settled down at Kelston.
About this time he married Mary, the daughter of
Lady Rogers, of Cannington, widow to a Somerset-
shire knight. His wife and his mother-in-law accom-
panied him little on his frequent visits to Court, and
the younger lady, encouraged by the elder, complained
much of his prolonged absences. He reproves them
both in divers epigrams :

Mall, in mine absence this is still your song,
Come home, sweetheart, you stay from home too long ;
That thou lov'st home, my love, I like it well,
Wives should be like thy tortas in the shell.

But for men, who must see and be seen, the case is
diiferent. For them —

To have no home, perhaps it is a curse ;
To be a prisoner at home is worse.

Yet his appearances at Court were not always of the
happiest. The occasion of his translation of Ariosto,
if a fairly authenticated tradition be true, was in this
wise. To amuse, or to tease, the ladies of the Court,
he had translated the twenty-eighth book of the
Orlando Furioso. Now this ' bad book ', as himself
admitted later, has in it ' neither history nor allegory,
nor scant anything that is good ', and can be defended,
by a determined moralist, only on the ground that its
demonstration of the universal frailty of the female
sex has become ' the comfort of cuckolds '. Queen

L 2

148 SIR JOHN HARINGTON

Elizabeth was displeased, and banished him the Court
until he should have completed the translation of the
entire poem. The task may have been set in the spirit
of the step-mother of fairy legend, but Harington's
fluency came to his aid, and in 1591 his complete
translation appeared in folio, w^ith a dedication to the
queen. The most recent edition of this fine work
belongs to the year 1634 ; the Dictionary of National
Biography, deviating into criticism, states that it has
since been superseded, but does not mention by whom.
It is true that Harington, in the right spirit of a poetical
translator, omits and alters, compresses and expands.
But the speech of that eloquent age ran freely from
his tongue, and in the numerous incidental similes and
* sentences ', or moral aphorisms, he often attains the
note of finality. Let a single stanza, descriptive of
the region in the moon where Astolfo sought the lost
wits of Orlando, illustrate the translator's ease :

The precious time that fools mis-spend in play,
The vain attempts that never take effect,

The vows that sinners make, and never pay,
The counsels wise that careless men neglect.

The fond desires that lead us oft astray,
The praises that with pride the heart infect.

And all we lose with folly and mis-spending.

May there be found unto this place ascending.

But an examination of this forgotten work, which
anticipates, in places, the cadences of Shakespeare's
twin poems, would ask a chapter. Be it rather recorded
here that in the year of the completion of his Ariosto
Harington was made Sheriff of Somersetshire, and
that, if it is doubted whether he entertained the queen
at Kelston in the following year, it is certain that he
was present at Oxford during her visit of 1592, and
wrote an epigram * Of Learning Nothing at a Lecture '.
His brother Francis, a Christ Church man, who con-
tributed fifty stanzas to the Orlando, was present on

"sir JOHN HARINGTON 149

the same solemn occasion. Then followed some years
spent chiefly as a private country gentleman, ' that lives
among clouted shoes, in his frieze jacket and galoshes '.
The cares of his family and estates occupied, but did
not satisfy, him. He was well aware that ' men that
obscure themselves shall not be sought for with torch-
light ', he eagerly pondered occasion to be thought of
and talked of, and the fruit of his meditations appeared
in 1596, and created another scandal at the Court.
He had something of the mechanical and inventive
turn, and there were reasons enough in that age why
his invention should be directed to the improvement
of sanitary appliances. The Metamorphosis of Ajax,
a pamphlet the title of which contains one of Haring-
ton's puns, and by no means the wretchedest of them,
was supplemented by the Plain Plot of a Privy in
Perfection^ with charts, and bills of cost, and every-
thing handsome about it. The real reform Harington
had to urge was sound and good, the need for it not
small, and his treatment of his theme is, on the whole,
both light and airy. What was resented was the
combination of far-fetched erudition, telling satire,
and volatile wit, with the humble original topic. In
his pamphlet Literature was married to Sanitation,
and the epoch that had rendered the rare union
possible frowned on the couple and forbade the banns.
A little storm arose at Court, and only the favour of
the queen, which persisted through her anger, saved
her ' saucy godson ' from the Star Chamber. Haring-
ton answered some of his critics in an Apology, others
in the epigrams wherewith his quiver was always
stocked ; but the ball of scandal was hard to stop.
An anonymous writer, probably of Brasenose College,
Oxford, took occasion to write a dissertation, more
scurrilous than Harington's, by way of answer to him.
This tract, entitled Ulysses upon Ajax, and signed
* Misodiaboles ', is written in a less measured style

150 SIR JOHN HARINGTON

than the Jjax, and seems to conceal some personal
pique.

It cannot be doubted that another year or two in
the country became necessary in consequence of this
adventure. The Englisher of Ariosto, the first English
disciple of Rabelais, had reaped little profit from either
of his achievements. Perhaps he was content ; in his
Apology he allows that, because ' even at wise men's
tables fools have most of the talk, therefore I came
in with a bauble to have my tale heard, I must needs
confess it '. He had his tale heard ; and having
claimed the privilege of motley, he suffered the fool's
neglect. From Kelston, however, in 1599, ^^ ^^^
called in haste, so that he had ' scant time to put on
his boots ', to bear a part in the Essex expedition.
His account of his adventures in Ireland, and of the
poor reception he met with from the queen on his
premature return, is, perhaps, the best known part of
his history. ' What, did the fool bring you^ too ?
Go back to your business,' was his Royal Mistress's
greeting. ' I did not stay to be bidden twice ; if all
the Irish rebels had been at my heels, I should not
have had better speed.' But before her reign was
over, the poet, now Sir John Harington, is found once
more in the queen's presence, and earning by his
sportive fancies her gentler rebuke : ' When thou dost
feel creeping time at thy gate, these fooleries will
please thee less.'

The prophecy was speedily fulfilled. Already,
during the later years of Elizabeth's reign, he had
turned his attention more exclusively to affairs, had
attempted to regain by lawsuit the lost lands of his
ancestors in Yorkshire, and to secure by cajolery the
inheritance of his mother-in-law's property for his
children. The more intimate of the epigrams give
a vivid picture of his domestic circle. Some of them,
not included in the posthumously printed collections,

SIR JOHN HARINGTON 151

are inscribed by his own hand in the presentation
copy of his Orlando, given by him to the Lady Rogers.
They are added, he says, to remind her of ' the kind
and sometimes unkind occasions on which some of
them were written '. He ' durst never show them to
any lady ' (he was learning prudence by degrees) save
herself and her ' heir female ' — by which name he
preferred to designate his wife. The Lady Rogers's
personal traits, her fondness for ancient saws : — ' Store
is no sore ', ' At meat be glad, for sin be sad ' — the
discussions, not always amicable, that she had with her
son-in-law concerning the relative heinousness of the
Seven Deadly Sins, the proper hour for dinner, and
the ultimate disposition of her property ; her fondness
for pet dogs and her dislike of the smell of garlic, all
stand recorded in the epigrams. When she died, in
January 1 601, the family feud came to a head, and
served to employ Sir John in the period of his disgrace.
Acting as the representative of his wife, who was one
of the executors of the will. Sir John barricaded and
fortified himself in the house at Cannington and
refused admission to his brother-in-law, who came to
secure the interests of the Rogers family. By the
authority of the Deputy- Sheriff the house was broken
into, and Sir John, who had already conveyed away
some of the property of the deceased, was shut up
without light or food for the better part of a day.
He brought an action in the Star Chamber later
without success. The incident marks the end of the
gay period of his career. With the accession of the
new line he set himself to regain the name and, if
possible, the emoluments, of a sober politician. In
a copy of Latin verses written at this time he bids
farewell to his * wanton Muse ', and casts a regretful
eye backward on the errors into which she had led
him. He is willing to serve the king in any capacity
whatsoever, his engineering and architectural abilities

152 SIR JOHN HARINGTON

are at the Royal bidding — then he thinks of his Ajax
and admits, with a sigh,

Ah ! nimis his operis ingeniosus eram.

His resolve is taken.

Quod superest aevi, patriae patriaeque parenti
Dedico, nee levibus iam datur hora iocis.

But James, whom he had plied before with a presenta-
tion copy of the Orlando and with a New Year's
gift of a curiously constructed lantern, whose right
to the throne he had maintained by epigram and
prose discourse, in whose honour he had grown

* Scottish ' in speech and manner, and for whose sake
he had entertained Captain William Hunter at Bath —
James, beyond the ordinary complimentary acknow-
ledgments, did nothing for him. To his kinsman of
Exton was granted a peerage ; to Sir John of Kelston,
an interview. In the course of a conversation inimi-
tably described by the knight, the fatuous monarch

* enquired much of learning, and showed me his own
in such sort as made me remember my examiner at
Cambridge aforetime '. The king went on, inevitably,
to talk of tobacco and witchcraft, the two themes of
his severer studies, and told stories of the second sight.
So Sir John found, as his prophetic soul had warned
him, that he had * danced barefoot with Clio and her
schoolfellows until he did sweat, and then had gotten
nothing to slake his thirst but a pitcher of Helicon's
well '. At the Court of Elizabeth he was known as
the * witty poet ', to King James he was the * merry
blade '. So perilous a thing is it to attain to the
ambitions of a joker.

The last glimpse we have of the efforts of Sir Ajax
to obtain honourable preferment reveals him in all the
glory of his pleasant simplicity. A highly characteristic
document on the state of Ireland was addressed by

SIR JOHN HARINGTON 153

him, in the year 1605, to my Lord of Devonshire and
my Lord of Cranborne, beseeching their influence
with the king. The offices of Archbishop of Dublin
and Lord High Chancellor had simultaneously fallen
vacant by the death of Archbishop Loftus. The
modest request of the knight is that he may obtain
the succession to both offices, spiritual and temporal.
He is willing to take Holy Orders, he has long had
a purpose to devote himself wholly to the study of
divinity, and his resolve has been strengthened by the
crosses of this life, by restraint of liberty, by sickness,
by unkind kinsfolk and unfaithful friends, which
troubles have also, by a happy coincidence, given him
some insight into the business of the Law Courts.
The Holy Scripture itself teaches that if any man
desire the office of a bishop, he desireth a good work.
And then, in a delightful piece of reasoning, the
applicant establishes his own fulfilment of the con-
ditions laid down by St. Paul, laying especial stress
on the fact that he is not ' given to filthy lucre '.
This is, indeed, the true metamorphosis of Ajax. Did
ever poet, before or since, find such use for the poverty
of his tribe ? As for the Chancellor's office, a lawyer
is no good appointment : — * They suspect all strangers,
and especially a lawyer.' He concludes ' that the
world is a stage, and we who live in it all stage-
players ', and is desirous that the comedy of his life
may have a grave ending, that he may not * in extremo
actu dejicere '. He therefore makes bold to set his
qualifications, without imputation of arrogancy, before
the two persons by whom ' it is likely that his Majesty
will most specially be advised '. Lord Cranborne has
assisted him in time past with the advice not to repeat
the things the queen said in an interview. If his
request is granted, the petitioner is willing to leave
his ' country and sweetest home ' to serve the King's
Majesty.

154 SIR JOHN HARINGTON

There is no record of the reception given to this
strange supplication. Perhaps the noblemen to whom
it was addressed consulted a copy of the Ajax and
found the author's earlier declaration : ' I have always
had a Bible in my parlour these many years, and oft-
times when the weather hath been foul, and that
I have had no other book to read on, and have wanted
company to play at cards or at tables with me, I have
read in those books of the Old Testament, at least
half an hour by the clock.' In any case, the bishopric
was granted to one Jones, and Sir John was cast back
on his ' sweetest home '. There in his later years he
lived with his wife and the survivors of his eleven
children, took the baths for his health, married two
of his daughters, and indulged the graver thoughts
that had always underlain his merriment. Not that
his visits to the Court were discontinued. His cousin,
Lord Harington, was tutor to the Princess Elizabeth,
and Sir John was one of the crowd of courtiers that
attached themselves to Prince Henry. For the prince
he translated the sixth book of the Aeneid, and wrote
his supplement to Bishop Godwin's Catalogue of the
Bishops, introducing, as was his wont, a heap of
memories. Four centuries and more of his epigrams
he also copied out and presented to the same patron.
In the printed editions many of these, particularly
those dealing with affairs of State or decrying the
Puritans, were omitted by John Budge, the stationer
who introduced them to the public. In May 1612
Sir John Harington, then * sick of a dead palsy ',
visited Lord Salisbury, who was staying at the Bath ;
in December he died and was buried at Kelston.

The oblivion that has befallen his writings might
be symbolized by one of the lines he had inscribed
on his bedstead at Kelston :

Longa quiescendi tempora fata dabunt.

Some of them, not to put posterity to the charge
of forgetting them, are lost ; others exist only in

SIR JOHN HARINGTON 155

manuscript. All are filled with his wit, and exhibit
the gaiety and lightness, the ease and irrelevance, of
good talk. He is at his best, no doubt, when he is
speaking of himself — and he is often at his best. He
cannot apologize for poetry without straining himself
to make mention of his kindred and friends, ' that
might well be left out '. He is as pat with his posies
as a goldsmith's wife, and the wealth of his true tales
shames the shortness of his travels. Now it is a story
of Justice RandoU, of London, a man so avaricious
that although he had a thousand pounds at home, in
a chest full of old boots and shoes, he would put up
a widgeon for his supper when he dined with my
Lord Mayor ; again it is the saying of a good knight
of the county — (' Gogs soul, Sirs, the best gentleman
of us all need not forswear hanging ') — that receives
the seal of his authentication. He is curious in detail :
he never knew but one Englishman, the worthy Sir
Walter Mildmay, to eat his meat without sauce.
When the austerity of a translator's task denies him
the text, he finds harbour for his jests in the margin,
and criticizes the laws of the Amazons : ' There were
too many Speakers, belike, in their Parliament.' He
holds his fancy and his memory on so light a leash
that he will let them slip at mice or rabbits. Withal
he sometimes encounters nobler game, and his remark
addressed to Sir John Spenser, of Northamptonshire,
anticipates Gibbon : ' You have a learned writer of
your name, make much of him, for it is not the least
honour of your honourable family.' His works are
a mine of anecdote and allusion, and he was ' some-
what more than ordinarily acquainted with all the
Earls and great men ' of his time. Had he moved in
that other circle, of men whom few called great, had
he known but half as many dramatists as he knew
bishops, we should not have been left groping in the
ash-pit for the sorry relics that go to make a history
of Elizabethan literature.

JOHN DRYDEN AND POLITICAL
SATIRE^

When you asked me to deliver the Henry Sidgwick
Memorial Lecture I felt that I had no choice but to
accept. The compulsion was put upon me not by
the honour of your invitation, though I assure you
I am not insensible of that, but by the name of
Henry Sidgwick. A time will come, aU too soon,
when those who deliver this annual lecture must
deliver it in honour of one whom they never saw, and
never knew.

I am glad that I knew him ; he stands to me for
what is best in the temper of Cambridge, and it is
my lecture that is honoured by being dedicated to
his memory.

Whoever speaks to-day in praise of John Dryden
speaks to a world that is far from being- predisposed in
his favour. The poetry of to-day has many kinds of
excellence, but they are all remote from the excellence
of Dryden. The Rymanti^ movement was against him,
though two of the greatest and most vigorous masters
of Romance, Byron and Scott, were his devoted
adherents and champions. Now that Romance, after
a long reign, has fallen into a decline, thp npwpr kinds
of poetry take their cue from Donne and the met^-
physicals whom Dryden supplanted. We are fanciful,
decorative, conceited, mystical ; we find no difficulty
with the jewelled raptures of Francis Thompson or
the vague ecstasies of Rabindranath Tagore. Women,

* The Henry Sidgwick Memorial Lecture, delivered at Newnham
College, Cambridge, in November 1913.

POLITICAL SATIRE 157

whose voice in criticism counts for more than it did
in Dryden's time, have no use for the glorious John.

: He still has his admirers, but they are dwindled to
an (^jfl-fashmripd gmVt sect.

Let us leave our tastes and leanings on one side for
the moment, and consider the question historically.
There is much virtue in the history of literature. It
teaches diffidence, and without interfering at all with
our several likes and dislikes, saves us from transforming
our perfectly sound tastes into perfectly unsound
judgements.

For the last quarter of the seventeenth century

^^ Dryden dominated ilinglish poetry! An anthology
of tributes to his sovereignty might be gathered from
the Y^rgf>«? of hi> pnprmVc!^ who wcrc many and fierce.
Hardly one of them does not incidentally praise and
exalt him. His friends, on the other hand, were almost
all proud to confess themselves his disciples. A very

largp group of young men, wVinsf wnrlr rnntainpfl the

T^romise of the future, gathered ;iroi]pd Viim^ bowed
to his dictatorship, accepted his judgements, and
fought under his flag. A pinch from his snuif-box
in Will's Coffee-house was a diploma in letters. When
he died he was carried to his tomb in Westminster
Abbey like a king, on a hearse with six white Flanders
horses, with eight horsemen in long cloaks riding before
the hearse, and on either side of it thirteen footmen
in velvet caps. Above one hundred, coaches of the
nobility and gentry attended the procession, which
was preceded by a band of music, and Dryden was
laid to rest in ChaUcer's grave.

The throne of poetry was ascended, after a short

■jyacancy. and amid many rival claims, by Alexander

Fnpp. who^at all times pxpl^^d his pr^dy^^s^^^r and

-based his own title on his lineal desrent. When the

Romantic rebels delivered their assault on the throne

it was Fope who bore the brunt of the attack, so that

158 JOHN DRYDEN AND

the prime sovereignty of Dryden was unchallenged
and undisturbed for the whole of the eighteenth
century. Taste may be impatient of these facts, or
may find them irrelevant ; history is bound to reckon
with them and to attempt an explanation. If we can
understand how it was that Dryden loomed so large
in the world of his contemporaries, we shall place
ourselves at an angle whence his greatness can be seen.
His gradual conquest of fame and pre-eminence was
rpnst rapid jn the last ten years of his life, after the
V Revolution, ^"^hrn ^^ ^^'^ rl^pnved of all his pensions
^^'^ rgdu^fid ^^ gtrn^orp-lp for a livelihood by undertaking

tpdinnn tnrlrr fnr th^ hnnkspllprs. He maintained the

struggle with success and growing credit from his
fifty-ninth year onwards at a period of our history
when no author had as yet managed to keep himself
afloat by the profits drawn from the sale of his publica-
tions. That it was a severe struggle is confessed by
Dryden in the well-known lines at the close of his
elegy on F.lennnra^ Countess of Abingdon, in 1692 :

Let this suffice : nor thou, great saint, refuse
This humble tribute of no vulgar muse :
Who, not by cares, or wants, or age deprest.
Stems a wild deluge with a dauntless brest :
And dares to sing thy praises, in a clime
Where vice triumphs and virtue is a crime :
Where even to draw the picture of thy mind.
Is satire on the most of humane kind :
Take it, while yet 'tis praise ; before my rage
Unsafely just, break loose on this bad age ;
So bad, that thou thy self had'st no defence
From vice, but barely by departing hence.

And the dignity that he maintained through all his
hardships finds noble expression, five ypars latpr-^ in
tbnsp; sonorous spntpnres which he affixed to his
traoslatigiLjQl Virgil :

* What Virgil wrote in the vigour of his age, in plenty and

POLITICAL SATIRE 159

at ease, I have undertaken to translate in my declining years ;
struggling with wants, oppressed with sickness, curbed in my
genius, liable to be misconstrued in all I write ; and my judges,
if they are not very equitable, already prejudiced against
me, by the lying character which has been given them of
my morals. Yet steady to my principles, and not dispirited
with my afflictions, I have, by the blessing of God on my
endeavours, overcome all difficulties, and, in some measure,
acquitted myself of the debt which I owed the public when
I undertook this work.'

There is no brag about these passages ; the fapts,
bear them out. Dryden rose to his greatest in failure,
and impressed himself most on his contemporaries
when he was a sick and overtoiled man. His triumph
was a triumph of character ; $0 that his works cannot
^tanrl tn ns for all that the living man meant to his
Qwn generation. They were first collected in a single
edition bf Sir Walter Scott, more than a hundred
years after Dryden's death. They vary enormmislv
iiLjnerit. Some were written for money ; some to
oblige friends ; on one page is a jingle of ephemeral
trash, on another a whole succession of those magni-
ficent couplets which he had at command when the
occasion called forth all his powers. He belongs to
the careless race of great writers, who do not correct
their errors, but bury them under new achievement.
They carry^ and carry easily, a burden of faults that
jynuld crush a lesser man to the earth.

There is something very impressive in the sure

f>rnprgpnr^ of rharartpr. >Snhtlety of wit, breadth of

jjndfiisianding — these are only an engine, useless
without the steadiness of purpose that controls them.
Without depreciating Johnson's works, we may admit
that we should not know him well if we knew
nothing of his life. It is our misfortune that we know
very little of the life of Dryden. He was almost
worshipped by the young men whom he befriended
and encouraged. Yet none of them has left more

tLf<lA-^.

i6o JOHN DRYDEN AND

than slight, casual references to his conversation and
manners. Johnson, whose youth was spent within the
reach of oral tradition, complains that they had little
to tell.

' Of the only two men whom I have found ', he says, ' to
whom he was personally known, one told me that at the
house which he frequented, called Will's Coffee-house, the
appeal upon any literary dispute was made to him, and
the other related that his armed chair, which in the winter
had a settled and prescriptive place by the fire, was in the
summer placed in the balcony; and that he called the two
places his winter and his summer seat. This is all the intelli-
gence which his two survivors afforded me.'

The explanation of this, I think, is simple. Dryden
wag rj^t a ^nnA talker. His character of himself is that
he ' never could shake off the rustic bashfulness '
which hung upon his nature, that he was * saturnine
and reserved, and not one of those who endeavour to
entertain company by lively sallies of merriment and
wit '. KLe. was bred to writing, says one of his enemies,
* and knew not what to say '. In this respect he is
a complete contrast to Thomas Shadwell, his chief
opponent, of whom Rochester said that ' if he had
burnt all he wrote and printed all he spoke, he would
have had more wit and humour than any other poet '.
Gibber says that Dryden was a very bad reader of his
own verse ; his delivery was ' cold, flat, and unaffect-
ing ' ; so that he was in every way ill equipped to hold
a company by continuous discourse. It is not difficult
to guess what happened at Will's. The younger men —
and they were all younger than Dryden — carried on
animated debates and combats. He listened benevo-
lently from his chair of authority. The manner in
which, from time to time, he took snuff, was, no doubt,
keenly observed as an indication of his sympathies.
When, at a crisis, he was appealed to, he uttered, not
arguments, but verdicts. His recorded sayings are

POLITICAL SATIRE i6i

not very striking, but they are nearly all brief. The
most delightful of them, which is also the briefest, is
given by Fenton ; it shows how completely authorship
and the art of letters filled the thoughts and talk of the
company. Dryden was fond of fishing, and would not
allow any skill in that craft to bad writers, like Tom
D'Urfey:

By long experience, D'Urfey may no doubt
Ensnare a gudgeon, or sometimes a trout ;
Yet Dryden once exclaimed, in partial spite,
* He fish ! ' — because the man attempts to write.

^The famous war 0" "H^lly^gs, as a crime proper to

gnthnrg^ anr^ tVipir wnrgt rr\rr\f- ]->Pjf>an with Drvden

and the professional circle that formed around Turn.
If Dryden had died just before he was fifty^jie would

have had a minor place ip t^^ onnolc r>f c\x\t litPratnrP' ;

indeed, it may be doubted whether he would have been
so highly esteemed as Shadwell, who died at that age.
As a young man of decent family and small fortune
he had followed the literary fashions of the time;
not without great merit, yet it would be hard to
discern the splendour of his matured powers in his
heroic plays or in his eulogies of the great. Then
came the last crisis of the fortunes of the Stuart
dynasty, the crisis which gave us our constitutional
monarchy and our modern party system. The pro-
posal to exclude the Catholic Duke of York from the
throne passed the House of Commons, and rent the
nation in two. The Whigs, led by Shaftesbury,
favoured the claims of the Duke of Monmouth, the
nntural "nn of Cfaarles II, and a great popular favourite.
The position was saved by the king, who having to
choose between a son and a brother, became serious
for once, and, neglecting his own ease and safety,
declared himself immovable on the side of the lawful
heir. To disinherit James was one thing ; to override

3600 M

i62 JOHN DRYDEN AND

Charles quite another ; for if he was not highly-
respected, he was much liked, and his just champion-
ship of his brother won the sympathy and admiration
of the people. The leaders of the House of Commons
drove their advantage too hard, and the reaction was
swift. Shaftesbury was arrested and thrown into
prison to stand his trial for high treason. His one
chance of escape was that the Grand Jury of the City
of London, which was a Whig stronghold, would
refuse to find a true bill. It was while Shaftesbury
lay in the Tower, awaiting his trial, that Dryden
issued his first famous satire, /fht^Inm and Jlrhitnphel.
Pe meant it to do its work, and to procure the convic-
i;inn nf the. Whi|g leader. Xt IS the HenHlipst document
in_English literature, splendid in power^ unrelenting
in purpose. Tlie lines in which he praises Shaftesbury's
upright conduct ofTtlre bench did not appear in this
first edition. Dryden was taking no risks. But his
pamphlet failed in its immediate purpose ; the Grand
Jury threw out the bill ; the Whig party celebrated
Shaftesbury's release by striking a medal in his honour,
and Dryden, after returning to the charge in his satire
called ZIi£LM£daly had time to look about him and to

rlpal nnt latp v^ngeanrf np Sjiariwpll^ Settle, and

the writers on the other side, who are crucified in
MacFlecknof and the Second Part of Absalom and
Achitophel.

All four of these great satires fall within_a single
yeaiiu, Dryden was a well-known dramatist and poet,
bjiLhe issued them all anonymously^ TRey produced W-
a sensation greater than any printed pamphlet had ▼
ever produced in England. T dr? nnt r^m''m^""T n^-^y
cither case of a pamphlet designed to achieve a parti-
cular end, pointed to the nrrasmn, tnplral and allusive
in f^vp'ry 1mf> wkirV^ ^'i\rn^A at nnrp^ and retained ever
after, a place among our great nation;^], classics. The
effect it produed may be well measured by the poems

POLITICAL SATIRE 163

written in its praise, while yet the author remained
unknown. The verse of Absalom^ says Nathaniel Lee,
is * divinely good ', each syllable is a soul. It is

As if a Milton from the dead arose,
Filed off the rust, and the right party chose.

Nahum Tate, who afterwards became Dryden's
collaborator, discerned in the new author a great
poet :

The rock obey'd the powerful Hebrew guide,

Her flinty breast dissolved into a tide ;

Thus on our stubborn language he prevails

And makes the Helicon on which he sails ;

The dialect, as well as sense, invents.

And, with his poem, a new speech presents.

Hail then, thou matchless bard, thou great unknown.

That give your country fame, yet shun your own !

What these praises mean is that T^vydfiTl w^'' re^m^-

nized at once, as h^ is rprngni7ed still, for the first

f>l±he mnflerns. He ' filed off the rust ' ; he discarded

the antique poetic trappings, and proved that poetry

could do work in the world. I confess that when I look

through the collected poems of Dryden I am amazed

hy his CQmpletf^ly mndprn attitndp to all thft "^d

Jjraditions. Take a trivial but significant instance.

In Thg_S££ular Masque he introduces a chorus of the

lu'^thpn divinitips^ who desrnhp the rb^pgps that

time has wrought in the world. Diana celebrates the

^prt of hunting beloved by the court of James I,

Ifc then joins with Janus, Chronos, and Momus,

in a festive chorus :

Then our age was in its prime :
Free from rage and free from crime.
A very merry, dancing, drinking,
Laughing, quaffing, and unthinking time.

The whole masque resembles nothing so much as

M 2

i64 JOHN DRYDEN AND

a Drury Lane pantomime. And Dryden's ij^^nova-
. tinns in language wprt^^ to his own age, no less startling.

^ ^[q W^g rr>ntpnt fn malce use of the colloquial speech
iqI the day, the speech in which men tratiic, and
quarrel, and discuss, but he used it with such intensity

, and conciseness that he raised it to a higher power.

: TVi^ j^ptirUtg who rami- hpf^re him had either beaten
the air^ like the Elizabethans, or had been fanciful,

J grotesque, and metaphysical, like Butler and Cleve-
land. They dressed themselves in cobwebs ; Dryden
Avore a suit of armour. Men of the world had been
accustomed to deal with poetry as a very good thing
in its own place, when you have the time and the
taste for it. You cannot deal thus with what you fear.
Dryden compelled them to find the time.

If any one protests that the highest poetry, like the
purest mathematics, can do no work, I do not desire
to quarrel with him, so long as no attempt is made
to deprive Dryden of the name of a great poet. Among
the many definitions of poetry it is wise to choose the
broadest. To exclude from the name of poetry work
which is artistically ordered in strong and poHshed
verse by an imagination of extraordinary scope and
power, is a wretched impoverishment of thought and
of speech.

The charge that has most frequently been brought
agair^<^t Pryd^" ^'g ^-liat hf> was, t" p"^ it bluntly,

' a„4aJttfc:S£Iver. He celebrated Oliver Cropriwell in
ringing stanzas. He also celebrated the Restoration
of King Charles H. He defended the position of the
dmrchLof-England in a grave poem, full of weighty
reasoning. When James H came to the throne he
joined the Roman Communion, and, continuing in his
office of Poet Laureate, wrote TheHindand the
Panther in defence and praise of the Chufch of Rome.
Men who change their religion after the age of fifty
cannot expect to pass unchallenged, especially if the

POLITICAL SATIRE 165

change happens to conduce to their material advan-
tage.

Johnson and Scott were not puzzled or perturbed
by these changes in Dryden, nor was their admiration
for him, as man and poet, impaired at all. Indeed,
I think that ai^y one who takes the trouble to make
acquaintance with Dryden's writings and the records
of his life will find that there is no puzzle to solve.
All through his life Dryden changed, or moved,
steadily, in a single direction ; he moved, and he )
never went back, 'i'hose who fiercely demand con-
sislfificy in a political career commonly mean Fy con-
sistency the rppptitinn nf a party__rry. Their ideal '
character is the parrot, who never forgets what he was
taught in youth, and never tires of repeating it.
They make no allowance for experience, and none
for thought — that bugbear of the drill sergeant,
which will not stop when you cry ' Halt ! ' Dryden
was born of ^ Pnriton iorr)Uy qnd passed his youth in
the religious and political chaos of the Commonwealth.
It is not easy for us to realize what a lesson was there.
A course of reading in the works of the fanatics and
visionaries of the seventeenth century, each with his
own scheme of government and of salvation, is enough
to make an anarchist sick of freedom. The Church oi\

Fn^lamWYvpirnprirlprl jtsclf tO Drvdcn. fi3:St of all,' — „

.'andtorTTirnej as a decent haven of j;efuge .from the
noise of the sects. The authority of the Bible was
allowed by all the sects, but there remained the diffi-
cult question — Who was to interpret the Bible ? The
Papists, says Dryden, withheld it from the common
people ; the grotestants gavejt^ to all — ^with what
effect ?

The Book thus put in every vulgar hand,
Which each presumed he best could understand,
The common rule was made the common prey;
And at the mercy of the rabble lay.

i66 JOHN DRYDEN AND

The tender page with horny fists was galled;

And he was gifted most that loudest bawled ;

The spirit gave the doctoral degree,

And every member of a Company

Was of his trade and of the Bible free.

Plain truths enough for needful use they found ;

But men would still be itching to expound ;

Each was ambitious of th' obscurest place,

No measure ta'en from knowledge, all from Grace.

Study and pains were now no more their care;

Texts were explained by fasting and by prayer :

This was the fruit the private spirit brought ;

Occasioned by great zeal and little thought.

While crowds unlearned, with rude devotion warm,

About the sacred viands buzz and swarm.

The fly-blown text creates a crawling brood;

And turns to maggots what was meant for food.

A thousand daily sects rise up, and die;

A thousand more the perished race supply :

So all we make of Heaven's discovered will

Is, not to have it, or to use it ill.

The danger 's much the same ; on several shelves

If others wreck us or we wreck ourselves.

These lines, it is plain to see, express the sentiments
of a friend to authority. Dryden believed in authority
in religion, and monarchy in the State, even when the
monarch's name was Cromwell. He was attracted, by
the natural bent of his mind, to monarchy in religion —
that is, to an indisputable power which should pro-
nounce on all doubtful points. He never writes more
vigorously or with more fervour of conviction than
when he attacks the engineers of democracy. So in his
sketch of Shaftesbury's career, in The Medal — if you
will excuse a long quotation —

When his just sovereign, by no impious way,
Could be seduced to arbitrary sway;
Forsaken of that hope, he shifts the sail;
Drives down the current with a pop'lar gale;
And shows the fiend confessed without a veil.

POLITICAL SATIRE 167

He preaches to the crowd that power is lent,

But not conveyed to kingly government ;

That claims successive bear no binding force;

That coronation oaths are things of course ;

Maintains the multitude can never err;

And sets the people in the papal chair.

The reason 's obvious ; infrest never lies ;

The most have still their int'rest in their eyes;

The power is always theirs, and power is ever wise.

Almighty crowd ! thou shorten'st all dispute ;

Power is thy essence ; wit thy attribute !

Nor faith nor reason make thee at a stay,

Thou leapst o'er all eternal truths in thy Pindaric way !

Athens, no doubt, did righteously decide,

When Phocion and when Socrates were tried ;

As righteously they did those dooms repent ;

Still they were wise, whatever way they went.

Crowds err not, though to both extremes they run ;

To kill the father and recall the son.

Some think the fools were most as times went then,

But now the world 's o'erstocked with prudent men.

The common cry is ev'n religion's test ;

The Turk's is, at Constantinople, best.

Idols in India, Popery at Rome,

And our own worship only true at home,

And true but for the time, 'tis hard to know

How long we please it shall continue so ;

This side to-day, and that to-morrow burns ;

So all are God a'mighties in their turns.

A tempting doctrine, plausible and new ;

What fools our fathers were, if this be true !

Who, to destroy the seeds of civil war,

Inherent right in monarchs did declare :

And, that a lawful power might never cease.

Secured succession, to secure our peace.

No doubt it would be possible to go over all that
Dryden here says, to state it in another way, and to
make out a case on the other side. But it is not easy,
if indeed it be possible, to plead for a novel order of
things by way of satire. Satire entrenches itself
naturally in old habits and accepted customs. People

i68 JOHN DRYDEN AND

laugh at what is unfamiHar to them. Marcus Crassus
is said to have laughed when he saw an ass eating
thistles, but he probably laughed alone, which is no
very happy way to laugh. The part of life that is not
subject to custom and habit is a very small part, so
that the satire of eccentricities and deviations from the
beaten track has a wide empire and, in spite of occa-
sional mistakes, is, for the most part, sane. Some
wits of our own time have attempted to combine the
advocacy of new views with satire directed against
those who fail to be converted by them. The combina-
tion of the two professions, evangelist and buffoon,
has a delightfully quaint air, but it robs the evan-
gelist of all his efficacy. One simple soul makes more
converts than many jesters. The terrible super-
stitious power of laughter is witnessed by this anxious
care of nervous reformers to laugh first. They are
afraid of ridicule, and try to intimidate their satirists
by laughing at them. But this is a sign of weakness, for
no one is hurt by laughter until he thinks he is hurt.

,^1 One of the great fasrinatjons of Dryden?s satire is

j it? pprfprt p^f^f; pf application to our_own time. The

divisinrjs of opinion, the fpibles. and~tEe characters

I that he describes are alive_^ among us to-day. Only

the power and the will to satirize them have grown

feebler. One reason of this, no doubt, is that our

differences, for all their violence, are less fundamental

i and less tragic. A generation which had seen the

jking of England led to the block was in no danger of

I I under-estimating the gravity of political differences.

