HANDBOUND
AT THE
VOLUME 16
MACAULAY-MICKIEWICZ
UNIVERSITY EDITION
THE WARNER LIBRARY
IN THIRTY VOLUMES
VOLS. 1-26
THE WORLD'S BEST LITERATURE
VOL. 27
THE BOOK OF SONGS AND LYRICS
VOL. 28
THE READER'S DICTIONARY OF AUTHORS
VOL. 29
THE READER'S DIGEST OF BOOKS
VOL. 30
THE STUDENT'S COURSE IN LITERATURE
GENERAL INDEX
t«
NEW STEAD ABBEY-
The ancestral home of the family of Lord Byron.
Original Etching from an Old Engraving.
PRU
bioJ lo
gni'/£-r§nH blO nr, mcnl 5;
UNIVERSITY EDITION
THE WARNER LIBRARY
IN THIRTY VOLUMES
VOLUME 16
THE
WORLD'S BEST
LITERATURE
EDITORS
JOHN W. CUNLIFFE
ASHLEY H. THORNDIKE
PROFESSORS OF ENGLISH IN COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY
'
FOUNDED BY
CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER
NEW YORK
PRINTED AT THE KNICKERBOCKER
PRESS FOR THE WARNER LIBRARY COMPANY
TORONTO: GLASGOW, BROOK & COMPANY
1917
PM
V tl
Copyright, 1896, by R. S. Peak and J. A. Hill
Copyright, 1902, by J. A. Hitt
Copyright, 1913, by Warner Library Company
Copyright, 1917, by United States Publishers Association, Inc.
All Rights Reserved
.it
ADVISORY COUNCIL
EDWIN A. ALDERMAN
President of the University of Virginia
RICHARD BURTON
Professor of English in the University of Minnesota
MAURICE FRANCIS EGAN
American Ambassador to Denmark; Formerly Professor of Literature
. in the Catholic University of America
BRANDER MATTHEWS
Professor of Dramatic Literature in Columbia University
WILLIAM LYON PHELPS
Professor of English in Yale University
PAUL SHOREY
Professor of Greek in the University of Chicago
WILLIAM M. SLOANE
Seth Low Professor of History in Columbia University
CRAWFORD H. TOY
Professor Emeritus of Hebrew in Harvard University
WILLIAM P. TRENT
Professor of English Literature in Columbia University
BENJAMIN IDE WHEELER
President of the University of California
GEORGE M. WRONG
Professor of History in the University of Toronto
vu
CONTENTS
THOMAS BABIXGTON MACAULAY, 1800-1859 PAGE
CRITICAL ESSAY, by John Bach McMaster . . . . ' 9381
The (Coffee-House 9386
The Difficulty of Travel in England, 1685 9388
The Highwayman .......... 9395
The Delusion of Overrating the Happiness of our Ancestors . . 9397
The Puritan 9399
Spain under Philip II. ......... 9402
The Character of Charles II. of England 9406
The Church of Rome 9408
Loyola and the Jesuits ......... 9411
The Reign of Terror 9415
The Trial of Warren Hastings ........ 9419
Horatius 9422
The Battle of Ivry 9437
JUSTIN MCCARTHY, 1830-1912
CRITICAL ESSAY ..... 9440
The King Is Dead — Long Live the Queen 9441
A Modern English Statesman 9450
GEORGE MACDOXALD, 1824-1905
CRITICAL ESSAY 9455
The Flood 9456
The Hay-Loft 9464
JEAN MACE, 1815-1894
CRITICAL ESSAY 9473
The Necklace of Truth 9474
NICCOLO MACHIAVELLI, 1469-1527
CRITICAL ESSAY, by Charles P. Nefll . . . . . . . 9479
The Conspiracy against Carlo Galeazzo, Duke of Milan . . . 94^8
How a Prince Ought to Avoid Flatterers 9492
Exhortation to Lorenzo de' Medici ....... 9493
Vlll CONTENTS
PERCY MACKAYE, 1875- PAGE
CRITICAL ESSAY . . . . . . . . . 9494 a
From ' The Canterbury Pilgrims ' . . . . . . 9494 b
The Scarecrow, Act. iv 9494 g
NORMAN MACLEOD, 1812-1872
CRITICAL ESSAY ........... 9495
The Home-Coming .......... 9497
Highland Scenery .......... 9500
My Little May .......... 9501
JOHN BACH McMASTER, 1852-
CRITICAL ESSAY ........... 9503
Town and Country Life in 1800 ....... 9504
Effects of the Embargo of 1807 . . . . . . .9513
ANDREW MACPHAIL, 1864-
CRITICAL ESSAY, by Archibald MacMechan . . . . . 9514 a
Psychology of the Suffragette . . . . . . . 9514 c
EMERICH MADACH, 1823-1864
CRITICAL ESSAY, by George Alexander Kohut . . . . . .9515
From the ' Tragedy of Man ' ........ 9517
JAMES MADISON, 1751-1836
CRITICAL ESSAY 9531
From ' The Federalist '......... 9534
Interference to Quell Domestic Insurrection ..... 9539
MAURICE MAETERLINCK, 1864-
CRITICAL ESSAY, by William Sharp ........ 9541
EDITORIAL NOTE .......... 9546 a
From ' The Death of Tintagiles ' . . . ' . . . . 9547
The Inner Beauty .......... 9552
From ' The Tragical in Daily Life' 9562
DR. WILLIAM MAGINN, 1793-1842
CRITICAL ESSAY 9564
Saint Patrick . . . . . 9565
Song of the Sea 9567
CONTENTS ix
JOHN PENTLAND MAHAFFY, 1839- PAGE
CRITICAL ESSAY . . . . . . i . * . 9569
Childhood in Ancient Life ..... . 9571
.
ALFRED THAYER MAHAN, 1840-1914
CRITICAL ESSAY . . . . . . . . . ' . . 9580
The Importance of Cruisers and of Strong Fleets in War . . . 9581
MOSES MAIMONIDES, 1135-1204
CRITICAL ESSAY, by Rabbi Gottheil ........ 9589
Extract from Maimonides's Will . ... . . . . 9594
From the ' Guide of the Perplexed ' . . . . . . 9595
SIR HENRY MAINE, 1822-1888
CRITICAL ESSAY, by D. MacG. Means ....... 9605
The Beginnings of the Modern Laws of Real Property .... 9607
Importance of a Knowledge of Roman Law: and the Effect of the Code
Napoleon . . . . . . . . . . . 9610
XAVIER DE MAISTRE, 1764-1852
The Traveling-Coat
A Friend
9*"-l
. 96l8
Q62O
The Library
. 9621
WILLIAM HURRELL MALLOCK, 1849-
CRITICAL ESSAY .........
• 9623
An Evening's Table-Talk at the Villa .
. 9626
SIR THOMAS MALORY, FIFTEENTH CENTURY
CRITICAL ESSAY, by Ernest Rhys . . . . . . . . 9645
The Finding of the Sword Excalibur ...... 9648
The White Hart at the Wedding of King Arthur and Queen Guenever . 9650
The Maid of Astolat . 9651
The Death of Sir Launcelot . 9653
SIR JOHN MANDEVILLE, FOURTEENTH CENTURY
CRITICAL ESSAY ........... 9655
The Marvelous Riches of Prester John 9658
From Hebron to Bethlehem .... ... 9660
X CONTENTS
JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN, 1803-1849 PAGE
CRITICAL ESSAY ........... 9664
The Dawning of the Day ........ 9665
The Nameless One 9666
St. Patrick's Hymn before Tarah ....... 9668
ALESSANDRO MANZONI, 1785-1873
CRITICAL ESSAY, by Maurice Francis Egan ...... 9671
An Unwilling Priest ......... 9674
A Late Repentance .......... 9686
An Episode of the Plague in Milan ....... 9693
Chorus from ' The Count of Carmagnola ' ..... 9695
The Fifth of May 9698
MARGUERITE D'ANGOULEME (MARGARET OF NAVARRE), 1492-
1549
CRITICAL ESSAY ........... 9702
A Fragment ........... 9706
Dixains ............ 9707
From the ' Heptameron ' . . . . . . . . . 9708
CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE, 1564-1593
CRITICAL ESSAY . . . . . . . . . . . 9714
The Passionate Shepherd to his Love . . . . . 97 17
From ' Tamburlaine ' ......... 9718
Invocation to Helen . ....... 9722
From ' Edward the Second ' . . . . . . 9725
From ' The Jew of Malta ' 9727
CLEMENT MAROT, 1497-1544
CRITICAL ESSAY . ......... 9729
Old-Time Love ......... 9732
Epigram 9732
To a Lady who Wished to Behold Marot ...... 9732
The Laugh of Madame D'Albret ....... 9733
From an Elegy 9733
The Duchess D'Alengon ......... 9734
To the Queen of Navarre ........ 9734
From a Letter to the King; after being Robbed . . . . -9735
From a Rhymed Letter to the King . . . . . . . 9736
FREDERICK MARRYAT, 1792-1848
CRITICAL ESSAY ........... 9737
Perils of the Sea .......... 9740
Mrs. Easy Has her own Way ........ 9747
CONTENTS XI
MARTIAL (MARCUS VALERIUS MARTIALIS) ?5O-?iO2 PAGE
CRITICAL ESSAY, by Caskie Harrison ....... 9750
The Unkindest Cut 9753
Evolution ........... 9754
Vale of Tears ........... 9754
Sic Vos Non Vobis .......... 9754
Silence is Golden .......... 9754
So Near and Yet So Far ' . . . 9754
The Least of Evils .......... 9755
Thou Reason'st Well 9755
Never Is, but Always to Be . . . . . . . . 9755
Learning by Doing 9755
Tertium Quid . . . 9755
Similia Similibus .......... 9756
Cannibalism . . . . . . . . . . 9756
Equals Added to Equals ......... 9756
The Cook Well Done 9756
A Diverting Scrape . . . . • . . . . . . 9756
Diamond Cut Diamond ......... 9757
The Cobbler's Last 9757
But Little Here Below ......... 9757
E Pluribus Unus 9757
Fine Frenzy ........... 9757
Live without Dining ......... 9758
The Two Things Needful 9758
JAMES MARTINEAU, 1805-1900
CRITICAL ESSAY ........... 9759
The Transient and the Real in Life . . . . . . 9762
ANDREW MARVELL, 1621-1678
CRITICAL ESSAY . . . . . . . . . . . 977O
The Garden 9771
The Emigrants in Bermudas ........ 9773
The Mower to the Glow- Worms 9774
The Mower's Song 9774
The Picture of T. C 9775
•
KARL MARX, 1809-1883
CRITICAL ESSAY, by William English Walling 9776 a
Bourgeois and Proletarians ....... 9776 i
JOHN MASEFIELD, 1874-
CRITICAL ESSAY, by Joyce Kilmer . . . . . . . . 9777
From ' The Everlasting Mercy ' ...... 9777 e
Xll CONTENTS
John Masefield Continued PAGE
The Yarn of the ' Loch Achray '...... 9777 j
Sea-Fever .......... 9777 1
D'Avalos' Prayer ......... 9777 1
Sonnets .......... 9777 m
MASQUES
CRITICAL ESSAY, by Ernest Rhys ..... . 9777 p
JEAN BAPTISTE MASSILLON, 1663-1742
CRITICAL ESSAY, by J. F. Bingham .... . . 9780
Picture of the Death-Bed of a Sinner ...... 9784
Fasting 9785
Hypocritical Humility in Charity ....... 9787
The Blessedness of the Righteous . . . . . . . 9789
One of His Celebrated Pictures of General Society .... 9791
Prayer ............ 9792
PHILIP MASSINGER, 1583-1640
CRITICAL ESSAY, by Anna McClure Sholl ...... 9797
From ' The Maid of Honour '........ 9799
From ' A New Way to Pay Old Debts ' 9801
BRANDER MATTHEWS, 1852-
CRITICAL ESSAY, by Ernest Hunter Wright ..... 9802 a
American Character . . . . . . . . 9802 d
Shakspere's Actors . ........ 9802 s
GUY DE MAUPASSANT, 1850-1893
CRITICAL ESSAY, by Firmin Roz ...... 9803 d
The Last Years of Madame Jeanne ....... 9809
A Normandy Outing: Jean Roland's Love-Making . . . .9815
The Piece of String 9821
FREDERICK DENISON MAURICE, 1805-1872
CRITICAL ESSAY ........... 9828
From a Letter to Rev. J. de La Touche . . . . . . 9830
From a Letter to Rev. Charles Kingsley ...... 9832
The Subjects and Laws of the Kingdom of Heaven .... 9832
JOSEPH MAZZINI, 1805-1872
CRITICAL ESSAY, by Frank Sewall ........ 9843
Faith and the Future ......... 9845
Thoughts Addressed to the Poets of the Nineteenth Century . . 9848
On Carlyle . . . 9849
CONTENTS Xlll
JOHANN WILHELM MEINHOLD, 1797-1851 PAGE
CRITICAL ESSAY . 9853
The Rescue on the Road to the Stake 9855
HERMAN MELVILLE, 1819-1891
CRITICAL ESSAY . 9867
A Typee Household ... 9870
Fayaway in the Canoe .... . 9877
The General Character of the Typees . . . 9879
Taboo .... 9881
:)FELIX MENDELSSOHN-BARTHOLDY, 1809-1847
CRITICAL ESSAY ..... . 9886
From a Letter to F. Killer ........ 9888
From a Letter to Herr Advocat Conrad Schleinitz .... 9888
Hours with Goethe, 1830 ...... . 9889
A Coronation in Presburg . ..... . 9891
First Impressions of Venice ........ 9892
In Rome: St. Peter's .... . 9894
A Sunday at Foria ......... 9895
A Vaudois Walking Trip: Pauline ....... 9896
A Criticism ..........
'.CATULLE MENDES, 1843-1909
CRITICAL ESSAY ...... . 99OO
The Foolish Wish .......... 9901
The Sleeping Beauty ..... . 9904
The Charity of Sympathy ........ 9908
The Mirror ............ 9908
The Man of Letters ......... 9912
MARCELINO MENENDEZ Y PELAYO, 1856-1912
CRITICAL ESSAY, by Federico de Onis ... 9914 a
Calderon .......... 9914 d
GEORGE MEREDITH, 1828-1909
CRITICAL ESSAY, by Anna McClure Sholl . . . . . 99*5
CRITICAL ESSAY on MEREDITH'S POETRY by Gertrude E. T. Slaughter . . 9920
Richard and Lucy: An Idyl ........ 9921
Richard's Ordeal Is Over ........ 9930
Aminta Takes a Morning Sea-Swim: A Marine Duet . . . 9934
Love in the Valley ......... 9939 a
The Lark Ascending ........ 9939 c
XIV CONTENTS
Meredith's Poetry — Continued PAGE
From ' The Woods of Westermain ' . . . . . . 9939 f
From ' France, 1870' ........ 9939 g
From ' Modern Love ' :
IV . 9940
XVI 9940
XLIII 9940 a
XLVII 9940 a
L .......... 9940 b
PROSPER MERIMEE', 1803-1870
CRITICAL ESSAY, by Grace King ........ 9941
From ' Arsene Guillot '......... 9946
THE MEXICAN NUN QUANA YNEZ DE LA CRUZ), 1651-1695
CRITICAL ESSAY, by John Malone ........ 9956
On the Contrarieties of Love . . . . . . . -9959
Learning and Riches ......... 9959
Death in Youth .......... 9960
The Divine Narcissus ......... 9960
KONRAD FERDINAND MEYER, 1825-1898
CRITICAL ESSAY 9965
From the ' Monk's Wedding '........ 9966
7
MICHEL ANGELO, 1475-1564
CRITICAL ESSAY . 9977
A Prayer for Strength . . . . . . . . .9979
The Impeachment of Night ........ 9980
Love, the Life-Giver ......... 9980
Irreparable Loss .......... 9981
JULES MICHELET, 1798-1874
CRITICAL ESSAY, by Grace King . . . . . . 9982
The Death of Jeanne D'Arc ........ 9985
Michel Angelo. .......... 9990
Summary of the Introduction to ' The Renaissance ' . . . . 9993
ADAM MICKIEWICZ, 1798-1855
CRITICAL ESSAY, by Charles Harvey Genung . . . . ' ' • . . 9995
Sonnet ............ 9999
Father's Return .......... 10000
Primrose ........ ... 10002
New Year's Wishes . . . . . . . . . . 10004
To M 10005
From ' The Ancestors '.......,. 10006
From ' Fans ' . 10006
XV
ILLUSTRATIONS
NFEWSTEAD ABBEY
Photogravure .
I
THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY
Portrait from wood
PURITANS GOING TO CHURCH
Photogravure .
NICCOLO MACHIAVELLI
Portrait from wood
MONGOLIAN BUDDHISTIC WRITING
Facsimile manuscript . » . . . .
,|JAMES MADISON
Portrait from wood
SLAVONIC WRITING OF Xlra CENTURY
Half tone
Frontispiece
Facing page 9381
". " 9398
« " 9479
" " 9501
" " 9531
" " ' 9753
THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY
THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY
(1800-1859)
BY JOHN BACH MCMASTER
IHOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY, the most widely read of English
essayists and historians, was born near London on the 25th
of October, 1800. His early education was received at
private schools; but in 1818 he went into residence at Trinity College,
Cambridge, graduated with honor, and was elected a fellow in 1824.
Out of deference to the wishes of his father he thought for a while
of becoming an attorney, read law, and was called to the bar in 1826.
But the labors of the profession were little to his liking; no business
of consequence came to him, and he was soon deep in literature and
politics, for the pursuit of which his tastes, his habits, and his parts
pre-eminently fitted him.
His nephew and biographer has gathered a mass of anecdotes and
reminiscences, which go far to show that while still a lad Macaulay
displayed in a high degree many of the mental characteristics which
later in life made him famous. The eagerness with which he de-
voured books of every sort; the marvelous memory which enabled
him to recall for years whole pages and poems, read but once; the
quickness of perception by the aid of which he could at a glance
extract the contents of a printed page; his love of novels and poetry;
his volubility, his positiveness of assertion, and the astonishing amount
of information he could pour out on matters of even trivial import-
ance,— were as characteristic of the boy as of the man.
As might have been expected from one so gifted, Macaulay began
to write while a mere child; but his first printed piece was an anony-
mous letter defending novel-reading and lauding Fielding and Smol-
lett. It was written at the age of sixteen; was addressed to his father,
then editor of the Christian Observer, was inserted in utter ignorance
of the author, and brought down on the periodical the wrath of a
host of subscribers. One declared that he had given the obnoxious
number to the flames, and should never again read the magazine.
At twenty-three Macaulay began to write for Knight's Quarterly Maga-
zine, and contributed to it articles some of which — as <The Conver-
sation between Mr. Abraham Cowley and Mr. John Milton touching
the Great Civil War>; his criticism of Dante and Petrarch; that on
Athenian Orators ; and the ( Fragments of a Roman Tale * — are still
9382
THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY
given a place, in his collected writings. In themselves these pieces
are of small value; but they served to draw attention to the author
just at the time when Jeffrey, the editor of the great Whig Edin-
burgh Review, was eagerly and anxiously searching for <( some clever
young man ** to write for it. Macaulay was such a clever young man.
Overtures were therefore made to him; and in 1825, in the August
number of the Review, appeared his essay on John Milton. The
effect was immediate. Like Byron, he awoke one morning to find
himself famous; was praised and complimented on every hand, and
day after day saw his table covered with cards of invitation to dinner
from every part of London. And well he might be praised; for no
English magazine had ever before published so readable, so eloquent,
so entertaining an essay. Its very faults are pleasing. Its merits
are of a high order; but the passage which will best bear selection
as a specimen of the writing of Macaulay at twenty-five is the de-
scription of the Puritan.
Macaulay had now found his true vocation, and entered on it
eagerly and with delight. In March 1827 came the essay on Machia-
velli; and during 1828 those on John Dryden, on History, and on Hal-
lam's 'Constitutional History.* During 1829 he wrote and published
reviews of James Mill's ( Essay on Government* (which involved him
in an unseemly wrangle with the Westminster Review, and called
forth two more essays on the Utilitarian Theory of Government),
Southey's Colloquies on Society,* Sadler's < Law of Population,* and
the reviews of Robert Montgomery's Poems. The reviews of Moore's
* Life of Byron * and of Southey's edition of the ( Pilgrim's Progress *
appeared during 1830. In that same year Macaulay entered Parlia-
ment, and for a time the essays came forth less frequently. A reply
to a pamphlet by Mr. Sadler written in reply to Macaulay 's review,
the famous article in which Croker's edition of Boswell's Johnson
was pilloried, and the essay on John Hampden, were all he wrote in
1831. In 1832 came Burleigh and his Times, and Mirabeau; in 1833
The War of the Succession in Spain, and Horace Walpole; in 1834
William Pitt, Earl of Chatham; in 1835 Sir James Mackintosh; in 1837
Lord Bacon, the finest yet produced; in 1838 Sir William Temple; in
1839 Gladstone on Church and State; and in 1840 the greatest of all
his essays, those on Von Ranke's ( History of the Popes* and on Lord
Clive. The Comic Dramatists of the Restoration, Warren Hastings,
and a short sketch of Lord Holland, were written in 1841 ; Frederic
the Great in 1842; Madame D'Arblay and Addison in 1843; Barere
and The Earl of Chatham in 1844: and with these the long list
closes.
Never before in any period of twenty years had the British read-
ing public been instructed and amused by so splendid a series of
THOMAS BABINGTO.F MACAULAY 9383
essays. Taken as a whole the series falls naturally into three classes:
the critical, the biographical, and the historical. Each has merits and
peculiarities of its own; but all have certain characteristics in com-
mon which enable us to treat them in a group.
Whoever will take the pains to read the six-and-thirty essays we
have mentioned, — and he will be richly repaid for his pains, — can-
not fail to perceive that sympathy with the past is Macaulay's ruling
passion. Concerning the present he knew little and cared less. The
range of topics covered by him was enormous; art, science, theology,
history, literature, poetry, the drama, philosophy — all were passed
in review. Yet he has never once failed to treat his subject histori-
cally. We look in vain for the faintest approach to a philosophical
or analytical treatment. He reviewed Mill's essay on Government,
and Hallam's ( Constitutional History > ; but he made no observations
on government in the abstract, nor expressed any opinions as to
what sort of government is best suited for civilized communities in
general. He wrote about Bacon; yet he never attempted to expound
the principles or describe the influence of the Baconian philosophy.
He wrote about Addison and Johnson, Hastings and Clive, Machia-
velli and Horace Walpole and Madame D'Arblay; yet in no case did
he analyze the works; or fully examine the characteristics, or set forth
exhaustively the ideas, of one of them. They are to him mere pegs
on which to hang a splendid historical picture of the times in which
these people lived. Thus the essay on Milton is a review of the
Cromwellian period; Machiavelli, of Italian morals in the sixteenth
century; that on Dryden, of the state of poetry and the drama in the
days of Charles the Second; that on. Johnson, of the state of English
literature in the days of Walpole. In the essays on Clive and Hast-
ings, we find little of the founders of British India beyond the enu-
meration of their acts. But the Mogul empire, and the rivalries and
struggles which overthrew it, are all depicted in gorgeous detail. No
other writer has ever given so fine an account of the foreign policy
of Charles the Second as Macaulay has done in the essay on Sir Will-
iam Temple ; nor of the Parliamentary history of England for the forty
years preceding our Revolution, as is to be found in the essays on
Lord Chatham. In each case the image of the man whose name
stands at the head of the essay is blurred and indistinct. We are
told of the trial of John Hampden; but we do not see the fearless
.champion of popular liberty as he stood before the judges of King
Charles. We are introduced to Frederic the Great, and are given a
summary of his characteristics and a glowing narrative of the wars
in which he won fame; but the real Frederic, the man contending
« against the greatest superiority of power and the utmost spite of
fortune, » is lost in the mass of accessories. He describes the out-
ward man admirably: the inner man is never touched.
THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY
But however faulty the Essays may be in respect to the treatment
accorded to individual men, they display a prodigious knowledge of
the facts and events of the periods they cover. His wonderful mem-
ory, stored with information gathered from a thousand sources, his
astonishing power of arranging facts and bringing them to bear on
any subject, whether it called for description or illustration, joined
with a clear and vigorous style, enabled him to produce historical
scenes with a grouping, a finish, and a splendor to which no other
writer can approach. His picture of the Puritan in the essay on
Milton, and of Loyola and the Jesuits in the essay on the Popes; his
description of the trial of Warren Hastings; of the power and mag-
nificence of Spain under Philip the Second; of the destiny of the
Church of Rome; of the character of Charles the Second in the essay
on Sir James Mackintosh, — are but a few of many of his bits of word-
painting which cannot be surpassed. What is thus true of particular
scenes and incidents in the Essays is equally true of many of them
in the whole. Long periods of time, great political movements, com-
plicated policies, fluctuations of ministries, are sketched with an accu-
racy, animation, and clearness not to be met with in any elaborate
treatise covering the same period.
While Macaulay was writing two and three essays a year, he won
renown in a new field by the publication of (The Lays of Ancient
Rome.* They consist of four ballads — <Horatius); (The Battle of
the Lake Regillus*; < Virginius'; and < The Prophecy of Capys* — which
are supposed to have been sung by Roman minstrels, and to belong
to a very early period in the history of the city. In them are re-
peated all the merits and all the defects of the Essays. The men
and women are mere enumerations of qualities; the battle pieces are
masses of uncombined incidents: but the characteristics of the periods
treated have been caught and reproduced with perfect accuracy. The
setting of Horatius, which belongs to the earliest days of Rome,
is totally different from the setting of the Prophecy of Capys, which
belongs to the time when Rome was fast acquiring the mastery over
Italy ; and in each case the setting is studiously and remarkably exact.
In these poems, again, there is the same prodigious learning, the same
richness of illustration, which distinguish the essays; and they are
adorned with a profusion of metaphor and aptness of epithets which
is most admirable.
The 'Lays* appeared in 1842, and at once found their way into
popular favor. Macaulay's biographer assures us that in ten years
18,000 copies were sold in Great Britain; 40,000 copies in twenty
years; and before 1875 nearly 100,000 had passed into the hands of
readers.
Meantime the same popularity attended the ( Essays. y Again and
again Macaulay had been urged to collect and publish them in book
THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY 9385
form, and had stoutly refused. But when an enterprising publisher
in Philadelphia not only reprinted them but shipped copies to Eng-
land, Macaulay gave way; and in the early months of 1843 a volume
was issued. Like the Lays, the Essays rose at once into popular
favor, and in the course of thirty years 120,000 copies were sold in
the United Kingdom by one publisher.
But the work on which he was now intent was the ( History of
England from the accession of King James the Second down to a
time which is within the memory of men still living.* The idea of
such a narrative had long been in his mind; but it was not till 1841
that he began seriously to write, and not till 1848 that he published
the first and second volumes. Again his success was instant. Nothing
like it had been known since the days of Waverley. Of <Marmion)
2,000 were sold in the first month; of Macaulay's History 3,000
copies were sold in ten days. Of the < Lay of the Last Minstrel >
2,250 copies were disposed of in course of the first year; but the
publishers sold 13,000 copies of Macaulay in four months. In the
United States the success was greater yet.
«We beg you to accept herewith a copy of our cheap edition of your
work,» wrote Harper & Brothers in 1849. (< There have been three other
editions published by different houses, and another is now in preparation; so
there will be six different editions in the market. We have already sold
40,000 copies, and we presume that over 60,000 copies have been disposed of.
Probably within three months of this time the sale will amount to 200,000
copies. No work of any kind has ever so completely taken our whole coun-
try by storm. w
Astonishing as was the success, it never flagged; and year after
year the London publisher disposed of the work at the rate of
seventy sets a week. In November 1855 the third and fourth vol-
umes were issued. Confident of an immense sale, 25,000 copies were
printed as a first edition, and were taken by the trade before a copy
was bound. In the United States the sale, he was assured by Everett,
was greater than that of any book ever printed, save the Bible and
a few school-books in universal use. Prior to 1875, his biographer
states, 140,000 copies of the History were sold in the United King-
dom. In ten weeks from the day of the issue 26,500 copies were
taken, and in March 1856 $100,000 was paid him as a part of the
royalty due in December.
Honors of every sort were now showered on him. He was raised
to the peerage; he was rich, famous, and great. But the enjoyment
of his honors was short-lived; for in December 1859 he was found in
his library, seated in his easy-chair, dead. Before him on the table
lay a copy of the Cornhill Magazine, open at the first page of
Thackeray's story of < Lovel the Widower. >
9386
THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY
All that has been said regarding the Essays and the Lays applies
with equal force to the ( History of England. > No historian who has
yet written has shown such familiarity with the facts of English
history, no matter what the subject in hand may be : the extinction
of villeinage, the Bloody Assizes, the appearance of the newspaper,
the origin of the national debt, or the state of England in 1685.
Macaulay is absolutely unrivaled in the art of arranging and com-
bining his facts, and of presenting in a clear and vigorous narrative
the spirit of the epoch he treats. Nor should we fail to mention that
both Essays and History abound in remarks, general observations, and
comment always clear, vigorous, and shrewd, and in the main very
just.
£7
THE COFFEE-HOUSE
From the < History of England >
coffee-house must not be dismissed with a cursory men-
tion. It might indeed at that time have been not im-
properly called a most important political institution. No
Parliament had sat for years. The municipal council of the City
had ceased to speak the sense of the citizens. Public meetings,
harangues, resolutions, and the rest of the modern machinery of
agitation had not yet come into fashion. Nothing resembling
the modern newspaper existed. In such circumstances the coffee-
houses were the chief organs through which the public opinion
of the metropolis vented itself.
The first of these establishments had been set up by a Tur-
key merchant, who had acquired among the Mahometans a taste
for their favorite beverage. The convenience of being able to
make appointments in any part of the town, and of being able
to pass evenings socially at a very small charge, was so great
that the fashion spread fast. Every man of the upper or middle
class went daily to his coffee-house to learn the news and to dis-
cuss it. Every coffee-house had one or more orators to whose
eloquence the crowd listened with admiration, and who soon
became what the journalists of our time have been called, a
Fourth Estate of the realm. The court had long seen with un-
easiness the growth of this new power in the State. An attempt
THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY 9387
had been made, during Danby's administration, to close the coffee-
houses. But men of all parties missed their usual places of
resort so much that there was an unusual outcry. The govern-
ment did not venture, in opposition to a feeling so strong and
general, to enforce a regulation of which the legality might well
be questioned. Since that time ten years had elapsed, and during
those years the number and influence of the coffee-houses had
been constantly increasing. Foreigners remarked that the coffee-
house was that which especially distinguished London from all
other cities; that the coffee-house was the Londoner's home, and
that those who wished to find a gentleman commonly asked, not
whether he lived in Fleet Street or Chancery Lane, but whether
he frequented the Grecian or the Rainbow, Nobody was excluded
from these places who laid down his penny at the bar. Yet
every rank and profession, and every shade of religious and polit-
ical opinion, had its own headquarters. There were houses near
Saint James's Park where fops congregated, their heads and shoul-
ders covered with black or flaxen wigs, not less ample than those
which are worn by the Chancellor and by the Speaker of the
House of Commons. The wig came from Paris, and so did the
rest of the fine gentleman's ornaments, — his embroidered coat, his
fringed gloves, and the tassel which upheld his pantaloons. The
conversation was in that dialect which, long after it had ceased
to be spoken in fashionable circles, continued in the mouth of
Lord Foppington to excite the mirth of theatres. The atmo-
sphere was like that of a perfumer's shop. Tobacco in any other
form than that of richly scented snuff was held in abomination.
If any clown, ignorant of the usages of the house, called for a
pipe, the sneers of the whole assembly and the short answers of
the waiters soon convinced him that he had better go somewhere
else. Nor indeed would he have had far to go. For in gen-
eral, the coffee-rooms reeked with tobacco like a guard-room; and
strangers sometimes expressed their surprise that so many peo-
ple should leave their own firesides to sit in the midst of eternal
fog and stench. Nowhere was the smoking more constant than
at Will's. That celebrated house, situated between Covent Gar-
den and Bow Street, was sacred to polite letters. There the talk
was about poetical justice and the unities of place and time.
There was a faction for Perrault and the moderns, a faction for
Boileau and the ancients. One group debated whether < Paradise
Lost* ought not to have been in rhyme. To another an envious
9388
THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY
poetaster demonstrated that ( Venice Preserved J ought to have
been hooted from the stage. Under no roof was a greater vari-
ety of figures to be seen. There were earls in stars and garters,
clergymen in cassocks and bands, pert Templars, sheepish lads
from the universities, translators and index-makers in ragged
coats of frieze. The great press was to get near the chair where
John Dryden sat. In winter that chair was always in the warm-
est nook by the fire; in summer it stood in the balcony. To bow
to the Laureate, and to hear his opinion of Racine's last tragedy
or of Bossu's treatise on epic poetry, was thought a privilege.
A pinch 'from his snuff-box was an honor sufficient to turn the
head of a young enthusiast. There were coffee-houses where the
first medical men might be consulted. Dr. John -Radcliffe, who in
the year 1685 rose to the largest practice in London, came daily,
at the hour when the Exchange was full, from his house in
Bow Street, then a fashionable part of the capital, to Garraway's;
and was to be found, surrounded by surgeons and apothecaries,
at a particular table. There were Puritan coffee-houses where no
oath was heard, and where lank -haired men discussed election
and reprobation through their noses; Jew coffee-houses where
dark eyed money-changers from Venice and Amsterdam greeted
each other; and Popish coffee-houses where, as good Protestants
believed, Jesuits planned over their cups another great fire, and
cast silver bullets to shoot the King.
THE DIFFICULTY OF TRAVEL IN ENGLAND, 1685
From the < History of England >
THE chief cause which made the fusion of the different ele-
ments of society so imperfect was the extreme difficulty
which our ancestors found in passing from place to place.
Of all inventions, the alphabet and the printing-press alone ex-
cepted, those inventions which abridge distance have done most
for the civilization of our species. Every improvement of the
means of locomotion benefits mankind morally and intellectually
as well as materially; and not only facilitates the interchange of
the various productions of nature and art, but tends to remove
national and provincial antipathies, and to bind together all the
branches of the great human family. In the seventeenth century
THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY 9389
the inhabitants of London were, for almost every practical pur-
pose, farther from Reading than they now are from Edinburgh,
and farther from Edinburgh than they now are from Vienna.
The subjects of Charles the Second were not, it is true, quite
unacquainted with that principle which has, in our own time,
produced an unprecedented revolution in human affairs; which
has enabled navies to advance in face of wind and tide, and
brigades of troops, attended by all their baggage and artillery, to
traverse kingdoms at a pace equal to that of the fleetest race-
horse. The Marquess of Worcester had recently observed the
expansive power of moisture rarefied by heat. After many ex-
periments he had succeeded in constructing a rude steam-engine,
which he called a fire-water work, and which he pronounced to
be an admirable and most forcible instrument of propulsion.
But the Marquess was suspected to be a madman, and known to
be a Papist. His inventions therefore found no favorable recep-
tion. His fire-water work might perhaps furnish matter for
conversation at a meeting of the Royal Society, but was not
applied to any practical purpose. There were no railways, except
a few made of timber, on which coals were carried from the
mouths of the Northumbrian pits to the banks of the Tyne.
There was very little internal communication by water. A few
attempts had been made to deepen and embank the natural
streams, but with slender success. Hardly a single navigable
canal had been even projected. The English of that day were
in the habit of talking with mingled admiration and despair of
the immense trench by which Lewis the Fourteenth had made a
junction between the Atlantic and the Mediterranean. They lit-
tle thought that their country would, in the course of a few gen-
erations, be intersected, at the cost of private adventurers, by
artificial rivers making up more than four times the length of
the Thames, the Severn, and the Trent together.
It was by the highways that both travelers and goods gener-
ally passed from place to place; and those highways appear to
have been far worse than might have been expected from the
degree of wealth and civilization which the nation had even then
attained. On the best lines of communication the ruts were
deep, the descents precipitous, and the way often such as it was
hardly possible to distinguish, in the dusk, from the uninclosed
heath and fen which lay on both sides. Ralph Thoresby the
antiquary was in danger of losing his way on the Great North
THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY
Road, between Barnby Moor and Tuxford, and actually lost his
way between Doncaster and York. Pepys and his wife, traveling
in their own coach, lost their way between Newbury and Read-
ing. In the course of the same tour they lost their way near
Salisbury, and were in danger of having to pass the night on the
plain. It was only in fine weather that the whole breadth of the
road was available for wheeled vehicles. Often the mud lay
deep on the right and the left; and only a narrow track of firm
ground rose above the quagmire. At such times obstructions and
quarrels were frequent, and the path was sometimes blocked up
during a long time by carriers, neither of whom would break the
way. It happened, almost every day, that coaches stuck fast,
until a team of cattle could be procured from some neighbor-
ing farm, to tug them out of the slough. But in bad seasons
the traveler had to encounter inconveniences still more serious.
Thoresby, who was in the habit of traveling between Leeds and
the capital, has recorded, in his Diary, such a series of perils and
disasters as might suffice for a journey to the Frozen Ocean or
to the Desert of Sahara. On one occasion he learned that the
floods were out between Ware and London, that passengers had
to swim for their lives, and that a higgler had perished in the
attempt to cross. In consequence of these tidings he turned out
of the high-road, and was conducted across some meadows, where
it was necessary for him to ride to the saddle skirts in water.
In the course of another journey he narrowly escaped being
swept away by an inundation of the Trent. He was afterwards
detained at Stamford four days, on account of the state of the
roads; and then ventured to proceed only because fourteen mem-
bers of the House of Commons, who were going up in a body to
Parliament with guides and numerous attendants, took him into
their company. On the roads of Derbyshire, travelers were in
constant fear for their necks, and were frequently compelled to
alight and lead their beasts. The great route through Wales
to Holyhead was in such a state that in 1685, a viceroy going
to Ireland was five hours in traveling fourteen miles, from St.
Asaph to Conway. Between Conway and Beaumaris he was
forced to walk a great part of the way; and his lady was car-
ried in a litter. His coach was, with much difficulty and by the
help of many hands, brought after him entire. In general, car-
riages were taken to pieces at Conway, and borne on the shoul-
ders of stout Welsh peasants to the Menai Straits. In some
THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY 939 r
parts of Kent and Sussex, none but the strongest horses could
in winter get through the bog, in which at every step they
sank deep. The markets were often inaccessible during several
months. It is said that the fruits of the earth were sometimes
suffered to rot in one place, while in another place, distant only
a few miles, the supply fell far short of the demand. The
wheeled carriages were in this district generally pulled by oxen.
When Prince George of Denmark visited the stately mansion of
Petworth in wet weather, he was six hours in going nine miles;
and it was necessary that a body of sturdy hinds should be on
each side of his coach, in order to prop it. Of the carriages
which conveyed his retinue, several were upset and injured.
A letter from one of the party has been preserved, in which
the unfortunate courtier complains that during fourteen hours
he never once alighted, except when his coach was overturned
or stuck fast in the mud.
One chief cause of the badness of the roads seems to have
been the defective state of the law. Every parish was bound
to repair the highways which passed through it. The peasantry
were forced to give their gratuitous labor six days in the year.
If this was not sufficient, hired labor was employed, and the
expense was met by a parochial rate. That a route connecting
two great towns, which have a large and thriving trade with
each other, should be maintained at the cost of the rural popu-
lation scattered between them, is obviously unjust; and this
injustice was peculiarly glaring in the case of the Great North
Road, which traversed very poor and thinly inhabited districts,
and joined very rich and populous districts. Indeed, it was not
in the power of the parishes of Huntingdonshire to mend a high-
way worn by the constant traffic between the West Riding of
Yorkshire and London. Soon after the Restoration this griev-
ance attracted the notice of Parliament; and an act, the first of
our many turnpike acts? was passed, imposing a small toll on
travelers and goods, for the purpose of keeping some parts of
this important line of communication in good Tepair. This inno-
vation, however, excited many murmurs; and the other great
avenues to the capital were long left under the old system. A
change was at length effected, but not without much difficulty.
For unjust and absurd taxation to which men are accustomed is
often borne far more willingly than the most reasonable impost
which is new. It was not till many toll-bars had been violently
THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY
pulled down, till the troops had in many districts been forced to
act against the people, and till much blood had been shed, that a
good system was introduced. By slow degrees reason triumphed
over prejudice; and our island is now crossed in every direction
by near thirty thousand miles of turnpike road.
On the best highways heavy articles were, in the time of
Charles the Second, generally conveyed from place to place by
stage-wagons. In the straw of these vehicles nestled a crowd
of passengers, who could not afford to travel by coach or on
horseback, and who were prevented by infirmity, or by the weight
of their luggage, from going on foot. Trie expense of transmit-
ting heavy goods in this way was enormous. From London to
Birmingham the charge was seven pounds a ton; from London
to Exeter twelve pounds a ton. This was about fifteen pence a
ton for every mile; more by a third than was afterwards charged
on turnpike roads, and fifteen times what is now demanded
by railway companies. The cost of conveyance amounted to a
prohibitory tax on many useful articles. Coal in particular was
never seen except in the districts wh6re it was produced, or in
the districts to which it could be carried by sea; and was indeed
always known in the south of England by the name of sea-coal.
On by-roads, and generally throughout the country north of
York and west of Exeter, goods were carried by long trains of
pack-horses. These strong and patient beasts, the breed of which
is now extinct, were attended by a class of men who seem to
have borne much resemblance to the Spanish muleteers. A trav-
eler of humble condition often found it convenient to perform a
journey mounted on a pack-saddle between two baskets, under the
care of these hardy guides. The expense of this mode of con-
veyance was small. But the caravan moved at a foot's pace; and
in winter the cold was often insupportable.
The rich commonly traveled in their own carriages, with at
least four horses. Cotton, the facetious poet, attempted to go
from London to the Peak with a single pair; but found at St.
Albans that the journey would be insupportably tedious, and
altered his plan. -A coach-and-six is in our time never seen,
except as part of some pageant. The frequent mention there-
fore of such equipages in old books is likely to mislead us. We
attribute to magnificence what was really the effect of a very
disagreeable necessity. People in the time of Charles the Sec-
ond traveled with six horses, because with a smaller number
THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY
9393
there was great danger of sticking fast in the mire. Nor were
even six horses always sufficient. Vanbrugh, in the succeeding
generation, described with great humor the way in which a
country gentleman, newly chosen a member of Parliament, went
up to London. On that occasion all the exertions of six beasts,
two of which had been taken- from the plow, could not save the
family coach from being imbedded in a quagmire.
Public carriages had recently been much improved. During
the years which immediately followed the Restoration, a dili-
gence ran between London and Oxford in two days. The pas-
sengers slept at Beaconsfield. At length, in the spring of. 1669,
a great and daring innovation was attempted. It was announced
that a vehicle, described as the Flying Coach, would perform the
whole journey between sunrise and sunset. This spirited under-
taking was solemnly considered and sanctioned by the Heads of
the University, and appears to have excited the same sort of in-
terest which is excited in our own time by the opening of a new
railway. The Vice-Chancellor, by a notice affixed in all public
places, prescribed the hour and place of departure. The success
of the experiment was complete. At six in the morning the car-
riage began to move from before the ancient front of All Souls
College; and at seven in the evening the adventurous gentlemen
who had run the first risk were safely deposited at their inn in
London. The emulation of the sister university was moved;
and soon a diligence was set up which in one day carried passen-
gers from Cambridge to the capital. At the close of the reign
of Charles the Second, flying carriages ran thrice a week from
London to the chief towns. But no stage-coach, indeed no stage-
wagon, appears to have proceeded further north than York, or
further west than Exeter. The ordinary day's journey of a flying
coach was about fifty miles in the summer; but in winter, when
the ways were bad and the nights long, little more than thirty.
The Chester coach, the York coach, and the Exeter coach gen-
erally reached London in four days during the fine season, but at
Christmas not till the sixth day. The passengers, six in number,
were all seated in the carriage; for accidents were so frequent
that it would have been most perilous to mount the roof. The
ordinary fare was about twopence halfpenny a mile in summer,
and somewhat more in winter.
This mode of traveling, which by Englishmen of the pres-
ent day would be regarded as insufferably slow, seemed to our
THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY
ancestors wonderfully and indeed alarmingly rapid. In a work
published a few months before the death of Charles the Second,
the flying coaches are extolled as far superior to any similar
vehicles ever known in the world. Their velocity is the subject
of special commendation, and is triumphantly contrasted with
the sluggish pace of the Continental posts. But with boasts like
these was mingled the sound of complaint and invective. The
interests of large classes had been unfavorably affected by the
establishment of the new diligences; and as usual, many per-
sons were, from mere stupidity and obstinacy, disposed to clamor
against the innovation simply because it was an innovation. It
was vehemently argued that this mode of conveyance would be
fatal to the breed of horses and to the noble art of horseman-
ship; that the Thames, which had long been an important nursery
of seamen, would cease to be the chief thoroughfare from London
up to Windsor and down to Gravesend; that saddlers and spur-
riers would be ruined by hundreds; that numerous inns, at which
mounted travelers had been in the habit of stopping, would be
deserted, and would no longer pay any rent; that the new car-
riages were too hot in summer and too cold in winter; that the
passengers were grievously annoyed by invalids and crying child-
ren; that the coach sometimes reached the inn so late that it
was impossible to get supper, and sometimes started so early that
it was impossible to get breakfast. On these grounds it was
gravely recommended that no public coach should be permitted
to have more than four horses, to start oftener than once a week,
or to go more than thirty miles a day. It was hoped that if
this regulation were adopted, all except the sick and the lame
would return to the old mode of traveling. Petitions embodying
such opinions as these were presented to the King in council
from several companies of the City of London, from several pro-
vincial towns, and from the justices of several counties. We
smile at these things. It is not impossible that our descendants,
when they read the history of the opposition offered by cupidity
and prejudice to the improvements of the nineteenth century,
may smile in their turn.
In spite of the attractions of the flying coaches, it was still
usual for men who enjoyed health and vigor, and who were not
incumbered by much baggage, to perform long journeys on
horseback. If a traveler wished to move expeditiously, he rode
post. Fresh saddle-horses and guides were to be procured afc
THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY
convenient distances along all the great lines of road. The charge
was threepence a mile for each horse, and fourpence a stage for
the guide. In this manner, when the ways were good, it was
possible to travel, for a considerable time, as rapidly as by any
conveyance known in England, till vehicles were propelled by
steam. There were as yet no post-chaises; nor could those who
rode in their own coaches ordinarily procure a change of horses.
The King, however, and the great officers of State, were able
to command' relays. Thus, Charles commonly went in one day
from Whitehall to Newmarket, a distance of about fifty-five miles,
through a level country; and this was thought by his subjects a
proof of great activity. Evelyn performed the same journey in
company with the Lord Treasurer Clifford. The coach was drawn
by six horses, which were changed at Bishop Stortford and again
at Chesterford. The travelers reached Newmarket at night. Such
a mode of conveyance seems to have been considered as a rare
luxury, confined to princes and ministers.
THE HIGHWAYMAN
From the < History of England >
WHATEVER might be the way in which a journey was per-
formed, the travelers, unless they were numerous and
well armed, ran considerable risk of being stopped and
plundered. The mounted highwayman, a marauder known to ouf
generation only from books, was to be found on every main road.
The waste tracts which lay on the great routes near London were
especially haunted by plunderers of this class. Hounslow Heath
on the Great Western Road, and Finchley Common on the Great
Northern Road, were perhaps the most celebrated of these spots.
The Cambridge scholars trembled when they approached Epping
Forest, even in broad daylight. Seamen who had just been paid
off at Chatham were often compelled to deliver their purses on
Gadshill, celebrated near a hundred years earlier by the greatest
of poets as the scene of the depredations of Falstaff. The public
authorities seem to have been often at a loss how to deal with
the plunderers. At one time it was announced in the Gazette
that several persons, who were strongly suspected of being high-
waymen, but against wrhom there was not sufficient evidence,
would be paraded at Newgate in riding dresses: their horses
0396 THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY
would also be shown; and all gentlemen who had been robbed
were invited to inspect this singular exhibition. On another
occasion a pardon was publicly offered to a robber if he would
give up some rough diamonds, of immense value, which he had
taken when he stopped the Harwich mail. A short time after
appeared another proclamation, warning the innkeepers that the
eye of the government was upon them. Their criminal conniv-
ance, it was affirmed, enabled banditti to infest the roads with
impunity. That these suspicions were not without foundation, is
proved by the dying speeches of some penitent robbers of that
age, who appear to have received from the innkeepers services
much resembling those which Farquhar's Boniface rendered to
Gibbet.
It was necessary to the success and even to the safety of the
highwayman that he should be a bold and skillful rider, and that
his manners and appearance should be such as suited the mastel
of a fine horse. He therefore held an aristocratical position in
the community of thieves, appeared at fashionable coffee-houses
and gaming-houses, and betted with men of quality on the race
ground. Sometimes, indeed, he was a man of good family and
education. A romantic interest therefore attached, and perhaps
still attaches, to the names of freebooters of this class. The vul-
gar eagerly drank in tales of their ferocity and audacity, of their
occasional acts of generosity and good-nature, of their amours, of
their miraculous escapes, of their desperate struggles, and of their
manly bearing at the bar and in the cart. Thus it was related
of William Nevison, the great robber of Yorkshire, that he levied
a quarterly tribute on all the northern drovers, and, in return,
not only spared them himself, but protected them against all
other thieves; that he demanded purses in the most courteous
manner; that he gave largely to the poor what he had taken
from the rich; that his life was once spared by the royal clem-
ency, but that he again tempted his fate, and at length died, in
1685, on the gallows of York. It was related how Claude Duval,
the French page of the Duke of Richmond, took to the road,
became captain of a formidable gang, and had the honor to be
named first in a royal proclamation against notorious offenders;
how at the head of his troop he stopped a lady's coach, in which
there was a booty of four hundred pounds ; how he took only one
hundred, and suffered the fair cwner to ransom the rest by dan-
cing a coranto with him on the heath; how his vivacious gallantry
THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY 9397
stole away the hearts of all women; how his dexterity at sword
and pistol made him a terror to all men: how at length, in the
year 1670, he was seized when overcome by wine; how dames of
high rank visited him in prison, and with tears interceded for his
life; how the King would have granted a pardon, but for the
interference of Judge Morton, the terror of highwaymen, who
threatened to resign his office unless the law were carried into
full effect; and how, after the execution, the corpse lay in state
with all the pomp of scutcheons, wax-lights, black hangings, and
mutes, till the same cruel judge, who had intercepted the mercy
of the Crown, sent officers to disturb the obsequies. In these
anecdotes there is doubtless a large mixture of fable: but they
are not on that account unworthy of being recorded; for it is
both an authentic and an important fact that such tales, whether
false or true, were heard by our ancestors with eagerness and
faith.
THE DELUSION OF OVERRATING THE HAPPINESS OF OUR
ANCESTORS
From the ( History of England >
THE general effect of the evidence which has been submitted
to the reader seems hardly to admit of doubt. Yet in spite
of evidence, many will still image to themselves the Eng-
land of the Stuarts as a more pleasant country than the England
in which we live. It may at first sight seem strange that society,
while constantly moving forward with eager speed, should be con-
stantly looking backward with tender regret. But these two pro-
pensities, inconsistent as they may appear, can easily be resolved
into the same principle. Both spring from our impatience of the
state in which we actually are. That impatience, while it stimu-
lates us to surpass preceding generations, disposes us to overrate
their happiness. It is, in some sense, unreasonable and ungrate-
ful in us to be constantly discontented with a condition which is
constantly improving. But in truth, there is constant improve-
ment precisely because there is constant discontent. If we were
perfectly satisfied with the present, we should cease to contrive, to
labor, and to save with a view to the future. And it is natural
that being dissatisfied with the present, we should form a too
favorable estimate of the past.
9398
THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY
In truth, we are tirider a deception similar to that which mis-
leads the traveler in the Arabian desert. Beneath the caravan
all is dry and bare; but far in advance, and far in the rear, is
the semblance of refreshing waters. The pilgrims hasten forward
and find nothing but sand where an hour before they had seen a
lake. They turn their eyes and see a lake where, an hour before,
they were toiling through sand. A similar illusion seems to haunt
nations through every stage of the long progress from poverty
and barbarism to the highest degrees of opulence and civiliza-
tion. But if we resolutely chase the mirage backward, we shall
find it recede before us into the regions of fabulous antiquity. It
is now the fashion to place the golden age of England in times
when noblemen were destitute of comforts the want of which
would be intolerable to a modern footman, when farmers and
shopkeepers breakfasted on loaves the very sight of which would
raise a riot in a modern workhouse, when to have a clean shirt
once a week was a privilege reserved for the higher class of gen-
try, when men died faster in the purest country air than they
now die in the most pestilential lanes of our towns, and when
men died faster in the lanes of our towns than they now die on
the coast of Guiana. We too shall in our turn be outstripped,
and in our turn be envied. It may well be, in the twentieth
century, that the peasant of Dorsetshire may think himself miser-
ably paid with twenty shillings a week; that the carpenter at
Greenwich may receive ten shillings a day; that laboring men
may be as little used to dine without meat as they are now to
eat rye bread; that sanitary police and medical discoveries may
have added several more years to the average length of human
life; that numerous comforts and luxuries which are now un-
known, or confined to a few, may be within the reach of every
diligent and thrifty workingman. And yet it may then be the
mode to assert that the increase of wealth and the progress of
science have benefited the few at the expense of the many, and
to talk of the reign of Queen Victoria as the time when England
was truly merry England, when all classes were bound together
by brotherly sympathy, when the rich did not grind the faces of
the poor, and when the poor did not envy the splendor of the
rich.
v
m
PURITANS GOING TO CHURCH
Photogravure from a painting by Boughton.
THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY 9399
THE PURITAN
From the Essay on <John Milton *
WE WOULD speak first cf the Puritans; the most remarkable
body of men, perhaps, which the world has ever produced.
The odious and ridiculous parts of their character lie on
the surface. He that runs may read them; nor have there been
wanting attentive and malicious observers to point them out.
For many years after the Restoration they were the theme of
unmeasured invective and derision. They were exposed to the
utmost licentiousness of the press and of the stage, at the time
when the press and the stage were most licentious. They were
not men of letters; they were as a body unpopular; they could
not defend themselves, and the public would not take them
under its protection. They were therefore abandoned, without
reserve, to the tender mercies of the satirists and dramatists.
The ostentatious simplicity of their dress, their sour aspect, their
nasal twang, their stiff posture, their long graces, their Hebrew
names, the Scriptural phrases which they introduced on every
occasion, their contempt of human learning, their detestation of
polite amusements, were indeed fair game for the laughers. But
it is not from the laughers alone that the philosophy of history
is to be learnt. And he who approaches this subject should care-
fully guard against the influence of that potent ridicule which has
already misled so many excellent writers.
(<Ecco il fonte del riso, ed ecco il rio
Che mortali perigli in se contiene;
Hor qui tener a fren nostro desio,
Ed esser cauti molto a noi conviene.**
Those who roused the people to resistance, who directed their
measures through a long series of eventful years, who formed
out of the most unpromising materials the finest army that
Europe had ever seen, who trampled down King, Church, and
Aristocracy, who, in the short intervals of domestic sedition and
rebellion, made the name of England terrible to every nation
on the face of the earth, — were no vulgar fanatics. Most of their
* « Behold the fount of mirth, behold the rill
Containing mortal perils in itself;
And therefore here to bridle our desires,
And to be cautious well doth us befit. )J
94oo THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY
absurdities were mere external badges, like the signs of free-
masonry or the dresses of friars. We regret that these badges
were not more attractive. We regret that a body to whose cour-
age and talents mankind has owed inestimable obligations had
not the lofty elegance which distinguished some of the adherents
of Charles the First, or the easy good-breeding for which the court
of Charles the Second was celebrated. But if we must make our
choice, we shall, like Bassanio in the play, turn from the specious
caskets which contain only the Death's-head and the Fool's-head,
and fix on the plain leaden chest which conceals the treasure.
The Puritans were men whose minds had derived a peculiar
character from the daily contemplation of superior beings and
eternal interests. Not content with acknowledging, in general
terms, an overruling Providence, they habitually ascribed every
event to the will of the Great Being for whose power nothing
was too vast, for whose inspection nothing was too minute. To
know him, to serve him, to enjoy him, was with them the great
end of existence. They rejected with contempt the ceremoni-
ous homage which other sects substituted for the pure worship of
the soul. Instead of catching occasional glimpses of the Deity
through an obscuring veil, they aspired to gaze full on his intol-
erable brightness, and to commune with him face to face. Hence
originated their contempt for terrestrial distinctions. The differ-
ence between the greatest and the meanest of mankind seemed
to vanish, when compared with the boundless interval which sep-
arated the whole race from Him on whom their own eyes w.ere
constantly fixed. They recognized no title to superiority but his
favor; and, confident of that favor, they despised all the accom-
plishments and all the dignities of the world. If they were un-
acquainted with the works of philosophers and poets, they were
deeply read in the oracles of God. If their names were not
found in the registers of heralds, they were recorded in the Book
of Life. If their steps were not accompanied by a splendid train
of menials, legions of ministering angels had charge over them.
Their palaces were houses not made with hands, their diadems
crowns of glory which should never fade away. On the rich
and the eloquent, on nobles and priests, they looked down with
contempt; for they esteemed themselves rich in a more precious
treasure and eloquent in a more sublime language, nobles "by
the right of an earlier creation and priests by the imposition oi
a mightier hand. The very meanest of them was a being
THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY
9401
whose fate a mysterious and terrible importance belonged; on
whose slightest action the spirits of light and darkness looked
with anxious interest; who had been destined, before heaven and
earth were created, to enjoy a felicity which should continue when
heaven and earth should have passed away. Events which short-
sighted politicians ascribed to earthly causes, had been ordained
on his account. For his sake empires had risen, and flourished,
and decayed. For his sake the Almighty had proclaimed his
will by the pen of the Evangelist and the harp of the prophet
He had been wrested by no common deliverer from the grasp
of no common foe. He had been ransomed by the sweat of no
vulgar agony, by the blood of no earthly sacrifice. It was for
him that the sun had been darkened, that the rocks had been
rent, that the dead had risen, that all nature had shuddered at
the sufferings of her expiring God.
Thus the Puritan was made up of two different men: the one
all self-abasement, penitence, gratitude, passion; the other proud,
calm, inflexible, sagacious. He prostrated himself in the dust be-
fore his Maker; but he set his foot on the neck of his king. In
his devotional retirement he prayed with convulsions, and groans,
and tears. He was half maddened by glorious or terrible illus-
ions. He heard the lyres of angels or the tempting whispers
of fiends. He caught a gleam of the Beatific Vision, or woke
screaming from dreams of everlasting fire. Like Vane, he thought
himself intrusted with the sceptre of the millennial year. Like
Fleetwood, he cried in the bitterness of his soul that God had
hid his 'face from him. But when he took his seat in the coun-
cil, or girt on his sword for war, these tempestuous workings of
the soul had left no perceptible trace behind them. People who
saw nothing of the godly but their uncouth visages, and heard
nothing from them but their groans and their whining hymns,
might laugh at them. But those had little reason to laugh who
encountered them in the hall of debate or on the field of battle.
These fanatics brought to civil and military affairs a coolness
of judgment and an immutability of purpose which some writers
have thought inconsistent with their religious zeal, but which
were in fact the necessary effects of it. The intensity of their
feelings on one subject made them tranquil on every other. One
overpowering sentiment had subjected to itself pity and hatred,
ambition and fear. Death had lost its terrors, and pleasure its
charms. Thev had their smiles and their tears, their raptures
THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY
and their sorrows; but not for the things of this world. Enthu.
siasm had made them Stoics; had cleared their minds from every
vulgar passion and prejudice, and raised them above the influ-
ence of danger and of corruption. It sometimes might lead them
to pursue unwise ends, but never to choose unwise means. They
went through the world, like Sir Artegal's iron man Talus with
his flail, crushing and trampling down oppressors, mingling with
human beings, but having neither part nor lot in human infirm-
ities; insensible to fatigue, to pleasure, and to pain; not to be
pierced by any weapon, not to be withstood by any barrier.
Such we believe to have been the character of the Puritans.
We perceive the absurdity of their manners. We dislike the sul-
len gloom of their domestic habits. We acknowledge that the
tone of their minds was often injured by straining after things
too high for mortal reach: and we know that in spite of their
hatred of Popery, they too often fell into the worst vices of that
bad system, — intolerance and extravagant austerity; that they had
their anchorites and their crusades, their Dunstans and their De
Montforts, their Dominies and their Escobars. Yet, when all cir-
cumstances are taken into consideration, we do not hesitate to
pronounce them a brave, a wise, an honest, and a useful body.
SPAIN UNDER PHILIP IL
Prom the Essay on Lord Mahon's < History of the War of the Succession in
Spain *
WHOEVER wishes to be well acquainted with the morbid anat-
omy of governments, whoever wishes to know how great
States may be made feeble and wretched, should study
the history of Spain. The empire of Philip the Second was
undoubtedly one of the most powerful and splendid that ever
existed in the world. In Europe, he ruled Spain, Portugal, the
Netherlands on both sides of the Rhine, Tranche Comte, Rous-
sillon, the Milanese, and the Two Sicilies. Tuscany, Parma,
and the other small States of Italy, were as completely dependent
on him as the Nizam and the Rajah of Berar now are on the
East India Company. In Asia, the King of Spain was master of
the Philippines, and of all those rich settlements which the Por-
tuguese had made on the coasts of Malabar and Coromandel, in
the Peninsula of Malacca, and in the spice islands of the Eastern
THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY 9403
Archipelago. In America, his dominions extended on each side
of the equator into the temperate zone. There is reason to
believe that his annual revenue amounted, in the season of his
greatest power, to a sum near ten times as large as that which
England yielded to Elizabeth. He had a standing army of fifty
thousand excellent . troops, at a time when England had not a
single battalion in constant pay. His ordinary naval force con-
sisted of a hundred and forty galleys. He held, what no other
prince in modern times has held, the dominion both of the land
and of the sea. During the greater part of his reign, he was
supreme on both elements. His soldiers marched up to the capi-
tal of France; his ships menaced the shores of England.
It is no exaggeration to say that during several years, his
power over Europe was greater than even that of Napoleon.
The influence of the French conqueror never extended beyond
low-water mark. The narrowest strait was to his power what it
was of old believed that a running stream was to the sorceries
of a witch. While his army entered every metropolis from
Moscow to Lisbon, the English fleets blockaded every port from
Dantzic to Trieste. Sicily, Sardinia, Majorca, Guernsey, enjoyed
security through the whole course of a war which endangered
every throne on the Continent. The victorious and imperial
nation which had filled its museums with the spoils of Antwerp,
of Florence, and of Rome, was suffering painfully from the want
of luxuries which use had made necessaries. While pillars and
arches were rising to commemorate the French conquests, the
conquerors were trying to manufacture coffee out of succory and
sugar out of beet-root. The influence of Philip on the Continent
was as great as that of Napoleon. The Emperor of Germany
was his kinsman. France, torn by religious dissensions, was
never a formidable opponent, and was sometimes a dependent
ally. At the same time, Spain had what Napoleon desired in
vain, — ships, colonies, and commerce. She long monopolized the
trade of America and of the Indian Ocean. All the gold of the
West, and all the spices of the East, were received and distributed
by her. During many years of war, her commerce was inter-
rupted only by the predatory enterprises of a few roving pri-
vateers. Even after the defeat of the Armada, English statesmen
continued to look with great dread on the maritime power of
Philip. « The King of Spain, » said the Lord Keeper to the two
Houses in 1593, <( since he hath usurped upon the kingdom of
9404 THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY
Portugal, hath thereby grown mighty by gaining the East Indies;
so as, how great soever he was before, he is now thereby mani-
festly more great. . . . He keepeth a navy armed to impeach
all trade of merchandise from England to Gascoigne and Guienne,
which he attempted to do this last vintage; so as he is now
become as a frontier enemy to all the west of England, as well
as all the south parts, as Sussex, Hampshire, and the Isle of
Wight. Yea, by means of his interest in St. Maloes, a port full of
shipping for the war, he is a dangerous neighbor to the Queen's
isles of Jersey and Guernsey, ancient possessions of this crown,
and never conquered in the greatest wars with France. »
The ascendency which Spain then had in Europe was in
one sense well deserved. It was an ascendency which had been
gained by unquestioned superiority in all the arts of policy and
of war. In the sixteenth century, Italy was not more decidedly
the land of the fine arts, Germany was not more decidedly the
land of bold theological speculation, than Spain was the land
of statesmen and of soldiers. The character which Virgil has
ascribed to his countrymen might have been claimed by the
grave and haughty chiefs who surrounded the throne of Ferdi-
nand the Catholic, and of his immediate successors. That majes-
tic art, "regere imperio populos," was not better understood
by the Romans in the proudest days of their republic than
by Gonsalvo and Ximenes, Cortez and Alva. The skill of the
Spanish diplomatists was renowned throughout Europe. In Eng-
land the name of Gondomar is still remembered. The sovereign
nation was unrivaled both in regular and irregular warfare.
The impetuous chivalry of France, the serried phalanx of Switz-
erland, were alike found wanting when brought face to face with
the Spanish infantry. In the wars of the New World, where
something different from ordinary strategy was required in the
general and something different from ordinary discipline in the
soldier, where it was every day necessary to meet by some new
expedient the varying tactics of a barbarous enemy, the Spanish
adventurers, sprung from the common people, displayed a fertility
of resource, and a talent for negotiation and command, to which
history scarcely affords a parallel.
The Castilian of those times was to the Italian what the Ro-
man, in the days of the greatness of Rome, was to the Greek.
The conqueror had less ingenuity, less taste, less delicacy of
perception, than the conquered; but far more pride, firmness, and
1
THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY 9405
courage, a more solemn demeanor, a stronger sense of honor.
The subject had more subtlety in speculation, the ruler more
energy in action. The vices of the former were those of a
coward; the vices of the latter were those of a tyrant. It may
be added, that the Spaniard, like the Roman, did not disdain to
study the arts and the language of those whom he oppressed. A
revolution took place in the literature of Spain, not unlike that
revolution which, as Horace tells us, took place in the poetry of
Latium: <( Capta ferum victorem cepit.):> The slave took prisoner
the enslaver. The old Castilian ballads gave place to sonnets
in the style of Petrarch, and to heroic poems in the stanza of
Ariosto, as the national songs of Rome were driven out by imi-
tations of Theocritus and translations from Menander.
In no modern society, not even in England during the reign
of Elizabeth, has there been so great a number of men eminent
at once in literature and in the pursuits of active life, as Spain
produced during the sixteenth century. Almost every distin-
guished writer was also distinguished as a soldier and a politi-
cian. Boscan bore arms with high reputation. Garcilaso de Vega,
the author of the sweetest and most graceful pastoral poem of
modern times, after a short but splendid military career, fell
sword in hand at the head of a storming party. Alonzo de
Ercilla bore a conspicuous part in that war of Arauco which he
afterwards celebrated in one of the best heroic poems that Spain
has produced. Hurtado de Mendoza, whose poems have been
compared to those of Horace, and whose charming little novel is
evidently the model of Gil Bias, has been handed down to us by
history as one of the sternest of those iron proconsuls who were
employed by the House of Austria to crush the lingering pub-
lic spirit of Italy. Lope sailed in the Armada; Cervantes was
wounded at Lepanto.
It is curious to consider with how much awe our ancestors in
those times regarded a Spaniard. He was in their apprehension
a kind of daemon; horribly malevolent, but withal most sagacious
and powerful. (< They be verye wyse and politicke,^ says an
honest Englishman, in a memorial addressed to -Mary, <(and can>
thorowe ther wysdome, reform and brydell theyr owne natures
for a tyme, and applye their conditions to the manners of those
men with whom they meddell gladlye by friendshippe : whose
mischievous manners a man shall never knowe untyll he come
under ther subjection: but then shall he parfectlye parceyve and
9406
THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY
fele them; which thynge I praye God England never do: for
in dissimulations tin tyll they have ther purposes, and afterwards
in oppression and tyrannye when they can obtayne them, they
do exceed all other nations upon the earthe. >} This is just such
language as Arminius would have used about the Romans, or as
an Indian statesman of our times might use about the English.
It is the language of a man burning with hatred, but cowed by
those whom he hates; and painfully sensible of their superiority,
not only in power, but in intelligence.
THE CHARACTER OF CHARLES II. OF ENGLAND
From the Essay on Mackintosh's < History of the Revolution in England >
SUCH was England in 1660. In 1678 the whole face of things
had changed. At the former of those epochs eighteen years
of commotion had made the majority of the people ready to
buy repose at any price. At the latter epoch eighteen years of
misgovernment had made the same majority desirous to obtain
security for their liberties at any risk. The fury of their return-
ing loyalty had spent itself in its first outbreak. In a very few
months they had hanged and half -hanged, quartered and embow-
eled, enough to satisfy them. The Roundhead party seemed to
be not merely overcome, but too much broken and scattered ever
to rally again. Then -commenced the reflux of public opinion.
The nation began to find out to what a man it had intrusted
without conditions all its dearest interests, on what a man it had
lavished all its fondest affection.
On the ignoble nature of the restored exile, adversity had
exhausted all her discipline in vain. He had one immense
advantage over most other princes. Though born in the purple,
he was far better acquainted with the vicissitudes of life and the
diversities of character than most of his subjects. He had known
restraint, danger, penury, and dependence. He had often suffered
from ingratitude, insolence, and treachery. He had received many
signal proofs of faithful and heroic attachment. He had seen, if
ever man saw, both sides of human nature. But only one side
remained in his memory. He had learned only to despise and
to distrust his species; to consider integrity in men, and modesty
in women, as mere acting: nor did he think it worth while to
keep his opinion to himself. He was incapable of friendship; yet
THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY 9407
he was perpetually led by favorites, without being in the small-
est degree duped by them. He knew that their regard to his
interests was all simulated; but from a certain easiness which had
no connection with humanity, he submitted, half laughing at him-
self, to be made the tool of any woman whose person attracted
him or of any man whose tattle diverted him. He thought
little and cared less about religion. He seems to have passed
his life in dawdling suspense between Hobbism and Popery.
He was crowned in his youth with the Covenant in his hand;
he died at last with the Host sticking in his throat; and dur-
ing most of the intermediate years was occupied in persecuting
both Covenanters and Catholics. He was not a tyrant from
the ordinary motiveSo He valued power for its own sake little,
and fame still less. He does not appear to have been vindictive,
or to have found any pleasing excitement in cruelty. What he
wanted was to be amused, to get through the twenty-four hours
pleasantly without sitting down to dry business. Sauntering
was, as Sheffield expresses it, the- true Sultana Queen of his
Majesty's affections. A sitting in council would have been insup-
portable to him if the Duke of Buckingham had not been there
to make mouths at the Chancellor. It has been said, and is
highly probable, that in his exile he was quite disposed to sell
his rights to Cromwell for a good round sum. To the last, his
only quarrel with his Parliaments was that they often gave him
trouble and would not always give him money. If there was a
person for whom he felt a real regard, that person was his
brother. If there was a point about which he really entertained
a scruple of conscience or of honor, that point was the descent
of the crown. Yet he was willing to consent to the Exclusion
Bill for six hundred thousand pounds; and the negotiation was
broken off only because he insisted on being paid beforehand.
To do him justice, his temper was good; his manners agreeable;
his natural talents above mediocrity. But he was sensual, frivo-
lous, false, and cold-hearted, beyond almost any prince of whom
history makes mention.
Under the government of such a man, the English people
could not be long in recovering from the intoxication of loyalty.
9408
THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY
THE CHURCH OF ROME
From the Essay on Ranke's < History of the Popes >
THERE is not, and there never was on the earth, a work of
human policy so well deserving of examination as the
Roman Catholic Church. The history of that Church joins
together the two great ages of human civilization. No other in-
stitution is left standing which carries the mind back to the times
when the smoke of sacrifice rose from the Pantheon, and when
camelopards and tigers bounded in the Flavian amphitheatre. The
proudest royal houses are but of yesterday, when compared with
the line of the Supreme Pontiffs. That line we trace back in an
unbroken series from the pope who crowned Napoleon in the
nineteenth century to the pope who crowned Pepin in the eighth;
and far beyond the time of Pepin the august dynasty extends, till
it is lost in the twilight of fable. The republic of Venice came
next in antiquity. But the republic of Venice was modern when
compared with the Papacy; and the republic of Venice is gone,
and the Papacy remains. The Papacy remains, not in decay, not
a mere antique, but full of life and useful vigor. The Catholic
Church is still sending forth to the farthest ends of the world
missionaries as zealous as those who landed in Kent with Augus-
tin, and still confronting hostile kings with the same spirit with
which she confronted Attila. The number of her children is
greater than in any former age. Her acquisitions in the New
World have more than compensated for what she has lost in the
Old. Her spiritual ascendency extends over the vast countries
which lie between the plains of the Missouri and Cape Horn,
countries which, a century hence, may not improbably contain
a population as large as that which now inhabits Europe. The
members of her communion are certainly not fewer than a hun-
dred and fifty millions; and it will be difficult to show that all
other Christian sects united amount to a hundred and twenty
millions. Nor do we see any sign which indicates that the term
of her long dominion is approaching. She saw the commence-
ment of all the governments and of all the ecclesiastical estab-
lishments that now exist in the world ; and we feel no assurance
that she is not destined to see the end of them all. She was
great and respected before the Saxon had set foot on Britain,
before the Frank had passed the Rhine, when Grecian eloquence
still flourished in Antioch, when idcls were still worshiped in the
THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY 9409
temple of Mecca. And she may still exist in undiminished vigor
when some traveler from New Zealand shall, in the midst of a
vast solitude, take his stand on a broken arch of London Bridge
to sketch the ruins of St. Paul's.
We often hear it said that the world is constantly becoming
more and more enlightened, and that this enlightening must be
favorable to Protestantism and unfavorable to Catholicism. We
wish that we could think so. But we see great reason to doubt
whether this be a well-founded expectation. We see that during
the last two hundred and fifty years the human mind has been
in the highest degree active; that it has made great advances in
every branch of natural philosophy; that it has produced innu-
merable inventions tending to promote the convenience of life;
that medicine, surgery, chemistry, engineering, have been very
greatly improved; that government, police, and law have been
improved, though not to so great an extent as the physical sci-
ences. But we see that during these two hundred and fifty
years, Protestantism has made no conquests worth speaking of.
Nay, we believe that as far as there has been a change, that
change has on the whole been in favor of the Church of Rome.
We cannot, therefore, feel confident that the progress of knowl-
edge will necessarily be fatal to a system which has, to say the
least, stood its ground in spite of the immense progress made by
the human race in knowledge since the days of Queen Elizabeth.
Indeed, the argument which we are considering seems to us
to be founded on an entire mistake. There are branches of
knowledge with respect to which the law of the human mind
is progress. In mathematics, when once a proposition has been
demonstrated, it is never afterwards contested. Every fresh story
is as solid a basis for a new superstructure as the original
foundation was. Here, therefore, there is a constant addition to
the stock of truth. In the inductive sciences, again, the law is
progress. Every day furnishes new facts, and thus brings theory
nearer and nearer to perfection. There is no chance that either
in the purely demonstrative or in the purely experimental sci-
ences, the world will ever go back or even remain stationary.
Nobody ever heard of a reaction against Taylor's theorem, or
of a reaction against Harvey's doctrine of the circulation of the
blood.
But with theology the case is very different. As respects nat-
ural religion, — revelation being for the present altogether left ont
9410 THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY
of the question, — it is not easy to see that a philosopher of the
present day is more favorably situated than Thales or Simonides.
He has before him just the same evidences of design in the
structure of the universe which the early Greek had. We say
just the same; for the discoveries of modern astronomers and
anatomists have really added nothing to the force of that argu-
ment which a reflecting mind finds in every beast, bird, insect,
fish, leaf, flower, and shell. The reasoning by which Socrates,
in Xenophon's hearing, confuted the little atheist Aristodemus,
is exactly the reasoning 'of Paley's Natural Theology. Socrates
makes precisely the same use of the statues of Polycletus and the
pictures of Zeuxis which Paley makes of the watch. As to the
other great question, the question what becomes of man after
death, we do not see that a highly educated European, left to
his unassisted reason, is more likely to be in the right than a
Blackfoot Indian. Not a single one of the many sciences in
which we surpass the Blackfoot Indians throws the smallest light
on the state of the soul after the animal life is extinct. In truth,
all the philosophers, ancient and modern, who have attempted
without the help of revelation to prove the immortality of man,
from Plato down to Franklin, appear to us to have failed de-
plorably. . . .
Of the dealings of God with man, no more has been revealed
to the nineteenth century than to the first, or to London than to
the wildest parish in the Hebrides. It is true that in those
things which concern this life and this world, man constantly
becomes wiser and wiser. But it is no less true that, as respects
a higher power and a future state, man, in the language of
Goethe's scoffing fiend,
«bleibt stets von gleichem Schlag,
Und ist so wunderlich als wie am ersten Tag.w*
The history of Catholicism strikingly illustrates these observa-
tions. During the last seven centuries the public mind of Europe
has made constant progress in every department of secular knowl-
edge. But in religion we can trace no constant progress. The
ecclesiastical history of that long period is a history of movement
to and fro. Four times, since the authority of the Church of
Rome was established in Western Christendom, has the human
* « — remains always of the same stamp,
And is as unaccountable as on the first day.»
THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY 941 !
intellect • risen up against her yoke. Twice that Church remained
completely victorious. Twice she came forth from the conflict
bearing the marks of cruel wounds, but with the principle of life
still strong within her. When we reflect on the tremendous
assaults which she has survived, we find it difficult to conceive in
what way she is to perish.
LOYOLA AND THE JESUITS
From the Essay on Ranke's < History of the Popes >
IT is not, therefore, strange that the effect of the great outbreak
of Protestantism in one part of Christendom should have
been to produce an equally violent outbreak of Catholic zeal
in another. Two reformations were pushed on at once with
equal energy and effect: a reformation of doctrine in the North,
a reformation of manners and discipline in the South. In the
course of a single generation, the whole spirit of the Church of
Rome underwent a change. From the halls of the Vatican to
the most secluded hermitage of the Apennines, the great revival
was everywhere felt and seen. All the institutions anciently
devised for the propagation and defense of the faith were
furbished up and made efficient. Fresh engines of still more
formidable power were constructed. Everywhere old religious
communities were remodeled and new religious communities
called into existence. Within a year after the death of Leo, the
order of Camaldoli was purified. The Capuchins restored the old
Franciscan discipline, the midnight prayer and the life of silence.
The Barnabites and the society of Somasca devoted themselves.
to the relief and education of the poor. To the Theatine order
a still higher interest belongs. Its great object was the same,
with that of our early Methodists; namely, to supply the defi-
ciencies of the parochial clergy. The Church of Rome, wiser than
the Church of England, gave every countenance to the good
work. The members of the new brotherhood preached to great
multitudes in the streets and in the fields, prayed by the beds
of the sick, and administered the last sacraments to the dying.
Foremost among them in zeal and devotion was Gian Pietro
Caraffa, afterwards Pope Paul the Fourth.
In the convent of the Theatines at Venice, under the eye
of Caraffa, a Spanish gentleman took up his abode, tended the
poor in the hospitals, went about in rags, starved himself almost
94I2 THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY
to death, and often sallied into the streets, mounted on stones,
and waving his hat to invite the passers-by, began to preach in
a strange jargon of mingled Castilian and Tuscan. The Thea*
tines were among the most zealous and rigid of men: but to
this enthusiastic neophyte their discipline seemed lax, and their
movements sluggish; for his own mind, naturally passionate and
imaginative, had passed through a training which had given to
all its peculiarities a morbid intensity and energy. In his early
life he had been the very prototype of the hero of Cervantes.
The single study of the young Hidalgo had been chivalrous ro-
mance; and his existence had been one gorgeous day-dream of
princesses rescued and infidels subdued. He had chosen a Dul-
cinea, <(no countess, no duchess, >} — these are his own words,—
<( but one of far higher station ; w and he flattered himself with
the hope of laying at her feet the keys of Moorish castles and
the jeweled turbans of Asiatic kings.
In the midst of these visions of martial glory and prosper-
ous love, a severe wound stretched him on a bed of sickness.
His constitution was shattered, and he was doomed to be a crip-
ple for life. The palm of strength, grace, and skill in knightly
exercises, was no longer for him. He could no longer hope to
strike down gigantic soldans, or to find favor in the sight of
beautiful women. A new vision then arose in his mind, and
mingled itself with his own delusions in a manner which to most
Englishmen must seem singular, but which those who know how
close was the union between religion and chivalry in Spain will
be at no loss to understand. He would still be a soldier; he
would still be a knight-errant: but the soldier and knight-errant
of the spouse of Christ. He would smite the Great Red Dragon.
He would be the champion of the Woman clothed with the Sun.
He would break the charm under which false prophets held
the souls of men in bondage. His restless spirit led him to the
Syrian deserts and to the chapel of the Holy Sepulchre. Thence
he wandered back to the farthest West, and astonished the con-
vents of Spain and the schools of France by his penances and
vigils. The same lively imagination which had been employed in
picturing the tumult of unreal battles and the charms of unreal
queens, now peopled his solitude with saints and angels. The
Holy Virgin descended to commune with him. He saw the
Savior face to face with the eye of flesh. Even those mysteries
of religion which are the hardest trial of faith were in his case
palpable to sight. It is difficult to relate without a pitying smile
THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY
that in the sacrifice of the mass, he saw transubstantiation take
place; and that as he stood praying on the steps of the Church
of St. Dominic, he saw the Trinity in Unity, and wept aloud
with joy and wonder. Such was the celebrated Ignatius Loyola,
who in the great Catholic reaction bore the same part which
Luther bore in the great Protestant movement.
Dissatisfied with the system of the Theatines, the enthusiastic
Spaniard turned his face towards Rome. Poor, obscure, without
a patron, without recommendations, he entered the city where
now two princely temples, rich with painting and many-colored
marble, commemorate his great services to the Church; where
his form stands sculptured in massive silver; where his bones,
enshrined amidst jewels, are placed beneath the altar of God.
His activity and zeal bore down all opposition; and under his
rule the order of Jesuits began to exist, and grew rapidly to
the full measure of his gigantic powers. With what vehemence,
with what policy, with what exact discipline, with what dauntless
courage, with what self-denial, with what forgetfulness of the
dearest private ties, with what intense and stubborn devotion to
a single end, with what unscrupulous laxity and versatility in the
choice of means, the Jesuits fought the battle of their church,
is written in every page of the annals of Europe during several
generations. In the Order of Jesus was concentrated the quint-
essence of the Catholic spirit; and the history of the Order of
Jesus is the history of the great Catholic reaction. That order
possessed itself at once of all the strongholds which command the
public mind: of the pulpit, of the press, of the confessional, of
the academies. Wherever the Jesuit preached, the church was
too small for the audience. The name of Jesuit on a title-page
secured the circulation of a book. It was in the ears of the
Jesuit that the powerful, the noble, and the beautiful breathed
the secret history of their lives. It was at the feet of the Jesuit
that the youth of the higher and middle classes were brought
up from childhood to manhood, from the first rudiments to the
courses of rhetoric and philosophy. Literature and science, lately
associated with infidelity or with heresy, now became the allies
of orthodoxy.
Dominant in the South of Europe, the great order soon went
forth conquering and to conquer. In spite of oceans and deserts,
of hunger and pestilence, of spies and penal laws, of dungeons
and racks, of gibbets and quartering-blocks, Jesuits were to be
THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY
found under every disguise and in every country; scholars, phy
sicians, merchants, serving-men; in the hostile court of Sweden,
in the old manor-house of Cheshire, among the hovels of Con-
naught; arguing, instructing, consoling, stealing away the hearts
of the young, animating the courage of the timid, holding up
the crucifix before the eyes of the dying. Nor was it less their
office to plot against the thrones and lives of the apostate kings,
to spread evil rumors, to raise tumults, to inflame civil wars,
to arm the hand of the assassin. Inflexible in nothing but in
their fidelity to the Church, they were equally ready to appeal
in her cause to the spirit of loyalty and to the spirit of freedom.
Extreme doctrines of obedience and extreme doctrines of liberty;
the right of rulers to misgovern the people, the right of every
one of the people to plunge his knife in the heart of a bad ruler,
were inculcated by the same man, according as he addressed
nimself to the subject of Philip or to the subject of Elizabeth.
Some described these divines as the most rigid, others as the
most indulgent of spiritual directors; and both descriptions were
correct. The truly devout listened with awe to the high and
saintly morality of the Jesuit. The gay cavalier who had run his
rival through the body, the frail beauty who had forgotten her
marriage vow, found in the Jesuit an easy well-bred man of the
world, who knew how to make allowance for the little irregu-
larities of people of fashion. The confessor was strict or lax,
according to the temper of the penitent. The first object was to
drive no person out of the pale of the Church. Since there were
bad people, it was better that they should be bad Catholics than
bad Protestants. If a person was so unfortunate as to be a
bravo, a libertine, or a gambler, that was no reason for making
him a heretic too.
The Old World was not wide enough for this strange activ-
ity. The Jesuits invaded all the countries which the great mari-
time discoveries of the preceding age had laid open to European
enterprise. They were to be found in the depths of the Peru-
vian mines, at the marts of the African slave-caravans, on the
shores of the Spice Islands, in the observatories of China. They
made converts in regions which neither avarice nor curiosity had
tempted any of their countrymen to enter; and preached and dis-
puted in tongues of which no other native of the West understood
a word.
•
THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY 94! 5
THE REIGN OF TERROR
From the Essay on <Barere>
No GREAT party can be composed of such materials as these
[disinterested enthusiasts]. It is the inevitable law that
such zealots as we have described shall collect around them
a multitude of slaves, of cowards, and of libertines, whose savage
tempers and licentious appetites, withheld only by the dread of
Jaw and magistracy from the worst excesses, are called into full
activity by the hope of impunity. A faction which, from what-
ever motive, relaxes the great laws of morality, is certain to be
joined by the most immoral part of the community. This has
been repeatedly proved in religious wars. The war of the Holy
Sepulchre, the Albigensian war, the Huguenot war, the Thirty
Years' war, all originated in pious zeal. That zeal inflamed the
champions of the Church to such a point that they regarded all
generosity to the vanquished as a sinful weakness. The infidel,
the heretic, was to be run down like a mad dog. No outrage
committed by the Catholic warrior on the miscreant enemy could
deserve punishment,, As soon as it was known that boundless
license was thus given to barbarity and dissoluteness, thousands
of wretches who cared nothing for the sacred cause, but who
were eager to be exempted from the police of peaceful cities and
the discipline of well-governed camps, flocked to the standard of
the faith. The men who had set up that standard were sincere,
chaste, regardless of lucre, and perhaps, where only themselves
were concerned, not unforgiving; but round that standard were
assembled such gangs of rogues, ravishers, plunderers, and fero-
cious bravoes, as were scarcely ever found under the flag of any
State engaged in a mere temporal quarrel. In a very similar
way was the Jacobin party composed. There was a small nucleus
of enthusiasts; round that nucleus was gathered a vast mass
of ignoble depravity; and in all that mass there was nothing so
depraved and so ignoble as Barere.
Then came those days when the most barbarous of all
codes was administered by the most barbarous of all tribunals;
when no man could greet his neighbors, or say his prayers, or
dress his hair, without danger of committing a capital crime;
when spies lurked in every corner; when the guillotine was long
and hard at work every morning; when the jails were filled as
9416
THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY
close as the hold of a slave-ship; when the gutters ran foaming
with blood into the Seine; when it was death to be great-niece
of a captain of the royal guards, or half-brother of a doctor of
the Sorbonne, to express a doubt whether assignats would not
fall, to hint that the English had been victorious in the action
of the first of June, to have a copy of one of Burke's pamphlets
locked up in a desk, to laugh at a Jacobin for taking the name
of Cassius or Timoleon, or to call the Fifth Sans-culottide by its
old superstitious name of St. Matthew's Day. While the daily
wagon-loads of victims were carried to their doom through the
streets of Paris, the proconsuls whom the sovereign committee
had sent forth to the departments reveled in an extravagance of
cruelty unknown even in the capital. The knife of the deadly
machine rose and fell too slow for their work of slaughter. Long
rows of captives were mowed down with grape-shot. Holes were
made in the bottom of crowded barges. Lyons was turned into
a desert. At Arras even the cruel mercy of a speedy death was
denied to the prisoners. All down the Loire, from Saumur to
the sea, great flocks of crows and kites feasted on naked corpses,
twined together in hideous embraces. No mercy was shown to
sex or age. The number of young lads and of girls of seven-
teen who were murdered by that execrable government is to be
reckoned by hundreds. Babies torn from the breast were tossed
from pike to pike along the Jacobin ranks. One champion of
liberty had his pockets well stuffed with ears. Another swag-
gered about with the finger of a little child in his hat. A few
months had sufficed to degrade France below the level of New
Zealand.
It is absurd to say that "any amount of public danger can
justify a system like this, we do not say on Christian principles,
we do not say on the principles of a high morality, but even on
principles of Machiavellian policy. It is true that great emer-
gencies call for activity and vigilance; it is true that they justify
severity which, in ordinary times, would deserve the name of
cruelty. But indiscriminate severity can never, under any cir-
cumstances, be useful. It is plain that the whole efficacy of
punishment depends on the care with which the guilty are dis-
tinguished. Punishment which strikes the guilty and the innocent
promiscuously operates merely like a pestilence or a great con-
vulsion of nature, and has no more tendency to prevent offenses
than the cholera, or an earthquake like that of Lisbon, would
THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY
have. The energy for which the Jacobin administration is praised
was merely the energy of the Malay who maddens himself with
opium, draws his knife, and runs a-muck through the streets,
slashing right and left at friends and foes. Such has never been
the energy of truly great rulers; of Elizabeth, for example, of
Oliver, or of Frederick. They were not, indeed, scrupulous. But
had they been less scrupulous than they were, the strength and
amplitude of their minds would have preserved them from crimes
such as those which the small men of the Committee of Public
Safety took for daring strokes of policy. The great Queen who
so long held her own against foreign and domestic enemies,
against temporal and spiritual arms; the great Protector who gov-
erned with more than regal power, in despite both of royalists
and republicans; the great King who, with a beaten army and
an exhausted treasury, defended his little dominions to the last
against the united efforts of Russia, Austria, and France, — with
what scorn would they have heard that it was impossible for
them to strike a salutary terror into the disaffected without send-
ing schoolboys and schoolgirls to death by cart-loads and boat-
loads !
The popular notion is, we believe, that the leading Terrorists
were wicked men, but at the same time great men. We can see
nothing great about them but their wickedness. That their policy
was daringly original is a vulgar error. Their policy is as old
as the oldest accounts which we have of human misgovernment.
It seemed new in France and in the eighteenth century only
because it had been long disused, for excellent reasons, by the
enlightened part of mankind. But it has always prevailed, and
still prevails, in savage and half-savage nations, and is the chief
cause which prevents such nations from making advances towards
civilization. Thousands of deys, of beys, of pachas, of rajahs, of
nabobs, have shown themselves as great masters of statecraft as
the members of the Committee of Public Safety. Djezzar, we
imagine, was superior to any of them in their new line. In fact,
there is not a petty tyrant in Asia or Africa so dull or so un-
learned as not to be fully qualified for the business of Jacobin
police and Jacobin finance. To behead people by scores without
caring whether they are guilty or innocent, to wring money
out of the rich by the help of jailers and executioners; to rob
the public creditor, and to put him to death if he remonstrates;
to take loaves by force out of the bakers' shops; to clothe and
THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY
mount soldiers by seizing on one man's wool and linen, and on
another man's horses and saddles, without compensation, — is of
all modes of governing the simplest and most obvious. Of its
morality we at present say nothing. But surely it requires no
capacity beyond that of a barbarian or a child.
By means like those which we have described, the Commit-
tee of Public Safety undoubtedly succeeded, for a short time, in
enforcing profound submission and in raising immense funds.
But to enforce submission by butchery, and to raise funds by spo-
liation, is not statesmanship. The real statesman is he who,
in troubled times, keeps down the turbulent without unnecessa-
rily harassing the well-affected; and who, when great pecuniary
resources are needed, provides for the public exigencies without
violating the security of property and drying up the sources of
future prosperity. Such a statesman, we are confident, might in
1793 have preserved the independence of France without shed-
ding a drop of innocent blood, without plundering a single ware-
house. Unhappily, the republic was subject to men who were
mere demagogues and in no sense statesmen. They could declaim
at a club. They could lead a rabble to mischief. But they had
no skill to conduct the affairs of an empire. The want of skill
they supplied for a time by atrocity and blind violence. For
legislative ability, fiscal ability, military ability, diplomatic ability,
they had one substitute, — the guillotine. Indeed, their exceeding
ignorance and the barrenness of their invention are the best
excuse for their murders and robberies. We really believe that
they would not have cut so many throats and picked so many
pockets, if they had known how to govern in any other way.
That under their administration the war against the European
coalition was successfully conducted, is true. But that war had
been successfully conducted before their elevation, and continued
to be successfully conducted after their fall. Terror was not the
order of the day when Brussels opened its gates to Dumourier.
Terror had ceased to be the order of the day when Piedmont
and Lombardy were conquered by Bonaparte. The truth is, that
France was saved, not by the Committee of Public Safety, but by
the energy, patriotism, and valor of the French people. Those
high qualities were victorious in spite of the incapacity of rulers
whose administration was a tissue, not merely of crimes, but of
blunders.
THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY
9419
THE TRIAL OF WARREN HASTINGS
From the Essay on Gleig's < Memoirs of Warren Hastings >
IN THE mean time, the preparations for the trial had proceeded
rapidly; and on the thirteenth of February, 1788, 'the sittings
of the Court commenced. There have been spectacles more
dazzling to the eye, more gorgeous with jewelry and cloth of
gold, more attractive to grown-up children, than that which was
then exhibited at Westminster; but perhaps there never was a
spectacle so well calculated to strike a highly cultivated, a reflect-
ing, an imaginative mind. All the various kinds of interest which
belong to the near and to the distant, to the present and to the
past, were collected on one spot and in one hour. All the talents
and all the accomplishments which are developed by liberty and
civilization were now displayed, with every advantage that could
be derived both from co-operation and from contrast. Every step
in the proceedings carried the mind either backward, through
many troubled centuries, to the days when the foundations of
our constitution were laid; or far away, over boundless seas and
deserts, to dusky nations living under strange stars, worshiping
strange gods, and writing strange characters from right to left,
The High Court of Parliament was to sit, according to forms
handed down from the days of the Plantagenets, on an English-
man accused of exercising tyranny over the lord of the holy city
of Benares, and over the ladies of the princely house of Oude.
The place was worthy of such a trial. It was the great hall
of William Rufus, the hall which had resounded with acclamations
at the inauguration of thirty kings, the hall which had witnessed
the just sentence of Bacon and the just absolution of Somers,
the hall where the eloquence of Stafford had for a moment awed
and melted a victorious party inflamed with just resentment, the
hall where Charles had confronted the High Court of Justice
with the placid courage which has half redeemed his fame.
Neither military nor civil pomp was wanting. The avenues were
lined with grenadiers. The streets were kept clear by cavalry.
The peers, robed in gold and ermine, were marshaled by the
heralds under Garter King-at-arms. The judges in their vest-
ments of state attended to give advice on points of law. Near a
hundred and seventy lords, three-fourths of the Upper House as
the Upper House then was, walked in solemn order from their
p420 THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY
usual place of assembling to the tribunal. The junior baron
present led the way, — George Elliot, Lord Heathfield, recently
ennobled for his memorable defense of Gibraltar against the fleets
and armies of France and Spain. The long procession was closed
by the Duke of Norfolk, Earl Marshal of the realm, by the great
dignitaries, and by the brothers and sons of the King. Last of
all came the Prince of Wales, conspicuous by his fine person and
noble bearing. The gray old walls were hung with scarlet. The
long galleries were crowded by an audience such as has rarely
excited the fears or the emulations of an orator. There were
gathered together, from all parts of a great, free, enlightened, and
prosperous empire, grace and female loveliness, wit and learning,
the representatives of every science and of every art. There
were seated round the Queen the fair-haired young daughters of
the House of Brunswick. There the ambassadors of great kings
and commonwealths gazed with admiration on a spectacle which
no other country in the world could present. There Siddons, in
the prime of her majestic beauty, looked with emotion on a scene
surpassing all the imitations of the stage. There the historian of
the Roman Empire thought of the days when Cicero pleaded the
cause of Sicily against Verres, and when, before a Senate which
still retained some show of freedom, Tacitus thundered against
the oppressor of Africa. There were seen side by side the great-
est painter and the greatest scholar of the age. The spectacle
had allured Reynolds from that easel which has preserved to us
the thoughtful foreheads of so many writers and statesmen, and
the sweet smiles of so many noble matrons. It had induced
Parr to suspend his labors in that dark and profound mine from
which he had extracted a vast treasure of erudition; a treasure
too often buried in the earth, too often paraded with injudicious
and inelegant ostentation, but still precious, massive, and splen-
did. There appeared the voluptuous charms of her to whom the
heir of the throne had in secret plighted his faith. There too
was she, the beautiful mother of a beautiful race, the St. Cecilia
whose delicate features, lighted up by love and music, art has
rescued from the common decay. There were the members of
that brilliant society which quoted, criticized, and exchanged rep-
artees, under the rich peacock hangings of Mrs. Montague. And
there the ladies whose lips, more persuasive than those of Fox
himself, had carried the Westminster election against palace and
treasury, shone around Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire.
THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY 9421
The Serjeants made proclamation. Hastings advanced to the
bar, and bent his knee. The culprit was indeed not unworthy of
that great presence. He had ruled an extensive and populous
country, had made laws. and treaties, had sent forth armies, had
set up and pulled down princes. And in his high place he had
so borne himself that all had feared him, that most had loved
him, and that hatred itself could deny him no title to glory
except virtue. He looked like a great man, and not like a bad
man. A person small and emaciated, yet deriving dignity from a
carriage which while it indicated deference to the court, indicated
also habitual self-possession and self-respect, a high and intellect-
ual forehead, a brow pensive but not gloomy, a mouth of inflex-
ible decision, a face pale and worn but serene, on which was
written, as legibly as under the picture in the council chamber at
Calcutta, Mens <zqua in arduis: such was the aspect with which
the great proconsul presented himself to his judges.
His counsel accompanied him, — men all of whom were after-,
wards raised by their talents and learning to the highest posts in
their profession: the bold and strong-minded Law, afterwards
Chief Justice of the King's Bench; the more humane and elo-
quent Dallas, afterwards Chief Justice of the Common Pleas; and
Plomer, who near twenty years later successfully conducted in
the same high court the defense of Lord Melville, and subse-
quently became Vice-Chancellor and Master of the Rolls.
But neither the' culprit nor his advocates attracted so much
notice as the accusers. In the midst of the blaze of red drapery,
a space had been fitted up with green benches and tables for the
Commons. The managers, with Burke at their head, appeared in
full dress. The collectors of gossip did not fail to remark that
even Fox, generally so regardless of his appearance, had paid
to the illustrious tribunal the compliment of wearing a bag and
sword. Pitt had refused to be one of the conductors of the
impeachment; and his commanding, copious, and sonorous elo-
quence was wanting to that great muster of various talents. Age
and blindness had unfitted Lord North for the duties of a public
prosecutor; and his friends were left without the help of his
excellent sense, his tact, and his urbanity. But in spite of the
absence of these two distinguished members of the lower House,
the box in which the managers stood contained an array of speak-
ers such as perhaps had not appeared together since the great
THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY
age of Athenian eloquence. There were Fox and Sheridan, the
English Demosthenes and the English Hyperides, There was
Burke, — ignorant indeed, or negligent, of the art of adapting his
reasonings and his style to the capacity and taste of his hearers,
but in amplitude of comprehension and richness of imagination
superior to every orator, ancient or modern. There, ' with eyes
reverentially fixed on Burke, appeared the finest gentleman of the
age, his form developed by every manly exercise, his face beam-
ing with intelligence and spirit, — the ingenious, the chivalrous,
the high-souled Windham. Nor, though surrounded by such men,
did the youngest manager pass unnoticed. At an age when most
of those who distinguish themselves in life are still contending
for prizes and fellowships at college, he had won for himself a
conspicuous place in Parliament. No advantage of fortune or
connection was wanting that could set off to the height his splen-
did talents and his unblemished honor. At twenty-three he had
been thought worthy to be ranked with the veteran statesmen who
appeared as the delegates of the British Commons, at the bar of
the British nobility. All who stood at that bar, save him alone,
are gone, — culprit, advocates, accusers. To the generation which is
now in the vigor of life, he is the sole representative of a great
age which has passed away. But those who within the last ten
years have listened with delight, till the morning sun shone on
the tapestries of the House of Lords, to the lofty and animated
eloquence of Charles, Earl Grey, are able to 'form some estimate
of the powers of a race of men among whom he was not the
foremost.
HORATIUS
A LAY MADE ABOUT THE YEAR OF THE CITY CCCLX
LARS PORSENA of
By the Nine Gods he swore
That the great house of Tarquin
Should suffer wrong no more.
By the Nine Gods he swore it,
And named a trysting day,
And bade his messengers ride forth,
East and west and south and north.
To summon his array.
THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY 9423
East and west and south and north
The messengers ride fast,
And tower and town and cottage
Have heard the trumpet's blast.
Shame on the false Etruscan
Who lingers in his home,
When Porsena of Clusium
Is on the march for Rome.
The horsemen and the footmen
Are pouring in amain
From many a stately market-place,
From many a fruitful plain;
From many a lonely hamlet,
Which, hid by beech and pine,
Like an eagle's nest hangs on the crest
Of purple Apennine;
From lordly Volaterrae,
Where scowls the far-famed hold
Piled by the hands of giants
For godlike kings of old;
From seagirt Populonia,
Whose sentinels descry
Sardinia's snowy mountain-tops
Fringing the southern sky;
From the proud mart of Pisee,
Queen of the western waves,
Where ride Massilia's triremes,
Heavy with fair-haired slaves;
From where sweet Clanis wanders
Through corn and vines and flowers;
From where Cortona lifts to heaven
Her diadem of towers.
Tall are the oaks whose acorns
Drop in dark Auser's rill;
Fat are the stags that champ the boughs
Of the Ciminian hill;
Beyond all streams Clitumnus
Is to the herdsman dear;
Best of all pools the fowler loves
The great Volsinian mere.
9424 THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY
But now no stroke of woodman
Is heard by Auser's rill;
No hunter tracks the stag's green path
Up the Ciminian hill;
Unwatched along Clitumnus
Grazes the milk-white steer;
Unharmed the water-fowl may dip
In the Volsinian mere.
The harvests of Arretium,
This year, old men shall reap;
This year, young boys in Umbro
Shall plunge the struggling sheep;
And in the vats of Luna,
This year, the must shall foam
Round the white feet of laughing girls
Whose sires have marched to. Rome,
There be thirty chosen prophets,
The wisest of the land,
Who alway by Lars Porsena
Both morn and evening stand;
Evening and morn the Thirty
Have turned the verses o'er,
Traced from the right on linen white
By mighty seers of yore.
And with one voice the Thirty
Have their glad answer given: —
wGo forth, go forth, Lars Porsena j
Go forth, beloved of Heaven;
Go, and return in glory
To Clusium's royal dome;
And hang round Nurscia's altars
The golden shields of Rome.)}
And now hath every city
Sent up her tale of men;
The foot are fourscore thousand,
The horse are thousands ten.
Before the gates of Sutrium
Is met the great array:
A proud man was Lars Porsena
Upon the trysting day.
THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY 9425
For all the Etruscan armies
Were ranged beneath his eye
And many a banished Roman,
And many a stout ally;
And with a mighty following
To join the muster came
The Tusculan Mamilius,
Prince of the Latian name.
But by the yellow Tiber
Was tumult and affright:
From all the spacious champaign
To Rome men took their flight.
A mile around the city,
The throng stopped up the ways;
A fearful sight it was to see
Through two long nights and days.
For aged folks on crutches,
And women great with child,
And mothers sobbing over babes
That clung to them and smiled,
And sick men borne in litters
High on the necks of slaves.
And troops of sunburned husbandmen
With reaping-hooks and staves, .
And droves of mules and asses
Laden with skins of wine,
And endless flocks of goats and sheep,
And endless herds of kine,
And endless trains of wagons
That creaked beneath the weight
Of corn sacks and of household goods,
Choked every roaring gate.
Now, from the rock Tarpeian,
Could the wan burghers spy
The line of blazing villages
Red in the midnight sky.
The Fathers of the City,
They sat all night and day,
For every hour some horseman came
With tidings of dismay.
9426 THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY
To eastward and to westward
Have spread the Tuscan bands;
Nor house, nor fence, nor dovecote
In Crustumerium stands.
Verbenna down to Ostia
Hath wasted all the plain;
Astur hath stormed Janiculum,
And the stout guards are slain.
Iwis, in all the Senate,
There was no heart so bold,
But sore it ached and fast it beat,
When that ill news was told.
Forthwith up rose the Consul,
Up rose the Fathers all;
In haste they girded up their gowns,
And hied them to the wall.
They held a council standing
Before the River-Gate:
Short time was there, ye well may guess,
For musing or debate.
Out spake the Consul roundly: —
<( The bridge must straight go down ;
For since Janiculum is lost,
Naught else can save the town."
Just then a scout came flying,
All wild with haste and fear: —
<(To arms! to arms! Sir Consul:
Lars Porsena is here."
On the low hills to westward
The Consul fixed his eye,
And saw the swarthy storm of dust
Rise fast along the sky.
And nearer fast and nearer
Doth the red whirlwind come;
And louder still and still more loud,
From underneath that rolling cloud,
Is heard the trumpet's war-note proud,
The trampling and the hum.
And plainly and more plainly
Now through the gloom appears,
THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY 9427
Far to left and far to right,
In broken gleams of dark-blue light,
The long array of helmets bright,
The long array of spears.
And plainly and more plainly,
Above that glimmering line,
Now might ye see the banners
Of twelve fair cities shine;
But the banner of proud Clusium
Was highest of them all,
The terror of the Umbrian,
The terror of the Gaul.
And plainly and more plainly
Now might the burghers know,
By port and vest, by horse and crest,
Each warlike Lucumo.
There Cilnius of Arretium
On his fleet roan was seen;
And Astur of the fourfold shield,
Girt with the brand none else may wield,
Tolumnius with the belt of gold,
And dark Verbenna from the hold
By reedy Thrasymene.
Fast by the royal standard,
O'erlooking all the war,
Lars Porsena of Clusium
Sat in his ivory car.
By the right wheel rode Mamilius,
Prince of the Latian name;
And by the left false Sextus,
That wrought the deed of shame.
But when the face of Sextus
Was seen among the foes,
A yell that rent the firmament
From all the town arose.
On the housetops was no woman
But spat towards him and hissed;
No child but screamed out curses,
And shook its little fist.
But the Consul's brow was sad,
And the Consul's speech was low.
THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY
And darkly looked he at the wall,
And darkly at the foe.
ft Their van will be upon us
Before the bridge goes down;
And if they once may win the bridge,
What hope to save the town?"
Then out spake brave Horatius,
The captain of the gate: —
«To every man upon this earth
Death cometh soon or late.
And how can man die better
Than facing fearful odds,
For the ashes of his fathers,
And the temples of his gods;
(<And for the tender mother
Who dandled him to rest;
And for the wife who nurses
His baby at her breast;
And for the holy maidens
Who feed the eternal flame,
To save them from false Sextus
That wrought the deed of shame?
aHew down the bridge, Sir Consul,
With all the speed ye may;
1, with two more to help me,
Will hold the foe in play.
In yon strait path a thousand
May well be stopped by three:
Now who will stand on either hand,
And keep the bridge with me ? w
Then out spake Spurius Lartius —
A Ramnian proud was he:
*Lo, I will stand at thy right hand.
And keep the bridge with thee.°
And out spake strong Herminius —
Of Titian blood was he:
<*I will abide on thy left side,
And keep the bridge with thee."
* Horatius, w quoth the Consul,
<( As thou sayest, so let it be.w
THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY 9429
And straight against that great array
Forth went the dauntless Three.
For Romans in Rome's quarrel
Spared neither land nor gold,
Nor son nor wife, nor limb nor life,
In the brave days of old.
Then none was for a party;
Then all were for the State;
Then the great man helped the poor,
And the poor man loved the great:
Then lands were fairly portioned;
Then spoils were fairly sold:
The Romans were like brothers
In the brave days of old.
Now Roman is to Roman
More hateful than a foe,
And the. Tribunes beard the high,
And the Fathers grind the low.
As we wax hot in faction,
In battle we wax cold;
Wherefore men fight not as they fought
In the brave days of old.
Now while the Three were tightening
Their harness on their backs,
The Consul was the foremost man
To take in hand an axe ;
And Fathers mixed with Commons
Seized hatchet, bar, and crow,
And smote upon the planks above,
And loosed the props below.
Meanwhile the Tuscan army,
Right glorious to behold,
Came flashing back the noonday light,
Rank behind rank, like surges bright
Of a broad sea of gold.
Four hundred trumpets sounded
A peal of warlike glee,
As that great host, with measured tread,
And spears advanced, and ensigns spread,
Rolled slowly towards the bridge's head,
Where stood the dauntless Three.
9430 THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY
The Three stood calm and silent,
And looked upon the foes,
And a great shout of laughter
From all the vanguard rose:
And forth three chiefs came spurring
Before that deep array;
To earth they sprang, their swords they drew,
And lifted high their shields, and flew
To win the narrow way:
Aunus from green Tifernum,
Lord of the Hill of Vines;
And Seius, whose eight hundred slaves
Sicken in Ilva's mines;
And Picus, long to Clusium
Vassal in peace and war,
Who led to fight his Umbrian powers
From that gray crag where, girt with towers,
The fortress of Nequinum lowers
O'er the pale waves of Nar.
Stout Lartius hurled down Aunus
Into the stream beneath;
Herminius struck at Seius,
And clove him to the teeth;
At Picus brave Horatius
Darted one fiery thrust,
And the proud Umbrian's gilded arms
Clashed in the bloody dust.
Then Ocnus of Falerii
Rushed on the Roman Three;
And Lausulus of Urgo,
The rover of the sea;
And Aruns of Volsinium,
Who slew the great wild boar —
The great wild boar that had his den
Amidst the reeds of Cosa's fen,
And wasted fields, and slaughtered men,
Along Albinia's shore.
Herminius smote down Aruns;
Lartius laid Ocnus low:
Right to the heart of Lausulus
Horatius sent a blow.
THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY 943 *
aLie there," he cried, "fell pirate!
No more, aghast and pale,
From Ostia's walls the crowd shall mark
The track of thy destroying bark.
No more Campania's hinds shall fly
To woods and caverns when they spy
Thy thrice accursed sail.®
But now no sound of laughter,
Was heard among the foes;
A wild and wrathful clamor
From all the vanguard rose.
Six spears'-lengths from the entrance
Halted that deep array,
And for a space no man came forth
To win the narrow way.
But hark! the cry is "Astur!"
And lo! the ranks divide;
And the great Lord of Luna
Comes with his stately stride.
Upon his ample shoulders
Clangs loud the fourfold shield,
And in his hand he shakes the brand
Which none but he can wield.
He smiled on those bold Romans
A smile serene and high;
He eyed the flinching Tuscans,
And scorn was in his eye.
Quoth he, (<The she-wolf's litter
Stand savagely at bay;
But will ye dare to follow,
If Astur clears the way?w
Then, whirling up his broadsword
With both hands to the height,
He rushed against Horatius,
And smote with all his might.
With shield and blade Horatius
Right deftly turned the blow.
The blow, though turned, came yet too nigh:
It missed his helm, but gashed his thigh;
The Tuscans raised a joyful cry
To see the red blood flow.
9432 THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY
He reeled, and on Herminius
He leaned one breathing-space:
Then, like a wild-cat mad with wounds,
Sprang right at Astur's face;
Through teeth, and skull, and helmet,
So fierce a thrust he sped,
The good sword stood a hand-breadth out
Behind the Tuscan's head.
And the great Lord of Luna
Fell at that deadly stroke,
As falls on Mount Alvernus
A thunder-smitten oak.
Far o'er the crashing forest
The giant arms lie spread;
And the pale augurs, muttering low,
Gaze on the blasted head.
On Astur's throat Horatius
Right firmly pressed his heel,
And thrice and four times tugged amain,
Ere he wrenched out the steel.
<(And see,** he cried, (<the welcome,
Fair guests, that waits you here!
What noble Lucumo comes next
To taste our Roman cheer ?w
But at his haughty challenge
A sullen murmur ran,
Mingled of wrath, and shame, and dread,
Along that glittering van.
There lacked not men of prowess,
Nor men of lordly race;
For all Etruria's noblest
Were round the fatal place.
But all Etruria's noblest
Felt their hearts sink to see
On the earth the bloody corpses,
In the path the dauntless Three:
And from the ghastly entrance
Where those bold Romans stood,
All shrank, like boys who unaware,
Ranging the woods to start a hare,
Come to the mouth of the dark lair
THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY 9433
Where, growling low, a fierce old bear
Lies amidst bones and blood.
Was none who would be foremost
To lead such dire attack;
But those behind cried (( Forward ! »
And those before cried « Back ! »
And backward now and forward
Wavers the deep array;
And on the tossing sea of steel,
To and fro the standards reel;
And the victorious trumpet-peal
Dies fitfully away.
Yet one man for one moment
Stood out before the crowd;
Well known was he to all the Three,
And they gave him greeting loud: —
<( Now welcome, welcome, Sextus!
Now welcome to thy home !
"Why dost thou stay, and turn away?
Here lies the road to Rome."
Thrice looked he at the city;
Thrice looked he at the dead;
And thrice came on in fury,
And thrice turned back in dread;
And, white with fear and hatred,
Scowled at the narrow way
Where, wallowing in a pool of blood,
The bravest Tuscans lay.
But meanwhile axe and lever
Have manfully been plied;
And now the bridge hangs tottering
Above the boiling tide.
<( Come back, come back, Horatius ! w
Loud cried the Fathers all.
(< Back, Lartius ! back, Herminius !
Back, ere the ruin fall!"
Back darted Spurius Lartius;
Herminius darted back:
And as they passed, beneath their feet
They felt the timbers crack.
9434 THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY
But when they turned their faces,
And on the farther shore
Saw brave Horatius stand alone,
They would have crossed once more
But with a crash like thunder
Fell every loosened beam,
And like a dam, the mighty wreck
Lay right athwart the stream:
And a long shout of triumph
Rose from the walls of Rome,
As to the highest turret-tops
Was splashed the yellow foam.
And like a horse unbroken
When first he feels the rein,
The furious river struggled hard,
And tossed his tawny mane,
And burst the curb, and bounded,
Rejoicing to be free,
And whirling down, in fierce career,
Battlement and plank and pier,
Rushed headlong to the sea,
Alone stood brave Horatius,
But constant still in mind;
Thrice thirty thousand foes before,
And the broad flood behind.
(< Down with him ! >} cried false Sextus,
With a smile on his pale face.
<(Now yield thee," cried Lars Porsena,
ttNow yield thee to our grace. >J
Round turned he, as not deigning
Those craven ranks to see;
Naught spake he to Lars Porsena,
To Sextus naught spake he:
But he saw on Palatinus
The white porch of his home;
And he spake to the noble river
That rolls by the towers of Rome.
«O Tiber! father Tiber!
To whom the Romans pray;
A Roman's life, a Roman's arms
Take thou in charge this day!w
THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY 9435
So he spake, and speaking sheathed
The good sword by his side,
And with his harness on his back,
Plunged headlong in the tide.
No sound of joy or sorrow
Was heard from either bank;
But friends and foes, in dumb surprise,
With parted lips and straining eyes,
Stood gazing where he sank;
And when above the surges
They saw his crest appear,
All Rome sent forth a rapturous cry,
And even the ranks of Tuscany
Could scarce forbear to cheer.
But fiercely ran the current,
Swollen high by months of rain:
And fast his blood was flowing;
And he was sore in pain,
And heavy with his armor,
And spent with changing blows:
And oft they thought him sinking,
But still again he rose.
Never, I ween, did swimmer,
In such an evil case,
Struggle through such a raging flood
Safe to the landing-place;
But his limbs were borne up bravely
By the brave heart within,
And our good father Tiber
Bore bravely up his chin.
"Curse on him!" quoth false Sextus;
(< Will not the villain drown ?
But for this stay; ere close of day
We should have sacked the town ! *
(< Heaven help him ! }> quoth Lars Porsena,
<(And bring him safe to shore;
For such a gallant feat of arms
Was never seen before."
And now he feels the bottom;
Now on dry earth he stands;
Now round him throng the Fathers
To press his gory hands;
9436 THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAT
And now, with shouts and clapping,
And noise of weeping loud,
He enters through the River-Gate,
Borne by the joyous crowd.
They gave him of the corn-land,
That was of public right,
As much as two strong oxen
Could plow from morn till night;
And they made a molten image,
And set it up on high,
And there it stands unto this day
To witness if I lie.
It stands in the Comitium,
Plain for all folk to see, — •
Horatius in his harness,
Halting upon one knee;
And underneath is written,
In letters all of gold,
How valiantly he kept the bridge
In the brave days of old.
And still his name sounds stirring
Unto the men of Rome,
As the trumpet-blast that cries to them
To charge the Volscian home;
And wives still pray to Juno
For boys with hearts as bold
As his who kept the bridge so well
In the brave days of old.
And in the nights of winter,
When the cold north winds blow,
And the long howling of the wolves
Is heard amidst the snow;
When round the lonely cottage
Roars loud the tempest's din,
And the good logs of Algidus
Roar louder yet within;
When the oldest cask is opened,
And the largest lamp is lit;
When the chestnuts glow in the embers,
And the kid turns on the spit;
When young and old in circle
Around the firebrands close;
THOMAS BABINGTCJN MACAULAY 9437
When the girls are weaving baskets,
And the lads are shaping bows;
When the goodman mends his armor,
And trims his helmet's plume;
When the goodwife's shuttle merrily
Goes flashing through the loom; —
With weeping and with laughter
Still is the story told,
How well Horatius kept the bridge
In the brave days of old.
THE BATTLE OF IVRY
[Henry the Fourth, on his accession to the French crown, was opposed by
a large part of his subjects under the Duke of Mayenne, with the assistance
of Spain and Savoy. In March 1590 he gained a decisive victory over that
party at Ivry. Before the battle, he addressed his troops — «My children, if
you lose sight of your colors, rally to my white plume: you will always find
it in the path to honor and glory. w His conduct was answerable to his prom-
ise. Nothing could resist his impetuous valor, and the Leaguers underwent a
total and bloody defeat. In the midst of the rout, Henry followed, crying,
«Save the French !» and his clemency added a number of the enemies to his
own army.]
Now glory to the Lord of Hosts, from whom all glories are!
And glory to our Sovereign liege, King Henry of Navarre!
Now let there be the merry sound of music and the dance,
Through thy cornfields green and sunny vines, O pleasant land of
France !
And thou, Rochelle, our own Rochelle, proud city of the waters,
Again let rapture light the eyes of all thy mourning daughters.
As thou wert constant in our ills, be joyous in our joy,
For cold, and stiff, and still are they who wrought thy walls annoy.
Hurrah! hurrah! a single field hath turned the chance of war;
Hurrah! hurrah! for Ivry, and King Henry of Navarre!
Oh, how our hearts were beating, when, at the dawn of day,
We saw the army of the League drawn out in long array,
With all its priest-led citizens, and all its rebel peers,
And Appenzell's stout infantry, and Egmont's Flemish spears.
There rode the brood of false Lorraine, the curses of our land ;
And dark Mayenne was in the midst, a truncheon in his hand:
And as we looked on them, we thought of Seine's empurpled flood,
And good Coligny's hoary hair all dabbled with his blood;
9438
THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY
And we cried unto the living God, who rules the fate of war,
To fight for his own holy name and Henry of Navarre.
The King is come to marshal us, in all his armor drest,
And he has bound a snow-white plume upon his gallant crest;
He looked upon his people, and a tear was in his eye;
He looked upon the traitors, and his glance was stern and high.
Right graciously he smiled on us, as rolled from wing to wing,
Down all our line, in deafening shout, <( God save our lord, the King!*
(<And if my standard-bearer fall, as fall full well he may, —
For never saw I promise yet of such a bloody fray, —
Press where ye see my white plume shine, amidst the ranks of war.
And be your oriflamme to-day the helmet of Navarre. w
Hurrah! the foes are moving. Hark to the mingled din
Of fife, and steed, and trump, and drum, and roaring culverin!
The fiery Duke is pricking fast across St. Andre's plain,
With all the hireling chivalry of Guelders and Almayne.
Now by the lips of those ye love, fair gentlemen of France.
Charge for the golden lilies now — upon them with the lance!
A thousand spurs are striking deep, a thousand spears in rest,
A thousand knights are pressing close behind the snow-white crest;
And in they burst, and on they rushed, while, like a guiding star,
Amidst the thickest carnage blazed the helmet of Navarre.
Now, God be praised, the day is ours ! Mayenne hath turned his rein ,
D'Aumale hath cried for quarter; the Flemish Count is slain;
Their ranks are breaking like, thin clouds before a Biscay gale;
The field is heaped with bleeding steeds, and flags and cloven mail.
And then we thought on vengeance, and all along our van,
« Remember St. Bartholomew, » was passed from man to man:
But out spake gentle Henry then, (<No Frenchman is my foe;
Down, down with every foreigner, but let your brethren go.*
Oh! was there ever such a knight in friendship or in war,
As our sovereign lord, King Henry, the soldier of Navarre!
Right well fought all the Frenchmen who fought for France that
day;
And many a lordly banner God gave them for a prey.
But we of the Religion have borne us best in fight,
And our good lord of Rosny hath ta'en the cornet white.
Our own true Maximilian the cornet white hath ta'en —
The cornet white with crosses black, the flag of false Lorraine.
Up with it high; unfurl it wide, that all the world may know
How God hath humbled the proud house that wrought his Church
such woe.
THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY
Then on the ground, while trumpets peal their loudest point of war,
Fling the red shreds, a foot-cloth meet for Henry of Navarre.
Ho, maidens of Vienna! ho, matrons of Luzerne!
Weep, weep, and rend your hair for those who never shall return.
Ho! Philip, send for charity thy Mexican pistoles,
That Antwerp monks may sing a mass for thy poor spearmen's souls.
Ho! gallant nobles of the League, look that your arms be bright;
Ho! burghers of St. Genevieve, keep watch and ward to-night:
For our God hath crushed the tyrant, our God hath raised the slave.
And mocked the counsel of the wise and valor of the brave.
Then glory to his holy name, from whom all glories are;
And glory to our sovereign lord, King Henry of Navarre!
944°
JUSTIN MCCARTHY
( 1830-1912)
JLTHOUGH Justin McCarthy was not without reputation as a Home
Rule politician, he was primarily a literary man ; his adventures
into the fields of history and fiction having preceded his
Parliamentary career. He was perhaps a novel writer rather than a
historian in the strict sense of the term. His histories are clever
and astute accounts of comparatively recent events, but bear little
evidence of the patient scholarship, the critical research, which are
characteristic of modern historical scholarship. Yet the ( History of
Our Own- Times,) (The Story of Glad-
stone's Life,) (The Reign of Queen Anne,)
the <Four Georges,* and the < Epoch of
Reform, > are not without the value and
interest attached to the writings of a man
of affairs whose dramatic- sense is well de-
veloped. Mr. McCarthy wrote of the first
Reform Bill, of Lord Grey, of Lord Palm-
erston, of Disraeli, of Gladstone, of Home
Rule politics, in the spirit of one who had
been in the swing of the movements which
he described, and who had known his heroes
in person or by near repute. Mr. McCar-
thy's talents as a novelist were of use to him
as a historian. He was quick to grasp the
salient features of character, and he was sensitive to the dramatic
elements in individuality. His <Leo XIII., > and his ( Modern Lead-
ers, y a series of biographical sketches, are successful portraits of
their kind. That Mr. McCarthy did not always see below the sur-
face in his estimates of famous contemporaries detracts little from the
picturesque character of his biographies. He is capable of giving to
his reader in a sentence or two a vivid if general impression of a
personality or of a literary work ; as when he says that « Charlotte
Bronte was all genius and ignorance, and George Eliot is all genius
and culture }) ; or when he says of Carlyle's ( French Revolution > that
it is <( history read by lightning. »
Justin McCarthy was a clever journalist as well as a writer of fic-
tion and history. Born at Cork in 1830, he connected himself with
the Liverpool press in 1853, and in 1860 became a member of the
JUSTIN MCCARTHY
JUSTIN MCCARTHY 9441
staff of the Morning Star. In 1864 he became chief editor. His
newspaper experience had more than a little influence upon his style
and methods of literary composition, as his political knowledge aided
him in his treatment of historical subjects. For twenty years he
was a Home Rule M.P., being first elected in 1879. After that year,
many of his novels were produced. They show the quick observa-
tion of the man' of newspaper training, and his talents as a ready
and clever writer. Mr. McCarthy's novels, like his histories and
biographies, are concerned mainly with the England of his own day.
Occasionally the plot is worked out against the background of Par-
liamentary life, as in (The Ladies' Gallery > and <The Right Honor-
able^ Among his other novels — for he wrote a great number —
are (Miss Misanthrope,* (A Fair Saxon,* <Lady Judith,' 'Dear Lady
Disdain, } <The Maid of Athens, J and <Paul Massie.* Mr. McCarthy's
style is crisp, straightforward, and for the most part entertaining. His
last years were given to a series of autobiographical works — (Re-
miniscences) (1899), (The Story of An Irishman) (1904), (Irish Recollec-
tions) (1911) — containing valuable information about contemporary
political history.
THE KING IS DEAD — LONG LIVE THE QUEEN
From (A History of Our Own Times *
BEFORE half-past two o'clock on the morning of June 2oth,
1837, William IV. was lying dead in Windsor Castle, while
the messengers were already hurrying off to Kensington
Palace to bear to his successor her summons to the throne. The
illness of the King had been but short, and at one time, even
after it had been pronounced alarming, it seemed to take so
hopeful a turn that the physicians began to think it would pass
harmlessly away. But the King was an old man — was an old
man even when he came to the throne; and when the dangerous
symptoms again exhibited themselves, their warning- was very
soon followed by fulfillment. The death of King William may
be fairly regarded as having closed an era of our history. With
him, we may believe, ended the reign of personal government
in England. William was indeed a constitutional king in more
than mere name. He was to the best of his lights a faithful
representative of the constitutional principle. He was as far in
advance of his two predecessors in understanding and acceptance
of the principle as his successor has proved herself beyond him.
Constitutional government has developed itself gradually, as
9442 JUSTIN MCCARTHY
everything else has done in English politics. The written prin-
ciple and code of its system it would be as vain to look for as
for the British Constitution itself. King William still held to
and exercised the right to dismiss his ministers ^hen he pleased,
and because he pleased. His father had held to the right of
maintaining favorite ministers in defiance of repeated votes of
the House of Commons. It would not be easy to find any
written rule or declaration of constitutional law pronouncing deci-
sively that either was in the wrong. But in our day we should
believe that the constitutional freedom of England was outraged,
or at least put in the extremest danger, if a sovereign were to
dismiss a ministry at mere pleasure, or to retain it in despite of
the expressed wish of the House of Commons. Virtually there-
fore there was still personal government in the reign of William
IV. With his death the long chapter of its history came to an
end. We find it difficult now to believe that it was a living
principle, openly at work among us, if not openly acknowledged,
so lately as in the reign of King William.
The closing scenes of King William's life were undoubtedly
characterized by some personal dignity. As a rule, sovereigns
show that they know how to die. Perhaps the necessary conse-
quence of their training, by virtue of which they come to regard
themselves always as the central figures in great State pageantry,
is to make them assume a manner of dignity on all occasions
when the eyes of their subjects may be supposed to be on
them, even if dignity of bearing is not the free gift of nature.
The manners of William IV. had. been, like those of most of his
brothers, somewhat rough and overbearing. He had been an
unmanageable naval officer. He had again and again disregarded
or disobeyed orders; and at last it had been found convenient to
withdraw him from active service altogether, and allow him to
rise through the successive ranks of his profession by a merely
formal and technical process of ascent. In his more private
capacity he had, when younger, indulged more than once in un-
seemly and insufferable freaks of temper. He had made himself
unpopular, while Duke of Clarence, by his strenuous opposition
to some of the measures which were especially desired by all the
enlightenment of the country. He was, for example, a deter-
mined opponent of the measures for the abolition of the slave
trade. He had wrangled publicly in open debate with some ot
his brothers in the House of Lords; and words had been inter-
JUSTIN MCCARTHY 9443
changed among the royal princes which could not be heard in
our day even in the hottest debates of the more turbulent House
of Commons. But William seems to have been one of the men
whom increased responsibility improves. He was far better as a
king than as a prince. He proved that he was able at least to
understand that first duty of a constitutional sovereign, which to
the last day of his active life his father, George III., never could
be brought to comprehend, — that the personal predilections and
prejudices of the king must sometimes give way to the public
interest.
Nothing perhaps in life became him like the leaving of it.
His closing days were marked by gentleness and kindly consid*
eration for the feelings of those around him. When, he awoke
on June i8th he remembered that it was the anniversary of the
Battle of Waterloo. He expressed a strong, pathetic wish to live
over that day, even if he were never to see another sunset. He
called for the flag which the Duke of Wellington always sent him
on that anniversary; and he laid his hand upon the eagle which
adorned it, and said he felt revived by the touch. He had him-
self attended since his accession the Waterloo banquet; but this
time the Duke of Wellington thought it would perhaps be more
seemly to have the dinner put off, and sent accordingly to take
the wishes of his Majesty. The King declared that the dinner
must go on as usual; and sent to the Duke a friendly, simple
message, expressing his hope that the guests might have a pleas-
ant day. He talked in his homely way to those about him, his
direct language seeming to acquire a sort of tragic dignity from
the approach of the death that was so near. He had prayers
read to him again and again, and called those near him to wit-
ness that he had always been a faithful believer in the truths of
religion. He had his dispatch-boxes brought to him, and tried
to get through some business with his private secretary. It was
remarked with some interest that the last official act he ever
performed was to sign with his trembling hand the pardon of a
condemned criminal. Even a far nobler reign than his would
have received new dignity if it closed with a deed of mercy.
When some of those around him endeavored to encourage him
with the idea that he might recover and live many years yet, he
declared with a simplicity which had something oddly pathetic in
it that he would be willing to live ten years yet for the sake of
the country. The poor King was evidently under the sincere
9444 JUSTIN MCCARTHY
conviction that England could hardly get on without him. His
consideration for his country, whatever whimsical thoughts it
may suggest, is entitled to some at least of the respect which
we give to the dying groan of a Pitt or a Mirabeau, who fears
with too much reason that he leaves a blank not easily to be
filled. (< Young royal tarry-breeks, w William had been jocularly
called by Robert Burns fifty years before, when there was yet a
popular belief that he would come all right and do brilliant and
gallant things, and become a stout sailor in whom a seafaring
nation might feel pride. He disappointed all such expectations;
but it must be owned that when responsibility came upon hirr*
he disappointed expectation anew in a different way, and 'was a
better sovereign, more deserving of the complimentary title of
patriot-king, than even his friends would have ventured to antici-
pate.
There were eulogies pronounced upon him after his death,
in both Houses of Parliament, as a matter of course. It is not
necessary, however, to set down to mere court homage or parlia-
mentary form some of the praises that were bestowed upon the
dead King by Lord Melbourne and Lord Brougham and Lord
Grey. A certain tone of sincerity, not quite free perhaps from
surprise, appears to run through some of these expressions of
admiration. They seem to say that the speakers were at one
time or another considerably surprised to find that after all, Will-
iam really was able and willing- on grave occasions to subordi-
nate his personal likings and dislikings to considerations of State
policy, and to what was shown to him to be for the good of the
nation. In this sense at least he may be called a patriot-king.
We have advanced a good deal since that time, and we require
somewhat higher and more positive qualities in a sovereign now
to excite our political wonder. But we must judge William by
the reigns that went before, and not the reign that came after
him; and with that consideration borne in mind, we may accept
the panegyric of Lord Melbourne and of Lord Grey, and admit
that on the whole he was better than his education, his early
opportunities, and his early promise.
William IV. (third son of George III.) had left no children
who could have succeeded to the throne; and the crown passed
therefore to the daughter of his brother (fourth son of George),
the Duke of Kent. This was the Princess Alexandrina Victoria,
who was born at Kensington Palace on May 24th, 1819. The
JUSTIN MCCARTHY
princess was therefore at this time little more than eighteen years
of age. The Duke of Kent died a few months after the birth of
his daughter, and the child was brought up under the care of
his widow. She was well brought up: both as regards her intel-
lect and her character her training was excellent. She was taught
to be self-reliant, brave, and systematical. Prudence and economy
were inculcated on her as though she had been born to be poor.
One is not generally inclined to attach much importance to what
historians tell us of the education of contemporary princes or
princesses; but it cannot be doubted that the Princess Victoria
was trained for intelligence and goodness.
<( The death of the King of England has everywhere caused the
greatest sensation. ... Cousin Victoria is said to have shown
'astonishing self-possession. She undertakes a heavy responsi-
bility, especially at the present moment, when parties are so
excited, and all rest their hopes on her." These words are an
extract from a letter written on July 4th, 1837, by the late Prince
Albert, the Prince Consort of so many happy years. The letter
was written to the Prince's father, from Bonn. The young Queen
had indeed behaved with remarkable self-possession. There is a
pretty description, which has been often quoted, but will bear
citing once more, given by Miss Wynn, of the manner in which
the young sovereign received the news of her accession to a
throne. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Howley, and the
Lord Chamberlain, the Marquis of Conyngham, left Windsor for
Kensington Palace, where the Princess Victoria had been resid-
ing, to inform her of the King's death. It was two hours after
midnight when they started, and they did not reach Kensington
until five o'clock in the morning. (<They knocked, they rang>
they thumped for a considerable time before they could rouse the
porter at the gate; they were again kept waiting in the court-
yard, then turned into one of the lower rooms, where they seemed
forgotten by everybody. They rang the bell, and desired that
the attendant of the Princess Victoria might be sent to inform
her Royal Highness that they requested an audience on busi-
ness of importance. After another delay, and another ringing to
inquire the cause, the attendant- was summoned, who stated that
the princess was in such a sweet sleep that she could not venture
to disturb her. Then they said, < We are come on business of
State to the Queen, and even her sleep must give way to that.'
It did; and to prove that she did not keep them waiting, in a
9446 JUSTIN MCCARTHY
few minutes she came into the room in a loose white nightgown
and shawl, her nightcap thrown off, and her hair falling upon her
shoulders, her feet in slippers, tears in her eyes, but perfectly
collected and dignified." The Prime Minister, Lord Melbourne,
was presently sent for, and a meeting of the Privy Council sum-
moned for eleven o'clock; when the Lord Chancellor administered
the usual oaths to the Queen, and Her Majesty received in re-
turn the oaths of allegiance of the Cabinet ministers and other
privy councillors present. Mr. Greville, who was usually as little
disposed to record any enthusiastic admiration of royalty and
royal personages as Humboldt or Varnhagen von Ense could have
been, has described the scene in words well worthy of quotation.
<(The King died at twenty minutes after two yesterday morning,
and the young Queen met the Council at Kensington Palace at
eleven. Never was anything like the first impression she. produced,
or the chorus of praise and admiration which is raised about her
manner and behavior, and certainly not without justice. It was
very extraordinary, and something far beyond what was looked for.
Her extreme youth and inexperience, and the ignorance of the world
concerning her, naturally excited intense curiosity to see how she
would act on this trying occasion, and there was a considerable
assemblage at the palace, notwithstanding the short notice which
was given. The first thing to be done was to teach her her lesson,
which, for this purpose, Melbourne had himself to learn. . . . She
bowed to the lords, took her seat, and then read her speech in a
clear, distinct, and audible voice, and without any appearance of fear
or embarrassment. She was quite plainly dressed, arid in mourning.
After she had read her speech, and taken and signed the oath for
the security of the Church of Scotland, the privy councillors were
sworn, the two royal dukes first by themselves; and as these two
old men, her uncles, knelt before her, swearing allegiance and kissing
her hand, I saw her blush up to the eyes, as if she felt the contrast
between their civil and their natural relations, — and this was the only
sign of emotion which she evinced. Her manner to them was very
graceful and engaging; she kissed them both, and rose from her
chair and moved towards the Duke of Sussex, who was farthest from
her, and too infirm to reach her. She seemed rather bewildered
at the multitude of men who were sworn, and who came, one after
another, to kiss her hand, but she did not speak to anybody, nor did
she make the slightest difference in her manner, or show any in
her countenance, to any individual of any rank, station, or party. 1
particularly watched her when Melbourne and the ministers, and tha
JUSTIN MCCARTHY 9447
Duke of Wellington and Peel, approached her. She went through
the whole ceremony, occasionally looking at Melbourne for instruction
when she had any doubt what to do, — which hardly ever occurred, —
and with perfect calmness and self-possession, but at the same time
with a graceful modesty and propriety particularly interesting and
ingratiating."
Sir Robert Peel told Mr. Greville that he was amazed ((at her
manner and behavior, at her apparent deep sense of her situa-
tion, and at the same time her firmness." The Duke of Welling,
ton said in his blunt way that if she had been his own daughter
he could not have desired to see her perform her part better,
<(At twelve," says Mr, Greville, <( she held a Council, at which
she presided with as much ease as if she had been doing nothing
else all her life; and though Lord Lansdowne and my colleague
had contrived between them to make some confusion with the
Council papers, she was not put out by it. She looked very well ;
and though so small in stature, and without much pretension to
beauty, the gracefulness of her manner and the good expression
of her countenance give her on the whole a very agreeable ap-
pearance, and with her youth inspire an excessive interest in all
who approach her, and which I can't help feeling myself. . . .
In short, she appears to act with every sort of good taste and
good feeling, as well as good sense; and as far as it has gone,
nothing can be more favorable than the impression she has
made, and nothing can promise better than her manner and con-
duct do; though," Mr. Greville somewhat superfluously adds, ((it
would be rash to count too confidently upon her judgment and
discretion in more weighty matters."
The interest or curiosity with which the demeanor of the
young Queen was watched was all the keener because the world
in general knew so little about her. Not merely was the world
in general thus ignorant, but even the statesmen and officials in
closest communication with court circles were in almost absolute
ignorance. According to Mr. Greville (whose authority, however,
is not to be taken too implicitly except as to matters which he
actually saw), the young Queen had been previously kept in such
seclusion by her mother — "never," he says, ft having slept out
of her bedroom, nor been alone with anybody but herself and
the Baroness Lehzen" — that (<not one of her acquaintances, none
of the attendants at Kensington, not even the Duchess of North-
umberland, her governess, have any idea what she is or what
9443 JUSTIN MCCARTHY
she promises to be." There was enough in the court of the two
sovereigns who went before Queen Victoria to justify any strict-
ness of seclusion which the Duchess of Kent might desire for
her daughter. George IV. was a Charles II. without the edu-
cation or the talents; William IV. was a Frederick William of
Prussia without the genius. The ordinary manners of the society
at the court of either had a full flavor, to put it in the softest
way, such as a decent tap-room would hardly exhibit in a time
like the present. No one can read even the most favorable
descriptions given by contemporaries of the manners of those
two courts, without feeling grateful to the Duchess of Kent for
resolving that her daughter should see as little as possible of
their ways and their company.
It was remarked with some interest that the Queen sub-
scribed herself simply "Victoria," and not, as had been expected,
C( Alexandrina Victoria. }) Mr. Greville mentions in ' his diary of
December 24th, 1819, that <(the Duke of Kent gave the name
of Alexandrina to his daughter in compliment to the Emperor of
Russia. She was to have had the name of Georgiana, but the
duke insisted upon Alexandrina being her first name. The Regent
sent for Lieven [the Russian ambassador, husband of the famous
Princess de Lieven], and made him a great many compliments,
en le persiflant, on the Emperor's being godfather; but informed
him that the name of Georgiana could be second to no other in
this country, and therefore she could not bear it at all.® It was
a very wise choice to employ simply the name Victoria, around
which no tmgenial associations of any kind hung at that time,
and which can have only grateful associations in the history of
this country for the future.
It 'is not necessary to go into any formal description of the
various ceremonials and pageantries which celebrated the acces-
sion of the new sovereign. The proclamation - of the Queen,
her appearance for the first time on the throne in the House of
Lords when she prorogued Parliament in person, and even the
gorgeous festival of her coronation, — which took place on June
28th, in the following year, 1838, — may be passed over with a
mere word of record. It is worth mentioning, however, that at
the coronation procession one of the most conspicuous figures
was that of Marshal Soult, Duke of Dalmatia, the opponent of
Moore and Wellington in the Peninsula, the commander of the
Old Guard at Llitzen, and one of the strong arms of Napoleon at
JUSTIN MCCARTHY
Waterloo. Soult had been sent as ambassador extraordinary to
represent the French government and people at the coronation
of Queen Victoria; and nothing could exceed the enthusiasm with
which he was received by the crowds in the streets of London
on that day. The white-haired soldier was cheered wherever a
glimpse of his face or figure could be caught. He appeared in
the procession in a carriage the frame of which had been used
on occasions of state by some of the princes of the House of
Conde, and which Soult had had splendidly decorated for the
ceremony of the coronation. Even the Austrian ambassador,
says an eye-witness, attracted less attention than Soult, although
the dress of the Austrian, Prince Esterhazy, <(down to his very
boot-heels sparkled with diamonds. }) The comparison savors now
of the ridiculous, but is remarkably expressive and effective.
Prince Esterhazy's name in those days suggested nothing but
diamonds. His diamonds may be said to glitter through all the
light literature of the time.. When Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
wanted a comparison with which to illustrate excessive splendor
and brightness, she found it in (< Mr. Pitt's diamonds. }> Prince
Esterhazy's served the same purpose for the writers of the early
years of the present reign. It was therefore, perhaps, no very
poor tribute to the stout old moustache of the Republic and the
Empire to say that at a London pageant his war-worn face drew
attention away from Prince Esterhazy's diamonds. Soult himself
felt very warmly the genuine kindness of the reception given to
him. Years after, in a debate in the French Chamber, when M.
Guizot was accused of too much partiality for the English alliance,
Marshal Soult declared himself a warm champion of that alliance.
<(I fought the English down to Toulouse, }> he said, "when I
fired the last cannon in defense of the national independence:
in the mean time I have been in London; and France knows
the reception which I had there. The English themselves cried
*Vive Soult !> — they cried, < Soult forever !> I had learned to
estimate the English on the field of battle; I have learned to esti-
mate them in peace: and I repeat that I am a warm partisan of
the English alliance. » History is not exclusively made by cab-
inets and professional diplomatists. It is highly probable that
the cheers of a London crowd on the day of the Queen's corona-
tion did something genuine and substantial to restore the good
feeling between this country and France, and efface the bitter
memories of Waterloo,
JUSTIN MCCARTHY
It is a fact well worthy of note, amid whatever records of
court ceremonial and of political change, that a few days after
the accession of the Queen, Mr. Montefiore was elected Sheriff
of London (the first Jew who had ever been chosen for that
office), and that he received knighthood at the hands of her
Majesty when she visited the City on the following Lord Mayor's
day. He was the first Jew whom royalty had honored in this
country since the good old times when royalty was pleased to
borrow the Jew's money, or order instead the extraction of his
teeth. The expansion of the principle of religious liberty and
equality, which has been one of the most remarkable characteris-
tics of the reign of Queen Victoria, could hardly have been more
becomingly inaugurated than by the compliment which sovereign
and city paid to Sir Moses Montefiore.