; Almost all the political problems of to-day bear
a likeness to the problems of the seventeenth century ; >/
but the colours of that earlier picture are darker and
stronger. We are perhaps humaner than they ; we
are certainly more humanitarian. We do not behead
those who are opposed to us, we do not even condemn
them ; we explain them. Explanation is a subtler

POLITICAL SATIRE 169

\ kind of satire, and it is touched, as Diyden insisted that t
allgood satire should be touched, with ^conaession, I"*"
and even with sympathy. But we have to pay for
our gains ; and we have lost the grand style. When
Richard Pigott, the informer, broke down, and took
his own life, he was pitied more than he was hated.
Far different was the case of Titus Oates, who, to work
up Protestant frenzy against the'Duke of York, invented
a whole network of falsehoods concerning the Popish
Plot. Titus Oates became an idol of the people for a
time. Mr. Traill, summarizing the historical evidence,
describes him as * a squat, misshapen man, bull-
necked and bandy-legged, with villainous low forehead,
avenged by so monstrous a length of chin that his
wide-slit mouth bisected his purple face '. But he
was worshipped as the defender of the faith. (See
Spectator, No. 57.) Dryden deals with him in lines
that vibrate with scorn. Not even in the Roman
satirists could you find four lines so packed with mean-
ing and invective as the first four of Dryden's attack :

Yet, Corah, thou shalt from oblivion pass ; ^
Erect thyself thou monumental brass : \

High as the serpent of thy metal made, \ \

While nations stand secure beneath thy shade. /

And the controversies of modern authors, whether
in verse or prose, are like the mewing of cats compared
with Dryden's attack on Shadwell :

A double noose thou on thy neck dost pull

For writing treason and for writing dull ;

To die for faction is a common evil,

But to be hanged for nonsense is the devil.

Hadst thou the glories of thy king exprest,

Thy praises had been satire at the best ;

But thou in clumsy verse, unlickt, unpointed,

Hast shamefully defied the Lord's anointed :

I will not rake the dunghill of thy crimes,

For who would read thy life that reads thy rimes ?

170 JOHN DRYDEN AND

But of King David's foes be this the doom,
May all be like the young man Absalom ;
And for my foes may this their blessing be,
To talk like Doeg, and to write like thee.

Perhaps I spoke too lightly, a minute or two ago,
of the injury that can be wrought by laughter. Shad-
well, as any one who reads his plays can witness, is
a dramatist of real merit, with great breadth of
humanity. But his plays soon fell out of demand, and
none of them was ever reprinted until a few years ago.

The temple-gates of Fame to him were shut ;
He lived outside, and lived as Dryden's butt.

As for his satire, written in reply to Dryden's Medal, it
is a rarity for collectors. When I went to the Bodleian
Library to see it for the purposes of this lecture, I
found that they had mislaid it, so that Dryden's
contempt not only blasted his reputation, but perhaps
has indirectly prevented my making any attempt to
restore it.

I must not pass over Dryden's greatest enemy, the
statesman and demagogue, Anthony Ashley Cooper,
first Earl of Shaftesbury. To discuss his character and
career would take me too far afield. It was not a
simple character. If you do no more than take notice
of Dryden's allowances and concessions, you will see
'"'fat once that Shaftesbury can never be painted all
black, or all white. He was a just and compassionate
judge. He was of an indefatigable industry, and sought
no private profit. He was courageous, even to rash-
ness. Dryden's fiercest onslaught on him is directed
against the demagogue. Shaftesbury took pleasure in
the craft of statesmanship, and delighted in his own
dexterity in handling public opinion. As Butler says
of him he

W*uld force his neck into the noose
To show his play at fast and loose.

POLITICAL SATIRE 171

He was insatiable in his desire for power, and when
against his advice the king withdrew the Declaration
of Indulgence to Roman Catholics and Dissenters, he
threw in his lot with the Opposition, and cultivated
the arts of popularity. The people forgive much in
those who declare for them, and Shaftesbury's share
in promoting the war with Holland, a Protestant ally
of England, was forgiven when he espoused the Whig
cause. Dryden's comment describes the conveniences
of popularity :

How safe is treason and how sacred ill,
Where none can sin against the people's will,
Where crowds can wink and no offence be known.
Since in another's guilt they find their own !

The gist of Dryden's charge agajnst Shaftpsb"JX is.
n^t that hf rpprrsfntfrd the people bnt-^hnt he/
oeceived them. He encouraged opinions that he did
not sKare,~if he thought he could make use of them.
He stirred up envy and hatred, which are more easily
awakened than put to sleep again. There is no
douliting the sinrenty and the passion of the apostrophe
that concludes jrZ>g Medal :

But thou, the pander of the people's hearts,

(O crooked soul and serpentine in arts ;)

Whose blandishments a loyal land have whored,

And broke the bonds she plighted to her lord;

What curses on thy blasted name will faU !

Which age to age their legacy shall call;

For all must curse the woes that must descend on all.

History has something better to do (or, at least,
something more interesting to do) than to fulfil the
predictions of impassioned prophets. The warfare of
party has raged on, with varying fortunes, for more
than two hundred years since Dryden wielded his
two-edged sword, and the honours are still divided.
Butjt would be a mistake to regard Dryden as fi rs t and
foremost a party_jaan. No mere party pamphleteer

172 JOHN DRYDEN AND

ever has won, or ever could win, the place that he
holds in English letters. He is of the centre ; his
party is the party of Aristophanes and of Rabelais.
His best work is inspired by the sanity thatjnhabits
at the heart of things! He lived in a turbulent age,
and he was a fighter. T^pt all extremists are his J
gatural enemies. His wpapnris ran be usecj, on
occasion, by either side. He hated wrong-headed
theorists and fanatics, who commonly impose their
alliance, a heavy burden, on the reforming party in
the State. He also hated all contented and self-
sufficient dullards, who for the most part have to be
supported, a grievous weight, by the party that stands
[for the established order. He makes war on both,

v/' y* with laughter that flashes and cuts. There are
many provinces of poetry, some where poetry is most
at home, that are strange to him. His love lyrics are, O
with very few exceptions, a miracle of banality. His •
best dramas just fall short of greatness. But in prose /

^^^^. / criticism, as in argumentative versjfi, nnd in rnf^^i^n^ J^
"^ \ satire, he has not beerTsurpasse^."^ Not many authors -^
have achieved the highest rank in three such diverse
kinds.

^If Dryden has failed to captivate some lovers of
poetry it is perhaps because he deals, almost exclu-
sively, with p"b1ir aiTairs Kvpn_rr1iginn is fVf^teA^
^througl^nnt lijg argi^inentative poemSj in nne-aspect
I only, as a public interest. Were it not for one or two
allusions to his advancing years, his works yw)tild give
you no clue to his private life and retired meditations.
V If jvar, politics, and argument _wf re banished-ff^n the
f<u:£_ of the earth, nothing wn^lH hp Ipff f^^r him to
say,.^^ at any rate he would say nothing. Congreve
remarked that Dryden was the most modest man
he ever knew ; and certainly he is one of the most
reserved of poets. He does not take his readers into his
confidence ; he has no pnHparing^4ftdisrrftin"« He

POLITICAL SATIRE

173

t^

is content to meet them in an open place, where there
is business enough to bespeak their attention. A pro-
fessional man of letters, especially if he is much at
war with unscrupulous enemies, is naturally jealous
of his privacy ; he will be silent on his more personal
interests, or, if he must speak, will veil them under
conventional forms. So it was, I think, with Dryden ;
he is no bosom friend, to be the companion of those
who keep the world and its noises at a distance.
Those who do not care for Dryden may well care for
poetry ; it is difficult to believe that they can care
for politics, war, or argument. And Dryden's
resolutely public attitude has a purification of its own ;
it disciplines the more secretive and furtive passions by
forcing them out into the light and air. War, after
allj_is^the jcleaijgst kind of—hate : and, by its awful
ordeal, often transforms hate altogether into pride and
pity and sorrow. Something of the same kind may be
said of great sapre,,h'ke Dryden^s. » The ugliness and
sqnalp];^ of personal hostility cannot live in that
tonic atmosphere. The resentments of men are
touched to larger issues, and raised above themselves.
What is murky and little and obscene is drawn by the
graving tool of the artist, with never a line in vain,
and becomes a strong and noble thing, a possession
for ever.

u

GEORGE SAVILE^

It would have given no displeasure to Sir George
Savile, First Marquess of Halifax, to think that by
later generations of his countrymen he should be
almost forgotten. Statesmen are easily forgotten.
A prosperous lie made Titus Oates immortal ; but
the man who was the practical genius of the English
Revolution, and the acutest critical genius among
English politicians, is now little more than a name.
What is most commonly remembered about him is
that he was called the ' Trimmer '. The nickname
was put upon him angrily by his contemporaries, and
was worn proudly by himself. The imputation it
conveyed was, no doubt, that he trimmed his sails to
the varying breezes of opinion ; but in his famous
pamphlet, the noise of which still echoes distantly in
the public ear, he changed the metaphor. A boat, he
said, goes ill, and is in danger of capsizing, if the
people in it weigh it down all on one side, or all on
the other. But there is a kind of men * who conceive
that it would do as well if the boat went even, without
endangering the passengers '. And it is hard to
imagine, he adds, how it should come to be a fault,
or a heresy, to attempt to trim the boat.

He calls it a boat (he never used magnificent or
extravagant language), but -What he means is the ship
of State, that ship on whose seaworthiness the lives
even of the mutineers depend . Halifax was a pilot
for the greater part of his responsible life, and his
chief care was always the State. His reputation has
none of that glamour which shines upon heroic folly.
The leader of a forlorn hope excites a ready enthusiasm ;
the martyr for an idea, the rebel who will have his

^ Introduction to Complete Works of George Savile, first Marquess
oj Halifax. Oxford, 1 91 2.

GEORGE SAVILE 175

own way or nothing, the stickler for principle, who
cares little to stay in a world where his darling creed
is not to prevail — all these are easily made into heroes,
and worshipped for their courage. But the pilot, to
whom danger and difficulty are not heroic crises, but
the very material of his craft, or the engine-driver,
who has had the care of a thousand lives in his sole
charge, goes home unnoticed, and takes his modest
wage. On his constancy and judgment the safety of
humanity depends ; his faith and skill have made it
possible for the thoughtless passengers to dream in
peace and to warm their imagination with the admir-
able deeds of fiction. Life would be a poorer thing
than it is if work of this kind were rewarded by monu-
ments and testimonials and public fame. The old
Roman way is better : expect the best from your
political servants, and try them for treason if they
give you less.

Not many men have written books on the practical
business of their lives. Statesmen have commonly
been content to make laws, or treaties, leaving it to
philosophers to expound the principles of politics. It
is the fascination of the writings of Halifax that they
were suggested by his experience of life, and are
crammed with the lessons drawn directly from that
experience. Here are no flights of the imagination,
no ingenious ornaments of style, no beautiful vanities
of authorship. He quotes none of those fallacious
historical precedents which are dear to the mind of
the academic scholar ; his writings are bare of classical
allusion. What he has to tell is what he has found
out for himself in the course of his traffic with the
world ; but he tells it with so much wit and irony,
with such acuteness of observation and pungency of
phrasing, that he runs some risk of losing the esteem
of those who think that wise men must needs be dull.
Moreover, books have failed, from time immemorial,

176 GEORGE SAVILE

to convey the lessons of experience ; and the wisdom
of life can be bought only by the expenditure of life
itself. Old men would be very glad to tell what they
know, but they cannot hope to be understood. If
they are wise, they say little ; if they are foolish, they
babble pleasantly enough, but have nothing to tell.
Halifax has much to tell, but a beginner is not likely
to learn it. On the other hand, a man who has served
on a jury, or has stood an election, or has been
responsible for the management of any business, will
feel a thrill of pleasure when his own experience is
brought home to him again in that brilliant epigram-
matic dress. English literature is very rich ; only
a very rich literature could have afforded to neglect
so distinguished a writer. But it is not rich in practical
vnsdom ; and the neglect of Halifax is a thing to be
regretted and amended.

/ His writings are strangely modern, and, withal, are
wholly English. The politics of this country have
altered very little, one would say, since the days of
the Exclusion Bill. Indeed it is one of the chief
attractions of seventeenth-century history that there
is hardly a live question to-day which was unknown
to the men of that time. It is something to feel that
we are not more fantastic or absurd than our ancestors.
Any one who reads the pamphlets which contain
Halifax's reflections on the controversies of his own
time will find himself, almost against his will, applying
these reflections to the matter of to-day. No violence
is required to make the application ; page after page
of the pamphlets might have been written yesterday
for all the evidence that they show of bygone modes.
It is a fashion nowadays to decry the Party system
in politics. Once upon a time (so the argument runs)
Party names stood for something real ; they marked
fundamental and irreconcilable differences of opinion
on essential questions. But now they have become

GEORGE SAVILE 177

empty of meaning, the pretexts of competitors for
power and reward. Such an account of the Party-
system is not good history. Swift, who lived when
the succession to the Crown was a Party question,
made light of Whig and Tory, and here, at the very
birth of the system, is Halifax, its most destructive
critic. The names of Whig and Tory do not occur
in his works. He disliked devotion in a conventicle,
and loyalty in a drunken Club. He was troubled to
see men of all sides sick of a calenture. He knew that
men, though they forget much, never forget them-
selves ; and that the World is nothing but Vanity cut
out into several shapes. His remarks Of Parties in his
Political Thoughts and Reflections are the severest things
ever said about Party :

' It turneth all Thought into talking instead of doing.
Men get a habit of being unuseful to the Publick by turning
in a Circle of Wrangling and Railing, which they cannot
get out of.'

' Ignorance maketh most Men go into a Party, and Shame
keepeth them from getting out of it.'

The fact is that the rigours of Party, which are easily
maintained, with all their consequences, by logicians,
journalists, and theorists, will not suffer the practical
test. Men exalt themselves on their principles, and
glory in the partition which separates the sheep from
the goats, who prove, after all, to be only the other
sheep. But the English have a genius for government,
and when government is the business in hand, this
separatist method has no value. Men who differ
rabidly on principles will find that the lessons they
learn from experience have a tendency to be the same.
Then, if they change their course, or modify the policy
which has been so bravely announced, they are accused
of being false. The charge is true ; they have been
false ; but it was their thinking and talking that was
false, not their corrected action. The melodrama of

3600 N

178 GEORGE SAVILE

their boastful creed would not bear translation into
the life of this world. They have been the dupes of
literature ; all that is heroic in literature is simple and
straightforward, but then, the hero is prepared to die.
Society is not prepared to die for a creed, and politics
is a vast complex network of means to an end, the end
being the continued life and comfort of mankind. It
is the irony of the statesman's position that while his
work is very like the work of a good housekeeper, the
literary deceits and fictions incident to the process of
persuasion invite us to regard him as a hero of romance,
a lone figure on a mountain peak, silhouetted against
the moon. * I think it 's the novels ', said the old lady
quoted by Mr. Bagehot, ' that make my girls so heady.''
The old political families of England, who have
borne a hand for generations in the government of
the country, are often exempt from these errors.
They are not easily intoxicated by public duties, which
have been their matter-of-fact business for centuries.
You may call them Whig or Tory, it makes little
difference ; some third name, more fundamental in
its implications, is needed to describe them. They
look at things instinctively from the point of view of
the administration. The fervours of the pulpit and
the platform do not much delight them. It was the
great advantage of George Savile that he was born
into such a family, and was connected by kinship, or
by the accidents of life, with many of the most
influential persons of that age. Sir Henry Savile, wit
and scholar. Warden of Merton College, Oxford, and
Provost of Eton, perhaps the most learned Greek
scholar of Elizabethan England, was his distant kins-
man. The Lord Keeper Coventry was his grandfather.
The great Earl of Stafford was his father's uncle.
Anthony Ashley Cooper, first Earl of Shaftesbury, who
vies with one other claimant for the credit of being
the first Whig, was his uncle by marriage, his colleague,

GEORGE SAVILE 179

and, in the end, his rival. Lady Dorothy Sidney,
Waller's * Sacharissa ', was his wife's mother. More
notable still, the famous Earl of Chesterfield was his
grandson. In short, he was intimately connected with
most of those whose names fill the pages of English
History during the latter half of the seventeenth
century, and was a witness of the events of that
history from a position of extraordinary vantage.-^His
family, moreover, though staunchly Royalist, managed
to keep possession of its estates, and in 1643, when
his father. Sir William Savile, after loyal service
rendered to the King, died at the age of thirty-one,
the young George Savile had the ball at his feet.
Concerning his youth and education we know next to
nothing. He was born in 1633, and was brought up
under the control of his widowed mother, who was
a woman of strong character. When she died, in
1662, her son was already married, settled on his estate
of Rufford, in Nottinghamshire, and prominent in
public life.* He was described, later, by Evelyn the
diarist, as ' a very rich man, very witty, and in his
younger days somewhat positive '. His wit and his
riches he kept throughout life ; his opinions became
less positive. His wit was perhaps his chief fault ; he
could not keep it under, or refuse himself a pointed
jest. * One great argument ', says a contemporary
account, ' of the prodigious depth and quickness of
his sense is, that many of his observations and wise
sayings were on the sudden, when talking to a friend
or going from him.' The spontaneity and freedom of
his talk was ill taken by Clarendon and other cautious
and explanatory persons, and Savile was reputed to be

^ All who concern themselves with Halifax must acknowledge their
great debt to the careful and exhaustive work of Miss Foxcroft, The
Life and Letters of Sir George Savile, Bart., First Marquis of Halifax,
i^c, with a new edition of his works now for the first time collected and
revised by H. C. Foxcroft. Two volumes, Longmans, 1898,

N 2

i8o GEORGE SAVILE

void of all sense of religion — which he certainly was
not. Later, among his Moral Thoughts and Reflections,
he says, * There is so much Danger in Talking, that
a Man strictly wise can hardly be called a sociable
Creature.' This was a lesson that he learned but
slowly, if indeed he ever learned it. His conduct of
business was discreet almost to a fault ; his letters are
so prudent and reserved that they are amazingly dull
to read ; but he indemnified himself for these restraints
by the freedom of his intimate conversation. The
writings in which he has allowed himself most of this
freedom were either non-political, like his Advice to
a Daughter, or were posthumously published, like his
Character of King Charles the Second : and Political,
Moral and Miscellaneous Thoughts and Reflections.
These are the best of his works. That prudence and
discretion which keeps a man safe and sequestered in
life conceals him also from the notice of later genera-
tions ; the same caution which delivers him from
malicious gossip, puts him beyond the reach of post-
humous sympathy. Halifax, the author, appeals to our
interest because he says many things which politicians
know and do not say. To avoid even paltry enmities
may be the clear duty of a statesman. * It is a Mis-
fortune ', Halifax remarks, ' for a Man not to have
a Friend in the World, but for that reason he shall
have no Enemy.'

The events of his public life, as parliamentary leader,
as Minister under Charles H, as President of the
Council under James H, and as Lord Privy Seal under
William HI, are written broad on the history of
England, and cannot be recorded here. He bore
a hand in all the chief events of the time, from the
Restoration onwards, to his death, in 1695. His
importance may be well measured by this, that it
never depended on the office that he held. He was
respected, consulted, and feared in opposition no less

GEORGE SAVILE i8i

than when he was chief Minister of the Crown. The
greatest of his achievements, it will probably be agreed,
was the rejection of the Exclusion Bill in 1680 by the
House of Lords. No record remains of the speeches
made ; but the severity and brilliancy of his duel with
Shaftesbury is attested by many contemporaries. He
stood up to Shaftesbury, and answered him every time
he spoke. He carried the House, in the end, trium-
phantly with him. It was a triumph not so much of
argument as of intelligence and insight. He under-
stood the temper of the people of England as Shaftes-
bury never did, and he knew that the ebullitions of
popular enthusiasm are no safe index to that temper.
Monmouth was adored by the people ; the Duke of
York was neither liked nor loved. Shaftesbury thought
to earn the nation's gratitude by offering them Mon-
mouth in place of York. He miscalculated cruelly ;
the people did not fear a new King ; but they did
fear a Kingmaker. The whole edifice of constitutional
monarchy was designed not for the protection of bad
kings, but for the humiliation of arrogant ministers.
This Halifax understood ; so he became the guardian
of the Constitution, and later, when James H had set
himself to break the Constitution, the guiding spirit
of the Revolution. His politics are our politics ; his
political creed remains in the twentieth century what
it was in the seventeenth century, the creed of John
Bull. But the rare delight is to find John Bull a wit !
Wit is commonly employed in extremes, where it
works most easily. To satirize novelty, and ridicule
all that is unfamiliar ; or, reversing the process, to
ridicule all that is familiar, to deny the truth of
proverbs and to flout the sayings that embody general
opinion — these devices furnish wit with a simple and
effective mechanism. But Halifax employs the subtlest
resources of wit in defence of the practical expedient,
the middle course, the reasonable compromise.

i82 GEORGE SAVILE

Dryden pays tribute, in Absalom and Achitophel, not
only to the wit of Halifax, but to his courage and
eloquence :

Jotham of piercing Wit and pregnant Thought,
Endew'd by nature and by learning taught
To move Assemblies, who but onely tri'd
The worse a while, then chose the better side ;
Nor chose alone, but turned the Balance too ;
So much the weight of one brave man can do.

Indeed, for all that he is called the Trimmer, Halifax
has been very generally recognized for an upright and
honourable man. He was promoted, by steady grada-
tion, to high honours and high offices, yet no one has
been found foolish enough to pretend that he was
a self-seeker. Macaulay, who expresses some distrust
of him in the Essays, and introduces him, in the
History, as one who was not sufficiently indifferent to
titles of honour, makes amends, in a later passage, by
a full and generous eulogy :

' What distinguishes him from all other English statesmen
is this, that, through a long public life, and through frequent
and violent revolutions of public feeling, he almost invariably
took that view of the great questions of his time which history
has finally adopted. He was called inconstant, because the
relative position in which he stood to the contending factions
was perpetually varying. As well might the pole-star be called
inconstant because it is sometimes to the east and sometimes
to the west of the pointers. To have defended the ancient
and legal constitution of the realm against a seditious populace
at one conjunction, and against a tyrannical government at
another ; to have been the foremost champion of order in the
turbulent Parliament of 1680, and the foremost champion of
liberty in the servile Parliament of 1685 ; to have been just
and merciful to Roman Catholics in the days of the Popish plot,
and to Exclusionists in the days of the Rye House plot ; to have
done all in his power to save both the head of Stafford and the
head of Russell ; this was a course which contemporaries, heated
by passion, might not unnaturally call fickle, but which deserves
a very different name from the later justice of posterity.'

GEORGE SAVILE 183

One stain, and one only, Macaulay finds on his
memory, that in the reign of William III he stooped
to hold communication with the exiled Court of
St. Germain. The fact is not disputed, but a wise
judgment on the fact asks for a more active and
careful imagination than is usually brought to it. The
black-and-white school of moralists are not valuable
critics of the politics of the seventeenth century.
They would be better employed in writing laudatory
biographies of the authors of Histriontastix and EUoau
^acn\iK-q. For many years it was not certain who
was King of England. It was not certain whether
England was to be a monarchy or a commonwealth.
Many patriotic Englishmen had been driven abroad,
and hardly a man of note had not relatives in France.
In these civil conflicts, which divide families, the law
of treason must needs be humanely interpreted ; and
the offence proved against Halifax amounts only to
misprision of treason ; that is to say, he did not cut
off all confidential relations with his friends and
acquaintance on the other side.

This, at any rate, is certain, he never for one moment
sought any other end than the security and greatness
of England. He very early recognized that one por-
tentous question was beginning to obscure the whole
political horizon. ' The Greatness of France,' wrote
the English Envoy at Lisbon, ' as I have heard your
Lordship observe, hath made all old politics useless.'
So, in 1068, he welcomed the Triple Alliance between
England, Holland, and Sweden, to hold Louis XIV in
check. So far, his politics were the politics of William
of Orange. But William of Orange was a European
statesman and general ; Halifax was purely an English-
man. He was glad to have the help of alliances, but
he did not like to have to trust to them. Real friend-
ships between nations are things of very slow and
difficult growth ; while friendships between govern-

i§4 GEORGE SAVILE

ments are subject to the dangers and disadvantages of
friendships between two bodies of trustees representing
different interests. If such friendships are immutable,
they are dishonest. HaUfax was not deceived by them.
In a letter to Sir William Temple, written shortly
before the Triple Alliance was concluded, he discusses
the possibility of a French invasion, and concludes :
* We must rely upon the Oak and Courage of England
to do our Business, there being small Appearance of
anything to help us from abroad.'

Many fine things have been said of England by
Englishmen ; none of them more sincere and moving
than the things said by Halifax. He is a quiet writer,
critical and sceptical, keenly aware of the absurdity
of enthusiasm. He keeps his feelings so well in hand
that he has the reputation of a cynic. But this is how
he writes of England :

' Our Trimmer is far from Idolatry in other things, in one
thing only he cometh near it, his Country is in some degree his
Idol ; he doth not Worship the Sun, because 'tis not peculiar
to us, it rambles about the World, and is less kind to us than
others ; but for the Earth of England^ tho perhaps inferior to
that of many places abroad, to him there is Divinity in it,
and he would rather dye, than see a spire of English Grass
trampled down by a Foreign Trespasser : He thinketh there
are a great many of his mind, for all plants are apt to taste
of the Soyl in which they grow, and we that grow here, have
a Root that produceth in us a Stalk of English Juice, which is
not to be changed by grafting or foreign infusion ; and I do
not know whether any thing less will prevail, than the Modern
Experiment, by which the Blood of one Creature is transmitted
into another ; according to which, before the French blood
can be let into our Bodies, every drop of our own must be
drawn out of them.'

When these words were written England stood in
greater danger of invasion than she has known at any
later time, unless it were in the time of Napoleon.
Halifax had seen the Navy driven off the sea by the

GEORGE SAVILE 185

Dutch, and the shipping in the Thames burnt, yet
the people were slow to awake to their danger. In the
pamphlet entitled A Rough Draught of a New Model
at Sea, which was published in 1694, but was probably
written earlier, he tries to awaken them. He knew
the difficulty of the attempt.

' A Nation is a great while ', he observes, ' before they can
see, and generally they must feel first before their Sight is quite
cleared. This maketh it so long before they can see their
Interest, that for the most part it is too late for them to
pursue it : If Men must be supposed always to follow their
true Interest, it must be meant of a New Manufactory of
Mankind by God Almighty ; there must be some new Clay,
the old Stuff never yet made any such infallible Creature.'

Yet the means to safety was clear, and he puts it in
the forefront of his argument :

' I will make no other Introduction to the following Dis-
course, than that as the Importance of our being strong at
Sea, was ever very great, so in our present Circumstances it
is grown to be much greater ; because, as formerly our Force
of Shipping contributed greatly to our Trade and Safety ; so
now it is become indispensibly necessary to our very Being.

' It may be said now to England, Martha, Martha, thou art
busy about many things, but one thing is necessary. To
the Question, What shall we do to be saved in this World ?
there is no other Answer but this, Look to your Moate.

' The first Article of an English-man's Political Creed must
be. That he believeth in the Sea, If^c. without that there
needeth no General Council to pronounce him incapable of
Salvation here.'

This is all very modern, and so also are his recom-
mendations in the matter of commissions in the Navy.
It is perhaps no bad vindication of his opinions that
they are in complete agreement with the best practice
of the Navy from that time to this. There were those
who held that all naval officers should be gentlemen
born, as there were others who held that they should
all be tarpaulins — that is, men who had been bred

i86 GEORGE SAVILE

from boyhood to the rough work of practical seamen.
He discusses the merits and faults of both sorts of
officer, and rejects both proposals as evil extremes.
There must be a mixture, he holds, of the two classes,
in a proportion to be determined by experiment and
circumstance ; and the dangers that may attend the
mixture are to be avoided by one main precaution :

* The Gentlemen shall not be capable of bearing Office at
Sea^ except they be Tarpaulins too ; that is to say, except
they are so trained up by a continued habit of living at Sea^
that they may have a Right to be admitted free Denizens
of Wapping.*

There must be an end of sending idle young noble-
men to sea in positions of authority.

* When a Gentleman is preferr'd at Sea^ the Tarpaulin is
very apt to impute it to Friend or Favour : But if that Gentle-
man hath before his Preferment passed through all the Steps
which lead to it, so that he smelleth as much of Pitch and Tar,
as those that were Steadied in Sail-Cloath ; his having an
Escutcheon will be so far from doing him harm, that it will set
him upon the advantage Ground : It will draw a real Respect
to his Quality when so supported, and give him an Influence
and Authority infinitely superior to that which the meer Sea
man can ever pretend to.'

A sailor can never be fit to command till he has
learned to obey ; nor can he be trusted to inflict
punishments to which he has never been liable.

* When the undistinguish'd Discipline of a Ship hath tamed
the young Mastership, which is apt to arise from a Gentleman's
Birth and Education, he then groweth Proud in the right
place, and valueth himself first upon knowing his Duty, and
then upon doing it.'

The experience of the two wars with Holland had
plentifully illustrated the evils of which Halifax speaks ;
it was his own knowledge of human nature which
directed him so clearly to the remedy.

The works of Halifax all belong to the last ten years

GEORGE SAVILE 187

or so of his life. The earliest of them, The Character
of a Trimmer^ is a complete handbook to the politics
of the closing years of Charles the Second's reign. The
Letter to a Dissenter and The Anatomy of an Equivalent,
which followed it within a few months, are directed
against James the Second's famous attempt to buy off
the hostility of the Dissenters by including them in
his project of toleration. None of these tracts, when
first printed, bore the author's name. The naval tract
mentioned above, and the tract entitled Some Cautions
Offered to the Consideration of Those who are to Chuse
Members to Serve for the Ensuing Parliament^ are also
anonymous, and are his latest writings. When the
ensuing Parliament came to be elected he had been
six months dead. All his worldly wisdom shines in
this last tract, which, again, applies almost without
change to the circumstances of to-day. The last
satirical injunction has a strangely familiar ring :

' In the mean time, after having told my Opinion, Who
ought not to be Chosen :

' If I should be ask'd, Who ought to be, my Answer must be,
Chuse Englishmen ; and when I have said that, to deal honestly,
I will not undertake that they are easy to be found.'

In some ways his Advice to a Daughter, which, alone
among the writings published during his lifetime, seems
to have been carefully prepared by his own hand for
the press, is the most attractive of his works. It was
written for his daughter Elizabeth, who became the
wife of the third Earl of Chesterfield, and the mother
of a famous son. The habit of giving advice to the
younger generation would appear to have been here-
ditary in the family. But Halifax's social maxims are
more profound than Chesterfield's, as his political
maxims are more profound than Bolingbroke's. The
book was immensely popular ; it ran through some
twenty-five editions, and held the field for almost
a century, to be superseded at last by Dr. Gregory's

i88 GEORGE SAVILE

Father^s Legacy and Mrs. Chapone's Letters on the
Improvement of the Mind. The Advice is somewhat
melancholy in tone. The author sets before his
daughter no ideas of self-advancement, and indulges
her with scant hopes of happiness. There is too little
room in his scheme for the holiday virtues, and the
free play of impulse. * Whilst you are playing full of
Innocence, the spitefuU World will bite, except you
are guarded by your Caution.'' His words are a pro-
phylactic against the inevitable ills of life. His section
on a Husband is devoted mainly to considerations
which may palliate a husband's faults and vices. His
commandments are commandments without promise.
There is to be no relaxation ; life is one long fencing-
bout. ' You are to have as strict a Guard upon your-
self amongst your Children, as if you were amongst
your Enemies."* This is a wise remark, but it does not
make home seem a place of warmth and ease. The
same cold good sense and discernment govern his
thinking on such topics as Religion and Friendship.
He is judicious, sane, and balanced, but he does not
think of the world as a cheerful place.

Yet, with all this, there is something very moving
in his solicitude. His high principles of conduct and
his deep affection for his daughter peep out unwittingly
here and there. It is small wonder that the book was
cherished by her, and lay always upon her table. The
calm of the perfectly well-bred style forbids all direct
expression of the emotions, but the impression it makes
is all the greater. * When my Fears prevail, I shrink
as if I was struck, at the Prospect of Danger, to which
a young Woman must be expos'd.' His concluding
advice on the article of marriage has a pathos of its
own :

* That you would, as much as Nature will give you leave,
endeavour to forget the great Indulgence you have found at
home. After such a gentle Discipline as you have been under,

GEORGE SAVILE 189

every thing you dislike will seem the harsher to you. The
tenderness we have had for you, My Dear, is of another nature,
peculiar to kind Parents, and differing from that which you
will meet with first in any Family into which you shall be
transplanted ; and yet they may be very kind too, and afford
no justifiable reason to you to complain. You must not be
frighted with the first Appearances of a differing Scene ; for
when you are used to it, you may like the House you go to,
better than that you left ; and your Husband's Kindness will
have so much advantage of ours, that we shall yield up all
Competition, and as well as we love you, be very well contented
to Surrender to such a Rival.''

Something of the same fragrance makes itself felt in
the worldly wisdom of his advice concerning Censure :

' The Triumph of Wit is to make your good Nature subdue
your Censure ; to be quick in seeing Faults, and slow in exposing
them. You are to consider, that the invisible thing called
a Good Name, is made up of the Breath of Numbers that speak
well of you ; so that if by a disobliging Word you silence the
meanest, the Gale vnll be less strong which is to bear up your
Esteem. And though nothing is so vain as the eager pursuit
of empty Applause, yet to be well thought of, and to be kindly
used by the world, is like a Glory about a Womans Head ; 'tis
a Perfume she carrieth about with her, and leaveth where-
ever she goeth ; 'tis a Charm against Ill-will. Malice may
empty her Quiver, but cannot wound ; the Dirt will not
stick, the Jests will not take ; Without the consent of the
World a Scandal doth not go deep ; it is only a slight stroak
upon the injured Party and returneth with the greater force
upon those that gave it.'

The Character of King Charles II is a masterpiece.
Perhaps no such intimate portrait of an English King,
drawn by a contemporary, is to be found in the whole
course of our history. It makes us regret that Halifax
has left us so few descriptions of the persons whom
he knew. The tendency to aphorism and epigram is
strong, and the Character is full of brilliant sentences.
* Men given to dissembling are like Rooks at play,
they will cheat for shillings, they are so used to it.'

190 GEORGE SAVILE

* Mistresses are in all Respects craving Creatures.' But
the dispassionate analysis of the King's character and
motives ; the account given of the effect of his early
misfortune on his disposition ; and the incidental
pictures, for those who read between the lines, of the
daily life of the Court ; — all these are as convincing as
a scientific demonstration. The King's ruling passion,
the love of ease, was never so vividly drawn. Nothing
to him was worth purchasing at the price of a difficulty.
We see him surrounded by a crowd of importunate
beggars of both sexes ; he would walk fast to avoid
being engaged by them. ' He would slide from an
asking Face, and could guess very well.' When he was
brought to bay, he would buy off his tormentors by
large concessions for the sake of present ease. In this
way ' the King was made the Instrument to defraud
the Crown, which is somewhat extraordinary '. It is
plain to see, for all the delicacy with which the Royal
foibles are described, that Lord Halifax was not per-
fectly happy in the familiar company that the King
kept about him. * His Mistresses were such as did not
care that Wit of the best kind should have the Pre-
cedence in their Apartments.' The King delighted in
broad allusions, and made fun of those who would not
join in. He had a good memory, but told stories too
often, and at too great length. He appreciated wit,
but (and here is a cry from the soul) ' of all Men that
ever liked those who had Wit, he could the best endure
those who had none '. Yet the natural amiability and
sweetness of Charles's temper shines through all the
description. There is a certain attractiveness in his
impatience of the formalities of his position ; his
tendency to relapse into Charles Stuart and so regain
the freedom of a private estate. The closing eulogy
on this unfortunate and gentle Prince is a sincere and
true testimony from a competent witness :

' A Prince neither sharpened by his Misfortunes whilst

GEORGE SAVILE 191

Abroad, nor by his Power when restored, is such a shining
Character, that it is a Reproach not to be so dazzled with
it, as not to be able to see a Fault in its full Light. . . . He
is under the Protection of common Frailty, that must engage
Men for their own sakes not to be too severe, where they
themselves have so much to answer.'

The Political, Moral and Miscellaneous Thoughts and
Reflections is the most notable English collection of
Maxims, the nearest parallel and rival to the work of
La Rochefoucauld and La Bruyere. Popular proverbs,
it has often been remarked, are not very generous in
their treatment of humanity ; and a writer of apho-
risms, which are proverbs coined in a private mint, is
open to the same charge. An aphorism is an act of
judgement, and so can pretend to no higher merit than
justice, which is not the greatest of human virtues.
The beauties of human character are vague and living
things ; the deformities lend themselves more readily
to be outlined by a decisive pencil. Yet the aphorisms
of Halifax never sacrifice sense to wit, and always
provoke thought. His political reflections, especially,
could only have been written by a statesman of
experience. He is often severe, but he is no cynic.
* Men must be saved in this World ', he says, * by
their Want of Faith ' ; but he was not so foolish as to
deny the existence of unselfishness. * It is a Mistake
to say a Friend can be bought.' In his Character of
King Charles 11, commenting on the insatiability of
the King's followers, he falls into the same vein of
argument :

' I am of an Opinion, in which I am every Day more con-
firmed by Observation, that Gratitude is one of those things
that cannot be bought. It must be born with Men, or else
all the Obligations in the World will not create it. An outward
Shew may be made to satisfy Decency, and to prevent Reproach;
but a real Sense of a kind thing is a Gift of Nature, and never
was, nor can be acquired.'