A MODERN ENGLISH STATESMAN
From <A History of Our Own Times >
«T TN-ARM, Eros: the long day's task is done, and we must
|^J sleep!" A long, very long day's task was nearly done.
A marvelous career was fast drawing to its close. Down
in Hertfordshire Lord Palmerston was dying. As Mirabeau said
of himself, so Palmerston might have said: he could already hear
the preparations for the funeral of Achilles. He had enjoyed life
to the last as fully as ever Churchill did, although in a different
sense. Long as his life was, if counted by mere years, it seems
much longer still when we consider what it had compassed, and
how active it had been from the earliest to the very end. Many
men were older than Lord Palmerston; he left more than one
senior behind him. But they were for the most part men whose
work had long been done, — men who had been consigned to the
arm-chair of complete inactivity. Palmerston was a hard-working
statesman until within a very few days of his death. He had
been a member of Parliament for nearly sixty years. He entered
Parliament for the first time in the year when Byron, like him-
self a Harrow boy, published his first poems. .He had been in
the House of Commons for thirty years when the Queen came to
the throne. He used to play chess with the unfortunate Caroline
of Brunswick, wife of the Prince Regent, when she lived at
JUSTIN MCCARTHY
Kensington as Princess of Wales. In 1808, being then one of
the Lords of the Admiralty, he had defended the Copenhagen
expedition of the year before, and insisted that it was a stroke
indispensable to the defeat of the designs of Napoleon. During
all his political career he was only out of office for rare and brief
seasons. To be a private member of Parliament was a short
occasional episode in his successful life. In the words of Sadi,
the Persian poet, he had obtained an ear of corn from every
harvest.
No man since the death of the Duke of Wellington had filled
so conspicuous a place in the public mind. No man had enjoyed
anything like the same amount of popularity. He died at the
moment when that popularity had reached its very zenith. It
hajd become the fashion of the day to praise all he said and all
he did. It was the settled canon of the ordinary Englishman's
faith, that what Palmerston said England must feel. . .
Privately, he can hardly have had any enemies. He had a
kindly heart, which won on all people who came near him. He
had no enduring enmities or capricious dislikes; and it was there-
fore very hard for ill-feeling to live in his beaming, friendly
presence. He never disliked men merely because he had often to
encounter them in political war. He tried his best to give them
as good as they brought, and he bore no malice. There were
some men whom he disliked, as we have already mentioned in
these volumes; but they were men who for one reason or another
stood persistently in his way, and who, he fancied he had reason
to believe, had acted treacherously towards him. He liked a man
to be "English," and he liked him to be what he considered a
gentleman; but he did not restrict his definition of the word
<( gentleman }) to the mere qualifications of birth or social rank.
His manners were frank and genial rather than polished; and his
is one of the rare instances in which a man contrived always
to keep up his personal dignity without any stateliness of bearing
and tone. He was a model combatant: when the combat was
over, he was ready to sit down by his antagonist's side and be
his friend, and talk over their experiences and exploits. He was
absolutely free from affectation. This very fact gave sometimes
an air almost of roughness to his manners, he could be so plain-
spoken and downright when suddenly called on to express his
mind. He was not, in the highest sense of the word, a truthful
man; that is to say, ijiere were episodes of his career in which
9452 JUSTIN MCCARTHY
for purposes of statecraft he allowed the House of Commons and
the country to become the dupes of an erroneous impression.
Personally truthful and honorable of course it would be super-
fluous to pronounce him. A man of Palmerston's bringing-up is
as certain to be personally truthful as he is to be brave, and to
be fond of open-air exercise and the cold bath. But Palmerston
was too often willing- to distinguish between the personal and the
political integrity of a statesman. The distinction is common to
the majority of statesmen: so much the worse for statesmanship.
But the gravest errors of this kind which Palmerston had com-
mitted were committed for an earlier generation. . . .
His greatest praise with Englishmen must be that he loved
England with a sincere love that never abated. He had no pre-
dilection, no prejudice, that did not give way where the welfare
of England was concerned. He ought to have gone one step
higher in the path of public duty: he ought to have loved justice
and right even more than he loved England. He ought to have
felt more tranquilly convinced that the cause of justice and of
right must be the best thing which an English minister could
advance even for England's sake in the end. Lord Palmerston
was not a statesman who took any lofty view of a minister's
duties. His statesmanship never stood on any high moral eleva-
tion. He sometimes did things in the cause of England which
we may well believe he would not have done for any considera-
tion in any cause of his own. His policy was necessarily shift-
ing, uncertain, and inconsistent; for he molded it always on the
supposed interests of England as they showed themselves to his
eyes at the time. His sympathies with liberty were capricious
guides. Sympathies with liberty must be so always where there
is no clear principle defining objects and guiding conduct. Lord
Palmerston was not prevented by his liberal sympathies from
sustaining the policy of the Coup d'Etat; nor did his hatred of
slavery, one of his few strong and genuine emotions apart from
English interests, inspire him with any repugnance for the cause
of the Southern slaveholders. But it cannot be. doubted that his
very defects were a main cause of his popularity and his success.
He was able always with a good conscience to assure the English
people that they were the greatest and the best — the only good
and great — people in the world, because he had long taught him-
self to believe this, and had come to believe it. He was always
popular, because his speeches invariably conveyed this impression
JUSTIN MCCARTHY
to the English crowd whom he addressed in or out of Parliament.
Other public men spoke for the most part to tell English peo-
ple of something they ought to do which they were not doing,
something which they had done and ought not to have done. It
is not in the nature of things that such men should be as popular
as those who told England that whatever she did must be right.
Nor did Palmerston lay on his praise with coarse and palpable
artifice. He had no artifice in the matter. He believed what he
said; and his very sincerity made it the more captivating and the
more dangerous.
A phrase sprang up in Palmerston's days which was employed
to stigmatize certain political conduct beyond all ordinary re-
proach. It was meant to stamp such conduct as outside the
pale of reasonable argument or patriotic consideration. That was
the word "un-English." It was enough with certain classes to
say that anything was (< un-English w in order to put it utterly
out of court. No matter to what principles, higher, more uni-
versal, and more abiding than those that are merely English, it
might happen to appeal, the one word of condemnation was held
to be enough for it. Some of the noblest and the wisest men
of our day were denounced as "un-English." A stranger might
have asked in wonder, at one time, whether it was un-English
to be just, to be merciful, to have consideration for the claims
and the rights of others, to admit that there was any higher
object in a nation's life than a diplomatic success. All that
would have made a man odious and insufferable in private life
was apparently held up as belonging to the virtues of the Eng-
lish nation. Rude self-assertion, blunt disregard for the feelings
and the claims of others, a self-sufficiency which would regard
all earth's interests as made for England's special use alone, — •
the yet more outrageous form of egotism which would fancy that
the moral code as it applies to others does not apply to us, — all
this seemed to be considered the becoming national character-
istic of the English people. It would be almost superfluous to
say that this did not show its worst in Lord Palmerston himself.
As in art, so in politics, we never see how bad some peculiar
defect is until we see it in the imitators of a great man's style.
A school of Palmerstons, had it been powerful and lasting, would
have made England a nuisance to other nations. . . . We
have no hesitation in saying that Lord Palmerston's statesman-
ship on the whole lowered the moral tone of English politics for
JUSTIN MCCARTHY
a time. This consideration alone, if there were nothing else, for-
bids us to regard him as a statesman whose deeds were equal to
his opportunities and to his genius. To serve the purpose of the
hour was his policy. To succeed in serving it was his triumph.
It is not thus that a great fame is built up, unless indeed where
the genius of the man is like that of some Caesar or Napoleon,
which can convert its very ruins into monumental records. Lord
Palmerston is hardly to be called a great man. Perhaps he may
be called a great "man of the time.*
9455
GEORGE MACDONALD
(1824-1905)
EORGE MACDONALD has been characterized as a Across between
a poet and a spiritual teacher. }) His powers as a novelist,
however, are not taken into account by this description.
Added to his genuine poetical feeling, and to his refined moral sense,
are the qualities of a good story-teller. He knows how to handle an
elaborate plot; he understands the dramatic values of situations; he
can put life into his characters. Yet the dominant impression left
by his novels is their essential moral nobility. The ideal which Mr.
Macdonald sets before himself as a writer
of fiction is summed up in this passage
from <Sir Gibbie*: —
<*But whatever the demand of the age, I
insist that that which ought to be presented to
its beholding is the common good, uncommonly
developed: and that not because of its rarity, but
because it is truer to humanity. It is the noble,
not the failure from the noble, that is the true
human: and if I must show the failure, let it
ever be with an eye to the final possible, yea,
imperative success. But in our day a man who
will accept any oddity of idiosyncratic develop-
ment in manners, tastes, and habits, will refuse
not only as improbable, but as inconsistent with
human nature, the representation of a man trying to be merely as noble as is
absolutely essential to his being. »
This quaint realism of Mr. Macdonald's in a literary age, when
many believe that only the evil in man's nature is real, dominates
his novels, from < David Elginbrod > to <The Elect Lady.' They are
wholesome stories of pure men and women. The author is at his
strongest when drawing a character like that of Sir Gibbie, com-
pelled forever to follow the highest law of his nature. With villains
and with mean folk, Mr. Macdonald can do nothing. He cannot un-
derstand them, neither can he understand complexity of character.
He is too dogmatic ever to see the « shadowy third » between the
and one. He is too much of a preacher to be altogether a
lovelist.
GEORGE MACDONALD
9456 GEORGE MACDONALD
His training increased his dogmatic faculty. Born at Huntly,
Aberdeenshire, in 1824, he was graduated at King's College, Aber-
deen, and then entered upon the study of theology at the Independ-
ent College, Highbury, London. He was for a time a preacher in
the Scottish Congregational Church, but afterwards became a layman
in the Church of England. He then assumed the principalship of a
seminary in London. His novels witness to his Scotch origin and
training. The scenes of many of them are laid in Scotland, and not
a few of the characters speak the North-Scottish dialect. But the
spirit which informs them is even more Scotch than their setting.
The strong moral convictions of George Macdonald infuse them with
the sermonizing element. The novelist is of the spiritual kindred of
the Covenanters. Yet they are full of a kindly humanity, and where
the moralist is merged in the writer of fiction they attain a high
degree of charm.
His pure and tender spirit made him peculiarly fitted to under-
stand children and child life. ((Gibbie had never been kissed,)) he
writes; ((and how is any child £o thrive without kisses?)) His stories
for children, (At the Back of the North Wind) and (The Princess
and Curdie,) are full of beauty in their 'fine sympathy for the moods
of a child.
George Macdonald wrote a great number of novels. They in-
clude (David Elginbrod,) (Alec Forbes of How Glen,) (Annals of a
Quiet Neighborhood,) (The Seaboard Parish) (sequel to the foregoing),
(Robert Falconer,) ( Wilfrid Cumbermede,) (Malcolm,) (The Marquis
of Lossie,) (St. George and St. Michael,) (Sir Gibbie,) (What's Mine's
Mine,) (The Elect Lady,) and such fanciful stories as his well-known
(Phantastes.) He also published (Miracles of Our Lord) and (Un-
spoken Sermons.) His sermons, as might be expected, are vigorous,
and exhibit his peculiar sensitiveness to the moral and spiritual elements
in man's existence. This same sensitiveness pervades his verse.
George Macdonald's death occurred in London on September i8th,
1905.
THE FLOOD
From <Sir Gibbie >
STILL the rain fell and the wind blew; the torrents came tear-
ing- down from the hills, and shot madly into the rivers; the
rivers ran into the valleys, and deepened the lakes that filled
them. On every side of the Mains, from the foot of Glashgar to
Gormdrm, all was one yellow and red sea, with roaring currents
GEORGE MACDONALD
9457
and vortices numberless. It burrowed holes, it opened long-
deserted channels and water-courses; here it deposited inches of
rich mold, there yards of sand and gravel; here it was carrying
away fertile ground, leaving behind only bare rock or shingle
where the corn had been waving; there it was scooping out the
bed of a new lake. Many a thick soft lawn of loveliest grass,
dotted with fragrant shrubs and rare trees, vanished, and nothing
was there when the waters subsided but a stony waste, or a grav-
elly precipice. Woods and copses were undermined, and trees and
soil together swept into the vast; sometimes the very place was
hardly there to say it knew its children no more. Houses were
torn to pieces; and their contents, as from broken boxes, sent
wandering on the brown waste through the gray air to the dis-
colored sea, whose saltness for a long way out had vanished with
its hue. Hay-mows were buried to the very top in sand; others
went sailing bodily down the mighty stream — some of them fol-
lowed or surrounded, like big ducks, by a great brood off ricks for
their ducklings. Huge trees went past as if shot down an Alpine
slide — cottages and bridges of stone giving way before them.
Wooden mills, thatched roofs, great mill-wheels, went dipping
and swaying and hobbling down. From the upper windows of
the Mains, looking towards the chief current, they saw a drift of
everything belonging to farms and dwelling-houses that would
float. Chairs and tables, chests, carts, saddles, chests of drawers,
tubs of linen, beds and blankets, work-benches, harrows, girnels,
planes, cheeses, churns, spinning-wheels, cradles, iron pots, wheel-
barrows— all these and many other things hurried past as they
gazed. Everybody was looking, and for a time all had been
silent. . . .
Just as Mr. Duff entered the stable from the nearer end, the
opposite gable fell out with a great splash, letting in the wide
level vision of turbidly raging waters, fading into the obscurity
of the wind-driven rain. While he stared aghast, a great tree
struck the wall like a battering-ram, so that the stable shook.
The horses, which had been for some time moving uneasily, were
now quite scared. There was not a moment to be lost. Duff
shouted for his men; one or two came running; and in less
than a minute more, those in the house heard the iron-shod feet
splashing and stamping through the water, as one after another
the horses were brought across the yard to the door of the house.
Mr. Duff led by the halter his favorite Snowball, who was a good
9458
GEORGE MACDONALD
deal excited, plunging and rearing so that it was all he could do
to hold him. He had ordered the men to take the others first,
thinking he would follow more quietly. But the moment Snow-
ball heard the first thundering of hoofs on the stair, he went out
of his senses with terror, broke from his master, and went plun-
ging back to the stable. Duff started after him, but was only in
time to see him rush from the further end into the swift cur-
rent, where he was at once out of his depth, and was instantly
caught and hurried, rolling over and over, from his master's
sight. He ran back into the house, and up to the highest win-
dow. From that he caught sight of him a long way down,
swimming. Once or twice he saw him turned heels over head —
only to get his neck up again presently, and swim as well as
before. But alas! it was in the direction of the Daur, which
would soon, his master did not doubt, sweep his carcass into the
North Sea. With troubled heart he strained his sight after him
as long as he could distinguish his lessening head, but it got
amongst some wreck; and, unable to tell any more whether he
saw it or not, he returned to his men with his eyes full of tears.
Gibbie woke with the first of the dawn. The rain still fell —
descending in spoonfuls rather than drops; the wind kept shaping
itself into long hopeless howls, rising to shrill yells that went
drifting away over the land; and then the howling rose again.
Nature seemed in despair. There must be more for Gibbie to
do! He must go again to the foot of the mountain, and see if
there was anybody to help. They might even be in trouble at
the Mains: who could tell! . . .
Gibbie sped down the hill through a worse rain than ever.
The morning was close, and the vapors that filled it were like
smoke burned to the hue of the flames whence it issued. Many
a man that morning believed another great deluge begun, and all
measures relating to things of this world lost labor. Going down
his own side of the Glashburn, the nearest path to the valley,
the gamekeeper's cottage was the first dwelling on his way. It
stood a little distance from the bank of the burn, opposite the
bridge and gate, while such things were.
It had been with great difficulty — for even Angus did not
know the mountain so well as Gibbie . — that the gamekeeper
reached it with the housekeeper the night before. It was within
two gun-shots of the house of Glashruach, yet to get to it they
GEORGE MACDONALD
had to walk miles up and down Glashgar. A mountain in storm
is as hard to cross as a sea. Arrived, they did not therefore
feel safe. The tendency of the Glashburn was indeed away from
the cottage, as the grounds of Glashruach sadly witnessed; but
a torrent is double-edged, and who could tell? The yielding of
one stone in its channel might send it to them. All night Angus
watched, peering out ever again into the' darkness, but seeing
nothing save three lights that burned above the water — one of
them, he thought, at the Mains. The other two went out in the
darkness, but that only in the dawn. When the morning came,
there was the Glashburn meeting the Lorrie in his garden. But
the cottage was well built, and fit to stand a good siege, while
any moment the waters might have reached their height. By
breakfast-time, however, they were round it from behind. There
is nothing like a flood for revealing the variations of surface, the
dips and swells of a country. In a few minutes they were iso-
lated, with the current of the Glashburn on one side and that
of the Lorrie in front. When he saw the water come in at front
and back doors at once, Angus ordered his family up the stair:
the cottage had a large attic, with dormer windows, where they
slept. He himself remained below for some time longer, in that
end of the house where he kept his guns and fishing-tackle ; there
he sat on a table, preparing nets for the fish that would be left
in the pools; and not until he found himself afloat did he take
his work to the attic.
There the room was hot, and they had the window open.
Mistress MacPholp stood at it, looking out on the awful prospect,
with her youngest child, a sickly boy, in her arms. He had in
his a little terrier pup, greatly valued of the gamekeeper. In a
sudden outbreak of peevish willfulness, he threw the creature out
of the window. It fell on the sloping roof, and before it could
recover itself, being too young to have the full command of four
legs, rolled off.
<(Eh! the doggie's i' the watter!" cried Mistress MacPholp in
dismay.
Angus threw down everything with an ugly oath, — for he had
given strict orders not one of the children should handle the
whelp, — jumped up, and got out on the roof. From there he
might have managed to reach it. so high now was the water, had
the little thing remained where it fell; but already it had swum
a yard or two from the house. Angus, who was a fair swimmer
9460
GEORGE MACDONALD
and an angry man, threw off his coat, and plunging- after it,
greatly to the delight of the little one, caught the pup. with his
teeth by the back of .the neck, and turned to make for the house.
Just then a shrub swept from the hill caught him in the face,
and so bewildered him that before he got rid of it he had blun-
dered into the edge of the current, which seized and bore him
rapidly away. He dropped the pup and struck out for home
with all his strength. But he soon found the most he could do
was to keep his head above water, and gave himself up for lost.
His wife screamed in agony. Gibbie heard her as he came down
the hill, and ran at full speed towards the cottage.
About a hundred yards from the house, the current bore
Angus straight into a large elder-tree. He got into the middle
of it, and there remained trembling, — the weak branches break-
ing with every motion he made, while the stream worked at the
roots, and the wind laid hold of him with fierce leverage. In
terror, seeming still to sink as he sat, he watched the trees dart
by like battering-rams in the swiftest of the current ; the least of
them diverging would tear the elder-tree with it. Brave enough
in dealing with poachers, Angus was not the man to gaze with
composure in the face of a sure slow death, against which no
assault could be made. Many a man is courageous because he
has not conscience enough to make a coward of him, but Angus
had not quite reached that condition; and from the branches of
the elder-tree showed a pale, terror-stricken visage. Amidst the
many objects in the face of the water, Gibbie, however, did not
distinguish it; and plunging in, swam round to the front of the
cottage to learn what was the matter. There the wife's gesticu-
lations directed his eyes to her drowning husband.
But what was he to do? He could swim to the tree well
enough, and, he thought, back again; but how was that to be
made of service to Angus ? He could not save him by main
force: there was not enough of that between them. If he had
a line — and there must be plenty of lines in the cottage — he
could carry him the end of it to haul upon: that would do. If
he could send it to him, that would be better still; for then he
could help at the other end, and would be in the right position
up-stream to help further if necessary, for down the current
alone was the path of communication open. He caught hold of
the eaves and scrambled on to the roof. But in the folly and
faithlessness of her despair, the woman would not let him enter.
GEORGE MACDONALD 946 x
With a curse caught from her husband, she struck him from the
window, crying —
(<Ye s' no come in here, an' my man droonin' yon'er! Gang
till 'im, ye cooard!}>
Never had poor Gibbie so much missed the use of speech.
On the slope of the roof he could do little to force an entrance,
therefore threw himself off it to seek another, and betook him-
self to the windows below. Through that of Angus's room, he
caught sight of a floating anker cask. It was the very thing! —
and there on the walls hung a quantity of nets and cordage!
But how to get in ? It was a sash window, and of course swol-
len with the wet, and therefore not to be opened; and there was
not a square in it large enough to let him through. He swam
to the other side, and crept softly on to the roof and over the
ridge. But a broken slate betrayed him. The woman saw him,
rushed to the fireplace, caught up the poker, and darted back to
defend the window.
«Ye s' no come in here, I tell ye," she screeched, <( an' my
man stickin' i' yon boortree buss ! w
Gibbie advanced. She made a blow at him with the poker.
He caught it, wrenched it from her grasp, and threw himself
from the roof. The next moment they 'heard the poker at work
smashing the window.
"He'll be in an' murder 's a'!" cried the mother, and ran to
the stair, while the children screamed and danced with terror.
But the water was far too deep for her. She returned to the
attic, barricaded the door, and went again to the window to
watch her drowning husband.
Gibbie was inside in a moment; and seizing the cask, pro-
ceeded to attach to it a strong line. He broke a bit from a
fishing-rod, secured the line round the middle of it with a notch,
put the stick through the bunghole in the bilge, and corked up
the whole with a net-float. Happily he had a knife in his pocket.
He then joined strong lines together until he thought he had
length enough, secured the last end to a bar of the grate, and
knocked out both sashes of the ^window with an axe. A passage
thus cleared, he floated out first a chair, then a creepie, and one
thing after another, to learn from what part to start the bar-
rel. Seeing and recognizing them from above, Mistress MacPholp
raised a terrible outcry. In the very presence of her drowning
husband, such a wanton dissipation of her property roused her to
9462
GEORGE MACDONALD
fiercest wrath; for she imagined Gibbie was emptying her house
with leisurely revenge. Satisfied at length, he floated out his
barrel, and followed with the line in his hand, to aid its direction
if necessary. It struck the tree. With a yell of joy Angus laid
hold of it, and hauling the line taut, and feeling it secure, com-
mitted himself at once to the water, holding by the barrel and
swimming with his legs, while Gibbie, away to the side with a
hold of the rope, was swimming his hardest to draw him out of
the current. But a weary man was Angus when at length he
reached the house. It was all he could do to get himself in
at the window and crawl up the stair. At the top of it he fell
benumbed on the floor.
By the time that, repentant and grateful, Mistress MacPholp
bethought herself of Gibbie, not a trace of him was to be seen.
While they looked for him in the water and on the land, Gib-
bie was again in the room below, carrying out a fresh thought.
With the help of the table he emptied the cask, into which a
good deal of water had got. Then he took out the stick, corked
the bunghole tight, laced the cask up in a piece of net, attached
the line to the net and wound it about the cask by rolling the
latter round and round, took the cask between his hands, and
pushed from the window straight into the current of the Glash-
burn. In a moment it had swept him to the Lorrie. By the
greater rapidity of the former he got easily across the heavier
current of the latter, and was presently in water comparatively
still, swimming quietly towards the Mains, and enjoying his trip
none the less that he had to keep a sharp lookout: if he should
have to dive to avoid any drifting object, he might lose his
barrel. Quickly now, had he been so minded, he could have
returned to the city, — changing vessel for vessel, as one after
another went to pieces. Many a house roof offered itself for the
voyage; now and then a great water-wheel, horizontal and help-
less, devoured of its element. Once he saw a cradle come gyrat-
ing along, and urging all his might, intercepted it; but hardly
knew whether he was more sorry or relieved to find it empty.
When he was about half-way to the Mains, a whole fleet of ricks
bore down upon him. He boarded one, and scrambled to the top
of it, keeping fast hold of the end of his Hne, which unrolled
from the barrel as he ascended. From its peak he surveyed the
wild scene. All was running water. Not a human being was
visible, and but a few house roofs; of which for a moment it was
GEORGE MACDONALD
9463
hard to say whether or not they were of those that were afloat.
Here and there were the tops of trees, showing like low bushes.
Nothing was uplifted except the mountains. He drew near the
Mains. All the ricks in the yard were bobbing about, as if
amusing themselves with a slow contra-dance ; but they were as
yet kept in by the barn and a huge old hedge of hawthorn.
What was that cry from far away ? Surely it was that of a horse
in danger! It brought a lusty equine response from the farm.
Where could horses be, with such a depth of water about the
place ? Then began a great lowing of cattle. But again came
the cry of the horse from afar, and Gibbie, this time recognizing
the voice as Snowball's, forgot the rest. He stood up on the
very top of the rick, and sent his keen glance round on all sides.
The cry came again and again, so that he was soon satisfied in
what direction he must look. The rain had abated a little; but
the air was so thick with vapor that he could not tell whether it
was really an object he seemed to see white against the brown
water, far away to the left, or a fancy of his excited hope; it
might be Snowball on the turnpike road, which thereabout ran
along the top of a high embankment. He tumbled from the rick,
rolled the line about the barrel, and pushed vigorously for what
might be the horse.
It took him a weary hour- — -in so many currents was he
caught, one after the other, all straining to carry him far below
the object he wanted to reach: an object it plainly was, before
he had got half-way across; and by-and-by as plainly it was
Snowball, testified to ears and eyes together. When at length
he scrambled on the embankment beside him, the poor shivering,
perishing creature gave a low neigh of delight: he did not know
Gibbie, but he was a human being. He was quite cowed and
submissive, and Gibbie at once set about his rescue. He had
reasoned as he came along, that if there were beasts at the
Mains there must be room for Snowball, and thither he would
endeavor to take him. He tied the end of the line to the rem-
nant of the halter on his head, the other end being still fast to
the barrel, and took to the water again. Encouraged by the power
upon his head, — the pressure, namely, of the halter, — the horse
followed, and they made for the Mains. It was a long journey,
and Gibbie had not breath enough to sing to Snowball, but he
made what noises he could, and they got slowly along. He found
the difficulties far greater now that he had to look out for the
9464
• GEORGE MACDONALD
horse as well as for himself. None but one much used to the
water could have succeeded in the attempt, or could indeed have
stood out against its weakening influence and the strain of the
continued exertion together so long. At length his barrel got
waterlogged, and he sent it adrift. . . .
When they arrived at the door, they found a difficulty await-
ing them: the water was now so high that Snowball's head rose
above the lintel; and though all animals can swim, they do not
all know how to dive. A tumult of suggestions immediately broke
out. But Donal had already thrown himself from a window with
a rope, and swum to Gibbie's assistance; the two understood each
other, and heeding nothing the rest were saying, held their own
communications. In a minute the rope was fastened round Snow-
ball's body, and the end of it drawn between his forelegs and
through the ring of his head-stall, when Donal swam with it to
his mother who stood on the stair, with the request that as soon
as she saw Snowball's head under the water, she would pull with
all her might, and draw him in at the door. Donal then swam
back, and threw his arms around Snowball's neck from below,
while the same moment Gibbie cast his whole weight on it from
above: the horse was over head and ears in an instant, and
through the door in another. With snorting nostrils and blazing
eyes his head rose in the passage, and in terror he struck out
for the stair. As he scrambled heavily up from the water, his
master and Robert seized him, and with much petting and patting
and gentling, though there was little enough difficulty in man-
aging him now, conducted him into the bedroom to the rest of the
horses. There he was welcomed by his companions, and immedi-
ately began devouring the hay upon his master's bedstead. Gib-
bie came close behind him, was seized by Janet at the top of the
stair, embraced like one come alive from the grave, and led, all
dripping as he was, into the room where the women were.
THE HAY-LOFT
From <At the Back of the North Wind >
I HAVE been asked to tell you about the back of the North
Wind. An old Greek writer mentions a people who lived
there, and were so comfortable that they could not bear it
any longer, and drowned themselves. My story is not the same
GEORGE MACDONALD
as his. I do not think Herodotus had got the right account of
the place. I am going to tell you how it fared with a boy who
went there.
He lived in a low room over a coach-house; and that was not
by any means at the back of the North Wind, as his mother very
well knew. For one side of the room was built only of boards,
and the boards .were so old that you might run a penknife
through into the North Wind. And then let them settle between
them which was the sharper! I know that when you pulled it
out again, the wind would be after it like a cat after a mouse,
and you would know soon enough you were not at the back of
the North Wind. Still, this room was not very cold, except when
the north wind blew stronger than usual: the room I have to do
with now was always cold, except in summer, when the sun took
the matter into his own hands. Indeed, I am not sure whether
I ought to call it a room at all; for it was just a loft where they
kept hay and straw and oats for the horses. And when little
Diamond — but stop: I must tell you that his father, who was a
coachman, had named him after a favorite horse, and his mother
had had no objection — when little Diamond, then, lay there in bed,
he could hear the horses under him munching away in the dark,
or moving sleepily in their dreams. For Diamond's father had
built him a bed in the loft with boards all round it, because they
had so little room in their own end over the coach-house; and
Diamond's father put old Diamond in the stall under the bed,
because he was a quiet • horse, and did not go to sleep standing,
but lay down like a reasonable creature. But although he was a
surprisingly reasonable creature, yet when young Diamond woke
in the middle of the night and felt the bed shaking in the blasts
of the North Wind, he could not help wondering whether, if the
wind should blow the house down, and he were to fall through
into the manger, old Diamond mightn't eat him up before he
knew him in his night-gown. And although old Diamond was
very quiet all night long, yet when he woke he got up like an
earthquake; and then young Diamond knew what o'clock it was,
or at least what was to be done next, which was — to go to sleep
again as fast as he could.
There was hay at his feet and hay at his head, piled up in
great trusses to the very roof. Indeed, it was sometimes only
through a little lane with several turnings, which looked as if it
had been sawn out for him, that he could reach his bed at all.
GEORGE MACDONALD
For the stock of hay was of course always in a state either of
slow ebb or of sudden flow. Sometimes the whole space of the
loft, with the little panes in the roof for the stars to look in,
would lie open before his open eyes as he lay in bed; sometimes
a yellow wall of sweet-smelling fibres closed up his view at
the distance of half a yard. Sometimes when his mother had
undressed him in her room, and told him to trot away to bed by
himself, he would creep into the heart of the hay, and lie there
thinking how cold it was outside in the wind, and how warm it
was inside there in his bed, and how he could go to it when he
pleased, only he wouldn't just yet: he would get a little colder
first. And ever as he grew colder, his bed would grow warmer,
till at last he would scramble out of the hay, shoot like an arrow
into his bed, cover himself up, and snuggle down, thinking what
a happy boy he was. He had not the least idea that the wind
got in at a chink in the wall, and blew about him all night. For
the back of his bed was only of boards an inch thick, and on the
other side of them was the North Wind.
Now, as I have already said, these boards were soft and
crumbly. To be sure, they were tarred on the outside, yet in
many places they were more like tinder than timber. Hence it
happened that the soft part having worn away from about it,
little Diamond found one night after he lay down, that a knot
had come out of one of them, and that the wind was blowing in
upon him in a cold and rather imperious fashion. Now he had
no fancy for leaving things wrong that might be set right ; so he
jumped out of bed again, got a little strike of hay, twisted it up,
folded it in the middle, and having thus made it into a cork,
stuck it into the hole in the wall. But the wind began to blow
loud and angrily; and as Diamond was 'falling asleep, out blew
his cork and hit him on the nose, just hard enough to wake him
up quite, and let him hear the wind whistling shrill in the hole.
He searched for his hay-cork, found it, stuck it in harder, and
was just dropping off once more, when, pop! with an angry
whistle behind it, the cork struck him again, this time on the
cheek. Up he rose once more, made a fresh stopple of hay, and
corked the hole severely. But he was hardly down again before
— pop! it came on his forehead. He gave it up, drew the clothes
above his head, and was soon fast asleep.
Although the next day was very stormy, Diamond forgot all
about the hole; for he was busy making a cave by the side of
GEORGE MACDONALD
9467
his mother's fire, — with a broken chair, a three-legged stool, and
a blanket, — and sitting in it. His mother, however, discovered it
and pasted a bit of brown paper over it; so that when Diamond
had snuggled down for the next night, he had no occasion ! to
think of it.
Presently, however, he lifted his head and listened. Who could
that be talking to him? The wind was rising again, and getting
very loud, and full of rushes and whistles. He was sure some
one was talking — and very near him too it was. But he was
not frightened, for he had not yet learned how to be; so he sat
up and hearkened. At last the voice, which though quite gentle
sounded a little angry, appeared to come from the back of the
bed. He crept nearer to it, and laid his ear against the wall.
Then he heard nothing but the wind, which sounded very loud
indeed. The moment, however, that he moved his head from the
wall he heard the voice again, close to his • ear. He felt about
with his hand, and came upon the piece of paper his mother had
pasted over the hole. Against this he laid his ear, and then he
heard the voice quite distinctly. There was in fact a little cor-
ner of the paper loose ; and through that, as from a mouth in
the wall, the voice came.
<(What do you mean, little boy — closing up my window ? "
(< What window ? " asked Diamond.
<(You stuffed hay into it three times last night. I had to
blow it out again three times."
<(You can't mean this little hole! It isn't a window; it's a
hole in my bed."
<( I did not say it was a window : I said it was my window. "
<( But it can't be a window, because windows are holes to see
out of."
<(Well, that's just what I made this window for."
(< But you are outside: you can't want a window."
(<You are quite mistaken. Windows are to see out of, you
say. Well, I'm in my house, and I want , windows to see out
of it.»
"But you've made a window into my bed."
(< Well, your mother has got three windows into my dancing-
room, and you have three into my garret."
<( But I heard father say, when my mother wanted him to
make a window through the wall, that it was against the law,,
for it would look into Mr. Dyves's garden."
9468
GEORGE MACDONALD
The voice laughed.
" The law would have some trouble to catch me ! " it said.
"But if it's not right, you know,* said Diamond, <( that's no
matter. You shouldn't do it.®
<( I am so tall I am above that law, " said the voice.
"You must have a tall house, then," said Diamond.
<(Yes, a tall house: the clouds are inside it."
<(Dear me!" said Diamond, and thought a minute. " I think,
then, you can hardly expect me to keep a window in my bed for
you. Why don't you make a window into Mr. Dyves's bed ? "
"Nobody makes a window into an ash-pit," said the voice
rather sadly : <( I like to see nice things out of my windows. "
" But he must have a nicer bed than I have ; though mine is
very nice — so nice that I couldn't wish a better."
<( It's not the bed I care about: it's what is in it. — But you
just open that window."
"Well, mother says I shouldn't be disobliging; but it's rather
hard. You see the north wind will blow right in my face if I
do."
«I am the North Wind."
<( O-o-oh ! " said Diamond thoughtfully. " Then will you prom-
ise not to blow on my face if I open your window ? "
<( I can't promise that. "
"But you'll give me the toothache. Mother's got it already."
" But what's to become of me without a window ? "
" I'm sure I don't know. All I say is, it will be worse fol
me than for you."
"No, it will not. You shall not be the worse for it — I prom-
ise you that. You will be much the better for it. Just you
believe what I say, and do as I tell you."
"Well, I can pull the clothes over my head," said Diamond;
and feeling with his little sharp nails, he got hold of the open
edge of the paper and tore it off at once.
In came a long whistling spear of cold, and struck his little
naked chest. He scrambled and tumbled in under the bed-clothes,
and covered himself up: there was no paper now between him
and the voice, and he felt a little — not frightened exactly, I told
you he had not learned that yet — but rather queer; for what a
strange person this North Wind must be that lived in the great
house — "called Out-of-Doors, I suppose," thought Diamond — and
made windows into people's beds! But the voice began again;
GEORGE MACDONALD
9469
and he could hear it quite plainly, even with his head under the
bedclothes. It was a still more gentle voice now, although six
times as large and loud as it had been, and he thought it sounded
a little like his mother's.
<( What is your name, little boy ? " it asked.
"Diamond," answered Diamond under the bedclothes.
" What a funny name ! "
"It's a very nice name," returned its owner.
"I don't know that," said the voice.
<(Well, I do," retorted Diamond, a little rudely.
" Do you know to whom you are speaking ? "
"No," said Diamond.
And indeed he did not. For to know a person's name is not
always to know the person's self.
"Then I must not be angry with you. — You had better look
and see, though."
(< Diamond is a very pretty name, " persisted the boy, vexed
that it should not give satisfaction.
(( Diamond is a useless thing, rather," said the voice.
<( That's not true. Diamond is very nice — as big as two — and
so quiet all night! And doesn't he make a jolly row in the morn-
ing, getting up on his four great legs! It's like thunder."
"You don't seem to know what a diamond is."
(< Oh, don't I just! Diamond is a great and good horse; and
he sleeps right under me. He is Old Diamond, and I am Young
Diamond; or if you like it better, — for you're very particular,
Mr. North Wind, — he's Big Diamond, and I'm Little Diamond:
and I don't know which of us my father likes best."
A beautiful laugh, large but very soft and musical, sounded
somewhere beside him; but Diamond kept his head under the
clothes.
<(I'm not Mr. North Wind," said the voice.
<( You told me that you were the North Wind, * insisted Dia-
mond.
"I did not say Mister North Wind," said the voice.
"Well then, I do; for mother tells me I ought to be polite."
"Then let me tell you I don't think it at all polite of you to
say Mister to me."
"Well, I didn't know better. I'm very sorry.0
"But you .ought to know better."
" I don't know that."
9470
GEORGE MACDONALD
<( I do. You can't say it's polite to lie there talking, with
your head under the bedclothes, and never look up to see what
kind of person you are talking to. I want you to come out with
me."
<( I want to go to sleep, " said Diamond, very nearly crying;
for he did not like to be scolded, even when he deserved it.
<(You shall sleep all the better to-morrow night."
<( Besides, " said Diamond, (< you are out in Mr. Dyves's gar-
den, and I can't get there. I can only get into our own yard."
<( Will you take your head out of the bedclothes ? " said the
voice, just a little angrily.
"No!" answered Diamond, half .peevish, half frightened.
The instant he said the word, a tremendous blast of wind
crashed in a board of the wall, and swept the clothes off Dia-
mond. He started up in terror. Leaning over him was the large,
beautiful, pale face of a woman. Her dark eyes looked a little
angry, for they had just begun to flash; but a quivering in her
sweet upper lip made her look as if she were going to cry.
What was most strange was that away from her head streamed
out her black hair in every direction, so that the darkness in the
hay-loft looked as if it were made of her hair; but as Diamond
gazed at her in speechless amazement, mingled with confidence,
— for the boy was entranced with her mighty beauty, — her hair
began to gather itself out of the darkness, and fell down all
about her again, till her face looked 'out of the midst of it like a
moon out of a cloud. From her eyes came all the light by which
Diamond saw her face and her hair; and that was all he did see
of her yet. The wind was over and gone.
<( Will you go with me now, you little Diamond ? I am sorry
I was forced to be so rough with you," said the lady.
" I will ; yes, I will, " answered Diamond, holding out both his
arms. "But," he added, dropping them, <(how shall I get my
clothes? They are in mother's room, and the door is locked."
"Oh, never mind your clothes. You will not be cold. I shall
take care of that. Nobody is cold with the North Wind."
(( I thought everybody was, " said Diamond.
"That is a great mistake. Most people make it, however.
They are cold because they are not with the North Wind, but
without it."
If Diamond had been a little older, and had supposed himself
a good deal wiser, he would have thought the lady was joking.
GEORGE MACDONALD
9471
But he was not older, and did not fancy himself wiser, and there-
fore understood her well enough. Again he stretched out his
arms. The lady's face drew back a little.
(< Follow me, Diamond," she said.
"Yes," said Diamond, only a little ruefully.
(< You're not afraid ? " said the North Wind.
<(No, ma'am: but mother never would let me go without
shoes; she never said anything about clothes, so I daresay she
wouldn't mind that."
(< I know your mother very well, " said the lady. <( She is a
good woman. I have visited her often. I was with her when
you were born. I saw her laugh and cry both at once. I love
your mother, Diamond."
(< How was it you did not know my name, then, ma'am ?
Please, am I to say ma'am to you, ma'am ? "
<(One question at a time, dear boy. I knew your name quite
well, but I wanted to hear what you would say for it. Don't
you remember that day when the man was rinding fault with
your name — how I blew the window in ? "
<( Yes, yes, " answered Diamond eagerly. <( Our window opens
like a door, right over the coach-house door. And the wind —
you, ma'am — came in, and blew the Bible out of the man's
hands, and the leaves went all flutter-flutter on the floor, and
my mother picked it up and gave it back to him open, and
there — "
(<Was your name in the Bible — the sixth stone in the high-
priest's breast-plate. "
<(Oh! a stone, was it?" said Diamond. <( I thought it had
been a horse — I did."
"Never mind. A horse is better than a stone any day. Well,
you see, I know all about you and your mother."
" Yes. I will go with you. "
(<Now for the next question: you're not to call me ma'am.
You must call me just my own name — respectfully, you know —
just North Wind."
"Well, please, North Wind, you are so beautiful, I am quite
ready to go with you."
<(You must not be ready to go with everything beautiful all
at once, Diamond."
"But what's beautiful can't be bad. You're not bad, North
Wind ? »
GEORGE MACDONALP
<(No; I'm not bad. But sometimes beautiful things grow bad
by doing bad, and it takes some time for their badness to spoil
their beauty. So little boys may be mistaken if they go after
things because they are beautiful. >}
<(Well, I will go with you because you are beautiful and good
too. })
(<Ah, but there's another thing, Diamond: What if I should
look ugly without being bad — look ugly myself because I am
making ugly things beautiful ? — what then ? })
a I don't quite understand you, North Wind. You tell me
what then."
<(Well, I will tell you. If you see me with my face all black,
don't be frightened. If you see me flapping wings like a bat's,
as big as the whole sky, don't be frightened. If you hear me
raging ten times worse than Mrs. Bill, the blacksmith's wife, —
even if you see me looking in at people's windows like Mrs. Eve
Dropper, the gardener's wife, — you must believe that I am doing
my work. Nay, Diamond, if I change into a serpent or a tiger,
you must not let go your hold of me, for my hand will never
change in yours if you keep a good hold. If you keep a hold,
you will know who I am all the time, even when you look at
me and can't see me the least like the North Wind. I may
look something very awful. Do you understand ? w
"Quite well,0 said little Diamond.
"Come along then," said North Wind, and disappeared behind
the mountain of hay.
Diamond crept out of bed and followed her.
9473
JEAN MACE
(1815-1894)
JEAN MACE was a benign child-lover, and never lost the
childlike simplicity and zest in life which characterize his
style. He was born in Paris in 1815; and his parents, plain
working-people who were ambitious for their boy, gave him unusual
advantages for one of his class. His course at the College Stanilaus
was not completed without self-sacrifice at home which made him
prize and improve his opportunities. At
twenty-one he became instructor in history
in the same college, and he was teaching
in the College Henri IV., when he was
drafted as a soldier. After three years'
service he was bought out by his friend
and former professor M. Burette, whose pri-
vate secretary he became. Always inter-
ested in politics, and an ardent republican,
he welcomed the revolution of 1848 with
an enthusiasm which involved him in diffi-
culties a few years later. With the restor-
ation of the Empire under Louis Napoleon
he was banished; and in exile, at the age of
thirty-seven, he discovered his true vocation.
The (< Little Chateau, }) at Beblenheim in Alsace, was a private
school for girls, kept by his friend Mademoiselle Verenet, who now
offered Mace a position as teacher of natural science and literature.
He loved to teach, loved to impart fact so that it might exercise a
moral influence upon character; and he was very happy in the calmly
busy life at Beblenheim, where, as he says, <(I was at last in my
true calling. }>
In 1 86 1 he published the (Histoire d'une Bouchee de Pain,' — a
simple yet comprehensive work on physiology, made as delightful as
a story-book to child readers. Its wide popularity both in French,
and in an English translation as ( The Story of a Mouthful of Bread, >
prompted a sequel, < Les Serviteurs de 1'Estomac > (The Servants of
the Stomach), also very successful. But the < Contes du Petit Cha-
teau, > a collection of charming fairy tales written for his little pupils,
is Mace's masterpiece. These stories are simple lessons in thrift,
JEAN MAC£
9474 JEAN MACfi
truth, and generosity, inculcated with dramatic force and imaginat-
ive vigor. Translated as ( Home Fairy Tales, y they have long been
familiar to English and American children.
After ten years at Beblenheim, Mace returned to Paris, where in
company with Stahl he established the popular Magasin d'Education
et de Recreation. One of his strongest desires had always been to
extend educational influences; and for this purpose he established in
1863 the Societe des Bibliotheques Communales du Haut Rhin, and
later organized a League of Instruction for increasing the number of
schools and libraries. He died in 1894.
THE NECKLACE OF TRUTH
From < Mace's Fairy Book.* Translated by Mary L. Booth, and published by
Harper & Brothers
THERE was once a little girl by the name of Coralie, who took
pleasure in telling falsehoods. Some children think very
little of not speaking the truth; and a small falsehood, or a
great one in case of necessity, that saves them from a duty or
a punishment, procures them a pleasure, or gratifies their self-love,
seems to them the most allowable thing in the world. Now
Coralie was one of this sort. The truth was a thing of which
she had no idea; and any excuse was good to her, provided that it
was believed. Her parents were for a long time deceived by her
stories; but they saw at last that she was telling them what was
not true, and from that moment they had not the least confidence
in anything that she said.
It is a terrible thing for parents not to be able to believe
their children's words. It would be better almost to have no
children; for the habit of lying, early acquired, may lead them
in after years to the most shameful crimes: and what parent can
help trembling at the thought that he may be bringing up his
children to dishonor ?
After vainly trying every means to reform her, Coralie's par-
ents resolved to take her to the enchanter Merlin, who was cele-
brated at that time over all the globe, and who was the greatest
friend of truth that ever lived. For this reason, little children
that were in the habit of telling falsehoods were brought to him
from all directions, in order that he might cure them.
The enchanter Merlin lived in a glass palace, the walls of
which were transparent; and never in his whole life had the
JEAN MACE 9475
idea crossed his mind of disguising one of his actions, of causing
others to believe what was not true, or even of suffering them
to believe it by being silent when he might have spoken. He
knew liars by their odor a league off; and when Coralie ap-
proached the palace, he was obliged to burn vinegar to prevent
himself from being ill.
Coralie 's mother, with a beating heart, undertook to explain
the vile disease which had attacked her daughter; and blushingly
commenced a confused speech, rendered misty by shame, when
Merlin stopped her short.
(< I know what is the matter, my good lady," said he. <( I felt
your daughter's approach long ago. She is one of the greatest
liars in the world, and she has made me very uncomfortable. })
The parents perceived that fame had not deceived them in
praising the skill of the enchanter; and Coralie, covered with
confusion, knew not where to hide her head. She took refuge
under the apron of her mother, who sheltered her as well as she
could, terrified at the turn affairs were taking, while her father
stood before her to protect her at all risks. They were very
anxious that their child should be cured, but they wished her
cured gently and without hurting her.
(< Don't be afraid, >} said Merlin, seeing their terror: (< I do not
employ violence in curing these diseases. I am only going to
make Coralie a beautiful present, which I think will not displease
her.»
He opened a drawer, and took from it a magnificent amethyst
necklace, beautifully set, with a diamond clasp of dazzling lustre.
He put it on Coralie's neck, and dismissing the parents with a
friendly gesture, <( Go, good people, >} said he, <( and have no more
anxiety. Your daughter carries with her a sure guardian of the
truth. »
Coralie, flushed with pleasure, was hastily retreating, delighted
at having escaped so easily, when Merlin called her back.
(< In a year, }) said he, looking at her sternly, <( I shall come
for my necklace. Till that time I forbid you to take it off for a
single instant : if you dare to do so, woe be unto you ! w
<(Oh, I ask nothing better than always to wear it, — it is so
beautiful. »
In order that you may know, I will tell you that this neck-
lace was none other than the famous Necklace of Truth, so much
talked of in ancient books, which unveiled every species of false-
hood.
9476 JEAN MACE
The day after Coralie returned home she was sent to school.
As she had long been absent, all the little girls crowded round
her, as always happens in such 'cases. There was a general cry
of admiration at the sight of the necklace.
"Where did it come from?" and "where did you get it ?" was
asked on all sides.
In thos » days, for any one to say that he had been to the
enchanter Merlin's was to tell the whole story, Coralie took
good care not to betray herself in this way.
"I was sick for a long time," said she, boldly; "and on my
recovery my parents gave me this beautiful necklace."
A loud- cry rose from all at once. The diamonds of the clasp,
which had shot forth so brilliant a light, had suddenly become dim,
and were turned to coarse glass.
"Well, yes, I have been sick! What are you making such a fuss
about?"
At this second falsehood, the amethysts in turn changed to ugly
yellow stones. A new cry arose. Coralie, seeing all eyes fixed
on her necklace, looked that way herself, and was struck with
terror.
" I have been to the enchanter Merlin's," said she, humbly,
understanding from what direction the blow came, and not daring
to persist in her falsehood.
Scarcely had she confessed the truth when the necklace recov-
ered all its beauty; but the loud bursts of laughter that sounded
around her mortified her to such a degree that she felt the need
of saying something to retrieve her reputation.
"You do very wrong to laugh," said she, "for he treated us
with the greatest possible respect. He sent his carriage to meet
us at the next town, and you have no idea what a splendid car-
riage it was, — six white horses, pink satin cushions with gold
tassels, to say nothing of the negro coachman with his hair pow-
dered, and the three tall footmen behind! When we reached his
palace, which is all of jasper and porphyry, he came to meet us
at the vestibule, and led us to the dining-room, where stood a
table covered with things that I will not name to you, because
you never even heard speak of them. There was, in the first
place—"
The laughter, which had been suppressed with great difficulty
ever since she commenced this fine story, became at that mo-
ment so boisterous that she stopped in amazement; and casting
her eyes once more on the unlucky necklace, she shuddered
JEAN MACE 9477
anew. At each detail that she had invented, the necklace had
become longer and longer, until it already dragged on the ground.
(<You are stretching the truth, yy cried the little girls.
"Well, I confess it: we went on foot, and only stayed five
minutes. "
The necklace instantly shrunk to its proper size.
"And the necklace — the necklace — where did it come from?*
"He gave it to me without saying a word; probabl — "
She had not time to finish. -The fatal necklace grew shorter
and shorter till it choked her terribly, and she gasped for want
of breath.
<( You are keeping back part of the truth, " cried her school-
fellows.
She hastened to alter the broken words while she could still
speak.
(( He said — that I was — one of the greatest — liars — in the
world. "
Instantly freed from the pressure that was strangling her, she
continued to cry with pain and mortification.
<( That was why he gave me the necklace. He said that it
was a guardian of the truth, and I have been a great fool to be
proud of it. Now I am in a fine position ! "
Her little companions had compassion on her grief; for they
were good girls, and they reflected how they should feel in her
place. You can imagine, indeed, that it was somewhat embar-
rassing for a girl to know that she could never more pervert the
truth.
"You are very good," said one of them. "If I were in your
place, I should soon send back the necklace: handsome as it is,
it is a great deal too troublesome. What hinders you from tak-
ing it off?"
Poor Coralie was silent; but the stones began to dance up and
down, and to make a terrible clatter.
<c There is something that you have not told us," said the little
girls, their merriment restored by this extraordinary dance.
" I like to wear it. "
The diamonds and amethysts danced and clattered worse than
ever.
"There is a reason which you are hiding from us."
"Well, since I can conceal nothing from you, he forbade me
to take it off, under penalty of some great calamity."
9478 JEAN
You can imagine that with a companion of this kind, which
turned dull whenever the wearer did not tell the truth, which
grew longer whenever she added to it, which shrunk whenever
she subtracted from it, and which danced and clattered whenever
she was silent, — a companion, moreover, of which she could not
rid herself, — it was impossible even for the most hardened liar
not to keep closely to the truth. When Coralie once was fully
convinced that falsehood was useless, and that it would be in-
stantly discovered, it was not difficult for her to abandon it. The
consequence was, that when she became accustomed always to
tell the truth, she found herself so happy in it — she felt her
conscience so light and her mind so calm — that she began to
abhor falsehood for its own sake, and the necklace had nothing
more to do. Long before the year had passed, therefore, Merlin
came for his necklace, which he needed for another child that
was addicted to lying, and whioh, thanks to his art, he knew
was of no more use to Coralie.
No one can tell me what has become of this wonderful Neck-
lace of Truth; but it is thought that 'Merlin's heirs hid it after
his death, for fear of the ravages that it might cause on earth.
You can imagine what a calamity it would be to many people —
I do not speak only of children — if they were forced to wear it.
Some travelers who have returned from Central Africa declare
that they have seen it on the neck of a negro king, who knew
not how to lie; but they have never been able to prove their
words. Search is still being made for it, however; and if I were
a little child in the habit of telling falsehoods, I should not feel
quite sure that it might not some day be found again.
MACHIAVELLI
9479
NICCOLO MACHIAVELLI
(1469-1527)
BY CHARLES P. NEILL
IICCOLO MACHIAVELLI, perhaps the greatest prose writer of the
Italian Renaissance, was born in Florence May 3d, 1469, and
died there June 22d, 1527. He was of ancient and distin-
guished lineage on both his father's and his mother's side, and many
of his more immediate ancestors had been honored by republican
Florence with high offices of State. His father Bernardo was a re-
spectable jurist, who to a moderate income from his profession added
a small revenue from some landed possessions. His mother was a
woman of culture, and a poet of some ability.
Of Niccolo's early life and education we know nothing. No trace
of him remains previous to his twenty-sixth year. But of his times
and the scenes amid which he grew up, we know much. It was the
calm but demoralizing era of Lorenzo the Magnificent, when the
sturdy Florentine burghers rested satisfied with magnificence in lieu
of freedom, and, intoxicated with the spirit of a pagan renaissance,
abandoned themselves to the refinements of pleasure and luxury; —
when their streets had ceased for a while to re-echo with the clash
of steel and the fierce shouts of contending factions, and resounded
with the productions of Lorenzo's melodious but indecent Muse.
Machiavelli was a true child of his time. He too was thoroughly
imbued with the spirit of the Renaissance; and looked back, fasci-
nated, on the ideals of that ancient world that was being revivified
for the men of his day. But philosophy, letters, and art were not the
only heritage that the bygone age had handed down; politics — the
building of States and of empire — this also had engaged the minds
of the men of that age, and it was this aspect of their activity that
fired the imagination of the young Florentine. From his writings we
know he was widely read in the Latin and Italian classics. But Vir-
gil and Horace appealed to him less than Livy, and Dante the poet
was less to him than Dante the politician; for he read his classics,
not as others, to drink in their music or be led captive by their
beauty, but to derive lessons in statecraft, and penetrate into the
secrets of the successful empire-builders of the past. It is equally
9480
NICCOLO MACHIAVELLI
certain, from a study of his works, that he had not mastered Greek.
Like Ariosto, Machiavelli was indebted for his superb literary tech-
nique solely to the study of the literature of his own nation.
With the expulsion of the Medici from Florence, Machiavelli, at
the age of thirty, emerged from obscurity to play a most important
role in the Florentine politics of the succeeding decade and a half.
In 1498 he was elected secretary to the Ten of War and Peace, — a
commission performing the functions of a ministry of war and of
home affairs, and having in addition control of the Florentine diplo-
matic service. From 1498 to 1512 Machiavelli was a zealous, patriotic,
and indefatigable servant of the republic. His energy was untiring,
his activity ceaseless and many-sided. He conducted the voluminous
diplomatic correspondence devolving upon his bureau, drew up me-
morials and plans in affairs of State for the use and guidance of the
Ten, undertook the reorganization of the Florentine troops, and went
himself on a constant succession of embassies, ranging in importance
from those to petty Italian States up to those to the court of France
and of the Emperor. He was by nature well adapted to the peculiar
needs of the diplomacy of that day; and the training he received in
that school must in turn have reacted on him to confirm his native
bent, and accentuate it until it became the distinguishing character-
istic of the man. His first lessons in politics and statecraft were
derived from Livy's history of the not over-scrupulous Romans; and
when he comes to take his lessons at first hand, it is in the midst
of the intrigues of republican Florence, or at the court of a Caterina
Sforza, or in the camp of a Cesare Borgia. Small wonder that his
conception of politics should have omitted to take account of hon-
esty and the moral law; and that he conceived <(the idea of giving
to politics an assured and scientific basis, treating them as having
a proper and distinct value of their own, entirely apart from their
moral value. }>
During this period of his political activity, we have a large num-
ber of State papers and private letters from his pen; and two works
of literary cast have also come down to us. These are his ( Decen-
nale * : historic narratives, cast into poetic form, of Italian events.
The first treats of the decade beginning 1494; and the second, an
unfinished fragment, of the decade beginning 1504. They are written
in easy terzine; and unfeigned sorrow for the miseries of Italy, torn
by internal discord, alternates with cynical mockery and stinging wit.
They are noteworthy as expressing the sentiment for a united Italy.
A third literary work of this period has been lost: (Le Maschere,* a
satire modeled upon the comedies of Aristophanes.
When in 1512, after their long exile, the Medici returned to Flor-
ence in the train of her invader, Machiavelli, though not unwilling
NICCOLO MACHIAVELLI
to serve the restored rulers, was dismissed from his office and ban-
ished for a year from the confines of the city. Later, on suspicion
of being concerned in a plot against the Medici, he was thrown into
prison and tortured. He was soon afterward included in a gen-
eral pardon granted by the Cardinal de' Medici, then become Leo
X. But notwithstanding Machiavelli's earnest and persistent efforts
to win the good graces of the ruling family, he did not return to
public life until 1525; and this interval of enforced leisure from
affairs of State was the period of his literary activity. A number of
comedies, minor poems, and short prose compositions did not rise
above mediocrity. They were for the most part translations from
the classics, or imitations; and the names are hardly worth recount-
ing. But in one dramatic effort he rose to the stature of genius.
His ( Mandragola > achieved a flattering success both at Rome and in
Florence. It has been pronounced the finest comedy of the Italian
stage, and Macaulay rated it as inferior only to the greatest of
Moliere's. In its form, its spontaneity, vivacity, and wit, it is not
surpassed by Shakespeare; but it is a biting satire on religion and
morality, with not even a hint of a moral to redeem it. Vice is
made humorous, and virtue silly ; its satire is (< deep and murderous >} ;
and its plot too obscene to be narrated. In it Machiavelli has har-
nessed Pegasus to a garbage cart.
His lesser prose works are — the (Life of Castruccio Castracani,'
a <( politico-military romance }) made up partly from incidents in the
life of that hero, and partly from incidents taken from Diodorus Sicu-
lus's life of Agathocles, and concluding with a series of memorable
sayings attributed to Castruccio, but taken from the apophthegms of
Plutarch and Diogenes Laertius; and the (Art of War,* a treatise
anticipating much of our modern tactics, and inveighing against the
mediaeval system of mercenary troops of mail-clad men and horses.
A more ambitious undertaking, and in fact his largest work, is the
< History of Florence.* At the suggestion of the Cardinal de' Medici,
the directors of the studio of Florence commissioned Machiavelli to
employ himself in writing a history of Florence, (( from whatever
period he might think fit to select, and either in the Latin or the
Tuscan tongue, according to his taste. » He was to receive one hun-
dred florins a year for two years to enable him to pursue the work.
He chose his native tongue; and revised and polished his work until
it became a model of style, and in its best passages justifies his claim
to the title of the best and most finished of Italian prose writers.
He thus describes the luring of Giuliano de' Medici to his place of
assassination: —
<(This arrangement having been determined upon, they went into the
church, where the Cardinal had already arrived with Lorenzo de' Medici. The
9482
NICCOLO MACHIAVELLI
church was crowded with people, and divine service had already commenced;
but Giuliano had not yet come. Francesco dei Pazzi, therefore, together with
Bernardo, who had been designated to kill Giuliano, went to his house, and by
artful persuasion induced him to go to the church. It is really a noteworthy
fact that so much hatred and the thoughts of so great an outrage could be
concealed under so much resoluteness of heart, as was the case with Francesco
and Bernardo; for on the way to church, and even after having entered it, they
entertained him with merry jests and youthful chatter. And Francesco, even,
under pretense of caressing him, felt him with his hands and pressed him in
his arms, for the purpose of ascertaining whether he wore a cuirass or any
other means of protection under his garments. })
But though Machiavelli had the historical style, he lacked histori-
cal perspective; he arranged his matter not according to objective
value, but placed in the boldest relief those events that best lent
support to his own theories of politics and statecraft. He makes his
facts to be as he wishes them, rather than as he knows them to be.
He wishes to throw .contempt on mercenary troops, and though he
knows an engagement to have been bloody, prefers for his descrip-
tion such a conclusion as this: — <(In the tremendous defeat that was
noised throughout Italy, no one perished excepting Ludovico degli
Obizzi and two of his men, who being thrown from their horses were
smothered in the mud." To Machiavelli history was largely to be
written as a tendenz roman, — manufactured to point a preconceived
moral.
Though Machiavelli wrote history, poetry, and comedy, it is not
by these he is remembered. The works that have made his name a
synonym, and given it a place in every tongue, are the two works
written almost in the first year of his retirement from political
life. These are < The Prince ) and the < Discourses on the First Ten
Books of Titus Livius.' Each is a treatise on statecraft; together they
form a complete and unified treatise, and represent an attempt to for-
mulate inductively a science of politics. The ( Discourses ) study
republican institutions, <The Prince* monarchical ones. The first is
the more elementary, and would come first in logical arrangement.
But in the writing of them Machiavelli had in view more than the
foundation of a science of politics. He was anxious to win the
favor of the Medici; and as these were not so much interested in
how republics are best built up, he completed c The Prince ) first, and
sent it forth dedicated <(to the magnificent Lorenzo, son of Piero de*
Medici. »
In the < Discourses, > the author essays <(a new science of states-
manship, based on the experience of human events and history. w In
that day of worship of the ancient world, Machiavelli endeavors to
draw men to a study of its politics as well as its art. In Livy he
finds the field for this study.
NICCOLO MACHIAVELLI 9483
«When we consider the general respect for antiquity, and how often — to
say nothing of other examples — a great price is paid for some fragments of
an antique statue which we are anxious to possess to ornament our houses
with, or to give to artists who strive to imitate them in their own works;
and when we see, on the other hand, the wonderful examples which the his-
tory of ancient kingdoms and republics presents to us, the prodigies of virtue
and of wisdom displayed by the kings, captains, citizens, and legislators who
have sacrificed themselves for their country: when we see these, I say, more
admired than imitated, or so much neglected that not the least trace of this
ancient virtue remains, — we cannot but be at the same time as much sur-
prised as afflicted; the more so as in the differences which arise between
citizens, or in the maladies to which they are subjected, we see these same
people have recourse to the judgments and the remedies prescribed by the
ancients. The civil laws are in fact nothing but the decisions given by their
jurisconsults, and which, reduced to a system, direct our modern jurists in
their decisions. And what is the science of medicine but the experience of
ancient physicians, which their successors have taken for a guide ? And yet
to found a republic, maintain States, to govern a kingdom, organize an army,
conduct a war, dispense justice, and extend empires, you will find neither
prince nor republic, nor captain, nor citizen, who has recourse to the exam-
ples of antiquity !»
In his commentary on the course of Romulus in the founding
of Rome, we find the keynote of Machiavelli's system of political
science. His one aim is the building of a State; his one thought,
how best to accomplish his aim. Means are therefore to be selected,
and to be judged, solely as regards their effectiveness to trie business
in hand. Ordinary means are of course to be preferred ; but extraor-
dinary must be used when needed.
« Many will perhaps consider it an evil example that the founder of a civil
society, as Romulus was, should first have killed his brother, and then have
consented to the death of Titus Tatius, who had been elected to share the
royal authority with him; from which it might be concluded that the citizens,
according to the example of their prince, might, from ambition and the desire
to rule, destroy those who attempt to oppose their authority. This opinion
would be correct, if we do not take into consideration the object which Rom-
ulus had in view in committing that homicide. But we must assume, as a
general rule, that it never or rarely happens that a republic or monarchy is
well constituted, or its old institutions entirely reformed, unless it is done by
only one individual; it is even necessary that he whose mind has conceived
such a constitution should be alone in carrying it into effect. A sagacious
legislator of a republic, therefore, whose object is to promote the public good
and not his private interests, and who prefers his country to his own succes-
sors, should concentrate all authority in himself; and a wise mind will never
censure any one for having employed any extraordinary means for the purpose
of establishing a kingdom or constituting a republic. It is well that when the
act accuses him, the result should excuse ; and when the result is good, as in
the case of Romulus, it will always absolve him from blame. w
9484
NICCOLO MACHIAVELLI
In an equally scientific and concise manner he analyzes the meth-
ods of preventing factions in a republic.
«We observe, from the example of the Roman consuls in restoring harmony
between the patricians and plebeians of Ardea, the means for obtaining that
object, which is none other than to kill the chiefs of the opposing factions. In
fact, there are only three ways of accomplishing it: the one is to put the
leaders to death, as the Romans did; or to banish them from the city; or to
reconcile them to each other under a pledge not to offend again. Of these
three ways, the last is the worst, being the least certain and effective. »
In (The Prince, } a short treatise of twenty-six chapters, and mak-
ing little more than a hundred octavo pages, Machiavelli gives more
succinct and emphatic expression to the principles of his new polit-
ical science. ( The Prince > is the best known of all his works. It is
the one always connected with his name, and which has made his
name famous. It was said of the poet Gray that no other man had
walked down the aisle of fame with so small a book under his arm.
It might be repeated as truly of Machiavelli. Men, he has said,
(< preferred infamy to oblivion, for at least infamy served to transmit
their names to posterity. w Had he written (The Prince } to escape
oblivion, the fullest measure of his desire would have been attained.
For the model of his prince, Machiavelli took Cesare Borgia, and cites
him as an example worthy of imitation; and he has shared in the
execration *hat posterity has heaped upon Borgia.
The fifteenth and eighteenth chapters of <The Prince > contain a
formulation of the principles that have brought down condemnation
on their author.
«The manner in which men live is so different from the way in which
they ought to live, that he who leaves the common course for that which he
ought to follow will find that it leads him to ruin rather than to safety. For
a man who in all respects will carry out only his professions of good, will be
apt to be ruined amongst so many who are evil. A prince therefore who
desires to maintain himself, must learn to be not always good, but to be so
or not as necessity may require. . . . For, all things considered, it will be
found that some things that seem like virtue will lead you to ruin if you fol-
low them; whilst others that apparently are vices will, if followed, result in
your safety and well-being. »
And again: —
<( It must be evident to every one that it is more praiseworthy for a prince
always to maintain good faith, and practice integrity rather than craft and de-
ceit. And yet the experience of our own times has shown that those princes
have achieved great things who made small account of good faith, and who
understood by cunning to circumvent the intelligence of others; and that in
NICCOLO MACHIAVELL1
9485
the end they got the better of those -whose actions were dictated by loyalty
and good faith. You must know, therefore, that there are two ways of carry-
ing on a contest: the one by law, and the other by force. The first is prac-
ticed by men, and the other by animals; and as the first is often insufficient,
it becomes necessary to resort to the second.
«A prince then should know how to employ the nature of man, and that
of the beast as well. ... A prince should be a fox, to know the traps
and snares ; and a lion, to be able to frighten the wolves : for those who simply
hold to the nature of the lion do not understand their business.
<(A sagacious prince, then, cannot and should not fulfill his pledges when
their observance is contrary to his interest, and when the causes that induced
him to pledge his faith rfo longer exist. If men were all good, then indeed
this precept would be bad; but as men are naturally bad, and will not observe
their faith towards you, you must in the same way not observe yours towards
them: and no prince ever yet lacked legitimate reasons with which to color
his want of good faith. . . .
«It is not necessary, however, for a prince to possess all the above-men-
tioned qualities; but it is essential that he should at least seem to have them.
I will even venture to say, that to have and to practice them constantly is
pernicious, but to seem to have them is useful. For instance, a prince should
seem to be merciful, faithful, humane, religious, and upright, and should even
be so in reality; but he should have his mind so trained that, when occasion
requires it, he may know how to change to the opposite. And it must be
understood that a prince, and especially one who has but recently acquired
his state, cannot perform all those things which cause men to be esteemed as
good; he being often obliged, for the sake of maintaining his state*, to act con-
trary to humanity, charity, and religion. And therefore it is necessary that he
should have a versatile mind, capable of changing readily, according as the
winds and changes bid him; and as has been said above, not to swerve from
the good if possible, but to know how to resort to evil if necessity demands it.>J
And yet in these same books we find expressions worthy of a
moralist.
(< All enterprises to be undertaken should be for the honor of God and the
general good of the country. »
«In well-constituted governments, the citizens fear more to break their
oaths than the laws; because they esteem the power of God more than that
of men.)>
« Even in war, but little glory is derived from any fraud that involves the
breaking of a given pledge and of agreements made.**
« It is impossible to believe that either valor or anything praiseworthy can
result from a dishonest education, or an impure and immodest mmd.»
The strangest moral contradictions abound throughout (The Prince,'
as they do in all Machiavelli's writings. He is saint or devil accord-
ing as you select your extracts from his writings. Macaulay has
given us a perfect characterization of the man and his works.
9486
NICCOLO MACHIAVELLI
« In all the writings which he gave to the public, and in all those which
the research of editors has in the course of three centuries discovered: in
his comedies, designed for the entertainment of the' multitude; in his com-
ments on Livy, intended for the perusal of the most enthusiastic patriots of
Florence; in his < History, > inscribed to one of the most amiable and esti-
mable of the popes; in his public dispatches; in his private memoranda, —
the same obliquity of moral principle for which <The Prince > is so severely
censured, is more or less discernible. We doubt whether it would be possi-
ble to find, in all the many volumes of his compositions, a single expression
indicating that dissimulation and treachery had ever struck him as discredit-
able.
« After this, it may seem ridiculous to say that we are acquainted with
few writings which exhibit so much elevation of sentiment, so pure and
warm a zeal for the public good, or so just a view of the duties and rights
of citizens, as those of Machiavelli. Yet so it is. And even from <The Prince >
itself, we could select many passages in support of this remark. To a reader
of our age and country, this inconsistency is at first perfectly bewildering.
The whole man seems to be an enigma; a grotesque assemblage of incongru-
ous qualities ; selfishness and generosity, cruelty and benevolence, craft and
simplicity, abject villainy and romantic heroism. One sentence is such as a
veteran diplomatist would scarcely write in cipher for the direction of his
most confidential spy; the next seems to be extracted from a theme composed
by an ardent schoolboy on the death of Leonidas. An act of dexterous per-
fidy, and an act of patriotic self-devotion, call forth the same kind and the
same degree of respectful admiration. The moral sensibility of the writer
seems at once to be morbidly obtuse and morbidly acute. Two characters
altogether dissimilar are united in him. They are not merely joined, but in-
terwoven. They are the warp and the woof of his mind.**
In consequence of this, no writer has been more condemned or
more praised than Machiavelli. Shakespeare, reflecting English
thought, uses his name as the superlative for craft and murderous
treachery. But later years have raised up defenders for him, and his
rehabilitation is still going on. He has been lauded as <( the noblest
and purest of patriots }) ; and more ardent admirers could <( even praise
his generosity, nobility, and exquisite delicacy of mind, and go so far
as to declare him an incomparable model of public and private vir-
tue.w In 1787, after his dust had lain for nearly three centuries in an
obscure tomb beside that of Michelangelo, a monument was erected
above him, with the inscription given below,
TANTO NOMINI NULLUM PAR EULOGIUM
NICOLANO MACHIAVELLUS
[No eulogy could add aught to so great a name as that of Niccolo
Machiavelli.]
NICCOLO MACHIAVELLI 9487
In 1859 the government of his native Tuscany itself gave his works
to the public in a complete edition. And in 1869 the Italian govern-
ment enrolled him in its calendar of great ones; and placed above
the door of the house in Florence in which he lived and died, a mar-
ble tablet, inscribed —
A NICCOLO MACHIAVELLI
Dell' Unita Nazionale Precursore audace e indovino
E d'Armi proprie e non aventizie primo Institutore e Maestro
L'ltalia Una e Armata pose il 3 Maggio 1869
IL QUARTO DI Lui CENTENNARIO
[To Niccolo Machiavelli — the intrepid and prophetic Precursor of National
Unity, and the first Institutor and Master of her own Armies in place
of adventitious ones — United and Armed Italy places this on May 3ds
1869, his Fourth Centenary.]
His rehabilitation proceeds from two causes. Later research has
shown that perhaps he only reflected his time; and his works breathe
a passionate longing for that Italian unity which in our day has been
realized. He may be worthy canonization as a national saint; but
those who are more interested in the integrity of moral standards
than in Italian unity will doubtless continue to refuse beatification to
one who indeed knew the Roman virtus, but was insensible to the
nature of virtue as understood by the followers of Christ. And no
amount of research into the history of his age can make his princi-
ples less vicious in themselves. A better understanding of his day
can only lessen the boldness of the relief in which he has heretofore
stood out in history. He was probably no worse than many of his
fellows. He only gave a scientific formulation to their practices. He
dared openly to avow and justify the principles that their actions
implied. They paid to virtue the court of hypocrisy, and like the
Pharisee of the earlier time, preached righteousness and did evil; but
Machiavelli was more daring, and when he served the devil, disdained
to go about his business in the livery of heaven.
9488 NICCOLO MACHIAVELLI
THE CONSPIRACY AGAINST CARLO GALEAZZO, DUKE
OF MILAN, 1476
From the ( History of Florence >
WHILST the- transactions between the King and the Pope
were in progress, and those in Tuscany, in the manner
we have related, an event of greater importance occurred
in Lombardy. Cola Montana, a learned and ambitious man, taught
the Latin language to the youth of the principal families in Mi-
lan. Either out of hatred to the character and manners of the
duke, or from some other cause, he constantly deprecated the
condition of those who live under a bad prince; calling those
glorious and happy who had the good fortune to be born and
live in a republic. He endeavored to show that the most cele-
brated men had been produced in republics, and not reared
under princes; that the former cherish virtue, whilst the latter
destroy it; the one deriving advantage from virtuous men, whilst
the latter naturally fear them. The youths with whom he was
most intimate were Giovanni Andrea Lampognano, Carlo Vis-
conti, and Girolamo Olgiato. He frequently discussed with
them the faults of their prince, and the wretched condition of
those who were subject to him ; and by constantly inculcating his
principles, acquired such an ascendency over their minds as to
induce them to bind themselves by oath to effect the duke's de-
struction, as soon as they became old enough to attempt it.
Their minds being fully occupied with this design, which grew
with their years, the duke's conduct and their own private inju-
ries served to hasten its execution. Galeazzo was licentious and
cruel; of .both which vices he had given such repeated proofs
that he became odious to all. . . . These private injuries
increased the young men's desire for vengeance, and the deliv-
erance of their country from so many evils; trusting that when-
ever they should succeed in destroying the duke, many of the
nobility and all the people would rise in their defense. Being
resolved upon their undertaking, they were often together; which,
on account of their long intimacy, did not excite any suspicion.
They frequently discussed the subject; and in order to familiar-
ize their minds with the deed itself, they practiced striking each
other in the breast and in the side with the sheathed daggers
intended to be used for the purpose. On considering the most
suitable time and place, the castle seemed insecure; during the
NICCOLO MACHIAVELLI
9489
chase, uncertain and dangerous; whilst going about the city for
his own amusement, difficult if not impracticable; and at a ban-
quet, of doubtful result. They therefore determined to kill him
upon the occasion of some procession or public festivity, when
there would be no doubt of his presence, and where they might
under various pretexts assemble their friends. It was also re-
solved that if one of their number were prevented from attend-
ing, on any account whatever, the rest should put him to death
in the midst of their armed enemies.
It was now the close of the year 1476, — near Christmas; and
as it was customary for the duke to go upon St. Stephen's day,
in great solemnity, to the church of that martyr, they considered
this the most suitable opportunity for the execution of their de- •
sign. Upon the morning of that day they ordered some of their
most trusty friends and servants to arm, telling them they wished
to go to the assistance of Giovanandrea, who, contrary to the wish
of some of his neighbors, intended to turn a water-course into
his estate; but that before they went they wished to take leave
of the prince. They also assembled, under various pretenses,
other friends and relatives; trusting that when the deed was ac-
complished, every one would join them in the completion of their
enterprise. It was their intention, after the duke's death, to col-
lect their followers together and proceed to those parts of the
city where they imagined the plebeians would be most disposed
to take arms against the duchess and the principal ministers of
State: and they thought the people, on account of the famine
which then prevailed, would easily be induced to follow them;
for it was their design to give up the houses of Cecco Simonetta,
Giovanni Botti, and Francesco Lucani, — all leading men in the
government, — to be plundered, and by this means gain over the
populace and restore liberty to the community. With these ideas,
and with minds resolved upon their execution, Giovanandrea and
the rest were early at the church, and heard mass together; after
which Giovanandrea, turning to a statue of St. Ambrose, said,
<(O patron of our city! thou knowest our intention, and the end ,
we would attain by so many dangers: favor our enterprise, and
prove, by protecting the oppressed, that tyranny is offensive to
thee.»
To the duke, on the other hand, when intending to go to the
church, many omens occurred of his approaching death ; for in the
morning, having put on a cuirass, as was his frequent custom, he
NICCOLO MACHIAVELLI
immediately took it off again, either because it inconvenienced
him or that he did not like its appearance. He then wished to
hear mass in the castle; but found that the priest who officiated
in the chapel had gone to St. Stephen's, and taken with him the
sacred utensils. On this he desired the service to be performed
by the Bishop of Como, ' who acquainted him with preventing
circumstances. Thus, almost compelled, he determined to go to
the church; but before his departure he caused his sons, Giovan
Galeazzo and Ermes, to be brought to him, and embraced and
kissed them several times, seeming reluctant to part with them.
He then left the castle, and with the ambassadors of Ferrara and
Mantua on either hand, proceeded to St. Stephen's.
The conspirators, to avoid exciting suspicion, and to escape
the cold, which was very severe, had withdrawn to an apart-
ment of the arch-priest, who was a friend of theirs; but hearing
the duke's approach, they came into the church, Giovanandrea
and Girolamo placing themselves upon the right hand of the en-
trance and Carlo on the left. Those who led the procession
had already entered, and were followed by the duke, surrounded
by such a multitude as is usual on similar occasions. The first
attack was made by Lampognano and Girolamo; who, pretending
to clear the way for the prince, came close to him, and grasping
their daggers, which being short and sharp were concealed in the
sleeves of their vests, struck at him. Lampognano gave him
two wounds, one in the belly, the other in the throat. Girolamo
struck him in the throat and breast. Carlo Visconti, being nearer
the door, and the duke having passed, could not wound him in
front; but with two strokes transpierced his shoulder and spine.
These six wounds were inflicted so instantaneously that the duke
had fallen before any one was aware of what had happened; and
he expired, having only once ejaculated the name of the Virgin,
as if imploring her assistance.
A great tumult immediately ensued; several swords were
drawn; and as often happens in sudden emergencies, some fled
from the church and others ran towards the scene of tumult,
both without any definite motive or knowledge of what had oc-
curred. Those, however, who were nearest the duke and had
seen him slain, recognizing the murderers, pursued them. Gio-
vanandrea, endeavoring to make his way out of the church, had
to pass among the women, who being numerous, and according
to their custom seated upon the ground, impeded his progress
NICCOLO MACHIAVELLI
949 1
by their apparel; and being overtaken, he was killed by a Moor,
one of the duke's footmen. Carlo was slain by those who were
immediately around him. Girolamo Olgiato passed through the
crowd, and got out of the church; but seeing his companions
dead, and not knowing where else to go, he went home, where
his father and brothers refused to receive him; his mother only,
having compassion on her son, recommended him to a priest,
an old friend of the family, who, disguising him in his own ap-
parel, led him to his house. Here he remained two days, not
without hope that some disturbance might arise in Milan which
would contribute to his safety. This not occurring, and appre-
hensive that his hiding-place would be discovered, he endeavored
to escape in disguise; but being observed, he was given over to
justice, and disclosed all the particulars of the conspiracy. Giro-
lamo was twenty-three years of age, and exhibited no less com-
posure at his death than resolution in his previous conduct; for
being stripped of his garments, and in the hands of the execu-
tioner, who stood by with the sword unsheathed ready to deprive
him of life, he repeated the following words in the Latin tongue,
in which he was well versed: « Mors acerba, fama perpetua, stabit
vetus memoria facti.^*
The enterprise of these unfortunate young men was conducted
with secrecy and executed with resolution; and they failed for
want of the support of those whom they expected to rise in
their defense. Let princes therefore learn to live so as to ren-
der themselves beloved and respected by their subjects, that none
may have hope of safety after having destroyed them ; and let
others see how vain is the expectation which induces them to
trust so much to the multitude as to believe that even when
discontented, they will either embrace their cause or ward off
their dangers. This event spread consternation all over Italy;
but those which shortly afterwards occurred in Florence caused
much more alarm, and terminated a peace of twelve years' con-
tinuance. Having commenced with blood and horror, they will
have a melancholy and tearful conclusion.
* « Death is bitter, but fame is eternal, and the memory of this deed shall
long endure. w
9492 NICCOLO MACHIAVELLI
HOW A PRINCE OUGHT TO AVOID FLATTERERS
From <The Prince >
I MUST not forget to mention one evil against which princes
should ever be upon their guard, and which they cannot
avoid except by the greatest prudence; and this evil is the
flattery which reigns in every court. Men have so much self'
love, and so good an opinion of themselves, that it is very diffi'
cult to steer clear of such contagion; and besides, in endeavoring
to avoid it, they run the risk of being despised.
For princes have no other way of expelling flatterers than by
showing that the truth will not offend. Yet if every one had the
privilege of uttering his sentiments with impunity, what would
become of the respect due to the majesty of the sovereign ? A
prudent prince should take a middle course, and make choice of
some discreet men in his State, to whom alone he may give the
liberty of telling him the truth on such subjects as he shall
request information upon from them. ' He ought undoubtedly to
interrogate them and "hear their opinions upon every subject of
importance, and determine afterwards according to his own
judgment; conducting himself at all times in such a manner as
to convince every one that the more freely they speak the more
acceptable they will be. After which he should listen to nobody
else, but proceed firmly and steadily in the execution of what he
has determined.
A prince who acts otherwise is either bewildered by the adu-
lation of flatterers, or loses all respect and consideration by the
uncertain and wavering conduct he is obliged to pursue. This
doctrine can be supported by an instance from the history of our
own times. Father Luke said of the Emperor Maximilian, his
master, now on the throne, that ((he never took counsel of any
person, and notwithstanding he never acted from an opinion of
his own }> ; and in this he adopted a method diametrically opposite
to that which I have proposed. For as this prince never in-
trusted his designs to any of his ministers, their suggestions were
not made till the very moment when they should be executed; so
that, pressed by the exigencies of the moment, and overwhelmed
with obstacles and unforeseen difficulties, he was obliged to yield
to whatever opinions his ministers might offer. Hence it hap-
pens, that what he does one day he is obliged to cancel the next;
NICCOLO MACHIAVELLI
and thus nobody can depend on his decisions, for it is impossible
to know what will be his ultimate determination.
A prince ought to take the opinions of others in everything,
but only at such times as it pleases himself, and not whenever
they are obtruded upon him; so that no one shall presume to
give him advice when he does not request it. He ought to be
inquisitive, and listen with attention; and when he sees any one
hesitate to tell him the full truth, he ought to evince the utmost
displeasure at such conduct.
Those are much mistaken who imagine that a prince who
listens to the counsel of others will be but little esteemed, and
thought incapable of acting on his own judgment. It is an infal-
lible rule that a prince who does not possess an intelligent mind
of his own can never be well advised, unless he is entirely gov-
erned by the advice of an able minister, on whom he may repose
the whole cares of government; but in this case he runs a great
risk of being stripped of his authority by the very person to whom
he has so indiscreetly confided his power. And if instead of one
counselor he has several, how can he, ignorant and uninformed
as he is, conciliate the various and opposite opinions of those
ministers, — who are probably more intent on their own interests
than those of the State, and that without his suspecting it ?
Besides, men who are naturally wicked incline to good only
when they are compelled to it; whence we may conclude that
good counsel, come from what quarter it may, is owing entirely
to the wisdom of the prince, and the wisdom of the prince does
not arise from the goodness of the counsel.
EXHORTATION TO LORENZO DE' MEDICI TO DELIVER ITALY
FROM FOREIGN DOMINATION
From closing chapter of ( The Prince >
IF IT was needful that Israel should be in bondage to Egypt,
to display the quality of Moses; that the Persians should be
overwhelmed by the Medes, to bring out the greatness and
the valor of Cyrus; that the Athenians should be dispersed, to
make plain the superiority of Theseus, — so at present, to illumi-
nate the grandeur of one Italian spirit, it was Doubtless needful
that Italy should be sunk to her present state, — a worse slavery
than that of the Jews, more thoroughly trampled down than the
NICCOLO MACHIAVELLI
Persians, more scattered than the Athenians; without a head,
without public order, conquered and stripped, lacerated, overrun
by her foes, subjected to every form of spoliation.
And though from time to time there has emanated from
some one a ray of hope that he was the one ordained by God
to redeem Italy, yet we have seen how he was so brought to a
standstill at the very height of his success that poor Italy still
remained lifeless, so to speak, and waiting to see who might be
sent to bind up her wounds, to end her despoilment, — the dev-
astation of Lombardy, the plunder and ruinous taxation of the
kingdom of Naples and of Tuscany, — and to heal the sores that
have festered so long. You see how she prays to God that he
may send her a champion to defend her from this cruelty, bar-
barity, and insolence. You see her eager to follow any standard,
if only there is some one to uprear it. But there is no one
at this time to whom she could look more hopefully than to
your illustrious house, O magnificent Lorenzo! which, with its
excellence and prudence, favored by God and the Church, — of
which it is now the head, — could effectively begin her deliver-
ance. . . .
You must not allow this opportunity to pass. Let Italy,
after waiting so long, see her deliverer appear at last. And I
cannot put in words with what affection he would be received in
all the States which have suffered so' long from this inundation
of foreign enemies! with what thirst for vengeance, with what
unwavering loyalty, with what devotion, and with what tears!
What door would be closed to him ? Who would refuse to obey
him ? What envy would dare to contest his place ? What Italian
would refuse him homage ? This supremacy of foreign barbari-
ans is a stench in the nostrils of all!
9494a
PERCY MACKAYE
(1875-)
modern drama since Ibsen has been in large measure realistic
and propagandist. The theatre has been crowded with
problems, sermons, and reforms. Yet during this period,
Romance has refused to leave the stage, and Fancy and Poetry have
piped for many a dance. Ibsen himself wrote (Peer Gynt) as well as
(Ghosts); France has Rostand as well as Brieux; and the new Irish
drama is essentially poetic and romantic. In England, not to speak
of the blank-verse plays of Stephen Phillips and others, the most
popular playwright has been Mr. Barrie who welds sentiment,
whimsy, fantasy, and nonsense into a kind of comedy scarcely
seen since the days of Bottom and Titania. We may leave it
to a future historian to decide where the balance lies between the
realistic and the romantic proclivities of our drama, and to deter-
mine whether Mr. Shaw throws his weight with the serious preacher
or with the ((high fantastical.)) Our concern is merely to note
that our stage has been large enough to afford room for many a flight
of fancy.
In the United States, Mr. Percy Mackaye has been the chief poet
of the theatre, and whether he has written in verse or in prose he has
always contrived to give fancy wing. Sometimes he has gone to the
past for his themes. Chaucer provided his first comedy, (The Canter-
bury Pilgrims) (1903), which after many open-air performances grad-
uated into opera. (Jeanne d'Arc) (1906) and (Sappho and Phaon)
(1907) are two of his early tragedies that won the services of distinguished
actors. But his fancy has not been confined to the great stories of
the past or to the traditional forms of the drama. (The Scarecrow)
(1908) was sub-titled ((a tragedy of the ludicrous)); and a series of one-
act plays was brought together under the title (Yankee Fantasies)
(1912). (Eeny Meeny) has the still more attractive label ((a moon-
shine fantasy,)) and when Mr. Mackaye came to write of (The Immi-
grants) (1915), the result was denominated a ((lyric drama.)) The
mixture of species indicated by these titles is significant of Mr. Mack-
aye's invention, which while variable in purpose, is always seeking to
escape from the stricter limitations of the theatre. He has found a
congenial opportunity in the more spacious stage afforded by the
masques, pageants, and out-of-door performances of civic celebrations.
His (Sanctuary, a Bird Masque) was produced before President Wilson
in 1913; his (St. Louis,) a civic masque, was given in 1914; and his
9494b PERCY MACKAYE
(Caliban,) for the Shakespearian tercentenary, received a stupendous
presentation in New York in 1916.
It would be easy to criticize any of Mr. Mackaye's productions
from the point of view of dramaturgy; but the remarkable fact is that
in so many ways he has succeeded in bringing so varied and so fresh
an invention to the service of the stage. Within the same period,
other men have written more successful plays, and other men have
sustained their fancy in more certain nights. No other man, however,
has so persistently and ingeniously wooed the stage with poetry and
fantasy.
Percy Mackaye, dramatist, son of Steele Mackaye, dramatist, was
born in New York in 1875. Since his graduation from Harvard and
the succeeding years of study and travel abroad, he has practised
assiduously at his high calling. In addition to a large number of
dramatic productions, some of which have been mentioned, he has
written many non-dramatic poems, so that his collected works now
consist of one volume of plays and one of poems. Among the latter
are several read on. special occasions, as (Ticonderoga) (1909), (Ellen
Terry) (1910), (Commodore Peary and his Men) (1910). He has
also published a memoir of his father, several volumes of essays, as
(The Playhouse and the Play) (1909), and' (The Civic Theatre) (1912),
and (with Professor Tatlock) has written (The Modern Reader's
Chaucer) (1912).
FROM (THE CANTERBURY PILGRIMS)
Copyright by the Macmillan Co., and reprinted by their permission.
[The scene is at the Tabard Inn; the persons are the pilgrims well known to us
from Chaucer's Prologue to the Canterbury Tales.]
KNIGHT — I am returning from the Holy Land
And go to pay my vows at Canterbury.
This is my son.
Chaucer — Go you to Canterbury
As well, Sir Squire?
[The Squire, putting down his flute, sighs deeply.]
Knight — My son, the gentleman
Accosts thee!
Squire — Noble gentleman — Ah me!
[He turns away.]
PERCY MACKAYE
9494 c
Chaucer [follows him] —
My dearest heart and best beloved foe,
Why liketh you to do me all this woe?
What have I done that grieveth you, or said,
Save that I love and serve you, high and low?
And whilst I 1'ive I will do ever so.
Wherefore, my sweet, do not that I be dead;
For good and fair and gentle as ye be,
It were great wonder if but that ye had
A thousand thousand servants, good and bad:
The most unworthiest servant — I am he!
Squire — Sir, by my lady's grace, you are a poet
And lover, like myself. We shall be brothers.
But pardon, sir, those verses are not yours.
Dan Chaucer wrote, them. Ah, sir, know you Chaucer?
Chaucer — Twelve stone of him!
Squire — Would / did! Is he not
An amorous divinity? Looks he
Like pale Leander, or some ancient god?
Chaucer — Sooth, he is like old Bacchus round the middle.
Squire — How acts he when in love? What feathers wears he?
Doth he sigh oft? What lady doth he serve?
Oh!
[At a smile from Chaucer, he starts back and looks at
him in awe: then hurries to the Knight. Chaucer walks
among the pilgrims, talking with them severally.}
Miller [to Franklin] —
Ten gallon ale? God's arms! I take thee.
Man of Law — What's
The wager?
Franklin — Yonder door; this miller here
Shall break it, at a running, with his head.
The door is oak. The stakes ten gallon ale.
Shipman — Ho, then, I bet the miller shall be drunk.
Merchant - What bet?
Shipman — Twelve crown upon the miller.
Merchant — ' Done.
[At the door appears the Prioress, accompanied by a Nun
and her three priests, one of whom, Joannes, carries a little
pup. The Host hurries up with a reverence.}
Host — Welcome, my lady dear.
Poor Harry Bailey's inn.
Vouchsafe to enter
9494 d PERCY MACKAYE
Progress — Merci.
Host [to a serving-boy] — Knave, show
My lady Prioress to the blue chamber
Where His Majesty, King Richard, slept.
Prioress — Joannes,
Mark, Paulus, stay! have you the little hound
Safe?
Joannes — Yes, my lady.
Prioress — Carry him before,
But carefully.
Miller [to. Yeoman] —
Here, nut-head, hold my hood.
Yeoman — Wilt try bareheaded?
Friar — 'Mass!
Franklin — Ha, for a skull!
Miller, thou art as tough a knot as e'er
The Devil tied. By God, mine ale is spilled.
[The priests and Prioress have just reached the door left
front, which the Miller is preparing to ram.}
Ploughman — The door is locked.
Joannes — But, sir, the Prioress —
Shipman — Heigh! Clear the decks!
[The Miller, with clenched fists and head doubled over,
runs for the door.]
Yeoman — Harrow!
Parson - Run, Robin.
Guild-Men [rise from their dice] — Ho!
[With a crash, the Miller's head strikes the door and splits
it. At the shock, he rebounds against Joannes, and reaching
to save himself from falling, seizes the puppy.]
Miller - A twenty devils!
Guild- Men [all but the Weaver, clambering over the table] -
Come on!
Ploughman [to the Miller] - What aileth thee?
Miller — The priest hath bit my hand.
Joannes - Sweet sir, the puppy -
It was the puppy, sir.
Miller - Wring me its neck.
Prioress — Alas, Joannes — help!
PERCY MACKAYE 9494e
Miller — By Corpus bones!
Give me the cur.
Prioress — St. Loy! Will no one help?
Chaucer — Madame, what may I do?
Prioress — My little hound —
The churl — My little hound! The churl will hurt it.
If you would fetch to me my little hound —
Chaucer -• — Madame, I'd fetch you Cerberus from hell.
Miller — Lo, masters! See a dog's neck wrung!
Chaucer [breaking through the crowd, seizes the Miller by the throat] —
Which dog's?
Miller — - Leave go! — 'Sdeath! Take the whelp, a devil's name.-
Chaucer — Kneel! Ask grace of this lady here.
Miller [sullenly] — What lady?
Chaucer — Of her whom gentles call St. Charity
In every place and time. —
[Turns then towards Prioress.]
What other name
This lady bears, I have not yet been honored
With knowing. = — Kneel!
Miller [morosely; kneels] — Lady, I axe your pardon.
Chaucer — Madame, your little hound is safe.
Prioress [nestles the little hound with tender effusiveness; then turns shyly
to Chaucer —
Merci!
My name is Madame Eglantine.
[Hurries out, left.]
Chaucer [aside] — Hold, Geoffrey!
Yon beastie's quaking side thumped not as thine
Thumps now. And wilt thou ape a little hound?
Ah, Madame Eglantine, unless ye be
To me, as well as him, St. Charity!
Franklin — Who is the man?
Miller - The Devil, by his eye.
They say King Richard hath to court a wrastler
Can grip ten men. I guess that he be him.
Cook — Ho! milksop of a miller!
Miller [seizing him] — Say it twice;
What?
Cook - Nay, thou art a bull at bucking doors.
Franklin — Let ribs be hoops for twenty gallon ale
And stop your wind-bags. Come.
9494f PERCY MACKAYE
Miller [with a grin, follows the Franklin] —
Ship man — Twelve crown.
By Corpus bones!
Twelve, say you? See my man of law.
Merchant —
Weaver [springs to his feet] —
The throw is mine! •
Dyer — A lie! When we were away
You changed the dice!
Weaver — My throw was cinq and three.
Dyer — A lie! Have it in your gullet!
[Draws his knife. They fight.}
Carpenter — Part them!
Tapicer — Back!
Host — Harrow! Dick Weaver, hold! Fie, Master Dyer,
Here's not a dyeing stablishment; we want
No crimson cloth — Clap hands now: Knave, more ale.
Chaucer [to the Doctor] —
If then, as by hypothesis, this cook
Hath broke his nose, it follpws first that we
Must calculate the ascendent of his image. .
Doctor — Precisely! Pray proceed. I am fortunate
To have met a fellow-doctor at this inn.
Chaucer — Next, treating him by magic natural,
Provide him well with old authorities,
As Esculapius, Diescorides,
Damascien, Constantinus, Averrois,
Hippocrates, Serapion, Razis,
Bernardus, Galienus, Gilbertinus —
Doctor — But, sir, the fellow cannot read —
Chaucer — Why, true;
Then there remains but one sure remedy,
Thus: bid him, fasting, when the moon is wane,
And Venus rises in the house of Pisces,
To rub it nine times with a herring's tail.
Doctor — Yea, Pisces is a fish. — I thank you, sir.
[He hurries of to the Cook, whose nose he has patched.}
Host [to the Reeve, who enters} —
God save thee, Osewold! What's o'clock? Thou looks't
As puckered as a pear at Candlemas.
Reeve — There be too many fold i' the world; and none
Is ripe till he be rotten.
PERCY MACKAYE 9494 g
[Sits at table.]
Penny 'orth ale!
Squire — My lord, father!
Knight — Well, son?
Squire [looking at Chaucer] — Sir, saw you ever
So knightly, sweet, and sovereign a man,
With eyes so glad and shrewdly innocent?
O, when I laid my hand in his, and looked
Into his eyes, meseemed I rode on horse
Into the April open fields, and heard
The larks upsinging in the sun. Sir, have
You guessed who 'tis?
Knight — To judge him by his speech,
Some valiant officer.
Squire — Nay, I have guessed.
THE SCARECROW
Copyright by the Macmillan Co., and reprinted by their permission.
Act IV.
[Night. The moon, shining in broadly at the window, discovers Ravens-
bane alone, prostrate before the mirror. Raised on one arm to a
half-sitting posture, he gazes fixedly at the -vaguely seen image of the
scarecrow prostrate in the glass.]
RAVENSBANE — All have left me — but not thou. Rachel has
left me; her eyes have turned away from me; she is gone.
And with her, the great light itself from heaven has drawn
her glorious skirts, contemptuous, from me — and they are gone
together. Dickon, he too has left me — but not thou. All that I
loved, all that loved me, have left me. A thousand ages — a thousand
ages ago, they went away; and thou and I have gazed upon each other's
desert edness. Speak! and be pitiful! If thou art I, inscrutable
image, if thou dost feel these pangs thine own, show then self -mercy;
speak! What art thou? What am I? Why are we here? How
comes it that we feel and guess and suffer? Nay, though thou answer
not these doubts, yet mock them, mock them aloud, even as there,
monstrous, thou counterfeitest mine actions.- Speak, abject enigma!
— Ah ! with what vacant horror it looks out and yearns toward me.
Peace to thee! Thou poor delirious mute, prisoned in glass and
9494 h PERCY MACKAYE
moonlight, peace! Thou canst not escape thy gaol, nor I break in to
thee. Poor shadow, thou —
[Recoiling wildly.]
Stand back, inanity! Thrust not thy mawkish face in pity toward
me. Ape and idiot ! Scarecrow ! — to console me ! Haha ! -
A flail and broomstick! a cob, a gourd and pumpkin, to fuse and
sublimate themselves into a mage-philosopher, who puffeth meta-
physics from a pipe and discourseth sweet philanthropy to itself —
itself, God! Dost Thou hear? Itself! For even such am I — I
whom Thou madest to love Rachel. Why, God — haha ! dost Thou
dwell in this thing? Is it Thou that peerest forth at me — from me?
Why, hark then; Thou shalt listen, and answer — if Thou canst.
Hark then, Spirit of life! Between the rise and setting of a sun, I
have walked in this world of Thine. I have gazed upon it, I have
peered within it, I have grown enamored, enamored of it. I have
been thrilled with wonder, I have been calmed with knowledge, I
have been exalted with sympathy. I have trembled with joy and
passion. Power, beauty, love have ravished me. Infinity itself,
like a dream, has blazed before me with the certitude of prophecy;
and I have cried, ((This world, the heavens, time itself, are mine to
conquer,)) and I have thrust forth mine arm to wear Thy shield forever
— and lo ! for my shield Thou reachest me a mirror — and whisperest
((Know thyself! Thou art — a scarecrow: a tinkling clod, a rigmarole
of dust, a lump of ordure, contemptible, superfluous, inane!)) Haha!
Hahaha! And with such scarecrows Thou dost people a planet!
O ludicrous! Monstrous! Ludicrous! At least, I thank Thee,
God ! at least, this breathing bathos can laugh at itself. At least this
hotch-potch nobleman of stubble is enough of an epicure to turn his own
gorge. Thou hast vouchsafed to me, Spirit, — hahaha ! — to know my-
self. Mine, mine is the consummation of man — even self -contempt !
[Pointing in the glass with an agony of derision.]
Scarecrow ! Scarecrow ! Scarecrow !
The Image in the Glass [more and more faintly] — Scarecrow !
Scarecrow ! Scarecrow !
[Ravensbane throws himself prone upon the floor, beneath the window,
sobbing. There is a pause of silence, and the moon shines brighter.
Slowly then Ravensbane, getting to his knees, looks out into the
night.}
PERCY MACKAYE 94941
Ravensbane — What face are you, high up through the twinkling
leaves? Why do you smile upon me with such white beneficence?
Or why do you place your viewless hand upon my brow, and say,
«Be comforted))? Do you not, like all the rest, turn, aghast, your
eyes away from me — me, abject enormity, groveling at your feet?
Gracious being, do you not fear — despise me ? To you alone am I
not hateful — unredeemed ? 0 white peace of the world, beneath
your gaze the clouds glow silver, and the herded cattle, slumbering
far afield, crouch — beautiful. The slough shines lustrous as a
bridal veil. Beautiful face, you are Rachel's, and you have changed
the world. Nothing is mean, but you have made it miraculous;
nothing is loathsome, nothing ludicrous, but you have converted it to
loveliness, that even this shadow of a mockery myself, cast by your
light, gives me the dear assurance I am a man. Yea, more, that I
too, steeped in your universal light, am beautiful. For you are
Rachel, and you love me. You are Rachel in the sky, and the might
of your serene loveliness has transformed me. Rachel, mistress,
mother, beautiful spirit, out of my suffering you have brought forth
my soul. I am saved!
The Image in the Glass — A very pretty sophistry.
[The moonlight grows dimmer, as at the passing of a cloud.}
Ravensbane — Ah ! what voice has snatched you from me ?
The Image — A most poetified pumpkin !
Ravensbane — Thing ! dost thou speak at last ? My soul abhors
thee.
The Image — I am thy soul.
Ravensbane — Thou liest.
The Image — Our Daddy Dickon and our mother Rickby begot
and conceived us at sunrise, in a Jack-o'-lantern.
Ravensbane — Thou liest, torturing illusion. Thou art but a
phantom in a glass.
The Image — Why, very true. So art thou. We are a pretty
phantom in a glass.
Ravensbane — It is a lie. I am no longer thou. I feel it ; I am a
man.
The Image — And prithee, -what's a man? Man's but a mirror,
Wherein the imps and angels play charades,
Make faces, mope, and pull each other's hair —
Till crack! the sly urchin Death shivers the glass,
And the bare coffin boards show underneath.
9494J PERCY MACKAYE
Ravensbane — Yea! if it be so, thou coggery ! if both of us be indeed
but illusions, why, now let us end together. But if it be not so, then
let me for evermore be free of thee. Now is the test — the glass !
[Springing to the fireplace, he seizes an iron cross-piece from the andirons.]
I'll play your urchin Death and shatter it. Let's see what shall
survive !
[He rushes to strike the glass with the iron. Dickon steps out of the mirrort
closing the curtain.]
Dickon — I wouldn't really!
Ravensbane — Dickon ! dear Dickon ! is it you ?
Dickon — Yes, Jacky ! it's dear Dickon, and I really wouldn't.
Ravensbane — Wouldn't what, Dickon?
Dickon — Sweep the cobwebs off the sky with thine aspiring
broomstick. When a man questions fate, 'tis bad digestion. When
a scarecrow does it, 'tis bad taste.
Ravensbane — At last, you will tell me the truth, Dickon! Am I
then — that thing?
Dickon — You mustn't be so skeptical. Of course you're that
thing.
Ravensbane — Ah me despicable ! Rachel, why didst thou ever
look upon me?
9495
NORMAN MACLEOD
(i8i2-i872)>
!N THE present century the Scottish Church has given to the
world two sons of pre-eminent importance and influence: Dr.
Chalmers and Dr. Norman Macleod. The names of these
two men, simple clergymen of the simple Scottish Church, are familiar
not only in Scotland and among Scotsmen all the world over, but
among thousands also of English and Americans. With one only we
have to do here: the famous Scottish minister and Queen's Chaplain
who became so universally known and beloved in Scotland that he
was rarely if ever alluded to by his full name, but simply as « Dr. Nor-
man » — and even, in many localities, merely as (< Norman. » Norman
Macleod was a notable man on account of his writings; a still more
notable man on account of his preaching and influence ; possibly more
notable still as an ideal type of the Highlander from the Highland
point of view; and above all, notable for his dominant and striking
personality. It has been said, and perhaps truly, that no one has
taken so strong a hold of the affections of his countrymen since
Burns. Fine as are Dr. Macleod's writings, — notably ( The Reminis-
cences of a Highland Parish,* <The Old Lieutenant,' < The Starling, >
and < Wee Davie, * — we may look there in vain for adequate sources
of this wide-spread and still sustained popularity. Fine as his literary
gifts are, his supreme gift was that of an over-welling human sym-
pathy, by which he made himself loved, from the poorest Highland
crofters or the roughest Glasgow artisans to the Queen herself. This
is fully brought out in the admirable Memoir written by his brother,
Dr. Donald Macleod, the present editor of that well-known magazine,
Good Words, which Dr. Norman began. The name of his childhood
and his family, says Dr. Donald, —
•<was to all Scotland his title, as distinct as a Duke's, — Norman Macleod;
sometimes the < Norman > alone was enough. He was a Scottish minister, noth-
ing more ; incapable of any elevation to rank, bound to mediocrity of means
by the mere fact of his profession, never to be bishop of anywhere, dean
of anywhere, lord of anything, so long as life held him, yet everybody's fel-
low wherever he went: dear brother of the Glasgow workingmen in their
grimy fustians ; of the Ayrshire weavers in their cottages ; dear friend of the
sovereign on the throne. He had great eloquence, great talent, and many of
the characteristics of genius ; but above all, he was the most brotherly of men.
It is doubtful whether his works will live an independent life after him:
949^
NORMAN MACLEOD
rather, perhaps, it may be found that their popularity depended upon him
and not upon them ; and his personal claims must fade, as those who knew him
follow him into the Unknown."
And indeed there could be no better summary of Norman Macleod
than this at once pious and just estimate by his brother.
He came not only of one of the most famous Highland clans, but
of a branch noted throughout the West of Scotland for the stalwart
and ever militant sons of the church which it has contributed from
generation to generation. It is to this perpetuity of vocation, as well
as to the transmission of family names, that a good deal of natural
confusion is due in the instance of writers bearing Highland names,
and of the Macleods in particular. <( They're a' thieves, fishermen, or
ministers, }> as is said in the West; and however much or little truth
there may be in the first, there is a certain obvious truth in the
second, and a still more obvious truth in the third. Again and again
it is stated that Dr. Norman Macleod — meaning this Norman — is the
author of what is now the most famous song among the Highlanders,
the farewell to Fiunary*; a song which has become a Highland
national lament. But this song was really written by Dr. Norman
Macleod the elder; that is, the father of 'the Dr. Norman Macleod of
whom we are now writing.
Norman Macleod was born on June 3d, 1812, in Campbelltown of
Argyll. After his education for the church at Glasgow and Edin-
burgh Universities, he traveled for some time in Germany as private
tutor. Some years after his ordainment to an Ayrshire parish, he
visited Canada on ecclesiastical business. It was not till 1851 that he
was translated to the church with which his name is so closely asso-
ciated; namely, the Barony Charge in Glasgow.' Three years after
this, in 1854, he became one of her Majesty's Chaplains for Scotland,
and Dean of the Order of the Thistle. In 1860 he undertook the
editorship of Good Words; and made this magazine, partly by his
own writings and still more by his catholic and wise editorship, one
of the greatest successes in periodical literature. Long before his
death at the comparatively early age of sixty, he had become famous
as the most eloquent and influential of the Scottish ministry; indeed,
so great was his repute that hundreds of loyal Scots from America
and Australia came yearly to Scotland, primarily with the desire to
see and hear one whom many of them looked to as the most emi-
nent Scot of his day. It was in his shrewdness of judgment, his
swift and kindly tact, his endless fund of humor, and his sweet
human sympathy, that the secret of his immense influence lay. But
while it is by virtue of his personal qualities that even now he sur-
vives in the memory of his countrymen, there is in his writings much
that is distinctive and beautiful. Probably * The Reminiscences of a
NORMAN MACLEOD
9497
Highland Parish > will long be read for their broad and fine sense of
human life in all its ordinary aspects. This book, without any par-
ticular pretensions to style, is full of such kindly insight, such swift
humor, and such broad sympathy, that it is unquestionably the most
characteristic literary work of its author. Probably, among his few
efforts in fiction, the story known as < The Old Lieutenant and his
Son > (unless it be ( The Starling > ) still remains the most popular.
Curiously enough, although his sermons stirred all Scotland, there
are few of them which in perusal at this late date have any specially
moving quality, apart from their earnestness and native spiritual
beauty. There is however one which stands out above the others,
and is to this day familiar to thousands: the splendid sermon on
(War and Judgment, J which, at a crucial moment in the history of
his country, Dr. Norman Macleod preached before the Queen at the
little Highland church of Crathie.
The three extracts which follow adequately represent Dr. Macleod.
The first exemplifies his narrative style. The second depicts those
West Highlands which he loved so well and helped to make others
love. The third is one of those little lyrics in lowland Scottish which
live to this day in the memories of the people.
THE HOME-COMING
From ( The Old Lieutenant and his Son >
THERE lived in the old burgh one of that class termed (< fools w
to whom I have already alluded, who was called "daft
Jock." Jock was lame, walked by the aid of a long staff,
and generally had his head and shoulders covered up with an old
coat. Babby had a peculiar aversion to Jock; why, it was diffi-
cult to discover, as her woman's heart was kindly disposed to all
living things. Her regard was supposed to have been partially
alienated from Jock from his always calling her <(Wee Babbity,}>
accompanying the designation with a loud and joyous laugh.
Now, I have never yet met a human being who was not weak
on a point of personal peculiarity which did not natter them. It
has been said that a woman will bear any amount of abuse that
does not involve a slight upon her appearance. Men are equally
susceptible of similar pain. A very tall or very fat hero will be
calm while his deeds are criticized or his fame disparaged, but
will resent with bitterness any marked allusion to his great longi-
tude or latitude. Babby never could refuse charity to the needy,
and Jock was sure of receiving something from her as the result
949^
NORMAN MACLEOD
of his weekly calls; but he never consigned a scrap of meat to
his wallet without a preliminary battle. On the evening of the
commemoration of the <( Melampus " engagement, Babby was sit-
ting by the fire watching a fowl which twirled from the string
roasting for supper, and which dropped its unctuous lard on a
number of potatoes that lay basking in the tin receiver below.
A loud rap was heard at the back door; and to the question,
(< Who's there ? " the reply was heard of (< Babbity, open ! Open,
wee Babbity ! Hee, hee, hee ! "
(< Gae wa wi' ye, ye daft cratur, " said Babby. <( What right
hae ye to disturb folk at this time o' nicht ? I'll let loose the
dog on you."
Babby knew that Skye shared her dislike to Jock; as was
evident from his bark when he rose, and with curled tail began
snuffing at the foot of the door. Another knock, louder than
before, made Babby start.
<( My word," she exclaimed, (<but ye hae learned impudence ! "
And afraid of disturbing <(the company," she opened as much of
the door as enabled her to see and rebuke Jock. <( Hoo daur ye,
Jock, to rap sae loud as that ? "
<( Open, wee, wee, wee Babbity ! " said Jock.
<(Ye big, big, big blackguard, I'll dae naething o' the kind,"
said Babby as she shut the door. But the stick of the fool was
suddenly interposed. <( That beats a' ! " said Babby : (< what the
sorrow d'ye want, Jock, to daur to presume — "
But to Babby's horror the door was forced open in the mid-
dle of her threat, and the fool entered, exclaiming, <( I want a
kiss, my wee, wee, bonnie Babbity ! "
<( Preserve us a' ! " exclaimed Babby, questioning whether she
should scream or fly, while the fool, turning his back to the
light, seized her by both her wrists, and imprinted a kiss on her
forehead.
"Skye!" half screamed Babby; but Skye was springing up,
as if anxious to kiss Jock. Babby fell back on a chair, and
catching a glimpse of the fool's face, she exclaimed, <(O my
darling, my darling ! O Neddy, Neddy, Neddy ! " Flinging off
her cap, as che always did on occasions of great perplexity, she
seized him by the hands, and then sunk back, almost fainting, in
the chair.
<( Silence, dear Babby!" said Ned, speaking in a whisper; "for
I want to astonish the old couple. How glad I aw to see yon[
NORMAN MACLEOD
and they are all well, I know; and Freeman here, too!" Then
seizing the dog, he clasped him to his heart, while the brute
struggled with many an eager cry to kiss his old master's face.
Ned's impulse from the first was to rush into the parlor; but
he was restrained by that strange desire which all have experi-
enced in the immediate anticipation of some great joy, — to hold
it from us, as a parent does a child, before we seize it and clasp
it to our breast.
The small party, consisting of the captain, his wife, and Free-
.man, were sitting round the parlor fire; Mrs. Fleming sewing,
and the others keeping up rather a dull conversation, as those
who felt, though they did not acknowledge, the presence of some-
thing at their hearts which hindered their usual freedom and
genial hilarity.
<( Supper should be ready by this time," suggested the captain,
just as the scene between Ned and Babby was taking place in
the kitchen. (< Babby and Skye seem busy: I shall ring, may I
not ? "
<( If you please," said Mrs. Fleming; (( but depend upon it,
Babby will cause no unnecessary delays. *
Babby speedily responded to the captain's ring. On entering
the room she burst into a fit of laughing. Mrs. Fleming put
down her work and looked at her servant as if she was mad.
<( What do you mean, woman ? " asked the captain with knit
brows: (< I never saw you behave so before."
« Maybe no. Ha! ha! ha!" said Babby; « but there's a queer
man wishing to speak wi' ye." At this moment a violent ring
was heard from the door-bell.
<(A queer man — wishing to speak with me — at this hour,"
muttered the captain, as if in utter perplexity.
Babby had retired to the lobby, and was ensconced, with her
apron in her mouth, in a corner near the kitchen. <(You had
better open the door yersel'," cried Babby, smothering her laugh-
ter.
The captain, more puzzled than ever, went to the door, and
opening it was saluted with a gruff voice, saying, « I'm a poor
sailor, sir, — and knows you're an old salt, — and have come to
see you, sir."
(< See me, sir ! What do you want ? " replied the captain
gruffly, as one whose kindness some impostor hoped to bene-
fit by.
9500 NORMAN MACLEOD
(< Wants nothing, sir, * said the sailor, stepping near the captain.
A half -scream, half-laugh from Babby drew Mrs. Fleming and
Freeman to the lobby.
((You want nothing? What brings you to disturb me at this
hour of the night ? Keep back, sir ! "
<(Well, sir, seeing as how I sailed with Old Cairney, I thought
you would not refuse me a favor, " replied the sailor in a hoarse
voice.
"Don't dare, sir," said the captain, (<to come into my house
one step farther, till I know more about you."
<( Now, captain, don't be angry; you know as how that great
man Nelson expected every man to do his duty: all I want is
just to shake Mrs. Fleming by the hand, and then I go; that is,
if after that you want me for to go."
(< Mrs. Fleming ! " exclaimed the captain, with the indignation
of a man who feels that the time has come for open war as
against a house-breaker. (< If you dare — "
But Mrs. Fleming, seeing the rising storm, passed her husband
rapidly, and said to the supposed intruder, whom she assumed to
be a tipsy sailor, <( There is my hand, if that's all you want: go
away now as you said, and don't breed any disturbance."
But the sailor threw his arms around his mother, and Babby
rushed forward with a light; and then followed muffled cries
of « Mother!" « Father!" <(Ned!» «My own boy!" «God be
praised ! " until the lobby was emptied, and the parlor once more
alive with as joyous and thankful hearts as ever met in (< hamlet
or in baron's ha'!"
HIGHLAND SCENERY
HER great delight was in the scenery of that West Highland
country. Italy has its gorgeous beauty, and is a magnifi-
cent volume of poetry history, and art, superb within and
without, read by the light of golden sunsets. Switzerland is the
most perfect combination of beauty and grandeur; from its up-
lands— with grass more green and closely shaven than an English
park; umbrageous with orchards; musical with rivulets; tinkling
with the bells of wandering cattle and flocks of goats; social with
picturesque villages gathered round the chapel spires — up to the
bare rocks and mighty cataracts of ice; until the eye rests on the
NOR1N
95°*
,rp in the intense blue of
<wn the whole marvelous picture with
Torway its peculiar glory of fiords
ling their v tmong gigantic mount-
lofty precipices, or primeval forests. But the scenery of the
:.ern Highlands -ctive character of its own. It is
not beauty, in spit- ;h and oak copse that
e the : lochs and the innumerable bights and bays
of pearly sand. Nor is it grandeur — although there is a wonder-
ful i tr-stretching landscapes of ocean meeting the
on, or of h ridges, mingling afar
upper sky. But coloring of its mount-
ains; in the silence of its untrodden valleys; in the extent of its
A undulating moors; in the sweep of its rocky corr:
in the shifting mists and clouds that hang over its dark preci-
: in all this kind of s ith the wild tradii
which ghost-like float around he
MONGOLIAN BUDDHISTIC WRITING
" tO the im; Facsimile of part of fragment of a Mongolian manuscript of the XVIth
century. It was discovered by the Russians in the ruins of the
Buddhist monastery of Ablai-Kied, a desert spot near
from the rest -Of tfle s<>urce of the river Irtiscu.
rocky fastnesses, before they (< a their dun
wings from Morven."
MY LITTLE MAY
MY LITTLE May was like a lintie
Glintin' 'mang the flowers o* spring;
Like a lintie she was cantie,
Like a lintie she could sing; —
Singing, milking in the gloamin',
Singing, herding in the morn,
Singing 'mang the brackens roaming,
Singing shearing yellow corn !
Oh the bonnie dell and dingle,
Oh the bor: -,f glen,
Oh the bonnie bleezin' ingle,
Oh the bonnie but and ben!
Ilka body smiled that met her,
Nane were, glad 1 f areweel ; "
3V
dJlVX adjno JqhDaunsavnBifognoM
NORMAN MACLEOD
peaks of alabaster snow, clear and sharp in the intense blue of
the cloudless sky, which crown the whole marvelous picture with
awful grandeur! Norway too has its peculiar glory of fiords
worming their way like black water-snakes among gigantic mount-
ains, lofty precipices, or primeval forests. But the scenery of the
Western Highlands has a distinctive character of its own. It is
not beauty, in spite of its knolls of birch and oak copse that
fringe the mountain lochs and the innumerable bights and bays
of pearly sand. Nor is it grandeur — although there is a wonder-
ful vastness in its far-stretching landscapes of ocean meeting the
horizon, or of hills beyond hills, in endless ridges, mingling afar
with the upper sky. But in the sombre coloring of its mount-
ains; in the silence of its untrodden valleys; in the extent of its
bleak and undulating moors; in the sweep of its rocky corries;
in the shifting mists and clouds that hang over its dark preci-
pices: in all this kind of scenery, along with the wild traditions
which ghost-like float around its ancient keeps, and live in the
tales of its inhabitants, there is a glory and a sadness, most affect-
ing to the imagination, and suggestive of a period of romance
and song, of clanships and of feudal attachments, which, banished
from the rest of Europe, took refuge and lingered long in those
rocky fastnesses, before they (< passed away forever on their dun
wings from Morven."
MY LITTLE MAY
MY LITTLE May was like a lintie
Glintin' 'mang the flowers o* spring;
Like a lintie she was cantie,
Like a lintie she could sing; —
Singing, milking in the gloamin',
Singing, herding in the morn,
Singing 'mang the brackens roaming,
Singing shearing yellow corn!
Oh the bonnie dell and dingle,
Oh the bonnie flowering glen,
Oh the bonnie bleezin' ingle,
Oh the bonnie but and ben!
Ilka body smiled that met her,
Nane were glad that said fareweel;
NORMAN MACLEOD
Never was a blyther, better,
Bonnier bairn, frae croon to heel!
Oh the bonnie dell and dingle,
Oh the bonnie flowering glen,
Oh the bonnie bleezin' ingle,
Oh the bonnie but and ben!
Blaw, wintry winds, blaw cauld and eerie,
Drive the .sleet and drift the snaw;
May is sleeping, she was weary,
For her heart was broke in twa!
Oh wae the dell and dingle,
Oh wae the flowering glen;
Oh wae aboot the ingle,
Wae's me baith but and ben!
M
95°3
JOHN BACH MCMASTER
IHE change in aim and method of the modern historian has
kept pace with the development of the democratic idea.
Where before, in the study and writing of history, the do-
ings of rulers and courts and the working of governmental machinery
have been the chief points of interest, to the exclusion of the every-
day deeds and needs of the nation, the tendency to-day is to lay
emphasis on the life of the people broadly viewed, — the development
of the social organism in all its parts. The feeling behind this
tendency is based on a conviction that the
true vitality of a country depends upon the
healthy growth and general welfare of the
great mass of plain folk, — the working,
struggling, wealth-producing people who
make it up. The modern historian, in a
word, makes man in the State, irrespective
of class or position, his subject for sympa-
thetic portrayal.
This type of historian is represented by
John Bach McMaster, whose < History of
the People of the United States J strives to
give a picture of social rather than consti-
tutional and political growth: those phases JOHN BACH McMASTER
of American history have been treated ably
by Adams, Schouler, and others. Professor McMaster, with admirable
lucidity and simplicity of style, and always with an appeal to fact
precluding the danger of the subjective writing of history to fit a
theory, tells this vital story of the national evolution, and tells it as
it has not been told before. The very title of his work defines its
purpose. It is a history not of the United States, but of the people
of the United States, — like Green's great ( History of the English
People,' another work having the same ideal, the modern attitude.
The period covered in Professor McMaster's plan is that reaching
from the adoption of the Constitution in 1789 to the outbreak of the
Civil War, — less than one hundred years, but a crucial time for
the shaping of the country. The depiction of the formative time,
the day of the pioneer and the settler, — of the crude beginnings of
9504 JOHN BACH MCMASTER
civilization, — engages his particular attention and receives his most
careful treatment. An example is given in the selection chosen from
his work, which gains warmth and picturesqueness in this way. The
first volume of his work appeared in 1883; the sixth in 1908. It pro-
vides an invaluable storehouse of information on the life and manners
of our growing nation. Professor McMaster has allowed himself
space and leisure in order to make an exhaustive survey of the field,
and a synthetic presentation of the material. His history when fin-
ished will be of very great value. His preparation for it began in
1870, when he was a young student, and it will be his life work and
monument.
John Bach McMaster was born in Brooklyn, June 29th, 1852; and
received his education at the College of the City of New York, his
graduation year being 1872. He taught a little, studied civil engi-
neering, and in 1877 became instructor in that branch at Princeton.
Thence he was called in 1883 to the University of Pennsylvania, to
take the chair of American history, which he still holds. Professor
McMaster is also an attractive essayist. His 'Benjamin Franklin as
a Man of Letters' (1887) is an excellent piece of biography; and
the volume of papers called 'With the Fathers > (1896) contains a
series of historical portraits sound in scholarship and very readable
in manner. In his insistence on the presenting of the unadorned
truth, his dislike of pseudo-hero worship, Professor McMaster seems at
times iconoclastic. But while he is not entirely free from prejudice,
his intention is to give no false lights to the picture, and few his-
torians have been broader minded and fairer.
TOWN AND COUNTRY LIFE IN 1800
From <A History of the People of the United States from the Revolution to
the Civil War.> D. Appleton & Co., 1885. Copyright 1885, by John Bach
McMaster.
WHAT was then known as the far West was Kentucky, Ohio,
and central New York. Into it the emigrants came
streaming along either of two routes. Men from New
England took the most northern, and went out by Albany and
Troy to the great wilderness which lay along the Mohawk and
the lakes. They came by tens of thousands from farms and vil-
lages, and represented every trade, every occupation, every walk
in life, save one: none were seafarers. No whaler left his vessel;
no seaman deserted his mess; no fisherman of Marblehead or
Gloucester exchanged the dangers of a life on the ocean for the
JOHN BACH MCMASTER
privations of a life in the West. Their fathers and their uncles
had been fishermen before them, and their sons were to follow
in their steps. Long before a lad could nib a quill, or make a
pot-hook, or read half the precepts his primer contained, he knew
the name of every brace and stay, every sail and part of a Grand
Banker and a Chebacco, all the nautical terms, what line and
hook should be used for catching halibut and what for mackerel
and cod. If he ever learned to write, he did so at (< writing-
school, }) which, like singing-school, was held at night, and to
which he came bringing his own dipped candle, his own paper,
and his own pen. The candlestick was a scooped-out turnip, or
a piece of board with a nail driven through it. His paper he
ruled with a piece of lead, for the graphite lead-pencil was un-
known. All he knew of theology, and much of his knowledge of
reading and spelling, was gained with the help of the New Eng-
land Primer. There is not, and there never was, a text-book so
richly deserving a history as the Primer. The earliest mention
of it in print now known is to be found in an almanac for the
year 1691. The public are there informed that a second impres-
sion is (<in press, and will suddenly be extant w; and will con-
tain, among much else that is new, the verses John Rogers the
Martyr made and left as a legacy to his children. When the
second impression became extant, a rude cut of Rogers lashed to
the stake, and while the flames burned fiercely, discoursing to his
wife and nine small children, embellished the verses, as it has
done in every one of the innumerable editions since struck off.
The tone of the Primer is deeply religious. Two thirds of . the
four-and-twenty pictures placed before the couplets and triplets
in rhyme, from
«In Adam's fall
We sinned all,*
to
<(Zaccheus, he
Did climb a tree
Our Lord to see,**
represent Biblical incidents. Twelve <( words of six syllables >J are
given in the spelling lesson. Five of them are — abomination, edi-
fication, humiliation, mortification, purification. More than half
the book is made up of the Lord's Prayer and the Creed, some
of Watts's hymns, and the whole of that great Catechism which
one hundred and twenty divines spent five years in preparing.
JOHN BACH MCMASTER
There too are Mr. Rogers's verses, and John Cotton's ( Spiritual
Milk for American Babes*; exhortations not to cheat at play,
not to lie, not to use ill words, not to call ill names, not to be a
dunce, and to love school. The Primer ends with the famous
dialogue between Christ, Youth, and the Devil.
Moved by pity and a wish to make smooth the rough path to
learning, some kind soul prepared <A Lottery-Book for Children.1
The only difficulty in teaching children to read was, he thought,
the difficulty of keeping their minds from roaming; and to (<pre^
vent this precipitancy }> was the object of the ( Lottery-Book. } On
one side of each leaf was a letter of the alphabet; on the other
two pictures. As soon, he explained, as the child could speak, it
should thrust a pin through the leaf from the side whereon the
pictures were, at the letter on the other, and should continue to
do this till at last the letter was pierced. Turning the leaf after
each trial, the mind of the child would be fixed so often and so
long on the letter that it would ever after be remembered.
. The illustrations in the book are beneath those of a patent-
medicine almanac, but are quite as good as any that can be found
in children's books of that day. No child had then ever seen
such specimens of the wood-engraver's and the printer's and the
binder's arts as now, at the approach of every Christmas, issue
from hundreds of presses. The covers of such chap-books were
bits of wood, and the backs coarse leather. On the covers was
sometimes a common blue paper, and sometimes a hideous wall-
paper, adorned with horses and dogs, roosters and eagles, standing
in marvelous attitudes on gilt or copper scrolls. The letterpress
of none was specially illustrated, but the same cut was used
again and again to express the most opposite ideas. A woman
with a dog holding her train is now Vanity, and now Miss All-
worthy going abroad to buy books for her brother and sister.
A huge vessel with three masts is now a yacht, and now the
ship in which Robinson Crusoe sailed from Hull. The virtuous
woman that is a crown to her husband, and naughty Miss Kitty
Bland, are one and 'the same. Master Friendly listening to the
minister at church now heads a catechism, and now figures as
Tommy Careless in the (Adventures of a Week.* A man and
woman feeding beggars become, in time, transformed into a
servant introducing two misers to his mistress. But no creature
played so many parts as a bird, which after being named an
eagle, a cuckoo, and a kite, is called finally Noah's dove.
JOHN BACH MCMASTER
Mean and cheap as such chap-books were, the peddler who
hawked them sold not one to the good wives of a fishing village.
The women had not the money to buy with; the boys had not
the disposition to read. Till he was nine, a lad did little more
than watch the men pitch pennies in the road, listen to sea
stories, and hurry, at the cry of (( Rock him," <( Squail him," to
help his playmates pelt with stones some unoffending boy from a
neighboring village. By the time he had seen his tenth birth-
day he was old enough not to be seasick, not to cry during a
storm at sea, and to be of some use about a ship; and went on
his first trip to the Banks. The skipper and the crew called him
'( cut-tail " ; for he received no money save for the fish he caught,
and each one he caught was marked by snipping a piece from
the tail. After an apprenticeship of three or four years the
r< cut-tail" became a <( header," stood upon the same footing as
the <(sharesmen," and learned all the duties which a <( splitter"
and a (<salter" must perform. A crew numbered eight; four were
"sharesmen" and four were apprentices; went twice a year to
the Banks, and stayed each time from three to five months.
Men who had passed through such a training were under no
temptation to travel westward. They took no interest, they bore
no part in the great exodus. They still continued to make their
trips and bring home their <( fares"; while hosts of New-England-
ers poured into New York, opening the valleys, founding cities,
and turning struggling hamlets into villages of no mean kind.
Catskill, in 1792, numbered ten dwellings and owned one vessel
of sixty tons. In 1800 there were in the place one hundred
and fifty-six houses, two ships, a schooner, and eight sloops of
one hundred tons each, all owned there and employed in carry-
ing produce to New York. Six hundred and twenty-four bushels
of wheat were brought to the Catskill market in 1792. Forty-
six thousand one hundred and sixty-four bushels came in 1800.
On a single day in 1801 the merchants bought four thousand
one hundred and eight bushels of wheat, and the same day
eight hundred loaded sleighs came into the village by the west-
ern road. In 1790 a fringe of clearings ran along the western
shore of Lake Champlain to the northern border, and pushed
out through the broad valley between the Adirondacks and the
Catskills to Seneca and Cayuga Lakes. In 1800 the Adirondack
region was wholly surrounded. The emigrants had passed Oneida
Lake, had passed Oswego, and skirting the shores of Ontario
JOHN BACH MCMASTER
and the banks of the St. Lawrence, had joined with those on
Lake Champlain. Some had gone down the valleys of the
Delaware and Siisquehanna to the southern border of the State.
The front of emigration was far beyond Elmira and Bath. Just
before it went the speculators, the land-jobbers, the men afflicted
with what in derision was called <( terraphobia. }> They formed
companies and bought millions of acres. They went singly and
purchased whole townships as fast as the surveyors could locate;
buying on trust and selling for wheat, for lumber, for whatever
the land could yield or the settler give. Nor was the pioneer
less infatuated. An irresistible longing drove him westward, and
still westward, till some Indian scalped him, or till hunger, want,
bad food, and exposure broke him down, and the dreaded Genesee
fever swept him away. The moment such a man had built a
log cabin, cleared an acre, girdled the trees, and sowed a hand-
ful of grain, he was impatient to be once more moving. He had
no peace till his little farm was sold, and he had plunged into
the forest to seek a new and temporary home. The purchaser
in time would make a few improvements, clear a few more acres,
plant a little more grain, and then in turn sell and hurry west-
ward. After him came the founders of villages and towns, who,
when the cabins about them numbered ten, felt crowded and
likewise moved away. Travelers through the Genesee valley tell
us they could find no man who had not in this way changed
his abode at least six times. The hardships which these people
endured is beyond description. Their poverty was extreme.
Nothing was so scarce as food; many a wayfarer was turned
from their doors with the solemn assurance that they had not
enough for themselves. The only window in many a cabin was
a hole in the roof for the smoke to pass through. In the win-
ter the snow beat through the chinks and sifted under the door,
till it was heaped up about the sleepers on the floor before the
fire. . . .
Beyond the Blue Ridge everything was most primitive. Half
the roads were <( traces }> and blazed. More than half the houses,
even in the settlements, were log cabins. When a stranger came
to such a place to stay, the men built him a cabin and made
the building an occasion for sport. The trees felled, four corner-
men were elected to notch the logs; and while they were busy
the others ran races, wrestled, played leap-frog, kicked the hat,
fought, gouged, gambled, drank, did everything then considered
JOHN BACH MCMASTER
an amusement. After the notching was finished the raising took
but a few hours. Many a time the cabin was built, roofed, the
door and window cut out, and the owner moved in, before sun-
down. The chinks were stopped with chips and smeared with
mud. The chimney was of logs, coated with mud six inches
thick. The table and the benches, the bedstead and the door,
were such as could be made with an axe, an auger, and a saw.
A rest for the rifle and some pegs for clothes completed the
fittings.
The clothing of a man was in summer a wool hat, a blue
linsey hunting-shirt with a cape, a belt with a gayly colored
fringe, deerskin or linsey pantaloons, and moccasins and shoe-
packs of tanned leather. Fur hats were not common. A boot
was rarely to be seen. In winter, a striped linsey vest and a
white blanket coat were added. If the coat had buttons — and it
seldom had — they were made by covering slices of a cork with
bits of blanket. Food which he did not obtain by his rifle and
his traps he purchased by barter. Corn was the staple; and no
mills being near, it was pounded between two stones or rubbed
on a grater. Pork cost him twelve cents a pound, and salt
four. Dry fish was a luxury, and brought twenty cents a pound.
Sugar was often as high as forty. When he went to a settle-
ment he spent his time at the billiard-table, or in the <( keg
grocery J> playing Loo or (< Finger in Danger, w to determine who
should pay for the whisky consumed. Pious men were terrified
at the drunkenness, the vice, the gambling, the brutal fights,
the gouging, the needless duels they beheld on every hand.
Already the Kentucky boatmen had become more dreaded than
the Indians. <(A Kentuc0 in 1800 had much the same meaning
that (< a cowboy w has now. He was the most reckless, fearless,
law-despising of men. A common description of him was half
horse, half alligator, tipped with snapping-turtle.
On a sudden this community, which the preachers had often
called Satan's stronghold, underwent a moral awakening such as
this world had never beheld.
Two young men began the great work in the summer of 1799.
They were brothers, preachers, and on their way across the
pine barrens to Ohio, but turned aside to be present at a sacra-
mental solemnity on Red River. The people were accustomed
to gather at such times on a Friday, and by praying, singing,
and hearing sermons, prepare themselves for the reception of the
95IO JOHN BACH MCMASTER
sacrament on Sunday. At the Red River meeting the brothers
were asked to preach, and one did so with astonishing fervor.
As he spoke, the people were deeply moved; tears ran streaming
down their faces, and one, a woman far in the rear of the house,
broke through order and began to shout. For two hours after
the regular preachers had gone, the crowd lingered and were
loath to depart. While they tarried, one of the brothers was
irresistibly impelled to speak. He rose and told them that he
felt called to preach, that he could not be silent. The words
which then fell from his lips roused the people before him <( to a
pungent sense of sin.'0 Again and again the woman shouted,
and would not be silent. He started to go to her. The crowd
begged him to turn back. Something within him urged him on,
and he went through the house shouting and exhorting and
praising God. In a moment the floor, to use his own words,
(<was covered with the slain. " Their cries for mercy were
terrible to hear. Some found forgiveness, but many went away
(< spiritually wounded )J and suffering unutterable agony of soul.
Nothing could allay the excitement. Every settlement along the
Green River and the Cumberland was full of religious fervor.
Men fitted their wagons with beds and provisions, and traveled
fifty miles to camp upon the ground and hear him preach.
The idea was new; hundreds adopted it, and camp-meetings
began. There was now no longer any excuse to stay away
from preaching. Neither distance, nor lack of houses, nor scar-
city of food, nor daily occupations prevailed. Led by curiosity,
by excitement, by religious zeal, families of every Protestant
denomination — Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians, Episcopalians
— hurried to the camp-ground. Crops were left half gathered;
every kind of work was left undone; cabins were deserted; in
large settlements there did not remain one soul. The first
regular general camp-meeting was held at the Gasper River
Church, in July, 1800; but the rage spread, and a dozen encamp-
ments followed in quick succession. Camp-meeting was always
in the forest near some little church, which served as the preach-
ers' lodge. At one end of a clearing was a rude stage, and
before it the stumps and trunks of hewn trees, on which the
listeners sat. About the clearing were the tents and wagons
ranged in rows like streets. The praying, the preaching, the
exhorting would sometimes last for seven days, and be prolonged
every day until darkness had begun to give way to light. Nor
JOHN BACH MCM ASTER 95II
were the ministers the only exhorters. Men and women, nay,
even children took part. At Cane Ridge a little girl of seven
sat upon the shoulder of a man and preached to the multitude
till she sank exhausted on her bearer's head. At Indian Creek a
lad of twelve mounted a stump and exhorted till he grew weak,
whereupon two men upheld him, and he continued till speech
was impossible. A score of sinners fell prostrate before him.
At no time was the (< falling exercise }> so prevalent as at night.
Nothing was then wanting that could strike terror into minds
weak, timid, and harassed. The red glare of the camp-fires re-
flected from hundreds of tents and wagons; the dense blackness
of the flickering shadows, the darkness of the surrounding forest,
made still more terrible by the groans and screams of the <( spir-
itually wounded, }> who had fled to it for comfort; the entreaty
of the preachers; the sobs and shrieks of the downcast still walk-
ing through the dark valley of the Shadow of Death; the shouts
and songs of praise from the happy ones who had crossed the
Delectable Mountains, had^gone on through the fogs of the En-
chanted Ground, and entered the land of Beulah, were too much
for those over whose minds and bodies lively imaginations held
full sway. The heart swelled, the nerves gave way, the hands
and feet grew cold, and motionless and speechless they fell head-
long to the ground. In a moment crowds gathered about them
to pray and shout. Some lay still as death. Some passed
through frightful twitchings of face and limb. At Cabin Creek
so many fell, that lest the multitude should tread on them, they
were carried to the meeting-house and laid in rows on the floor.
At Cane Ridge the number was three thousand.
The recollection of that famous meeting is still preserved in
Kentucky, where, not many years since, old men could be found
whose mothers had carried them to the camp-ground as infants,
and had left them at the roots of trees and behind logs while
the preaching and exhorting continued. Cane Ridge meeting-
house stood on a well-shaded, well-watered spot, seven miles from
the town of Paris. There a great space had been cleared, a
preacher's stand put up, and a huge tent stretched to shelter the
crowd from the sun and rain. But it did not cover the twen-
tieth part of the people who came. Every road that led to the
ground is described to have presented for several days an almost
unbroken line of wagons, horses, and men. One who saw the
meeting when it had just begun wrote home to Philadelphia that
JOHN BACH McM ASTER
wagons covered an area as large as that between Market Street
and Chestnut, Second and Third. Another, who counted them,
declared they numbered eleven hundred and forty-five. Seven
hundred and fifty lead tokens, stamped with the letters A or B,
were given by the Baptists to communicants; and there were still
upward of four hundred who received none. Old soldiers who
were present, and claimed to know something of the art of esti-
mating the numbers of masses of men, put down those encamped
at the Cane Ridge meeting as twenty thousand souls. The ex-
citement surpassed anything that had been known. Men who
came to scoff remained to preach. All day and all night the
crowd swarmed to and fro from preacher to preacher, singing,
shouting, laughing, now rushing off to listen to some new ex-
horter who had climbed upon a stump, now gathering around
some unfortunate, who in their peculiar language was <( spiritu-
ally slain. w Soon men and women fell in such numbers that it
became impossible for the multitude to move about without
trampling them, and they were hurried to the meeting-house.
At no time was the floor less than half covered. Some lay quiet,
unable to move or speak. Some talked but could not move.
Some beat the floor with their heels. Some, shrieking in agony,
bounded about, it is said, like a live fish out of water. Many
lay down and rolled over and over for hours at a time. Others
rushed wildly over the stumps and benches, and then plunged,
shouting (< Lost ! Lost ! w into the forest.
As the meetings grew more and more frequent, this nervous
excitement assumed new and more terrible forms. One was
known as jerking; another, as the barking exercise; a third, as
the Holy Laugh. <(The jerks* began in the head and spread
rapidly to the feet. The head would be thrown from side to side
so swiftly that the features would be blotted out and the hair
made to snap. When the body was affected, the sufferer was
hurled over hindrances that came in his way, and finally dashed
on the ground to bounce about like a ball. At camp-meetings in
the far South, saplings were cut off breast-high and left <(for the
people to jerk by." One who visited such a camp-ground declares
that about the roots of from fifty to one hundred saplings the
earth was kicked up (< as by a horse stamping flies. >} There only
the lukewarm, the lazy, the half-hearted, the indolent professor
was afflicted. Pious men, and scoffing physicians who sought to
get the jerks that they might speculate upon them, were not
JOHN BACH MCMASTER
touched. But the scoffer did not always escape. Not a professor
of religion within the region of the great revival but had heard
or could tell of some great conversion by special act of God.
One disbeliever, it was reported, while cursing and swearing, had
been crushed by a tree falling on him at the Cane Ridge meet-
ing. Another was said to have mounted his horse to ride away,
when the jerks seized him, pulled his feet from the stirrups,
and flung him on the ground, whence he rose a Christian man.
A lad who feigned sickness, kept from church, and lay abed, was
dragged out and dashed against the wall till he betook himself
to prayer. When peace was restored to him, he passed out into
his father's tan-yard to unhair a hide. Instantly the knife left his
hand, and he was drawn over logs and hurled against trees and
fences till he began to pray in serious earnest. A foolish woman
who went to see the jerks was herself soon rolling in the mud.
Scores of such stories passed from mouth to mouth, and may now
be read in the lives and narratives of the preachers. The com-
munity seemed demented. From the nerves and muscles the dis-
order passed to the mind. Men dreamed dreams and saw visions,
nay, fancied themselves dogs, went down on all fours, and barked
till they grew hoarse. It was no uncommon sight to behold
numbers of them gathered about a tree, barking, yelping, ft treeing
the Devil." Two years later, when much of the excitement of the
great revival had gone down, falling and jerking gave way to
hysterics. During the most earnest preaching and exhorting,
even sincere professors of religion would on a sudden burst into
loud laughter; others, unable to resist, would follow, and soon the
assembled multitude would join in. This was the <( Holy Laugh, })
and became, after 1803, a recognized part of worship.
EFFECTS OF THE EMBARGO OF 1807
From a < History of the People of the United 'States from the Revolution to
the Civil War.> D. Appleton & Co., 1885. Copyright 1885, by John Bach
McMaster./
PARALYSIS seized on the business of the coast towns and began
to spread inward. Ships were dismantled and left half
loaded at the wharves. Crews were discharged. The sound
of the caulking-hammer was no longer heard in the ship-yards.
The sail-lofts were deserted, the rope-walks were closed; the
95 r 4 JOHN BACH MCMASTER
cartmen had nothing to do. In a twinkling- the price of every
domestic commodity went down, and the price of every foreign
commodity went up. But no wages were earned, no business
was done,^ and money almost ceased to circulate. . . .
The federal revenues fell from sixteen millions to a few
thousands. . . . The value of the shipping embargoed has
been estimated at fifty millions; and as the net earnings were
twenty-five per cent., twelve and a half millions more were
lost to the country through the enforced idleness of the vessels.
From an estimate made at the time, it appears that one hundred
thousand men were believed to have been out of work for one
year. They earned from forty cents to one dollar and thirty-
three cents per day. Assuming a dollar as the average rate of
daily wages, the loss to the laboring class was in round numbers
thirty-six millions of dollars. On an average, thirty millions had
been invested annually in the purchase of foreign and domestic
produce. As this great sum was now seeking investment which
could, not be found, its owners were deprived not only of their
profits, but of two millions of interest besides.
Unable to bear the strain, thousands on thousands went to
the wall. The newspapers were full of insolvent-debtor notices.
All over the country the court-house doors, the tavern doors,
the post-offices, the cross-road posts, were covered with advertise-
ments of sheriffs' sales. In the cities the jails were not large
enough to hold the debtors. At New York during 1809 thirteen
hundred men were imprisoned for no other crime than being
ruined by the embargo. A traveler who saw the city in this
day of distress assures us that it looked like a town ravaged by
pestilence. The counting-houses were shut or advertised to let.
The coffee-houses were almost empty. The streets along the
water-side were almost deserted. The ships were dismantled;
their decks were cleared, their hatches were battened down/ Not
a box, not a cask, not a barrel, not a bale was to be seen on
the wharves, where the grass had begun to grow luxuriantly. A
year later, in this same city, eleven hundred and fifty men were
confined for debts under twenty-five dollars, and were clothed by
the Humane Society.
ANDREW MACPHAIL
(1864-)
BY ARCHIBALD MACMECHAN
IHE tiny province of Prince Edward Island is noted for the
pastoral beauty of its landscape and well deserves its by-name,
the Garden of the Gulf. Here, in the Highland settlement
of Orwell, a rich farming district, Andrew Macphail was born on Novem-
ber 24th, 1864. His father, William Macphail (who had been ship-
wrecked on the voyage out from Scotland and had lost all he possessed
except his copy of (Horace)) was first a farmer-schoolmaster at Orwell,
afterwards inspector or ((visitor)) of schools, and ultimately superinten-
dent of the provincial asylum for the insane.
Andrew Macphail attended Prince of Wales College in Charlotte-
town, the chief educational institution of the province, and in 1883
became principal of the Fanning Gramma School, a post he held for
two years. In 1885 he began his studies at McGill University, supple-
menting his means by writing for various local papers and by acting
as tutor, and was graduated in both arts and medicine within six
years. He then went to London to continue his medical studies after
graduation. He also visited the East in the interests of a newspaper
syndicate.
In 1893, he married Georgina Burland, a lady of rare endowments,
who died in 1902, leaving a son and a daughter.
Up to the outbreak of the Great War Macphail practised medicine
in Montreal, spending his summers on the paternal acres at Orwell,
engaged in his favorite recreation of farming. He was Professor of
Pathology in the University of Bishop's College, Lennoxville, Patholo-
gist to the Western Hospital, and to Verdun Hospital for the Insane,
and Professor of the History of Medicine in McGill University. In
1915, as a captain in No. 6 Field Ambulance of the Canadian Expedi-
tionary Force, he followed his brother Alexander and his son Jeffrey
overseas. He obtained the post, he said, not on account of his medical
knowledge, but because, forty years before, he had learned to ride a horse.
Macphail's literary work is notable for its variety. Countless
articles, a novel, some verse, an unpublished play, three volumes of
essays, stand to the credit of his untiring pen. He has managed two
important publications with conspicuous success, The Canadian Medical
Journal and The University Magazine. During the war, he has found
time to complete and see through the press his remarkable anthology,
(The Book of Sorrow.) He has assisted generously in other literary
95l4b ANDREW MACPHAIL
undertakings such as the publication of Miss Marjorie Pickthall's
exquisite poems.
His first book, (Essays in Puritanism) (1905), consists of five
critical studies of such diverse personalities as Jonathan Edwards, who
manifested the spirit of Puritanism in the pulpit, John Winthrop, who
showed that spirit at work in the world, Margaret Fuller, who reacted
against that spirit in one way, and Walt Whitman, who rebelled against
it in another. The fifth essay is a sympathetic appreciation of the
character and work of John Wesley. The essays were prepared first
for the Pen and Pencil Club of Montreal. They set all the five charac-
ters studied in a new light. The style is masculine and distinguished
by quiet irony, caustic wit, and incisive vigor of phrase.
With the by-products, apparently, of the research involved in these
studies, he constructed his second book, (The Vine of Sibmah) (1906).
This is an historical romance of Puritan New England shortly after the
Restoration. It recounts in the first person the adventures of a young
Roundhead captain by sea and land, and reproduces skillfully the
((jargon -of enthusiasm)) in which the Puritans expressed themselves.
Though a strong piece of work, it was but coldly received.
In 1907 Macphail launched The University Magazine, a quarterly
review. It had its origin in McGill University but Toronto and Dal-
housie also associated themselves in the enterprise. Macphail adopted
the principle (new in Canada) of paying contributors a living wage and
he proved himself an editor of tact and sound judgment. The policy of
paying for contributions brought out unsuspected strength of native
talent. It was even a commercial success. Not a little of the success,
however, was due to the editor's own vigorous articles. While offering
an open forum for the discussion of all problems in literature, art,
philosophy, and religion, the chief concern was Canadian and Imperial
politics.
In 1909, Macphail published a collection of his papers which had
already appeared in magazines, under the title (Essays in Politics.)
No more able or impartial political criticism had appeared in Canada.
It was free from partisan bias and the point of view was fresh.
In 1910 appeared the (Essays in Fallacy,) containing perhaps
MacphaiPs most serious and valuable criticism.
No other Canadian writer has exercised the critical faculty as widely
as Macphail, or presents such a mass of reasoned opinion upon so many
themes of perennial human interest. At times, the full force of his
judgments is not felt through the subtlety of his irony and his Scottish
preference for the understatement. Generally destructive, as criticism
must in its nature be, his discussions, especially in the domain of Cana-
dian politics, tend to build up sound national sentiment and to encourage
clear thinking.
ANDREW MACPHAIL 95I4C
PSYCHOLOGY OF THE SUFFRAGETTE
From (Essays in Fallacy) Longmans, Green & Co. Copyright by Andrew
Macphail.
To get at the root of the matter, we must understand the essential
character of the feminine nature, and if we discover that it is
good, neutral, or bad, we must remember that man has made
it so. The praise or blame is to us. Therefore we are in reality
investigating ourselves. There is a German saying: From a woman
you can learn nothing of a woman. As Immanuel Kant explains it:
woman does not betray her secret. And yet, the only secret which is
well kept is that which is no secret at all. Possibly this is the reason
why women and Freemasons have been so successful in guarding
theirs. The revelation which women in their writings make of them-
selves is incomplete because they are incapable of that intellectual
effort by which complete detachment is obtained. All the ((Con-
fessions)) have been done by men, St. Augustine, Montaigne, Pepys,
Rousseau, Amiel, and by those immodest writers of the past ten years
whose confessions are so tiresome because they have so little to confess,
and therefore experience none of that reminiscitory pleasure which
makes the confessional so popular.
It was a reflection of Joseph de Maistre: ((I do not know what the
heart of a rascal may be; I know what is in the heart of an honest
man: it is horrible.)) Only a man is capable of making this true
reflection and of confessing not alone faults which do not dishonor,
but secrets which are ridiculous and mortal sins which are without
extenuation. One may well believe that Chateaubriand in his
(Memoires d'Outre-tombe,) Lamartine in his (Confidences,) Renan
in his ( Souvenirs, ) even without being consciously insincere or lacking
in veracity, refrained from mentioning those cruelly painful reminis-
cences with which Rousseau scourged himself; but one is considered
simple-minded indeed who believes that George Sand tells us as much
as she can remember in ( L'Histoire de ma Vie. ) This charge which
Mr. Jules Lemaitre brings against George Sand finds its explanation
in the fact that women really do forget. A man will deliberately
revive the remembrance of past sins for his present amendment, and
evil being turned into good, the sin is forgiven. A woman forgets
an act of meanness because it made no impression upon her mind
when she committed it. She does not understand the nature of it.
She forgives an act of meanness which a woman commits against her
because they understand each other so well.
ANDREW MACPHAIL
To arrive at an apprehension of this condition of non-morality,
we must go back to the beginning of created beings, when the prob-
lems of physiology were reduced to their simplest forms, and the
problems of psychology and ethics had not yet made their appearance ;
when the presence of life was revealed only by the appearance of
movement. As we see the living being in its lowest form, it merely
moves, eats, grows, reproduces itself, and dies. It is contractile,
irritable, receptive, assimilative, metabolic, secretory, respiratory,
and reproductive, as the books on science say. This seems a great
deal, but in reality it is very little, for it does not differentiate an
amoeba from a man.
The evolution of the animal kingdom began with the acquirement
of the first rudiments of a morality. The original amoeba was content
to wait until its food arrived in a faint swirl of water. We can well
imagine that, by some circumstance which was apparently fortuitous
but in reality due to the operation of the law of gravity and of those
principles which underlie the distribution of air, the food was brought
in unusual quantity or at an unnecessary moment. The creature,
being already surfeited, was quite willing, that the nutriment should
go to a rival. The satisfaction which was experienced as a result of
comfortable physical distention was attributed to an act of self-
abnegation, and so the foundation of morality was laid.
This illustration may be made more obvious, and perhaps less
absurd, if we consider the situation of the savage reclining before* the
fire with his family in the sanctity of his cave after a successful day's
chase, and a surfeit upon the rude but efficient cookery of those days.
We shall not be wrong if we surmise that an emotion of gratitude
might arise in his breast towards the giver of so much good and of
commiseration of a less fortunate neighbor. This laudable sentiment
might induce him to share the food which was yet uneaten, especially
if — not to credit him with too high and disinterested a morality —
he recalled that on previous occasions his surplus store had perished
by decay. Certainly he would not feel disposed to interfere with his
neighbor's chase, and so the principles of justice would be established.
It is not improbable that his neighbor at some future time would do
as he had been done by, and accordingly the growth of morality and
the bonds of amity would be strengthened. In due course game laws
would make their appearance, and out of that would arise a system
of jurisprudence to cover the various problems which must have
faced a growing, though simple, civilization.
If now it be true that morality had its origin in the mental and
ANDREW MACPHAIL 95146
physical activities attendant upon the procuring of food, and since
these activities were exercised chiefly by the male, it follows that the
female who was not brought under the influence of a favorable environ-
ment would remain non-moral. She did not come in contact with the
world, as the saying is, and continued unlearned, wanting the hard
lesson of experience. Something of a similar nature is still witnessed
in the case of those clerics who deal habitually with women, of school-
masters and professors whose world is merely that which is encountered
within the walls of a class-room, and of writers whose observation
does not extend beyond their closets. The characteristics of the
feminine nature are found in them. They are considered virtuous
because the problems of morality have never presented themselves.
Shut out from the world, the primitive woman was not free to
develop an independent life. She adapted herself to the man. His
views were her views ; his dislikes were shared by her, and she adopted
his opinions ready-made. She preferred to be dependent, and agreed
that the man should continue to mold her mentality. This" destruc-
tion of her personality and departure from her line of life became so
permanent that she enjoyed it. Her sense of personal value was lost.
It was found in external things, her beauty, her adornment, her
children, or her husband. This lightness of regard for their own
personality still persists, as we may see in the readiness with which a
woman exchanges her own name for another, not once, but under
certain circumstances — after a period of half -luxurious sorrow and
self-conscious demureness — twice, or yet again, and each time with
the greater alacrity. Without freedom there can be no free will,
and without free will there can be no character.
The primitive man in the contest with his environment developed
an ethic, a logic, and a morality, because he was free. Deprived of
freedom, the primitive woman remained servile in disposition; tyran-
nical when occasion offered, because the servant ever makes the worst
master; unjust, since she was protected against the penalty of injustice;
unsympathetic and heartless, because there was no occasion for a
wide and disinterested charity; mindless, because there was another
to think for her. Trained to accept the conventions which the man
imposed upon her, she easily submitted to the conventions devised
by her own sex, and became imitative even in the clothes which she
wore, in the method of adornment which she adopted, in the sentiments
which she entertained, and in the opinions which she expressed. In
time, "however, she adapted herself to her environment, and developed
a kind of ethic, of her own, which was entirely adequate for the cir-
ANDREW MACPHAIL
cumstances in which she was placed, but breaks down hopelessly in a
wider sphere of activity.
As if it were not enough that the woman was deprived of these
incentives to the acquisition of a morality, she was made the victim
of man's unconscious egoism and his conscious duplicity. Men in
common with other males are subject at times to a curious psychical
and physical condition which is familiarly known as ((being in love.))
The first symptom of this mental disorder is an entire incapacity to
perceive the truth. He creates an ideal woman, the woman of poetry
and other romantical writings. He attributes to her, or rather
projects into the ideal, his own qualities of truthfulness, modesty,
justice, charity, sympathy, fortitude, and beauty. To employ the
jargon of the theologians, this ideal woman is anthropomorphic.
A man who is in love with a woman is really in love with himself, but
neither the one nor the other is aware of the fact. He begins by
deceiving himself and ends by deceiving her, for a time at least, and
her futuVe life consists in the employment of every resource to en-
courage and maintain the fiction. It is not the real woman whom he
loves, but a spurious personality. To succeed in retaining this love,
she is obliged to live the life of the image which he has created, and
ends by destroying her inner self. And yet, under present conditions,
that woman succeeds best who is most successful in maintaining this
illusion in the minds of both.
This practice of loving and believing a lie is, I suspect, the fons et
origo of all that is evil in our civilization. Few men and no women are
free from the vice. Even the intelligent fall into the easy habit. In
an important city the editing of a newspaper was entrusted to ten of
the most righteous women to be found therein, and yet they assigned
the prize which had been offered for the best expression of appreciation
of their labors to a man who affirmed that their literary product
would overwhelm the city ((with a deluge of sweetness and light.))
The second prize went to a woman who predicted that much good
would be effected ((by their wisdom, their wit, and their might.))
And this leads one to the observation that nearly all writing is an
endeavor to minister to this desire for self-deception. Comparatively
few men who have attained to the great age of forty years indulge in
the pastime of reading. Their experience has taught them that the
motive of nearly all writing is the desire for notoriety, either in this
life or in the minds of those who are to come. They are wise enough
to write their own books ; but being wise, they abstain. They regard
it as a delusion that all who are capable of reading are also capable
ANDREW MACPHAIL 95I4g
of writing. As well might a man believe that he had a peculiar
aptitude for herding sheep and playing the bagpipes, because he was
born in the Highlands of Scotland. This desire of women to be de-
ceived accounts for that insincere writing which is found in nearly all
novels, and in all of those she-papers which fatten upon their credulity.
Reading, then, becomes a vapid and frivolous amusement for dazing
the mind, and a book no better than a lap-dog.
Nor does art thrive any better than literature in this atmosphere
of feminism. Art has to do with the beauty of utility, of truth. A
woman learns by instinct, possibly by experience, that personal
beauty does not imply morality, and as it is with her own personality
she is most concerned, a secret distrust in all beauty, even the beauty
of art, is instilled into her mind. Accordingly the pictures which are
painted to please her must have a superficial prettiness, and the
houses which are erected for her use will best serve her purpose if,
instead of simplicity, they display a decorated cosiness and 'have
sufficient cupboards for the accommodation of her cast-off finery.
The superfluous top-hamper of civilisation, which makes living
difficult for the rich and impossible for the poor, continues to burden
humanity because women will have it so. A world of iniquity is
created out of their desire for change. It is not love of beauty which
suddenly reveals to a woman that last year's adornment is hideous,
but the desire to change one form of ugliness for another. If she
possessed that sense of beauty which comes from sincerity, and that
in turn from freedom, she would once and for all agree upon some
practice of adornment combined with utility, which would have a
reasonable degree of permanency, rather than submit to the tyranny
of an organized band of mercenaries, who exist for the purpose of
exploiting her femininity. This passion in women for splendid
apparel arises from their suspicion that they are not in reality beautiful,
but have only been told so by men whose senses they suspect are
dulled by passion.
The value of the exercise of the suffrage by a woman is that it will
serve to emancipate her from herself in so far as it emancipates her
from men. In the present state of affairs, which is based on the Orien-
tal conception that a woman is a chattel, a private possession, born to
serve and be dependent upon man, she has no complete existence in
herself. She obtains the sense of full existence only through her
husband and children, just as the Mussulman woman attains to the
chief desire of her heart if she is chosen to give a son to the Pattisah.
She stands ready to be made wife or mother, that she may acquire
9514k ANDREW MACPHAIL
that gift; and her love is the mental sense of satisfaction that she is
about to be redeemed.
Looked at narrowly, this attempt on the part of women to emanci-
pate themselves would appear to be nothing more than the expression
of a desire to enlarge the range of their caprice, for which not even
marriage, the old and sovereign remedy, is any longer efficacious. In
reality the reason lies much deeper. It is a blind striving for the pure
air of freedom, for escape from a bondage in which only the qualities
of the servile have had room for development. Until women cease
to believe the pretty lies which men tell them, that they are only a
little lower than the angels, and discover the real bondage, their own
nature, from which they must emancipate themselves, they will not
proceed with any degree of seriousness. They will not convince the
world until they themselves are convinced. Analysis they consider
detraction, and fly from investigation in wild alarm. Upon this
subject there is a considerable body of information in the writings of
satirists, dramatists, and theologians, ancient and modern; but it is
decried as slander, whether uttered by St. Paul, Origen, Clement of
Alexandria, or Otto Weininger.
This violent effort to attain to freedom is bound to be associated
with a form of disorderliness which the common mind describes as
hysterical. All disorder in itself is bad. It is intolerable only when it
is meaningless. It is decried because it is misunderstood. Any con-
sideration of the mind of the suffragette would be quite inadequate
without some mention of those complex manifestations which are
known as hysteria. Of this too I shall offer an explanation in support
of my argument. It is a sign of the striving after a higher morality,
of an attempt to ((convert nothing into something,)) to put on a new
nature, to acquire personality, distinction, character, and mind. Up
to a certain point the woman accepts her femininity and all that is
implied thereby with unquestioning obedience, taking it at its mascu-
line value. In the absence of an external controlling influence there
comes a divine discontent with that negative condition of existence,
and she becomes imbued with moral ideas which are foreign to her
normal mind and opposed to her real nature. In reality she puts on a
superficial, sham self, and yet is incapable of perceiving the spurious-
ness of it. This new personality shows itself in self-confidence,
independence, assertiveness, a punctilious sincerity, and painful
candor in speech and action. This artificial imitation of the masculine
morality with which she has overlaid her femininity, at the touch of
some rough reality flies in pieces, and the conflict between her real
ANDREW MACPHAIL 95141
nature and this unnatural self produces those phenomena which are
known as hysteria. It is a contest between what she knows to be
true and what she suspects is false.
A woman in this condition is a piteous and degrading spectacle,
exposing her femininity naked yet unashamed, and revealing the
whole record of development in its continuous progress through those
stages which we designate as plant, beast, and savage life. To the
psychologist the phenomenon is full of interest and fruitful of instruc-
tion, but it recalls the fearful image conjured up by the words :
((And Satan yawning on his brazen seat,
Toys with the screaming thing his fiends have flayed.))
This demand for the suffrage is in reality an attempt to arrive at a
higher morality, to attain to consideration in virtue of goodness and
not of charm. The real opponents are the women who master men
by that easy device, and all men who find it so comfortable to succumb,
because they find it so alluring. There is an active and a passive
conspiracy working to the same end that women shall not be free.
There is no creature in the world who is so irritating to the woman who
is merely good as the woman who is merely charming, and therefore
in a condition of negative morality. The most efficient means to
destroy the force of any charm is to investigate its origin, a task to
which those who are striving for emancipation would do well to apply
themselves. It is not enough that they have relinquished this quality
in themselves. They can succeed only when they have removed its
possession from others.
The struggle for freedom from their own nature will not be easy.
The habits acquired during countless ages are all but ineradicable;
yet progress may appear in the exchange of one bondage for another.
One would say that the noble army of martyrs who have attacked the
inner sanctuary of the British Constitution had emancipated them-
selves from every restraint and destroyed the last attraction between
themselves and living men; and yet their next act was to bind them-
selves with physical chains to those stone images of male humanity
which stand in the Hall of St. Stephen. This thing is an allegory.
I am not blind to certain perils which lie in the way; but I think
they have been exaggerated and will tend to cure themselves. Voting
implies being voted for, and men are so fatuous that they will vote for
the woman who has a pleasing personality and skill in the adornment
of her person, rather than for a candidate of commanding intellect
9514] ANDREW MACPHAIL
and skill in the public use of her tongue. Then will arise another
noble band of martyrs after the discovery of how little men's votes for
women are influenced by reason and how much by charm. They
will declare that man shall no longer have the opportunity of being
silly, and they will banish their charming sisters from public life.
There is nothing which a man who is left to himself desires so
ardently as he desires the feminine. To attain to it he will commit
the last infamy, descending to the level of the beast from which he has
arisen, even whilst he despises himself for the surrender of that morality
which he has so laboriously acquired. This interdependence of good
and evil constitutes the riddle of the universe ; and yet it is out of this
conflict between the lower and the higher that our civilization, as we
know it, has arisen. The woman exercises her power by means of a
charm, by which she allures and then captivates. The ((fountain))
of this charm is love, and its essence ((pleasant to the eyes)) like that
fruit which first attracted the Universal Dame herself.
If the power of this charm were unchecked, it would reabsorb the
masculine idea into the feminine, so earnestly is it desired by men.
It is the business of women to see to it that this charm is exercised
with due restraint. Every child knows that a charm is broken by
speech, and if the injunction taceat mulier were observed, the masculine
would be delivered into an eternal bondage. If all women at all times
behaved themselves in accordance with the principles of the eternal
feminine, which are those of appearance and beauty, men would
become so enamored of it that they would mold their lives by it and
eventually transform themselves into women.
Compare the power of the woman who sits, and looks, and exercises
her charm in silence and mystery with her who says an inane thing
three times over with the intention of being interesting and vivacious,
or a foolish thing rather than remain silent; with her who votes and
speaks in the councils, even though she speak with the tongue of a
man and reveal all knowledge; with her who brawls in public places,
and even gives her body to the Holloway gaol, and we shall discover
the essential reason why women should be encouraged to do these
things, namely, that they shall be induced to tell the truth about
themselves and so liberate men in some degree from the power of their
charm, that reason may govern life.
The women who are not satisfied with the status of wife and
mother and are striving to educate themselves into fitting ((com-
panions)) for their husbands and sons by attending lectures and
reading magazines are unaware of the power of this charm, and are
ANDREW MACPHAIL 9514k
suffering from an exaggerated notion of the kind of companionship
for which men are capable. They magnify the masculine intelligence
unduly. What a piece of work is a man! they exclaim in rhapsody,
how noble in reason, how infinite in faculty, in form and moving how
express and admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension
how like a god, the beauty of the world ! In reality this ((paragon of
animals)) desires a woman more ardently than he desires a talking
book, agreeing, if he is sensible, with that eminent divine, John Calvin,
when he declared, ((The only beauty that can please my heart is one
that is gentle, chaste, modest, economical, patient, and, finally, careful
of her husband's health.))
The real grievance from which women suffer is that their authority
and claim to consideration is based upon a principle which is non-
ethical and of no inherent value in their eyes. Their way of escape
lies in convincing men that they also should arrive at a like estimate of
its fallibility. This can best be done by setting up truth in opposition
to falsehood, which is the most subtle method of iconoclasm, the most
powerful for breaking down an eidolon in which the affections are
inordinately fixed, since the deity and the devotee can then make
mutual inferences. To keep the matter scientific and impersonal,
they might begin by an investigation into the nature of the trog-
lodytic woman, disclosing her characteristics, assigning them to
their proper cause, and estimating what proportion still remains.
The opinion requires corroboration that women have been more
successful than men in purging away those qualities which were in-
herent in the primitive nature. Indeed to the most careful observer
there is some evidence that jealousy has not entirely given way to
justice, heartlessness to charity, pride to dignity, shamelessness to
modesty, selfishness to sympathy, and the desire of provoking com-
passion to a self-reliant fortitude.
This investigation might properly be undertaken by the various
Councils of Women, even at the risk of excluding those subjects upon
which they possess no especial information, such as the effect of
narcotics and intoxicants upon the masculine frame. A frank pro-
nouncement from this high quarter would be free from the taunt that
it was merely slander, diatribe, or vituperation. To make the inquiry
sufficiently extensive, it might be well to appoint a committee of men
to prepare an agendum for the meeting, a labor in which I would
willingly bear a part, having a desire for specific information upon
certain points, namely: why up to a certain age a younger sister
dislikes the elder, and between certain ages a mother is averse to her
95141- ANDREW MACPHAIL
daughter; why the law of modesty in apparel is not constant at nine
o'clock in the evening and nine o'clock in the morning; why it is
painful for a woman to witness another advancing in social status;
why female beauty and an adornment which heightens it does not
excite an emotion of universal pleasure; why women make good
nurses, if it is not because they are lacking in sympathy.
For women, then, there are two lines of conduct open, and only
two. Either they must remain within the cave, as ((sisters to the
flowers,)) in an environment suitable for the development of such
qualities as may be developed from the essentially feminine nature, an
easy docility, a pleasurable obedience, meekness, forbearance, long-
suffering, patience, silence; as objects upon which men may lavish
protection, kindness, benevolence, affection, and so stimulate their
own masculine morality, and redeem themselves in virtue of the love
which is created thereby: or they must aspire to a perfect freedom;
casting aside the curb of sex and freeing themselves from the tyranny
of kith and kin, they must come out into the world and remain out in
the full glare of the sun, ruthlessly exposing their nature to the rough
environment whereby its imperfections will be scourged and chastened
away. Possibly that nature might perish in the process before a new
one was created, and in any event it might be nothing more than a
close approximation to the male.
There is no middle station, half in and half out, exposing the evil
and doing nothing for its amendment. This tentative standing-
ground merely permits of a sudden release of the nature of the
primitive woman in all its nakedness unchecked from within and
uncontrolled from without. The spectacle is so revolting, I fear, that
most women would turn back with grief and hatred of it to their old
rule, rather than strive with a full purpose and endeavor after a new
obedience. That is the essential difficulty with which those women
have to contend, who would lead their sisters out of bondage. Their
real enemies are of their own household, who hate to see this revelation
that women make of themselves, which affords to vulgar satirists
congenial exercise of their irony and scoff, for the torment or amuse-
ment of those who, like themselves, by continually regarding humanity
as it is, have developed a capacity for analysis at the expense of a
certain dryness and hardness of heart.
These satirists smile and whisper in our ear that the emancipation
of women is intended only to enlarge the bounds of their caprice;
that their performance is of no immediate interest to the man, and
only of very remote benefit to the woman; that, when he grows tired
ANDREW MACPHAIL 9514 in
of the farce, he will cast her out of the cave and leave her to her own
device as he was left in the day of his creation. From this they con-
clude that a race which allows itself to be brought to such an impasse
is not worth reproducing, and we cannot blame them too severely.
It is on account of their perception of this fact that the women of
primitive communities deal faithfully with their unruly sisters lest a
worse thing befall themselves. There is a choice between the good and
the best as there is between the evil and the good; and women must
find in freedom compensation for having cast out the imputed sacred-
ness from their lives; and, in watching the gyrations of their souls,
some recompense for that calm leisure in which they were wont to
dream.
This then is the end of the argument in favor of the suffragette,
which is developed out of her own psychology. Women have ob-
tained their places in the' world because they are desired by men on
grounds which are not of the highest ethical quality; but these are the
only grounds upon which men will consent to endure the burden of
carrying on a society, about whose invention they were not consulted.
We are now — men and women, not as opponents but as companions
in a misery which we should do our best to assuage by mutual help — -
face to face with the real problem: Shall we allow the evil to endure,
or even suffer the good to remain as the enemy of the best, saying
with the sluggard, a little more sleep, a little more slumber; or shall we
strive after the higher morality, even losing our life that we may save
it?
It is no bar to the argument that it faces the extinction of the
species to which we belong. In a question of morality consequences
do not count. We did not create ourselves. The responsibility of
ceasing to exist does not rest upon us. It is in reality a question of
conduct, and upon that we can always get information if we inquire
of Him whose genius for right living was such that a large proportion
of mankind have agreed upon Him as the chief exemplar and pat-
tern of pure right eousness. The problem presented itself to Him. He
answered it in specific terms. Three times and in separate places are
the question and answer recorded in words which are almost identical :
What good thing shall I do that I may inherit eternal life; what lack I
yet? What shall I do that I may inherit eternal life? What shall I
do to inherit eternal life? To convince us that the answer is not pne
of special application, the question is repeated thrice in general terms
and so recorded: Who then can be saved? Who then can be saved?
Who then can be saved? The answer invariably is that those who t
95I4H ANDREW MACPHAIL
would inherit everlasting life must first forsake certain things which
are specifically set forth, and the enumeration ends in all cases with
((woman.)) One is quite prepared to be told that Paul was ill-informed
or ill-natured, when he declared that even the intimacy with a woman
which is implied by marriage is a drag in the attempt after a higher
life, and yet protest, in face of that exegetic feat which attributes the
insertion of the fatal word to a monkish hand, that Jesus really meant
something when He said that she must be forsaken.
All things are working toward this divine end by making it easy
to forsake the woman. As that kind of intelligence is developed by
higher education, as it is called with a certain degree of assumption,
which consists in an increased capacity for the recollection of unrelated
statements, a measure of value is created which men can understand.
The}7" are dealing in their own currency. Pedantry they have already
witnessed, and the instructed woman is even less adorable than a
professor. An imitation of the garb which is customary in the male
at once suggests the form which it is intended to conceal and a com-
parison with the standards of abstract beauty. When women place
themselves in situations for which they, are not qualified by their
nature to fill with obvious advantage they become a ridiculous carica-
ture of themselves. The mind of the suffragette appears to possess a
peculiar aptitude for that absurdity which makes a man impatient and
finally contemptuous of all femininity, and resolute to adhere to his
own ideal. A woman may be foolish and yet be charming. She
emancipates herself when she becomes an object of aversion.
95^5
EMERICH MADACH
(1823-1864)
BY GEORGE ALEXANDER KOHUT
[UNGARY is a favorite land of the Muses. Romance, ardent
sentiment, and a certain mystic fervor give to her poetry an
exquisite charm. A thrill of fire and passion vibrates in her
songs and melodies. Her folk-lore and ancient traditions teem with
rich Oriental imagery and beautiful conceptions. These ancient gems
have in the present century received a fresh setting at the hands of
the literary artists, who have borne witness
to the unabated vigor of this people <( barbar-
ously grand. » Of the modern school, Petofi
the lyric poet and Madach the dramatic are
the most popular poets of Hungary.
Madach Imre (for the family name comes
first in Hungarian) was born in Also Sztre-
gova, Hungary, January 2ist, 1823; and died
in his native town October 5th, 1864. Of
his life little need be told. He was notary,
orator, and journalist; at an early age he
wrote a number of essays on natural science,
archaeology, and aesthetics. He wrote lyric
as well as dramatic poetry; .but it is chiefly
through his two dramatic poems, < Moses >
and <The Tragedy of Man,> written almost simultaneously in 1860,
that he is best known. An edition of his collected writings, in three
volumes, was issued by Paul Gyulai in Budapest, 1880. His master-
piece, <The Tragedy of Man,> has been rendered into German no less
than five times; the latest version, by Julius Lechner von der Lech
(Leipzig, 1888, with a preface by Maurice Jokai), being the most feli-
citous. Alexander Fischer gave a splendid re'sumt of this powerful
drama in Sacher-Masoch's periodical, Auf der Hohe (Vol. xvi., 1885),
— the only analysis of it in any language except Hungarian. Though
it is too philosophical and contemplative in character, and not in-
tended for the stage, its first production, which took place in Septem-
ber 1883, created an immense sensation both in Austria and Hungary.
To English readers, Madach is a total stranger. His name is
scarcely ever found in -any encyclopaedia or biographical dictionary;
EMERICH MADACH
95 1<> EMERICH MADACH
and strangely enough, no attempt has been thus far made to give
even a selection from this latter-day Milton of Hungary.
It is not here intended to explain the origin and inner development
of this fascinating jlrama, nor to draw elaborate parallels between
its author and his predecessors in other lands. Such a comparative
critical study would be interesting as showing the spiritual kinship
between master minds, centuries distant from one another, whose
sympathies are in direct touch with our own ideals and life problems.
Madach will plead his own cause effectively enough. To him, how-
ever, who in reading the ( Tragedy of Man * involuntarily makes such
comparisons, and might be led unjustly to question the author's ori-
ginality, the graceful adage Grosse Geister treffen sick (Great minds
meetj will serve as an answer. He should rather say, with true
artistic estimate, that the shading in the one landscape of a higher
life helps to set off the vivid and brilliant coloring in the other; so
that the whole, viewed side by side, presents a series of wondrous
harmonies. Madach imbibed, no doubt, from foreign sources. He
was familiar with c Paradise Lost,* and with the now obsolete but
once much-lauded epic, < La Semaine > (The Week), of Milton's French
predecessor Du Bartas; Alfieri's tramelogedia, 'Abele,* and Gesner's
< Death of Abel,* as well as Byron's ( Mystery of Cain,* may also have
come to his notice ; Goethe's ( Faust * appears more than once, and may
be recognized in any incognito. Yet we cannot say with certainty
that any one of these masterpieces influenced his own work, any more
than Milton inspired the great German bard. We might as justly
tax him with drawing upon Hebrew tradition for the entire plot of
his drama, beginning with the fourth scene; for strangely enough,
Adam's expe'riences with his mentor and Nemesis, Lucifer, are fore-
shadowed in the very same manner in a quaint legend of the Jewish
Rabbis, told nearly twenty centuries ago. The comparative study
of literature will reveal other facts equally amazing. It is of course
self-evident that the morbid pessimism which rings its vague alarms
throughout the book is that of Ecclesiastes, whose vanitas vanitatum
is the key to his doleful plaint.
ttl applied my heart to seek and to search out by wisdom concerning all
that is done under heaven: it is a sore travail that God hath given to the
sons of men to be exercised therewith. I have seen all the works that are
done under the sun ; and behold, all is vanity and a striving after wind. . . .
And I applied my heart to know wisdom, and to know madness and folly; I
perceived that this also was a striving after wind. For in much wisdom is
much grief; and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow. w (Eccl. i.
12-18.)
This is the leading theme, and Lessing's soulful simile of the
ideal, the grand morale: — (<If God held trutn^in his right hand," says
he, <( and in his left the mere striving after truth, bidding me choose
EMERICH MADACH
between the two, I would reverently bow to his left and say, (Give
but the impulse ; truth is for thee alone ! ) }>
Thus, after traversing many lands the world over; after plunging
Into every pleasure and being steeped in every vice; after passions
human and divine have had their sway over his spirit, — Adam con-
cedes to Lucifer that the world of ideals is illusory, existing only in
fancy, thriving but in our own souls, nourished by sentiment, and
supersensitive to the touch of grosser things. And yet the echo
which answers his sad pleadings, as he cries out disheartened —
<( O sacred poetry, hast thou then
Quite forsaken this prosy world of our»? }>
is a wholly unexpected one in the grand finale. It teaches the
doctrine of eternal hope, as the great Hebrew pessimist Koheleth
summed it up, when only the Hellenic intellect reigned supreme and
the Hellenic heart was cold: —
(< I have decreed, O man — strive ye and trust P*
The ideal conquers in the end, should life and love not fail. Poetry
and sentiment transform even this valley of the shadow of death into
a Paradise regained. It is a song of the ideals in which salvation
lies; and the words of the Lord with which the poem closes are,
(< Struggle and trust. }>
FROM THE < TRAGEDY OF MAN>
SEVENTH SCENE
Scene: An open square in Constantinople. A few citizens lounging about.
In the centre the palace of the Patriarch; to the right a cloister; to the
left a grove. Adam as Tancred, in the prime of life, is seen advan-
cing at the head of returning Crusaders, accompanied by other knights, •
with colors flying and drums beating; Lucifer as his armor-bearer.
Evening, then night.
FIRST CITIZEN — Behold, there comes another horde of heathen;
Oh, flee and double-bar the doors, lest they
Again the whim to plunder feel!
Second Citizen — Hide ye the women: but too well
Knows this rebel the joys of the seraglio.
EMERICH MADACH
First Citizen — And our wives the rights of the conqueror.
Adam — Hold ! hold ! why scatter in such haste ?
Do ye not see the holy sign aloft
That makes us brothers in humanity
And companions to one goal ? —
We bore the light of our faith, the law
Of love, into Asia's wilds,
That the savage millions there
Where our Savior's cradle stood •
Might share sweet salvation's boon.
Kjiow ye not this brotherly love ?
First Citizen — Full many a time through honeyed words
Swift harm befell our homes.
[They disperse.}
Adam [to the knights} —
Behold, this is the accursed result
When scheming vagabonds
The sacred symbol flaunt,
And flattering the passions, of the mob,
Presume unasked to lead. —
Fellow knights! Until our swords
To honor fair, to praise of God,
To women's guard, to bravery,
Be sanctified, — are we in duty bound
This demon foul in constant check to hold,
That in spite of godless inclination,
He great and noble deeds may do.
Lucifer — That sounds well. But, Tancred, what if the people
Do but spurn thy leadership ?
Adam — Where spirit is, is also victory.
I'll crush them to the earth!
Lucifer — And should spirit with them alike abide,
Wilt thou descend to them ?
Adam — . Why descend?
Is it not nobler to lift them up to me ?
To yield for lack of fighters
The foremost place in battle, were
As unworthy as to reject a comrade
In envy of his share of victory.
Lucifer — Alack! how the grand idea has come to naught
For which the martyrs of the circus fought!
Is this the freedom of equality ?
A wondrous brotherhood were that!
EMERICH MADACH 9519
Adam — Oh, cease thy scorn! Think not that I misprize
Christianity's exalted precepts.
My being yearns for them alone!
Whoever hath the spark divine may strive;
And him who upward toils to us
With joy we surely will receive.
A sword-cut lifts him to our ranks.
But guard we must our ranks with jealous eye
Against the still fermenting chaos here.
Would that our time were already near!
For only then can we be quite redeemed
When every barrier falls — when all is pure.
And were he who set this universe in motion
Not himself the great and mighty God,
I must needs doubt the dawn of such a day.
Ye have seen, O friends, how we have been received:
Orphaned amidst the tumult of the town,
Naught now remains save in yonder grove
A tent to pitch, as we were wont among the infidels,
Till better times shall come. Go; I follow soon.
Every knight stands sponsor for his men.
[The Crusaders pitch their tent.}
Lucifer — What a pity that thy spirit's lofty flight
Even now begets such sorry fruit;
Red without, within already rotten!
Adam — Stop !
Hast thou no longer faith in lofty thought?
Lucifer — What boots it thee if I believe,
When thine own race doth doubt ?
This knighthood which thou hast placed
As lighthouse amid ocean's waves,
Will yet die out, or half collapse,
And make the sailor's course even more fearful
Than before, when no light shone before his way.
What lives to-day and blessing works,
Dies with time; the spirit takes wing
And the carcass but remains, to breathe
Murderous miasmas into the fresher life
Which round him buds. Behold, thus
Survive from bygone times our old ideals.
Adam — Until our ranks dissolve, its sacred teachings
Will have had effect upon the public mind.
I fear no danger then.
9520
EMERICH MADACH
Lucifer — The holy teachings! They are your curse indeed,
When ye approach them unawares,
For ye turn, sharpen, split, and smooth
Them o'er so long, till they your phantoms
Or your chains become.
And though reason cannot grasp exact ideas,
Yet ye presumptuous men do always seek
To forge them — to your harm.
Look thou upon this sword! It may by a hair's-breadth
Longer be or shorter, and yet remains the same
In substance. The door is opened thus to endless specula-
tion;
For where is there limit pre-imposed?
'Tis true your feelings soon perceive the right
When change in greater things sets in. —
But why speak and myself exert ? Speech
Is wearisome. Turn thou, survey the field thyself.
Adam — Friends, my troops are tired and shelter crave.
In the Capital of Christendom they will
Perchance not crave in vain.,
Third Citizen —
The question is, whether as heretics
Ye're not worse than infidels! . . .
Adam — I stand aghast! But see — what prince
Approaches from afar, so haughtily defiant?
Lucifer — The Patriarch — successor to the Apostles.
Adam — And this barefoot, dirty mob
Which follows with malicious joy
In the captive's wake,
Feigning humility ?
Lucifer — They are monks, Christian cynics.
Adam — I saw not such among my native hills.
Lucifer — You'll see them yet. Slowly, slowly
Spreads the curse of leprosy;
But beware how you dare insult
This people, so absolute in virtue and
Hence so hard to reconcile.
Adam — What virtue could adorn such folk as this ?
Lucifer — Their worth is abnegation, poverty,
As practiced first by the Master on the Cross.
Adam — He saved a world by such humility;
While these cowards, like rebels,
Do but blaspheme tne name of God,
In that they despise his gift.
EMERICH MADACH 95 2 T
Who 'gainst gnats the weapons same would draw
That in the bear hunt he is wont to use
Is a fool.
Lucifer — But if they in pious zeal, perchance,
Mistake the gnats for monstrous bears,
Have they then not the right to drive
To the very gates of hell
Those who life enjoy ? . . .
Adam {facing the Patriarch} —
Father, we're battling for the Holy Grave,
And wearied from the way which we have come,
To rest within these walls we are denied.
Thou hast power here : help thou our cause.
Patriarch —
My son, I have just now no time for petty things.
God's glory and my people's weal
Call higher aims now forth. I must away
To judge the heretics; who, like poisonous weeds,
Do grow and multiply, and whom hell
With force renewed upon us throws,
Even though we constant try with fire and sword
To root them out.
But if indeed ye be true Christian knights,
Why seek the Moor so far remote ?
Here lurks a yet more dangerous- foe.
Scale ye their walls, level them to the ground,
And spare ye neither woman, child, nor hoary head.
Adam — The innocent! O father, this cannot be thy wish!
Patriarch —
Innocent is the serpent, too, while yet of tender growth
Or after its fangs are shed.
Yet sparest thou the snake ?
Adam — It must, in faith, have been a grievous sin
Which could such wrath from Christian love evoke.
Patriarch —
O my son! not he shows love who feeds the flesh,
But he who leadeth back the erring soul,
At point of sword, — or e'en through leaping flames
If needs must be,- to Him who said:
Not peace but war do I proclaim !
That wicked sect interprets false
The mystic Trinity. . . .
Monks — Death upon them all!
There burns the funeral pile.
EMERICH MADACH
Adam — My friend, give up the iota, pray:
Your inspired valor in fighting
For the Savior's grave will be
More fitting sacrifice than this.
An Old Heretic—
Satan, tempt us not! We'll bleed
For our true faith where God ordains.
One of the Monks —
Ha, renegade ! thou boastest of true faith ? . .
Patriarch —
Too long have we tarried here: away with them
To the funeral pyre, in honor of God!
The Old Heretic—
In honor of God ? Thou spakest well, O knave !
In honor of God are we indeed your prey.
Ye are strong, and can enforce your will
As ye may please. But whether ye have acted rightly
Heaven alone will judge. Even now is weighed,
At every hour, your vile career of crime.
New champions shall from our blood arise;
The idea lives triumphant on; and coming centuries
Shall the light reflect of flames that blaze to-day.
Friends, go we to our glorious martyrdom!
The Heretics {chanting in chorus} —
My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me ?
Why art thou so far from helping me
And from the words of my roaring ?
O my God, I cry in the daytime, but thou
Hearest not; and in the night season,
And am not silent. But thou art holy!
(Psalm xxii.)
Monks [breaking in] —
Plead my cause, O Lord, with them that strive with me;
Fight against them that fight against me;
Take hold of shield and buckler and stand up for mine help;
Draw out also the spear, and stop the way
Against them that persecute me.
(Psalm xxxv.)
[In the interim the Patriarch and the procession go by. The monks with
tracts mingle among the Crusaders}
Lucifer — Why silent thus and horrified?
Dost hold this to be a tragedy?
Consider it a comedy, and 'twill make thee laugh.
EMERICH MADACH
9523
Adam — Nay, spare thy banter now! Can one
For a mere iota go firmly thus to death?
What then is the lofty and sublime?
Lucifer — • That which to others may seem droll.
Only a hair divides these two ideas;
A voice in the heart alone may judge betwixt them,
And the mysterious judge is sympathy,
Which, blindly, at one time deifies,
Then with brutal scorn condemns to death.
Adam — Why must my eyes be witness of these varied sins?
The subtleties of proud science, and of sophistry!
That deadly poison wondrously so sipped
From the sweetest, gayest, freshest flowers?
I knew this flower once in the budding time
Of our oppressed faith. Where is the wanton hand
That ruthlessly destroyed it?
Lucifer — The wanton hand is victory,
Which wide-spread once, a thousand wishes wakes,
Danger allies, and martyrs makes,
And strength endues;
'Tis there among the heretics.
Adam — Verily, I'd cast away my sword and turn me
To my northern home, where, in the glades
Of the shadowy woods primeval,
Stern manliness, true artlessness yet dwell,
And the rancor of this smooth-tongued age defy.
I would return but for a voice that lisps
The constant message in my ears,
That I alone am called to re-create this world.
Lucifer— Love's labor lost; for unaided thou canst
Ne'er prevail against the ruling spirit of the age.
The course of time is a mighty stream, —
It buries thee or bears thee;
Nor canst thou hope to guide it,
But only swim adrift the tide.
Who in history immortal shine,
And wield uncommon power,
Knew well the time in which they lived,
Yet did not themselves the thought create.
Not because the cock crows does day dawn,
But the cock crows with the dawn of day;
Yonder those who, fettered, fly to face
The terrors of a death of martyrdom,
See scarce a step ahead.
EMERICH MADACH
The thought but just conceived dawns in their midst
In the throes of death they hail so joyfully,—
The thought which by a care-free posterity
Will be inhaled with the air they breathe.
But leave thou this theme! Glance toward thy tent:
What unclean monks stroll about there?
What trade they drive, what speeches make
And gestures wild, insane ?
Let's nearer draw, and hearken !
A Monk in the centre of a crowd of Crusaders —
Buy ye, brave warriors; neglect ye not
This manual of penance:
'Twill clear all doubt of conscience;
You'll learn therein much weighty mystery:
How many years in hell will burn*
Each murderer, thief, and ravisher,
And he who doth our doctrines spurn;
It tells ye what the rich may buy
For a score or more of solidi;
And the poor for three alone
May swift obtain salvation's boon;
Whilst even he, to be quite fair,
Who such a sum cannot well spare,
May for a thousand lashes, mind,
Salvation bring upon his kind.
Buy ye, buy ye, this precious book!
The Crusaders —
Here, father, here, give us a copy too!
Adam — Infamous trader, and still more wicked patrons,
Draw ye the sword and end this foul traffic!
Lucifer {confused} —
I beg your pardon. This monk has long my partner been.
Not so deeply do I this world despise;
When praise of God soared high,
My homage also rose aloft,
Whilst thine remained becalmed. . . ' .
Adam — Help me, O Lucifer! Away, away from here!
Lead back my future into past,
That I my fate no longer see,
Nor view a fruitless strife. Pray let me think
If wisdom is to thwart my destiny!
Lucifer — Awake then, Adam, — thy dream is o'er.
EMERICH MADACH
FIFTEENTH SCENE
Scene: A garden of palms. Adam, young again, enters from his bower;
still half asleep, he looks about in astonishment. Lucifer stands in
the middle of the scene. It is a radiant day.
ADAM — Ye weird scenes and haggard forms,
How have ye left me lone!
Joys and smiles greet now my path,
As once of yore before my heart was broken.
Lucifer — O boastful man, is it thy wish, perchance,
That Nature for thy sake her law should change, —
A star appoint to mark thy loss,
Or shake the earth because a worm has died?
Adam — Have I dreamed, or am I dreaming still?
And is our life aught but a dream at last
Which makes an inanimate mass to live
But for a moment, then lets it fade forever?
Oh why, why this brief glimpse of consciousness,
Only to view the terrors of annihilation ?
Lucifer — Thou mournest ? Only cowards bend
Their necks to yoke, and unresisting stand
When yet the blow may be averted.
But unmurmuring doth the strong man
Decipher the mystic runes eternal
Of his destiny, caring but to know
If he himself can thrive beneath their doom.
The might of Fate controls the world's great course;
Thou art but a tool and blindly onward driven.
Adam — Nay, nay, thou liest! for the will of man is free;
That at least I've well deserved,
And for it have resigned my Paradise!
My phantom dreams have taught me much;
Full many a madness have I left behind,
And now 'tis mine to choose another path.
Lucifer — Ay, if forgetting and eternal hope
Were not to destiny so closely wed.
The one doth heal thy bleeding wounds,
The other closely screens abysmal depths,
And gives new courage, saying, —
Rash hundreds found a grave therein,
Thou shalt be the first safely to leap it o'er.
Hast thou not, scholar, full oft beheld
The many freaks and whims among
EMERICH MADACH
The parasites that brood and breed
In cats and owls only,
But must pass in mice their earliest stage
Of slow development?
Not just the one or other mouse
Predestined is the claw to feel
Of cat or owl; who cautious is
May even both avoid, and keep
In ripe old age his nest and house.
A relentless hand doth yet provide
Just such a number for his foes
As its presence here on earth
Ages hence insures.
Nor is the human being bound,
And yet the race wears chains.
Zeal carries thee like a flood along:
To-day for this, for that to-morrow,
The funeral pyres will their victims claim,
And of scoffers there will be no lack;
While he who registers the count
Will be in wonder lost, that wanton fate
Should have maintained such rare consistency
In making, matching, marring,
In virtue, faith, and sin and death,
In suicide and lunacy.
Adam — Hold! An inspiration fires my brain;
I may then thee, Almighty God, defy.
Should fate but cry to life a thousand halts,
I'd laugh serene and die, should I so please.
Am I not lone and single in this world ?
Before me frowns that cliff, beneath whose base
Yawns the dark abysmal gulf.
One leap, the final scene, and I shall cry —
Farewell, the farce at last is ended!
[Adam approaches the cliff, as Eve appears.'}
Lucifer — Ended! What simple-minded phrases!
Is not each moment end and
Beginning too ? Alas ! and but for this
Hast thou surveyed millennial years to come ?
Eve — I pray thee, Adam, why didst steal off from me?
Thy last cold kiss still chills my heart;
And even now, sorrow or anger sits
Upon thy brow; I shrink from thee!
EMERICH MADACH 9537
Adam [going ori\ —
Why follow me ? Why dog my footsteps ?
The ruler of creation, man,
Has weightier things to do
Than waste in sportive love his days.
Woman understands not; is a burden only.
[Softening} —
Oh, why didst thou not longer slumber?
Far harder now the sacrifice will be
. That I for future ages offer must.
Eve — Shouldst hear me, lord, 'twill easier be:
What doubtful was, is now assured, —
The future.
Adam — How now?
Eve — The hope my lips thus fain would lisp
Will lift the cloud and clear thy brow.
Come then a little nearer, pray!
O Adam, hear: I am a mother.
Adam [sinking upon his knee} —
Thou hast conquered me, O Lord!
Behold, in the dust I lie.
Without thee as against thee I strive in vain;
Thou mayest raise me up or strike me down, —
I bare my heart and soul before thee.
God {appearing, surrounded by angels} —
Adam, rise, and be thou not cast down.
Behold, I take thee back to me,
Reconciled by my saving grace.
Lucifer [aside] —
Family scenes are not my specialty.
They may affect the heart,
But the mind shrinks from such monotony;
Methinks I'll slink away. [About to go.
God — Lucifer! I'll have a word with thee, — remain!
And thou, my son, confess what troubles thee.
Adam — Fearful images haunted me, O Lord,
And what was true therein I cannot tell;
Intrust to me, I beg, I supplicate,
The mystery of all my future state.
Is there naught else besides this narrow life
Which, becoming clarified like wine,
Thou mayest spill with every whim of thine,
And dust may drink it ?
Or didst thou mean the soul for higher things ?
95*3
EMERICH MADACH
Will further toil and forward stride my kind,
Still growing nobler, till we perfection find
Near thine almighty Throne ?
Or drudge to death like some blind treadmill-horse
Without the hope of ever changing course ?
Doth noble striving meet with just reward,
When he who for ideals gives his blood
Is mocked at by a soulless throng ?
Enlighten me; grateful will I bear my lot:
I can but win by such exchange,
For this suspense is hell.
God — Seek not to solve the mystery
Which Godly grace and sense benign
Hath screened from human sight.
If thou couldst see that transient is
The soul's sojourn upon this world,
And that it upward soars
To life unending, in the great beyond, —
Sorrow would no virtue be.
If dust absorbed thy soul alike,
What would spur thee on to thought?
Who would prompt thee to resign
Thy grosser joys for virtue fine ?
Whilst now, though burdened with life,
Thy future beckons from afar,
. Shimmering through the clouds
And lifting thee to higher spheres.
And should, at times, this pride thy heart inflame,
Thy span of life will soon control thy pace,
And nobleness and virtue reign supreme.
Lucifer \laughing derisively} —
Verily, glory floods the paths you tread,
Since greatness, virtue, are to lead thee on.
Two words which only pass in. blessed deed
When superstition, ignorance, and prejudice
Keep constant guard and company. —
Why did I ever seek to work out great ideas
Through man, of dust and sunbeams formed,
So dwarfed in knowledge, in blind error so gigantic ?
Adam — Cease thy scorn, O Lucifer! cease thy scorn!
I saw full well thy wisdom's edifice,
Wherein my heart felt only chilled;
But, gracious God, who shall sustain me now
And lead me onward in the paths of right,
EMERICH MADACH
Since thou didst withdraw the hand that guided me,
Before I tasted fruit of idle knowledge ?
God — Strong is thine arm, full thy heart of lofty thoughts;
The field is boundless where thou seed shouldst sow.
Give thou but heed! A voice shall ceaseless call thee back.
Or constant speed thee on:
Follow its lead. And if at times
This heavenly sound be hushed in midst the whirl
Of thine eventful years, the purer soul
Of woman, unselfish, pure, and gentle,
Will surely hear it, and thrilled by woman's love,
Thy soul shall soar in Poetry and Song!
And by thy side she loyally will watch,
Mounted on these cherubim,
In sorrow pale or rosy joy,
A cheering, soothing genius.
Thou too, O Lucifer, a link but art
In my wide universe; so labor on!
Thy frosty knowledge and thy mad denial
Will cause, like yeast, the mind to effervesce.
E'en though it turns him from the beaten track,
It matters not. He'll soon return;
But endless shall thy penance be,
Since thou art ever doomed to see
How beauty buds and virtue sprouts
From the seed thou wouldst have spoiled.
Chorus of Angels
Choice between the good and evil,
Wondrous thought, sublime decision!
Still to know that thou art shielded
By a gracious God's provision.
For the right, then, be thou steadfast,
Though thou labor without meed;
Thy reward shall be the knowledge
Thou hast done a noble deed.
Greatness grows in goodness only;
Shame will keep the good man just,
And the fear of shame uplifts him,
While the mean man crawls in dust.
But when treading paths exalted,
This blind error cherish not, —
9530 EMERICH MADACH
That the glory thou achievest
Adds to God's a single jot:
For he needs not thy assistance
To accomplish his designs;
Be thou thankful if he calls thee
And a task to thee assigns.
Eve — Praise be to God, I understand thife song.
Adam — I divine the message and submit to its decree.
Ah, could I only the distant end foresee!
God — I have ordained, O man, —
Struggle thou and trust!
Translated for <A Library of the World's Best Literature > by G. A. Kotnat
JAMES MADISON
JAMES MADISON
(1751-1836)
|HE writings of James Madison were designed to serve the
ends of practical politics. Yet, despite the absence of a lit-
erary motive, they possess qualities which entitle them to
a permanent place in American literature. Madison's papers in the
Federalist, for example, are models of political essay-writing.
James Madison was the son of a wealthy planter of Orange
County, Virginia, and was born at Port Con way, March i6th, 1751.
He was graduated at Princeton in 1772. Two years later, at the
age of twenty-three, he was appointed a member of the Committee
of Public Safety for Orange County; and thenceforward, .with a few
unimportant interruptions, took an active part in politics until 1817,
when, at the close of his second term as President of the United
States, he retired permanently from public life.
His first notable publication was a paper entitled <A Memorial
and Remonstrance, > addressed to the General Assembly of Virginia.
It appeared in 1785, and was directed against a bill providing for a
tax "for the support of teachers of the Christian religion, » the vote
on which in the Legislature he had with difficulty been able to post-
pone. Copies of the paper were distributed throughout the State, with
the result that in the next election religious freedom was made a test
question. In the session of the Legislature which followed the elec-
tion the obnoxious bill was defeated, and in place thereof was enacted
the bill establishing religious freedom offered by Jefferson seven years
before. The Religious Freedom Act disestablished the Episcopal
Church in Virginia, and abolished religious tests for public office.
Madison's chief work both as a constructive statesman and as a
publicist was done in connection with the Constitutional Convention
of 1787. The epithet <( Father of the Constitution, }) sometimes applied
to him, is not undeserved, inasmuch as he was the author of the
leading features of that instrument. In common with others, he
had for some time seen the impossibility of maintaining an effective
government under the Articles of Confederation. With the thorough-
ness characteristic of his nature, he had made a study of ancient and
modern confederacies, — including, as his notes show, the Lycian, the
Amphictyonic, the Achaean, the Helvetic, the Belgic, and the Ger-
man,— with a view to discovering the proper remedy for the defects
9532
JAMES MADISON
in the Articles of Confederation. Before the convention met, he laid
before his colleagues of the Virginia delegation the outlines of the
scheme of government that was presented to the convention as the
<( Virginia plan." .This plan was introduced at the beginning of
the convention by Edmund Randolph, who, by virtue of his office as
governor of Virginia, was regarded as the member most fit to speak
for the delegation; but its chief supporter in the debate which fol-
lowed was Madison. The fundamental defect of the government
created by the Articles of Confederation was that it operated on
States only, not upon individuals. The delegates to the Continental
Congress were envoys from sovereign States rather than members
of a legislative body. They might deliberate and advise, but had
no means of enforcing their decisions. Thus they were empowered
to determine the share of the expenses of the general government
which each State should pay, but were unable to coerce a delinquent
State. The Virginia plan contemplated a government essentially the
same as that created by the Constitution; with this difference, that it
provided for representation according to population, both in the upper
and in the lower house of the legislature. The hand of Madison is
also seen in some of the provisions of the Constitution which were
not contained in the Virginia plan. Thus, for instance, he was the
author of the famous compromise in accordance with which, for
purposes of direct taxation and of representation, five slaves were
counted as three persons.
During the convention Madison kept a journal of its debates, which
forms the chief authority for the deliberations of that historic body.
This journal, together with his notes on the proceedings of the Con-(
tinental Congress from November 1782 to February 1783, was pur-
chased by the government after his death; both have been published
by order of Congress under the title of <The Madison Papers. > It
may here be noted also that the remainder of his writings, including
his correspondence, speeches, etc., from 1769 to 1836, have been pub-
lished by the government in a separate work, entitled ( Writings of
James Madison. J
After the adjournment of the convention Madison devoted his
energies toward securing the ratification of the Constitution. He not
only successfully opposed the eloquence and prestige of Patrick Henry
and Richard Henry Lee in the Virginia ratifying convention, but also
wrote with Hamilton and Jay that series of essays, appearing origi-
nally in certain New York newspapers, which has been preserved in
book form under the title of <The Federalist'; and which, though
intended primarily to influence the action of the extremely doubtful
State of New York, served to reinforce the arguments of the advo-
cates of ratification in other States also.
JAMES MADISON
'The Federalist y is composed of eighty-five essays; of which, ac-
cording to the memorandum made by Madison, he wrote twenty-nine,
Hamilton fifty-one, and Jay five, — one or two being written jointly.
It discussed the utility of the proposed union, the inefficiency of the
existing Confederation, the necessity of a government at least equally
energetic with the one proposed, the conformity of the Constitution to
the true principles of republican government, its analogy to the State
constitutions, and the additional security which its adoption would give
to liberty and property. Madison's papers defined republican govern-
ment, and surveyed the powers vested in the Union, the relations
between the Federal and State governments, the distribution of power
among the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of the govern-
ment, and the structure of the legislative department; taking up in
conjunction with the last-mentioned subject most of the vital ques-
tions, both theoretical and practical, connected with representative
institutions.
Madison wrote in the style that prevailed at the close of • the
eighteenth century. His language, while occasionally involved and
heavy with orotund Latin derivatives, is rhythmical, dignified, and
impressive. His writings have no imagination, wit, or humor; but
the absence of these qualities is atoned for by clearness, sincerity,
and aptness of illustration. Possessed of depth and genuineness of
feeling coupled with an extraordinary power of logical exposition, he
was considered by Jefferson, some years after the adoption of the
Constitution, to be the only writer in the Republican party capable of
opposing Alexander Hamilton, the Federalist <( colossus of debate."
At the opening of the First Congress, Madison took his seat in
the House of Representatives, — the influence of Henry and the Anti-
Federalists in the Virginia State Legislature having prevented his
election to the Senate. In the differentiation of parties occasioned by
Hamilton's nationalizing financial policy, Madison allied himself with
the Republicans and became the leader of the opposition in the
House. His change of attitude from that of an extreme nationalist
to that of an extreme States-rights man was no doubt due in large
part to the influence of his friend and intimate Thomas Jefferson.
No two documents can be more dissimilar than the Virginia plan,
which would have invested Congress with a veto on State legislation,
and the famous Virginia Resolutions of 1789 and 1799, of which Mad-
ison was the author. However, his inconsistency was perhaps more
apparent than real; for having once given in his adhesion to the
Constitution, it was perfectly logical to desire a strict construction of
that instrument to preserve the balance struck in it between the
State and Federal governments.
On the inauguration of Jefferson as President in 1801, Madison
accepted the Secretaryship of State. It was while holding this office
JAMES MADISON
that he wrote the pamphlet (An Examination of the British Doctrine
which Subjects to Capture a Neutral Trade not Open in Time of
Peace. > At the close of Jefferson's second term, March 4th, 1809,
Madison became President. He had been to his predecessor an able
and efficient lieutenant. He was, however, a scholar rather than a
man of action; and it was his misfortune that his administration fell
in a period which required more than ordinary talents of leadership,
and those of a different stamp from his own. His conduct of the
War of 1812 was weak and hesitating, and added nothing to the glory
of his previous career. He retired at the expiration of his second
term in 1817 to Montpelier, his country seat in Virginia, where he
died June 28th, 1836.
FROM <THE FEDERALIST >
AN OBJECTION DRAWN FROM THE EXTENT OF COUNTRY ANSWERED
WE HAVE seen the necessity of the Union, as our bulwark
against foreign danger; as the conservator of peace among
ourselves; as the guardian of our commerce, and other
common interests; as the only substitute for those military estab-
lishments which have subverted the liberties of the Old World;
and as the proper antidote for the diseases of faction, which have
proved fatal to other popular governments, and of which alarm-
ing symptoms have been betrayed by our own. All that remains,
within this branch of our inquiries, is to take notice of an objec-
tion that may be drawn from the great extent of country which
the Union embraces. A few observations on this subject will be
the more proper, as it is perceived that the adversaries of the
new Constitution are availing themselves of a prevailing prejudice
with regard to the practicable sphere of republican administra-
tion, in order to supply, by imaginary difficulties, the want of
those solid objections which they endeavor in vain to find.
The error which limits republican government to a narrow
district has been unfolded and refuted in preceding papers. I
remark here only, that it seems to owe its rise and prevalence
chiefly to the confounding of a republic with a democracy, and
applying to the former, reasonings drawn from the nature of
the latter. The true distinction between these forms was also
adverted to on a former occasion. It is, that in a democracy the
people meet and exercise the government in person; in a repub-
lic they assemble and administer it by their representatives and
JAMES MADISON
agents. A democracy, consequently, must be confliiecl to a Small
spot. A republic may be extended over a large region.
To this accidental source of the error may be added the
artifice of some celebrated authors whose writings have had a
great share in forming the modern standard of political opinions.
Being subjects either of an absolute or limited monarchy, they
have endeavored to heighten the advantages or palliate the evils
of those forms, by placing in comparison with them the vices
and defects of the republican; and by citing, as specimens of the
latter, the turbulent democracies of ancient Greece and modern
Italy. Under the confusion of names, it has been an easy task
to transfer to a republic, observations applicable to a democracy
only; and among others, the observation that it can never be
established but among a small number of people, living within a
small compass of territory.
Such a fallacy may have been the less perceived, as most
of the popular governments of antiquity were of the democratic
species; and even in modern Europe, to which we owe the great
principle of representation, no example is seen of a government
wholly popular and founded at the same time wholly on that
principle. If Europe has the merit of discovering this great
mechanical power in government, by the simple agency of which
the will of the largest political body may be concentred, and its
force directed to any object which the public good requires,
America can claim the merit of making the discovery the basis
of unmixed and extensive republics. It is only to be lamented,
that any of her citizens should wish to deprive her of the addi-
tional merit of displaying its full efficacy in the establishment of
the comprehensive system now under her consideration.
As the natural limit of a democracy is that distance from the
central point which will just permit the most remote citizens to
assemble as often as their public functions demand, and will
include no greater number than can join in those functions, so
the natural limit of a republic is that distance from the centre
which will barely allow the representatives of the people to meet
as often as may be necessary for the administration of public
affairs. Can it be said that the limits of the United States ex-
ceed this distance ? It will not be said by those who recollect
that the Atlantic coast is the longest side of the Union ; that dur-
ing the term of thirteen years, the representatives of the States
have been almost continually assembled; and that the members
JAMES MADISON
from the most distant States are not chargeable with greater
intermissions of attendance than those from the States in the
neighborhood of Congress.
That we may form a juster estimate with regard to this inter-
esting subject, let us resort to the actual dimensions of the
Union. The limits, as fixed by the treaty of peace, are — on the
east the Atlantic, on the south the latitude of thirty-one degrees,
on the west the Mississippi, and on the north an irregular line
running in some instances beyond the forty-fifth degree, in oth-
ers falling as low as the forty-second. The southern shore of
Lake Erie lies below that latitude. Computing the distance be-
tween the thirty-first and forty-fifth degrees, it amounts to nine
hundred and seventy-three common miles; computing it from
thirty-one to forty-two degrees, to seven hundred and sixty-four
miles and a half. Taking the mean for the distance, the amount
will be eight hundred and sixty-eight miles and three fourths.
The mean distance from the Atlantic to the Mississippi does not
probably exceed seven hundred and fifty miles. On a comparison
of this extent with that of several countries in Europe, the prac-
ticability of rendering our system commensurate to it appears
to be demonstrable. It is not a great deal larger than Ger
many, where a diet representing the whole empire is continually
assembled; or than Poland before the late dismemberment, where
another national diet was the depository of the supreme power.
Passing by France and Spain, we find that in Great Britain,
inferior as it may be in size, the representatives of the northern
extremity of the island have as far to travel to the national
council as will be required of those of the most remote parts of
the Union.
Favorable as this view of the subject may be, some observa-
tions remain which will place it in a light still more satisfactory.
In the first place, it is to be remembered that the general
government is not to be charged with the whole power of mak-
ing and administering laws: its jurisdiction is limited to cer-
tain enumerated objects, which concern all the members of the
republic, but which are not to be attained by the separate pro-
visions of any. The subordinate governments, which can extend
their care to all those other objects which can be separately pro-
vided for, will retain their due authority and activity. Were it
proposed by the plan of the convention to abolish the govern-
ments of the particular States, its adversaries would have soms
JAMES MADISON
ground for their objection; though it would not be difficult to
show that if they were abolished, the general government would
be compelled, by the principle of self-preservation, to reinstate
them in their proper jurisdiction.
A second observation to be made is, that the immediate ob-
ject of the Federal Constitution is to secure the union of the
thirteen primitive States, which we know to be practicable; and
to add to them such other States as may arise in their own
bosoms, or in their neighborhoods, which we cannot doubt to
be equally practicable. The arrangements that may be neces-
sary for those angles and fractions of our territory which lie on
our northwestern frontier must be left to those whom further
discoveries and experience will render more equal to the task.
Let it be remarked, in the third place, that the intercourse
throughout the Union will be daily facilitated -by new improve-
ments. Roads will everywhere be shortened, and kept in bet-
ter order; accommodations for travelers will be multiplied and
meliorated; an interior navigation on our eastern side will be
opened throughout, or nearly throughout, the whole extent of the
thirteen States. The communication between the western and
Atlantic districts, and between different parts of each, will be
rendered more and more easy by those numerous canals with
which the beneficence of nature has intersected our country, and
which art finds it so little difficult to connect and complete.
A fourth and still more important consideration is, that as
almost every State will on one side or other be a frontier,
and will thus find, in a regard to its safety, an inducement to
make some sacrifices for the sake of general protection, so the
States which lie at the greatest distance from the heart of the
union, and which of course may partake least of the ordinary
circulation of its benefits, will be at the same time immediately
contiguous to foreign nations, and will consequently stand, on par-
.ticular occasions, in greatest need of its strength and resources.
It may be inconvenient for Georgia, or the States forming our
western or northeastern borders, to send their representatives to
the seat of government; but they would find it more so to strug-
gle alone against an invading enemy, or even to support alone
the whole expense of those precautions which may be dictated
by the neighborhood of continual danger. If they should derive
less benefit therefore from the union, in some respects, than the
less distant States, they will derive greater benefit from it in
JAMES MADISON
other respects; and thus the proper equilibrium will be main-
tained throughout.
I submit to you, my fellow-citizens, these considerations, in full
confidence that the good sense which has so often marked your
decisions will allow them their due weight and effect; and that
you will never suffer difficulties, however formidable in appear-
ance, or however fashionable the error on which they may be
founded, to drive you into the gloomy and perilous scenes into
which the advocates for disunion would conduct you. Hearken
not to the unnatural voice which tells you that the people of
America, knit together as they are by so many chords of affec-
tion, can no longer live together as members of the same fam-
ily; can no longer continue the mutual guardians of their mutual
happiness; can no longer be fellow-citizens of one great, respect-
able, and flourishing empire. Hearken not to the . voice which
petulantly tells you that the form of government recommended
for your adoption is a novelty in the political world; that it has
never yet had a place in the theories of the wildest projectors;
that it rashly attempts what it is impossible to accomplish. No,
my countrymen: shut your ears against this unhallowed language.
Shut your hearts against the poison which it conveys. The kin-
dred blood which flows in the veins of American citizens, the
mingled blood which they have shed in defense of their sacred
rights, consecrate their union, and excite horror at the idea of
their becoming aliens, rivals, enemies. And if novelties are to
be shunned, believe me, the most alarming of all novelties, the
most wild of all projects, the most rash of all attempts, is that
of rending us in pieces in order to preserve our liberties and
promote our happiness.
But why is the experiment of an extended republic to be
rejected, merely because it may comprise what is new ? Is it not
the glory of the people of America, that whilst they have paid a
decent regard to the opinions of former times and other nations,
they have not suffered a blind veneration for antiquity, for cus-
tom, or for names, to overrule the suggestions of their own
good sense, the knowledge of their own situation, and the les-
sons of their own experience? To this manly spirit, posterity will
be indebted for the possession, and the world for the example,
of the numerous, innovations displayed on the American thea-
tre in favor of private rights and public happiness. Had no
important step been taken by the leaders of the Revolution for
JAMES MADISON
which a precedent could- not be discovered, — no government
established of which an exact model did not present itself, — the
people of the United States might at this moment have been
numbered among the melancholy victims of misguided councils;
must at best have been laboring under the weight of some of
those forms which have crushed the liberties of the rest of man-
kind. Happily for America, — happily, we trust, for the whole
human race, — they pursued a new and more noble course. They
accomplished a revolution which has no parallel in the annals of
human society. They reared the fabrics of governments which
have no model on the face of the globe. They formed the
design of a great confederacy, which it is incumbent on their suc-
cessors to improve and perpetuate. If their works betray imper-
fections, we wonder at the fewness of them. If they erred most
in the structure of the union, this was the work most difficult to
be executed; this is the work which has been new modeled by
the act of your convention, and it is that act on which you are
now to deliberate and to decide.
INTERFERENCE TO QUELL DOMESTIC INSURRECTION
From <The Federalist >
AT FIRST view, it might seem not to square with the repub-
lican theory to suppose either that a majority have not the
right, or that a minority will have the force, to subvert a
government; and consequently, that the federal interposition can
never be required but when it would be improper. But theoretic
reasoning, in this as in most other cases, must be qualified by
the lessons- of practice. Why may not illicit combinations, for
purposes of violence, be formed as well by a majority of a State,
especially a small State, as by a majority of a county or a dis-
trict of the same State; and if the authority of the State ought
in the latter case to protect the local magistracy, ought not the
Federal authority, in the former, to support the State authority?
Besides, there are certain parts of the State constitutions which
are so interwoven with the federal Constitution, that a violent
blow cannot be given to the one without communicating the •
wound to the other. Insurrections in a State will rarely induce
a federal interposition, unless the number concerned in them
bear some proportion to the friends of government. It will be
JAMES MADISON
much better that the violence in such cases should be repressed
by the superintending power, than that the majority should be
left to maintain their cause by a bloody and obstinate contest.
The existence of a right to interpose will generally prevent the
necessity of exerting it.
Is it true that force and right are necessarily on the same side
in republican governments ? May not the minor party possess
such a superiority of pecuniary resources, of military talents and
experience, or of secret succors from foreign powers, as will ren-
der it superior also in an appeal to the sword? May not a more
compact and advantageous position turn the scale on the same
side, against a superior number so situated as to be less capable
of a prompt and collected exertion of its strength ? Nothing can
be more chimerical thrn to imagine that in a trial of actual force,
victory may be calculated by the rules which prevail in a census
of the inhabitants, or which determine the event of an election !
May it not happen, in fine, that the minority of citizens may
become a majority of persons, by the accession of alien residents,
of a casual concourse of adventurers, or of those whom the con-
stitution of the State has not admitted to the rights of suffrage ?
I take no notice of an unhappy species of population abounding in
some of the States, who, during the calm of regular government,
are sunk below the level of men; but who, in the tempestuous
scenes of civil violence, may emerge into the human character,
and give a superiority of strength to any party with which they
may associate themselves.
In cases where it may be doubtful on which side justice lies,
what better umpires could be desired by two violent factions, fly-
ing to arms and tearing a State to pieces, than the representatives
of confederate States not heated by the local flame? To the
impartiality of judges they would unite the affection of friends.
Happy would it be if such a remedy for its infirmities could be
enjoyed by all free governments; if a project equally effectual
could be established for the universal peace of mankind!
Should it be asked, what is to be the redress for an insurrec-
tion pervading all the States, and comprising a superiority of the
entire force, though not a constitutional right, — the answer must
be that such a case, as it would be without the compass of human
remedies, so it is fortunately not within the compass of human
probability; and that it is a sufficient recommendation of the
federal Constitution, that it diminishes the risk of a calamity for
which no possible constitution can provide a cure.
954i
MAURICE MAETERLINCK
(1864-)
BY WILLIAM SHARP
iNE of the most remarkable, one of the most widely known of
the younger writers of the day, Maurice Maeterlinck, is still
little more than a name to the majority of people, even
among those who nominally follow closely every new expression of
the contemporary spirit. Some, following the example of his ultra-
enthusiastic French pioneer, M. Octave Mirbeau, have made for him
the high claim of genius; others have gone
to the opposite extreme, and denied his pos-
session of any qualities save a morbid fan-
tasy in drama, or of a mystical intensity in
spiritual philosophy.
That Maurice Maeterlinck is in every
sense of the word a most notable person-
ality in contemporary literature is net to
be denied; whether we like or dislike his
peculiar methods in the dramatic presenta-
tion of his vision of life, or understand or
sympathize with his uncompromising posi-
tion as a mystic of the kindred of Sweden-
borg, Jakob Boehme, or that Ruysbroeck of
•whom he has been the modern interpreter.
It is undeniable, now, that the great vogue prophesied for the Maeter-
linckian drama has not been fulfilled. Possibly the day may come
when the Drame Intime may have a public following to justify the
hopes of those who believe in it; but that time has not come yet.
Meanwhile, we have to be content with dramas of the mind enacted
against mental tapestries, so to say, or with shifting backgrounds
among the dream vistas and perspectives of the mind. For although
several of M. Maeterlinck's poetic plays have been set upon the
stage, — rather as puppet plays than in the sense commonly meant, —
their success has been one of curiosity rather than of conviction.
Even the most impressive has seemed much less so when subjected
to the conditions of stage representation; and it is almost impossible
to understand how certain of them could avoid exciting that sense
MAURICE MAETERLINCK
9542 MAURICE MAETERLINCK
of incongruity which is fatal to a keen impression of verisimilitude.
Even compositions so decorative as (The Seven Princesses,* or that
strange drama 'The Blind,* are infinitely more impressive when read
than when seen; and this because they are, like all else of Mae-
terlinck's, merely the embodiment in words, and in a pseudo-dramatic
formula, of spiritual allegories or dreams. There were many who
thought that his short drama <The Intruder* more than stood the
test of stage representation. I have seen <L'Intruse) twice, and
given with all the skill and interpretative sympathy possible, both
in Paris and London; and yet I have not for a moment found in its
stage representation anything to approach the convincing and inti-
mate appeal, so simple and yet so subtle and weird, afforded in the
perusal of the original.
We have, however, no longer to consider Maurice Maeterlinck
merely as a dramatist, or perhaps I should say as a writer in dra-
matic form. He began as a poet, and as a writer of a very strange
piece of fiction; and now, and for some time past, his work has been
that of a spiritual interpreter, of an essayist, and of a mystic.
Mooris Materlinck — for it was not till he was of age that he
adopted the Gallicized <( Maurice Maeterlinck ** — was born in Flanders,
and is himself racially as well as mentally and spiritually a Fleming
of the Flemings. He has all the physical endurance, the rough bod-
ily type, of his countrymen; but he has also their quiet intensity of
feeling, their sense of dream and mystery. His earliest influences in
literature were French and English: the French of writers such as
Villiers de L'Isle-Adam, the English of writers such as Shakespeare
and the Elizabethan dramatists. When, as little more than a youth,
he went to Paris, it was mainly in the hope of discipleship to the
great Villiers. It was while in Paris that he wrote one of his earliest
and to this day one of his most remarkable productions, the short
story entitled <The Massacre of the Innocents, > — a study so remark-
able that it at once attracted the attention of the few who closely
follow every new manifestation of literary talent. In this strange
tale, Maeterlinck has attempted to depict the Biblical story after the
manner of those Dutch and Flemish painters who represented with
unflinching contemporary realism all their scenes based upon Script-
ural episodes — that is to say, who represented every scene, however
Oriental or remote, in accordance with Dutch or Flemish customs,
habits, dress, etc. This short story, however, appeared in an obscure
and long since defunct French periodical; and little notice was taken
of it till some years later, when the present writer drew attention 'to
it as the first production of its by that time distinguished author.
Since then it has been admirably translated, and has appeared in an
American edition.
MAURICE MAETERLINCK
But the first actual book which Maurice Maeterlinck published was
a volume of poems entitled c Serres Chaudes,' — a title which we
might idiomatically render as ( Hot-house Blooms. } These poems are
interesting, and we can clearly discern in them the same mental
outlook and habit of mind the author exhibits in his maturer prose
writings; but they have not in any marked degree the lyric quality,
as a poet's work must have; and for all that there are poetical and
imaginative lines and verses, they suggest rather the work of a rare
and imaginative mind controlling itself to expression in this manner,
than of one who yields to it out of imperious and impulsive need.
In some respects we find a curious return to this first book in Maeter-
linck's later work, ( Le Tresor des Humbles,) for although it is a
vohime of mystical essays, and deals with other themes than those
chiefly broached in ( Serres Chaudes,' there is a remarkable spiritual
affinity between them. It is impossible to understand this strange
and powerful writer if one does not approach him on his mystical
side. It is not necessary for the reader to follow him in his brooding
hours with Ruysbroeck, or even to listen to what he has to say
on the subject of Novalis and other German mystics; but his subtle
analytical study of Emerson, and above all, those spiritual essays of
his (entitled in English < The Treasure of the Humble )), should be
carefully studied. This last-named book has shared the fate of all
works of the kind; that is to say, it has been ignored by the great
majority of the reading public, it has been sneered at by an ever fret-
ful and supercilious band of critics, and has been received with deep
gladness and gratitude by the few who welcome with joy any true
glad tidings of the spiritual life. Among these essays, two should in
particular be read : those entitled ( The Deeper Life > and ( The Inner
Beauty.' The last-named, indeed, is really a quintessential essay.
Just as a certain monotony of detail characterizes Maeterlinck's dra-
mas, so a repetitive diffuseness mars these prose essays of his.
Beautiful thoughts and phrases are to be found throughout the whole
of <The Treasure of the Humble >; but after all, the essay entitled
( The Inner Beauty > comprises his whole spiritual philosophy. When
we turn to Maurice Maeterlinck the dramatist, we find him the
supreme voice in modern Belgian literature. As a poet he is far sur-
passed by Emile Verhaeren — who is indeed one of the finest poets
now living in any country; and as a writer of prose he has many
rivals, and some who have a distinction, grace, and power altogether
beyond what he has himself displayed. But as a dramatist — that is,
an imaginative artist working in dramatic form — he holds a unique
and altogether remarkable place.
In one of his early poems he exclaims: (<Mon ame! — Oh, mon
ante vraiment trop a 1'abri!" — (My soul! — Oh, truly my soul dwells
MAURICE MAETERLINCK
too* much in the shadow!) And it is this dwelling in the shadow
which is the dominant characteristic of Maurice Maeterlinck. In
(The Princess Maleine,' in ( The Seven Princesses, > in ( Pelleas and
Melisande,> in <The Intruder, > and < The Blind, >— in one and all
of these, to his latest production, he hardly ever moves out of the
shadow of a strange and affecting imaginative gloom. He too might
with the Spanish writer, Emilia Pardo Bazan, exclaim : (< Enter with
me into the dark zone of the human soul ! }) It is rather, with
him, the twilight zone. He loves to haunt the shadowy ways where
night and day concur, — those shadowy ways wherein human actions
and thoughts are still real, but are invested with a light or a shadow
either strange or fantastic. His method is a simple one; but it is
that kind of simplicity which involves a subtle and artistic mind.
Often he relies upon words as abstractions, in order to convey the
impression that is in his own mind; and this accounts for the bewil-
derment which some of his characteristic mannerisms cause to many
readers. Where they see simple repetition, a vain and perhaps child-
ish monotony, Maeterlinck is really endeavoring to emphasize the
impression he seeks to convey, by dwelling upon certain images,
accentuating certain words, evoking certain , mental melodies or
rhythms full of a certain subtle suggestion of their own.
Much has been said and written about this new form in con-
temporary dramatic literature. It is a form strangely seductive, if
obviously perilous. It has possibly a remarkable future — coming, as
it has done, at a time when our most eager spirits are solicitous of a
wider scope in expression, for a further opening-up of alluring vis-
tas through the ever blossoming wilderness of art. It may well be
that Maeterlinck's chief service here will prove rather to be that of
a pioneer — of a pioneer who has directed into new channels the
stream which threatened to stagnate in the shallows of insincere con-
vention.
Maeterlinck was guided to the formula with which his name has
become so identified, primarily through the influence of his friend
Charles van Lerberghe, the author of <Les Flaireurs.* The short
dramatic episode entitled < Les Flaireurs > occupies itself with a single
incident: the death of an old peasant woman, by night, in a lonely
cottage in a remote district, with no companion save her girlish
grandchild. Almost from the outset the reader guesses what the
nocturnal voices indicate. The ruse of the dramatist is almost child-
ishly simple, if its process of development be regarded in detail.
The impressiveness lies greatly in the cumulative effect. A night of
storm, the rain lashing at the windows, the appalling darkness with-
out, the wan candle-glow within, a terrified and- bewildered child, a
dying and delirious old woman, an ominous oft-repeated knocking at
MAURICE MAETERLINCK
9545
the door, a hoarse voice without, changeful but always menacing,
mocking or muttering an obscure and horrible message: this inter-
wrought, again and again represented, austerely tragic by-play — from
one point of view, merely the material for tragedy — is a profoundly
impressive work of art. It* is perhaps all the more so from the fact
that it relies to some extent upon certain venerable and even out-
worn conventionalities. The midnight hour, storm, mysterious sounds,
the howl of a dog — we are familiar with all these (< properties. }>
They do not now move us. Sheridan Le Fanu, or Fitzjames O'Brien,
or R. L. Stevenson, can create for us an inward terror far beyond
the half-simulated creep with which we read the conventional bogy-
story. That Charles van Lerberghe should so impress us by the
simplest and most familiar stage tricks points to his genuine artistry,
to his essential masterhood. The literary conjurer would fain deceive
us by sleight of hand; the literary artist persuades us by sleight of
mind.
Van Lerberghe is neither romanticist nor realist, as these vague
and often identical terms are understood abroad. He works realisti-
cally in the sphere of the imaginary. If it were not that his aim, as
that of Maeterlinck, is to bring into literature a new form of the drame
intime, with meanwhile the adventitious aid of nominal stage acces-
sories, one might almost think that ( Les Flaireurs > was meant for
stage representation. It would be impossible, however, thus. Imagine
the incongruity of the opening of this drama with its subject: —
<( Orchestral music. Funeral march. Roll of muffled drums. A blast of a
horn in the distance. Roll of drums. A short psalmodic motive for
the organ. REPEATED KNOCKS, HEAVY AND DULL. Curtain.^
What have orchestral music and rolling of drums, and a psalmodic
motive for the organ, to do with an old peasant woman dying in a
cottage ? For that stage of the imagination from which many of us
derive a keener pleasure than from that of any theatre, there is per-
haps nothing incongruous here. The effect sought to be produced is
a psychic one; and if produced, the end is gained, and the means of
no moment. It is only from this standpoint that we can view aright
the work of Van Lerberghe, Maeterlinck, and Auguste Jenart. <Les
Flaireurs } is wholly unsuitable for the actual stage, — as unsuitable as
(L'Intruse,> or <Les Aveugles,> or <Les Sept Princesses,' or < Le Bar-
bare. } Each needs to be enacted in the shadow-haunted glade of the
imagination, in order to be understood aright. Under the lime-light
• their terror becomes folly, their poetry rhetoric, their tragic signifi-
cance impotent commonplace; their atmosphere of mystery, the com-
mon air of the squalidly apparent; their impressiveness a cause of
mocking.
954<5
MAURICE MAETERLINCK
While in Maurice Maeterlinck we certainly encounter one of the
most interesting figures in contemporary letters, it is not so easy to
arrive at a definite opinion as to whether he is really a dominant
force.
There are many who believe that trie author of <La Princesse
Maleine> — and of many striking productions which have succeeded it
— will attain to that high mastery which makes a writer a voice for
all men, and not merely an arresting echo for his own hour, his own
time, among his own people. Certainly his debut was significant,
remarkable. Yet in France, where his reputation was made, he is
already looked upon as a waning force. Any new work by him is
regarded with interest, with appreciation and sympathy perhaps, but
not with that excited anticipation with which formerly it was greeted.
For ourselves, we cannot estimate him otherwise than by his actual
achievement. Has the author of (La Princesse Maleine,* 'L'Intruse,'
and < Les Aveugles y — his earliest and most discussed works — fulfilled
himself in <Pelleas et Melisande > and the successors of that mov-
ing drama? His admirers declared that in this last-named play we
should find him at his best and most mature. But (Pelleas and Meli-
sande) has not stood the test.
Yet I do not think (Pelleas et Melisande* is — what so many claim
for it — Maeterlinck's Sedan. All the same it is, at best, «a faithful
failure. w I believe he will give us still better work; work as dis-
tinctive as his two masterpieces, <L'Intruse> and <Les Aveugles, }
but with a wider range of sympathy, more genial an insight, an
apprehension and technical achievement more masterly still. Indeed,
in <Tintagiles) and his latest productions, he has to a large extent
fulfilled the wonderful imaginative beauty with which he charmed
us in ( Les Sept Princesses. } Still, even here it is rather the dream-
record of a dreamer than the actual outlook on life of a creative
mind.
Finally, what we have to bear in mind meanwhile is that Maurice
Maeterlinck is possibly the pioneer of a new method coming into
literature. We must not look too closely, whether in praise or blame,
to those treasured formulas of his, of which so much has been said.
What is inessential in these he will doubtless unlearn; what is essen-
tial he will probably develop. For it is not in the accidents of his
dramatic expression that so fine an artist as Maeterlinck is an origi-
nal writer, but in that quality of insight which is his own, that phras-
ing, that atmosphere.
CjUcCu.^
MAURICE MAETERLINCK 9546 a
EDITORIAL NOTE. — As William Sharp's death excluded the possi-
bility of the revision of the foregoing article by his own hand, it seemed
best to the Editors to leave it untouched, for it is an admirable presen-
tation of Maeterlinck's work up to the time that it was written. Sharp's
distrust of the permanent success of the mystical dramas, expressed
with- so much sympathy and insight, was later confirmed by the drama-
tist himself. Indeed Maeterlinck confounded some of his more en-
thusiastic disciples by speaking in tones of decided depreciation of
these earlier plays, and his dramatic work took an entirely new turn.
The change has been ascribed to his desire to write a play suited to the
talent of the charming and gifted actress, Georgette Leblanc, whom
he married in 1901, but it should doubtless be attributed to more
profound developments in his artistic and intellectual life. However
this may be, it is certain that ( Mona Vanna) (1902) offered a complete
contrast to his earlier dramatic work; instead of the vague background
of legendary northern forests, we have a definite scene — Pisa at the
end of the fifteenth century, — and instead of the drame intime of
humble souls or mystic princesses, we have the stirring incidents of a
siege and the clash of contending politicians. All this, it is true, is
interwoven with the spiritual struggles that take place in the hearts of
Mona Vanna, her husband, and her lover, but the drama in its tone
and atmosphere is much closer to Browning's (Luria,) to which it was
obviously indebted, than to anything its author had done before. As
a historical melodrama it was made effective enough on the American
stage by a talented emotional actress of the day, but it was necessary
for the critics to point out its spiritual significance, which was pre-
sumably the dramatist's chief aim, but which somehow disappeared
in the representation. »
Maeterlinck was hardly more successful in dealing with a subject
from Christian tradition, in (Sister Beatrice) (1901) or from Arthurian
legend in (Joyzelle) (1903), but in (The Blue Bird) (1908) he at last
found material exactly suited for dramatic treatment by him from the
point of view at which he had now arrived — that of the agnostic
mystic — who accepts the facts of science, but sees beyond them a
vast field for poetic imagination. First acted in Moscow, (The Blue
Bird) made its triumphant way all over Europe and across the Atlantic;
it is still perhaps the most popular of fairy plays, both with children,
who are delighted by its romantic treatment of matters of everyday
experience, and by adult critics, who find in it suggestions of deep
spiritual significance.
Before (The Blue Bird) achieved its world wide dramatic success
Maeterlinck had firmly established his reputation as a writer of prose
in (La Vie des Abeilles) (The Life of the Bee, 1901). It was not that
like Fabre he discovered new facts, but he gave to what was already
known a romantic charm due to an imaginative insight and a peculiarly
9546b MAURICE MAETERLINCK
attractive style, of which the following description of the queen bee's
nuptial flight may serve as an example:
((She starts her flight backwards; returns twice or thrice to the alighting-board;
and then, having definitely fixed in her mind the exact situation and aspect of the
kingdom she has never yet seen from without, she departs like an arrow to the
zenith of the blue. She soars to a height, a luminous zone, that other bees attain
at no period of their life. Far away, caressing their idleness in the midst of the
flowers, the males have beheld the apparition, have breathed the magnetic perfume
that spreads from group to group till every apiary near is instinct with it. Immedi-
ately crowds collect, and follow her into the sea of gladness, whose limpid boundaries
ever recede. She, drunk with her wings, obeying the magnificent law of the race
that chooses jier lover, and enacts that the strongest alone shall attain her in the
solitude of the ether, she rises still; and, for the first time in her life, the blue morning
air rushes into her stigmata, singing its song, like the blood of heaven, in the myriad
tubes of the tracheal sacs, nourished on space, that fill the centre of her body. She
rises still. A region must be found unhaunted by birds, that else might profane the
mystery. She rises still; and already the ill-assorted troop below are dwindling and
falling asunder. The feeble, infirm, the aged, unwelcome, ill-fed, who have flown
from inactive or impoverished cities, these renounce the pursuit and disappear in
the void. Only a small, indefatigable cluster remain, suspended in infinite opal.
She summons her wings for one final effort; and now the chosen of incomprehensible
forces has reached her, has seized her, and bounding aloft with united impetus, the
ascending spiral of their intertwined flight whirls for one second in the hostile madness
of love.))
Maeterlinck's genius next sought an outlet in discussions of psychical
phenomena, more especially in connection with the problem of the
immortality of the soul. His essays on the subject have his unfailing
charm of style, but are less readable on account of the uncongenial
material he has undertaken to handle. His philosophic discussions of
the general problem of immortality are marked by scientific reserve,
curiously combined with the native cheerfulness which goes with his
Flemish temperament and robust physique. He cannot be said to have
added anything to our knowledge of life beyond the grave, but he writes
about it sympathetically and courageously.
The outbreak of the war interrupted Maeterlinck's literary and
philosophic interest. Although he had long resided at the beautiful
Abbey of Ste. Wandrille in France he remained thoroughly Belgian at
heart, and he plunged with all the ardor of his passionate temperament
and the eloquence of his moving style into protests and pleas on behalf
of his unhappy compatriots. These belong perhaps rather to history
than to literature, but the unsparing devotion with which Maeter-
linck gave himself to the cause of his unfortunate country cannot but
command our admiration.
MAURICE MAETERLINCK
FROM <THE DEATH OF TINTAGILES>
9547
The Plays of Maurice Maeterlinck, Second Series. Translated by Richard
Hovey. Copyright 1896, by Stone & Kimball.
Scene: At the top of a hill overlooking the castle. Enter Ygraine, holding
Tintagiles by the hand.
YGRAINE — Thy first night will be troubled, Tintagiles. Already
the sea howls about us; and the trees are moaning. It is
late. The moon is just setting behind the poplars that stifle
the palace. We are alone, perhaps, for all that here we have to
live on guard. There seems to be a watch set for the approach
of the slightest happiness. I said to myself one day, in the very
depths of my soul, — and God himself could hardly hear it, — I
said to myself one day I should be happy. There needed noth-
ing further: in a little while our old father died, and both our
brothers vanished without a single human being able since to tell
us where they are. Now I am all alone, with my poor sister and
thee, my little Tintagiles; and I have no faith in the future.
Come here; sit on my knee. Kiss me first: and put thy little
arms there, all the way around my neck; perhaps they will not
be able to undo them. Rememberest thou the time when it was
I that carried thee at night when bedtime came; and when thou
fearedst the shadows of my lamp in the long windowless corri-
dors ? — I felt my soul tremble upon my lips when I saw thee,
suddenly, this morning. I thought thee so far away, and so
secure. Who was it made thee come here ?
Tintagiles — I do not know, little sister.
Ygraine — Thou dost not know any longer what was said ?
Tintagiles — They said I had to leave.
Ygraine — But why hadst thou to leave?
Tintagiles — Because it was the Queen's will.
Ygraine — They did not say why it was her will? — I am sure
they said many things.
Tintagiles — I heard nothing, little sister.
Ygraine — When they spoke among themselves, what did they
say ?
Tintagiles — They spoke in a low voice, little sister.
Ygraine — All the time?
Tintagiles — All the time, sister Ygraine; except when they
looked at me.
Ygraine — They did not speak of the Queen?
9548
MAURICE MAETERLINCK
Tintagiles — They said she was never seen, sister Ygraine.
Ygraine — And those who were with thee, on the bridge of
the ship, said nothing?
Tintagiles — They minded nothing but the wind and the sails,
sister Ygraine.
Ygraine — Ah! that does not astonish me, my child.
Tintagiles — They left me all alone, little sister.
Ygraine — Listen, Tintagiles, I will tell thee what I know.
Tintagiles — What dost thou know, sister Ygraine?
Ygraine — Not much, my child. My sister and I have crept
along here, since our birth, without daring to understand a whit
of all that happens. For a long while, indeed, I lived like a blind
woman on this island; and it all seemed natural to me. I saw
no other events than the flying of a bird, the trembling of a leaf,
the opening of a rose. There reigned such a silence that the
falling of a ripe fruit in the park called faces to the windows.
And no one seemed to have the least suspicion; but one night
I learned there must be something else. I would have fled, and
could not. Hast thou understood what I have said ?
Tintagiles — Yes, yes, little sister: I understand whatever you
will.
Ygraine — Well, then, let us speak no more of things that are
not known. Thou seest yonder, behind the dead trees that poison
the horizon — thou seest the castle yonder, in the depth of the
valley ?
Tintagiles — That which is so black, sister Ygraine?
Ygraine — It is black indeed. It is at the very depth of an
amphitheatre of shadows. We have to live there. It might have
been built on the summit of the great mountains that surround
it. The mountains are blue all day. We should have breathed.
We should have seen the sea and the meadows on the other side
of the* rocks. But they preferred to put it in the depth of the
valley; and the very air does not go down .so low. It is falling
in ruins, and nobody bewares. The walls are cracking; you
would say it was dissolving in the shadows. There is only one
tower unassailed by the weather. It is enormous; and the house
never comes out of its shadow.
Tintagiles — There is something shining, sister Ygraine. See,
see, the great red windows!
Ygraine — They are those of the tower, Tintagiles: they are
the only ones where you will see light; it is there the throne of
the Queen is set.
MAURICE MAETERLINCK
9549
Tintagiles — I shall not see the Queen?
Ygraine — No one can see her.
Tintagiles — Why can't one see her?
Ygraine — Come nearer, Tintagiles. Not a bird nor a blade of
grass must hear us.
Tintagiles — There is no grass, little sister. [A silence.'] —
What does the Queen do ?
Ygraine — No one knows, my child. She does not show her-
self. She lives there, all alone in her tower; and they that serve
her do not go out by day. She is very old; she is the mother
of our mother; and she would reign alone. She is jealous and
.suspicious, and they say that she is mad. She fears lest some one
rise into her place, and it was doubtless because of that fear that
she had thee brought hither. Her orders are carried out no one
knows how. She never comes down; and all the doors of the
tower are closed night and day. I aever caught a glimpse of
her; but others have seen her, it seems, in the past, when she
was young.
Tintagiles — Is she very ugly, sister Ygraine?
Ygraine — They say she is not beautiful, and that she is grow-
ing huge. But they that have seen her dare never speak of it.
Who knows, indeed, if they have seen her? She has a power not
to be understood ; and we live here with a great unpitying weight
upon our souls. Thou must not be frightened beyond measure,
nor have bad dreams; we shall watch over thee, my little Tinta-
giles, and no evil will be able to reach thee: but do not go far
from me, your sister Bellangere, nor our old master Aglovale.
Tintagiles — Not from Aglovale either, sister Ygraine?
Ygraine — Not from Aglovale either. He loves us.
Tintagiles — He is so old, little sister!
Ygraine — He is old, but very wise. He is the only friend
we have left; and he knows many things. It is strange; she has
made thee come hither without letting any one know. I do not
know what there is in my heart. I was sorry and glad to know
thou wert so far away, beyond the sea. And now — I was aston-
ished. I went out this morning to see if the sun was rising over
the mountains; and it is thou I see upon the threshold. I knew
thee at once.
Tintagiles — No, no, little sister: it was I that laughed first.
Ygraine — I could not laugh at once. Thou wilt understand.
It is time, Tintagiles, and the wind is growing black upon the
9550 MAURICE MAETERLINCK
sea. Kiss me harder, again, again, before thou standest upright.
Thou knowest not how we love. Give me thy little hand. I
shall guard it well; and we will go back into the sickening castle.
\Exeunt.
Scene: An apartment in the castle. Agio vale and Ygraine discovered.
Enter Bellangere.
Be Hanger e — Where is Tintagiles ?
Ygraine — Here; do not speak too loud. He sleeps in the
other room. He seems a little pale, a little ailing too. He was
tired by the journey and the long sea-voyage. Or else the atmo-,
sphere of the castle has startled his little soul. He cried for no
cause. I rocked him to sleep on my knees; come, see. He sleeps
in our bed. He sleeps very gravely, with one hand on his fore-
head, like a little sad king.
Bellangere [bursting suddenly into tears\ — My sister ! my sis-
ter ! my poor sister !
Ygraine — What is the matter?
Bellangere — I dare not say what I know, and I am not sure
that I know anything, and yet I heard that which one could not
hear —
Ygraine — What didst thou hear?
Bellangere — I was passing near the corridors of the tower —
Ygraine — Ah !
Bellangere — A door there was ajar. I pushed it very softly.
I went in.
Ygraine — In where ?
Bellangere — I had never seen the place. There were other
corridors lighted with lamps; then low galleries that had no out-
let. I knew it was forbidden to go on. I was afraid, and I was
going to return upon my steps, when I heard a sound of voices
one could hardly hear.
Ygraine — It must have been the handmaids of the Queen:
they dwell at the foot of the tower.
Bellangere — I do not know just what it was. There must
have been more than one door between us; and the voices came
to me like the voice of some one who was being smothered. I
drew as near as I could. I am not sure of anything, but I think
they spoke of a child that came t;o-day and of a crown of gold.
They seemed to be laughing.
MAURICE' MAETERLINCK
Ygraine — They laughed >
Bellangere — Yes, I think they laughed, unless they were
weeping, or unless it was something I did not understand; for it
was hard to hear, and their voices were sweet. They seemed to
echo in a crowd under the arches. They spoke of the child the
Queen would see. They will probably come up this evening.
Ygraine — What ? this evening?
Bellangere — Yes, yes, I think so.
Ygraine — They spoke no one's name?
Bellangere — They 'spoke of a child, of a very little child.
Ygraine — There is no other child.
Bellangere — They raised their voices a little at that moment,
because one of them had said the day seemed not yet come.
Ygraine — I know what that means; it is not the first time
they have issued from the tower. I knew well why she made
him come ; but I could not believe she would hasten so ! We
shall see; we are three, and we have time.
Bellangere — What wilt thou do ?
Ygraine — I do not know yet what I shall do, but I will aston-
ish her. Do you know how you tremble ? I will tell you —
Bellangere — What ?
Ygraine — She shall not take him without trouble.
Bellangere — We are alone, sister Ygraine.
Ygraine — Ah! it is true, we are alone! There is but one
remedy, the one with which we have always succeeded! Let us
wait upon our knees as the other times. Perhaps she will have
pity! She allows herself to be disarmed by tears. We must
grant her all she asks us; haply she will smile; and she is wont
to spare all those who kneel. She has been there for years in
her huge tower, devouring our beloved, and none, not one, has
dared to strike her in • the face. She is there, upon our souls,
like the stone of a tomb, and no one dare put forth his arm. In
the time when there were men here, they feared too, and fell
upon their faces. To-day it is the woman's turn: we shall see.
It is time to rise at last. We know not upon what her power
rests, and I will live no longer in the shadow of her tower. Go —
go, both of you, and leave me more alone still, if you tremble
too. I shall await her.
Bellangere — Sister, I do not know what must be done; but I
stay with thee.
MAURICE MAETERLINCK
Aglovale — I too stay, my daughter. For a long- time my soul
has been restless. You are going to try. We have tried more
than once.
Ygraine — You have tried — you too?
Aglovale — They have all tried. But at the last moment they
have lost their strength. You will see, you too. Should she order
me to come up to her this very night, I should clasp both my
hands without a word; and my tired feet would climb the stair,
without delay and without haste, well as I know no one comes
down again with open eyes. I have no more courage against
her. Our hands are of no use and reach no one. They are not
the hands we need, and all is useless. But I would help you,
because you hope. Shut the doors, my child. Wake Tintagiles;
encircle him with your little naked arms and take him on your
knees. We have no other defense.
THE INNER BEAUTY
From <The Treasure of the Humble >
THERE is nothing in the whole world that can vie with the
soul in its eagerness for beauty, or in the ready power
wherewith it adopts beauty unto itself. There is nothing
in the world capable of such spontaneous uplifting, of such
speedy ennoblement; nothing that offers more scrupulous obedi-
ence to the pure and noble commands it receives. There is
nothing in the world that yields deeper submission to the empire
of a thought that is loftier than other thoughts. And on this
earth of ours there are but few souls that can withstand the
dominion of the soul that has suffered itself to become beautiful.
In all truth might it be said that beauty is the unique ali-
ment of our soul; for in all places does it search for beauty, and
it perishes not of hunger even in the most degraded of .lives.
For indeed nothing of beauty can pass by and be altogether
unperceived. Perhaps does it never pass by save only in our
unconsciousness: but its action is no less puissant in gloom of
night than by light of day; the joy it procures may be less tan-
gible, but other difference there is none. Look at the most ordi-
nary of men, at a time when a little beauty has contrived to
steal into their darkness. They have come together, it matters
MAURICE MAETERLINCK
not where, and for no special reason; but no sooner are they
assembled than their very first thought would seem to be to
close the great doors of life. Yet has each one of them, when
alone, more than once lived in accord with his soul. He has
loved perhaps, of a surety he has suffered. Inevitably must he
too have heard the (< sounds that come from the distant country
of Splendor and Terror }> ; and many an evening has he bowed
down in silence before laws that are deeper than the sea. And
yet when these men are assembled, it is with the basest of
things that they love to debauch themselves. They have a strange
indescribable fear of beauty; and as their number increases, so
does this fear become greater, resembling indeed their dread of
silence or of a verity that is too pure. And so true is this, that
were one of them to have done something heroic in the course
of the day, he would ascribe wretched motives to his conduct,
thereby endeavoring to find excuses for it, and these motives
would lie readily to his hand in that lower region where he and
his fellows were assembled. And yet listen: a proud and lofty
word has been spoken, a word that has in a measure undammed
the springs of life. For one instant has a soul dared to reveal
itself, even such as it is in love and sorrow, such as it is in face
of death and in the solitude that dwells around the stars of
night. Disquiet prevails; on some faces there is astonishment,
others smile. But have you never felt at moments such as those
how unanimous is the fervor wherewith every soul admires,
and how unspeakably even the very feeblest, from the remotest
depths of its dungeon, approves the word it has recognized as
akin to itself ? For they have all suddenly sprung to life again in
the primitive and normal atmosphere that is their own ; and could
you but hearken with angels' ears, I doubt not but you would
hear mightiest applause in that kingdom of amazing radiance
wherein the souls do dwell. Do you not think that even the
most timid of them would take courage unto themselves were
but similar words to be spoken every evening ? Do you not
think that men would live purer lives ? And yet though the
word come not again, still will something momentous have hap-
pened, that must leave still more momentous trace behind.
Every evening will its sisters recognize the soul that pronounced
the word; and henceforth, be the conversation never so trivial,
its mere presence will, I know not how, add thereto something of
majesty. Whatever else betide, there has been a change that we
MAURICE MAETERLINCK
cannot determine. No longer will such absolute power be vested
in the baser side of things, and henceforth even the most terror-
stricken of souls will know that there is somewhere a place of
refuge.
Certain it is that the natural and primitive relationship of
soul to soul is a relationship of beauty. For beauty is the only
language of our soul; none other is known to it. It has no other
life, it can produce nothing else, in nothing else can it take in-
terest. And therefore it is that the most oppressed, nay, the
most degraded of souls, — if it may truly be said that a soul can
be degraded, — immediately hail with acclamation every thought,
every word or deed, that is great and beautiful. Beauty is the
only element wherewith the soul is organically connected, and it
has no other standard or judgment. This is brought home to us
at every moment of our life, and is no less evident to the man by
whom beauty may more than once have been denied, than to him
who is ever seeking it in his heart. Should a day come when
you stand in profoundest need of another's sympathy, would you
go to him who was wont to greet the .passage of beauty with a
sneering smile ? Would you go to him whose shake of the head
had sullied a generous action or a mere impulse that was pure ?
Even though perhaps you had been of those who commended him,
you would none the less, when it was truth that knocked at your
door, turn to the man who had known how to prostrate himself
and love. In its very depths had your soul passed its judgment;
and it is this silent and unerring judgment that will rise to the
surface, after thirty years perhaps, and send you towards a sister
who shall be more truly you than you are yourself, for that she
has been nearer to beauty.
There needs but so little to encourage beauty in our soul; so
little to awaken the slumbering angels; or perhaps is there no
need of awakening, — it is enough that we lull them not to sleep.
It requires more effort to fall, perhaps, than to rise. Can we,
without putting constraint upon ourselves, confine our thoughts
to every-day things at times when the sea stretches before us and
we are face to face with the night ? And what soul is there but
knows that it is ever confronting the sea, ever in presence of an
eternal night ? Did we but dread beauty less, it would come
about that naught else in life would be visible; for in reality it
is beauty that underlies everything, it is beauty alone that exists.
There is no soul but is conscious of this; none that is not in
MAURICE MAETERLINCK
9555
readiness; but where are those that hide not their beauty? And
yet must one of them (< begin." Why not dare to be the one to
(< begin }> ? The others are all watching eagerly around us like
little children in front of a marvelous palace.. They press upon
the threshold, whispering to each other and peering through
every crevice; but there is not one who dares put his shoulder
to the door. They are all waiting for some grown-up person
to come and fling it open. But hardly ever does such a one
pass by.
And yet what is needed to become the grown-up person for
whom they lie in wait ? So little ! The soul is not exacting. A
thought that is almost beautiful — a thought that you speak not,
but that you cherish within you at this moment — will irradiate
you as though you were a transparent vase. They will see it,
and their greeting to you will be very different than had you
been meditating how best to deceive your brother. We are sur-
prised when certain men tell us that they have never come
across real ugliness, that they cannot conceive that a soul can be
base. Yet need there be no cause for surprise. These men had
"begun." They themselves had been the first to be beautiful,
and had therefore attracted all the beauty that passed by, as a
light-house attracts the vessels from the four corners of the hori-
zon. Some there are who complain of women, lor instance;
never dreaming that the first time a man meets a woman, a sin-
gle word or thought that denies tfce beautiful or profound will
be enough to poison forever his existence in her soul. (< For my
part, )} said a sage to me one day, <( I have never come across
a single woman who did not bring to me something that was
great. }> He was great himself first of all; therein lay his secret.
There is one thing only that the soul can never forgive: it is to
have been compelled to behold, or share, or pass close to an ugly
action, word, or thought. It cannot forgive, for forgiveness here
were but the denial of itself. And yet with the generality of
men, ingenuity, strength, and skill do but imply that the soul
must first of all be banished from their life, and that every im-
pulse that lies too deep must be carefully brushed aside. Even
in love do they act thus; and therefore it is that the woman,
who is so much nearer the truth, can scarcely ever live a mo-
ment of the true life with them. It is as though men dreaded
the contact of their soul, and were anxious to keep its beauty
at immeasurable distance. Whereas, on the contrary, we should
9556
MAURICE MAETERLINCK
endeavor to move in advance of ourselves. If at this moment
you think or say something that is too beautiful to be true in
you — if you have but endeavored to think or say it to-day, on
the morrow it will be true. We must try to be more beautiful
than ourselves; we shall never distance our soul. We can never
err when it is question of silent or hidden beauty. Besides,
so long- as the spring within us be limpid, it matters but little
whether error there be or not. But do any of us ever dream
of making the slightest unseen effort? And yet in the domain
where we are, everything is effective; for that, everything is
waiting. All the doors are unlocked; we have but to push them
open, and the palace is full of manacled queens. A single word
will very often suffice to clear the mountain of refuse. Why not
have the courage to meet a base question with a noble answer ?
Do you imagine it would pass quite unnoticed, or merely arouse
surprise ? Do you not think it would be more akin to the dis-
course that would naturally be held between two souls ? We
know not where it may give encouragement, where freedom.
Even he who rejects your words will in spite of himself have
taken a step towards the beauty that is within him. Nothing of
beauty dies without having purified something, nor can aught of
beauty be lost. Let us not be afraid of sowing it along the
road. It may remain there for weeks or years: but like the dia-
mond, it cannot dissolve, and finally there will pass by some one
whom its glitter will attract ; .he will pick it up and go his way
rejoicing. Then why keep back a lofty, beautiful word, for that
you doubt whether others will understand ? An instant of higher
goodness was impending over you: why hinder its coming, even
though you believe not that those about you will profit thereby ?
What if you are among men of the valley: is that sufficient rea-
son for checking the instinctive movement of your soul towards
the mountain peaks? Does darkness rob deep feeling of its
power ? Have the blind naught but their eyes wherewith to dis-
tinguish those who love them from those who love them not?
Can the beauty not exist that is not understood ? and is there not
in every man something that does understand, in regions far
beyond what he seems to understand, — far beyond, too, what he
believes he understands ? <( Even to the very wretchedest of all, >}
said to me one day the loftiest-minded creature it has ever been
my happiness to know, — <( even to the Very wretchedest of all, I
never have the courage to say anything in reply that is ugly or
MAURICE MAETERLINCK
9557
mediocre. }> I have for a long time followed that man's life,
and have seen the inexplicable power he exercised over the most
obscure, the most unapproachable, the blindest, even the most
rebellious of souls. For no tongue can tell the power of a soul
that strives to live in an atmosphere of beauty, and is actively
beautiful in itself. And indeed, is it not the quality of this activ-
ity that renders a life either miserable or divine ?
If we could but probe to the root of things, it might well
be discovered that it is by the strength of some souls that are
beautiful that others are sustained in life. Is it not the idea we
each form of certain chosen ones that constitutes the only living,
effective morality ? But in this idea how much is there of the
soul that is chosen, how much of him who chooses ? Do not
these things blend very mysteriously, and does not this ideal
morality lie infinitely deeper than the morality of the most beau-
tiful books ? A far-reaching influence exists therein whose limits
it is indeed difficult to define, and a fountain of strength whereat
we all of us drink many times a day. Would not any weakness
in one of those creatures whom you thought perfect, and loved in
the region of beauty, at once lessen your confidence in the uni-
versal greatness of things, and would your admiration for them
not suffer?
And again, I doubt whether anything in the world can beau-
tify a soul more spontaneously, more naturally, than the knowl-
edge that somewhere in its neighborhood there exists a pure and
noble being whom it can unreservedly love. When the soul has
veritably drawn near to such a being, beauty is no longer a
lovely, lifeless thing that one exhibits to the stranger; for it sud-
denly takes unto itself an imperious existence, and its activity
becomes so natural as to be henceforth irresistible. Wherefore
you will do well to think it over; for none are alone, and those
who are good must watch.
Plotinus, in the eighth book of the fifth 'Ennead,* after
speaking of the beauty that is <( intelligible, >J — /. ^., Divine, —
concludes thus: (<As regards ourselves, we are beautiful when we
belong to ourselves, and ugly when we lower ourselves to our
inferior nature. Also are we beautiful when we know ourselves,
and ugly when we have no such knowledge. >} Bear it in mind,
however, that here we are on the mountains, where not to know
oneself means far more than mere ignorance of what takes place
within us at moments of jealousy or love, fear or envy, happiness
9558
MAURICE MAETERLINCK
or unhappiness. Here not to know oneself means to be uncon-
scious of all the divine that throbs in man. As we wander from
the gods within us, so does ugliness enwrap us; as we discover
them, so do we become more beautiful. But it is only by re-
vealing the divine that is in us that we may discover the divine
in others. Needs must one god beckon to another; and no signal
is so imperceptible but they will every one of them respond. It
cannot be said too often, that be the crevice never so small, it
will yet suffice for all the waters of heaven to pour into our
soul. Every cup is stretched out to the unknown spring, and we
are in a region where none think of aught but beauty. If we
could ask of an angel what it is that our souls do in the shadow,
I believe the angel would answer, after having looked for many
years perhaps, and seen far more than the things the soul seems
to do in the eyes of men, <(They transform into beauty all the
little things that are given to them." AhJ we must admit that
the human soul is possessed of singular courage! Resignedly
does it labor, its whole life long, in the darkness whither most
of us relegate it, where it is spoken to by none. There, never
complaining, does it do all that in its power lies, striving to tear
from out the pebbles we fling to it the nucleus of eternal light
that perad venture they contain. And in the midst of its work it
is ever lying in wait for the moment when it may show to a sis-
ter who is more tenderly cared for, or who chances to be nearer,
the treasures it has so toilfully amassed. But thousands of exist-
ences there are that no sister visits; thousands of existences
wherein life has infused such timidity into the soul that it de-
parts without saying a word, without even once having been able
to deck itself with the humblest jewels of its humble crown.
And yet, in spite of all, does it watch over everything from
out its invisible heaven. It warns and loves, it admires, attracts,
repels. At every fresh event does it rise to the surface, where it
lingers till it be thrust down again, being looked upon as weari-
some and insane. It wanders to and fro, like Cassandra at the
gates of the Atrides. It is ever giving utterance to words of
shadowy truth, but there are none to listen. When we raise our
eyes, it yearns for a ray of sun or star that it may weave into a
thought, or haply an impulse, which shall be unconscious and
very pure. And if our eyes bring it nothing, still will it know
how to turn its pitiful disillusion into something ineffable, that
it will conceal even till its death. When we love, how eagerly
MAURICE MAETERLINCK
does it drink in the light from behind the closed door! — keen
with expectation, it yet wastes not a minute, and the light that
steals through the apertures becomes beauty and truth to the
soul. But if the door open not, (and how many lives are there
wherein it does open ?) it will go back into its prison, and its
regret will perhaps be a loftier verity that shall never be -seen; —
for we are now in the region of transformations whereof none
may speak; and though nothing born this side of the door can
be lost, yet does it never mingle with our life.
I said just now that the soul changed into beauty the little
things we gave to it. It would even seem, the more we think of
it, that the soul has no other reason for existence, and that all its
activity is consumed in amassing, at the depths of us, a treasure
of indescribable beauty. Might not everything naturally turn into
beauty were we not unceasingly interrupting the arduous labors
of our soul ? Does not evil itself become precious so soon as it
has gathered therefrom the deep-lying diamond of repentance ?
The acts of injustice whereof you have been guilty, the tears you
have caused to flow, will not these end too by becoming so much
radiance and love in your soul ? Have you ever cast your eyes
into this kingdom of purifying flame that is within you ? Per-
haps a great wrong may have been done you to-day, the act
itself being mean and disheartening, the mode of action of the
basest, and ugliness wrapped you round as your tears fell. But
let some years elapse, — then give one look into your soul, and
tell me whether, beneath the recollection of that act, you see not
something that is already purer than thought: an indescribable,
unnamable force that has naught in common with the forces of
this world; a mysterious inexhaustible spring of the other life,
whereat you may drink for the rest of your days. And yet will
you have rendered no assistance to the untiring queen; other
thoughts will have filled your mind, and it will be without your
knowledge that the act will have been purified in the silence of
your being, and will have flown into the precious waters that lie
in the great reservoir of truth and beauty, which, unlike the
shallower reservoir of true or beautiful thoughts, has an ever
ruffled surface, and remains for all time out of reach of the
breath of life. Emerson tells us that there is not an act or
event in our life but sooner or later casts off its outer shell, and
bewilders us by its sudden flight, from the very depths of us, on
high into the empyrean. And this is true to a far greater extent
MAURICE MAETERLINCK
than Emerson had foreseen; for the further we advance in these
regions, the diviner are the spheres we discover.
We can form no adequate conception of what this silent activ-
ity of the souls that surround us may really mean. Perhaps yov
have spoken a pure word to one of your fellows, by whom it has
not been understood. You look upon it as lost, and dismiss it
from your mind. But one day, peradventure, the word comes up
again extraordinarily transformed, and revealing the unexpected
fruit it has borne in the darkness; then silence once more falls
over all. But it matters not; we have learned that nothing can
be lost in the soul, and that even to the very pettiest there
come moments of splendor. It is unmistakably borne home to
us that even the unhappiest and the most destitute of men
have at the depths of their being, and in spite of themselves, a
treasure of beauty that they cannot despoil. They have but to
acquire the habit of dipping into this treasure. It suffices not
that beauty should keep solitary festival in life; it has to become
a festival of every day. There needs no great effort to be ad-
mitted into the ranks of those <( whose, eyes no longer behold
earth in flower, and sky in glory, in infinitesimal fragments, but
indeed in sublime masses w; — and I speak here of flowers and
sky that are purer and more lasting than those that we behold.
Thousands of channels there are through which the beauty of
our soul may sail even unto our thoughts. Above all is there
the wonderful central channel of love.
Is it not in love that are found the purest elements of beauty
that we can offer to the soul ? Some there are who do thus in
beauty love each other. And to love thus means that, little by
little, the sense of ugliness is lost; that one's eyes are closed to
all the littlenesses of life, to all but the freshness and virginity
of the very humblest of souls. Loving thus, we have no longer
even the need to forgive. Loving thus, we can no longer have
anything to conceal, for that the ever present soul transforms all
things into beauty. It is to behold evil in so far only as it puri-
fies indulgence, and teaches us no longer to confound the sinner
with his sin. Loving thus, do we raise on high within ourselves
all those about us who have attained an eminence where failure
has become impossible; heights whence a paltry action has so
far to fall, that touching earth it is compelled to yield up its
diamond soul. It is to transform, though all unconsciously, the
feeblest intention that hovers about us into illimitable movement
MAURICE MAETERLINCK 956r
It is to summon all that is beautiful in earth, heaven, or soul,
to the banquet of love. Loving thus, we do indeed exist before
our fellows as we exist before God. It means that the least
gesture will call forth the presence of the soul with all its treas-
ure. No longer is there need of death, disaster, or tears, for that
the soul shall appear: a smile suffices. Loving thus, we perceive
truth in happiness as profoundly as some of the heroes perceived
it in the radiance of greatest sorrow. It means that the beauty
that turns into love is undistinguishable from the love that turns
into beauty. It means to be able no longer to tell where the
ray of a star leaves off and the kiss of an ordinary thought be-
gins. It means to have come so near to God that the angels
possess us. Loving thus, the same soul -will have been so beau-
tified by us all that it will become little by little the <( unique
angel >} mentioned by Swedenborg. It means that each day will
reveal to us a new beauty in that mysterious angel, and that we
shall walk together in a goodness that shall ever become more
and more living, loftier and loftier. For there exists also a life-
less beauty made up of the past alone; but the veritable love
renders the past useless, and its approach creates a boundless
future of goodness, without disaster and without tears. To love
thus is but to free one's soul, and to become as beautiful as the
soul thus freed. (( If, in the emotion that this spectacle cannot
fail to awaken in thee," says the great Plotinus, when dealing
with kindred matters, — and of all the intellects known to me,
that of Plotinus draws the nearest to the divine, — <(if, in the
emotion that this spectacle cannot fail to awaken in thee, thou
proclaimest not that it is beautiful ; and if, plunging thine eyes
into thyself, thou dost not then feel the charm of beauty, — it
is in vain that, thy disposition being such, thou shouldst seek
the intelligible beauty; for thou wouldst seek it only with that
which is ugly and impure. Therefore it is that the discourse we
hold here is not addressed to all men. But if thou hast recog-
nized beauty within thyself, see that thou rise to the recollection
of the intelligible beauty. }>
MAURICE MAETERLINCK
FROM <THE TRAGICAL IN DAILY LIFE>
In <The Treasure of the Humble >
THERE is a tragic element in the life of every day that is far
more real, far more penetrating, far more akin to the true
self that is in us than the tragedy that lies in great ad-
venture. . . .
Is it beyond the mark to say that the true tragic element, nor-
mal, deep-rooted, and universal, — that the true tragic element of
life only begins at the moment when so-called adventures, sor-
rows, and dangers have disappeared ? Is the arm of happiness
not longer than that of sorrow, and do not certain of its attri-
butes draw nearer to the soul ? Must we indeed roar like the
Atridae, before the Eternal God will reveal himself in our life ?
and is he never by our side at times when the air is calm, and
the lamp burns on unflickering? . . . Are there not ele-
ments of deeper gravity and stability in happiness, in a single
moment of repose, than in the whirlwind of passion ? Is it not
then that we at last behold the march of time — ay, and of many
another on-stealing besides, more secret still — is it not then that
the hours rush forward ? Are not deeper chords set vibrating
by all these things than by the dagger-stroke of conventional
drama ? Is it not at the very moment when a man believes him-
self secure from bodily death that the strange and silent tragedy
of the being and the immensities does indeed raise its curtain on
the stage ? Is it while I flee before a naked sword that my
existence touches its most interesting point ? Is life always at
its sublimest in a kiss ? Are there not other moments, when one
hears purer voices that do not fade away so soon ? Does the
soul only flower on nights of storm ? Hitherto, doubtless, this
belief has prevailed. It is only the life of violence, the life of
bygone days, that is perceived by nearly all our tragic writers;
and truly may one say that anachronism dominates the stage,
and that dramatic art dates back as many years as the art of
sculpture. . . .
To the tragic author, as to the mediocre painter who still
lingers over historical pictures, it is only the 'violence of the
anecdote that appeals; and in his representation thereof does the
entire interest of his work consist. And he imagines, forsooth,
that we shall delight in witnessing the very same acts that
MAURICE MAETERLINCK
9563
brought joy to the hearts of the barbarians, with whom murder,
outrage, and treachery were matters of daily occurrence. Where-
as it is far away from bloodshed, battle-cry, and sword-thrust
that the lives of most of us flow on; and men's tears are silent
to-day, and invisible, and almost spiritual.
Indeed, when I go to a theatre, I feel as though I were
spending a few hours with my ancestors, who conceived life as
something that was primitive, arid, and brutal; but this concep-
tion of theirs scarcely even lingers in my memory, and surely it
is not one that I can share. I am shown a deceived husband
killing his wife, a woman poisoning her lover, a son avenging
his father, a father slaughtering his children, children putting
their father to death, murdered kings, ravished virgins, impris-
oned citizens — in a word, all the sublimity of tradition, but alas,
how superficial and material ! Blood, surface-tears, and death !
What can I ' learn from creatures who have but one fixed idea,
and who have no time to live, for that there is a rival, or a
mistress, whom it behoves them to put to death ? . . .
I admire Othello, but he does not appear to me to live the
august daily life of a Hamlet, who has the time to live, inasmuch
as he does not act. Othello is admirably jealous. But is it not
perhaps an ancient error to imagine that it is at the moments
when this passion, or others of equal violence, possesses us, that
we live our truest lives ? I have grown to believe that an old
man, seated in his arm-chair, waiting patiently, with his lamp
beside him; giving unconscious ear to all the eternal laws that
reign about his house ;* interpreting, without comprehending, the
silence of doors and windows and the quivering voice of the
light; submitting with bent head to the presence of his soul and
his destiny, — an old man, who conceives not that all the powers
of this world, like so many heedful servants, are mingling and
keeping vigil in his room, who suspects not that the very sun
itself is supporting in space the little table against which he
leans, or that every star in heaven and every fibre of the soul
are directly concerned in the movement of an eyelid that closes,
or a thought that springs to birth, — I have grown to believe that
he, motionless as he is, does yet live in reality a deeper, more
human, and more universal life than the lover who strangles his
mistress, the captain who conquers in battle, or <(the husband
who avenges his honor. }>
9564
DR. WILLIAM MAGINN
(1793-1842)
JLACKWOOD was astonished one day by the intrusion of a wild
Irishman from Cork into the publishing house of the staid
Scotch magazine. With much warmth and an exaggerated
brogue the stranger demanded to know the identity of one Ralph
Tuckett Scott, who had been printing things in the periodical. Of
course he was not told, and was very coldly treated; but Mr. Black-
wood was much delighted at last to find in the person of his guest
the original of his valued and popular Irish contributor, who taking
this odd method disclosed the personality
and name of William Maginn, a young
schoolmaster who had begun to write over
the name of Grossman, and afterwards as-
sumed several other pseudonyms before he
settled upon the famous <(Sir Morgan O'Do-
herty.»
Born in the city of Cork, July loth, 1793,
William Maginn may be said to have taken
in learning with his mother's milk. His
father conducted an academy for boys in
the Irish Athens, as Cork was then called;
and the future editor of Eraser's Magazine
was prepared for *and entered Trinity Col-
lege, Dublin, at the age of ten. He was
graduated at fourteen; and so extraordinary was his mind that he
was master not only of the classics but of most of the languages of
modern Europe, including of course his own ancestral Gaelic. When
his father died, William, then twenty years of age, took charge of
the academy in Marlborough Street, and in 1817 took his degree of
LL. D. at Trinity College. In the following year he made his way
into the field of letters. When he went to London in 1824, his repu-
tation as a brilliant writer was well established and enduring. He
had married in 1817 the daughter of the Rev. Mr. Bullen, rector of
Kanturk.
Immediately upon his removal to London, he was engaged by
Theodore Hook as editor of John Bull. In 1827 he boldly published
a broad and witty satire on Scott's historical novels. He was assist-
ant editor of the Evening Standard upon its institution, a position
f
DR. WILLIAM MAGINN
DR. WILLIAM MAGINN 9565
which he held for years at a salary of ^400. These years he said
afterwards were the happiest of his life. He was a sturdy Irishman,
and proud of his country; and he had what is often an Irishman's
Strongest weakness, — he was a spendthrift. His appreciation of his
relations toward creditors was embodied in the phrase (< They put
something in a book.* Little wonder then that his last years were
wretched and bailiff-haunted. The sketch of Captain Brandon in the
debtors' prison, in 'Pendennis,' is said to have been taken from this
period of Maginn's life.
Before this sad time, though, came a long era of prosperity, and
the days of the uncrowned sovereignty of letters as editor of Eraser's
Magazine. This periodical was started as a rival to Blackwood's
because Maginn had fallen out with the publishers of that magazine.
The first number appeared February ist, 1830; and before the year
was out it was not only a great financial success, but had upon its
staff the best of all the English writers. The attachment between
Dr. Maginn and Letitia E. Landon began in this time; and was,
though innocent enough, a sad experience for them both, — torturing
Maginn through the jealousy of his wife, and sending (< L. E. L.w to an
uncongenial marriage, and death by prussic acid in the exile of the
West Coast of Africa. Released from the Fleet by the Insolvency
Act in 1842, broken in health and spirit, Maginn went to the vil-
lage of Walton-on-Thames, where he died from consumption, penniless
and almost starving, on the 2ist of August of that year. Sir Robert
Peel had procured for him from the Crown a gift of ^100; but he
died without knowledge of the scanty gratuity.
SAINT PATRICK
A FIG for St. Denis of France,
He's a trumpery fellow to brag on;
A fig for St. George and his lance,
Which spitted a heathenish dragon ;
And the saints of the Welshman or Scot
Are a couple of pitiful pipers,
Both of whom may just travel to pot,
Compared with the patron of swipers,
St. Patrick of Ireland, my dear!
He came to the Emerald Isle
On a lump of a paving-stone mounted;
The steamboat he beat to a mile,
Which mighty good sailing was counted:
9566 DR. WILLIAM MAGINN
Says he, «The salt water, I think,
Has made me most bloodily thirsty;
So bring me a flagon of drink,
To keep down the mulligrubs, burst ye, —
Of drink that is fit for a saint. »
He preached then with wonderful force,
The ignorant natives a-teaching;
With a pint he washed down his discourse,
"For," says he, «I detest your dry preaching.15
The people, with wonderment struck
At a pastor so pious and civil,
Exclaimed, (< We're for you, my old buck,
And we pitch our blind gods to the Devil,
Who dwells in hot water below. w
This ended, our worshipful spoon
Went to visit an elegant fellow,
Whose practice each cool afternoon
Was to get most delightfully mellow.
That day, with a black-jack of beer,
It chanced he was treating a party:. .
Says the saint, <(This good day, do you hear,
I drank nothing to speak of, my hearty,
So give me a pull at the pot."
The pewter he lifted in sport
(Believe me, I tell you no fable);
A gallon he drank from the quart,
And then planted it full on the table.
<(A miracle ! w every one said,
And they all took a haul at the stingo:
They were capital hands at the trade,
And drank till they fell; yet, by jingo!
The pot still frothed over the brim.
Next day quoth his host, <( 'Tis a fast,
But I've naught in my larder but mutton;
And on Fridays who'd make such repast,
Except an unchristian-like glutton ? w
Says Pat, <( Cease your nonsense, I beg;
What you tell me is nothing but gammon:
Take my compliments down to the leg,
And bid it come hither a salmon ! w
And the leg most politely complied.
DR. WILLIAM MAGINN 9567
You've heard, I suppose, long ago,
How the snakes in a manner most antic
He marched to the County Mayo,
And trundled them into th' Atlantic.
Hence not to use water for drink
The people of Ireland determine;
With mighty good reason, I think,
Since St. Patrick had filled it with vermin,
And vipers, and other such stuff.
Oh, he was an elegant blade
As you'd meet from Fair Head to Kilcrumper;
And though under the sod he is laid,
Yet here goes his health in a bumper!
I wish he was here, that my glass
He might by art magic replenish;
But as he is not, why, alas!
My ditty must come to a finish —
Because all the liquor is out!
SONG OF THE SEA
«Woe to us when we lose the watery wall!)) — TIMOTHY TICKLER.
IF E'ER that dreadful hour should come — but God avert the day! —
When England's glorious flag must bend, and yield old Ocean's
sway ;
When foreign ships shall o'er that deep, where she is empress, lord;
When the cross of red from boltsprit-head is hewn by foreign sword;
When foreign foot her quarter-deck with proud stride treads along;
When her peaceful ships meet haughty check from hail of foreign
tongue :
One prayer, one only prayer is mine, — that ere is seen that sight,
Ere there be warning of that woe, I may be whelmed in night !
If ever other prince than ours wield sceptre o'er that main,
Where Howard, Blake, and Frobisher the Armada smote of Spain;
Where Blake, in Cromwell's iron sway, swept tempest-like the seas, -
From North to South, from East to West, resistless as the breeze;
Where Russell bent great Louis's power, which bent before to none,
And crushed his arm of naval strength, and dimmed his Rising Sun:
One prayer, one only prayer is mine, — that ere is seen that sight,
Ere there be warning of that woe, I may be whelmed in night!
9568
DR. WILLIAM MAGINN
If ever other keel than ours triumphant plow that brine, [line;
Where Rodney met the Count de Grasse, and broke the Frenchman's
Where Howe upon the first of June met the Jacobins in fight,
And with old England's loud huzzas broke down their godless might;
Where Jervis at St. Vincent's felled the Spaniards' lofty tiers,
Where Duncan won at Camperdown, and Exmouth at Algiers:
One prayer, one only prayer is mine, — that ere is seen that sight,
Ere there be warning of that woe, I may be whelmed in night!
But oh! what agony it were, when we should think on thee,
The flower of all the Admirals that ever trod the sea!
I shall not name thy honored name; but if the white-cliffed Isle
Which reared the Lion of the deep, the Hero of the Nile, —
Him who 'neath Copenhagen's self o'erthrew the faithless Dane,
Who died at glorious Trafalgar, o'ervanquished France and Spain, —
Should yield her power, one prayer is mine, — that ere is seen that
sight,
Ere there be warning of that woe, I may be whelmed in night!
9569
JOHN PENTLAND MAHAFFY
(1839-)
JOHN PENTLAND MAHAFFY is conspicuous among contemporary
Greek scholars and historians for devoting himself less to
the study of the golden age of the Greek intellect than to
the post-Alexandrian period, when the union of Greece with the
Orient produced the Hellenistic world. It is in this highly colored,
essentially modern world of decadent Greek energy that Professor
Mahaffy is most at home, and in which he finds the greatest number
of parallels to the civilization of his own day. He is disposed indeed
to link England and Ireland, through their
political life, to the Athens and Sparta of
the third century before Christ, and to find
precedents in the Grecian republics for
democratic conditions in the United States.
In the opening chapter of his ( Greek Life
and Thought,* after dwelling upon the hos-
tile attitude of Sparta and Athens towards
the Macedonian government, he adds, <( But
we are quite accustomed in our own day to
this Home-Rule and Separatist spirit. }>
It is this intimate manner of approach-
ing a far-off theme that gives to Professor
Mahaffy's work much of its interest. He is
continually translating ancient history into
the terms of modern life. <( Let us save ancient history, » he writes,
<(from its dreary fate in the hands of the dry antiquarian, the nar-
row scholar; and while we utilize all his research and all his learn-
ing, let us make the acts and lives of older men speak across the
chasm of centuries and claim kindred with the men and motives of
to-day. For this and this only is to write history in the full and real
sense. »
Whatever the merits of his scholarship, Professor Mahaffy has
adhered closely to his ideal of a historian. He has a thorough grasp
upon the spirit of that period for which he has the keenest appre-
ciation, and which he is able to present to his readers with the great-
est clearness and vividness of color and outline. It is true, doubtless,
as he says, that the exclusive attention paid by modern scholars to the
J. P. MAHAFFY
JOHN PENTLAND MAHAFFY
age of spotless Atticism has overshadowed that Oriental-Hellenistic
world which rose after Alexander sank. The majority of persons
know little of that rich life of decaying arts and flourishing philoso-
phies, and strangely modern political and social conditions, which had
its centres in Alexandria and Antioch. It is of this that Professor
Mahaffy writes familiarly in his < Greek Life and Thought,' and in
his ( Greek World under Roman Sway.* He succeeds in throwing a
great deal of light upon this period of history; less perhaps through
sheer force of scholarship than through his happy faculty of finding
a family relationship in the poets, philosophers, statesmen, and kings
of a long-dead world. What he may lose as a <(pure scholar w he
thus gains as a historian.
In his classical researches, he has profited greatly by his acquaint-
ance with German investigations in this field. Although of Irish
parentage, he was born in Switzerland in 1839, and the roots of his
education were fixed in the soil of German scholarship. His subse-
quent residence at Trinity College, Dublin, as professor of ancient
history, has by no means weaned him from his earlier educational
influences. He attaches the utmost importance to the thorough-going
spirit of the German Grecians. He makes constant use of their discov-
eries. Nevertheless Professor Mahaffy is more of a sympathetic Irish
historian or historical essayist than a strict Greek scholar after the
German pattern. He is at his best when he is writing of the social
side of Hellenistic life. His < Greek Life and Thought, > his < Greek
World under Roman Sway, * his < Survey of Greek Civilization, * his
< Social Life in Greece, y show keen insight into the conditions which
governed the surface appearances of a world whose colors have not
yet faded. This world of Oriental sensuousness wedded to Greek
intelligence, this world which began with Demosthenes and Alexan-
der and ended with Nero and St. John, seems to Professor Mahaffy
a more perfect prototype of the modern world than the purer Attic
civilization which preceded it, or the civilization of Imperial Rome
which followed it.
Like the majority of modern Greek scholars, Professor Mahaffy has
engaged in antiquarian research upon the soil of Greece itself. His
( Rambles and Studies in Greece, > a work of conversational charm,
shows not a little poetical feeling for the memories that haunt the
living sepulchre of a great dead race.
Other works of Professor Mahaffy include < Problems in Greek
History, > ( Prolegomena to Ancient History, > < Lectures on Primitive
Civilization, } <The Story of Alexander's Empire, > (Old Greek Life,'
and the < History of Classical Greek Literature. } His value as a
historian and student of Greek life lies mainly in his power of sug-
gestion, and in his original and fearless treatment of subjects usually
JOHN PENTLAND MAHAFFY
approached with the dreary deference of self-conscious scholarship.
His revelation of the same human nature linking the world of two
thousand years ago to the world of the present day, has earned for
his Greek studies deserved popularity.
:
CHILDHOOD IN ANCIENT LIFE
From <Old Greek Education >
WE FIND in Homer, especially in the Iliad, indications of the
plainest kind that Greek babies were like the babies of
modern Europe: equally troublesome, equally delightful to
their parents, equally uninteresting to the rest of society. The
famous scene in the sixth book of the Iliad, when Hector's infant,
Astyanax, screams at the sight of his father's waving crest, and
the hero lays his helmet on the ground that he may laugh and
weep over the child; the love and tenderness of Andromache,
and her pathetic laments in the twenty-second book, — are famil-
iar to all. She foresees the hardships and unkindnesses to her
orphan boy, <( who was wont upon his father's knees to eat the
purest marrow and the rich fat of sheep, and when sleep came
upon him, and he ceased his childish play, he would lie in the
arms of his nurse, on a soft cushion, satisfied with every comfort. J>
So again, a protecting goddess is compared to a mother keeping
the flies from her sleeping infant; and a pertinacious friend, to
a little girl who, running beside her mother, begs to be taken
up, holding her mother's dress and delaying her, and with tear-
ful eyes keeps looking up till the mother denies her no longer.
These are only stray references, and yet they speak no less clearly
than if we had asked for an express answer to a direct inquiry.
So we have the hesitation of the murderers sent to make away
with the infant Cypselus, who had been foretold to portend dan-
ger to the Corinthian Herods of that day. The smile of the
baby unmans — or should we rather say unbrutes ? — the first ruf-
fian, and so the task is passed on from man to man. This story
in Herodotus is a sort of natural Greek parallel to the great
Shakespearean scene, where another child sways his intended tor-
turer with an eloquence more conscious and explicit, but not per-
haps more powerful, than the radiant smile of the Greek baby.
Thus Euripides, the great master of pathos, represents Iphigenia
bringing her infant brother Orestes to plead for her. with that
9572 JOHN PENTLAND MAHAFFY
unconsciousness of sorrow which pierces us to the heart more
than the most affecting rhetoric. In modern art a little child
playing about its dead mother, and waiting with contentment for
her awaking, is perhaps the most powerful appeal to human com-
passion which we are able to conceive.
On the other hand, the troubles of infancy were then as now
very great. We do not indeed hear of croup, or teething, or
measles, or whooping-cough. But these are occasional matters,
and count as nothing beside the inexorable tyranny of a sleepless
baby. For then as now, mothers and nurses had a strong preju-
dice in favor of carrying about restless children, and so soothing
them to sleep. The unpractical Plato requires that in his fabu-
lous Republic two or three stout nurses shall be in readiness to
carry about each child; because children, like gamecocks, gain
spirit and endurance by this treatment! What they really gain
is a gigantic power of torturing their mothers. Most children
can readily be taught to sleep in a bed, or even in an arm-chair,
but an infant once accustomed to being carried about will insist
upon it; and so it came that Greek husbands were obliged to
relegate their wives to another sleeping-room, where the nightly
squalling of the furious infant might not disturb the master as
well as the mistress of the house. But the Greek gentleman
was able to make good his damaged rest by a midday siesta, and
so required but little sleep at night. The modern father in
northern Europe, with his whole day's work and waking, is
therefore in a more disadvantageous position.
Of course very fashionable people kept nurses; and it was the
highest tone at Athens to have a Spartan nurse for the infant,
just as an English nurse is sought out among foreign noblesse.
We are told that these women made the child hardier, that they
used less swathing and bandaging, and allowed free play for the
limbs; and this, like all the Spartan physical training, was ap-
proved of and admired by the rest of the Greek public, though
its imitation was never suggested save in the unpractical specula-
tions of Plato.
Whether they also approved of a diet of marrow and mutton
suet, which Homer, in the passage just cited, considers the lux-
ury of princes, does not appear. As Homer was the Greek
Bible, — an inspired book containing perfect wisdom on all things,
human and divine, — there must have been many orthodox par-
ents who followed his prescription. But we hear no approval or
JOHN PENTLAND MAHAFFY
censure of such diet. Possibly marrow may have represented
our cod-liver oil in strengthening delicate infants. But as the
Homeric men fed far more exclusively on meat than their his-
torical successors, some vegetable substitute, such as olive oil,
inust have been in use later on. Even within our memory,
mutton suet boiled in milk was commonly recommended by phy-
sicians for the delicacy now treated by cod-liver oil. The sup-
posed strengthening of children by air and exposure, or by early
neglect of their comforts, was as fashionable at Sparta as it is
with many modern theorists; and it probably led in both cases
to the same result, — the extinction of the weak and delicate.