192 GEORGE SAVILE

Yet even sincere Friendship has its weaknesses.
* Those Friends who are above Interest are seldom
above Jealousy.'

The aphorisms of Halifax are a better guide to the
world as it is than all the brilliancies of his epigram-
matic French contemporaries. His satire bears no
trace of disappointed ambition or poisoned egotism.
Some of his sayings are condensed treatises in their
weight of thought. Why is it that popularity is so
often suspect ? He puts his finger at once on the
answer. ' Popularity is a Crime from the Moment it
is sought ; it is only a Virtue where Men have it
whether they will or no.' Who has ever defined a Fool
better than in these few words : ' A Fool hath no
Dialogue within himself, the first Thought carrieth
him without the Reply of a second ' ? How could
the verdict of mankind on plaintive persons be more
truly expressed than in the sentences on Complaint^ —

' Complaining is a Contempt upon ones self :

' It is an ill Sign both of a Man's Head and of his Heart.

* A Man throweth himself down whilst he complaineth ;

and when a Man throweth himself down, no body careth to

take him up again.'

There is very little mention made of Halifax in the
writings of his contemporaries. Though he held a con-
spicuous station, he seems to have passed through life
observing rather than observed. A fascinating sketch
of him is given in Burnet's History of His Own Time,
as he appeared to that prelate of unbounded energy
and coarse perceptions. Virtue may win over vice ;
but intelligence cannot make a convert of stupidity.
Burnet, whose power in the State came late in Halifax's
career, is a good example of the bluff, hot-headed
partisan, to whom it is impossible to doubt that right
is all on one side. Halifax, we are told by a con-
temporary, * was never better pleased than when he
was turning Bishop Burnet and his politics into ridi-

GEORGE SAVILE 193

cule'. Burnet's verdict on Halifax will not mislead
those who have heard the Trimmer speak for himself :

' He was a man of a great and ready wit ; full of life, and very
pleasant ; much turned to satire. He let his wit run much
on matters of religion, so that he passed for a bold and deter-
mined atheist ; though he often protested to me he was not
one ; and said, he believed there was not one in the world :
he was a Christian in submission : he believed as much as he
could and he hoped that God would not lay it to his charge,
if he could not digest iron, as an ostrich did, nor take into his
belief things that must burst him : if he had any scruples, they
were not sought for, nor cherished by him ; for he never read
an atheistical book. In a fit of sickness I knew him very much
touched with a sense of religion. I was then often with him.
He seemed full of good purposes, but they went off with his
sickness. He was always talking of morality and friendship.
He was punctual in all payments, and just in all his private
dealings. But, with relation to the public, he went backwards
and forwards, and changed sides so often, that in conclusion
no side trusted him. He seemed full of commonwealth
notions, yet he went into the worst part of King Charles's
reign.'

He is the last of the long line of statesmen who
found it possible to govern England without paying
allegiance to party. Their day is past ; and the party
system is stronger now than it was in the time of the
Jacobites and Hanoverians. No better method has ever
been devised for the peaceful settlement of differences
of opinion on domestic questions. The nation is not
prepared to revive the custom of impeaching unpopular
ministers. Englishmen sometimes rail at party, as they
rail at cricket and football, but they know that there
is no escape from it. It deceives vainglorious partisans,
no doubt, and it offends righteous philosophers ; but
it suits the national temper. Yet there is no need to
be duped by it ; and any one who tries to think clearly
on politics must be a very wise man, or a very foolish
one, if he gets no help from the writings of the
Marquess of Halifax.

3600 o

THE BATTLE OF THE BOOKS^

Among all the nugatory quarrels that have engaged
the irritable and expressive race of authors, the dispute
that arose at the end of the seventeenth century^ con-
cerning the comparative merits of the Ancients and
Moderns, might seem, for intrinsic vanity, to bear
away the bell. Academic in its origin, it might, at first
sight, be condemned as academic also in its essence.
Whether Milton is a greater or less poet than Virgil,
whether Moliere is to be ranked above or below
Aristophanes for wit, whether Aristotle or Descartes
had the more penetrating intellect, are questions
seldom asked in our own day, save by those who are
paid to puzzle the students of a University or the
future rulers of India. Debating societies nourish their
idle dialectic on just such knotty points. And, indeed,
the very history of the famous dispute seems to declare
it both artificial and trivial. When Charles Perrault,
the versatile architect, who first broached the question
at a session of the French Academy in 1687, had
siiccessfully aroused the ire of the great classical critic
of the age, his paradox had doubtless served its im-
mediate end. Sir William Temple, who opened the
English campaign with his ' Essay upon the Ancient
and Modern Learning ', was a retired statesman, who
beguiled his leisure with gardening and the classics.
The greater combatants were drawn into the fray by
the merest accident, or chapter of accidents. A single
error of Sir William Temple's gave Richard Bentley
an opportunity for the display of his marvellous
scholarship, and Jonathan Swift^seized the occasion to

^ Reprinted from Costnopolis, February 1897.

THE BATTLE OF THE BOOKS 195

exercise upon the presumption of the Moderns that
splendid satirical power which, in its more mature j
development, chose for its adversary the human race. '
But these two were auxiliaries and free-lances in the
main action, with ends of their own to serve ; Bentley,
after taking the spolia opima from the generals of the
Ancients, retired into his private tent, and Swift con-
centrated his fury upon the party of the Moderns,
because he knew them better than the Ancients, and
could attack them with more effect. The fortunes of
the main battle were confused rather than determined
by the single-handed exploits of these brilliant adven-
turers, their prowess served merely to illuminate some
of the minor incidents in a long and dull campaign.
Long and dull though it be, it is worthy the attention
of the student of literature and the historian of
thought, nor are the issues involved so trifling as they
appear. The comparison of individual champions on
the one side or the other is, no doubt, as futile as the
question whether a black pawn is better or worse than
a white ; pawns take their value from their position
on the chess-board, and the board in this case was as
wide as human thought and human activity. The
stakes for which the game was played were no less
than the ideals of progress and of science, the right
of a nation to its own literature, the enfranchisement
of art from the eternal reproduction of old models,
and of science from the dogmatic pedantry of the
schools. Tljejv^r. began with the Renaissance of
-Learriing, and found no close with the Revival of
Romance. It is no matter for wonder, therefore, that
in France, where the study of literature has borne its
best fruit, the subject has attracted the attention of
critics and historians, and has been minutely illustrated
by the admirable treatise of M. H. Rigault.^ In

^ H. Rigault, (Euvres ComflHeSy Paris, 1859. Tome i, Histoire de la
Querelle des Anciens et des Modemes.

o 2

196 THE BATTLE OF THE BOOKS

England, the controversy, although derivative in its
origin, developed on different lines, and certain aspects
of it, little apparent in the v^^orks of Fontenelle and
Perrault, Boileau and Madame Dacier, come into note-
yvorthy prominence in the hands of the English sjip-
^orters of the tv^o parties. The waging of the war
ground the names of certain selected ancient and
modern worthies lent itself to diversity of treatment.
Differences on a well-defined point of principle are
soon reconciled, or seen to be irreconcilable ; in
quarrels about persons, on the other hand, the antago-
nists engage through interest or taste, and are com-
pelled to define principles for themselves. In this
process of definition the intellectual tendencies of an
age or country are manifested ; the main battle in
England rages round a point that lay in the neglected
outskirts of the French quarrel.

The seeds of all the strife lay hid in the complexities
of the Renaissance. That great vague evenjLJay-its
very name implies the resuscitation of the ancient
world to preside at the birth of the modern. Aristotle,
yrhOf from being a man and a Greek, had sunk into
a system and a dogma, Aquinas, who was Aristotle
sainted, were cast out from their universal empire,
aijd the new world apprenticed itself to the pagan
civilizations of Greece and Rome. It was inevitable,
when the first fine excess of superstitious veneration
bad spent itself, when the scholars and antiquaries had
done their work, that the awakened nations of Europe
should seek to better the instructions given them, and
should match themselves with their masters in original
achievement. The restorer and editor of texts gave
way to the translator,* and he in his turn to the poet ;
the reasoner, who based the structure of his thought
on a skilful arrangement of quotation quarried from
the works of the ancient philosophers, saw rising beside
him other palaces of truth, compact of new material

THE BATTLE OF THE BOOKS 197

won by infinite labour from the bowels of the earth
itself. The craft learned in the schools of the Ancients
was put to new and unexampled uses ; epics took for
their subject the mysteries of the Christian religion ;
systems subversive of ancient tradition were wrought
by Descartes and Bacon, and signed with their names.
Yet this emancipation from the servitude of apprentice-
ship was not achieved in a day ; the very splendour
of the old models held the new workers long enthralled,
and, in the realm of the arts at least, originality was
often the outcome of modesty. Ariosto wrote his
great poem in Italian, because by writing in Latin
' he thought he could not attain to the highest place
of praise, the same being before occupied by divers,
and especially Virgil and Ovid'. Milton, a century
later, alleges the same reason for his choice of the
English tongue, although patriotism had its due weight
with him as with Ariosto, and he, too, was willing
' to enrich his own language with such writings as
might make it in more account with other nations '.
Yet a century later, and Gray's early ambitions pre-
ferred the Latin before his native tongue, while even
the author of the English Dictionary could not be
induced by the united supplications of his friends to
write Goldsmith's epitaph in the language of which
ke_:ffi:a5 the greatest living master. So slowly did the
native speech of Shakespeare vindicate its right to
appear on occasions of ceremony in its own country.

In the French Academy it was the Moderns who
instituted the comparison and began the fray ; in the
world at large it was rather the blind pjarlisans of
the Ancients who forced the q^uarrel on a reluctant
adversary by decrying all novelty in art and ridiculing
all^xperiment in science. The great artists and poets
of modern times were not guilty of raising their hands,
in impious absurdity, against their teachers. Ben
Jonson and Milton, Dryden and Gray, to take a few

198 THE BATTLE OF THE BOOKS

names of English poets at a venture, are not men
whom it is easy to accuse of holding antiquity in light
esteem. Even among the pioneers of modern thought,
who encountered a much more formidable opposition
than the artists, Hobbes translated Homer and Thucy-
dides, and Bacon rifled the treasuries of ancient
wisdom. But the very men who reverenced the
Ancients most, and most intelligently, found it impos-
sible to avoid all combat, when the great names of
.old time became the battle-cry and the rallying point
of exasperated stupidity and vainglorious pedantry.
Foremost among the reactionary influences, whether
of the sixteenth or seventeenth centuries, may be
reckoned the English Universities. In the earlier part
of the sixteenth century they fought hard against the
study of Greek, in the later part it is strange to note
how little the men of the Renaissance, the true
inheritors of antiquity, owed to them. And in the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the Universities
afforded shelter and alms to the pugnacious dotage
of scholasticism. The earliest historian of the Royal
Society, in discussing the corruptions of learning,
indicates with great clearness the weakness of these
venerable institutions. ' Seats of knowledge ', he says,
' have been for the most part heretofore, not labora-
tories, as they ought to be, but only schools, where
some have taught and all the rest subscribed.' Hence
follows * not only a continuance, but an increase of
the yoke upon our reasons ' ; and the most docile of
pupils becomes the most imperious of masters, when,
by a vicious circle, he who learns only that he may
teach succeeds to the office of him who taught only
as he had learned. The Universities therefore, the
home of those who ' hastily catch things in small
systems, before they have broken their pride ', .usurped-
the championship of the Ancients, and tilted with all
the weight of an organization against the free valour

THE BATTLE OF THE BOOKS 199

of the best of their offspring. Yet the quarrel, although
espoused by them, was not theirs by right. For the
Renaissance itself was a twin birth, and the two move-
ments for which it is a name were fated from the first
to come into conflict. The one sought a closer sti;idy
of ancient masterpieces in art and letters, and a reverent
^discipleship, the other sought an escape from the
tyranny 6i the Ancients in tne domain of science and
philosophy. The one movement might be typified by
the discovery of Plato, the other by the discovery of
America. In their early union against Mediaevalism,
these inherent differences of character were overlooked,
or undeveloped, and it was not so easy then as it is
now to perceive that the allies attacked their foe for
opposite reasons ; the one because the mediaeval world
had betrayed the teaching of the Ancients in art and
letters, the other because it had adopted and organized
the teaching of the Ancients in science. When the
din and smoke of that conflict had begun to clear
away, the successful allies became rivals, and the
followers of Galileo or of Descartes found their critics
and assailants in men who, like themselves, were the
children of the Revival of Learning. This perhaps is
the main aspect of a difference which received noj
formal expression until the end of the seventeenths
century, and no adequate treatment until much later, j
In the discourses contributed to the quarrel, whether
in England or France, questions of style and of thought,
of art and of science, are entangled in bewildering
confusion ; Homer is impugned for the ignorance of
Hippocrates, and the discoverer of the circulation of
the blood incurs a share of the learned contempt that
is lavished on Gondibert. Nor are the issues plain
to disentangle by the light of history, for the new
philosophy claimed and exercised a strong influence
on English literary style ; while, on the other hand,
scholars deeply read in the lore of the Ancients knew

200 THE BATTLE OF THE BOOKS

how little of fundamental wisdom, civil and ethical, was
left for the Moderns to discover, and cheapened the
fruits of physical science by the comparison, '^e^ve.r-.
I thelesa. jthe .quar^^ may be regarded as -lying-mainly
} ^Jtween the Arts on the part of the Ancients* and. Jthi-
I ,Sciences on the part of the Moderns ; the various
purely literary or purely scientific points involved may
be treated as side issues. It is the chief interest of
the English quarrel that it brings this aspect into high
relief. It has never been easy in England to bespeak
public attention for a question of literary criticism,
and such in the main was the question debated in
France. But the rapid growth of scientific research
un the seventeenth_£entury, the foundation of the
Eoyal Society, the extravagant expectations entfix-
t^ined by.its members and admirers, and the existence
of a large body of wits and theologians who flung
themselves into opposition, w^re circumstances favour-
able to the simplification, in England, of the issues
involved in the original, debate. Between the sciences
and the abetters of polite learning the English battle
was fought, and its outcome, tardily apparent, was no
victory, but a definition of the causes of conflict,
a general amnesty, and a partition of the empire of
human knowledge and human activity between the
belligerents. The treaty whereby this pacification was
effected bears no name, and its authority is still from
time to time set at naught by a Hebrew scholar who
combats the conclusions of geology, or a physicist who
applies laboratory methods to determining the nature
and destiny of the soul. The quarrel of the Ancients
and Moderns marks the beginning of that long process
whereby there arose the system of federated provinces
which is modern learning, and the chaos, of- options
-which is modern education.

Cross issues, darkening and blurring the main
question that underlies the English struggle, there

THE BATTLE OF THE BOOKS 201

were in plenty, never to be enumerated in a single
essay. One of these should, perhaps, be mentioned,
if only to be set aside. The great men of Greece and
Rome, as has often been remarked, were pagans, and
the early Revival of Learning had to encounter a
strenuous opposition based on that fact. It might
therefore be expected that the forces of theology
would be found arrayed against the Ancients. So it
was in the early centuries of Christianity ; so it was,
again, at the time of the Renaissance. But before the
later controversy came to a head, this older feud had
been settled on a basis of practical compromise.
Christianity agreed to commit to the Ancients a f.air
s]iare in the education of the young, and an almost
complete autocracy in matters of poetry and taste.
There still were fervent and logical minds, both in
France and England, that demurred to one or other
of these concessions. The question of the fitness of
Chrictian story and doctrine for poetic treatment was
long a burning one ; Desmarets de Saint -Sorlin, one
of the earliest French assailants of the Ancients, chose
this ground for his attack, and illustrated his theory
in the sacred poem of Clovis, which Boileau could
not read. About the same time Cowley attempted
a Biblical epic in the Davideis, which satisfied
neither himself nor his admirers, and was left incom-
plete. It was Boileau who formulated the verdict of
the majority of seventeenth-century critics in his
refusal to allow poetic imagination to cast the glamour
of fable on the severe truths of Christianity by adorning
them with superfluous fiction. The publication, a few
years earlier, of Milton's amazing poem has often been
cited to the discredit of the French critic, but Paradise
Lost proves nothing. Its strange blend of the Cal-
vinistic theodicy with the pagan fables, of zeal for the
old poetry with a lively interest in the new science,
makes the greatest poem in the English language an

202 THE BATTLE OF THE BOOKS

exposition of nothing but its author ; and Johnson,
who praised it without restraint, held fast by the
opinion of Boileau. That opinion, however lamentably
justified by the example of most so-called sacred poems,
rests in theory on a conception of poetry at once
depreciatory and tolerant. For the age of Louis XIV
or of Queen Anne poetry was one of the decorative
arts, the works of Lucretius were relegated to the
domain of ornament and fancy, and the mysteries of
Christianity confined, with equal rigidity, to the
domain of fact. The demarcation was complete, the
fortification of the frontier strong, and an elegant code
of international comity permitted the cultivation of
a polite acquaintance with the famous Ancients. But
the new philosophers, the Cartesians and the men of
Gresham, who were marking out the site of their new
Atlantis in the very heart of the domain of fact, could
hardly be regarded by the orthodox world with the
\same complacent suavity. Their claims were large,
Vnd, worse than large, indefinite. Already they had
encroached on sacred precincts, and, in spite of their
protests of esteem, they seemed likely to encroach
farther. Thomas Burnet, whose Theory of the Earth
had a share in suggesting to Sir William Temple the
desirability of humbling the Moderns, startled the
public only a few years later by propounding, in his
Archaeologiae Philosophic ae (1692), an allegorical inter-
pretation of the first few chapters of Genesis. Educa-
tion and instinct alike, the pride that took pleasure in
an innocent commerce with the classics, and the fear
that divined an endless heritage of strife from the
pretensions of the Moderns, combined to throw the
Church, forgetful of past differences, into the arms of
the Ancients. Enlightened Churchmen not a few, like
Bishop Wilkins, Glanvill, and Sprat, were to be found
in the very front ranks of the Royal Society. But that
they were conscious of the novelty of their position is

THE BATTLE OF THE BOOKS 203

shown by their passionate professions of orthodoxy,
their exclusion of theology from the scope of their
method, and their indignant vindication of themselves
and their fellows from the oft-repeated charge of
atheism. The Church at large was against them, and
the wits, for once in a way, in the reign of King
Charles H sided with the Church. Thus it was that
the brunt of the battle on_ the side of the_Moderns
was borne in England by tEe upholders of science, and
the literary and artistic excellences of the modern
virorid found no capable exponent. William Wotton,
who wrote a book in answer to Sir WiUiam Temple's
essay, gives away one-half of the cause of his party
with almost indecent alacrity, in order that he may
win a more favourable consideration for the other
half — the claims of modern research. His choice of
concession is doubtless wise, but a better fighter might
have found it worth while to mention Shakespeare,
whose name is not once invoked from the beginning
to the end of the quarrel proper.

To find the counterpart of the literary dispute that
made such a stir in the French Academy the English
_historian must hark back to an earlier period. The
rebellion against the rule of the Ancients in matters
of literature could never gather force in England, where
from the first they had exercised a strictly limited
monarchy. In the time of Elizabeth the attempt was
nj^ade to impose on English poetry the despotism of
classical models, and was successfully and decisively
resisted. The tide of the Renaissance reached these
shores so late, and came at last with such overwhelming
suddenness, that before purely classical learning had
time to establish itself in secure mastery a crowd of
newer models, Italian farces and romances, French
essays and sacred poems, came huddling on its heels.
In the two topics of fiercest debate, the observance
of the conventions of the classical drama and the

204 THE BATTLE OF THE BOOKS

introduction of classical quantitative measures, the
Elizabethan party of the Ancients was defeated by
the accomplished fact rather than by the arguments
of their opponents. Tajnburlaine and the Faerie
Queene were more effective than a shopful of pamphlets
lor the laying of thnseJjtroils. The populace applauded
the romantic drama, the new romantic metres sang
in the heads of the young, and the destinies of the
national literature were settled at a blow. The old
controversies lingered on tediously, without audience.
Already, before the end of the century, England had
poets and dramatists who might be matched, by the
enthusiasm of their eulogists, with the proudest of
the Ancients. Francis Meres in his Palladis Tamia
sets up such a comparison at length, ordering poetry
according to its kinds, and quoting an array of incon-
siderable English names under each head, with the
name of Shakespeare thrown in ubiquitously as a make-
weight. But this pedantic little treatise is undertaken
only by way of literary pastime, the Moderns are
pleasantly glorified at no cost to the Ancients. Simi-
larly the tract included in Camden's Remains, wherein
the worthiness of the English tongue is set forth, owed
the suggestion of its theme to Estienne's Precellence
de la Langue Frangoise, and dealt with a question that
no longer hung in the balance. A more serious import
must be attached to Ben Jonson's famous verses, for
he speaks with authority, and there is something more
than friendship, or the licence of an epitaph, in his
setting the tragedies of Shakespeare over against the
works of the mighty three :

Or when thy socks were on,
Leave thee alone for the comparison
Of all that insolent Greece, or haughty Rome,
Sent forth, or since did from their ashes come.

As if to vindicate the gravity of his judgment,
Jonson grants the same merit to one other of his

THE BATTLE OF THE BOOKS 205

contemporaries, even to the repetition of the phrase.
The Lord Verulam, he says in his Discoveries, hath
* performed that in our tongue which may be com-
pared or preferred either to insolent Greece or haughty
Rome '. This pair of names can support the national
cause better than all the light-armed troops enrolled
against the Latins by Meres.

Complimentary comparisons of this kind, it may be
said truly, make no quarrels. They are incidental to
an age that took its very quality from the classics, and
accepted them as the standard of literary measurement.
Nevertheless, the elements of the later French dispute
may be found in Elizabethan England, and if they
smouldered to extinction, it was for lack of fuel.
Those who had never been galled by the yoke of the
classics could not attempt to throw it off, but they
defied the repeated attempts to impose it. The last
echoes of this war for the preservation of independence
may be caught in Samuel Daniel's Defence of Rhyme
(1601). Directed ostensibly to the support of a single
position, this noble treatise takes occasion to survey
the whole field of action. In his dramas Daniel
followed classical precedent ; for the rest he was an
assured romantic. The question of rhyme is the least
part of his pamphlet ; it is handled briefly and fitfully.
In our modern stanzas, he says, ' the apt planting the
sentence where it may best stand to hit the certain
close of delight with the full body of a just period
well carried, is such, as neither the Greeks or Latins
ever attained unto '. But he passes on to wider con-
siderations, and in more places than one anticipates
Fontenelle and Perrault. * The distribution of gifts
is universal, and all seasons have them in some sort.
We must not think but that there were Scipios,
Caesars, Catos, and Pompeys, born elsewhere than at
Rome ; the rest of the world hath ever had them in
the same degree of nature, though not of state.' An

2o6 THE BATTLE OF THE BOOKS

eloquent and appreciative defence of the Middle Ages
is brought in with an exordium that shows Daniel at
his best, for catholicity of judgment and tuneful
cadence of prose :

* Methinks we should not so soon yield up our consents
captive to the authority of antiquity, unless we saw more
reason ; all our understandings are not to be built by the
square of Greece and Italy. We are the children of nature as
well as they, we are not so placed out of the way of judgment
but that the same sun of discretion shineth upon us ; we have
our portion of the same virtues as well as of the same vices, et
Catilinam quocunque in populo videas, quocunque sub axe. . . .
It is not the observing of their trochaics nor their iambics that
will make our writings aught the wiser ; all their poesy, and all
their philosophy, is nothing, unless we bring the discerning
Hght of conceit with us to apply it to use. It is not books, but
only that great book of the world, and the all over-spreading
grace of Heaven that makes men truly judicial. Nor can it
but touch of arrogant ignorance, to hold this or that nation
barbarous, these or those times gross, considering how this
manifold creature man, wheresoever he stand in the world,
hath always some disposition of worth, entertains the order of
society, affects that which is most in use, and is eminent in
some one thing or other that fits his humour and the times.'

That is finely said ; it contains, in epitome, the best
of the case for the Moderns, and makes of comparison
an instrument of appreciation, not of contempt. The
later solution of the literary controversy is here fore-
shadowed. But in England the memory of the abortive
conflict died away, and the national literature, free to
follow its own bent, strayed farther every year from
the simplicity of classic models. Ovid had always
exercised a more potent influence than Virgil on the
English literature of the Renaissance, but Ovid is
a hermit for austerity by the glittering conceits of
Donne and his followers. X}?£jfl^eory_j3l_ilie--new
English ppetr_y-Was_S£t_ forth byTJavcnant with some
jimplitudeJELhifi prffacs t*^ Gondihert (165 1), wherein
the defence of his own poem is rested on a belittling

THE BATTLE OF THE BOOKS 207

of the Ancients. Homer, says the author, has proved
* rather a guide for those whose satisfied wit will not
venture beyond the track of others, than to them who
affect a new and remote way of thinking, who esteem
it a deficiency and meanness of mind to stay and
depend upon the authority of example '. This utter-
ance might be taken for a defence of the remote and
unexampled figures with which the poem is crowded,
but Davenant is not satisfied with defence. The
ancientsjffiere-Aot-only lacking in tha true salt o£ wit,
they were guilty of a gross and positive fault in the
introduction of supernatural machinery. One by one
they are summoned to the bar ; one by one they are
condemned on the same count — for their unnatural
fictions. Statins stands convicted of following Virgil,
as Virgil followed Homer, * where Nature never comes,
even into Heaven and Hell '. This complaint is the
cry, not of outraged piety, like that of Desmarets, but
ol offended rationalism. And Hobbes, to whom the
preface was addressed, lifted hands of blessing, and
predicted that Gondibert * would last as long as either
the Aeneid or the Iliad, but for one disadvantage ;
and the disadvantage is this : the languages of the
Greeks and Romans (by their colonies and conquests)
have put off flesh and blood, and are become immu-
table, which none of the modern tongues are like to
be '. He followed the way of praise that Davenant
showed him, and whereas Sidney, in the sixteenth
century, had commended the ancient poets for theiij
notable invention of * Heroes, demi-Gods, Cyclops,^
Chimeras, Furies, and such-like ', Hobbes falls foul of \
them for their * monsters and beastly giants '. Wallei.J^
and Cowley took their tune from the philosopher, and ^
swelled the. _ chorus with commendatory verses Jn
honour of the book :

Which no bold tales of Gods or Monsters swellj
But human passions, such as with us dwell.

\

2o8 THE BATTLE OF THE BOOKS

' Davenant,' said Cowley, * like some adventurous
knight-errant, had invaded the fairyland of poetry,
and rescued it, by virtue of his sacred arms, from the
cursed race of enchanters and demons, restoring it to
Truth and Nature.'

Had King James I, as he was urged to do, founded
an Academy of Letters, there might have been a place
of honour for the response to this challenge. Even in
their scattered and distracted state, the Royalist wits
were not so preoccupied with politics as to let it pass
unnoticed. A few of them banded together to pelt
the unfortunate poet with epigram and to ridicule
the judgment of his admirers. But this * mob of
gentlemen ' was fitter to banter Davenant's personal
deformities than to undertake the serious defence of
the Ancients on the ground that he had chosen for
his attack. Indeed, one of the most fashionable diver-
sions of the wits lay in travesties of the classical epics,
depending for their mirthful effect on a ribald parody
of the divinities of the Ancients. Davenant's Return
to Nature was no crotchet or fancy of his own, but
a faithful following of the spirit of the time ; the
Nature that he returned to was the Nature,, not of
the poets, but of the new school of philosophers ;
and the conquest of literature by philosophy was
crowned with a theory of diction, propounded for the
occasion by Hobbes, to the effect that poetry should
"Borrow its expression not chiefly from books, * the
ordinary boxes of counterfeit complexion ', but from
experience and a knowledge of Nature.

The seventeenth century in England was pre-
eminently~tHe age of the rise of Science. From the
death of Bacon onwards the proposals for an English
Academy that appeared from time to time were, fOr
the most part, lik^ Evelyn's, Cowley's, and Sir William
Petty's, schemes for the endowment of experimental
research. When at last, in 1662, the * Invisible

THE BATTLE OF THE BOOKS 209

College ' received its charter, and became the Royal
Society, the feud between the Aacients - and- the
Moderns broke out afresh. The Moderns were now
incorporate, and therefore easier of attack ; they were
subjected to a running fire of derision and invective.
Evelyn wittily compares the assailants of the Society
to Sanballat the Horonite and the rest of those who
laughed to scorn the building of Jerusalem, and
eloquently adds — ' let us rise up and build ! ' But
most of the wit was on the other side, and when
ridicule of the Puritan grew stale, the new * virtuoso '
took his place as a stock subject of satire. Samuel
Butler in his later years directed his shafts of wit
against the new Society for its credulity and the
triviality of its researches ; Shadwell, in his play The
Virtuoso, treats scientific research as a ' humour * or
mental twist, and embodies the new philosophy in
Sir Nicholas Gimcrack, who holds that * 'tis below
a Virtuoso to trouble himself with men and manners ',
but is deeply seen in the nature of ants, flies, bumble-
bees, and earwigs. The mathematical and physical
sciences soon put themselves, by the work of Newton
and Boyle, beyond the reach of contempt, although
in 1 66 1 the assertion of the motion of the earth was
still entertained, on the testimony of Glanvill, with
the hoot of the rabble. It was on the achievements
of these sciences, and on the physiological researches
of Harvey, Willis, and others, that Wotton based the
most important part of his case for the Moderns. But
the long infancy of chemistry and biology gave bur-
lesque an enduring theme ; Gay, Goldsmith, and
Johnson, each in his turn drew satirical portraits of
the men who proceed, * laborious in trifles, constant
in experiment ; without one single abstraction by
which alone ', according to Goldsmith, * knowledge
may be properly said to increase '.

There is no doubt that the new philosophy had

3600 p

2IO THE BATTLE OF THE BOOKS

a profound influence on literature as well as on thought,
and that the foundation of the Royal Society gave to
scientific questions in England something of the public
prominence that literature enjoyed in France. In the
first place, many of its original members were menu of
letters, interested in questions of style, and sonae of
them set themselves to remedy the excesses of English
prose. Glanvill, in his Vanity of Dogmatising, attacks
* the vain idolizing of authors, which gave birth to
that silly vanity of impertinent citations, and inducing
authority in things neither requiring nor deserving it '.
Sprat, in his History of the Royal Society, devotes an
admirable passage to a description of the mists and
uncertainties brought upon knowledge by the specious
tropes and figures of eloquence, and proposes the
formal establishment of an English Academy to bring
the language to its last perfection. That the efforts
of these men, and others like-minded, had a very real
influence on practice is witnessed by Wotton at the
close of his Reflections upon Ancient and Modern
Learning. The new philosophy, he says, in the course
of half a century has almost abolished pedantry ; and
the young men of his own time are taught ' to laugh
at that frequent citation of scraps of Latin in common
discourse, or upon arguments that do not require it,
and that nauseous ostentation of reading and scholar-
ship in public companies, which formerly was so much
in fashion '. In short, the ' virtuosi ' bore their own
share in bringing in the lucid and elegant style of the
age of Queen Anne.

^ In the second place, the extravagant speculations
and fantasies of the men of Gresham, which naturally
gained a wider notoriety than their more sober
researches, alienated scholars, and gained for them the
reputation of fanatics. They were too apt, in the
public advocacy of their cause, to discount the future
revenue of science at a liberal estimate, and take it out

THE BATTLE OF THE BOOKS 211

in immediate self-sufficiency. * Should these heroes go
on ', says Glanvill, the ablest writer of them all, * as
they have happily begun, they will fill the world with
wonders. ... It may be some ages hence a voyage to
the southern unknown tracts, yea, possibly the moon,
will not be more strange than one to America.' He
goes on to speak, in a passage that long echoed in
literature, of the invention of wings, the restoration of
juvenility to the old, and the turning of the earth into
a paradise by improvements in agriculture. Visions
such as these moved philosophers like Hobbes to remind
experimental science of its limits, and to deny to its
apostles an exclusive property in the Millennium ; by
men of culture, like Temple, they were attributed to
the pretentiousness of ignorance. It is impossible,
without a knowledge of the controversies that sur-
rounded the Royal Society, to understand the indigna-
tion that moved Temple to write his essay. His ears
had been besieged for decades with the self-gratulation
of the new age. In the peace of his retirement, with
old books for his companions, there reached him the
noise of the French quarrel. It may be that Saint-
Evremond had introduced the question some years
earlier into the polite circles and literary coffee-houses
of England. But it is certain that Temple's con-
tribution to the discussion drew more than half its
inspiration from the quarrels that had raged around
the early steps of the Royal Society. The question
of literary criticism he was willing enough to treat,
but in England it lacked interest, for there were no
pretenders to be humbled, except Davenant, who was
long dead. TQie^ arrogance of the Moderns was em-
bodied for the time in the promulgators of the experi-
mental philosophy. Against them, therefore, the
retired statesman directed theJteenest shafts of his
urbane raillery.
Thus in 1692, with Sir William Temp^^'s essay, the

p 2

212 THE BATTLE OF THE BOOKS

quarrel proper began in England. Temple was well
^equipped in one way, for he was thoroughly conversant
witli the French quarrel, and his diplomatic career
had kept him in touch with polite circles in France.
Further, he owned an almost passionate attachment
to poetry, and criticized it with spirit and judgment
from a distinctly romantic standpoint. But there his
qualifications ended ; for the heroic labour that he
undertook his knowledge of the classics was hardly
adequate, and his acquaintance with the sciences must
have been gathered from conversations unwillingly
overheard. He was unfortunate, moreover, or unwise,
in the line of argument he marked out for himself,
and in the tone he adopted. The Moderns were pro-
digiously serious in their pretensions, and Temple,
from the elevation of his urbanity, might have reproved
their self-esteem without exposing himself to any
dangerous retort. Determined as he was to dog-
matize, he might still have learned from Fontenelle,
whose Digression sur les anciens et sur les modernes he
had read, how well an air of moderation may be made
to carry off the easy generalizations of a brilliant talker.
But he was bent on gaining a victory all along the
line, and in the effort to exhaust his subject he ran
into a hundred blunders. The genuine merits of the
Moderns he depreciates or disallows. ' There is
nothing new in Astronomy ', he remarks, * to vie with
the ancients, unless it be the Copernican system ; nor
in Physic, unless Harvey's circulation of the blood.'
Even these, he suggests, are imperfectly established,
or perhaps were known to the ancients, and are, in
any case, of little use to the world. Of the arts in
England, all the knowledge that he cares to display
might have been gathered by an ambassador from
abroad in three weeks. Sidney, Bacon, and Selden
are the only English authors deemed worthy of praise.
English music is ignored, but Orpheus and Arion are

THE BATTLE OF THE BOOKS 213

allowed to plead their great renown. If there were
one law for the Greeks and for the English, Merlin,
Taliessin, and Guy of Warwick should have been
summoned along with the Seven Sages, and permitted
to establish their case by bringing evidence as to
character.

Most of the errors of the essay, if they had not been
exposed by Macaulay, could very readily be corrected
by Macaulay's school-boy. But the business would be
at least as idle as the other tasks imposed upon that
repulsive young gentleman by his creator, for the basis
of Temple's position is not a reasoned belief, but
a prejudice. All the hollow apparatus of conjecture
whereby he derives Greek learning from Egypt, China,
and the Brahmins, is the merest flummery, concealing
a method of proof that begs the question. Man starts
on his journey through the ages well provided with
the luggage of learning, and the trifles that he accu-
mulates in his later days cannot compensate the
magnificent losses of his prime. What he possesses of
value he must have brought ; what he lacks he has
probably lost. Temple disbelieved in progress, and
held, with Sir Thomas Browne, that 'tis too late to
be ambitious. Yet his prejudice is his virtue, and the
finest and truest sentences in the essay draw their
strength from perennial founts.

* What would we have ', he cries, ' unless it be other natures
and beings than God Almighty has given us ? The height of
our statures may be six or seven feet, and we would have it
sixteen ; the length of our age may reach to a hundred years,
and we would have it a thousand. We are born to grovel
upon the earth, and we would fain soar up to the skies. We
pretend to give a clear account how thunder and Hghtning
(that great artillery of God Almighty) is produced, and we
cannot comprehend how the voice of man is framed, that
poor little noise we make every time we speak. The motion of
the sun is plain and evident to some astronomers, and of the
earth to others, yet we none of us know which of theni moves,

214 THE BATTLE OF THE BOOKS

and meet with many seeming impossibilities in both, and beyond
the fathom of human reason and comprehension. Nay, we
do not so much as know what motion is, nor how a stone moves
from our hand when we throw it across the street. Of all these
that most ancient and divine writer gives the best account in
that short satire, " Vain man would fain be wise when he is
born like a wild ass's colt ".'