These theorists parade the cases of survival of stout children —
that is, their exceptional soundness — as the effect of this harsh
treatment, and so satisfy themselves that experience confirms
their views. Now with the Spartans this was logical enough;
for as they professed and desired nothing but physical results, as
they despised intellectual qualities and esteemed obedience to be
the highest of moral ones, they were perhaps justified in their
proceeding. So thoroughly did they advocate the production of
healthy citizens for military purposes, that they were quite con-
tent that the sickly should die. In fact, in the case of obviously
weak and deformed infants, they did not hesitate to expose them
in the most brutal sense, — not to cold and draughts, but to the
wild beasts in the mountains.
This brings us to the first shocking contrast between the
Greek treatment of children and ours. We cannot really doubt,
from the free use of the idea in Greek tragedies, in the comedies
of ordinary life, and in theories of political economy, that the
exposing of new-born children was not only sanctioned by public
feeling, but actually practiced throughout Greece. Various mo-
tives combined to justify or to extenuate this practice. In the
first place, the infant was regarded as the property of its parents,
indeed of its father, to an extent inconceivable to most modern
Europeans. The State only, whose claim overrode all other con-
siderations, had a right for public reasons to interfere with the
dispositions of a father. Individual human life had not attained
what may be called the exaggerated value derived from sundry
superstitions, which remains even after those superstitions have
decayed. And moreover, in many Greek States, the contempt
for commercial pursuits, and the want of outlet for practical en-
ergy, made the supporting of large families cumbersome, or the
JOHN PENTLAND MAHAFFY
subdivision of patrimonies excessive. Hence the prudence or the
selfishness of parents did not hesitate to use an escape which
modern civilization condemns as not only criminal but as horribly
cruel. How little even the noblest Greek theorists felt this ob-
jection appears from the fact that Plato, the Attic Moses, sanc-
tions infanticide under certain circumstances or in another form,
in his ideal State. In the genteel comedy it is often mentioned
as a somewhat painful necessity, but enjoined by prudence. No-
where does the agony of the mother's heart reach us through
their literature, save in one illustration used by the Platonic
Socrates, where he compares the anger of his pupils, when first
confuted out of their prejudices, to the fury of a young mother
deprived of her first infant. There is something horrible in the
very allusion, as if in after life Attic mothers became hardened
to this treatment. We must suppose the exposing of female
infants to have been not uncommon, until the just retribution
of barrenness fell upon the nation, and the population dwindled
away by a strange atrophy.
In the many family suits argued by the Attic orators, we do
not (I believe) find a case in wrhich a large family of children
is concerned. Four appears a larger number than the average.
Marriages between relations as close as uncle and niece, and even
half-brothers and sisters, were not uncommon; but the researches
of modern science have removed the grounds for believing that
this practice would tend to diminish the race. It would certainly
increase any pre-existing tendency to hereditary disease; yet we
do not hear of infantile diseases any more than we hear of deli-
cate infants. Plagues and epidemics were common enough; but
as already observed, we do not hear of measles, or whooping-
cough, or scarlatina, or any of the other constant persecutors of
our nurseries.
As the learning of foreign languages was quite beneath the
notions of the Greek gentleman, who rather expected all barba-
rians to learn his language, the habit of employing foreign nurses,
so useful and even necessary to good modern education, was well-
nigh unknown. It would have been thought a great misfortune
to any Hellenic child to be brought up speaking Thracian or
Egyptian. Accordingly foreign slave attendants, with their strange
accent and rude manners, were not allowed to take charge of
children till they were able to go to school and had learned their
m other tongue perfectly.
JOHN PENTLAND MAHAFFY
But the women's apartments, in which children were kept for
the first few years, are closed so completely to us that we can
but conjecture 'a few things about the life and care of Greek
babies. A few late epigrams tell the grief -of parents bereaved
of their infants. Beyond this, classical literature affords us no
light. The backwardness in culture of Greek women leads us to
suspect that then, as now, Greek babies were more often spoilt
than is the case among the serious northern nations. The term
<( Spartan mother }> is, however, still proverbial ; and no doubt in
that exceptional State, discipline was so universal and so highly
esteemed that it penetrated even to the nursery. But in the
rest of Greece, we may conceive the young child arriving at his
schoolboy age more willful and headstrong than most of our
more watched and worried infants. Archytas the philosopher
earned special credit for inventing the rattle, and saving much
damage to household furniture by occupying children with this
toy.
The .external circumstances determining a Greek boy's educa-
tion were somewhat different from ours. We must remember that
all old Greek life — except in rare cases, such as that of Elis, of
which we know nothing — was distinctly town life; and so, nat-
urally, Greek schooling was day-schooling, from which the child-
ren returned to the care of their parents. To hand over boys, far
less girls, to the charge of a boarding-school, was perfectly un-
known, and would no doubt have been gravely censured. Orphans
were placed under the care of their nearest male relative, even
when their education was provided (as it was in some cases) by
the State. Again, as regards the age of going to school, it would
naturally be early, seeing that the day-schools may well include
infants of tender age, and that in Greek households neither father
nor mother was often able or disposed to undertake the educa-
tion of the children. Indeed, we find it universal that even
the knowledge of the letters and reading were obtained from a
schoolmaster. All these circumstances would point to an early
beginning of Greek school life; whereas, on the other hand, the
small number of subjects required in those days, the absence from
the programme of various languages, of most exact sciences, and
of general history and geography, made it unnecessary to begin
so early, or work so hard, as our unfortunate children have to
do. Above all, there were no competitive examinations, except in
athletics and music. The Greeks never thought of promoting a
JOHN PENTLAND MAHAFFY
man for <(dead knowledge, J> but for his living grasp of science
or of life.
Owing to these causes, we find the theorists discussing, as they
now do, the expediency of waiting till the age of seven before
beginning serious education: some advising it, others recommend-
ing easy and half-playing lessons from an earlier period. And
then, as now, we find the same curious silence on the really
important fact that the exact number of years a child has lived
is nothing to the point in question; and that while one child
may be too young at seven to commence work, many more may
be distinctively too old.
At all events, we may assume in parents the same varieties
of over-anxiety, of over-indulgence, of nervousness, and of care-
lessness, about their children; and so it doubtless came to pass
that there was in many cases a gap between infancy and school
life which was spent in playing and doing mischief. This may
be fairly inferred, not only from such anecdotes as that of Alci-
biades playing with his fellows in the street, evidently without
the protection of any pedagogue, but also from the large nomen-
clature of boys' games preserved to us in the glossaries of later
grammarians.
These games are quite distinct from the regular exercises in
the palaestra. We have only general descriptions of them, and
these either by Greek scholiasts or by modern philologists. But
in spite of the sad want of practical knowledge of games shown
by both, the instincts of boyhood are so uniform that we can
often frame a very distinct idea of the sort of amusement popu-
lar among Greek children. For young boys, games can hardly
consist of anything else than either the practicing of some bodily
dexterity, such as hopping on one foot higher or longer than
is easy, or throwing further with a stone; or else some imitation
of war, such as snowballing, or pulling a rope across a line, or
pursuing under fixed conditions; or lastly, the practice of some
mechanical ingenuity, such as whipping a top or. shooting with
marbles. So far as climate or mechanical inventions have not
altered our little boys' games, we find all these principles rep-
resented in Greek games. There was the hobby or cock horse
(kdlamon, parab$nai); standing or hopping on one leg (askolidzeiri),
which, as the word askos implies, was attempted on a skin bottle
filled with liquid and greased; blindman's buff (chalke muia, lit-
erally <( brazen fly"), in which the boy cried, (< I am hunting a
JOHN PENTLAND MAHAFFY
brazen fly, )J and the rest answered, <( You will not catch it ; })
games of hide-and-seek, of taking- and releasing prisoners, of fool
in the middle, of playing at king: in fact, there is probably no
simple child's game now known which was not then in use.
A few more details may, however, be interesting. There was
a game called kyndalismos [Drive the peg], in which the kyndalon
was a peg of wood with a heavy end sharpened, which boys
sought to strike into a softened place in the earth so that it stood
upright and knocked out the peg of a rival. This reminds us of
the peg-top splitting which still goes on in our streets. Another,
called ostrakinda, consisted of tossing an oyster shell in the air,
of which one side was blackened or moistened and called night,
the other, day, — or sun and rain. The boys were divided into
two sides with these names; and according as their side of the
shell turned up, they pursued and took prisoners their adversaries.
On the other hand, epostrakismos was making a shell skip along
the surface of water by a horizontal throw, and winning by the
greatest number of skips. Eis omillan [At strife], though a gen-
eral expression for any contest, was specially applied to tossing
a knuckle-bone or smooth stone so as to lie in the centre of a
fixed circle, and to disturb those which were already in good
positions. This was also done into a small hole (tropd). They
seem to have shot dried beans from their fingers as we do mar-
bles. They spun coins on their edge (chalkismds) [game of cop-
pers].
Here are two games not perhaps so universal nowadays:
pentalithizein [Fives, Jackstones] was a technical word for toss-
ing up five pebbles or astragali, and receiving them so as to
make them lie on the back of the hand. Meloldnthe, or the
beetle game, consists in flying a beetle by a long thread, and
guiding him like a kite; but by way of improvement they at-
tached a waxed splinter, lighted, to his tail, — and this cruelty is
now practiced, according to a good authority (Papasliotis) , in
Greece, and has even been known to cause serious fires. Tops
were known under various names (bembix, strdmbos, strobilos),
one of them certainly a humming-top. So were hoops (trochoi).
Ball-playing was ancient and diffused, even among the Ho-
meric heroes. But as it was found very fashionable and care-
fully practiced by both Mexicans and Peruvians at the time of
the conquest, it is probably common to all civilized races. We
have no details left us of complicated games with balls; and the
JOHN PENTLAND MAHAFFY
mere throwing them up and catching them one from the other,
with some rhythmic motion, is hardly worth all the poetic fervor
shown about this game by the Greeks. But possibly the musical
and dancing accompaniments were very important, in the case of
grown people and in historical times. Pollux, however, — our
main authority for most of these games, — in one place distinctly
describes both football and hand-ball. <( The names, w he says, (< of
games with balls are — episkyros, phaininda, aporraxis, ourania.
The first is played by two even sides, who draw a line in the
centre which they call skyros, on which they place the ball.
They draw two other lines behind each side; and those who first
reach the ball throw it (rhiptousiri) over the opponents, whose
duty it is to catch it and return it, until one side drives the
other back over their goal line." Though Pollux makes no men-
tion of kicking, this game is evidently our football in substance.
He proceeds: * Phaininda was called either from Phainindes, the
first discoverer, or from pkenakizein [to play tricks], w etc., — we
need not follow his etymologies; (( and aporraxis consists of mak-
ing a ball bound off the ground, and sending it against a wall,
counting the number of hops according as it was returned. *' And
as if to make the anticipations of our games more curiously com-
plete, there is cited from the history of Manuel, by the Byzantine
Cinnamus (A. D. 1200), a clear description of the Canadian la-
crosse, a sort of hockey played with racquets: —
(C Certain youths, divided equally, leave in a level place, which
they have before prepared and measured, a ball made of leather,
about the size of an apple, and rush at it, as if it were a prize lying
in the middle, from their fixed starting-point [a goal]. Each of them
has in his right hand a racquet (rhdbdon) [wand, staff] of suitable
length, ending in a sort of flat bend, the middle of which is occupied
by gut strings dried by seasoning, and plaited together in net fash-
ion. Each side strives to be the first to bring it to ttie opposite end
of the ground from that allotted to them. Whenever the ball is
driven by the racquets (rhdbdoi} to the end of the ground, it counts
as a victory. >J
Two games which were not confined to children — and which
are not widely diffused, though they exist among us — are the use
of astragali, or knuckle-bones of animals, cut so nearly square as
to serve for dice; and with these children threw for luck, the
highest throw (sixes) being accounted the best. In later Greek
art, representations of Eros and other youthful figures engaged
JOHN PENTLAND MAHAFFY
with astragali are frequent. It is to be feared that this game
was an introduction to dice-playing, which was so common, and
so often abused that among the few specimens of ancient dice
remaining, there are some false and some which were evidently
loaded. The other game to which I allude is the Italian morra,
the guessing instantaneously how many fingers are thrown up by
the player and his adversary. It is surprising how fond southern
men and boys still are of this simple game, chiefly however for
gambling purposes.
There was tossing in a blanket, walking on stilts, swinging,
leap-frog, and many other similar plays, which are ill understood
and worse explained by the learned, and of no importance to
us, save as proving the general similarity of the life of little boys
then and now.
We know nothing about the condition of little girls of the
same age, except that they specially indulged in ball-playing.
Like our own children, the girls probably joined to a lesser
degree in the boys' games, and only so far as they could be
carried on within doors, in the court of the house. There are
graceful representations of their swinging and practicing our see-
saw. Dolls they had in plenty, and doll-making (of clay) was
quite a special trade at Athens. In more than one instance we
have found in children's graves their favorite dolls, which sorrow-
ing parents laid with them as a S':>rt of keepsake in the tomb.
Most unfortunately there is hardly a word left of the nursery
rhymes, and of the folk-lore, which are very much more inter-
esting than the physical amusements of children. Yet we know
that such popular songs existed in plenty; we know too, from
the early fame of ^Esop's fables, from the myths so readily
invented and exquisitely told by Plato, that here we have lost a
real fund of beautiful and stimulating children's stories. And of
course, here too the general character of such stories throughout
the human race was preserved.
ALFRED THAYER MAHAN
(1840-1914)
[HE power of genius to discover new relations between famil-
iar facts is strikingly exemplified in Admiral Alfred Thayer
Mahan's studies of the influence of sea power upon history.
The data cited in his works are common literary property; but the
conclusions drawn from them are a distinct contribution to historical
science. Admiral Mahan was the first writer to demonstrate the deter-
mining force which maritime strength has exercised upon the fortunes of
individual nations, and consequently upon the course of general history.
Technically, one of his representative works, the (Influence of Sea
Power upon History,) is but a naval history of Europe from the re-
storation of the Stuarts to the end of the American Revolution. But
the freedom with which it digresses on general questions of naval policy
and strategy, the attention which it pays to the relation of cause and
effect between maritime events and international politics, and the
author's literary method of treatment, place this work outside the class
of strictly professional writings, and entitle it already to be regarded
as an American classic. In Europe as well as in America, it has been
recognized as an epoch-making work in the field of naval history.
The contents of Admiral Mahan's great studies of naval history
were originally given forth in a course of lectures delivered before
the Naval War College at Newport, Rhode Island; and Admiral Ma-
han's prime object, in establishing the thesis that maritime strength
is a determining factor in the prosperity of nations, was to reinforce
his argument that the future interests of the United States require a
departure from the traditional American policy of neglect of naval-
military affairs. Admiral Mahan has maintained that, as openings to
immigration and enterprise in North America and Australia diminish,
a demand will arise for a more settled government in the disordered
semi-barbarous states of Central and South America. He lays down
the proposition that stability of institutions is necessary to commer-
cial intercourse; and that a demand for such stability can hardly
be met without the intervention of interested civilized nations. Thus
international complications may be fairly anticipated; and the date
of their advent will be precipitated by the completion of a canal
through the Central-American isthmus. The strategic conditions of
the Mediterranean will be reproduced in the Caribbean Sea, and in
the' international struggle for the control of the new highway of
commerce the United States will have the advantage of geographical
ALFRED THAYER MAHAN 9581
position. He points out that the carrying trade of the United States
is at present insignificant, only because the opening of the West
since the Civil War has made maritime undertakings less profitable
than the development of the internal resources of the country. It is
thus shown to be merely a question of time when American capital
will again seek the ocean; and Admiral Mahan urges that the United
States should seek to guard the interests of the future by building
up a strong military navy, and fortifying harbors commanding the
Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea.
Admiral Mahan's biography was simple and professional. He was
born September 27th, 1840. A graduate of the U. S. Naval Academy,
he served in the Union navy as a lieutenant throughout the Civil
War, and was president of the Naval War College from 1886 to 1889
and from 1890 to 1893. In 1896 he retired from active service but was
a member of the Naval Board of Strategy during the war between
Spain and the United States. He was made rear-admiral in 1906. He
became a voluminous writer on his peculiar subject or its closely kindred
topics. Besides the work already mentioned, his writings include
(The Gulf and Inland Waters) (1883); (Life of Admiral Farragut)
(1892); (Influence of Sea Power upon the French Revolution and
Empire) (1892), a continuation of the (Influence of Sea Power upon
History); (The Life of Nelson, the Embodiment of the Sea Power of
Great Britain) (1897); (Sea Power in its Relation to the War of 1812)
(1905); (From Sail to Steam) (1907); (The Interest of America in Inter-
national Conditions) (1910); (Naval Strategy) (1911); and (Arma-
ments and Arbitration) (1912). His other books may be regarded as
supplements and continuations of the new interpretation of history
set forth in his (Influence of Sea Power upon History.) He died in
1914 before he could witness for himself the supreme test to which the
Great War was to put his theories and prophecies.
THE IMPORTANCE OF CRUISERS AND OF STRONG FLEETS
IN WAR
From <The Influence of Sea Power upon History, 1660-1783. > Copyright 1890,
by Captain A. T. Mahan. Reprinted by permission of the author, and
of Little, Brown & Co., publishers.
THE English, notwithstanding their heavy loss in the Four
Days' Battle, were at sea again within two months, much
to the surprise of the Dutch; and on the 4th of August
another severe fight was fought off the North Foreland, ending
in the complete defeat of the latter, who retired to their own
coasts. The English followed, and effected an entrance into
9582
ALFRED THAYER MAHAN
one of the Dutch harbors, where they destroyed a large fleet
of merchantmen as well as a town of some importance. Toward
the end of 1666 both sides [England and Holland] were tired
of the war, which was doing great harm to trade, and weaken-
ing both navies to the advantage of the growing sea power of
France. Negotiations looking toward peace were opened; but
Charles II., ill disposed to the United Provinces, confident that
the growing pretensions of Louis XIV. to the Spanish Nether-
lands would break up the existing alliance between Holland and
France, and relying also upon the severe reverses suffered at sea
by the Dutch, was exacting and haughty in his demands. To
justify and maintain this line of conduct he should have kept
up his fleet, the prestige of which had been so advanced by its
victories. Instead of that, poverty, the result of extravagance
and of his home policy, led him to permit it to decline ; ships in
large numbers were laid up; and he readily adopted an opinion
which chimed in with his penury, and which, as it has had advo-
cates at all periods of sea history, should be noted and con-
demned here. This opinion, warmly opposed by Monk, was: —
(<That as the Dutch were chiefly supported by trade, as the sup
ply of their navy depended upon trade, and as experience showed,
nothing provoked the people so much as injuring their trade, his
Majesty should therefore apply himself to this, which would effectu-
ally humble them, at the same time that it would less exhaust the
English than fitting out such mighty fleets as had hitherto kept the
sea every summer. . . . Upon these motives the King took a
fatal resolution of laying up his great ships, and keeping only a few
frigates on the cruise. »
In consequence of this economical theory of carrying on a
war, the Grand Pensionary of Holland, De Witt, who had the
year before caused soundings of the Thames to be made, sent
into the river, under De Ruyter, a force of sixty or seventy ships
of the line, which on the i4th of June, 1667, went up as high
as Gravesend, destroying ships at Chatham and in the Medway,
and taking possession of Sheerness. The light of the fires could
be seen from London; and the Dutch fleet remained in possession
of the mouth of the river until the end of the month. Under
this blow, following as it did upon the great plague and the
great fire of London, Charles consented to peace, which was
signed July 3ist, 1667, and is known as the Peace of Breda. The
most lasting result of the war was the transfer of New York and
ALFRED THAYER MAHAN 9583
New Jersey to England, thus joining her northern and southern
colonies in North America.
Before going on again with the general course of the history
of the times, it will be well to consider for a moment the theory
which worked so disastrously for England in 1667; that, namely,
of maintaining a sea war mainly by preying upon the enemy's
commerce. This plan, which involves only the maintenance of a
few swift cruisers and can be backed by the spirit of greed in a
nation, fitting out privateers without direct expense to the State,
possesses the specious attractions which economy always presents.
The great injury done to the wealth and prosperity of the enemy
is also undeniable ; and although ' to some extent his merchant
ships can shelter themselves ignobly under a foreign flag while
the war lasts, this guerre de course, as the French call it, — this
commerce-destroying, to use our own phrase, — must, if in itself
successful, greatly embarrass the foreign government and distress
its people. Such a war, however, cannot stand alone: it must be
supported, to use the military phrase; unsubstantial and evanes-
cent in itself, it cannot reach far from its base. That base must
be either home ports or else some solid outpost of the national
power on the shore or the sea; a distant dependency or a
powerful fleet. Failing such support, the cruiser can only dash
out hurriedly a short distance from home; and its blows, though
painful, cannot be fatal. It was not the policy of 1667, but
Cromwell's powerful fleets of ships of the line in 1652, that shut
the Dutch merchantmen in their ports and caused the grass to
grow in the streets of Amsterdam. When, instructed by the suffer-
ing of that time, the Dutch kept large fleets afloat through two
exhausting wars, though their commerce suffered greatly, they
bore up the burden of the strife against England and France
united. Forty years later, Louis XIV. was driven by exhaustion
to the policy adopted by Charles II. through parsimony. Then
were the days of the great French privateers, — Jean Bart, For-
bin, Duguay-Trouin, Du Casse, and others. The regular fleets of
the French navy were practically withdrawn from the ocean dur-
ing the great War of the Spanish Succession (1702-1712). The
French naval historian says: —
(< Unable to renew the naval armaments, Louis XIV. increased the
number of cruisers lipon the more frequented seas, especially the
Channel and the German Ocean [not far from home, it will be noticed].
95^4
ALFRED THAYER MAHAN
In these different spots the cruisers were always in a position to inter-
cept or hinder the movements of transports laden with troops, and of
the numerous convoys carrying supplies of all kinds. In these seas,
in the centre of the commercial and political world, there is always
work for cruisers. Notwithstanding the difficulties they met, owing
to the absence of large friendly fleets, they served advantageously the
cause of the two peoples [French and Spanish]. These cruisers, in
the face of the Anglo-Dutch power, needed good luck, boldness, and
skill. These three conditions were not lacking to our seamen; but
then, what chiefs and what captains they had ! }>
The English historian, on the other hand, while admitting
how severely the people and commerce of England suffered from
the cruisers, bitterly reflecting at times upon the administration,
yet refers over and over again to the increasing prosperity of
the whole country, and especially of its commercial part. In the
preceding war, on the contrary, from 1689 to 1697, when France
sent great fleets to sea and disputed the supremacy of the ocean,
how different the result! The same English writer says of that
time : —
(<With respect to our trade, it is certain that we suffered infinitely
more, not merely than the French, for that was to be expected from
the greater number of our merchant ships, but than we ever did in
any former war. . . . This proceeded in great measure from the
vigilance of the French, who carried on the war in a piratical way.
It is out of all doubt that, taking all together, our traffic suffered
excessively; our merchants were many of them ruined. »
Macaulay says of this period: (< During many months of 1693
the English trade with the Mediterranean had been interrupted
almost entirely. There was no chance that a merchantman
from London or Amsterdam would, if unprotected, reach the Pil-
lars of Hercules without being boarded by a French privateer;
and the protection of armed vessels was not easily obtained. })
Why? Because the vessels of England's navy were occupied
watching the French navy, and this diversion of them from the
cruisers and privateers constituted the support which a commerce-
destroying war must have. A French historian, speaking of the
same period in England (1696), says: <( The state of the finances
was deplorable: money was scarce, maritime insurance thirty
per cent., the Navigation Act was virtually suspended, and the
English shipping reduced to the necessity of sailing under the
Swedish and Danish flags. w Half a century later the French
ALFRED THAYER MAHAN
9585
government was again reduced, by long neglect of the navy, to
a cruising warfare. With what results? First, the French his-
torian says: <( From June 1756 to June 1760, French privateers
captured from the English more than twenty-five hundred mer-
chantmen. In 1761, though France had not, so to speak, a single
ship of the line at sea, and though the English had taken two
hundred and forty of our privateers, their comrades still took
eight hundred and twelve vessels. But," he goes on to say,
(<the prodigious growth of the English shipping explains the
number of these prizes. }) In other words, the suffering involved
to England in such numerous captures, which must have caused
great individual injury and discontent, did not really prevent the
growing prosperity of the State and of the community at large.
The English naval historian, speaking of the same period, says:
<( While the commerce of France was nearly destroyed, the trad-
ing fleet of England covered the seas. Every year her com-
merce was increasing; the money which the war carried out was
returned by the produce of her industry. Eight thousand mer-
chant vessels were employed by the English merchants. }> And
again, summing up the results of the war, after stating the
immense amount of specie brought into the kingdom by foreign
conquests, he says: <(The trade of England increased gradually
every year; and such a scene of national prosperity, while waging
a long, bloody, and costly war, was never before shown by any
people in the world. w
On the other hand, the historian of the French navy, speaking
of an earlier phase of the same wars, says: (<The English fleets,
having nothing to resist them, swept the seas. Our privateers
and single cruisers, having no fleet to keep down the abundance
of their enemies, ran short careers. Twenty thousand French
seamen lay in English prisons. When, on the other hand, in
the War of the American Revolution, France resumed the policy
of Colbert and of the early reign of Louis XIV., and kept large
battle fleets afloat, the same result again followed as in the days
of Tourville." (< For the first time," says the Annual Register, for-
getting or ignorant of the experience of 1693, and remembering
only the glories of the later wars, <( English merchant ships were
driven to take refuge under foreign flags. }) Finally, in quitting
this part of the subject, it may be remarked that in the Island of
Martinique the French had a powerful distant dependency upon
which to base a cruising warfare; and during the Seven Years'
95 86 ALFRED THAYER MAHAN
War, as afterward during the First Empire, it, with Guadaloupe,
was the refuge of numerous privateers. <(The records of the
English admiralty raise the losses of the English in the West
Indies during the first years of the Seven Years' War to four-
teen hundred merchantmen taken or destroyed. }) The English
fleet was therefore directed against the islands, both of which
fell, involving a loss to the trade of France greater than all the
depredations of her cruisers on the English commerce, besides
breaking up the system; but in the war of 1778 the great fleets
protected the islands, which were not even threatened at any
time.
So far we have been viewing the effect of a purely cruis-
ing warfare, not based upon powerful squadrons, only upon that
particular part of the enemy's strength against which it is theo-
retically directed, — upon his commerce and general wealth, upon
the sinews of war. The evidence seems to show that even for its
own special ends such a mode of war is inconclusive, — worrying
but not deadly; it might almost be said that it causes needless
suffering. What, however, is the effect of this policy upon the
general ends of the war, to which it is one of the means and to
which it is subsidiary ? How, again, does it react upon the people
that practice it ? As the historical evidences will come up in
detail from time to time, it need here only be summarized.
The result to England in the days of Charles II. has been
seen, — her coast insulted, her shipping burned almost within
sight of her capital. In the War of the Spanish Succession,
when the control of Spain was the military object, while the
French depended upon a cruising war against commerce, the
navies of England and Holland, unopposed, guarded the coasts
of the peninsula, blocked the port of Toulon, forced the French
succors to cross the Pyrenees, and by keeping open the sea high-
way, neutralized the geographical nearness of France to the seat
of war. Their fleets seized Gibraltar, Barcelona, and Minorca;
and co-operating with the Austrian army, failed by little of .redu-
cing Toulon. In the Seven Years' War the English fleets seized,
or aided in seizing, all the most valuable colonies of France and
Spain, and made frequent descents on the French coast.
The War of the American Revolution affords no lesson, the
fleets being nearly equal. The next most striking instance to
Americans is the War of 1812. Everybody knows how our pri-
vateers swarmed over the seas; and that from the smallness of
ALFRED THAYER MAHAN 9587
our navy the war was essentially, indeed solely, a cruising- war.
Except upon the lakes, it is doubtful if more than two of our
ships at any time acted together. The injury done to English
commerce, thus unexpectedly attacked by a distant foe which had
been undervalued, may be fully conceded; but on the one hand,
the American cruisers were powerfully supported by the French
fleet, which, being assembled in larger or smaller bodies in the
many ports under the Emperor's control from Antwerp to Venice,
tied the fleets of England to blockade duty; and on the other
hand, when- the fall of the Emperor released them, our coasts
were insulted in every direction, the Chesapeake entered and con-
trolled, its shores wasted, the Potomac ascended, and Washington
burned. The Northern frontier was kept in a state of alarm,
though there, squadrons absolutely weak but relatively strong
sustained the general defense; while in the South the Mississippi
was entered unopposed, and New Orleans barely saved. When
negotiations for peace were opened, the bearing of the English
toward the American envoys was not that of men who felt their
country to be threatened with an unbearable evil.
The late Civil War, with the cruises of the Alabama and
Sumter and their consorts, revived the tradition of commerce-
destroying. In so far as this is one means to a general end, and
is based upon a navy otherwise powerful, it is well; but we need
not expect to see the feats of those ships repeated in the face of
a great sea power. In the first place, those cruises were power-
fully supported by the determination of the United States to
blockade, not only the chief centres of Southern trade, but every
inlet of the coast, thus leaving few ships available for pursuit;
in the second place, had there been ten of those cruisers where
there was one, they would not have stopped the incursion in
Southern waters of the Union fleet, which penetrated to every
point accessible from the sea; and in the third place, the un-
deniable injury, direct and indirect, inflicted upon individuals
and upon one branch of the nation's industry (and how high that
shipping industry stands in the writer's estimation need not be
repeated), did not in the least influence or retard the event of
the war. Such injuries, unaccompanied by others, are more irri-
tating than weakening. On the other hand, will any refuse to
admit that the work of the great Union fleets powerfully modified
and hastened an end which was probably inevitable in any case ?
As a sea power the South then occupied the place of France in
9588
ALFRED THAYER MAHAN
the wars we have been considering1, while the situation of the
North resembled that of England; and as in France, the suffer-
ers in the Confederacy were not a class, but the government and
the nation at large.
It is not the taking of individual ships or convoys, be they
few or many, that strikes down the money power of a nation: it
is the possession of that overbearing power on the sea which
drives the enemy's flag from it, or allows it to appear only as a
fugitive; and which, by controlling the great common, closes the
highways by which commerce moves to and from the enemy's
shores. This overbearing power can only be exercised by great
navies; and by them (on the broad sea) less efficiently now than
in the days when the neutral flag had not its present immunity.
It is not unlikely that in the event of a war between maritime
nations, an attempt may be made by the one having a great
sea power, and wishing to break down its enemy's commerce, to
interpret the phrase <( effective blockade w in the manner that
best suits its interests at the time; to assert that the speed and
disposal of its ships make the blockade .effective at much greater
distances and with fewer ships than formerly. The determination
of such a question will depend, not upon the weaker belligerent,
but upon neutral powers: it will raise the issue between bel-
ligerent and neutral rights; and if the belligerent have a vastly
overpowering navy he may carry his point, — just as England,
when possessing the mastery of the seas, long refused to admit
the doctrine of the neutral flag covering the goods.
95^9
MOSES MAIMONIDES
(1135-1204)
BY. RABBI GOTTHEIL
IHE conclusion of the whole matter is, Go either to the right,
my heart, or go to the left; but believe all that Rabbi Moses
ben Maimon has believed, — the last of the Gaonim [religious
teachers] in time, but the first in rank.*' In such manner did the
most celebrated Jewish poet in Provence voice in his quaint way the
veneration with which the Jewish Aristotle of Cordova was regarded.
For well-nigh four hundred years, the descendants of Isaac had lived
in the Spanish Peninsula the larger life opened up to them by the
sons of Ishmael. They had with ardor cultivated their spiritual pos-
sessions— the only ones they had been able to save — as they passed
through shipwreck and all manner of ill fortune from the fair lands
of the East. The height of their spiritual fortune was manifested in
this second Moses, whom they did not scruple to compare with the
first bearer of that name.
Abu Amram Musa ibn Ibrahim Ubeid Allah, as his full Arabic
name ran, was born in the city of Cordova, <(the Mecca of the West,*
on March 3oth, 1135. His father was learned in Talmudic lore; and
from him the young student must have gotten his strong love of
knowledge. At an early period he developed a taste for the exact
sciences and for philosophy. He read with zeal not only the works
of the Mohammedan scholastics, but also those of the Greek philoso-
phers in such dress as they had been made accessible by their
Arabian translators. In this way his mind, which by nature ran in
logical and systematic grooves, was strengthened in its bent; and he
acquired that distaste for mysticism and vagueness which is so char-
acteristic of his literary labors. He went so far as to abhor poetry,
the best of which he declared to be false, since it was founded upon
pure invention — and this too in a land which had produced such
noble expressions of the Hebrew and Arab Muse.
It is strange that this man, whose character was that of a sage,
and who was revered for his person as well as for his books, should
have led such an unquiet life, and have written his works so full
of erudition with the staff of the wanderer in his hand. For his
peaceful studies were rudely disturbed in his thirteenth year by the
MOSES MAIMONIDES
invasion of the Almohades, or Mohammedan Unitarians, from Africa.
They not only captured Cordova, but set up a form of religious per-
secution which happily is not always characteristic of Islamic piety.
Maimonides's father wandered to Almeria on the coast; and then
(1159) straight into the lion's jaws at Fez in Africa, — a line of conduct
hardly intelligible in one who had fled for the better exercise of the
dictates of conscience. So pressing did the importunities of the Almo-
had fanatics become, that together with his family Maimonides was
compelled to don the turban, and to live for several years the life of
an Arabic Marrano. This blot upon his fair fame — if blot it be — he
tried to excuse in two treatises, which may be looked upon as his
<( apologia pro vita sua": one on the subject of conversion in general
(1160), and another addressed to his co-religionists in Southern Arabia
on the coming of the Messiah. But the position was an- untenable
one; and in 1165 we find Maimonides again on the road, reaching
Accho, Jerusalem, Hebron, and finally Egypt. Under the milder rule
of the Ayyubite Caliphs, no suppression of his belief was necessary.
Maimonides settled with his brother in old Cairo or Fostat; gaining
his daily pittance, first as a jeweler, and then in the practice of medi-
cine ; the while he continued in the study of philosophy and the elab-
oration of the great works upon which his fame reposes. In 1177 he
was recognized as the head of the Jewish community of Egypt, and
soon afterwards was placed upon the list of court physicians to Sala-
din. He breathed his last on December 13th, 1204, and his body was
taken to Tiberias for burial.
Perhaps no fairer presentation of the principles and practices of
Rabbinical Judaism can be cited than that contained in the three
chief works of Maimonides. His clear-cut mind gathered the various
threads which Jewish theology and life had spun since the closing of
the Biblical canon, and wove them into such a fabric that a new
period may fitly be said to have been ushered in. The Mishnah had
become the law-book of the Diaspora: in it was to be found the sys-
tem of ordinances and practices which had been developed up to the
second century A. D. In the scholastic discussions in which the Jew-
ish schoolmen had indulged their wit and their ingenuity, much of
its plain meaning had become obscured. At the age of twenty-three
Maimonides commenced to work upon a commentary to this Mishnah,
which took him seven years to complete. It was written in Arabic,
and very fitly called ( The Illumination > ; for here the philosophic
training of its author was brought to bear upon the dry legal mass,
and to give it life as well as light. The induction of philosophy into
law is seen to even more peculiar advantage in his Mishnah Torah
(Repeated Law). The scholastic discussions upon the Mishnah had in
the sixth century been put into writing, and had become that vast
MOSES MAIMONIDES
9591
medley of thought, that kaleidoscope of schoolroom life, which is
known by the name of Talmud. Based upon the slender framework
of the Mishnah, the vast edifice had been built up with so little plan
and symmetry that its various ramifications could only be followed
with the greatest difficulty and with infinite exertion. In turn, the
Talmud had supplanted the Mishnah as the rule of life and the direct-
ive of religious observance. Even before the time of Maimonides-
scholars had tried their hand at putting order into this great chaos;
but none of their efforts had proved satisfactory. For ten years
Maimonides worked and produced this digest, in which he arranged
in scientific order all the material which a Jewish jurist and theo-
logian might be called upon to use. Though this digest was received
with delight by the Jews of Spain, many were found who looked upon
Maimonides's work as an attempt to crystallize into unchangeable law
the fluctuating streams of tradition. The same objection was made
to his attempt to formulate into a creed 'the purely theological ideas
of the Judaism of his day. His ( Thirteen Articles y brought on a war
of strong opposition; and though in the end, the fame of their author
conquered a place for them even in the Synagogue . Ritual, they were
never accepted by the entire Jewry. They remained the presentation
of an individual scholar.
But his chief philosophical work, his ( Guide of the Perplexed >
(Dalalat al Hai'rin), carried him still further; and for centuries fairly
divided the Jewish camp into two parties. The battle between the
Maimonists and anti-Maimonists waged fiercely in Spain and Provence.
The bitterness of the strife is represented in the two inscriptions
which were placed upon his tombstone. The first read: —
<(Here lies a man, and still a man;
If thou wert a man, angels of heaven
Must have overshadowed thy mother. w
This was effaced and a second one placed in its stead: —
<(Here lies Moses Maimuni, the excommunicated heretic. })
In the ( Guide of the Perplexed y Maimonides has also produced a
work which was (< epoch-making w in Jewish philosophy. It is the best
attempt ever made by a Jew to combine philosophy with theology.
Aristotle was known to Maimonides through Al-Farabi and Ibn Sina
(Avicenna); and he is convinced that the Stagyrite is to be followed
in certain things, as he is that the Bible must be followed in others.
In fact, there can be no divergence between the two; for both have
the same end in view, — to prove the existence of God. The aim of
metaphysics is to perfect man intellectually; the same aim is at the
core of Talmudic Judaism. Reason and revelation must speak th»
MOSES MAIMONIDES
same language ; and by a peculiar kind of subtle exegesis — which
provoked much opposition, as it seemed to do violence to the plain
wording — he is able to find his philosophical ideas in the text oi
the Bible. But he is careful to limit his acquiescence in Aristotle's
teaching to things which occur below the sphere of the moon. He
was afraid of coming into contact with the foundations of religious
belief, and of having to deny the existence of wonders. The Bible
teaches that matter was created, and the arguments advanced in favoi
of both the Platonic and Aristotelian views he looks upon as insuffi-
cient. The Jewish belief that God brought into existence not only the
form but also the matter of the world, Maimonides looks upon much
as an article of faith. The same is true of the belief in a resurrec-
tion. He adduces so little proof for this dogma that the people of
his day were ready to charge him with heresy.
Maimonides is able to present twenty-five ontological arguments
for his belief in the existence, unity, and incorporeality of God. What
strikes one most is the almost colorless conception of the Deity at
which he arrives. In his endeavor to remove the slightest shadow of
corporeality in this conception, he is finally led to deny that any
positive attributes can be posited of God. Such attributes would only
be "accidentia"; and any such <( acciden'tia >} would limit the idea
of oneness. Even attributes which would merely show the relation of
the Divine Being to other beings are excluded; because he is so far
removed from things non-Divine, as to make all comparison impossi-
ble. Even existence, when spoken of in regard to him, is not an
attribute. In his school language, the "essentia" of God involves
his <( existentia. » We have therefore to rely entirely upon negative
attributes in trying to get a clear concept of the Deity.
If the Deity is so far removed, how then is he to act upon the
world ? Maimonides supposes that this medium is to be found in the
world of the spheres. Of these spheres there are nine: "the all-
encompassing sphere, that of the fixed stars, and those of the seven
planets. >J Each sphere is presided over by an intelligence which is
its motive power. These intelligences are called angels, in the Bible.
The highest intelligence is immaterial. It is the nods poietikos, the
ever-active intellect. It is the power which gives form to all things,
and makes that which was potential really existent. (< Prophecy is
an emanation sent forth by the Divine Being through the medium of
the active intellect, in the first instance to man's rational faculty and
then to his imaginative faculty. The lower grade of prophecy comes
by means of dreams, the higher through visions accorded the prophet
in a waking condition. The symbolical actions of the prophets are
nothing more than states of the soul.® High above all the prophets
Maimonides places Moses, to whom he attributes a special power, by
MOSES MAIMONIDES
means of which the active intellect worked upon him without the
mediation of the imagination.
The psychological parts of the c Guide * present in a Jewish garb
the Peripatetic philosophy as expounded by Alexander of Aphrodisia.
Reason exists in the powers of the soul, but only potentially as latent
reason (notis htilikos). It has the power to assimilate immaterial forms
which come from the active reason. It thus becomes acquired or
developed reason (nods epiktetos)\ and by still further assimilation it
becomes gradually an entity separable from the body, so that at
death it can live on unattached to the body.
In ethics Maimonides is a strong partisan of the doctrine of the
freedom of the will. No one moves him, no one drives him to cer-
tain actions. He can choose, according to his own inner vision, the
way on which he wishes to walk. Nor does this doctrine involve any
limitation of the Divine power, as this freedom is fully predetermined
by the Deity. But Maimonides must have felt the difficulty of squar-
ing the doctrine of the freedom of the will with that of the omnis-
cience of God; for he intrenches himself behind the statement that
the knowledge. of God is so far removed from human knowledge as
to make all comparison impossible. Again, in true Aristotelian style,
Maimonides holds that those actions are to be considered virtuous
which follow the golden mean between the extremes of too much
and too little. The really wise man will always choose this road;
and such wisdom can be learned; by continued practice it can become
part of man's nature. He is most truly virtuous who has reached
this eminence, and who has eliminated from his own being even the
desire to do wrong.
The daring with which Maimonides treated many portions of
Jewish theology did not fail to show its effect immediately after the
publication of the c Guided His rationalistic notions about revela-
tion, his allegorizing interpretation of Scripture, his apparent want of
complete faith in the doctrine of resurrection, produced among the
Jews a .violent reaction against all philosophical inquiry, which lasted
down to the times of the French Revolution. Even non-Jews looked
askance at his system. Abd al-Latif, an orthodox Mohammedan, con-
sidered the ( Guide > « a bad book, which is calculated to undermine the
principles of religion through the very means which are apparently
designed to strengthen them"; and in Catholic Spain the writings of
(<Moyses hijo de Maymon Egipnachus" were ordered to be burned.
In Montpellier and in Paris, his own Jewish opponents, not content
with having gotten an edict against the use of the master's writings,
obtained the aid of the Church (for the < Guide > had been translated
into Latin in the thirteenth century), and had it publicly consigned
to the flames. But all this was only further evidence of the power
0594 MOSES MAIMONIDES
which Maimonides wielded. The Karaites copied it; the Kabbalah
even tried to claim it as its own. Many who were not of the House
of Israel, as Thomas Aquinas and Albertus Magnus, acknowledged the
debt they owed the Spanish Rabbi; and Spinoza, though in many
places an opponent, shows clearly how carefully he had studied the
< Guide of the Perplexed.*
EXTRACT FROM MAIMONIDES'S WILL
FEAR the Lord, but love him also; for fear only restrains a
man from sin, while love stimulates him to good.
Accustom yourselves to habitual goodness ;. for a man's
character is what habit makes it. ... The perfection of the
body is a necessary antecedent to the perfection of the soul; for
health is the key that unlocks the inner chamber. When I bid
you attend to your bodily and moral welfare, my object is to
open for you the gates of heaven. . . . Measure your words;
for the more your words, the more your errors. Ask for expla-
nations of what you do not understand; but let it be done at a
fitting moment and in fitting language. . . . Speak in refined
language, in clear utterance and gentle voice. Speak aptly to
the subject, as one who wishes to learn and to find the truth, not
as one whose aim is to quarrel and to conquer. . . . Learn
in your youth, when your food is prepared by others, while heart
is still free and unincumbered with cares, ere the memory is
weakened. . For the time will come when you will be willing to
learn but will be unable. Even if you be able, you will labor
much for little result; for your heart will lag behind your lips,
and when it does keep pace, it will soon forget. ... If you
find in the Law or the Prophets or the Sages a hard saying
which you cannot understand, which appears subversive of some
principle of the religion, or altogether absurd, stand fast by your
faith, and attribute the fault to your own want of intelligence.
Despise not your religion because you are unable to understand
one difficult matter. . . . Love truth and uprightness, — the
MOSES MAIMONIDES
ornaments of the soul, — and cleave to them; prosperity so ob-
tained is built on a sure rock. Keep firmly to your word; let
riot a legal contract or witness be more binding than your verbal
promise even privately made. Disdain reservation and subter-
fuges, sharp practices and evasions. Woe to him who builds
his house thereon! . . . Bring near those fhat are far off;
humble yourselves to the lowly and show them the light of your
countenance. In your joys make the desolate share, but put no
one to the blush by your gifts. ... I have seen the white
become black, the low brought still lower, families driven into
exile, princes deposed from their high estate, cities ruined, as-
semblies dispersed, all on account of quarrelsomeness. Glory in
forbearance, for in that is true strength and victory.
Speech, which distinguishes man from beasts, was a loving gift,
which man uses best in thinking, and thanking and praising God.
Ungraceful should we be to return evil for good, and to utter
slanders or falsehoods. . . . Eat not excessively or raven-
ously. Work before you eat, and rest afterwards. From a man's
behavior at a public meal you can discern his character. Often
have I returned hungry and thirsty to my house, because I was
afraid when I saw the disgraceful conduct of those around
me. . . . The total abstinence from wine is good, but I will
not lay this on you as an injunction. Yet break wine's power
with water, and drink it for nourishment, not for mere enjoy-
ment. ... At gambling the player always loses. Even if
he wins money, he is weaving a spider's web round himself.
. . . Dress as well as your means will allow, but spend on
your food less than you can afford. . . . Honor your wives,
for they are your honor. Withhold not discipline from them, and
let them not rule over you.
FROM THE < GUIDE OF THE PERPLEXED >
A PROOF OF THE UNITY OF GOD
IT HAS been demonstrated by proof that the whole existing
world is one organic body, all parts of which are connected
together; also, that the influences of the spheres above per-
vade the earthly substance and prepare it for its forms. Hence
it is impossible to assume that one deity be engaged in forming
9596
MOSES MAIMONIDES
one part, and another deity in forming another part, of that
organic body of which all parts are closely connected together.
A duality could only be imagined in this way: either that at
one time the one deity is active, the other at another time; or
that both act simultaneously, nothing being done except by both
together. The lirst hypothesis is certainly absurd, for many
reasons: if at the time the one deity be active the other could
also be active, there is no reason why one deity should then act
and the other not; if on the other hand it be impossible for the
one deity to act when the other is at work, there must be some
other cause [besides these deities] which [at a certain time]
enables the one to act and disables the other. [Such differ-
ence would not be caused by time,] since time is without change,
and the object of the action likewise remains one and the same
organic whole. Besides, if two deities existed in this way, both
would be subject to the relations of time, since their actions
would depend on time; they would also in the moment of act-
ing pass from potentiality to actuality, and require an agent for
such transition; their essence would besides include possibility
[of existence]. It is equally absurd to assume that both together
produce everything in existence, and that neither of them does
anything alone; for when a number of forces must be united for
a certain result, none of these forces acts of its own accord, and
none is by itself the immediate cause of that result, but their
union is the immediate cause. It has furthermore been proved
that the action of the Absolute cannot be due to a [an external]
cause. The union is also an act which presupposes a cause
effecting that union, and if that cause be one, it is undoubtedly
God; but if it also consists of a number of separate forces, a
cause is required for the combination of these forces, as in the
first case. Finally, one simple being must be arrived at, that is
the cause of the existence of the universe, which is one whole;
it would make no difference whether we assumed that the First
Cause had produced the universe by creatio ex nihilo, or whether
the universe co-existed' with the First Cause. It is thus clear
how we can prove the Unity of God from the fact that this
universe is one whole.
MOSES MAIMONIDES
AN ARGUMENT CONCERNING THE INCORPOREALITY OF GOD
9597
EVERY corporeal object is composed of matter and form (Prop,
xxii.); every compound of these two elements requires an agent
for effecting their combination. Besides, it is evident that a body
is divisible and has dimensions; a body is thus undoubtedly sub'
ject to accidents. Consequently nothing corporeal can be a unity,
because everything corporeal is either divisible or a compound,
— that is to say, it can logically be analyzed into two elements;
for a body can only be said to be a certain body when the dis-
tinguishing element is added to the corporeal substratum, and
must therefore include two elements: but it has been proved
that the Absolute admits of no dualism whatever.
Among those who believe in the existence of God, there are
found three different theories as regards the question whether
the universe is eternal or not.
First Theory. — Those who follow the Law of Moses our
teacher hold that the whole universe (i. e., everything except God)
has been brought by him into existence out of non-existence.
In the beginning God alone existed, and nothing else; neither
angels, nor spheres, nor the things that are contained within the
spheres existed. He then produced from nothing all existing
things such as they are, by his will and desire. Even time itself
is among the things created; for time depends on motion, —
i. e., on an accident in things which move, — and the things upon
whose motion time depends are themselves created beings, which
have passed from non-existence into existence. We say that God
existed before the creation of the universe, although the verb
(< existed }) appears to imply the notion of time ; we also believe
that he existed an infinite space of time before the universe was
created; but in these cases we do not mean time in its true sense.
We only use the term to signify something analogous or similar
to time. For time is undoubtedly an accident, and according to
our opinion, one of the created accidents, like blackness and
whiteness; it is not a quality, but an accident connected with
motion. This must be clear to all who imderstand what Aris-
totle has said on time and its real existence.
Second Theory. — The theory of all philosophers whose opin-
ions and works are known to us is this: It is impossible to
assume that God produced anything from nothing, or that he
reduces anything1 to nothing; that is to say, it is impossible that
MOSES MAIMONIDES
an object consisting of matter and form should be produced
when that matter is absolutely absent, or that it should be
destroyed in such a manner that that matter be absolutely no
longer in existence. To say of God that he can produce a thing
from nothing or reduce a thing to nothing is, according to
the opinion of these philosophers, the same as if we were to say
that he could cause one substance to have at the same time
two opposite properties, or produce another being like himself, or
change himself into a body, or produce a square the diagonal of
which should be equal to its side, or similar impossibilities. The
philosophers thus believe that it is no defect in the Supreme
Being that he does not produce impossibilities, for the nature of
that which is impossible is constant; it does not depend on the
action of an agent, and for this reason it cannot be changed.
Similarly there is, according to them, no defect in the greatness
of God when he is unable to produce a thing from nothing,
because they consider this as one of the impossibilities. They
therefore assume that a certain substance has coexisted with
God from eternity, in such a manner that neither God existed
without that substance nor the latter without G.od. But they do
not hold that the existence of that substance equals in rank that
of God; for God is the cause of that existence, and the substance
is in the same relation to God as the clay is to the potter, or
the iron to the smith: God can do with it what he pleases; at
one time he forms of it heaven and earth, at another time he
forms some other thing. Those who hold this view also assume
that the heavens are transient ; that they came into existence
though not from nothing, and may cease to exist although they
cannot be reduced to nothing. They are transient in the same
manner as the individuals among living beings, which are pro-
duced from some existing substance that remains in existence.
The process of genesis and destruction is, in the case of the
heavens, the same as in that of earthly beings.
Third Theory. — Viz., that of Aristotle, his followers and com-
mentators. Aristotle maintains, like the adherents of the second
theory, that a corporeal object cannot be produced without a cor-
poreal substance. He goes further, however, and contends that
the heavens are indestructible. For he holds that the universe
in its totality has never been different, nor will it ever change:
the heavens, which form the permanent element in the universe,
and are not subject to genesis and destruction, have always been
MOSES MAIMONIDES
9599
so; time and motion are eternal, permanent, and have neither
beginning nor end; the sublunary world, which includes the tran-
sient elements, has always been the same, because the materia
prima is itself eternal, and merely combines successively with
different forms, — when one form is removed another is assumed.
This whole arrangement, therefore, both above and here below, is
never disturbed or interrupted; and nothing is produced contrary
to the laws or the ordinary course of Nature. He further says —
though not in the same terms — that he considers it impossible
for God to change his will or conceive a new desire; that God
produced this universe in its totality by his will, but not from
nothing. Aristotle finds it as impossible to assume that God
changes his will or conceives a new desire as to believe that
he is non-existing or that his essence is changeable. Hence it
follows that this universe has always been the same in the past,
and will be the same eternally.
THE OBJECT OF LAW
THE general object of the Law is twofold: the well-being of
the soul and the well-being of the body. The well-being of the
soul is promoted by correct opinions communicated to the people
according to their capacity. Some of these opinions are there-
fore imparted in a plain form, others allegorically ; because certain
opinions are in their plain form too strong for the capacity of
the common people. The well-being of the body is established
by a proper management of the relations in which we live one
to another. This we can attain in two ways: first by removing
all violence from our midst; that is to say, that we do not do
every one as he pleases, desires, and is able to do, but every one
of us does that which contributes towards the common welfare.
Secondly, by teaching every one of us such good morals as must
produce a good social state.
Of these two objects, the former — the well-being of the soul,
or the communication of correct opinions — comes undoubtedly
first in rank; but the other — the well-being of the body, the gov-
ernment of the State, and the establishment of the best possible
relations among men — is anterior in nature and time. The lat-
ter object is required first; it is also treated [in the Law] most
carefully and most minutely, because the well-being of the soul
can only be obtained after that of the body has been secured.
9600
MOSES MAIMONIDES
For it has always been found that man has a double perfection:
the first perfection is that of the body, and the second perfec-
tion is that of the soul. The first consists in > the most healthy
condition of his material relations, and this is only possible
when man has all his wants supplied as they arise: if he has
his food and other things needful for his body, — e. g., shelter,
bath, and the like. But one man alone cannot procure all this;
it is impossible for a single man to obtain this comfort; it is only
possible in society, since man, as is well known, is by nature
social.
The second perfection of man consists in his becoming an
actually intelligent being ; i. e. , when he knows about the things
in existence all that a person perfectly developed is capable of
knowing. This second perfection certainly does not include any
action or good conduct, but only knowledge, which is arrived at
by speculation or established by research.
It is clear that the second and superior kind of perfection can
only be attained when the first perfection has been acquired; for
a person that is suffering from great hunger, thirst, heat, or cold,
cannot grasp an idea even if communicated by others, much less
can he arrive at it by his own reasoning. But when a person is
in possession of the first perfection, then he may possibly acquire
the second perfection, which is undoubtedly of a superior kind,
and is alone the source of eternal life. The true Law, which as
we said is one, and beside which there is no other Law, — viz.,
the Law of our teacher Moses, — has for its purpose to give us
the twofold perfection. It aims first at the establishment of good
mutual relations among men, by removing injustice and creating
the noblest feelings. In this way the people in every land are
enabled to stay and continue in one condition, and every one can
acquire his first perfection. Secondly, it seeks to train us in
faith, and to impart correct and true opinions when the intellect
is sufficiently developed. Scripture clearly mentions the twofold
perfection, and tells us that its acquisition is the object of all
Divine commandments. Cf. <(And the Lord commanded us to
do all these statutes, to fear the Lord our God, for our good
always, that he might preserve us alive this day w (Deut. vi. 24).
Here the second perfection is first mentioned because it is of
greater importance; being, as we have shown, the ultimate aim
of man's existence. This perfection is expressed in the phrase
<(for our good always." You know the interpretation of our
MOSES MAIMONIDES
9601
sages: <(<that it may be well with thee ' (ibid., xxii. 7), —
namely, in the world that is all good; <and thou mayest prolong
thy days* (ibid.), — i. e., in the world that is all eternal. }> In the
same sense I explain the words (( for our good always w to mean
<(that we may come into the world that is all good and eternal,
where we may live permanently }> ; and the words (( that he might
preserve us alive this day}> I explain as referring to our first and
temporal existence, to that of our body,' which cannot be in a
perfect and good condition except by the co-operation of society,
as has been shown by us.
TRUE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD
AFTER a man has acquired the true knowledge of God, it
must be his aim to surrender his whole being to him and to have
his heart constantly filled with longing after him. Our intellect-
ual power, which emanates directly from God, joins us to him.
You have it in your power to strengthen that bond, or to weaken
it until it breaks. It will be strengthened if you love God above
all other things" and weakened if you prefer other things to him.
All religious acts, such as the reading of Scripture, praying, and
performing of ordinances, are only means to fill our mind with
the thought of God and free it from worldliness. If however
we pray with the motion of our lips and our face toward the
wall, but think all the while of our business; read the Law, and
think of the building of our house; perform ceremonies with our
limbs only, whilst our hearts are far from God, — then there is
no difference between these acts and the digging of the ground
or the hewing of wood.
SUPERFLUOUS THINGS
THE soul, when accustomed to superfluous things, acquires a
strong habit of desiring others which are neither necessary for
the preservation of the individual nor for that of the species.
This desire is without limit; whilst things which are necessary
are few and restricted within certain bounds. Lay this well to
heart, reflect on it again and again: that which is superfluous is
without end, and therefore the desire for it also without limit.
Thus you desire to have your vessels of silver, but gold vessels
are still better; others have even vessels studded with sapphires,
emeralds, or rubies. Those therefore who are ignorant of this
xvi — 601
9602
MOSES MAIMONIDES
truth, that the desire for superfluous things is without limit, are
constantly in trouble and pain. They expose themselves to great
dangers by sea voyages or in the service of kings. When they
thus meet with the consequences of their course, they complain of
the judgments of God; they go so far as to say that God's power
is insufficient, because he has given to this universe the proper-
ties which they imagine cause these evils.
EVIL THINGS CONTRASTED WITH GOOD THINGS
MEN frequently think that the evils in the world are more
numerous than the good things; many sayings and songs of the
nations dwell on this idea. They say that the good is found only
exceptionally, whilst evil things are numerous and lasting. The
origin of this error is to be found in the circumstance that men
judge of the whole universe by examining one single person,
believing that the world exists for that one person only. If
anything happens to him contrary to his expectation, forthwith
they conclude that the whole universe • is evil. 'All mankind at
present in existence form only an infinitesimal portion of the per-
manent universe. It is of great advantage that man should know
his station. Numerous evils to which persons are exposed are
due to the defects existing in the persons themselves. We seek
relief from our own faults; we suffer from evils which we inflict
on ourselves; and we ascribe them to God, who is far from con-
nected with them. As Solomon explained it, (< The foolishness of
man perverteth his way, and his heart fretteth against the Lord"
(Prov. xix. 3).
THOUGHT OF SINS
THERE is a well-known saying of our sages : <( The thoughts
about committing a sin are a greater evil than the sin itself.0
I can offer a good explanation of this strange dictum. When a
person is disobedient, this is due to certain accidents connected
with the corporal element in his constitution; for man sins only
by his animal nature, whereas thinking is a faculty connected
with his higher and essential being. A person who thinks sinful
thoughts, sins therefore by means of the nobler portion of his
self ; just as he who causes an ignorant slave to work unjustly,
commits a lesser wrong than he who forces a free man or a
prince to do menial labor. That which forms the true nature of
MOSES MAIMONIDES
9603
man, with all its properties and powers, should only be employed
in suitable work, — in endeavoring to join higher beings, — and
not to sink to the condition of lower creatures.
Low SPEECH CONDEMNED
You know we condemn lowness of speech, and justly so; for
the gift of speech is peculiar to man, and a boon which God
granted to him, that he may be distinguished from the rest of
living creatures. This gift, therefore, which God gave us in
order to enable us to perfect ourselves, to learn and to , teach,
must not be employed in doing that which is for us most degrad-
ing and disgraceful. We must not imitate the songs and tales of
ignorant and lascivious people. It may be suitable to them, but
it is "not fit for those who are told — <(And ye shall be unto me
a kingdom of priests, and a holy nation ® (Ex. xix. 6).
CONTROL BODILY DESIRES
MAN must have control over all bodily desires. He must
reduce them as much as possible, and only retain of them as
much as is indispensable. His aim must be the aim of man, as
man ; viz. , the formation and perfection of ideas, and nothing else.
The best and the sublimest among them is the idea which man
forms of God, angels, and the rest of the creation, according to
his capacity. Such men are always with God, and of them it is
said: <(Ye are princes, and all of you are children of the Most
High." When man possesses a good sound body, that does not
overpower nor disturb the equilibrium within him, he possesses
a Divine gift. A good constitution facilitates the rule of the
soul over the body; but it is not impossible to conquer a bad
constitution by training, and make it subservient to man's ulti-
mate destiny.
THE MORAL EQUIPOISE
IT is true that many pious men in ages gone by have broken
the universal rule, to select the just mean in all the actions of
life; at times they went to extremes. Thus they fasted often,
watched through the nights, abstained from flesh and wine, wore
sackcloth, lived among the rocks, and wandered in the deserts.
They did this, however, only when they considered it necessary
to restore their disturbed moral equipoise; or to avoid, in the
9604
MOSES MAIMONIDES
midst of men, temptations which at times were too strong for
them. These abnegations were for them means to an end, and
they forsook them as soon as that end was attained. Thought-
less men, however, regarded castigations as holy in themselves,
and imitated them without thinking of the intentions of their
examples. They thought thereby to reach perfection and to
approach to God. The fools! as if God hated the body and took
pleasure in its destruction. They did not consider how many
sicknesses of soul their actions caused. They are to be compared
to such as take dangerous medicines because they have seen
that experienced physicians have saved many a one from death
with them; so they ruin themselves. This is the meaning of the
cry of the Prophet Jeremiah: <(Oh that I had in the wilderness
a lodging-place of wayfaring men, that I might leave my people
and go from them."
9605
SIR HENRY MAINE
(1822-1888)
BY D. MACQ. MEANS
[ENRY JAMES SUMNER MAINE was born near Leighton on August
1 5th, 1822, and passed his first years in Jersey; afterward
removing. to England, where he was brought up exclusively
by his mother, a woman of superior talents. In 1829 he was entered
by his godfather — Dr. Sunnier, afterward Archbishop of Canterbury
— at Christ's Hospital, and in 1840 went as one of its exhibitioners to
Pembroke College, Cambridge. From the
very beginning his career was brilliant; and
after carrying off nearly all the academic
honors, he was made Regius Professor of
Civil Law at the early age of twenty-five.
In spite of a feeble constitution, which
made his life a prolonged struggle with ill-
ness, his voice was always notably strong,
and is described by one of his early hearers
as like a silver bell. His appearance was
striking, indicating the sensitive nervous
energy of which he was full. Such were
his spirits and disposition that he was a
charming companion, but it was hard to
draw him away from his reading. This
became eventually prodigious in extent, his power of seizing on the
essence of books and passing over what was immaterial being very
remarkable.
In 1847 he married his cousin, Jane Maine; and as it became
necessary to provide for new responsibilities, he took up the law as
a profession, and was called to the bar in 1850. Like so many other
great Englishmen of modern times, he devoted much time to writing
for the press, his first efforts appearing in the Morning Chronicle.
He wrote for the first number of the Saturday Review, and is said
to have suggested its name. His contributions were very numer-
ous; and were especially valued by the editor, John Douglas Cook,
although the present Lord Salisbury, Sir William Ha'jourt, Goldwin
Smith, Sir James Stephen, Walter Bagehot, and otner able writers
SIR HENRY MAINE
9606
SIR HENRY MAINE
were coadjutors. He practiced a little at the common-law bar; but
his health did not "permit him to go regularly on circuit, and he
soon went over to the equity branch of the profession. In 1852 the
Inns of Court appointed him reader in Roman law; and in 1861 the
results of this lectureship were given to the world in the publication
of ( Ancient Law.*
This splendid work made an epoch in the history of the study of
law. It is the finest example of the comparative method which the
present generation has seen. Some of its conclusions have been
proved erroneous by later scholars, but the value of the book remains
unimpaired. Apart from its graces of style, its peculiar success was
due to the author's power of re-creating the past; of introducing
the reader, as it were, to his own ancestors many centuries removed,
engaged in the actual transaction of legal business. It was altogether
fitting that one who had shown such distinguished capacity for under-
standing the thoughts and customs of primitive peoples should be
chosen as an administrator of the Indian Empire; and in 1862 Maine
accepted the law membership in the council of the Governor-General
— the office previously filled by Macaulay. Perhaps nowhere in the
world is so good work done with so little publicity as in such posi-
tions as this. It is inconceivable that any 'one except a historian or a
specialist should read Maine's Indian papers, and yet no one can take
them up without being struck with their high quality. So far as intel-
ligent government is concerned, there is no comparison between a
benevolent despot like Maine and a representative chosen by popular
suffrage.
On his return from India in 1869, Maine became professor of
jurisprudence at Oxford; and showed the results of his Indian expe-
riences in the lectures published in 1871, under the title < Village
Communities.* In 1875 he brought out the ( Early History of Institu-
tions. ' He became a member of the Indian Council, and resigning his
Oxford professorship, was chosen master of Trinity Hall, Cambridge;
numberless other honors being showered on him. In 1883 tne last of
the series of works begun with 'Ancient Law* appeared, — Disser-
tations on Early Law and Custom.* This was followed in 1885 by
Popular Government,* a work especially interesting to Americans as
criticizing their form of government from the aristocratical point of
view. In 1887 Maine succeeded Sir William Harcourt as professor
of international law at Cambridge; but delivered only one course of
lectures, which were published after his death without his final revis-
ion. He died February 3d, 1888, of apoplexy, leaving a widow and
two sons, one of whom died soon after his father. A memoir of
his life was prepared by Sir M. E. Grant Duff, with a selection of his
Indian speeches and minutes, and published in this country in 1892
SIR HENRY MAINE 9607
by Henry Holt & Co. It contains a fine photograph from Dickinson's
portrait, — enough evidence of itself to explain the mastery which
the English race has come to exercise over so large a part of the
earth.
Maine's style was distinguished by lucidity and elegance. He has
been justly compared with Montesquieu; but the progress of knowl-
edge gave him the advantage of more accurate scholarship. He
applied the theory of evolution to the development of human institu-
tions; yet no sentence ever written by him has been so often quoted
as that which recognized the immobility of the masses of mankind:
<( Except the blind forces of nature, nothing moves in this world
which is not Greek in its origin. }> In spite of his wonderful powers
of almost intuitive generalization, and of brilliant expression, he had
not the temperament of a poetical enthusiast. He was noted for his
caution in his career as a statesman, and the same quality marked
all his work. As Sir F. Pollock said, he forged a new and lasting
bond between jurisprudence and anthropology, and made jurispru-
dence a study of the living growth of human society through all its
stages. But those who are capable of appreciating his work in India
will perhaps consider it his greatest achievement; for no man has
done so much to determine what Indian law should be, and thus to
shape the institutions of untold millions of human beings.
THE BEGINNINGS OF THE MODERN LAWS OF REAL PROPERTY
From Essay on < The Effects of Observation of India on Modern European
Th ought, > in < Village Communities in the East and West*
WHENEVER a corner is lifted up of the veil which hides from
us the primitive condition of mankind, even of such parts
of it as we know to have been destined to civilization,
there are two positions, now very familiar to us, which seem to
be signally falsified by all we are permitted to see: All men are
brothers, and All men are equal. The scene before us is rather
that which the animal world presents to the mental eye of those
who have the courage to bring home to themselves the facts
answering to the memorable theory of Natural Selection. Each
9608
SIR HENRY MAINE
fierce little community is perpetually at war with its neighbor,
tribe with tribe, village with village. The never-ceasing attacks
of the strong on the weak end in the manner expressed by the
monotonous formula which so often recurs in the pages of Thu-
cydides, — "They put the men to the sword; the women and
children they sold into slavery. » Yet even amid all this cruelty
and carnage, we find the germs of ideas which have spread over
the world. There is still a place and a sense in which men are
brothers and equals. The universal belligerency is the belliger-
ency of one total group, tribe, or village, with another; but in
the interior of the groups the regimen is one not of conflict and
confusion, but rather of ultra-legality. The men who composed
the primitive communities believed themselves to be kinsmen
in the most literal sense of the word; and surprising as it may
seem, there are a multitude of indications that in one stage of
thought they must have regarded themselves as equals. When
these primitive bodies first make their appearance as land-owners,
as claiming an exclusive enjoyment in a definite area of land,
not only do their shares of the soil appear to have been ori-
ginally equal, but a number of contrivances survive for preserv-
ing the equality, of which the most frequent is the periodical
redistribution of the tribal domain. The facts collected suggest
one conclusion, which may be now considered as almost proved
to demonstration. Property in land, as we understand it, — that
is, several ownership, ownership by individuals or by groups not
larger than families, — is a more modern institution than joint
property or co-ownership; that is, ownership in common by large
groups of men originally kinsmen, and still, wherever they are
found (and they are still found over a great part of the world),
believing or assuming themselves to be, in some sense, of kin to
one another. Gradually, and probably under the influence of a
great variety of causes, the institution familiar to us, individual
property in land, has arisen from the dissolution of the ancient
co-ownership.
There are other conclusions from modern inquiry which ought
to be stated less confidently, and several of them only in nega-
tive form. Thus, wherever we can observe the primitive groups
still surviving to our day, we find that competition has very fee-
ble play in their domestic transactions; competition, that is, in
exchange and in the acquisition of property. This phenomenon,
with several others, suggests that competition, that prodigious
SIR HENRY MAINE
9609
social force of which the action is measured by political econ-
omy, is of relatively modern origin. Just as the conceptions
of human brotherhood, and in a less degree of human equality,
appear to have passed beyond the limits of the primitive com-
munities and to have spread themselves in a highly diluted form
over the mass of mankind, — so, on the other hand, competition
in exchange seems to be the universal belligerency of the ancient
world which has penetrated into the interior of the ancient groups
of blood relatives. It is the regulated private war of ancient
society gradually broken up into indistinguishable atoms. So far
as property in land is concerned, unrestricted competition in pur-
chase and exchange has a far more limited field of action, even
at this moment, than an Englishman or an American would sup-
pose. The view of land as merchantable property, exchangeable
like a horse or an ox, seems to be not only modern but even
now distinctively Western. It is most unreservedly accepted in
the United States; with little less reserve in England and France;
but as we proceed through Eastern Europe it fades gradually
away, until in Asia it is wholly lost.
I cannot do more than hint at other conclusions which are
suggested by recent investigation. We may lay down, I think at
least provisionally, that in the beginning of the history of owner-
ship there was no such broad distinction as we now commonly
draw between political and proprietary power, — between the
power which gives the right to tax and the power which confers
the right to exact rent. It would seem as if the greater forms
of landed property now existing represented political sovereignty
in a condition of decay, while the small property of most of the
world has grown — not exclusively, as has been vulgarly supposed
hitherto, out of the precarious possessions of servile classes, but —
out of the indissoluble association of the status of freeman with
a share in the land of the community to which he belonged. I
think, again, that it is possible we may have to revise our ideas
of the relative antiquity of the objects of enjoyment which we
call movables and immovables, real property and personal prop-
erty. Doubtless the great bulk, of movables came into existence
after land had begun to be appropriated by groups of men; but
there is now much reason for suspecting that some of these com-
modities were severally owned before this appropriation, and that
they exercised great influence in dissolving the primitive collect-
ive ownership.
9610
SIR HENRY MAINE
It is unavoidable that positions like these, stated as they can
cnly be stated here, should appear to some paradoxical, to others
unimportant. There are a few, perhaps, who may conceive a sus-
picion that if property as we now understand it — that is, several
property — be shown to be more modern not only than the human
race (which was long ago assumed), but than ownership in com-
mon (which is only beginning to be suspected), some advantage
may be gained by those assailants of the institution itself whose
doctrines from time to time cause a panic in modern Continental
society. I do not myself think so, It is not the business of the
scientific historical inquirer to assert good or evil of any particu-
lar institution. He deals with its existence and development, not
with its expediency. But one conclusion he may properly draw
from the facts bearing on the subject before us. Nobody is at
liberty to attack several property and to say at the same time
that he values civilization. The history of the two cannot be dis-
entangled. Civilization is nothing more than a name for the old
order of the Aryan world, dissolved but perpetually reconstituting
itself under a vast variety of solvent influences, of which infi-
nitely the most powerful have been those which have slowly,
and in some parts of the world much less perfectly than others,
substituted several property for collective ownership.
IMPORTANCE OF A KNOWLEDGE OF ROMAN LAW: AND THE
EFFECT OF THE CODE NAPOLEON
From ( Roman Law and Legal Education,* in ( Village Communities in the
East and West>
IF IT were worth our while to inquire narrowly into the causes
which have led of late years to the revival of interest in the
Roman civil law, we should probably end in attributing its
increasing popularity rather to some incidental glimpses of its
value, which have been gained by the English practitioner in the
course of legal business, than to any widely diffused or far reach-
ing appreciation of its importance as an instrument of knowledge.
It is most certain that the higher the point of jurisprudence
which has to be dealt with, the more signal is always the assist-
ance derived by the English lawyer from Roman law; and the
higher the mind employed upon the question, the more unquali-
fied is its admiration of the system by which its perplexities have
SIR HENRY MAINE 96n
been disentangled. But the grounds upon which the study of
Roman jurisprudence is to be defended are by no means such as
to be intelligible only to the subtlest intellects, nor do they await
the occurrence of recondite points of law in order to disclose
themselves. It is believed that the soundness of many of them
will be recognized as soon as they are stated; and to these it is
proposed to call attention in the present essay.
The historical connection between the' Roman jurisprudence
and our own appears to be now looked upon as furnishing one
very strong reason for increased attention to the civil law of
Rome. The fact, of course, is not now to be questioned. The
vulgar belief that the English common law was indigenous in all
its parts was always so easily refuted, by the most superficial
comparison of the text of Bracton and Fleta with the Corpus
Juris^ that the honesty of the historians who countenanced it
can only be defended by alleging the violence of their preju-
dices; and now that the great accumulation of fragments of ante-
Justinianean compendia, and the discovery of the MS. of Gaius,
have increased our acquaintance with the Roman law in the only
form in which it can have penetrated into Britain, the suspicion
of a partial earlier filiation amounts almost to a certainty. The
fact of such a filiation has necessarily the highest interest for the
legal antiquarian, and it is of value besides for its effect on some
of the coarser prepossessions of English lawyers. But too much
importance should not be attached to it. It has ever been the
case in England that every intellectual importation we have
received has been instantly colored by the peculiarities of our
national habits and spirit. A foreign jurisprudence interpreted
by the old English common-lawyers would soon cease to be for-
eign, and the Roman law would lose its distinctive character with
even greater rapidity than any other set of institutions. It will
be easily understood that a system like the laws of Rome, distin-
guished above all others for its symmetry and its close correspond-
ence with fundamental rules, would be effectually metamorphosed
by a very slight distortion of its parts, or by the omission of one
or two governing principles. Even though, therefore, it be true —
and true it certainly is — that texts of Roman law have been
worked at all points into the foundations of our jurisprudence, it
does not follow from that fact that our knowledge of English
law would be materially improved by the study of the ( Corpus
Juris*; and besides, if too much stress be laid on the historical
9612
SIR HENRY MAINE
connection between the systems, it will be apt to encourage one
of the most serious errors into which the inquirer into the phi-
losophy of law can fall. It is not because our own jurisprudence
and that of Rome were once alike that they ought to be studied
together; it is because they will be alike. It is because all laws,
however dissimilar in their infancy, tend to resemble each other
in their maturity; and because we in England are slowly, and
perhaps unconsciously or unwillingly, but still steadily and cer-
tainly, accustoming ourselves to the same modes of legal thought,
and to the same conceptions of legal principle, to which the
Roman jurisconsults had attained after centuries of accumulated
experience and unwearied cultivation.
The attempt, however, to explain at length why the flux and
change which our law is visibly undergoing furnish the strongest
reasons for studying a body of rules so mature and so highly
refined as that contained in the ( Corpus Juris, y would be nearly
the same thing as endeavoring to settle the relation of the Roman
law to the science of jurisprudence; and that inquiry, from its
great length and difficulty, it would be obviously absurd to prose-
cute within the limits of an essay like the present. But there is
a set of considerations of a different nature, and equally forcible
in their way, which cannot be too strongly impressed on all who
have the control of legal or general education. The point which
they tend to establish is this: the immensity of the ignorance to
which we are condemned by ignorance of Roman law. It may be
doubted whether even the best educated men in England can
fully realize how vastly important an element is Roman law in
the general mass of human knowledge, and how largely it enters
into and pervades and modifies all products of human thought
which are not exclusively English. Before we endeavor to give
some distant idea of the extent to which this is true, we must
remind the reader that the Roman law is not a system of cases,
like our own. It is a system of which the nature may, for prac-
tical purposes though inadequately, be described by saying that
it consists of principles, and of express written rules. In Eng-
land, the labor of the lawyer is to extract from the precedents a
formula, which while covering them will also cover the state- of
facts to be adjudicated upon; and the task of rival advocates is,
from the same precedents or others to elicit different formulas
of equal apparent applicability. Now, in Roman law no such use
is made of precedents. The Corpus Juris, > as may be seen at a
SIR HENRY MAINE
9613
glance, contains a great number of what our English lawyers
would term cases; but then they are in no respect sources of
rules — they are instances of their application. They are, as it
were, problems solved by authority in order to throw light on the
rule, and to point out how it should be manipulated and applied.
How it was that the Roman law came to assume this form so
much sooner and more completely than our own, is a question
full of interest, and it is one of the first to which the student
should address himself; but though the prejudices of an English-
man will probably figure to him a jurisprudence thus constituted
as, to say the least, anomalous, it is nevertheless quite as readily
conceived, and quite as natural to the constitution of our own
system. In proof of this, it may be remarked that the English
common law was clearly conceived by its earliest expositors as
wearing something of this character. It was regarded as existing
somewhere in the form of a symmetrical body of express rules,
adjusted to definite principles* The knowledge of the system,
however, in its full amplitude and proportions, was supposed to be
confined to the breasts of the judges and the lay public, and the
mass of the legal profession were only permitted to discern its
canons intertwined with the facts of adjudged cases. Many traces
of this ancient theory remain in the language of our judgments
and forensic arguments; and among them we may perhaps place
the singular use of the word (< principle }> in the sense of a legal
proposition elicited from the precedents by comparison and induc-
tion.
The proper business of a Roman jurisconsult was therefore
confined to the interpretation and application of express written
rules; processes which must of course be to some extent em-
ployed by the professors of every system of laws — of our own
among others, when we attempt to deal with statute law. But
the great space which they filled at Rome has no counterpart
in English practice; and becoming, as they did, the principal
exercise of a class of men characterized as a whole by extraordi-
nary subtlety and patience, and in individual cases by extraor-
dinary genius, they were the means of producing results which
the English practitioner wants centuries of attaining. We who
speak without shame — occasionally with something like pride — of
our ill success in construing statutes, have at our hand nothing
distantly resembling the appliances which the Roman jurispru-
dence supplies, partly by definite canons and partly by appropriate
9614 SIR HENRY MAINE
examples, for the understanding and management of written law.
It would not be doing more than justice to the methods of inter-
pretation invented by the Roman lawyers, if we were to com-
pare the power which they give over their subject-matter to
the advantage which the geometrician derives from mathematical
analysis in discussing the relations of space. By each of these
helps, difficulties almost insuperable become insignificant, and pro-
cesses nearly interminable are shortened to a tolerable compass.
The parallel might be carried still further, and we might insist on
the special habit of mind which either class of mental exercise
induces. Most certainly nothing can be more peculiar, special, and
distinct than the bias of thought, the modes of reasoning, and
the habits of illustration, which are given by a training in the
Roman law. No tension of mind or length of study which even
distantly resembles the labor of mastering English jurisprudence
is necessary to enable the student to realize these peculiarities
of mental view; but still they cannot be acquired without some
effort, and the question is, whether the effort which they demand
brings with it sufficient reward. We can only answer by endeav-
oring to point out that they pervade whole departments of thought
and inquiry of which some knowledge is essential to every law-
yer, and to every man of decent cultivation. . . .
It may be confidently asserted, that if the English lawyer only
attached himself to the study of Roman law long enough to mas-
ter the technical phraseology and to realize the leading legal con-
ceptions of the < Corpus Juris, y he would approach those questions
of foreign law to which our courts have repeatedly to address
themselves, with an advantage which no mere professional acumen
acquired by the exclusive practice of our own jurisprudence could
ever confer on him. The steady multiplication of legal systems
borrowing the entire phraseology, adopting the principles, and
appropriating the greater part of the rules, of Roman jurispru-
dence, is one of the most singular phenomena of our day, and far
more worthy of attention than the most showy manifestations of
social progress. This gradual approach of Continental Europe to
a uniformity of municipal law dates unquestionably from the first
French Revolution, Although Europe, as is well known, formerly
comprised a number of countries and provinces which governed
themselves by the written Roman law, interpolated with feudal
observances, there does not seem to be any evidence that the
institutions of these localities enjoyed any vogue or favor beyond
SIR HENRY MAINE
9615
their boundaries. Indeed, in the earlier part of the last century,
there may be traced among the educated men of the Continent
something of a feeling in favor of English law; a feeling pro-
ceeding, it is to be feared, rather from the general enthusiasm
for English political institutions which was then prevalent, than
founded on any very accurate acquaintance with the rules of our
jurisprudence. Certainly,, as respects France in particular, there
were no visible symptoms of any general preference for the insti-
tutions of the pays de droit tcrit as 'opposed to the provinces in
which customary law was observed. But then came the French
Revolution, and brought with it the necessity of preparing a gen-
eral code for France one and indivisible. Little is known of the
special training through which the true authors of this work had
passed; but in the form which it ultimately assumed, when pub-
lished as the Code Napoleon, it may be described without great
inaccuracy as a compendium of the rules of Roman law then
practiced in France, cleared of all feudal admixture; such rules,
however, being in all cases taken with the extensions given to
them and the interpretations put upon them by one or two emi-
nent French jurists, and particularly by Pothier. The French
conquests planted this body of laws over the whole extent of the
French empire, and the kingdoms immediately dependent upon it;
and it is incontestable that it took root with extraordinary quick-
ness and tenacity. The highest tribute to the French codes is
their great and lasting popularity with the people, the .lay public,
of the countries into which they have been introduced. How
much weight ought to be attached to this symptom, our own ex-
perience should teach us; which surely shows us how thoroughly
indifferent in general is the mass of the public to the particu-
lar rules of civil life by which it may be governed, and how
extremely superficial are even the most energetic movements in
favor of the amendment of the law. At the fall of the Bona-
partist empire in 1815, most of the restored governments had
the strongest desire to expel the intrusive jurisprudence which
had substituted itself for the ancient customs of the land. It was
found, however, that the people prized it as the most precious of
possessions: the attempt to subvert it was persevered in in very
few instances, and in most of them the French codes were
restored after a brief abeyance. And not only has the observance
of these laws been confirmed in almost all the countries which
ever enjoyed them, but they have made their way into numerous
9616
SIR HENRY MAINE
other communities, and occasionally in the teeth of the most for-
midable political obstacles. So steady, indeed, and so resistless
has been the diffusion of this Romanized jurisprudence, either in
its original or in a slightly modified form, that the civil law of
the whole Continent is clearly destined to be absorbed and lost
in it. It is, too, we should add, a very vulgar error to suppose
that the civil part of the codes has only been found suited to a
society so peculiarly constituted as that of France. With alter-
ations and additions, mostly directed to the enlargement of the
testamentary power on one side and to the conservation of en-
tails and primogeniture on the other, they have been admitted
into countries whose social condition is as unlike that of France
as is possible to conceive.
9617
XAVIER DE MAISTRE
(1764-1852)
lo STUDENTS of French literature the name De Maistre suggests
first, Joseph Marie de Maistre, — brilliant philosopher, stern
and eloquent critic, vain opponent of revolutionary ideas;
but the general reader is far better acquainted with his younger
brother Xavier. He was a somewhat da'shing military personage,
a striking contrast to his austere senior, loving the aesthetic side of
life: an amateur artist, a reader of many books, who on occasion
could write charmingly.
Born in Chambery in 1764, of French
descent, he entered the Sardinian army,
where he remained until the annexation of
Savoy to France; when, finding himself an
exile, he joined his brother, then envoy to
St. Petersburg. Later he entered the Rus-
sian army; married in Russia, and lived
there to the good old age of eighty-eight.
Perhaps the idea of authorship would
never have occurred to the active soldier
but for a little mishap. A love affair led
to a duel; and he was arrested and impris-
oned at Turin for forty-two days. A result
of this leisure was the ( Voyage autour de
ma Chambre > (Journey round my Room) ; a series of half playful, half
philosophic sketches, whose delicate humor and sentiment suggest the
influence of Laurence Sterne. Later on, he submitted the manuscript
to his much-admired elder brother, who liked it so well that he had
it published by way of pleasant surprise. He was less complimentary
to a second and somewhat similar work, ( L'Expedition Nocturne >
(The Nocturnal Expedition), and his advice delayed its publication
for several years.
Xavier de Maistre was not a prolific writer, and all his work is
included in one small volume. Literature was merely his occasional
pastime, indulged in as a result of some chance stimulus. A conver-
sation with fellow-officers suggests an old experience, and he goes
home and writes ( Le Lepreux de la Cite d'Aoste } (The Leper of
Aoste), a pathetic story, strong in its unstudied sincerity of expression.
XAVIER DE MAISTRE
9618
XAVIER DE MAISTRE
Four years later he tells another little tale, <Les Prisonniers du
Caucase y (The Prisoners of the Caucasus), a stirring bit of adventure.
His last story, < La Jeune Siberienne > (The Siberian Girl), best
known as retold and weakened by Madame Cottin, is a striking pre-
monition of later realism. There is no forcing the pathetic effect
in the history of the heroic young daughter who braves a long and
terrible journey to petition the Czar for her father's release from
Siberian exile.
The charm of De Maistre's style is always in the ease and sim-
plicity of the telling. In his own time he was very popular; and his
work survives with little loss of interest to-day.
THE TRAVELING-COAT
From the <Journey round My Room.> Copyright 1871, by Hurd & Houghton
I PUT on my traveling-coat, after having examined it with a
complacent eye; and forthwith resolved to write a chapter
ad hoc, that I might make it known to the reader.
The form and usefulness of these garments being pretty gen-
erally known, I will treat specially of their influence upon the
minds of travelers.
My winter traveling-coat is made of the warmest and softest
stuff I could meet with. It envelops me entirely from head to
foot; and when I am in my arm-chair, with my hands in my
pockets, I am very like the statue of Vishnu one sees in the
pagodas of India.
You may, if you will, tax me with prejudice when I assert
the influence a traveler's costume exercises upon its wearer. At
any rate, I can confidently affirm with regard to this matter that
it would appear to me as ridiculous to take a single step of my
journey round my room in uniform, with my sword at my side,
as it would to go forth into the world in my dressing-gown.
Were I to find myself in full military dress, not only should
I be unable to proceed with my journey, but I really believe I
should not be able to read what I have written about my travels,
still less to understand it.
Does this surprise you ? Do we not every day meet with peo-
ple who fancy they are ill because they are unshaven, or because
some one has thought they have looked poorly and told them
so ? Dress has such influence upon men's minds that there are
valetudinarians who think themselves in better health than usual
XAVIER DE MAISTRE
9619
when they have on a new coat and well-powdered wig. They
deceive the public and themselves by their nicety about dress,
until one finds some fine morning they have died in full fig, and
their death startle? everybody.
And in the class of men among whom I live, how many there
are who, finding themselves clothed in uniform, firmly believe
they are officers, until the unexpected appearance of the enemy
shows them their mistake. And more than this, if it be the
king's good pleasure to allow one of them to add to his coat a
certain trimming, he straightway believes himself to be a general;
and the whole army gives him the title without any notion of
making fun of him! So great an influence has a coat upon the
human imagination!
The following illustration will show still further the truth of
my assertion: —
It sometimes happened that they forgot to inform the Count
de some days beforehand of the approach of his turn to
mount guard. Early one morning, on the very day on which this
duty fell to the Count, a corporal awoke him and announced the
disagreeable news. But the idea of getting up there and then,
putting on his gaiters, and turning out without having thought
about it the evening before, so disturbed him that he preferred
reporting himself sick and staying at home all day. So he put
on his dressing-gown and sent away his barber. This made him
look pale and ill, and frightened his wife and family. He really
did feel a little poorly.
He told every one .he was not very well, — partly for the sake
Z)f appearances, and partly because he positively believed himself
to be indisposed. Gradually the influence of the dressing-gown
began to work. The slops he was obliged to take upset his
stomach. His relations and friends sent to ask after him. He
was soon quite ill enough to take to his bed.
In the evening Dr. Ranson found his pulse hard and feverish,
and ordered him to be bled next day.
If the campaign had lasted a month longer, the sick man's
case would have been past cure.
Now, who can doubt about the influence of traveling-coats
upon travelers, if he reflect that poor Count de thought
more than once that he was about to perform a journey to the
other world for having inopportunely donned his dressing-gown
in this ?
9626 XAVIER DE MAISTRE
A FRIEND
From the < Journey round My Room.* Copyright 1871, by Kurd & Houghton
I HAD a friend. Death took him from me. He was snatched
away at the beginning of his career, at the moment when
his friendship had become a pressing need to my heart. We
supported one another in the hard toil of war. We had but
one pipe between us. We drank out of the same cup. We slept
beneath the same tent. And amid our sad trials, the spot where
we lived together became to us a new fatherland. I had seen
him exposed to all the perils of a disastrous war. Death seemed
to spare us to each other. His deadly missiles were exhausted
around my friend a thousand times over without reaching him.
but this was but to make his loss more painful to me. The
tumult of war, and the enthusiasm which possesses the soul at
the sight of danger, might have prevented his sighs from pier-
cing my heart, while his death would have been useful to his
country and damaging to the enemy. Had he died thus, I should
have mourned him less. But to lose him amid the joys of our
winter-quarters; to see him die at the moment when he seemed
full of health, and when our intimacy was rendered closer by
rest and tranquillity, — ah, this was a blow from which I can
never recover!
But his memory lives in my heart, and there alone. He is
forgotten by those who surrounded him and who have replaced
him. And this makes his loss the more sad to me.
Nature, in like manner indifferent to the fate of individuals^
dons her green spring robe, and decks herself in all her beauty
near the cemetery where he rests. The trees cover themselves
with foliage, and intertwine their branches; the birds warble under
the leafy sprays; the insects hum among the blossoms: every-
thing breathes joy in this abode of death.
And in the evening, when the moon shines in the sky, and I
am meditating in this sad place, I hear the grasshopper, hidden
in the grass that covers the silent grave of my friend, merrily
pursuing his unwearied song. The unobserved destruction of
human beings, as well as all their misfortunes, are counted for
nothing in the grand total of events.
The death of an affectionate man who breathes his last sur-
rounded by his afflicted friends, and that of a butterfly killed in
a flower's cup by the chill air of morning, are but two similar
XAVIER DE MAISTRE
epochs in the course of nature. Man is but a phantom, a
shadow, a mere 'vapor that melts into the air.
But daybreak begins to whiten the sky. The gloomy thoughts
that troubled me vanish with the darkness, and hope awakens
again in my heart. No! He who thus suffuses the east with
light has not made it to shine upon my eyes only to plunge me
into the night of annihilation. He who has spread out that vast
horizon, who raised those lofty mountains whose icy tops the sun
is even now gilding, is also he who made my heart to beat and
my mind to think.
No! My friend is not annihilated. Whatever may be the
barrier that separates us, I shall see him again. My hopes are
based on no mere syllogism. The flight of an insect suffices to
persuade me. And often the prospect of the surrounding coun-
try, the perfume of the air, and an indescribable charm which
is spread around me, so raise my thoughts, that an invincible
proof of immortality forces itself upon my soul, and fills it to the
full.
THE LIBRARY
From the ( Journey round My Room*: Copyright 1871, by Hurd & Houghton
I PROMISED to give a dialogue between my soul and the OTHER.
But there are some chapters which elude me, as it were; or
rather, there are others which flow from my pen nolens volens,
and derange my plans. Among these is one about my library;
and I will make it as short as I can. Our forty-two days will
soon be ended ; and even were it not so, a similar period would
not suffice to complete the description of the rich country in
which I travel so pleasantly.
My library, then, is composed of novels, if I must make the
confession — of novels and a few choice poets.
As if I had not troubles enough of my own, I share those of
a thousand imaginary personages, and I feel them as acutely as
my own. How many tears have I shed for that poor Clarissa,
and for Charlotte's lover!
But if I go out of my way in .search of unreal afflictions, I
find in return such virtue, kindness, and disinterestedness in this
imaginary world, as I have never yet found united in the real
world around me. I meet with a woman after my heart's desire,
9622
XAVIER DE MAISTRE
free from whim, lightness, and affectation. I say nothing about
beauty: this I can leave to my imagination, and picture her fault-
lessly beautiful. And then closing the book, which no longer
keeps pace with my ideas, I take the fair one by the hand, and
we travel together over a country a thousand times more delight-
ful than Eden itself. What painter could represent the fairyland
in which I have placed the goddess of my heart? What poet
could ever describe the lively and manifold sensations I experi-
ence in those enchanted regions ?
How often have I cursed that Cleveland, who is always em-
barking upon new troubles which he might very well avoid! I
cannot endure that book, with its long list of calamities. But if
I open it by way of distraction, I cannot help devouring it to
the end.
For how could I leave that poor man among the Abaquis ?
What would become of him in the hands of those savages ? Still
less dare I leave him in his attempt to escape from captivity.
Indeed, I so enter into his sorrows, I am so interested in him
and in his unfortunate family, that the sudden appearance of the
ferocious Ruintons makes my hair stand on end. When I read
that passage a cold perspiration covers me; and my fright is as
lively and real as if I were going to be roasted and eaten by the
monsters myself.
When I have had enough of tears and love, I turn to some
poet, and set out again for a new world.
9623
WILLIAM HURRELL MALLOCK
(i849-)
IILLIAM HURRELL MALLOCK is the interesting product of the
interesting period in which he was educated and the inter-
esting conditions of his social life. Well born, well bred,
well fed, well read, well supplied with luxuries, well disciplined at the
wicket and the oar, the son of a clergyman of the Church of England
(Rev. Roger Mallock) and the nephew of James Anthony and Richard
Hurrell Froude, he was educated at home by private tutors till he
entered Balliol College, Oxford. There he took a second class in final
classicals, and in 1871 the Newdigate poet-
ical prize, the subject of his poem being
<The Isthmus of Suez.'
In 1876 he published <The New Repub-
lic, * which first appeared in a magazine.
The first impression of the book is its
audacity, the second its cleverness; but
when one has gotten well into its leisurely
pages, and has found himself in what seems
to be the veritable company of Huxley,
Matthew Arnold, Ruskin, Professor Clifford,
Walter Pater, Professor Jowett, and Mr.
Tyndall, he is penetrated with the convic-
tion that the work is the perfected flower
of the art of delicate characterization. The
parodies are so good that they read like reminiscences enlivened with
the lightest touch of extravaganza.
The sub-title of < The New Republic > — < Culture, Faith, and Phi-
losophy in an English Country-House > — indicates its plan. A young
man of fortune and distinction assembles at his villa a party of vis-
itors, who under thin disguises represent the leading thinkers of the
day. The company plays at constructing an ideal republic, which
is to be the latest improvement on Plato's commonwealth. To facil-
itate the discussion, the host writes the titles of the subjects to be
talked about on the back of the menus of their first dinner: they
prove to be such seductive themes as <The Aim of Life,* ( Society,
Art, and Literature,* ( Riches and Civilization, y and (The Present and
the Future. J
In the expression of opinion that follows, the peculiarities and
inconsistencies of the famous personages are hit off with delicious
1
WILLIAM H. MALLOCK
9624 WILLIAM HURRELL MALLOCK
appositeness. The first principle of the proposed New Republic is to
destroy all previous republics. Mr. Storks ( Professor Huxley ) elimi-
nates a conscious directing intelligence from the world of matter.
Mr. Stockton (Professor Tyndall) eliminates the poetry and romance
of the imagination, substituting those of the wonders of science.
The materialist, Mr. Saunders (Professor Clifford), eliminates the <(foul
superstition >} of the existence of God and the scheme of salvation
through the merits of Christ. Mr. Luke (Matthew Arnold) who is
represented as mournfully strolling about the lawn in the moonlight,
reciting his own poems, — poems which puzzle us in their oscillation
between mirth and moralizing, till an italicized line warns us to be
wary, — Mr. Luke eliminates the middle classes. Mr. Rose (Walter
Pater) eliminates religious belief as a serious verity, but retains it
as an artistic finish and decorative element in life. Dr. Jenkinson
(Professor Jowett) in a sermon which he might have preached in
Balliol Chapel, and his habitual audience have heard without the
lifting of an eyebrow, eliminates the <(bad taste w of conviction on
any subject. Finally Mr. Herbert (Mr. Ruskin), descending upon the
reformers in a burst of vituperation, eliminates the upper classes,
because they neither have themselves nor furnish the lower orders
any object to live for. The outcome of the discussion is predicted on
the title-page: —
«A11 is jest and ashes and nothingness; for all things that are, are of
folly.»
So much space has been given to Mr. Mallock's first book because
it is representative of his quality, and discloses the line of his sub-
sequent thinking. Only once again does he permit himself the
relaxation of an irresponsible and clever parody, — that on Positivism
in *The New Paul and Virginia *; wherein the germ revealed in the
sketches of Huxley and his fellow scientists is more fully developed,
to the disedification of the serious-minded, who complain that the
representatives of Prometheus are dragged down to earth.
But the shades of the mighty whom he ridiculed have played a
curious trick on Mr. Mallock. As Emerson says of the soul of the
dead warrior, which, entering the breast of the conqueror, takes up
its abode there, — so the wraiths of doubt, materialism, discontent,
Philistinism, and the many upsetting emotions which the clever satir-
ist disposed of with a jest, entered his own hypersensitive organism,
and, for all the years succeeding, sent him about among the men
of his generation sharing with Ruskin the burden of their salvation.
Nor does he propose to let any sense of his own limitations as a
prophet interfere with the delivery of his message. In a volume of
several hundred pages he asks a nineteenth-century audience, < Is
Life Worth Living ? J Can we, he demands in substance, like his own
WILLIAM HURRELL MALLOCK
9625
Mr. Herbert, go on buying blue china and enjoying the horse-show
and the ><( season, * and our little trips to Paris, and first editions in
rare bindings, if we are not sure that these tastes will be gratified
in another world ? In his mind, the reply to this question resolves
itself into the necessity for a final authority, — an authority which he
himself discovers in the voice of the Church of Rome.
He is an indefatigable worker. As a novelist he belongs to the
sentimental school, in which a craving for sympathy and a marked
tendency to reject conventional standards characterizes all his men
and many of his women. Because he has written them, his stories
are never dull; they abound in epigram, sketches of character, and
wise reflections: but the plots are slightly woven and hang at loose
ends, while a denouement is as deliberately ignored as if the author
were a pupil of Zola. His novels or romances are <A Romance of
the Nineteenth Century,) (The Old Order Changeth,) (A Human Doc-
ument,) (The Heart of Life,) and (The Veil of the Temple) (1904).
As an essayist he is widely read. He was one of the famous
five who took part in the Christianity vs. Agnosticism controversy, in
which Bishop Wace and Mr. Huxley were the champions. He has
written two volumes of poems, translated Lucretius; and his varied
magazine articles, collected in book form, have been published under
the titles of ( Social Equality > (London, 1882), ( Property, Progress,
and Poverty) (1884), (Classes and Masses; or, Wealth and Wages
in the United Kingdom) (1896), (Aristocracy and Evolution) (1898),
(Doctrine and Doctrinal Disruption) (1900), ( Critical Examinations of
Socialism) (1907), (The Nation as a Business Firm) (1910), etc.
In these volumes, mostly on social topics, Mr. Mallock presents
himself as a sedate Conservative, committed to hereditary legisla-
tion, the sacredness of the game laws, the Doomsday Book, and the
rest of medisevalism. Against democratic theories concerning social
equality, labor, and property, he sets up the counter proposition that
labor is not the cause of wealth, and of itself would be powerless to
produce it. As for social equality, he sees that diversity of station is
a part of the framework that holds society together.
These books are written in a serious manner. But it is an axiom that
the successful advocate must give the impression that he himself has
no doubt of his cause. This Mr. Mallock almost never does. The
more positive his plea, the more visible between the lines is the
mocking, unconvinced expression of the author's other self. More-
over, his fastidious discontent, and the subtlety of mind which is the
greatest perhaps of his many charms, point him toward some un-
explored quarter, where, as he has not investigated it, he fancies the
truth may lie. The reader of Mallock goes to him for witty com-
ment, satire, suggestion; and to get into a certain high-bred society
9626 WILLIAM HURRELL MALLOCK
where the scholar is at home and the gospel of good-breeding is
preached. But that reader will never know in what social system of
the past — in slavery, feudalism, or absolutism — Mallock's Utopia is
to be sought.
AN EVENING'S TABLE-TALK AT THE VILLA
From <The New Republic >
No PROPOSAL could have been happier than Lady Grace's, of
the garden banquet in the pavilion. It seemed to the
guests, when they were all assembled there, that the lovely
summer's day was going to close with a scene from fairy-land.
The table itself, with its flowers and glowing fruit, and its many-
colored Venetian glass, shone and gleamed and sparkled in the
evening light, that was turning outside to a cool mellow amber;
and above, from the roof, in which the dusk was already dark-
ness, hung china lamps in the shape of green and purple grape
clusters, looking like luminous fruit stolen from Aladdin's garden.
The pavilion, open on all sides, was supported on marble pillars
that were almost hidden in red and white roses. Behind, the eye
rested on great tree trunks and glades of rich foliage ; and before,
it would pass over turf and flowers, till it reached the sea be-
yond, on which in another hour the faint silver of the moonlight
would begin to tremble.
There was something in the whole scene that was at once
calming and exhilarating; and nearly all present seemed to feel
in some measure this double effect of it. Dr. Jenkinson had
been quite . restored by an afternoon's nap; and his face was now
all a-twinkle with a fresh benignity, — that had, however, like an
early spring morning, just a faint suspicion of frost in it. Mr.
Storks even was less severe than usual; and as he raised his
champagne to his lips, he would at times look very nearly con-
versational.
<( My dear Laurence, y> exclaimed Mr. Herbert, <( it really
almost seems as if your visions of the afternoon had come true,
and that we actually were in your New Republic already. I can
only say that if it is at all like this, it will be an entirely charm-
ing place — too charming, perhaps. But now remember this:
you have but half got through the business to which you first
addressed yourselves, — that of forming a picture of a perfect
WILLIAM HURRELL MALLOCK 9627
aristocracy, an aristocracy in the true and genuine sense of the
word. You are all to have culture, or taste. Very good: you
have talked a great deal about that, and you have seen what you
mean by it; and you have recognized, above all, that it includes
a discrimination between right and wrong. But now you, with
all this taste and culture, — you gifted men and women of the
nineteenth century, — what sort of things does your taste teach
you to reach out towards ? In what actions and aims, in what
affections and emotions, would you place your happiness ? That
is what I want to hear, — the practical manifestations of this
culture. 9
<(Ah, w said Mr. Rose, <( I have at this moment a series of
essays in the press, which would go far towards answering these
questions of yours. They do indeed deal with just this: the
effect of the choicer culture of this century on the soul of man;
the ways in which it endows him with new perceptions; how it
has made him, in fact, a being altogether more highly organ-
ized. All I regret is that these choicer souls, these Xapievres, are
as yet like flowers that have not found a climate in which they
can thrive properly. That mental climate will doubtless come
with time. What we have been trying to do this afternoon is, I
imagine, nothing more than to anticipate it in imagination. })
"Well," said Mr. Herbert, with a little the tone of an Inquis-
itor, "that is just what I have been asking. What will this
climate be like, and what will these flowers be like in this cli-
mate ? How would your culture alter and better the present, if
its powers were equal to its wishes ? w
Mr. Rose's soft lulling tone harmonized well with the scene
and hour, and the whole party seemed willing to listen to him;
or at any rate, no one felt any prompting to interrupt him.
<( I can show you an example, Mr. Herbert, >} he said, <( of
culture demanding a finer climate, in — if you will excuse my
seeming egoism — in myself. For instance (to take the widest
matter i can fix upon, the general outward surroundings of our
lives), — often, when I walk about London, and see how hideous
its whole external aspect is, and what a dissonant population
throng it, a chill feeling of despair comes over me. Consider
how the human eye delights in form and color, and the ear in
tempered and harmonious sounds; and then think for a moment
of a London street! Think of the shapeless houses, the forest of
ghastly chimney-pots, of the hell of distracting noises made by
9628
WILLIAM HURRELL MALLOCK
the carts, the cabs, the carriages; think of the bustling-, common-
place, careworn crowds that jostle you; think of an omnibus,
think of a four-wheeler — )}
<( I often ride in an omnibus, w said Lord Allen, with a slight
smile, to Miss Merton.
<( It is true, >J replied Mr. Rose, only overhearing the tone in
which these words were said, (< that one may ever and again
catch some touch of sunlight that will for a moment make the
meanest object beautiful with its furtive alchemy. But that is
Nature's work, not man's; and we must never confound the
accidental beauty that Nature will bestow on man's work, even
at its worst, with the rational and designed beauty of man's
work at its best. It is this rational human beauty that I say
our modern city life is so completely wanting in; nay, the look
of out-of-door London seems literally to stifle the very power of
imagining such beauty possible. Indeed, as I wander along our
streets, pushing my way among the throngs of faces, — faces
puckered with misdirected thought or expressionless with none;
barbarous faces set towards Parliament,' or church, or scientific
lecture-rooms, or government offices, or counting-houses, — I say,
as I push my way amongst all the sights and sounds of the
streets of our great city, only one thing ever catches my eye
that breaks in upon my mood and warns me I need not de-
spair. M
(<And what is that ? " asked Allen with some curiosity.
(<The shops," Mr. Rose answered, <( of certain of our uphol-
sterers and dealers in works of art. Their windows, as I look
into them, act like a sudden charm on me; like a splash of cold
water dashed on my forehead when I am fainting. For I seem
there to have got a glimpse of the real heart of things ; and as
my eyes rest on the perfect pattern (many of which are really
quite delicious; indeed, when I go to ugly houses, I often take
a scrap of some artistic cretonne with me in my pocket as a
kind of aesthetic smelling-salts) , — I say, when I look in at their
windows, and my eyes rest on the perfect pattern of some new
fabric for a chair or for a window curtain, or on some new de-
sign for a wall paper, or on some old china vase, I become at
once sharply conscious, Mr. Herbert, that despite the ungenial
mental climate of the present age, strange yearnings for and
knowledge of true beauty are beginning to show themselves like
flowers above the weedy soil; and I remember, amidst the roar
WILLIAM HURRELL MALLOCK 9629
and clatter of our streets, and the mad noises of our own times,
that there is amongst us a growing number who have deliber-
ately turned their backs on all these things, and have thrown
their whole souls and sympathies into the happier art ages of the
past. They have gone back," said Mr. Rose, raising his voice a
little, <(to Athens and to Italy; to the Italy of Leo and to the
Athens of Pericles. To such men the clamor, the interests, the
struggles of our own times become as meaningless as they really
are. To them the boyhood of Bathyllus is of more moment than
the manhood of Napoleon. Borgia is a more familiar name than
Bismarck. I know, indeed, — and I really do not blame them, —
several distinguished artists who, resolving to make their whole
lives consistently perfect, will on principle never admit a . news-
paper into their houses that is of later date than the times of
Addison: and I have good trust that the number of such men
is on the increase; men, I mean," said Mr. Rose, toying- tenderly
with an exquisite wine-glass of Salviati's, "who with a steady
and set purpose follow art for the sake of art, beauty for the
sake of beauty, love for the sake of love, life for the sake of
life."
Mr. Rose's slow gentle voice, which was apt at certain times
to become peculiarly irritating, sounded now like the- evening air
grown articulate; and had secured him hitherto a tranquil hear-
ing, as if by a kind of spell. This, however, seemed here in
sudden danger of snapping.
<( What, Mr. Rose ! " exclaimed Lady Ambrose, (< do you mean
to say, then, that the number of people is on the increase who
won't read the newspapers ? "
<(Why, the men must be absolute idiots !* said Lady Grace,
shaking her gray curls, and putting on her spectacles to look at
Mr. Rose.
Mr, Rose, however, was imperturbable.
<( Of course," he said, <(you may have newspapers if you will;
I myself always have them : though in general they are too full
of public events to be of much interest. I was merely speaking
just now of the spirit of the movement. And of that we must
all of us here have some knowledge. We must all of us have
friends whose houses more or less embody it. And even if we
had not, we could not help seeing signs of it — signs of how true
and earnest it is, in the enormous sums that are now given for
really good objects. J>
9630
WILLIAM HURRELL MALLOCK
"That," said Lady Grace, with some tartness, (<is true enough,
thank God!"
<(But I can't see," said Lady Ambrose, whose name often
figured in the Times, in the subscription lists of advertised chari-
ties,— <( I can't see, Mr. Rose, any reason in that why we should
not read the newspapers."
<(The other day, for instance," said Mr. Rose reflectively,
al heard of eight Chelsea shepherdesses picked up by a dealer,
I really forget where, — in some common cottage, if I recollect
aright, covered with dirt, giving no pleasure to any one, — and
these were all sold in a single day, and not one of them fetched
Jess than two hundred and twenty pounds."
(</ can't help thinking they must have come from Cremorne,"
said Mrs. Sinclair softly.
(< But why," said Mr. Rose, (< should I speak of particular
instances ? We must all of us have friends whose houses are
full of priceless treasures such as these; the whole atmosphere of
whose rooms really seems impregnated with art, — seems, in fact,
Mr. Herbert, such an atmosphere as we should dream of for our
New Republic. "
<( To be sure, " exclaimed Lady Ambrose, feeling that she
had at last got upon solid ground. <(By the way, Mr. Rose,"
she said with her most gracious of smiles, <( I suppose you have
hardly seen Lady Julia Hayman's new house in Belgrave Square ?
I'm sure that would delight you. I should like to take you there
some day and show it to you."
<(I have seen it," said Mr. Rose with languid condescension.
<( It was very pretty, I thought, — some of it really quite nice."
This, and the slight rudeness of manner it was said with,
raised Mr. Rose greatly in Lady Ambrose's estimation, and she
began to think with respect of his late utterances.
<(Well, Mr. Herbert," Mr. Rose went on, (<what I want to
say is this: We have here in the present age, as it is, fragments
of the right thing. We have a number of isolated right interiors;
we have a few, very few, right exteriors. But in our ideal State,
our entire city — our London, the metropolis of our society —
would be as a whole perfect as these fragments. Taste would
not there be merely an indoor thing. It would be written visi-
bly for all to look upon, in our streets, our squares, our gardens.
Could we only mold England to our wishes, the thing to do, I
am persuaded, would be to remove London to some kindlier site,
WILLIAM HURRELL MALLOCK
9631
that it might there be altogether horn anew. I myself would
have it taken to the southwest, and to the sea-coast, where the
waves are blue, and where the air is calm and fine, and there — "
(< Ah me ! }> sighed Mr. Luke with a lofty sadness, (< coelum non
animam mutant.^
(< Pardon me," said Mr. Rose: <(few paradoxes — and most para-
doxes are false — are, I think, so false as that. This much at
least of sea-like man's mind has: that scarcely anything so dis-
tinctly gives a tone to it as the color of the skies he lives under.
And I was going to say, w he went on, looking out dreamily
towards the evening waves, "that as the imagination is a quick
workman, I can at this moment see our metropolis already trans-
planted and rebuilt. I seem to see it now as it were from a
distance, with its palaces, its museums, its churches, its convents,
its gardens, its picture galleries, — a cluster of domed and pillared
marble, sparkling on a gray headland. It is Rome, it is Athens,
it is Florence, arisen and come to life again, in these modern
days. The aloe-tree of beauty again blossoms there, under the
azure stainless sky."
<( Do you know, Mr. Rose, }> said Lady Ambrose in her most
cordial manner, (<all this is very beautiful; and certainly no one
can think London as it is more ugly than I do. That's natural
in me, isn't it, being a denizen of poor prosaic South Audley
Street as I am ? But don't you think that your notion is — •
it's very beautiful, I quite feel that — but don't you think it is
perhaps a little too dream -like — too unreal, if you know what I
mean ? })
* Such a city, * said Mr. Rose earnestly, (< is indeed a dream ;
but it is a dream which we might make a reality, would circum-
stances only permit of it. We have many amongst us who know
what is beautiful, and who passionately desire it; and would
others only be led by these, it is quite conceivable that we might
some day have a capital, the entire aspect of which should be
the visible embodiment of our finest and most varied culture, oui
most sensitive taste, and our deepest aesthetic measure of things.
This is what this capital of our New Republic must be, this
dwelling-place of our ideal society. We shall have houses, gal-
leries, streets, theatres, such as Giulio Romano or Giorgio Vasari
or Giulio Campi would have rejoiced to look at; we shall have
metal-work worthy of the hand of Ghiberti and the praise of
Michel Angelo; we shall rival Domenico Beccafumi with our
pavements. As you wander through our thoroughfares and our
9632 WILLIAM HURRELL MALLOCK
gardens, your feelings will not be jarred by the presence of
human vulgarity, or the desolating noise of traffic; nor in every
spare space will your eyes be caught by abominable advertise-
ments of excursion trains to Brighton, or of Horniman's cheap
tea. They will rest instead, here on an exquisite fountain, here
on a statue, here on a bust of Zeus or Hermes or Aphrodite,
glimmering in a laureled nook; or on a Mater Dolor osa looking
down on you from her holy shrine; or on the carved marble
gate-posts of our palace gardens, or on their wrought-iron or
wrought-bronze gates; or perhaps on such triumphal arches as
that which Antonio San Gallo constructed in honor of Charles V.,
and of which you must all remember the description given by
Vasari. Such a city," said Mr. Rose, (( would be the externaliza-
tion of the human spirit in the highest state of development that
we can conceive for it. We should there see expressed openly
all our appreciations of all the beauty that we can detect in the
world's whole history. The wind of the spirit that breathed
there would blow to us from all the places of the past, and be
charged with infinite odors. Every frieze on our walls, every
clustered capital of a marble column, would be a garland or nose-
gay of associations. Indeed, our whole city, as compared with
the London that is now, would be itself a nosegay as compared
with a faggot; and as related to the life that I would see lived
in it, it would be like a shell murmuring with all the world's
memories, and held to the ear of the two twins Life and Love."
Mr. Rose had got so dreamy by this time that he felt him-
self the necessity of turning a little more matter-of-fact again.
(<You will see what I mean, plainly enough," he said, (<if you
will just think of our architecture, and consider how that natur-
ally will be— »
<( Yes, " said Mr. Luke, (< I should be glad to hear about our
architecture."
(< — how that naturally will be, " Mr. Rose went on, (<of no
style in particular. "
"The deuce it won't ! " exclaimed Mr. Luke.
"No," continued Mr. Rose unmoved; <(no style in particular,
but a renaissance of all styles. It will matter nothing to us
whether they be pagan or Catholic, classical or mediaeval. We
shall be quite without prejudice or bigotry. To the eye of true
taste, an Aquinas in his cell before a crucifix, or a Narcissus
gazing at himself in a still fountain, are — in their own ways,
you know — equally beautiful."
WILLIAM HURRELL MALLOCK
9633
<( Well, really, w said Miss Merton, <( I can not fancy St. Thomas
being a very taking" object to people who don't believe in him
either as a saint or a philosopher. I always think that except
from a Christian point of view, a saint can be hardly better de-
scribed than by Newman's lines, as —
<A bundle of bones, whose breath
Infects the world before his death. >>>#
c< I remember the lines well, w said Mr. Rose calmly, <( and the
writer you mention puts them in the mouth of a yelping devil.
But devils, as far as I know, are not generally — except perhaps
Milton's — conspicuous for taste; indeed, if we may trust Goethe,
the very touch of a flower is torture to them."
(< Dante's biggest devil, )} cried Mr. Saunders, to every one's
amazement, (( chewed Judas Iscariot like a quid of tobacco, to all
eternity. He, at any rate, knew what he liked. }>
Mr. Rose started, and visited Mr. Saunders with a rapid
frown. He then proceeded, turning again to Miss Merton as if
nothing had happened.
<( Let me rather, }) he said, (< read a nice sonnet to you, which
I had sent to me this morning, and which was in my mind
just now. These lines" (Mr. Rose here produced a paper from
his pocket) <(were written by a boy of eighteen, — a youth of
extraordinary promise, I think, — whose education I may myself
claim to have had some share in directing. Listen, }> he said,
laying the verses before him on a clean plate.
<( Three visions in the watches of one night
Made sweet my sleep — almost too sweet to tell.
One was Narcissus by a woodside well,
And on the moss his limbs and feet were white;
And one, Queen Venus, blown for my delight
Across the blue sea in a rosy shell;
And one, a lean Aquinas in his cell,
Kneeling, his pen in hand, with aching sight
Strained towards a carven Christ: and of these three
I knew not which was fairest. First I turned
Towards that soft boy, who laughed and fled from me;
Towards Venus then, and she smiled once, and she
Fled also. Then with teeming heart I yearned,
O Angel of the Schools, towards Christ with theeP
• Vide J. H. Newman's < Dream of Gerontius.>
9634
WILLIAM HURRELL MALLOCK
(< Yes, " murmured Mr. Rose to himself, folding up the paper,
<(they are dear lines. Now there," he said, (<we have a true and
tender expression of the really catholic spirit of modern aestheti-
cism, which holds nothing common or unclean. It is in this
spirit, I say, that the architects of our State will set to work.
And thus for our houses,, for our picture galleries, for our
churches, — I trust we shall have many churches, — they will
select and combine — "
<(Do you seriously mean," broke in Allen a little impatiently,
"that it is a thing to wish for and to look forward to, that we
should abandon all attempts at original architecture, and content
ourselves with simply sponging on the past ? "
<( I do, " replied Mr. Rose suavely ; (( and for this reason, if
for no other, — that the world can now successfully do nothing
else. Nor indeed is it to be expected, or even wished, that it
should. »
(< You say we have no good architecture now ! " exclaimed
Lady Ambrose; <(but, Mr. Rose, have you forgotten our modern
churches ? Don't you think them beautiful ? Perhaps you never
go to All Saints' ? "
<(I every now and then," said Mr. Rose, <(when I am in the
weary mood for it, attend the services of our English Ritualists,
and I admire their churches very much indeed. In some places
the whole thing is really managed with surprising skill. The
dim religious twilight, fragrant with the smoke of incense; the
tangled roofs that the music seems to cling to; the tapers, the
high altar, and the strange intonation of the priests, — all produce
a curious old-world effect, and seem to unite one with things that
have been long dead. Indeed, it all seems to me far more a
part of the past than the services of the Catholics,"
Lady Ambrose did not express her approbation of the last
part of this sentiment, out of regard for Miss Merton; but she
gave a smile and a nod of pleased intelligence to Mr. Rose.
"Yes," Mr. Rose went on, "there is a regretful insincerity
about it all, that is very nice, and that at once appeals to me,
'Gleich einer alten halbverklungnen Sage.'* The priests are
only half in earnest; the congregations even — "
"Then I am quite sure," interrupted Lady Ambrose with
vigor, <(that you can never have heard Mr. Cope preach."
*«Like some old half -forgotten legend. »
WILLIAM HURRELL MALLOCK
9635
<( I don't know," said Mr. Rose languidly. c< I never inquired,
nor have I ever heard any one so much as mention, the names
of any of them. Now all that, Lady Ambrose, were life really
in the state it should be, you would be able to keep.>J
<( Do you seriously, and in sober earnest, mean, w Allen again
broke in, <(that you think it a good thing that all our art and
architecture should be borrowed and insincere, and that our very
religion should be nothing but a dilettante memory ? >J
<(The opinion, }) said Mr. Rose, — "which by the way you
slightly misrepresent, — is not mine only, but that of all those
of our own day who are really devoting themselves to art for
its own sake. I will try to explain the reason of this. In the
world's life, just as in the life of a man, there are certain peri-
ods of eager and all-absorbing action, and these are followed by
periods of memory and reflection. We then look back upon
our past and become for the first time conscious of what we
are, and of what we have done. We then see the dignity of
toil, and the grand results of it; the beauty and the strength
of faith, and the fervent power of patriotism: which whilst we
labored, and believed, and loved, we were quite blind to. Upon
such a reflective period has the world now entered. It has acted
and believed already: its task now is to learn to value action
and belief, to feel and to be thrilled at the beauty of them. And
the chief means by which it can learn this is art; the art of a
renaissance. For by the power of such art, all that was beauti-
ful, strong, heroic, or tender in the past, — all the actions, pas-
sions, faiths, aspirations of the world, that lie so many fathom
deep in the years, — float upward to the tranquil surface of the
present, and make our lives like what seems to me one of the
loveliest things in nature, the iridescent film on the face of a
stagnant water. Yes; the past is not dead unless we choose that
it shall be so. Christianity itself is not dead. There is ( nothing
of it that doth fade,' but turns (into something rich and strange,*
for us to give a new tone to our lives with. And believe me, }>
Mr. Rose went on, gathering earnestness, <(that the happiness
possible in such conscious periods is the only true happiness.
Indeed, the active periods of the world were not really happy at
all. We only fancy them to. have been so by a pathetic fallacy.
Is the hero happy during his heroism ? No, but after it, when
he sees what his heroism was, and reads the glory of it in the
eyes of youth or maiden. ®
9636
WILLIAM HURRELL MALLOCK
<(A11 this is very poor stuff — very poor stuff, " murmured Dr.
Jenkinson, whose face had become gradually the very picture of
crossness.
(< Do you mean, Mr. Rose, " said Miss Merton, with a half
humorous, half incredulous smile, <(that we never value religion
till we have come to think it nonsense ? "
(< Not nonsense — no, " exclaimed Mr. Rose in gentle horror;
w I only mean that it never lights our lives so beautifully as
when it is leaving them like the evening sun. It is in such
periods of the world's life that art springs into being in its
greatest splendor. Your Raphael, Miss Merton, who painted you
your (dear Madonnas,' was a luminous cloud in the sunset sky
of the Renaissance, — a cloud that took its fire from a faith that
was sunk or sinking. "
(< I'm afraid that the faith is not quite sunk yet," said Miss
Merton, with a slight sudden flush in her cheeks, and with just
the faintest touch of suppressed anger.
Mr. Saunders, Mr. Stockton, Mr. Storks, and Mr. Luke all
raised their eyebrows.
"No," said Mr. Rose, "such cyclic sunsets are happily apt to
linger. »
<( Mr. Rose," exclaimed Lady Ambrose, with her most gracious
of smiles, (( of course every one who has ears must know that all
this is very beautiful; but I am positively so stupid that I haven't
been quite able to follow it all."
<( I will try to make my meaning clearer," he said, in a
brisker tone. (< I often figure to myself an unconscious period
and a conscious one, . as two women : one an untamed creature
with embrowned limbs, native to the air and the sea; the other
marble-white and swan-soft, couched delicately on cushions be-
fore a mirror, and watching her own supple reflection gleaming
in the depths of it. On the one is the sunshine and the sea
spray. The wind of heaven and her • unbound hair are play-
mates. The light of the sky is in her eyes; on her lips is a free
laughter. We look at her, and we know that she is happy.
We know it, mark me; but she knows it not. Turn, however,
to the other, and all is changed. • Outwardly, there is no gladness
there. Her dark, gleaming eyes open depth within depth upon
us, like the circles of a new Inferno, There is a clear, shadowy
pallor on her cheek. Only her lips are scarlet. There is a sad-
ness, a languor, — even in the grave tendrils of her heavy hair,
WILLIAM HURRELL MALLOCK
9637
and % in each changing curve of her bosom as she breathes or
sighs. J>
<(< What a very odd man Mr. Rose is ! }> said Lady Ambrose in
a loud whisper. <( He always seems to talk of everybody as if
they had no clothes on. And does he mean by this that we
ought to be always in the dumps ? >J
"Yes," Mr. Rose was meanwhile proceeding, his voice again
growing visionary, (< there is no eagerness, no action there : and
yet all eagerness, all action is known to her as the writing on
an open scroll; only, as she reads, even in the reading of it,
action turns into emotion and eagerness into a sighing memory.
Yet such a woman really may stand symbolically for us as the
patroness and the lady of all gladness, who makes us glad in
the only way now left us. And not only in the only way, but in
the best way — the way of ways. Her secret is self -consciousness.
She knows that she is fair; she knows, too, that she is sad: but
she sees that sadness is lovely, and so sadness turns to joy. Such
a woman may be taken as a symbol, not of our architecture only,
but of all the aesthetic surroundings with which we shall shelter
and express our life. Such a woman do I see whenever I enter
a ritualistic church — }>
<( I know, " said Mrs. Sinclair, <( that very peculiar people do go
to such places; but, Mr. Rose,}> she said with a look of appealing
inquiry, <( I thought they were generally rather overdressed than
otherwise ? w
"The im agination, ® said Mr. Rose, opening his eyes in grave
wonder at Mrs. Sinclair, (< may give her what garb it chooses.
Our whole city, then — the city of our New Republic — will be in
keeping with this spirit. It will be the architectural and decorat-
ive embodiment of the most educated longings of our own times
after order and loveliness and delight, whether of the senses or
the imagination. It will be, as it were, a resurrection of the
past, in response to the longing and the passionate regret of
the present. It will be such a resurrection as took place in Italy
during its greatest epoch, only with this difference — w
(< You seem to have forgotten trade and business altogether, w
said Dr. Jenkinson. (< I think, however rich you intend to be,
you will find that they are necessary. w
<(Yes, Mr. Rose, you're not going to deprive us of all our
shops, I hope ? » said Lady Ambrose.
9638
WILLIAM HURRELL MALLOCK
"Because, you know," said Mrs. Sinclair with a soft mali-
ciousness, (< we can't go without dresses altogether, Mr. Rose.
And if I were there,® she continued plaintively, <( I should want
a bookseller to publish the scraps of verse — poetry, as I am
pleased to call it — that I am always writing. ®
<( Pooh ! ® said Mr. Rose, a little annoyed, (< we shall have all
that somewhere, of course; but it will be out of the way, in a
sort of Piraeus, where the necessary xdxyhn — ®
WA sort of what ? ® said Lady Ambrose.
<( Mr. Rose merely means, ® said Donald Gordon, <( that there
must be good folding-doors between the offices and the house of
life, and that the servants are not to be seen walking about in
the pleasure-grounds. ®
"Yes,* said Mr. Rose, (< exactly so.®
<(Well, then,® said Lady Ambrose, (< I quite agree with you,
Mr. Rose; and if wishing were only having, I've not the least
doubt that we should all of us be going back to Mr. Rose's
city to-morrow, instead of to London, with its carts, and cabs,
and smoke, and all its thousand-and-one drawbacks. I'm sure,"
she said, turning to Miss Merton, <(you would, my dear, with all
your taste.®
(( It certainly, ® said Miss Merton smiling, (< all sounds very
beautiful. All that I am afraid of is, that we should not be
quite worthy of it.®
(<Nay,® said Mr. Rose, (<but the very point is that we shall
be worthy of it, and that it will be worthy of us. I said, if you
recollect, just now, that the world's ideal of the future must
resemble in many ways its memory of the Italian Renaissance.
But don't let that mislead you. It may resemble that, but it
will be something far in advance of it. During the last three
hundred years — in fact, during the last sixty or seventy years —
the soul of man has developed strangely in its sentiments and its
powers of feeling; in its powers, in fact, of enjoying life. As I
said, I have a work in the press devoted entirely to a description
of this growth. I have some of the proof-sheets with me; and
if you will let me, I should like to read you one or two pas-
sages. ®
<( I don't think much can be made out of that,® said Dr. Jen-
kinson, with a vindictive sweetness. (< Human sentiment dresses
itself in different fashions, as human ladies do; but I think
WILLIAM HURRELL MALLOCK
9639
beneath the surface it is much the same. I mean,* he added,
suddenly recollecting" that he might thois seem to be rooting up
the wheat of his own opinions along with the tares of Mr.
Rose's, (< I mean that I don't think in seventy years, or even in
three hundred, you will be able to show that human nature has
very much changed. I don't think so."
Unfortunately, however, the Doctor found that instead of put-
ting down Mr. Rose by this, he had only raised up Mr. Luke.
<(Ah, Jenkinson, I think you are wrong there," said Mr. Luke.
<(As long as we recognize that this growth is at present confined
to a very small minority, the fact of such growth is the most
important, the most significant of all facts. Indeed, our friend
Mr. Rose is quite right thus far, in the stress he lays on our
appreciation of the past: that we have certainly in these modern
times acquired a new sense, by which alone the past can be
appreciated truly, — the sense which, if I may invent a phrase
for it, I should call that of Historical Perspective; so that now
really for the first time the landscape of history is beginning to
have some intelligible charm for us. And this, you know, is not
alL Our whole views of things (you, Jenkinson, must know this
as well as I do) — the Zeitgeist breathes upon them, and they do
not die; but they are changed, they are enlightened."
The Doctor was too much annoyed to make any audible
answer to this; but he murmured with some emphasis to him-
self, (< That's not what Mr. Rose was saying ; that's not what I
was contradicting."
<( You take, Luke, a rather more rose-colored view of things
than you did last night," said Mr. Storks.
"No," said Mr. Luke with a sigh, (<far from it. I am not
denying (pray, Jenkinson, remember this) that the majority of
us are at present either Barbarians or Philistines; and the ugli-
ness of these is more glaring now than at any former time. But
that any of us are able to see them thus distinctly in their true
colors itself shows that there must be a deal of light somewhere.
Even to make darkness visible some light is needed. We should
always recollect that. We are only discontented with ourselves
when we are struggling to be better than ourselves."
(< And in many ways, " said Laurence, <( I think the strug-
gle has been successful. Take for instance the pleasure we get
now from the aspects of external nature, and the way in which
these seem to mix themselves with our lives. This certainly is
WILLIAM HURRELL MALLOCK ;
something distinctly modern. And nearly all our other feel-
ings, it seems to me, have changed just like this one, and have
become more sensitive and more highly organized. If we mayv
judge by its expression in literature, love has, certainly; and that,
I suppose, is the most important and comprehensive feeling in
life.*
<( Does Mr. Laurence only suppose that ? " sighed Mrs. Sinclair,
casting down her eyes.
"Well," said Dr. Jenkinson, <(our feelings about these two
things — about love and external nature — perhaps have changed
somewhat. Yes, I think they have. I think you might make an
interesting magazine article out of that — but hardly more."
<( I rather," said Laurence apologetically, <( agree with Mr.
Luke and Mr. Rose, that all our feelings have developed just as
these two have. And I think this is partly owing to the fusion
in our minds of our sacred and secular ideas; which indeed
you were speaking of this morning in your sermon. Thus, to
find some rational purpose in life was once merely enjoined as a
supernatural duty. In our times it has taken our common nature
upon it, and become a natural longing — though I fear," he added
softly, <(a fruitless one."
<( Yes, " suddenly exclaimed Lady Grac -i, who had been listen-
ing intently to her nephew's words; <(and if you are speaking of
modern progress, Otho, you should not leave out the diffusion of
those grand ideas of justice and right and freedom and humanity
which are at work in the great heart of the nation. We are
growing cultivated in Mr. Luke's noble sense of the word; and
our whole hearts revolt against the way in which women have
hitherto been treated, and against the cruelties which dogma
asserts the good God can practice, and the cruelties on the
poor animals which wicked men do practice. And war too,"
Lady Grace went on, a glow mounting into her soft faded
cheek: "think how fast we are outgrowing that! England at
any rate will never watch the outbreak of another war, with all
its inevitable cruelties, without giving at least one sob that shall
make all Europe pause and listen. Indeed, we must not forget
how the entire substance of religion is ceasing to be a mass of
dogmas, and is becoming embodied instead in practice and in
action. }>
<( Quite true. Lady Grace," said Mr. Luke. Lady Grace was
just about to have given a sign for rising; but Mr. Luke's assent
WILLIAM HURRELL MALLOCK
9641
detained her. (<As to war," he went on, "there may of course
be different opinions, — questions of policy may arise : w ((< As if
any policy," murmured Lady Grace, <( could justify us in such a
thing ! ") ((but religion — yes, that, as I have been trying" to teach
the world, is the great and important point on which culture is
beginning to cast its light; and with just the effect which you
describe. It is true that culture is at present but a little leaven
hid in a barrel of meal: but still it is doing its work slowly; and
in the matter of religion, — indeed, in all matters, for religion
rightly understood embraces all, — " (<( I do like to hear Mr. Luke
talk sometimes," murmured Lady Grace,) (<its effect is just this:
to show us that religion in any civilized, any reasonable, any
sweet sense, can never be found except embodied in action; that
it is in fact nothing but right action, pointed — winged, as it
were — by right emotion, by a glow, an aspiration, an aspiration
toward God — " (Lady Grace sighed with feeling) (<not, of course, "
Mr. Luke went on confidentially, "that petulant Pedant of the
theologians, that irritable angry Father with the very uncertain
temper, but toward — "
(<An infinite, inscrutable, loving Being," began Lady Grace,
with a slight moisture in her eyes.
(< Quite so," said Mr. Luke, not waiting to listen: <( towards
that great Law, that great verifiable tendency of things, that
great stream whose flowing1 such of us as are able are now so
anxiously trying to accelerate. There is no vain speculation
about creation and first causes and consciousness here; which are
matters we can never verify, and which matter nothing to us."
<( But, " stammered Lady Grace aghast, <( Mr. Luke, do you
mean to say that ? But it surely must matter something whether
God can hear our prayers, and will help us, and whether we owe
him any duty, and whether he is conscious of what we do, and
will judge us: it must matter. "
Mr. Luke leaned forward towards Lady Grace and spoke to
her in a confidential whisper.
(<Not two straws — not that," he said, with a smile, and a very
slight fillip of his finger and thumb.
Lady Grace was thunderstruck.
(< But, " again she stammered softly and eagerly, <( unless you
say there is no personal — "
Mr. Luke hated the word personal: it was so much mixed
up in his mind with theology, that he even winced if he had to
speak of personal talk.
9642
WILLIAM HURRELL MALLOCK
<( My dear Lady Grace, " he said in a tone of surprised remon-
strance, <(you are talking like a bishop."
<(Well, certainly," said Lady Grace, rising, and struggling she
hardly knew how into a smile, <( nolo episcopari. You see I do
know a little Latin, Mr. Luke."
"Yes," said Mr. Luke with a bow, as he pushed back a chair
for her, (<and a bit that has more wisdom in it than all other
ecclesiastical Latin put together."
((We're going to leave you gentlemen to smoke your cigar-
ettes, " said Lady Grace. <(We think of going down on the beach
for a little, and looking at the sea, which is getting silvery; and
by-and-by, I daresay you will not expel us if we come back for
a little tea and coffee."
«Damn it!"
Scarcely had the last trailing skirt swept glimmering out of
the pavilion into the mellow slowly brightening moonlight, than
the gentlemen were astounded by this sudden and terrible excla-
mation. It was soon found to have issued from Mr. Saunders,
who had hardly spoken more than a few sentences during the
whole of dinner.
<( What can be the matter ? " was inquired by several voices.
(< My fool of a servant, " said Mr. Saunders sullenly, <( has, I
find, in packing, wrapped up a small sponge of mine in my dis-
proof of God's existence."
(<H'f," shuddered Mr. Rose, shrinking from Mr. Saunders's
somewhat piercing tones, and resting his forehead on his hand;
<(my head aches sadly. I think I will go down to the sea, and
join the ladies."
<(I," said Mr. Saunders, (<if you will excuse me, must go and
see in what state the document is, as I left it drying, hung on
the handle of my jug. "
No sooner had Mr. Saunders and Mr. Rose departed than
Dr. Jenkinson began to recover his equanimity somewhat. Seeing
this, Mr. Storks, who had himself during dinner been first soothed
and then ruffled into silence, found suddenly the strings of his
tongue loosed.
(< Now, those are the sort of young fellows," he said, look-
ing after the retreating form of Mr. Saunders, (<that really do a
good deal to bring all solid knowledge into contempt in the minds
of the half -educated. There's a certain hall in London, not far
from the top of Regent Street, where I'm told he gives Sunday
lectures. "
WILLIAM HURRELL MALLOCK 9643
"Yes," said Dr. Jenkinson, -sipping his claret, "it's all very
bad taste — very bad taste. »
«And the worst of it is," said Mr. Storks, "that these young
men really get hold of a fact or two, and then push them on to
their own coarse and insane conclusions, — which have, I admit,
to the vulgar eye, the look of being obvious. "
"Yes/ said Dr. Jenkinson with a seraphic sweetness, "we
should always suspect everything that seems very obvious. Glar-
ing inconsistencies and glaring consistencies are both sure to van-
ish if you look closely into them."
"Now, all that about God, for instance," Mr. Storks went on,
(< is utterly uncalled for ; and as young Saunders puts it, is utterly
misleading."
<(Yes," said Dr. Jenkinson, <( it all depends upon the way you
say it."
<( I hardly think, " said Mr. Stockton with a sublime weariness,
"that we need waste much thought upon his way. It is a very
common one, — that of the puppy that barks at the heels of the
master whose meat it steals."
"May I," said Mr. Herbert gently, after a moment's pause,
"ask this — for I am a little puzzled here: Do I understand
that Mr. Saunders's arguments may be held, on the face of the
thing, to disprove the existence of God ? "
Mr. Storks and Mr. Stockton both stared gravely on Mr.
Herbert, and said nothing. Dr. Jenkinson stared at him too;
but the Doctor's eye lit up into a little sharp twinkle of benign
content and amusement, and he said: —
" No, Mr. Herbert, I don't think Mr. Saunders can disprove
that, nor any one else either. For the world has at present no
adequate definition of God; and I think we should be able to
define a thing before we can satisfactorily disprove it. I think
so. I have no doubt Mr. Saunders can disprove the existence of
God as he would define him. All atheists can do that."
"Ah," murmured Mr. Stockton, "nobly said!"
"But that's not the way," the Doctor went on, "to set to
work, — this kind of rude denial. We must be loyal to nature.
We must do nothing per saltum. We must be patient. We
mustn't leap at Utopias, either religious or irreligious. Let us
be content with the knowledge that all dogmas will expand in
proportion as we feel they need expansion; for all mere forms
are transitory, and even the personality of — "
9644
WILLIAM HURRELL MALLOCK
Fatal word! It was like a match to a cannon.
<(Ah, Jenkinson," exclaimed Mr. Luke, and Dr. Jenkinson
stopped instantly, <( we see what you mean ; and capital sense it
is too. But you do yourself as much as any one else a great
injustice, in not seeing that the age is composed of two parts,
and that the cultured minority is infinitely in advance of the Phi-
listine majority — which alone is, properly speaking, the present;
the minority being really the soul of the future waiting for its
body, which at present can exist only as a Utopia. It is the
wants of this soul that we have been talking over this afternoon.
When the ladies come back to us, there are several things that
I should like to say; and then you will see what we mean, Jen-
kinson, and that even poor Rose has really some right on his
side. )}
At the mention of Mr. Rose's name the Doctor's face again
curdled into frost.
<( I don't think so." That was all he said.
9^45
SIR THOMAS MALORY
AND THE <MORTE D' ARTHUR'
(FIFTEENTH CENTURY)
BY ERNEST RHYS
IHE one certain thing about Sir Thomas Malory is, that he
wrote the first and finest romance of chivalry in our com-
mon tongue, — the (Morte d' Arthur.' Beyond this, and the
testimony that the book affords as to its author, we have little
record of him. That he was a Welshman, however, seems highly
probable; and his name is certainly of Welsh origin, derived as it is
from Maelor. That he was a clerk in holy orders is likely too. It
was usual to distinguish vicars at that period and later by the prefix
(< Sir }) ; and various clergymen of the same Christian name and sur-
name as his may be traced by old tombs, at Mobberley in Cheshire
and elsewhere. Bale, in his interesting Latin chronicle of 1548, on
( Illustrious Writers of Great Britain,* speaks of his <cmany cares of
State, }) it is true; but church and State were then closely enough al-
lied to make the two things compatible with our view of him. Bale's
further account is brief but eloquent. Our romancer was a man, he
tells us, <(of heroic spirit, who shone from his youth in signal gifts of
mind and body.** Moreover, a true scholar, a true man of letters, who
never interrupted his quest <( through all the remnants of the world's
scattered antiquity. }) So it was that Malory was led to gather, from
various sources, all the traditions he could find <( concerning the valor
and the victories of the most renowned King Arthur of the Britons. w
Out of many materials, in French and Latin, in Welsh and Breton, he
shaped the book <Morte d' Arthur > as we now know it; working
with a sense of style, and with a feeling for the tale-teller's and the
romancer's art, which show him to be much more than the mere
compiler and book-maker that some critics have been content to call
him.
A word now as to the dates of Malory's writing, and Caxton's
publishing, the < Morte d' Arthur, } and we turn from the history of the
book to the book itself. In his last page, — after asking his readers
to pray for him, — Malory says in characteristic words, which again
may be thought to point to his being more than a mere layman:
<( This book was finished the ninth year of the reign of King Edward
9646
SIR THOMAS MALORY
the Fourth, ... as Jesu help me, for his great might; as he
[/. e., Malory] is the servant of Jesu both day and night. » The period
thus fixed brings us approximately to the year 1469, and to the ten
years previous as the probable time when the ( Morte d'Arthur J was
being written. Caxton published it in 1485, and then referred to
Malory as still living. Hence he and his noble romance both fall
well within that wonderful fifteenth century which saw the rise of
English poetry, with Chaucer as its morning star,—
« — the morning star of song, who made
His music heard below, — )J
and the revival of Greek learning. It is significant enough, seeing
their close kinship, that romance with Malory, and poetry with Chau-
cer, should have come into English literature in the same period.
As for Malory and his romance, there is hardly a more difficult
and a more delightful undertaking in all the history of literature
than that of the quest of its first beginnings. Principal Rhys has
in his erudite studies in the Arthurian Legend carried us far back
into the early Celtic twilight, — the twilight of the morning of man
and his spiritual awakening, — and shown us some of the curious par-
allels between certain Aryan myths and the heroic folk-tales which
lent their color to the "culture-hero," Arthur.
To examine these with the critical attention they require is be-
yond the scope of the present brief essay; but we may gather from
their threads a very interesting clue to the <( coming of Ring Arthur, w
in another sense than that of the episode so finely described by Ten-
nyson. We see the mythical hero carried in vague folk-tales of the
primitive Celts, in their journey westward across Europe, when the
traditions were attached to some other name. Then we find these
folk-tales given a local habitation and a name in early Britain; until
at last the appearance of a worthy historical hero, a King Arthur of
the sixth century, provided a pivot on which the wheel of tradition
could turn with new effect. The pivot itself might be small and in-
significant enough, but the rim of the wheel might have layer after
layer of legend, and accretion after accretion of mythical matter,
added to it, till at last the pivot might well threaten to give way
under the strain. Not to work the metaphor too hard, the wheel
may be said to go to pieces at last, when the turn of the romancers,
as distinct from the folk-tale tellers, comes. The Welsh romancers
had their turn first; then their originals were turned into Latin
by quasi-historians like Geoffrey of Monmouth; carried into France,
given all manner of new chivalric additions and adornments, out of
the growing European stock, by writers like Robert de Borron; and
finally, at the right moment, recaptured by our later Welsh romancer,
SIR THOMAS MALORY 9647
Malory, working in the interest of a new language and a new litera-
ture, destined to play so extraordinary a part in both the New World
and the Old.
The art of fiction and romance displayed by Malory in making
this transfer of his French materials, is best to be gauged by com-
paring his (Morte d'Arthur) with such romances as those in the
famous Merlin cycle of De Borron and his school. To all students of
the subject, this comparative investigation will be found full of the
most curiously interesting results. Besides Malory, we have English
fourteenth-century versions of these French romances ; notably ( The
Romance of 'Merlin,* of which we owe to the Early English Text
Society an excellent reprint. To give some idea of the effect of this
translation, let us cite a sentence or two from its account of Merlin's
imprisonment in the Forest of Broceliande; which may be compared
with the briefer account in the (Morte d' Arthur.* Sir Gawain hears
the voice of Merlin, speaking as it were <(from a smoke or mist in
the air," and saying: —
((From hence may I not come out, — for in all the world is not so strong a
close as is this whereas I am: and it is neither of iron, nor steel, nor timber,
nor of stone; but it is of the air without any other thing, [bound] by enchant-
ment so strong that it may never be undone while the world endureth."