There speaks the humane scholar and man of the
world, convinced, from his experience and reading, of
the infinite littleness of human affairs. The same
ideas, in language as eloquent, had been employed by
Glanvill to abash the confidence of the Aristotelians ;
and, indeed, they leave the question at issue where they
found it. In a second essay, written in answer to
some of his critics, and puBlFslied postliumously,
T^ple points his criticisms more explicitly at ' the
airy speculations of those who have passed for the
great advancers of knowledge and learning these last
fifty years ' ; and makes excellent fun of the universal
medicine, ' which will certainly cure all that have it ',
the philosopher's stone, ' which will be found out by
men that care not for riches ', the universal language,
' which may serve all men's turn when they have
forgot their own ', the art of flying, ' till a man happens
to fall down and break his neck ', and the new world
in the moon, where the modern sages, whose dreams
are wilder and less witty than those of Ariosto, may
perchance find their lost senses. He died in the belief
that the new movement which his manhood and age
had witnessed was a melancholy aberration of decadent
humanity.

Temple's first essay made some stir in the world ;
it was translated at once into French, and was answered
in England by William Wotton, chaplain to the Earl
of Nottingham, in a treatise entitled Reflections upon
Ancient and Modern Learning (1694). Wotton treats
his distinguished adversary with an almost timorous

THE BATTLE OF THE BOOKS 215

deference, but his book js remarkable,, for its -breadth
of view and for the real acquaintance with contemn
porary science that it displays. Its treatment of the
question that called it forth is enlightened and judicial,
nothing is unduly pressed, and nothing insolently
assumed. It is interesting to note Wotton's complaint
that ' natural knowledge ' had fallen from the esteem
it enjoyed twenty years before, and that experimental
research, which weathered the attack of its theological
adversaries, was beginning to lose vogue under the
steady stream of public ridicule, so that those who
had opulent fortunes and a love of learning shrank
from exposing themselves to obloquy. But the interest
of Wotton's book soon paled in the glare of a fiercer
dispute. In the course of his dissertation on ancient
literature. Temple had specially commended Phalaris
and Aesop as the two earliest writers of Greek prose.
This called forth, on the one hand, a new edition of
the Letters of Phalaris^ by the Hon. Charles Boyle, in
1695 ; and, on the other, a demonstration of the
spuriousness of those letters in an essay contributed
to the second edition of Wotton's book by Richard
Bentley. The details of the famous war that ensued
have engaged many pens, and are irrelevant to the
main battle, which, indeed, was suspended, that the
rival hosts might enjoy the spectacle of that combat
of heroes. Swift's Battle of the Books, written in Sir
WilHam Temple's house, but nat published till 1704,
and Bentley's great Dissertation of 1699, are monu-
ments that have preserved the memory of the lesser,
and by that means also of the greater, quarrel. In
one sense they may be said to close the strife, for the
attention of the public was never led back to the
original issue. In another, they furnish that long con-
fused war with its crowning paradox. That Swift,
whose relentless steel was placed at the service of the
Ancients, should have been recommended by his

2i6 THE BATTLE OF THE BOOKS

patron, some years before, for employment at the
Gresham College, is a small matter, not without its
interest. But that Bentley, the best classical scholar
of his day, should have made his entry from the side of
the Moderns, has been an enduring cause of wonder
to later critics. It is true that he paid scant attention
to the larger issue, contenting himself with showing
that Phalaris and Aesop (or, rather, those who assumed
their names) were no Ancients, and that Temple and
Boyle were no scholars. But he was fighting single-
handed, in any case ; he had enemies in both camps ;
and, in spite of his friendship for Wotton, it would
have been easy for him, had he so desired, to claim
the right of championing the Ancients in place of
Temple. He indicates, in passing, that Temple's
praise of the oldest authors might have been more
appropriately illustrated by the names of Homer and
Archilochus. For the rest, he refused to mingle in
the main action. * Your controversy ', he writes to
Wotton, ' I do not make my own, nor presume to
interpose in it. 'Tis a subject so nice and delicate,
and of such a mixed and diffused nature, that I am
content to make the best use I can of both Ancients
and Moderns.' It may well be that the whole dispute
seemed to him trifling.

Yet in truth there is more than accident in Bentley's
league with Wotton ; by sympathy and circumstance
he was a Modern. With the polite society that railed
at the Greshamites he was comparatively unacquainted,
some of his fastest friends were members of the Royal
Society, and he himself had delivered the first course
of lectures provided for under the bequest of Robert
Boyle. The science of scholarship which he professed
had more in common with the newer sciences than
with the flimsy culture of the wits. Herein may be
seen the most important difference between the French
and English quarrels. In the salons of Paris the cause

THE BATTLE OF THE BOOKS 217

of the Moderns was popular, while the more erudite
of French scholars did battle for the Ancients. The
polite assemblies of England, on the contrary, for
reasons that have been partially indicated, were all for
the Ancients ; ' young gentlemen of great hopes ' like
Charles Boyle, men of the world like Sir William
Temple, men of letters like Dryden and Shadwell,
wits like Atterbury and Swift, united to cast on the
party of the Moderns the imputation of bad taste and
defective education. In France the partisans of the
Ancients ran a risk of being looked upon as fusty
pedants. ' Platon est juge,' said Perrault, ' il ne plait
pas aux dames,' and if the epigram was only half
serious, the tribunal was real enough. The same
reference to the opinions of the fashionable world was
resorted to in England, but by the other side. Boyle
himself, in the firm grasp of Bentley, endeavoured to
make the authenticity of the letters of Phalaris a
question of polite taste, wherein of course the pedantry
of the King's librarian could be ruled out of court.
Sir William Temple, ' the most accomplished writer
of the age ', had openly declared in favour of the
epistles, * and the nicety of his taste ', adds Boyle,
* was never, I think, disputed by such as had any
themselves '. Polite society being the court of appeal,
taste and good breeding were the judges, and the case
was to be settled by a trial of wits. Thus scholarship
and science could be made to look equally awkward
by being compelled to don the fashionable court dress.
Learning, as it was understood in the social circles that
gave the law to literature, consisted in a smattering of
the Ancient tongues, a ready gift of expression in the
Modern, and a pretty taste in the arts. * Mr. Bicker-
staff,' says Gay, speaking of Steele's Taller in 171 1,

' has convinced our young fops and young fellows of the value
and advantages of Learning. He has indeed rescued it out of
the hands of pedants and fools, and discovered the true method

2i8 THE BATTLE OF THE BOOKS

of making it amiable and lovely to all mankind. In the dress
he gives it, it is a most welcome guest at tea-tables and
assemblies, and is relished and caressed by the merchants on
the 'Change. Accordingly there is not a lady at Court nor
a banker in Lombard-street who is not verily persuaded that
Captain Steele is the greatest scholar and best casuist of any
man in England.'

Thus was learning understood among the party of
the Ancients in England. The ' pedants and fools *
from whom the writer of The Tatler rescued it were
doubtless scholars like Bentley (if any there were), and
men of science like Woodward, whom Gay, with the
aid of Pope and Arbuthnot, satirized some six years
later upon the public stage. The contemporary society
that applauded Boyle was made largely of the elements
that united to patronize Mr. Bickerstaff. So that
Bentley's signal victory over his antagonist was for
fifty years popularly reckoned a defeat.

It is easy, after all, to run to excess in identifying
the cause of the Moderns with that of science, exact
scholarship, and progress. There was a certain virtue
also in the literary men of fashion who settled the
authenticity of a text with the wave of a lace ruffle.
The Augustan age, to give it its own proud name, did
much for English letters. It upheld a literary standard,
it naturalized the classic tradition in England, and
imposed sense and taste upon the people. If it was
too apt to judge of all things in the arts or the sciences
by their immediate bearing on manners, culture, and
the amenities of life, at least it held those amenities
in high esteem, and brought them to a measure of
perfection. It held fast by the principle that has
raised the scholar of the modern world above the
mercenary or servile level of a mechanic — that learning
is not a special craft, but the birthright of a gentleman
and the ennobling of a peasant. We have divided
the realm of knowledge into a hundred autonomous

THE BATTLE OF THE BOOKS 219

departments, under the rule of governors, oftentimes
barbarous, who allow a doubtful and insecure hege-
mony to the arts that made the greatness of Greece
and Rome. We follow hysterical prophets into the
wilderness, and contemn the grey enclosure of Fleet
Street that bounded the ambitions of Samuel Johnson.
Inured to a squalid society, we magnify the future of
the race, and are content with ugliness and rudeness,
so our posterity may reap knowledge and wealth.

Doubtless we have chosen the better part ; but our
civilization, on the broad basis of our new-found hopes,
is yet to be achieved. The Augustans indulged their
vision with a narrower horizon, and cultivated their
gardens with a greater serenity. Are we so assured of
our cherished schemes of progress that we dare decry
their more Horatian philosophy ? Perpetual revolu-
tion and interchange governs the world, there is a
wheel of fortune for nations as well as for men, and
even on its giddy summit Pope Innocent might cull
matter for his discourse concerning the miserable
estate of the human race. We feed on the promise
of to-morrow ; perchance we too must learn, in the
words of a champion of the Moderns, * to submit
ourselves herein to the law of Time, which in a few
years will make all that for which we now contend,
nothing '.

AN ESSAY ON ROBERT BURNS^

The man who attempts an estimate of Robert
Burns must needs be haunted by misgivings when
he thinks of the fate of those who have gone before
him. It is a hundred and eighteen years since Burns
died, and the roll of his critics and biographers includes
not a few of the most distinguished names in modern
English literature. The success of these critics has
not been answerable to their distinction. This quest
is not for the cavaliers of literature, the bold and the
warlike. Those who have best stood the trial have been
helped by their weakness and humility, by a recogni-
tion of their own temptations and vanities. Words-
worth understood Burns because he understood the
inordinate excitements which— beset thf^ pnptir tpm-
p£iainen£ Of The Idiot Boy he says, ' I never wrote
anything with so much glee ' ; and, in his search for
the spirit of pleasure wherever it can be found, he
readily accepts the felicities of love and wine. Carlyle
knew poverty — the poverty that_jmghed on Burns
from the cradle to the grave ; he knew also,~~and
valued, the matchless smcerity of the man who speaks
truly_ofJiunaan errors becausf^ he ■spf:al^jnainly_of his
own. But those who have put for it gaily and con-
fi3ently, who have sought a verdict in a happy epigram
or a ringing phrase, are not likely to be heard at the
ultimate assize. Matthew Arnold, who hated all that
is national, brpughjL-a-iJiargc-Gf-prQvincialism against
the poetry oFBurns, which deals perpetually,^ he. says,
with Scotch drink, Scotch religion, and Scotch
manners. If he had added, as in fairness he should

1 Reprinted from W. D. Scott's edition of Lockhart's Life of
Robert Burns, 191 4, vol. i.

AN ESSAY ON ROBERT BURNS 221

have added, that it deals with Scotch lovp, j^*^ ^allary
wni^|d hayr hfp" ^ppn^^nt, Robert Louis Stevenson,
^^p^lHtHn him, as his friend testifies, * something of
the Shorter Catechist ', never showed it more clearly
than when, from a boastful phrase of Burns in a letter
to a boon companion, he elaborated his picture of the
Old Hawk, the cold-blooded seducer of women.
Mr. W. E. Henley wrote an essay on Burns which is
a noble piece of English, and a brave counterblast to
the Presbyterian apologists, but it is far too simple
and clean-cut in its judgments. , ' This lewd, amazing
peasant of genius,' is what he calls the poet ; and
though there is some truth in each of the epithets,
they do not together make for intimacy and a sym-
pathetic understanding. They are missiles, not
discoveries. We are invited to go shares with the
critic in his wonder, and in his social and moral
censures. But these alien emotions are not what have
given Burns his truest friends and disciples. Those
who love him best do not wonder at him at all. He
seems to them as obvious and natural as breathing.
They think and feel what he thinks and feels ; but
he says more than they are in the habit of saying, and
says it brilliantly. He is the voice of a million inarticu-
late consciences, who, if it were required of them,
would cheerfully sign all that he says, and, in so doing,
would be signing nothing that they do not under-
stand and believe.

The Scottish people feel a hearty, instinctive, and
just dislike for biographers of Burns. The life of
Burns, full as it was of joy and generous impulse, full
also of error, disappointment, and failure, makes
a perfectly devised trap for the superior person.
Almost every one is superior to Robert Burns in some
one point or other — in conjugal fidelity, in worldly
prudence, or in social standing. Let him be careful
to forget his advantages before he approaches this

222 AN ESSAY ON ROBERT BURNS

graveside, or his name will be added to the roll of
the failures. Every kind of one-sidedness has found its
text and its opportunity in the Inany-faceted records
of this life, and in the rich diversity of these poems.
The moods of the poet are so whole-hearted and so
triumphant, each in its turn, that they seem to give
the poet's own warrant to the partiality of his critics
and biographers. The judgments which he passed
on himself are so frank and unsparing, that they
anticipate the moralist and cheer him on to his
melancholy work. Does any one desire to preach the
danger of the passions, without their glory ? he can
prove his case from a careful selection of the poet's
own words. Does any one desire to exalt the careless
life of impulse and whim ? the poet again furnishes
him with his most eloquent pleading. But let the
.sH two parties to the suit read on, and they will both find

cause for doubt.

O ye douce foUc that live by rule,
Grave, tideless-blooded, calm an' cool,
Compar'd wi' you — O fool ! fool ! fool !

How much unlike !
Your hearts are just a standing pool.

Your lives, a dyke !

And again, on himself.

The poor inhabitant below

Was quick to learn and wise to know,

And keenly felt the friendly glow,

And softer flame ;
But thoughtless follies laid him low,

And stain'd his name !

The poet who wrote these verses knew the delight
of riding on the crest of the wave, with a following
wind ; he knew also the wisdom of those who hug the
coast that they may make their harbour.

In the old debate between youth and age, between
pleasure and prudence^ he was on both sides. But

AN ESSAY ON ROBERT BURNS 223

he did not deceive himself, nor edit the facts in his
own defence. He was always * wise to know '. He
knew that the price of life is danger ; he knew also
that those who bid recklessly for all that life proffers
are mortgaging their peace to pay for their raptures.
The only just comment on his life is the story of it,
if the story could be told truly, with none of the
delights omitted. It is a poignant drama, in some
sort even a tragedy, but it cannot be handled by the
moralist, who, caring nothing for faded and forgotten
pleasures, finds the staple of his discourse in the
miseries that followed. Yet those faded and forgotten
pleasures are the very stuff of that wonderful poetry
which raised Burns on high and make him visible to
the moralists. For their sake he was killed all the day

long. .yaJ^JLA^*'^

Because he understands both extremes. Burns is ' <»^ i* >^^
the national poet of Scotland and its people. That
fierce and strenuous race has now for many centuries
been divided into two irreconcilable parties. There is
no gaiety in their religion, and very little sobriety
in their pleasures. To this day, in any Scottish town
the inhabitants, who have worked together all the
week, sort themselves out on the morning of Sunday,
and make two parties, the sheep and the goats, each
with its appropriate employ. The parties are mutually
critical and mutually defiant, so that their differences
are hardened by opposition. Innocent pleasures are
driven into wild and violent courses, and become
disreputable ; piety and religion refuse all traffic with
human weakness, and become grim and forbidding.
If statistics could be compiled, it would probably be
found that, in proportion to the number of the
population, there are more fanatically righteous, and
more dissolute, persons in Scotland than in any other
country of Europe.

Burns is the bard of both sects, and is enthusias-

224 AN ESSAY ON ROBERT BURNS

tically accepted by both as their priest and prophet.
He wrote The Cotter's Saturday Ni^hL which is pro-
found in its intelljgpn^f" anri its pipty ; he wrote
indecent snn^ fnr tVingP nthf^r Sati^fday nights which
he celebrated in t^f* ^nrripnny ^^ ^^^ * rmrViollon
.£ejicibles ' — songs of so grotesque and Gargantuan
a humour, that they put to shame the lubricity and
flatness of uninspired obscenity. He expressed the
constancy of settled love in the song written for Jean.

Of a' the airts the wind can blavv,
I dearly like the west,

For there the bonnie lassie lives,
The lassie I lo'e best ;

and he glorified the transports of inconstant love in
the song written" for Artn^ Porb- — * whivVi \ thinir i«;
the best love song I ever composed in my life ; but
in its original state is not quite a lady's song ' :
Yestreen I had a pint o* wine,
A place where body saw na ;
Yestreen lay on this breast o' mine
The gowden locks of Anna.

In his Epistle to Dr. Blacklock he explained Jhow_one^
ideal mav be attained in a fleeting world :
To make a happy fireside clime

To weans and wife,
That 's the true pathos and sublime
Of human life ;

and in Zke Jolly Beggars not many years earlier, he
wrote_with no less fervour of conviction in praise of
quite another i^^al •

What is title, what is treasure,

What is reputation's care ?
If we lead a life of pleasure,
Tis no matter how or where !

With the ready trick and fable.

Round we wander all the day ;
And, at night, in barn or stable,

Hug our doxies on the hay.

AN ESSAY ON ROBERT BURNS 225

Does the train-attended carriage
Thro' the country lighter rove ?

Does the sober bed of marriage
Witness brighter scenes of love ?

Life is all a variorum, /

We regard not how it goes ; '
Let them cant about decorum,

Who have character to lose.

These passages and these sentiments are all the
right Burns ; there is no pallor or insincerity in his

fppling_fnr^tVip rplip^jnn ni the rpttage, and no half-

T^pari-p<;^ness in hjs praise of the life of the r^adT He
who picks and chooses may select from Burns a body of
verse to please almost any taste ; using it as a text,
he may write true and eloquent dissertations on love,
on morality, on poetry ; but if he refuses to con-
sider the coarse with the fine, the satirical with the
devout, the velleities of sentiment with the stark
simplicities of passion, he is not writing of Robert
Burns.

It is not the men of letters who have handled Burns
with the surest touch . Men to whom letters mean little
or nothing are quicker to understand him. The fact
rs that burns is eyeryman" There h^nn subtlety, and
jigjuiiiosky, in all his writings. His ditties are in the
major key. The feelings which he celebrates are
:^eelinp;s familiar to all, even to those who, in mere
self-protection, deny that they feel them. There is
no escape from him. He blurts out what every one
is thinking, even though most of his hearers are trying
not to think it. But all their careful internal discipline
is useless, and is even made to appear mean, when their
furtive thoughts are dragged into the light, and are
invested with the splendour of courageous and absolute
expression. Burns has often been praised for his
independence of temper. He cannot be over-praised ;
born as he was into a society of people struggling for

3600 Q

226 AN ESSAY ON ROBERT BURNS

a livehood, and inured to timidities and suppressions,
it was only by his enormous gift of courage and candour
that he cut himself loose from these bonds, and rose into
the freedom of the truth. His magnanimous reckless-
ness speeded him on his way to death, but it was the
same quality of his mind which, in the beginning, had
lifted him into the light, and delivered him from
slavery. He owed a death to the God of whom music
and song and blood are pure ; he paid his debt early,
but he was no loser by the bargain.

This wnnrlerfnl instinrt for truth anri fran]rnp«^s is

the secret nf his £;fnins and of his 'itylp Perhaps it
is the secret of all great style. Most men take no
interest in the truth save in relation to their circum-
stances, their needs, and their aims. When they try
to express themselves, they weave a network of accom-
modations, and entangle themselves in it. Their only
blunt, direct, and lucid statements are expressions of
the will, not of the understanding. What they see as
disinterested spectators does not prompt them to
speech. But here and there, at rare intervals, a man is
born who must say what he sees, for no other reason
than that he sees it ; and on him the gift of speech
descends. His fellows may think him foolish or
incontinent, * full of new wine '. They suspect the
wisdom of one who uses the coinage of language for
other purposes than commerce and profit. Ought
a man to be trusted with words who does not under-
stand their purchasing power ?

The courtiers who praised the emperor's new
I clothes were shocked by the dreadful candour of the
child. * But he has nothing on ' — there is the great
style, hidden throughout all time from the calculating
and the ambitious, given as their birthright to children
and to poets.

No one was ever franker than Burns. Nothing true
can be said of him that has not already been said by

AN ESSAY ON ROBERT BURNS 227

himself, somewhere in the six stout volumes of his
collected poems and letters.^ The whole story of his
life is there, so that one cannot but marvel at the
multiplication of discussions and disquisitions on his
character and career. No matter what the point at
issue may be, let the advocates have it this way and
that, the final and convincing word is to be found
in his own writings ; and, seeing that the judge's
deliverance was spoken before ever the pleadings
began, the topsy-turvy case is like to be endless. It
is to be remembered that the bulk of the work of
Burns, in verse and prose, was published after his
death, and that much of it was written without
a thought of publication. We have not yet got it all,
as the editors' asterisks in the completest collections
warn us. Even Auld Scotland, his worshipped love,
has not yet dared to insist on her poet being given to
her entire. Nevertheless, enough of him is in evidence
to show him in every relation of life, and in almost
every vein of imagination. If all that he ever wrote
were accessible, in good black print, he could hardly
be better, or worse, understood.

Exankness is almost always misconceived. Burns
was very like many another m"an in what he had to tell,
aQd~ditfered from other men only because he told it.
The poets are discussed as if they were monsters,
because they cannot help telling the truth. They are
too deeply concerned with the thing that they are,
to spend time and effort on that second self, which
attends a man like his shadow, the thing that he
wishes to be thought. Women, it may be truly said, i
do not dress themselves ; they dress their opinion of f
themselves, their hopes and aspirations for themselves.
Men are no less incurably romantic, and when they
speak in their own character, they commonly dress it

^ The Works of Robert Burns. Edinburgh, James Thin, 1895.
6 vols. Ed. Wm. Scott Douglas.

02

228 AN ESSAY ON ROBERT BURNS

for the effect that they covet. Burns shows traces of
this practice, but only in his weaker compositions.
When his real feelings take possession of him, he is
blown hither and thither, and escapes from his own
control. The mark of the secondary character,
devised for the impression that it makes on others, is
consistency. All built characters are consistent, and,
being consistentT are duller and rnore artificial than
real human nature. Character-building, like all
other building, is for shelter and for show ; it protects
a man from the stress of the weather, and exposes
a brave front to the gaze of the world. No such four-
^square consistency was attainable by Burns. He was
the victim p,nd sport nf hiii turbulent pflffsi^ngj which,
to use his own words, ^ raged like so many devils '.
Tbp int^nfiity nf his fppjjngs. which respondedjLo all
nrc^sinris, wfis t^^ ^rf-nt tn allrt^y ^f a Hecorous presenta-
tion. He. is often hot on both sides of a questjon.
A hundred inconsistencies can be gathered fronTTiis
works. _In a song written during his bachelor days at
Mossgiel he is pleased to regard himselt as a village
Don Juan : ~ ~~^

Oleave novels, ye Mauchline belles,

Ye're safer at your spinning-wheel ;
Such witching books are baited hooks.

For rakish rooks like Rob Mossgiel ;
Your fine Tom Jones and Grandisons,

They make your youthful fancies reel ;
They heat your brains, and fire your veins.

And then you're prey for Rob Mossgiel.

At almost the same time, in The Cotter^ s Saturday Night,
he pictures innocent youthtuMoverand^Breaks out into
deLlaniali6n against those who take advantage of it :

Is there in human form, that bears a heart,
A wretch ! a villain ! lost to love and truth !

That can with studied, sly, ensnaring art.
Betray sweet Jenny's unsuspecting youth ?

Curse on his perjur'd arts ! dissembling, smooth !

AN ESSAY ON ROBERT BURNS 229

Yet this very vigorous outburst must not be set down
as hypocrisy. If the emphasis laid on these dangers
in the midst of a scene of domestic happiness seem
somewhat extravagant, that too tells its story in con-
nexion with the poet. One of the deepest and most
enduring feelings of his life was reverence for his
father and affection for the grave and orderly home
where he had his upbringing. The memory of
that home was his sheet-anchor, and when at last he
made good his marriage to Jean Armour, and settled
at EUisland, he acted on principle and conviction.
There is nothing very remarkable in the discovery that
he talked another and more boastful language among
the bachelors of Tarbolton and the companions of his
festive hours in Mauchline and Edinburgh.

No sermon worth so much as a tallow dip has
ever been preached on the life of Burns, but the mere
story of his life is an enthralling drama, so painful,
in spite of its scenes of joy and exultation, that the
sadness of it tugs at the heartstrings, and it can hardly
be read without tears. His long, arduous, over-tasked
boyhood and youth were spent on the poor farms of
Mount Oliphant and Lochlea, where he worked from
sunrise to sunset like a galley-slave. Yet all the time
the spirit of youth, which is the strongest thing in
the world, kept holiday in his heart, and his pride was
more than a match for his poverty. Life called to
him, and he listened ; he joined himself to com-
panions with whom he discussed the chief problems
of life, seriously and high-mindedly, like a conclave of
gods, on whose choice the fortunes of the world are
to depend ; he fell in love with the girls who worked
by his side in the fields, and his heart ' was eternally
lighted up by some goddess or other ' ; he read such
books as he could lay his hands on, especially poetry,
and expressed himself on these and other matters with
such spirit and force that he soon became the leader

1/

230 AN ESSAY ON ROBERT BURNS

of his circle and a lawgiver among his mates ; he wrote
verses of his own, and read them to his friends — love
songs, satires, epistles, and epigrams ; he made a
position for himself in his own world, and began to
dream of fame and the freedom that lay beyond. The
whole of the early life of Burns is one triumphant
progress, achieved by a youth who was tied to labour
and fatigue, yet denied himself none of those indul-
gences and excitements of the heart and mind which
are sought for by men in easier circumstances. He
worked double shifts. He made his living, and he did
not sacrifice his life to it. Flood-tide came during
the wonderful years at Mossgiel. William Burns, the
father, died in 1784, when Robert was twenty-five
years old ; thereupon the poet and his brother
Gilbert moved from Lochlea, and became joint-
tenants of the farm of Mossgiel, which, like Lochlea,
is in close neighbourhood to the town of Mauchline.
They worked the farm themselves,. and Robert lived
on a wage of seven pounds a year, which was his share
of the takings. But before he had been a year at
Mossgiel he was, in more than one sense, a public
character. In the autumn of 1784 he was rebuked
and fined by the Kirk Session, the occasion being the
birth of his illegitimate daughter by Elizabeth Paton,
who was formerly in his father's employ at Lochlea.
During the following winter his name became known
throughout the country-side for his satires on the
orthodox, or Auld Licht, party in the Church of
Scotland, and his ridicule of theological controversy.
In poems like 7he 7wa Herds, written on a quarrel
between two divines, and Holy WiUie^s Prayer, a
magnificent piece of clean-drawn satire on religious
hypocrisy, he attains to his full power. The sword
of a master of legions never intervened with more
decisive effect among the brawls of priests. The
trenchant and shining good sense and good nature of

AN ESSAY ON ROBERT BURNS 231

these poems cut to pieces the web of theological
sophistications. There is no doubt that by this time
Burns was looking beyond his farm. In his affectionate
poem of Welcome to his Love-begotten Daughter^ he
says as much when he remarks of the gossips who
' tease his name ' :

The mair they talk, I'm kent the better,
E'en let them clash ;

and it was not long before his scheme of publishing
a volume of poems began to take shape. In the mean-
time he was involved with Jean Armour, the daughter
of a Mauchline mason, and, having given her a writing
which acknowledged her as his wife, prepared to
emigrate to Jamaica in order to provide a home for
her. Jean's father regarded the proposed marriage
of his daughter to Burns as a sheer disaster, and having
persuaded Jean to give up the compromising document,
cut out the names. Burns was wild with anger ; he
excommunicated Jean from his heart, and took up,
seriously enough, with the Mary of his famous elegies.
He continued his preparations for exile, and, as a part-
ing legacy to his friends and enemies, prepared and
published the Kilmarnock edition of his Poems, chiefly
in the Scottish Dialect, 1786. The success of this
volume was never in doubt ; all the six hundred
copies were sold in a month, and they brought to the
poet letters of admiration and gratitude from distin-
guished and learned strangers. He enjoyed his fame,
and hesitated for months on the brink of exile. At last,
partly on the advice of friends, and partly in obedience
to his own ambition, he resolved to try his fortunes,
and the fortunes of a new edition of his poems, in the
Scottish capital. He arrived in Edinburgh on the
28th of November 1786, and became the lion of the
season.

The visit to Edinburgh was the turning-point of

232 AN ESSAY ON ROBERT BURNS

Burns's career. If his life were to be exhibited as
a battle between good and evil forces, this blaze of
success would be found to be the devil of the piece.
The contrast between what went before and what
came after, stated carefully, with no moral heightening,
is almost melodramatic in its completeness. The eight
years of his manhood which passed before he set foot
in Edinburgh were the victorious years, reckoned
almost exactly from the age of twenty to the age of
twenty-eight. Undaunted by difficulties, and unsub-
dued by hard labour, he steadily climbed, during these
years, the steep ascent to the pinnacle of his fame.
A placid happiness was impossible to his temperament ;
he had to do battle with many obstacles, and knew
remorse, misery, and anguish of mind. But he came
through them all undamaged ; even the agitations and
reverses of his several love-affairs had not impeded his

progress. ' Tr> Af-ar rlplnrting WOr>flPj th^ jfy of

jjQjcSy' says the Reverend Hamilton Paul^- 4^nrns was
partial ]n the extreme.' This partiality gave him
many harr^ prnhlpms tn_sn1vp ; it led him into many
entanglements and some disgrace ; but, in these early
years at least, it did not defeat him. His spirit was
equal to anything ; the very fabric of his poetic
achievement was woven out of his trials and distresses.
Then followed the two winters in Edinburgh, the
tours to the Border country and the Highlands, the
visits to families of established fortune and position,
the honours and excitement of literary society in the
capital, not to speak of a whole new chapter of timid
sentimental advances to ladies of gentle birth. ' Fain
would I climb, but that I fear to fall.' And all the
time one settled element of unhappiness cast a blight
on these enjoyments and adventures — the future held
out to Burns no prospect of a sufficient livelihood, and
the anxiety gnawed his mind. At last, after much
searching of heart and long debate, he fell back on

AN ESSAY ON ROBERT BURNS 233

an idea which he had entertained before the visit to
Edinburgh, and determined to seek a post in the
Excise. But he put it off for a time in favour of one
more attempt at farming, and took a lease of the farm
of Ellisland, near Dumfries. He left Edinburgh in
March 1788, and after openly announcing his marriage
to Jean, settled with her on his farm. Henceforth, for
the remaining eight years of his life, his story is a heart-
rending story of struggle, depression, and collapse ;
brightened, it is true, not seldom, by gleams of the
old splendour, and preserved from degradation by
that temper of humanity which never failed him in all
his troubles. He began his experiment without much
hope. Before he had been three days on his farm,
he wrote in his journal : ' I am such a coward in life,
so tired of the service, that I would almost at any time,
with Milton's Adam, gladly lay me in my mother's lap,
and be at peace. But a wife and children bind me
to struggle with the stream.' He struggled with his
farm for three and a half years, and attempted to
maintain himself on it by adding to his work the
travelling duties of an Excise officer. Then he gave
up the profitless farm, and became an exciseman in
Dumfries, at a salary of fjo a year. His heart was not
in this business, any more than it had been in the
farming. During all these later years he wrote
songs, first for Ihe Scots Musical Museum, and then
for the Select Collection of Original Scottish Airs,
which were both produced by Edinburgh publishers.
He hated the paltry duties of his profession, and he did
not always resist its temptations when it put within
his reach the means of drowning his cares. He had
friends among the neighbouring gentry, but his pride
and his misery made him wilful and reckless, and he
offended them ; as he also offended his Government
employers by flaunting republican and Jacobite
opinions. He knew that he was a chief among men,

234 AN ESSAY ON ROBERT BURNS

so that when he lost touch with decorous and reputable
people, he was not unwilling to fall back on a lower and
less exacting kind of company, where he could indulge
himself, and play the Sultan. It was a virtue in him
that he was always at home among beggar-bodies
and wastrels and crazy drunken folk. The elements
of humanity were no puzzle to him ; but the unspoken
conventions and rules of what is called good society
often wakened the rebellious spirit in him, or, what is
worse, made him feel that he was a foreigner, and
robbed him of the confidence and sureness of his
speech and writing. Some of his letters to ladies can
only be called insincere and affected in manner.
He knows what he wants to say, but he is mesmerized
by the strangeness of his situation, and the glamour
of his correspondent, so that he falls into the worst
vices of the Complete Letter-writer. But these stilted
letters belong, for the most part, to the Edinburgh
period, when he first made acquaintance with genteel
society. At Dumfries that dream had vanished, and
his pride took refuge in defiance. A thick cloud hangs
about his last years ; little is heard of him except what
can be gathered from the reverberated and distorted
gossip of a small provincial town. There is no need
to follow conscientious and painful investigators in
their minute discussion of the probable causes for
the break-up of his health, or the degree of his intem-
perance, or such-like problems ; the main facts are
clear to all who desire to know them. God, who made
Robert Burns, made a world that broke him, and there
is no more to be said. That marvellous full dark eye,
which literally glowed, says Sir Walter Scott, when he
spoke with feeling or interest ; that high heart, which
scorned patronage and authority, but stooped at once
to tenderness ; that quick brain, magnificent in its
sanity, which surveyed nature and man ; those
surging passions and desires, which overleapt all

AN ESSAY ON ROBERT BURNS 235

restraint, and drove straight on the rocks — these
were the equipment of a man who was never designed
to reach old age. *^o human imagination can, by any
gymnastic, conceive of Burns as a man of sixty. To
reach that age a man must spare himself, and conform.
Burns did neither. So he retired to his bitter indepen-
dence in Dumfries, where he fretted his heart out in
neglect and obscurity. He died at his house, in the
Wee Vennel, on the 21st of July 1796, and was buried
with military honours, in the parish churchyard,
amid a great concourse of spectators. He could not
benefit by it, or know it, but he had devoted friends
in every shire of Scotland.

If facts can show anything, they show that the visit
to Edinburgh, and the new way of life which he tasted
as a stranger there, took the heart out of Burns, and
spoilt him for a return to the old familiar track. He
is Scotland's greatest poet, yet if all that he wrote
were lost except the great things that belong to a single
period, of about fifteen months, at Mossgiel, we should
still have the bulk of his finest work. Before the
Edinburgh visit, he was a ploughman who joyed in
literature ; after it, he was an author tied to the tail
of the plough, or condemned to search old wives'
barrels for evidences of deceit. It was his own pride
and his own good sense which took him back to the
country and the life that he knew. He had a just
and discerning horror of putting his poetry to sale for
the means of livelihood. He saw well enough that
the trade of a man of letters in the roystering Athens
of the North promised no peace and no security to
a temper like his own, that his hectic enjoyment of it
could have no continuance, and that the tide of popular
favour which had lifted him so high was bound, in
the course of nature, to ebb and leave him stranded.
He was wise and cool in his judgment ; his head was
never turned by the adulation, and the toasts, and the

236 AN ESSAY ON ROBERT BURNS

shouting ; he deliberately chose to bid farewell to
the world before the world shoul'd bid farewell to
him. It was a decision worthy of him, but perhaps,
accustomed as he was to trust to his own right arm
for fighting through, he did not reckon how sore the
wrench would be, and he over-estimated his strength.
The long trial of patience and endurance to which he
doomed himself was not a trial for which he was fit.
He had lived on hope and ambition, eagerly pressing
on from victory to victory ; he could not console
himself with the pleasures of memory in the quiet.
He had been shown the kingdoms of the world from
a lofty mountain, and the thought of that glittering
vision disturbed his rest. It was high noon with him
at Edinburgh ; thenceforward he walked with his
own lengthening shadow pointing the way, and with
no goal before him but the nightfall.