This is not unlike Malory; but a little further study of the two
side by side will show the reader curious in such things how much
he has improved upon these earlier legendary romances, by his pro-
cess of selection and concentration, and by his choice of persons and
episodes. On the other hand, we must concede to his critics that
some of his most striking passages, full of gallant adventure gallantly
described, are borrowed very closely. But then the great poets and
romancers have so often been great borrowers. Shakespeare borrowed
boldly and well; so did Herrick; so did Pope; so did Burns. And
why not Malory ?
It is sufficient if we remember that romance, like other branches
of literature, is not a sudden and original growth, but a graft from
an old famous stock. To set this graft skillfully in a new tree needed
no 'prentice hand; in doing it, Malory proved himself beyond question
a master of romance. His true praise is best to be summed up in
the long-continuing tribute paid to the ( Morte d'Arthur ) by other
poets and writers, artists and musicians. Milton, let us remember
hesitated whether he should not choose its subject for his magnum
opus, in the place of ( Paradise Lost.* Tennyson elected to give it
an idyllic presentment in the purple pages of his ( Idylls of the King.*
Still later poets — Matthew Arnold, William Morris, and Swinburne —
have gone to the same fountain-head; and in painting, the pictures
9648 SIR THOMAS MALORY
of Rossetti, Watts, and Sir Edward Burne-Jones bear a like tribute;
while in music, there is more than a reflection of the same influence
in the works of Wagner.
In all this, one may trace the vitality of the early Aryan folk-tale
out of which the Arthurian legend originally took its rise. Sun-
hero or "culture-hero," Celtic chieftain or British king, it is still the
radiant figure of King Arthur that emerges from the gray past, in
which myth is dimly merged into mediaeval romance. In Malory's
pages, to repeat, the historical King Arthur goes for little ; but (< the
ideal Arthur lives and reigns securely in that kingdom of old romance
of which Camelot is the capital, }) — his beautiful and fatal Guinevere
at his side, and Sir Galahad, Sir Launcelot, and his Knights of the
Round .Table gathered about him. And if there be, as Tennyson
made clear in his * Idylls, y a moral to this noble old romance, we»
may best seek it in the spirit of these words in Caxton's prologue,
which make the best and simplest induction to the book: —
« Herein may be seen noble chivalry, courtesy, humanity, friendliness,
hardiness, love, friendship, cowardice, murder, hate, virtue, and sin. Do
after the good and leave the evil, and it shall bring you to good fame and
renown. And for to pass the time this book shall be pleasant to read in; but
for to give faith and belief that all is true that is contained herein, ye be at
your liberty.*
THE FINDING OF THE SWORD EXCALIBUR
From <Morte d' Arthur >
AND so Merlin and he departed, and as they rode King Arthur
said, <(I have no sword. » (< No matter, » said Merlin; « here-
by is a sword that shall be yours and I may." So they
rode till they came to a lake, which was a fair water and a
broad; and in the midst of the lake King- Arthur was aware of
an arm clothed in white samite, that held a fair sword in the
hand. "Lo," said Merlin unto the King, <( yonder is the sword
that I spake of."
With that they saw a damsel going upon the lake. <(What
damsel is that ?}) said the King. « That is the Lady of the Lake,»
SIR THOMAS MALORY
9649
said Merlin; (< and within that lake is a reach, and therein is as
fair a place as any is on earth, and richly beseen; and this dam-
sel will come to you anon, and then speak fair to her that she
will give you that sword." Therewith came the damsel to King
Arthur and saluted him, and he her again. (< Damsel, " said the
King, <(what sword is that which the arm holdeth yonder above
the water? I would it were mine, for I have no sword." « Sir
King, " said the damsel of the lake, <( that sword is mine, and if
ye will give me a gift when I ask it you, ye shall have it." <( By
my faith, " said King Arthur, (< I will give you any gift that you
will ask or desire." (< Well," said the damsel, <( go ye into yon-
der barge, and row yourself unto the sword, and take it and the
scabbard with you; and I will ask my gift when I see my time.*'
So King Arthur and Merlin alighted, tied their horses to two
trees, and so they went into the barge. And when they came
to the sword that the hand held, King Arthur took it up by
the handles, and took it with him; and the arm and the hand
went under the water, and so came to the land and rode forth.
Then King Arthur saw a rich pavilion. (< What signifieth
yonder pavilion ? " <( That is the knight's pavilion that ye fought
with last — Sir Pellinore; but he is out; for he is not there:
he hath had to do with a knight of yours, that hight Eglame,
and they have foughten together a great while, but at the last
Eglame fled, and else he had been dead; and Sir Pellinore hath
chased him to Carlion, and we shall anon meet with him in the
highway." (< It is well said," quoth King Arthur; <(now have I
a sword, and now will I wage battle with him and be avenged
on him." (< Sir, ye shall not do so," said Merlin: (< for the knight
is weary of fighting and chasing; so that ye shall have no wor-
ship to have a do with him. Also he will not lightly be matched
of one knight living: and therefore my counsel is, that ye let
him pass; for he shall do you good service in short time, and his
sons after his days. Also ye shall see that day in short space,
that ye shall be right glad to give him your sister to wife."
« When I see him, " said King Arthur, « I will do as ye advise
me."
Then King Arthur looked upon the sword and liked it passing
well. (< Whether liketh you better," said Merlin, « the sword or
the scabbard?" (< Me liketh better the sword," said King Arthur.
(< Ye are more unwise," said Merlin; (<for the scabbard is worth
ten of the sword: for while ye have the scabbard upon you, ye
9650
SIR THOMAS MALORY
shall lose no blood, be ye never so sore wounded, — therefore
keep well the scabbard alway with you." So they rode on to
Carlion.
THE WHITE HART AT THE WEDDING OF KING ARTHUR AND
QUEEN GUENEVER
From <Morte d' Arthur > 9
THEN was the high feast made ready, and the King- was wed-
ded at Camelot unto Dame Guenever, in the Church of St.
Stevens, with great solemnity; and as every man was set
after his degree, Merlin went unto all the Knights of the Round
Table, and bid them sit still, and that none should remove, <(for
ye shall see a marvelous adventure." Right so as they sat, there
came running in a white hart into the hall, and a white brachet
next him, and thirty couple of black running hounds came after
with a great cry, and the hart went about the Table Round. As
he went by the other tables, the white brachet caught him by
the flank, and pulled out a piece, wherethrough the hart leapt a
great leap, and overthrew a knight that sat at the table's side;
and therewith the knight arose and took up the brachet, and so
went forth out of the hall, and took his horse and rode his way
with the brachet.
Right soon anon came in a lady on a white palfrey, and cried
aloud to King Arthur, <( Sir, suffer me not to have this despite,
for the brachet was mine that the knight led away. " (< I may
not do therewith," said the King. With this there came a knight
riding all armed on a great horse, and took the lady with him
by force; and she cried and made great moan. When she was
gone the King was glad, because she made such a noise. "Nay,"
said Merlin, <( ye may not leave these adventures so lightly, for
these adventures must be brought again, or else it would be
disworship to you, and to your feast." (< I will," said the King,
"that all be done by your advice." "Then," said Merlin, «let
call Sir Gawaine, for he must bring again the white hart; also,
sir, ye must let call Sir Tor, for he must bring again the brachet
and the knight, or else slay him; also, let call King Pellinore, for
he must bring again the lady and the knight, ©r else slay him:
and these three knights shall do marvelous adventures or they
come again."
SIR THOMAS MALORY 965 T
THE MAID OF ASTOLAT
From <Morte d'Arthur>
Now speak we of the fair maid of Astolat, which made such
sorrow day and night, that she never slept, eat, nor drank;
and always she made her complaint unto Sir Launcelot.
So when she had thus endured about ten days, that she felt
that she must needs pass out of this world. Then she shrove
her clean and received her Creator; and ever she complained still
upon Sir Launcelot. Then hej ghostly father bade her leave such
thoughts. Then said she, <( Why should I leave such thoughts ?
am I not an earthly woman ? and all the while the breath is in
my body I may complain. For my belief is that I do none
offense, though I love an earthly man; and I take God unto
record, I never loved any but Sir Launcelot du Lake, nor never
shall; and a maiden I am, for him and for all other. And sith
it is the sufferance of God that I shall die for the love of so
noble a knight, I beseech the high Father of heaven for to have
mercy upon my soul; and that mine innumerable pains which
I suffer may be allegiance of part of my sins. For our sweet
Savior Jesu Christ, }> said the maiden, (( I take thee to record, I
was never greater offender against thy laws, but that I loved this
noble knight, Sir Launcelot, out of all measure; and of myself,
good Lord! I might not withstand the fervent love, wherefore I
have my death. }) And then she called her father, Sir Bernard,
and her brother, Sir Tirre; and heartily she prayed her father
that her brother might write a letter like as she would indite it
And so her father granted it her.
And when* the letter was written, word by word, as she had
devised, then she prayed her father that she might be watched
until she were dead. <(And while my body is whole let this
letter be put into my right hand, and my hand bound fast with
the letter until that I be cold; and let me be put in a fair bed,
with all the richest clothes that I have about me. And so let
my bed, with all' my rich clothes, be laid with me in a chariot
to the next place whereas the Thames is; and there let me be
put in a barge, and but one man with me, such as ye trust, to
steer me thither, and that my barge be covered with black sam-
ite over and over. Thus, father, I beseech you let be done." So
her father granted her faithfully that all this thing should be
done like as she had devised. Then her father and her brothel
9652 SIR THOMAS MALORY
made great dole; for when this was done, anon she died. And so
when she was dead, the corpse, and the bed, and all, were led
the next way unto the Thames; and there a man, and the corpse
and all, were put in a barge on the Thames; and so the man
steered the barge to Westminster, and there he rode a great
while to and fro or any man discovered it.
So, by fortune, King Arthur and Queen Guenever were speak-
ing together at a window; and so as they looked into the Thames,
they espied the black barge, and had marvel what it might mean.
Then the King called Sir Kaye and showed him it. "Sir," said
Sir Kaye, <(wit ye well that there is some new tidings." «Go
ye thither," said the King unto Sir Kaye, <(and take with you
Sir Brandiles and Sir Agravaine, and bring me ready word what
is there." Then these three knights departed and came to the
barge and went in ; and there they found the fairest corpse, lying
in a rich bed, that ever they saw, and a poor man sitting in the
end of the barge, and no word would he speak. So these three
knights returned unto the King again, and told him what they
had found. (< That fair corpse will I see," said King Arthur.
And then the King took the Queen by the hand and went thither.
Then the King made the barge to be holden fast; and then the
King and the Queen went in with certain knights with them ; and
there they saw a fair gentlewoman, lying in a rich bed, covered
unto her middle with many rich clothes, and all was cloth of
gold: and she lay as though she had smiled. Then the Queen
espied the letter in the right hand, and told the King thereof.
Then the King took it in his hand and said, <(Now I am sure
this letter will tell what she was and why she is come hither."
Then the King and the Queen went out of the barge; and the
King commanded certain men to wait v*~ on the barge. And so
when the King was come within his chamber, he called many
knights about him and said (< that he would wit openly what was
written within that letter." Then the King broke it open and
made a clerk to read it. And this was the intent of the letter: —
<( Most noble knight, my lord, Sir Launcelot du Lake, now
hath death made us two at debate for your love. I was your
love, that men called the Fair Maiden of Astolat; therefore unco
all ladies I make my moan. Yet for my soul that ye pray, and
bury me at the least, and offer me my mass penny. This is my
last request; and a clean maid I died, I take God to my witness.
Pray for my soul, Sir Launcelot, as thou art a knight peerless.*
SIR THOMAS MALORY 9653
This was all the substance of the letter. And when it was
read, the Queen and all the knights wept for pity of the doleful
complaints. Then was Sir Launcelot sent for; and when he
was come King Arthur made the letter to be read to him. And
when Sir Launcelot had heard it, word by word, he said, <( My
lord, King Arthur, wit you well that I am right heavy of the
death of this fair damsel. God knoweth I was never causer of
her death by my will; and that I will report me unto her own
brother here, — he is Sir Lavaine. I will not say nay/ said Sir
Launcelot, <(but that she was both fair and good; and much was
I beholden unto her : but she loved me out of measure. }> <( Yp
might have showed her/ said the Queen, <( some bounty and gen-
tleness, that ye might have preserved her life." <( Madam, }> said
Sir Launcelot, (< she would none other way be answered, but that
she would be my wife, or else my love; and of these two I would
not grant her: but I proffered her for her good love, which she
showed me, a thousand pounds yearly to her and her heirs, and
to wed any manner of knight that she could find best to love in
her heart. For madam," said Sir Launcelot, (< I love not to be
constrained to love; for love must arise of the heart, and not by
constraint. w <( That is truth, }> said King Arthur and many knights :
<(love is free in himself, and never will be bound; for where he
is bound he loseth himself. >}
THE DEATH OF SIR LAUNCELOT.*
From (Morte d' Arthur. >
THEN Sir Launcelot, ever after, eat but little meat, nor drank,
but continually mourned until he was dead; and then he
sickened more and more, and dried and dwindled away.
For the bishop, nor none of his fellows, might not make him
to eat, and little he drank, that he was soon waxed shorter
by a cubit than he was, that the people could not know him.
For evermore day and night he prayed, but "needfully, as nature
required; sometimes he slumbered a broken sleep, and always
he was lying groveling upon King Arthur's and Queen Guene-
ver's tomb: and there was no comfort that the bishop, nor Sir
*The second paragraph of this eloquent passage is not to be found in the
first edition 'of the <Morte d' Arthur. > and is probably by some other writer
than Malory- This, however, does not affect its eloquence.
9654
SIR THOMAS MALORY
Bors, nor none of all his fellows could make him; it availed
nothing.
O ye mighty and pompous lords, shining in the glory transi-
tory of this unstable life, as in reigning over great realms and
mighty great countries, fortified with strong castles and towers,
edified with many a rich city; yea also, ye fierce and mighty
knights, so valiant in adventurous deeds of arms, — behold! be-
hold! see how this mighty conqueror, King Arthur, whom in
his human life all the world doubted; see also, the noble Queen
Guenever, which sometime sat in her chair, adorned with gold,
pearls, and precious stones, now lie full low in obscure foss, or
pit, covered with clods of earth and clay. Behold also this
mighty champion, Sir Launcelot, peerless of all knighthood; see
now how he lieth groveling upon the cold mold; now being
so feeble and faint, that sometime was so terrible. How, and in
what manner, ought ye to be so desirous of worldly honor, so
dangerous. Therefore, methinketh this present book is right
necessary often to be read; for in it shall ye find the most gra-
cious, knightly, and virtuous war of the most noble knights of
the world, whereby they gat a praising continually. Also me
seemeth, by the oft reading thereof, ye shall greatly desire to
accustom yourself in following of those gracious knightly deeds;
that is to say, to dread God and to love righteousness, — faith-
fully and courageously to serve your sovereign prince; and the
more that God hath given you triumphal honor, the meeker
ought ye to be, ever fearing the unstableness of this deceitful
world.
9655
SIR JOHN MANDEVILLE
(FOURTEENTH CENTURY)
!HE most entertaining book in early English prose is the one
entitled ( The Marvelous Adventures of Sir John Maundevile
[or Mandeville], Knight: being his Voyage and Travel which
treateth of the way to Jerusalem and of the Marvels of Ind with
other Islands and Countries.' Who this knight was, and how many
of the wondrous countries and sights he described he actually saw,
are matters of grave discussion. Some scholars have denied his very
existence, affirming the book to be merely a compilation from other
books of travel, well known at the time, and made by a French physi-
cian, Jehan de Bourgogne, who hid his identity under the pseudonym
of the English knight of St. Albans. As a matter of fact, the asser-
tion of Sir John in a Latin copy notwithstanding, research has proved
beyond doubt that the book was first written in French, and then
translated into English, Latin, Italian, German, Flemish, and even
into Irish. It has been further shown that the author drew largely
on the works of his contemporaries. The chapters on Asiatic history
and geography are from a book dictated in French at Poitiers in
1307, by the Armenian monk Hayton; the description of the Tartars
is from the work of the Franciscan monk John de Piano Carpini;
the account of Prester John is taken from the Epistle ascribed to
him, and from stories current in the fourteenth century. There are,
furthermore, large borrowings from the book of the Lombard Fran-
ciscan friar Odoric of Pordenone, who traveled in the Orient between
1317 and 1330, and on his return had his adventures set down in Latin
by a brother of his order. The itinerary of the German knight Will-
iam of Boldensele, about 1336, is also laid under contribution. What
then can be credited to Sir John ? While learned men are waxing hot
over conjectures the answers to which seem beyond the search-light
of exact investigation, the unsophisticated reader holds fast by the
testimony of the knight himself as to his own identity, accepting it
along with the marvels narrated in the book: —
<( I John Maundevile, Knight, all be it I be not worthy, that was born in
England, in the town of St. Albans, passed the sea in the year of our Lord
Jesu Christ, 1322, in the day of St. Michaelmas; and hitherto have been long
time over the Sea. and have seen and gone through many diverse Lands, and
5656 SIR JOHN MANDEVILLE
many Provinces and Kingdoms and Isles, and have passed through Tartary,
Persia, Ermony [Armenia] the Little and 'the Great ; through Lybia, Chaldea,
and a great part of Ethiopia; through Amazonia, Ind the Less and the More, a
great Part; and throughout many other Isles, that be about Ind: where dwell
many diverse Folks, and of diverse Manners and Laws, and of diverse Shapes
of Men. Of which Lands and Isles I shall speak more plainly hereafter.
«And I shall advise you of some Part of things that there be, when Time
shall be hereafter, as it may best come to my Mind; and especially for them
that will and are in Purpose to visit the Holy City of Jerusalem and the
Holy Places that are thereabout. And I shall tell the way that they shall
hold hither. For I have often times passed and ridden the Way, with good
company of many Lords. God be thanked. »
And again in the epilogue: —
<(And ye shall understand, if it like you, that at mine . Home-coming, 1
came to Rome, and showed my Life to our Holy Father the Pope, . . .
and amongst all I showed him this treatise, that I had made after information
of Men that knew of things that I had not seen myself, and also of Marvels
and Customs that I had seen myself, as far as God would give me grace;
and besought his Holy Father-hood, that my Book might be examined and
corrected by Advice of his wise and discreet Council. And our Holy Father,
of his special Grace, remitted my Book to be examined and proved by the
Advice of his said Council. By the which my Book was proved true. . . .
And I John Maundevile, Knight, above said, although I be unworthy, that
departed from our Countries and passed the Sea the Year of Grace 1322, that
have passed many Lands and many Isles and Countries, and searched many
full strange Places, and have been in many a full good honorable Company,
and at many a fair Deed of Arms, albeit that I did none myself, for mine
incapable Insufficiency, now am come Home, maugre myself, to Rest. For
Gouts and Rheumatics, that distress me — those define the End of my Labor
against my Will, God knoweth.
<(And thus, taking solace in my wretched rest, recording the Time passed,
I have fulfilled these Things, and put them written in this Book, as it would
come into my Mind, the Year of Grace 1356, in the 34th year that I departed
from our countries. )J
The book professes, then, to be primarily a guide for pilgrims to
Jerusalem by four routes, with a handbook of the holy places. But
Sir John's love of the picturesque and the marvelous, and his delight
in a. good story, lead him to linger along the way : nay, to go out of
his way in order to pick up a legend or a tale wherewith to enliven
the dry facts of the route ; as if his pilgrims, weary and footsore with
long day journeys, needed a bit of diversion to cheer them along the
way. When, after many a detour, he is finally brought into Pales-
tine, the pilgrim is made to feel that every inch is holy ground.
The guide scrupulously locates even the smallest details of Bible
history. He takes it all on faith. He knows nothing of nineteenth-
SIR JOHN MANDEVILLE 9657
century <( higher criticism," nor does he believe in spiritual interpre-
tation. He will point you out the
«rock where Jacob was sleeping when he saw the angels go up and down a
ladder. . . . And upon that rock sat our Lady, and learned her psalter.
. . . Also at the right side of that Dead Sea dwelleth yet the Wife of Lot
in Likeness of a Salt Stone. . . . And in that Plain is the Tomb of Job.
. . . And there is the Cistern where Joseph, which they sold, was cast in
of by his Brethren. . . . There nigh is Gabriel's Well where our Lord
was wont to bathe him, when He was young, and from that Well bare the
Water often-time to His Mother. And in that Well she washed often-time
the Clothes of her Son Jesu Christ. ... On that Hill, and in that same
Place, at the Day of Doom, 4 Angels with 4 Trumpets shall 'blow and raise
all Men that have suffered Death. »
He touches on whatever would appeal to the pious imagination
of the pilgrims, and helps them to visualize the truths of their reli-
gion. When he leaves Palestine, — a country he knew perhaps better
than ever man before or since his day, — and goes into the more
mythical regions of Ind the Little and More, Cathay and Persia, his
imagination fairly runs riot. With an Oriental love of the gorgeous
he describes the (< Royalty of the Palace of the Great Chan,^ or
of Prester John's abode, — splendors not to be outdone even by the
genie of Aladdin's wonderful lamp. He takes us into regions lustrous
with gold and silver, diamonds and other precious stones. We have
indeed in the latter half of the book whole chapters rivaling the
'Arabian Nights y in their weird luxurious imaginings, and again in
their grotesque creations of men and beasts and plant life. What
matter where Sir John got his material for his marvels, — his rich,
monster-teeming Eastern world, with its Amazons and pigmies; its
people with hound's heads, that <(be great folk and well-fighting » ; its
wild geese with two heads, and lions all white and great as oxen;
men with eyes in their shoulders, and men without heads; (<folk that
have the Face all flat, all plain, without Nose and without Mouth w ;
« folk that have great Ears and long that hang down to their Knees » ;
and (<folk that run marvelously swift with one foot so large that it
serves them as umbrella against the sun when they lie down to rest }> ;
the Hippotaynes, half man and half horse; griffins that (<have the
Body upwards as an Eagle and beneath as a Lion, and truly they
say truth, that they be of that shape. }> We find hints of many old
acquaintances of the wonder-world of story-books, and fables from
classic soil. The giants with one eye in the middle of the forehead
are close brothers to the Cyclops Polyphemus, whom Ulysses outwit-
ted. The adamant rocks were surely washed by the same seas that
swirled around the magnetic mountain whereon Sindbad the Sailor
was wrecked. Sir John was in truth a masterful borrower, levying
9658 SIR JOHN MANDEVILLE
tribute on all the superstitions, the legends, the stories, and the
fables current in his time, a time when the distinction between meum
and tuum, in literature as well as in other matters, was not as finely
drawn as it is now. Whatever a man could use, he plagiarized and
considered as his own. Where the robber-baron filched by means of
the sword, Sir John filched by means of the pen. He took his mon-
sters out of Pliny, his miracles out of legends, his strange stories out
of romances. He meant to leave no rumor or invention unchronicled ;
and he prefaces his most amazing assertions with <( They say }) or
<(Men say, but I have not seen it.® He fed the gullibility of his age
to the top of its bent, and compiled a book so popular that more
copies from the fourteenth-century editions remain than of any other
book except the Bible.
THE MARVELOUS RICHES OF PRESTER JOHN
From <The Adventures >
IN THE Land of Prester John be many divers Things and
many precious Stones, so great and' so large, that Men make
of them Vessels, as Platters, Dishes, and Cups. And many
other Marvels be there, that it were too cumbrous and too long
to put in Writing of Books; but of the principal Isles and of his
Estate and of his Law, I shall tell you some Part. . . .
And he hath under him 72 Provinces, and in every Province
is a King. And these Kings have Kings under them, and all
be Tributaries to Prester John. And he hath in his Lordships
many great Marvels.
For in his Country is the Sea that Men call the Gravelly
Sea, that is all Gravel and Sand, without any Drop of W^ater, and
it ebbeth and floweth in great Waves as other Seas do, and it is
never still nor at Peace in any manner of Season. And no Man
may pass that Sea by Ship, nor by any manner of Craft, and
therefore may no Man know what Land is beyond that Sea.
And albeit that it have no Water, yet Men find therein and on
the Banks full good Fishes of other manner of Nature and shape
than Men find in any other Sea, and they be of right good
Taste and delicious for Man's Meat.
And a 3 Days' Journey long from that Sea be great Mount-
ains, out of the which goeth out a great River that cometh out
of Paradise. And it is full of precious Stones, without any Drop
of Water, and it runneth through the Desert on the one Side,
SIR JOHN MANDEVILLE
so that it maketh the Sea gravelly; and it runneth into that Sea,
and there it endeth. And that River runneth, also, 3 Days in
the Week and bringeth with him great Stones and the Rocks
also therewith, and that great Plenty. And anon, as they be
entered into the Gravelly Sea, they be seen no more, but lost
for evermore. And in those 3 Days that that River runneth, no
Man dare enter into it; but on other Days Men dare enter well
enough.
Also beyond that River, more upward to the Deserts, is a
great Plain all gravelly, between the Mountains. And in that
Plain, every Day at the Sun-rising, begin to grow small Trees,
and they grow till Midday, .bearing Fruit; but no Man dare take
of that Fruit, for it is a Thing of Faerie. And after Midday
they decrease and enter again into the Earth, so that at the
going down of the Sun they appear no more. And so they do,
every Day. And that is a great Marvel.
In that Desert be many Wild Men, that be hideous to look
on; for they be horned, and they speak naught, but they grunt,
as Pigs. And there is also great Plenty of wild Hounds. And
there be many Popinjays [or Parrots] that they call Psittakes in
their Language. And they speak of their own Nature, and say
( Salve! * [God save you !] to Men that go through the Deserts,
and speak to them as freely as though it were a Man that spoke.
And they that speak well have a large Tongue, and have 5 Toes
upon a Foot. And there be also some of another Manner, that
have but 3 Toes upon a Foot; and they speak not, or but little,
for they cannot but cry.
This Emperor Prester John when he goeth into Battle against
any other Lord, he hath no Banners borne before him; but he
hath 3 Crosses of Gold, fine, great, and high, full of precious
Stones, and every one of the Crosses be set in a Chariot, full
richly arrayed. And to keep every Cross, be ordained 10,000
Men of Arms and more than 100,000 Men on Foot, in manner as
when Men would keep a Standard in our Countries, when that
we be in a Land of War. . . .
He dwelleth commonly in the City of Susa. And there is
his principal Palace, that is so rich and noble that no Man will
believe it by Estimation, but he had seen it. And above the
chief Tower of the Palace be 2 round Pommels or Balls of
Gold, and in each of them be 2 Carbuncles great and large, that
shine full bright upon the Night. And the principal gates of
966o SIR JOHN MANDEVILLE
his Palace be of precious Stone that Men call Sardonyx, and the
Border and the Bars be of Ivory. And the Windows of the Halls
and Chambers be of Crystal. And the Tables whereon Men eat,
some be of Emeralds, some of Amethyst, and some of Gold, full
of precious Stones; and the Pillars that bear up the Tables be
of the same precious Stones. And of the Steps to go up to
his Throne, where he sitteth at Meat, one is of Onyx, another is
of Crystal, and another of green Jasper, another of Amethyst,
another of Sardine, another of Cornelian, and the yth, that he
setteth his Feet on, is of Chrysolite. And all these Steps be
bordered with fine Gold, with the other precious Stones, set with
great orient Pearls. And the Sides of the Seat of his Throne
be of Emeralds, and bordered with Gold full nobly, and dubbed
with other precious Stones and great Pearls. And all the Pillars
in his Chamber be of fine Gold with Precious Stones, and with
many Carbuncles, that give Light upon the Night to all People.
And albeit that the Carbuncles give Light right enough, never-
theless, at all Times burneth a Vessel of Crystal full of Balm, to
give good Smell and Odor to the Emperor, and to void away all
wicked Eyes and Corruptions. >}
FROM HEBRON TO BETHLEHEM
From the < Adventures >
AND in Hebron be all the Sepultures of the Patriarchs, —
Adam, Abraham, Isaac, and of Jacob; and of their Wives,
Eve, Sarah and Rebecca and of Leah; the which Sepul-
tures the Saracens keep full carefully, and have the Place in
great Reverence for the holy Fathers, the Patriarchs that lie
there. And they suffer no Christian Man to enter into the
Place, but if it be of special Grace of the Sultan; for they hold
Christian Men and Jews as Dogs, and they say, that they should
not enter into so holy a Place. And Men call that Place, where
they lie, Double Splunk (Spelunca Duplex), or Double Cave, or
Double Ditch, forasmuch as one lieth above another. And the
Saracens call that Place in their Language, ^Karicarba* that
is to say <( The Place of Patriarchs. w And the Jews call that
Place ^Arboth? And in that same Place was Abraham's House,
and there he sat and saw 3 Persons, and worshiped but one; as
Holy Writ saith, (< Tres vidit et unum adoravit; }> that is to say,
SIR JOHN MANDEVILLE 9661
saw 3 and worshiped one: w and those same were the Angels
that Abraham received ,into his House.
And right fast by that Place is a Cave in the Rock, where
Adam and Eve dwelled when they were put out of Paradise;
and there got they their Children. And in that same Place was
Adam formed and made, after that, that some Men say (for Men
were wont to call that Place the Field of Damascus, because that
it was in the Lordship of Damascus), and from thence was he
translated into the Paradise of Delights, as they say; and after
he was driven out of Paradise he was left there. And the same
Day that he was put in Paradise, the same Day he was put .out.
for anon, he sinned. There beginneth the Vale of Hebron, that
endureth nigh to Jerusalem. There the Angel commanded Adam
that he should dwell with his Wife Eve, of the which he begat
Seth; of the which Tribe, that is to say Kindred, Jesu Christ
was born.
In that Valley is a Field, where Men draw out of the Earth
a Thing that Men call Cambile, and they eat it instead of Spice,
and they bear it away to sell. And Men may not make the
Hole or the Cave, where it is taken out of the Earth, so deep or
so wide, but that it is, at the Year's End, full again up to the
Sides, through the Grace of God. . . .
From Hebron Men go to Bethlehem in half a Day. for it is
but 5 Mile; and it is a full fair Way, by Plains and Woods full
delectable. Bethlehem is a little City, long and narrow and well
walled, and on each Side enclosed with good Ditches: and it was
wont to be clept Ephrata, as Holy Writ saith, *Ecce, andimus
eum in Ephrata^ that is to say, (< Lo, we heard it in Ephrata.8
And toward the East End of the City is a full fair Church and
a gracious, and it hath many Towers, Pinnacles and Corners, full
strong and curiously made; and within that Church be 44 Pillars
of Marble, great and fair. . . .
Also besides the Choir of the Church, at the right Side, as
Men come downward 16 Steps, is the Place where our Lord was
born, that is full well adorned with Marble, and full richly
painted with Gold, Silver, Azure and other Colours. And 3
Paces beyond is the Crib of the Ox and the Ass. And beside
that is the Place where the Star fell, that led the 3 Kings, Jas-
per, Melchior and Balthazar (but Men of Greece call them thus,
<( Galgalathe, Malgalathe, and Seraphie," and the Jews call them
in this manner, in Hebrew, <(Appelius, Amerrius, and Damasus*).
SIR JOHN MANDEVILLE
These 3 Kings offered to our Lord, Gold, Incense and Myrrh,
and they met together through Miracle . of God ; for they met
together in a City in Ind, that Men call Cassak, that is a 53
Days' Journey from Bethlehem; and they were at Bethlehem
the 1 3th Day; and that was the 4th Day after that they had
seen the Star, when they met in that City, and thus they were
in 9 days from that City at Bethlehem, and that was a great
Miracle.
Also, under the Cloister of the Church, by 18 Steps at the
right Side, is the Charnel-house of the Innocents, where their
Bodies lie. And before the Place where our Lord was born is
the Tomb of St. Jerome, that was a Priest and a Cardinal, that
translated the Bible and the Psalter from Hebrew into Latin:
and without the Minster is the Chair that he sat in when he
translated it. And fast beside that Church, at 60 Fathom, is a
Church of St. Nicholas, where our Lady rested her after she was
delivered of our Lord; and forasmuch as she had too much Milk
in her Paps, that grieved her, she milked them on the red Stones
of Marble, so that the Traces may yet be seen, in the Stones, all
white.
And ye shall understand, that 'all that dwell in Bethlehem be
Christian Men.
And there be fair Vines about the City, and great plenty of
Wine, that the Christian Men have made. But the Saracens till
not the Vines, neither drink they any Wine: for their Books of
their Law, that Mohammet gave them, which they call their <(A1
Koran w (and some call it "Mesaph," and in another language it
is clept "Harme,") — the same Book forbiddeth them to drink
Wine. For in that Book, Mohammet cursed all those that drink
Wine and all them that sell it: for some Men say, that he slew
once an Hermit in his Drunkenness, that he loved full well; and
therefore he cursed Wine and them that drink it. But his Curse
be turned onto his own Head, as Holy Writ saith, «Et in verticem
ipsius iniquitas ejus descendet; >J that is to say, (< His Wickedness
shall turn and fall onto his own Head. w
And also the Saracens breed no Pigs, nor eat they any
Swine's Flesh, for they say it is Brother to Man, and" it was for-
bidden by the old Law; and they hold him accursed that eateth
thereof. Also in the Land of Palestine and in the Land of
Egypt, they eat but little or none of Flesh of Veal or of Beef,
but if the Beast be so old, that he may no more work for old
SIR JOHN MANDEVILLE
Age; for it is forbidden, because they have but few of them;
therefore they nourish them to till their Lands.
In this City of Bethlehem was David the King born; and he
had 60 Wives, and the first wife was called Michal; and also he
had 300 Lemans.
And from Bethlehem unto Jerusalem is but 2 Mile; and in
the Way to Jerusalem half a Mile from Bethlehem is a Church,
where the Angel said to the Shepherds of the Birth of Christ.
And in that Way is the Tomb of Rachel, that was the Mother
of Joseph the Patriarch; and she died anon after that she was
delivered of her Son Benjamin. And there she was buried by
Jacob her Husband; and he made set 12 great Stones on her, in
Token that she had born 12 Children. In the same Way, half a
Mile from Jerusalem, appeared the Star to the 3 Kings. In that
Way also be many Churches of Christian Men, by the which Men
go towards the City of Jerusalem.
9664
JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN
1803-1849
,N THE summer of 1894 some workmen engaged in removing a
mass of rubbish, to make room for a new building in one of
the poorer quarters of Dublin, came upon the ruins of an
old cellar. A casual passer-by happened to notice the old wall, with
its low window looking out upon a level with the narrow and squalid
alley. Moved by some bookish recollection, he realized that he was
standing at the corner of Bride Street and Myler's Alley, known in
the older days as Glendalough Lane; and that the miserable vestige
of human habitation into which the rough navvies were driving their
pickaxes had once been the poor shelter of him who, —
«Worn by weakness, disease, and wrong,
Had fled for shelter to God, who mated
His soul with song.»
From this spot James Clarence Mangan, wasted with famine and
already delirious, was carried by the Overseers of the Poor to the
sheds of Meath Hospital in June 1849; too late, alas! to save the
dying man, who in the years of his young manhood had sung and
suffered for Ireland. A few friends gathered about him to comfort
his patient and gentle soul, and to lay his bones in the cool clay of
Glasnevin.
The life of Mangan is a convincing proof that differences of time
and place have no influence upon the poet's power. Poverty and
Want were the foster-brothers of this most wonderful of Ireland's
gifted children. His patient body was chained to daily labor for the
sordid needs of an unappreciating kindred, and none of the pleasant
joys of travel and of diversified nature were his. He was born in
Fishamble Street, Dublin, in 1803, and never passed beyond the con-
fines of his native city; but his spirit was not jailed by the misery
which oppressed his body. His wondrous fancy swept with a con-
queror's march through all the fair broad universe.
Like Poe and Chatterton, Mangan impaired his powers by the use
of intoxicants. He was very sensitive about the squalor of his sur-
roundings, and was reticent and shy in the company of more fortu-
nate men and women: but with admirable unselfishness he devoted
his days, his toil, and the meagre rewards which came to him from
his work, to the care and sustenance of his mean-spirited kindred.
JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN 9665
For years he labored in the hopeless position of a scrivener's clerk,
from which he was rescued by the interest of Dr. Todd, and was
made an assistant librarian of Trinity College. There it was his
habit to spend hours of rapt and speechless labor amid the dusty
shelves, to earn his pittance. Dr. Petrie subsequently found him a
place in the office of the Irish Ordnance Survey; but Mangan was
his own enemy and foredoomed to defeat. He wielded a vigorous
pen in Ireland's cause, and under various names communicated his
own glowing spirit to his countrymen through the columns of several
periodicals. He published also two volumes of translations from the
German poets, which are full of his own lyric fire but have no claim
to fidelity. It was in his gloomy cellar-home that he poured out the
music of his heart. When he died, a volume of German poetry was
found in his pocket, and there were loose papers on which he had
feebly traced his last thoughts in verse. Mangan will forever remain
a cherished comrade of all gentle lovers of the Beautiful and True.
THE DAWNING OF THE DAY
T
WAS a balmy summer morning
Warm and early,
Such as only June bestows;
Everywhere the earth adorning,
Dews lay pearly
In the lily-bell and rose.
Up from each green-leafy bosk and hollow
Rose the blackbird's pleasant lay;
And the soft cuckoo was sure to follow:
'Twas the dawning of the day!
Through the perfumed air the golden
Bees flew round me;
Bright fish dazzled from the sea,
Till medreamt some fairy olden-
World spell bound me
In a trance of witcherie.
Steeds pranced round anon with stateliest housings,
Bearing riders prankt in rich array,
Like flushed revelers after wine-carousings :
'Twas the dawning of the day!
Then a strain of song was chanted,
And the lightly
Floating sea-nymphs drew anear.
0666 JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN
Then again the shore seemed haunted
By hosts brightly
Clad, and wielding shield and spear!
Then came battle shouts — an onward rushing —
Swords, and chariots, and a phantom fray.
Then all vanished: the warm skies were blushing
In the dawning of the day!
Cities girt with glorious gardens,
Whose immortal
Habitants in robes of light
Stood, methought, as angel-wardens
Nigh each portal,
Now arose to daze my sight.
Eden spread around, revived and blooming;
When — lo! as I gazed, all passed away:
I saw but black rocks and billows looming
In the dim chill dawn of day!
R
THE NAMELESS ONE
OLL forth, my song, like the rushing river
That sweeps along to the mighty sea;
God will inspire me while I deliver
My soul of thee!
Tell thou the world, when my bones lie whitening
Amid the last homes of youth and eld,
That there was once one whose veins ran lightning
No eye beheld.
Tell how his boyhood was one drear night hour;
How shone for him, through his griefs and gloom,
No star of all heaven sends to light our
Path to the tomb.
Roll on, my song, and to after ages
Tell how, disdaining all earth can give,
He would have taught men, from wisdom's pages,
The way to live.
And tell how, trampled, derided, hated,
And worn by weakness, disease, and wrong,
He fled for shelter to God, who mated
His soul with song —
JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN 9657
With song which alway, sublime or vapid,
Flowed like a rill in the morning beam,
Perchance not deep, but intense and rapid —
A mountain stream.
Tell how this Nameless, condemned for years long
To herd with demons from hell beneath,
Saw things that made him, with groans and tears, long
For even death.
Go on to tell how, with genius wasted,
Betrayed in friendship, befooled in love,
With spirit shipwrecked, and young hopes blasted,
He still, still strove.
Till, spent with toil, dreeing death for others,
And some whose hands should have wrought for him
(If children live not for sires and mothers),
His mind grew dim.
And he fell far through that pit abysmal, —
The gulf and grave of Maginn and Burns, —
And pawned his soul for the devil's dismal
Stock of returns.
But yet redeemed it in days of darkness,
And shapes and signs of the final wrath,
When death, in hideous and ghastly starkness,
Stood on his path.
And tell how now, amid wreck and sorrow,
And want, and sickness, and houseless nights,
He bides in calmness the silent morrow,
That no ray lights.
And lives he still, then ? Yes : old and hoary
At thirty-nine, from despair and woe,
He lives, enduring what future story
Will never know.
Him grant a grave too, ye pitying noble,
Deep in your bosoms! There let him dwell?
He too had tears for all souls in trouble
Here and in hell.
,9668 JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN
ST. PATRICKS HYMN BEFORE TARAH
AT TARAH to-day, in this awful hour,
I call on the fcoly Trinity:
Glory to him who reigneth in power,
The God of the elements, Father and Son
And Paraclete Spirit, which Three are the One,
The ever-existing Divinity!
At Tarah to-day I call on the Lord,
On Christ, the omnipotent Word,
Who came to redeem from death and sin
Our fallen race;
And I put and I place
The virtue that lieth and liveth in
His incarnation lowly.
His baptism pure and holy,
His life of toil and tears and affliction,
His dolorous death — his crucifixion,
His burial, sacred and sad and, lone,
His resurrection to life again,
His glorious ascension to Heaven's high throne*
And, lastly, his future dread
And terrible coming to judge all men —
Both the living and dead. . . .
At Tarah to-day I put and I place
The virtue that dwells in the seraphim's love,
And the virtue and grace
That are in the obedience
And unshaken allegiance
Of all the archangels and angels above,
And in the hope of the resurrection
To everlasting reward and election,
And in the prayers of the fathers of old,
And in the truths the prophets foretold,
And in the Apostles' manifold preachings,
And in the confessors' faith and teachings;
And in the purity ever dwelling
Within the immaculate Virgin's breast,
And in the actions bright and excelling
Of all good men, the just and the blest. , ,
At Tarah to-day, in this fateful hour,
I place all heaven with its power,
JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN 9669
And the sun with its brightness,
And the snow with its whiteness,
And fire with all the strength it hath,
And lightning with its rapid wrath,
And the winds with their swiftness along their path,
And the sea with its deepness,
And the rocks with their steepness,
And the earth with its starkness, —
All these I place,
By God's almighty help and grace,
Between myself and the powers of darkness.
At Tarah to-day
May God be my stay! •
May the strength of God now nerve me!
May the power of God preserve me!
May God the Almighty be near me!
May God the Almighty espy me!
May God the Almighty hear me!
May God give me eloquent speech!
May the arm of God protect me!
May the wisdom of God direct me!
May God give me power to teach and to preach!
May the shield of God defend me!
May the host of God attend me,
And ward me,
And guard me
Against the wiles of demons and devils,
Against the temptations of vices and evils,
Against the bad passions and wrathful will
Of the reckless mind and the wicked heart,—
Against every man who designs me ill,
Whether leagued with others or plotting apart!
In this hour of hours,
I place all those powers
Between myself and every foe
Who threaten my body and soul
With danger or dole,
To protect me against the evils that flow
From lying soothsayers' incantations,
From the gloomy laws of the Gentile nations,
From heresy's hateful innovations,
From idolatry's rites and invocations.
9670 JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN
Be those my defenders,
My guards against every ban —
And spell of smiths, and Druids, and women;
In fine, against every knowledge that renders
The light Heaven sends us dim in
The spirit and soul of man!
May Christ, I pray,
Protect me to-day
Against poison and fire,
Against drowning and wounding;
That so, in His grace abounding,
I may earn the preacher's hire!
Christ as a light
T11 J -J I
Illumine and guide me!
Christ as a shield o'ershadow and cover me!
Christ be under me! — Christ be over me I
Christ be beside me,
On left hand and right!
Christ be before me, behind nie, about me,
Christ this day be within and without me!
Christ, the lowly and meek.
Christ the Ail-Powerful be
In the heart of each to whom I speak,
In the mouth of each who speaks to me?
In all who draw near me,
Or see me or hear me!
At Tarah to-day, in this awful hour,
I call on the Holy Trinity!
Glory to Him who reigneth in power,
The God of the elements, Father and Son
And Paraclete Spirit, which Three are the One,
The ever-existing Divinity!
Salvation dwells with the Lord,
With Christ, the omnipotent Word.
From generation to generation
Grant us, O Lord, thy grace and salvation;
9671
ALESSANDRO MANZONI
(1785-1873)
BY MAURICE FRANCIS EGAN
[LESSANDRO MANZONI was looked upon during his life as a man
who had deserved well of Heaven. (<He gazed, » as one of
his countrymen said, <(at Fortune straight in the eyes, and
Fortune smiled. }> And Manzoni might well have looked with clear
eyes, for there was nothing in his heart — if a man's heart may be
judged from his constant utterances — that was base.
He lived in a time best suited to his genius and his temperament.
And his genius and his time made an epoch in Italian history worthy
of most serious study. In 1815 Italy was
inarticulate; she had to speak by signs.
She dared only dream of a future which
she read in a glorious past. The Austrians
ruled the present, the future was veiled,
the past was real and golden. Manzoni,
Pellico, and Grossi were romanticists be-
cause they were filled with aspiration; and
their aspiration, clothing itself in the form
which Goethe's < Gotz> and Sir Walter Scott's
<Marmion) had given to the world, tried to
obliterate the present and find relief at the
foot of the cross in the shadow of old Gothic
cathedrals. The Comte de Mun, Vicomte
de Vogue, Sienkiewicz, and others of the
modern neo-Catholic school, represent reaction rather than aspiration.
Manzoni, Chateaubriand, Montalembert, Overbeck in art, Lamartine
and Lamennais, were not only fiercely reactionary, but fiercely senti-
mental, hopeful, and romantic.
With Austrian bayonets at the throat of Italy, it was not easy
to emit loud war-cries for liberty. The desire of the people must
therefore be heard through the voice of the poet. . And the desire of
the Italians is manifest in the poetry and the prose of the author of
<The Betrothed > (I Promessi Sposi), and the < Sacred Hymns.* Only
two reproaches were made against Manzoni: he was praised by Goe-
the,— which, (( says a sneer turned proverb, w as Mr. Howells puts it,
<(is a brevet of mediocrity, w — and he was not persecuted. <( Goethe, x>
ALESSANDRO MANZONI
9672
ALESSANDRO MANZONI
Mr. Howells continues, (< could not laud Manzoni's tragedies too highly;
he did not find one word too much or too little in them; the style
was free, noble, full, and rich. As to the religious lyrics, the manner
of their treatment was fresh and individual although the matter and
the significance were not new, and the poet was (a Christian without
fanaticism, a Roman Catholic without bigotry, a zealot without hard-
ness.>})
In 1815 the Continental revolt against the doctrines of Rousseau
and Voltaire was at its highest. The period that produced Cesare
Cantu was likewise the period when Ossian and Byron had become
the favorite poets of the younger men. Classicism and infidelity were
both detested. The last king was not, after all, to be strangled with
the entrails of the last priest. (<God might rest,*' as a writer on the
time remarks with naivete. It was the fashion to be respectful to
him. Italy was willing to disown the paganism of the Renaissance
for the moral teaching of the ages that preceded it. Manzoni and
his school held that true patriotism must be accompanied by virtue;
and in a country where Machiavelli's ( Prince } had become a classic,
this seemed a new doctrine. The movement which Manzoni repre-
sented was above all religious; the pope was again transfigured, and
in his case by a man who had begun life with the most liberal tenden-
cies. As it was, he never accepted the belief that the pope must
necessarily be a ruler of great temporalities; but of the sincerity
and fervor of his faith in the Catholic Church one finds ample proof
in his ( Sacred Hymns.'
Born at Milan in 1785, he married Mademoiselle Blondel in 1808.
Her father was a banker of Geneva; and tradition says that he was
of that cultivated group of financiers to whom the Neckers belonged,
and that his daughter was of a most dazzling blonde beauty. The
Blondels, like the Neckers, were Protestants; but at Milan, Louise
Blondel entered the Catholic Church and confirmed the wavering
faith of her young husband, who began at once the ( Sacred Hymns. }
In these Mr. Howells praises <( the irreproachable taste and unaffected
poetic appreciation of the grandeur of Christianity, w One may go
even further; for they have the fervor, the exultation, the knowledge
that the Redeemer liveth, in a fullness which we do not find in sacred
song outside the Psalms of David, the < Dies Irae,* and the ( Stabat
Mater. >
Manzoni's poems were not many, but they all have the element of
greatness in them. We can understand why the invading Austrians
desired to honor him, when we read his ode ( The Fifth of May* (on
the death of Napoleon), or his two noble tragedies <The Count of
Carmagnola* and <Adelchi,> or that pride of all Italians, his master-
piece, < The Betrothed > (< I Promessi Sposi >X We can understand too
ALESSANDRO MANZONI
9673
the lofty haughtiness that induced him to refuse these honors, and
to relinquish his hereditary title of Count, rather than submit to the
order that he must register himself as an Austrian subject. The gov-
ernment, however, did not cease to offer honors to him; all of which,
except the Italian senatorship proffered him in 1860, he declined.
Great tragedies, like Shelley's 'Cenci,* Sir Henry Taylor's Philip van
Artevelde,' and Sir Aubrey De Vere's (Mary Tudor, } may be unact-
able; they may speak best to the heart and mind only through the
written word. Manzoni's are of this class. They have elevation,
dramatic feeling, the power of making emotion vital and of inspiring
passionate sympathy with the intention of the author; but even Sal-
vini, Rossi, or Ristori could not make them possible for the stage.
In the ( Count of Carmagnola,* which celebrated the physical ruin but
moral success of a noble man, Manzoni in 1820 shocked the classicists
and won their hatred. They loved Aristotle and his rules; Manzoni
broke every rule as thoroughly as Shakespeare and as consciously as
Victor Hugo. He was looked upon as a literary, artistic apostate. In
his explanation of his reasons for this assault on an old world, he
makes an audacious apologia which Alfred de Musset might have read
with profit before despairing of a definition of romanticism, ^delchi*
followed in 1822, still further exasperating the fury of the classicists,
who hated Manzoni and romance ; foreseeing perhaps by intuition that
the romantic school was to be the ancestor of the realistic school,
whose horrors were only dimly dreamed of.
The < Sacred Hymns, > <The Count of Carmagnola,> <Adelchi,> < The
Betrothed,* and the great ( Fifth of May) ode on the death of Napo-
leon, are the works by which Manzoni's fame was established. The
tragedies — c Carmagnola * of the fifteenth century, ( Adelchi y of the
eighth — would live for their strong lyrical element, even were the
quality of eloquence and the fire that must underlie eloquence lack-
ing. Pathos is exquisite in both these plays; the marble hearts
of the Italian classic tragedy are replaced here by vital, palpitating
flesh. When Carmagnola dies for his act of humanity in releasing
his prisoners of war, and Ermengarda, whose loveliness is portrayed
with the delicacy of the hand that drew Elaine, passes away in her
convent, one feels that the world may indeed mourn. And when a
poet can force us to- take the shades of the Middle Ages for real
human beings, no man may deny his gift.
( The Fifth of May,* the noblest ode in the Italian language,
almost defies translation. Mr. Howells has made the best possible
version of it. Napoleon had wronged Italy, but Italy speaking
through its poet forgave him.
(< Beautiful, deathless, beneficent,
Faith ! used to triumphs even
9674 ALESSANDRO MANZONI
This also writes exultingly;
No loftier pride 'neath heaven
Unto the shame of Calvary
Stooped ever yet its crest.
Thou from his weary mortality
Disperse all bitter passions;
The God that humbleth and hearteneth,
That comforts and that chastens.
Upon the pillow else desolate
To his pale lips lay pressed !»
<The Betrothed } is one of the classics of fiction. It appeared in
1825. Since that time it has been translated into every language in
the civilized world. It deserves the verdict which time has passed
upon it. Don Abbondio and Cardinal Federigo Borromeo, Renzo and
Lucia, and Don Rodrigo, go on from year to year seeming to gain
new vitality. It will bear the test of a reading in youth and a re-
reading in old age; and there are few books of fiction of which this
can be said, — it is a standard of their greatness.
Manzoni died in 1873. His patriotic dreams had not been entirely
realized; but he passed away content, in faith and hope. His career
was on the whole happy and serene. He loved the simple things of
life, and looked on life itself as only a vestibule — to be nobly
adorned, however — to a place of absolute peace.
Arnaud's (I Poetti Patriottica> (1862); (Storia della Litteratura
Italiana,* by De Sanctis (1879); and William Dean Howells's ( Modern
Italian Poets } (Harper & Brothers: 1887), — are valuable books of ref-
erence on the romantic movement in Italy, and on the position of
Manzoni in that movement. The best translation of ( The Betrothed >
is included in the Bonn Library.
Q
AN UNWILLING PRIEST
From <The Betrothed >
[The following amusing scene occurs in the earlier portion of Manzoni's
novel. Don Abbondio, a cowardly village curate, has been warned by Don
Rodrigo, his lord of the manor, that if he dares to unite in marriage two
young peasants, Renzo and Lucia (the « betrothed » of the story), vengeance
will follow. The priest accordingly shirks his duty; and cruelly refusing to
set any marriage date, shuts himself up in his house and even barricades him-
self against Renzo's entreaties. Donna Agnese, the mother of Lucia, hears
that if a betrothed pair can but reach the presence of their parish priest and
ALESSANDRO MANZONI 9675
announce that they take each other as man and wife, the marriage is as bind-
ing as if celebrated with all formality. Accordingly Agnese devises a sort of
attack on the priest by stratagem, to be managed by the parties to the con-
tract and two witnesses (the brothers Tonio and Gervase) ; which device is con-
siderably endangered by the wariness of the curate's housekeeper, Perpetua.]
IN FRONT of Don Abbondio's door, a narrow street ran between
two cottages; but only continued straight the length of the
buildings, and then turned into the fields. Agnese went for-
ward along this street, as if she would go a little aside to speak
more freely, and Perpetua followed. When they had turned the
corner, and reached a spot whence they could no longer see what
happened before Don Abbondio's house, Agnese coughed Icudly.
This was the signal; Renzo heard it, and re-animating Lucia
by pressing her arm, they turned the corner together on tiptoe,
crept very softly close along the wall, reached the door, and
gently pushed it open : quiet, and stooping low, they were quickly
in the passage; and here the two brothers were waiting for them.
Renzo very gently let down the latch of the door, and they all
four ascended the stairs, making scarcely noise enough for two.
On reaching the landing, the two brothers advanced towards
the door of the room at the side of the staircase, and the lovers
stood close against the wall.
^Deo gratias* said Tonio in an explanatory tone.
(< Eh, Tonio ! is it you ? Come in ! }) replied the voice within.
Tonio opened the door, scarcely wide enough to admit himself
and his brother one at a time. The ray of light that suddenly
shone through the opening and crossed the dark floor of the
landing made Lucia tremble, as if she were discovered. When
the brothers had entered, Tonio closed the door inside: the lov-
ers stood motionless in the dark, their ears intently on the alert,
and holding their breath; the loudest noise was the beating of
poor Lucia's heart.
Don Abbondio was seated, as we have said, in an old arm-
chair, enveloped in an antiquated dressing-gown, and his head
buried in a shabby cap of the shape of a tiara, which by the
faint light of a small lamp formed a sort of cornice all around
his face. Two thick locks which escaped from beneath his head-
dress, two thick eyebrows, two thick mustachios, and a thick tuft
on the chin, all of them gray and scattered over his dark and
wrinkled visage, might be compared to bushes covered with snow,
projecting from the face of a cliff, as seen by moonlight.
9676
ALESSANDRO MANZONI
"Aha!" was his salutation, as he took off his spectacles and
laid them on his book.
(< The Signer Curate will say I am come very late, " said Tonio
with a low bow, which Gervase awkwardly imitated.
(< Certainly, it is late — late every way. Don't you know I
am ill?»
(<I'm very sorry for it."
<(You must have heard I was ill, and didn't know when I
should be able to see anybody. . . . But why have you
brought this — this boy with you ? "
"For company, Signor Curate."
<(Very well, let us see."
<(Here are twenty- five new berlinghe, with the figure of Saint
Ambrose on horseback," said Tonio, drawing a little parcel out
of his pocket.
" Let us see, " said Don Abbondio ; and he took the parcel, put
on his spectacles again, opened it, took out the berlinghe, turned
them over and over, counted them, and found them irreprehen-
sible.
"Now, Signor Curate, you will give me Tecla's necklace."
" You are right, " replied Don Abbondio ; and going to a
cupboard, he took out a key, looking around as if to see that all
prying spectators were at a proper distance, opened one of the
doors, and filling up the aperture with his person, introduced his
head to see and his arm to reach the pledge; then drawing it
out, he shut the cupboard, unwrapped the paper, and saying,
" Is that right ? " folded it up again and handed it to Tonio.
C( Now, " said Tonio, (( will you please to put it in black and
white ? "
(( Not satisfied yet ! " said Don Abbondio. <( I declare they
know everything. Eh ! how suspicious the world has become !
Don't you trust me ? "
"What, Signor Curate! Don't I trust you? You do me
wrong. But as my name is in your black books, on the debtor's
side — Then, since you have had the trouble of writing once,
so — From life to death — "
"Well, well," interrupted Don Abbondio; and muttering be-
tween his teeth, he drew out one of the table drawers, took thence
pen, ink, and paper, and began to write, repeating the words
aloud as they proceeded from his pen. In the mean time Tonio,
and at his side Gervase, placed themselves standing before the
ALESSANDRO MANZONI 9677
table in such a manner as to conceal the door from the view of
the writer, and began to shuffle their feet about on the floor, as
if in mere idleness, but in reality as a signal to those without
to enter, and at the same time to drown the noise of their foot-
steps. Don Abbondio, intent upon his writing, noticed nothing
else. At the noise of their feet, Renzo took Lucia's arm, pressing
it in an encouraging manner, and went forward, almost dragging
her along; for she trembled to such a degree that without his
help she must have sunk to the ground. Entering very softly,
on tiptoe, and holding their breath, they placed themselves be-
hind the two brothers. In the mean time, Don Abbondio, having
finished writing, read over the paper attentively, without raising
his eyes; he then folded it up, saying, ((Are you content now ? »
and taking off his spectacles with one hand, handed the paper to
Tonio with the other, and looked up. Tonio, extending his right
hand to receive it, retired on one side, and Gervase, at a sign
from him, on the other; and behold! as at the shifting of a scene,
Renzo and Lucia stood between them. Don Abbondio saw indis-
tinctly— saw clearly — was terrified, astonished, enraged, buried in
thought, came to a resolution; and all this while Renzo uttered
the words, (( Signor Curate, in the presence of these witnesses,
this is my wife." Before, however, Lucia's lips could form the
reply, Don Abbondio dropped the receipt, seized the lamp with
his left hand and raised it in the air, caught hold of the cloth
with his right, and dragged it furiously off the table, bringing
to the ground in its fall, book, paper, inkstand, and sand-box;
and springing between the chair and the table, advanced towards
Lucia. The poor girl, with her sweet gentle voice, trembling
violently, had scarcely uttered the words, <(And this — w when
Don Abbondio threw the cloth rudely over her head and face, to
prevent her pronouncing the entire formula. Then, letting the
light fall from his other hand, he employed both to wrap the
cloth round her face, till she was well-nigh smothered, shouting
in the mean while, at the stretch of his voice, like a wounded
bull, (< Perpetual Perpetual — treachery! — help!" The light, just
glimmering on the ground, threw a dim and flickering ray upon
Lucia, who, in utter consternation, made no attempt to disengage
herself, and might be compared to a statue sculptured in chalk,
over which the artificer had thrown a wet cloth. When the light
died away, Don Abbondio quitted the poor girl, and went grop-
ing about to find the door that opened into an inner room: and
9678
ALESSANDRO MANZONI
having reached it, he entered and shut himself in, unceasingly
exclaiming, (< Perpetua ! treachery ! help ! Out of the house ! Out
of the house ! })
In the other room all was confusion: Renzo, seeking to lay
hold of the Curate, and feeling with his hands, as if playing at
blindman's buff, had reached the door, and kicking against it,
was crying, "Open, open; don't make such a noise !}) Lucia,
calling to Renzo in a feeble voice, said beseechingly, <( Let us go,
let us go, for God's sakeo" Tonio was crawling on his knees,
and feeling with his hands on the ground to recover his lost
receipt. The terrified Gervase was crying and jumping about,
and seeking for the door of the stairs, so as to make his escape
in safety.
In the midst of this uproar, we cannot but stop a moment to
make a reflection. Renzo, who was causing disturbance at night
in another person's house, who had effected an entrance by
stealth, and who had blockaded the master himself in one of his
own rooms, has all the appearance of an oppressor; while in fact
he was the oppressed. Don Abbondio, taken by surprise, terrified
and put to flight, while peaceably engaged in his own affairs,
appears the victim; when in reality it was he who did the wrong.
Thus frequently goes the world; — or rather, we should say, thus
it went in the seventeenth century.
The besieged, finding that the enemy gave no signs of aban-
doning the enterprise, opened a window that looked into the
church-yard, and shouted out, (( Help ! help ! >} There was a most
lovely moon; the shadow of the church, and a little farther on
the long sharp shadow of the bell-tower, lay dark, still, and well
defined, on the bright grassy level of the sacred inclosure: all
objects were visible, almost as by day. But look which way you
would, there appeared no sign of living person. Adjoining the
lateral wall of the church, on the side next the parsonage, was a
small dwelling where the sexton slept Aroused by this unusual
cry, he sprang up in his bed, jumped out in great haste, threw
open the sa'sh of his little window, put his head out with his
eyelids glued together all the while, and cried out, (< What's the
matter ? »
tt Run, Ambrogio I help ! people in the house i )} answered Don
Abbondio. a Coming directly, >J replied he? as he drew in his
head and shut the window; and although half asleep and more
than half terrified, an expedient quickly occurred to him that
ALESSANDRO MANZONI 9679
would bring more aid than had been asked, without dragging him
into the affray, whatever it might be. Seizing his breeches that
lay upon the bed, he tucked them under his arm like a gala hat,
and bounding down-stairs by a little wooden ladder, ran to the
belfry, caught hold of the rope that was attached to the larger
of the two bells, and pulled vigorously.
Ton, ton, ton, ton: the peasant sprang up in his bed; the
boy stretched in the hay-loft listened eagerly, and leapt upon
his feet « What's the matter? what's the matter? The bell 's
ringing! Fire? Thieves? Banditti?" Many of the women
advised, begged, their husbands not to stir — to let others run;
some got up and went to the window; those who were cowards,
as if yielding to entreaty, quietly slipped under the bedclothes
again; while the more inquisitive and courageous sprang up and
armed themselves with pitchforks and pistols, to run to the up-
roar; others waited to see the end. . . .
Renzo, who had more of his senses about him than the rest,
remembered that they had better make their escape one way
or another before the crowds assembled; and that the best plan
would be to do as Menico advised, — nay, commanded, with the
authority of one in terror. When once on their way, and out of
the tumult and danger, he could ask a clearer explanation from
the boy. (< Lead the way," said he to Menico; and addressing
the women, said, <( Let us go with him." They therefore quickly
turned their steps towards the church, crossed the church -yard,
• — where, by the favor of Heaven, there was not yet a living
creature, — entered a little street that ran between the church
and Don Abbondio's house, turned into the first alley they came
to, and then took the way of the fields.
They had not perhaps gone fifty yards, when the crowd
began to collect in the church-yard, and rapidly increased every
moment. They looked inquiringly in each other's faces; every
one had a question to ask, but no one could return an answer.
Those who arrived first ran to the church door: it was locked.
They then ran to the belfry outside; and one of them, putting
his mouth to a very small window, a sort of loophole, cried,
(< What ever is the matter ? " As soon as Ambrogio recognized a
known voice, he let go of the bell-rope, and being assured by
the buzz that many people had assembled, replied, (( I'll open
the door." Hastily slipping on the apparel he had carried undet
his arm, he went inside the church and opened the door.
9680
ALESSANDRO MANZONI
«What is all this hubbub? — What is it? — Where is it?—
Who is it?»
<( Why, who is it ? " said Ambrogio, laying1 one hand on the
door-post, and with the other holding up the habiliment he had
put on in such haste: <(What! don't you know? People in the
Signor Curate's house. Up, boys; help!" Hearing this, they all
turned to the house, looked up, approached it in a body, looked
up again, listened: all was quiet. Some ran to the street door;
it was shut and bolted: they glanced upwards; not a window was
open, not a whisper was to be heard.
(< Who is within ? — Ho ! Hey ! — Signor Curate ! — Signor
Curate !»
Don Abbondio, who, scarcely aware of the flight of the in-
vaders, had retired from the window and closed it, and who at
this moment was reproaching Perpetua in a low voice for having
left him alone in this confusion, was obliged, when he heard him-
self called upon by the voice of the assembled people, to show
himself again at the window; and when he saw the crowds that
had come to his aid, he sorely repented having called them.
<( What has happened ? — What have they done to you ? — Who
are they? — Where are they?" burst forth from fifty voices at
once.
(< There's nobody here now: thank you; go home again."
(< But who has been here ? — Where are they gone ? — What
has happened ? "
<( Bad people, people who go about by night ; but they're gone :
go home again; there is no longer anything; another time, my
children: I thank you for your kindness to me." So saying, he
drew back and shut the window. Some of the crowd began to
grumble, some to joke, others to curse; some shrugged their
shoulders and took their departure. .
The melancholy trio continued their walk, the women taking
the lead and Renzo behind to act as guard. Lucia clung closely
to her mother's arm, kindly and dexterously avoiding the prof-
fered assistance of the youth at the difficult passes of this unfre-
quented path; feeling ashamed of herself, even in such troubles,
for having already been so long and so familiarly alone with
him, while expecting in a few moments to be his wife. Now
that this vision had been so sorrowfully dispelled, she repented
having proceeded thus far; and amidst so many causes of fear,
she feared even for her modesty; — not such modesty as arises
ALESSANDRO MANZONI 968l
from the sad knowledge of evil, but for that which is ignorant
of its own existence; like the dread of a child who trembles in
the dark, he knows not why.
"And the house ? w suddenly exclaimed Agnese. But however
important the object might be which extorted this exclamation,
no one replied, because no one could do so satisfactorily. They
therefore continued their walk in silence, and in a little while
reached the square before the church of the convent.
Renzo advanced to the door of the church, and gently' pushed
it open. The moon that entered through the aperture fell upon
the pale face and silvery beard of Father Cristoforo, who was
standing here expecting them; and having seen that no one
was missing, <( God be praised ! >} said he, beckoning to them to
enter. By his side stood another Capuchin, the lay sexton, whom
he had persuaded by prayers and arguments to keep vigil with
him, to leave the door ajar, and to remain there on guttrd to
receive these poor threatened creatures; and it required nothing
short of the authority of the Father, and of his fame as a saint,
to persuade the layman to so inconvenient, perilous, and irregu-
lar a condescension. When they were inside, Father Cristoforo
very softly shut the door. Then the sexton could no longer con-
tain himself, and taking the Father aside, whispered in his ear.
<( But, Father, Father ! at night — in church — with women — shut
— the rule — but, Father ! w And he shook his head, while thus
hesitatingly pronouncing these words. Just see! thought Father
Cristoforo: if it were a pursued robber, Friar Fazio would make
no difficulty in the world; but a poor innocent escaping from
the jaws of a wolf — ^Omnia munda mundis** added he, turn-
ing suddenly to Friar Fazio, and forgetting that he did not under-
stand Latin. But this forgetfulness was exactly what produced
the right effect. If the Father had begun to dispute and reason,
Friar Fazio would not have failed to urge opposing arguments,
and no one knows how and when the discussion would have come
to an end; but at the sound of these weighty words of a mys-
terious signification, and so resolutely uttered, it seemed to him
that in them must be contained the solution of all his doubts.
He acquiesced, saying, <(Very well: you know more about it than
1 do.»
*Or in reverse, <(To the pure all things are pure.»
9682
ALESSANDRO MANZONI
<( Trust me, then," replied Father Cristoforo; ana by the
dim light of the lamp burning before the altar, he approached
the refugees, who stood waiting in suspense, and said to them,
(< My children, thank God, who has delivered you from so great
a danger! Perhaps at this moment — M And here he began to
explain more fully what he had hinted by the little messen-
ger; little suspecting that they knew more than he, and sup-
posing that Menico had found them quiet in their own house,
before the arrival of the ruffians. Nobody undeceived him,—
not even Lucia, whose conscience, however, was all the while
secretly reproaching her for practicing such dissimulation with so
good a man; but it was a night of embarrassment and dissimula-
tion.
(( After this, }> continued he, <( you must feel, my children, that
the village is no longer safe for you. It is yours, who were
born there, and you have done no wrong to any one; but God
wills it so. It is a trial, my children; bear it with patience and
faith, without indulging in rancor, and rest assured there will
come a day when you will think yourselves happy that this has
occurred. I have thought of a refuge for you, for the present.
Soon, I hope, you may be able to return in safety to your own
house; at any rate; God will provide what is best for you; and I
assure you, I will be careful not to prove unworthy of the favor
he has bestowed upon me, in choosing me as his minister, in
the service of you his poor yet loved afflicted ones. You,)} con-
tinued he, turning to the two women, <( can stay at . Here
you will be far enough from every danger, and at the same
time not far from your own home. There seek out our con-
vent, ask for the guardian, and give him this letter: he will be
to you another Father Cristoforo. And you, my Renzo, must
put yourself in safety from the anger of others, and your own.
Carry this letter to Father Bonaventura da Lodi, in our convent
of the Porta Orientale, at Milan. He will be a father to you,
will give you directions and find you work, till you can return
and live more peaceably. Go to the shore of the lake, near
the mouth of the Bione, a river not far from this monastery.
Here you will see a boat waiting ; say, ( Boat ! > It will be asked
you, ( For whom ? > And you must reply, ( San Francesco. } The
boat will receive^you and carry you to the other side, where you
will find a cart that will take you straight to .*
ALESSANDRO MANZONI
9683
If any one asks how Father Cristoforo had so quickly at his
disposal these means of transport by land and water, it will show
that he does not know the influence and power of a Capuchin
held in reputation as a saint.
It still remained to decide about the care of the houses.
The Father received the keys, pledging himself to deliver them
to whomsoever Renzo and Agnese should name. The latter, in
delivering up hers, heaved a deep sigh, remembering that at that
moment the house was open, that the devil had been there, and
who knew what remained to be taken care of !
(< Before you go," said the Father, <( let us pray all together
that the Lord may be with you in this your 'journey, and for
ever; and above all, that he may give you strength and a spirit
of love, to enable you to desire whatever he has willed. }) So
saying, he knelt down in the middle of the church, and they all
followed his example.
After praying a few moments in silence, with a low but dis-
tinct voice he pronounced these words : — <( We beseech thee also
for the unhappy person who has brought us to this state. We
should be unworthy of thy mercy if we did not from our hearts
implore it for him; he needs it, O Lord! We, in our sorrow,
have this consolation, that we are in the path where thou hast
placed us; we can offer thee our griefs and they may become
our gain. But he is thine enemy! Alas, wretched man, he is
striving with thee ! Have mercy on him, O Lord, touch his heart ;
reconcile him to thyself, and give him all those good things we
could desire for ourselves."
Rising then in haste, he said, <( Come, my children, you have
no time to lose: God defend you; his angel go with you; —
farewell ! " And while they set off with that emotion which
cannot find words, and manifests itself without them, the Father
added in an agitated tone, <( My heart tells me we shall meet
again soon."
Certainly the heart, to those who listen to it, has always some-
thing to say on what will happen; but what did his heart know?
Very little, truly, of what had already happened.
Without waiting a reply, Father Cristoforo retired with hasty
steps; the travelers took their departure, and Father Fazio shut
the door after them, bidding them farewell with even his voice a
little faltering.
9684
ALESSANDRO MANZONI
The trio slowly made their way to the shore they had been
directed to; there they espied the boat, and exchanging the pass-
word, stepped in. The waterman, planting one oar on the land,
pushed off; then took up the other oar, and rowing with both
hands, pulled out and made towards the opposite beach. Not a
breath of wind was stirring; the lake lay bright and smooth, and
would have appeared motionless but for the tremulous and gen-
tle undulation of the moonbeams, which gleamed upon it from
the zenith. No sounds were heard but the muffled and slowly
measured breaking of the surge upon the pebbly shore, the more
distant gurgling of the troubled waters dashing among the .piles
of the bridge, arid the even plash of the light sculls, as, rising
with the sharp sound of a dripping blade, and quickly plunged
again beneath, they cut the azure surface of the lake. The
waves, divided by the prow, and reuniting behind the little bark,
tracked out a curling line which extended itself to the shore. The
silent travelers, with their faces turned backwards, gazed upon
the mountains and the country, illumined by the pale light of
the moon, and diversified here and there with vast shadows.
They could distinguish the villages, the houses, and the little
cabins: the palace of Don Rodrigo, with its square tower, rising
above the group of huts at the base of the promontory, looked
like a savage standing in the dark and meditating some evil
deed while keeping guard over a company of reclining sleepers.
Lucia saw it and shuddered; then drawing her eye along the
declivity till she reached her native village, she fixed her gaze on
its extremity, sought for her own cottage, traced out the thick
head of the fig-tree which towered above the wall of the court-
yard, discovered the window of her own room, — and being seated
in the bottom of the boat, 'she leaned her elbow on the edge,
laid her forehead on her arm as if she were sleeping, and wept
in secret.
Farewell, ye mountains, rising from the waters and pointing
to the heavens! ye varied summits, familiar to him who has been
brought up among you, and impressed upon his mind as clearly
as the countenance of his dearest friends! ye torrents, whose
murmur he recognizes like the sound of the voices of home! ye
villages, scattered and glistening on the declivity, like flocks of
grazing sheep! Farewell! How mournful is the step of him
who, brought up amidst your scenes, is compelled to leave you'
ALESSANDRO MANZONI 9685
Even in the imagination of one who willingly departs, attracted by
the hope of making a fortune elsewhere, the dreams of wealth at
this moment lose their charms ; he wonders he could form such a
resolution, and would even now turn back but for the hope of
one day returning with a rich abundance. As he advances into
the plain, his eye becomes wearied with its uniform extent; the
atmosphere feels heavy and lifeless; he sadly and listlessly enters
the busy cities, where houses crowded upon houses, and streets
intersecting streets, seem to take away his breath; and before
edifices admired by the stranger, he recalls with restless longing
the fields of his own country, and the cottage he had long ago
set his heart upon, and which he resolves to purchase when he
returns enriched to his own mountains.
But what must he feel who has never sent a passing wish
beyond these mountains, who has arranged among them all his
designs for the future, and is driven far away by an adverse
power! who, suddenly snatched away from his dearest habits, and
thwarted in his dearest hopes, leaves these mountains to go in
search of strangers whom he never desired to know, and is un-
able to look forward to a fixed time of return!
Farewell, native cottage — where, indulging in unconscious
fancy, one learnt to distinguish from the noise of common foot-
steps the approach of a tread expected with mysterious timid-
ity! Farewell, thou cottage, — still a stranger, but so often hastily
glanced at, not without a blush, in passing — in which the mind
took delight to figure to itself the tranquil and lasting home
of a wife ! Farewell, my church, where the heart was so often
soothed while chanting the praises of the Lord; where the pre-
paratory rite of betrothal was performed; where the secret sigh-
ing of the heart was solemnly blessed, and love was inspired,
and one felt a hallowing influence around. Farewell! He who
imparted to you such gladness is everywhere ; and he never dis-
turbs the joy of his children but to prepare them for one more
certain and durable.
Of such a nature, if not exactly these, were the reflections of
Lucia; and not very dissimilar were those of the two other wan-
derers, while the little bark rapidly approached the right bank of
the Adda.
9686 ALESSANDRO MANZONI
A LATE REPENTANCE
From <The Betrothed >
[In several chapters preceding the following affecting extract from Man-
zoni's story is described the imprisonment of Lucia Mondella, the heroine of
the tale, in the lonely castle of an outlaw. The latter is a man of rank; but
guilty of such a succession of murders, robberies, and other villainies,' during
many years, that he — in the story he is called only <The Unnamed* — has
become a terror throughout all the country-side. A sudden repentance and
remorse comes to this monster of wickedness. Hearing that the great Cardi-
nal Federigo Borromeo of Milan is arrived in the neighborhood, he decides, in
great hesitation and contrition, to visit that kindly and courageous priest.]
CARDINAL FEDERIGO was employed — according to his usual
custom in every leisure interval — in study, until the hour
arrived for repairing- to the church for the celebration of
Divine service; when the chaplain and cross-bearer entered with
a disturbed and gloomy countenance.
<(A strange visitor, my noble lord — strange indeed!"
«Who?» asked the Cardinal.
tt No less a personage than the Signer , )J replied the chap-
lain; and pronouncing the syllables with a very significant tone,
he uttered the name which we cannot give to our readers. He
then added, (< He is here outside in person, and demands noth-
ing less than to be introduced to your illustrious Grace. >}
"He!" said the Cardinal with an animated look, shutting his
book and rising from his seat : (< let him come in ! — let him
come in directly ! w
(< But — J> rejoined the chaplain, without attempting to move,
"your illustrious Lordship must surely be aware who he is: that
outlaw, that famous — >J
<(And is it not a most happy circumstance for a bishop, that
such a man should feel a wish to come and seek an interview
with him ? »
<(But — w insisted the chaplain, (< we may never speak of cer-
tain things, because my lord says it is all nonsense : but when
it comes to the point, I think it is a duty — Zeal makes many
enemies, my lord; and we know positively that more than one
ruffian has dared to boast that some day or other — w
<(And what have they done ? }) interrupted the Cardinal.
<( I say that this man is a plotter of mischief, a desperate
character, who holds correspondence with the most violent des-
peradoes, and who may be sent — w
ALESSANDRO MANZONI 9687
<(Oh, what discipline is this," again interrupted Federigo, smil-
ing, "for the soldiers to exhort their general to cowardice ?>}
Then resuming a grave and thoughtful air, he continued : <( Saint
Carlo would not have deliberated whether he ought to receive
such a man: he would have gone to seek him. Let him be
admitted directly: he has already waited too long."
The chaplain moved towards the door, saying in his heart,
<( There's no remedy: these saints are all obstinate. }>
Having opened the door and surveyed the room where the
Signor and his companions were, he saw that the latter had
crowded together on one side, where they sat whispering and
cautiously peeping at their visitor, while he was left alone in one
corner. The chaplain advanced towards him, eying him guard-
edly from head to foot, and wondering what weapons he might
have hidden under that great coat: thinking at the same time
that really, before admitting him, he ought at least to have pro-
posed— But he could not resolve what to do. He approached
him, saying, (< His Grace waits for your Lordships Will you
be good enough to come with me ? w And as he preceded him
through the little crowd, which instantly gave way for him, he
kept casting glances on each side, which meant to say, "What
could I do ? don't you know yourselves that he always has his
own way ? w
On reaching the apartment, the chaplain opened the door and
introduced the Unnamed. Federigo advanced to meet him with
a happy and serene look, and his hand extended, as if to wel-
come an expected guest; at the same time making a sign to
the chaplain to go out, which was immediately obeyed.
When thus left alone, they both stood for a moment silent
and in suspense, though from widely different feelings. The
Unnamed, who had as it were been forcibly carried there by an
inexplicable compulsion, rather than led by a determinate inten-
tion, now stood there, also as it were by compulsion, torn by two
contending feelings: on the one side, a desire and confused hope
of meeting with some alleviation of his inward torment; on
the other, a feeling of self -rebuked shame at having come hither,
like a penitent, subdued and wretched, to confess himself guilty
and to make supplication to a man: he was at a loss for words,
and indeed scarcely sought for them. Raising his eyes, however,
to the Archbishop's face, he became gradually filled with a feel-
ing of veneration, authoritative and at the same time soothing;
9688
ALESSANDRO MANZONI
which, while it increased his confidence, gently subdued his
haughtiness, and without offending his pride, compelled it to give
way, and imposed silence.
The bearing of Federigo was in fact one which announced
superiority, and at the same time excited love. It was natur-
ally sedate, and almost involuntarily commanding, his figure being
not in the least bowed or wasted by age; while his solemn
yet sparkling eye, his open and thoughtful forehead, a kind of
virginal floridness, which might be distinguished even among
gray locks, paleness, and the traces of abstinence, meditation, and
labor: in short, all his features indicated that they had once
possessed that which is most strictly entitled beauty. The habit
of serious and benevolent thought, the inward peace of a long
life, the love that he felt towards his fellow-creatures, and the
uninterrupted enjoyment of an ineffable hope, had now substi-
tuted the beauty (so to say) of old age, which shone forth more
attractively from the magnificent simplicity of the purple.
He fixed for a moment on the countenance of the Unnamed
a penetrating look, long accustomed to , gather from this index
what was passing in the mind; and imagining he discovered,
under that dark and troubled mien, something every moment
more corresponding with the hope he had conceived on the first
announcement of such a visit. <( Oh ! >J cried he, in an animated
voice, "what a welcome visit is this!' and how thankful I ought
to be to you for taking such a step, although it may convey to
me a little reproof ! }>
<( Reproof ! " exclaimed the Signer, much surprised, but soothed
by his words and manner, and glad that the Cardinal had broken
the ice and started some sort of conversation.
(< Certainly it conveys to me a reproof, >} replied the Arch-
bishop, <(for allowing you to be beforehand with me when so
often, and for so long a time, I might and ought to have come
to you myself. )}
<( You come to me ! Do you know who I am ? Did they de-
liver my name rightly ? >J
<(And the happiness I feel, and which must surely be evi-
dent in my countenance, — do you think I should feel it at the
announcement and visit of a stranger ? It is you who make me
experience it; you, I say, whom I ought to have sought; you
whom I have at least loved and wept over, and for whom I
have so often prayed; you among all my children — for each
ALESSANDRO MANZONI
9689
one I love from the bottom of my heart — whom I should most
have desired to receive and embrace, if I had thought I might
hope for such a thing. But God alone knows how to work won-
ders, and supplies the weakness and tardiness of his unworthy
servants. }>
The. Unnamed stood astonished at this warm reception, in lan-
guage which corresponded so exactly with that which he had not
yet expressed, nor indeed had fully determined to express; and,
affected but exceedingly surprised, he remained silent. <( Well ! *
resumed Federigo still more affectionately, <( you have good news
to tell me ; and you keep me so long expecting it ? "
"Good news! I have hell in my heart; and can I tell you
any good tidings ? Tell me, if you know, what good news you
can expect from such as I am ? "
((That God has touched your heart and would make you his
own," replied the Cardinal calmly.
«God! God! God! If I could see him! If I could hear him!
Where is this God ? »
(< Do you ask this ? you ? And who has him nearer than you ?
Do you not feel him in your heart, overcoming, agitating you,
never leaving you at ease, and at the same time drawing you for-
ward, presenting to your view a hope of tranquillity and conso-
lation, a consolation which shall be full and boundless, as soon
as you recognize him, acknowledge and implore him ? "
c< Oh, surely ! there is something within that oppresses, that
consumes me ! But God ! If this be Gods if he be such as they
say, what do you suppose he can do with me?"
These words were uttered with an accent of despair; but
Federigo, with a solemn tone as of calm inspiration, replied: —
<( What can God do with you ? What would he wish to make of
you ? A token of his power and goodness : he would acquire
through you a glory such as others could not give him. The
world has long cried out against you; hundreds and thousands of
voices have declared their detestation of your deeds." (The Un-
named shuddered, and felt for a moment surprised at hearing such
unusual language addressed to him and still more surprised that
he felt no anger, but rather almost a relief. ) (< What glory, }> pur-
sued Federigo/ (<will thus redound to God! They may be voices
of alarm, of self-interest; of justice, perhaps — a justice so easy!
so natural! Some perhaps — yea, too many — may be voices
of envy of your wretched power; of your hitherto deplorable
9690
ALESSANDRO MANZONI
security of heart. But when you yourself rise up to condemn
your past life, to become your own accuser, — then, then indeed,
God will be glorified! And you ask what God can do with you.
Who am I, a poor mortal, that I can tell you what use such a
Being may choose henceforth to make of you ? how he can em-
ploy your impetuous will, your unwavering perseverance, when he
shall have animated and invigorated them with love, with hope,
with repentance ? Who are you, weak man, that you should
imagine yourself capable of devising and executing greater deeds
of evil, than God can make you will and accomplish in the cause
of good ? What can God do with you ? Pardon you ! save you !
finish in you the work of redemption! Are not these things noble
and worthy of him? Oh, just think! if I, a humble and feeble
creature, so worthless and full of myself — I, such as I am, long
so ardently for your salvation, that for its sake I would joyfully
give (and he is my witness!) the few days that still remain to
me, — oh, think what and how great must be the love of Him
who inspires me with this imperfect but ardent affection; how
must He love you, what must He desire for you, who has bid
and enabled me to regard you with a charity that consumes
me!»
While these words fell from his lips, his face, his expression,
his whole manner, evinced his deep feeling of what he uttered.
The countenance of his auditor changed from a wild and con-
vulsive look, first to astonishment and attention, and then gradu-
ally yielded to deeper and less painful emotions; his eyes, which
from infancy had been unaccustomed to weep, became suffused;
and when the words ceased, he covered his face with his hands
and burst into a flood of tears. It was the only and most evi'
dent reply.
(< Great and good God!" exclaimed Federigo, raising his hands
and eyes to heaven, <(what have I ever done, an unprofitable
servant, an idle shepherd, that thou shouldest call me to this
banquet of grace! that thou shouldest make me worthy of being
an instrument in so joyful a miracle ! >J So saying, he extended
his hand to take that of the Unnamed.
(< No ! w cried the penitent nobleman ; (< no ! keep away from
me: defile not that innocent and beneficent hand. You don't
know all that the one you would grasp has committed. })
<( Suffer me," said Federigo,, taking it with affectionate vio-
lence, ft suffer me to press the hand which will repair so many
ALESSANDRO MANZONI
wrongs, dispense so many benefits, comfort so many afflicted, and
be extended — -disarmed, peacefully, and humbly — to so many
enemies. }>
(< It is too much ! w said the Unnamed sobbing : <( leave me, my
lord; good Federigo, leave me! A crowded assembly awaits you;
so many good people, so many innocent creatures, so many come
from a distance, to see you for once, to hear you: and you are
staying to talk — with whom ! }>
<( We will leave the ninety-and-nine sheep, w replied the Cardi-
nal: (<they are in safety upon the mountain; I wish to remain
with that which was lost. Their minds are perhaps now more
satisfied than if they were seeing their poor bishop. Perhaps
God, who has wrought in you this miracle of mercy, is diffusing
in their hearts a joy of which they know not yet- the reason.
These people are perhaps united to us without being awrare of
it; perchance the Spirit may be instilling into their hearts an
undefined feeling of charity, a petition which he will grant
for you, an offering of gratitude of which you are as yet the
unknown object. J> So saying, he threw his arms around the neck
of the Unnamed; who, after attempting to disengage himself, and
making a momentary resistance, yielded, completely overcome by
this vehement expression of affection, embraced the Cardinal in
his turn, and buried in his shoulder his trembling and altered
face. His burning tears dropped upon the stainless purple of
Federigo, while the guiltless hands of the holy bishop affection-
ately pressed those members, and touched that garment, which
had been accustomed to hold the weapons of violence and treach-
ery/
Disengaging himself at length from this embrace, the Un-
named again covered his eyes with his hands, and raising his face
to heaven, exclaimed : — (< God is indeed great ! God is indeed
good! I know myself now, now I understand what I am; my
sins are present before me, and I shudder at the thought of
myself; yet! — yet I feel an alleviation, a joy — yes, even a joy,
such as I have never before known during the whole of my hor-
rible life ! »
(<It is a little taste, » said Federigo, "which God gives you, to
incline you to his service, and encourage you resolutely to entei
upon the new course of life which lies before you, and in which
you will have so much to undo, so much to repair, so much to
mourn over!"
9692
ALESSANDRO MANZONI
<( Unhappy man that I am ! w exclaimed the Signer : <( how
many, oh, how many — things for which I can do nothing besides
mourn! But at least I have undertakings scarcely set on foot
which I can break off in the midst, if nothing more: one there
is which I can quickly arrest, which I can easily undo and repair. w
Federigo listened attentively while the Unnamed briefly
related, in terms of perhaps deeper execration than we have
employed, his attempt upon Lucia, the sufferings and terrors
Of the unhappy girl, her importunate entreaties, the frenzy that
these entreaties had aroused within him, and how she was still
in the castle. . . .
(<Ah, then let us lose no time ! w exclaimed Federigo, breath-
less with eagerness and compassion. <( You are indeed blessed !
This is an earnest of God's forgiveness! He makes you capable
of becoming the instrument of safety to one whom you intended
to ruin. God bless you! Nay, he has blessed you! Do you
know where our unhappy protegee comes from ? })
The Signor named Lucia's village.
<( It's not far from this," said the Cardinal, <( God be praised;
and probably — w So saying, he went towards a little table and
rang a bell. The cross-bearing chaplain immediately attended the
summons with a look of anxiety, and instantly glanced towards
the Unnamed. At the sight of his altered countenance, and his
eyes still red with weeping, he turned an inquiring gaze upon
the Cardinal; and perceiving, amidst the invariable composure
of his countenance, a look of solemn pleasure and unusual solici-
tude, he would have stood with open mouth in a sort of ecstasy,
had not the Cardinal quickly aroused him from his contempla-
tions by asking whether, among the parish priests assembled in
the next room, there was one from .
<( There is, your illustrious Grace," replied the chaplain.
(< Let him come in directly, yy said Federigo, <( and with him the
priest of this parish. }>
The chaplain quitted the room, and on entering the hall where
the clergy were assembled, all eyes were immediately turned upon
him; while, with a look of blank astonishment, and a countenance
in which was still depicted the rapture he had felt, he lifted up
his hands, and waving them in the air, exclaimed, "Signori!
Signori! Hcec mutatio dexter cz Excelsi^ [This change is from
the right hand of the Almighty]. And he stood for a moment
without uttering another word.
ALESSANDRO MANZONI
AN EPISODE OF THE PLAGUE IN MILAN
From <The Betrothed >
[The hero of the novel, young Renzo Tramaglino, enters Milan on foot,
seeking his lost betrothed, Lucia Mondella. Among the scenes of suffering
and horror which continually meet his eyes is the following.]
RENZO had already gone some distance on his way through the
midst of this desolation, when he heard, proceeding from
a street a few yards off, into which he had been directed
to turn, a confused noise, in which he readily distinguished the
usual horrible tinkling.
At the entrance of the street, which was one of the most
spacious, he perceived four carts standing in the middle: and as
in a corn market there is a constant hurrying to and fro of people,
and an emptying and filling of sacks, such was the bustle here,
— monatti intruding into houses, monatti coming out, bearing
a burden upon their shoulders, which they placed upon one or
other of the carts; some in red livery, others without that distinc-
tion; many with another still more odious, — plumes and cloaks of
various colors, which these miserable wretches wore in the midst
of the general mourning, as if in honor of a festival. From time
to time the mournful cry resounded from one of the windows,
(< Here, monatti!* And with a- still more wretched sound, a harsh
voice rose from this horrible source in reply, (< Coming directly ! y>
Or else there were lamentations nearer at hand, or entreaties to
make haste; to which the monatti responded with oaths.
Having entered the street, Renzo quickened his steps, trying
not to look at these obstacles further than was necessary to
avoid them: his attention, however, was arrested by a remarkable
object of pity, — such pity as inclines to the contemplation of its
object; so that he came to a pause almost without determining
to do so.
Coming down the steps of one of the doorways, and advan-
cing towards the convoy, he beheld a woman, whose appearance
announced still remaining though somewhat advanced youthful-
ness; a veiled and dimmed but not destroyed beauty was still
apparent, in spite of much suffering and a fatal languo'r, — that
delicate and at the same time majestic beauty which is con-
spicuous in the Lombard blood. Her gait was weary, but not
tottering; no tears fell from her eyes, though they bore tokens of
having shed many; there was something peaceful and profound
9*94
ALESSANDRO MANZONI
in her sorrow, which indicated a mind fully conscious and sensi-
tive enough to feel it. But it was not merely her own appear-
ance which in the midst of so much misery marked her out
so especially as an object of commiseration, and revived in her
behalf a feeling1 now exhausted — extinguished — in men's hearts.
She carried in her arms ?. little child, about nine years old, now.
a lifeless body; but laid out and arranged, with her hair parted
on her forehead, and in a white and remarkably clean dress,
as if those hands had decked her out for a long-promised feast,
granted as a reward. Nor was she lying there, but upheld and
adjusted on one arm, with her breast reclining against her
mother's, like a living creature; save that a delicate little hand,
as white as wax, hung from one side with a kind of inanimate
weight, and the head rested upon her mother's shoulder with an
abandonment deeper than that of sleep; — her mother; for even
if their likeness to each other had not given assurance of the
fact, the countenance which could still display any emotion would
have clearly revealed it.
A horrible -looking monatto approached the woman, and at-
tempted to take the burden from her arms; with a kind of unusual
respect, however, and with involuntary hesitation. But she, slightly
drawing back, yet with the air of one who shows neither scorn
nor displeasure, said, (<No! don't take her from me yet: I must
place her myself on this cart — here.* So saying, she opened her
hand, displayed a purse which she held in it, and dropped it into
that which the monatto extended towards her. She then con-
tinued : <( Promise me not to take a thread from around her, nor
to let any one else do so, and to lay her in the ground thus."
The monatto laid his right hand on his heart; and then, zeal-
ously and almost obsequiously, — rather from the new feeling
by which he was, as it were, subdued, than on account of the
unlooked-for reward, — hastened to make a little room on the car
for the infant dead. The lady, giving it a kiss on the forehead,
laid it on the spot prepared for it, as upon a bed, arranged it
there, covering it with a pure white linen cloth, and pronounced
these parting words: — <( Farewell, Cecilia! rest in peace! This
evening' we too will join you, to rest together forever. In the
mean while pray for us; for I will pray for you and the others. "
Then, turning again to the monatto, "You," said she, <(when you
pass this way in the evening, may come to fetch me too; and
not me only."
ALESSANDRO MANZONI
So saying, she re-entered the house, and after an instant
appeared at the window, holding in her arms another more dearly
loved one, still living, but with the marks of death on its counte-
nance. She remained to contemplate these so unworthy obsequies
of the first child, from the time the car started until it was out
of sight, and then disappeared. And what remained for her to
do but to lay upon the bed the only one that was left her, and
to stretch herself beside it, that they might die together ? as the
flower already full blown upon the stem falls together with the
bud still infolded in its calyx, under the scythe which levels alike
all the herbage of the field.
(< O Lord ! }> exclaimed Renzo, <( hear her ! take her to thyself,
her and that little infant one: they have suffered enough! surely,
they have suffered enough ! }>
CHORUS
IN THE < COUNT OF CARMAGNOLA*
From < Modern Italian Poets, > by W. D. Howells. Copyright 1887, by
Harper & Brothers
ON THE right hand a trumpet is sounding,
On the left hand a trumpet replying,
The field upon all sides resounding
With the tramping of foot and of horse.
Yonder flashes a flag; yonder, flying
Through the still air, a bannerol glances;
Here a squadron embattled advances,
There another that threatens its course.
The space 'twixt the foes now beneath them
Is hid, and on swords the sword ringeth;
In the hearts of each other they sheathe them;
Blood runs, — they redouble their blows.
Who are these? To our fair fields what bringeth,
To make war upon us, this stranger ?
Which is he that hath sworn to avenge her,
The land of his birth, on her foes ?
They are all of one land and one nation.
One speech; and the foreigner names them
All brothers, of one generation;
In each visage their kindred is seen:
ALESSANDRO MANZONI
This land is the mother that claims them,
This land that their life-blood is steeping,
That God, from all other lands keeping,
Set the seas and the mountains between.
Ah, which drew the first blade among them,
To strike at the heart of his brother ?
What wrong or what insult hath stung them
To wipe out what stain, or to die ?
They know not: to slay one another
They come in a course none hath told them;
A chief that was purchased hath sold them;
They combat for him, nor ask why.
Ah, woe for the mothers that bare them,
For the wives of the warriors maddened!
Why come not their loved ones to tear them
Away from the infamous field ?
Their sires, whom long years have saddened.
And thoughts of the sepulchre chastened,
In warning why have they not hastened
To bid them to hold and to yield ?
As under the vine that embowers
His own happy threshold, the smiling
Clown watches the tempest that lowers
On the furrows his plow has not turned,,
So each waits in safety, beguiling
The time with his count of those falling
Afar in the fight, and the appalling
Flames of towns and of villages burned.
There, intent on the lips of their mothers,
Thou shalt hear little children with scorning,
Learn to follow and flout at the brothers
Whose blood they shall go forth to shed:
Thou shalt see wives and maidens adorning
Their bosoms and hair with the splendor
Of gems but now torn from the tender
Hapless daughters and wives of the dead.
Oh, disaster, disaster, disaster!
With the slain the earth's hidden already:
With blood reeks the whole plain, and vaster
And fiercer the strife than before!
ALESSANDRO MANZONI 9697
But along the ranks, rent and unsteady,
Many waver, — they yield, — they are flying!
With the last hope of victory dying,
The love of life rises again.
As out of the fan, when it tosses
The grain in its breath, the grain flashes,
So over the field of their losses
Fly the vanquished. But now in their course
Starts a squadron that suddenly dashes
Athwart their wild flight and that stays them,
While hard on the hindmost dismays them
The pursuit of the enemy's horse.
At the feet of the foe they fall trembling,
And yield life and sword to his keeping;
In the shouts of the victors assembling,
The moans of the dying are drowned.
To the saddle a courier leaping,
Takes a missive, and through all resistance,
Spurs, lashes, devours the distance;
Every hamlet awake at the sound.
Ah, why from their rest and their labor
To the hoof-beaten road do they gather?
Why turns every one to. his neighbor
The jubilant tidings to hear ?
Thou know'st whence he comes, wretched father i
And thou long'st for his news, hapless mother!
In fight brother fell upon brother!
These terrible tidings / bring.
All around I hear cries of rejoicing;
The temples are decked; the song swelleth
From the hearts of the fratricides, voicing
Praise and thanks that are hateful to God.
Meantime from the Alps where he dwelleth
The stranger turns hither his vision,
And numbers with cruel derision
The brave that have bitten the sod.
Leave your games, leave your songs and exulting;
Fill again your battalions, and rally
Again to your banner! Insulting
The stranger descends, he is come!
9698 ALESSANDRO MANZONI
Are ye feeble and few in your sally,
Ye victors? For this he descendeth!
Tis for this that his challenge he sendeth
From the fields where your brothers lie dumb!
Thou that strait to thy children appearedst,
Thou that knew'st not in peace how to tend them,
Fatal land! now the stranger thou fearedst
Receive, with the judgment he brings!
A foe unprovoked to offend them
At thy board sitteth down and derideth,
The spoil of thy foolish divideth,
Strips the sword from the hand of thy kings.
Foolish he, too! What people was ever
For the bloodshedding blest, or oppression ?
To the vanquished alone comes harm never;
To tears turns the wrong-doer's joy!
Though he 'scape through the years' long progression
Yet the vengeance eternal o'ertaketh
Him surely; it waiteth and waketh;
It seizes him at the last sigh!
We are all made in one likeness holy,
Ransomed all by one only redemption
Near or far, rich or poor, high or lowly,
Wherever we breathe in life's air;
We are brothers by one great pre-emption
. Bound all; and accursed be its wronger,
Who would ruin by right of the stronger,
Wring the hearts of the weak with despair.
Translation of William D. Howells
THE FIFTH OF MAY
From < Modern Italian Poets, > by W. D. Howells. Copyright 1887, by
Harper & Brothers
HE PASSED: and as immovable
As, with the last sigh given,
Lay his own clay, oblivious,
From that great spirit riven,
So the world stricken and wondering
Stands at the tidings dread;
ALESSANDRO MANZONI 9699
Mutely pondering the ultimate
Hour of that fateful being,
And in the vast futurity
No peer of his foreseeing
Among the countless myriads
Her blood-stained dust that tread.
Him on his throne and glorious
Silent saw I, that never —
When with awful vicissitude
He sank, rose, fell forever —
Mixed my voice with the numberless
Voices that pealed on high;
Guiltless of servile flattery
And of the scorn of coward.
Come I when darkness suddenly
On so great light hath lowered,
And offer a song at his sepulchre
That haply shall not die.
From the Alps unto the Pyramids,
From Rhine to Manzanares,
Unfailingly the thunderstroke
His lightning purpose carries;
Bursts from Scylla to Tanais, —
From one to the other sea.
Was it true glory? — Posterity,
Thine be the hard decision;
Bow we before the mightiest,
Who willed in him the vision
Of his creative majesty
Most grandly traced should be.
The eager and tempestuous
Joy of the great plan's hour,
The throe of the heart that controllessly
Burns with a dream of power,
And wins it, and seizes victory
It had seemed folly to hope,
All he hath known: the infinite
Rapture after the danger,
The flight, the throne of sovereignty,
The salt bread of the stranger;
Twice 'neath the feet of the worshipers,
Twice 'neath the altar's cope.
9700
ALESSANDRO MAJSTZONI
He spoke his name; two centuries*
Armed and threatening either,
Turned unto him submissively,
As waiting fate together;
He made a silence, and arbiter
He sat between the two.
He vanished; his days in the idleness
Of his island prison spending,
Mark of immense malignity,
And of a pity unending,
Of hatred inappeasable,
Of deathless love and true.
As on the head of the mariner,
Its weight some billow heaping,
Falls, even while the castaway,
With strained sight far sweeping,
Scanneth the empty distances
For some dim sail in vain:
So over his soul the memories
Billowed and gathered ever;
How oft to tell posterity
Himself he did endeavor,
And on the pages helplessly
Fell his weary hand again.
How many times, when listlessly
In the long dull day's declining —
Downcast those glances fulminant,
His arms on his breast entwining —
He stood assailed by the memories
Of days that were passed away;
He thought of the camps, the arduous
Assaults, the shock of forces,
The lightning-flash of the infantry,
The billowy rush of horses,
The thrill in his supremacy,
The eagerness to obey.
Ah, haply in so great agony
His panting soul had ended
Despairing, but that potently
A hand, from heaven extended.
Into a clearer atmosphere
In mercy lifted him.
ALESSANDRO MANZONI 9701
And led him on by blossoming
Pathways of hope ascending
To deathless fields, to happiness
All earthly dreams transcending,
Where in the glory celestial
Earth's fame is dumb and dim.
Beautiful, deathless, beneficent
Faith! used to triumphs, even
This also write exultantly:
No loftier pride 'neath Heaven
Unto the shame of Calvary
Stooped ever yet its crest.
Thou from his weary mortality
Disperse all bitter passions:
The God that humbleth and hearteneth,
That comforts and that chastens,
Upon the pillow else desolate
To his pale lips lay pressed!
Translation of William D. Howells.
9702
.es
MARGUERITE D'ANGOULEME
(1492-1549)
[ARGUERITE D'ANGOULEME, or as she is often styled, Marguerite
de Navarre, or Marguerite de Valois, is chiefly known as a
writer by the collection of stories entitled the <Heptameron,>
(in imitation of the ( Decameron J of Boccaccio,) her only prose
work. But a considerable number of poetic writings of hers remain:
^moralities,* pastorals, sad "comedies" and serious "farces," — in
Polonius's phrase, "scenes individable and poems unlimited, }> with
epistles in verse, and many dixains, chan-
sons, and rondeaux. There are also two
volumes of her Letters.
In all this literary production, there is
but little that can now or could ever win
much applause ; but it wins the better meed
of sympathy. Marguerite was no artist; she
had no sense of form, she had no high
aims in literature, she wrote with extraor-
dinary carelessness and prolixity. It is only
at moments that her style has grace and
color, and still more rarely that it has force.
But the feeling that moves her to write is
MARGARET OF NAVARRE always sincere. Her thoughts always spring
from her own intelligence : and therefore
while her writings have no touch of egotism, they reveal to a remark-
able extent her inner life; and it is a life of peculiar interest. Her
reader listens rather than reads as he turns her pages, and what he
hears comes not merely from the printed word.
She made constant use of the dramatic form, — of -dialogue, — and
evidently from the same motive that Montaigne ascribes to Plato: "to
utter with more decorum, through diverse mouths, the diversity and
variations of her own thpughts." There is great interest in discover-
ing "her own thoughts » amid these diverse expressions, and this can
only be done by becoming familiar with her life. The events in which
she was concerned throw an important and touching light on her
writings, — the only light by which they can be read intelligently.
In this light her famous book <Heptameron> completely changes its
MARGUERITE D'ANGOULEME 9703
character, and instead of being a collection of somewhat coarse and
somewhat tedious stories set in a mere frame of dialogues, it becomes
a series of interesting and suggestive conversations circling about
historic tales.
A sketch of her life is therefore the proper introduction to her
writings.
She must be distinguished from her great-niece, the daughter of
Henri Deux, with whom she is sometimes confused, — another Mar-
guerite de Valois, and a later Queen of Navarre, — who also was a
writer of some importance. The first Marguerite was the sister of
Francis the First. In this fact lies the key to the intimacies of her
nature. All the affections the human heart is capable of centred for
her in Francis. He was not only her brother and her friend, but he
was respected by her like a father, and cared for by her like a son;
he was (with a weight of meaning difficult of conception by modern
minds) supremely her King; he was at moments almost her God.
He repaid this fervor of devotion with a brotherly regard that satis-
fied her; but her content was a proof of her generosity.
Their youth was passed together in the pleasant Chateau d'Am-
boise; and their careful education — the education of the Renais-
sance— happily fostered in them inherited tastes for literature and
art.
Marguerite was married at seventeen (in 1509) to the Duke d'Alen-
con, the first prince of the blood; and when, six years later, Francis
became king, she was in a position and of an age to be conspicuous
at court, where her intellectual vivacity and social grace made her
eminent. Free and gay in speech, eager and joyous in spirit, she
amused herself with the brilliant life and with her would-be lovers;
and at other hours occupied herself with her books, — books often of
divinity, — studies that were molding her character. ((Elle s'adonna
fort aux lettres en son jeune aage," says one who knew her; and her
interest also in the men who wrote the books of her day was great
even then. From the first, she discerned and divined and recognized
the most remarkable of the men who surrounded her.
But the startling contrasts that marked the career of King Francis
all found their reverberating echo in the heart of Margaret, and made
her something very different from a merely intellectual woman. In
1520 came the Field of the Cloth of Gold; in 1525 the battle of Pavia
and Francis's imprisonment and illness at Madrid. Again, 1520
brought the appearance of Luther, and the next year the beginning
of persecutions in France; but it was not till the King had gone to
Italy that heretics were burned at the stake. That this comparative
leniency was greatly due to Margaret's personal influence with the
King is as unquestionable as that it is an error to consider her as
MARGUERITE D'ANGOULEME
herself belonging to the party of the Reformers. Her generous nat-
ure could protect the Protestants all her life long, and sympathize
with them so keenly as to cause her personal anguish, without shar-
ing their beliefs. This exceptional largeness and liberality has caused
Margaret's relation to the Reformation to be constantly and greatly
misunderstood. Her personal character — her own nature — was less
akin to the spirit of the Reformation than to that of the Renaissance.
The year 1524 was marked by domestic sorrows. Queen Claude
died, truly lamented by her husband and his mother and sister; and
two months later one of her little motherless girls died in Margaret's
arms. It was probably the first time she had seen death: she had
been summoned to the Queen's death-bed, and had hurriedly traveled
thither, but had arrived too late. The death of little eight-year old
Madame Charlotte after weeks of weary illness, spent by her aunt
in tender watching, made a profound impression upon Margaret, and
was the occasion of a poetical composition — the earliest in date of
her extant writings — a dialogue (<en forme de vision nocturne }) be"
tween herself and "Tame saincte de defuncte Madame Charlotte de
France }) concerning the happiness of the blessed dead.
In her somewhat mystical mind death was always a subject ol
meditation; and it is told of her that she once sat long by the bed*
side of one of her waiting-women whom she loved, who was neai
death ; and she gazed upon her fixedly till the last breath was drawn.
And when asked why she had thus eagerly watched, it appeared that
she had longed to catch some sight, some sound, of the departing
soul; <( and she added, w says the contemporary account, (< that if hei
faith were not very firm, she should not know what to think of this
separation of the soul from the body; but that she would believe
what God and his Church commanded without indulging in vain
curiosity. And indeed she was a woman as devout as could be found,
and who often spoke of God and truly feared him."
Within three months of the death of the Queen and Madame
Charlotte, the King was a prisoner. Margaret's religious faith, put to
the utmost test, supported her through days of measureless misery, of
which there are very touching outbreaks and outpourings among her
poems. Again two months, and her husband, the Duke d'Alengon,
died. Many years later she -wrote a touching and affectionate narra-
tive in verse of the scenes she then witnessed.
The agony of her suffering at the King's defeat and imprisonment
was in some measure lightened by being sent officially to him at
Madrid, and empowered to enter into negotiations with Charles the
Fifth for his release. Again we find the reflection of these events in
her verses. Her position attracted wide interest, and a letter written
to her by Erasmus expresses the general feeling; — .
MARGUERITE D'ANGOULEME
«I have been encouraged, » he says (in effect), <(to address some con-
dolences to you in the midst of the tempest of misfortune which now assails
you. . . . Long have I admired the many excellent gifts that God has
endowed you with. He has given you prudence, chastity, modesty, piety,
invincible strength of mind, and a marvelous contempt for temporal things.
. . . Therefore I am inspired with the desire to congratulate you rather
than offer you consolation. Your misfortune is great, I acknowledge; but no
event is terrible enough to overthrow a courage founded upon- the rock of
belief in Jesus Christ. »
This letter, written in Latin, did not need to be translated to
Margaret. And not only did she read Latin easily, but she was
familiar with the Greek dramatists and with Plato in the original.
Another period of Margaret's life opened in 1527, when her second
marriage took place, with Henri d'Albret, the young King of Navarre
(the nominal King), eleven years younger than herself. It was a
marriage of passionate affection on her side, inspired in part, one may
be sure, by the misfortunes of this valiant youth, who, ta-ken captive
with her brother, had been a prisoner like him for many months, and
who had then presented himself at the French court, poor and
friendless, but famed for his kindness and justice to his Bearnais
subjects. He cannot but have been easily moved to ardent admiration
for the sweet, attractive widow of thirty-five, whose recent remark-
able sojourn at Madrid had made her famous; still more, she was
the sister of the King of France, his liege lord, and recognized as
"the King's constant counselor. No question his wooing was vigorous.
How strong Margaret's wishes must have been is shown by her with-
standing the opposition of her brother for the only time in her life.
From the moment of this union date the unspeakable sorrows of
Margaret's heart. The position she henceforth occupied as the queen
of an outcast and mendicant king, a.nd also as the wife of a soon
alienated husband, was one burdened with tragic perplexities public
and private. It involved among other bitter trials that of an enforced
separation from her only child, Jeanne d'Albret.
The court Marguerite created at Pau and at Nerac, in the impov-
erished princedom of Beam, was the meeting-ground of scholars and
of poets, of charming women and light-hearted men. Even more, it
was the refuge of men persecuted. She possessed the supreme
womanly power that when herself in pain, she could comfort; when
weak, she could protect; when poor, she could enrich. Her benevo-
lence was one with beneficence. She was the great Consoler of her
fellow countrymen, — and not of them alone. Her heart-beats sent
vital force to all the numberless unknown suppliants whose eyes were
turned toward her, as well as to her oppressed friends who safely put
their trust in her.
MARGUERITE D'ANGOULEME
This exceptional womanliness is to be felt in her writings; and of
them as of her life it may be said: —
« If her heart at high flood swamped her brain now and then
'Twas but richer for that when the tide ebbed agen.»
She died in 1549, killed by her brother's death two years before.
It was in those last years that Rabelais addressed her as —
« Abstracted spirit, rapt in ecstasies,
Seeking thy birthplace, the familiar skies ;»
but in the same breath he solicited her to listen to <(the joyous
deeds of good Pantagruel. >} Nothing could more vividly note than
this the various qualities that met in Margaret, — of sad mysticism
and gay humor, of constant withdrawal from the world's vanities and
unfailing interest in the world's intellectual achievements.
She has never been so well known, so intelligently understood, so
carefully judged, and never so highly honored, as in our own genera-
tion. The French scholars of to-day have assigned to her her true
place in history, and it is a noble one. But in her lifetime she was
loved even more than she was honored : and still and always she will
be loved by those who shall know her.
A FRAGMENT
GRIEF has given me such a wound
By an unbearable sorrow,
That almost my body dies
From the pain it feels in secret.
My spirit is in torment,
But it leans
On Him who gives the pain;
Who, causing the pain, comforts it.
My heart, which lived on love alone,
Is by sorrow wasted.
It resisted not since the fatal day
That it felt the stroke of death;
For of its life
From it was ravished,
The more than half
Joined to it in perfect friendship. .
Lord, who knowest me,
I have no voice to cry to Thee,
MARGUERITE D'ANGOULEME 9707
Nor can find words
Worthy to pray Thee with.
Thyself, O Lord,
May it please Thee Thyself to say
To Thyself what I would say.
Speak Thou, pray Thou,
And answer Thou for me.
DIXAINS
OR NEAR, so near that in one bed our bodies lie,
And our wills become as one,
And our two hearts, if may be, touch,
And all is common to us both;
Or far, so far that importuning Love
May never tidings of you tell to me,
Who see you not, nor hear your voice, nor write,
So that for you my heart may cease to ache;
Thus it is that my desire is toward you,
For between these two, save dead, I cannot be.
[Ou pres, si pres que en un lict nos corps couchent,
Et nos vouloirs soyent uniz en un,
Et nos deux coeurs, si possible est, se touchent,
Et nostre tout soit a nous deux commun;
Ou loing, si loing que amour tant importun
De vos nouvelles a moy ne puisse dire,
Povre de veoir, de parler, et d'escrire,
Tant que de vous soit mon cceur insensible;
Voila comment vivre avecq vous desire,
Car entre deux, sans mort, m'est impossible.!
NOT near, so near that you could lie
Within my bed, shall ever be,
Or by love my heart or body touch,
Nor weight my honor by a whit.
If far, very far you go, I promise you
To hinder nowise your long wandering;
For neither near nor far have I the heart to loye
Save with that love we all are fain to feel.
97°8 MARGUERITE D'ANGOULEME
To be so near or far is no desire of a sage:
Please you, be loved between the two.
[Ne pres, si pres que vous puissiez coucher
Dedans mon lict, il n'adviendra jamais,
Ou par amour mon corps ou coeur toucher
Ny adj ouster a mon honneur un mais.
Si loing, bien loing allez, je vous prometz
De n'empescher en rien vostre voyaige,
Car pres ne loing d'aymer je n'ay couraige
Fors d'un amour dont chascun aymer veulx.
Soit pres ou loing n'est desir d'homme saige;
Contentez vous d'estre ayme entre deux.]
FROM THE <HEPTAMERON>
A LITTLE company of five ladies and five noble gentlemen have
been interrupted in their travels by heavy rains and great
floods, and find themselves together in a hospitable abbey.
They while away the time as best they can, and the second day
Parlemente says to the old Lady Oisille, <( Madame, I wonder that
you who have so much experience ... do not think of some
pastime to sweeten the gloom that our long delay here causes us.**
The other ladies echo her wishes, and all the gentlemen agree with
them, and beg the Lady Oisille to be pleased to direct how they
shall amuse themselves. She answers them: —
<( MY CHILDREN, you ask of me something that I find very
difficult, — to teach you a pastime that can deliver you from your
sadness; for having sought some such remedy all my life I have
never found but one — the reading of Holy Writ; in which is
found the true and perfect joy of the mind, from which proceed
the comfort and health of the body. And if you ask me what
keeps me so joyous and so healthy in my old age, it is that as
soon as I rise I take and read the Holy Scriptures, seeing and
contemplating the will of God, who for our sakes sent his Son on
earth to announce this holy word and good news, by which he
promises remission of sins, satisfaction for all duties by the gift
he makes us of his love, Passion and merits. This consideration
gives me so much joy that I take my Psalter and as humbly as
MARGUERITE D'ANGOULEME 9709
I can I sing with my heart and pronounce with my tongue the
beautiful psalms and canticles that the Holy Spirit wrote in the
heart of David and of other authors. And this contentment that
I have in them does me so much good that the ills that every
day may happen to me seem to me to be blessings, seeing that
I have in my heart, by faith, Him wno has borne them for me.
Likewise, before supper, I retire, to pasture my soul in read-
ing; and then, in the evening, I call to mind what I have done
in the past day, in order to ask pardon for my faults, and to
thank Him for his kindnesses, and in His love, fear and peace
I repose, assured against all ills. Wherefore, my children, this is
the pastime in which I have long stayed my steps, after having
searched all things, where I found no content for my spirit. It
seems to me that if every morning you will give an hour to
reading, and then, during mass, devoutly say your prayers, you
will find in this desert the same beauty as in cities; for he who
knows God, sees all beautiful things in him, and without him all
is ugliness. y>
Her nine companions are not quite of this pious "mind, and pray
her ' to remember that when they are at home the men have hunt-
ing and hawking, and the ladies have their household affairs and
needlework, and sometimes dancing; and that they need something to
take the place of all these things. At last it is decided that in the
morning the Lady Oisille should read to them of the life led by Our
Lord Jesus Christ; and in the afternoon, from after dinner to vespers,
they should tell tales like those of Boccaccio.
One of the tales opens thus: —
<(!N THE city of Saragossa there was a rich merchant who,
seeing his death draw nigh, and that he could no longer retain
his possessions, which perhaps he had acquired with bad faith,
thought that by making some little present to God he might
satisfy in part for his sins, after his death, — as if God gave his
grace for money. w
So he ordered his wife to sell a fine Spanish horse he had, as
soon as he was gone, and give its price to the poor. But when the
burial was over, the wife, <(who was as little of a simpleton as Span-
ish women are wont to be," told her man-servant to sell the horse
indeed, but to sell him for a ducat, while the purchaser must at
9710 MARGUERITE D'ANGOULEME
the same time buy her cat, and for the cat must be paid ninety-nine
ducats. So said, so done; and the Mendicant Friars received one
ducat, and she and her children ninety-and-nine.
<(In your opinion, )} asks Namerfide in conclusion, <(was not
this woman much wiser than her husband ? and should she have
cared as much for his conscience as for the good of her house-
hold ? )} — (< I think, w said Parlamente, (< that she loved her husband
well, but seeing that most men are not of sound mind on their
death-beds, she, who knew his intention, chose to interpret it for
the profit of his children, which I think very wise." — "But," said
Gebaron, (< don't you think it a great fault to fail to carry out
the wills of dead friends ? " — <( Indeed I do, " said Parlamente,
provided the testator is of good sense and of sound mind. " —
(< Do you call it not being of sound mind to give our goods to
the Church and the Mendicant Friars ? " — (< I don't call it want-
ing in sound-mindedness, " said Parlamente, <(when a man dis-
tributes among the poor what God has put in his power; but to
give alms with what belongs to others I do not consider high
wisdom, for you will see constantly the greatest usurers there
are, build the most beautiful and sumptuous chapels that can be
seen, wishing to appease God for a hundred thousand ducats'
worth of robbery by ten thousand ducats' worth of buildings, as
if God did not know how to count."
"Truly I have often marveled at this," said Oisille; <(how do
they think to appease God by the things that he himself, when
on earth, reprobated, such as great buildings, gildings, decora-
tions, and paintings ? But, if they rightly understood what God
has said in one passage, that for all sacrifice he asks of us a con-
trite and humble heart, and in another St. Paul says we are the
temple of God in which he desires to dwell, they would have
taken pains to adorn their consciences while they were alive; not
waiting for the hour when a man can no longer do either well
or ill, and even what is worse, burdening those who survive them
with giving their alms to those they would not have deigned to
look at while they were alive. But He who knows the heart can-
not be deceived, and will judge them, not only according to their
works, but according to the faith and charity they have had in
Him.* (<Why is it then," said Gebaron, <( that these Gray Friars
and Mendicant Friars sing no other song to us on our death-beds
save that we should give much wealth to their monasteries,
MARGUERITE D'ANGOULEME 9711
assuring us that that will carry us to Paradise, willy-nilly ? w
((Ah! Gebaron," said Hircan, (<have you forgotten the wickedness
that you yourself have related to us of the Gray Friars, that you
ask how it is possible for such people to lie ? I declare to you
that I do not think that there can be in the world greater lies
than theirs. And yet those men cannot be blamed who speak
for the good of the whole community, but there are those who
forget their vow of poverty to satisfy their avarice. " (( It seems
to me, Hircan, }) said Nomerfide, "that you know something about
such a one; I pray you, if it be worthy of this company, that
you will be pleased to tell it to us. " <( I am willing, " said Hir-
can, <( although I dislike to speak of this sort of people, for it
seems to me that they are of the same kind as those of whom
Virgil said to Dante, (Pass on, and heed them not* (( Passe oul-
tre et n'en tiens compte')."
in
THE following conversation contains the comments on a tale told
of the virtuous young wife of an unfaithful husband, who by dint of
patience and discretion regained his affection; so that <(they lived to-
gether in such great friendship that even his just faults by the good
they had brought about increased their contentment. "
(< I BEG you, ladies," continues the narrator, <(if God give you
such husbands, not to despair till you have long tried every
means to reclaim them; for there are twenty-four hours in a day
in which a man may change his way of thinking, and a woman
should deem herself happier to have won her husband by patience
and long effort than if fortune and her parents had given her a
more perfect one." "Yes," said Oisille, "this is an example for
all married women." — <( Let her follow this example who will,*
said Parlamente : (< but as for me, it would not be possible for mo
to have such long patience; for, however true it may be that in
all estates patience is a fine virtue, it's my opinion that in mar-
riage it brings about at last unfriendliness; because, suffering un->
kindness from a fellow being, one is forced to separate from him
as far as possible, and from this separation arises a contempt for
the fault of the disloyal one, and in this contempt little by little
love diminishes ; for it is what is valued that is loved. " — (( But
there is danger," said Ennarsuite, "that the impatient wife may
find a furious husband, who would give her pain, in lieu of
9712 MARGUERITE D'ANGOULEME
patience, d — (<But what could a husband do," said Parlamente,
<( save what has been recounted in this story ? " <( What could he
do ? " said Ennarsuite : <( he could beat his wife. " . . .
<(-I think, " said Parlamente, <(that a good woman would not
be so grieved in being beaten out of anger, as in being con-
temptuously treated by a man who does not care for her, and
after having endured the suffering of the loss of his friendship,
nothing the husband might do would cause her much concern.
And besides, the story says that the trouble she took to draw
him back to her was because of liar love for her children, and I
believe it " — <( And do you think it was so very patient of her, "
said Nomerfide, (< to set fire to the bed in which her husband was
sleeping ? " — <( Yes, " said Longarine, <( for when she saw the
smoke she awoke him; and that was just the thing where she
was most in fault, for of such husbands as those the ashes are
good to make lye for the washtub. " — (( You are cruel, Lon-
garine,w said Oisille, (<and you did not live in such fashion with
your husband. " — No, " said Longarine, (< for, God be thanked,
he never gave me such occasion, but 'reason to regret him all
my life, instead of to complain of him." — <(And if he had
treated you in this way, "said Nomerfide, (<what would you have
done ? " — » (< I loved him so much, " said Longarine, <( that I think I
should have killed him and then killed myself; for to die after
such vengeance would be pleasanter to me than to live faithfully
with a faithless husband."
(<As far as I see," said Hircan, <(you love your husbands only
for yourselves. If they are good after your own heart, you love
them well; if they commit towards you the least fault in the
world, they have lost their week's work by a Saturday. The
long and the short is that you want to be mistresses; for my
part I am of your mind, provided all the husbands also agree
to it." — (<It is reasonable," said Parlamente, "that the man rrle
us as our head, but not that he* desert us or ill-treat us.w — •
"God," said Oisille, <(has set in such due order the man and the
woman that if the marriage estate is not abused, I hold it to be
one of the most beautiful and stable conditions in the world;
and I am sure that all those here present, whatever air they as-
sume, think no less highly of it. And forasmuch as men say
they are wiser than women, they should be more sharply punished
when the fault is on their side. But we have talked enough on
this subject."
MARGUERITE D'ANGOULEME 9713
IV
*!T SEEMS to me, since the passage from one life to another
is inevitable, that the shortest death is the best. I consider for-
tunate those who do not dwell in the suburbs of death, and who
from that felicity which alone in this world can be called felicity"
pass suddenly to that which is eternal. }) — "What do you call the
suburbs of death ? >J said Simortault. — <( I mean that those who
have many tribulations, and those also who have long been sick,
those who by extremity of bodily or mental pain, have come to
hold death in contempt and to find its hour too tardy, — all these
have wandered in the suburbs of death, and will tell you the hos-
telries where they have more wept than slept, )}
<(Do YOU count as nothing the shame she underwent, and her
imprisonment ? }>
a I think that one who loves perfectly, with a love in harmony
with the commands of God, knows neither shame nor dishonor
save when the perfection of her love fails or is diminished; for
the glory of true loves knows not shame: and as to the imprison-
ment of her body, I believe that through the freedom of her
heart which was united with God and with her husband, she did
not feel it, but considered its solitude very great liberty; for to
one who cannot see the beloved, there is no greater good than
to think incessantly of him, and the prison is never narrow where
the thought can range at will.®
VI
<(!N GOOD faith I am astonished at the diversity in the nature
of women's love: and I see clearly that those who have most
love have most virtue; but those who have less love, dissimulate,
wishing to feign virtue. })
alt is true,® said Parlamente, "that a heart pure towards God
and man, loves more strongly than one that is vicious, and it
fears not to havt, its very thoughts known. a
9714
CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE
(1564-1593)
fwo months before the birth of William Shakespeare, on Feb-
ruary 26th, 1564, John Marlowe, shoemaker in the ancient
town of Canterbury, carried a baby boy, his first son, to
be baptized in the Church of St. George the Martyr. John Marlowe
was a « clarke of Saint Marie's church, » and member of the Shoe-
makers' and Tanners' Guild. He may have been a man of sufficient
means to give his son a liberal education; or some rich gentleman,
Sir John Manwood perhaps, may have interested himself in the gifted
lad. At any rate Christopher went to the King's School, Canterbury,
where fifty pupils were taught gratuitously and allowed £4 a year
each; and there he was a diligent scholar, for it is recorded that in
1579 he received an allowance of £i for each of the first three terms.
From school he was sent to Benet — now Corpus Christi — College,
Cambridge; where he obtained the degree' of B. A. in 1583, and that
of M. A. in 1587. His translations of Ovid's elegies were probably
begun, if not completed, during his years at the university. There
are slight indications in his poems that he may have been a soldier
for a time, and served during the Netherlands campaign. Probably,
however, he went at once to London from Cambridge, — <( a boy in
years, a man in genius, va god in ambition, J> as Swinburne says, — and
began his struggle for fame and fortune. Like many another young
poet, he may have gone on the stage; but it is said that he was soon
after incapacitated for acting, by an accident which lamed him. He
attached himself as playwright to a prominent dramatic company, —
that of the Earl of Nottingham, the Lord Admiral.
He was a dashing fellow, witty and daring, (<the darling of the
town,^ and with a gift for making friends. He was a protege of
Thomas Walsingham, and gallant Sir Walter Raleigh found him q
congenial spirit. He knew Kyd, Nash, Greene, Chapman, and very
likely Shakespeare too. Of all the brilliant group that glorify Eliza-
bethan literature, there is no more striking or typical figure than
Marlowe's own. He was the very embodiment of the Renascence
spirit, with energies all vitalized and athirst for both spiritual and
sensual satisfactions. His gay-hearted, passionate, undisciplined nature
was too exorbitant in demand to find content. To his pagan soul
beauty and pleasure were ultimate aims, orthodox faith and observ-
ances impossible. So for a few mad years he dreamed and wrote,
CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE
loved and feasted, starved sometimes, perhaps; and then at twenty-
nine, when he had tried all possible experiences, his wild, brilliant
young life suddenly ended. His irreligious scoffing, doubtless exag-
gerated from mouth to mouth, led finally to a warrant for his arrest.
Evading this, he had gone to the small town of Deptford, and there,
June 1593, while at the tavern, he became engaged in a drunken
scuffle in which he was fatally stabbed.
Marlowe's first play, < Tamburlaine, * must have been written before
he was twenty-four. Like many of his contemporaries, he always bor-
rowed his plots; and this one he took from 'Foreste,* a translation
from the Spanish made by Thomas Fortescue. His treatment of it
was a conscious effort to revolutionize dramatic poetry; for <( jiggling
veins of rhyming mother wits » to substitute ((high astounding terms *;
and it is his great distinction that with < Tamburlaine > he established
blank verse in the English drama. From the appearance of ( Gorbo-
duc> in 1562 there had been blank or rimeless verse ; but the customary
form of dramatic expression was in tediously monotonous heroic coup-
lets, whether they suited the subject or not. Marlowe was the first
of the English dramatists to understand that thought and expression
should be in harmony. His original spirit refused dictation; and he
developed a rich sonorous line, the beauty of which was recognized
at once. His musical ear and poetic instinct guided him to hitherto
forbidden licenses, — variety in the management of the caesura, femi-
nine rhymes, run-on lines, the introduction of other than iambic
measures; and thus he secured an elasticity of metre which perma-
nently enriched English poetry. His creative daring stifled a cold
and formal classicism, inaugurated our romantic drama, and served as
guiding indication to Shakespeare himself. But although certain
verses of ( Tamburlaine > cling to the reader's memory as perfect in
poetic feeling and harmony, the greater part of it is mere « bombast »
to modern taste. Even in Marlowe's day his exaggerations excited
ridicule, and quotations from his dramas became town catchwords.
But the spontaneous passion of his impossible conceptions gave them
a force which impressed the public. ( Tamburlaine > was immensely
popular, and the sequel or Part Second was enthusiastically received.
Many critics since Ben Jonson have discussed (t Marlowe's mighty
line** and honored its influence; and his fellow writers were quick to
follow his example. ~
The Faust legend, traceable back to the sixth century, finally
drifted over to,, England, .where in ballad form, founded upon the
<Volksbuch> by Spiess, it appeared in 1587, and probably soon caught
Marlowe's attention. His play of ( Dr. Faustus y was given in 1588,
and was very highly praised. It is said that Goethe, who thought of
translating it, exclaimed admiringly, (<How greatly it is all planned !}>
9716
CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE
Compared with the harmonic unity of form and matter in Goethe's
( Faust, > Marlowe's work seems childish in construction, uneven and
faulty in expression. But there are certain passages — for example,
the thrilling passion of the invocation to Helen, and the final despair
of Faustus — of positive poetic splendor.
In the <Jew of Malta > there are fine passages which show Mar-
lowe's increasing mastery of his line. But in spite of its descriptive
color and force, and keen touches of characterization, it was less
successful than ^amburlaine,* and is perhaps most noteworthy now
for the obvious parallelism of certain scenes with those of the later
( Merchant of Venice.*
( Edward II.,* founded upon Robert Fabyan's ( Chronicle > or Con-
cordance of Histories,* is structurally the best of Marlowe's plays,
and contains finely pathetic verse which bears comparison with that
of Shakespeare's historical dramas. The poet as he grows older
seems to take a broader, more sympathetic view of life; and there-
fore he begins to understand feelings more normal than the infinite
ambitions of Faustus and Tamburlaine, and becomes more skillful in
the portrayal of character. There is little of his earlier exaggeration.
The two shorter dramas — <The Massacre of Paris, * and <Dido,
Queen of Carthage * — were written in collaboration with other play-
wrights.
No one can read Marlowe carefully without feeling that the social
influences of his time made him a dramatist, and that he was by
nature a lyric poet. He was intensely subjective, and incapable of
taking an impersonal and comprehensive point of view. He always
expresses his own aspiration for fame, or joy, or satisfaction, tran-
scending anything earth can offer. <(That like I best that flies be-
yond my reach. w This preoccupation with imaginative ideals ma<l«
it impossible for him to understand every-day human nature. Hence
no touch of humor vitalizes his work; and hence his efforts to depict
women are always vague and unsatisfactory. He is at his best when
expressing his own passions, — his adoration of light and color, of gold
and sparkling gems, of milk-white beauties with rippling brilliant
hair. Like the other men of his time, he loved nature: delighted
in tinkling waters, wide skies, gay velvety blossoms. He is a
thorough sensualist ; frankly, ardently so in < Hero and Leander, y —
that beautiful love poem, a paraphrase of Musach's poem, of which
he wrote the first two sestiads, and which after his death was fin-
ished by Chapman. Every one knows the lines, written in much the
same spirit, of < The Passionate Shepherd to his Love > ; « that smooth
song which was made by Kit Marlowe, )} as Izaak Walton says. It
had many imitations, and a charming response from the pen of Sir
Walter Raleigh.
CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE 97!7
It has been suggested that Shakespeare in his early days may have
looked enviously at the successful young Marlowe. This erring ideal-
ist aimed high, and left a lasting imprint upon English literature.
He reached fame very quickly; made more friends than enemies;
and his early death called out many tributes of love and admiration.
Michael Drayton wrote of him: — •
ttNext Marlowe, bathed in the Thespian Springs,
Had in him those brave transhmary things
That the first poets had: his raptures were
All air and fire, which made his verses clear;
For that fine madness still he did retain,
Which rightly should possess a poet's brain. »
THE PASSIONATE SHEPHERD TO HIS LOVE
COME live with me, and be my love,
And we will all the pleasures prove
That valleys, groves, and hills, and fields,
Woods or steepy mountains yields.
And we will sit upon the rocks,
Seeing the shepherds feed their flocks
By shallow rivers, to whose falls
Melodious birds sing madrigals. .
And I will make thee beds of roses,
And a thousand fragrant posies;
A cap of flowers, and a kirtle
Embroidered all with leaves of myrtle;
A gown made of the finest wool,
Which from our pretty lambs we pull;
Fair lined slippers for the cold,
With buckles of the purest gold;
A belt of straw and ivy buds,
With coral clasps and , amber studs :
And if these pleasures may thee move,
Come live with me, and be my love.
The shepherd swains shall dance and sing
For thy delight each May-morning:
If these delights thy mind may move,
Then live with me, and be my love.
CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE
FROM <TAMBURLAINE>
Alarms of battle within. Enter Cosroe, wounded, and Tamburlaine
COSROE — Barbarous and bloody Tamburlaine,
Thus to deprive me of my crown and life!
Treacherous and false Theridamas,
Even at the morning of my .happy state,
Scarce being seated in my royal throne,
To work my downfall and untimely end!
An uncouth pain torments my grieved soul,
And death arrests the organ of my voice,
Who, entering at the breach thy sword hath made,
Sacks every vein and artier of my heart. —
Bloody and insatiate Tamburlaine!
Tamburlaine —
The thirst of reign and sweetness of a crown
That caused the eldest son of heavenly Ops
To thrust his doting father from his chair,
And place himself in the empyreal heaven,
Moved me to manage arms against thy state.
What better precedent than mighty Jove ?
Nature that framed us of four elements,
Warring within our breasts for regiment,
Doth teach us all to have aspiring minds.
Our souls, whose faculties can comprehend
The wondrous architecture of the world,
And measure every wandering planet's course,
Still climbing after knowledge infinite,
And always moving as the restless spheres,
Will us to wear ourselves, and never rest,
Until we reach the ripest fruit of all, —
That perfect bliss and sole delicity,
The sweet fruition of an earthly crown.
FROM < TAMBURLAINE>
AH, FAIR Zenocrate! — divine Zenocrate! —
Fair is too foul an epithet for thee,
That in thy passion for thy country's love,
And fear to see thy kingly father's harm,
With hair disheveled wip'st thy watery cheeks;
And like to Flora in her morning pride,
Shaking her silver tresses in the air,
CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE 9719
Rain'st on the earth resolved pearl in showers,
And sprinklest sapphires on thy shining face,
Where Beauty, mother to the Muses, sits
And comments volumes with her ivory pen,
Taking instructions from thy flowing eyes;
Eyes that, when Ebena steps to heaven,
In silence of thy solemn evening's walk,
Make, in the mantle of the richest night,
The moon, the planets, and the meteors, light
There angels in their crystal armors fight
A doubtful battle writh my tempted thoughts,
For Egypt's freedom and the Soldan's life;
His life that so consumes Zenocrate,
Whose sorrows lay more siege unto my soul,
Than all my army to Damascus's walls:
And neither Persia's sovereign, nor the Turk,
Troubled my senses with conceit of foil
So much by much as doth Zenocrate.
What is beauty, saith my sufferings, then ?
If all the pens that ever poets held
Had fed the feeling of their masters' thoughts,
And every sweetness that inspired their hearts,
Their minds, and muses on admired themes;
If all the heavenly quintessence they still
From their immortal flowers of poesy,
Wherein, as in a mirror, we perceive
The highest reaches of a human wit;
If these had made one poem's period,
And all combined in beauty's worthiness,
Yet should there hover in their restless heads
One thought, one grace, one wonder, at the least
Which into words no virtue can digest.
But how unseemly is it for my sex,
My discipline of arms and chivalry,
My nature, and the terror of my name,
To harbor thoughts effeminate and faint!
Save only that in beauty's just applause,
With whose instinct the soul of man is touched;
And every warrior that is wrapt with love
Of fame, of valor, and of victory,
Must needs have beauty beat on his conceits:
I thus conceiving and subduing both
That which hath stooped the chiefest of the gods,
Even from the fiery-spangled veil of heaven,
CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE
To feel the lowly warmth of shepherds' flames,
And mask in cottages of strowed reeds,
Shall give the world to note for all my birth,
That virtue solely is the sum of glory,
And fashions men with true nobility.
FROM <TAMBURLAINE>
TAMBURLAINE — But now, my boys, leave off and list
to me,
That mean to teach you rudiments of war:
I'll have you learn to sleep upon the ground,
March in your armor thorough watery fens,
Sustain the scorching heat and freezing cold,
Hunger and thirst, right adjuncts of the war,
And after this to scale a castle wall,
Besiege a fort, to undermine a town,
And make whole cities caper in the air.
Then next the way to fortify your men:
In champion grounds, what figure serves you best,
For which the quinque-angle form is meet,
Because the corners there may fall more flat
Whereas the fort may fittest be assailed,
And sharpest where the assault is desperate.
The ditches must be deep; the counterscarps
Narrow and steep; the walls made high and broad;
The bulwarks and the rampires large and strong,
With cavalieros and thick counterforts,
And room within to lodge six thousand men.
It must have privy ditches, countermines,
And secret issuings to defend the ditch;
It must have high argins and covered ways,
To keep the bulwark fronts from battery,
And parapets to hide the musketers;
Casemates to place the great artillery;
And store of ordnance, that from every flank
May scour the outward curtains of the fort,
Dismount the cannon of the adverse part,
Murder the foe, and save the walls from breach.
When this is learned for service on the land,
By plain and easy demonstration
I'll teach you how to make the water mount,
That you may dry-foot march through lakes and pools,
CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE 9721
Deep rivers, havens, creeks, and little seas,
And make a fortress in the raging waves,
Fenced with the concave of monstrous rock,
Invincible by nature of the place.
When this is done then are ye soldiers,
And worthy sons of Tamburlaine the Great.
Calyphas — My lord, but this is dangerous 'to be done:
We may be slain or wounded ere we learn.
Tamburlaine —
Villain! Art thou the son of Tamburlaine,
And fear'st to die, or with a curtie-axe
To hew thy flesh, and make a gaping wound?
Hast thou beheld a peal of ordnance strike
A ring of pikes, mingled with shot and horse,
Whose shattered limbs, being tossed as high as Heaven,
Hang in the air as thick as sunny motes,
And canst thou, coward, stand in fear of death ?
Hast thou not seen my horsemen charge the foe,
Shot through the arms, cut overthwart the hands,
Dyeing their lances with their streaming blood,
And yet at night carouse within my tent,
Filling their empty veins with airy wine,
That, being concocted, turns to crimson blood, —
And wilt thou shun the field for fear of wounds?
View me, thy father, that hath conquered kings,
A 1 • l' 1 • 1 -1
And with his horse marched round about the earth
Quite void of scars and clear from any wound,
That by the wars lost not a drop of blood, —
And see him lance his flesh to teach you all.
^^j>
[He cuts his arm.
A wound is nothing, be it ne'er so deep;
Blood is the god of war's rich livery.
Now look I like a soldier, and this wound
As great a grace and majesty to me,
As if a chain of gold, enameled,
Enchased with diamonds, sapphires, rubies.
And fairest pearl of wealthy India,
Were mounted here under a canopy,
And I sate down clothed with a massy robe,
That late adorned the Afric potentate,
Whom I brought bound unto Damascus's walls.
Come, boys, and with your fingers search my wound,
And in my blood wash all your hands at once,
9722 CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE
While I sit smiling to behold the sight.
Now, my boys, what think ye of a wound ?
Calyphas — I know not what I should think of it; methinks it is a
pitiful sight.
Celebinus — 'Tis nothing: give me a wound, father.
Amyras — And me another, my lord.
Tamburlaine —
Come, sirrah, give me your arm.
Celebinus — Here, father, cut it bravely, as you did your own.
Tamburlaine —
It shall suffice thou darest abide a wound:
My boy, thou shalt not lose a drop of blood
Before we meet the army of the Turk;
But then run desperate through the thickest throngs,
Dreadless of blows, of bloody wounds, and death;
And let the burning of Larissa-walls,
My speech of war, and this my wound you see,
Teach you, my boys, to bear courageous minds
Fit for the followers of great Tamburlaine!
INVOCATION TO HELEN
From < Doctor Faustus>
FAUSTUS — Was this the face that launched a thousand
ships
And burnt the topless towers of Ilium ?
Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss.
[Kisses her.
Her lips suck forth my soul; see where it flies! —
Come, Helen, come, give me my soul again.
Here will I dwell, for Heaven is in these lips,
And all is dross that is not Helena.
I will be Paris, and for love of thee,
Instead of Troy, shall Wertenberg be sacked;
And I will combat with weak Menelaus,
And wear thy colors on my plumed crest;
Yea, I will wound Achilles in the heel,
And then return to Helen for a kiss.
Oh, thou art fairer than the evening air
Clad in the beauty of a thousand stars;
Brighter art thou than flaming Jupiter
When he appeared to hapless Semele;
More lovely than the monarch of the sky
CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE 9723
In wanton Arethusa's azured arms:
And none but thou shalt b>e my paramour.
•
Ah, Faustus,
Now hast thou but one bare hour to live,
And then thou -must be damned perpetually!
Stand still, you ever-moving spheres of heaven,
That time may cease, and midnight never come;
Fair Nature's eye, rise, rise again and make
Perpetual day; or let this hour be but
A year, a month, a week, a natural day,
That Faustus may repent and save his soul!
O lente, lente, cur rite noctis equi!
The stars move still, time runs, the clock will strike,
The Devil will come, and Faustus must be damned.
Oh, I'll leap up. to my God! Who pulls me down?
See, see, where Christ's blood streams in the firmament!
One drop would save my soul! — half a drop; ah, my
Christ !
Ah, rend not my heart for naming of my Christ!
Yet will I call on him: O spare me, Lucifer! —
Where is it now ? 'tis gone ; and see where God
Stretcheth out his arm, and bends his ireful brows I
Mountain and hills come, come and fall on me,
And hide me from the heavy wrath of God!
No! No!
Then will I headlong run into the earth;
Earth gape! Oh, no, it will not harbor me!
You stars that reigned at my nativity,
Whose influence hath allotted death and hell,
Now draw up Faustus like a foggy mist
Into the entrails of yon laboring clouds,
That when they vomit forth into the air,
My limbs may issue from their smoky mouths,
So that my soul may but ascend to heaven.
[The dock strikes the half -hour.'}
Ah, half the hour is past! 'twill all be past anon!
O God!
If thou wilt not have mercy on my soul,
Yet for Christ's sake whose blood hath ransomed me,
Impose some end to my incessant pain;
Let Faustus live in hell a thousand years —
A hundred thousand, and — at last — be saved!
9724 CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE
Oh, no end is limited to damned souls!
Why wert thou not a creature wanting soul ?
Or why is this immortal that thou hast ?