It is true that at Ellisland and Dumfries he wrote
not a few of his finest songs, and that Tam o' Shunter,
in many ways the strongest and maturest of all his
works, belongs to his closing years. He always enjoyed
poetry, as only a poet enjoys it, and to read the songs
contributed, in rapid succession, to Johnson's Museum
and to Thomson's Select Collection, is to share in a
revelry of delight. His style continues to be what it
always was, a clean straight miracle, but his humour
strengthens, and his versatility increases. He ranges
through all moods and all sentiments, from the beauty
of * O my luve is like a red, red rose ' to the hilarious
fancy of ' O, Willie brewed a peck o' maut'. In 7am
Q^Shanter, especially^ he surp^!ii«^es hirpcplf j nn mp^tpr-
piece of narrative so concise, so various, so_t£lliiig, is
to be found even in Chaucer. Is it not a strange
thing that the king of poetic story-tellers told only one
story ? His powers were not failing ; but the motive
for exercising them was gone. His life was out of gear,
and it was only by fits and starts that he showed what

AN ESSAY ON ROBERT BURNS 237

a power and what a craft were standing idle. He was
weary of it all. •^

The core of the tragedy is to be found not in litera-
ture, but in society — in those social relationships
which, throughout his life, preoccupied and irritated
and fascinated the poet. Through his letters and his
poems, through all the incidents, happy and unhappy,
which were his exalting and his undoing, this eternal
refrain goes sounding on. Love, where women of his
own class were concerned, and bacchanalian festivity
in the free-and-easy circle of boon-companions, were
his only complete holiday from the obsession. There,
among the elements, he found truth and nature,
intimacy and spontaneity. Elsewhere he was eternally
on his guard, and prepared for hostilities. Of all his
biographers Lockhart, who had no doubt gained much
from discussing the life of Burns with Scott, recognizes
this most fully. But no one can read the original
records without being struck by it. Gilbert Burns,
who knew his brother well, speaking of his very early
days, says : ' He had always a particular jealousy of
people who were richer than himself, or who had
more consequence in life.' To say that his jealousy
tortured him all his life is to say no more than he often
said himself. Here is an extract from his private
Common-place Book, written in Edinburgh ;

' There are few of the sore evils under the sun give me more
uneasiness and chagrin than the comparison how a man of
genius, nay, of avowed worth, is received everywhere, with the
reception which a mere ordinary character, decorated with the
trappings and futile distinctions of fortune, meets. I imagine
a man of abilities, his heart glowing with honest pride, con-
scious that men are born equal, still giving honour to whom
honour is due ; he meets at a great man's table a Squire Some-
thing, or a Sir Somebody ; he knows the noble landlord at
heart gives the bard, or whatever he is, a share of his good
wishes, beyond, perhaps, any one at table ; yet how will it
mortify him to see a fellow, whose abilities would scarcely

238 AN ESSAY ON ROBERT BURNS

have made an eightpenny tailor, and whose heart is not worth
three farthings, meet with attention and notice that are with-
held from the son of genius and poverty !

' The noble Glencairn has wounded me to the soul here,
because I dearly esteem, respect, and love him. He showed
so much attention, engrossing attention, one day, to the only
blockhead at table (the whole company consisted of his lordship,
dunderpate, and myself), that I was within half a point of
throwing down my gage of contemptuous defiance ; but he
shook my hand and looked so benevolently good at parting.
God bless him ! Though I should never see him more, I shall
love him until my dying day ! I am pleased to think I am as
capable of the throes of gratitude, as I am miserably deficient
in some other virtues.'

This note recurs again and again. Writing to
Mrs. Dunlop, after a short visit to Edinburgh from
Ellisland, he describes with disgust the bustle and self-
sufficiency of the place :

' When I must skulk into a corner, les't the rattling equipage
of some gaping blockhead should mangle me in the mire,
I am tempted to exclaim — What merits has he had, or what
demerit have I had, in some state of pre-existence, that he is
ushered into this state of being with the sceptre of rule, and
the key of riches in his pu»iy fist, and I am kicked into the world,
the sport of folly, or the victim of pride ? '

When he complains, as he often does, of the tyranny
of riches, and the inequality of fortune, it is his own
case that he sketches again. To Peter Hill, an Edin-
burgh bookseller, he writes enclosing payment of an
account :

' Poverty ! thou half-sister of Death, thou cousin-german
of Hell ! where shall I find force of execration equal to thy
demerits ? ... By thee, the man of Genius, whose ill-starred
ambition plants him at the tables of the fashionable and
polite, must see, in suffering silence, his remark neglected, and
his person despised, while shallow Greatness, in his idiot
attempts at wit, shall meet with countenance and applause.'

All this may be thought to be very sad, but it has
its place, and no insignificant place, in the life-history

AN ESSAY ON ROBERT BURNS 239

of Burns. His feelings ran in this channel so habitually
and so deeply, that he has marred some passages even
of his famous lyric, ' A man 's a man for a' that ', by
outbursts of injured violence. Why should silk and
wine be made the mark, not of the rich, but of knaves
and fools ? There are knaves in buckram, and fools
who drink beer — some even, if the truth must be
told, who drink water. That a lord may be a block-
head is true, but to lay such stress upon the possibility
is not to show indifference to rank. The boast ' We
dare be poor ' has a touch of the false glory of Charles
Kingsley's famous admonition, ' Be good, sweet maid,
and let who will be clever '. Those who will to be
clever, when they cannot attain it, or dare to be poor,
when they cannot avoid it, do not alter the fact,
which is not made less distressing by noise about it.
Sometimes the bard's preoccupation with the
mysterious distribution ot rank and fortune takes
a pleasanier form. In a delightful little extempore
^oehi, he celebrates his first meeting with a lord.
The occasion was the 23rd of October 1786, and the
lord was Lord Daer, eldest son of the Earl of Selkirk,
who was fellow-guest with Burns at the house of
Dr. Mackenzie of Mauchline. The poet explains that
he has been well accustomed to take his ease in the
company of men of various professions :

I've been at drucken writers' feasts,
Nay, been bitch-fou mang godly priests —

Wi' rev'rence be it spoken ! —
I've even join'd the honor'd jorum,
When mighty Squireships of the quorum

Their hydra drouth did sloken.
But wi' a Lord ! — ^stand out my shin,
A Lord — a Peer — an Earl's son !

Up higher yet, my bonnet !
An' sic a Lord ! — lang Scotch ells twa,
Our Peerage he o'erlooks them a'.

As I look o'er my sonnet.

dl.

240 AN ESSAY ON ROBERT BURNS

But O for Hogarth's magic pow'r !
To show Sir Bardie's willyart glow'r,

An' how he star'd an' stammer'd,
When, goavin', as if led wi' branks,
An' stumpin on his ploughman shanks,

tifi in the parlour hammer'd.

I, sidling, shelter'd in a nook,
An' at his Lordship steal't a look,

Like some portentous omen ;
Except good sense and social glee
An' (what surpris'd me) modesty,

I marked nought uncommon.

This is very simple and innocent, and its honesty
and dramatic humour are no less remarkable. The
poet plainly expected to meet the wicked earl of the
stage, haughty, sneering, and magnificent in gesture.
But he takes keen delight in describing his own
embarrassment, and he winds up his poem with a
hearty tribute to the * noble youthful Daer '.

With ladies of quality he was not always so happy.
Every one knows the history of his poem on * The Lass
o' Ballochmyle '. He was walking on the banks of
Ayr at Ballochmyle, near Kilmarnock, in July 1786,
when Miss Alexander, the sister of the proprietor of
the estate, crossed his path, a vision of beauty. He
celebrated her beauty in a copy of verses, which
describe, with his usual frankness, the amorous
raptures that might have been his had she been born
a country maid and dedicated to his arms. He sent
the poem to her, later in the year, and asked for her
permission to publish it. No one who reads his letter
can wonder that it remained unanswered. But the
poet was hurt and angry. He transcribed the letter
into his own private letter-book, and added an indignant
comment : ' Well, Mr. Burns, and did the lady give
you the desired permission ? No ! She was too fine
a lady to notice so plain a compliment ' — and he goes
on to cast contempt on her brothers, whose purses.

AN ESSAY ON ROBERT BURNS 241

he says, are full, but their heads empty. His style
in addressing young ladies may be illustrated from the
letter written to Miss Peggy Kennedy, whose acquaint-
ance he had made at the house of his friend, Gavin
Hamilton :

' Poets, Madam, of all mankind, feel most forcibly the
powers of Beauty ; as, if they are really Poets of Nature's
making, their feelings must be finer, and their taste more
delicate, than most of the world. In the cheerful bloom of
Spring, or the pensive mildness of Autumn, the grandeur of
Summer, or the hoary majesty of Winter, the poet feels a
charm unknown to the most of his species : even the sight of
a fine flower, or the company of a fine woman (by far the
finest part of God's works below), have sensations for the

f)oetic heart that the Herd of men are strangers to. On this
ast account. Madam, I am, as in many other things, indebted
to Mr. Hamilton's kindness in introducing me to you. Your
lovers may view you with a wish, I look on you with pleasure ;
their hearts, in your presence, may glow with desire, mine rises
with admiration.'

This letter was written in the autumn of 1785, at
a time when Burns was pouring forth his finest poetry.
Some people who write easy, natural, sincere letters,
are frozen into sentiment and convention when they
attempt a poem or an essay. It was otherwise with
Burns ; he wrote poetry like an angel, but when he
sat down to address a fair stranger, the disease of social
diffidence played lamentable tricks with his pen.
Frank humour and passion were here out of place ;
he was concerned chiefly to make good his title to
social consideration, and he wrote what need not be
described now that it has been quoted.

These things have usually been but slightly treated
by the biographers, whose love and reverence for
Burns make the whole topic distasteful to them. But
these things were a very real part of the poet's life,
and contributed not a little to the chagrins and
unhappinesses which gathered around him. More-

a6oo R

242 AN ESSAY ON ROBERT BURNS

over, if they are silently passed over by the friends
of Burns, that very silence puts them as weapons
of offence into the hands of some who are not quite
so much his friends.

Let there be no mistake about it, this is not a simple
or easy question. If it were only to admit a fault,
a weakness, in an otherwise strong character, a dis-
advantage incident to early deprivations, then the
business might be dealt with and dismissed in a few
words. But Burns is right ; men cannot be judged by
their social standing ; a lord is often a blockhead,
a ploughman often shows unerring tact and perfect
sincerity in the ordering of his relations with his
fellowmen. No rough-and-ready explanation will
serve. We have to do with the tragedy of a broken
life, and there is no tragedy except where great,
unknown forces clash, and the right is on both sides.
A pretentious and foolish man, who commences
poet, and then complains that he is not sufficiently
esteemed, may be set down easily enough, without
compunction. But Burns was neither pretentious nor
foolish — and he was Robert Burns. To give away
his case by genially admitting the charges which he
has made it so easy to bring against him is simply
not to understand. Any one can name his faults ;
but the faults of a man like Burns have an awkward
habit of being also his virtues. Change the scene,
unroll the panorama of his life, and the orthodox
standards are made ridiculous ; his strength becomes
weakness, and his weakness strength.

Burns was a very simple man, vpry rWrert and
forthright, and quite amazmgly honest. In all that
■ he knew and understood — that is to say, in all plempjital
things — his instinct for truth was as sure as a rock^.aild,as
qiiirkj^g lightning, He was otten urged, by influential
advisers, tfumritr pnemn in thg Englinh of his day,
and so to commend himself to a wider world.

AN ESSAY ON ROBERT BURNS 243

anjrlaim a plarp hpdrip nnlHsmith and Gray and

(JoUins] He always rejected the proposal decisively,
with scant ceremony. Hp Vnpw wh^r^ ^^'^ gt^'^ng^^ ^
lay. The brain of man may easily be made polyglot,
but the heart can speak only the birth-tongue. Yet,
seeing that Burns wrote English better than most
of the poets of Dodsley's Miscellany, and seeing that
his choice of the Scottish dialect shut him out, by the
common consent of polite opinion in that age, from
the high places of literature, it is not a little thing that
he never was allured or deceived by false fires. In
matters like this his judgment was absolute. So
it was in all questions of right and wrong, good and
bad, which were familiar to him in his own world
and his own society — questions within the com-
petence of unsophisticated humanity. He hated
hypocrisy — so did Henry Fielding. He was tender to
the transgressions of youthful blood — so was Samuel
Johnson — but he was no more willing than was
Johnson himself to let these transgressions cast a slight
upon the moral law, or justify themselves to the con-
science. His writings have given to Scotland a moral
concordance of precepts — all sound and true, if they
be rightly understood. When he says :

The heart 's ay
The part ay
That makes us right or wrang,

he may seem to be condoning laxity ; he is really
saying no more than has been said by all great religious
teachers in every age. While he moved in the world
of great simple things, where poetry has its habitation,
he was at home, and never erred. Then he was sud-
denly confronted with urgent problems and baffling
complexities in an unfamiliar world, not so easy to
handle, and he lost his sureness of touch.

Consider the irony of his position in Edinburgh.

R 2

244 AN ESSAY ON ROBERT BURNS

He was received, and f^ted, and was made free of the
tables and homes of the great. They took pleasure
in his poetry, and in his wit, and, so far from crudely
patronizing him, were, for the most part, delicate and
diffident in their approaches, and not in the least
oblivious of the points where he was their superior.
They had riches and power ; he had genius ; a per-
fectly natural courtesy prompted them to treat him
on that footing of equality which is the only possible
ground for happy social intercourse. Yet there was
no equality, and Burns knew it. He was afloat on
a treacherous sea ; the company that admired him
stood on the land, and drank his health, while he raised
his glass and bowed his acknowledgements from his
frail raft. They went home to the employments and
avocations of a settled life ; he was left alone, to resume
the interrupted agony of his unsettled meditations.
It had been a pleasant meeting, enjoyed by all con-
cerned, but Burns knew who paid most for it. His
entertainers gave him some of their leisure ; he gave
them some of his life. The transaction was a kindly
one, fairly intended, and courteously carried out, but
not equal on the two sides, any more than four acres
are equal to four o'clock.

In the reign of Queen Victoria there flourished
a long-haired tribe of elegant parasites, who preached
to an attentive audience that wealth and social power
are matters of no concern to a poet. Burns, though
he was subject to some follies, was not that kind of
fool. He knew the hardships of life too well to under-
value the means of life. He knew that poverty spells
starvation of mind and body ; that want is the
murderer of wit. It irritated him to see men affluent
in power and money, yet endowed with so little
imagination that they could not conceive of themselves
without these advantages. If he had been a minstrel,
a happy-go-lucky child of fortune, he might perhaps

AN ESSAY ON ROBERT BURNS 245

have taken it all in good part, the rough with the
smooth, the day of feasting with the month of fasting,
the caresses with the neglect, and have enjoyed it
quietly, as one of the queer humours of life. But he
could not stand aloof in that fashion ; the strength
and passion of his poetry came from his intimacy with
human society as he knew it. He was a man like other
men, and he resented the isolation that was put upon
him even by honours and plaudits. He suspected that
he was being kept at arm's length and regarded as
a curiosity. Here were men to whom he must not
speak his mind, and women whom he must not love.
He felt the invisible bars, and he raged behind them.
In truth, though he often chose to regard himself as
the Poet, there was much about him of the pride of
the aristocrat. He belonged to an old, farming
aristocracy, richly dowered with self-respect, attached
to the soil, severe in its standards, and fixed in its
habits. He could not and would not think of himself
as depending on the favour of any living man. Yet
here he was, an idolized public musician, going from
feast to feast, entertained and entertaining, paying for
what he got, but not paying in kind. When he took
up with Clarinda, during his second winter in Edin-
burgh, it is easy to see how he came under that spell.
She fell in love with him, like any girl in Ayrshire,
and though she kept a strict restraint upon herself,
it was for reasons that he allowed and respected,
not from a sense of social differences. Here at last
was a rest and a welcome for the tired entertainer.

If his social adventures in Edinburgh had left him
sore, they had also made it impossible for him to
find comfort in the old life. He revisited his people
at Mauchline in the summer of 1787, between his
two long spells in Edinburgh. He was acclaimed
and made much of (for had he not astonished the
capital?), but this reflected glory was dust and ashes

246 AN ESSAY ON ROBERT BURNS

to him. He had held converse with quick intelligences
and delicate sympathies ; he was out of conceit with
the heavy talk and blunt questionings of his old
acquaintance. Before many days had passed he is
found writing to his Edinburgh friend, William Nicol :

* I never, my friend, thought mankind capable of anything
very generous ; but the stateliness of the patricians in Edin-
burgh, and the servility of my plebeian brethren (who perhaps
formerly eyed me askance) since I returned home, have nearly
put me out of conceit altogether with my species. I have
bought a pocket Milton, which I carry perpetually about with
me, in order to study the sentiments — the dauntless magna-
nimity, the intrepid, unyielding independence, the desperate
daring, and noble defiance of hardship, in that great personage,
Satan.'

The parallel is too close ; he was warring with the
eternal. His pride was immense, and he pitted it
against law and ordinance ; he wrestled in a net-
work of those innumerable fibres which hold society
together, and make it unbreakable. To call the
unwritten laws of society by the name of conven-
tions is to give them too poor and weak a name.
Their strength, no doubt, depends on a mass of
fluctuating opinion ; so does the price of Consols.
But no man who matched himself against them ever
yet came off the victor. Burns did not assail them in
open combat ; but he nursed the spirit of rebellion
in himself, and during all his later years was quick
to take occasion for defiance. The power of society
is a blind power ; without intending it, almost without
knowing it, moving on its way in obedience to the
laws of its own being, it crushed the life out of the
poet. It is made up of little things ; small pre-
eminences given to wealth, slight presumptions
accorded to rank, habitual deferences paid to office.
The man whom it will not recognize is the man who
claims these little things as a tribute to his personal

AN ESSAY ON ROBERT BURNS 247

merit. No society in the world can afford to admit
that claim. It was to escape the turmoil of such
•claims that society invented its rules.

In a tender mood of retrospection, society has felt
qualms and misgivings with regard to the poet. Could
not more have been done for him ? The question
has often been asked, and it is kindly meant ; but no
satisfactory answer to it has ever been suggested.
Burns was not the sort of man to whom it is easy to
proffer help ; and it may well be doubted whether
he could have brought himself to endure the kind of
shelving and pensioning which any public subsidy,
however honourable, inevitably implies. He was a
young man, in the full possession of his faculties,
and would have hated * to rust unburnished, not to
shine in use '. Who can picture him happy in a paid
sinecure ? He would have asserted himself, and broken
out, so that the end would have been the same.

Life is so mixed a business, that any simple moral
drawn from it is doomed to be onesided. The misery
of these last years at Dumfries is real enough, and sad
beyond expression. But the horrors and squalors of
human suffering are commonly felt much more acutely
by lookers-on than by those who undergo the pain.
Burns was still himself ; he still had hours of escape
and happiness. The meanness of these closing scenes
was no part of his soul's history ; it belongs rather
to the history of that crowd of hangers-on, busy-
bodies, and hero-worshippers, who were proud to
say that they had made merry in his company. They
came about him like flies, and his humanity forbade
him to repel them. If Shakespeare were alive to-day,
he could not live at Stratford-on-Avon ; the vulgarity
of the place would be the death of him. Keats, who
walked through the Burns country in the summer of
18 18, saw the whole thing clearly, as if he were gazing
in a crystal.

248 AN ESSAY ON ROBERT BURNS

* We went to Kirk Alloway ' — he writes to his friend, John
Hamilton Reynolds, ' " a Prophet is no Prophet in his own
Country " — ^We went to the Cottage, and took some Whisky.
I wrote a sonnet for the mere sake of writing some lines under
the roof — they are so bad I cannot transcribe them — The Man
at the Cottage was a great Bore with his Anecdotes — I hate
the rascal — his Life consists in fuz, fuzzy, fuzziest — He drinks
glasses five for the Quarter and twelve for the hour — he is
a mahogany-faced old Jackass who knew Burns — He ought to
have been kicked for having spoken to him. He calls himself
" a curious old Bitch " — but he is a flat old dog — I should
like to employ Caliph Vathek to kick him. O the flummery
of a birth-place ! Cant ! Cant ! Cant ! It is enough to give
a spirit the guts-ache — Many a true word, they say, is spoken
in jest — this may be because his gab hindered my sublimity :
the flat dog made me write a flat sonnet. My dear Reynolds —
I cannot write about scenery and visitings — Fancy is indeed
less than a present palpable reality, but it is greater than
remembrance — ^you would lift your eyes from Homer only to
see close before you the real Isle of Tenedos — you would rather
read Homer afterwards than remember yourself — One song of
Burns's is of more worth to you than all I could think for
a whole year in his native country. His Misery is a dead
weight upon the nimbleness of one's quill — I tried to forget
it — to drink Toddy without any Care — to write a merry sonnet
— it won't do — he talked with Bitches — he drank with Black-
guards, he was miserable — ^We can see horribly clear, in the
works of such a Man his whole life, as if we were God's spies.'

Any one who visits Dumfries to-day will come away
with something of the same impression. There, in the
little upstairs room where Burns died, are exhibited,
without any ironic intent, his blue china toddy-bowl,
and the larger and more decorative toddy-bowl of
the earliest Burns Club, founded to carry on the
tradition of jollity. In the churchyard, looking over
the town, stands his Mausoleum, a small square stone
building, with windows like the windows of a living-
room, peering through which windows the visitor may
discern, in the damp and comfortless interior, a seated
statue of the poet.

>

AN ESSAY ON ROBERT BURNS 249

It is all like a bad dream, but it has nothing to do
with Burns. Any one who wants to escape from it
can follow the advice of Keats, and remember the
songs. Some of the most exquisite among them were
written in the last year of his life. He always stooped
to his women, his brother Gilbert says ; he never
stooped more tenderly and reverently than in the
lovely song, ' O wert thou in the cauld blast ', which
he wrote, when he was very near death, for Jessie
Lewars, the daughter of a brother-exciseman. She
tended him in his illness ; he repaid the debt with
more than his usual magnificence when, in a strain
of the deepest feeling, he pictured himself her protector
in the storm, and imagined her his Queen Consort on
the throne of the world. The prerogative of man is
to despise death ; Burns died unsubdued and unafraid.

Fly, fly, commanding soul ;

And on thy wings, for this thy body's breath.

Bear the eternal victory of death.

It is a true instinct which refuses to dwell on woes
that long since were curtained in peace. Poetry, the
voice of all man's truest instincts, has preserved for us
nothing of Burns except his pleasures and his triumphs,
and these it has made into a gift for all men. The
Burns Clubs are right ; they meet in all parts of the
world where Scottish men find footing, and it is not
the sorrows of the poet that they celebrate. The wheel
has come round again ; the freemasonry that Burns
knew so well in his happier days is once more holding
festival, there is whisky and good fellowship, the haggis
is brought in on its groaning trencher, and the scene
is illuminated, as it was when he made one of the
company, by the wit and fancy of the Bard. Not all
that he wrote is suited for these festive companies, or
for these occasions. But all that he wrote is sure to
be known by one or another of those who toast his

250 AN ESSAY ON ROBERT BURNS

memory. His searching moral counsels and precepts
are also a national tradition. There are few times
and seasons when he has nothing to say. But he
speaks most readily to those who are at the top of
happy hours. Lovers meeting at a tryst, soldiers
answering the call to action, friends pledging their
faith — all these have found in him their Bible. Because
he knew happiness he responds to their need. His
life is done with ; the joy that he took in it remains.

WILLIAM BLAKE^

We know little of the life of William Blake ; and
a great part of his written work, jotted down in pencil
when the mood was on him, and subject to all the
accidents of time and editorial patronage, has come
to us only in fragments. Yet what we have reveals
him for one of the boldest, most spontaneous, and |
most consistent of English poets and thinkers. There -
is no part of his writings, no casual recorded saying,
or scribbled note on the margin of the books he read,
which is not of a piece with all the rest. An absolute
unity of character and purpose runs through all. Put
him to the test, and he will re-word the matter, which
madness would gambol from. Those who have read
his work with the will and the power to learn, are
ready to acknowledge him for what he claimed to be,
a thinker and poet and seer.

His work is one prolonged vindication of the cause
of all the artists in the world, and an apology for all
those, whether saints or heretics, to whom religion
means something other than a body and system ofj
imposed discipline and law. Blake would have nothing'
to do with rational system. He trusted his vision >^
absolutely, and believed only what he saw. When he
built up the imaginative fabric of the Prophetic Books,
his claim for them was that they are not fable nor
allegory, but vision ; ' an endeavour to restore what
the Ancients called the Golden Age '. His motive for
the elaborate structure is given in Jerusalem :

I must Create a System, or be enslav'd by another Man's ; I /
I will not Reason and Compare : my business is to Create. '

* Introduction to Lyrical Poems of William Blake, edited by John
Sampson. Oxford, 1905.

252 WILLIAM BLAKE

What his eye saw was interpreted and supplemented
by the fierce energies of his mind, bodying forth * the
forms of things unknown '. So he succeeded in giving
a rendering of things which, in its darkness as in its
light, is the creature of his own perception and his
own imagination.

The most of mankind are so drilled and exercised,
from earliest childhood, in codes of interpretation,
that when they come to look at the world, and to ask
questions of it, they cannot look at it on their own
account. They see it by the light of half a dozen
preconceived theories. They have learned a thousand
glosses by heart before ever they attempt to read the
text. So little accustomed are they to trust to their
impressions, that even at a crisis they will make haste
to escape from their own experience, and take refuge
in authority and tradition. Safe enough guides these
are, no doubt, for many of the affairs of life ; but
a poet must find a surer foothold if he is to move the
world. He must speak because he has seen and known.
* The reason ', says Mr. Walter Bagehot, * why so
few good books are written, is that so few people
that can write know anything. In general an author
has always lived in a room, has read books, has cul-
tivated science, is acquainted with the style and senti-
ment of the best authors, but he is out of the way of
employing his own eyes and ears. He has nothing to
hear and nothing to see. His life is a vacuum.*
Mr. Bagehot is speaking of the width of experience
that went to the making of Shakespeare, but his words
are applicable also to the depth and intensity of
experience that gave his message to Blake. Critical
readers of poetry, and the poets themselves, have been
much concerned with questions of form and expression.
Should the thing be said that way or this ? The
previous question — why should the thing be said at
all ? — is often more troublesome to answer. Blake

WILLIAM BLAKE 253

could answer it decisively and triumphantly. He spoke
because the truth appeared to him as clear as the sun
at noonday, and would not be denied. The excuses
and explanations which enable any reader so minded
to escape from his vision were of no avail to him. He
saw and knew ; — no reason or demonstration could
make head against that. Unless we find ourselves
compelled to adopt one of the nullifying hypotheses
which are implicitly accepted by most of his eulogists,
the only question for us is whether he has expressed
himself clearly and fully enough to enable us to share
in his vision. ' Truth ', he says himself, * can never
be told so as to be understood, and not be believed.'
Are his own utterances intelligible ? If he was a char-
latan, or the dupe of his own excitable nerves, or
a maniac, his work, at the best, is opalescent nonsense.
But if he has succeeded, here and there, in raising the
curtain on the life of things, it is the part of wisdom
and modesty to suppose that the rest of his work,
which is dark to us, is not devoid of meaning.
i In poetry he stands outside the regular line of suc-
Icession, and, as he had no disciples, so he acknowledged
no masters. ' The man, either painter or philosopher,*
he says in his notes on Reynolds, ' who learns oi|
acquires all he knows from others, must be full of
contradictions.' Yet he began very early to write
verse, and for the youthful poet there is no escape
from imitation. Indeed, in another of his incisive
notes, he admits the necessity. * The difference ', he
says, ' between a bad artist and a good is, that the bad
artist seems to copy a great deal, the good one does
copy a great deal.' Certainly, it is strange to observe
how the young engraver's apprentice, meditating the
muse, during his scanty leisure, in the City lanes round
Holborn, while Doctor Johnson gave the law to literary
society, found out for himself, as if by instinct, the
poets who had most to teach him. His early work.

254 WILLIAM BLAKE

printed in the Poetical Sketches of 1783, is full of
memories and fragrances culled from Shakespeare,
Spenser, and the Elizabethan song-writers. The lyric,
' My silks and fine array ', might almost have been
written by an Elizabethan. The celebration of ' good
English hospitality ' is in the very vein of early popular
poetry. And the Song by an Old Shepherd, beginning :

When silver snow decks Sylvia's clothes,
And jewel hangs at shepherd's nose,

is the work of one fresh from the reading of Love''s
Labour 'j Lost and As Tou Like It. By as natural a kin-
ship Blake recognized the imaginative power of Mac-
pherson and Chatterton, whose forgeries were the talk
of the day. In such pieces as Gzvin, King of Norway,
and Fair Lienor the ballad is revived, with that added
sense of dream and magic which was the secret of the
later poets of romance :

My lord was like a star in highest heav'n
Drawn down to earth by spells and wickedness ;
My lord was like the opening eyes of day
When western winds creep softly o'er the flowers ;

But he is darken'd ; like the summer's noon
Clouded ; fall'n like the stately tree, cut down ;
The breath of heaven dwelt among his leaves.
O Elenor, weak woman, fiU'd with woe !

And not less remarkable than his discovery of those
poets, old or new, who could speak to him in the
language of imagination, is his complete neglect of
the fashionable models of his own time. In poetry,
as in the other arts, Blake cared only for impulse,
spontaneity, primal energy. * A cistern contains,' he
says ; ' a fountain overflows ' ; and he was impatient
of all the rules of measure and continence. In another
of his proverbs he gives pithy utterance to the indict-
ment which was to be brought by his successors against
the verse of the eighteenth century : ' Bring out

WILLIAM BLAKE 255

number, weight, and measure, in a year of dearth.'
The case against the Augustan poets has never been
more tersely put. But Blake shows no acquaintance
with their works, and might almost be supposed never
to have heard the name of Pope, were it not that, in
a grotesque and whimsical parody on the style of that
poet, he has recorded his contempt for all the wooden
furniture of compliment and rhetoric :

Wondrous the Gods, more wondrous are the Men,
More wondrous, wondrous still, the Cock and Hen,
More wondrous still the Table, Stool and Chair ;
But ah ! more wondrous still the Charming Fair.

He would, no doubt, have been willing to apply to
Pope's verses what he said of the drawings of Rubens
and Le Brun, ' These things that you call Finish'd are
not even Begun, how can they then be Finish'd ? '

What he learned from those who went before him
can only be guessed or inferred. We are on surer
ground in asserting that he taught nothing to those
who came after him. His poems, jotted down in his
own note-books, or printed by his own processes in
issues that were hardly more accessible than the original
manuscript, remained unknown to the public till many
years after his death. A few lovers of poetry, Charles
Lamb and Wordsworth among the number, when the
Romantic Revival was already at its height, made
acquaintance with the Songs of Innocence and Experi-
ence, and admired them as the work of genius, tainted
perhaps with insanity. Yet in these songs and in other
unprinted poems Blake had anticipated the Romantic
movement in all its phases. The most characteristic
doctrines of the diverse sects of that great school are
all foreshadowed in stray lines of Blake's verse. Is it
the metaphysical idealism of Coleridge's great Ode ?
Blake has expressed it in a single crude couplet :
The Sun's Light, when he unfolds it,
Depends on the Organ that beholds it.

256 WILLIAM BLAKE

Is it Wordsworth's praise of the revelations of sense as
compared with the processes of the tedious intellect ?
It appears already in Blake as The Voice of the Ancient
Bard :

Youth of delight, come hither,
And see the opening morn.
Image of truth new-born.
Doubt is fled, and clouds of reason,
Dark disputes and artful teazing.

Is it the enchantment of La Belle Dame sans Merci —
the happiness of dream, and the horror of awakening
to reality ? Blake too had known it :

Dear Child, I also by pleasant streams,

Have wander'd all Night in the Land of Dreams ;

But tho' calm and warm the waters wide,

I could not get to the other side.

' Father, O father ! what do we here
In this land of unbelief and fear ?
The Land of Dreams is better far.
Above the light of the Morning Star.'

Is it, finally, the Revolutionary theology of Shelley ?
It is already fully developed in Blake ; the king and
the priest are types of the oppressor ; humanity is
crippled by * mind-forg'd manacles ' ; love is enslaved
to the moral law, which is broken by the Saviour of
mankind ; and, even more subtly than by Shelley, life
is pictured by Blake as a deceit and a disguise veiling
from us the beams of the Eternal. The poetical work
of Blake, standing, as it does, out of direct relation to
the literary history of his age, shows how vain is the
attempt to treat the great movements of the human
mind as originating in authors of books, or operating
chiefly by way of literary influence. Thought, which
in its slower and duller processes is contagious, escapes
at times from our control, and lives in the air that
we breathe.

WILLIAM BLAKE 257

Blake's creed came borne to him in no other way. 1
He made it his declared aim * to cast aside from Poetry j
all that is not Inspiration ', and to express his own '
vision of the world. A man who dares thus to trust
himself cannot but be consistent, for inconsistency
lies in inferences and arguments, not in the array of
things seen. Blake would not make use of anything*
borrowed from others. ' He would have none of
the existing mythologies,' says his editor, Mr. John
Sampson, * either Greek, or Norse, or Hebrew ; but
must create or evolve one of his own, expressing his
spiritual convictions in a new symbolic language,
written in his own new metres, and engraved and
illustrated by his own hand in a new process of his
own invention.' In the Prophetic Books all the names
and phrases are uniformly employed. Euclid would
be a very uninforming work to a reader who thought
that * " parallel ", " radius ", " hypothenuse ", were
merely odd-sounding names with no particular mean-
ing '. Although Mr. Swinburne's essay on Blake has
furnished some hints and glimpses towards the under-
standing of the Prophetic Books, the task of inter-
pretation still remains to be achieved. Whether
Blake's whole scheme will ever be fully expounded is
at best doubtful, but this much is clear, that no
interpreter who regards it as a series of whimsical,
unrelated and fitful utterances dare hope for success.

* God keep you and me ', Blake writes to a friend,

* from the divinity of yes and no too — the yea, nay,
creeping Jesus — from supposing up and down to be
the same thing, as all experimentalists must suppose.' |
He was wholly in earnest, felt no doubt as to the value/
of his message, and passed his life in the attempt to
express it. Its very clearness to himself was a danger.'
He lived so long aloof from the ordinary traffic of
human intelligence, that he came to write only for
himself, and to employ terms in so arbitrary a signi-

2600 s

258 WILLIAM BLAKE

ficance, that his Prophetic Books are like an elaborate
cipher, which can be unriddled only by the correspon-
dences of its several parts. And the difficulty of
a solution is much increased by the novelty of the
meaning when once the meaning is attained. No
domestic and familiar truths await the explorer in
these labyrinths, rather the strange glow of the furnace
at the heart of things, where the rocks are melted and
the stuff of the enduring hills is prepared for its life
on the surface of the earth.

Until some interpreter shall penetrate to these
recesses it is impossible to criticize Blake's scheme from
within. Los, Enitharmon, Rintrah, Theotormon, and
other daily companions of his thought, to our appre-
hension are vague and overwhelming and intangible,
* scarce images of life ', stretched on the deep, like
clouds. The regions inhabited by these Titanic crea-
tions oppress us with a sense of fear and homelessness.
Now and again the reader catches hold of a clue, only
to lose it again. The two souls of man, called by Blake
his * Spectre ' and his ' Emanation ', the principle, that
is to say, of reason, pride, and self-assertion, conceived
of as a male, and that other principle of impulse,
passion, and imagination which appeared to Blake in
the likeness of a beautiful woman — who will not admit
that this new psychology takes account of the facts of
experience? But the symbolism is strange and diffi-
cult ; moreover, when we have accepted it, we find
that it only leads us onward into deeper and darker
matters. The terror of being left alone in a world of
strange shapes takes possession of us, and we are glad
to give our guide the slip and return to the light of
common day. The most of Blake's readers, and some
even of his lovers, are content to leave the Prophetic
Books unstudied, and to make what they can of the
lyrical and occasional poems.

Here, too, there is difficulty enough, but we are

WILLIAM BLAKE 259

nearer to the speech of every day. From the first all
Blake's writing has the elemental character of great
poetry. It is not the adventures of the elect, but
what happens everywhere and always, that the poets
declare to us. Those writers whose imagination is not
strong and true will always try to make play with the
exceptional or unexampled ; but it is not thus that
the Gods reveal themselves. Poetry is not a game of
boasting ; and the poet brings us back from our
pathetic little vanities to confront us once more with
the unchanging facts— lest we forget. His touch is as
rare as truth. There are war-songs in plenty, pitched
in a key of noisy self-glorification : ' We'll fight and
we'll conquer again and again.' How solemn and real
Blake's War Song to Englishmen, written in early youth,
sounds by the side of this heroic claptrap — all because
his imagination is at work, and he sees the facts :

Prepare your hearts for Death's cold hand ! prepare
Your souls for flight, your bodies for the earth ;
Prepare your arms for glorious victory !
Prepare your eyes to meet a holy God !

Prepare, prepare.

There is no alloy of rhetoric in Blake's poetry. He
lives among the elements, and is akin to them, and
discerns them so clearly in all life and experience, that
he has no patience with the doubtful processes of
reasoning. For the blind he has no message :

He 's a Blockhead who wants a proof of what he can't Perceive ;
And he 's a fool who tries to make such a Blockhead believe.

As for those who see and are not satisfied with seeing,
but must needs have further proof, their case is no
better :

He who Doubts from what he sees
Will ne'er Believe, do what you Please,
If the Sun and Moon should Doubt
They'd immediately Go Out.