Ah, Pythagoras's metempsychosis! were that true,
This soul should fly from me, and I be changed
Unto some brutish beast! all beasts are happy,
For, when they die,
Their souls are soon dissolved in elements;
But mine must live, still to be plagued in hell,
Curst be the parents that engendered me!
No, Faustus: curse thyself; curse Lucifer
That hath deprived thee of the joys of heaven.
[The dock strikes twelve.}
Oh, it strikes, it strikes! Now, body, turn to air,
Or Lucifer will bear thee quick to hell.
[ Thunder and lightning. ]
O soul, be changed into little water-drops,
And fall into the ocean — ne'er ,be found.
Enter Devils
My God! my God! look not so fierce on me!
Adders and serpents, let me breathe awhile!
Ugly hell, gape not! come not, Lucifer!
I'll burn my books! — Ah, Mephistophilis !
[J5xeu;if Devils with Faustus.}
Enter Chorus
Chorus — Cut is the branch that might have grown full straight,
And burned is Apollo's laurel bough,
That sometime grew within this learned man.
Faustus is gone: regard his hellish fall,
Whose fiendful fortune may exhort the wise
Only to wonder at unlawful things,
Whose deepness doth entice such forward wits
To practice more than heavenly power permits. [Exit.
CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE
FROM < EDWARD THE SECOND >
9725
KING EDWARD —
Who's there ? what light is that ? wherefore com'st thou ?
Lightborn — To comfort you, and bring you joyful news.
King Edward —
Small comfort finds poor Edward in thy looks.
Villain, I know thou com'st to murder me.
Lightborn — To murder you, my most gracious lord!
Far is it from my heart to do you harm.
The Queen sent me to see how you were used,
For she relents at this your misery;
And what eyes can refrain from shedding tears,
To see a king in this most piteous state ?
King Edward —
Weep'st thou already ? List awhile to me :
And then thy heart, were it as Gurney's is,
Or as Matrevis's, hewn from the Caucasus,
Yet will it melt, ere I have done my tale.
This dungeon where they keep me is the sink
Wherein the filth of all the castle falls.
Lightborn — O villains!
King Edward —
And there in mire and puddle have I stood
This ten days' space; and lest that I should sleep,
One plays continually upon a drum;
They give me bread and water, being a king:
So that, for want of sleep and sustenance,
My mind's distempered, and my body's numbed;
And whether I have limbs or no I know not.
Oh, would my blood dropped out from every vein,
As doth this water from my tattered robes.
Tell Isabel, the queen, I looked not thus
When for her sake I ran at tilt in France,
And there unhorsed the Duke of Cleremont.
Lightborn — Oh, speak no more, my lord! This breaks my heart.
Lie on this bed, and rest yourself awhile.
King Edward—
These looks of thine can harbor naught but death:
I see my tragedy written in thy brows.
Yet stay: awhile forbear thy bloody hand,
And let me see the stroke before it comes,
That even then, when I shall lose my life,
My mind may be more steadfast on my God.
9726
CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE
Lightborn — What means your Highness to mistrust me thus ?
King Edward —
What mean'st thou to dissemble with me thus?
Lightborn — These hands were never stained with innocent blood,
Nor shall they now be tainted with a king's.
King Edward —
Forgive my thought for having such a thought.
One jewel have I left; receive thou this. {Giving jewel.}
Still fear I, and I know not what's the cause,
But every joint shakes as I give it thee.
Oh, if thou harborest murder in thy heart,
Let this gift change thy mind, and save thy soul.
Know that I am a king — oh, at that name
I feel a hell of grief! Where is my crown?
Gone, gone ! and do I still remain alive ?
Lightborn — You're overwatched, my lord : lie down and rest.
King Edward —
But that grief keeps me waking, I should sleep;
For not these ten days have these eyelids closed.
Now as I speak they fall; and yet with fear
Open again. Oh, wherefore sitt'st thou here ?
Lightborn — If you mistrust me, I'll begone, my lord.
King Edward —
No, no: for if thou mean'st to murder me,
Thou wilt return again; and therefore stay. [Sleeps.]
Lightborn — He sleeps.
King Edward [waking} —
Oh, let me not die yet! Oh, stay a while!
Lightborn — How now, my lord ?
King Edward —
Something still buzzeth in mine ears,
And tells me if I sleep I never wake;
This fear is that which makes me tremble thus.
And therefore tell me, Wherefore art thou comer
Lightborn — To rid thee of thy life. — Matrevis, come !
Enter Matrevis and Gurney
King Edward —
I am too weak and feeble to resist:
Assist me, sweet God, and receive my soul I
Lightborn — Run for the table.
King Edward —
Oh, spare me, or dispatch me in a trice.
[Matrevis brings in a table.}
CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE 9727
Lightborn — So, lay the table down, and stamp on it,
But not too hard, lest that you bruise his body.
\King Edward is murdered.'}
Matrevis — I fear me that this cry will raise the town,
And therefore, let us take horse and away.
Lightborn — Tell me, sirs, was it not bravely done?
Gurney — Excellent well: take this for thy reward.
{Gurney stabs Lightborn, who dies.}
Come, let us cast the body in the moat,
And bear the King's to Mortimer our lord!
Away I [Exeunt with the bodies.
FROM <THE JEW OF MALTA >
BARABAS — So that of thus much that return was made;
And of the third part of the Persian ships,
There was the venture summed and satisfied.
As for those Sabans, and the men of Uz,
That bought my Spanish oils and wines of Greece,
Here have I purst their paltry silverlings.
Fie; what a trouble 'tis to count this trash!
Well fare the Arabians, who so richly pay
The things they traffic for with wedge of gold,
Whereof a man may easily in a day
Tell that which may maintain him all his life.
The needy groom that never fingered groat
Would make a miracle of thus much coin;
But he whose steel-barred coffers are crammed full,
And all his lifetime hath been tired,
Wearying his fingers' ends with telling it,
Would in his age be loth to labor so,
And for a pound to sweat himself to death.
Give me the merchants of the Indian mines,
That trade in metal of the purest mold;
The wealthy Moor, that in the eastern rocks
Without control can pick his riches up,
Anid in his house heap pearls like pebble-stonest
Receive them free, and sell them by the weight;
Bags of fiery opals, sapphires, amethysts,
Jacinths, hard topaz, grass-green emeralds,
9728
CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE
Beauteous rubies, sparkling diamonds,
And seld-seen costly stones of so great price.
As one of them indifferently rated,
And of a carat of this quantity,
May serve in peril of calamity
To ransom great kings from captivity.
This is the ware wherein consists my wealth;
And thus methinks should men of judgment frame
Their means of traffic from the vulgar trade,
And as their wealth increaseth, so inclose
Infinite riches in a little room. . .
These are the blessings promised to the Jews,
And herein was old Abram's happiness:
What more may Heaven do for earthly man
Than thus to pour out plenty in their laps,
Ripping the bowels of the earth for them,
Making the seas their servants, and the winds
To drive their substance with successful blasts?
Who hateth me but for my happiness?
Or who is honored now but for his wealth ?
Rather had I a Jew be hated thus,
Than pitied in a Christian poverty:
For I can see no fruits in all their faith,
But malice, falsehood, and excessive pride,
Which methinks fits not their profession.
Haply some hapless man hath conscience,
And for his conscience lives in beggary.
They say we are a scattered nation;
I cannot tell, but we have scambled up
More wealth by far than those that brag of faith.
There's Kirriah Jairim, the great Jew of Greece,
Obed in Bairseth, Nones in Portugal,
Myself in Malta, some in Italy,
Many in France, and wealthy every one;
Ay, wealthier far than any Christian.
I must confess we come not to be kings:
That's not our fault; alas, our number's few,
And crowns come either by succession,
Or urged by force; and nothing violent,
Oft have I heard tell, can be permanent.
Give us a peaceful rule; make Christians kings,
That thirst so much for principality.
9729
CLEMENT MAROT
(1497-1544)
IHE quality that gives a peculiar charm to the verses of Marot
is the blending of gayety and gravity. With light touches
he expresses serious feeling, and the sincerity of his senti-
ment suffers no wrong from the 'fantastic dress of the period. His
Muse wears a particolored robe; not that of Folly, but a garment of
rich and noble patches, in which velvets and brocades oddly harmon-
ize with the homespun they strengthen and adorn. It is because
they are the velvets and brocades of the Renaissance, any scrap
or shred of which had a decorative value.
And still another material is to be observed:
the strong linen of the Reformation, whose
whiteness endues with the more pictur-
esqueness the brilliant colors.
The poetic life of Clement Marot opened
on the plane of pedantry, and closed on
that of preaching; but between these two
conditions — each of them the consequence
of the influences of the time — his own indi-
viduality asserted itself in countless humor-
ous, delicate, charming, exquisite (< epistles }>
and <( elegies," (< epitaphs w and "etrennes"
and (< ballades, w <( dizains, }> "rondeaux," and
<( chansons, w and in (< epigrammes, }) — some of
them coarse and cynical, and some to be counted among his best and
most original work. He wrote also <( eclogues » ; and one on the death
of the queen mother, Luise of Savoie, is considered a masterpiece.
Two other kinds of composition in which he also excelled had in the
sixteenth century a great vogue: the <( blazon }) and the (<coq a I'ane.®
The <( blazons » were eulogistic or satirical descriptions of different
parts of an object; they were devoted .by the gallantry of the day
to the description of a woman's eyebrow or eyes, or hand, or more
intimate parts of the body. The two « blazons » of Marot (<Du Beau
Tetin > and ( Du Layd Tetin >) inspired a whole series of productions of
the same kind from contemporary versifiers. The pieces called ucoq
a 1'ane }> were, before Marot, a jeu d' esprit of incoherent verses. Marot
gave them a new character by making able use of this apparent
incoherency to veil satirical attacks on formidable enemies.
CLEMENT MAROT
CLEMENT MAROT
It has been prettily said that he was as the bee among poets,—*
delicately winged, honey-making, and with a sting for self-defense.
Born in 1497, the son of a secretary of Queen Anne of Brittany,
in 1515 the youthful poet presented to the youthful King (Francis
the First) a poetical composition, the longest he ever wrote, entitled
<Le Temple de Cupido.* In 1519 he — <(Le Despourveu," as he styled
himself — was attached to the court of Marguerite (the sister of
Francis), then the Duchesse d'Alencon. Five years later he became
one of her pensioners, and through all his after life he was cared
for and protected by her. In 1528 he was made one of the King's
household, and at this moment his powers attained their highest
point. The court, as he himself says, was his true « schoolmistress. »
In 1532 appeared the first collection of his verses.
But for some years previously his half-heretical opinions had
drawn trouble upon him, protest as he might
(< Point ne suis Lutheriste,
Ne Zuinglien, et moins Anabaptiste;
Je suis de Dieu par son fils Jesuchrist.^
In 1526 he suffered imprisonment for a few weeks, and this imprison-
ment was the occasion of a long poem entitled <Hell,) — a satire
on the tribunal and prison of the Chatelet. This <(si gentil ceuvre^
was first printed at Antwerp, and was reprinted some years later by
Estienne Dolet, <(in the most beautiful form," he says, (<and with the
most ornament possible to me, . . . because in reading it I have
found it free from anything scandalous respecting God and religion,
and not containing anything against the majesty of princes. }) It was
of such crimes that Marot had been accused.
In 1531 he was again brought before the Parliament, and once
more he was summoned in 1535. The matter now looked so serious
that he thought it best to fly to Ferrara, to the court of Renee of
France, where he found himself in company with Calvin. The per-
sonal unhappiness of the Princess Renee made a profound impression
on Marot. He saw this ardent protectress of the Protestants to be
sadly in need herself of protection; and more than once, at this time
and later, he addressed to her, and to others regarding her, strains of
heartfelt compassion. Her ducal husband Ercole d'Este — the enemy
of her friends — swept out of the city as with a besom all her pro-
teges as often as he could; and Marot was soon obliged to make his
way to Venice. Within the year, however, he received permission to
return to France, and was once more high in the King's favor.
But the immense, wide-spread success of a translation of some of
the Psalms he now made again roused the Sorbonne; and he was
forced to take refuge at Turin, where he died in 1544. Two years
later his friend Estienne Dolet was burned at the stake.
CLEMENT MAROT
Such was the outward career of this vivid, eager poet. He was
perhaps, in his relations to the world, audacious rather than bold;
in his relations to the other world, a lover of novelty rather than
of truth; as a man, somewhat vain and boastful, somewhat licen-
tious in a licentious age, — but he wrote verses that disarm 'criticism.
In reading the best of them, one is persuaded for the moment that
nothing is so enchanting as spontaneity, gayety, grace, quickness,
keenness, unimpassioned sentiment and natural courtesy, and the
philosophy that jests at personal misfortunes, flowing from a heart
of tenderness. Admiration of another kind also is excited in remem-
bering that this poet, whose epistles to (<the great w — to the King
and his sister — are almost in the tone of equal addressing equal, was
after all, nominally their servant, actually their dependent. A foolish
legend has prevailed that the relations between Marot and the Queen
of Navarre were of extreme intimacy. There is absolutely nothing to
justify such a belief. The attachment between them — respectful on
both sides — was only one of the illustrations of the relations brought
about by the Renaissance between crowned heads and men of letters.
The long Epistles of Marot are his most interesting productions.
He was the creator of the <( epitre-badine," and he has never been
surpassed in this kind of writing. The Epistle to Lyon Jamet, con-
taining the fable of the rat and the lion, is the most famous; but its
length and the exquisite quality of its style forbid any attempt at
its reproduction here. In his Epistles, as elsewhere in his work, the
best and most characteristic and the gayest verses of Marot are of
extreme difficulty to translate. Their form is their very substance:
change even the mere sound of a word, and its meaning is gone.
He, like La Fontaine, — there are many similarities between the two,
— can be known only by those who can read him in the original.
The following translations can scarcely do more than show the sub-
jects of the verses selected, and the general tone.
Marot exercised no durable influence, though his style was so
marked that it became a generic designation — <(le style Marotique."
But <(le style Marotique" means different things according to the
person using the phrase. Marmontel defines it as (< a medley of
phrases vulgar and noble, old-fashioned and modern. }) La Harpe said
<( a ( style Marotique > is one that has the gay, agreeable, simple,
natural manner peculiar to Marot. w La Harpe's definition is the truer,
that of Marmontel the one most generally accepted.
CLEMENT MAROT
OLD-TIME LOVE
IN GOOD old days such sort of love held sway
As artlessly and simply made its way,
And a few flowers, the gift of love sincere,
Than all the round earth's riches were more dear*
For to the heart alone did they address their lay.
And if they chanced to love each other, pray
Take heed how well they then knew how to stay
For ages faithful — twenty, thirty year —
In good old days.
But now is lost Lovers rule they used t' obey;
Only false tears and changes fill the day.
Who would have me a lover now appear
c*
Must love make over in the olden way,
And let it rule as once it held its sway
In good old days.
EPIGRAM
No LONGER am I what I have been,
Nor again can ever be;
My bright Springtime and my Summer
Through the window flew from me.
Love, thou hast ever been my master,
I'.ve served no other God so well; —
Oh, were I born a second time, Love,
Then my service none could tell.
TO A LADY WHO WISHED TO BEHOLD MAROT
BEFORE she saw me, reading in my book,
She loved me; then she wished to see my face:
Now she has seen me, gray, and swart of look,
Yet none the less remain I in her grace.
O gentle heart, maiden of worthy race,
You do not err: for this my body frail,
It is not I; naught is it but my jail:
And in the writings that you once did read,
Your lovely eyes — so may the truth avail —
Saw me more truly than just now, indeed.
CLEMENT MAROT
THE LAUGH OF MADAME D'ALBRET
SHE has indeed a throat of lovely whiteness,
The sweetest speech, and fairest cheeks and eyes
But in good sooth her little laugh of lightness
Is where her chiefest charm, to my thought, lies.
. With its gay note she can make pleasure rise,
Where'er she hap to be, withouten fail;
And should a bitter grief me e'er assail,
So that my life by death may threatened be,
To bring me back to health will then avail
To hear this laugh with which she slayeth me.
FROM AN « ELEGY »
THY lofty place, thy gentle heart, -
Thy wisdom true in every part,
Thy gracious mien, thy noble air,
Thy singing sweet, and speech so fair,
Thy robe that does so well conform
To the nature of thy lovely form :
In short, these gifts and charms whose grace
Invests thy soul and thee embrace,
Are not what has constrained me
To give my heart's true love to thee.
'Twas thy sweet smile which me perturbed,
And from thy lips a gracious word
Which from afar made me to see
Thou'd not refuse to hear my plea.
Come, let us make one heart of two!
Better work we cannot do;
For 'tis plain our starry guides,
The accord of our lives besides,
Bid this be done. For of us each
Is like the other in thought and speech:
We both love men of courtesy,
We both love honor and purity,
We both love never to speak evil,
We both love pleasant talk that's civil,
We both love being in those places
Where rarely venture saddened faces,
We both love merry music's measure,
We both in books find frequent pleasure.
9734 CLEMENT MAROT
What more is there ? Just this to sing
I'll dare: in almost everything
Alike we are, save hearts; — for thine
Is much more hard, alas! than mine.
Beseech thee now this rock demolish,
Yet not thy sweeter parts abolish.
THE DUCHESS D'ALENQON
SUCH lofty worth has she, my great mistress,
That her fair body's upright, pure, and fine;
Her steadfast heart, when Fortune's star doth shine,
Is ne'er too light, nor elsetimes in distress.
Her spirit rare than angels is no less,
The subtlest sure that e'er the heavens bred.
O marvel great! Now can it clear be seen
That I the slave am of a wonder dread. —
Wonder, I say, for sooth she has, I ween,
A woman's form, man's heart, and angel's head.
M
TO THE QUEEN OF NAVARRE
OURN for the dead, let who will for them mourn;-
But while I live, my heart is most forlorn
For those whose night of sorrow sees no dawn
On this earth.
O Flower of France whom at the first I served,
Those thou hast freed from pain that them unnerved
Have given pain to thee, ah! undeserved,
I'll attest.
Of ingrates thou hast sadly made full test;
But since I left thee (bound by stern behest), —
Not leaving thee, — full humbly I've addrest
A princess
Who has a heart that does not sorrow less
Than thine. Ah God! shall I ne'er know mistress,
Before I die, whose eye on sad distress
Is not bent?
Is not my Muse as fit and apt to invent
A song of peace that would bring full content
As chant the bitterness of this torment
Exceeding ?
CLEMENT MAROT 9735
Ah! listen, Margaret, to the suffering
That in the heart of Renee plants its sting;
Then, sister-like, than hope more comforting,
Console her. .
FROM A LETTER TO THE KING; AFTER BEING ROBBED
I HAD of late a Gascon serving-man:
A monstrous liar, glutton, drunkard, both,
A trickster, thief, and every word an oath, —
The rope almost around his neck, you see, —
But otherwise the best of fellows he.
This very estimable youngster knew
Of certain money given me by you:
A mighty swelling in my purse he spied;
Rose earlier than usual, and hied
To take it deftly, giving no alarm,
And tucked it snugly underneath his arm, — :
Money and all, of course, — and it is plain
'Twas not to give it back to me again,
For never have I seen it, to this day.
But still the rascal would not run away
For such a trifling bagatelle as that,
So also took cloak, trousers, cape, and hat,—
In short, of all my clothes the very best, —
And then himself so finely in them dressed
That to behold him, e'en by light of day,
It was his master surely, you would say.
He left my chamber finally, and flew
Straight to the stable, where were horses two
Left me the worst, and mounted on the best,
His charger spurred, and bolted; for the rest,
You may be sure that nothing he omitted,
Save bidding me good-by, before he quitted.
So — ticklish round the throat, to say the truth,
But looking like St. George — this hopeful youth
Rode off, and left his master sleeping sound,
Who waking, not a blessed penny found.
This master was myself, — the very one, —
And quite dumbfounded to be thus undone;
To find myself without a decent suit,
And vexed enough to lose my horse, to boot.
973 6 CLEMENT MAROT
But for the money you had given me,
The losing it ought no surprise to be;
For, as your gracious Highness understands,
Your money, Sire, is ever changing hands.
FROM A RHYMED LETTER TO THE KING
AT THE TIME OF HIS EXILE AT FERRARA — 1535
I THINK it may be that your Majesty, Sovereign King, may be-
lieve that my absence is occasioned by my feeling the prick
of some ill deed; but it is not so, for I do not feel myself to
be of the number of the guilty: but I know of many corruptible
judges in Paris, who, for pecuniary gain, or for friends, or for
their own ends, or in tender grace and charity to some fair
humble petitioner, will save the foul and guilty life of the most
wicked criminal in the world; while on the other hand, for lack
of bribing or protection, or from rancor, they are to the inno-
cent so inhuman that I am loth to fall into their hands.
They are much my enemies because of their hell, which I
have set in a writing, wherein some few of their wicked wiles I
lay bare. They wish great harm to. me for a small work. . . .
As much as they, and with no good cause, wishes ill to me
the ignorant Sorbonne. Very ignorant she shows herself in being
the enemy of the noble trilingual academy [College de France]
your Majesty has created. It is clearly manifest that within her
precincts, against your Majesty's will is prohibited all teaching
of Hebrew or Greek or Latin, she declaring it heretical. O poor
creatures, all denuded of learning, you make true the familiar
proverb, (< Knowledge has no such haters as the ignorant. *..•',
They have given me the name of Lutheran. I answer them
that it is not so. Luther for me has not descended from
heaven. Luther for my sins has not hung upon the cross; and
I am quite sure that in his name I have not been baptized: I
have been baptized in that Name at whose naming the Eternal
Father gives that which is asked for, the sole Name in and by
which this wicked world can find salvation. . . .
O Lord God . . . grant that whilst I live, my pen may
be employed in thy honor; and if this my body be predestined
by thee one day to be destroyed by fire, grant that it be for no
light cause, but for thee and for thy Word. And I pray thee,
Father, that the torture may not be so intense that my soul may
be sunk in forgetfulness of thee in whom is all my trust.
9737
FREDERICK MARRYAT
(1792-1848)
IHOUGH it is nearly half a century since Captain Frederick
Marryat passed away, he still lives in his sea stories. The
circulating-library copies are dog's-eared with constant use,
and an occasional new edition testifies to the favor of a younger gen-
eration. His most ardent admirers, however, do not rank him among
the great novelists. He had no theories of fiction; he had little cult-
ure, and of philosophy or psychology he did not dream. But there
is life, energy, directness in his tales, coupled with lively narrative
and spontaneous humor which keep them
fresh and interesting. He is a born story-
teller; and the talent of the story-teller
commands attention and enchains an audi-
ence, whatever the defects of manner.
Marryat was descended from a Huguenot
family that fled from France at the end of
the sixteenth century and settled in Eng-
land. On his mother's side he was of a
German stock, transplanted to Boston, and
there etherealized, perhaps, by east winds
and Yankee cultivation. He boasted indeed
of the blood of four different peoples. He
was the second son of Joseph Marryat of
Wimbledon, Member of Parliament for Sand-
wich, and was born in London. Educated at private schools, he
was noted from his early boyhood for his boisterous and refractory
though not unamiable temper, which often involved him in passion-
ate quarrels with his teachers, and resulted in his running away..
After he had run away repeatedly, and always with the intention of
going to sea, his father, yielding to his determined bent, got him
at the age of fourteen on board the frigate Imperieuse as midship-
man. His ship was engaged as part of the squadron which supported
the Catalonians against the French. His service there was active
and brilliant: he took part in some fifty engagements, in one of
which he was severely wounded and left for dead. His pugnacity
saved him; for the contemptuous kick of a fellow midshipman, whom
he hated, roused a fury in him that overcame his speechless and
FREDERICK MARRYAT
FREDERICK MARRYAT
apparently lifeless condition. The work of his division was cutting
out privateers, storming batteries, and destroying marine signal tele-
graph stations. Long afterwards he portrayed the daring and judg-
ment of his commander, Lord Cochrane, in the characters of Captain
Savage in ( Peter Simple,* and Captain M in ( The King's Own.*
Marryat was a man of a personal daring as reckless as that
of his favorite heroes. Again and again he risked his life to save
drowning men or to protect his superiors. More than once he re-
ceived the medal of the Humane Society, and King Louis Philippe
decorated him with the cross of the Legion of Honor. A life of
great exposure, constant danger, and severe exertion ruined his health ;
and before he was forty he resolved to leave the sea and devote
himself to story-writing. He took many of his characters and inci-
dents from real life, copying them closely in the main, but exagger-
ating and coloring them to meet the purposes of fiction. While not
without imagination, he depended so greatly on his observation and
experience that many of his novels may be said to be almost auto-
biographic. To this fact they owe much of their naturalness, vivid-
ness, and verisimilitude. His ample fund of rough humor and his
extraordinary fondness for spinning yarns — a characteristic which
belongs to the nautical temperament — contributed their best quali-
ties to his books; giving them not only the hue and quality, but
the very sound and odor of the sea. One of his old shipmates, who
lived hale and hearty to be an octogenarian, used to say that to read
< Midshipman Easy * or ( Jacob Faithful * was exactly like spending
half a day in the Captain's company in his best mood. There is
very little art in his thirty-five or forty volumes. They are the nar-
ratives of a bluff, bold, thorough-going, somewhat coarse sailor, who
has a strong dramatic sense and an intense relish for fun. Hardly
any of his novels have what deserves to be called a plot, — the ( King's
Own* and one or two others, perhaps, being exceptions, — nor are
they generally finished, or even carefully studied. Frequently they
read like half-considered, uncorrected manuscripts that have been dic-
tated. The principal events are graphically recorded, the minor cir-
cumstances and their connections loosely woven. But with all their
defects, the stories seem to the ordinary reader more as if they
had actually happened than as if they -had been invented. They are
entirely realistic, — the characters being perfectly vitali-zed, acting,
breathing human beings.
Among Marryat's best known novels, besides those already men-
tioned, are < Adventures of a Naval Officer; or, Frank Mildmay,* his
first work, published at twenty-eight; < Newton Forster,* <The Pacha of
Many Tales,* <The Pirate and the Three Cutters,* <Japhet in Search
of a Father,* < Peter Simple,* <Percival Keene,* < Snarley- Yow, * <The
FREDERICK MARRYAT
9739
Phantom Ship,* < Poor Jack,* and <The Private ersman One Hundred
Years Ago,' all of which had a large sale. He served in the Medi-
terranean, in the East and West Indies, and off the coast of North
America; participating during the war of 1812 in a gunboat fight on
Lake Pontchartrain, just before the battle of New Orleans. In the
same year he was made lieutenant, and after a few months com-
mander. At twenty-seven he married a daughter of Sir Stephen
Shairp, and became the father of eleven children. In 1837 he visited
this country; and two years later published (A Diary in America, > in
which he ridiculed the republic, — as Mrs. Trollope had done in her
( Domestic Manners, > as Dickens is still believed (by those who have
not read the book) to have done not long after in his American
Notes, > and as he did most viciously in < Martin Chuzzlewit > to revenge
himself for the uproar over the American Notes. > Americans of the
present generation are so much less sensitive than their predecessors,
however, that they are perhaps more inclined to ask whether these
adverse criticisms were not well founded than to resent their severity.
After this journey he produced divers miscellaneous books; among
which ( Masterman Ready > and < The Settlers in Canada > delighted
the boys of two generations, and are still popular. ( Masterman
Ready > was primarily written because his children wished him to
write a sequel to the < Swiss Family Robinson, > which was structur-
ally not feasible; but was also designed to ridicule that priggish
story, and was meant as a protest of naturalness against artificiality.
Fortunate indeed is the owner of an early illustrated edition of ( Mas-
terman, > portraying that excellent father of a family, Mr. Seagrave,
walking about his fortuitous island, turning over turtles, building
stockades, or gathering cocoanuts, attired in a swallow-tailed cfoat,
voluminous cravat, trousers severely strapped down under high-heeled
boots, and a tall silk hat which he seemed never to remove.
In his later life Marryat retired to Norfolk, and undertook amateur
farming, with the usual result of heavy losses. He died in 1848 at
Langham; comparatively poor, through carelessness, mismanagement,
and extravagance, although for many years he had earned a large
income. In England < Peter Simple > and <Mr. Midshipman Easy>
take rank with Smollett's < Peregrine Pickle y and ( Roderick Random. J
Not a few of his characters are as individual and as often cited as
^om Bowling> and <Jack Hatchway.* And if he is somewhat out of
fashion in manner, it is still probable that his naturalness, his racy
dialogue, and his comical incidents, will make him a welcome com-
panion for years to come.
FREDERICK MARRYAT
PERILS OF THE SEA
From < Peter Simple >
WE CONTINUED our cruise along the coast until we had run
down into the Bay of Arcason, where we captured two or
three vessels and obliged many more to run on shore.
And here we had an instance showing how very important it is
that a captain of a man-of-war should be a good sailor, and have
his ship in such discipline as to be strictly obeyed by his ship's
company. I heard the officers unanimously assert, after the dan-
ger was over, that nothing but the presence of mind which was
shown by Captain Savage could have saved the ship and her
crew. We had chased a convoy of vessels to the bottom of the
bay: the wind was very fresh when we hauled off, after running
them on shore; and the surf on the beach even at that time was
so great, that they were certain to go to pieces before they could
be got afloat again. We were obliged to double-reef the topsails
as soon as we hauled to the wind, and ,the weather looked very
threatening. In an hour, afterwards the whole sky was covered
with one black cloud, which sank so low as nearly to touch our
mast-heads; and a tremendous sea, which appeared to have risen
up almost by magic, rolled in upon us, setting the vessel on a
dead lee shore. As the night closed in, it blew a dreadful gale,
and the ship was nearly buried with the press of canvas which
she' was obliged to carry: for had we sea-room, we should have
been lying-to under storm staysails; but we were forced to carry
on at all risks, that we might claw off shore. The sea broke
over us as we lay in the trough, deluging us with water from
the forecastle aft to the binnacles; and very often, as the ship
descended with a plunge, it was with such force that I really
thought she would divide in half with the violence of the shock.
Double breechings were rove on the guns, and they were further
secured with tackles; and strong cleats nailed behind the trun-
nions; for we heeled over so much when we lurched, that the
guns were wholly supported by the breechings and tackles, and
had one of them broken loose it must have burst right through
the lee side of the ship, and she must have foundered. The cap-
tain, first lieutenant, and most of the officers remained on deck
during the whole of the night: and really, what with the howling
of the wind, the violence of the rain, the washing of the water
FREDERICK MARRYAT
9741
about the decks, the working of the chain pumps, and the creak-
ing and groaning of the timbers, I thought that we must inevi-
tably have been lost ; and I said my prayers at least a dozen times
during the night, for I felt it impossible to go to bed. I had
often wished, out of curiosity, that I might be in a gale of wind;
but I little thought it was to have been a scene of this descrip-
tion, or anything half so dreadful. What made it more appalling
was, that we were on a lee shore; and the consultations of the
captain and officers, and the eagerness with which they looked
out for daylight, told us that we had other dangers to encounter
besides the storm. At last the morning broke, and the lookout
man upon the gangway called out, <( Land on the lee beam ! w I
perceived the master dash his feet against the hammock rails as
if with vexation, and walk away without saying a word, and look-
ing very grave'.
<(Up there, Mr. Wilson, » said the captain to the second lieu-
tenant, (< and see how far the land trends forward, and whether
you can distinguish the point." The second lieutenant went up
the main rigging, and pointed with his hand to about two points
before the beam.
(< Do you see two hillocks inland ? w
<(Yes, sir," replied the second lieutenant.
"Then it is so," observed the captain to the master; ((and if
we weather it we shall have more sea-room. Keep her full, and
let her go through the water : do you hear, quartermaster ? }>
«Ay, ay, sir.*
(<Thus, and no nearer, my man. Ease her with a spoke or
two when she sends; but be careful, or she'll take the wheel out
of your hands."
It really was a very awful sight. When the ship was in the
trough of the sea, you could distinguish nothing but a waste of
tumultuous water; but when she was borne up on the summit of
the enormous waves, you then looked down, as it were, upon a
low, sandy coast, close to you., and covered with foam and break-
ers. <( She behaves nobly, " observed the captain, stepping aft to
the binnacle and looking at the compass: (<if the wind does not
baffle us, we shall weather." The captain had scarcely time to
make the observation when the sails shivered and flapped like thun-
der. <( Up with the helm : what are you about, quartermaster ? "
<( The wind has headed us, sir, " replied the quartermaster
coolly.
9742 FREDERICK MARRYAT
The captain and master remained at the binnacle watching the
compass; and when the sails were again full, she had broken off
two points, and the point of land was only a little on the lee bow.
<(We must wear her round, Mr. Falcon. Hands, wear ship —
ready, oh, ready. }>
(< She has come up again," cried the master, who was at the
binnacle.
(< Hold fast there a minute. How's her head now ? })
<(N. N. E., as she was before she broke off, sir. *
<( Pipe belay, J> said the captain. <( Falcon, J> continued he, (< if
she breaks off again we may have no room to wear; indeed
there is so little room now that I must run the risk. Which
cable was ranged last night — the best bower ? M
« Yes, sir. »
<(Jump down, then, and see it double-bitted and stoppered at
thirty fathoms. See it well done — our lives may depend upon
it.»
The ship continued to hold her course good; and we were
within half a mile of the point, and fully expected to weather it,
when again the wet and heavy sails napped in the wind, and the
ship broke off two points as before. The officers and seamen
were aghast, for the ship's head was right on to the breakers.
<(Luff now, all you can, quartermaster, }> cried the captain.
(( Send the men aft directly. — My lads, there is no room for
words — I am going to club '-haul the ship, for there is no time to
wear. The only chance you have of safety is to be cool, watch
my eye, and execute my orders with precision. Away to your
stations for tacking ship. Hands by the best bower anchor. Mr.
Wilson, attend below with the carpenter and his mates ready to
cut away the cable at the moment that I give the order. Silence,
there, fore and aft. Quartermaster, keep her full again for stays.
Mind you, ease the helm down when I tell you.® About a min-
ute passed before the captain gave any further orders. The ship
had closed-to within a quarter of a mile of the beach, and the
waves curled and topped around us, bearing us down upon the
shore, which presented one continued surface of foam, extending
to within half a cable's length of our position, at which distance
the enormous waves culminated and fell with the report of
thunder. The captain waved his hand in silence to the quarter-
master at the wheel, and the helm was put down. The ship
turned slowly to the wind, pitching and chopping as the sails
FREDERICK MARRYAT
were spilling. When she had lost her way, the captain gave the
order, (<Let go the anchor. We will haul all at once, Mr. Fal-
con,w said the captain. Not a word was spoken; the men went
to the fore-brace, which had not been manned; most of them
knew, although I did not, that if the ship's head did not go
round the other way, we should be on shore and among the
breakers in half a minute. I thought at the time that the cap-
tain had sa,d that he would haul all the yards at once: there
appeared to be doubt or dissent on the countenance of Mr. Fal-
con, and I was afterwards told fhat he had not agreed with the
captain ; but he was too good an officer (and knew that there was
no time for discussion) to make any remark: and the event proved
that the captain was right. At last the ship was head to wind,
and the captain gave the signal. The yards flew round with such
a creaking noise that I thought the masts had gone over the
side; and the next moment the wind had caught the sails, and
the ship, which for a moment or two had been on an even
keel, careened over to her gunnel with its force. The captain,
who stood upon the weather hammock-rails, holding by the main-
rigging, ordered the helm amidships, looked full at the sails and
then at the cable, which grew broad upon the weather bow and
held the ship from nearing the shore. At last he cried, (<Cut
away the cable ! }) A few strokes of the axes were heard, and
then the cable flew out of the hawse-hole in a blaze of fire, from
the violence of the friction, and disappeared under a huge wave
which struck us on the chest-tree and deluged us with water
fore and aft. But we were now on the other tack, and the ship
regained her way, and we had evidently increased our distance
from the land.
<c My lads, w said the captain to the ship's company, (< you
have behaved well, and I thank you; but I must tell you hon-
estly that we have more difficulties to get through. We have
to weather a point of the bay on this tack. Mr. Falcon, splice
the mainbrace and call the watch. How's her head, quarter-
master? J>
«S. W. by S. Southerly, sir.»
(< Very well, let her go through the water; }) and the captain,
beckoning to the n. aster to follow him, went down into the cabin.
As our immediate danger was over, I went down into the berth
to see if I could get anything for breakfast, where I found
O'Brien and two or three more.
FREDERICK MARRYAT
<(By the powers, it was as nate a thing as ever I saw done,®
observed O'Brien: (<the slightest mistake as to time or manage-
ment, and at this moment the flatfish would have been dubbing
at our ugly carcasses. Peter, you're not fond of flatfish, are you,
my boy ? We may thank heaven and the captain, I can tell
you that, my lads; but now where's the chart, Robinson? Hand
me down the parallel rules and compasses, Peter; they are in
the corner of the shelf. Here we are now, a devilish sight too
near this infernal point. Who knows how her head is ? "
<(I do, O'Brien: I heard the quartermaster tell the captain
S. W. by S. Southerly. "
<( Let me see," continued O'Brien, (< variation 2\ — leeway —
rather too large an allowance of that, I'm afraid: but however,
we'll give her 2-J- points; the Diomede would blush to make any
more, under any circumstances. Here — the compass — now we'll
see;" and O'Brien advanced the parallel rule from the compass
to the spot where the ship was placed on the chart. <( Bother !
you see it's as much as she'll do to weather the other point now,
on this tack, and that's what the captain meant when he told us
we had more difficulty. I could have taken my Bible oath that
we were clear of everything, if the wind held."
(<See what the distance is, O'Brien," said Robinson. It was
measured, and proved to be thirteen miles. "Only thirteen miles;
and if we do weather, we shall do very well, for the bay is deep
beyond. It's a rocky point, you see, just by way of variety-
Well, my lads, I've a piece of comfort for you, anyhow. It's not
long that you'll be kept in suspense; for by one o'clock this day,
you'll either be congratulating each other upon your good luck
or you'll be past praying for. Come, put up the chart, for I hate
to look at melancholy prospects; and steward, see what you can
find in the way of comfort." Some bread and cheese, with the
remains of yesterday's boiled pork, were put on the table, with a
bottle of rum, procured at the time they <( spliced the mainbrace " ;
but we were all too anxious to eat much, and one by one returned
on deck, to see how the weather was, and if the wind at all
favored us. On deck the superior officers were in conversation
with the captain, who had expressed the same fear that O'Brien
had in our berth. The men, who knew what they had to expect, —
for this sort of intelligence is soon communicated through a
ship, — were assembled in knots, looking very grave, but at the
same time not wanting in confidence. They knew that they could
FREDERICK MARRYAT
9745
trust to the captain, as far as skill or courage could avail them,
and sailors are too sanguine to despair, even at the last moment.
As for myself, I felt such admiration for the captain, after what
I had witnessed that morning, that whenever the idea came over
me that in all probability I should be lost in a few hours, I could
not help acknowledging how much more serious it was that such
a man should be lost to his country. I do not intend to say that
it consoled me; but it certainly made me still more regret the
chances with which we were threatened.
Before twelve o'clock the rocky point which we so much
dreaded was in sight, broad on the lee bow; and if the low sandy
coast appeared terrible, how much more did this, even at a dis-
tance! the black masses of rock covered with foam, which each
minute dashed up in the air higher than our lower mast-heads.
The captain eyed it for some minutes in silence, as if in calcula-
tion.
<( Mr. Falcon, )} said he at last, <(we must put the mainsail on
her.»
<( She never can bear it, sir. )}
(< She must bear it, w was the reply. <( Send the men aft to the
mainsheet. See that careful men attend the buntlines."
The mainsail was set; and the effect of it upon the ship was
tremendous. She careened over so that her lee channels were
under the water; and when pressed by a sea, the lee side of the
quarter-deck and gangway were afloat. She now reminded me
of a goaded and fiery horse, mad with the stimulus applied;
not rising as before, but forcing herself through whole seas, and
dividing the waves, which poured in one continual torrent from
the forecastle down upon the decks below. Four men were
secured to the wheel; the sailors were obliged to cling, to pre-
vent being washed away; the ropes were thrown in confusion to
leeward; Ihe shot rolled out of the lockers, and every eye was
fixed aloft, watching the masts, which were expected every mo-
ment to go over the side. A heavy sea struck us on the broad-
side, and it was some moments before the ship appeared to
recover herself; she reeled, trembled, and stopped her way, as if
it had stupefied her. The first lieutenant looked at the captain,
as if to say, « This will not do." <( It is our only chance, »
answered the captain to the appeal. That the ship went faster
through the water and held a better wind, was certain; but
just before we arrived at the point, the gale increased in force.
974<5
FREDERICK MARRYAT
<( If anything starts, we are lost, sir," observed the first lieutenant
again.
<(I am perfectly aware of it," replied the captain in a calm
tone; <(but as I said before, and you must now be aware, it is
our only chance. The consequence of any carelessness or neglect
in the fitting and securing of the rigging will be felt now; and
this danger, if we escape it, ought to remind us how much we
have to answer for if we neglect our duty. The lives of a whole
ship's company may be sacrificed by the neglect or incompetence
of an officer when in harbor. I will pay you the compliment,
Falcon, to say that I feel convinced that the masts of the ship
are as secure as knowledge and attention can make them."
The first lieutenant thanked the captain for his good opinion,
and hoped it would not be the last compliment which he paid
him.
<(I hope not too; but a few minutes will decide the point."
The ship was now within two cables' lengths of the rocky
point; some few of the men I observed to clasp their hands, but
most of them were silently taking off their jackets and kicking
off their shoes, that they might not lose a chance of escape pro-
vided the ship struck.
« 'Twill be touch and go indeed, Falcon," observed the captain
(for I had clung to the belaying pins, close to them, for the last
half -hour that the mainsail had been set). <( Come aft; you and
I must take the helm. We shall want nerve there, and only
there, now."
The captain and first lieutenant went aft and took the fore-
spokes of the wheel; and O'Brien, at a sign made by the cap-
tain, laid hold of the spokes behind them. An old quartermaster
kept his station at the fourth. The roaring of the seas on the
rocks, with the howling of the winds, was dreadful; but the sight
was more dreadful than the noise. For a few moments I shut
my eyes, but anxiety forced me to open them again. As near
as I could judge, we were not twenty yards from the rocks at
the time that the ship passed abreast of them. We were in the
midst of the foam, which boiled around us; and as the ship was
driven nearer to them, and careened with the wave, I thought
that our main yard-arm would have touched the rock; and at
this moment a gust of wind came on which laid the ship on her
beam-ends and checked her progress through the water, while
the accumulated noise was deafening. A few moments more the
FREDERICK MARRYAT
9747
ship dragged on; another wave dashed over her and spent itself
upon the rocks, while the spray was dashed back from them and
returned upon the decks. The main rock was within ten yards
of her counter, when another gust of wind laid us on our beam-
ends; the foresail and mainsail split and were blown clean out
of the bolt-ropes — the ship righted, trembling fore and aft. I
looked astern; the rocks were to windward on our quarter, and
we were safe. I thought at the time that the ship, relieved of
her courses, and again lifting over the waves, was not a bad
similitude of the relief felt by us all at that moment; and like
her we trembled as we panted with the sudden reaction, and felt
the removal of the intense anxiety which oppressed our breasts.
The captain resigned the helm, and walked aft to look at the
point, which was now broad on the weather quarter. In a min-
ute or two he desired Mr. Falcon to get new sails up and bend
them, and then went below to his cabin. I am sure it was to
thank God for our deliverance; I did most fervently, not only
then, but when I went to my hammock at night. We were now
comparatively safe — in a few hours completely so, for, strange
to say, immediately after we had weathered the rocks the gale
abated; and before morning we had a reef out of the topsails.
MRS. EASY HAS HER OWN WAY
From <Mr. Midshipman Easy>
IT WAS the fourth day after Mrs. Easy's confinement that Mr.
Easy, who was sitting by her bedside in an easy-chair, com-
menced as follows: <( I have been thinking, my dear Mrs.
Easy, about the name I shall give this chile1.. v
<( Name, Mr. Easy ? why, what name should you give it but
your own ? w
<(Not so, my dear," replied Mr. Easy: (<they call all names
proper names, but I think that mine is not. It is the very worst
name in the calendar. w
« Why, what's the matter with it, Mr. Easy ? »
<(The matter affects me as well as the boy. Nicodemus is a
long name to write at full length, and Nick is vulgar. Besides,
as there will be two Nicks, they will naturally call my boy Young
Nick, and of course I shall be styled Old Nick, which will be
diabolical. w
9748
FREDERICK MARRYAT
<(Well, Mr. Easy, at all events then let me choose the name.*
<c That you shall, my dear ; and it was with this view that I
have mentioned the subject so early. "
«I think, Mr. Easy, I will call the boy after my poor father:
his name shall be Robert."
"Very well, my dear: if you wish it, it shall be Robert. You
shall have your own way. But I think, my dear, upon a little
consideration, you will acknowledge that there is a decided
objection. "
(<An objection, Mr. Easy ? "
(< Yes, my dear : Robert may be very well, but you must
reflect upon the consequences; he is certain to be called Bob."
<( Well, my dear, and suppose they do call him Bob ? "
<( I cannot bear even the supposition, my dear. You forget
the county in which you are residing, the downs covered with
sheep. "
<(Why, Mr. Easy, what can sheep have to do with a Christian
name ? "
"There it is: women never look to consequences. My dear,
they have a great deal to do with the name of Bob. I will ap-
peal to any farmer in the country if ninety-nine shepherds' dogs
out of one hundred are not called Bob. Now observe: your child
is out of doors somewhere in the fields or plantations; you
want and you call him. Instead of your child, what do you find ?
Why, a dozen curs, at least, who come running up to you,
all answering to the name of Bob, and wagging their stumps
of tails. You see, Mrs. Easy, it is a dilemma not to be got
over. You level your only son to the brute creation by giving
him a Christian name which, from its peculiar brevity, has been
monopolized by all the dogs in the county. Any other name
you please, my dear; but in this one instance you must allow me
to lay my positive veto."
"Well, then, let me see — but I'll think of it, Mr. Easy: my
head aches very much just now."
"I will think for you, my dear. What do you say to John?"
<(Oh no, Mr. Easy, — such a common name!"
<(A proof of its popularity, my dear. It is Scriptural — we
have the Apostle and the Baptist, we have a dozen popes who
were all Johns. It Is royal — we have plenty of kings who
were Johns — and moreover, it is short, and sounds honest and
manly."
FREDERICK MARRYAT
(<Yes, very true, my dear; but they will call him Jack."
"Well, we have had several celebrated characters who were
Jacks. There was — let me see — Jack the Giant-Killer, and Jack
of the Bean-Stalk — and Jack — Jack— »
"Jack Sprat. »
"And Jack Cade, Mrs. Easy, the great rebel — and Three-
fingered Jack, Mrs. Easy, the celebrated negro — and above all,
Jack Falstaff, ma'am, Jack Falstaff — honest Jack Falstaff — witty
Jack Falstaff — »
" I thought, Mr. Easy, that I was to be permitted to choose
the name."
"Well, so you shall, my dear; I give it up to you. Do just
as you please; but depend upon it that John is the right name.
Is it not, now, my dear ? "
"It's the way you always treat me, Mr. Easy: you say that
you give it up, and that I shall have my own way, but I never
do have it. I am sure that the child will be christened John."
" Nay, my dear, it shall be just what you please. Now I
recollect it, there were several Greek emperors who were Johns;
but decide for yourself, my dear."
" No, no, " replied Mrs. Easy, who was ill, and unable to con-
tend any longer, " I give it up, Mr. Easy. I know how it will
be, as it always is: you give me my own way as people give
pieces of gold to children; it's their own money, but they must
not spend it. Pray call him John.^
" There, my dear, did not I tell you you would be of my
opinion upon reflection ? I knew you would. I have given you
your own way, and you tell me to call him John; so now we're
both of the same mind, and that point is settled."
" I should like to go to sleep, Mr. Easy : I feel far from
well."
"You shall always do just as you like, my dear," replied
the husband, " and have your own way in everything. It is the
greatest pleasure I have when I yield to your wishes. I will
walk in the garden. Good-by, my dear."
Mrs. Easy made no reply, and the philosopher quitted the
room. As may easily be imagined, on the following day the boy
was christened John.
9750
MARTIAL
(MARCUS VALERIUS MARTIALIS)
(5o?-io2? A. D.)
BY CASKIE HARRISON
PARTIAL (Marcus Valerius Martialis), the world's epigrammatist,
was, like Seneca and Quintilian, a Spanish Latin. Born at
Bilbilis about A. D. 40, he probably came to Rome in 63 ;
but we first individualize him about 79. He lived in Rome for nearly
thirty-five years, publishing epigrams, book after book and edition
after edition, doing hack-work in his own line for those who had the
money to buy but not the wit to produce, and plagiarized by those
who lacked both the wit and the money; reading his last good thing
to his own circle, from which he could
not always exclude poachers on his pre-
serves, and lending a courteous or a politic
patience to the long-winded recitations of
new aspirants; patronized in various more
or less substantial ways by the Emperor
and sundry men of wealth, influence, and
position, on whom he pulled all the strings
of fulsome flattery and importunate appeal;
adjusting himself to the privileges and ex-
pectancies of Rome's miscellaneous <( upper
ten" in private and public resorts: solacing
his better nature with the contact and es-
teem of the best authors of the day. Bored
with the <( fuss and feathers w of town life,
and yearning for the lost or imagined happiness of his native place,
he would from time to time fly to his Nomentane cottage or make
trips into the provinces, only to be disenchanted by rustic monotony
and depressed by the lack of urban occupations and diversions. His
works, and his life as there sketched, expose the times and their
representative men at their best and at their worst. This delineation
gives to his writings an importance even greater than that due to
his general pre-eminence as the one poet of his age, or to the special
supremacy of his epigrams as such. His rating as a poet has indeed
been questioned, and his restriction of the epigram deplored; but no
MARTIAL
MARTIAt,
one can question his portraiture of the Roman Empire at the turn of
its troubled tide.
Returning to Spain early in Trajan's reign, he died there about
102; and his death is noted with sincere feeling by the younger
Pliny, whose recognition must to a certain degree offset our repug-
nance to some of Martial's acknowledged characteristics. Martial was
a man of many personal attractions: he was essentially sympathetic
and true, loving nature and children; his manners were genial, and
his education was finished; his acute observation was matched by his
versatile wit; in an age of artifice, his style was as natural as his
disposition was fair and generous. All these qualities are detected
in his works, although his time demanded the general repression or
the prudent display of such qualities by one whose livelihood must
depend on patronage, — an inevitable professionalism that perhaps
fully explains, not only his obsequiousness, but also his obscenity.
Martial was a predestined gentleman and scholar, forced by his pro-
fession into a trimmer and a dependent: a man of stronger character
might have refused to .live such a life even at the cost of his vocation
and its aptitudes; but Martial was a man of his own world.
Whether Martial was married, and how many times, it is hard to
determine: he is his only witness, and his testimony is too indirect
to be unquestionable; at any rate, he seems to have had no children.
His pecuniary condition is equally doubtful: he credits himself with
possessions adequate to comfort only as a basis for protestations
of discomfort; but we know how time and circumstances alter one's
standards of worldly contentment. Even when Martial speaks in the
first person, we cannot be sure it is not the <( professional, w instead of
the individual, first person, — the vicarious and anonymous first per-
son of the myriad public whose hints he worked up into effective
mottoes, valentines, and lampoons, and for whose holiday gifts he
devised appropriate companion pieces of verse.
Martial's poems — fifteen books, containing about sixteen hundred
numbers in several measures — are epigrams of different kinds. The
( Liber Spectaculorum > (The Show Book) merely depicts the marvels
of the <( greatest shows on earth, » while eulogizing the generosity of
the emperors who provided them. The <Xenia) (« friendly gifts")
and 'Apophoreta* ((< things to take away with you") are couplets to
label or convoy presents, whose enumeration includes an inventory
of Flavian dietetics, costume, furniture, and bric-a-brac. The other
twelve books are epigrams of the standard type; a kind illustrated
indeed by the Greeks, but developed and fixed by the Romans from
Catullus down, Martial being the perpetual exemplar of its possibilities.
Besides some lapses of taste, whereby the fatal facility of over-
smartness sometimes leads to contaminating tender or lofty sentiments
9752 MARTIAL
by untimely pleasantry, Martial is justly condemned by the modern
world for the two blemishes which have been already specified. How
far he really felt his obsequiousness and his obscenity to be compro-
mises of his dignity, and how far his life was cleaner than his page,
we cannot tell: he was a client of Domitian's day, but he had enjoyed
the countenance of Pliny. In justice to Martial's memory, it must be
said that only about one-fifth of his epigrams are really offensive.
The reign of Domitian was a reaction within a reaction, char-
acterized by the power and the impotence of wealth and its cheap
imitations. It was an age of fads and nostrums: sincere, as the
galvanizing of dead philosophies; affected, as the vicarious intellect-
ualism or the vicarious athleticism of hired thinkers and hired glad-
iators. It was an age of forgotten fundamentals, with no enthusiasm
except for practical advantage, with public spirit aped only in mutual
admiration. Its art and literature had no creativeness and no respon-
sibility; form and copy being ideals, and point demanding the highest
season for its pungency, while the stage and the arena were scenes
of filth or brutality. Its religion was either, agnostic paganism or
various novel sentimentalities. Its social functions were chiefly het-
erogeneous gatherings of a flotsam and jetsam assemblage of parve-
nus, where acquaintance was accidental and multitudinous isolation
was the rule. The incongruities of the day afforded matchless targets
for our poet's wit, many of them unfortunately not suited to modern
light. Yet other ages of the world have indisputably exhibited in
their own forms one or another of the features familiarized to us
by Martial.
Martial divides with Juvenal the right to represent this period;
but the division is not equal. The serious purpose of the satirist,
even more than the purely impersonal attitude of the historian, leads
him to emphasize unduly circumstances of perhaps great momentary
importance, but of no ultimate or typical pertinence. On the other
hand, the satirist and the historian are apt to neglect or overlook
many aspects of contemporary life because these seem insignificant
as regards any particular aim or tendency; whereas trifles are often
the best exhibits of the actual offhand life, as distinguished from the
professed principles and practice of the time. Hence Martial's epi-
grams have been well called by Merivale "the quintessence of the
Flavian epoch. >} The epigrammatist has no mission to fulfill; and the
form as well as the volume of his works enables him to touch every
aspect of life into the boldest relief. Especially interesting is the
modernness of these touches; and it would startle a stranger to see
how slight an adaptation or perversion of an epigram or a line or a
word produces anticipatory echoes of present-day experiences, in their
extremest or most peculiar features.
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the nationality
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.as, ech<
curious antetypes
ial I-
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character Hires of
ern eounten;
preference has b n tu
qualities, as being the specia1
humorous after the dry
. omedy and epigram
ates the
ws all the colors
f France, of Ireland,
•ams; and even
legro idiosyncra-
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SLAVONIC WRITING OF Xlth CENTURY
This is said to have been copied from a Manuscript in Cyrillian charac-
ters in the Bibliotheque Royale of Paris, containing some
historical tracts and saints' lives,
verse being the best complete
sions of individual epigr
monographs in the
from Martial > give j ;joet in
our tongue.
JT*Jv^
TH;. UT
LAST night as
: ter havi
recall that I as
And yo: ^eese!
maudli;. iow,
1 thought of the mor
se mind's not a blank the next day!
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MARTIAL
9753
Generally speaking, the Romans were humorous after the dry
kind, while the Greeks were witty; but Greek comedy and epigram
are as humorous as those of any nation, and Martial vindicates the
Roman capacity for triumphant wit — a wit that shows all the colors
of all the nationalities. The wit of America, of France, of Ireland,
cross and blend with each other in Martial's epigrams; and even trav-
esties like the American mockery of Hebrew or negro idiosyncra-
sies find illustration. Puns, parodies, paradoxes, refrains, antitheses,
alliterations, echoes and surprises of all sorts are there, with some
curious antetypes of modern slang, of present provincial or proverb-
ial usages, and even of some points of recent comic songs. In the
versions here appended, literalness has been sacrificed to spirit; the
characteristic features of the original have been preserved in a mod-
ern countenance and expression. In the small space at command,
preference has been given to our poet's wit rather than his other
qualities, as being the special characteristic of himself and of the
epigram; though the omission of other specimens is a sacrifice of his
dues.
The only notable edition of Martial is Friedlander's with Ger-
man notes, the school manuals being inadequate and unsympathetic.
There is no great translation, the French renderings in prose and
verse being the best complete reproduction; there are admirable ver-
sions of individual epigrams in all the modern languages. Sellar's
monographs in the ( Encyclopaedia Britannica > and his' ( Selections
from Martial* give perhaps the best brief estimate of the poet in
our tongue.
THE UNKINDEST CUT
LAST night as we boozed at our wine,
After having three bottles apiece,
You recall that I asked you to dine,
And you've come, you absurdest of geese!
I was maudlin, you should have been mellow,
All thought of the morrow away:
Well, he's but a sorry good fellow
Whose mind's not a blank the next day!
9754 MARTIAL
EVOLUTION
A
SURGEON once — a sexton now — twin personages:
Identical professions, only different stages!
VALE OF TEARS
ALONE she never weeps her father's death;
When friends are by, her tears time every breath.
Who weeps for credit, never grief hath known;
He truly weeps alone, who weeps alone!
SIC VOS NON VOBIS
IF THAT the gods should grant these brothers twain
Such shares of life as Leda's Spartans led,
A noble strife affection would constrain,
For each would long to die in brother's stead;
And he would say who first reached death's confine,
(<Live, brother, thine own days, and then live mine!0
SILENCE IS GOLDEN
T 7ou'RE pretty, I know it; and young, that is true;
J And wealthy — there's none but confesses that too:
But you trumpet your praises with so loud a tongue
That you cease to be wealthy or pretty or young!
SO NEAR AND YET SO FAR
YES, New and I both here reside:
Our stoops you see are side by side;
And people think I'm puffed with pride,
And envy me serenely blessed,
With such a man for host and guest.
The fact is this — he's just as far
As folks in Borrioboola Gha.
What ! booze with him ? or see his face,
Or hear his voice ? In all the place
There's none so far, there's none so near!
We'll never meet if both stay here!
To keep from knowing New at all,
Just lodge with him across the hall!
MARTIAL 9755
THE LEAST OF EVILS
WHILE some with kisses Julia smothers,
Reluctant hand she gives to others:
Give me thy merest finger-tips,
Or anything — but not thy lips!
T
THOU REASON'ST WELL
HE atheist swears there is no God
And no eternal bliss:
For him to own no world above
Doth make a heaven of this.
NEVER IS, BUT ALWAYS TO BE
You always say (< to-morrow, w (< to-morrow w you will live;
But that "to-morrow," prithee, say when will it arrive?
How far is't off ? Where is it now ? Where shall I go to
find it?
In Afric's jungles lies it hid? Do polar icebergs bind it?
It's ever coming, never here; its years beat Nestor's hollow!
This wondrous thing, to call it mine, I'll give my every dollar!
Why, man, to-day's too late to live — the wise is who begun
To live his life with yesterday, e'en with its rising sunJ
LEARNING BY DOING
As MITHRADATES used to drink the deadly serpent's venom,
That thus all noxious things might have for him no mis-
chief in 'em, —
So Skinner feeds but once a day with scanty preparation,
To teach his folks to smile unfed nor suffer from starvation.
w
TERTIUM QUID
HEN poets, croaking hoarse with cold,
To spout their verses seek,
They show at once they cannot hold
Their tongues, yet cannot speak.
9756
MARTIAL
SIMILIA SIMILIBUS
WONDER not that this sweetheart of thine
Abstains from wine;
I only wonder that her father's daughter
Can stick to water.
CANNIBALISM
Y
WITHOUT roast pig he never takes his seat:
Always a boor — a boar — companions meet!
EQUALS ADDED TO EQUALS
ou ask why I refuse to wed a woman famed for riches:
Because I will not take the veil and give my wife the breeches.
The dame, my friend, unto her spouse must be subservient quite ;
No other way can man and wife maintain their equal right..
THE COOK WELL DONE
WHY call me a bloodthirsty, gluttonous sinner
For pounding my chef when my peace he subverts ?
If I can't thrash my cook when he gets a poor dinner,
Pray how shall the scamp ever get his deserts?
A DIVERTING SCRAPE
MY SHAVER, barber eke and boy, —
One such as emperors employ
Their hirsute foliage to destroy, —
I lent a friend as per request
To make his features look their best.
By test of testy looking-glass
He mowed and raked the hairy grass,
Forgetful how the long hours pass;
He 1eft my friend a perfect skin,
But grew a beard on his own chin!
Y
MARTIAL 9757
DIAMOND CUT DIAMOND
OU'D marry Crichton, Miss Jemima:
Smart for you!
But somehow he won't come to time. Ah!
He's smart too!
H
THE COBBLER'S LAST
PREDESTINED for patching and soling,
For fragrance of grease, wax, and thread,
You find yourself squire by cajoling,
When with pigs you should hobnob instead;
And midst your lord's vertu you're rolling,
With liquor and love in your head!
How foolish to send me to college,
To soak up unpractical views!
How slow is the progress of knowledge
By the march of your three-dollar shoes!
BUT LITTLE HERE BELOW
is grave must be shallow, — the earth on him light,
Or else you will smother the poor little mite.
E PLURIBUS UNUS
WHEN hundreds to your parlors rush,
You wonder I evade the crush ?
Well, frankly, sir, I'm not imbued
With love of social solitude.
L
FINE FRENZY
ONG and Short will furnish verse
To market any fake :
Do poets any longer dream,
Or are they wide-awake?
9758
MARTIAL
LIVE WITHOUT DINING
Now, if you have an axe to grind, or if you mean to spout,
If your invite is to a spread, then you must count me out:
I do not like that dark-brown taste, I dread the thought of
gout,
I'm restless at the gorgeous gorge that ostentation dares.
My friend must offer me pot-luck on wash-days unawares;
I like my feed when his menu with my own larder squares.
THE TWO THINGS NEEDFUL
How grand your gorgeous mansion shows
Through various trees in stately rows!
Yet two defects its splendors spite:
No charmed recess for tedious night —
No cheerful spot where friends may dine —
Well, your non-residence is fine!
w
9759
JAMES MARTINEAU
(1805-1900)
Iwo names overtop all others in the history of English Unita-
rian thought and leadership, — Joseph Priestley and James
Martineau. Priestley died in 1804, and Martineau was born
the following year, April 2ist, coming of a Huguenot family which
had been long settled in England. From his father he inherited the
gentleness and refinement of his nature, from his mother that intel-
lectual strength in which his celebrated sister Harriet_so fully shared.
His education began at the <( Grammar School }) in Norwich, where
his father was a manufacturer and wine
merchant; and was continued at Bristol with
Dr. Lant Carpenter, then a prominent Uni-
tarian minister, but now best known as the
father of the scientist W. B. Carpenter and
Mary the philanthropist. The next step
was to the workshop, with a view to mak-
ing himself a civil engineer. This phase
of his • experience enriched his mind with
the materials for many a brilliant metaphor
in his writings, wonderful to his readers
until they know his early history. But his
heart was not in his work; and at length
his father yielded to his solicitations, and
assuring him that he was <( courting pov-
erty, w sent him to Manchester New College, which was then at
York, — a lineal descendant of that Warrenton Academy in which
Priestley taught and Malthus was educated, but already, in 1824, a
Unitarian theological school. Here Martineau was graduated in 1827,
and soon after became junior pastor of a church in Dublin, nominally
Presbyterian like most of the early Unitarian churches in England
and Ireland. Already distinguished as a preacher of great eloquence
and fervor, upon the death of his senior he refused to take that sen-
ior's place because it entailed the regium donum: a gift of the Crown
to Protestant ministers, which he thought discriminated unfairly
against Roman Catholics. His next charge was in Liverpool, whither
he went in 1832, and in 1836 published his first book, < Rationale of
Religious Enquiry,* which was strikingly in advance of the current
JAMES MARTINEAU
976o JAMES MARTINEAU
Unitarian thinking. In 1839 he made himself a great reputation in
the famous (< Liverpool Controversy » ; accepting, with the Unitarians
Thorn and Giles, the challenge of thirteen clergymen of the Estab-
lished Church to a public debate. Martineau's contribution was the
most brilliant and effective ever made to Unitarian controversial writ-
ing. This success may have done something to set the habit of his
life; for it is certain that it continued ever after stoutly controver-
sial,— his numerous essays and reviews, and even his most import-
ant books, being cast for the most part in a controversial mold, while
his sermons frequently take on a controversial character without any
of the personalities which the other things involve.
In 1840 he was made professor of mental and moral philosophy in
Manchester New College; which, following its peripatetic habit, in
1841 returned from York to Manchester, went to London in 1847, and
to Oxford in 1889. Martineau was connected with it as professor,
and for many years as its head, until 1885. In the mean time he
had removed from Liverpool to London, in 1857, after ten years of
journeying there to his lectures and back to his pastoral work. The
substance of his college work is embodied in his ( Types of Ethical
Theory > (1885), <A Study of Religion > (1888), and <The Seat of
Authority in Religion J (1890).
The critical radicalism of the last of these volumes did much to
alienate the sympathies of those whose religious conservatism had
attracted them to the two others, and to the general working of his
mind as opposed to the materialistic tendencies which were domi-
nant and 'aggressive in the third quarter of the century. But as a
critic of the New Testament and Christian origins there was nothing
in ( The Seat of Authority > to astonish or surprise any one acquainted
with the course of his development. In this respect he had been
consistently radical from first to last. Some of the most radical posi-
tions in the book will be found, germinal if not developed, in his
reviews and studies of a much earlier date. The result of his criti-
cisms was, for himself, a conception of Jesus and his work in history
which, ethically and spiritually, transcended any that he found in
the traditional presentation, but was strictly within the limits of a
humanitarian view.
If Martineau's theological and philosophical position was conserva-j
tive as compared with his criticism, it was so only from the accident
of a temporary swaying of the pendulum of thought towards materi-
alism — a tendency which has already reached its term, and which no
English writer has done so much to counteract as he. But an intui-
tive philosophy, anti-materialistic, anti-necessarian, anti-utilitarian, was
not a conservative but a radical philosophy from 1840 until 1860; and
this was the philosophy of Martineau in those years of earnest thought
JAMES MARTINEAU 976i
and active change. He had begun as an ardent disciple of Locke
and Hartley and Priestley; serving out his captivity with them
more patiently because of the idealization of their doctrine by the
younger Mill, who as early as 1841 noticed in a syllabus of Marti-
neau's lectures that he was falling away from his allegiance to the
empirical school, and begged to have the lectures printed lest he
should (<be studying them in another state of existence )} were their
publication long delayed. In a little while Martineau found himself
bound (< to concede to the self-conscious mind itself, both as knowing
and willing, an autonomous function distinct from each and all of
the phenomena known, and changes willed, — a self-identity as unlike
as possible to any growing aggregate of miscellaneous and dissimilar
experiences. w This involved a surrender of determinism and a revis-
ion of the doctrine of causation. In 1848-9 he spent fifteen months in
Germany, studying with Trendelenburg, and was soon brought into
the same plight with reference to the cognitive and aesthetic side of
life that had already befallen him in regard to the moral. He had
become a metaphysician, — the possible as real for him as the actual,
noumena as real as phenomena, mind central to the universe, and God
a righteous will.
It would be difficult to find a more brilliant series of writings —
culminating in the elaborate treatises of 1885, 1887, 1890 — than those
in which Martineau defended his new-found philosophic faith. He
had many foemen worthy of his pen. In the persons of Mansel and
Spencer he opposed himself to Agnosticism before Huxley had named
the terrible child, and while it was provisionally called Nescience.
Against Tyndall and others as the prophets of Materialism, he put
forth his utmost strength. In the great battle with Determinism and
Utilitarianism he met all those who came, up against him with a dia-
lectic supple and keen as a Damascus sword. On these several fields
he was a recognized captain of the host, and obtained the admiration
and the gratitude of many who could not abide his Unitarian faith.
His scientific knowledge was so large that it enabled him to cope
with noble confidence with scientists venturing across his lines. He
lived to see many of the bolder of them retreating from positions
too rashly taken up ; but that his own are final is not to be supposed.
One may greatly admire him, and yet conceive that he was far more
apt in finding what is weakest in the philosophical and religious
implications of a transitional science, than in appropriating those
scientific elements which make for a more satisfactory solution of the
universal mystery than any yet obtained.
But if Martineau had not been a master in philosophy and ethics,
he would still have been one of the most distinguished preachers of
his sect and time. His most helpful books have been his volumes
gj62 JAMES MARTINEAU
of sermons, especially the two volumes (1843-7) ( Endeavors after a
Christian Life.* The published sermons of his later life are too much
overcrowded by the fear that the materialists be upon us. They
have not the joyous march and song of the < Endeavors.' A pene-
trating spirituality is the dominant note of all his works; a passion
for ideal truth and purity. The beauty of holiness shines from every
page as from the preacher's face. His style, though marvel ously
brilliant, has undoubtedly been a deduction from his influence. It is
so rich with metaphor that it dazzles the reader more than it illumi-
nates the theme. Moreover, we are arrested by the beauty of the
expression as by a painted window that conceals what is beyond.
Nevertheless, for those straining after an ideal perfection, his sermons
are as music to their feet. He won the unbounded love and reverence
of his own household of faith ; and all the great universities of Great
Britain, America, and Continental Europe, accorded him their highest
honors. His death occurred in 1900, at the advanced age of 95
years.
THE TRANSIENT AND THE REAL IN LIFE
From < Hours of Thought on Sacred Things >
Job xii. 22: ^He discovereth deep things out of darkness; and bringeth
out to light the shadow of Deaths
IT is the oldest, as it is the newest, reproach of the cynic against
the devout, that they construe the universe by themselves;
attribute it to a will like their own; tracing in it imaginary
vestiges of a moral plan, and expecting from it the fulfillment of
their brilliant but arbitrary dreams. Instead of humbly sitting at
the feet of Nature, copying her order into the mind, and shap-
ing all desire and belief into the form of her usages and laws,
they turn out their own inward life into the spaces of the world,
and impose their longings and admirations on the courses and
issues of Time. With childish self-exaggeration, it is said, we
fancy creation governed like a great human life, — peopled with
motives, preferences, and affections parallel to ours, — its light
and heat, its winds and tides, its seasons and its skies, adminis-
tered by choice of good or ill, transparent with the flush of an
infinite love, or suffused with the shadow of an infinite displeas-
ure. We set at the helm of things a glorified humanity; and
that is our God. We think away from society the cries of wrong
TAMES MARTINEAU
and the elements of sin, leaving only what is calm and holy; and
that is our Kingdom of Heaven. We picture to ourselves youth
that never wastes, thought that never tires, and friendship with-
out the last adieu; and that is our immortality. Religion, we
are assured, is thus born of misery: it is the soul's protest against
disappointment and refusal to accept it, the pity which our nature
takes upon its own infirmities, and is secured only on the pathos
of the human heart.
Be it so. Are you sure that the security is not good ? Are
we so made as to learn everything from the external world,
and nothing out of ourselves ? Grant the allegation. Let our
diviner visions be the native instinct, the home inspiration, of
our thought and love: are they therefore false because we think
them ? illusory, because beautiful relatively to us ? Am I to be-
lieve the register of my senses, and to contradict the divinations
of conscience and the trusts of pure affection ? Is it a sign of
highest reason to deny God until I see him, and blind myself to
the life eternal till I am born into its surprise ? Nothing more
arbitrary, nothing narrower, can well be conceived, than to lay
down the rule that our lowest endowment — the perceptive pow-
ers which introduce us to material things — has the monopoly
of knowledge, and that the surmises of the moral sense have
nothing true, and the vaticinations of devoted love only a light
that leads astray. The wiser position surely is, that the mind
is a balanced organ of truth all round, — that each faculty sees
aright on its own side of things, and can measure what the
others miss: the hand, the palpable; the eye, the visible; the
imagination, the beautiful; the spirit, the spiritual; and the will,
the good. How else indeed could God and Heaven, if really
there, enter our field of knowledge, but by standing thus in rela-
tion to some apprehensive gift in us, and emerging as the very
condition of its exercise and the attendant shadow of its move-
ments ?
And in truth, if we are not strangely self-ignorant, we must
be conscious of two natures blended in us, each carrying a sep-
arate order of beliefs and trusts, which may assert themselves
with the least possible notice of the other. There is the nature
which lies open to the play of the finite world, gathers its expe-
rience, measures everything by its standard, adapts itself to its
rules, and discharges as fictitious whatever its appearances fail
to show. And underlying this, in strata far below, there is the
JAMES MARTINEAU
nature which stands related to things infinite, and heaves and
stirs beneath their solemn pressure, and is so engaged with them
as hardly to feel above it the sway and ripple of the transi-
tory tides. Living by the one, we find our place in nature; by
the other, we lose ourselves in God. By the first, we have our
science, our skill, our prudence; by the second, our philosophy,
our poetry, our reverence for duty. The one computes its way
by foresight; the other is self-luminous for insight. In short,
the one puts us into communication with the order of appear-
ances; the other with eternal realities. It is a shallow mind
which can see to the bottom of its own beliefs, and is conscious
of nothing but what it can measure in evidence and state in
words; which feels in its own guilt no depth it cannot fathom,
and in another's holiness no beauty it can only pine to seize;
which reads on the face of things — on the glory of the earth
and sky, on human joy and grief, on birth and death, in pity
and heroic sacrifice, in the eyes of a trusting child and the com-
posure of a saintly countenance — no meanings that cannot be
printed; and which is never drawn, alone and in silence, into
prayer exceeding speech. Things infinite and divine lie too near
to our own centre, and mingle in too close communion, to be
looked at as if they were there instead of here: they are given
not so much for definition as for trust; are less the objects we
think of than the very tone and color of our thought, the ten-
sion of our love, the unappeasable thirst of grief and reverence.
Till we surrender ourselves not less freely to the implicit faiths
folded up in the interior reason, conscience, and affection, than to
the explicit beliefs which embody in words the laws of the out-
ward world, we shall be but one-eyed children of Nature, and
utterly blind prophets of God.
No doubt these two sides of our humanity, supplying the
temporal and the spiritual estimates of things, are at ceaseless
variance; they reckon by incommensurable standards, and the
answers can never be the same. The natural world, with the
part of us that belongs to it, is so framed as to make nothing
of importance to us except the rules by which it goes, and to
bid us ask no questions about its origin; since we have equally
to fall in with its ways, be they fatal or be they divine. But to
our reason in its noblest exercise, it makes a difference simply
infinite, whether the universe it scans is in the hands of dead
necessity or of the living God. This, which our science ignores,
JAMES MARTINEAU 9765
is precisely the problem which our intellect is made to ponder.
Again, our social system of rights and obligations is constructed
on the assumption that with the springs of action we have no
concern: they fulfill all conditions, if we ask nothing and give
nothing beyond the conduct happiest in its results. But the nat-
ural conscience flies straight to the inner springs of action as
its sole interest and object; it is there simply as an organ for
interpreting them, and finding in them the very soul of right-
eousness: that which the outward observer shuns is the inward
spirit's holy place. And once more, Nature, as the mere mother
of us all, takes small account in this thronged and historic world of
the single human life-, repeating it so often as to render it cheap;
short as it is, often cutting its brief thread; and making each
one look so like the other that you would say it could not matter
who should go. But will our private love, which surely has the
nearer insight, accept this estimate ? Do we, when its treasure
has fallen from our arms, say of the term of human years, (< It
has been enough >} ? — that the possibilities are spent ; that the
cycle of the soul is complete; and that with larger time and
renovated opportunity, it could learn and love and serve no
more ? Ah no ! to deep and reverent affection there is an aspect
under which death must ever appear unnatural; and its cloud,
after lingering awhile till the perishable elements are hid, grows
transparent as we gaze, and half shows, half veils, a glorious
image in the depth beyond. Tell me not that affection is blind,
and magnifies its object in the dark. Affection blind! I say there
is nothing else that can see; 'that can find its way through the
windings of the soul it loves, and know how its graces lie. The
cynic thinks that all the fair look of our humanity is on the out-
Bide, inasmuch as each mind will put on its best dress for com-
pany ; and if there he detects some littleness and weakness,, which
perhaps his own cold eye brings to the surface, there can be
only what is worse within. Dupe that he is of his own wit! he
has not found out that all the evil spirits of human nature flock
to him; that his presence brings them to the surface from their
recesses in every heart, and drives the blessed angels to hide
themselves away: for who would own a reverence, who tell a
tender grief, before that hard ungenial gaze ? Wherever he moves,
he empties the space around him of its purest elements: with his
low thought he roofs it from the heavenly light and the sweet
air; and then complains of the world as a close-breathed and
97<56 JAMES MARTINEAU
stifling place. It is not the critic, but the lover, who can know
the real contents and scale of a human life; and that interior
estimate, as it is the truer, is always the higher: the closest look
becomes the gentlest too; and domestic faith, struck by bereave-
ment, easily transfigures the daily familiar into an image con-
genial with a brighter world.
Our faculties and affections are graduated then to objects
greater, better, fairer, and more enduring, than the order of
nature gives us here. They demand a scale and depth of being
which outwardly they do not meet, yet inwardly they are the
organ for apprehending. Hence a certain glorious sorrow must
ever mingle with our life: all our actual is transcended by our
possible; our visionary faculty is an overmatch for our experi-
ence; like the caged bird, we break ourselves against the bars
of the finite, with a wing that quivers for the infinite. To stifle
this struggle, to give up the higher aspiration, and be content
with making our small lodgings snug, is to cut off the summit
of our nature, and live upon the flat of a mutilated humanity.
To let the struggle be, however it may sadden us, to trust the
pressure of the soul towards diviner objects and more holy life,
and measure by it the invisible ends to which we tend, — this
is true faith; the unfading crown of an ideal and progressive
nature. It is indeed, and ever must be, notwithstanding the
light that circles it, a crown of thorns; and the brow that wears
it can never wholly cease to bleed. A nature which reaches
forth to the perfect from a station in the imperfect must always
have a pathetic tinge in its experience. Think not to escape it
by any change of scene, though from the noisy streets to the
eternal City of God. There is but One for whom there is no
interval between what he thinks and what he is; in whom there-
fore is <( light, and no darkness at all.* For us, vain is the
dream of a shadowless world, with no interruption of brilliancy,
no remission of joy. Were our heaven never overcast, yet we
meet the brightest morning only in escape from recent night;
and the atmosphere of our souls, never passing from ebb and
flow of love into a motionless constancy, must always break the
white eternal beams into a colored and a tearful glory. Whence
is that tincture of sanctity which Christ has given to sorrow, and
which makes his form at once the divinest and most pathetic in
the world ? It is that he has wakened by his touch the illimit-
able aspirations of our bounded nature, and flung at once into
JAMES MARTINEAU 9767
our thought and affection a holy beauty, a divine Sonship, into
which we can only slowly grow. And this is a condition which
can never cease to be. Among the true children of the Highest,
who would wish to be free from it? Let the glorious burden
lie! How can we be angry at a sorrow which is the birth-pang
of a diviner life ?
From this strife, of infinite capacity with finite conditions,
spring all the ideal elements which mingle with the matter of
our being. Nor is it our conscience only that betrays the secret
of this double life. Our very memory too, though it seems but
to photograph the actual, proves to have the artist's true select-
ing power, and knows how to let the transient fall away, and
leave the imperishable undimmed and cleai As time removes
us from each immediate experience, some freshening dew, some
wave of regeneration, brightens all the colors and washes off th^
dust; so that often we discover the essence only when the acci-
dents are gone, and the present must die from us ere it can
truly live. The work of yesterday, with its place and hour, has
but a dull look when we recall it. But the scene of our childish
years, — the homestead, it may be, with its quaint garden and
its orchard grass; the bridge across the brook from which we
dropped the pebbles and watched the circling waves; the school-
house in the field, whose bell broke up the game and quickened
every lingerer's feet; the yew-tree path where we crossed the
church-yard, with arm round the neck of a companion now be-
neath the sod, — how soft the light, how tender the shadows, in
which that picture lies! how musical across the silence are the
tones it flings! The glare, the heat, the noise, the care, are
gone; and the sunshine sleeps, and the waters ripple, and the
lawns are green, as if it were in Paradise. But in these minor
religions of life, it is the personal images of companions loved
and lost that chiefly keep their watch with us, and sweeten and
solemnize the hours. The very child that misses the mother's
appreciating love is introduced, by his first tears, to that thirst
of the heart which is the early movement of piety, ere yet it has
got its wings. And I have known the youth who through long
years of harsh temptation, and then short years of wasting decline,
has, from like memory, never lost the sense as of a guardian angel
near, and lived in the enthusiasm, and died into the embrace,
of the everlasting holiness. In the heat and struggle of mid-life,
it is a severe but often a purifying retreat to be lifted into the
JAMES MARTINEAU
lonely observatory of memory, above the fretful illusions of the
moment, and in presence once more of the beauty and the sanc-
tity of life. The voiceless counsels that look through the vision-
ary eyes of our departed steal into us behind our will, and sweep
the clouds away, and direct us on a wiser path than we should
know to choose. If age ever gains any higher wisdom, it is
chiefly that it sits in a longer gallery of the dead, and sees
the noble and saintly faces in further perspective and more vari-
ous throng. The dim abstracted look that often settles on the
features of the old, — what means it ? Is it a mere fading of
the life ? an absence, begun already, from the drama of humanity ?
a deafness to the cry of its woes and the music of its affections ?
Not always so: the seeming forgetfulness may be but brightened
memory; and if the mists lie on the outward present, and make
it as a gathering night, the more brilliant is the lamp within
that illuminates the figures of the past, and shows again, by their
flitting shadows, the plot in which they moved and fell.
It is through such natural experiences — the treasured sanctities
of every true life — that God <( discovereth to us deep things out
of darkness, and turneth into light the shadow of death. }) They
constitute the lesser religions of the soul; and say what you will,
they come and go with the greater, and put forth leaf and blos-
som from the same root. We are so constituted throughout — in
memory, in affection, in conscience, in intellect — that we cannot
rest in the literal aspect of things as they materially come to
us. No sooner are they in our possession, than we turn them
into some crucible of thought, which saves their essence and pre-
cipitates their dross; and their pure idea emerges as our lasting
treasure, to be remembered, loved, willed, and believed. What
we thus gain, then, — is it a falsification ? or a revelation ? What
we discard, — is it the sole constant, which alone we ought to
keep ? or the truly perishable, which we deservedly let slip ? If
the vision which remains with us is fictitious, then is there a
fatal misadjustment between the actual universe and the powers
given us for interpreting it; so that precisely what we recognize
as highest in us — the human distinctions of art, of love, of duty,
of faith — must be treated as palming off upon us a system of
intellectual frauds. But if the idealizing analysis be true, it is
only that our faculties have not merely passive receptivity, but
discriminative insight, are related to the permanent as well as to
the transient, and are at once prophetic and retrospective; and
JAMES MARTINEAU 9769
thus are qualified to report to us, not only what is, but what
ought to be and is to be. Did we apply the transforming- imagi-
nation only to the present, so as to discern in it a better possi-
bility beyond, it might be regarded as simply a provision for the
progressive improvement of this world, — an explanation still carry-
ing in itself the thought of a beneficent Provider. But w,e glorify
no less what has been than what now is; and see it in a light in
which it never appeared beneath the sun: and this is either an
illusion or a prevision.
The problem whether the transfiguring powers of the mind
serve upon us an imposture or open to us a divine vision, carries
in its answer the whole future of society, the whole peace and
nobleness of individual character. High art, high morals, high
faith, are impossible among those who do not believe their own
inspirations, but only court and copy them for pleasure or profit.
And for great lives, and stainless purity, and holy sorrow, and
surrendering trust, the souls of men must pass through all vain
semblances, and touch the reality of an eternal Righteousness
and a never-wearied Love.
- - ' m
.
9770
ANDREW MARVELL
(1621-1678)
JNDREW MARVELL has been described as of medium height,
sturdy and thick-set, with bright dark eyes, and pleasing,
rather reserved expression.
He was born in 1621, at Winestead, near Hull, in Yorkshire. His
father was master of the grammar school, and there Andrew was pre-
pared for Trinity College, Cambridge. But a boyish escapade led to
his expulsion before the completion of his university course, and for
several years he lived abroad; visiting France, Holland, Spain, and
Italy, and improving his mind (< to very
good purpose, }> as his friend John Milton
said admiringly. He returned to become
tutor to Lord Fairfax's young daughter, and
lived at Nun Appleton near Hull. He was
an ardent lover of nature, finding rest and
refreshment in its color and beauty, noting
the lilt of a bird or the texture of a blos-
som with a happy zest which recalls the
songs of the Elizabethans. Much of his
pastoral verse was written at this period.
But his energetic nature soon tired of
country calm. His connection with Lord
Fairfax had made him known in Round-
head circles, and he left Nun Appleton,
appointed by Cromwell tutor to his young ward Mr. Button, and
afterwards engaged in politics. His native Hull elected him to Par-
liament three times; and he is said to have been the last member to
receive wages — two shillings a day — for his services. So well did
he satisfy his constituents that they continued him a pension until
his death in 1678. His public career was distinguished for fearless
integrity; and an often quoted instance of this describes Lord Treas-
urer Danby sent by Charles II. to seek out the poet in his poverty-
stricken lodgings off the Strand, with enticing offers to join the court
party. These Marvell stoutly declined; although the story adds that
as soon as his flattering visitor had gone he was forced to send out
for the loan of a guinea.
Marvell's satiric prose was too bitter and too personal not to
arouse great animosity, and he was often forced to circulate it in
ANDREW MARVELL
ANDREW MARVELL
9771
manuscript or have it secretly printed. The vigorous style suggests
Swift; and mingled with coarse invective and frequent brutalities
there is sledge-hammer force of wit, — much of which, however, is
lost to the modern reader from the fact that the issues involved are
now forgotten.
The great objects of Marvell's veneration were Cromwell and Mil-
ton. He knew them personally, was the associate of Milton at the
latter's request, and these master minds inspired some of his finest
verse. He has been called ((the poet of the Protectorate }> ; and per-
haps no one has spoken more eloquently upon Cromwell than he in
his ( Horatian Ode > and ( Death of Cromwell. J It is interesting to
note that Milton and Cromwell admired and respected Marvell's
talents, and that the former suggested in all sincerity that he himself
might find matter for envy in the achievement of the lesser poet.
Marvell <(was eminently afflicted with the gift of wit or ingenuity
much prized in his time," says Goldwin Smith. His fanciful artificial-
ities, reflecting the contemporary spirit of Waller and Cowley, are
sometimes tedious to modern taste. But in sincerer moods he could
write poems whose genuine feeling, descriptive charm, and artistic
skill are still as effective as ever.
THE GARDEN
How vainly men themselves amaze,
To win the palm, the oak, or bays:
And their incessant labors see
Crowned from some single herb, or tree,
Whose short and narrow-verged shade
Does prudently their toils upbraid;
While all the flowers and trees do close,
To weave the garlands of repose.
Fair Quiet, have I found thee here,
And Innocence, thy sister dear ?
Mistaken long, I sought you then
In busy companies of men.
Your sacred plants, if here below.
Only among the plants will grow;
Society is all but rude
To this delicious solitude.
No white nor red was ever seen
So amorous as this lovely green. , .
97 7 2 ANDREW MARVELL
Fond lovers, cruel as their flame,
Cut in these trees their mistress's name.
Little, alas! they know or heed,
How far these beauties her exceed!
Fair trees! where'er your barks I wound,
No name shall but your own be found.
When we have run our passion's heat.
Love hither makes his best retreat.
The gods, who mortal beauty chase,
Still in a tree did end their race.
Apollo hunted Daphne so,
Only that she might laurel grow;
And Pan did after Syrinx speed,
Not as a nymph, but for a reed.
What wondrous life is this I lead!
Ripe apples drop about my head ;
The luscious clusters of the vine
Upon my mouth do crush their wine;
The nectarine and curious peach
Into my hands themselves do reach;
Stumbling on melons, as I pass,
Insnared with flowers, I fall on grass.
Meanwhile the mind from pleasure less
Withdraws into its happiness —
The mind, that ocean where each kind
Does straight its own resemblance find:
Yet it creates, transcending these,
Far other worlds and other seas;
Annihilating all that's made
To a green thought in a green shade.
Here at the fountain's sliding foot,
Or at some fruit-tree's mossy root,
Casting the body's vest aside,
My soul into the boughs does glide:
There like a bird it sits and sings,
Then whets and claps its silver wings;
And till prepared for longer flight,
Waves in its plumes the various light.
Such was the happy garden state,
While man there walked without a mate;
After a place so pure and sweet,
What other help could yet be meet?
ANDREW MARVELL
But 'twas beyond a mortal's share
To wander solitary there:
Two paradises are in one,
To live in paradise alone.
How well the skillful gardener drew
Of flowers and herbs, this dial new!
Where from above the milder sun
Does through a fragrant zodiac run;
And as it works, th' industrious bee
Computes its time as well as we. .
How could such sweet and wholesome hours
Be reckoned, but with herbs and flowers?
THE EMIGRANTS IN BERMUDAS
WHERE the remote Bermudas ride
In th' ocean's bosom, unespied —
From a small boat that rowed along,
The listening winds received this song: —
What should we do but sing His praise
That led us through the watery maze
Unto an isle so long unknown,
And yet far kinder than our own ?
Where he the huge sea monsters wracks
That lift the deep upon their backs,
He lands us on a grassy stage,
Safe from the storms and prelate's rage.
He gave us this eternal spring
Which here enamels everything,
And sends the fowls to us in care,
On daily visits through the air.
He hangs in shades the orange bright,
Like golden lamps in a green night,
And does in the pomegranates close
Jewels more rich than Ormus shows;
He makes the figs our mouths to meet,
And throws the melons at our feet;
But apples, — plants of such a price
No tree could ever bear them twice, —
With cedars, chosen by his hand
From Lebanon, he stores the land;
And makes the hollow seas that roar
Proclaim the ambergris on shore.
9773
9774 ANDREW MARVELL
He cast (of which we rather boast)
The gospel's pearl upon our coast;
And in these rocks for us did frame
A temple where to sound his name.
Oh, let our voice his praise exalt
Till it arrive at heaven's vault;
Which then, perhaps, rebounding may
Echo beyond the Mexique bay.
Thus they sang, in the English boat,
A .holy and a cheerful note ;
And all the way, to guide their chime,
With falling oars they kept the time.
THE MOWER TO THE GLOW-WORMS
Y
E LIVING lamps, by whose dear light
The nightingale does sit so late,
And studying all the summer night,
Her matchless songs does meditate!
Ye country comets, that portend
No war, nor prince's funeral,
Shining unto no other end
Than to presage the grass's fall!
Ye glow-worms, whose officious flame
To wandering mowers shows the way,
That in the night have lost their aim,
And after foolish fires do stray!
Your courteous lights in vain you waste,
Since Juliana here is come;
For she my mind hath so displaced,
That I shall never find my home.
M
THE MOWER'S SONG
Y MIND was once the true survey •
Of all these meadows fresh and gay;
And in the greenness of the grass
Did see its hopes as in a glass:
When Juliana came, and she,
What I do to the grass, does to my thoughts and me.
ANDREW MARVELL 9775
But these, while I with sorrow pine,
Grew more luxuriant still and fine;
That not one blade of grass you spied
But had a flower on either side :
When Juliana came, and she,
What I do to the grass, does to my thoughts and me.
Unthankful meadows, could you so
A fellowship so true forego,
And in your gaudy May-games meet,
While I lay trodden under feet?
When Juliana came, and she,
What I do to the grass, does to my thoughts and me.
But what you in compassion ought,
Shall now by my revenge be wrought;
And flowers, and grass, and I, and all,
Will in one common ruin fall:
For Juliana comes, and she,
What I do to the grass, does to my thoughts and me.
And thus ye meadows, which have been
Companions of my thoughts more green,
Shall now the heraldry become
With which I shall adorn my tomb:
For Juliana comes, and she,
What I do to the grass, does to my thoughts and me.
THE PICTURE OF T. C.
IN A PROSPECT OF FLOWERS
SEE with what simplicity
This nymph begins her golden days!
In the green grass she loves to lie,
And there with her fair aspect tames
The wilder flowers, and gives them names;
But only with the roses plays,
And them does tell
What color best becomes them, and what smell.
Who can foretell for what high cause
This darling of the gods was born?
9776 ANDREW MARVELL
See! this is she whose chaster laws
The wanton Love shall one day fear,
And under her command severe,
See his bow broke and ensigns torn.
Happy who can
Appease this virtuous enemy of man!
Oh, then let me in time compound
And parley with those conquering eyes,
Ere they have tried their force to wound, —
Ere with their glancing wheels they drive
In triumph over hearts that strive,
And them that yield but more despise:
Let me be laid
Where I may see the glory from some shade.
Meanwhile, whilst every verdant thing
Itself does at thy beauty charm,
Reform the errors of the spring:
Make that the tulips may have share
Of sweetness, seeing they are fair;
And roses of their thorns disarm;
But most procure
That violets may a longer age endure.
But oh, young beauty of the woods,
Whom Nature courts with fruit and flowerS;,
Gather' the flowers, but spare the buds,
Lest Flora, angry at thy crime
To kill her infants in their prime,
Should quickly make the example yours;
And ere we see,
Nip in the blossom all our hopes in thee.
9776a
KARL MARX
(1818-1883)
BY WILLIAM ENGLISH WALLING
JT is the common belief that modern Socialism owes its prin-
ciples largely to Karl Marx. But the central idea of Marx's
thought was precisely that every great social movement is
based not upon the ideas of any single man or group of men, but upon
the economic conditions, the needs and the aspirations of whole popula-
tions — or rather of those social classes which are destined to pre-
dominate. His first and greatest teaching was that such a movement
would come into existence whether or not there were any leaders capable
of adequately formulating its thought.
According to the Marxian view, the importance of Karl Marx is not
that he created the Socialist Movement or that he laid down its funda-
mental theoretical principles, but that his many-sided personality was
thoroughly (though not completely) representative of that movement.
To appreciate this representative character of Marx, it is not necessary
to gain more than a rudimentary knowledge of his leading ideas. The
briefest glance at his life and at the subject matter and titles of his
writings is sufficient.
In the first place, his whole life and thought were thoroughly inter-
national; that is to say, his politics and economics did not rest upon the
tradition of a single nation, but upon a comparative study of those
three countries in which he lived, Germany, France, and England —
the three leading countries of the world at the period in which he wrote.
Even his descent and birthplace were significant. He was born of
Jewish parents in the town of Trier in the year 1818. That is to say,
he was born of an international stock within a few miles of the boundary
of France and a very short distance from Belgium and Holland. Only
his early youth was spent in Germany. During several years of his
mature manhood he lived in exile in Paris and he spent the latter half
of his life in exile in London. His father having been a banker,- Marx
was brought up in an atmosphere of business and since he devoted his
life chiefly to the study of political economy he continued from his earliest
years to his death to take a view of all public questions that was largely
based upon an economic foundation. At the same time he was thor-
ough master of all the public discussion of his time, whether from an
economic, a philosophical, or a purely political standpoint. In Germany
he mastered all the current philosophies of his period, especially those
9776 b KARL MARX
of Hegel and Feuerbach. In France he devoured and assimilated all
the Revolutionary and post-Revolutionary political thought. In
England he not only became an adept in all the political economy of
the period from Adam Smith to Ricardo and John Stuart Mill, but his
keen powers of criticism soon enabled him to see all around these great
economists — at least in many directions, as most later economists
have admitted.
The Socialism of Karl Marx was thus essentially of a comparative
or scientific character. Not only was it based on a comparative study
of the three greatest and most advanced nations of Europe, but it was
compounded of ideas drawn from three almost separate sources: Ger-
man philosophy, French politics, and British economics. It may be
admitted that the so-called Utopian Socialists of France and England,
Fourier, St. Simon, and Owen, also exerted an influence. Undoubtedly
they furnished Marx with an ideal — that of a scientifically organized
industrial democracy. But this was only the smaller part of Marx's
thought. He was concerned relatively little with the nature of the
future society and concentrated his attention almost wholly on the ways
and means of attaining it.
I have indicated the influence of the geographical environment
upon the life and work of Karl Marx. It remains to mention the
influence of the period in which he lived. His education and his earliest
writing were dominated by the French Revolution and its after results.
All the progressive political thought of Europe before 1848 was under
the same influences: the theory of political democracy was accepted
dogmatically and absolutely; consequently all progressive thought
which concerned itself with social and economic questions tended to
extend the idea of democracy to cover those fields, and the ideal of
industrial and social democracy was in the air.
But Marx also drew a more immediate lesson from the French
Revolution — in agreement, in this instance, with French political
thought, but in disagreement both with the philosophy of Germany
and with the economics of England. He held, with the French, that all
thorough and radical social progress must be achieved in large part by
the method of social revolution. He took from English political
economy the idea — prevalent among business men everywhere and at
all times — that social progress depends largely, if not chiefly, upon
economic progress. But he thought that no very fundamental social
progress, and especially no change for the benefit of the democracy,
could be brought about without revolution. The old order is always
defended to the last ditch by the privileged classes that benefit from it.
This creates a ((class struggle)) between the privileged and the non-
privileged, a ((class struggle)) which can only be terminated successfully
by means of a political and social revolution.
This thought is in no way original with Marx, but was the prevalent
KARL MARX 97?6c
one in France even before 1848. The Revolution of 1848 very much
strengthened this conception. Like the great French Revolution, it
extended itself over Europe, indicating that it was directed not against
the superficial political forms of a single nation, but against the fun-
damental economic and social conditions of a whole period. But the
Revolution of 1848 was far more conscious than that of 1789. The
earlier revolution was thought of by its partisans merely as a struggle
between an old and a new order, the new order being regarded as a final
and conclusive settlement of all fundamental social problems. The
revolutionary movement of 1848 brought to various countries of Europe
complicated class struggles, struggles participated in by several social
classes: the land-owning nobilities, the peasantry, the urban middle
classes, and the urban working classes, not to mention other social
groups and subdivisions of those already named. The existence of
these social classes was recognized by nearly all the historians and politi-
cal and economic writers of the period. But nearly all of these writers
were still under the Utopian illusion of the French Revolution, that the
impending change would be the last great social upheaval. Karl
Marx, realizing how far from Socialism were the ideals of the leading
revolutionists of 1848, came to regard this revolution like its predecessor,
as marking merely a stage in progress towards Socialism to be followed
by a later revolution before a Socialist society could be ushered in.
It is doubtful whether we can say that Marx definitely applied the
idea of evolution, which was not yet finally accepted in biology at the
time when he wrote, to human society. Possibly a more accurate way
of stating his position would be to say that he had advanced from the
Utopian concept (which expected the final reorganization of society at
a single bound) in the direction of an evolutionary concept which looks
forward to endless change and progress in the fundamental organization
of society as well as in all other directions. He had not fully attained
this evolutionary view, for while he speaks of several fundamental
revolutionary changes in the past, he looks forward to only one such
change in the future, namely, the social revolution which was to usher
in Socialism. On the other hand, his view is evolutionary in one
exceedingly important aspect. He does not believe v/e shall be ready
for that great social change with which he is chiefly concerned until a
preliminary evolution is passed through with. Here indeed is the kernel
of his thought. No great progress is possible except through revolution.
But no revolution is possible except when the economic evolution of
society has thoroughly prepared the soil by creating new social classes
and by making practicable the new social institutions demanded by a
new society. In his theory, theny it might be said that Marx was not
wholly an evolutionist. In practice and in his attitude towards the
existing economic questions his standpoint was entirely evolutionary.
The importance of Karl Marx, as I have said, lies in the fact that he
9776 d KARL MARX
was so thoroughly representative of a great social movement. It is
not surprising, then, that he could claim no originality in any of the
ideas that I have mentioned up to the present point. What he did do
was to express these ideas better than others, to connect them in a more
logical system, and to discover a larger amount of evidence in support
of these views. But Marx did make an original contribution to politi-
cal thought and to the Socialist Movement — a contribution of the
first magnitude. Undoubtedly many other persons in his period, and
even before, were idealizing the role of ((labor)) as the social class upon
which society rested and the class which would have to reorganize
society in the end and establish Socialism. But few attempted to make
this thought the fundamental and central thought of a whole social
system — and such attempts as were made were unsuccessful; they did
not leave a profound impression either upon the educated public generally
or upon ((labor.)) Marx was the first to achieve a brilliant success in
both of these directions — a success so brilliant that none of his succes-
sors have been able to make a very radical advance in this line of thought.
Additions have been made and they have constituted advances, but it
may safely be said that all the Marxism since the days of Marx is
hardly as important as the writings of Marx himself.
It is impracticable in a brief space even to summarize the contents
of the writings of Marx, but we may mention his leading works and
indicate their relative importance. It is usual for the disciples of Marx,
as well as for professional critics, to regard (Das Kapital) as his chief
work. However, this monumental performance is of an exceedingly
abstract and theoretical nature. In spite of the high regard in which it
is held by the working classes, as well as all disciples and some critics of
Marx, it is of such an abstruse character that it has had relatively few
readers when compared with his other writings. In (Das Kapital)
Marx exposes a new philosophy and logic (based upon Hegel), a new
theory of history, and a new political economy. Besides the main
theoretical argument, the work contains a vast amount of historical
study and observation of the highest interest and value — matter
which is merely illustrative, however. Of equal merit as studies of
economic history, are Marx's shorter historical writings about the re-
Volutions of 1789 and 1848 and the Paris Commune of 1871. There can
be little question that these writings have had a far larger number of
readers than his magnum opus. Even if it is possible that the first
volume of (Das Kapital) may have had equally large editions, it is
certain that a very large number of the volumes purchased have either
remained largely unread or have been only partly read and still less
understood. Even more important in actual influence on the political
development of Europe has been the (Communist Manifesto,) written
by Marx together with Frederick Engels in 1847 — and therefore among
his very earliest writings. This is a relatively short pamphlet outlining
KARL MARX 97?6e
very briefly and with the utmost eloquence Marx's whole system. It
would probably be impossible to make even an approximate calculation
of the number of readers of this pamphlet. It has certainly circulated
by many millions.
Marx is best represented by the (Communist Manifesto,) for several
reasons. In the first place this document was, in a sense, the cause of
the formation of the first International Working Men's Association, a
body which for fifteen years played an important role in the history of
labor in Europe and even in America. Then the Manifesto displays
the true secret of Marx's power, his masterly grasp of social conditions,
his thorough-going democracy, and his self-evident and absolute in-
tellectual honesty. Incidentally, the Manifesto exhibits all the chief
strength and weakness of Marxism as it has developed since its publica-
tion. It shows — intimately connected together — a deeply philo-
sophical interest in social progress and an extraordinary grasp of practical
politics. At the same time there is visible both the rigid dogmatism and
the extreme partisanship of Marxism as the world has known it ever
since that time.
The most original doctrine of Karl Marx is, of course, the doctrine
which has created the most controversy, namely "the class-struggle."
The fact that it has created the most controversy is by no means a
paradox, for all great new systems of thought, in whatever field, arouse
opposition in proportion to their originality. We may even go farther
and say that it is usually found, after a lapse of time, that the more
original and more valuable a new idea is, the more serious and profound
is the error that is discovered to be an essential part of it. We have
discovered that Marx's very concept of ((labor)) is necessarily vague,
and vague to such a degree that it is never employed without leading
to a large measure of confusion, perhaps to almost as much confusion as
clarity of thought. For example, a larger and larger proportion of the
population is growing to be employed by governments. These govern-
ments are still chiefly under the control of Capitalism, as all Marxists
or Socialists of whatever school agree. Government employees of the
lower ranks are treated like laborers and their condition is similar to
that of the laborer in every way. On the other hand, the higher em-
ployees are drawn from privileged classes and their position is exceed-
ingly similar in every way to that of the privileged classes from which
they are drawn. Between these two groups there is a steady gradation,
and it is utterly impossible to sharply define ((labor)) in government
employment, though this definition is absolutely indispensable in all the
generalizations of Karl Marx. And this is only one of the difficulties
with the concept ((labor.))
Not only is the concept ((labor)) vague, but the concept ((capital)) is
equally so, and perhaps the idea of ((struggle)) is still more impossible to
'define. What Marx had in mind was undoubtedly a struggle leading
9776 f KARL MARX
gradually to a revolutionary climax, but the majority of Marxists have
already agreed to apply the term also to practically every struggle
between employers and employed, no matter how small its area and
without regard to the fact that sometimes a group of laborers may aim
at its own advantage at the expense of other groups of laborers. Of
course the strictly orthodox Marxists could not call the ordinary strike
an example of class struggle, but this merely proves that the number of
genuinely orthodox Marxists is so small as to be utterly insignificant —
for the great majority do speak of practically every strike as an example
of the class struggle, and of every labor union, as an example of the
economic organization of ((labor)) as a class struggling against capital.
In politics it is still more difficult to define what is meant by the term
<(struggle» in the class struggle theory. There are all shades of Socialist
co-operation with middle class parties, and even with the government of
one's own nation in conflict with the government of another nation.
In fact, a large majority of the Socialist parties of the world are now
supporting their governments, and not a few of them — including those
of several neutral nations — have actually become a part of the govern-
ment by sending official representatives of the party into coalition
ministries.
Marx expected that the period of industrial competition would bring
itself to an end by creating monopolies in all the important fields of
industry. However, he concluded that this period of industrial mo-
nopolies would be exceedingly short, as it would at once evolve into
government ownership and government ownership would in turn evolve
into Socialism. We now find ourselves in the period of monopoly, or
very nearly in it. We also find ourselves approaching the period of
government ownership. But the present order of society shows many
signs of considerable stability. Therefore the writings of Marx have
little application to the present time. His whole attack is against
competition and his whole argument is that we can and should take
advantage of the ending of competition to transform the existing order
into a Socialist society. He throws no light upon, and gives no direction
with regard to, the intervening stages — that is to say, his references to
the period in which we now live are entirely incidental and almost casual.
Marx did not foresee a long intervening period of State Socialism.
Hence, he did not credit social reform with the power of making any
of those radical improvements in conditions which we see taking place
all about us to-day. All the weaknesses of the period of industrial
competition he supposed would be continued up to the very moment of
social, revolution and Socialism — especially pauperism or poverty in an
extreme form.
A closely related error is that ((labor)) can gain no radical advance
except through its own effort, ((the class struggle,)) and that, as soon as
it gains anything very important, this is a sign that it is getting the
KARL MARX 97?6g
upper hand over capital and that the social revolution is at hand. Until
that moment arrives, Marx held little, if any gain is theoretically possible.
On the contrary, we see the governments all tending in the direction of
the adoption of a policy of national efficiency — which requires that the
individual efficiency of ((labor)) shall be raised by means of radical social
reforms. This policy is being adopted not only because of competition
between nations, but because the upper and privileged classes find that
a policy of enlightened selfishness may produce far larger profits than
to allow the working class to stagnate or decay. At the same time the
advances of the privileged still remain far greater proportionately than
the advances of the non-privileged. In other words, the relative power
of the working classes is not increasing, and we are therefore not at
present approaching a revolution. Whether we shall ever do so is a
question for the future to decide. It is certain that the tendency of the
present moment is not in that direction. On the contrary, the best
hope of a social revolution which might establish social and industrial
democracy is precisely that the physical and mental condition of ((labor))
is being rapidly improved — in spite of the fact that it has no power
to compel such improvements. Thus ((labor)) is becoming stronger
decade by decade. In spite of the fact that the condition of the other
classes is improving still more rapidly, the time may come when, by
virtue of its own organized power, ((labor)) will be able to compel radical
changes in society in the direction of Socialism — possibly even to the
extent of introducing a Socialist society — one in which their children
will have equal economic opportunity with the children of other social
classes.
Up to this point we have considered Marx as the formulator of a
political doctrine and the organizer of a political movement. But it
would be a great mistake, and a gross injustice to Marx, to gauge his
value solely by the nature and influence of his purely intellectual
achievements. Intellectually he was limited by the thought of his
time. Fundamentally he held to the philosophy, the logic and the
political economy of his period. His conclusions were radically different
from those of his contemporaries, but his starting-point, his funda-
mental assumptions and methods of thought were the same. The
immense influence he still wields, both over the working classes and
over a large part of the educated classes of the world to-day, is due in
large measure to another aspect of his character. It may be doubted if
any individual has ever been more passionately devoted to the cause of
social progress or has ever been able to bring a greater capacity to its
service. The vigor of Marx's personality and the immense literary
power and propaganda value of his writings are due at least as much
to his social sympathies as to the clarity and accuracy of his think-
ing. Few historians would question the fact that he had a larger and
more thorough grasp on the social conditions of his time than any other
9776 h KARL MARX
living man. He not only realized these conditions, but he made an
encyclopaedic review of all the remedies that had been offered and all the
hopes that had been held before the masses of mankind. From this
review he then succeeded — unquestionably — in picking out those
social facts and tendencies and those remedies which promised the
best for the future. Later history has shown that he was very radically
wrong in many of his predictions and conceptions — but it still remains
true that he was probably less wrong than any of his contemporaries.
If his predictions have proved partly false they have proved partly
true — and in larger measure than those of any other social philosopher
or statesman of his period.
When Marx first wrote, ((labor)) was disunited and doubtful of its
own future. He succeeded, in large measure, in uniting labor — in so far
as this could be done by giving it a single point of view. Moreover,
he popularized politics and economics among the masses, largely because
of the hope he offered to democracy in all of his writings. Every orderly
discussion requires a working hypothesis. Marx provided working hypo-
theses so excellent that some of them remain more or less serviceable even
to-day. At any rate, they were well in advance of the prevailing hypo-
theses of his time and they served their purpose of fixing in the workers'
minds an orderly and logical picture — largely accurate — of economic
and social progress.
The social sympathy and absolute intellectual honesty of Karl
Marx are chiefly responsible for the enormous following he has gained.
If his intellectual achievement loses in value, this does not in any way
lessen the stupendous contribution he made to social progress. More-
over the negative value of his work is lasting and cannot be overestimated.
He overthrew the reign in the minds of the people of every manner of
obsolete theory, from theology to a social philosophy, a political economy
and a political science which were almost consciously formulated for the
purpose of preventing social change and deceiving the masses.
As far as his popular influence is concerned, it may even be said that
Marx succeeded too well. Possibly he planted hope so firmly in the
hearts of the working classes as to produce a form of optimistic fatalism.
Possibly he so weakened the theory of individualism as to aid materially
in the upgrowth of a tyrannical State Socialism. Again, it may be
held that he popularized history to such a degree that he has brought
the working people of Continental Europe — for example, those of
Germany and France — to fix their attention too firmly upon the past,
and especially upon its revolutions and upon a class alignment which
after all may be destined to play only a limited role in history.
KARL MARX 9776 i
BOURGEOIS AND PROLETARIANS.1
From (The Manifesto of the Communist Party,) by Karl Marx and Frederick
Engels. Translated by Samuel Moore.
THE history of all hitherto existing society2 is the history of
class struggles.
Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf,
guildmaster3 and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed,
stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninter-
rupted, now hidden, now open fight, that each time ended, either in
revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common
ruin of the contending classes.
In the earlier epochs of history we find almost everywhere a
complicated arrangement of society into various orders, a manifold
gradation of social rank. In ancient Rome we have patricians,
knights, plebeians, slaves; in the Middle Ages, feudal lords, vassals,
guildmasters, journeymen, apprentices, serfs; in almost all of these
classes, again, subordinate gradations.
The modern Bourgeois society that has sprouted from the ruins
of feudal society has not done away with class antagonisms. It
has but established new classes, new, conditions of oppression, new
forms of struggle in place of the old ones.
Our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeois, possesses, however, this
distinctive feature: it has simplified the class antagonisms. Society
as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps,
1 By bourgeoisie is meant the class of modern capitalists, owners of the means of
social production and employers of wage-labor. By proletariat, the class of modern
wage-laborers who, having no means of production of their own, are reduced to
selling their labor-power in order to live.
2 That is, all -written history. In 1847, the pre-history of society, the social
organization existing previous to recorded history, was all but unknown. Since then,
Haxthausen discovered common ownership of land in Russia, Maurer proved it to be
the social foundation from which all Teutonic races started in history, and by and
by village communities were found to be, or to have been the primitive form of
society everywhere from India to Ireland. The inner organization of this primitive
Communistic society was laid bare, in its typical form, by Morgan's crowning
discovery of the true nature of the gens and its relation to the tribe. With the
dissolution of these primaeval communities society begins to be differentiated into
separate and finally antagonistic classes. I have attempted to retrace this process
of dissolution in : ( Der Ursprung der Familie, des Privateigenthums und des Staats, )
2nd edit., Stuttgart, 1886.
3 Guildmaster, that is a full member of a guild, a master within, not a head of a
guild.
9776 j KARL MARX
into two great classes directly facing each other: Bourgeoisie and
Proletariat.
From the serfs of the Middle Ages sprang the chartered burghers
of the earliest towns. From these burgesses the first elements of
the bourgeoisie were developed.
The discovery of America, the rounding of the Cape, opened up
fresh ground for the rising bourgeoisie. The East Indian and Chinese
markets, the colonization of America, trade with the colonies, the
increase in the means of exchange and in commodities generally, gave
to commerce, to navigation, to industry, an impulse never before
known, and thereby, to the revolutionary element in the tottering
feudal society, a rapid development.
The feudal system of industry, under which industrial production
was monopolized by close guilds, now no longer sufficed for the grow-
ing wants of the new markets. The manufacturing system took its
place. The guildmasters were pushed on one side by the manu-
facturing middle class; division of labor between the different cor-
porate guilds vanished in the face of division of labor in each single
workshop.
Meantime the markets kept ever growing, the demand ever rising.
Even manufacture no longer sufficed. Thereupon steam and machin-
ery revolutionized industrial production. The place of manufacture
was taken by the giant, Modern Industry, the place of the industrial
middle class, by industrial millionaires, the leaders of whole industrial
armies, the modern bourgeois.
Modern industry has established the world's market, for which
the discovery of America paved the way. The market has given
an immense development to commerce, to navigation, to communi-
cation by land. This development has, in its turn, reacted on the
extension of industry; and in proportion as industry, commerce,
navigation, and railways extended, in the same proportion the bour-
geoisie developed, increased its capital, and pushed into the background
every class handed down from the Middle Ages.
We see, therefore, how the modern bourgeoisie is itself the product
of a long course of development, of a series of revolutions in the
modes of production and of exchange.
Each step in the development of the bourgeoisie was accompanied
by a corresponding political advance of that class. An oppressed
class under the sway of the feudal nobility, an armed and self-govern-
ing association in the mediaeval commune, here independent urban
republic (as in Italy and Germany), there taxable ((third estate))
KARL MARX 97?6k
of the monarchy (as in France), afterwards, in the period of manu-
facture proper, serving either the semi-feudal or the absolute monarchy
as a counterpoise against the nobility, and, in fact, cornerstone of the
great monarchies in general, the bourgeoisie has at last, since the
establishment of Modern Industry and of the world's market, con-
quered for itself, in the modern representative State, exclusive politi-
cal sway. The executive of the modern State is but a committee
for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie.
The bourgeoisie, historically, has played a most revolutionary
part.
The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an
end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pitilessly
torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his ((natural
superiors,)) and has left remaining no other nexus between man and
man than naked self-interest, callous ((cash payment.)) It has drowned
the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervor, of chivalrous enthu-
siasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical
calculation. It has resolved personal worth into exchange value,
and in place of the numberless indefeasible chartered freedoms, has
set up that single, unconscionable freedom — Free Trade. In one
word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, it
has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation.
The bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto
honored and looked up to with reverent awe. It has converted the
physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science, into
its paid wage-laborers.
The bourgeoisie has torn away from the family its sentimental
veil, and has reduced the family relation to a mere money relation.
The bourgeoisie has disclosed how it came to pass that the brutal
display of vigor in the Middle Ages, which Reactionists so much
admire, found its fitting complement in the most slothful indolence.
It has been the first to show what man's activity can bring about.
It has accomplished wonders far surpassing Egyptian pyramids,
Roman aqueducts, and Gothic cathedrals; it has conducted expedi-
tions that put in the shade all former Exoduses of nations and crusades.
The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionizing
the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of produc-
tion, and with them the whole relations of society. Conservation
of the old modes of production in unaltered forms, was, on the con-
trary, the first condition of existence for all earlier industrial classes.
Constant revolutionizing of production, uninterrupted disturbance
97761 KARL MARX
of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation, distin-
guish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast-frozen
relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and
opinions, are swept away; all new-formed ones become antiquated
before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is
holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober
senses his real conditions of life and his relations with his kind.
The need of a constantly expanding market for its products
chases the bourgeoisie over the whole surface of the globe. It must
nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connections every-
where.
The bourgeoisie has through its exploitation of the world!s market
given a cosmopolitan character to production and consumption in
every country. To the great chagrin of Reactionists, it has drawn
from under the feet of industry the national ground on which it stood.
All old-established national industries have been destroyed or are
daily being destroyed. They are dislodged by new industries, whose
introduction becomes a life and death question for all civilized nations,
by industries that no longer work up indigenous raw material, but
raw material drawn from the remotest zones, industries whose prod-
ucts are consumed, not only at home, but in every quarter of the
globe. In place of the old wants, satisfied by the productions of
the country, we find new wants, requiring for their satisfaction the
products of distant lands and climes. In place of the old local and
national seclusion and self-sufficiency, we have intercourse in every
direction, universal inter-dependence of nations. And as in material,
so also in intellectual production. The intellectual creations of
individual nations become common property. National one-sided-
ness and narrow-mindedness become more and more impossible, and
from the numerous national and local literatures, there arises a world
literature.
The bourgeoisie, by the rapid improvement of all instruments of
production, by the immensely facilitated means of communication,
draws all, even the most barbarian, nations into civilization. The
cheap prices of its commodities are the heavy artillery with which it
batters down all Chinese walls, with which it forces the barbarians'
intensely obstinate hatred of foreigners to capitulate. It compels
all nations, on pain of extinction, to adopt the bourgeois mode of
production; it compels them to introduce what it calls civilization
into their midst, i. e., to become bourgeois themselves. In one word,
it creates a world after its own image.
KARL MARX 9776m
The bourgeoisie has subjected the country to the rule of the towns.
It has created enormous cities, has greatly increased the urban popu-
lation as compared with the rural, and has thus rescued a considerable
part of the population from the idiocy of rural life. Just as it has
made the country dependent on the towns, so it has made barbarian
and semi-barbarian countries dependent on the civilized ones, nations
of peasants on nations of bourgeois, the East on the West.
The bourgeoisie keeps more and more doing away with the scat-
tered state of the population, of the means of production, centralizes
means of production, and has concentrated property in a few hands.
The necessary consequence of this was political centralization. In-
dependent, or but loosely connected provinces, with separate interests,
laws, governments, and systems of taxation, became lumped together
into one nation, with one government, one code of laws, one national
class interest, one frontier, and one customs tariff.
The bourgeoisie, during its rule of scarce one hundred years, has
created more massive and more colossal productive forces than have
all preceding generations together. Subjection of Nature's forces
to man, machinery, application of chemistry to industry and agri-
culture, steam navigation, railways, electric telegraphs, clearing of
whole continents for cultivation, canalization of rivers, whole popu-
lations conjured out of the ground — what earlier century had even
a presentiment that such productive forces slumbered in the lap of
social labor?
We see then: the means of production and of exchange on whose
foundation the bourgeoisie built itself up were generated in feudal
society. At a certain stage in the development of these means of
production and of exchange, the conditions under which feudal
society produced and exchanged, the feudal organization of agricul-
ture and manufacturing industry, in one word, the feudal relations
of property, became no longer compatible with the already developed
productive forces; they became so many fetters. They had to be
burst asunder.
Into their place stepped free competition, accompanied by a
social and political constitution adapted to it, and by the economical
and political sway of the bourgeois class.
A similar movement is going on before our own eyes. Modern
bourgeois society with its relations of production, of exchange, and
of property, a society that has conjured up such gigantic means of
production and of exchange, is like the sorcerer, who is no longer able
to control the powers of the nether world whom he has called up by
9776 n> KARL MARX
his spells. For many a decade past the history of industry and
commerce is but the history of the revolt of modern productive forces
against modern conditions of production, against the property rela-
tions that are the conditions for the existence of the bourgeoisie and
of its rule. It is enough to mention the commercial crises that by
their periodical return put on its trial, each time more threateningly,
the existence of the bourgeois society. In these crises a great part
not only of the existing products, but also of the previously created
productive forces, is periodically destroyed. In these crises there
breaks out an epidemic that, in all earlier epochs, would have seemed
an absurdity — the epidemic of overproduction. Society suddenly
finds itself put back into a state of momentary barbarism ; it appears
as if a famine, a universal war of devastation had cut off the supply
of every means of subsistence; industry and commerce seem to be
destroyed; and why? because there is too much civilization, too
much means of subsistence, too much industry, too much commerce.
The productive forces at the disposal of society no longer tend to
further the development of the conditions of bourgeois property ; on
the contrary, they have become too powerful for these conditions,
by which they are fettered, and so soon as they overcome these fet-
ters, they bring disorder into the whole of bourgeois society, endanger
the existence of bourgeois property. The conditions of bourgeois
society are too narrow to comprise the wealth created by them. And
how does the bourgeoisie get over these crises? On the one hand,
by enforced destruction of a mass of productive forces ; on the other,
by the conquest of new markets, and by the more thorough exploita-
tion of the old ones. That is to say, by paving the way for more
extensive and more destructive crises, and by diminishing the means
whereby crises are prevented.
The weapons with which the bourgeoisie felled feudalism to the
ground are now turned against the bourgeoisie itself.
But not only has the bourgeoisie forged the weapons that
bring death to itself; it has also called into existence the men who
are to wield those weapons — the modern working class — the
proletarians.
In proportion as the bourgeoisie, i. e., capital, is developed,
in the same proportion is the proletariat, the modern working class,
developed; a class of laborers, who live only so long as they find work,
and who find work only so long as their labor increases capital. These
laborers, who must sell themselves piecemeal, are a commodity,
like every other article of commerce, and are consequently exposed
KARL MARX 9776 o
to all the vicissitudes of competition, to all the fluctuations of the
market.
Owing to the extensive use of machinery and to division of labor,
the work of the proletarians has lost all individual character, and,
consequently, all charm for the workman. He becomes an appendage
of the machine, and it is only the most simple, most monotonous, and
most easily acquired knack, that is required of him. Hence, the
cost of production of a workman is restricted almost entirely to the
means of subsistence that he requires for his maintenance, and for
the propagation of his race. But the price of a commodity, and
therefore also of labor, is equal to its cost of production. In pro-
portion, therefore, as the repulsiveness of the work increases, the
wage decreases. Nay, more, in proportion as the use of machinery
and division of labor increases, in the same proportion the burden
of toil also increases, whether by prolongation of the working hours,
by increase of the work exacted in a given time, or by increased speed
of the machinery, etc.
Modern industry has converted the little workshop of the patri-
archal master into the great factory of the industrial capitalist. Masses
of laborers, crowded into the factory, are organized like soldiers. • As
privates of the industrial army they are placed under the command
of a perfect hierarchy of officers and sergeants. Not only are they
slaves of the bourgeois class, and of the bourgeois State, they are
daily and hourly enslaved by the machine, by the over-looker, and,
above all, by the individual bourgeois manufacturer himself. The
more openly this despotism proclaims gain to be its end and
aim, the more petty, the more hateful, and the more embittering
it is.
The less skill and exertion of strength is implied in manual labor,
in other words, the more modern industry becomes developed, the
more is the labor of men superseded by that of women. Differences
of age and sex have no longer any distinctive social validity for the
working class. All are instruments of labor, more or less expensive
to use, according to age and sex.
No sooner is the exploitation of the laborer by the manufacturer
so far at an end that he receives his wages in cash, than he is set
upon by the other portions of the bourgeoisie, the landlord, the
shopkeeper, the pawnbroker, etc.
The lower strata of the middle class — the small tradespeople,
shopkeepers, and retired tradesmen generally, the handicraftsmen
and peasants — all these sink gradually into the proletariat, partly
9776 p KARL MARX
because their diminutive capital does not suffice for the scale on which
modern industry is carried on, and is swamped in the competition
with the large capitalists, partly because their specialized skill is
rendered worthless by new methods of production. Thus the pro-
letariat is recruited from all classes of the population.
The proletariat goes through various stages of development.
With its birth begins its struggle with the bourgeoisie. At first the
contest is carried on by individual laborers, then by the workpeople
of a factory, then by the operatives of one trade, in one locality
against the individual bourgeois who directly exploits them. They
direct their attacks not against the bourgeois conditions of produc-
tion, but against the instruments of production themselves; they
destroy imported wares that compete with their labor, they smash
to pieces machinery, they set factories ablaze, they seek to restore
by force the vanished status of the workman of the Middle
Ages.
At this stage the laborers still form an incoherent mass scattered
over the whole country, and broken up by their mutual competition.
If anywhere they unite to form more compact bodies, this is not yet
the consequence of their own active union, but of the union of the
bourgeoisie, which class, in order to attain its own political ends, is
compelled to set the whole proletariat in motion, and is moreover
yet, for a time, able to do so. At this Stage, therefore, the proleta-
rians do not fight their enemies, but the enemies of their enemies,
the remnants of absolute monarchy, the landowners, the non-indus-
trial bourgeois, the petty bourgeoisie. Thus the whole historical
movement is concentrated in the hands of the bourgeoisie; every
victory so obtained is a victory for the bourgeoisie.
But with the development of industry the proletariat not only
increases in number; it becomes concentrated in greater masses, its
strength grows and it feels that strength more. The various interests
and conditions of life within the ranks of the proletariat are more
and more equalized, in proportion as machinery obliterates all dis-
tinctions of labor, and nearly everywhere reduces wages to the same
low level. The growing competition among the bourgeois, and the
resulting commercial crises, make the wages of the workers ever more
fluctuating. The unceasing improvement of machinery, ever more
rapidly developing, makes their livelihood more and more precarious ;
the collisions between individual workmen and individual bourgeois
take more and more the character of collisions between two classes.
Thereupon the workers begin to form combinations (Trades' Unions)
KARL MARX 97?6q
against the bourgeois; they club together in order to keep up the
rate of wages; they found permanent associations in order to make
provision beforehand for these occasional revolts. Here and there
the contest breaks out into riots.
Now and then the workers are victorious, but only for a time.
The real fruit of their battles lies not in the immediate result but in
the ever improved means of communication that are created in mod-
ern industry and that place the workers of. different localities in
contact with one another. It was just this contact that was needed
to centralize the numerous local struggles, all of the same character,
into one national struggle between classes. But every class struggle
is a political struggle. And that union, to attain which the burghers
of the Middle Ages, with their miserable highways, required cen-
turies, the modern proletarians, thanks to railways, achieve in a
few years.
This organization of the proletarians into a class, and conse-
quently into a political party, is continually being upset again by the
competition between the workers themselves. But it ever rises up
again; stronger, firmer, mightier. It compels legislative recogni-
tion of particular interests of the workers, by taking advantage of
the divisions among the bourgeoisie itself. Thus the ten-hours' bill
in England was carried.
Altogether collisions between the classes of the old society further,
in many ways, the course of development of the proletariat. The
bourgeoisie finds itself involved in a constant battle. At first with
the aristocracy; later on, with those portions of the bourgeoisie itself
whose interests have become antagonistic to the progress of industry;
at all times with the bourgeoisie of foreign countries. In all these
countries it sees itself compelled .to appeal to the proletariat, to ask
for its help, and thus to drag it into the political arena. The bour-
geoisie itself, therefore, supplies the proletariat with weapons for
fighting the bourgeoisie.
Further, as we have already seen, entire sections of the ruling
classes are, by the advance of industry, precipitated into the prole-
tariat, or are at least threatened in their conditions of existence. These
also supply the proletariat with fresh elements of enlightenment and
progress.
Finally, in times when the class struggle nears the decisive hour,
the process of dissolution going on within the ruling class, in fact
within the whole range of old society, assumes such a. violent, glaring
character, that a small section of the ruling class cuts itself adrift,
9776 r KARL MARX
and joins the revolutionary class, the class that holds the future in its
hands. Just as, therefore, at an earlier period, a section of the nobil-
ity went over to the bourgeoisie, so now a portion of the bour-
geoisie goes over to the proletariat, and in particular, a portion of
the bourgeois ideologists, who have raised themselves to the level
of comprehending theoretically the historical movement as a
whole.
Of all the classes that stand face to face with the bourgeoisie
to-day, the proletariat alone is a really revolutionary class. The
other classes decay and finally disappear in the face of modern in-
dustry; the proletariat is its special and essential product.
The lower middle class, the small manufacturer, the shopkeeper,
the artisan, the peasant, all these fight against the bourgeoisie to
save from extinction their existence as fractions of the middle class.
They are, therefore, not revolutionary, for they try to roll back the
wheel of history. If by chance they are revolutionary, they are so
only in view of their impending transfer into the proletariat; they
thus defend not their present, but their future interests, they
desert their own standpoint to place themselves at that of the
proletariat.
The ((dangerous class,)) the social scum, that passively rotting
class thrown off by the lowest layers of old society, may, here and
there, be swept into the movement by a proletarian revolution; its
conditions of life, however, prepare it far more for the part of a bribed
tool of reactionary intrigue.
In the conditions of the proletariat, those of old society at large
are already virtually swamped. The proletarian is without property;
his relation to his wife and children has no longer anything in common
with the bourgeois family relations;, modern industrial labor, modern
subjection to capital, the same in England as in France, in America
as in Germany, has stripped him of every trace of national character.
Law, morality, religion, are to him so many bourgeois prejudices,
behind which lurk in ambush just as many bourgeois interests.
All the preceding classes that got the upper hand sought to fortify
their already acquired status by subjecting society at large to their
conditions of appropriation. The proletarians cannot become masters
of the productive forces of society, except by abolishing their own
previous mode of appropriation, and thereby also every other previous
mode of appropriation. They have nothing of their own to secure
and to fortify; their mission is to destroy all previous securities for,
and insurances of, individual property.
KARL MARX 97 7$ S
All previous historical movements were movements of minorities,
or in the interest of minorities. The proletarian movement is the
self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority, in
the interest of the immense majority. The proletariat, the lowest
stratum of our present society, cannot stir, cannot raise itself up,
without the whole super-incumbent strata of official society being
sprung into the air.
Though not in substance, yet in form, the struggle of the proleta-
riat with the bourgeoisie is at first a national struggle. The proletariat
of each country must, of course, first of all settle matters with its own
bourgeoisie.
In depicting the most general phases of the development
of the proletariat, we traced the more or less veiled civil war,
raging within existing society, up to the point where that war
breaks out into open revolution, and where the violent over-
throw of the bourgeoisie lays the foundation for the sway of the
proletariat.
Hitherto every form of society has been based, as we have already
seen, on the antagonism of oppressing and oppressed classes. But in
order to oppress a class certain conditions must be assured to it under
which it can, at least, continue its slavish existence. The serf, in
the period of serfdom, raised himself to membership in the commune,
just as the petty bourgeois, under the yoke of feudal absolutism,
managed to develop into a bourgeois. The modern laborer, on the
contrary, instead of rising with the progress of industry, sinks deeper
and deeper below the conditions of existence of his own class. He
becomes a pauper, and pauperism develops more rapidly than popula-
tion and wealth. And here it becomes evident that the bourgeoisie
is unfit any longer to be the ruling class in society and to impose
its conditions of existence upon society as an overriding law. It is
unfit to rule because it is incompetent to assure an existence to its
slave within his slavery, because it cannot help letting him sink into
such a state that it has to feed him instead of being fed by him. Soci-
ety can no longer live under this bourgeoisie; in other words, its
existence is no longer compatible with society.
The essential condition for the existence, and for the sway, of the
bourgeois class, is the formation and augmentation of capital; the
condition for capital is wage-labor. Wage-labor rests exclusively on
competition between the laborers. The advance of industry, whose
involuntary promoter is the bourgeoisie, replaces the isolation of the
laborers, due to competition, by their revolutionary combination, due
97?6t KARL MARX
to association. The development of modern industry, therefore,
cuts from under its feet the very foundation on which the bourgeoisie
produces and appropriates products. What the bourgeoisie therefore
produces, above all, are its own grave-diggers. Its fall and the
victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable.
9777
JOHN MASEFIELD
(1874-)
BY JOYCE KILMER
lo be versatile and prolific generally is to be unimportant. Es-
pecially in literature, Jack-of-all-trades is, as a rule, master
of none. An exception brilliantly proving this rule is John
Masefield.
Homer (scholars tell us) was not one man but a company of poets,
writing through more than one century. Shakespeare (we are en-
couraged to believe) was not a theatrical manager who liked occasion-*
ally to build' a play to show his dramatists how it should be done, but
a syndicate of philosophers, poets, playwrights, scientists, and politicians.
Three hundred years from now literary detectives will busy themselves
with discovering the names of the sailor, the farmer, the Hellenist, the
Orientalist, the sociologist, the realist, the romanticist, the dramatist,
the ballad maker, the sonneteer, the novelist, the short story writer,
who called their conspiracy John Masefield. They will attribute some
of the Salt Water Ballads to Kipling, some to Henry Newbolt, some to
C. Fox Smith. They will attribute (The Sweeps of Ninety-Eight) to
Dr. Douglas Hyde. They will attribute (The Faithful) to Sturge
Moore. They will attribute (The Tragedy of Nan) to D. H. Lawrence,
part of (A Mainsail Haul) to Charles Whibley, part of it to Algernon
Blackwood, and part of it to Robert Louis Stevenson. And some of his
ballads they will attribute to Wilfrid Gibson and some of his lyrics to
William Butler Yeats. This will be a stupid thing for them to do, but,
nevertheless, they will do it.
One reason why the conduct of these hypothetical scholars is particu-
larly irritating is that John Masefield is a writer of strong individuality.
He has a distinct and easily recognizable style; his theme may be a
battle of wits between Tiger Roche and the rebel hunters of 1798, or the
tragedy of Nan Hardwick and the mutton parsties and the malicious
Pargetters, or the great intrigues of royal Spain, or the ambitions of
Pompey, or the soul of man in its relation to the mercy of God — what-
ever his theme may be, his style is the same. The writer's eyes may be
fixed upon the mysteries of his own heart, or they may be searching the
boundless heavens; he is, nevertheless, always a realist. They may be
curiously studying the most ordinary details of modern life; he is,
nevertheless, always an idealist. So the intellectual, perhaps it might
be said the spiritual, attitude of John Masefield is unvarying. And
97 77 a JOHN MASEFIELD
in this is to be found the reason for the intense individuality of the
writer as seen in his works, for the feeling, common to all his readers, of
being in direct communication with him. And the style of the sequence
of sonnets in the Shakespearean manner is much the same as that of the
stories about pirates and the drama of ancient Japan. The nervous
expressive diction, the direct Elizabethan colloquialism, these things are
Masefield; the form may vary, but not in its characteristics, the language.
A writer's attitude toward life and toward the things beyond life is
his own; it is not to be accounted for by heredity or environment.
But a writer's style must necessarily be influenced by what he reads
and by the talk of those with whom he spends the formative periods
of his life. Even the careless reader of John Masefield's books will
notice occasionally in them, especially in the lyrics, a strong Celtic
flavor. Masefield's (Sea Fever) and (Roadways) and (Cardigan
Bay) and (Trade Winds) and (The Harper's Song) surely belong to
the same family as Eva Gore Booth's (The Little Waves of Breffny)
and William Butler Yeats's (The Lake Isle of Innisfree.) Furthermore,
Masefield has that belief in the beauty of tragedy, tragedy in itself
without regard to its moral significance, which is characteristic of many
of the Irish writers of our generation. In the preface to (The Tragedy
of Nan) he writes:
((Tragedy at its best is a vision of the heart of life. The heart of life can only be
laid bare in the agony and exultation of dreadful acts. The vision of agony, or
spiritual contest, pushed beyond the limits of the dying personality, is exalting and
cleansing. It is only by such visions that a multitude can be brought to the passion-
ate knowledge of things exulting and eternal. . . . Our playwrights have all the
powers except that power of exaltation which comes from a delighted brooding on
excessive, terrible things. That power is seldom granted to men; twice or thrice to
a race perhaps, not oftener. But it seems to me certain that every effort, however
humble, towards the achieving of that power -helps the genius of a race to obtain it,
though the obtaining may be fifty years after the strivers are dead.))
Now in our time only one other writer has expressed this idea with
equal force. And that writer is Mr. William Butler Yeats. He has
written in an essay: ((Tragic art, passionate art, . . . the confounder
of understanding, moves us by setting us to reverie, by alluring us
almost to the intensity of trance.)) So we find the Irish and the English
writer guided by one impulse and by one conviction. And the result
is that considering this, and considering also the Celtic idiom which
seemingly conies so naturally from the lips of Mr. Masefield, Englishman
though he be, in his lyrics, in his poetic dramas, and in many of the
stories in (A Mainsail Haul,) we are tempted to believe that the Irish
literary movement has stretched a shadowy arm across the channel and
laid its potent spell upon a man of Saxon blood. And to this theory
Masefield's close friendship with William Butler Yeats lends color.
JOHN MASEFIELD 9777 b
But there are flaws in this theory. One of them is that Masefield
was writing in this manner before he met Yeats, before, indeed, the
Irish literary movement had attracted much attention outside of its
home. Another flaw is that this idea of the nobility, one might almost
say, of the loveliness of tragedy, while it is in our time more Irish than
English, was held by the English dramatists and poets of centuries
ago — Marlowe, for instance, and Webster and Shakespeare himself.
The very earliest English poets selected tragic themes as a matter of
course. Which of the great old ballads is. without at least one bloody
murder? Furthermore, the modern Irish-English idiom is to a great
extent the idiom of England some centuries ago. There are rhymes in
Shakespeare and even in Pope which show that what we consider Irish
mispronunciations of English are simply English pronunciations that
have been carried through the ages unchanged — the «ay)> sound for
«ea» is an example of that. ((Our gracious Anne, whom the three realms
obey, does sometimes counsel take, and sometimes tea.)) Chaucerian
scholars say that the Wife of Bath talked what we would call Irish
dialect. Now, John Masefield's literary idols belong not to his own
generation or that immediately preceding it but to the early days of
English letters. His favorite poem, he has told me, is Chaucer's (Ballad
of Good Counsel.) This reading has affected his style and it has
affected also his thought, to the strengthening of the first and the
deepening of the second.
There has been much said and written about Masefield's romantic
youth — about his experiences before the mast and behind the bar.
There was a tendency during his tour of the United States in the early
spring of 1916 to regard him as. very much a self-made man, to marvel
at the miracle of genius which turned a bartender-sailor into a great
poet. But the fact of the matter is that Masefield is essentially of the
literary type, a man who might readily have supported himself by
school-teaching, journalism, or some other unromantic trade, but
deliberately selected colorful and exciting occupations. No one can
talk to him and retain the idea that Masefield is a ((sailor-poet)) or a
((bartender-poet.)) He is an educated English gentleman, very thor-
oughly a man of letters, who has had the good fortune to add to his
treasury of experience by travels in strange places and among strange
people.
Masefield's first important romantic experience, however, was
undergone at a time when the poet was so young that it can scarcely
have been the result of his own volition. Born in 1874 at Ledbury, in
the west of England, he was indentured to a captain in the English
merchant marine at the age of fourteen years. A fourteen-year-old boy
on shipboard generally learns to hate passionately and consistently the
sea and all that is associated with it. And it would not be strictly true
to say that Masefield gained from this early adventure a love of the sea.
9777C JOHN MASEFIELD
Rather he then came under the spell of the sea, a spell from which he has
never escaped. He has not that sentimental affection for the sea which
inspires the life-on-the-ocean-waves' verse written by landsmen who
know Neptune only by week-end visits in the summer time. He has
been in the power of the sea more than it is altogether safe for so sensi-
tive a spirit to be. He seems haunted by the sea; in those of his writings
which in theme are least related to the sea the reader finds that again
and again the figures and comparisons are drawn from the poet's memory
of days when above and beyond him were nothing but water and sky.
Not even Algernon Charles Swinburne was so much influenced by the
sea as Masefield has been.
It is true that Masefield has given more beautiful expression to
love for the sea than any other poet of our time — (Sea-Fever) alone
would establish him as the sea's true lover. But also Masefield has
expressed with terrible force the cruelty of the sea, its brutal and terrify-
ing energy, its soul-shattering melancholy. And nowhere in English
literature is it possible to find more vivid pictures of the bitter hardship
of a seaman's life than in the Salt Water Poems and Ballads. Masefield
is not elective nor selective in his attitude toward the sea; his feeling
toward the sea seems almost an obsession. The sea is not subject to his
genius; it speaks through him.
Masefield's life on shipboard did more than put him in the power of
the sea, it began his interest in the lives and thoughts of simple hard-
working people. And this interest has never left him. It is true that
he occasionally gives us something like (The Faithful) or (Philip, the
King) or (The Tragedy of Pompey the Great.) But his heart is in
poems like (Dauber) and (The Everlasting Mercy) and in stories like
(A Deal of Cards,) in which he writes of unsophisticated people who
feel strongly and do not conceal their emotions.
It was, perhaps, because of a real sense of the value and interest of
life among simple people that Masefield made the selection he did of
work to support himself during his first visit to the United States. In
Connecticut he was a farm laborer, in Yonkers he was a hand in a
carpet-factory and in New York City he was a sort of helper to the
bartender in the old Colonial hotel on Sixth Avenue near Jefferson
Market Court. This hotel is still in the possession of the family who
employed Masefield and their recollections of him are highly entertain-
ing. The writer once asked the eldest son of the family if Masefield
had written anything during the days of his employment there. He had
not, it seemed, and he was associated in the minds of the family with
the art of poetry for one reason only — that being that he used to sing
to the fretful baby, holding it in his lap as he sat in a rocking-chair in the
kitchen, waiting for his employer's wife to serve his dinner.
When Masefield went back to England he went to work as a clerk
in a London office. He was writing now, putting on paper the pictures
JOHN MASEFIELD 9777 d
that had been etched in his brain and in his heart during his wander
years. Now he perceived the deep and abiding beauty and the deep
and abiding tragedy (to Masefield they are the same) of his experiences.
How this knowledge came to him he has told in twelve intensely sincere
lines. E. A. Robinson has said that poetry is a language which tells,
by means of a more or less emotional reaction, that which cannot be
stated in prose. And therefore it is better to let Masefield tell this in
poetry than to attempt to paraphrase it. He wrote, by way of preface
to (A Mainsail Haul):
((I yarned with ancient shipmen beside the galley range
And some were fond of women, but all were fond of change;
They sang their quavering chanties, all in a fo'c's'le drone,
And I was finally suited, if I had only known.
I rested in an ale-house that had a sanded floor,
Where seamen sat a-drinking and chalking up the score;
They yarned of ships and mermaids, of topsail sheets and slings^ "
But I was discontented ; I looked for better things.
I heard a drunken fiddler in Billy Lee's saloon,
I brooked an empty belly with thinking of the tune;
I swung the doors disgusted as drunkards rose to dance,
And now I know the music was life and life's romance.))
Masefield's work soon attracted the -attention of William Butler
Yeats, John Galsworthy, Sturge Moore, and other English men of
letters, and largely through their efforts was brought to the attention of
the public. American readers first became aware of him through the
publication of two long poems — (The Everlasting Mercy) and (The
Widow in the Bye Street.) To say that these were long narrative
poems dealing with intensely tragic and dramatic events in the life of
the British poor is not to describe them adequately. They were a
poetry new to our generation. They showed an intimate knowledge
of the lives of the poor, especially of the criminal poor, not to be found
in the amiable poems of Mr. W. W. Gibson and similar socialistic
dilletantes. They were not socialistic in message; rather they were
individualistic. Saul Kane was not a drunkard because of economic
pressure; Jimmy's siren lived an evil life merely because she was evil,
not as a result of the injustice of man-made laws or anything else of the
sort. So precedents were violated and Masefield scored a success of
sensation. The savage colloquialisms of the poems, their violent
emotionalism, their melodrama — these things brought them to the
attention of a large number of people not ordinarily interested in the
work of new poets, and thus an audience was prepared for the poet's
later and more important work.