8 2

26o WILLIAM BLAKE

His own faith was so simple and fervid that he could
not give utterance to it save in the language of vision.
The question as to what Blake saw and what he
imagined he saw has much exercised his commentators*
Doubtless he was gifted with the easily excited visual
imagination of a painter. But the truth is that he
would have found no interest and no meaning in the
discussion. All that he believed seemed to come to
him directly, like the light of the sun, and he could
not bear to have his perceptions questioned by those
who had not seen. His commentators, with their large
allowance for his genius, and their willingness to admit
that there may be much in what he says, would have
enraged him. He would have all or nothing ; and even
his admirers are not willing to face the consequences
of giving him all. Mr. Gilchrist can find ' no leaven
of real sense or acumen ' in Blake's marginal notes on
Bacon's Essays. ' Whatever Bacon may say,' remarks
the plaintive biographer, ' his singular annotator refuses
to be pleased.' Scattered down the margin of the
book, we are told, are Blake's explosive comments —
* " liar ", " villain ", " atheist ", nay, " Satan ", and
even (most singular of all) " stupid ".' The senti-
mental enthusiast, who worships all great men in-
differently, finds himself in a distressful position when
his Gods fall out among themselves. His case is not
much unlike that of Terah, the father of Abraham,
who (if the legend be true) was a dealer in idols among
the Chaldees, and, coming home to his shop one day,
after a brief absence, found that the idols had quar-
relled, and the biggest of them had smashed the rest
to atoms. Blake is a dangerous idol for any man to
keep in his shop. He is not to be pacified by the
fluttering good offices of his owner. ' Here,' pleads
Mr. Gilchrist, after quoting a few of the marginal
notes on Bacon, ' here let this singular dialogue at
cross-purposes end.' To whom Blake — ' This is cer-

WILLIAM BLAKE 261

tain : if what Bacon says is true, what Christ says is false.'
The answer to this last direct thrust is still to seek.

One theme preoccupies Blake in all his writings, and
reappears in many forms — the theme to which he gave
a name in the title of his book, Songs of Innocence and
of Experience, showing the Two Contrary States of the
Human Soul. To reconcile the surprising and grave
lessons of experience with those joyous revelations
which come to eyes newly opened upon the world was
his single problem, as it is the problem of all poets.
The life-giving rays of the sun, which awakened the
child to ecstasy, are found to parch and burn as the
day moves on to its noon. Is there no light without
heat ; no joy, however natural and innocent, with-
out its price exacted in pain ? The trouble of the
question comes to all, and cautious tempers forswear
the delights offered to them, or enjoy them furtively
and sparingly, from dread of a jealous God. The
burnt child learns all too soon to shun the light.
Doubt, misgiving, and fear assume control over the
mind, and memory utters the final verdict :

Your spring and your day are wasted in play,
And your winter and night in disguise.

It is the distinction of Blake, even among the poets,
that the freshness of his early joys was never for an
instant dulled or clouded by the inevitable ills of life.
Experience and innocence are contrary states, but
neither of them is of force to change the nature of the
other. That profanity which is called disillusionment
is impossible to a soul that has tasted joy in all its
purity and fullness. ' The man ', said Blake, ' who has
never in his mind and thought travelled to heaven is
no artist.' He had lived for long years in heaven ; and
nothing taught him by experience could cause him to
renounce his faith, or to treat it as a bygone happy
illusion. He needed not the comfort that comes of

262 WILLIAM BLAKE

children, for he never lost the simplicity and intensity
of the child's mind that was in him. There is nothing
in all poetry like the Songs of Innocence. Other writers
— Hans Andersen, for instance — have penetrated into
that enchanted country, have learned snatches of its
language, and have seen some of its sights. But they
are at best still foreigners, observers, emissaries ; the
golden treasures of innocence which they bring back
with them they coin into pathos and humour for the
use of their own countrymen. There is no pathos in
Blake's innocent world ; he is a native of the place,
and none of the natives sits aloof to compare and
ponder. There is no humour ; the only laughter
heard in that Paradise is the laughter of woods, and
streams, and grasshoppers, and the sweet round mouths
of human children. There the day is a festival of
unceasing wonders, and the night is like the sheltering
hand of God. There change is another name for
delight, and the parting of friends is a prelude to new
glories :

Farewell, green fields and happy groves

Where flocks have took delight.

Where lambs have nibbled, silent moves

The feet of angels bright ;

Unseen they pour blessing,

And joy without ceasing,

On each bud and blossom,

And each sleeping bosom.

Death itself is an enterprise of high hope, an intro-
duction to the Angel with the bright key who opens
the long row of black coffins. Sorrow there is, and
pity for sorrow ; tears and bewilderment and dark-
ness ; but these things are all within the scheme, and
do not open vistas into chaos. When the little boy
is lost, God himself, dressed in white, appears by his
side and leads him back to his weeping mother, to the
world of daylight and shepherds, and lions with golden

WILLIAM BLAKE 263

manes. One who has known this holy land, and has
lived in it until it was overrun by infidel invaders —
how should not his later life be a great crusade for
its recovery ? —

Bring me my Bow of burning gold !
Bring me my Arrows of desire !
Bring me my Spear ! O clouds, unfold !
Bring mc my Chariot of fire !

I will not cease from Mental Fight,
Nor shall my Sword sleep in my hand.
Till we have built Jerusalem
In England's green and pleasant Land.

To a temper thus ardent and direct and sincere,
doubt is impossible. The question ' What shall we
believe ? ' continues to exercise the world, because
most dwellers in the world neglect the wonders of
sense and imagination, daily presented to them, or
count appearances trivial and deceitful, and look aside
from them into vacancy for a phantom cause. Like
the three Philosophers who figure in An Island in
the Moon, these inquirers ' sit together thinking of
nothing '. But to Blake, in the first flush of his man-
hood, the world, as it is given to us, was a thing
* bewildering hope, outrunning praise ', exhausting all
the capabilities of faith. What unknown world could
possibly satisfy the man who finds no grounds for faith
in this world of the fields and the skies ? The auguries
of Innocence are more confident :

Joy and Woe are woven fine,
A Clothing for the Soul divine ;
Under every grief and pine
Runs a joy with silken twine.
It is right it should be so ;
Man was made for Joy and Woe ;
And, when this we rightly know,
Thro' the World we safely go.

The birth-speech of faith is the lyric. The purest

264 WILLIAM BLAKE

lyrical utterances do not depend for their beauty on
the arrangement of accents and the counting of syl-
lables ; translate them into any language, and they
still run straight into song. There is no version of
the Magnificat which does not rise lifted on a climbing
sea of melody ; it is the voice of the faith of all the
women in the world. ' For he hath regarded the
lowliness of his handmaiden ' — what treatise on metre
can explain that rapture of song ? The spontaneity
of whole-hearted joy will save it from all essential
faults of expression ; its only business is to flow, and
it has no choice but to take the easiest outlet. Blake
troubles himself not at all about metres ; even in
a professed imitation of Spenser he does not once suc-
ceed in hitting Spenser's stanza ; but the life and soul
of lyrical effect is assured to him by his very careless-
ness. It seems that he sang his own lyrics to tunes of
his own choice, and shaped them by that loose prosody
which music supplies. Further than this he acknow-
ledged no law. All good things, in art as in life, were
to him the gift of the Spirit, and the impulse that
began a poem must end it, or the poem must remain
unfinished. The American critic who maintained that
there can be no such thing as a long poem might have
found his happiest illustration in the works of Blake.
Some of the poems, it is true, number a good many
lines, yet do not fall into the flats of prose demonstra-
tion ; but these are hardly ever single in effect ; they
come to a natural close in a few stanzas, and the
prophetic fury is renewed in a fresh outburst. The
dutiful and laborious execution of a long task originally
conceived in a happy moment of insight, was impos-
sible to Blake. To continue working when the fever-fit
was overblown would have been to work without
conviction and possibly without meaning.

His name has, therefore, been made the text for
many discourses on the nature of genius and inspira-

WILLIAM BLAKE 265

tion. To hear this subject discussed in ordinary
societies of men one would think that the human race
is a nation of slaves and idolaters. Every kind of
tribute is offered to the unhappy man of genius, save
the sole tribute that is of value to him, the tribute of
fellowship, equality, love, and understanding. He is
full of the breath and zest of humanity, and is treated
as though it were morbid to be inspired. He sees
what is around him with a clear eye ; he acts from
quick native human impulse ; and he is awarded a place
apart, as a genius, to be reverenced rather than trusted.
The gifts with which he is so plentifully dowered, for
all that they are looked askance at as abnormal and
portentous, are the common stuff of human nature,
without which life would flag and cease. No man
destitute of genius could live for a day. No intuitive
movement of feeling or sudden flash of conviction but
is inspired as truly as the prophecy of the seer. Genius
is spontaneity, the life of the soul asserting itself
triumphantly in the midst of dead things. Inspiration
is a short name for all that comes to us immediately,
with the warrant of ultimate certainty. The certainty
cannot be communicated to others at second-hand.
If the man whose inspiration is full and frequent
cannot teach us to breathe and to see, he can teach
us nothing. We shall lead a sickly life if we try to
support ourselves on the spare products of his generous
vitality. We must try, and taste, and act for ourselves,
on the assurance of our own vision.

These unprompted movements of the human soul,
rejoicing in its freedom, and dilating itself against the
force of circumstance, give to life the greater part of
its meaning and its zest. But these are not enough
to carry all human souls through the long campaign
of life. The world is vast and complex and unrelenting,
and the energies of the soul prove fitful and languid.
Some support and shelter is needed for those times

266 WILLIAM 'BLAKE

when we are taken at unawares, when our sympathies
are not alert, and our vision is clouded, and our power
of initiative is paralysed by doubt. At times like these
men crutch themselves on * principles ' of action, or
seek relief by resting on the strength of an accepted
law. Even love gives no unerring light ; even joy is
not always its own security. The need of others some-
times fails to inspire us ; our own experience sometimes
fails to transform itself into vital motive. | Then we
must fall back upon our defences, and do our duty.
The mechanism of society and institution and custom
cannot be based on the shifting chances of inspiration.
Yet all law, even the law that is forced on its reluctant
victim by the stronger interests of others, is active in
some minds in its primal form of inspiration. The
strength of law consists in this, that men are daily
carrying out its behests, with no consciousness of com-
pulsion or obedience, from sheer delight in their own
discernment and their own power. These are the
makers of the law ; the others are its captives and
slaves. All morality has been invented, and is con-
tinually re-invented, and gives to its discoverer a sense
of elation like that which the artist finds in the work
of his hands. One man's duty is another man's
pleasure. What appears to one man as a cold and
alien power, to be dreaded and revered, is to another
man the living energy that circulates in his veins and
flashes in his thought.

Blake trusted so entirely to his instincts, his life was
so made up of quick feeling and creative impulse, that
Law and Institution, as they exist in the world, seemed
to him a dull and evil imposition, maintained by the
passions which are hostile to life — fear, and envy, and
cunning selfishness. State and Church, King and
Priest, were hateful to him, but most of all he hated
the slow processes of the inductive reason, or, to give
them their accepted name, Science. There is some

WILLIAM BLAKE

267

danger of confusion here, for Blake often mentions
Science, and almost invariably in a strain of the highest
eulogy. ' O ye religious, discountenance every one
among you who shall pretend to despise Art and
Science ! I call upon you in the name of Jesus !
What is the Life of Man but Art and Science ? ' By
Science, here and elsewhere, he means intuitive know-
ledge, insight, and imagination at work on the individual
objects of man's regard. He means, indeed, what he
says in a prose passage of Jerusalem : ' I know of no
other Christianity, and of no other gospel, than the
liberty both of body and mind to exercise the Divine
Arts of Imagination.' Over against these energies of
the inward light must be set all the methods and
results of rational demonstration, which Blake inveighs
against by the name of Reason, and Philosophy, and
Natural Religion, but which are familiar to-day under
the name of Science. ' To generalize ', he says curtly,
Ms to be an idiot. To particularize is the great dis-
tinction of merit.' In this, as in all things, his attitude
is consistent and single. General rules for conduct,
general truths of observation, general canons of Art,
even the vague and general tone and colouring of the
great Venetian painters, all these were the same to
him — stupid makeshifts for escaping from the only
things worth knowing, those Minute Particulars,
namely, which are given directly in perception and
cannot be reached by a train of inference. His doctrine
of Art is his doctrine of Morals ; what is care for detail
and outline in the one is reverence and imagination
in the other :

He who would do good to another must do it in Minute

Particulars.
General good is the plea of the scoundrel, hypocrite and

flatterer ;
For Art and Science cannot exist but in minutely organized

Particulars,

268 WILLIAM BLAKE

And not in the generalizing Demonstrations of the Rational

Power,
The Infinite alone resides in Definite and Determinate Identity.

In more homely fashion he illustrates the same con-
clusion by the fable of the dog who dropped the
definite and determinate bone to catch at the vague
perfections of its shadow, and so lost shadow and sub-
stance too. * He had them both before ', says Blake,
in one of those terse and far-reaching sentences which
crop up everywhere, even in his idlest rhymes.

This doctrine, in all its bearings, is the soul and
centre of Blake's teaching on Art, Religion, Morals,
and Politics. He was never tired of inveighing against
Reason as the only sin. * The Classics,' he says, * it
is the Classics, and not the Goths nor Monks, that
desolate Europe with Wars.' The same reasoning
power which gives laws to literature establishes the
tyranny of empire :

The Strongest Poison ever known
Came from Caesar's Laurel Crown.

And again, in Jerusalem :

The Spectre is the Reasoning Power in Man ; and when

separated
From Imagination, and closing itself as in steel, in a Ratio
Of the Things of Memory, It thence frames Laws and Moralities
To destroy Imagination, the Divine Body, by Martyrdoms and

Wars.

The Reasoning Power is an abstract objecting power
that negatives everything — a negation of the substance
from which it is derived, a murderer of its own body,
and of every divine member. Its strength is the
strength of a terrible mechanism, its methods are the
methods of violence, and its work is the crushing out
of all things that have in them the separate germs of
life. It is the abomination of desolation.

It would be difficult to find anywhere a more com-

WILLIAM BLAKE 269

plete and eloquent statement of the creed of Anarchy
than is contained in Blake's writings. Those who
conceive of that creed as the child of hatred begotten
by confused thinking, may here correct their view.
Blake is an anarchist because his heart goes out in
sympathy to life in all its careless and joyous mani-
festations, and because he has the courage to hold fast
by what he loves. The Angels, as he describes them,
are also anarchists, natives of the element, creatures
of simple love and impulse. The strange power of
a good conscience and of singleness of mind is seen in
the freedom and success with which the Angels set
law at naught. They may steal a hundred horses,
where the man of principle, the man, that is, who is
the victim of doubt and moral struggle, may not look
over the hedge. Blake never failed to pay his tribute
of admiration to the power of innocence, confident in
itself, acting on its own sure initiative, and seeking for
no support from others. He recognized these impulses
of the heart even in the apostles of doubt and nega-
tion. Voltaire as the mocker of Christian faith, and
the setter-up of the rule of Reason, appears again and
again in Blake's writings as the adversary of the Spirit.
But Voltaire was also a rebel to established law, and
a man of quick and generous impulse. In conversation
with Crabb Robinson, Blake described how Voltaire
had appeared to him in vision, and had talked with
him. * I blasphemed the Son of Man,' said Voltaire,
' and it shall be forgiven me ; but my enemies blas-
phemed the Holy Ghost in me, and it shall not be
forgiven them.' The thoughts and deeds that spring
from an inward necessity are the only work of the
Spirit. Blake is much more profound in his exposition
of these things than Shelley, or any other of the
Revolutionary poets. Government he sees as a neces-
sary outcome of the rule of Reason ; and he attacks
the main position :

270 WILLIAM BLAKE

I turn my eyes to the Schools and Universities of Europe,
And there behold the Loom of Locke, whose Woof rages dire
Wash'd by the Water-wheels of Newton : black the cloth
In heavy wreathes folds over every Nation : and Works
Of many Wheels I view, wheel without wheel, with cogs

tyrannic
Moving by compulsion each other : not as those in Eden,

which
Wheel within Wheel in freedom revolve in harmony and peace.

This dark Satanic mill, the Reasoning power, which
overshadows humanity, has woven, for a garment of
oppression, the woof and warp of Good and Evil —
two contraries, qualities with which every substance
is clothed, but which are abstracted from their sub-
stances and made into a universal and shadowy pall.
On this problem of Good and Evil Blake is always
strangely illuminative and searching. What he says,
though it does not lightly unriddle that mystery, bears
all the marks of clear perception and profound belief.
He was fond of talking on this theme to Crabb
Robinson, who did not understand him. He would
not admit the real existence of Evil ; errors there are
in the world, no doubt, said he, but these are only
negations. ' What are called vices in the natural
world are the highest sublimities in the spiritual
world.' He was here speaking, it seems likely, not of
negations, errors of timidity and weakness, but of the
great positive deeds of passion and rebellion. Of the
natural world * It is all nothing ', he would say, ' and
Satan's empire is the empire of nothing '. On one
occasion Crabb Robinson ventured to remark that if
the distinction between good and evil is of no impor-
tance, there is no use in education. Blake replied,
' There is no use in education. I hold it to be wrong.
It is the great sin. It is eating of the tree of the
knowledge of good and evil. This was the fault of
Plato. He knew of nothing but the virtues and vices,
and good and evil. There is nothing in all that.

WILLIAM BLAKE 271

Everything is good in God's eyes.' Crabb Robinson,
pursuing his objection, asked if there is then nothing
evil in what men do ; and Blake replied, ' I am no
judge of that. Perhaps not in God's eyes.' This
Crabb Robinson finds to be inconsistent v^^ith what
Blake said in a subsequent conversation, when the
purity of Dante's character was under discussion :
* Pure, do you think there is any purity in God's eyes?
The angels in heaven are no more so than we. " He
chargeth his angels with folly." ' But so far from
being inconsistent, the two statements are mutually ^
dependent. Blake could not bear to have the moral
judgments of men authorized by being attributed to
the Eternal. * Who shall say ', he asked, ' that God
thinks evil ? That is a wise tale of the Mahometans
of the angel of the Lord that murdered the infant.
Is not every infant that dies of disease murdered by
an angel ? '

In his description of his picture of the Last Judge-
ment he has given fuller expression to some of his
ideas on this subject. * I do not consider either the
just or the wicked to be in a supreme state ; but to
be every one of them states of the sleep which the
soul may fall into in its deadly dreams of good and
evil, when it leaves Paradise following the serpent.'
And again, ' The treasures of heaven are not negations
of passions, but realities of intellect, from which the
passions emanate, uncurbed in their eternal glory.
The fool shall not enter into heaven, let him be ever
so holy. Holiness is not the price of entrance into
heaven. Those who are cast out are all those who,
having no passions of their own, have spent their lives
in curbing and governing other people's by the various
arts of poverty and cruelty of all kinds. The modern
church crucifies Christ with the head downwards.'

It is only by a comparison of Blake's scattered
utterances on this subject that the consistency and

272 WILLIAM BLAKE

singleness of his doctrine is made apparent. His note
on Homer's poetry shows how the same strain of
thought is applied to Art — from which indeed, in aU
likelihood, it had its origin. ' Aristotle says Characters
are either Good or Bad : now Goodness or Badness
has nothing to do with Character, an Apple-tree,
a Pear-tree, a Horse, a Lion are Characters, but a Good
Apple-tree or a bad, is an Apple-tree still ; a Horse
is not more a Lion for being a Bad Horse : that is
its Character, its Goodness or Badness is another con-
sideration.' To tell Blake of any individual man that
he was good or bad was to tell him nothing to the
purpose ; ' I have never known ', he said, * a very bad
man who had not something very good about him.'
He cried out on all who sit in judgment on others.
' Of the Old Testament ', says Crabb Robinson, ' he
seemed to think not favourably. Christ, said he, took
after his mother, the Law ' — a statement which he
explained by referring to the turning out of the
money-changers from the Temple. In short, these
moral distinctions of good and bad seemed to Blake
to be the most mischievous of Universal forms, or
abstract terms, devised by the Reasoning power of
man as sign-posts, to guide him or warn him in the
pursuit of his selfish ends. By the use of these vague
and general distinctions all that is most characteristic
or significant in the individual object was obliterated,
he thought, and lost. So Los, exploring the mental
states symbolized by London districts.

Saw every minute particular, the jewels of Albion, running

down
The kennels of the streets and lanes as if they were abhorr'd.
Every Universal Form was become barren mountains of Moral
Virtue ; and every Minute Particular harden'd into grains of

Sand :
And all the tendernesses of the soul cast forth as filth and mire.

' The Moral virtues do not exist,' said Blake. ' They

WILLIAM BLAKE 273

are allegories and dissimulations. But Time and Space
are real beings.' And the minute particulars — ' the
little ones ', as Blake calls them — which are of faith
and not of demonstration, the things seen and felt,
which are moments in the life of man ; these exist,
and are eternal ;

To those who enter into them they seem the only substances,
For every thing exists and not one sigh nor smile nor tear,
One hair nor particle of dust, not one can pass away.

This is the real world, created out of the void as an
act of mercy, the world which its Creator looked on,
and behold, it was very good. It is the manifestation
of that energy which is eternal delight.

The sea-fowl takes the wintry blast for a covering to her limbs :
And the wild snake the pestilence to adorn him with gems

and gold :
And trees and birds and beasts and men behold their eternal

Arise you little glancing wings and sing your infant joy !
Arise and drink your bliss, for everything that lives is holy !

Most men to whom has been granted the clear
dream and the solemn vision, have felt impelled, at
the maturity of their powers, to descend from the
mount of contemplation, and to endeavour, in the dust
and heat of the arena, to do something for the better
ordering of human life. But Blake, believing in no
institutions, felt no such temptation. The poet, to
whom is given imagination and vision, is false to his
faith if he turns his back on the revelation in order
to handle the machinery of worldly power and worldly
ambition. The most famous of the poets who took
up with these lowlier tasks are severely censured by
Blake. Of Dante he said, ' He was an Atheist — a mere
politician, busied about this world, as Milton was, till
in his old age he returned to God, whom he had had
in his childhood '. The anarchist's objection to Law,

2600 T

274 WILLIAM BLAKE ,

the mystic's objection to Rational process, are no less
strong when Law and Reason become weapons in the
hand of a triumphant democracy. Blake goes straight
to the point when he speaks of the aims of the Revolu-
tionary party. * You cannot have liberty,' he said,
* in this world, without what you call moral virtue,
and you cannot have moral virtue without the sub-
jection of that half of the human race who hate what
you call moral virtue.' So tyranny succeeds to tyranny,
self-righteousness is throned, and the age of innocence
and brotherhood is more remote than ever.

Yet these things are ; and Blake is forced to recog-
nize the existence of Evil. The experience came to
him late and slowly. His whole-hearted joy in the
world kept the enemy for long at bay. Even in the
Songs of Experience the old simplicity and happiness
reassert themselves :

For I dance,
And drink, and sing,
Till some blind hand
Shall brush my wing.

He does not agonize with the Fate that holds him in
its grasp ; his peaceful, almost infantine, submission
to the Power that is so cruelly strong in its dealings
with those who struggle against it, saved him from
anything like a tragedy of thought. He lay still, and
knew no fear. The trouble, when it came to him,
came in the form, not of doubt, but of bewilderment
and sorrow of heart. The reign of love and of natural
happy impulse is partial and precarious. Against it
are ranked all the baser passions — fear, envy, anger,
jealousy, covetousness — which Blake unites under the
single name of Self-hood. These restrain the innocent
desires of man, and combat his natural promptings,
and paralyse his will, and deny his instinctive faith.
In place of pity and dear mutual forgiveness, they set
up a spectral fiend whose only word is ' Thou shalt

WILLIAM BLAKE 275

not ', a polypus of death, withering the human form
by laws of chastity and abhorrence. The struggle
between this Satan and the redeeming power of love
and pity is the central theme of all the Prophetic
Books, and is there set forth with an immense array
of visionary terminology, yet clearly enough in effect.
The whole creation groans and travails ; but Blake
never wavers in his belief that the empire of Satan is
the empire of nothing. Self-hood is not a positive
and creative power ; it is a distorted and reversed
reflection in darkness and non-entity. The passions on
which its reign is built are themselves mere negations ;
they drain the blood, and arrest the beating of the
heart, and are inimical to life in all its forms. Fear,
which is the chief and most terrible of them, is the
parent of all the rest, and is lord over

the trembling throng
Whose sails were never to the tempest given.

While the soul is a fount of action, spending itself
without stint on outward objects, joy and faith are
supreme ; but when its activities flag, when it becomes
distrustful of itself and afraid of the world, defensive,
secretive, eager to husband its resources, it falls under
the control of Satan, and reasons, and doubts, and
inhibits, and measures, and denies. Everything that
it touches is blighted by the contact.

He who bends to himself a joy
Doth the winged life destroy ;
But he who kisses the joy as it flies .
Lives in Eternity's sunrise.

Blake saw the whole of human life, not as a drama
of the fall and redemption of man in great decisive
acts, but as a continual fall and a continual redemp-
tion. Angels, he said, are always becoming devils ;
every man has a devil ; and the conflict is eternal
between a man's self and God. He saw it, not as

T 2

276 WILLIAM BLAKE

a golden world suffering from the tyranny of an

external oppre'ssor, whose downfall shall herald the

\ millennium, but as a long intestinal antipathy and

\ struggle between native forces, to be ended only by

1 conciliation and a new method of harmony. In his

i earlier work he often seems to speak of the thwarting

and negating forces as if they were intrusive and

removable. But his thought did not long rest content

with the almost idiotic simplicity of Revolutionary

theory. If Self-hood be the enemy, the enemy is in

possession of the citadel ; and any call to arms for the

defence of man is answered by traitors, who exact

the price of their service rendered to the cause of

liberation by ensconcing themselves more closely in

domestic and moral tyranny. The dual nature of man

is an old and difficult problem, which has exercised all

poetry that pretends to thought :

. Oh, wearisome condition of humanity !
Born under one law, to another bound,
Vainly begot, and yet forbidden vanity,
Created sick, commanded to be sound ;
What meaneth nature by these diverse laws ?

Blake, following the mystic who wrote the account of
the Fall in Genesis, found the only likely explanation
and answer where it had been found before him by
Plato, and by the poets of the East, and by the most
) philosophic of the Elizabethans — in the fact of sex.
Here, at the very heart of things, there is war and
division ;

For the strife of Love 's the abysmal strife,
And the word of Love is the Word of Life.

The most mysterious and strongest of all forms of
self-assertion is built into the life of the race. Man,
who dreams of harmony within himself and of bene-
volence towards others, is mocked and haunted by
a tyrant passion which sets him at odds with the

WILLIAM BLAKE 277

world, defeats his reason, and laughs at his purposes.
The desire which dominates his life is that which gave
him birth :

Our blood to us, this to our blood is born.

If he attempt escape, the only way that lies open to
him leads to emaciation and death. A heaven of
delight and the well-being and perpetuity of his kind
is promised to him as the reward of his triumph in
aggression and self-assertion. The love that makes the
world go round is elemental, savage, exclusive, defiant,
in man for woman, in woman for the child of her
throes. Every man, by the law of his being, is an
adventurer and a warrior ; every woman, by the law
of her being, is bound to regard herself as her dearest
trust. The treaties, the armistices, the conquests and
surrenders, the flights and pursuits that mark the
course of the long war of the sexes are incidents in
a campaign where victory is the prize of self-assertion.
Generosity and self-sacrifice, where they occur, are
the luxuries of the victor or the forbearances of the
powerful.

The cruel splendours and relentless self-seeking of
the passion of love are directly opposed to the gentle-
ness, pity, and self-annihilation of that other love
which seeketh not its own. The contrast between the
two is often set forth by Blake. In the little poem
called 7he Clod and the Pebble he gives a voice to
each. The clod of clay, trodden beneath the cattle's
feet, sings thus :

Love seeketh not itself to please, \

Nor for itself hath any care, j

But for another gives its ease,
And builds a Heaven in Hell's despair. \

And the Pebble of the brook, polished, rounded,
and self-contained, replies :

278 WILLIAM BLAKE

Love seeketh only Self to please,
To bind another to its delight,
Joys in another's loss of ease.
And builds a Hell in Heaven's despite.

Most of the religions and philosophies which have
taught self-sacrifice have been driven in the direction
of nihilism ; they have either condemned all natural
lusts, or they have fenced them off from the precincts
of religion, giving them permission to roam at will in
the outskirts. Neither of these courses was possible
to Blake. Desire was still to him the authentic voice
of the divinity in man ; and the cherishing of unacted
desires was an offence against humanity :

Abstinence sows sand all over
The ruddy limbs and flaming hair,
But Desire gratified
Plants fruits of life and beauty there.

The gratification of desire needs no law and no argu-
ment to prove it good ; even from the tomb the voice
of nature cries :

Does not the worm erect a pillar in the mouldering church-
yard ?
And a palace of eternity in the jaws of the hungry grave ?
Over his porch these words are written. Take thy bliss O Man !

Blake said that Milton once appeared to him and
warned him not to be misled by Paradise Lost into
thinking that carnal pleasures arose from the Fall.
* The Fall could not produce any pleasure.'

In all this there is difficulty and contradiction
enough. Pleasure is a divine good, but pleasure is
entangled with self -hood, which is the great evil. The
contradiction is in the things themselves, not in the
statement of them ; and it is the genesis of Blake's
mysticism. The body of death which oppresses us,
the whole * Vegetable Universe ' which clogs the swift
spirit of life and joy, is identified by Blake with Nature

i

WILLIAM BLAKE 279

herself. ' I fear Wordsworth loves nature,' he said
to Crabb Robinson, ' and nature is the work of the
Devil. The Devil is in us as far as we are nature.'
The same thought appears in his poem To Tirzah —
the goddess who stands in his mythology for the
religion of Nature :

Thou Mother of my Mortal part
With cruelty didst mould my Heart,
And with false self-deceiving tears
Didst bind my Nostrils, Eyes, and Ears ;

Didst close my Tongue in senseless clay.
And me to Mortal Life betray :
The Death of Jesus set me free :
Then what have I to do with thee ?

When Blake uses the language of Christian theology, \
as he so frequently does, he gives to it his own meaning. \
The second of the foregoing stanzas needs for com-
ment some such passage as the following, taken from
his notes For the Year 1810 : ' All things are com-
prehended in their eternal forms in the divine body
of the Saviour, the true vine of eternity, the Human
imagination, who appeared to me as coming to judg-
ment among his Saints, and throwing off the temporal
that the eternal might be established.' In the real,
eternal, or imaginative world — for the terms are used
interchangeably — the warring powers that divide the
empire of the soul of man are reconciled and united.
Heaven and Hell, in this scheme, are not true oppo-
sites ; they are the dwelling-places of those divorced
powers of the soul whose greatest glory and strength
shall be found in their ultimate union. Between the
two realms angels are continually ascending and de-
scending. When the long severance shall find an end,
when love shall be the only fulfilling of the law, when
the power that hides in Self shall cease to oppose and
deny, and shall be merged in joyous impulse, the

28o WILLIAM BLAKE

consummation of all things will be attained in the
Marriage of Heaven and Hell.

In the meantime Blake recognizes only one religion
for dwellers on this earth, the religion of the continual
forgiveness of sin. This is the Religion of Jesus, ' the
most Ancient, the Eternal and the Everlasting Gospel '.
There is nothing more wonderful in Blake's poetry
than the long fragmentary poem on this theme,
inspired throughout with a kind of divine frenzy.

Jesus was sitting in Moses' Chair.
They brought the trembling woman there.
Moses commands she be ston'd to death.
What was the sound of Jesus' breath ?
He laid his hand on Moses' Law ;
The ancient heavens, in silent awe,
Writ with Curses from Pole to Pole,
All away began to roll.

Whenever Blake speaks on this subject of forgiveness,
what he says is full of insight and beauty. In his notes
on the Last Judgment these passages occur :

' It is not because angels are holier than men or devils that
makes them angels, but because they do not expect holiness
from one another, but from God only.'

' Angels are happier than men or devils because they are
not always prying after good and evil in one another, and
eating the tree of Knowledge for Satan's gratification.'

-The three Furies he represented, contrary to the
usual practice, as male beings, and he adds this quaint
note, ' The spectator may suppose them clergymen in
the pulpit, scourging sin instead of forgiving it '. For-
giveness, as Blake conceives of it, allows of no limits.
If it be offered in consideration of amends made, or
on condition that the offence be not repeated, it is
a bargain and not forgiveness. The only true forgive-
ness is a movement of love and pity called forth by
the offence as inevitably as a grain of sand in the eye
will causd the tears to flow. And this is the beginning

WILLIAM BLAKE 281

and the end of religion. By Blake's account of the
matter, evil, in all its terror and potency, like Satan
armed in gold, came into the world not with the first
offence, but with the first judgment on the offender.
It is from the judgment-seat that clouds of blood
and ruin have rolled over the world. ' Come then,'
he says, in his daring apostrophe at the end of the
second part of Jerusalem, —

Come then, O Lamb of God, and take away the remembrance
of Sin.

The live power of this belief in Blake's own mind
and heart may be seen in those poems — and they are
many — which reveal the marvels of his tenderness.
There was surely never a poet whose feelings responded
more delicately to all the appeals of frailty and weak-
ness and ignorance and helplessness. The poem called
Auguries of Innocence is a lexicon of pity, and a bio-
graphy of the gentle heart. Some of the couplets of
which it is made up are idylls of beauty :

The wild Deer wand'ring here and there
Keeps the Human Soul from Care.

Some have that strange metaphysical insight which
sees all things in each, and eternity in an hour :

He who torments the Chafer's Sprite
Weaves a Bower in endless Night.
The Catterpiller on the Leaf
Repeats to thee thy Mother's grief.
Kill not the Moth nor Butterfly
For the Last Judgment draweth nigh.

This, and other poems laden with the thought that
springs from the heart — poems like The School Boy, or
A Little Boy Lost in the Songs of Experience — give
meaning to Blake's claim that pity is vision and that
sympathy with weakness is strength :

For a Tear is an Intellectual thing :

And a Sigh is the Sword of an Angel King :

282 WILLIAM BLAKE

And the bitter groan of a Martyr's woe
Is an Arrow from the Almighty's Bow.

The sweetness and the rapture of desire give place, in
the later poems, to the more unchanging love that is
born of sorrov^^. Here, at last, love has found the
secret of peace and endurance :

I thought Love lived in the hot sunshine,
But O, he lives in the Moony light !
I thought to find Love in the heat of Day,
But sweet Love is the Comforter of Night.

Seek Love in the Pity of others' Woe,

In the gentle reHef of another's care,

In the darkness of night and the Winter's Snow,

In the naked and outcast, seek Love there !

Blake deals with the deepest and most obscure
problems, and deals with them, for the most part, in
a language of his own. His biographers and critics
have found it work enough to attempt the mere
exposition of his views, and have refrained from dis-
cussion and criticism. While the understanding of his
meaning is still so far from complete, how should
there be a sure ground for controversy ? Those parts
of his work which are written in any recognized metre
have now, at last, found a trustworthy and scholarly
editor in Mr. John Sampson. But much remains to
do before the field is open for the critic. All the
extant works must be competently and reverently
edited. A concordance of the Prophetic Books must
be prepared, marking the appearances and functions
of each of the personages of the visionary mythology.
If this essay, which pretends to no such ordered
exposition, has succeeded ' in showing that Blake's
meaning, caught here in flying glimpses from the less
obscure of his writings, promises good hope of reward
to the more laborious experiment, it has done all it
can do. Fuller criticism must be reserved for fuller
knowledge.

WILLIAM BLAKE 283

Yet even the reader of Blake who has brought no
systematic implements to the work of mining, but has
wandered and browsed on the surface of the Prophetic
Books, may without offence record his superficial and
modest impressions. To the most casual observer
there is something remarkable in the history of this
prophet and of his works. It is more than a hundred
years since he made his first appearance, and he has
found a fair number of biographers, editors, and
expositors. Yet no one of these can speak with
authority. Some have made of him a mere ground-
work on which to embroider their own opinions ;
some have lavished the highest praise on the imitative
work of his boyhood, and have ignored his later,
stronger, and darker work ; some have seen in him
a clumsy writer of allegories ; some have thrown the
whole force of their criticism into a discussion of the
nature and methods of madness. There is not one of
the number but has parted from his task with a sense
of dissatisfaction and defeat. Blake is a prophet
witkaut-iiisci^es.