There can be no doubt that the work published later was more
9777*e JOHN MASEFIELD
important. There were crudities in these two narrative poems which
seemed to be put there deliberately, in order to startle and shock the
reader. Masefield followed these poems with other poems in the same
manner done with much greater technical skill and with a more convinc-
ing sincerity. (Dauber) and (Biography) and the ( Daffodill Fields)
are more likely to be read by the next generation than are ( The Widow in
the Bye Street) and (The Everlasting Mercy,) in spite of the fact that
the last mentioned poem was awarded the Edward de Polignac prize of
$500 by the Royal Society of Literature.
It is hard to tell just what form Masefield will finally select for the
expression of his genius. He has written ballads, lyrics, plays, novels,
short-stories, even histories, and all these forms he has molded to his
own use. At the time of writing he is in France actively engaged in
Red Cross work, and has begun to send to the magazines stories of the
things that he has seen which entitle him to be called a great reporter.
The quest for beauty has been and is his ruling passion — he is splendidly
explicit on this subject in the magnificent sequence of Shakespearean
sonnets printed in ( Good Friday and Other Poems. > He has searched for
this beauty on the boundless sea, in noisy barrooms, in English meadows,
in the streets of New York. He is seeking it now, we may believe, in the
tragedy and heroism of the battlefield. And always, his sonnets tell us,
it is evasive and very distant, because its real dwelling place is his own
soul.
FROM (THE EVERLASTING MERCY)
Copyright by the Macmillan Co., and reprinted by their permission.
FROM '41 to '51
I was my folk's contrary son;
I bit my father's hand right through
And broke my mother's heart in two.
I sometimes go without my dinner
Now that I know the times I've gi'n her.
From '51 to '61
I cut my teeth and took to fun.
I learned what not to be afraid of
And what stuff women's lips are made of;
I learned with what a rosy feeling
Good ale makes floors seem like the ceiling,
And how the moon gives shiny light
To lads as roll home singing by't.
My blood did leap, my flesh did revel,
Saul Kane was tokened to the devil.
JOHN MASEFIELD 977 7 £
From '61 to '67
I lived in disbelief of Heaven.
I drunk, I fought, I poached, I whored,
I did despite unto the Lord.
I cursed, 'would make a man look pale,
And nineteen times I went to gaol.
Now friends, observe and look upon me,
Mark how the Lord took pity on me.
By Dead Man's Thorn, while setting wires,
Who should come up but Billy Myers,
A friend of mine, who used to be
As black a sprig of hell as me,
With whom I'd planned, to save encroaching
Which fields and coverts each should poach in.
Now when he saw me set my snare,
He tells me ((Get to hell from there.
This field is mine,)) he says, ((by right;
If you poach here, there'll be a fight.
Out now,)) he says, ((and leave your wire;
It's mine.))
«It ain't.))
((You put.»
((You liar.))
((You closhy put.))
((You bloody liar.))
((This is my field.))
((This is my wire.))
((I'm ruler here.))
((You ain't.))
((I am.))
((I'll fight you for it.))
((Right, by damn.
Not now, though, I've a-sprained my thumb,
We'll fight after the harvest hum.
And Silas Jones, that bookie wide,
Will make a purse five pounds a side.))
Those were the words, that was the place
By which God brought me into grace.
On Wood Top Field the peewits go
Mewing and wheeling ever so;
And like the shaking of a timbrel
Cackles the laughter of the whimbrel.
977 7 g JOHN MASEFIELD
In the old quarry-pit they say
Head-keeper Pike was made away.
He walks, head-keeper Pike, for harm,
He taps the windows of the farm;
The blood drips from his broken chin,
He taps and begs to be let" in.
On Wood Top, nights, I've shaked to hark
The peewits wambling in the dark
Lest in the dark the old man might
Creep up to me to beg a light.
1 But Wood Top grass is short and sweet
And springy to a boxer's feet;
At harvest hum the moon so bright
Did shine on Wood Top for the fight.
When Bill was stripped down to his bends
I thought how long we two'd been friends,
And in my mind, about that wire,
I thought, ((He's right, I am a liar.
As sure as skilly's made in prison
The right to poach that copse is his'n.
I'll have no luck to-night,)) thinks I.
((I'm fighting to defend a lie.
And this moonshiny evening's fun
Is worse than aught I've ever done.))
And thinking that way my heart bled so
I almost stept to Bill and said so.
And now Bill's dead I would be glad
If I could only think I had.
But no. I put the thought away
For fear of what my friends would say.
They'd backed me, see? O Lord, the sin
Done for the things there's money in.
The stakes were drove, the ropes were hitched,
Into the ring my hat I pitched.
My corner faced the Squire's park
Just where the fir trees made it dark;
The place where I begun poor Nell
Upon the woman's road to hell.
I thought oft, sitting in my corner
After the time-keep struck his warner
(Two brandy flasks, for fear of noise,
Clinked out the time to us two boys).
JOHN MASEFIELD 9777k
And while my seconds chafed and gloved me
I thought of Nell's eyes when she loved me,
And wondered how my tot would end,
First Nell cast off and now my friend;
And in the moonlight dim and wan
I knew quite well my luck was gone;
And looking round I felt a spite
At all who'd come to see me fight;
The five and forty human faces
Inflamed by drink and going to races,
Faces of men who'd never been
Merry or true or live or clean;
Who'd never felt the boxer's trim
Of brain divinely knit to limb,
Nor felt the whole live body go
One tingling health from toe to toe;
Nor took a punch nor given a swing,
But just soaked deady round the ring
Until their brains and bloods were foul
Enough to make their throttles howl,
While we whom Jesus died to teach
Fought round on round, three minutes each.
And thinking that, you'll understand
I thought, ((I'll go and take Bill's hand.
I'll up and say the fault was mine,
He shan't make play for these here swine.))
And then I thought that that was silly, '
They'd think I was afraid of Billy;
They'd think (I thought it, God forgive me)
I funked the hiding Bill could give me.
And that would make me mad and hot.
((Think that, will they? Well, they shall not.
They shan't think that. I will not. I'm
Damned if I will. I will not.))
Time!
Out into darkness, out to night
My flaring heart gave plenty light,
So wild it was there was no knowing
Whether the clouds or stars were blowing;
Blown chimney pots and folk blown blind,
And puddles glimmering like my mind,
9777i JOHN MASEFIELD
And clinking glass from windows banging,
And inn signs swung like people hanging,
And in my heart the drink unpriced,
The burning cataracts of Christ.
I did not think, I did not strive,
The deep peace burnt my me alive;
The bolted door had broken in,
I knew that I had done with sin.
I knew that Christ had given me birth
To brother all the souls on earth,
And every bird and every beast
Should share the crumbs broke at the feast.
0 glory of the lighted mind.
How dead I'd been, how dumb, how blind.
The station brook, to my new eyes,
Was babbling out of Paradise,
The waters rushing from the rain
Were singing Christ has risen again.
1 thought all earthly creatures knelt
From rapture of the joy I felt.
The narrow station-wall's brick ledge,
The wild hop withering in the hedge,
The lights in huntsman's upper storey
Were parts of an eternal glory,
Were God's eternal garden flowers.
I stood in bliss at this for hours.
'
O glory of the lighted soul.
The dawn came up on Bradlow Knoll,
The dawn with glittering on the grasses,
The dawn which pass and never passes.
((It's dawn,)) I said, ((And chimney's smoking,
And all the blessed fields are soaking.
It's dawn, and there's an engine shunting;
And hounds, and I must wander north
Along the road Christ led me forth.))
JOHN MASEFIELD 9777 j
THE YARN OF THE (( LOCH ACHRAY))
From (Salt Water Ballads.) Copyright by the Macmillan Co., and reprinted by
their permission.
THE ((Loch Achray)) was a clipper tall
With seven-and-twenty hands in all.
Twenty to hand and reef and haul,
A skipper to sail and mates to brawl
((Tally on the tackle-fall,
Heave now'n' start her, heave V pawl!))
Hear the yarn of a sailor,
An old yarn learned at sea.
Her crew were shipped and they said A Fare well,
So-long, my Tottie, my lovely gell;
We sail to-day if we fetch to hell,
It's time we tackled the wheel a spell.))
Hear the yarn of a sailor,
An old yarn learned at sea.
The dockside loafers talked on the quay
The day that she towed down to sea:
((Lord, what a handsome ship she be!
Cheer her, sonny boys, three times three!))
And the dockside loafers gave her a shout
As the red-funnelled tug-boat towed her out;
They gave her a cheer as the custom is,
And the crew yelled ((Take our loves to Liz —
Three cheers, bullies, for old Pier Head
*N* the bloody stay-at-homes!)) they said.
Hear the yarn of a sailor,
An old yarn learned at sea.
In the gray of the coming on of night
She dropped the tug at the Tuskar Light,
'N' the topsails went to the topmast head
To a chorus that fairly awoke the dead.
She trimmed her yards and slanted South
With her royals set and a bone in her mouth.
Hear the yarn of a sailor,
An old yarn learned at sea.
9777k JOHN MASEFIELD
She crossed the Line and all went well,
They ate, they slept, and they struck the bell
And I give you a gospel truth when I state
The crowd didn't find any fault with the Mate,
But one night off the River Plate.
Hear the yarn of a sailor,
An old yarn learned at sea.
It freshened up till it blew like thunder
And burrowed her deep, lee-scuppers under.
The old man said, ((I mean to hang on
Till her canvas busts or her sticks are gone)) —
Which the blushing looney did, till at last
Overboard went her mizzen-mast.
Hear the yarn of a sailor,
An old yarn learned at sea.
Then a fierce squall struck the ((Loch Achray,))
And bowed her down to her water-way;
Her main-shrouds gave and her forestay,
And a green sea carried her wheel away;
Ere the watch below had time to dress
She was cluttered up in a blushing mess.
Hear the yarn of a sailor,
An old yarn learned at sea.
T
She couldn't lay-to nor yet pay-off,
And she got swept clean in the bloody trough,
Her masts were gone, and afore you knowed
She filled by the head and down she goed.
Her crew made seven-and-twenty dishes
For the big jack-sharks and the little fishes,
And over their bones the water swishes.
Hear the yarn of a sailor,
An old yarn learned at sea.
The wives and girls they watch in the rain
For a ship as won't come home again.
((I reckon it's them head- winds,)) they say,
((She'll be home to-morrow, if not to-day.
I'll just nip home 'n' I'll air the sheets
'N' buy the fixin's 'n' cook the meats
As my man likes 'n' as my man eats.))
JOHN MASEFIELD 97771
So home they goes by the windy streets,
Thinking their men are homeward bound
With anchors hungry for English ground,
And the bloody fun of it is, they're drowned!
Hear the yarn of a sailor,
An old yarn learned at sea.
SEA-FEVER
From (Salt Water Ballads.) Copyright by the Macmillan Co., and reprinted by
their permission.
IMUST down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by,
And the wheel's kick and the wind's song and the white sail's
shaking,
And a gray mist on the sea's face and a gray dawn breaking.
I must down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide
Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied;
And all I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying,
And the flung spray and the blown spume, and the sea-gulls crying.
I must down to the seas again to the vagrant gypsy life,
To the gull's way and the whale's way where the wind's like a whetted
knife;
And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover,
And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick's over.
D'AVALOS' PRAYER
From (Salt Water Ballads.) Copyright by the Macmillan Co., and reprinted by
their permission.
W
HEN the last sea is sailed and the last shallow charted,
When the last field is reaped and the last harvest stored,
When the last fire is out and the last guest departed,
Grant the last prayer that I shall pray, Be good to me, 0 Lord!
And let me pass in a night at sea, a night of storm and thunder,
In the loud crying of the wind through sail and rope and spar;
Send me a ninth great peaceful wave to drown and roll me under
To the cold tunny-fishes' home where the drowned galleons are.
9777 m JOHN MASEFIELD
And in the dim green -quiet place far out of sight and hearing,
Grant I may hear at whiles the wash and thresh of the sea-foam
About the fine keen bows of the stately clippers steering
Towards the lone northern star and the fair ports of home.
SONNETS
L
From (Good Friday and Other Poems.) Copyright by the Macmillan Co. and
reprinted by their permission.
'
ONG ago when all the glittering earth
Was heaven itself, when drunkards in the street
Were like mazed kings shaking at giving birth
To acts of war that sickle men like wheat,
When the white clover opened Paradise
And God lived in a cottage up the brook,
Beauty, you lifted up my sleeping eyes
And filled my heart with longing with a look;
And all the day I searched and could not find
The beautiful dark-eyed who touched me there,
Delight in her made trouble in my mind,
She was within all Nature, everywhere,
The breath I breathed, the brook, the flower, the grass,
Were her, her word, her beauty, all she was.
Night came again, but now I could not sleep.
The owls were watching in the yew, the mice
Gnawed at the wainscot; the mid dark was deep,
The death-watch knocked the dead man's summons thrice.
The cats upon the pointed housetops peered
About the chimneys, with lit eyes which saw
Things in the darkness, moving, which they feared.
The midnight filled the quiet house with awe.
So, creeping down the stair, I drew the bolt
And passed into the darkness, and I knew
That Beauty was brought near by my revolt.
Beauty was in the moonlight, in the dew,
But more within myself whose venturous tread
Walked the dark house where death ticks called the dead.
Even after all these years there comes the dream
Of lovelier life than this in some new earth,
In the full summer of that unearthly gleam
Which lights the spirit when the brain gives birth,
JOHN MASEFIELD 9777 n
Of a perfected I, in happy hours,
Treading above the sea that trembles there,
A path through thickets of immortal flowers
That only grow where sorrows never were.
And, at a turn, of coming face to face
With Beauty's self, that Beauty I have sought
In women's hearts, in friends, in many a place,
In barren hours passed at grips with thought,
Beauty of woman, comrade, earth and sea,
Incarnate thought come face to face with me.
If I could come again to that dear place
Where once I came, where Beauty lived and moved,
Where, by the sea, I saw her face to face,
That soul alive by which the world has loved;
If, as I stood at gaze among the leaves,
She would appear again, as once before,
While the red herdsman gathered up his sheaves
And brimming waters trembled up the shore;
If, as I gazed, her Beauty that was dumb,
In that old time, before I learned to speak,
Would lean to me and revelation come,
Words to the lips and color to the cheek,
Joy with its searing-iron would burn me wise,
I should know all; all powers, all mysteries.
Let that which is to come be as it may,
Darkness, extinction, justice, life intense,
The flies are happy in the summer day,
Flies will be happy many summers hence.
Time with his antique breeds that built the Sphynx
Time with her men to come whose wings will tower,
Poured and will pour, not as the wise man thinks,
But with blind force, to each his little hour.
And when the hour has struck, comes death or change,
Which, whether good or ill, we cannot tell,
But the blind planet will wander through her range
Bearing men like us who will serve as well.
The sun will rise, the winds that ever move
Will blow our dust that once were men in love.
Flesh, I have knocked at many a dusty door,
Gone down full many a midnight lane,
Probed in old walls and felt along the floor,
Pressed in blind hope the window-pane.
97770 JOHN MASEFIELD
But useless all, though sometimes, when the moon
Was full in heaven and the sea was full,
Along my body's alleys came a tune
Played in the tavern by the Beautiful.
Then for an instant I have felt at point
To find and seize her, whosoe'er she be,
Whether some saint whose glory does anoint
Those whom she loves, or but a part of me,
Or something that the things not understood
Make for their uses out of flesh and blood.
9777P
MASQUES
BY ERNEST RHYS
*OME of the prettiest things in all literature lie hidden and
half forgotten in the <( masques » and « triumphs » to be found
in the old quartos and dusty folios of the early seventeenth
century. Lord Bacon unbent to praise them; Milton and Ben Jonson
wrote them ; Campion used both his music and his poetry upon them ;
Inigo Jones lent them his art. These are famous names, and in a
brief account one must keep to the great craftsmen' who worked in
that way; but it is fair to remember too the number of less known
writers who left things of the kind, imperfect as whole performances,
but full of such effects and pleasant passages as well reward the
students and lovers of old poetry.
Among the poets who have not come popularly into the first or
second rank, Samuel Daniel — <( 'Jie well-language d Daniel, » as he has
been called — has written exquisitely parts and passages in this kind.
Daniel, it may be recalled, besides writing plays on a*classical Senecan
model, very remarkable and exceptional in the literature of the time,
wrote a very convincing retort in his < Defence of Rhyme > to Cam-
pion's attack on its use in English poetry. The prose < Defence ) had
its verse counterpart in < Musophilus > ; in whose terse lines may be
found some that may grow proverbial, as e. g. : —
« While timorous knowledge stands considering,
Audacious ignorance hath done the deed.*
Something of the same idiomatic force of expression may be found
in his masques and in his plays. In his masque of < Tethys's Festival,
or the Queen's Wake,* which was celebrated at Whitehall in 1610, and
which like so many of Ben Jonson's masques owed a moiety at least
of their effect to the genius of Inigo Jones, — as becomes a play
devoted to Tethys, Queen of Ocean, and her nymphs, we find that — •
« The Scene it selfe was a Port or Haven, with Bulworkes at the entrance,
and the figure of a Castle commaunding a fortified towne : within this Port were
many Ships, small and great, seeming to lie at anchor, some neerer, and some
further off, according to perspective: beyond all appeared the Horizon or ter-
mination of the Sea, which seemed to moove with a gentle gale, and many
Sayles lying, some to come into the Port, and others passing out. From this
Scene issued Zephyrus, with eight Naydes, Nymphs of fountaines, and two
Tritons sent from Tethys. »
9778 MASQUES
Then followed songs and dances, and a change of scene accom-
plished during a wonderful circular dance of mirrors and lights,
devised by Inigo Jones.
« After this, Tethys rises, and with her Nymphes performes her second
daunce, and then reposes her againe upon the Mount, entertained with another
song: —
«Are they shadowes that we see?
And can shadowes pleasure give?
Pleasures onely shadowes bee
Cast by bodies we conceive;
And are made the things we deeme,
In those figures which they seeme.
<( But these pleasures vanish fast,
Which by shadowes are exprest:
Pleasures are not, if they last;
In their passing is their best.
Glory is most bright and gay
In a flash, and so away.»
Another poet and playwright of a distinctly lower rank than Dan-
iel, and yet a better writer perhaps than we now usually deem him,
• — Sir William £)avenant, — also wrote masques in conjunction with
Inigo Jones. Whether it was that Inigo had a good and inspiring
influence on the Oxford vintner's son, whom old report has associated
now and again with Shakespeare himself, certainly Davenant is found
quite at his most interesting pitch in such masques as (The Temple
of Love,' written some twenty-four years after Daniel's (Tethys's
Festival,* and presented by the (< Queenes Majesty and her Ladies at
Whitehall, on Shrove Tuesday i634.)) The Queen was Henrietta
Maria, wife of Charles I. There is a certain quaintness in the concep-
tion of this masque, in which t( Divine Poesie," who is called <(the
Secretary of Nature }> in the Argument, plays a prominent part. She
appears in the masque itself as <(a beautiful woman, her garment
sky-color, set all with stars of gold, her head crowned with laurel, a
spangled veil hanging down behind, }) a swan at her side, attended by
the Greek poets. For high-priest she has Orpheus, who is seen most
picturesquely in the following scene : —
«Out of a Creeke came waving forth a Barque of a gracious Antique de-
signe, adorned with Sculpture finishing in Scrowles, that on the poope had for
Ornament a great Masque head of a Sea-god; and all the rest enriched with
embost worke touched with silver and gold. In the midst of this Barque sate
Orpheus with his Harpe; he wore a white robe girt, on his shoulders was a
mantle of carnation, and his head crowned with a laurell garland; with him,
other persons in habits of Sea-men as pilots and guiders of the Barque he
playing one straine was answered with the voyces and instruments.
MASQUES 9779
THE SONG
HEARKE! Orpheus is a Sea-man growne;
No winds of late have rudely blowne,
Nor waves their troubled heads advance!
His Harpe hath made the winds so mild,
They whisper now as reconciled;
The waves are soothed into a dance. }>
Obviously much of the picturesqueness of such scenes was due to
the fine art of Inigo Jones. But we have to remember that music too
was an essential part; and this brings us to the conclusion that in
the masque, the arts all meet and combine in close accord. Paint-
ing and poetry, music and dancing, — nay, even architecture and
sculpture, have their allotted uses in it. For, to take sculpture, not
only does the devising and posing of the masquers and their draper-
ies seem as much a sculptor's as a painter's prerogative, but in the
old masques the device of living statues was a common one. Take
for example the ( Masque of the Gentlemen of Gray's Inn,* by Fran-
cis Beaumont: —
(<The statues were attired in cases of gold and silver close to their bodies,
faces, hands, and feet, — nothing seen but gold and silver, as if they had been
solid images of metal; tresses of hair, . . . girdles and small aprons of
oaken leaves, as if they had been carved or molded out of the metal. At
their coming, the music changed from violins to hautboys, cornets, etc. ; and
the air of the music was utterly turned into a soft time, with drawing notes:
excellently expressing their natures, . . . and the statues placed in such
several postures ... as was very graceful, besides the novelty. }>
This is enough to give an idea of the charm, in daintily mingled
effects of color and music, which exists in this realm of masques and
pageants; which is wide enough to include such pure poetry as Mil-
ton's 'Comus,' and such splendid scenes of State as the Field of the
Cloth of Gold. A pleasant realm to wander in, which leaves one
haunted indeed by such sights and sounds as those of the Dance of
the Stars, so frequently introduced, and the song that attended its
progress: —
<( Shake off your heavy trance,
And leap into a dance,
Such as no mortals use to tread;
Fit only for Apollo
To play to, for the moon to lead,
And all the stars to follow. »
9780
JEAN BAPTISTE MASSILLON
(1663-1742)
BY J. F. BINGHAM
(HE subject of this sketch, the celebrated Bishop of Clermont,
was the last of the three greatest preachers of the great
age of pulpit eloquence in France — the age, as Voltaire
has observed, probably the greatest in pulpit oratory of all time.
Massillon, by the consensus of the world, has been adjudged the
greatest of the great three, in the region of the pathetic, or persua-
sion by the resource of emotion, or in still
other words, as a preacher; that is, in the
power of stirring the hearts and moving
the passions of multitudes of men towards
that which all men know to be the noblest
and best, whatever the practice of their
lives may be.
Bossuet, the monarch of the pulpit,
moved on with a magnificent and thunder-
ing tread, trampling down all opposition;
in a dignified and elegant fury, subduing
all things to his imperial will. Bourdaloue,
the Jesuit and incomparable logician, a com-
batant by far more skillful than even Bos-
suet, with no flourish of trumpets, brought
up the irresistible battalions of arguments, marshaled with matchless
skill, swiftly succeeding one another with an unerring aim, all in
fighting undress, without waving plumes or the clank of glittering
trappings or the frippery of gilded lace and pompous orders, but with
victory written on every banner; and when the hour of conflict was
over, stood on a field strewed with the wrecks of every adversary.
Massillon, coming immediately after these giants of a world-wide
renown, while yet the air was ringing of their hitherto unequaled
achievements, — with the great advantage, indeed, of being offered
the opportunity of learning much from their skill, — yet struck out
a wholly new method for himself. Each of the three evinced enor-
mous native oratorical talent. Each had acquired and mastered what-
ever the schools can furnish of rhetorical skill and finish; and this is
much. But Massillon evinced an enormous superiority in that which
J. B. MASSILLON
JEAN BAPTISTE MASSILLON
was a peculiarity of his own — and it was a peculiarity of measure-
less consequence. He evinced a moral constitution more subtle and
more refined than either; a knowledge of the secret depths of the
human heart more profound; and a -certain sympathetic power, inde-
scribable in words, but infinitely effective in stirring the emotions and
rousing the passions of the hearer into an irresistible conflict in his
soul with his own perverse inclinations: while at the same moment
he was enchanting him with the purest and most perfect graces of
style; and was sweetly, almost unconsciously, leading him along, not
able, not wishing, to resist; or even affrighting him by a sudden cry
of alarm, as sincere and tender as that of a mother frightening her
infant away from the wrong way into the right.
In respect of purity and beauty of style, Fenelon, and Fenelon alone
of all preachers, might come into competition with him; but Fenelon
having ordered his sermons to be burned, we have little or nothing
of his in this line.
It is a happy consequence of this extreme elegance, this match-
less purity and beauty of style, — and it is one of the rarest in the
world, in the case of the great preachers, — that after deducting the
necessary and unspeakable loss of his majestic presence, his impress-
ive manner, his wonderfully lovely voice, his perfect and bewitch-
ing elocution, his printed sermons were read by the most refined of
his contemporaries in the closet, and for nearly two hundred years
have been and are still read (in the original), with unabated delight.
The young King Louis XV., we are told, « learned them by heart,
the magistrate had them in his office, the fine lady on her toilet
table. }> Unfortunately there are not, perhaps there cannot be, anv
translation of his masterpieces which in respect of style would be
judged, by those most competent to judge, to be worthy of him.
From the smoothness and harmonious flow of his sentences, Voltaire
named him the Racine of the pulpit; and tells us that the 'Athalie*
of Racine and the ( Grand Careme ) of Massillon (the forty-two ser-
mons preached at Versailles before Louis XIV. during the Lent of
1704) are always lying on his table side by side.
This remarkable man was the son of a" minor officer of the law:
born in the little city of Hyeres, — an ancient watering-place on the
French Riviera, some fifty miles east of Marseilles, — and educated
at the College of the Oratorians at Marseilles, of which liberal
order he became in due time a priest. He was a true child of the
fervid south. The warm blood of Provence galloped through his
veins, and the hot passions of human nature were strong in his soul.
His infant rambles were among orange groves, olives, and palms.
The soft breezes of the Mediterranean fanned the cheeks of his
youth; and from infancy up his ears were daily saluted by the gay
JEAN BAPTISTE MASSILLON
and amorous melodies of the Troubadours. He was rusticated from
his college for some faux pas with the sex. It was nothing very
serious, we imagine (he was only eighteen), and he was restored to
his classes within the year. After his great sermon on the Prodiga?
Son, in which he so profoundly analyzes the workings of the volup-
tuous passions, he was asked <( where, being a recluse, he could have
obtained such a profound knowledge of the voluptuous life?" He
replied, (< In my own heart. }>
He was not only born in the land of love and song, he was born
an orator. It is related of him that in early childhood he was ac-
customed, on Sundays and holy days, to gather his comrades around
him,. then mount a rock, a box, or a chair, and declaim to them the
substance of the sermon he had heard at mass. In college he pur-
sued the humanities with the greatest zeal, and was greatly distin-
guished in all the rhetorical exercises; yet after becoming a priest
and furnished with such a magnificent equipment, he • grew shy of
this great talent, made repeated attempts to escape the pulpit, and
finally began the exercise of his remarkable gifts only on the abso-
lute command of the superior of his order. From the first moment
a brilliant career was assured. Success swiftly followed success. He
passed rapidly up the ladder of promotion. The great capital was
already whispering his fame, when in his thirty-third year he found
himself actually planted in that wicked Babylon, and summoned to
preach in its most prominent pulpits. Improving his opportunity to
hear the greatest preachers there (including of course Bossuet and
Bourdaloue, and probably Flechier and Mascaron), he said on one
occasion to a brother priest who accompanied him : (< I feel their
intellectual force, I recognize their great talents; but if I preach, I
shall not preach like them.** And surely he did not.
From this moment, to hear a sermon of Massillon was a new expe-
rience to Paris. Many stories have come down to us of the effects
of this new method in the hands of this unparalleled master. We can
cite but a specimen. To illustrate how widely his influence pervaded
the lowest as well as the highest classes of society, it is related that
when Massillon was to preach in Notre Dame, the crush at the en-
trance was something extraordinary even for a Paris crowd. On one
occasion a rather powerful woman of the town, bent on hearing him,
roughly elbowing her way through the mass, whispered aloud, (<Eh!
wherever this devil of a Massillon preaches, he makes such a row!v
Baron, the comic author and actor, at that time the leading star of
the French stage, soon went to hear him. Struck by the simplicity
of his manner and the impressive truthfulness of his elocution, he
said to a brother actor who accompanied him, <( There, my friend.
is an orator: we are but players. }> Laharpe relates that a courtier.
JEAN BAPTISTE MASSILLON
going to a new opera, found his carriage blocked in a double file of
carriages, the one bound for the opera, the other for the Quinze-
vingts. The church was near where Massillon was preaching. In 'his
impatience he dismounted from the carriage, and out of curiosity for
a sight of the famous preacher, he entered the church. The sermon
was already begun. It was the celebrated discourse <On the Word
of God.* At that moment Massillon raised his usually downcast look,
and sweeping the congregation with his wonderful eye, uttered the
apostrophe — Tu es ille vir! [Thou art the man.] The gentleman
was struck as by an arrow. He remained till the end of the sermon,
fixed in his place as by a charm. At the close he did not go to
the opera, but returned to his home a changed man. Bourdaloue,
after hearing him, being asked by a distinguished brother of his own
order how he ranked the new orator, is said to have replied in the
words of the Forerunner concerning the just appearing Messiah: <( He
must increase, but I must decrease. » The celebrated compliment of
Louis XIV. at the close of the < Grand Careme,* though threadbare
and possibly intended to be equivocal, must not be omitted, because
it was unquestionably as true as it was elegant, when he said to
him : <( Father, I have heard several great orators in my chapel ; I
have been mightily pleased with them: as for you, every time I have
heard you, I have been very much displeased — with myself. )J He
presently added: <(And I wish to hear you, father, hereafter every
two years. >J Yet for this or some other now unknown reason, Mas-
sillon was never again invited by Louis XIV. to preach before him.
Bourdaloue, than whom there could be no abler or severer judge,
after reading his printed discourses declared: <(The progress one
has made in eloquence must be judged of by the relish he finds in
reading Massillon's works. » In 1717 he was appointed by Louis XV.
Bishop of Clermont, and in 1719 he was elected one of the French
Academy. He died at the age of eighty, of apoplexy, in his country
house a few miles outside his see-city.
Now what were the great and distinguishing features of this <(new
method, w which resulted in such enormous contemporary as well as
lasting .success? Setting aside, as having been sufficiently noticed,
the extraordinary witchery of his person, of his voice, of his manner,
of even his delicious language and perfect literary form, what partic-
ulars can we discover, in the printed pages of his sermons, as we
have them in our hands to-day, to account for the prodigious strength
and unrelaxing permanence of his grip on the minds and hearts of
men ? This we shall try to show in the selections we now offer the
reader from his most famous discourses.
There are two observations to be made in a general way toward
answering this question, before descending to more definite particulars.
JEAN BAPTISTE MASSILLON
One strikes us, on the first notice of the subjects he has chosen
to discourse on. He had observed, he once said, that there was too
much dwelling on external manners and a general and vague morality.
If we examine, we find that his subject-matter is always something
definite and personal, something that comes home to <(the business
and bosom }> of every one of his auditory. This is too evident in
every one of his discourses to need any citations.
Then it is conspicuous how little space he gives to establishing
accepted truths and general propositions universally adopted. He
assumes these, or at most confirms them in a paragraph or two.
Then he sets himself to search out in the bottom of the hearts of
his hearers — in their criminal attachments, in their earthly interests —
the reasons why each one in particular, without contesting the exist-
ence of the law or the necessity of obeying it, pretends that he can
give himself a dispensation from submitting himself to it. This too,
as we shall see, appears in every sermon.
Another characteristic which pervades his whole method, and is
found in every discourse, and in which Buffon in his treatise on
< Eloquence } gives it as his judgment that Massillon surpasses all
the orators ancient and modern, is called in the schools Amplifica-
tion. It consists in the difficult but effective art of developing a
principal thought in one long composite sentence, which occupies an
entire paragraph, and is made up of an expanding series of intensi-
fying clauses, flowing in one indivisible stream of multiplying minor
thoughts, which roll the fundamental sentiment along, exhibiting con-
tinually new relations, new colors, new charms, with ever increasing
force. As he thus revolved his thought through every application
and under every light, not only did the gathering force bear on all
before it, but each individual for himself, sooner or later, found his
own moral picture flashed into his soul; and these individual con-
victions, melting into one mighty sentiment, set the whole auditory in
commotion as if it were but a single soul. For an example of the
pathetic thus amplified, take the famous
PICTURE OF THE DEATH-BED OF A SINNER
THEN the dying sinner, finding- no longer in the remembrance
of the past, anything but regrets which overwhelm him; in
all which is passing from his sight, but images which afflict
him; in the thought of the future, but horrors which affright
him; — knowing no longer to whom he should have recourse:
neither to the creatures, which are escaping from him, nor to the
world, which is vanishing; nor to men, who do not know how
JEAN BAPTISTS MASSILLON 9785
to deliver him from death; nor to the just God, whom he regards
as his declared enemy, whose indulgence he must no longer ex-
pect;— he revolves his horrors in his soul; he torments himself,
he tosses himself hither and thither, to flee from death which is
seizing him, or at least to flee from himself; from his dying eyes
issues a gloomy wildness which bespeaks the furiousness of his
soul; from the depths of his dejection he throws out words broken
by sobs, which one but half understands, and knows not whether
it is despair or repentance which has given them form; he casts
on the crucifix affrighted looks, and such as leave us to doubt
whether it is fear or hope, hatred or love, which they mean; he
goes into convulsions in which one is ignorant whether it is the
body dissolving, or the soul perceiving the approach of her judge;
he sighs deeply, and one cannot tell whether it is the memory of
his crimes which is tearing these sighs from him, or his despair
at relinquishing life. Finally, in the midst of his mournful strug-
gles, his eyes become fixed, his features change, his countenance
is distorted, his livid mouth falls open; his whole body trembles,
and with this last struggle his wretched soul is sorrowfully torn
from this body of clay, falls into the hands of God, and finds
itself at the foot of the awful tribunal.
New translation by J. F. B.
In his painting of manners to be reproved, while always abiding
in the perfection of elegance, he sometimes descended with a frank
and bold simplicity to startling details. An example of this stripping
luxury naked for chastisement appears in the following exposure of
the ways by which it seeks to elude the rigor of the precept, from
the opening sermon of the < Grand Careme,' on —
FASTING
TEXT: ((Cum jejunatis, nolite fieri sicut hypocritse, tristes.^ — VULGATE. [When
thou fastest, be not like the hypocrites, sad. — FRENCH TRANSLATION.]
MY BRETHREN, there is more than one kind of sadness. There
is a sadness of penitence which works salvation, and the
joy of the Holy Spirit is always its sweetest fruit; a sad-
ness of hypocrisy, which observes the letter of the law, wearing
an affected exterior, pale and disfigured, in order not to lose be-
fore men the merit of its penitence, — and this is rare; finally,
there is a sadness of corruption, which opposes to this holy law
JEAN BAPTISTE MASSILLON
a depth of corruption and of sensuality: and one may safely say
that this is the most universal impression which is made on us
by the precept of the fast and of abstinence. . . .
I ask you whether, if it mortified the body and the passions
of the flesh, this ought to be by the length of the abstinence, or
by the simplicity of the food one makes use of, or in the frugal-
ity which one observes in his repasts. Pardon me this detail: it
is here indispensable, and I will make no abuse of it.
Is it the length of the abstinence ? But if, for gathering the
fruit and merit of the fast, the body must languish and faint
in the restriction of its nourishment, in order that the soul, while
expiating her profane voluptuousness, may learn in this natural
desire what ought to be her hunger and her thirst for the ever-
lasting righteousness, and for that blessed estate in which, estab-
lished again in the truth, we shall be delivered from all these
humiliating necessities, — oh, what of the useless and unfruitful
fasts in the Church!
Alas! the first believers, who did not break it till after the sun
was set; they whom a thousand holy and laborious exercises had
prepared for the hour of the repast: they who during the night
which preceded their fasting, had often watched in our temples,
and chanted hymns and canticles on the tombs of the martyrs, —
these pious believers might safely have referred the whole merit
of their fasting to the length of their abstinence, and yet only
then could their flesh and their criminal passions be enfeebled.
But for us, my brethren, it is no longer there that the merit
of our fastings must be sought; for besides that the Church, by
consenting that the hour of the repast should be advanced, has
spared this rigor to the faithful, what unworthy easements have
not been added to her indulgence ? It seems that all one's atten-
tion is limited to doing in a way that will bring one to the hour
of the repast, without one's really perceiving the length and the
rigor of the fasting.
And beyond this (since you oblige us to say it here, and to
put these indecent details in the place of the great verities of
religion), one prolongs the hours of his sleep in order to shorten
those of his abstinence; one dreads to feel for a single instant
the rigor of the precept, one stifles in the softness of repose
the prick of hunger, from which even the fasting of Jesus was
not exempt; in the sloth of a bed one nurses a flesh which the
Church had purposed to emaciate and afflict by punishment; and
JEAN BAPTISTE MASSILLON 9787
far from taking- nourishment as a necessary relief accorded at
last to the length of one's abstinence, one brings to it a body
still all full of the fumes of the night, and does not find in it
even the relish which pleasure alone would have desired for its
own satisfaction.
Translation of J. F. B.
A similar heart-searching severity pervades the following chastise-
ment, from the magnificent sermon on Alms-giving: —
HYPOCRITICAL HUMILITY IN CHARITY
IN TRUTH, there are few of those coarse and open hypocrisies
which publish on the house-tops the merit of their holy deeds;
the pride is more adroit, and never immediately unmasks: but
what in the world, nevertheless, has less of the true zealot of
charity, who seeks, like Jesus Christ, solitary and desert places to
conceal his charitable prodigality! One hardly sees any of these
ostentatious zealots who do not keep their eye out merely for
miseries of renown, and piously wish to put the public into their
confidence concerning their largesses; a good many means are
sometimes taken to cover them, but nobody is sorry that an in-
discretion has drawn them out; one will not seek the public eye,
but one will be enraptured when the public eye overtakes us;
and the liberalities which are unknown are almost regarded as
lost.
Alas! with their gifts on every side, were not our temples and
our altars the names and the marks of their benefactors, that is
to say, the public monuments of the vanity of our fathers and of
our own ? If one wished only the invisible eye of the heavenly
Father for witness, to what good this vain ostentation ? Do you
fear that the Lord forgets your offerings ? Is it necessary that
he should not be able to glance from the depth of the sanctuary,
where we adore him, without finding again the remembrance of
them ? If you propose only to please him, why expose your
bounties to other eyes than his ? Why shall his ministers them-
selves, in the most awful functions of the priesthood, appear at
the altar — where they ought to bring only the sins of the people —
loaded and clothed with marks of your vanity? Why these titles
and inscriptions which immortalize on sacred walls your gifts
and your pride ? Was it not enough that these gifts should be
written by the hand of the Lord in the Book of Life ? Why
9788 JEAN BAPTISTE MASSILLON
engrave, on marble which will perish, the merit of an action
which the charity of it was sufficient to render immortal?
Ah! Solomon, after having reared the most -stately and mag-
nificent temple that ever was, had engraved on it only the
awful name of the Lord, and took care not to mix the marks of
the grandeur of his race with those of the eternal majesty of the
King of Kings. A pious name is given to this custom; people
believe that these public monuments allure the liberality of the
faithful. But has the Lord charged your vanity with the care of
attracting bounties to his altars ? and has he permitted you to be
a modest means that your brethren should become more chari-
table ? Alas ! the most powerful among the first believers brought
simply, like the most obscure, their patrimonies to the feet of
the apostles; they saw, with a holy joy, their names and their
goods confounded with those of their brethren who had offered
less than they; people were not distinguished then in the assem-
blies of the faithful in proportion to their benefactions; the
honors and the precedences there were not yet the price of gifts
and offerings; and one did not care to change the eternal recom-
pense which was awaited from the Lord, into this frivolous
glory which might be received from men: and to-day the Church
has not privileges enough to satisfy the vanity of her benefactors;
their places with us are marked in the sanctuary; their tombs
with us appear even under the altar, where only the ashes of the
martyrs should repose; honors even are rendered to them which
ought to be reserved to the glory of the priesthood; and if they
do not bring their hand to the censer, they at least wish to share
with the Lord the incense which burns on his altars. Custom
authorizes this abuse, it is true; but that which it authorizes,
custom never justifies.
Charity, my brethren, is that sweet odor of Jesus Christ
which evaporates and is lost the moment it is uncovered. It
does not cause to abstain from the public duties of benevolence;
we owe to our brethren edification and example; it is a good
thing for them to see our works, but we should not see them
ourselves; and our left hand ought not to know the gifts our
right distributes; the achievements even which duty renders the
most brilliant, ought always to be secret in the preparations of
the heart; we ought to entertain a kind of jealousy for them
against others' gaze; and not think their innocence sure, but
when they are under the eyes of God alone. Yes, my brethren,
JEAN BAPTISTE MASSILLON
the alms which have almost always rolled along in secret, have
arrived much more pure into the bosom of God himself than
those which, exposed even against our will to the eyes of men,
have been somewhat befouled and disturbed on their course by
the unavoidable complaisances of self-love and the praise of the
spectators: like those streams which have almost always rolled
under the ground, and which carry into the bosom of the sea
waters living and pure; while, on the contrary, those which have
traversed level and exposed tracts in the open ordinarily carry
there only defiled waters, which are always dragging along the
rubbish, the corpses, the slime which they have amassed on their
route. Translation of J. F. B.
Massillon was especially noted for the appositeness and beauty of
his exordiums; and one of his sermons of great repute owes its enor-
mous fame to that peculiarity of the text and to the action of the
first three minutes. Massillon used no gestures, properly so called:
but in the words of the Abbe Maury, he had an eloquent eye; which,
Sainte-Beuve has added, made for him the most beautiful of gestures.
The sermon in question was that which he pronounced in the final
obsequies for Louis XIV. He entered the pulpit with lowered eyes,
as was his custom. At length, raising them, he swept them in silence
over all that magnificent funeral pomp. Then he fixed them on the
lofty catafalque, and slowly pronounced the words of his text, taken
from the first chapter of Ecclesiastes. in the French version of the
Vulgate: <(I have become great; I have surpassed in glory all who
have preceded me in Jerusalem. }> After a long silence, and upon
the excited expectation of the auditory, he began with the ever since
famous words: <(My brethren, God alone is great. w
Perhaps this bewitching felicity was never more striking than in
the exordium of his first sermon before the same Louis XIV., when,
knowing that a reputation for austerity had preceded him, he made
his debut before that glittering earthy crowd in the following way,
with the sermon on —
THE BLESSEDNESS OF THE RIGHTEOUS
TEXT: « Blessed are they that mourn. »
SIRE: If the world were speaking here instead of Jesus
Christ, no doubt it would not offer such language as this to
your Majesty.
(< Blessed the Prince, w it would say to you, "who has never
fought but to conquer; who has seen so many powers in arms
p79o JEAN BAPTISTE MASSILLON
against him, only to gain glory in granting them peace; who
has always been equally greater than danger and greater than
victory !
<( Blessed the Prince, who throughout the course of a long and
flourishing reign has peacefully enjoyed the emoluments of his
glory, the love of his subject peoples, the esteem of his enemies,
the admiration of all the world, the advantage of his conquests,
the magnificence of his works, the wisdom of his laws, the
august hope of a numerous posterity; and who has nothing more
to desire than long to preserve that which he possesses ! })
Thus the world would speak; but, Sire, Jesus does not speak
like the world.
(< Blessed, ® says he to you, (C not he who is achieving the
admiration of his age, but he who is making the world to come
his principal concern, and who lives in contempt of himself, and
of all that is passing away; because his is the kingdom of heaven.
(< Blessed, not he whose reign and whose acts history is going
to immortalize in the remembrance of men, but he whose tears
shall have effaced the story of his sins from the remembrance of
God himself; because he will be eternally comforted.
<( Blessed, not he who shall have extended by new conquests
the limits of his empire, but he who shall have confined his
inclinations and passions within the limits of the law of God;
because he will possess an estate more lasting than the empire
of the whole world.
<( Blessed, not he who, raised by the acclamations of subject
peoples above all the princes who have preceded him, peacefully
enjoys his grandeur and his glory, but he who, not finding on the
throne even anything worthy of his heart, seeks for perfect hap-
piness here below only in virtue and in righteousness; because he
will be satisfied.
<( Blessed, not he to whom men shall have given the glorious
titles of * Great J and < Invincible, > but he to whom the unfortu-
nate shall have given, before Jesus, the title of ( Father y and of
* Merciful * ; because he will be treated with mercy.
<( Blessed, in fine, not he who, being always arbiter of the
destiny of his enemies, has more than once given peace to the
earth, but he who has been able to give it to himself, and to
banish from his heart the vices and inordinate affections which
trouble the tranquillity of it; because he will be called a child
of God.»
JEAN BAPTTSTE MASSIL/LON
These, Sire, are they whom Jesus calls blessed, and the Gos-
pel does not know any other blessedness on earth than virtue
and innocence. '
New translation by J. F. B.
Further on in this same discourse, where he feels called upon to
defend himself from the charge of preaching on imaginary or at least
exaggerated delusions of the world, he draws, as follows, —
ONE OF His CELEBRATED PICTURES OF GENERAL SOCIETY
WHAT is the world for the worldlings themselves who love it,
who seem intoxicated with its pleasures, and who are not able
to step from it? The world? — It is an everlasting servitude,
where no one lives for himself, and where to be blest one must
be able to kiss one's fetters and love one's slavery. The world ?
— It is a daily round of events which awaken in succession, in
the hearts of its -partisans, the most violent and the most gloomy
passions, cruel hatreds, hateful perplexities, bitter fears, devour-
ing jealousies, overwhelming griefs. The world ? — It is a terri-
tory under a curse, where even its pleasures carry with them
their thorns and their bitternesses; its sport tires by its furies
and its caprices; its conversations annoy by the oppositions of
its moods and the contrariety of its sentiments; its passions
and criminal attachments have their disgusts, their derangements,
their unpleasant brawls; its shows, hardly rinding more in the
spectators than souls grossly dissolute, and incapable of being
awakened but by the most monstrous excesses of debauchery,
become stale, while moving only those delicate passions which
only show crime in the distance, and dress out traps for inno-
cence. The world, in fine, is a place where hope, regarded as a
passion so sweet, renders everybody unhappy; where those who
have nothing to hope for, think themselves still more miserable;
where all that pleases, pleases never for long; and where ennui
is almost the sweetest destiny and the most supportable that one
can expect in it.
This, my brethren, is the world: and it is not the obscure
world, which knows neither the great pleasures nor the charms
of prosperity, of favor, and of wealth, — it is the world at its
best; it is the world of the court ;^ it is you yourselves who hear
me, my brethren.
JEAN BAPTISTE MASSILLON
This is the world; and it is not, in this aspect, one of those
paintings from imagination of which the resemblance is nowhere
to be found. I am painting the world only after your own
hearts; that is, such as you know it and always feel it yourselves
to be.
There, notwithstanding, is the place where all sinners are seek-
ing their felicity. There is their country. It is there that they
wish they could eternize themselves. This is the world which
they prefer to the eternal joys and to all the promises of faith.
New translation by J. F. B.
An exhaustive, masterly, and tremendous discourse, perhaps without
a parallel in all literature for boldness and terrible severity in scor-
ing the sin of unchastity, was that on the ( Prodigal Son,* pronounced
before Louis XIV. in the chapel at Versailles during the ( Grand
Careme.* His text was: <( He went into a far country, and there
wasted his substance with riotous living. >} His exordium consists in
repeating minutely the story, dwelling on the willingness to live far
from home, with swine and like swine, — the nastiness, the emptiness,
the deadliness of such a life, — and closes with this affecting
PRAYER
PURIFY my lips, O my God! and while I shall recount the
excess of a voluptuous sinner, furnish me with expressions
which will not offend a virtue, the love of which I come
to-day to inspire in those who hear me; for the world, which
no longer knows any restraint on this vice, exacts much notwith-
standing of us in the language which condemns it.
Then he opens upon this sin his clean-sweeping artillery thus: —
The vice the deadly consequences of which I am to-day un-
dertaking to expose — this vice so universally spread abroad on
the earth, and which is desolating with such fury the heritage
of Jesus; this vice of which the Christian religion had purged
the world, and which to-day has prevailed on religion itself — is
marked by certain peculiar characteristics, all which I find in the
story of the wanderings of the Prodigal Son.
There is never a vice which more separates the sinner from
God ; there is never a vice which, after it has separated him from
God, leaves him less resource for returning to Him; there is
never a vice which renders the sinner more insupportable to
JEAN BAPTISTE MASSILLON
himself; finally, there is not one which renders him more con-
temptible in the eyes even of other men. Observe, I pray, all
these characteristics in the story of the sinner of our gospel.
The first characteristic of the vice of which we are speaking-
is the putting, as it were, an abyss between God and the volup-
tuous soul, and the leaving him almost no more hope of return.
The prodigal of our gospel went off at first into a very far
country, which left no longer anything in common between him
and his natural father: <( He took his journey into a far country. w
Indeed, in all the other vices, the sinner seems still to hold
upon God by some feeble ties. There are some vices which respect
at least the sacredness of the body, and do not strengthen its
inordinate inclinations; there are others which do not spread so
deep darkness on the mind, and leave at least some use of the
light of reason; finally, there are some which do not occupy
the heart to such a degree as absolutely to take away from it the
relish for all which could lead back to God. But the shameful
passion of which I am speaking dishonors the body, extinguishes
reason, renders all the things of heaven disagreeable, and raises
a wall of separation between God and the sinner which seems to
take away all hope of reunion. — (( He took his journey into a far
country. w
I said that it dishonors the body of the Christian; it profanes
the temple of God in us; it makes the members of Jesus do an
ignominious service: it soils a flesh nourished on his body and
his blood, consecrated by the grace of baptism; a flesh which is
to attain immortality and be conformable to the glorious likeness
of Jesus risen; a flesh which will repose in the holy place, and
whose ashes will await, under the altar of the Lamb, the day of
revelation, mingled with the ashes of the virgins and the martyrs;
a flesh more holy than those august temples where the glory of
the Lord reposes; more worthy of being possessed with honor
and with reverence than the very vases of the sanctuary, conse-
crated by the terrible mysteries which they inclose. But what a
barrier does not the opprobrium of this vice put to the return of
God into us! Can a holy God, in whose sight even the heavenly
spirits are unclean, sufficiently separate himself from a flesh cov-
ered with shame and ignominy ? The creature being but dust
and ashes, the holiness of God must suffer by lowering himself
down to it: ah, what then can the sinner promise himself who
joins to his own nothingness and baseness the indignities of a
JEAN BAPTISTE MASSILLON
body shamefully dishonored ? — (< He took his journey into a fai
country. })
I said that this vice extinguishes even in the soul all het
lights, and that the sinner is no longer capable of those salu-
tary reflections which often lead back an unbelieving soul. The
prodigal of our gospel, already blinded by his passion, does not
see the wrong he is doing himself in separating himself from his
paternal home; the ingratitude of which he is rendering himself
culpable towards his natural father; the dangers to which he is
exposing himself in wishing to be the sole arbiter of his own
destiny; the decencies even which he is violating in setting out
for a far country, without the counsel and advice of him to whom
he owes at least the sentiments of reverence and deference which
mere nature itself inspires. He starts, and no longer sees but by
the eyes of his passion. — <( He took his journey into a far coun-
try. »
Such is the characteristic of this ill-fated passion, — it spreads
a thick cloud over reason: men wise, shrewd, brilliant, lose here
at once all their shrewdness, all their wisdom; all their principles
of conduct are instantly effaced; a new manner of thinking is
made up, in which all the ordinary ideas are proscribed, — it is
no longer light and counsel, it is an impetuous inclination which
decides and rules all their proceedings; what one owes to others
and what one owes to one's self is forgotten; one is blind to
one's fortune, to one's duty, to one's reputation, to one's interests,
to the decencies even of which the other passions are so jealous;
and while one is giving one's self for a spectacle to the public,
it is one's self alone that does not see one. One is made blind
to fortune: and Ammon loses his life and crown for not having
been able to subdue his unjust feebleness. One is made blind to
duty : and the impassioned wife of Potiphar no longer remembers
that Joseph is a slave ; she forgets her birth, her glory, her pride,
and no longer sees in that Hebrew aught but the object of her
shameful passion. One is made blind to gratitude: and David
has no longer eyes either for Uriah's faithfulness, or for the
ingratitude of which he is going to render himself guilty towards
a God who had drawn him from the dust to set him on the
throne of Judah; from the time that his heart was touched, all
his lights were extinguished. . . . Thus it is, O my God!
that thou punishest the passions of the flesh by the darkness of
the rnind; that thy light shines no longer on souls adulterous and
JEAN BAPTISTE MASSILLON
corrupt, and that their foolish heart is darkened. — (< He took his
journey into a far country. J>
Finally, this deplorable passion puts into the heart an invinci-
ble disgust for the things of heaven. . . . Whatever is not
marked by the shameful characteristic of voluptuousness interests
no longer. Even the duties of society, the functions of a charge,
the decencies of a dignity, domestic cares, — all weary, all become
disagreeable, outside of passion. . . . Solomon is more attent-
ive to building profane temples to the gods of his foreign wives
than to easing his people of the weight of the public expense.
[A thrust of amazing boldness in the face of Louis XIV. !] . . .
One employs one s self in occupations all which go to nourish
voluptuousness, — profane shows, pernicious reading, lascivious
music, obscene pictures. . . . It is the characteristic of this
passion to fill the whole heart entirely; one is no longer able
to occupy one's self but with it; one is possessed, drunk with
it; one finds it everywhere; everything shows the marks of its
deadly impress; everything awakens its iniquitous desires; the
world, solitude, presence, absence, objects the most indifferent,
occupations the most serious, the holy temple itself, the sacred
altars, the terrible mysteries, recall the remembrance of it: and
everything becomes unclean, as the Apostle says, to him who is
already himself unclean. — (< He took his journey into a far coun-
try. »
Look back, unbelieving soul; recall those first sentiments of
modesty and virtue with which you were born, and see all the
way you have made in . the road of iniquity, since the fatal day
when this shameful vice soiled your heart; and how much you
have since removed yourself away from your God : <( He took his
journey into a far country. w
Translation of J. F. B.
Probably the most visibly effective of all the many extraordinary
bursts of Massillon's oratory was the celebrated passage in the per-
oration of the sermon on the < Small Number of the Saved, > pro-
nounced before Louis XIV. in the chapel royal at Versailles in the
course of the c Grand Careme } ; when, having in a long discourse
wrought up and prepared his auditory, he began: —
If Jesus should appear in this temple, in the midst of this
assembly, the most august in the whole world, to be our judge,
to make the terrible separation between the sheep and the goats.
JEAN BAPTISTE MASSILLON
do you believe that the greater number of us would be set on
his right hand ? — do you believe that things would be at least
equal? — do you believe there would be found here only ten
righteous, which the Lord was not able to find formerly in five
entire cities? I ask you; — you do not know, I do not know my-
self. Thou alone, O God, dost know those who belong to thee!
But if we do not know who belong to him, we do know at least
that sinners do not. But wrho are the faithful believers here as-
sembled ? — Titles and dignities must be counted for nothing; you
will be stripped of them before Jesus. Who are they ? A mass
of sinners who do not wish to be converted; still more who wish
to be, but who are putting off their conversion: a good many
who were converted, but only always to backslide; finally, a
great number who think they have no need of conversion: here
is the party of the reprobates. Retrench these four sorts of sin-
ners from this holy assembly; for they will be retrenched in the
great day; — appear now, ye righteous: where are you! Remnant
of Israel, pass to the right; wheat of Jesus, separate yourselves
from this chaff destined to the fire. O God! where are thine
elect ? and what remains for thy portion ?
New translation by J. F. B.
It is a curious and very significant tradition that this tremendous
sermon had been pronounced before in St. Eustache in Paris, where
the turn in the passage given above was unexpected, and the effect
unparalleled. At his call for (<the remnant of Israel, » it is said that
the whole congregation, carried away in sympathy with the orator,
rose to their feet in a body, not knowing what they were doing.
Stranger still, this was known at Versailles, and the passage was
expected and eagerly awaited. Yet hard as it is to credit it, we are
told that the effect was not a whit less tremendous. Strangest per-
haps of all, it is said that Massillon himself, by his posture, by his
look of dejection, by his silence of some seconds (a frequent usage of
his to add emphasis), associated himself with and augmented the ter-
ror of the audience in the chapel royal at Versailles. But we must
suppose that it was an expression of sincere sympathy, as well as a
sentiment of refinement and decency.
9797
PHILIP MASSINGER
(1583-1640)
BY ANNA MCCLURE SHOLL
(HE plays of Philip Massinger embody the prosaic spirit of the
period of decline which followed Shakespeare. This spirit
is not indicated by the subject-matter of his dramas. The
plots of <The Duke of Milan, > ( The Guardian,' or <The Fatal Dowry, >
admit of great treatment. In Massinger's hands they are at least
well woven. His absence of imagination is shown rather by his
lack of moral consistency in the depiction
of character. His men and women are pup-
pets, moved to action by the will of their
artificer, not by the laws of their individu-
ality.
The events of Massinger's life are ob-
scure and elusive. He was born in 1583;
he entered St. Albans Hall, Oxford, in 1602.
During his four years' residence there <( he
gave his mind more to poetry and romances
than to logic and philosophy. » After leav-
ing Oxford he went up to London, to throw
in his fortunes with the frequenters of the
Mermaid Tavern. The enchanted world of
the drama was at that time clothed in the
richness and beauty of its prime. The young hearts of Beaumont
and Fletcher, of Webster and Tourneur, still throbbed with (<the love
of love, the hate of hate." The brain of genius was still unchilled
by doubt and speculation.
Massinger, though contemporary with these great children of a
great age, belongs by his spirit to a duller time. His dramas have
the solidity of prose without its freedom. His characters and situa-
tions lack the spontaneity of nature. He is melodramatic in the
sense that his men and women are personifications of virtue or vice.
The broad via media, the highway on which the majority of mankind
is afoot, has no place in his dramas. He is blind to the half-lights
of character, — to the subtle blen dings of shade and color in the minds
of mer>-
PHILIP MASSINGER
PHILIP MASSINGER
Camiola and Adorni in < The Maid of Honour > are exceptions to this
rule. Camiola, who loves Bertoldo and is herself hopelessly beloved
of Adorni, is (< a small but ravishing substance. w Her impetuous affec-
tion, like Juliet's, goes directly to its goal without subterfuge or
deviation. When she learns from the servants that Bertoldo is in
prison, abandoned by the King, the impatience of her sorrow leaps to
her lips: —
<( Possible! Pray you, stand off.
If I do mutter treason to myself
My heart will break; and yet I will not curse him, —
He is my King. The news you have delivered
Makes me weary of your company: we'll salute
When we meet next. I'll bring you to the door.
Nay, pray you, no more compliments. })
Adorni is a noble and convincing figure. When commissioned by
Camiola to rescue his rival, she asks of him, (< You will do this ? }) He
answers, « Faithfully, madam ;» then aside, ((but not live long after. »
Massinger rarely clothes such abundance of meaning in so few words.
( The Fatal Dowry > and ( The Duke of Milan y are generally as-
signed the first place among the tragedies of Massinger. They are
stately plays, but dreary and lifeless. His two comedies (A New
Way to Pay Old Debts > and < The City Madam ) are comedies only
in the sense that they do not end in death and disaster. The char-
acter of Sir Giles Overreach in the former play has held the stage
until the present time. Of Massinger's classical dramas, Arthur
Symons assigns the highest place to ( Believe as You List,* though
the better known play < The Roman Actor > was held by the author
<(to be the most perfect work of my Minerva. »
Massinger is farthest from greatness in his depiction of women.
With the exception of Camiola, of Lidia in the ( Great Duke of
Florence, > of Bellisant in the 'Parliament of Love,* of Matilda in the
* Bashful Lover, y and of one or two others, his women are vulgar
and sensual. Their purity and their vice are alike unconvincing.
This defect of portrayal is common, however, to the majority of
Massinger's characters. They are uninteresting because their qualities
are imposed upon them. There is no fidelity to the hidden springs
of action.
Massinger wrote a number of plays in conjunction with other
dramatists. The best known is <The Virgin-Martyr.' Dekker's touch
is recognizable in such lines as these: —
(( I could weary stars,
And force the wakeful moon to lose her eyes,
With my late watching. »
PHILIP MASSINGER 9799
Massinger was a prolific writer. Beside the plays already men-
tioned, he gave to the stage of his day <The Renegade, > <The Bond-
man, > (A Very Woman, > < The Emperor of the East,> <The Pictured
and (The Unnatural Combat.* Coleridge has recommended the diction
of JMassinger to the imitation of modern writers, on the ground that
it is the nearest approach to the language of real life at all com-
patible with a fixed metre. . It is this very characteristic of it which
deprives it of the highest poetical quality.
FROM <THE MAID OF HONOUR >
[Camiola, who is in love with Bertoldo, is told by his Friends Antonio
and Gasparo that he is a prisoner, and that the King has refused to pay hia
ransom.]
Enter a Servant
Servant — The signiors, madam, Gasparo and Antonio,
Selected friends of the renowned Bertoldo,
Put ashore this morning.
Camiola — Without him ?
Servant — I think so.
Camiola — Never think more, then!
Servant — They have been at 'court,
Kissed the King's hand, and, their first duties done
To him, appear ambitious to tender
To you their second service.
Camiola — Wait them hither.
Fear, do not rack me! Reason, now if ever
Haste with thy aids, and tell me, such a wonder
As my Bertoldo is, with such care fashioned,
Must not, nay, cannot, in Heaven's providence
So soon miscarry ! —
Enter Antonio and Gasparo
Pray you, forbear: ere you take
The privilege as strangers to salute me,
(Excuse my manners) make me first understand
How it is with Bertoldo.
9800
PHILIP MASSINGER
Gasparo — The relation
Will not, I fear, deserves your thanks.
Antonio — I wish
Some other should inform you.
Camiola — Is he dead?
You see, though with some fear, I dare inquire it.
Gasparo — Dead! Would that were the worst: a debt were paid then..
Kings in their birth owe nature.
Camiola — Is there aught
More terrible than death ?
Antonio — Yes, to a spirit
Like his: cruel imprisonment, and that
Without the hope of freedom.
Camiola — You abuse me:
The royal King cannot, in love to virtue,
(Though all the springs of affection were dried up)
But pay his ransom.
Gasparo — When you know what 'tis.
You will think otherwise: no less will do it
Than fifty thousand crowns.
Camiola— A petty sum,
The price weighed with the purchase: fifty thousand!
To the King 'tis nothing. He that can spare more
To his minion for a masque, cannot but ransom
Such a brother at a million. You wrong
The King's munificence.
Antonio — In your opinion;
But 'tis most certain: he does not alone
In himself refuse to pay it, but forbids
All other men.
Camiola — Are you sure of this?
Gasparo — You may read
The edict to that purpose, published by him.
That will resolve you.
Camiola — Possible! Pray you, stand off.
If I do mutter treason to myself
My heart will break; and yet I will not curse him, —
He is my King. The news you have delivered
Makes me weary of your company: we'll salute
When we meet next. I'll bring you to the door.
Nay, pray you, no more compliments.
PHILIP MASSINGER 9801
FROM <A NEW WAY TO PAY OLD DEBTS >
[Sir Giles Overreach, on fire with greed and with ambition to found a
great feudal house, treats about marrying his daughter with Lord Lovell.]
OVERREACH — To my wish: we are private.
I come not to make offer with my daughter
A certain portion, — that were poor and trivial:
In one word I pronounce all that is mine,
In lands or leases, ready coin or goods,
With her, my lord, comes to you; nor shall you have
One motive to induce you to believe
I live too long, since every year I'll add
Something unto the heap, which shall be yours too.
Lovell — You are a right kind father.
Overreach — You shall have reason
To think me such. How do you like this seat?
It is well wooded and well watered, — the acres
Fertile and rich: would it not serve for change
To entertain your friends in a summer progress?
What thinks my noble lord ?
Lovell— 'Tis a wholesome air,
And well built; and she that is mistress of it
Worthy the large revenues.
Overreach— She the mistress!
It may be so for a time ; but let my lord
Say only that he but like it, and would have it, —
I say, ere long 'tis his.
Lovell— Impossible !
Overreach —
You do conclude too fast: not knowing me,
Nor the engines that I work by. 'Tis not alone
The lady Allworth's lands; — but point out any man's
In all the shire, and say they lie convenient
And useful for your Lordship, and once more
I say aloud, they are yours.
Lovell — I dare not own
What's by unjust and cruel means extorted.
My fame and credit are more dear to me,
Than so to expose 'em to be censured by
The public voice.
Overreach— You run, my lord, no hazard:
Your reputation shall stand as fair
In all good men's opinions as now.
Nor can my actions, though condemned for ill,
Cast any foul aspersion upon yours:
9802
PHILIP MASSINGER
For though I do contemn report myself,
As a mere sound, I still will be so tender
Of what concerns you in all points of honor,
That the immaculate whiteness of your fame,
Nor your unquestioned integrity,
Shall e'er be sullied with one taint or spot
That may take from your innocence and candor.
All my ambition is to have my daughter
Right Honorable, which my lord can make her;
And might I live to dance upon my knee
A young Lord Lovell, born by her unto you,
I write nil ultra to my proudest hopes.
As for possessions and annual rents,
Equivalent to maintain you in the part
Your noble birth and present state require,
I do remove the burden from your shoulders,
And take it on my own"; for though I ruin
The country to supply your riotous waste,
The scourge of prodigals (want) shall never find you.
Are you not frighted with the imprecations
And curses of whole families, made wretched
By your sinister practices ?
Overreach — Yes, as rocks are
When foamy billows split themselves against
Their flinty ribs; or as the moon is moved
When wolves, with hunger pined, howl at her brightness.
I am of a solid temper, and like these,
Steer on a constant course: with mine own sword,
If called into the field, I can make that right
Which fearful enemies murmured at as wrong.
Now, for those other piddling complaints,
Breathed out in bitterness: as when they call me
Extortioner, tyrant, cormorant, or intruder
On my poor neighbor's rights, or grand incloser
Of what was common to my private use;
Nay, when my ears are pierced with widows' cries,
And undone orphans wash with tears my threshold'
I only think what 'tis to have my daughter
Right Honorable; and 'tis a powerful charm
Makes me insensible of remorse or pity,
Or the least sting of conscience.
Lovell — I admire
The toughness of your nature.
Overreach — 'Tis for you,
My lord, and for my daughter, I am marble.
9802 a
BRANDER MATTHEWS
(1852-)
BY ERNEST HUNTER WRIGHT
>ORN at New Orleans February 2ist, 1852, Brander Matthews
was educated in New York, where he was graduated from
Columbia College in 1871 and from the Columbia Law School
two years later. He was admitted to the bar, but a fortunate choice
soon turned him to the profession of letters. His first book was pub-
lished in 1879, an(i since that date he has contributed uninterruptedly
to literature, in drama, fiction, biography, and perhaps most signally,
in criticism. In recognition of the distinction of his books he was
called to Columbia as lecturer in English in 1891, and in the following
year was appointed professor of literature. In 1899 he became the
professor of dramatic literature, and in this professorate he has been,
since 1903, the senior member of the Department of English in the
university.
He has been a prolific author in several fields. Beginning with a
volume on (The Theatres of Paris) in 1880, he continued his studies of
the French stage with (French Dramatists of the Nineteenth Century)
in iSSi. Without taking leave of the field of criticism, he then devoted
himself principally for more than ten years to the drama, the novel, and
the short story. His comedy of (Margery's Lovers,) produced in 1884,
was followed by (This Picture and That) in 1887 and (The Decision of
the Court) in 1893; and he also collaborated with George H. Jessop in
(A Gold Mine) (1887) and (On Probation) (1889), and with Bronson
Howard in (Peter Stuyvesant) (1898). In fiction he was more produc-
tive; the titles of the novels and short stories in his seventeen volumes
of narrative are too numerous for full citation here. They include
(Tom Paulding) (1892), (His Father's Son) (1895), (Tales of Fantasy
and Fact) (1896), (Outlines in Local Color) (1897), (A Confident To-
morrow) (1899), and (Vistas of New York) (1912). Without delivering
himself to the rigors of realistic theory, Professor Matthews consistently
wrote of the life that passed before his eyes; and if one type of his fiction
should be selected more than another for especial mention, it should
probably be such stories as the (Vignettes of Manhattan) (1894), in
which, over and above the tale that is told, he has given us faithful
etchings of certain characters and certain modes of living which the
hurried growth of the metropolis has all but obliterated and which now
endure dimly in the memories of men turned gray. i
98o2b BRANDER MATTHEWS
During the years devoted largely to drama and to fiction, Professor
Matthews was also steadily producing in the essay form, using it prin-
cipally for literary and dramatic criticism, and in the last twenty years
the bulk of his work has been done in this field. In the total product of
his pen his criticisms form the major part, and probably will prove his
most valuable work. (Pen and Ink,) from 1888, is a sheaf of essays on
various subjects, grave and gay. (Americanisms and Briticisms)
(1892) presents, among other things, an unbiassed study of variant
diction in which information is seasoned with amusement. (Studies of
the Stage) (1894) treats various aspects of the art to which the author
has given most thought and devotion. (Bookbindings, Old and New)
(1895) betrays by its title another interest of the author which is re-
flected here and there in others of his works. The ( Introduction to the
Study of American Literature) (1896) has been a companion to thou-
sands of students through school and college courses. (Aspects of
Fiction) (1896) contains, beside much else, studies in the technic of the
novel and the short story, an art to which, incidentally, the author has
contributed in criticism a body of doctrine comparable with the more
extended doctrine of the drama of which he has been a leading formu-
lator. Criticism of 'this and other -kinds he carries on into (The His-
torical Novel and Other Essays) in 1901. In (Parts of Speech,) from
the same year, he returns to a study somewhat similar to that of the
title-essay in (Americanisms and Briticisms.) In (The Development of
the Drama) (1903) he traces the history of dramatic art from its begin-
nings among barbarian tribes to its full development in modern society.
Then, after two volumes of essays on various subjects in (Inquiries and
Opinions) (1907) and (The American of the Future, and Other Essays)
(1909), he returns to the art of play-making in (A Study of the Drama)
in 1910. (A Study of Versification) followed this in the next year.
Miscellaneous treatises on literary topics were combined in (Gateways
to Literature) in 1913. And (A Book About the Theatre,) in 1916,
is the author's latest volume of studies in his favorite art.
Within the limits of this article it is not possible to mention, even by
name, all the works of Professor Matthews. A list that should include,
besides those already mentioned and others similar in kind, his various
pamphlets and booklets, his numerous prefaces and extensive editorial
work, and the chapters he has contributed to volumes written in col-
laboration, would be impressive for its length; and it is superfluous to say
that the exceptionally sustained quality of work so varied has long
since assured him a position in the front rank of contemporary authors
in America. But two at least of his later volumes call for especial notice.
In more than one sense his biography of (Moliere,) from 1910, and his
(Shakespeare as a Playwright,) from 1913, are the work of a lifetime.
The one he had actually planned in youth, and the other voices with
equal emphasis a lifelong interest. But more than this, the matured
BRANDER MATTHEWS 98020
critical gifts of the author, which had always been devoted most willingly
and most valuably to the drama, find here their amplest opportunity
in the two leading dramatists of modern times; and the principles of the
dramatic art, which the author has derived from the study of its entire
history and which he has formulated in a score of other works, are here
given their fullest application and illustration. To Professor Matthews
the drama has always been much more than a literary art. It is the
picture of an action shown not merely in words, but in the flesh, in the
persons of certain actors before a certain audience in a certain kind of
theatre. It is a plastic as well as a literary art. For the kind of criti-
cism that recognizes it as such, Professor Matthews has been one of
the leading spokesmen in America, and possibly his success in this
endeavor has been his main achievement as a critic. It is therefore
natural that the most original chapters of his (Moliere) and of his
(Shakespeare) should be those that attempt to show — what had been
too often neglected — how the plays of these dramatists were molded,
in accordance with the cardinal laws of all drama, with an eye upon the
actors who were to produce them, upon the audiences who were to wit-
ness them, and upon the theatres which aided and limited the presenta-
tion of them.
The work of Professor Matthews has not failed of recognition. Since
the days when he used to write for the Saturday Review his reputation
has been international. He is a member of many clubs and societies in
America and abroad. Of several of these he was a founder, among them
the Authors and the Players in New York, and the Kinsmen in New
York and London. He was also an organizer of the American Copyright
League, of the Columbia University Press, of the Dunlap Society, of the
National Institute of Arts and Letters, and of the Simplified Spelling
Board. The last three of these he has served as president or chairman.
He bears the honorary doctorate from several universities, wears the
ribbon of the Legion of Honor, and sits in the American Academy of
Arts and Letters. His friends form a host; the list of them is like a roll-
call of the great men of three nations in the last half-century. It is not
necessary to add that he knows himself how to be a friend. In conversa-
tion he is one of the foremost of American wits. In his work he has been
at once a scholar and a man of letters — one of the few men of his time
who has given to scholarship the voice of literature. That voice, above
all else, has been one of clarity. They say in France that if a sentence is
not clear it is not French. Certainly we of the English tongue can boast
no such distinction. But the author whose work we have here been
reviewing has been a lifelong reader of French prose, and whether this
be part of the reason or not, there is no exaggeration in the statement
that if a sentence fails of clarity it was not written by Brander Matthews.
And clarity in diction, here as usually, is the token of lucidity of mind
and sincerity of purpose.
9802 d BRANDER MATTHEWS
AMERICAN CHARACTER
From (The American of the Future and Other Essays.) Copyright by Charles
Scribner's Sons, and reprinted by their permission.
IN a volume recording a series of talks with Tolstoi, published by
a French writer in the final months of 1904, we are told that
the Russian novelist thought the Dukhobors had attained to
a perfected life, in that they were simple, free from envy, wrath, and
ambition, detesting violence, refraining from theft and murder, and
seeking ever to do good. Then the Parisian interviewer asked which
of the peoples of the world seemed most remote from the perfection
to which the Dukhobors had elevated themselves; and when Tolstoi
returned that he had given no thought to this question, the French
correspondent suggested that we Americans deserved to be held up
to scorn as the least worthy of nations.
The tolerant Tolstoi asked his visitor why he thought so ill of us ;
and the journalist of Paris then put forth the opinion that we Ameri-
cans are «a people terribly practical, avid ,of pleasure, systematically
hostile to all idealism. The ambition of the American's heart, the
passion of his life, is money ; and it is rather a delight in the conquest
and possession of money than in the use of it. The Americans ignore
the arts; they despise disinterested beauty. And now, moreover,
they are imperialists. They could have remained peaceful without
danger to their national existence; but they had to have a fleet and
an army. They set out after Spain, and attacked her; and now
they begin to defy Europe. Is there not something scandalous in
this revelation of the conquering appetite in a new people with no
hereditary predisposition toward war?))
It is to the credit of the French correspondent that after setting
down this fervid arraignment, he was honest enough to record Tolstoi's
dissent. But although he dissented, the great Russian expressed
little surprise at the virulence of this diatribe. No doubt it voiced
an opinion familiarized to him of late by many a newspaper of France
and of Germany. Fortunately for us, the assertion that foreign
nations are a contemporaneous posterity is not quite true. Yet the
opinion of foreigners, even when most at fault, must have its value
for us as a useful corrective of conceit. We ought to be proud of
our country; but we need not be vain about it. Indeed, it would
be difficult for the most patriotic of us to find any satisfaction in the
figure of the typical American which apparently exists in the mind
BRANDER MATTHEWS 98020
of most Europeans, and which seems to be a composite photograph
of the backwoodsman of Cooper, the negro of Mrs. Stowe, and the
Mississippi river-folk of Mark Twain, modified perhaps by more
vivid memories of Buffalo Bill's Wild West. Surely this is a strange
monster; and we need not wonder that foreigners feel towards it as
Voltaire felt toward the prophet Habakkuk, — whom he declared to
be ((capable of anything.))
It has seemed advisable to quote here what the Parisian journal-
ist said of us, not because he himself is a person of consequence,
indeed, he is so obscure that there is no need even to mention his
name, but because he has had the courage to attempt what Burke
declared to be impossible, — to draw an indictment against a whole
nation. It would be easy to retort on him in kind, for, unfortunately,
— and to the grief of all her friends, — France has laid herself open
to accusations as sweeping and as violent. It would be easy to dis-
miss the man himself as one whose outlook on the world is so narrow
that it seems to be little more than what he can get through a chance
slit in the wall of his own self-sufficiency. It would be easy to answer
him in either of these fashions, but what is easy is rarely worth while;
and it is wiser to weigh what he said and to see if we cannot find our
profit in it.
Sifting the essential charges from out the mass of his malevolent
accusation, we find this Frenchman alleging first, that we Americans
care chiefly for making money; second, that we are hostile to art
and to all forms of beauty; and thirdly, that we are devoid of ideals.
These three allegations may well be considered, one by one, beginning
with the assertion that we are mere money-makers.
Now, in so far as this Frenchman's belief is but an exaggeration
of the saying of Napoleon's, that the English were a nation of shop-
keepers, we need not wince, for the Emperor of the French found to
his cost that those same English shopkeepers had a stout stomach
for fighting. Nor need we regret that we can keep shop profitably,
in these days when the doors of the bankers' vaults are the real gates
of the Temple of Janus, war being impossible until they open. There
is no reason for alarm or for apology so long as our shopkeeping does
not cramp our muscle or curb our spirit, for, as Bacon declared three
centuries ago, ((walled towns, stored arsenals and armories, goodly
races of horse, chariots of war, elephants, ordnance, artillery, and the
98o2f BRANDER MATTHEWS
like, all this is but a sheep in a lion's skin, except the breed and dis-
position of the people be stout and warlike.))
Even the hostile French traveler did not accuse us of any flab-
biness of fibre; indeed, he declaimed especially against our ((con-
quering appetite,)) which seemed to him scandalous «in a new people
with no hereditary predisposition toward war.)) But here he fell
into a common blunder; the United States may be a new nation
— although as a fact the stars-and-stripes is now older than the
tricolor of France, the union jack of Great Britain, and the standards
of those newcomers among the nations, Italy and Germany -
the United States may be a new nation, but the people here have had
as many ancestors as the population of any other country. The
people here, moreover, have «a hereditary predisposition toward
war,)) or at least toward adventure, since they are, every man of
them, descended from some European more venturesome than his
fellows, readier to risk the perils of the Western Ocean and bolder
to front the unknown dangers of an unknown land. The warlike
temper, the aggressiveness, the imperialistic sentiment, — these
are in us no new development of unexpected ambition; and they
ought not to surprise anyone familiar with the way in which our
forefathers grasped this Atlantic coast first, then thrust themselves
across the Alleghanies, spread abroad to the Mississippi, and reached
out at last to the Rockies and to the Pacific. The lust of adventure
may be dangerous, but it is no new thing; it is in our blood, and
we must reckon with it.
Perhaps it is because ((the breed and disposition of the people)) is
((stout and warlike)) that our shopkeeping has been successful enough
to awaken envious admiration among other races whose energy
may have been relaxed of late. After all, the arts of war and the
arts of peace are not so unlike; and in either a triumph can be won
only by an imagination strong enough to foresee and to divine what
is hidden from the weakling. We are a trading community, after
all and above all, even if we come of fighting stock. We are a trading
community, just as Athens was, and Venice and Florence. And
like the men of these earlier commonwealths, the men of the United
States are trying to make money. They are striving to make money
not solely to amass riches, but partly because having money is the
outward and visible sign of success, — because it is the most obvious
measure of accomplishment.
In his talk with Tolstoi our French critic revealed an unexpected
insight when he asserted that the passion of American life was not
BRANDER MATTHEWS 9802 g
so much the use of money as a delight in the conquest of it. Many
an American man of affairs would admit without hesitation that he
would rather make half a million dollars than inherit a million. It
is the process he enjoys, rather than the result; it is the tough tussle
in the open market which gives him the keenest pleasure, and not
the idle contemplation of wealth safely stored away. He girds him-
self for battle and fights for his own hand; he is the son and the
grandson of the stalwart adventurers who came from the Old World
to face the chances of the new. This is why he is unwilling to retire
as men are wont to do in Europe when their fortunes are made.
Merely to have money does not greatly delight him — although he
would regret not having it; but what does delight him unceasingly
is the fun of making it.
The money itself often he does not know what to do writh; and
he can find no more selfish'use for it than to give it away. He seems
to recognize that his making it was in some measure due to the un-
conscious assistance of the community as a whole; and he feels it
his duty to do something for the people among whom he lives. It
must be noted that the people themselves also expect this from
him; they expect him sooner or later to pay his footing. As a result
of this pressure of public opinion and of his own lack of interest in
money itself, he gives freely. In time he comes to find pleasure in
this as well; and he applies his business sagacity to his benefactions.
Nothing is more characteristic of modern American life than this
pouring out of private wealth for public service. Nothing remotely
resembling it is to be seen now in any country of the Old World ; and
not even in Athens in its noblest days was there a larger-handed
lavishness of the individual for the benefit of the community.
Again, in no country of the Old World is the prestige of wealth
less powerful than it is here. This, of course, the foreigner fails to
perceive; he does not discover that it is not the man who happens
to possess money that we regard with admiration but the man who
is making money, and thereby proving his efficiency and indirectly
benefiting the community. To many it may sound like an insuffer-
able paradox to assert that nowhere in the civilized world to-day is
money itself of less weight than here in the United States; but the
broader his opportunity the more likely is an honest observer to
come to this unexpected conclusion. Fortunes are made in a day
almost, and they may fade away in a night; as the Yankee proverb
put it pithily, ((it's only three generations from shirt-sleeves to shirt-
sleeves.)) Wealth is likely to lack something of its glamour in a land
9802 h BRANDER MATTHEWS
where well-being is widely diffused and where a large proportion of
the population have either had a fortune and lost it, or else expect to
gain one in the immediate future.
Probably also there is no Country which now contains more men
who do not greatly care for large gains and who have gladly given up
money-making for some other occupation they found more profit-
able for themselves. These are the men like Thoreau — in whose
(Wai den, ) now half a century old, we can find an emphatic declara-
tion of all the latest doctrines of the simple life. We have all heard
of Agassi z, — best of Americans, even though he was born in another
republic, — how he repelled the proffer of large terms for a series of
lectures, with the answer that he had no time to make money. Closely
akin was the reply of a famous machinist in response to an inquiry
as to what he had been doing — to the effect that he had accomplished
nothing of late, — «we have just been building engines and making
money, and I'm about tired of it.)) There are not a few men to-day
in these toiling United States who hold with Ben Jonson that ((money
never made any man rich, — but his mind.))
But while this is true, while there are some men among us who
care little for money, and while there are many who care chiefly for
the making of it, ready to share it when made with their fellow-
citizens, candor compels the admission that there are also not a few
who are greedy and grasping, selfish and shameless, and who stand
forward, conspicuous and unscrupulous, as if to justify to the full
the aspersions which foreigners cast upon us. Although these men
manage for the most part to keep within the letter of the law, their
morality is that of the wrecker and of the pirate. It is a symptom
of health in the body politic that the proposal has been made to
inflict social ostracism upon the criminal rich. We need to stiffen
our conscience and to set up a loftier standard of social intercourse,
refusing to fellowship with the men who make their money by over-
riding the law or by undermining it, — just as we should have declined
the friendship of Captain Kidd laden down with stolen treasure.
In the immediate future these men will be made to feel that they
are under the ban of public opinion. One sign of an acuter sensi-
tiveness is the recent outcry against the acceptance of ((tainted money))
for the support of good works. Although it is wise always to give
a good deed the credit of a good motive, yet it is impossible some-
times not to suspect that certain large gifts have an aspect of ((con-
science money.)) Some of them seem to be the result of a desire to
divert public attention from the evil- way in which the money was
BRANDER MATTHEWS 9802!
made to the nobler manner in which it is spent. They appear to
be the attempt of a social outlaw to buy his peace with the com-
munity. Apparently there are rich men among us, who, having sold
their honor for a price, would now gladly give up the half of their
fortunes to get it back.
Candor compels the admission also that by the side of the crimi-
nal rich there exists the less noxious but more offensive class of the
idle rich, who lead lives of wasteful luxury and of empty excitement.
When the French reporter who talked with Tolstoi called us Ameri-
cans ((avid of pleasure)) it was this little group he had in mind, as he
may have seen the members of it splurging about in Paris, squandering
and self-advertising. Although these idle rich now exhibit them-
selves most openly and to least advantage in Paris and in London,
their foolish doings are recorded superabundantly in our own news-
papers; and their demoralizing influence is spread abroad. The
snobbish report of their misguided attempts at amusement may
even be a source of danger in that it seems to recognize a false stand-
ard of social success or in that it may excite a miserable ambition
to emulate these pitiful frivolities. But there is no need of delaying
longer over the idle rich; they are only a few, and they have doomed
themselves to destruction, since, it is an inexorable fact that those
who break the laws of nature can have no hope of executive clemency.
((Patience a little; learn to wait,
Years are long on the clock of fate.))
in
The second charge which the wandering Parisian journalist
brought against us was that we ignore the arts and that we despise
disinterested beauty. Here again the answer that is easiest is not
altogether satisfactory. There is no difficulty in declaring that there
are American artists, both painters and sculptors, who have gained
the most cordial appreciation in Paris itself, or in drawing attention
to the fact that certain of the minor arts — that of the silversmith,
for one, and for another, that of the glass-blower, and the glass-
cutter — flourish in the United States at least as freely as they do
anywhere else, while the art of designing in stained glass has had a
new birth here, which has given it a vigorous vitality lacking in
Europe since the Middle Ages. It would not be hard to show that
our American architects are now undertaking to solve new problems
wholly unknown to the builders of Europe, and that they are often
9802 j BRANDER MATTHEWS
succeeding in this grapple with unprecedented difficulty. Nor would
it take long to draw up a list of the concerted efforts of certain of
our cities to make themselves more worthy and more sightly with
parks well planned and with public buildings well-proportioned and
appropriately decorated. We might even invoke the memory of the
evanescent loveliness of the White City that graced the shores of
Lake Michigan a few years ago; and we might draw attention again
to the Library of Congress, a later effort of the allied arts of the
architect, the sculptor, and the painter.
But however full of high hope for the future we may esteem
these several instances of our reaching out for beauty, we must admit
— if we are honest with ourselves — that they are all more or less
exceptional, and that to offset this list of artistic achievements the
Devil's Advocate could bring forward a damning catalogue of crimes
against good taste which would go far to prove that the feeling for
beauty is dead here in America and also the desire for it. The Devil's
Advocate would bid us consider the flaring and often vulgar advertise-
ments that disfigure our highways, the barbaric ineptness of many
of our public buildings, the squalor of the outskirts of our towns and
villages, the hideousness and horror of the slums in most of our cities,
the negligent toleration of dirt and disorder in our public convey-
ances, and many another pitiable deficiency of our civilization present
in the minds of all of us.
The sole retort possible is a plea of confession and avoidance,
coupled with a promise of reformation. These evils are evident
and they cannot be denied. But they are less evident to-day than
they were yesterday; and we may honestly hope that they will be
less evident to-morrow. The bare fact that they have been observed
warrants the belief that unceasing effort will be made to do away
with them. Once aroused, public opinion will work its will in due
season. And here occasion serves to deny boldly the justice of a
part of the accusation which the French reporter brought against us.
It may be true that we ((ignore the arts,)) — although this is an ob-
vious overstatement of the case; but it is not true that we ((despise
beauty.)) However ignorant the American people may be as a whole,
they are in no sense hostile toward art — as certain other peoples
seem to be. On the contrary, they welcome it; with all their igno-
rance, they are anxious to understand it; they are pathetically eager
for it. They are so desirous of it that they want it in a hurry, only
too often to find themselves put off with an empty imitation. But
the desire itself is indisputable; and its accomplishment is likely to
BRANDER MATTHEWS 9802 k
be helped along by the constant commingling here of peoples from
various other stocks than the Anglo-Saxon, since the mixture of
races tends always to a swifter artistic development.
It is well to probe deeper into the question and to face the fact that
not only in the arts bat also in the sciences we are not doing all that
may fairly be expected of us. Athens was a trading city as New
York is, but New York has had no Sophocles and no Phidias. Flor-
ence and Venice were towns whose merchants were princes, but no
American city has yet brought forth a Giotto, a Dante, a Titian. It
is now nearly threescore years and ten since Emerson delivered his
address on the (American Scholar,) which has well been styled our
intellectual Declaration of Independence, and in which he expressed
the hope that ((perhaps the time is already come . . . when the
sluggard intellect of this continent will look from under its iron lids
and fulfill the postponed expectation of the world with something
better that the exertions of a mechanical skill.)) Nearly seventy
years ago was this prophecy uttered which still echoes unaccomplished.
In the nineteenth century in which we came to maturity as a
nation, no one of the chief leaders of art, even including literature
in its broadest aspects, and no one of the chief leaders in science,
was native to our country. Perhaps we might claim that Webster
was one of the world's greatest orators and that Parkman was one
of the world's greatest historians; but probably the experts outside
of the United States would be found unprepared and unwilling to
admit either claim, however likely it may be to win acceptance in
the future. Lincoln is indisputably one of the world's greatest states-
men; and his fame is now firmly established throughout the whole
of civilization. But this is all we can assert; and we cannot deny
that we have given birth to very few indeed of the foremost poets,
dramatists, novelists, painters, sculptors, architects, or scientific
discoverers of the last hundred years.
Alfred Russell Wallace, whose renown is linked with Darwin's
and whose competence as a critic of scientific advance is beyond dis-
pute, has declared that the nineteenth century was the most won-
derful of all since the world began. He asserts that the scientific
achievements of the last hundred years, both in the discovery of
general principles and in their practical application, exceed in number
the sum total of the scientific achievements to be credited to all the
centuries that went before. He considers, first of all, the practical
applications, which made the aspect of civilization in 1900 differ
in a thousand ways from what it had been in 1801. He names a
9802 I BRANDER MATTHEWS
dozen of these practical applications: railways, steam navigation,
the electric telegraph, the telephone, friction-matches, gas-lighting,
electric lighting, the photograph, the Roentgen rays, spectrum analy-
sis, anaesthetics, and antiseptics. It is with pride than an Ameri-
can can check off not a few of these utilities as being due wholly or
in large part to the ingenuity of one or another of his countrymen.
But his pride has a fall when Wallace draws up a second list not
of mere inventions but of those fundamental discoveries, of those
fecundating theories underlying all practical applications and mak-
ing them possible, of those principles ((which have extended our knowl-
edge or widened our conceptions of the universe.)) Of these he
catalogues twelve; and we are pained to find that no American has
had an important share in the establishment of any of these broad
generalizations. He may have added a little here and there; but
no single one of all the twelve discoveries is mainly to be credited to
any American. It seems as if our French critic was not so far
out when he asserted that we were ((terribly practical.)) In
the application of principles, in the devising of new methods, our
share was larger than that of any other nation. In the working out
of the stimulating principles themselves, our share was less than «a
younger brother's portion.))
It is only fair to say, however, that even though we may not
have brought forth a chief leader of art or of science to adorn the
wonderful century, there are other evidences of our practical saga-
city than those set down by Wallace, evidences more favorable and
of better augury for our future. We derived our language and
our laws, our public justice and our representative government from
our English ancestors, as we derived from the Dutch our religious
toleration and perhaps .also our large freedom of educational op-
portunity. In our time we have set an example to others and
helped along the progress of the world. President Eliot holds that
we have made five important contributions to the advancement of
civilization. First of all, we have done more than any other people
to further peace-keeping, and to substitute legal arbitration for the
brute conflict of war. Second, we have set a splendid example
of the broadest religious toleration — even though Holland had first
shown us how. Thirdly, we have made evident the wisdom of
universal manhood, suffrage. Fourthly, by our welcoming of new-
comers from all parts of the earth, we have proved that men be-
longing to a great variety of races are fit for political freedom.
Finally, we have succeeded in diffusing material well-being among
BRANDER MATTHEWS 9802 m
the whole population to an extent without parallel in any other country
in the world.
These five American contributions to civilization are all of them
the result of the practical side of the American character. They
may even seem commonplace as compared with the conquering ex-
ploits of some other races. But they are more than merely practi-
cal; they are all essentially moral. As President Eliot insists, they
are ((triumphs of reason, enterprise, courage, faith, and justice over
passion, selfishness, inertness, timidity, and distrust. Beneath each
of these developments there lies a strong ethical sentiment, a strenu-
ous moral and social purpose. It is for such work that multitudinous
democracies are fit.))
IV
A ((strong ethical sentiment,)) and a ((strenuous moral purpose))
cannot flourish unless they are deeply rooted to idealism. And here
we find an adequate answer to the third assertion of Tolstoi's visitor,
who maintained that we are ((hostile to all idealism.)) Our idealism
may be of a practical sort, but it is idealism none the less. Emerson
was an idealist, although he was also a thrifty Yankee. Lincoln was
an idealist, even if he was also a practical politician, an opportunist,
knowing where he wanted to go, but never crossing a bridge
before he came to it. Emerson and Lincoln had ever a firm grip
on the facts of life; each of them kept his gaze fixed on the stars,
— and he also kept his feet firm on the soil.
There is a sham idealism, boastful and shabby, which stares at
the moon and stumbles in the mud, as Shelley and Poe stumbled.
But the basis of the highest genius is always a broad common sense.
Shakespeare and Moliere were held in esteem by their comrades
for their understanding of affairs; and they each of them had money
out at interest. Sophocles was entrusted with command in battle;
and Goethe was the shrewdest of the Grand Duke's counselors.
The idealism of Shakespeare and of Moliere, of Sophocles and of
Goethe, is like that of Emerson and of Lincoln; it is unfailingly
practical. And thereby it is sharply set apart from the aristocratic
idealism of Plato and of Renan, of Ruskin and of Nietzsche, which
is founded on obvious self-esteem and which is sustained by arrogant
and inexhaustible egotism. True idealism is not only practical, it
is also liberal and tolerant.
Perhaps it might seem to be claiming too much to insist on certain
points of similarity between us and the Greeks of old. The points
980211 BRANDER MATTHEWS
of dissimilarity are only too evident to most of us; and yet there is
a likeness as well as an unlikeness. Professor Butcher has recently
asserted that «no people was ever less detached from the practical
affairs of life)) than the Greeks, ((less insensible to outward utility;
yet they regarded prosperity as a means, never as an end. The
unquiet spirit of gain did not take possession of their souls. Shrewd
traders and merchants, they were yet idealists. They did not lose
sight of the higher and distinctively human aims which give life its
significance.)) It will be well for us if this can be said of our civiliza-
tion two thousand years after its day is done ; and it is for us to make
sure that ((the unquiet spirit of gain)) shall not take possession of our
souls. It is for us also to rise to the attitude of the Greeks, among
whom, as Professor Butcher points out, ((money lavished on personal
enjoyment was counted vulgar, oriental, inhuman.))
There is comfort in the memory of Lincoln and of those whose
death on the field of Gettysburg he commemorated. The men who
there gave up their lives that the country might live, had answered
to the call of patriotism, which is one of the sublimest images of
idealism. There is comfort also in the recollection of Emerson, and
in the fact that for many of the middle years of the nineteenth cen-
tury he was the most popular of lecturers, with an unfading attractive-
ness to the plain people, perhaps, because, in Lowell's fine phrase,
he ((kept constantly burning the beacon of an ideal life above the
lower region of turmoil.)) There is comfort again in the knowledge
that idealism is one manifestation of imagination, and that imagina-
tion itself is but an intenser form of energy. That we have energy
and to spare, no one denies; and we may reckon him a nearsighted
observer who does not see also that we have our full share of imagina-
tion, even though it has not yet expressed itself in the loftiest regions
of art and of science. The outlook is hopeful, and it is not true that
((We, like sentries, are obliged to stand
In starless nights and wait the appointed hour.))
The foundations of our commonwealth were laid by the sturdy Eliza-
bethans who bore across the ocean with them their portion of that
imagination which in England flamed up in rugged prose and in
superb and soaring verse. In two centuries and a half the sons of
these stalwart Englishmen have lost nothing of their ability to see
visions and to dream dreams, and to put solid foundations under
their castles in the air. The flame may seem to die down for a season,
but it springs again from the embers most unexpectedly, as it broke
BRANDER MATTHEWS 98020
forth furiously in 1861. There was imagination at the core of the
little war for the freeing of Cuba, — the very attack on Spain, which the
Parisian journalist cited to Tolstoi as the proof of our predatory
aggressiveness. We said that we were going to war for the sake of
the ill-used people in the suffering island close to our shores; we said
that we would not annex Cuba; we did the fighting that was need-
ful;— and we kept our word. It is hard to see how even the most
bitter of critics can discover in this anything selfish.
There was imagination also in the sudden stopping of all the
steamcraft, of all the railroads, of all the street-cars, of all the inces-
sant traffic of the whole nation, at the moment when the body of a
murdered chief magistrate was lowered into the grave. This pause
in the work of the world was not only touching, it had a large signifi-
cance to anyone seeking to understand the people of these United
States. It was a testimony that the Greeks would have appreciated;
it had the bold simplicity of an Attic inscription. And we would
thrill again in sympathetic response if it was in the pages of Plutarch
that we read the record of another instance. When the time arrived
for Admiral Sampson to surrender the command of the fleet he had
brought back to Hampton Roads, he came on deck to meet there
only those officers whose prescribed duty required them to take
part in the farewell ceremonies as set forth in the regulations. But
when he went over the side of the flagship he found that the boat
which was to bear him ashore was manned by the rest of the officers,
ready to row him themselves and eager to render this last personal
service; and then from every other ship of the fleet there put out a
boat also manned by officers, to escort for the last time the commander
whom they loved and honored.
As another illustration of our regard for the finer and loftier
aspects of life, consider our parks, set apart for the use of the people
by the city, the state, and the nation. In the cities of this new coun-
try the public playgrounds have had to be made, the most of them,
and at high cost, — whereas the towns of the Old World have come
into possession of theirs for nothing, more often than not inheriting
the private recreation-grounds of their rulers. And Europe has
little or nothing to show similar either to the reservations of certain
states, like the steadily enlarging preserves in the Catskills and the
Adirondacks, or to the ampler national parks, the Yellowstone, the
Yosemite, and the Grand Canyon of the Colorado, some of them far
9802 p BRANDER MATTHEWS
larger in area than one at least of the original thirteen states. Over-
coming the pressure of private greed, the people have ordained the
preservation of this natural beauty and its protection for all time
under the safe guardianship of the nation and with free access to
all who may claim admission to enjoy it.
In like manner many of the battlefields, whereon the nation spent
its blood that it might be what it is and what it hopes to be, — these
have been taken over by the nation itself and set apart and kept
as holy places of pilgrimage. They are free from the despoiling hand
of any individual owner. They are adorned with monuments re-
cording the brave deeds of the men who fought there. They serve
as constant reminders of the duty we owe to our country and of the
debt we owe to those who made it and who saved it for us. And
the loyal veneration- with which these fields of blood have been cher-
ished here in the United States finds no counterpart in any country
in Europe, no matter how glorious may be its annals of military
prowess. Even Waterloo is in private hands; and its broad acres,
enriched by the bones of thousands, are tilled every year by the in-
dustrious Belgian farmers. Yet it was a Frenchman, Renan, who
told us that what welds men into a nation is ((the memory of great
deeds done in common and the will to accomplish yet more.))
According to the theory of the conservation of energy, there
ought to be about as much virtue in the world at one time as at an-
other. According to the theory of the survival of the fittest, there
ought to be a little more now than there was a century ago. We
Americans to-day have our faults, and they are abundant enough
and blatant enough, and foreigners take care that we shall not
overlook them ; but our ethical standard — however imperfectly we
may attain to it — is higher than that of the Greeks under Pericles,
of the Romans under Caesar, of the English under Elizabeth. It
is higher even than that of our forefathers who established our free-
dom, as those know best who have most carefully inquired into the
inner history of the American Revolution. In nothing was our
advance more striking than in the different treatment meted out to
the vanquished. after the Revolution and after the Civil War. When
we made our peace with the British the native tories were proscribed,
and thousands of loyalists left the United States to carry into Canada
the indurated hatred of the exiled. But after Lee's surrender at
Appomattox, no body of men, no single man indeed, was driven forth
to live an alien for the rest of his days; even though a few might
choose to go, none were compelled.
BRANDER MATTHEWS 9802 q
This change of conduct on the part of those who were victors in
the struggle was evidence of an increasing sympathy. Not only is
sectionalism disappearing, but with it is departing the feeling that
really underlies it, — the distrust of those who dwell elsewhere than
where we do. This distrust is common all over Europe to-day.
Here in America it has yielded to a friendly neighborliness which
makes the family from Portland, Maine, soon find itself at home in
Portland, Oregon. It is getting hard for us to hate anybody, — espe-
cially since we have disestablished the devil. We are good-natured
and easy-going; Herbert Spencer even denounced this as our imme-
diate danger, maintaining that we were too good-natured, too easy-
going, too tolerant of evil ; and he insisted that we needed to strengthen
our wills to protest against wrong, to wrestle with it resolutely, and
to overcome it before it is firmly rooted.
VI
\Ve are kindly and we are helpful; and we are fixed in the belief
that somehow everything will work out all right in the long run.
But nothing will work out all right unless we so make it work; and
excessive optimism may be as corrupting to the fibre of the people
as ((the Sabbathless pursuit of fortune,)) as Bacon termed it. When
Mr. John Morley was last in this country he seized swiftly upon a
chance allusion of mine to this ingrained hopefulness of ours. ((Ah,
what you call optimism,)) he cried, ((I call fatalism.)) But an optimism
which is solidly based on a survey of the facts cannot fairly be termed
fatalism; and another British student of political science, Mr. James
Bryce, has recently pointed out that the intelligent native American
has — and by experience is justified in having — a firm conviction
that the majority of qualified voters are pretty sure to be right.
Then he suggested a reason for the faith that is in us, when he
declared that no such feeling exists in Europe, since in Germany the
governing class dreads the spread of socialism, in France the repub-
licans know that it is not impossible that Monarchism and Clerical-
ism may succeed in upsetting the Republic, while in Great Britain
each party believes that the other party, when it succeeds, succeeds
by misleading the people, and neither party supposes that the major-
ity are any more likely to be right than to be wrong.
Mr. Morley and Mr. Bryce were both here in the United States
in the fall of 1904, when we were in the midst of a presidential elec-
tion, one of those prolonged national debates, creating incessant
commotion, but invaluable agents of our political education, in so
98o2r BRANDER MATTHEWS
far as they force us all to take thought about the underlying prin-
ciples of policy, by which we wish to see the government guided. It
was while this political campaign was at its height that the French
visitor to the Russian novelist was setting his notes in order and copy-
ing out his assertion that we Americans were mere money-grubbers,
((systematically hostile to all idealism.)) If this unthinking Parisian
journalist had only taken the trouble to consider the addresses which
the chief speakers of the two parties here in the United States were
then making to their fellow-citizens in the hope of winning votes,
he would have discovered that these practical politicians, trained
to perceive the subtler shades of popular feeling, were founding all
their arguments on the assumption that the American people as a
whole wanted to do right. He would have seen that the appeal of
these stalwart partisans was rarely to prejudice or to race-hatred, —
evil spirits that various orators have sought to arouse and to intensify
in the more recent political discussions of the French themselves.
An examination of the platforms, of the letters of the candidates,
and of the speeches of the more important leaders on both sides re-
vealed to an American observer the significant fact that ((each party
tried to demonstrate that it was more peaceable, more equitable,
more sincerely devoted to lawful and righteous behavior than the
other)); and ((the voter was instinctively credited with loving peace
and righteousness, and with being stirred by sentiments of good- will
toward men.)) This seems to show that the heart of the people is
sound, and that it does not throb in response to ignoble appeals.
It seems to show that there is here the desire ever to do right and to
see right done, even if the will is weakened a little by easy-going
good-nature, and even if the will fails at times to stiffen itself reso-
lutely to make sure that the right shall prevail.
((Liberty hath a sharp and double edge fit only to be handled by
just and virtuous men,)) so Milton asserted long ago, adding that
«to the bad and dissolute, it becomes a mischief unwieldy in their
own hands.)) Even if we Americans can clear ourselves of being
((bad and dissolute,)) we have much to do before we may claim to
be ((just and virtuous.)) Justice and virtue are not to be had for the
asking; they are the rewards of a manful contest with selfishness
and with sloth. They are the results of an honest effort to think
straight, and to apply eternal principles to present needs. Merely
to feel is only the beginning; what remains is to think and to act.
A British historian, Mr. Frederic Harrison, who came here to
spy out the land three or four years before Mr. Morley and Mr. Bryce
BRANDER MATTHEWS 98023
last visited us, was struck by the fact — and by the many conse-
quences of the fact — that ((America is the only land on earth where
caste has never had a footing, nor has left a trace.)) It seemed to
him that ((vast numbers and the passion of equality tend to low aver-
ages in thought, in manners, and in public opinion, which the zeal
of the devoted minority tends gradually to raise to higher planes of
thought and conduct.)) He believed that we should solve our prob-
lems one by one because ((the zeal for learning, justice, and humanity))
lies deep in the American heart. Mr. Harrison did not say it in so
many words, but it is implied in what he did say, that the absence of
caste and the presence of low averages in thought, in manners, and in
public opinion, impose a heavier task on the devoted minority, whose
duty it is to keep alive the zeal for learning, justice, and humanity.
Which of us, if haply the spirit moves him, may not elect himself
to this devoted minority? Why should not we also, each in our
own way, without pretense, without boastfulness, without bullying,
do whatsoever in us lies for the attainment of justice and of virtue?
It is well to be a gentleman and a scholar; but after all it is best to
be a man, ready to do a man's work in the world. And indeed there
is no reason why a gentleman and a scholar should not also be a man.
He will need to cherish what Huxley called ((that enthusiasm for
truth, that fanaticism for veracity, which is a greater possession than
much learning, a nobler gift than the power of increasing knowledge.))
He will need also to remember that
((Kings have their dynasties, — but not the mind;
Cassar leaves other Caesars to succeed,
But Wisdom, dying, leaves no heir behind.))
(1905-)
SHAKSPERE'S ACTORS
From (Shakspere as a Playwright.) Copyright by Charles Scribner's Sons, and
reprinted by their permission.
IT would be interesting if we could also ascertain the names of the
original performers of the important parts in all Shakspere's
plays. Here our information is pitiably scant. There were in
those days no printed playbills in the theatre itself; and there were
no theatrical criticisms in the newspapers, for the sufficient reason
that there were no newspapers. When a play was published it rarely
contained a list of the characters carrying on its plot; in the First
98o2t BRANDER MATTHEWS
Folio such a list is appended to only two or three of Shakspere's
pieces, the (Winter's Tale) for one and the second part of (Henry
IV. ) for another. And even when the list of characters is given there
is no indication of the names of the performers who played the several
parts.
Yet even if our information- is scant, it is not wholly lacking.
From an elegy written upon the death of Richard Burbage we learn,
what we might have inferred without this positive assurance, that
he was the performer of Hamlet, Othello, and King Lear, and another
poem of the period authorizes us to believe that he also played Richard
III. In the First Folio (Romeo and Juliet) in the fourth act the
stage-direction reads ((enter Peter,)) whereas in the second and third
quartos the stage direction reads ((enter Will Kempe)); and we have
no right to doubt that Kemp was the original actor of Peter. In
-(Much Ado about Nothing) a similar slip supplies us with two simi-
lar identifications of an actor with a part: in the fourth act, when
the watch enters, the speeches of Dogberry and Verges are assigned
to Kemp and Cowley, the names of the performers themselves care-
lessly appearing in place of the names of the characters they were
impersonating. And earlier in the same play, in the second act,
the stage-direction reads, ((enter Prince, Leonato, Claudio, and Jacke
Wilson,)) which is evidence that Wilson was the performer of the
part of Balthasar (who sings ((Sigh no more, ladies; sigh no more))).
Another slip of the same kind informs us that the servant who enters
in the third act of the (Taming of the Shrew) was played by an actor
known in the theatre as ((Nick.))
It may be noted that Will Kemp resigned about 1598, and that
his place was taken by Robert Armin, who seems to have been con-
nected with the company off and on for at least ten years. In the
dedication of a play of Armin's published in 1609, he discloses the
fact that he had impersonated Dogberry; it is likely, therefore, that
he succeeded to all of Kemp's characters when he joined the company
after Kemp had left it.
In the quarto edition of Ben Jonson's (Every Man in His Humour, )
printed in 1603, there is a list of the actors who appeared in this play:
((Will. Shakspeare, Aug. Philips, Hen. Condel, Will. Slye, Will
Kempe, Ric. Burbage, J. Hemings, Thos. Pope, Chr. Beeston, and
John Duke.)) The play had been produced by the company to which
Shakspere belonged in 1598, and the list given in 1603 is probably
an incomplete roster of the company as it was in 1598, since it in-
cludes Kemp, who seems to have withdrawn shortly after Jonson's
BRANDER MATTHEWS 9802 u
comedy was first performed. When Jonson's tragedy of (Sejanus)
was published in 1605, the final page tells us that ((this Tragaedie
was first acted in the yeere 1603 By the King's Majesties Servants))
and that ((the principal Tragaedians were Ric. Burbadge, Aug. Philips,
Will. Sly, Joh. Lowin, Will. Shakes-peare, Joh. Hemings, Hen. Con-
del, Alex. Cooke.)) Mention must be made also of the fact that the
(Seven Deadly Sins) (acted in all probability in 1592) had among
its performers Burbage, Philips, Pope, Condell, Cowley, Sly, Duke,
and Bryan.
In the First Folio we have a list of ((the names of the Principall
Actors in all these Plays)) arranged in two columns:
William Shakespeare Samuel Gilburne
Richard Burbage Robert Armin
John Hemmings William Ostler
Augustine Phillips Nathan Field
William Kempt John Underwood
Thomas Poope Nicholas Tooley
George Bryan William Ecclestone
Henry Condell Joseph Taylor
William Slye Robert Benfield
Richard Cowly Robert Goughe
John Lowine Richard Robinson
Samuell Crosse John Shancke
Alexander Cooke John Rice
But this list is not absolutely complete, since it omits the names
of John Duke, Christopher Beeston, and John Sinkler. Also to be
noted is the fact that it contains the names of actors probably not
in the company at the same time; Kemp and Armin, for example.
It may be doubted whether the company ever numbered as many
as twenty-six, even at its fullest strength. The usual number was
probably not more than fifteen. A single actor would often appear
in two or more of the less important parts. The suggestion has
even been made that one actor, possibly Wilson, thus ((doubled))
Cordelia and the Fool.
Apparently it was about 1590 that Shakspere joined the com-
pany, when certain of its leading members had already been associated
for some years. It had been organized before the Burbages built
9802V BRANDER MATTHEWS
the first Theatre in 1576, the materials of which were used in the
erection of the Globe twenty years later. It bore various titles,
being called Lord Strange's men, Lord Derby's and Lord Hunsdon's,
and the Lord Chamberlain's company; and finally, in 1603, after
the accession of James, it was authorized to call itself the King's
Players. In London, it acted not only at the Theatre and the Rose,
and then at the Globe, but still later also at the Blackfriars. It
went on frequent strolling expeditions in the provinces; and it may
have given performances in Stratford when Shakspere was still a
resident in his native town. But although it altered its name from
time to time, and although it acted in different places, it retained its
membership for a score of years after 1590 with comparatively few
changes. It seems to have been well chosen at the start and to have
been skillfully recruited as vacancies were caused by retirement or
by death. Its half dozen or half score chief members, the ((sharers))
or associated managers, who hired the boys and subordinate per-
formers, were not only good actors, they were also men of good
character bound by ties of friendship as well as of interest. Its
leading actors were partners in the management and in the very
considerable profits of the enterprise. In fact, in its organization,
in the qualities of its constituent elements, in its enduring solidarity
it bears a striking likeness to the company which Moliere brought
back to Paris in 1658 and which still survives as the Comedie-Fran-
gaise. Theatrical conditions in London, when Shakspere retired
in the first quarter of the seventeenth century, did not widely differ
from those in Paris when Moliere died toward the end of the third
quarter of that century; but theatrical conditions then were very
different from theatrical conditions now. To-day, in the first quarter
of the twentieth century, there is not to be seen in London or in New
York a single permanent company, and in Paris there is but one which
is substantially the same year after year.
Nowadays a special company is engaged for every new play that
is produced and for every important revival. To-day there is a
vast body of unemployed actors and actresses from whom the manager
can select the performers best suited to the several parts of the piece
he is about to bring out ; and the dramatist composes his play, having
in mind special actors only for one or more of the salient characters,
knowing that there will be no difficulty in securing fairly satisfactory
performers for the less important parts. But in Shakspere's time,
as in Moliere's, there were at call few disengaged performers of
merit; most of the available actors were already attached to one
BRANDER MATTHEWS 9802 w
or another of the existing companies in London or in the provinces.
The dramatist, therefore, composed his play specifically for the mem-
bers of some one of these companies, perforce adjusting the parts
to the performers who were originally to undertake them, and care-
fully refraining from the introduction of any part for which there
was not a fit performer already in the company. What is now known
as a ((special engagement)) was then impossible, because it would not
have been profitable, since the company kept all its successful plays
in repertory, ready for immediate performance in its own theatre in
London and in any convenient hall in the country towns when it
went on its frequent strolling excursions. In London fifteen to
twenty new plays were produced by a company every season; and
no one of them had more than fifteen or twenty performances, scat-
tered through the year, and never consecutive.
It has been pointed out that Moliere has no maternal love in any
of his plays, because his company did not contain any ((old woman)) ;
and the elderly females who do appear now and again in his comedies
were all of them highly colored so that they could be performed by
a male actor, in accord with mediaeval tradition still surviving in
the French theatre during the seventeenth century. Shakspere,
like Moliere, composed all his plays for one particular company,
that to which he himself belonged. We may rest assured that Shak-
spere and Moliere rarely wrote any part for which there was not a
proper performer already in the company. We may feel certain also
that Shakspere, like Moliere, fitted the characters in his comedies
and his tragedies to the special actors for whom he intended them.
As the repertory was large and as the program was changed daily, it
is probable that a prominent actor was not unwilling now and again to
appear in a part of less prominence than his importance in the theatre
would warrant ; and it may be noted that this was the practice in the
famous Meiningen company toward the end of the nineteenth century.
We know very little about the histrionic ability of the members
of the company for which Shakspere wrote. We have no record
of the manner in which Burbage acted Othello and Lear, or of the
method of Kemp in Peter and Dogberry. Yet with the evidence of
Shakspere's plays before us, and with our knowledge of the extra-
ordinary demands they make upon the performers, we are justified
in believing that the company must have been very strong indeed,
rich in actors of varied accomplishment. We should have the same
conviction in regard to Moliere's company, on the sole testimony of
his plays, even if we were without the abundant contemporary evi-
9802X BRANDER MATTHEWS
dence to the merits of Moliere and his wife, of La Grange and Made-
leine Bejart. By the fact that Shakspere wrote. Othello and Lear
and Hamlet for Burbage we are debarred from any right to doubt
that Burbage was a great tragedian. The parts that Shakspere
composed for Kemp, and later for Armin, may be taken as proof
positive that these two actors had a broad vein of humor like that
which Charles Lamb relished in Dowton. The swift succession of
Portia and Beatrice, Rosalind and Viola, is irrefragable testimony
to the histrionic capacity of the shaven lad who impersonated these
lovely creatures one after another. A good company it must have
been, that for which Shakspere wrote his twoscore histories and
comedies and tragedies, filled with superb parts stimulating to the
ambition of the actors who were his associates; and it was a good all-
round company also, versatile and energetic.
That Shakspere fitted these actors with parts, that he adjusted
his characters to the capacity of the performers, that he was moved
in his choice of subject by his intimate knowledge of the histrionic
capability of his fellow-actors, and perhaps also by their expressed
desire for more ambitious opportunities, this is surely beyond question,
since we know that it is just what Moliere did in his day and just
what every dramatist has done and must do. The author of (Ralph
Roister Doister) was head-master of Eton; and he put together that
piece of boisterous fun-making for the crude acting of his robustious
young scholars. Lyly's more delicate comedies were most of them
composed for performance by choir-boys; and they are found to be
devoid of any violence of emotion which might be beyond the power
of youthful inexperience. What may be observed in the seventeenth
century can be seen also in the nineteenth; and the best of Labiche's
farces were not more closely adjusted to the company at the Palais
Royal than were the later plays of the younger Dumas adjusted to
the incomparable assembly of actors at the Theatre Francais.
Just as Mr. Crummies, having bought a pump cheap, insisted
upon the introduction of that implement into the next play which
Nicholas Nickleby adapted for his company, so every dramatist is
moved, perhaps more or less unconsciously, to utilize the gifts of the
actors for whom he is working. If one of them is a trained singer, a
Jack Wilson, then he is tempted to write in a part for that performer
and so give him one or more songs. This fact was seized by the
acute intellect of James Spedding, who once wrote a letter to Furni-
vall in criticism of the latter's attempt to classify Shaksperc's
plays in chronological order in accordance with the mood of the dram-
BRANDER MATTHEWS 98027
atist at the time when they were written. Spedding insisted that
the distinguishing feature of every play ((would depend upon many
things besides the author's state of mind. It would depend upon the
story which he had to tell ; and the choice of the story would depend
upon the requirements of the theatre, the taste of the public, the
popularity of the different actors, the strength of the company. A
new part might be wanted for Burbage or Kemp. The two boys
that acted Hermia and Helena — the tall and the short one — or
the two men who were so alike that they might be mistaken for each
other, might want new pieces to appear in; and so on.))
The vice of the narrowly philosophic criticism of Shakspere,
which was so prevalent in the nineteenth century, lies in its con-
sideration of his characters solely and exclusively as characters.
They are characters, of course, but they are also parts prepared for
particular actors. They form a succession of magnificent parts,
making the most varied demand upon these actors. They are parts,
first of all, conceived in consonance with their author's intimate
knowledge of the histrionic abilities of his fellow-players, even if
every one of them is also a character, subtler and broader and deeper
than any mere part needs to be. In devising these parts Shakspere
was fitting the performers of the company to which he belonged, even
if he was also availing himself of the opportunity to body forth his
own vision of life.
in
When we have once grasped the significance of the relation of the
author and the actor our disappointment is redoubled that we know
so little about the various members of Shakspere 's company. Our
acquaintance with the career of Coquelin helps us to understand the
structure of (Cyrano de Bergerac, ) just as our familiarity with the
needs of Macrea'dy as an actor-manager helps to eludicate the Quali-
ties of (Richelieu) and (Money.) But we do not know Burbage
and Kemp, Heming and Armin, as we know Macready and Coquelin.
Instead of being able to explain their parts in some measure by their
personalities and by their abilities, we are forced to guess at their
personalities and their abilities by an analysis of the parts which
Shakspere intrusted to them. And here again we are at sea, since
we lack detailed information as to the parts they severally performed.
Yet there are a few things which we may fairly infer, without
involving ourselves in the fog of dangerous conjecture. If Burbage
was the original impersonator of Hamlet and Lear, of Othello and
gSo2z BRANDER MATTHEWS
Richard III., we may assume that he was also the original performer
of all Shakspere's tragic heroes, of Romeo and Richard II., Mac-
beth and Brutus. Burbage played early in the seventeenth century
all the parts which were undertaken toward the end of the nineteenth
century by Booth and Irving — with the possible exception only of
Shylock, which seems to have been in its author's intent a serio-comic
character, at once grim and grotesque, and which therefore might
fall to the lot of the actor who had appeared as Falstaff or else to the
habitual impersonator of villains. Burbage left behind him the repu-
tation of the foremost tragedian of his time; and since he was in-
trusted by Shakspere with these overwhelming characters, one
after another, he must have been a great actor, noble in bearing,
eloquent in delivery, passionate and versatile. As he grew older, so
did the characters which Shakspere composed for him to act,
Romeo having been written for him in his ardent and energetic youth,
while Lear was prepared later in his riper maturity. After his death,
in 1619, his parts seem to have been divided between Lowin and
Taylor.
Just as we may feel safe in assuming that Burbage impersonated
all Shakspere's tragic heroes, because we know that he played
Hamlet and Othello, so we are justified in assigning a succession of
comic characters in Shakspere's earliest comedies to Kemp be-
cause of our knowledge that he appeared as Peter and Dogberry.
There is a strong family likeness between Peter and a group of other
low-comedy parts, composed at no great interval before or after
(Romeo and Juliet) — simple figures of fun, mere «clownes,» as they
were then called, quick in quips, but lacking altogether the mellower
humor of Shakspere's later comic characters. Since Kemp was
the original Peter, it is reasonable to suppose that he was also one of
the two Dromios and one of the two Gobbos, and that he appeared
either as Costard or Dull in (Love's Labour's Lost) and either as
Launce or Speed in the (Two Gentlemen of Verona. ) And we can
find confirmation for this surmise in the disappearance of this sort
of part from Shakspere's plays after Kemp left the company, to
be replaced by Armin. No doubt Armin took over all these earlier
parts whenever the older plays were performed ; but in the new plays
the corresponding characters — Touchstone, for example, the Grave-
digger in (Hamlet) and the Porter in (Macbeth) — are less frivolous,
almost graver in their method. Nowadays the comedian who acts
Touchstone also acts Sir Toby Belch, and it is inherently likely that
Armin was the original of that unctuously humorous character, al-
BRANDER MATTHEWS 9803
though this part may have been cast to the original performer of
Falstaff (possibly Heming). There is to be noted in Moliere's plays
a curious parallel to this modification of the low-comedy parts in
Shakspere's plays after Armin had succeeded Kemp. Moliere
composed all his earlier soubrettes, his exuberant serving-maids, for
Madeleine Bejart; and after her death, when her place was taken
by Mademoiselle Beauval, who had less authority and a more con-
tagious gayety, the soubrettes in these later comedies change in tone
to adjust themselves to the different gifts of the new actress.
One other piece of information is also in our possession: the
Balthasar, who sings in (Much Ado,) was played by Jack Wilson.
From this we may fairly assume that Wilson also appeared as Amiens,
who sings in (As You Like it,) -and as Feste, who sings in (Twelfth
Night.) This assumption is strengthened by the fact that '(Much
Ado,) (As you Like it,) and the (Twelfth Night) are closely related,
having been composed rapidly one after the other. Then, if we
choose, we may risk a more daring speculation — that Wilson was
also the actor who created a little later the part of the Fool in (King
Lear, ) since this character is called upon for frequent snatches of song.
In dealing with Burbage and Wilson, with Kemp and Armin,
we are on fairly solid ground; that is to say, we are making infer-
ences from known facts. But when we desire to push our investiga-
tions further our footing is less secure; yet it is not impossible to
venture a little distance in advance. At least, there are a few ques-
tions which we may put to ourselves with advantage, even though we
may not be completely satisfied by the best answers that we can find.
For example, the original performer of Falstaff — Heming or another —
was possibly the original performer of Shy lock, and probably the
original performer of Sir Toby. This creates a likelihood that he
had also impersonated Bottom. It is also not unlikely that he was
intrusted with the Dromio that Kemp did not play, and also with
either Launce or Speed, Costard or Dull. And he seems to be the
performer who would naturally be called upon later to impersonate
Caliban. '
rv
We can also get a little light upon the probable organization of
the company at the Globe when Shakspere was a member of it by
considering the organization of Drury Lane when Sheridan was its
manager and when the stock-company system was in its prime. In-
deed, a similar organization is to be observed to-day in the many
9803 a BRANDER MATTHEWS
minor stock companies scattered throughout the United States.
The governing principle in Drury Lane and in the modern theatres
occupied by stock companies is that every one of the several actors
has his own (dine of business,)) as it is called; that is to say, he con-
fines himself to a certain definite class of characters. When an old
play is revived, and even when a new play is produced, the actor is
generally able to recognize at a glance the part to which he is entitled.
The ((leading man)) and the ((leading lady)) expect, of course, to imper-
sonate the hero and the heroine. The ((low comedian)) is ready at
once to undertake the broadly comic character, and the ((soubrette))
(or ((chambermaid))) is equally ready to assume the corresponding
female part. The villain falls to the lot of the ((heavy man.)) The
((old man)) and the ((old woman)) naturally assume the more elderly
characters. The ((light comedy)) part is the privilege of one actor,
and the ((character part)) is the duty of another. In a large company
there would be also a ((second low comedian,)) a ((second old man,))
and soon, besides several trustworthy performers known as ((responsi-
ble utilities.))
This organization is efficient, and its influence can be detected
very clearly in the English drama until the final years of the nine-
teenth century, when the stock-company system was abolished in
the more important theatres of London and New York. It was not
absolutely rigid, of course ; and now and again an actor of exceptional
power and range did not hesitate to undertake parts not strictly in
his own (dine of business.)) John Kemble, for example, the foremost
tragedian of his time, liked to appear in the light comedy part of
Charles Surface, a performance which was wittily described as ((Char-
les's Martyrdom.)) His brother, Charles Kemble, the foremost
light comedian of his time, had an infelicitous aspiration for tragic
characters. But even if this method of distributing the several
parts in a play among the several members of the company was not
absolutely fixed and final, it was generally acceptable. The departures
from the rules were infrequent in Drury Lane under Sheridan; and
we have no reason to doubt that they were quite as infrequent in
the Globe when Shakspere was writing his plays for its company.
The line of business which any one of Shakspere 's fellow-actors
undertook would be the same, of course, whether the play were writ-
ten by Shakspere himself or by another playwright. Therefore,
if we could discover any part played by any one of these actors in a
piece not by Shakspere, we might guess at the line of business he
was in the habit of playing and thus we might infer that he may
BRANDER MATTHEWS 9803 b
have been the original performer of those Shaksperean characters
which plainly belong to the particular line of business. Now, there'
is a little evidence of this sort. We know, for example, that Burbage
played Hieronimo in the (Spanish Tragedy) ; and this would give us
warrant for believing that he played Hamlet and Othello, even if we
had not more emphatic testimony. We know also that Condell
played the Cardinal in Webster's (Duchess of Malfi,) which is a
((heavy)) part, a stage villain of the deepest dye. If we may assume
from this that Condell was the regular performer of ((heavies,)) then
we may venture to ascribe to him not a few of Shakspere's villains
— Edmund in (King Lear) and, above all, lago. We may even go
further and suggest the probability that he was also the original
performer of Don John in (Much Ado,) of the usurping Duke in
(As you Like it, ) and of the King in (Hamlet.)
Unfortunately, we have no clue as significant as this to guide us
to a guess as to the original performer of another line of business,
very important in Shakspere's plays — that of ((juvenile lead)) or
((light comedy.)) Some of the parts seem to belong to one group and
some to another, yet they were probably played by the same actor
in Shakespeare's company, since they are now generally undertaken
by the same actor in our modern companies. These are the parts
in which Charles Kemble excelled ; they are the parts in which Edwin
Adams and Lawrence Barrett supported Booth and in which Terriss
and Alexander supported Irving. In the tragedies these characters
are Laertes, Richmond, Cassio,- and Mercutio; and in the comedies
they are Gratiano, Claudio and Orsino. And the same actor would
logically be intrusted also with Faulconbridge, with Hotspur, and
probably with Bolingbroke. These are most of them characters
which require for their adequate rendition youth and fire, vigor and
vivacity, wit and grace. We may never discover the name of the
actor who created these parts, but that they were all of them created
by one and the same performer seems highly probable. To those
who are familiar with the inner workings of the theatre there will be
nothing fanciful in the suggestion that the ((tag)) — the final speech —
of the (Merchant of Venice) may have been given to Gratiano as
some compensation to this actor for the early killing off of Mercutio,
in (Romeo and Juliet,) the play which almost immediately preceded
the (Merchant of Venice.) In general the tag is given by Shak-
spere to the most important of the surviving characters.
As to the several boys who were intrusted with Shakspere's
women we are absolutely in the dark. We can see with Spedding
98030 BRANDER MATTHEWS
that there were in the company at one time two lads who appeared as
the comedy heroines, one of them taller than the other; Le Beau
tells Orlando that Celia is taller than Rosalind, and Hero is repeatedly
called short. To one or another of these boys were committed also
Portia and Jessica, Viola and Olivia, Mrs. Page and Anne Page.
Mrs. Ford must have fallen to the lot of a third lad, who was later
to display his captivating humor as Maria in (Twelfth Night,) having
already appeared as the laughing Nerissa in the (Merchant of Venice)
and as the giggling Audrey in (As you Like it.) But which of these
three boys was bold enough to undertake Cleopatra or Lady Macbeth ?
It is not difficult to believe that the Queen Margaret who curses
so copiously was impersonated by the young fellow who was soon
after to appear as Kate the cursed. What became of this lad, and of
the others also, when their voices cracked and they grew to manhood?
Probably most of them remained in the company and took to male
characters, returning on occasion to the other sex when there arrived
a strongly marked part for an ((old woman)) — a part which did not
demand actual youth. One such actor, boy or man, must have
created the Nurse in (Romeo and Juliet),, the various Mrs. Quicklys
in the two parts of (Henry IV.,) in (Henry V.,) and in the (Merry
Wives,) and Mrs. Overdone in (Measure for Measure,) characters
closely akin in their oily humor.
A few further suggestions may be risked. It seems highly prob-
able that the performer who was the original Slender in the (Merry
Wives) was also the creator of Sir Andrew Aguecheek in (Twelfth
Night,) of Le Beau in (As you Like it) and of Osric in (Hamlet.)
We may also venture the surmise that the actor who created Chris-
topher Sly in the induction of the (Taming of the Shrew) had also
created one of the strongly marked comic characters in the Falstaff
plays, Nym or Pistol, but more probably Bardolph.
These scattered suggestions may seem fantastic. They are sug-
gestions only, hypotheses which may be verified by further investi-
gation or which may be contradicted by more diligent research. The
inquiry here initiated modestly can be pushed further; for example,
we have some information as to the actors who personated the chief
parts in certain of the Beaumont and Fletcher plays, and a study of
these parts may indicate the lines of business they were in the habit
of playing and thus point to their possible Shaksperean parts. Such
an inquiry is likely to increase our knowledge of the theatrical con-
ditions under which Shakspere worked and to which he had to
conform.
9803 d
GUY DE MAUPASSANT
(1850-1893)
BY FIRMIN ROZ
IHEN, after a volume of poetry, ( Des Vers> (Verses: 1880), Guy
de Maupassant published in 1881 the famous story < Boule de
SuiP (Tallow-Ball), he was claimed by the naturalists; and
Zola, in an enthusiastic article, introduced the author and the work
to the public. It learned that the new-comer to the Soirees de Medan
was a robust Norman, proud of his strength, skilled in physical exer-
cises. During ten years, Gustave Flaubert,
his godfather, had gradually and patiently
taught him his profession of observer and
writer. According to some, the pupil
equaled the master. He certainly excelled
a great number of those who claimed to be
enrolled in their ranks.
The document school was then in all its
glory. It was the heroic time of the so-
called realistic novel, composed of slices out
of life ; of the scientific and psychologic
novel, in which the study of the passions,
the conflicts of reason with instinct, — all
the old-time psychology, in short, — was
replaced by the organic dissection of the
characters, atavism, the influence of environment and circumstances, —
all determinism, in a word. In this examination of facts, hearts were
neglected; and novels laboriously constructed according to the posi-
tivist method set forth by Zola in < Le Roman Experimental > — novels
in which all must be explained and demonstrated, which attempted
to reproduce the very movement of life — were sometimes as false and
devoid of li:£e as photographs, which exactly reproduce the details of
a face without catching its expression.
By temperament, by education, Guy de Maupassant was above all
a realist. He had learned from Flaubert that anything is worthy of
art when the artist knows how to fashion it. A country pharmacist,
pretentious and commonplace (Bournisien in c Madame Bovary*), is
no less interesting than a scholar, a poet, or a prince. The writer
GUY DE MAUPASSANT
9804
GUY DE MAUPASSANT
should not accord any preference to one or another of his heroes.
His impartiality guarantees the sureness of his observation. His role
is to express life simply and purely, without seeking its meaning,
without choosing this or that form to the exclusion of some other.
But if the vulgarity or even coarseness of the characters and environ-
ment, the crudeness of scene and language, aroused the curiosity of
the public, and assisted the author's success by winning admirations
not always addressed perhaps to what was truly admirable, — the
learned, the connoisseurs, were not deceived. They greeted him as
a master writer, an unequaled story-teller, who in spite of Zola pre-
served the classic virtues — precision, clearness, art of composition —
which are necessary to the novel, indispensable to the short story.
This alone was enough to distinguish Maupassant from the Zolaists
and the De Goncourtists, who were then swarming: his firm, alert
prose is so profoundly French, free from neologisms, strong in verbs,
sober in adjectives, every sentence standing out with no apparent
effort, no excess, like a muscle in the perfect body of a young
athlete.
In less than twelve years Guy de Maupassant published ten collec-
tions of short stories .and tales: ( Mademoiselle FifV (Miss Harriett, y
<Au SoleiP (In the Sunshine), <Les Sceurs Rondoli* (The Sisters
Rondoli), < Contes de la Becasse,> <M. Parent, > <L'Inutile Beaute> (Vain
Beauty), etc.; and six novels: <Une Vie> (A Life: 1883), <Mont-Oriol,)
< Bel-Ami } (1885), < Pierre et Jean> (Peter and John: 1888), < Fort comme
la Mort> (Strong as Death: 1889), < Notre Cceur) (Our Heart: 1893).*
Guy de Maupassant's place, then, is in the first rank of the real-
ists, and nearer to- Flaubert than to De Goncourt and Zola. For the
purest expression of naturalism, one must seek him and his master.
He has that sense of the real which so many naturalists lack, and
which the care for exact detail does not replace. Beside the con-
gealed works of that school his work lives, not as a representation of
life but as life itself, — interior life expressed by exterior life, life of
men and of animals, the complex and multiform life of the universe
weighed down by eternal fatalities. And in the least little stories,
most often far from gays — between two phrases of Rachel Rondoli or
of M. Parent; through evocation of a sky, a perfume, a landscape,—
one experiences the disquiet of physical mysteries, the shudder of
love or of death. This living realism is absolutely pure with Guy de
Maupassant. There is no longer any trace of that romantic heredity
which is still apparent with the author of ( Salammbo y and of < La
Tentation de Saint Antoine.* He was rarely even tempted toward
the study and description of what are called the upper classes; or by
the luxury which fascinated Balzac. His predilection for ordinary
* Published by V. Havard in nine volumes ; by Ollendorff in ei^ht volumes.
GUY DE MAUPASSANT
9805
scenes and ordinary types is everywhere evident; he uses all kinds
of settings, — a cafe, a furnished room, a farm-yard, seen in their act-
ual character without poetic transfiguration, with all their vulgarity,
their poverty, their ugliness. And he uses too all kinds of charac-
ters,— clerks, peasants of Normandy, petty bourgeois of Paris and of
the country. They live the empty, tragic, or grotesque hours of their
lives; a're sometimes touching, sometimes odious; and never achieve
greatness either in heroism or in wickedness.
They are not gay, these stories; and the kind of amusement they
afford is strongly mixed with irony, pity, and contempt. Gayety,
whether brutal, frank, mocking, or delicate, never leaves this bitter
taste in the heart. How pitiful in its folly, in its vanity, in its weak-
ness, is the humanity which loves, weeps, or agitates in the tales of
Maupassant! There, virtue if awkward is never recompensed, nor vice
if skillful punished; mothers are not always saints, nor sons always
grateful and respectful; the guilty are often ignorant of remorse.
Then are these beings immoral ? To tell the truth, they are guided
by their instincts, by events, submissive to the laws of necessity, and
apparently released by the author from all responsibility.
Such is the individual humor of Guy de Maupassant, — a humor
rarely joyous, without sparkling shocks of repartee; a humor tinged
with bitterness and contempt, arising usually from the seriousness of
ridiculous people and from the ridiculousness of serious people, and
nearly always from the universal powerlessness to advance beyond
mediocrity. And if Maupassant is cruel to his heroes, he would
doubtless say that it is because life too is cruel, unjust, sad, deceiv-
ing; and that beauty, virtue, and happiness are only exceptions.
Thence the pessimistic tendency of his work. Nothing shows this
original pessimism — rough and lucid, emotional without lyricism —
better than the novel ( Une Vie.} It is the story of a commonplace
existence: the life of a country woman, married to a brutal and ava-
ricious country squire, delivered from him through a neighbor's ven-
geance, deceived by her son as well* as by her husband, and fixing
her obstinate hope upon the grandchild, who perhaps, if death does
not liberate her in time, will add one supreme deception to all the
others. This woman, who believes herself the victim of a special
fatality, has against her nothing but the chance of a bad choice,
and the weakness of her own tender spirit, incapable of struggle or
action. She is good, pure, and perhaps more sympathetic than any
other of Maupassant's heroines. Her life is like many other lives,
and doubtless the sadness which emanates from it widens to infinity.
In the short stories, this pessimistic tendency grows finer and
sharper so as sometimes to find expression in a tragic element.
But with Maupassant the tragic is of very special essence, and not
9806 GUY DE MAUPASSANT
expressed in grand melodramatic effects or catastrophes as in roman-
ticism. Nor does it consist in the classic debate between duty and
passion. No, it consists rather in a wholly physical emotion, excited
by the wretchedness of certain destinies, and evoking in its turn the
mysterious menaces which hover over us. Disease, madness, death,
are in ambush behind every door of our house; and no one has
expressed better than Maupassant the terror of the being who feels
their breath or sees them face to face. No one has felt with deeper
sorrow behind this human misery, the frightful solitude of man
among men; the black chasm which separates us from those whom
we love; the impossibility of uniting two hearts or two thoughts;
the slow succession of the little miseries of life; the fatal disorgan-
ization of a solitary existence whose dreams have vanished; and the
reason of those tragic endings which only nervous, sensitive minds
can understand.
This enables us to grasp the very principle of Maupassant's pes-
simism, and of this disorganization in which his clear and vigorous
intellect foundered. Even his first volume, (Des Vers,* showed this
haunting thought of death, this sadness of the supersensitive soul har-
assed and unsatisfied, powerless to take pleasure in the joys which
are scattered through the universe. In the two little poems ( La
Venus Rustique> (The Country Venus) and <Au Bord de 1'Eau* (On
the Water's Brink), there is as it were an intoxication with life, which
at first appears the sane and happy expression of a robust tempera-
ment, but which quickly ends in nostalgia and horror of nothingness.
And here is the keynote to Maupassant's sensualism: it is the fran-
tic desire to concentrate in the senses of a single man all that the
material world contains of delight, — colors, sounds, perfumes, beauty
under all its forms; it is the adoration of matter, ?nd it is the de-
spair of a being crushed by the blind, implacable, and eternal divinity
which it has chosen. What does feeling become in this pagan joy,
this mother of pains and slaveries? It is easy to see: love is as fatal
as death. It is a force of nature which we can neither control nor
avoid, nor fix according to our wish; and its very nature explains
the derangements of hearts, the betrayals, the jealousies, which deck
it in fictitious sentimentality. Final conclusion : — our free will, our
liberty, are illusions; and morality is suppressed at the same time
that remorses, internal conflicts, duties are reduced to more conven-
tions useful to society.
This is the principle of Maupassant's pessimism. As is evident, it
springs directly from his naturalism. His conception of art and his
conception of life are closely allied. This pessimism became more
and more accentuated from one work to another; from ( tine Vie1
(1883) to < Notre Coeur> (1892). But in the measure of the novelist's
GUY DE MAUPASSANT 9807
more and more profound investigation of life, he imperceptibly and to
a certain degree substituted psychological study for realism according
to Flaubert's formula. This evolution of Guy de Maupassant's talent
asserts itself in ( Pierre et Jean) (1888), and is still more clearly
delineated in < Fort comme la Mort> and < Notre Coeur.* We are far
away from the <Boule de Suifs* and the like. His observation has
become acuter, his language better shaded. There is a more flexible
precision in the study of more delicate sentiments and of more
complicated minds. Is not the love of the old painter Bertin for
the daughter of the woman he has passionately loved an exceptional
sentiment? It was a ticklish subject; and the author presented it
very ably, without brutalities. We cannot help pitying the woman
who feels herself growing old, the man who cherished in his friend's
daughter the young beauty of the mother whom he once loved. But
the charming child is ignorant of the harm she is innocently doing.
She marries, and the old painter bears his passion with him in death;
while Madame de Guilleroy burns the old letters, their love letters,
found in a drawer, and Olivier's resigned agony is lighted up by the
reflection of their blazing leaves.
This novel was less successful than its predecessors. The ordi-
nary public, who had enjoyed < Maitre Hauchecorne > and ( Mademoi-
selle FifV thought that its author had been changed. It asserted
that the success of the psychologic novel had fascinated Maupassant.
Perhaps we should see in this new phase of his talent only a conse-
quence of the modification which years and the events of his inti-
mate life had little by little brought about. < Notre Cceur > would
confirm this view. It resembles an autobiography. It is the eternal
misunderstanding between man and woman, — drawing near for an
instant, never united, and never giving the same words the same
meaning. What an exquisite charming face is that of Michelle de
Burne! a costly flower blossoming after centuries of extreme civiliza-
tion; a positive, gently egoistic being, in whom nothing is left of
primitive woman except the need of dazzling others and of being
adored. Simple sincere Elizabeth may console Andre Mariolle; but
neither brilliant orchid nor humble daisy can replace or make the
other forgotten. That is why Andre, uniting the two in a single
bouquet, renounces the torturing dream of one only love. Thus Guy
de Maupassant had been led by the progress of his observation and
his analysis to penetrate into the intimate regions of the heart, where
our most secret and most diverse sentiments hide, struggle, suppli-
cate, and contend with each other. This progress of the novelist is
natural. As his observation grows sharper and finer, it penetrates
deeper; proceeds from faces to minds, and from gestures to feelings.
Psychological analysis appears, and with it reflection. The mind falls
9808
GUY DE MAUPASSANT
back upon itself; the man returns to his own thoughts, his dreams,
his emotions. He descends into his own heart, and irony becomes pity
and tenderness. His art is perhaps more human.
Neither (Fort comme la Mort) nor ( Notre Cceur,' Guy de Mau-
passant's last two novels, shows any trace of insanity. Yet when
the world learned in 1893 that this terrible disease had seized the
famous novelist, those who had read and studied his work were only
half surprised. It was then some years since the reading of ( Horla >
had made them anxious.
What is < Horla >? — It is not a spirit, it is not a phantom of the
imagination. It is not any kind of a creature either natural or su-
pernatural. It is not even an illusion of sick senses, a hallucination
of fever. No; it is something both more real and less real, less dis-
quieting and more so: it is the unknown hostility surrounding one in
the invisible. It is everywhere, — in the bed curtains, in the water
pitcher, in the fire lighted to drive it from the house. Dream of a
madman, whom the wing of insanity had brushed! Already in 1884,
in the story entitled 'Lui,* there had been signs of this fear of fears,
fear of the spasms of a wandering mind, fear of that horrible sensa-
tion of incomprehensible terror : — <( I am afraid of the walls, of the
furniture, of the familiar objects which seem to me to assume a kind
of animal life. Above all I fear the horrible confusion of my thought,
of my reason escaping, entangled and scattered by an invisible and
mysterious anguish. w
Sensuality, pessimism, obsession of nothingness, hallucinations of
the strange, — these different states cruelly asserted their logical
dependence in the intellectual history of Guy de Maupassant. The
mind which had seemed so profoundly sane and free from any mor-
bid germ became disordered, and then shattered entirely. The uni-
verse of forms, sounds, . colors, and perfumes, to which he had so
complaisantly surrendered himself, became uninhabitable. Perhaps it
is necessary that in its attitude toward matter the mind should
always retain a kind of distrust, and dominate it without yielding
completely to its sorceries and enchantments. To this feast Maupas-
sant had opened all his senses. The day came when he felt his ideas
flying around him, he said, like butterflies. With his habitual grasp
he still sought to seize them while they were already far from his
empty brain. Guy de Maupassant died in 1893, when forty-three
years old. His robust constitution could not resist the excessive ex-
penditure of all his energies.