His imaginative mythology may yield up its meaning

to the rack and thumb-screw of a scientific criticism :

it yields neither pleasure nor enlightenment to the

wandering lover of beauty. In this world of howling

\ and groaning giants all is violence and contortion and

\ monotony. Here and there in the Prophetic Books

'.the reader finds, with a sweet sense of relief, that he

I has strayed into an oasis :

A little moony night and silence,
With Spaces of sweet gardens and a tent of elegant beauty :
Closed in by a sandy desert and a night of stars shining,
And a little tender moon, and hovering angels on the wing.

But he must take up his burden again, and go forth
into the gloomy desert of the Titans. He will need
all his faith and determination if he is to escape from

284 WILLIAM BLAKE

the assaults of the recurring doubt — is it possible that
the secret of human life lies hid in this darkness, or that
these shadowy and grotesque nonentities are true
symbols of God's eternal variety and plenty poured
out in the world of sun and rain ?

Blake started in life with as pure and tender a gift
of imagination as has ever fallen to the lot of man.
If that imagination went astray, some explanation is
needed. His own doctrine of the imagination gives
cause for disquietude. * Imagination ', he said, ' is the
divine vision, not of the world, nor of man, nor from
man as he is a natural man, but only as he is a spiritual
man. Imagination has nothing to do with memory.'
And again, ' Natural objects always did, and now do,
weaken, deaden, and obliterate imagination in me '.
* I assert for myself that I do not behold the outward
creation, and that to me it is hindrance and not
action.' This doctrine, let it be said in all sincerity,
may be good and true for the seer ; it is certainly
\ bad and false for the artist. It leaves Blake without
a reason for drawing a man with two legs. His own
pictorial art suffered from his belief that nature is the
work of the devil. At its best, it has great nobility
and dignity of outline, a grave solemnity, and a keen
feeling for little tendernesses of attitude and incident.
But he uses his eyes too seldom, so that his treatment
of the human figure is habitually crude, violent,
exaggerated, and wilful. Nature, whatever be the
power that created her, is unfailing in the revenge she
takes on the man who cheapens her. Let an artist
neglect the loving study of the life, and his work will
lose power even while he talks. If Blake's powers
miscarried, it was not from any failure of his reason,
which remained strong and sane to the end, but from
the pride of his imagination, which mocked the meat
it should have fed on. It seems almost as if, in the
language of his own mythology, his Spectre had usurped

WILLIAM BLAKE 285

the seat of his imaginative powers, and had made these
powers the engine of a violent egotism ; while his
Emanation, under whose genial impulse he had written
the Songs of Innocence, and had poured out his heart
to the natural world in many tender, feminine observ-
ances, lay bound in captivity, ' weeping incessantly for
his sin '. In his prophetic fury he lost touch with
the natural world, and lost something of that humility
and expectancy which alone can make the natural
world a school for the powers of the artist.
, It was an ill day for Blake when he first made
jacquaintance with the works of Emmanuel Sweden-
fcorg. Up to that time the Bible and the poems of
Milton had been, beyond compare, the most influential
hi the books he had read. Swedenborg offered him
k new method, utterly unlike anything to be found in
Milton, and without adequate scriptural precedent,
save in parts of the weakest and last of the books of
the New Testament. J The writings of Swedenborg
have something of the fascination of authentic vision ;
but the springs of refreshment trickle out from moun-
tains of inanity and laborious pedantry .j Blake was, \
in a certain sense, illiterate, even to the end ; and 1
Swedenborg was the worst possible teacher for him.
It is easy to decry the academic processes of verbal
education, but these processes have their uses. They
do little, it is true, to enrich a man's nature, or to
increase his reserve of natural power. But they put
him on his guard against the deceits of verbiage, and
render him immune from the insidious encroachments
of high-sounding nonsense. They submit even the
imagination to a civil and social discipline, and compel
the bard to express himself with a decent respect for
the intellectual habits of his feUow men. This classic
discipline, which has never yet, by itself, been the
making of a good poet, but which has saved the world
from the pretentious follies of many a dunce and the

286 WILLIAM BLAKE

brilliant futilities of many a man of genius, was exactly
what Blake most needed. But he was born in an age
when the masters of this grave and ancient school had
fallen half-asleep over their task, and were droning out
lessons that made but little appeal to the affections
and the imagination ; so that he recoiled from them
in contempt, and fell into the arms of the first enthu-
siast who held out to him glittering promises. He
'passes some cool enough criticisms, it is fair to say, on
the system of Swedenborg. Swedenborg, he said, was
a Divine teacher ; but was wrong * in endeavouring to
explain to the rational faculty what the reason cannot
comprehend. He should have left that.' Yet, though
the doctrine of correspondences, in all its monstrous
mechanical elaboration, failed of acceptance, the virus
of the system, with its symbolism and esoteric vision,
passed into Blake's thought, and made a galloping pro-
gress. To one whose visualizing power was naturally
strong almost to the point of hallucination the symbolic
creed offered irresistible attractions. It endowed his
waking dreams with the value of a philosophy and the
force of a gospel. So began, it may be, the mis-
application of the doctrine of double vision, whereby
double vision was based not on what is presented by
the natural world to the bodily eye, but on fantasies
which were themselves a mirage of the life of the
intellect, and which, by a further process of abstrac-
tion, must be re-interpreted by the reader into general
terms — vapour passing from the visible state back into
the invisible. Blake was conscious of this tendency in
himself, and, until it took complete possession of him,
lamented it. * My abstract folly ', he writes in 1801
to Mr. Butts, ' hurries me often away while I am at
work, carrying me over mountains and valleys, which
are not real, into a land of abstraction where spectres
of the dead wander. . . . Who shall deliver me from
this spirit of abstraction ? '

WILLIAM BLAKE 287

It may well be that the visionary writings will yield
a fuller meaning to 'the investigator when the code of
interpretation is discovered. But even if this should
be achieved, the force of the objection is not impaired.
What can be intelligibly deciphered can be intelligibly
expressed so that it needs no deciphering. And if, on
the other hand, the vision revealed in the Prophetic
Books is a true vision of real things, as various and
inscrutable in meaning as the world of sense, it must
be judged as that world is judged, by its direct appeal,
its inherent virtue and beauty. Blake's world of over*-/
laboured giants has no form nor comeliness ; it ik\
a nightmare, broken by sudden miracles of spirituals
insight, and irradiated by wonderful gleams of tender i
memory, coming far and faint from that world oi\
sense which, in his later speculations, he despised.

The difficulty of criticizing Blake fairly is increased
to the point of desperation by the enormous nature
of his claims. He asks to be considered not as a poet,
content to rest his fame on the finest of his achieve-
ments, but as a prophet, whose vision of things, con-
sistent in all its parts, must be accepted or rejected
in its entirety. The reader who feels the fascination
and beauty of his work, and is willing to accept the
author's own exposition of it, yet cannot avoid mis-
givings. Blake has not the assured calm of the greatest
visionaries. He shows, at times, the most superb
indifference to the blindness of those who deny his
faith. But this is only one of his moods ; at other \
times he is irritable, captious, rancorous, and vents his
annoyance in a fusillade of epigram and satire. Some
of this is striking in its grotesque humour and the
fierceness of its hostility, as when he consigns his rivals
to perdition, and tells how

Death sits laughing on their Monuments,

On which he 's written ' Received the Contents '.

288 WILLIAM BLAKE

/

/ But let a prophet beware of satire. He may curse

j the adversaries of his faith ; he may not laugh at
1 them. Laughter, when it is employed as a weapon,
,is an appeal to common sense. All genuine laughter
'implies or invites sympathy, and refers the question
at issue to the tribunal of current opinion. There is
something disconcerting and inhuman about the loud
and fierce laughter of one who laughs alone. It is
the war-cry of defiant and injured vanity, and bears
witness to the hurt received. But the seer who lives
in the confidence and peace of his own vision is
incapable of hurt. He worships at the temple's inner
shrine, and takes no part in the noisy contentions of
the market-place.

Blake, whose sympathy for children was so wonder-
fully quick and true, felt but scant sympathy for grown
men. He was self-absorbed and self-involved during
all his later years. He sought no disciples, and founded
/no Church, but was content to remain an eccentric,
a recluse, and an Ishmaelite. The dreams wherein he
saw angels ascending and descending were dreamed in
the studio, not under the open sky ; and he received
no promise that in him should all the families of the
earth be blessed. His dreams are all that is left of
him for our inheritance — dreams often broken and
troubled, but illumined, even at their darkest, by those
wonders of joy and innocence which were the gift to
/him of that God whom he had had in his childhood.

SHELLEY*

More than the others of that group of English
poets who flourished at the beginning of the nine-
teenth century, and whose work, taken as a whole,
gives to English literature its all but greatest glory,
Shelley was the inheritor and the exponent of the
ideas of the French Revolution. The French Revolu-
tion aroused and then disappointed Wordsworth,
causing him to turn away from political ideals and to
seek consolation in universal nature ; it made Byron
a rebel, and Southey a Laureate ; but it gave birth to
Shelley. And the chief effect of the Revolution on
English life and thought is to be sought in literature
rather than in politics. The great wave that broke
over Europe in the roar of the Napoleonic wars spent
its strength in vain on the political structure of these
islands, but the air was long salt with its spray. And
the poems of Shelley, if it be not too fanciful to
prolong the figure, are the rainbow lights seen in the
broken wave.

The ideas of the Revolution and the passion of the
Revolution glitter and vibrate in Shelley's poems.
And these ideas, it must be remembered, in their
earlier and cruder political forms, had but a short
spell of life. They bred the giant that killed them ;
the modern scientific and historical temper finds it
wellnigh impossible to regain the outlook of those who
stood breathlessly waiting for the revelation of a new
heaven and a new earth. So that it is not to be won-
dered at if the poetry that sprang from the political
creed has been to some extent involved in the downfall
of the creed. Certain it is that few of his readers, even
among his professed admirers, read Shelley for his

^ Introduction to Poems by Shelley, George Bell and Sons, 1902.
3600 u

290 SHELLEY

meaning ; few, even among his critics, treat his
message seriously. The people of England, said Burke,
want * food that will stick to their ribs ' ; and the
remark condenses in a phrase all that dissatisfaction
with theory and dream which is heard as an undertone
in most of the authoritative criticisms of Shelley.
The poet has achieved immortality, but not on his
own terms. He is ' a beautiful and ineffectual angel ' —
a decorator's angel, one might almost say, designed for
a vacant space, not the authentic messenger of the
will of Heaven. Or he is a moonlight visitant that
soothes the soul with melodious words and beautiful
images when the bonds of reality are loosened. As
a prophet he is lightly esteemed, but when once the
prophet's mantle is gently removed from his shoulders
by tender official hands, he is welcome to stay with us,
and to delight us in all restful places by the subtle
marvels of his lyrical craft, and the iridescent play of
his creative fancy.

Yet seeing that a poet is a poet only in so far as he
reveals the beauty and the power that is universal
and enduring caught from the confused lights and
shadows of his own time, it is worth the pains to
examine the main ideas that animate the poetry of
Shelley. Some of these, it may not be denied, are
utterly fallen from power. Like other revolutionary
thinkers, Shelley hopes for the salvation and perfection
of mankind by way of an absolute breach with the
past. History is to him at best a black business, an
orgy of fantastic and luxurious cruelty. Commerce is
* the venal interchange of all that human art and nature
yield '. Gold — how far would gold have enthralled
the imagination of poets if it had been a dull black
substance with a slightly unpleasant scent ? — gold is
a god, or demon, of dreadful strength. Education
and tradition, institution and custom are made the
marks of the same impassioned invective, simple

SHELLEY 291

sometimes almost to thoughtlessness, as in that passage
of Laon and Cythna where British parental authority-
is thus described :

The land in which I lived by a fell bane
Was withered up. Tyrants dwelt side by side
And stabled in our homes ;

sometimes rising to heights of grave denunciation,
as in that other passage where is described how

The Queen of slaves,
The hood-winked angel of the blind and dead,
Custom, with iron mace points to the graves
Where her own standard desolately waves
Over the dust of Prophets and of Kings.

Yet this multiplied oppression, which is imposed on
man by man himself, which has grown with his growth
and is intertwined with his dearest interests, is con-
ceived of by the revolutionary theorists and, at least
in his earlier poems, by Shelley himself, as a thing
separable from man, a burden laid on him by some
dark unknown power, a net weaved around him by
foreign enemies. One resolute act of inspired insurrec-
tion, and the burden may be cast off for ever, the
net severed at a blow, leaving man free, innocent, and
happy, the denizen of a golden world.

In his later and maturer poems we may detect
Shelley's growing suspicion that the burden of man
is none other than the weight of ' the superincum-
bent hour ', or of the atmosphere that he breathes ;
that the net has its fibres entangled with the nerves
of his body and the veins and arteries that feed his
life. Yet he neither faltered nor repented ; he had
learned

To hope, till hope creates
From its own wreck the thing it contemplates ;

and if the tyrant that oppresses mankind is immitigable

U 2

292 SHELLEY

Reality, he will be a rebel against Reality in the name
of that fairer and no less immortal power, the desire
of the heart.

Shelley is the poet of desire. To him, as to Blake,
the promptings of desire were the voice of divinity
in man, and instinct and impulse bore the authentic
stamp of the Godhead. His pure and clear and
wonderfully simple spirit could hardly conceive of
a duty that travels by a dim light through difficult
and uncertain ways, still less of a duty that calculates
and balances and chooses. When he was lifted on
the crest of some overmastering emotion, he saw all
clear ; dropped into the hollow, he could only wait
for another wave. It is as if he could not live save
in the keen and rarified air of some great joy or heroic
passion ; and his large capacity for joy made him the
more susceptible to all that thwarts or depresses or
interrupts it. These two strains, of rapture and of
lament, of delight in love and beauty, and of protest
against a world where love and beauty are not fixed
eternal forms, run through all the poetry of Shelley,
answering each other like the voices of a chorus.
Our life on earth seems to him a stormy vision, a
wintry forest, a * cold common hell ' ; but it has
moments of exaltation which belie it, and by their
power and intensity hold out a promise of deliverance.
Thought and passion transform the dull suffering
of this life into the likeness of ' a fiery martyrdom *,
and by their very intensity bear witness to the greatness
of the issues at stake.

It is somewhat absurdly made a charge against
Shelley that the ideal which he sets before humanity
is not 3. practical or possible one. He had to deal
with this sort of criticism during his lifetime, and in
the preface to Prometheus Unbound he offers a grave
explanation : * It is a mistake ', he says, ' to suppose
that I dedicate my poetical compositions solely to

SHELLEY 293

the direct enforcement of reform, or that I consider
them in any degree as containing a reasoned system
on the theory of human life.' No exact political
programme is deducible from his works. No coherent
or satisfactory account can be given of the changes
that would be necessary to bring in the idyllic society
that mocks his vision in the distance. But if the
aspirations of a poet are to be tethered to what is
demonstrably attainable, the loftiest legitimate ambi-
tion ever breathed in English verse would perhaps be
found in those lines of The Excursion where an earnest
wish is expressed for a System of National Education
established universally by Government. The creed of
the Revolution was a noble creed, and although
Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity, considered as the
basis of a political system, have been sadly battered
by political artillery, they have not yet been so com-
pletely disgraced that it is forbidden to a poet to desire
them. Only in a world where they shall be more
desired than they are with us can they ever become
possible. And the gist of Shelley's teaching lies not
in this or that promise held out of future good, but in
the means that he insists on for its realization. The
elusive vagueness of the millennium pictured in the
weakest part of Prometheus Unbound detracts no whit
from the loftiness and truth of the great speech of
Demogorgon and the closing World-symphony. The
early Christians, too, were deceived in their hopes
of the millennium, but they, like the early alchemists,
went not unrewarded by ' fair, unsought discoveries
by the way '.

The very vagueness of Shelley's poetry is an essential
part of its charm. He speaks the language of pure
emotion, where definite perceptions are melted in
the mood they generate. Possessed by the desire of
escape, he gazes calmly and steadily on nothing of
earthly build. Every visible object is merely another

294 SHELLEY

starting-point for the cobwebs of dreams. Like his
own poet,

He will watch from dawn to gloom
The lake-reflected sun illume
The yellow bees in the ivy-bloom,
Nor heed nor see, what things they be ;
But from these create he can
Forms more real than living man,
Nurslings of immortality.

His thoughts travel incessantly from what he sees
to what he desires, and his goal is no more distinctly
conceived than his starting-place. His desire leaps
forth towards its mark, but is consumed, like his
fancied arrow, by the speed of its own flight. His
devotion is * to something afar from the sphere of our
sorrow ' ; the voices that he hears bear him vague
messages and hints

Of some world far from ours
Where music and moonlight and feeling are one.

And this perfect lyrical vagueness produces some
of the most ghostly and bodiless descriptions to be
found in all poetry. His scenery is dream-scenery ;
it can hardly be called cloud-scenery, for the clouds
that tumble in a June sky are shapes of trim and
substantial jollity compared with the shifting and
diffused ether of his phantom visions. The scene of
his poems is laid among

Dim twilight-lawns, and stream -illumined caves,
And wind-enchanted shapes of wandering mist.

And the inhabitants are even less definite in outline ;
the spaces of his imagination are

Peopled with unimaginable shapes,

Such as ghosts dream dwell in the lampless deep.

The poet is himself native to this haunted and scarce

SHELLEY 295

visible world ; and when, in Eptpsychidion, he tells
of the Being who communed with him in his youth,
it is in this world that they meet :

On an imagined shore,
Under the grey beak of some promontory
She met me, robed in such exceeding glory,
That I beheld her not.

It is pleasant to consider what a critic of the school
of Johnson, if any had survived, would have said of
these lines. * Here, Sir,' he might have said, ' he tells
us merely that in a place which did not exist he met
nobody. Whom did he expect to meet ? ' Yet the
spirit of Romance, which will listen to no logic but the
logic of feeling, is prompt to vindicate Shelley. The
kind of human experience that he set himself to utter
will not admit of chastened and exact language ; the
homeless desires and intimations that seem to have no
counterpart and no cause among visible things must
create or divine their origin and object by suggestion
and hyperbole, by groping analogies, and fluttering
denials. To Shelley life is the great unreality, a painted
veil, the triumphal procession of a pretender. Yet,
here and there, in the works of Nature and of Art —
' flowers, ruins, statues, music, words,' — there are
sudden inexplicable glories that speak of reality
beyond. It is from the images and thoughts that are
least of a piece with the daily economy of life, from the
faithful attendants that hang on the footsteps of our
exiled perceptions, and from the dwellers on the
boundary of our alienated world, from shadows and
echoes, dreams and memories, yearnings and regrets,
that he would learn to give expression to this hidden
reality. Yet the very attempt defeats itself and is
reduced to the bare negation of appearances. The
highest beauty, as he describes it, is always invisible ;
the liveliest emotion passes into swoon, and takes on
the likeness of death. Demogorgon, the lord of the

296 SHELLEY

Universe, is ' a mighty darkness, filling the seat of
power '.

So habitual and familiar was Shelley's converse
with this spectral world that both in his thought and
in his expression it held the place of what is commonly
called the real world. The figures of his poetry illus-
trate what is strange by what is familiar, and it is the
shadows and spirits that are familiar. The autumn
leaves scurrying before the wind remind him of
* ghosts from an enchanter fleeing '. The skylark in
the heavens is ' like a poet hidden in the light of
thought \ The avalanche on the mountain is piled
flake by flake, as thought by thought is piled in
heaven-defying minds,

Till some great truth
Is loosened, and the nations echo round,
Shaken to their roots.

It is his outward perceptions that he seeks to explain
and justify by a reference to the existences and forms
that filled and controlled his daily meditations.

His poetry, as might be expected, has been found
too remote and unsubstantial to satisfy the taste of
many readers and even of some few lovers of poetry.
It is lacking in human interest. The figures that he
sets in motion are for the most part creatures of his
own making, who have no tangible being outside the
realm of his imagination. Minds that move naturally
and easily only in the world of concrete existences are
compelled to translate Shelley's poetry, as it were,
into another dialect of the universal language, if they
would grasp his meaning. Too often they have
refused the task ; they have been content to float
along on his melody, and to indulge their sense of
colour with the delicate tints of his vision. Even
when he is thus read, there is no denving the matchless
quality of his poetic genius, or the absolute mastery of

SHELLEY 297

his art. But the wisdom of his reading of life, and
the scope and depth of his thought, have sometimes
been questioned.

He died young, and the accumulated wisdom of
old experience was never within his reach. Yet before
he died he had graduated in the school of suffering
and had there learned lessons that only the wise heart
learns. Prometheus Unbound is something more than
a dance of prismatic lights and a concert of sweet
sounds ; it is a record of spiritual experience, subtle
in its analysis, profound in its insight. The supreme
torture of Prometheus, inflicted by the Furies, comes
to him in the form of doubt — doubt lest his age-long
sufferings should all be vain, and worse than vain.
The Furies, who are * hollow underneath, like death ',
and who darken the dawn with their multitude, are
the ministers of pain and fear, of mistrust and hate.
They plant self-contempt and shame in young spirits ;
they live in the heart and brain in the shape of base
desires and craven thoughts. Of all passions, the
ugliest in Shelley's eyes is Hate ; the most terrible
and maleficent is Fear. But Prometheus through his
long agony feels no fear, and no rancour ; the pity
and love that endure in his heart are at last victorious,
and the Furies, baffled, take themselves away. The
first act is full of psychological study, and Shelley
throughout is speaking of what he has felt and known
and observed. But he embodies it in such unearthly
forms, and so carefully avoids the allegorical manner,
that the details of the drama, difficult as they often
are of interpretation, have been wrongly regarded as
freaks of ornament and fantasy. The main idea, the
conception of Love and Life as a dualism, and of
Love as the sole principle of freedom, joy, beauty,
and harmony, in Nature and in Man, appears in
Shelley's earlier poems, and strengthens with his
growth, until it reaches its most magnificent expression

298

SHELLEY

in the radiant figure of Asia and the closing rhapsody
of Adofiais.

That Light whose smile kindles the Universe,
That Beauty in which all things work and move,
That Benediction which the eclipsing Curse
Of birth can quench not, that sustaining Love
Which through the web of being blindly wove
By man and beast and earth and air and sea,
Burns bright or dim, as each are mirrors of
The fire for which all thirst ; now beams on me
Consuming the last clouds of cold mortality.

His early death, though it has endeared him the
more to his lovers, has also deprived him of a full
meed of critical appreciation. The bulk of reputable
criticism is written by middle-aged men, who have
made their peace with the world, on reasonable and
honourable terms, perhaps, but not without conces-
sions. How should they do full justice to the young
rebels, the Marlowes and the SheUeys, who died under
the standard of revolt ? They are tender to them,
and tolerant, as to their younger selves. But they
have accepted, where these refused, and they cannot
always conceal their sense of the headstrong folly of
the refusal. Nor can their judgment be disabled,
for they have knowledge on their side, and experience,
and the practical lore of life. Further, they can enlist
poet against poet, and over against the heart that defies
Power which seems omnipotent, they can set the heart
that watches and receives. Is there not more of
human wisdom to be learned from the quiet harvester
of the twilight than from the glittering apostle of the
dawn ? Yet there is a wisdom that is not born of
acceptance ; and the spirit that is to be tamed to
the uses of this world, if it has much to learn, has
something also to forget. The severest criticism that
the world and the uses of the world are called upon to
undergo is that which looks out on them, ever afresh,

SHELLEY 299

from the surprised and troubled eyes of a child.
In the debate of Youth and Age, neither can expect to
have it all his own way. It is therefore no unqualified
condemnation of Shelley's poetry to say that it appeals
chiefly to the young. And it is not true to say that
it appeals to no others. Many men, it has been said,
are poets in their youth ; it would be truer to say
that many born subjects of prose are tickled by senti-
ment in their youth, and beguiled by sense into
believing, for a time, that they love poetry. The love
of poetry is not so easily eradicable ; it is not Time's
fool,

though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his blending sickle's compass come,

and wherever there are poets, to the end of time,
Shelley will find lovers.

MATTHEW ARNOLD^

The Essays in Criticism cannot be fully appreciated
and understood if they are taken as a mere collection of
discourses composed on various occasions and inspired
by various subjects. They are something more, or
at least they are something other, than that. Taken
together they are a manifesto, an attempt to define,
^nd to. illustrate in practice, the vital functions of
criticism. The first essay supplies the text which is
expanded, diversified, and put into action in all the
succeeding essays. In a letter w^ritten to his sister
shortly after the Essays appeared, Matthew Arnold
states the motive of the book. He was sincerely and
gravely alarmed by the prospects and tendencies of
English literature. On the one hand he saw the Latin
races of the Continent, who preserve, as they have
always preserved, in their practice as well as in their
theory, some of the main traditions of the literatures
of Greece and Rome. On the other hand he saw
America, growing and thriving immensely, dependent
for her literary teaching almost wholly on English
traditions, and applying these traditions with a laxity
and diffuseness which carried them still farther from
the ancient models. * An EngHsh writer ', he says,
' may produce plenty of effect there, and this would
satisfy people like Bright who think successful America
will do quite as well for all they want, or even better,
than successful England ; but it will never satisfy me.
Whatever Mary may say, or the English may think,
I have a conviction that there is a real, an almost
imminent danger of England losing immeasurably in
all ways, declining into a sort of greater Holland, for
want of what I must still call ideas, for want of per-

* Introduction to Essays in Criticism, Govvans and Gray, 191 2.

MATTHEW ARNOLD 301

ceiving how the world is going and must go, and
preparing herself accordingly. This conviction haunts
me, and at times even overwhelms me with depression ;
I would rather not live to see the change come to
pass, for we shall all deteriorate under it. While
there is time I will do all I can, and in every way,
to prevent its coming to pass. Sometimes, no
doubt, turning oneself one way after another, one
must make unsuccessful and unwise hits, and one may
fail after all ; but try I must, and I know that it is
only by facing in every direction that one can win the
day.' It was with this aim, to arrest what he con-
ceived to be the national decay, to lead English
literature into the paths of sanity and wisdom, that
Matthew Arnold became a critic, a missionary, a pro-
phet. To the question, * What must a national
literature do to be saved ? ' he would have replied
with confidence, ' It must generate a sound and
enlightened criticism '. To him the critic seemed no
less than the Saviour of Society.

The decisive change which drew him away from
poetry and made criticism the business of his life came
much earlier than 1865, the date of these essays. The
whole of his literary teaching is foreshadowed in the
remarkable Preface to the Poems of 1853, which well
deserved, indeed, to be reprinted with these essays.
In some ways it is more direct and harder hitting than
anything in this volume. It contains his famous criti-
cism of Shakespeare — * a name the greatest perhaps of
all poetical names ' — as a poet who by his exuberance
and lawlessness had misled his imitators. The habit
of judging poets rather by their fitness as models for
the young than by what is personal and incommuni-
cable in them was strong in Matthew Arnold. The
importance of influence and example was a lesson that
he learned, no doubt, from his father at Rugby ; and
the main employments of his life were likely to impress

302 MATTHEW ARNOLD

it yet more deeply. In 185 1, at the age of twenty-
eight, he took up his life-long task as an Inspector of
Schools ; from 1857 to 1867 he was also Professor
of Poetry at Oxford. His tragedy of Merope was
published, shortly after his appointment as Professor,
to illustrate the value of the classical ideals. It is
correct and cold and mechanical. The difference
between Metope and Shakespeare's wildest work does
not seem to have discouraged him, or to have sug-
gested any doubts concerning the part played by sound
poetic doctrine in the production of poetry. He never
wavered in his faith, but thenceforward he was con-
tent, for the most part, to declare it in criticism and
prose. The lectures On Translating Homer, published
in 1 86 1, set forth the creed once more, and endeavour
to show how the fanciful tendencies of English speech
impede it for the task of rendering the unadorned
majesty of the greatest of the ancient poets.

In a sense, therefore, the critic in Matthew Arnold
killed the poet, and killed him young. He did some
great work in poetry later, on rare and high occasions,
but the bulk of his poetry was written before he became
a Professor. Thereafter he was concerned chiefly with
what is communicable in literary practice, with archi-
tectural models, and the chastening of style. Sallies
of wit and imagination pleased him not at all in poetry,
and he speaks of them with a kind of reluctant toler-
ance. To his mind, they are at best decorations and
details, merits of a part of the subject, only too likely
to obscure and confuse the proportions of the whole,
to which his attention was steadily directed. He lays
all the stress of his teaching on construction. As
a building should be designed to support, with no
excess of strength and no defect, the weight of its
own material, so a theme, in prose or poetry, must be
treated to exhibit and uphold the weight of the mere
event. All reflection and digression, all by-play and

MATTHEW ARNOLD 303

cleverness, deforms and mars the main effect. A story-
must be allowed to tell itself, and to that end the
most that the author can do is to furnish it with
transparent words. If he is restless and egotistic and
acrobatic, and intrudes exhibitions of his own skill, the
effect is less telling. The gist of a play is its action,
and care must be taken that every scene and every
line of the play shall be made subservient to this, so
that what comes home to the spectators shall come
with the gravity and force of experience, purged of
all that is irrelevant and accidental.

This is sound and ancient doctrine, and there is
good reason to say that English poets, more than the
poets of other races, have neglected it in their practice.
Yet the question is not so simple as the metaphors
that are used to expound it. Construction is too
mechanical a word to describe the operation of the
mind in a great poet. His theme, or story, may be
given him, but so soon as his imagination gets to work
on it, it is transformed to a new likeness. The process
is a vital process, not external, like bricklaying ; so
that if architecture must needs be invoked, it is rather
the architecture of the shell-fish, with its mysterious
involutions and delicate suffusion of colour. No artist,
however sedulously and reverently he may keep to the
rules, dares to trust any part of his work that did not
come to him. What he makes by rule he can explain
by rule ; but this, the vital and essential part of his
work, is as surprising to him as it is to others. He
laughs at his own wit, and weeps at his own pathos.
A grave and simple mind — say the mind of Sophocles
— conceives of human life gravely and simply, so that
his words have the strength of the elements. Because
his material is free to all, and his secret lies in the
handling, many of those who admire his work, and
yet more of those who know that it is admirable, are
prone to believe that they can deduce from it a method

304 MATTHEW ARNOLD

and a mechanism, which shall aid them in their own
efforts. They study him, and follow him, and produce
work of their own, free from all the faults of wayward
genius, work that can never die, because it never lived.

Matthew Arnold was too good a poet not to know
this. A sure instinct governed his poetic adventures,
and made him refuse subjects and occasions which did
not rouse and inspire him. Most of his poetry was
born, not made. Yet there is little evidence that he
remembered this when he became a preacher. He is
too fond of speaking as if there were a saving grace
in method. Ben Jonson's Roman plays conform much
more perfectly to his standards than do any of the
Roman plays of Shakespeare. But what profit is that,
to them or to us, when nobody can read them ? The
curse that rests on the academics of modern literature
has sent Merope to join Sejanus in the limbo where
everything is measured and correct.

It will be observed that among the names which are
the subjects of these essays there is no English name.
The ideals that are set before us are European or
cosmopolitan, not national. That is at once their
strength and their weakness. The classic doctrine
belongs to the Latin civilization ; the doctrine of
ideas, of the pure intelligence, freed from all local
and temporal prejudices, belongs to those intellectual
wayfarers who are citizens of the world, and refuse to
contract themselves in narrower bonds. If London or
Berlin were destroyed, they could live no less happily
in Paris. Wherever they find intelligence and art,
there they are among their own people. They are in
no way attached to the soil. It is significant that
what is perhaps the finest of these essays, the essay on
Heinrich Heine, is an essay on a Jew. From Heine's
mocking attacks on German middle-class complacency
Matthew Arnold learned how to make war on his own
countrymen ; the very term Philistine^ a weapon with

MATTHEW ARNOLD 305

which he did so much execution, was borrowed from
Heine's armoury. The attitude that was natural to
Heine, standing aloof, as he did by necessity, from
national custom and national sentiment, whether in
France or Germany, seems less graceful in Matthew
Arnold. There is no evidence that he ever understood
the English character. With incredible lightness he
speaks of ' prescription and routine ' as things evil in
themselves when they get a hold upon a people ! He
preaches accessibility to ideas, readiness to move at
the bidding of reason, and exalts the pure intelligence,
which is depressed and impeded in England by a world
of unreasoning custom and habit. There is no harm
in this kind of preaching, taken as a stimulant, but it
seems strangely to neglect the affections, which build
their nest in custom and habit. The love which makes
the world go round is not the love of the pure idea ;
and the defect of Matthew Arnold, as a critic of
England, is that he had too little affection for England.
It is not easy to divine how the English people, if, by
the operation of some mad miracle, they had moulded
themselves on his teaching, could have remained
English. All that is peculiar to them seems to offend
him. Their upper classes are barbarian ; their middle
classes are Philistine, their lower classes are completely
negligible for the purposes of the pure intelligence —
mere populace. He stands among them, a well-bred,
highly-cultivated stranger, and tries to win them to
the light. But there is nothing in what he says, or
in what he implies, to indicate that he would have
felt any disappointment, any sense even of partial
loss, if they had all become French philosophers or
wandering Jews.

These considerations are not irrelevant, for Matthew
Arnold became more and more, in his later work,
a critic of English literature, which is an intensely
national literature, and can be only imperfectly criti-

3600 X

3o6 MATTHEW ARNOLD

cized from the cosmopolitan point of view. That, and
no other, was his point of view, from first to last.
His criticism is a good antidote to parochialism. His
condemnations, based as they are on a knowledge of
the great work that has been done in other countries
and in bygone ages, are sound and often illuminative.
But every literature is attached, by a myriad of invisible
threads, to the life of its native speech, which is the
creature, not of pure reason, but of national custom
and habit. There are many delicacies and implications
in it which a foreign critic cannot feel. If he is a good
scholar, he can see them ; but when they are elucidated
by a process of study, they lose most of their effect ;
they do not come home to him like a blow. All
criticism of a foreign language really involves a kind
of translation ; and translation, while it reveals some
merits, obliterates others. In a certain sense, Matthew
Arnold's attitude to English literature was that of
a foreigner. He had nourished his youth on other
pastures, and had no taste for many flavours that are
racy of the English soil. When he wishes to show
how poetry should be written, it is commonly a line
of Homer, or Dante, or Goethe, that he quotes. It
is a favourite exercise with him to set side by side
extracts, in several languages, from the notable poems
of different ages, and to use the comparison as a basis
for dogmatic judgments on the authors. Differences
of language, of aim, of circumstance, do not perplex
him ; he sets up his tribunal, and applies his tests
indifferently to all comers. If flowers had been his
affair, and there had been ranged before him a rose,
a tiger-lily, and a sprig of mignonette, he would have
pointed out, with an air of great finality, that only
the tiger-lily is grand.

The method of his criticism is essentially and wholly
dogmatic. He believed in dogma and authority as
engines of practical good, and in an academy as a means

MATTHEW ARNOLD 307

of literary salvation. He wanted only the best and
highest things from poetry ; he was very quick to
discern them, and was so confident in his judgment
that he cared not at all to reason about them, or to
analyse the causes of their greatness. He made very
short work of bad poetry, and when it is remembered
how England was overrun with bad poetry in the age
after the great Romantics, this should be counted to
his credit. Yet even when he treats of good poets, his
method, sometimes just, is hardly ever sympathetic.
He balances faults and virtues, without caring much
to inquire how they came to grow up together in one
mind. In his Essay on Shelley, written much later
than the essays in this volume, he proposes to him-
self * to mark firmly what is ridiculous and odious in
the Shelley brought to our knowledge by the new
materials, and then to show that our former beautiful
and lovable Shelley nevertheless survives '. The fault
of this procedure is that what survives is not Shelley
at all, but * a beautiful and ineffectual angel, beating
in the void his luminous wings in vain '. It is impos-
sible that any one who tries to conceive of Shelley afs
a live man and poet should find him at the same time
ridiculous and odious, beautiful and lovable. A more
careful and modest criticism will easily discern that
it was in truth the author of Jlastor, Epipsychidion,
Prometheus Unbound^ and Adonais, who eloped with
Mary Godwin. But Matthew Arnold cared only to
judge deeds as deeds, and poems as poems ; he was
quite incurious about men. In his critical essays he
presents us with many sound rules, and many memor-
able sentences, but no live man. How Shelley appeared
to Shelley, what Keats thought of Keats — this most
fascinating inquiry, not in itself very difficult to pursue,
seems to interest him not at all. But when they write any-
thing, or do anything, he is willing enough to judge it.
The world avenges itself on those men of genius

Z2

3o8

MATTHEW ARNOLD

who try to convert it to their doctrines, by forgetting
their doctrines and falling in love with themselves.
Matthew Arnold must not be judged, and is not
judged, by his teaching. It is the man who engages
our attention, and who survives by what is most
personal and whimsical in him. His manner in criti-
cism was all his own : he was adorably insolent, priding
himself on his courtesy and humanity, walking deli-
cately among the little people of the earth, like a kind
of Olympian schoolmaster dandy. In controversy he
wielded enormous powers of irritation, wielded them
and enjoyed them, though it seems doubtful whether
he ever quite understood why the poor victims of
them were irritated. His courtesies are a graceful
trellis-work which leave just space enough for his
contempt to peep through. Politeness, which, in its
genuine form, is a clothing for the modesty of good-
will, with him is a suit of armour, worn to protect
him from his adversaries. Nothing can exceed the
quiet impertinence of his use of proper names. He
manages, even in his writings, to give a slight stress
of scornful intonation to names like Clutterbuck, or
Cobbe, or Dodd, and seems gently to conduct the
wearers of these names to a place outside the pale of
humanity. Sometimes he does it merely by repeating
the name oftener than is necessary, as if there were
something essentially absurd in the owner of such
a name daring to hold opinions on things of moment.
It is all monstrously unfair, but his enjoyment of it
is infectious. Some of his critical utterances on poetry
have the same note of calm extravagance. What could
be more whimsical than to attempt to judge the
relative greatness of poets by a comparison of single
lines chosen at random from their works ? That is
how he treats Dante and Chaucer, setting a line from
The Prioress's 7 ale —

O martyr souded to virginitee

MATTHEW ARNOLD 309

over against a single line of Dante —

In la sua volontade e nostra pace.

It is nothing to him that the line from Chaucer is
a mere vocative, and, strictly speaking, has no meaning,
while the line from Dante tells the truth of all religion ;
he is exhibiting his powers as a virtuoso, a taster of
different vintages, and is willing to write a whole
dissertation on the two poets by the light of these
two lines. Nothing so bizarre has ever been done in
so serious a spirit since the foolish fellow of the classical
story brought a sample brick to market in the attempt
to sell his house. He too was a pedant, but he must
yield the prize to the English professor, who taught
poetic architecture all his life, and when he was asked
to pass judgment on the merits of a church and a
town-hall, was content to handle a brick from each.

His invincible air of superiority has interfered some-
what with his efficiency as an evangelist. He ' allures
to brighter worlds, and leads the way ', but, in spite of
his protests, it is difficult to believe that he cares much
about his followers. That is a sound maxim of the
American satirist, addressed to reformers and philan-
thropists— ' In uplifting, get underneath '. Would
Matthew Arnold have been willing or able to learn
anything from a wit of Chicago ? He needed the
lesson. But it is better perhaps not to take his mission-
work too seriously. He enjoyed it, and expressed
himself in it. The most memorable things in his
prose work, as, for instance, his famous sentences on
Oxford, take their power and magic from the memories
and dreams of his own youth. He became involved,
by the necessities of life, in the ugly machinery of
education, where he found much that was wrong, and
much that was pretentious and unreal. Poetry deals
only with what is eternally right, and remedies the
unreal by forgetting it. But it is difficult for a man

310 MATTHEW ARNOLD

to forget insincerities which are presented to him
afresh every morning. A very robust and spontaneous
faculty of human sympathy might shake them off, or
see through them. Matthew Arnold suffered from
them, and took up the sinister weapon of prose argu-
ment to do battle with them. His poetry deals only
with the great things —

The day in his hotness,
The strife with the palm ;
The night in her silence,
The stars in their calm.

In his prose the great things are not forgotten ; they
are continually invoked as memories, and appealed to
as standards. But they are distant, as they never are
distant in the poems, so that his talk concerning them
is like the talk of a country-dweller shut up among
the brawls and noises of a city. He knows a better
life, but he is put on his defence, and his voice learns
the tone of mockery. For all that, he never forgets ;
and when, in a pause of the quarrel, he finds time to
recall those * regions mild of calm and serene air ', he
speaks of what he has seen and breathed.

IN ME MORI AM— JAMES McNEILL
WHISTLER*

Mr. President, my Lords, and Gentlemen,

We are met to celebrate the memory of a very great
man, and to do honour to the work in which he has
perpetuated that memory. Mr. Whistler was a man
good at many things ; he was a wit, and a warrior,
and the most versatile of craftsmen. But he was more
than this ; and it is as a creator and servant of beauty
that he claims our remembrance to-night. Beauty,
and beauty only, he said, was the justification and aim
and end of a work of art. Surely, in the history of the
world, there has seldom been a collection of the works
of one man which was pervaded and inspired and
possessed by the desire of beauty as the wonderful
collection now to be exhibited in the New Gallery
is pervaded and inspired and possessed. Every touch
and every line in those canvases and prints bears its
part in the unceasing quest and shares in the triumph
of the capture. The labour is over ; and we are per-
mitted to take our pleasure, every man according to his
capacity, in the rich reward.

You will not expect me, I am sure, in the face of
these pictures, to discuss or expound any theories of
art. The practice is better. Not the most brilliant
of his theoretic utterances could express Mr. Whistler
a hundredth part so adequately as these works of his.
Indeed, his own theories, though they are neat and
pointed and polished, edged with wit, and often
animated by a profound knowledge, seem to me to
fall far short of expressing him. He taught his age
to look at a picture, not through it ; and the lesson

^ A speech delivered'at the Cafe Royal, London, at the Banquet on
the occasion of the opening of the Whistler Memorial Exhibition,
20 February 1905 ; published by Messrs. Heinemann.

3t2 JAMES McNeill whistler

was ajneeded one. But in his zeal to reprove the public
for their preoccupation with incident and morality
he was apt to deny to his pictures qualities which, after
all, they have. Call a picture what you will, a pattern
or a symphony, or an arrangement, or (if you like)
call it merely a picture, still this is true of it : that
when an artist has done his best at symphony, or
arrangement, there comes to him sometimes an
unsought increment on his effort ; something that he
did not consciously work for, perhaps does not even
know that he has attained. In Mr. Whistler's figure-
pieces there is often a tenderness and grace and pathos
of human emotion which is unaccounted for by the
theory, but which is his no less than the more purely
optical qualities that he laid stress on. The intensity
of his purpose overshoots itself and reveals to him
more than he is seeking.

He stood aloof — more completely aloof, perhaps,
than most other great artists have done — from the
movements and schools of his own time. His early
works belong to a notable time of artistic ferment.
The Pre-Raphaelites were teaching what I may call
their new morality of vision ; the Impressionists were
working out their new psychology of vision. He
belonged to neither school. He picked up hints and
suggestions, no doubt, from these and a hundred
other sources, but in the main he was independent
and original — in the right sense of that word. That
is to say, he began at the beginning ; in each of his
works he creates afresh, as it were ; he accepts every
subject as presenting a new problem to be grappled
with, a new set of conditions to be studied and sub-
dued, by new devices, to the service of beauty. I am
not decrying the utility of ' schools ' if I say that the
most robust and splendid of them may interfere, by
the very greatness of their traditions, with that inces-
sant watchfulness, that alert vitality, and that readiness
for new experiment which is found in all Mr. Whistler's
work. It is the misfortune of the schools that they

JAMES McNeill whistler 313

give a false importance to acquisitive and imitative
talent. And there is one school, at least, which is
apt to cramp the work even of a man of genius — the
school of his own past successes. If the love of ease
entices him, his very triumphs become his enemies,
by tempting him into formula and repetition. But to
the end of his life, Mr. Whistler never rested upon
success ; he went on seeking for new worlds to
conquer. * If you want to rest,' he once said to a friend
who complained that there was no easy chair in his
house — ' if you want to rest you had better go to bed '
— and the remark might be taken as the motto of his
artistic career ; as the motto, indeed, of the career
of any artist.

An alertness like this finds its ample reward. It
keeps a man's intelligence and sympathies open for
new lessons from Art and Nature. It was by his
sleepless activity of mind that Mr. Whistler was
enabled to become the interpreter, and the pioneer
in Europe, of the art of the Japanese. In this, I
believe, he was something of a discoverer, and brought
from the East, not gold nor spices, but a new charm.
He may be said to have inaugurated, in the happiest
way, the Anglo-Japanese Alliance — an Alliance which,
in the realm of Art, is neither offensive nor defensive,
but devoted to mutual appreciation and mutual
delight — a kind of friendly tournament on the Field
of the Cloth of Gold. And, besides Japan, there was
another great teacher from whom he never ceased to
learn — the Goddess Nature, whom he was wont to
patronize with a certain humorous bravado. She had
so much he did not want, that he was inclined to
regard her as a busybody, an officious and too impor-
tunate saleswoman, pressing her garish stores of goods
on his attention. Yet how much did he not learn from
his sensitive and untiring observation of Nature ?
When did he cease to study her moving benediction
of light ? The public of his time asked a painter for
recognizable and clearly defined pictorial symbols of

314 JAMES McNeill whistler

common objects. But these objects, to an eye not
blinded by habit, exist in a strange submarine world,
a shifting and glimmering sea of light and air. It was
this sea that Mr. Whistler cared for — this sea in its
gentlest undulating moods ; and, although I dare not
judge others by my own case, yet I believe there are
many artists who were taught by his work, as I, in
my layman's ignorance, was taught, to take a keener
pleasure in observing how light caresses the surface of
things, and how air softens their outlines.

But the highest praise remains to tell. Wherever
artists are gathered together, Mr. Whistler cannot be
too much honoured for what has been well called
his ' implacable conscience '. He found no use on
this earth for critics. But there never lived a severer
critic of himself. Among all the temptations that
assail an artist he walked so absolutely unspotted and
unsubdued, with so confident a gaiety, that it seems
unfair to say that he resisted temptation ; it is almost
as if he had never been tempted. He would destroy
any of his works rather than leave a careless or inex-
pressive touch within the limits of the frame. He
would begin again a hundred times over, rather than
attempt, by patching, to make his work seem better
than it was. He was not content till he had got what
he wanted, and his work expressed himself at his best.
And this was the cause, I think, of his remarkably
strong sense of property in his pictures. They were
his children, a part of himself, and that they should
be sold into slavery, that anything so accidental and
external as the payment of money should alienate or
impair his rights in them, always seemed to him, I
think, a mere piece of inhumanity and impertinence
on the part of the law.

Consider the irony of things. Here was one of the
most serious-minded men that have ever lived in this
world. For a long time he was widely and authorita-
tively regarded as a trifler and a jester, one who
evaded difficulties and sought a cheap reputation for

JAMES McNeill whistler 315

eccentricity. I will not remind you of any incidents
in the famous trial, though it still has its lessons for
artists and critics. Any one who takes up the full
report of that trial and reads it now, will rub his eyes
and wonder. It tells how the official worlds of Art
and Criticism were ranged against Mr. Whistler and
a few friends. Many of the witnesses no doubt
repented later of their evidence — of being so busy
with their tongues and so idle with their eyes. But
no man goes through an experience of this kind
untouched. Mr. Whistler went on with his work —
that is the great thing — and provided himself with
a defence against the world. Laughter, which is often
used for defensive purposes by those who have good
wits and sensitive tempers, became his shield and his
spear. His attitude to the public was exactly the
attitude taken up by Robert Browning, who suffered
as long a period of neglect and mistake, in those lines
of The Ring and the Book :

Well, British Public, ye who like me not,

(God love you !) and will have your proper laugh

At the dark question : — ^laugh it ! I laugh first.

Mr. Whistler always laughed first. So he carried
the war into the enemy's country. They treated the
business which was no less than a religion to him as
if it were a pretence and a trifle. What wonder if he
treated in the same spirit the business which was
most serious to them ? Politics, society, banking —
these also are serious affairs. But one who comes
across them in his moments of relaxation, after a long
and grim struggle with one of the most difficult crafts
in the world, may be excused if he finds in them
plentiful opportunities for amusement. After all, an
artist must be amused — it is the breath of his nostrils ;
he must find delight or make it, whether from under-
standing things, or from indulging his humour in
wilfully misunderstanding them. Where Mr. Whistler
found delight in misunderstanding, he also gave delight

3i6 JAMES McNeill whistler

by his child-like glee and by his powers of wit — a
wit not employed in great campaigns, but decorated
and tempered and worn by the side, or flourished in
the hand, as a fit addition to courtly dress.

He gained recognition at last. Wherever a man of
genius spends an arduous life in the lonely pursuit of
his aims, you find the same sequel, in posthumous sub-
scriptions, or on graven memorial stones, or in those
honorary degrees which are conferred by Universities
on famous veterans. I am glad to think that the
honorary degree which was conferred on Mr. Whistler
some two years ago by the University of Glasgow
gave him sincere pleasure. I know it was felt by
those whose votes conferred it, that if a living painter
was to be chosen from among the English-speaking
peoples for academic honours, there could be no
question what name to choose. I think the precedent
was a good one ; and I trust it will be followed up.
If a University is to represent all that is best in the
intelligence and skill of a nation, it can ill afford to
neglect the Fine Arts. Let the great artist take
refuge in isolation if he will, but do not force it upon
him. For, indeed, his work, though he refuses to
submit it to the popular suffrage, or to modify it by
the opinions of critics, is an asset of civilization, a
possession for ever ; and his example is a model for
all workers in its unflagging persistence and in its
devotion to some of the greatest and best things that
are attainable by the frailty of our human nature.

Gentlemen, I give you the toast of

* The Memory of Whistler '.

BURKE^

Of all great English prose writers, Burke is most
like Shakespeare. If we had to state, in a few words,
what it is that sets Shakespeare at the head of the
great company of English poets, the task would be
difficult (or perhaps impossible) ; but would not the
answer have to be something like this : that no other
poet combines the same breadth with the same inten-
gitjL? Those who have something of the passion of
Shakespeare are narrower in their outlook, more
personal and exclusive. Those who have something
of his width of view are usually more purely humorous
or philosophic, less intimately concerned with the
fervours and passions of humanity. Shakespeare alone
never forgets the part in the whole ; he is magnificent
in his appreciation of the laws which govern human
life, but he sees their remotest consequences, and
illustrates them by their detailed effects on the life of
the individual. He cares chiefly for the concrete, for
living breathing human creatures, and he is never
content to formulate a law without showing it in its
real operation at the points where it touches daily
experience and natural feeling.

In these respects Burke is like Shakespeare. His
imagination has an immense scope, he deals much in
general truths and laws of universal validity, but he is
never satisfied with knowing the truth unless he can
Teel it and see it too — feel it in its operation on the
life of man and see it in its humblest guise as it is
exemplified in the habits and customs, the pleasures
and sufferings of the English miner and the Indian
peasant. He brought to the service of politics an
imagination that would have given him high rank

^ A lecture delivered at Newcastle-upon-Tyne in January 1908.

3i8 BURKE

among dramatists and poets. In Goldsmith's well-
known lines he appears as one

Who, born for the Universe, narrowed his mind,
And to party gave up what was meant for mankind.

But the sacrifice can be stated another way. He gave
to politics all the vigour of his imagination, all the
treasures of his observation and learning, and showed
how, understood justly and liberally, politics are not
a thing apart, but are coextensive with all the dearest
interests of life. His writings have not the range of
the drama. He handles no private matters, except
in so far as these depend on public affairs. How
intimately they do, everywhere and always, depend on
public affairs has never been more clearly conceived
than by Burke. He is the greatest and truest of our
political thinkers. He has made it impossible for any
one who reads and understands his work to give
politics a place apart, to hand it over to politicians and
economists and theorists as a partial and special study.
Politics to Burke meant the life of man in society.
There is no other life of man. His subject, therefore,
is nothing less than humanity. The wonderful growtlT
that is called the state, which no oiie man can design
or construct ; the pieties and affections which bind
man to man, and make men willing to help one
another ; the blind force of habit and custom which
are as much properties of man as mass and weight are
properties of matter ; the operation of positive law
enforced by the State on its subjects, and the limits of
that operation ; the traffic of nations with each other,.

Peaceful commerce from dividable shores,

and the interpretation and meaning of that traffic in
terms of social and individual happiness ; the vicissi-
tudes and perils of societies, their rupture by internal
differences and their clash in war — all these things are

BURKE 319

a part of Burke's theme ; to the consideration of
thenr-amre irrings the accumulated riches of his
study and all the extraordinary powers of his minute
vision.

I do not propose to narrate the political life of
Burke. It is a part of English history : he was states,-
man, orator, and writer. Perhaps it is not a misfortune
that his life, judged by his achievements in practical
politics, was not, on the whole, a successful one. If
he had carried all his measures he would have run
some risk of becoming a mere party leader and party
idol. His failure has made him the possession of the
nation. No party can claim a sole right in Burke. All
parties can learn from him, even at those points where,
judged by the light of later history, he seems to have
been wrong in his anticipations. It is in his character
as a writer that I desire to speak of him. And the
part of his history that is of the deepest import in
relation to his writings, is the part which we study by
preference in the lives of all writers, the part which
is often so obscure and impossible to be known — the
early part, when he was making himself.

When he came on to the stage of action he had the
enormous advantage which almost all great writers have
,.enjoyed — he brought on to the stage a mind practised
and enrichedwith long years of thought and study.
Milton could never have written his great epic if he
had not been * long choosing and beginning late '.
Hazlitt for twenty years of active life wrote for his
livelihood, employing his pen on the subjects that
offered under conditions very unfavourable to medita-
tion. His writings are vigorous and brilliant and
mature far beyond the wont of good journalism.
Part of the explanation is to be found in a passage of
one of his essays — On Living to One's Self :

' For many years of my life I did nothing but think. I had
nothing else to do but solve some knotty point, or dip in some

320 BURKE

abstruse author, or look at the sky, or wander by the pebbled
sea-side :

To see the children sporting on the shore.
And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore.
I cared for nothing, I wanted nothing. I took my time to
consider whatever occurred to me, and was in no hurry to give
a sophistical answer to a question — there was no printer's devil
waiting for me. I used to write a page or two perhaps in
half a year. ... I lived in a world of contemplation, and not
of action.'

Burke's mental history was like this. He was thirty-
five years old before he entered Parliament. He was
almost forty when he wrote his first political pamphlet
on the affairs of the nation. His early years were
passed in Ireland at a village school and thereafter at
Trinity College, Dublin. He gained no College prizes
or distinctions and trod no beaten path. He read
enormously, in desultory fashion. ' All my studies ',
he wrote in his youth, * have rather proceeded from
sallies of passion than from the preference of sound
reason,' and he describes how one frenzy of appetite
for knowledge has succeeded another, natural philo-
sophy, logic, metaphysics, history, poetry. When he
was twenty years old he went to London to study the
law, and thereafter we almost lose sight of him for
ten years. His father, dissatisfied with Burke's doings,
withdrew his allowance, and so after his marriage he
was thrown upon literature for a subsistence. His
first regular employment was from the bookseller
Dodsley, who in 1759 founded the Annual Register
and gave Burke £100 a year to write the annual
survey of the chief political events of the year. At
this time Burke was nearly 30 years old.

The meaning of all this is not obscure in relation
to Burke's later writings. For many years he did
nothing jbut [think.

' Reading,' he said to his son, ' and much reading, is good.
But the power of diversifying the matter infinitely in your

BURKE 321

own mind, and of applying it to every occasion that arises, is
far better ; so don't suppress the vivida vis.''

His own knowledge was all vital. He was prompted to
his studies by * the sallies of passion ', so there was no
dead matter in his mind, and he no more forgot
what he read than a man forgets his most exciting
adventures. ' Political truth ', says Mackintosh of
Burke, ' seems, as it were, to lie too deep to be reached
by calm labour, and it appears to be only thrown up
from the recesses of a great understanding by the
powerful agency of those passions which the contests
of politics inspire.' He applied what he read to every
occasion ; he tested books by life, and found guidance
in life from the transmitted experience of books.
This live quality of his mind is seen in all his writings.
He was a lover of poetry, and in his letters and speeches
quotes the great Latin and English poets more fre-
quently perhaps than any other politician has ever
done. But his quotations are not dragged in to lend
a touch of ornament to political reasoning. He never
kept a commonplace book. They come unsought ;
often they are unconscious reminiscences of his adven-
tures among masterpieces. They are a part of his own
mind, and express his own thought and feeling.

He had thought long and hard on political questions
and the deepest problems of society. ' I did not
come into Parliament ', he said later, ' to con my
lesson. I had earned my pension before I set foot in
St. Stephen's Chapel. I was prepared and disciplined
to this political warfare.' He is alluding to the
secretaryships that he held in his early years, and also
to the enormous reading and study that he had from
the first brought to bear on politics.

Not even genius could attain to Burke's style in
oratory and poetry without the full stores laid in
during the quiet years. ' Burke's talk ', said Johnson,
who found him a formidable antagonist, * is the

2600 Y

322 BURKE

ebullition of his mind ; he does not talk from a desire
of distinction, but because his mind is full/ * He
viewed all objects of the understanding ', says De
Quincey, * under more relations than other men, and
under more complex relations.' ... * Under his treat-
ment every truth, be it what it may, every thesis of
a sentence, grows in the very act of unfolding it.' . . .
' Some collateral adjunct of the main proposition,
some temperament or restraint, some oblique glance
at its remote affinities, will invariably be found to
attend the progress of his sentences, like the spray
from a waterfall, or the scintillations from the iron
under the blacksmith's hammer.'

It is this wide-searching figurative power, this
remembrance of all the side issues and unseen effects,
that makes Burke so great a political thinker. Politics
is never a simple affair. Man, for all his weakness, is
not a simple animal. We cannot reduce human
problems, to the plainness and certainty of the mathe-
matics, or govern a household by the aid of a Ready
Reckoner. The sure mark of a shallow politician is to
be found in his forcible and delusive simplifications of
the human problem. How familiar we all are with
this easy line of thought, and how prone we are to
follow it ! Judge the wisdom of a politician by what
he thinks of those who are on the other side. If he
tells you that they care only for money, that they are
eaten up with vanity, that they are bent only on
dragging the name of their country through the mire —
distrust him. These are not the conclusions of
thought ; they are incentives merely to blind action.
It is as if men were afraid of understanding one
another, lest they should cease to hate.

Burke knew that the attempt to legislate for society
on certain broad and simple principles was a mere
delusion.

* The nature of man ', he says, ' is intricate ; the objects

BURKE 323

of society are of the greatest possible complexity ; and there-
fore no simple disposition or direction of power can be suitable
.either to man's nature or to the quality of his affairs. When
I hear the simplicity of contrivance aimed at and boasted of
in any new political constitutions, I am at no loss to decide that
the artificers are grossly ignorant of their trade, or totally
negligent of their duty.'

And again :

* Nations are governed by the same methods, and on the
same principles, by which an individual without authority is
often able to govern those who are his equals or his superiors ;
by a knowledge of their temper, and by a judicious management
of it. . . . The temper of the people amongst whom he^gresides
ought therefore to be the first study of a Statesman.'

Napoleon said, ' Men must be led by the bridles
that are on them, not by those you intend to put on
them '.

It is useless, therefore, to look in Burke for any
statement of abstract principles of government. He
did not believe that they exist : and fiercely opposed
all who believed in them. Nothing universal, he said,
can be rationally affirmed on any moral or political
subject.

* .Circumstances give, in reality, to every political principle
its distinguishing colour and discriminating effect. The cir-
cumstances are what render every civil and political scheme
beneficial or obnoxious to mankind.'

To a member of the National Assembly in France he
wrote disclaiming the power to advise at a distance :

* I must see with my own eyes ; I must in a manner touch
with my own hands, not only the fixed, but momentary cir-
cumstances, before I could venture to suggest any political
project whatsoever. I must know the power and disposition to
accept, to execute, to persevere. I must see all the aids and
all the obstacles. I must see the means of correcting the plan,
where corrections would be wanted. I must see the things :
I must see the men. Without a concurrence and adaptation
of these to the design, the very best speculative projects might

Y 2

324 BURKE

become not only useless, but mischievous. Plans must be made
for men. People at a distance must judge ill of men. They do
not always answer to their reputation when you approach them.
Nay, the perspective varies, and shows them quite other than
you thought them. At a distance, if we judge uncertainly of
men, we must judge worse of opportunities^ which continually
vary their shapes and colours, and pass away like clouds.*

During Burke's century many political thinkers had
devoted themselves to devising a science of politics.
The misfortune was that the natural sciences, which
alone could give hints of the right method to be
pursued, were hardly in their infancy. On the other
hand the mathematical and physical sciences, since the
days of the early Royal Society, had advanced with
enormous strides, and seemed to promise that all
knowledge might be reduced to mathematical plain-
ness and necessity ; that politics might find its Newton
or its Boyle, and attain to the infallibility of general
statement and law without exception. An ambition
of this kind fired the French philosophers and encyclo-
paedists. No one can read the works, say, of Voltaire
without being struck by the hold that astronomical and
mathematical conceptions have on Voltaire's imagina-
tion. Burke, throughout his life, passionately opposed
such conceptions as applied to human society. Plans
must be made for men.

' The science of constructing a commonwealth, or renovating
it, or reforming it, is . . . not to be taught a priori.''

He had not the scientific language which belongs to a
later age ; but he knew that Society is a living
organism, and that its health or disease depends on
the mysterious laws of life. Hence his life is a long
series of attacks on all who would treat it in meta-
physical or pedantic fashion, on sophisters, economists,
legalists, believers in abstract rights.

* What is the use ', he cries, ' of discussing a man's abstract
right to food or to medicine ? The question is upon the method

BURKE 325

of procuring and administering them. In that deliberation
I shaU always advise to call in the aid of the farmer and the
physician rather than the professor of metaphysics.'

It is no uncommon thing for politicians to despise
and dislike abstract principles in politics. If Burke
taught this, so do the opportunists. There are many
practical politicians who pride themselves on their
exclusive attention to the immediate issue. ' Sufficient
unto the day ' is their motto. They are content with
finding some sort of makeshift solution for every
question when it is forced upon them. Until it is
forced upon them they give it no attention. They
capture votes and pass measures, and call this victory.

Burke was well acquainted with statesmen of this
kind, who have flourished everywhere and always —
have flourished and lived on the lips of men and then,
unless their memory is preserved by some immortal
blunder, have passed from office into speedy and final
oblivion. The masterly sketch of George Grenville,
who passed the Stamp Act, contains Burke's criticisms
on this kind of character. He praises Grenville for his
courage, his industry, his generous ambitions — all of
which did not avail to save nim from his epoch-making
blunder. He had been bred in the law, and thence had
passed straight into the work of official administration.
The sins that beset the official and the administrator
a,re_well set forth by Burke in a few brief sentences.

* Their habits of office are apt to give them a turn to think
the substance of business not to be much more important than
the forms in which it is conducted. These forms are adapted
to ordinary occasions ; and therefore persons who are nurtured
in office do admirably well as long as things go on in their
common order ; but when the high roads are broken up,
and the waters out, when a new and troubled scene is opened,
and the file affords no precedent, then it is that a greater
knowledge of mankind, and a far more extensive comprehension
of things, is requisite than ever office gave, or than office can
ever give.'

326 BURKE

Burke thought no better of the matter-of-fact
official than of the theorist. A statesman, according
to him, should not be bound wholly by precedent, nor
wholly by doctrine. He should neither lose himself in
the detail of office, nor commit himself to large uni-
versal theories which are forcibly applied in practice.
He must take broad and general views, yet he must not
forget the individual in the State. How is all this to
be reconciled in a single mind ? What is the nature
of this comprehensive view of things which is necessary
for politics ? It is not philosophical : Burke rails
against the philosophers of his own day. It is not
legal : he hates the appeal to legality in great human
crises. It is not economic : he conceives of economists
at the best as servants not masters of political wisdom.

Burke has nowhere, I think, said it in so many
words, but I believe he would have accepted the
statement that for a just and true political outlook
the qualities most necessary are those which are found
in a great dramatist. The master faculty in politics
is not abstract reason, but imagination. The great
failures in politics are due, ^ almost invariably, to
poverty of imagination. A wide and live imagination,
an enormous faculty of sympathy, the power to con-
ceive many characters and to know how they will act
in a given case, and all this held together by an ever-
present sense of the great mysterious laws that govern
human life — these things are essential for a statesman
as they are for a dramatist. If you consider only the
greatest of the leaders of men you will find that where
they have failed (and which of them has not known
failure ?) it is often because the impartiality and
sympathy of their outlook, the truth of their per-
spective, has been marred by egotism or passion, or
dimmed by fatigue. Some have been lured by success
into over-estimating their own importance and their
power over human affairs, and have awakened with a

BURKE 327

shock of surprise to find that they are not necessary
to their party or their country. Some have been
entangled in the machine ; they are so accustomed to
measure the forces they have immediately to deal with
that they forget the elements. They should be subtle
enough to deal with things, simple enough to deal with
men. The elector often thinks broadly, simply, directly :
where the minister thinks in perorations or epigrams.
Some have fallen victims to a fixed idea ; they have
done the State some service in a particular way, and
they attempt to repeat the service although the
circumstances have changed, and a fresh review of the
whole situation is required ; or they have repelled the
enemies of the State, but their imagination from that
time forward is possessed by these enemies, so that if
danger advances from any other quarter, they do not
see it. Politics are so large an affair that one man is
hardly ever permitted to play many parts : the happy
conjunction of the right abilities with the crisis that
demands those abilities is not repeated. One man
conceives a measure and another carries it out ; one
set of men begins a war and another ends it. Those
who succeed in remaining conspicuous on the stage in
spite of all changes of scene generally maintain their
position at the price of some loss of influence. In the
large flow of things recriminations are useless : for
one party to complain that another party has stolen
its ideas is as if the spring should complain that the
brook has stolen its water.

It would be easy to illustrate these remarks from
the career of Burke as well as from his writings. He
had little opportunity to be corrupted or put to sleep
by power or office. But his hatred of theorists and
abstract rights, which found such noble expression in
his American speeches, somewhat falsified his view of
the causes and nature of the French Revolution. If
his imagination failed to grasp this unprecedented

328 BURKE

event in all its complexity, no human imagination, one
would say, could have succeeded at the same crisis.
His view of humanity was not like a mathematical
diagram : it was a coloured and moving panorama.
Napoleon said : * He who can carry in his mind most
images is the man most gifted with imagination.'

' Burke knew ', says Mr. Birrell,^ ' how the whole world lived.
Everything contributed to this : his vast desultory reading ;
his education ; ... his wanderings up and down the country ; his
vast conversational powers ; his enormous correspondence ; . . .
his unfailing interest in all pursuits, trades, manufactures — ^all
helped to keep before him, like motes dancing in a sunbeam,
the huge organism of modern society. . . . The legislator
devising new laws, the judge expounding and enforcing old
ones, the merchant despatching his goods and extending his
credit,. . .the ancient institutions of Church and University with
their seemly provisions for sound learning and true religion,
the parson in his pulpit, the poet pondering his rhymes, the
farmer eyeing his crops, the painter covering his canvases, the
player educating the feelings. Burke saw all this with the
fancy of a poet, and dwelt on it with the eye of a lover.'

To realize the wide bearing of all political changes
or measures, to keep in mind what is unseen and does
not express itself on paper in the office, asks for an
imagination as vivid as a dramatist's. A new tax is
imposed ; its incidence is a matter of personal experi-
ence and personal emotion. The mere collection of a
tax, which can be ordered by a stroke of the pen, is a
business involving an endless diversity of dramatic
situation and human perplexity. The first man who
pays it can tell the statesman something that it is
worth a statesman's while to know. A change in the
law is made to achieve some plain end of justice : it
carries with it all kinds of remote and unexpected
consequences.

' The real eifects ', says Burke, ' of moral causes are not

^ In Edmund Burhe^ a lecture delivered before the Edinburgh Philo-
sophical Society f reprinted in Obiter Dicta, 1910.

BURKE 329

always immediate, but that which in the first instance is
prejudicial, may be excellent in its remoter operation ; and its
excellence may arise even from the ill effects it produces in the
beginning. The reverse also happens ; and very plausible
schemes, and very pleasing commencements, have often
shameful and lamentable conclusions.*

Burke's imagination led him to inquire into the
remoter consequences of political acts. He was not
content with the prospect of to-morrow's victory. He
asked the question What then ? — a question too
seldom asked. His speeches on America show this
power of political forecast at its brightest. There was
ho question that England had the legal right to tax
the colonists. There was no question that England
had the ships and troops to enforce her demand.
But what then ? The Colonies were at one in their
protest against the exercise of the right. Their
temper was fierce and unyielding. Could that temper
be altered by argument ? Could their shipping enter-
prises be restrained and the Colonies made unservice-
able in order to keep them obedient ? Or must
England take the high hand and prosecute the
resisting colonists as criminals ?

' It looks to me ', says Burke, ' to be narrow and pedantic to
apply the ordinary ideas of criminal justice to this great public
contest. I do not know the method of drawing up an indict-
ment against a whole people.'

The only remaining way was to recognize facts, to
comply with the American spirit, and to do it with
a good grace, fully and generously — not to reassert the
right while remitting the actual taxes. Burke's
wisdom here is simply (what it so often is) the wisdom
of private life. No grudging and cautious concession
was ever gratefully received by man or by state ;
none was ever felt to be a concession. The temptation
to triumph in legal argument even while giving way
on the material point was the temptation to which the

330 BURKE

British ministers yielded. It is a familiar temptation
in private life. But these are triumphs from which
wise men should refrain ; they are cheap, and dearly
bought.

' The question with me ', said Burke, ' is, not whether you
have a right to render your people miserable ; but whether it
is not your interest to make them happy. It is not, what a
lawyer tells me I may do ; but what humanity, reason, and
justice tell me I ought to do. Is a politic act the worse for
being a generous one ? Is no concession proper, but that which
is made from your want of right to keep what you grant ?
Or does it lessen the grace or dignity of relaxing in the exercise
of an odious claim, because you have your evidence-room full
of titles, and your magazines stuffed with arms to enforce
them ? What signify all those titles, and all those arms ?
Of what avail are they, when the reason of the thing tells me,
that the assertion of my title is the loss of my suit ; and that
I could do nothing but wound myself by the use of my own
weapons ? '

Another habitual exercise of Burke's imagination is
seen in his habitual question — How does this matter
appear when seen from the other side ? What does
it mean to the other party \ His masterly sketch of
American history and American character shows how
profound was his understanding of this new and distant
community. His speeches on the affairs of India,
which he had never seen, take away one's breath by
the vividness and truth of their imagery — as if he had
the gift of second sight. He had only a wide and
true imagination, working on the materials of patiently
accumulated knowledge and recognizing the essential
facts of human nature in their most foreign dress.
When he came to deal with the French Revolution
his knowledge was less intimate, and his sympathy less
alert. It is true that he showed the insight of genius
in predicting Napoleon. If the project of a Republic
should fail, he said, that failure would make way for
* the most completely arbitrary power that ever

BURKE 331

appeared on earth '. But Burke's view of French
affairs was disturbed by passion. He had visited
France in 1773 and had made acquaintance with the
circle of the philosophers and political theorists ; had
heard polite infidelity talked in the salons, and had
seen with violent alarm how the very foundations of
the social system were questioned and discussed. When
the Revolution broke out, he attributed it wholly to
these theorists and sceptical thinkers. The French
people became to him * an armed doctrine '. But a
whole people will not fight for a doctrine. The
philosophers may have done the work of incendiaries,
but the pile they fired was built up of age-long oppres-
sions and age-long miseries. The state of the French
people was very imperfectly visualized and imagined
by Burke. He is at his best and most splendid when
he is attacking the doctrinaires, but he gives no
suflRcient or discerning account of the fact of the
Revolution. His writings on the French Revolution
are rich in great precepts and counsels, true for all
time ; but the application of them is not always so
sure. It is to be remembered that his political wisdom
was severely tested by the most difficult problems of
modern history. During the short period of his life
two great political events happened which were
without precedent — the Independence of America, the
French Revolution. The meaning of the later and
greater of these is still in dispute : its immediate
effect was a reign of anarchy and bloodshed which
justified all Burke's forebodings, and alienated even
those who had hailed the movement in its beginnings
as a new dawn. A severe illness sometimes leaves the
patient better and stronger, but he would be an
arrogant physician who should treat disease as his
friend.

Burke's wisdom will never grow old until it has
been accepted and followed in practice as a matter of

332 BURKE

course. He teaches the elements of politics ; and the
nations of the earth are still his backward and careless
pupils. All the problems that he had to face are in
one form or another with us to-day. When he ended
his speech on Conciliation with America there voted
with him 78, against him 270. The doctrine of that
speech has become a part of the creed of Empire,
but it has not yet been so fully learned that it is
secure against popular passion, national vanities and
moments of crisis. The state of things that Burke
found in France, where the yeast of new doctrine,
of equality and liberty, was working in an ancient and
complex civilization, is reproduced to-day, with some
strong likenesses, and some absolute differences, in
India. It is easy to be wise after the event. ' The
greatness of Burke is that he was often wise before it.
Let those who are inclined to blame him because his
wisdom was not infallible turn their attention to India
and learn the futility of human forecasts.

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