GUY DE MAUPASSANT
THE LAST YEARS OF MADAME JEANNE
From <A Life>
9809
JEANNE did not go out any more. She hardly bestirred herself.
Each morning she got up at the same hour; took notice of
the weather outside ; and then went down and seated her-
self before the fire in the hall.
She would remain there whole days, immovable, her. eyes
fixed upon the flame, giving course to lamentable thoughts, fol-
lowing the melancholy retrospect of her sorrows. Little by little
darkness would invade the small room as the day closed, without
her having made any other movement than to put more wood on
the fire. Then Rosalie would bring the lamp, exclaiming to her,
"Come, come, Madame Jeanne! You must shake yourself up. a
bit, or really you won't have any appetite this evening for sup-
per.»
Often, too, she was persecuted by fixed ideas, which besieged
and tortured her; by insignificant preoccupations, — mere trifles
which took in her dim brain a false importance.
More than anything else she took to living over the past, — -
her past that lay furthest back, haunted by the early days of
her life, — by her wedding trip, over there in Corsica. Suddenly
there would rise up before her, landscapes of that island so long
forgotten, seen now in the embers of the fireplace : she would
recall all the details, all the trivial little episodes, every face
once met in that time; the fine head of the guide that they had
employed — Jean Ravoli — kept coming before her, and she some-
times fancied that she heard his voice.
Then too she would fall into a revery upon the happy years
of her son's childhood, when she and Aunt Lison, with Paul, had
worked in the salad-bed together^ kneeling side by side in the soft
ground, the two women rivals in their effort to amuse the child
as they toiled among the young plants.
So musing, her lips would murmur, <( Poulet, Poulet ! my little
Poulet," — as if she were speaking to him; and, her revery broken
as she spoke, she would try during whole hours to write the boy's
name in the air, shaping with her outstretched finger these letters.
She would trace them slowly in space before the fire, sometimes
imagining that she really saw them, then believing that her eyes
had deceived her; and so she would rewrite the capital P again,
her old arm trembling with fatigue, but forcing herself to trace
9810
GUY DE MAUPASSANT
the name to its end; then when she had finished it she would
write it over again. At last she could not write it any more.
She would confuse everything, — form other words at random,
enfeebled almost to idiocy.
All the little manias of those who live solitary took hold of
her. The least change in her surroundings irritated her.
Rosalie would often insist upon making her walk about, and
even, carry her off to the roadside: but Jeanne at the end of
twenty minutes would always end up by saying, (<No, I am too
tired out, my good girl ; * and then she would sit down on the
edge of the green roadside.
Indeed, movement of any kind was soon distasteful to hei>
and she would stay in bed in the morning as late as possible.
Ever since her infancy one particular habit had remained tena-
ciously with her, — that of jumping up out of bed just as soon as
she had swallowed her morning coffee. She was very much set
on that way of breakfasting, and the privation would have been
felt more than anything else. Each morning she would await
Rosalie's arrival at her bedside with an exaggerated impatience,
and just as soon as the cup was put upon the table at her side,
she would start up and empty it almost greedily, and then begin
to dress herself at once.
But now, little by little, she had grown into the habit of
dreamily waiting some seconds after she had put back the cup
into the plate; then she would settle herself again in her bed;
and then, little by little, would lengthen her idleness from day
to day, until Rosalie would come back furious at such delay, and
would dress her mistress almost by force.
Besides all this, she did not seem to have now any appear-
ance of a will about matters; and each time that Rosalie would
ask her opinion as to whether something was to be one way or
another, she would answer, (<Do as you think best, my girl."
She fancied herself directly pursued by obstinate misfortune,
against which she made herself as fatalistic as an Oriental: the
habit of seeing her dreams evaporate, and her hopes come to
nothing, put her into the attitude of being afraid to undertake
anything; and she hesitated whole days before accomplishing the
most simple affair, convinced that she would only set out the
wrong way to do it, and that it would turn out badly. She
repeated continually, <( I have never had any luck in my life. }>
Then it was Rosalie's turn to cry to her, <( What would you say
GUY DE MAUPASSANT 98n
if you had had to work for your bread, — if you were obliged to
get up every morning at six o'clock and go out for your day's
doings ? There are lots of people who are obliged to do that,
nevertheless; and when such people become too old, they have to
die — just of their poverty. )}
A little more strength came to her when the air softened into
the first days of spring; but she used this new activity only to
throw herself more and more into sombre thoughts.
One morning, when she had climbed up into the garret to
hunt for something, she happened to open a trunk full of old
calendars; somebody had kept them, as certain country people
have a habit of doing. It seemed to her that in finding them
she found the very years themselves of her past life; and she
remained stricken with a strange and confused emotion before
that pile of cardboard squares.
She took them up and carried them down-stairs. They were
of all shapes, big and little. She began to arrange them year
by year, upon the table ; and then, all at once, she found the very
first one that had belonged to her, — the same one that she had
brought to Peuples. She looked at this one a long time, with
the dates marked off by her the morning of her departure from
Rouen, the day after her going away from the convent. She
wept over it. Sadly and slowly the tears fell; the bitter tears
of an old woman whose life was spread out before her on that
table.
With the calendars came to her an idea that soon became a
sort of obsession; terrible, incessant, inexorable. She would try to
remember just whatever she had done from day to day during-
all her life. She pinned the calendars against the walls and on
the carpet one after the other — those faded pieces of cardboard;
and so she came to pass hours face to face with them, continually
asking herself. <( Now let me see, — what was it happened to me
that month ? »
She had checked certain memorable days in the course of her
life, hence now and then she was able to recall the episodes of
an entire month, bringing them up one by one, grouping them
together, connecting one by another all those little matters which
had preceded or followed some important event. She succeeded
by sheer force of attention, by force of memory and of concen-
trated will, in bringing back to mind almost completely her two
first years at Peuples. Far-away souvenirs of her life returned to
9812
GUY DE MAUPASSANT
her with a singular facility, and with a kind of relief in them;
but the later years gradually seemed to lose themselves in a
mist, — to become mixed one with another: and so Jeanne would
remain now and then an indefinite time, her head bowed toward
one of the calendars, her mind spellbound by the past, without
being able to remember whether it. was in this or that calendar
that such or such a remembrance ought to be decided. She
ranged them around the room like the religious pictures that
point out the- Way of the Cross in a church, — these tableaux
of days that were no more. Then she would abruptly set down
her chair before one of them; and there she would sit until
night came, immobile, staring at it, buried in her vague re-
searches.
All at once, when the sap began to awaken in the boughs
beneath the warmth of the sun; when the crops began to spring
up in the fields, the trees to become verdant; when the apple-
trees in the orchard swelled out roundly like rosy balls, and per-
fumed the plain, — then a great counter-agitation came over her;
she could not seem to stay still. She went and came; she left
the house and returned to it twenty times a day, and even took
now and then a stroll the length of the farming tracts, excited
to a sort of fever of regret. The sight of a daisy blossoming in
a tuft of grass, the flash of a ray of sun slipping down between
the leaves, the glittering of a strip of water in which the blue
sky was mirrored, — all moved her; awakened a tenderness in
her; gave her sensations very far away, like an echo of her
emotions as a young girl, when she went dreaming about the
country-side.
One morning the faithful Rosalie came later than usual into
her room, and said, setting down upon the table the bowl of cof-
fee : <( Come now, drink this. Denis is down-stairs waiting for us
at the door. We will go over to Peuples to-day: I've got some
business to 'attend to over there. }>
Jeanne thought that she was going to faint, so deep was her
emotion at the sound of that name, at the thought of going to
the home of her girlhood. She dressed herself, trembling with
emotion, frightened and tremulous at the mere idea of seeing
again that dear house.
A radiant sky spread out above over all the world; the horse,
in fits and starts of liveliness, sometimes went almost at a gallop.
When they entered into the commune of Etouvent, Jeanne could
GUY DE MAUPASSANT
hardly breathe, so much did her heart beat; and when she saw
from a distance the brick pillars of the boundary-line of her old
home, she exclaimed in a low voice two or three times, and as if
in spite of herself, <(Oh! — oh! — oh! — }> as if before things that
threatened to revolutionize all her heart.
They left the wagon with the Couillard family: then, while
Rosalie and her son went off to attend to their business, the care-
takers offered Jeanne the chance of taking a little turn around
the chateau, the present owners of it being absent; so they gave
her the keys.
Alone she set out; and when she was fairly before the old
manor-house by the seaside, she stopped to look at its outside
once again. It had changed in nothing outside. The large,
grayish building that day showed upon its old walls the smile of
the sunshine. All the shutters were closed.
A bit of a dead branch fell from above upon her dress. She
raised her eyes. It came from the plane-tree. She drew near
the big tree with its smooth, pale bark; she caressed it with her
hand almost as if it had been an animal. Her foot struck some-
thing in the grass, — a fragment of rotten wood; lo! it was the
last fragment of the very bench on which she had sat so often
with those of her own family about her, so many years ago; the
very bench which had been set in place on the same day that
Julien had made his first visit.
She turned then to the double doors of the vestibule of the
house, and she had great trouble to open them; for the heavy
key, grown rusty, refused to turn in the lock. At length the
lock yielded with a heavy grinding of its springs; and the door,
a little obstinate itself, gave her entrance with a cloud of dust.
At once, and almost running, she went up-stairs to find what
had been her own room. She could hardly recognize it, . hung
as it was with a light new paper: but throwing open a window,
she looked out and stood motionless, stirred even to the depth of
her being at the sight of all that landscape so much beloved; the
thicket, the elm-trees, the flat reaches, and the sea dotted with
brown sails, seeming motionless in the distance.
She began prowling about the great empty, lonely dwelling.
She even stopped to look at the discolorations on the walls; spots
familiar to her eyes. Once she stood before a little hole crushed
in the plaster by her father himself; who had often amused him-
self with making passages at arms, cane in hand, against the
partition wall, when he would happen to be passing this spot.
9814 GUY DE MAUPASSANT
Her mother's room — in it she found, stuck behind the door
in a dark corner near the bed, a fine gold hairpin; one which
she herself had stuck there so long ago, and which she had often
tried to find during the past years. Nobody had ever come across
it. She drew it out as a relic beyond all price, and kissed it,
and carried it away with her. Everywhere about the house she
walked, recognizing almost invisible marks in the hangings of
the rooms that had not been changed; she made out once more
those curious faces that a childish imagination gives often to the
patterns and stuffs, to marbles, and to shadings of the ceilings,
grown dingy with time. On she walked, with soundless footsteps,
wholly alone in the immense, silent house, as one who crosses a
cemetery. All her life was buried in it.
She went down-stairs to the drawing-room. It was sombre
behind the closed shutters: for some time she could not distin-
guish anything; then her eyes became accustomed to the darkness.
She recognized, little by little, the tall hangings with their pat-
terns of birds flitting about. Two arm-chairs were set before the
chimney, as if people had just quitted them; and even the odor
of the room, an odor which it had always kept, — that old vague,
sweet odor belonging to some old houses, — entered Jeanne's very
being, enwrapt her in souvenirs, intoxicated her memory. She
remained gasping, breathing in that breath of the past, and with
her eyes fixed upon those two chairs; for suddenly, in a sort of
hallucination which gave place to a positive idea, she saw — as
she had so often seen them — her father and her mother, sitting
there warming their feet by the fire. She drew back terrified,
struck her back against the edge of the door, caught at it to
keep herself from falling, but with her eyes still fixed upon the
chairs.
The vision disappeared. She remained forgetful of everything
during some moments; then slowly she recovered her self-pos-
session, and would have fled from the room, fearful of losing her
very senses. By chance, her glance fell against the door-post on
which she chanced to be leaning; and lo! before her eyes were
the marks that had been made to keep track of Poulet's height
as he was growing up!
The little marks climbed the painted wood with unequal in-
tervals; figure? traced with the penknife noted down the different
ages and growths during the boy's life. Sometimes the jottings
were in the handwriting of her father, a large hand; sometimes
they were in her own smaller hand; sometimes in that of Aunt
GUY DE MAUPASSANT
9815
Lison, a little tremulous. It seemed to her that the child of
other, days was actually there, standing before her with his blond
hair, pressing his little forehead against the wall so that his
height could be measured; and the Baron was crying, <( Why,
Jeanne! he has grown a whole centimetre since six weeks ago!*
She kissed the piece of wood in a frenzy of love and desolate-
ness.
But some one was calling her from outside. It was Rosalie's
voice : <( Madame Jeanne, Madame Jeanne ! We are waiting for
you, to have luncheon. }> She hurried away from the room half
out of her senses. She hardly understood anything that the oth-
ers said to her at luncheon. She ate the things that they put
on her plate; she listened without knowing what she heard, talk-
ing mechanically with the farming- women, who inquired about
her health; she let them embrace her, and herself saluted the
cheeks that were held out to her; and then got into the wagon
again.
When the high roof of the chateau was lost to her sight
across the trees, she felt in her very heart a direful wrench. It
seemed to her in her innermost spirit that now she had said
farewell forever to her old home!
Translated for <A Library of the World's Best Literature, > by
E. Irenseus Stevenson
A NORMANDY OUTING: JEAN ROLAND'S LOVE-MAKING
From < Pierre and Jean.> Copyright 1890, by Hugh Craig. Published by
Home Book Company
THE harvest was ripe. Beside the dull green of the clover
and the bright green of the beets, the yellow stalks of
wheat illuminated the plains with a tawny golden gleam.
They seemed to have imbibed the sunlight that fell upon them.
Here and there the reapers were at work; and in the fields
attacked by the scythe the laborers were seen, swinging rhythmi-
cally as they swept the huge, wing-shaped blade over the surface
of the ground.
After a drive of two hours, the break turned to the left,
passed near a windmill in motion, — a gray melancholy wreck,
half rotten and condemned, the last survivor of the old mills, —
p8l6 GUY DE MAUPASSANT
and then entered a pretty court-yard and drew up before a gay
little house, a celebrated inn of the district.
They started out, net on shoulder and basket on back. Ma-
dame Rosemilly was charming in this costume, with an unex-
pected, rustic, fearless style of beauty.
The petticoat borrowed from Alphonsine, coquettishly raised
and held by a few stitches, so as to enable the wearer to run
and leap without fear among the rocks, displayed her ankle and
the lower part of the calf — the firm calf of a woman at once
agile and strong. Her figure was loose, to leave all her move-
ments easy; and she had found, to cover her head, an immense
gardener's hat of yellow straw, with enormous flaps, to which a
sprig of tamarisk, holding one side cocked up, gave the daunt-
less air of a dashing mousquetaire.
Jean, since receiving his legacy, had asked himself every day
whether he should marry her or no. Every time he saw her,
he felt decided to make her his wife; but when he was alone,
he thought that meanwhile there was time to reflect. She was
now not as rich as he was, for she possessed only twelve thou-
sand francs a year; — but in real-estate farms, and lots in Havre
on the docks, and these might in time be worth a large sum.
Their fortunes, then, were almost equivalent; and the young
widow assuredly pleased him much.
As he saw her walking before him on this day, he thought,
<( Well, I must decide. Beyond question, I could not do bet-
ter. »
They followed the slope of a little valley, descending from the
village to the cliff; and the cliff at the end of this valley looked
down on the sea from a height of nearly three hundred feet.
Framed in by the green coast, sinking away to the left and
right, a spacious triangle of water, silvery blue in the sunlight,
was visible; and a sail, scarcely perceptible, looked like an insect
down below. The sky, filled with radiance, was so blended with
the water that the eye could not distinguish where one ended and
the other began; and the two ladies, who were in front of the
three men, cast on this clear horizon the clear outline of their
compact figures.
Jean, with ardent glance, saw speeding before him the enti-
cing hat of Madame Rosemilly. Every movement urged him to
those decisive resolutions which the timid and the hesitating take
abruptly. The warm air, in which was blended the scent of the
GUY DE MAUPASSANT 9817
coastr of the reeds, the clover, the grasses, and the marine odor
of the rocks exposed by the tide, animated him with a gentle
intoxication; and he decided, more and more at every step, at
every second, at every look he cast on the graceful outline of
the young woman — he decided to hesitate no longer, to tell her
that he loved her and wanted to marry her. The fishing party
would be of service: it would render a tete-a-tete more easy; and
besides, it would furnish a pretty background, a pretty scene for
words of love, with their feet in a basin of limpid water, as they
watched the long feelers of the shrimps darting through the sea-
weeds.
When they reached the end of the valley at the edge of the
bluff, they perceived a little path that ran down the cliff; and
below them, between the sea and the foot of the precipice, about
half-way down, a wondrous chaos of enormous rocks, that had
fallen or been hurled down, heaped on each other on a kind
of grassy broken plain which disappeared toward the south, and
which had been formed by ancient landslips. In the long strip
of brushwood and turf, tossed, one might say, by the throes of a
volcano, the fallen rocks resembled the ruins of a great vanished
city that once on a time had looked down on the ocean, itself
dominated by the white and endless wall of the cliff.
(< How beautiful ! }) said Madame Rosemilly, pausing.
Jean joined her, and with beating heart offered his hand to
guide her down the narrow steps cut in the rock.
They went on in front; while Beausire, stiffening himself on
his short legs, held out his bent arm to Madame Roland, who
was dazed by the blank depth.
Roland and Pierre came last; and the doctor had to support
his father, who was so troubled by vertigo that he sat down, and
thus slid from step to step.
The young people, who descended at the head of the party,
went rapidly, and suddenly caught sight of a streamlet of pure
water springing from a little hole in the cliff, by the side of a
wooden bench, which formed a resting-place about the middle of
the slope. The streamlet at first spread into a basin about the
size of a wash-hand bowl, which it had excavated for itself; and
then, falling in a cascade of about two feet in height, flowed
across the path where a carpet of cress had grown, and then
disappeared in the reeds and grass, across the level where the
landslips were heaped up.
"How thirsty I am!" cried Madame Rosemilly.
9818 GUY DE MAUPASSANT
But how to drink? She tried to collect in the hollow of her
hand the water which escaped between her fingers. Jean had a
bright idea; he placed a stone in the road, and she knelt on it to
drink from the very source with her lips, which were thus raised
to the same height.
When she raised her head, covered with glittering drops
sprinkled by thousands over her face, her hair, her eyelashes, her
bust, — Jean, bending toward her, whispered: —
(( How pretty you are ! }>
She replied in the tone one assumes to scold a child: —
<( Will you hold your tongue ? w
These were the first words of flirtation which they had ex-
changed.
"Come," said Jean, rather discomfited, (< let us be off before
they overtake us.}>
In fact, he was aware that Captain Beausire was quite close
to them, and was descending backwards in order to support
Madame Roland with both hands; while, higher up and farther
away, M. Roland, in a sitting posture, was dragging himself down
by his feet and elbows with the speed of a tortoise, and Pierre
went before him to superintend his movements.
The path became less steep, and formed now a sloping road
that skirted the enormous blocks that had fallen from above.
Madame Rose*milly and Jean began to run, and were soon on the
shingle. They crossed it to gain the rocks, which extended in a
long and flat surface covered with seaweed, in which innumerable
flashes of water glittered. The tide was low and far out, behind
this slimy plain of sea-wrack with its shining green and black
growths.
Jean rolled up his trousers to the knee and his sleeves to the
elbow, so as to wet himself with impunity, and cried (< Forward i *
as he boldly leaped into the first pool that presented itself.
With more prudence, though with equal determination to wade
into the water at once, the young woman went around the narrow
basin with timid steps, — for she slipped on the slimy weeds.
<( Do you see anything ? }> she said.
<( Yes, I see your face reflected in the water. "
<( If you only see that, you will not have any fishing to boast
of.»
He said in a tender voice: —
<(Ah, that is fishing I shall prefer over all!"
She laughed.
GUY DE MAUPASSANT 9819
"Try, then, and you'll see how it slips through your net.®
«Well, if you like — »
(< I should like to see you catch some prawns — and nothing
more — just at present. w
(<You are cruel. Let us go farther: there is nothing here."
He offered her his hand to steady her on the greasy rocks.
She leaned on it rather timidly; and he, all at once, felt himself
invaded by love, throbbing with desire, hungering for her, as if
the passion that was germinating in him had waited for that day
to burst forth.
They soon arrived at a deeper crevice, where, beneath the
rippling water flowing to the distant sea by an invisible fissure,
long, fine, strangely colored seaweeds, with tresses of rose and
green, floated as if they were swimming.
Madame Rosemilly exclaimed: —
(< Look, look, I see one — a big one, a very big one, down
chere!»
He perceived it in turn, and went down into the crevice,
although the water wet him to the waist.
But the creature, moving its long feelers, quietly retired be-
fore the net. Jean drove it toward the wreck, sure of catching
it there. When it found itself blockaded, it made a sudden dash
over the net, crossed the pool, and disappeared.
The young woman, who was watching in panting eagerness
his attempt, could not refrain from crying.—
« Ah, clumsy ! »
He was vexed, and without thinking, dragged his net through
a pool full of weeds. As he raised it to the surface, he saw in it
three large transparent prawns, which had been blindly dragged
from their invisible hiding-place.
He presented them in triumph to Madame Rosemilly, who
dared not touch them for fear of the sharp, tooth-like point which
arms their heads. At last she decided to take them; and seiz-
ing between two of her fingers the thin end of their beard, she
placed them one after the other in her basket, with some weed
to keep them alive.
Then, on finding a shallower piece of water, she entered it
with hesitating steps, and catching her breath as the cold struck
her feet, began to fish herself. She was skillful and cunning,
with a supple wrist and a sportman's instinct. At about every
cast she brought out some victims, deceived and surprised by
the ingenious slowness with which she swept the pool.
9820
GUY DE MAUPASSANT
Jean was taking nothing; but he followed her step by step,
touched her dress, bent over her, pretended to be in despair at
his awkwardness, and wished her to teach him.
<( Show me how, w he said ; <( show me ! w
Then, as their two faces were reflected one beside the other
in the clear water, which the deep-growing seaweeds formed into
a limpid mirror, Jean smiled at the face so near his which looked
up to him from below; and at times threw to it, from the tips
of his fingers, a kiss which seemed to fall on it.
(( You are very tiresome, }> the young woman said. (< My dear
fellow, never do two things at the same time.'*
He replied: —
<( I am only doing one. I love you.'*
She drew herself up erect, and said in a serious tone: —
"Come now, what is the matter with you for the last ten
minutes ? Have you lost your head ? }>
<( No, I have not lost my head. I love you, and at last dare
to tell you so."
They were now standing in the pool of sea-water that rose
nearly to their knees, and with their dripping hands leaning on
their nets, looked into the depth of each other's eyes.
She resumed in a playful and rather annoyed tone: —
<(You are badly advised to speak to me thus at this moment.
Could you not wait another day, and not spoil my fishing ?*
He replied: —
<( Pardon me, but I could not keep silence. I have loved you
a long time. To-day you have made me lose my senses. w
Then she seemed at once to 'take her resolution, and to resign
herself to talk business and renounce amusement.
(< Let us sit on this rock, * she said : (< we shall be able to talk
quietly. }>
They climbed on a rock a little higher; and when they were
settled, side by side, their feet hanging down in the full sunshine,
she rejoined: —
<( My friend, you are not a child, and I am not a girl. Both
of us know what we are about, and can weigh all the conse-
quences of our acts. If you decide to-day to declare your love
to me, I suppose naturally you wish to marry me."
He had scarcely expected such a clear statement of the situa-
tion, and answered sheepishly: —
«Why, yes!»
« Have you spoken to your father and mother ? w
GUY DE MAUPASSANT 982i
<(No. I wished to know if you would accept me."
She extended to him her hand, which was still wet, and as he
placed his own in it with fervor —
<( I am willing, }> she said. <( I believe you good and loyal.
But do not forget that I would not displease your parents. }>
<( Do you think that my mother has foreseen nothing, and that
she would love you as she does if she did not desire a marriage
between us ? }>
w True : I am rather confused. w
They were silent. On his part, he was astonished that she
was so little confused and so reasonable. He had expected some
pretty airs and graces, refusals which say yes, a whole coquettish
comedy of love blended with fishing and the splashing of water.
And it was all over; he felt himself bound and married in a
score of words. They had nothing more to say to each other,
since they were in full accord; and they both now remained
somewhat embarrassed at what had passed so rapidly between
them, perhaps even somewhat confused, — not daring to speak
further, not daring to fish further, not knowing what to do. •
Translation of Hugh Craig.
THE PIECE OF STRING
From <The Odd Number.> Copyright 1889, by Harper & Brothers
IT WAS market day, and over all the roads round Goderville the
peasants and their wives were coming towards the town. The
men walked easily, lurching the whole body forward at every
step. Their long legs were twisted and deformed by the slow,
painful labors of the country: by bending over to plow, which
is what also makes their left shoulders too high and their figures
crooked; and by reaping corn, which obliges them for steadiness'
sake to spread their knees too wide. Their starched blue blouses,
shining as though varnished, ornamented at collar and cuffs with
little patterns of white stitch-work, and blown up big around
their bony bodies, seemed exactly like balloons about to soar, but
putting forth a head, two arms, and two feet.
Some of these fellows dragged a cow or a calf at the end
of a rope. And just behind the animal, beating it over the
back with a leaf-covered branch to hasten its pace, went their
wives, carrying large baskets from which came forth the heads
9g22 GUY DE MAUPASSANT
of chickens or of ducks. These women walked with steps far
shorter and quicker than the men; their figures, withered and
upright, were adorned with scanty little shawls pinned over their
flat bosoms; and they enveloped their heads each in a white
cloth, close fastened round the hair and surmounted by a cap.
Now a char-a-banc passed by, drawn by a jerky-paced nag. It
shook up strangely the two men on the seat. And the woman
at the bottom of the cart held fast to its sides to lessen the hard
joltings.
In the market-place at Goderville was a great crowd, a min-
gled multitude of men and beasts. The horns of the cattle, the
high and long-napped hats of wealthy peasants, the head-dresses
of the women, came to the surface of that sea. And voices
clamorous, sharp, shrill, made a continuous and savage din. Above
it a huge burst of laughter from the sturdy lungs of a merry
yokel would sometimes sound, and sometimes a long bellow from
a cow tied fast to the wall of a house.
. It all smelled of the stable, of milk, of hay, and of perspira-
tion; giving off that half human, half animal odor which is pecul-
iar to the men of the fields.
Maitre Hauchecorne, of Breaute, had just arrived at Godeis
ville, and was taking his way towards the square, when he
perceived on the ground a little piece of string. Maitre Hauche-
corne, economical like all true Normans, reflected that everything
was worth picking up which could be of any use; and he stooped
down — but painfully, because he suffered with rheumatism. He
took the bit of thin cord from the ground, and was carefully pre-
paring to roll it up when he saw Maitre Malandain the harness-
maker on his doorstep, looking at him. They had once had a
quarrel about a halter, and they had remained angry, bearing
malice on both sides. Maitre Hauchecorne was overcome with a
sort of shame at being seen by his enemy looking in the dirt so
for a bit of string. He quickly hid his find beneath his blouse;
then in the pocket of his breeches; then pretended to be still
looking for something on the ground which he did not discover;
and at last went off towards the market-place, with his head bent
forward, and a body almost doubled in two by rheumatic pains.
He lost himself immediately in the crowd, which was clamor-
ous, slow, and agitated by interminable bargains. The peasants
examined the cows, went off. came back, always in great per-
plexity and fear of being cheated, never quite daring to decide,
GUY DE MAUPASSANT 9823
spying at the eye of the seller, trying ceaselessly to discover the
tricks of the man and the defect in the beast.
The women, having placed their great baskets at their feet,
had pulled out the poultry, which lay upon the ground, tied by
the legs, with eyes scared, with combs scarlet.
They listened to propositions, maintaining their prices, with a
dry manner, with an impassive face ; or suddenly, perhaps, decid-
ing to take the lower price which was offered, they cried out to
the customer, who was departing slowly: —
«A11 right: I'll let you have them, Mait' Anthime."
Then, little by little, the square became empty; and when
the Angelus struck midday, those who lived at a distance poured
into the inns.
At Jourdain's, the great room was filled with eaters, just as
the vast court was filled with vehicles of every sort,— wagons,
gigs, char-a-bancs, tilburies, tilt-carts which have no name, yel-
low with mud, misshapen, pieced together, raising their shafts to
heaven like two arms, or it may be with their nose in the dirt
and their rear in the air.
Just opposite to where the diners were at table, the huge
fireplace, full of clear flame, threw a lively heat on the backs of
those who sat along the right. Three spits were turning, loaded
with chickens, with pigeons, and with joints of mutton; and a
delectable odor of roast meat, and of gravy gushing over crisp
brown skin, took wing from the hearth, kindled merriment, caused
mouths to water.
All the aristocracy of the plow were eating there, at Mait'
Jourdain's, the innkeeper's, — a dealer in horses also, and a sharp
fellow who had made a pretty penny in his day.
The dishes were passed round, were emptied, with jugs of
yellow cider. Every one told of his affairs, of his purchases and
his sales. They asked news about the crops. The weather was
good for green stuffs, but a little wet for wheat.
All of a sudden the drum rolled in the court before the house.
Every one, except some of the most indifferent, was on his feet
at once and ran to the door, to the windows, with his mouth still
full, and his napkin in his hand.
When the public crier had finished his tattoo, he called forth
in a jerky voice, making his pauses out of time: —
<( Be it known to the inhabitants of Goderville, and in general
to all — persons present at the market, that there has been lost
9824
GUY DE MAUPASSANT
this morning^ on the Belize ville road, between — nine and ten
o'clock, a pocket-book of black leather, containing five hundred
francs and business papers. You are requested to return it — to
the mayor's office at once, or to Maitre Fortune Houlbreque of
Manne ville. There will be fifty francs reward."
Then the man departed. They heard once more at a distance
the dull beatings on the drum, and the faint voice of the crier.
Then they began to talk of this event, reckoning up the
chances which Maitre Houlbreque had of finding or of not find-
ing his pocket-book again.
And the meal went on.
They were finishing their coffee when the corporal of gen-
darmes appeared on the threshold.
He asked: —
(< Is Maitre Hauchecorne, of Breaute, here ? "
Maitre Hauchecorne, seated at the other end of the table,
answered : —
«Here I ani.»
And the corporal resumed: —
(( Maitre Hauchecorne, will you have the kindness to come with
me to the mayor's office ? M. le Maire would like to speak to
you. "
The peasant, surprised and uneasy, gulped down his little glass
of cognac, got up, and — even worse bent over than in the morn-
ing, since the first steps after a rest were always particularly dif-
ficult — started off, repeating : —
<( Here I am, here I am. "
And he followed the corporal.
The mayor was waiting for him, seated in an arm-chair. He
was the notary of the place, a tall, grave man of pompous speech.
<( Maitre Hauchecorne," said he, "this morning, on the Beuze-
ville road, you were seen to pick up the pocket-book lost by
Maitre Houlbreque of Manneville."
The countryman, speechless, gazed at the mayor; frightened
already by this suspicion, which rested on him he knew not why.
<( I — I picked up that pocket-book ? "
<(Yes, you."
C(I swear I didn't even know nothing about it at all."
(( You were seen."
(< They saw me — me ? Who is that who saw me ? "
<(M. Malandain, the harness-maker."
GU\ DE MAUPASSANT 9825
Then the old man remembered, understood, and reddening
with anger: —
(<Ah ! he saw me, did he, the rascal ? He saw me picking up
this string here, M'sieu' le Maire."
And fumbling at the bottom of his pocket, he pulled out of
it the little end of string.
But the mayor incredulously shook his head: —
((You will not make me believe, Maitre Hauchecorne, that
M. Malandain, who is a man worthy of credit, has mistaken this
string for a pocket-book. }>
The peasant, furious, -raised his hand and spit as if to attest
his good faith, repeating: —
«For all that, it is the truth of the good God, the blessed
truth, M'sieu' le Maire. There! on my soul and my salvation I
repeat it. })
The mayor continued; —
<(After picking up the thing in question, you even looked
for some time in the mud to see if a piece of money had not
dropped out of it.}'
The good man was suffocated with indignation and with fear.
<( If they can say — ! If they can say sucn lies as that to slan-
der an honest man ! If they can say — ! w
He might protest, he was not believed.
He was confronted with M. Malandain, who repeated and
sustained his testimony. They abused one another for an hour.
At his own request, Maitre Hauchecorne was searched. Nothing
was found on him.
At last the mayor, much perplexed, sent him away, warning
him that he would inform the public prosecutor and ask for
orders.
The news had spread. When he left the mayor's office, the
old man was surrounded, interrogated with a curiosity which was
serious or mocking as the case might be, but into which no in-
dignation entered. And he began to tell the story of the string.
They did not believe him. They laughed.
He passed on, buttonholed by every one, himself buttonholing
his acquaintances, beginning over and over again his tale and his
protestations, showing his pockets turned inside out to prove that
he had nothing.
They said to him: —
<(You old rogue,
GUY DE MAUPASSANT
And he grew angry, exasperated, feverish, in despair at not
being believed; and always telling his story.
The night came. It was time to go home. He set out with
three of his neighbors, to whom he pointed out the place where
he had picked up the end of string; and all the way he talked
of his adventure.
That evening he made the round in the village of Breaute, so
as to tell every one. He met only unbelievers.
He was ill of it all night long.
The next day, about one in the afternoon, Marius Paumeile, a
farm hand of Maitre Breton, the market-gardener at Ymauville,
returned the pocket-book and its contents to Maitre Houlbreque
of Manneville.
This man said that he had indeed found it on the road: but
not knowing how to read, he had carried it home and given it
to his master.
The news spread to the environs. Maitre Hauchecorne was
informed. He put himself at once upon the go, and began to
relate his story as completed by the denouement. He triumphed.
"What grieved me," said he, (< was not the thing itself, do
you understand; but it was the lies. There's nothing does you
so much harm as being in disgrace for lying. w
All day he talked of his adventure; he told it on the roads to
the people who passed; at the cabaret to the people who drank;
and the next Sunday, when they came out of church. He even
stopped strangers to tell them about it. He was easy now, and
yet something worried him without his knowing exactly what it
was. People had a joking manner while they listened. They did
not seem convinced. He seemed to feel their tittle-tattle behind
his back.
On Tuesday of the next week he went to market at Goder-
viile, prompted entirely by the need of telling his story.
Malandain, standing on his door-step, began to laugh as he
saw him pass. Why ?
He accosted a farmer of Criquetot, who did not let him finish,
and giving him a punch in the pit of his stomach, cried in his
face : —
(< Oh you great rogue, va ! }> Then turned his heel upon Him.
Maitre Hauchecorne remained speechless, and grew more and
more uneasy. Why had they called him <( great rogue w ?
When seated at table in Jourdain's tavern he began again to
explain the whole affair.
GUY DE MAUPASSANT
9827
A horse-dealer of Montivilliers shouted at him: —
(<Get out, get out, you old scamp: I know all about your
Etring!"
Hauchecorne stammered: —
<( But since they found it again, the pocket-book — ! })
But the other continued: —
(< Hold your tongue, daddy : there's one who finds it and there's
another who returns it. And no one the wiser. }>
The peasant was choked. He understood at last. They accused
him of having had the pocket-book- brought back by an accom-
plice, by a confederate.
He tried to protest. The whole table began to laugh.
He could not finish his dinner, and went away- amid a chorus
of jeers.
He went home ashamed and indignant, choked with rage, with
confusion; the more cast down since from his Norman cunning,
he was perhaps capable of having done what they accused him
of, and even of boasting of it as a good trick. His innocence
dimly seemed to him impossible to prove, his craftiness being
so well known. And he felt himself struck to the heart by the
injustice of the suspicion.
Then he began anew to tell of his adventure, lengthening his
recital every day, each time adding new proofs, more energetic
protestations, and more solemn oaths which he thought of, which
he prepared in his hours of solitude, his mind being entirely
occupied by the story of the string. The more complicated his
defense, the more artful his arguments, the less he was believed.
<( Those are liars' proofs, * they said behind his back.
He felt this ; it preyed upon his heart. He exhausted himself
in useless efforts.
He was visibly wasting away.
The jokers now made him tell <(the story of the piece of
string }) to amuse them, just as you make a soldier who has been
on a campaign tell his story of the battle. His mind, struck at
the root, grew weak.
About the end of December he took to his bed.
He died early in January, and in the delirium of the death
agony he protested his innocence, repeating: —
(<A little bit of string — a little bit of string — see, here it is,
M'sieu' le Maire."
Translation of Jonathan Sturges.
9828
FREDERICK DENISON MAURICE
(1805-1872)
FREDERICK DENISON MAURICE takes high rank among the reli-
gious teachers of this century, more by virtue of what he
was than of what he wrote. He is of those elect souls
whose insight becomes a guiding force both to themselves and to
their fellows. Of a generation which knew Carlyle and Mill and
Darwin, which was given over to the dry-rot of intellectual despair
in all matters concerning the religious life of man, Maurice seemed
born out of due time. He belonged apparently to an earlier or to a
later day. Yet by force, not of his intellect
but of his faith, he succeeded in turning
many of his contemporaries to the Christ-
ian ideal which haunted him throughout his
life, and which perpetually dominated his
nineteenth-century inheritance of skepti-
cism. Unlike Newman, with whom he was
associated at Oxford, Maurice was content
to find in the Church of England, as in all
churches, only a partial realization of his
ideal. of righteousness. He is of those who
believe that the whole truth can never
be revealed to one generation. He shares
FREDERICK D. MAURICE the Platonic belief that the vision of God
becomes gradually apparent through many
aeons. This liberalism was the mainspring of his power as a reli-
gious teacher.
His early training had enlarged his sympathies and prepared the
way for his future ministrations. He was born in 1805 of a Unitarian
father, and of a mother who adhered to the doctrines of Calvin. His
first religious problem was to reconcile these differences of faith.
Later his education at Cambridge deepened within him the evangeli-
cal sympathies, which made him long to unite the world under one
banner as Sons of God. Upon leaving Cambridge he undertook the
editorship of the Athenaeum in London, and while engaged upon
this work became a member of the Church of England. His resi-
dence at Oxford was the natural outcome of this step. The strong-
hold of medievalism was then vital with the presence of Newman,
FREDERICK DENISON MAURICE
9829
of Pusey, of Keble, and of others who were seeking with passionate
eagerness a refuge from the insistent doubts and difficulties of the
age. The spirit of the age was then trying all men through the re-
ligious faculty. Maurice, as if anticipating the Christianity of the
twentieth century, found the key to all problems, not in an infalli-
ble church nor in infallible reason, but in the everlasting love and
fatherhood of God, and in the universal sonship of men. Cambridge
had increased his liberality; Oxford deepened his idealism. Maurice
would exclude no man, whether Jew, Turk, infidel, or heretic, from
the Divine family; yet in his exalted worship of Jesus he was linked
to the mediaeval mystic. This rare combination gave him charm, and
drew to him thoughtful and cultured men who were too large for
narrowed and dogmatic Christianity, yet who longed to give expres-
sion to the soul of worship within them. It drew to him also the
workingmen of London. After Maurice left Oxford he was appointed
to the chaplaincy of Guy's Hospital in London. He held also the
chairs of history, literature, and divinity in King's College, and the
chaplaincy- of Lincoln's Inn and of St. Peter's. During his long resi-
dence in London, from 1834 until 1866, the broad and fervent religious
spirit of Maurice found expression in social work. The man who
would knit together all the kindreds of the wor.d in the bonds of
Divine fellowship could not limit his ministrations to certain classes
of society. He was in strong sympathy with workingmen, believing
that their lack of education by no means debarred them from the
apprehension of the highest spiritual truths. His foundation of the
Workingman's College was the outcome of this sympathy. He founded
also Queen's College for women; and thus established still further his
claim to be ranked with the prophets of his time. In 1866 he became
professor of moral philosophy at Cambridge. He died in 1872.
Frederick Denison Maurice was the author of many religious
works, but his pre-eminent power is in his sermons. His < Lectures
on Ecclesiastical History, > his < Theological Essays, > his < Kingdom of
Christ, > his < Unity of the New Testament, > have literary value in
proportion as they exhibit the spirit of the preacher. In his ser-
mons the luminous spirituality of Maurice and his strength as a writer
find completest expression. The man himself can be most closely
approached in his sensitive and thoughtful letters to his friends.
9830 FREDERICK DENISON MAURICE
FROM A LETTER TO REV. J. DE LA TOUCHE
HOLDOR HOUSE, DORKING, April i4th, 1863.
I DO not know whether you will think me less or more fitted
to enter into that tremendous difficulty of which you speak
in your last letter, when I tell you that I was brought up
a Unitarian, and that I have distinctly and deliberately accepted
the belief which is expressed in- the Nicene Creed as the only
satisfaction of the infinite want which Unitarianism awakened in
me; yes, and as the only vindication of the truth which Unitari-
anism taught me.
You feel that our Lord is a man in the most perfect sense
of the word. You cannot convince yourself that he is more.
No, nor will any arguments convince you that he is more. For
what do you mean by that more? Is it a Jupiter Tonans whom
you are investing with the name of God ? is it to him you pray
when you say (< Our Father which art in heaven >J ? Is God
a Father, — really and actually a Father? is he in heaven, far
away from our conceptions and confusions, — one whom1 we can-
not make in the likeness of anything above, around, beneath us?
Or is all this a dream ? is there no God, no father ? has he never
made himself known, never come near to men ? can men never
come near to him ?
Are you startled that I put these questions to you ? Do
they seem more terrible than any that have yet presented them-
selves to you ? Oh, they are the way back to the faith of the
little child, and to the faith of the grown man. It is not Christ
about whom our doubts are. We are feeling after God if haply
we may find him. We cannot find him in nature. Paley will not
reveal him to us. But he is very near us; very near to those
creatures whom he has formed in his own image; seeking after
them; speaking to them in a thousand ways.
The belief of a Son who was with him before all worlds, in
whom he created and loves the world; who for us men and for
our salvation came down from heaven and became incarnate, and
died, and was buried, and rose again for us, and ascended on
high to be the High Priest of the universe, — this belief is what?
Something that I can prove by texts of Scripture or by cun-
ning arguments of logic ? God forbid ! I simply commend it to
you. I know that you want it. I know that it meets exactly
what your spirit is looking after, and cannot meet with in any
FREDERICK DENISON MAURICE 9831
books of divinity. For we have to find out that God is not in a
book; that he is; that he must reveal himself to us; — that he is
revealing himself to us.
I am not distressed that you should be brought to feel that
these deep and infinite questions — not questions about the arith-
metic of the Bible — are what are really haunting and torment-
ing you. I believe that the clergy must make this discovery. We
have beea repeating phrases and formulas. We have not entered
into them, but only have accepted certain reasonings and proofs
about them. Now they are starting up and looking at us as if
they were alive, and we aie frightened at the sight. It is good
for us to be frightened; only let us not turn away from them,
and find fault with them, but ask God — if we believe that he can
hear us — to search us and show us what is true, and to bring
us out of our atheism.
How, you ask, can I use the prayers of the Church which
assume Christ's divinity when I cannot see sufficient proof that
he is divine ? That is a question, it seems to me, which no man
can answer for you; nay, which you cannot answer for yourself.
If I am right, it is in prayer that you must find the answer.
Yes, in prayer to be able to pray; in prayer to know what prayer
is; in prayer to know whether, without a Mediator, prayer is not
a dream and an impossibility for you, me, every one. I cannot
solve this doubt. I can but show you how to get it solved. I
can but say, The doubt itself may be the greatest blessing you
ever had, may be the greatest striving of God's Spirit within you
that you have ever known, may be the means of making every
duty more real to you.
I do not know who your bishop is. If he is a person with
whom it is possible to communicate freely, I should tell him that
I had perplexities which made the use of the Prayer Book not
as true to me as it once was; that I wanted time for quiet
thought; that I should like to be silent for a little while; — I
would ask him to let me commit my charge to a curate till I
could see my way more clearly. That would be better, surely,
than a resignation, painful not merely to your friends but inju-
rious to the Church, and perhaps a reason for severe repentance
afterwards. But I may be only increasing your puzzles by this
suggestion. Of the fathers in God on earth I have no certainty.
Of the Father in heaven I can be quite certain. Therefore one
of my hints may be worth nothing. The other is worth every-
thing.
9832 FREDERICK DENISON MAURICE
FROM A LETTER TO REV. CHARLES KINGSLEY
MARCH 9TH, 1849.
I HAVE done your bidding and read Froude's book (the ( Nemesis
of Faith*), with what depth of interest I need not tell you.
It is a very awful, and I think may be a very profitable book.
Yes, God would not have permitted it to go forth if he did not
mean good to come out of it. For myself, I have felt more than
ever since I read it how impossible it is to find any substitute
for the old faith. If after all that experience, a man cannot ask
the God of Truth to give him his spirit of truth, to guide him
into all truth, what is left but just what he describes, — doubt;
not merely of existence, but of doubt itself; doubt whether every
superstition may not be real, every lie a fact ? It is undoubted
that such a state of mind is possible, — yes, is near to all of us;
Froude is no false witness. But if it is possible, there must be
some one to bring us out of it; clearly the deliverance is not in
ourselves. And what is the Bible after' all but the history of a
deliverer; of God proclaiming himself as man's deliverer from the
state into which he is ever ready to sink, — a state of slavery to
systems, superstitions, the world, himself, atheism ? The book is
good for this: it brings us to the root 'of things; and there is
nothing, or there is God. It is good for this: it shows that God
must come forth and do the work for us, and that all the reli-
gions we make for ourselves, whatever names we give them, are
miserable mutilated attempts to fashion him after our image, with
yet such fragments of truth as show that we are formed in his.
THE SUBJECTS AND LAWS OF THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN
TEXT: — <(And he lifted up his eyes on his disciples, and said, Blessed be ye
poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.» — ST. LUKE vi. 20. .
So BEGINS a discourse which has often been said to contain a
code of very high morality for those who forsake the low
level of the crowd, and aim at a specially elevated stand-
ard of excellence. The previous sentence explains to whom the
discourse was addressed. <(And he came down with them, and
stood in the plain, and the company of his disciples, and a great
multitude of people out of all Judea and Jerusalem, and from
the sea-coast of Tyre and Sidon. which came to hear him, and to
FREDERICK DENISON MAURICE
9833
be healed of their diseases. w Those were the people who heard
Christ say, (< Blessed are ye poor, for yours is the Kingdom of
Heaven. }>
We were wont to mitigate the force of this sentence by re-
ferring to the one in St. Matthew's Gospel which most resembles
it. For <<poor,)> we say, the other Evangelist gives us ((poor in
spirit. }) Is not that the sense in which we must understand the
words here ? I am most thankful for the expression in St. Mat-
thew, and am quite willing to use it for the illustration of the
discourse in which it occurs. We may find it a great help here-
after in understanding St. Luke. But I must take his language
as it stands. He says that our Lord lifted up his eyes on a
miscellaneous crowd. He cannot have expected that crowd to
introduce any spiritual qualification into the words, (< Yours is
the Kingdom of Heaven. w What then did those words import ?
Might they be addressed to a multitude similarly composed in
London ? . . .
Surely, in this very simple and direct sense. Our Lord had
come to tell them who was governing them; under whose author-
ity they were living. Who had they fancied was governing
them ? One who regarded the rich with affection ; who had
bestowed great advantages upon them ; who had given them an
earnest here of what he might do for them hereafter. It was
most natural for poor men to put this interpretation upon that
which they saw and that which they felt. It was difficult for
them to find any other interpretation. It was not more difficult
for the people who dwelt about the coasts of Tyre and Sidon
than for the people who dwell in the courts and alleys of Lon-
don. The difficulty is the same precisely in kind. The degree
of it must be greater, on some accounts, for the dwellers in
a crowded modern city than for those who breathed the fresh
air of Galilee. The difficulty was not diminished for the latter
(I mean for the Galileans) by anything which they heard from
their religious teachers. It was enormously increased. God was
said to demand of these poor people religious services which they
could not render; an account of knowledge about his law which
they could not possess. His prizes and blessings here and
hereafter were said to be contingent upon their performing these
services, upon their having that knowledge. Whichever way they
turned, — to their present condition, to the forefathers to wnose
errors or *ias they must in great part attribute that condition,
9834 FREDERICK DENISON MAURICE
to the future in which they must expect the full fruit of the
misery and evil into which they had fallen, — all looked equally
dark and hopeless.
Startling- indeed, then, were the tidings, (< Yours is the King-
dom of Heaven* Most startling when they were translated into
these : (< You have a Father in heaven who is seeking after you,
watching over you, whom you may trust entirely. He ruled over
your forefathers. He promised that he would show forth his
dominion fully and perfectly in the generations to come. I am
come to tell you of him; to tell you how he rules over you,
and how you may be in very deed his subjects. I am come
that you and your children may be citizens in God's own city,
that the Lord God himself may reign over you. }> I cannot ren-
der the phrase into any equivalents that are simpler, more obvi-
ous, than these. And if they were true, must they not have been
true for all that crowd, for every thief and harlot in it ? Was
not this the very message of John, delivered by Him who could
not only call to repentance but give repentance ?
"Yes," it may be answered, <( that • might be so, if the lan-
guage only declared to the poor that there was a Heavenly
Father who cared for them no less than he cared for the rich:
but the sentences which follow give them a positive advantage;
it would appear as if the blessing on the poor involved a curse
on the rich. What other force can you put on such sentences as
these ? ( Blessed are ye that hunger now, for ye shall be filled.
Blessed are ye that weep now, for ye shall laugh. But woe unto
you that are rich, for ye have received your consolation. Woe
unto you that are full, for ye shall hunger. Woe unto you that
laugh now, for ye shall mourn and weep. } w
Language so explicit as this cannot be evaded. And I hold
it is greatly for the interest of all of us who are leading easy
and comfortable lives in the world, that it should not be evaded.
If any amount of riches greater or smaller does give us consola-
tion, it is well for us to understand that there is a woe upon
those riches. They were not meant to give consolation ; we were
not meant to find it in them. If any laughter of ours does make
us incapable of weeping, incapable of entering into the sorrow
of the world in which we are dwelling, we ought to feel that
there is misery and death in that laughter. Our Lord does not
speak against laughter; he sets it forth as a blessing. He does
denounce all that laughter which is an exultation in our own
FREDERICK DENISON MAURICE 9835
prosperity and in the calamities of others. He does promise
that those who are indulging that sort of laughter shall weep.
I use the word promise advisedly. It is a promise, not a threat-
ening; or if you please, a threat which contains a promise. It
is the proof that we are under a Kingdom of Heaven; that God
does not allow such laughter to go on; that he stops it; that he
gives the blessing of sorrow in place of it. And thus all alike
are taught that they are under this fatherly government. All
are shown that the Father in heaven is aware of the discipline
which they need, and will apportion it. All may be brought
to take their places with their brethren in this kingdom. All
may be taught that the common blessings — the blessings from
which one cannot exclude another — are the highest blessings.
All may be brought to know that this one fact, that they have
a Father in heaven, is worth all others. And so that poverty
of spirit which is only another name for childlike dependence
upon One who is above us, and is all good because we have
found we cannot depend upon ourselves, may be wrought by
Him with whom we have to do in rich and poor equally. The
heavenly treasures may be revealed to both, which moth and
rust cannot corrupt, which thieves cannot break through and
steal.
Thus far, assuredly, the tendency of this discourse of our
Lord's has been to level, not to exalt. The Kingdom of Heaven
has not been a prize for those who are unlike their fellows, but
for those who will take their stand by them — who will set up
no exclusive pretensions of their own. But what shall we say
of this benediction — <( Blessed are ye when men shall hate you,
and when they shall separate you from their company, and shall
reproach you, and shall cast out your name as evil, for the Son
of Man's sake. Rejoice ye in that day, and leap for joy, for
behold your reward is great in heaven: for in the like manner
did their fathers unto the prophets"? And again of this woe —
(<Woe unto you when all men shall speak well of you, for so did
their fathers unto the false prophets " ? Is there not here a glori-
fication of the little minority which is persecuted, a denunciation
of the majority which persecutes ?
The comment on the language is in the actual history. Why
was St. Stephen, whom we have been remembering lately, cast
out of the city of Jerusalem and stoned ? Because he was ac-
cused of breaking down the barriers which separated the chosen
9836 FREDERICK DENISON MAURICE
people from the surrounding nations. Why was the young man
at whose feet the witnesses against Stephen laid down their
clothes, afterwards denounced in .the same city as one who ought
not to live ? Because he said that he was sent with a message
of peace and reconciliation to the Gentiles. What was it that
sustained and comforted Stephen in the hour when his country-
men were gnashing upon him with their teeth ? The sight of
the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God; the Savior
and King, not of him and his brother disciples, but of mankind.
What was St. Paul's deepest sorrow, and how was it that in the
midst of that sorrow he could always rejoice ? His sorrow was
that his kinsmen after the flesh were to be cut off, because they
were enemies to God and contrary to all men. His joy was in
the thought that « all Israel should be saved ; » that « God had
concluded all in unbelief, that he might have mercy upon all.*
This then was the witness of the little band of the persecuted,
that God is the Father of all; that his Kingdom is over all.
And the determination of that powerful majority of persecutors
was to keep the favor of God and the Kingdom of Heaven to
themselves. Those of whom all men speak well are those who
flatter their exclusiveness ; who lead them to think that they
are better than others, and that they shall have mercies which are
denied to others. The comfort of the persecuted, which the per-
secutor could not have, was the comfort of believing that God
would conquer all obstacles; that the Son of Man, for whose sake
they loved not their lives, would be shown in very deed to be
King of kings and Lord of lords — all human wills being sub-
jected to his will.
And so you perceive how the next precepts, which we often
read as if they were mere isolated maxims, are connected with
these blessings and these woes. (( But I say unto you which
hear," — unto you, that is, whom I have told that men shall sep-
arate you from their company, and cast out your persons as
evil, — (( Love your enemies; do good to them which persecute
you. Bless them that curse you, and pray for them which de-
spitefully use you. And unto him that smiteth thee on the one
cheek offer also the other; and him that taketh away thy cloke
forbid not to take thy coat also. Give to every man that asketh
of thee; and of him that taketh away thy goods ask them not
again. And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also
to them likewise. For if ye love them which love you, what
FREDERICK DENISON MAURICE 9837
thank have ye ? for sinners also love those that love them. And
if ye do good to them which do good to you, what thank have
ye ? for sinners also do even the same. And if ye lend to them
of whom ye hope to receive, what thank have ye ? for sinners
also lend to sinners, to receive as much again. But love ye your
enemies, and do good; and lend, hoping for nothing again. And
ye shall be the children of the Highest; for he is kind unto the
unthankful and to the evil. Be ye therefore merciful, as your
Father in heaven is merciful. }>
In these passages is contained the sum of what we have been
used to call the peculiar Christian morality. It is supposed to
be very admirable, but far too fine for common use. He who
aims at following it is to be counted a high saint. He claims
a state immensely above the ordinary level of humanity. He
even discards the maxims by which civil society is governed —
those which the statesman considers necessary fcr his objects.
No doubt, it is said, this transcendent doctrine has had a cer-
tain influence upon the nations in which it is promulgated. It
has modified some of the thoughts and feelings which are most
adverse to it. The beauty of it is confessed by many who never
dream of practicing it. There are some unbelievers who try to
practice it, and say that if this part of Christianity could be sepa-
rated from its mysterious part, they could not reverence it too
highly. But though this is true, we have proofs, it is said, every
day and hour, that this love to enemies, this blessing them that
curse, this turning the one cheek to him who smites the other,
is altogether contrary to the habits and tempers of the world.
My friends, the evidence goes much further than that. We
need not derive our proofs that the natural heart revolts against
these precepts from what is called The World. The records of
the Church will furnish that demonstration much more perfectly.
Hatred of those whom they have counted their enemies,— this
has been the too characteristic sign of men who have called
themselves Christ's servants and soldiers. Curses have been their
favorite weapons. No church can bring that charge against an-
other without laying itself open to retaliation. ' And it cannot be
pleaded, (< Oh, there is a corrupt unbelieving leaven in every
Christian society. }> The habit I speak of has come forth often
most flagrantly in those who were denouncing this leaven, who
were seeking to cast it out. I am not saying that they were not
good men. The case is all the stronger if they were. I am not
9838 FREDERICK DENISON MAURICE
saying that a genuine zeal for truth was not at the root of their
rage, and did not mingle with the most outrageous acts of it.
Of all this, God will be the judge. We are not wise to antici-
pate his decisions. But such facts, which are notorious, and are
repeated in every age and in every country, show the absurdity
of the theory that what our Lord lays down as the laws of the
Kingdom of Heaven are intended for the use of a particular
class of persons, who aspire to outstrip their fellows and win
higher prizes than the rest of mankind. They lead us to suspect
that those who have aimed at such distinctions and pursued such
objects have not been able to submit to his government — have
assumed a position which was essentially rebellious. They lead
us back to the leveling sentence with which the discourse opens,
and which must be accepted as the key to the whole of it. What
business has any citizen of a kingdom to talk of a certain standard
which is meant for him and not for all the subjects of it ? What
is that but adopting the maxim which the Roman poet unfairly
ascribed to the Greek hero, that (< laws were not born for him >} ?
How reasonable, on the other hand, — how perfectly consist-
ent,— is our Lord's language, if we suppose him to be revealing
the laws under which God has constituted human beings, — the
laws which are the expression of his own Divine nature, the laws
which were perfectly fulfilled in his Son, the laws which his
Spirit is seeking to write on all hearts! What signifies it to
the reality of such laws that this or that man transgresses them;
that he who transgresses them calls himself Churchman or Dis-
senter, Catholic or Protestant, believer or infidel ? If they are
true, they must stand in spite of such transgressions; they will
make their power manifest through such transgressions. There
will be a witness on behalf of them, such as we see there is in
all human consciences; there will be a resistance to. them, such
as we see there is in all human wills. Our belief in their ulti-
mate triumph over that which opposes them must depend on
our belief in Him who is the Author of the law. If we think
that he is our Father in heaven, and that his law of forgiveness
has been fully accomplished in Christ, and that his Spirit is
stronger than the Evil Spirit, every sign of the victory of love
over striving and hating wills must be a pledge how the battle
is to terminate: no success of bitterness, and wrath, and malice,
however it may shake our minds, can be anything but a proof
that less than Almighty love, less than a Divine sacrifice, would
FREDERICK DENISON MAURICE 9839
have been unable to subdue such adversaries. But if we think
this discourse to be the announcement of a refined ethical sys-
tem,— not the proclamation of a Kingdom of Heaven, as it pro-
fesses to be, — we may well complain how feeble and ineffective it
is and must always be. We may say that its power can never be
recognized beyond a circle of rare exceptional persons. And we
may find that these rare exceptional persons are always supplied
with a set of evasions, equivocations, and apologies for violating
every one of its principles, especially in those acts which they
consider most religious and meritorious.
Those who confine this discourse to saints speedily contradict
themselves. When they bring forth evidences of Christianity, or
evidences of the influence of the Catholic Church, they appeal to
the power which the Cross, with its proclamation of Divine for-
giveness to enemies, has exercised over the wild warring tribes
that have fashioned modern Europe. They ask whether the con-
science of those tribes, in the midst of all their bloody feuds
and acts of personal vengeance, did not stoop to the authority
of a Prince of Peace; whether it did not confess him as King of
kings and Lord of lords; whether it did not acknowledge those
as especially his ministers who in bodily weakness — in defiance
of the physically strong — showed forth the loving-kindness which
they said was his, and claimed the serf and the noble as alike
his subjects and his brethren. The facts cannot be gainsaid.
They are written in sunbeams on all the darkest pages of mod-
ern history. What do they prove ? Surely, that our Lord was
not proclaiming a code which was at variance with civil order
and obedience, — a transcendental morality, — but principles which
were the foundation of civil order and obedience; principles
which were to undermine and uproot the very evils which all
national codes are endeavoring to counteract. The national code
— the most exalted, the most divine code — can only forbid, only
counteract. If it aspires to do more, if it strives to extirpate
vices instead of to punish crimes, if it enjoins virtues instead of
demanding simple submission to its decrees, — it proves its own
impotence. It is always asking for help to do that which it can-
not do. It wants a power to make the obedience which it needs
voluntary: to kindle the patriotism without which it will only
be directed to a herd of animals, not a race of men. Wherever
there has been a voluntary obedience, wherever there has been
a patriotism which has made men willing to die that their land
FREDERICK DENISON MAURICE
might not be in the possession of strangers, there has been faith
in an unseen Ruler; there has been a confidence that he wilk
men to be free. The Jewish history interprets other history.
It shows what has been the source of law and freedom; what
has been the destruction of both; what has been the preservation
of both. This discourse, because it proclaims a more universal
principle than the Jewish or national principle, is supposed to
set that aside. I accept our Lord's words, a I come not to de-
stroy, but to fulfill, }> as true in every case. He does not destroy
the fundamental maxim that God is the author of the Com-
mandments. He fulfills it by proclaiming the mind of his Father
in heaven as the ground of all the acts of his children. He does
not destroy one sacrifice which any patriot had made for his peo-
ple's freedom. He fulfills it in his perfect sacrifice to God and
for us. He does not destroy any one precept of duty to God
or to our neighbor. He fulfills it by baptizing with his Spirit;
by making duty to God the surrender of man's will to his will
which is working in us; that will binding men to each other as
members of the same body; that will fighting with all the self-
ish impulses which tear us asunder. There is no opposition be-
tween the Kingdom of Heaven and any kingdom of earth, except
what is produced by this selfishness which is the enemy of both.
If the civil ruler sanctions one law for the rich and one law
for the poor, he offends against the maxims of the Kingdom of
Heaven; but then he also introduces a confusion into his own.
If he prefers war to peace, gambling to honesty, bondage to
freedom, and if he seeks religious sanctions to uphold him in
these tastes, he offends against the maxims of the Kingdom
of Heaven, and he is preparing ruin for his own State. If the
ecclesiastic proclaims one law for the saint and another for the
common man, he overthrows the common order and morality of
nations; but he sins still more directly against the laws which
Christ proclaimed on the Mount. If he sets up the priest against
the magistrate, he disturbs the peace of civil communities; but
he also exalts the priest into the place of God, and so commits
treason against the Kingdom of Heaven. If he assume the office
of a judge of his brethren, he may do much mischief on earth
which the ruler on earth cannot hinder. But he falls under this
sentence: "Judge not, and ye shall not be judged; condemn not,
and ye shall not be condemned; forgive, and ye shall be for-
given. w
FREDERICK DENISON MAURICE 9841
These laws of the Kingdom of Heaven seem very hard to
keep. See what hinders us from keeping them. It is not some
incapacity. It is our determination to assume a place which is
not ours. Each of us is continually setting up himself to be a
God. Each is seizing the judgment-throne of the universe. We
know that it is so. And from this throne we must come down.
We must confess that we are not gods; not able to pronounce
on the condition of our fellows, needing forgiveness every day
from our Father and from each other, permitted to dispense
what he sends us. The lesson is a simple one. Yet every other
is contained in it. If we do in very deed come to the light,
our deeds may be made manifest; if we ask to be judged — if
we ask our Father in Heaven to make us his ministers and not
his rivals — we shall be able to enter into the wonderful precept
that follows (v. 38): <( Give, and it shall be given unto you;
good measure pressed down and shaken together, and running
over, shall men give into your bosom. For with the same meas-
ure that ye mete withal it shall be measured to you again.*
They had been told before that they were (< to do good and lend,
hoping for nothing again. }) How is it that we are encouraged
to hope here that if we give it shall be given to us ? The two
passages explain each other; experience confirms them both.
Only the man who gives hoping for nothing again, who gives
freely without calculation out of the fullness of his heart, ever
can find his love returned to him. He may win hatred as well
as love ; but love does come in measures that he never could
dream of. We see it every day; and every day, perhaps, we may
be disappointed at finding some favors which we thought were
well laid out bringing back no recompense. They were bestowed
with the hope of something again.
Yes, friends: most truly are these the unchangeable laws of
the Kingdom of Heaven. That which we measure is measured
against us again; selfishness for selfishness, love for love. It
may not be clear to us now that it is. We shall be sure of it
one day — in that day which shall show Him who -spoke this dis-
course to be indeed the King of kings and Lord of lords. For,
as his next words tell us, this has been the great inversion of
order: <( The blind have been leading the blind; the disciples have
been setting themselves above their Master." We have been lay-
ing down our own maxims and codes of morality. Each one has
been saying to his brother, <( Brother, let me pull out the mote
FREDERICK DENISON MAURICE
out of thine eye." We have had such a clear discernment of
these motes! And all the while none of us has been aware of
the beam in his own eye. And how can any of us become aware
of it; how can we escape the charge of hypocrisy which our con-
sciences own to be so well deserved ? Only if there is a King
and Judge over us who detects the beam; who makes us feel
that it is there; who himself undertakes to cast it out. To that
point we must always return. We may boast of this morality
as something to glorify saints. We may call it <( delicious, w as a
modern French critic calls it. Only when it actually confronts
us, as the word of a King who is speaking to us and convict-
ing us of our departures from it — only then shall we discover
that it is for sinners, not saints; that it is terrible, not delicious.
But only then shall we know what the blessedness is of being
claimed as children of this kingdom; only then shall we begin
to apprehend the glory of which we are inheritors. For we then
shall understand that there is a selfish evil nature in every man,
let him call himself churchman or man of the world, believer
or unbeliever, which cannot bring forth good fruit — which is
utterly damnable; and that there is a Divine root of humanity,
a Son of Man, whence all the good in churchman or man of the
world, in believer or unbeliever, springs — whence nothing but
good can spring. If we exalt ourselves upon our privileges as
Christians or saints, the King will say to us, (<Why call ye me
Lord, and do not the things which I say ? }> If we submit to his
Spirit we may bring forth now the fruits of good works which
are to his glory; we may look for the day when every law of
his kingdom shall be fulfilled, when all shall know him from the
least to the greatest. And churches, in the sense of their own
nothingness, may seek after the foundation which God has laid,
and which will endure the shock of all winds and waves. And
churches which rest upon their own decrees and traditions and
holiness will be like the man (< who without a foundation built
an house upon the earth, against which the stream did beat
vehemently, and immediately it fell; and the ruin of that house
was great. })
9843
JOSEPH MAZZINI
(1805-1872)
BY FRANK SEWALL
IMONG the liberators of modern Italy, ranking in influence with
Victor Emmanuel, Cavour, and Garibaldi, Joseph Mazzini
was unique in his combination of deep religious motive,
philosophic insight, and revolutionary zeal. His early studies of Dante
inspired in him two ideals: a restored Italian unity, and the subor-
dination of political government to spiritual law, exercised in the
conscience of a free people. Imprisoned in early life for participation
in the conspiracy of the Carbonari, he left Italy in his twentv-sixth
year, to spend almost the entire remainder
of his life in exile. While living as a refu-
gee in Marseilles and in Switzerland, from
1831 to 1836, he fostered the revolutionary
association of young Italian enthusiasts,
and edited their journal, the Giovine Italia,
its purpose being to bring about a national
revolution through the insurrection of the
Sardinian States. In Switzerland he organ-
ized in the same spirit the <( Young Switzer-
land M and the <( Young Europe, w fostering
the idea of universal political reform, and
the bringing in of a new era of the world,
in which free popular government should
displace the old systems both of legitimate
monarchy and despotic individualism. Banished from Switzerland
under a decree of the French government, in 1836 Mazzini found
refuge in London ; and for the remainder of his life the English press
was the chief organ of his world-wide influence as a reformer, while
his literary ability won him a place among the most brilliant of the
modern British essayists. Only for brief intervals did Mazzini appear
again in Italy; notably in the period of 1848 and 1849, when, on the
insurrection of Sicily and Venetian Lombardy and the flight of Pio
Nono from Rome, like a Rienzi of the nineteenth century he issued
from that (< city of the soul » the declaration of the Roman Republic,
and was elected one of the triumvirs. He led in a heroic resistance
JOSEPH MAZZINI
9844 JOSEPH MAZZINI
to the besieging French army until compelled to yield; and he was
content to have brought forth from the conflict the unstained banner,
'<God and the People, » to be the standard for all future struggles for
the union of free Italy under the rightful leadership of Rome. In
1857 he again took part in person in the insurrections in Genoa and
in Sicily, and was laid under sentence of death, a judgment which was
removed in 1865. In 1870, on his attempting to join Garibaldi in
Sicily, he was arrested at sea and imprisoned at Gaeta, to be released
in two months, as the danger of a general insurrection disappeared.
During all this time he had been carrying on, mainly from England,
his propaganda through the press; publishing in 1852, in the West-
minster Review, the essay ( Europe, its Conditions and Prospects, J
completing in 1858 <The Duties of Man,* and addressing open letters
to Pio Nono, to Louis Napoleon, and to Victor Emmanuel. In 1871 he
contributed to the Contemporary Review an essay on (The Franco-
German War and the Communed The last production of his pen was
his essay on Renan's (Reforme Morale et Intellectuelle,' finished in
March 1872, and published in the Fortnightly Review in 1874.
It was shortly after the completion of this essay at Pisa, whither
he had gone in the hope of regaining his health, that he was seized
with the illness that closed his earthly life on March loth, 1872.
Honors were decreed him by the Italian Parliament, his funeral was
attended by an immense concourse of people, and his remains were
laid away in a costly monument in the Campo Santo of Genoa.
If Mazzini is entitled to be called the prophet of a new political
age, it is because he sought for a new spiritual basis for political
reform. What is remarkable is, that his bold and ingenuous insist-
ence on the religious motive as fundamental in the government that
is to be, did not diminish his influence with his contemporaries of
whatever shades of opinion. Even so radical a writer as the Russian
anarchist Bakunin, in an essay on the ( Political Theology > of Mazzini,
speaks of him as one of the noblest and purest individualities of our
age.
The two fundamental principles for which Mazzini stood were col-
lective humanity as opposed to individualism, and duty as opposed to
rights. His position was, that the revolutionary achievements of the
past had at most overcome the tyranny of monarchy in asserting the
principle of the rights of the individual. But this is not in itself a
unifying motive. The extreme assertion of this leads to disunion and
weakness, and makes way only for another and more hopeless des-
potism. The rights of the individual must now be sacrificed to the
collective good, and the motive of selfish aggrandizement must yield
to the sacred law of duty under the Divine government. It is this
undeviating regard for the supreme principle of duty to the collective
JOSEPH MAZZINI 9845
man, under the authority of the Divine law, that alone can make the
perpetuation of the republic possible.
Mazzini's devotion to this principle accounts for his apparent luke-
warmness in many of the boldest and most conspicuous movements
in the progress of Italian liberation and unity. It was because he
saw the preponderance of sectional aims rather than the participa-
tion of all in the new federation, that he criticized the Carbonari king,
Charles Albert, in 1831, and that he fought against the policy of ob-
taining at the cost of Savoy and Nice (<a truncated Italy of monarchy
and diplomacy, the creation of Victor Emmanuel, Louis Napoleon, and
Cavour.^ He lived to see Italy, nominally at least, a united nation,
freed from foreign control; but far from being the ideal republic
whose law is from above, and whose strength is in the supreme
devotion of each citizen to the good of all, and. to the realization
in this manner of a Divine government in the world. Toward the
attainment of this ideal by progressive governments everywhere, the
influence of Mazzini will long be a powerful factor, and his mission
more and more recognized as that of a true prophet of a new politi-
cal era of the world.
Among Mazzini's literary writings may be mentioned his essays on
( Victor Hugo,} ( George Sand,' ( Byron and Goethe, } (The Genius and
Tendency of the Writings of Thomas Carlyle,' and that on (M. Renan
and France. } His (Life and Writings,* in six volumes, were published
in London in 1870; and a volume of ( Essays, Selected, * in 1887.
FAITH AND THE FUTURE
From the < Essays >
FAITH requires an aim capable of embracing life as a whole,
of concentrating all its manifestations, of directing its vari-
ous modes of activity, or of repressing them all in favor of
one alone. It requires an earnest, unalterable conviction that
that aim will be realized; a profound belief in a mission and
the obligation to fulfill it; and the consciousness of a supreme
power watching over the path of the faithful towards its accom-
plishment. These elements are indispensable to faith; and where
any one of these is wanting, we shall have sects, schools, political
parties, but no faith, — no constant hourly sacrifice for the sake of
a great religious idea.
5846 JOSEPH MAZZINI
Now we have no definite religious idea, no profound belief in
an obligation entailed by a mission, no consciousness of a supreme
protecting power. Our actual, apostolate is a mere analytical
opposition; our weapons are interest, and our chief instrument of
action is a theory of rights. We are all of us, notwithstanding
our sublime presentiments, the sons of rebellion. We advance
like renegades, without a God, without a law, without a banner
to lead us towards the future. Our former aim has vanished
from our view; the new, dimly seen for an instant, is effaced by
that doctrine of rights which alone directs our labors. We make
of the individual both the means and the aim. We talk of
humanity — a formula essentially religious — and banish religion
from our work. We talk of synthesis, and yet neglect the most
powerful and active element of human existence. Bold enough
to be undaunted by the dream of the material unity of Europe,
we thoughtlessly destroy its moral unity by failing- to recognize
the primary condition of all association, — uniformity of sanction
and belief. And it is amidst such contradictions that we pretend
to renew a world.
Right is the faith of the individual. Duty is the common col-
lective faith. Right can but organize resistance: it may destroy,
it cannot found. Duty builds up, associates, and unites: it is
derived from a general law, whereas right is derived only from
human will. There is nothing, therefore, to forbid a struggle
against right; any individual may rebel against any right in
another individual which is injurious to him, and the sole judge
left between the adversaries is force: and such in fact has fre-
quently been the answer which societies based upon right have
given to their opponents.
Societies based upon duty would not be compelled to have
recourse to force; duty, once admitted as the rule, excludes the
possibility of struggle; and by rendering the individual subject to
the general aim, it cuts at the very root of those evils which
right is unable to prevent, and only affects to cure. Moreover,
progress is not a necessary result of the doctrine of right: it
merely admits it as a fact. The exercise of rights being of
necessity limited by capacity, progress is abandoned to the arbi-
trary rule of an unregulated and aimless liberty.
The doctrine of rights puts an end to sacrifice, and cancels
martyrdom from the world: in every theory of individual rights,
interests become the governing and motive power, and martyrdom
JOSEPH MAZZINI 9847
an absurdity; for what interest can endure beyond the tomb?
Yet how often has martyrdom been the initiation of progress,
the baptism of a world ! . . .
Faith, which is intellect, energy, and love, will put an end to
the discords existing in a society which has neither church nor
leaders; which invokes a new world, but forgets to ask its secret,
its Word, from God.
With faith will revive poetry, rendered fruitful by the breath
of God and by a holy creed. Poetry, exiled now from a world a
prey to anarchy; poetry, the flower of the angels, nourished by
the blood of martyrs and watered by the tears of mothers, blos-
soming often among ruins but ever colored by the rays of dawn;
poetry, a language prophetic of humanity, European in essence
and national in form, — will make known to us the fatherland of
all the nations hitherto; translate the religious and social syn-
thesis through art; and render still lovelier by its light, Woman,
an angel, — fallen, it is true, but yet nearer heaven than we, —
and hasten her redemption by restoring her to her mission of
inspiration, prayer, and pity, so divinely symbolized by Christian-
ity in Mary. . . .
The soul of man had fled; the senses reigned alone. The
multitude demanded bread and the sports of the circus. Philoso-
phy had sunk first into skepticism, then into epicureanism, then
into subtlety and words. Poetry was transformed into satire.
Yet there were moments when men were terror-struck at the
solitude around them, and trembled at their isolation. They ran
to embrace the cold and naked statues of their once venerated
gods; to implore of them a spark of moral life, a ray of faith,
even an illusion! They departed, their prayers unheard, with
despair in their hearts and blasphemy upon their lips. Such
were the times; they resembled our own.
Yet this was not the death agony of the world. It was the
conclusion of one evolution of the world which had reached its
ultimate expression. A great epoch was exhausted, and passing
away to give place to another, the first utterances of which had
already been heard in the north, and which awaited but the Ini-
tiator to be revealed.
He came, — the soul the most full of love, the most sacredly
virtuous, the most deeply inspired by God and the future that
men have yet seen on earth, — Jesus. He bent over the corpse of
the dead world, and whispered a word of faith. Over the clay
that had lost all of man but the movement and the form, he
9848 JOSEPH MAZZINI
uttered words until then unknown, — love, sacrifice, a heavenly
origin. And the dead arose. A new life circulated through the
clay, which philosophy had tried in vain to reanimate. From that
corpse arose the Christian world, the world of liberty and equal-
ity. From that clay arose the true man, the image of God, the
precursor of humanity.
THOUGHTS ADDRESSED TO THE POETS OF THE NINETEENTH
CENTURY
From <Giovine Italia J
THE future is humanity. The world of individuality, the world
of the Middle Ages, is exhausted and consumed. The mod-
ern era of the social world is now in the dawn of its devel-
opment; and genius is possessed by the consciousness of this
coming world.
Napoleon and Byron represented, summed up, and concluded
the epoch of individuality: the one the monarch of the kingdom
of battle, the other the monarch of the realm of imagination;
the poetry of action, the poetry of thought.
Created by nature deeply to feel, and identify himself with
the first sublime image offered to his sight, Byron gazed around
upon the world and found it not.
Religion was no more. An altar was yet standing, but broken
and profaned: a temple silent and destitute of all noble and ele-
vating emotion, and converted into a fortress of despotism; in it
a neglected cross. Around him a world given up to materialism,
which had descended from the rank of philosophical opinion to
the need of practical egotism, and the relics of a superstition
which had become deformed and ridiculous since the progress of
civilization had forbidden it to be cruel. Cant was all that was
left in England, frivolity in France, and inertia in Italy. No
generous sympathy, no pure enthusiasm, no religion, 'no earnest
desire, no aspiration visible in the masses.
Whence could the soul of Byron draw inspiration? where
find a symbol for the immense poetry that burned within him ?
Despairing of the world around him, he took refuge in his own
heart, and dived into the inmost depths of his own soul. It was
indeed a whole world, a volcano, a chaos of raging and tumultu-
ous passions, — a cry of war against society such as tyranny had
made it; against religion such as the pope and the craft of priests
JOSEPH MAZZINI 9849
had made it; and against mankind as he saw them, — isolated,
degraded, and deformed.
The result was a form of poetry purely individual, — all of
individual sensation and images; a poetry having no basis in
humanity, nor in any universal faith; a poetry over which, with
all its infinity of accessories drawn from nature and the material
world, there broods the image of Prometheus bound down to
earth and cursing the earth, an image of individual will striving
to substitute itself by violence for the universal will and univer-
sal right.
Napoleon fell; Byron fell. The tombs of St. Helena and Mis-
solonghi contain the relics of an entire world.
ON CARLYLE
From the < Essays >
WE ALL seek God; but we know that here below we can
neither attain unto him, nor comprehend him, nor con-
template him: the absorption into God of some of the
Brahminical religions, of Plato, and of some modern ascetics, is
an illusion that cannot be realized. Our aim is to approach
God: this we can do by our works alone. To incarnate as far
as possible his word; to translate, to realize his thought, — is
our charge here below. It is not by contemplating his works
that we can fulfill our mission upon earth; it is by devoting
ourselves to our share in the evolution of his work, without
interruption, without end. The earth and man touch at all points
on the infinite: this we know well, but is it enough to know this ?
have we not to march onwards, to advance into this infinite ?
But can the individual finite creature of a day do this if he
relies only upon his own powers ? It is precisely from having
found themselves for an instant face to face with infinity, with-
out calculating upon other faculties, upon other powers, than
their own, that some of the greatest intellects of the day have
been led astray into skepticism or misanthropy. Not identifying
themselves sufficiently with humanity, and startled at the dis-
proportion between the object and the means, they have ended
by seeing naught but death and annihilation on every side,
and have no longer had courage for the conflict. The ideal has
appeared to them like a tremendous irony.
9850 JOSEPH MAZZ1NI
In truth, human life, regarded from a merely individual point
of view, is deeply sad. Glory, power, grandeur, all perish,—
playthings of a day, broken at night. The mothers who loved
us, whom we love, are snatched away; friendships die, and we
survive them. The phantom of death watches by the pillow of
those dear to us. The strongest and purest love would be the
bitterest irony, were it not a promise for the future; and this
promise itself is but imperfectly felt by us, such as we are at the
present day. The intellectual adoration of truth without hope of
realization is sterile: there is a larger void in our souls, a yearn-
ing for more truth than we can realize during our short terrestrial
existence. . . .
Sadness, unending sadness, discordance between the will and
the power, disenchantment, discouragement — such is human life,
when looked at only from the individual point of view. A few
rare intellects escape the common law and attain calmness: but
it is the calm of inaction, of contemplation; and contemplation
here on earth is the selfishness of genius.
I repeat, Mr. Carlyle has instinctively 'all the presentiments of
the new epoch; but following the teachings of his intellect rather
than his heart, and rejecting the idea of the collective life, it is
absolutely impossible for him to find the means of their realiza-
tion. A perpetual antagonism prevails throughout all he does;
his instincts drive him to action, his theory to contemplation.
Faith and discouragement alternate in his works, as they must in
his soul. He weaves and unweaves his web, like Penelope; he
preaches by turns life and nothingness; he wearies out the pow-
ers of his readers by continually carrying them from heaven to
hell, from hell to heaven. Ardent, and almost menacing, upon
the ground of ideas, he becomes timid and skeptical as soon as
he is engaged on that of their application. I may agree with
him with respect to the aim, I cannot respecting the means:
he rejects them all, but he proposes no others. He desires
progress, but shows hostility to all who strive to progress; he
foresees, he announces as inevitable, great changes or revolu-
tions in the religious, social, political order, but it is on condition
that the revolutionists take no part in them; he has written
many admirable pages on Knox and Cromwell, but the chances
are that he would have written them as admirably, although less
truly, against them had he lived at the commencement of their
struggles. . . .
JOSEPH MAZZINI 9851
What is meant by (< reorganizing labor" but bringing back the
dignity of labor? What is a new form but the case or the sym-
bol of a new idea ? We perhaps have had a glimpse of the ideal
in all its purity; we feel ourselves capable of soaring into the
invisible regions of the spirit. But are we, on this account, to
isolate ourselves from the movement which is going on among
our brethren beneath us ? Must we be told, <( You profane the
sanctity of the idea," because the men into whom we seek to
instill it are flesh and blood, and we are obliged to speak to their
senses ? Condemn all action, then ; for action is only a form
given to thought — its application, practice. (<The end of man is
an action and not a thought. w Mr. Carlyle himself repeats this
in his ( Sartor Resartus > ; and yet the spirit which pervades his
works seems to me too often of a nature to make his readers
forget it.
It has been asked, what is at the present day the duty of
which we have spoken so much ? A complete reply would re-
quire a volume, but I may suggest it in a few words. Duty
consists of that love of God and man which renders the life of
the individual the representation and expression of all that he
believes to be the truth, absolute or relative. Duty is progress-
ive, as the evolution of truth; it is modified and enlarged with
the ages; it changes its manifestations according to the require-
ment of times and circumstances. There are times in which we
must be able to die like Socrates; there are others in which we
must be able to struggle like Washington: one period claims the
pen of the sage, another requires the sword of the hero. But
here and everywhere the source of this duty is God and his law;
its object, humanity; its guarantee, the mutual responsibility of
men; its measure, the intellect of the individual and the demands
of the period; its limit, power.
Study the universal tradition of humanity, with all the facul-
ties, with all the disinterestedness, with all the comprehensive-
ness of which God has made you capable: where you find the
general permanent voice of humanity agreeing with the voice of ,
your conscience, be sure that you hold in your grasp something
of absolute truth — gained, and forever yours. Study also with
interest, attention, and comprehensiveness, the tradition of your
epoch and of your nation — the idea, the want, which ferments
within them: where you find that your conscience sympathizes
with the general aspiration, you are sure of possessing the rel-
ative truth. Your life must embody both these truths, must
9852 JOSEPH MAZZINI
represent and communicate them, according to your intelligence
and your means: you must be not only MAN, but a man of your
age; you must act as well as speak; you must be able to die
without being compelled to acknowledge, <( I have known such a
fraction of the truth, I could have done such a thing for its tri-
umph, and I have not done it."
Such is duty in its most general expression. As to its spe-
cial application to our times, I have said enough on this point
in that part of my article which establishes my difference from
the views of Mr. Carlyle, to render its deduction easy. The
question at the present day is the perfecting of the principle
of association, a transformation of the medium in which man-
kind moves: duty therefore lies in a collective labor. Every one
should measure his powers, and see what part of this labor falls
to him. The greater the intellect and influence a man enjoys,
the greater his responsibility; but assuredly contemplation cannot
satisfy duty in any degree.
Mr. Carlyle's idea of duty is naturally different. Thinking
only of individuality, calculating only the powers of the individ-
ual, he would rather restrict than enlarge its sphere. The rule
which he adopts is that laid down by Goethe, — <( Do the duty
which lies nearest thee.}> And this rule, like all other moral
rules, is good in so far as it is susceptible of a wide interpretation ;
bad so far as, taken literally, and fallen into the hands of men
whose tendencies to self-sacrifice are feeble, it may lead to the
justification of selfishness, and cause that which at bottom should
only be regarded as the wages of duty to be mistaken for duty
itself. It is well known what use Goethe, the high priest of
the doctrine, made of this maxim: enshrining himself in what he
called <( Art }> ; and amidst a world in misery, putting away the
question of religion and politics as <( a troubled element for Art, *
though a vital one for man, and giving himself up to the con-
templation of forms and the adoration of self.
There are at the present day but too many who imagine
they have perfectly done their duty, because they are kind toward
their friends, affectionate in their families, inoffensive toward the
rest of the world. The maxim of Goethe and of Mr. Carlyle will
always suit and serve such men, by transforming into duties
the individual, domestic, or other affections, — in other words, the
consolations of life. Mr. Carlyle probably does not carry out his
maxim in practice; but his principle leads to this result, and can-
not theoretically have anv other.
9853
JOHANN WILHELM MEINHOLD
(1797-1851)
IN THE year 1843 appeared from an important Prussian pub-
lishing house a small volume, which was received with the
liveliest interest by literary Germany. Its title was < Maria
Schweidler, the Amber-Witch: Being the most Interesting Trial for
Witchcraft yet Known: Taken from a Defective Manuscript, made by
the Father of the Accused, the Reverend Abraham Schweidler, of
Coserow [Usedom Island]; Edited by Reverend W. Meinhold.' With-
in its pages was brought up from the superstitious past of the rural
life of North Germany, in 1630, a grim yet absorbingly interesting
picture and personal drama. Rev. Johann Wilhelm Meinhold, in edit-
ing the relic, stated that he had discovered its yellowed and torn
pages by merest accident among some literary rubbish in the choir
of the old Coserow church. The writer of it, the Reverend Abra-
ham Schweidler, a godly and simple-minded man, had almost lost his
only child Maria through a villainous plot on the part of a rejected
suitor, aided by an evil and jealous woman of the neighborhood, —
the latter confessing herself an actual servant of Satan. After a
formal trial, and the beginnings of those direful tortures to induce
confession that were then the ordinary accompaniment of German
criminal processes, the unfortunate young girl, wholly innocent of the
preposterous charge, had confessed it. She had found herself con-
quered by sheer physical agony, and by her inability to endure the
torment of the executioners. Sentenced to the stake, Maria had pre-
pared herself to meet her undeserved doom; and not before she was
fairly on the way to the pyre was she rescued by a courageous young
nobleman who loved her, and not only made himself her deliverer,
but anon her husband and protector for life. The whole narrative
was given with a simplicity of accent, and with a minuteness of
detail, that precluded doubt as to its being a genuine contribution
to the literature of the witchcraft delusion in Europe, — to which Mas-
sachusetts furnished an American supplement.
In offering to the public his interesting treasure, the Reverend
Pastor Meinhold particularly stated that he had kept the connection
between the fragments of Pastor Schweidler's old manuscript by
interpolating passages of his own editorial composition, c< imitating
as accurately as I was able the language and manner of the old
9854 JOHANN WILHELM MEINHOLD
biographer. w The careful Meinhold noted that he expressly refrained
from pointing out the particular passages supplied, because <( modern
criticism, which has now attained to a degree of acuteness never
before equaled, » could easily distinguish them.
The work met with the most complete success. < Maria Schweid-
ler, the Amber- Witch > was received with high commendation, as a
mediaeval document most happily brought to light. Not only did its
dramatic treatment attract critical notice : a sharp argument soon
arose among those reviewers especially keen in dealing with curious
mediaeval chronicles, as to the extent of Pastor Meinhold's <( editorial »
additions; and as to whether this passage or that were original, or
only a nice imitation of the crabbed chronicle. The discussion soon
became a literary tempest in a teapot. Meinhold observed for months
a strict silence: then he abruptly announced that ( Maria Schweidler,
the Amber- Witch > was a total fabrication ; that he had written the
whole story; that no part of it had ever been found in Coserow
Church or elsewhere; and further, that he had not been inspired to
perpetrate his brilliant fraud by merely the innocent vanity of a
story-teller or antiquarian. He had desired to prove to the learned
Biblical critics of the date (it was the time, of the attacks of Strauss
and Baur on the authenticity of certain books of the Scriptures) how
untrustworthy was their reasoning, from purely internal evidence, as
to the sources of the Canon. If a contemporary could deceive their
judgment with a forged romance, how much more might they err in
their Biblical arguments ! < Maria Schweidler, the Amber- Witch > was
thus a country parson's protest against inerrancy in the <( higher
criticism* then agitating German orthodoxy. It is interesting to
know that Meinhold's confession was at first rejected; although he
soon proved the story to be indeed the result of his scholarship
and quaint imagination. Its reputation grew; and the acknowledged
imposture only added to its circulation.
Of Meinhold's life and career, except as the author of ( Maria
Schweidler, the Amber-Witch, > there is little to be said. His father
was a Protestant minister, eccentric almost to the degree of insanity.
Wilhelm was born at Netzelkow, Usedom Island, February 27th, 1797.
He studied at Greifswald University, was a private tutor at Ueker-
munde and a curate at Gutzkow. On his marriage he settled first
at Usedom, later at Coserow. His literary success attracted the favor
of King Frederic Wilhelm IV. of Prussia; but after taking a pastor-
ate at Rehwinkel, in Stargard, Meinhold remained there almost to
the close of his life, although he inclined to the Roman Catholic
theology as he came to middle years. Another mediaeval romance of
witchcraft, (Sidonia von Bork, the Cloister- Witch, > is by some critics
considered superior to < Maria Schweidler, the Amber-Witch > ; but it
JOHANN WILHELM MEINHOLD 9855
has never met with the popularity of the less pretentious story that
gave the Usedom clergyman his wide reputation. It is of interest to
add that not only has the translation of the tale by Lady Duff-Gordon
been recognized as one of the very best examples of English transla-
tion of a fiction, — the translation that does not suggest the convey-
ance of a tale at second-hand, — but that on the appearance of her
version she was credited with the authorship of the story, and the
likelihood of a German original denied. From first to last, the drama
of Maria Schweidler's peril and romance seems to have been destined
to deceive better even than it was planned to deceive.
The ( Amber- Witch > belongs in the same category of <( fictions that
seem fact" which includes Defoe's ( Robinson Crusoe,* or his 'History
of the Plague in London ) ; where the appropriate detail is so abundant,
and the atmosphere of an epoch and community is so fully conveyed,
as to bar suspicion that the story is manufactured. As Mr. Joseph
Jacobs happily remarks in his excellent study of Meinhold, and of the
history that has kept his name alive among German romanticists: —
« Who shall tell where Art will find her children ? On the desolate and
gloomy shores of the Baltic, the child of a half-crazy father, unfriendly and
unfriended as a bursch, — a Protestant pastor with Romanist tendencies, —
who would have anticipated from Meinhold perhaps the most effective pres-
entation of mediaeval thought and feeling which the whole Romantic move-
ment produced? And the occasion of the production of (The Amber-Witch >
was equally unexpected. Meinhold went forth to refute Strauss, and founded
on his way a new kingdom in the realm of Romance. It is a repetition of
the history of Saul.»
THE RESCUE ON THE ROAD TO THE STAKE
From <The AmberrWitch>
[The following extract is from the concluding portion of the terrible expe-
riences of Maria Schweidler. She has been tried and convicted of sorcery,
and solemnly sentenced. Seated in a cart, in which her father and her god-
father (the Pastor Benzensis of the chronicle) are- allowed to accompany her
to her doom, the young girl maintains the courage of despair. On her ride
to the mountain, where the pyre has been raised, she is surrounded by suc-
cessive mobs of infuriated peasants; but is not unnerved, and advances toward
her death reciting prayers and hymns. Popular fury against her is deepened
by the rising of a violent storm, naturally laid to the young girl's last spells;
and by the violent death of her chief accuser, the wicked Sheriff Wittich,
who is killed by falling into the wheel of a roadside mill. At last the ele»
ments and the populace are quieted enough to allow the death procession to
be resumed. Surrounded by guards with pitchforks, and bound in the cart,
Maria is drawn toward the Blocksberg; and nothing apparently can interfere
with the legal tragedy of which she is the heroine. At this point the incident
occurs which is told in the excerpt]
9856 JOHANN WILHELM MEINHOLD
How MY DAUGHTER WAS AT LENGTH SAVED BY THE HELP OF THE ALL-
MERCIFUL, YEA, OF THE ALL-MERCIFUL GOD
MEANWHILE, by reason of my unbelief, wherewith Satan again
tempted me, I had become so weak that I was forced to
lean my back against the constable his knees, and expected
not to live till even we should come to the mountain; for the
last hope I had cherished was now gone, and I saw that my
innocent lamb was in the same plight. Moreover the reverend
Martinus began to upbraid her, saying that he too now saw that
all her oaths were lies, and that she really could brew storms.
Hereupon she answered with a smile, although indeed she was as
white as a sheet, <(Alas, reverend godfather, do you then really
believe that the weather and the storms no longer obey our Lord
God ? Are storms then so rare at this season of the year that
none save the foul fiend can cause them ? Nay, I have never
broken the baptismal vow you once made in my name, nor will
I ever break it, as I hope that God will be merciful to me in
my last hour, which is now at hand." But the reverend Mar-
tinus shook his head doubtingly, and said, <v The Evil One must
have promised thee much, seeing thou remainest so stubborn
even unto thy life's end, and blasphemest the Lord thy God; but
wait, and thou wilt soon learn with horror that the devil <(is a
liar, and the father of it" (St. John viii.). Whilst he yet spake
this, and more of a like kind, we came to Uekeritze, where all
the people both great and small rushed out of their doors, also
Jacob Schwarten his wife, -who as we afterwards heard had only
been brought to bed the night before, and her £'oodman came
running after her to fetch her back. In vain: she told him he
was a fool, and had been one for many a weary day, and that if
she had to crawl up the mountain on her bare knees, she would
go to see the parson's witch burned; that she had reckoned upon
it for so long, and if he did not let her go, she would give him
a thump on the chaps, etc.
Thus did the coarse and foul-mouthed people riot around the
cart wherein we sat; and as they knew not what had befallen,
they ran so near us that the wheel went over the foot of a
boy. Nevertheless they all crowded up again, more especially the
lasses, and felt my daughter her clothes, and would even see her
shoes and stockings, and asked her how she felt. Item, one fel-
low asked whether she would drink somewhat, with many more
JOHANN WILHELM MEINHOLD 9857
fooleries besides; till at last, when several came and asked her for
her garland and her golden chain, she turned towards me and
smiled, saying, « Father, I must begin to speak some Latin again ;
otherwise the folks will leave me no peace. >} But it was not
wanted this time: for our guards with the pitchforks had now
reached the hindmost, and doubtless told them what had hap-
pened, as we presently heard a great shouting behind us, for the
love of God to turn back before the witch did them a mischief,
and as Jacob Schwarten his wife heeded it not, but still plagued
my child to give her her apron to make a christening coat for
her baby, for that it was a pity to let it be burnt, her goodman
gave her such a thump on her back with a knotted stick which
he had pulled out of the hedge that she fell down with loud
shrieks: and when he went to help her up she pulled him down
by his hair, and as reverend Martinus said, now executed what
she had threatened; inasmuch as she struck him on the nose with
her fist with might and main, until the other people came run-
ning up to them, and held her back. Meanwhile, however, the
storm had almost passed over, and sank down toward the sea.
And when we had gone through the little wood, we suddenly
saw the Streckelberg before us covered with people, and the pile
and stake upon the top, upon the which the tall constable jumped
up when he saw us coming, and beckoned with his cap with all
his might. Thereat my senses left -me, and my sweet lamb was
not much better, for she bent to and fro like a reed, and stretch-
ing her bound hands towards heaven, she once more cried out: —
<(Rex tremendae majestatis!
Qui salvandos salvas gratis,
Salva me, fons pietatisP*
And behold, scarce had she spoken these words, when the sun
came out and formed a rainbow right over the mountain most
pleasant to behold; and it is clear that this was a sign from the
merciful God, such as he often gives us, but which we blind
and unbelieving men do not rightly mark. Neither did my child
heed it; for albeit she thought upon that first rainbow which
shadowed forth our troubles, yet it seemed to her impossible that
she could now be saved: wherefore she grew so faint, that she
no longer heeded the blessed sign of mercy, and her head fell
forward (for she could no longer lean it upon me, seeing that I
lay my length at the bottom of the cart), till her garland almost
9858 JOHANN WILHELM MEINHOLD
touched my worthy gossip his knees. Thereupon he bade the
driver stop for a moment, and pulled out a small flask filled with
wine, which he always carries in his pocket when witches are to
be burnt, in order to comfort them therewith in their terror.
(Henceforth, I myself will ever do the like, for this fashion of
my dear gossip pleases me well.) He first poured some of this
wine down my throat, and afterwards down my child's: and we
had scarce come to ourselves again, when a fearful noise and
tumult arose among the people behind us, and they not only
cried out in deadly fear, « The sheriff is come back ! the sheriff is
come again ! }) but as they could neither run away forwards or
backwards (being afraid' of the ghost behind and of my child
before them), they ran on either side; some rushing into the
coppice and others wading into the Achterwater up to their
necks.
Item, as soon as Dom. Camerarius saw the ghost come out of
the coppice with a gray hat and a gray feather, such as the sher-
iff wore, riding on the gray charger, he crept under a bundle
of straw in the cart; and Dom. Consul cursed my child again,
and bade the coachman drive on as madly as they could, even
should all the horses die of it, when the impudent constable
behind us called to him, (< It is not the sheriff, but the young
lord of Nienkerken, who will surely seek to save the witch: shall
I then cut her throat with my sword ? }> At these fearful words
my child and I came to ourselves again, and the fellow had
already lift up his naked sword to smite her, seeing Dom. Con-
sul had made him a sign with his hand, when my dear gossip,
who saw it, pulled my child with all his strength into his lap.
(May God reward him on the Day of Judgment, for I never can.)
The villain would have stabbed her as she lay in his lap; but
the young lord was already there, and seeing what he was about
to do, thrust the boar-spear which he held in his hand in between
the constable's shoulders, so that he fell headlong on the earth,
and his own sword, by the guidance of the most righteous God,
went into his ribs on one side and out again at the other.
He lay there and bellowed; but the young lord heeded him not,
but said to my child, (< Sweet maid, God be praised that you are
safe ! }> When, however, he saw her bound hands, he gnashed
his teeth; and cursing her judges, he jumped off his horse, and
cut the rope with his sword which he held in his right hand,
took her hand in his, and said, <(Alas, sweet maid, how have I
JOHANN WILHELM MEINHOLD 9859
sorrowed for you! but I could not save you, as I myself also lay
in chains, which you may see from my looks. w
But my child could answer him never a word, and fell into a
swound again for joy; howbeit she soon came to herself again,
seeing my dear gossip still had a little wine by him. Meanwhile
the dear young lord did me some injustice, which however I
freely forgive him; for he railed at me and called me an old
woman, who could do naught save weep and wail. Why had I not
journeyed after the Swedish king, or why had I not gone to Mel-
lenthin myself to fetch his testimony, as I knew right well what
he thought about witchcraft ? (But, blessed God, how could I do
otherwise than believe the judge, who had been there ? Others
besides old women would have done the same; and I never
once thought of the Swedish king; and say, dear reader, how
could I have journeyed after him and left my own child ? But
young folks do not think of these things, seeing they know not
what a father feels.)
Meanwhile, however, Dom. Camerarius, having heard that it
was the young lord, had again crept out from beneath the straw;
item, Dom. Consul had jumped down from the coach and ran
towards us, railing at him loudly, and asking him by what
power and authority he acted thus, seeing that he himself had
heretofore denounced the ungodly witch ? But the young lord
pointed with his sword to his people, who now came riding out
of the coppice about eighteen strong, armed with sabres, pikes,
and muskets, and said, (( There is my authority; and I would let
you feel it on your back if I did not know that you were but a
stupid ass. When did you hear any testimony from me against
this virtuous maiden ? You lie in your throat if you say you
did." And as Dom. Consul stood and straightway forswore him-
self, the young lord, to the astonishment of all, related as fol-
lows : —
That as soon as he heard of the misfortune which had befallen
me and my child, he ordered his horse to be saddled forthwith,
in order to ride to Pudgla to bear witness to our innocence:
this, however, his old father would nowise suffer, thinking that
his nobility would receive a stain if it came to be known that
his son had conversed with a reputed witch by night on the
Streckelberg. He 'had caused him therefore, as prayers and
threats were of no avail, to be bound hand and foot and con-
fined in the donjon -keep, where till datum an old servant had
986o JOHANN WILHELM MEINHOLD
watched him; who refused to let him escape, notwithstanding he
offered him any sum of money; whereupon he fell into the great-
est anguish and despair at the thought that innocent blood would
be shed on his account: but that the all-righteous God had gra-
ciously spared him this sorrow; for his father had fallen sick from
vexation, and lay abed all this time, and it so happened that
this very morning, about prayer-time, the huntsman in shooting
at a wild duck in the moat had by chance sorely wounded his
father's favorite dog, called Packan, which had crept howling to
his father's bedside and had died there; whereupon the old man,
who was weak, was so angered that he was presently seized with
a fit and gave r.p the ghost too. Hereupon his people released
him; and after he had closed his father's eyes and prayed an
<( Our Father w over him, he straightway set out with all the
people he could find in the castle in order to save the innocent
maiden. For he testified here himself before all, on the word
and honor of a knight, — nay, more, by his hopes of salvation, —
that he himself was that devil which had appeared to the maiden
on the mountain in the shape of a hairy giant: for having heard
by common report that she ofttimes went thither, he greatly
desired to know what she did there, and that from fear of his
hard father he disguised himself in a wolf's skin, so that none
might know him, and he had already spent two nights there,
when on the third the maiden came; and he then saw her dig
for amber on the mountain, and that she did not call upon
Satan, but recited a Latin carmen aloud to herself. This he
would have testified at Pudgla, but from the cause aforesaid he
had not been able : moreover his father had laid his cousin, Claus
von Nienkerken, who was there on a visit, in his bed, and made
him bear false witness; for as Dom. Consul had not seen him
(I mean the young lord) for many a long year, seeing he had
studied in foreign parts, his father thought that he might easily
be deceived, which accordingly happened.
When the worthy young lord had stated this before Dom.
Consul and all the people, which flocked together on hearing that
the young lord was no ghost, I felt as though a millstone had
been taken off my heart; and seeing that the people (who had
already pulled the constable from under the cart, and crowded
round him like a swarm of bees) cried to me that he was dying,
but desired first to confess somewhat to me, I jumped from the
cart as lightly as a young bachelor, and called to Dom. Consul
JOHANN WILHELM MEINHOLD 986i
and the young lord to go with me, seeing that I could easily
guess what he had on his mind. He sat upon a stone, and the
blood gushed from his side like a fountain, now that they had
drawn out the sword; he whimpered on seeing me, and said that
he had in truth hearkened behind the door to all that old Liz-
zie had confessed to me, namely, that she herself, together with
the sheriff, had worked all the witchcraft on man and beast, to
frighten my poor child and force her to play the wanton. That
he had hidden this, seeing that the sheriff had promised him
a great reward for so doing; but that he would now confess it
freely, since God had brought my child her innocence to light.
Wherefore he besought my child and myself to forgive him.
And when Dom. Consul shook his head, and asked whether he
would live and die on the truth of this confession, he answered,
<( Yes ! }> and straightway fell on his side to the earth and gave
up the ghost.
Meanwhile time hung heavy with the people on the mountain,
who had come from Coserow, from Zitze, from Gnitze, etc., to
see my child burnt; and they all came /unning down the hill
in long rows like geese, one after the other, to see what had
happened. And among them was my ploughman, Claus Neels.
When the worthy fellow saw and heard what had befallen us,
he began to weep aloud for joy; and straightway he too told
what he had heard the sheriff say to old Lizzie in the garden,
and how he had promised a pig in the room of her own little
pig, which she had herself bewitched to death in order to bring
my child into evil repute. Summa: all that I have noted above,
and which till datum he had kept to himself for fear of the
question. Hereat all the people marveled, and greatly bewailed
her misfortunes; and many came, among them old Paasch, and
would have kissed my daughter her hands and feet, as also mine
own, and praised us now as much as they had before reviled us.
But thus it ever is with the people. Wherefore my departed
father used to say: —
(( The people's hate is death ;
Their love a passing breath !})
My dear gossip ceased not from fondling my child, holding her
in his lap, and weeping over her like a father (for I could not
have wept more myself than he wept). Howbeit she herself wept
not, but begged the young lord to send one of his horsemen
9862 JOHANN WILHELM MEINHOLD
to her faithful old maid-servant at Pudgla, to tell her what had
befallen us, which he straightway did to please her. But the
worshipful court (for Dom. Camerarius and the scriba had now
plucked up a heart, and had come down from the coach) was not
yet satisfied, and Dom. Consul began to tell the young lord about
the bewitched bridge, which none other save my daughter could
have bewitched. Hereto the young lord gave answer that this
was indeed a strange thing, inasmuch as his own horse had also
broken a leg thereon; whereupon he had taken the sheriff his
horse, which he saw tied up at the mill: but he did not think
that this could be laid to the charge of the maiden, but that it
came about by natural means, as he had half discovered already,
although he had not had time to search the matter thoroughly.
Wherefore he besought the worshipful court and all the people,
together with my child herself, to return back thither, where,
with God's help, he would clear her from this suspicion also, and
prove her perfect innocence before them all.
Thereunto the worshipful court agreed; and the young lord,
having given the sheriff his gray charger to my ploughman to
carry the corpse, which had been laid across the horse's neck, to
Coserow, the young lord got into the cart by us, but did not
seat himself beside my child, but backward by my dear gossip.
Moreover, he bade one of his own people drive us instead of
the old coachman, and thus we turned back in God his name.
Gustos Benzensis, who with the children had run in among the
vetches by the wayside (my defunct Gustos would not have done
so, he had more courage), went on before again with the young
folks ; and" by command of his reverence the pastor led the Am-
brosian Te Deum, which deeply moved us all, more especially
my child, insomuch that her book was wetted with her tears,
and she at length laid it down and said, at the same time giving
her hand to the young lord, <( How can I thank God and you for
that which you have done for me this day ? )} Whereupon the
young lord answered, saying, <( I have greater cause to thank
God than yourself, sweet maid, seeing that you have suffered in
your dungeon unjustly, but I justly, inasmuch as by my thought-
lessness I brought this misery upon you. Believe me that this
morning, when in my donjon-keep I first heard the sound of
the dead-bell, I thought to have died; and when it tolled for the
third time, I should have gone distraught in my grief, had not
the Almighty God at that moment taken the life of my strange
JOHANN WILHELM MEINHOLD 9863
father, so that your innocent life should be saved by me. Where-
fore I have vowed a new tower, and whatsoe'er beside may be
needful, to the blessed house of God; for naught more bitter
could have befallen me on earth than your death, sweet maid,
and naught more sweet than your life ! })
But at these words my child only wept and sighed ; and when
he looked on her, she cast down her eyes and trembled, so that
I straightway perceived that my sorrows were not yet come to an
end, but that another barrel of tears was just tapped for me; and
so indeed it was. Moreover, the ass of a Gustos, having finished
the Te Deum before we were come to the bridge, straightway
struck up the next following hymn, which was a funeral one,
beginning <( The body let us now inter. }) (God be praised that
no harm has come of it till datum.) My beloved gossip rated
him not a little, and threatened him that for his stupidity he
should not get the money for the shoes which he had promised
him out of the Church dues. But my child comforted him, and
promised him a pair of shoes at her own charges, seeing that
peradventure a funeral hymn was better for her than a song of
gladness.
And when this vexed the young lord, and he said, (< How
now, sweet maid, you know not how enough to thank God and
me for your rescue, and yet you speak thus ? }) she answered,
smiling sadly, that she had only spoken thus to comfort the poor
Gustos. But I straightway saw that she was in earnest; for that
she felt that although she had escaped one fire, she already
burned in another.
Meanwhile we were come to the bridge again; and all the
folks stood still, and gazed open-mouthed, when the young lord
jumped down from the cart, and after stabbing His horse, which
still lay kicking on the bridge, went on his knees, and felt here
and there with his hand. At length he called to the worshipful
court to draw near, for that he had found out the witchcraft.
But none save Dom. Consul and a few fellows out of the crowd,
among whom was old Paasch, would follow him; item, my dear
gossip and myself : and the young lord showed us a lump of tal-
low about the size of a large walnut which lay on the ground,
and wherewith the whole bridge had been smeared, so that it
looked quite white, but which all the folks in their fright had
taken for flour out of the mill; item, with some other materia
which stunk like fitchock's dung, but what it was we could not
9864 JOHANN WILHELM MEINHOLD
find out. Soon after a fellow found another bit of tallow, and
showed it to the people; whereupon I cried, <(Aha! none hath
done this but that ungodly miller's man, in revenge for the
stripes which the sheriff gave him for reviling my child. w Where-
upon I told what he had done, and Dom. Consul, who also had
heard thereof, straightway sent for the miller.
He, however, did as though he knew naught of the matter;
and only said that his man had left his service about an hour
ago. But a young lass, the miller's maid-servant, said that that
very morning before daybreak, when she had got up to let out
the cattle, she had seen the man scouring the bridge; but that
she had given it no further heed, and had gone to sleep for
another hour — and she pretended to know no more than the
miller whither the rascal was gone. When the young lord had
heard this news, he got up into the cart and began to address
the people, seeking to persuade them no longer to believe in
witchcraft, now that they had seen what it really was. When I
heard this, I was horror-stricken (as was but right) in my con-
science as a priest, and I got upon the cart-wheel, and whispered
into his ear for God his sake to leave this materia; seeing that
if the people no longer feared the Devil, neither would they fear
our Lord God.
The dear young lord forthwith did as I would have him, and
only asked the people whether they now held my child to be
perfectly innocent? and when they had answered "Yes!" he
begged them to go quietly home, and to thank God that he
had saved innocent blood. That he too would now return home,
and that he hoped that none would molest me and my child if
he let us return to Coserow alone. Hereupon he turned hastily
towards her, took her hand, and said, (( Farewell, sweet maid:
I trust that I shall soon clear your honor before the world; but
do you thank God therefor, not me." He then did the like to
me and to my dear gossip, whereupon he jumped down from the
cart and went and sat beside Dom. Consul in his coach. The
latter also spake a few words to the people, and likewise begged
my child and me to forgive him (and I must say it to his honor
that the tears ran down his cheeks the while) ; but he was so
hurried by the young lord that he brake short his discourse, and
they drove off over the little bridge without so much as looking
back. Only Dom. Consul looked round once, and called out to
me that in his hurry he had forgotten to tell the executioner
JOHANN WILHELM MEINHOLD 9865
that no one was to be burned to-day: I was therefore to send
the churchwarden of Uekeritze up the mountain, to say so in his
name; the which I did. And the bloodhound was still on the
mountain, albeit he had long since, heard what had befallen;
and when the bailiff gave him the orders of the worshipful court,
he began to curse so fearfully that it might have awakened the
dead ; moreover he plucked off his cap and trampled it under foot,
so that any one might have guessed what he felt.
But to return to ourselves. My child sat as still and as white
as a pillar of salt after the young lord had left her so suddenly
and so unawares; but she was somewhat comforted when the
old maid-servant came running with her coats tucked up to her
knees, and carrying her shoes and stockings in her hands. We
heard her afar off, as the mill had stopped, blubbering for joy;
and she fell at least three times on the bridge, but at last she
got over safe, and kissed now mine and now my child her hands
and feet; begging us only not to turn her away, but to keep her
until her life's end; the which we promised to do. She had to
climb up behind where the impudent constable had sat, seeing
that my dear gossip would not leave me until I should be back
in mine own manse. And as the young lord his servant had got
up behind the coach, old Paasch drove us home, and all the folks
who had waited till datum ran beside the cart, praising and pity-
ing as much as they had before scorned and reviled us. Scarce
however had we passed through Uekeritze, when we again heard
cries of — (< Here comes the young lord, here comes the young
lord ! }) so that my child started up for joy and became as red as
a rose ; but some of the folks ran into the buckwheat by the road
again, thinking it was another ghost. It was however in truth
the young lord, who galloped up on a black horse, calling out
as he drew near us, (< Notwithstanding the haste I am in, sweet
maid, I must return and give you safe -conduct home, seeing that
I have just heard that the filthy people reviled you by the way,
and I know not whether you are yet safe." Hereupon he urged
old Paasch to mend his pace; and as his kicking and trampling
did not even make the horses trot, the young lord struck the
saddle-horse from time to time with the flat of his sword, so that
we soon reached the village and the manse. Howbeit when I
prayed him to dismount awhile, he would not, but excused him-
self, saying that he must still ride through Usedom to Anclam;
but charged old Paasch, who was our bailiff, to watch over my
9866 JOHANN WILHELM MEINHOLD
child as the apple of his eye, and should anything unusual hap-
pen he was straightway to inform the town -clerk at Pudgla, or
Dom. Consul at Usedom, thereof. And when Paasch had promised
to do this, he waved his hand to us and galloped off as fast as
he could.
But before he got round the corner by Pagel his house, he
turned back for the third time; and when we wondered thereat,
he said we must forgive him, seeing his thoughts wandered
to-day.
That I had formerly told him that I still had my patent of
nobility, the which he begged me to lend him for a time. Here-
upon I answered that I must first seek for "it, and that he had
best dismount the while. But he would not, and again excused
himself, saying he had no time. He therefore stayed without
the door until I brought him the patent; whereupon he thanked
me and said, <(Do not wonder hereat: you will soon see what my
purpose is." Whereupon he struck his spurs into his horse's sides
and did not come back again.
Translation of Lady Duff -Gordon.
9867
HERMAN MELVILLE
(1819-1891)
1846 appeared a volume of travel and adventure called
<Typee,) with the name of Herman Melville on the title-
page. It created a stir, which in these days would be
called a sensation, which speedily spread to England. What was
Typee ? What was this South Sea island ? Did it exist, with its soft
airs and compliant people, only in romance ? The romantic name
<( Herman Melville }> must be only a nom de plume. The critics and
the newspapers took up the mystery and tossed it about. Was the
whole thing an invention of a clever ro-
mancer ? Was there any such person as
Melville and his sailor comrade (< Toby >y ?
The newspapers were facetious about the
latter, and headed their paragraphs (<To Be
or not To Be.* It was a great relief when
one day the veritable sailor Toby turned
up in Buffalo, New York, and made affirma-
tion to the truth of the Vhole narrative.
< Typee } was the first of the long line
of books of travel, adventure, and romance
about the South Seas; and Fayaway was
the first of the Polynesian maidens to at-
tract the attention of the world. The book
not only opened a new world, but it gave
new terms — like taboo — to our language. It led the way to a host
of other writers, among whom recently are Pierre Loti and Steven-
son. The ( Mariage de Loti,' in its incidents and romanticism, copies
( Typee. ) It is not probable, however, that Pierre Loti ever saw Mel-
ville's book, or he would not have made such an imitation.
Herman Melville, son of a New York merchant, and born in that
city in October 1819, in a state of life which hedged him about
with a thousand social restrictions, early <(came to live in the all,* as
Goethe has it; though Melville himself put the transformation much
later, when he broke away from home, became a sailor on a whal-
ing vessel, and there endured innumerable hardships and cruelties.
Finally escaping from his tyrants, he reached the Marquesas Islands,
HERMAN MELVILLE
9868
HERMAN MELVILLE
where he enjoyed strange adventures for many months, — a captive
in a tribe of cannibals in the Typee Valley. An Australian ship
having taken him aboard, he returned home, the hero of strange
tales which he at once chronicled in the romances ( Typee ) (1846)
and <Omoo> (1847). No sooner were these volumes published than
his promise of lasting fame « was voluble in the mouths of wisest
censure, » while his actual success put him in the first rank of Amer-
ican authors at the age of twenty-six. But for some mysterious rea-
son (for most of his other books were written on the subject which
inspired 'Typee* and <Omoo,) and were possessed with the same
enthusiasm) <Moby Dick,' published when he was only thirty-two
years old, disclosed that he had <(come to the last leaf in the bulb."
He wrote several books afterwards, musings and stories, and three
volumes of poems which just miss the mark. Mr. R. H. Stoddard, his
kindly and sympathetic critic, said of him that he thought like a
poet, saw like a poet, felt like a poet; but never attained any pro-
ficiency in verse, because, though there was a wealth of imagination
in his mind, it was an untrained imagination, and <(a world of the
stuff out of which poetry is made, but no poetry, which is creation,
not chaos. »
At one time Melville and Hawthorne were near neighbors, — when
Hawthorne lived on the brink of Stockbridge pool, and Melville at
Lenox; and it is possible that each was influenced by the genius of
the other. Mr. Stoddard thinks there were dark, mysterious elements
in Melville's nature akin to those that possessed Hawthorne ; but that
unlike Hawthorne, Melville did not control his melancholy, letting it
rather lead him into morbid moods. Certainly, in the days of < Omoo >
and ( Typee * Melville exhibited no such traits ; but he had probably,
like Emily Bronte, <( an intense and glowing mind }> to see everything
through its own atmosphere. Really to know Melville the man, it is
necessary to read the letters that passed between Hawthorne and
himself, which are printed in Mr. Julian Hawthorne's memoir of his
parents. There Melville pours out his sad strange views of life, which
on the whole had treated him kindly, given him a success which
would have intoxicated another man with joy, and the promise of
favors to come.
His later years were passed in the world of thought rather than
of action. He published nothing; and New York, his old camping-
ground, seldom knew him. But when he appeared, his gray figure,
gray hair and coloring, and piercing gray eyes, marked him to the
most casual observer. Though a man of moods, he had a peculiarly
winning and interesting personality, suggesting Laurence Oliphant in
his gentle deference to an opponent's conventional opinion while he
expressed the wildest and most emancipated ideas of his own.
HERMAN MELVILLE 9869
Herman Melville died in New York, September 28th, 1891; and in
his death he was revived in the memories of many of his old-time
associates and admirers, to whom his personality had become shad-
owy, but who still regarded <Omoo) and <Typee> as landmarks in
American literature.
The Marquesas Islands, when Melville visited them, were virgin
soil; the report that their inhabitants were cannibals having kept
the country safe from the invading tourist. Melville soon ingratiated
himself with the gentle creatures who ate human beings, as Emer-
son's savage kills his enemy, only out of pure compliment to their
virtues, fancying that the qualities of a great antagonist will pass into
his conqueror. The feminine element came in to add romance; and
though a human soul, even that of a South Sea Islander, is always
more interesting than all the coral reefs and the cocoanut palms in
the world, and Melville's beautiful heroines are a little too subsidiary
to scenery, the critic must remember that the primitive woman is a
thing of traits, not of peculiarities, and therefore alike the world over.
We should therefore judge him not too harshly because there is
little character-drawing in his romances; and be thankful to breathe
— as he makes us breathe — the soft airs, see the blue sky, and visit
the coral caves, of the South Seas. His great advantage is in placing
his stories in a sort of poetic or fairy precinct, where the groves are
sylvan haunts and the very names full of romance; while his dramatis
persons, if not marked, are a people gentle but lofty, eloquent, and
full of poetry and hospitality. All this he embodied in his first nov-
els; and although he had the advantage of <( breaking ground, » as
the farmers say, he had to compete not with the literature of a new
country, but with the prejudices of a new country against anything
not produced in the old. <Omoo's) charms, however, penetrated the
conservatism of Blackwood and the Edinburgh Review; while his
confreres — Lowell, Hawthorne, Bayard Taylor, and the rest — were
proud of his recognition abroad.
A re-reading does not destroy the illusion of his reputation. The
spirit of his books is as fresli and penetrating as when they 'were
first written, his genius keeping for him the secret of eternal youth.
His vocabulary is perhaps too large, too fluent; it has been called
unliterary: but what he lacks in conciseness is atoned for in spon-
taneity. And although his romances are permeated with languid airs
and indolent odors, and although flower-decked maidens turn their
brown shoulders and their soft eyes to the captive hero, the books
have a healthy, manly ring as far from sensuousness as from auster-
ity; the reader knows that after all it is a captive's tale, and that
one day, when the winds blow to stir him to action, he will sail away
to a more bracing clime.
9870 HERMAN MELVILLE
A TYPEE HOUSEHOLD
From <Typee>
MEHEVI having now departed, and the family physician having
likewise made his exit, we were left about sunset with
the ten or twelve natives who by this time I had ascer-
tained composed the household of which Toby and I were mem-
bers. As the dwelling to which we had been first introduced
was the place of my permanent abode while I remained in the
valley, and as I was necessarily placed upon the most intimate
footing with its occupants, I may as well here enter into a little
description of it and its inhabitants. This description will apply
also to nearly all the other dwelling-places in the vale, and will
furnish some idea of the generality of the natives.
Near one side of the valley, and about midway up the ascent
of a rather abrupt rise of ground waving with the richest ver-
dure, a number of large stones were laid in successive courses to
the height of nearly eight feet, and disposed in such a manner
that their level surface corresponded in shape with the habita-
tion which was perched upon it. A narrow space however wag
reserved in front of the dwelling, upon the summit of this pile
of stones (called by the natives a "pi-pi"), which being inclosed
by a little pocket of canes gave it somewhat the appearance of
a veranda. The frame of the house was constructed of large
bamboos planted uprightly, and secured together at intervals by
transverse stalks of the light wood of the hibiscus, lashed with
thongs of bark. The rear of the tenement — built up with suc-
cessive ranges of cocoanut boughs bound one upon another, with
their leaflets cunningly woven together — inclined a little from
the vertical, and extended from the extreme edge of the <( pi-pi >J
to about twenty feet from its surface; whence the shelving roof,
thatched with the long tapering leaves of the palmetto, sloped
steeply off to within about five feet of the floor, leaving the
eaves drooping with tassel-like appendages over the front of the
habitation. This was constructed of light and elegant canes,
in a kind of open screen-work, tastefully adorned with bindings
of variegated sinnate, which served to hold together its various
parts. The sides of the house were similarly built; thus present-
ing three quarters for the circulation of the air, while the whole
was impervious to the rain.
HERMAN MELVILLE
9871
In length this picturesque building was perhaps twelve yards,
while in breadth it could not have exceeded as many feet. So
much for the exterior; which with its wire -like reed-twisted sides
not a little reminded me of an immense aviary.
Stooping a little, you passed through a narrow aperture in its
front: and facing you on entering, lay two long, perfectly straight,
and well-polished trunks of the cocoanut-tree, extending the full
length of the dwelling; one of them placed closely against the
rear, and the other lying parallel with it some two yards distant,
the interval between them being spread with a multitude of gayly
worked mats, nearly all of a different pattern. This space formed
the common couch and lounging-place of the natives, answering
the purpose of a divan in Oriental countries. Here would they
slumber through the hours of the night, and recline luxuriously
during the greater part of the day. The remainder of the floor
presented only the cool shining surfaces of the large stones of
which the "pi-pi" was composed.
From the ridge-pole of the house hung suspended a number
of large packages enveloped in coarse tappa; some of which con-
tained festival dresses, and various other matters of the ward-
robe, held in high estimation. These were easily accessible by
means of a line, which, passing over the ridge-pole, had one end
attached to a bundle; while with the other, which led to the side
of the dwelling and was there secured, the package could be
lowered or elevated at pleasure.
Against the farther wall of the house were arranged in taste-
ful figures a variety of spears and javelins, and other implements
of savage warfare. Outside of the habitation, and built upon the
piazza-like area in its front, was a little 'shed used as a sort of
larder or pantry, and in which were stored various articles of
domestic use and convenience. A few yards from the <( pi-pi }>
was a large shed built of cocoanut boughs, where the process of
preparing the <( poee-poee }> was carried on, and all culinary oper-
ations attended to.
Thus much for the house and its appurtenances; and it will
be readily acknowledged that a more commodious and appropriate
dwelling for the climate and the people could not possibly be de-
vised. It was cool, free to admit the air, scrupulously clean, and
elevated above the dampness and impurities of the ground.
But now to sketch the inmates; and here I claim for my tried
servitor and faithful valet Kory-Kory the precedence of a first
9872 HERMAN MELVILLE
description. As his character will be gradually unfolded in the
course of my narrative, I shall for the present content myself
with delineating his personal appearance. Kory-Kory, though the
most devoted and best-natured serving-man in the world, was,
alas! a hideous object to look upon. He was some twenty-five
years of age, and about six feet in height, robust and well made,
and of the most extraordinary aspect. His head was carefully
shaven, with the exception of two circular spots, about the size
of a dollar, near the top of the cranium, where the hair, per-
mitted to grow of an amazing length, was twisted up in two
prominent knots, that gave him the appearance of being deco-
rated with a pair of horns. His beard, plucked out by the roots
from every other part of his face, was suffered to droop in hairy
pendants, two of which garnished his upper lip, and an equal
number hung from the extremity of his chin.
Kory-Kory, with a view of improving the handiwork of nature,
and perhaps prompted by a desire to add to the engaging ex-
pression of his countenance, had seen fit to embellish his face
with three broad longitudinal stripes of tattooing, which, like
those country roads that go straight forward in defiance of all
obstacles, crossed his nasal organ, descended into the hollow of
his eyes, and even skirted the borders of his mouth. Each com-
pletely spanned his physiognomy; one extending in a line with
his eyes, another crossing the face in the vicinity of the nose,
and the third sweeping along his lips from ear to ear. His
countenance thus triply hooped, as it were, with tattooing, always
reminded me of those unhappy wretches whom I have sometimes
observed gazing out sentimentally from behind the grated bars
of a prison window; whilst the entire body of my savage valet,
covered all over with representations of birds and fishes, and a
variety of most unaccountable-looking creatures, suggested to me
the idea of a pictorial museum of natural history, or an illus-
trated copy of ( Goldsmith's Animated Nature. }
But it seems really heartless in me to write thus of the poor
islander, when I owe perhaps to his unremitting attentions the
very existence I now enjoy. Kory-Kory, I mean thee no harm
in what I say in regard to thy outward adornings; but they were
a little curious to my unaccustomed sight, and therefore I dilate
upon them. But to underrate or forget thy faithful services is
something I could never be guilty of, even in the giddiest mo-
ment of my life.
HERMAN MELVILLE 9873
The father of my attached follower was a native of gigantic
frame, and had once possessed prodigious physical powers; but
the lofty form was now yielding to the inroads of time, though
the hand of disease seemed never to have been laid upon the
aged warrior. Marheyo — for such was his name — appeared to
have retired from all active participation in the affairs of the
valley, seldom or never accompanying the natives in their vari-
ous expeditions; and employing the greater part of his time in
throwing up a little shed just outside -the house, upon which he
was engaged to my certain knowledge for four months, without
appearing to make any sensible advance. I suppose the old gen-
tleman was in his dotage, for he manifested in various ways the
characteristics which mark this particular stage of life.
I remember in particular his having a choice pair of ear
ornaments, fabricated from the teeth of some sea-monster. These
he would alternately wear and take off at least fifty times in the
course of the day, going and coming from his little hut on each
occasion with all the tranquillity imaginable. Sometimes slipping
them through the slits in his ears, he would seize his spear —
which in length and slightness resembled a fishing-pole — and
go stalking beneath the shadows of the neighboring groves, as if
about to give a hostile meeting to some cannibal knight. But
he would soon return again, and hiding his weapon under the
projecting eaves of the house, and rolling his clumsy trinkets
carefully in a piece of tappa, would resume his more pacific
operations as quietly as if he had never interrupted them.
But despite his eccentricities, Marheyo was a. most paternal
and warm-hearted old fellow, and in this particular not a little
resembled his son Kory-Kory. The mother of the latter was the
mistress of the family,— and a notable housewife; and a most
industrious old lady she was. If she did not understand the art
of making jellies, jams, custards, tea-cakes, and such like trashy
affairs, she was profoundly skilled in the mysteries of preparing
"amar,* "poee-poee," and "kokoo," with other substantial mat-
ters. She was a genuine busybody: bustling about the house
like a country landlady at an unexpected arrival; forever giving
the young girls tasks to perform, which the little huzzies as often
neglected; poking into every corner and rummaging over bun-
dles of old tappa, or making a prodigious clatter among the cala*
bashes. Sometimes she might have been seen squatting Upon
her haunches in front of a huge wooden basin, and kneading
pg^4 HERMAN MELVILLE
poee-poee with terrific vehemence, dashing the stone pestle about
as if she would shiver the vessel into fragments; on other occas-
ions galloping about the valley in search of a particular kind of
leaf used in some of her recondite operations, and returning
home, toiling and sweating, with a bundle of it under which
most women would have sunk.
To tell the truth, Kory-Kory's mother was the only indus-
trious person in all the valley of Typee; and she could not have
employed herself more actively had she been left an exceedingly
muscular and destitute widow with an inordinate supply of young
children, in the bleakest part of the civilized world. There was
not the slightest necessity for the greater portion of the labor
performed by the old lady : but she ' seemed to work from some
irresistible impulse; her limbs continually swaying to and fro,
as if there were some indefatigable engine concealed within her
body which kept her in perpetual motion.
Never suppose that she was a termagant or a shrew for all
this: she had the kindliest heart in the world, and acted towards
me in particular in a truly maternal manner; occasionally putting
some little morsel of choice food into my hand, some outlandish
kind of savage sweetmeat or pastry, like a doting mother petting
a sickly urchin with tarts and sugar-plums. Warm indeed are
my remembrances of the dear, good, affectionate old Tinor!
Besides the individuals I have mentioned, there belonged to
the household three young men, — dissipated, good-for-nothing,
roystering blades of savages, — who were either employed in
prosecuting loye affairs with the maidens of the tribe, or grew
boozy on (( arva }> and tobacco in the company of congenial spir-
its, the scapegraces of the valley.
Among the permanent inmates of the house were likewise
several lovely damsels, who instead of thrumming pianos and read-
ing novels, like more enlightened young ladies, substituted for
these employments the manufacture of a fine species of tappa;
but for the greater portion of the time were skipping from
house to house, gadding and gossiping with their acquaintances.
From the rest of these, however, I must except the beauteous
nymph Fayaway, who was my peculiar favorite. Her free pliant
figure was the very perfection of female grace and beauty. Her
complexion was a rich and mantling olive; and when watching
the glow upon her cheeks, I could almost swear that beneath the
transparent medium there lurked the blushes of a faint vermilion.
HERMAN MELVILLE 9875,
The face of this girl was a rounded oval, and each feature as
perfectly formed as the heart or imagination of man could desire.
Her full lips, when parted with a smile, disclosed teeth of a daz-
zling whiteness; and when her rosy mouth opened with a burst
of merriment, they looked like the milk-white seeds of the (< arta, w
— a fruit of the valley which, when cleft in twain, shows them
reposing in rows on either side, imbedded in the rich and juicy
pulp. Her hair of the deepest brown, parted irregularly in the
middle, flowed in natural ringlets over her shoulders, and when-
ever she chanced to stoop, fell over and hid from view her
lovely bosom. Gazing into the depths of her strange blue eyes,
when she was in a contemplative mood, they seemed most placid
yet unfathomable; but when illuminated by some lively emotion,
they beamed upon the beholder like stars. The hands of Faya-
way were as soft and delicate as those of any countess; for an
entire exemption from rude labor marks the girlhood and even
prime of a Typee woman's life. Her feet, though wholly ex-
posed, were as diminutive and fairly shaped as those which peep
from beneath the skirts of a Lima lady's dress. The skin of this
young creature, from continual ablutions and the use of mollifying
ointments, was inconceivably smooth and soft.
I may succeed, perhaps, in particularizing some of the indi-
vidual features of Fayaway's beauty; but that general loveliness
of appearance which they all contributed to produce I will not
attempt to describe. The easy unstudied graces of a child of
nature like this — breathing from infancy an atmosphere of per-
petual summer, and nurtured by the simple fruits of the earth,
enjoying a perfect freedom from care and anxiety, and removed
effectually from all injurious tendencies — strike the eye in a
manner which cannot be portrayed. This picture is no fancy
sketch: it is drawn from the most vivid recollections of the per-
son delineated.
Were I asked if the beauteous form of Fayaway was alto-
gether free from the hideous blemish of tattooing, I should be
constrained to answer that it was not. But the practitioners of
the barbarous art, so remorseless in their inflictions upon the
brawny limbs of the warriors of the tribe, seem to be conscious
that it needs not the resources of their profession to augment
the charms of the maidens of the vale.
The females are very little embellished in this way; and Fay-
away, with all the other young girls of her age, were even less
9876
HERMAN MELVILLE
so than those of their sex more advanced in years. The reason
of this peculiarity will be alluded to hereafter. All the tattooing
that the nymph in question exhibited upon her person may be
easily described. Three minute dots, no bigger than pin-heads,
decorated either lip, and at a little distance were not at all dis-
cernible. Just upon the fall of the shoulder were drawn two
parallel lines, half an inch apart and perhaps three inches in
length, the interval being filled with delicately executed figures.
These narrow bands of tattooing, thus placed, always reminded
me of those stripes of gold lace worn by officers in undress, and
which were in lieu of epaulettes to denote their rank.
Thus much was Fayaway tattooed — the audacious hand which
had gone so far in its desecrating work stopping short, appar-
ently wanting the heart to proceed.
But I have omitted to describe the dress worn by this nymph
of the valley.
Fayaway — I must avow the fact — for the most part clung to
the primitive and summer garb of Eden. But how becoming the
costume! It showed her fine figure to the best possible advan-
tage, and nothing could have been better adapted to her peculiar
style of beauty. On ordinary occasion she was habited precisely
as I have described the two youthful savages whom we had met
on first entering the valley. At other times, when rambling
among the groves, or visiting at the houses of her acquaintances,
she wore a tunic of white tappa, reaching from her waist to a
little below the knees; and when exposed for any length of time
to the sun, she invariably protected herself from its rays by a
floating mantle of the same material, loosely gathered about the
person. Her gala dress will be described hereafter.
As the beauties of our own land delight in bedecking them-
selves with fanciful articles of jewelry, — suspending them from
their ears, hanging them about their necks, clasping them around
their wrists, — so Fayaway and her companions were in the habit
of ornamenting themselves with similar appendages.
Flora was their jeweler. Sometimes they wore necklaces of
small carnation flowers, strung like rubies upon a fibre of tappa;
or displayed in their ears a single white bud, the stem thrust
backward through the aperture, and showing in front the deli-
cate petals folded together in a beautiful sphere, and looking like
a drop of the purest pearl. Chaplets too, resembling in their
arrangement the strawberry coronal worn by an English peeress,
HERMAN MELVILLE 9877
and composed of intertwined leaves and blossoms, often crowned
their temples; and bracelets and anklets of the same tasteful
pattern were frequently to be seen. Indeed, the maidens of the
islands were passionately fond of flowers, and never wearied of
decorating their persons with them; a lovely trait in their char-
acter, and one that ere long will be more fully alluded to.
Though in my eyes, at least, Fayaway was indisputably the
loveliest female I saw in Typee, yet the description I have given
of her will in some measure apply to nearly all the youthful
portion of her sex in the valley. Judge you then, reader, what
beautiful creatures they must have been.
FAYAWAY IN THE CANOE
From < Typee >
FOR the life of me I could not understand why a woman should
not have as much right to enter a canoe as a man. At last
he became a little more rational, and intimated that, out
of the abundant love he bore me, he would consult with the
priests and see what could be done.
How it was that the priesthood of Typee satisfied the affair
with their consciences, I know not; but so it was, and Fayaway's
dispensation from this portion of the taboo was at length pro-
cured. Such an event I believe never before had occurred in
the valley; but it was high time the islanders should be taught
a little gallantry, and I trust that the example I set them may
produce beneficial effects. Ridiculous, indeed, that the lovely
creatures should be obliged to paddle about in the water like so
many ducks, while a parcel of great strapping fellows skimmed
over its surface in their canoes.
The first day after Fayaway's emancipation I had a delightful
little party on the lake — the damsel, Kory-Kory, and myself.
My zealous body-servant brought from the house a calabash of
poee-poee, half a dozen young cocoanuts stripped of their husks,
three pipes, as many yams, and me on his back a part of the
way. Somethirig of a load; but Kory-Kory was a very strong
man for his size, and by no means brittle in the spine. We had
a very pleasant day; my trusty valet plied the paddle and swept
us gently along the margin of the water, beneath the shades of
9878
HERMAN MELVILLE
the overhanging thickets. Fayaway and I reclined in the stern
of the canoe, on the very, best terms possible with one another;
the gentle nymph occasionally placing her pipe to her lip and
exhaling the mild fumes of the tobacco, to which her rosy
breath added a fresh perfume. Strange as it may seem, there
is nothing in which a young and beautiful female appears to
more advantage than in the act of smoking. How captivating is
a Peruvian lady swinging in her gayly woven hammock of grass,
extended between two orange-trees, and inhaling the fragrance of
a choice cigarro! But Fayaway, holding in her delicately formed
olive hand the long yellow reed of her pipe, with its quaintly
carved bowl, and every few moments languishingly giving forth
light wreaths of vapor from her mouth and nostrils, looked still
more engaging.
We floated about thus for several hours, when I looked up tb
the warm, glowing, tropical sky, and then down into the trans-
parent depths below; and when my eye, wandering from the
bewitching scenery around, fell upon the grotesquely tattooed
form of Kory-Kory, and finally encountered the pensive gaze of
Fayaway, I thought I had been transported to some fairy region,
so unreal did everything appear.
This lovely piece of water was the coolest spot in all the val-
ley, and I now made it a place of continual resort during the
hottest period of the day. One side of it lay near the termina-
tion of a long, gradually expanding gorge, which mounted to the
heights that environed the vale. The strong trade-wind, met in
its course by these elevations, circled and eddied about their
summits, and was sometimes driven down the steep ravine and
swept across the valley, ruffling in its passage the otherwise tran-
quil surface of the lake.
One day, after we had been paddling about for some time,
I disembarked Kory-Kory and paddled the canoe to the wind-
ward side of the lake. As I turned the canoe, Fayaway, who was
with me, seemed all at once to be struck with some happy
idea. With a wild exclamation of delight, she disengaged from
her person the ample robe of tappa which was knotted over
her shoulder (for the purpose of shielding her from the sun), and
spreading it out like a sail, stood erect with uprai'sed arms in the
head of the canoe. We American sailors pride ourselves upon
our straight clean spars, but a prettier little mast than Fayaway
made was never shipped aboard of any craft.
HERMAN MELVILLE 9879
In a moment the tappa was distended by the breeze, the long
brown tresses of Fayaway streamed in the air, and the canoe
glided rapidly through the water and shot towards the shore.
Seated in the stern, I directed its course with my paddle until
it dashed up the soft sloping bank, and Fayaway with a light
spring alighted on the ground; whilst Kory-Kory, who had
watched our manoeuvres with admiration, now clapped his hands
in transport and shouted like a madman. Many a time after-
wards was this feat repeated.
THE GENERAL CHARACTER OF THE TYPEES
From <Typee>
IHAVE already mentioned that the influence exerted over the
people of the valley by their chiefs was mild in the extreme;
and as to any general rule or standard of conduct by which
the commonalty were governed in their intercourse with each
other, so far as my observation extended, I should be almost
tempted to say that none existed on the island, except indeed
the mysterious (( Taboo w be considered as such. During the time
I lived among the Typees, no one was ever put upon his trial
for any offense against the public. To all appearances there
were no courts of law or equity. There were no municipal police
for the purpose of apprehending vagrants and disorderly charac-
ters. In short, there were no legal provisions whatever for the
well-being and conservation of society, the enlightened end of
civilized legislation. And yet everything went on in the valley
with a harmony and smoothness unparalleled, I will venture to
assert, in the most select, refined, and pious associations of mor-
tals in Christendom. How are we to explain this enigma ? These
islanders were heathens! savages! ay, cannibals! and how came
they, without the aid of established law, to exhibit in so emi-
nent a degree that social order which is the greatest blessing
and highest pride of the social state ?
It may reasonably be inquired, How were these people gov-
erned ? how were their passions controlled in their every-day
transactions ? It must have been by an inherent principle of
honesty and charity towards each other. They seemed to be
governed by that sort of tacit common-sense law, which, say what
they will of the inborn lawlessness of the human race, has its
9880
HERMAN MELVILLE
precepts graven on every breast. The grand principles of virtue
ind honor, however they may be distorted by arbitrary codes,
are the same all the world over; and where these principles are
concerned, the right or wrong of any action appears the same
to the uncultivated as to the enlightened mind. It is to this
indwelling, this universally diffused perception of what is just and
noble, that the integrity of the Marquesans in their intercourse
with each other is to be attributed. In the darkest nights they
slept securely, with all their worldly wealth around them, in
houses the doors of which were never fastened. The disquiet-
ing ideas of theft or assassination never disturbed them. Each
islander reposed beneath his own palmetto thatching, or sat under
his own bread-fruit tree, with none to molest or alarm him. There
was not a padlock in the valley, nor anything that answered the
purpose of one; still there was no community of goods. This
long spear, so elegantly carved and highly polished, belongs to
Wormoonoo; it is far handsomer than the one which old Marheyo
so greatly prizes, — it is the most valuable article belonging to its
owner. And yet I have seen it leaning against a cocoanut-tree
in the grove, and there it was found when sought for. Here is
a sperm-whale tooth, graven all over with cunning devices: it is
the property of Karluna; it is the most precious of the damsel's
ornaments. In her estimation its price is far above rubies. And
yet there hangs the dental jewel by its cord of braided bark
in the girl's house, which is far back in the valley; the door
is left open, and all the inmates have gone off to bathe in the
stream. . . .
There was one admirable trait in the general character of the
Typees which, more than anything else, secured my admiration:
it was the unanimity of feeling they displayed on every occasion.
With them there hardly appeared to be any difference of opinion
upon any subject whatever. They all thought and acted alike. I
do not conceive that they could support a debating society for a
single night: there would be nothing to dispute about; and were
they to call a convention to take into consideration the state of
the tribe, its session would be a remarkably short one. They
showed this spirit of unanimity in every action of life : everything
was done in concert and good-fellowship. . . .
Not a single female took part in this employment [house-
building]; and if the degree of consideration in which the ever
adorable sex is held by the men, be — as the philosophers affirm —
HERMAN MELVILLE
a just criterion of the degree of refinement among a people, then
I may truly pronounce the Typees to be as polished a commu-
nity as ever the sun shone upon. The religious restrictions of
the taboo alone excepted, the women of the valley were allowed
every possible indulgence. Nowhere are the ladies more assidu-
ously courted ; nowhere are they better appreciated as the contrib-
utors to our highest enjoyments; and nowhere are they more
sensible of their power. Far different from their condition among
many rude nations, where the women are made to perform all
the work while their ungallant lords and masters lie buried in
sloth, the gentle sex in the valley of Typee were exempt from
toil; if toil it might be called, that even in that tropical climate,
never distilled one drop of perspiration. Their light household
occupations, together with the manufacture of tappa, the platting
of mats, and the polishing of drinking-vessels, \vere the only em-
ployments pertaining to the women. And even these resembled
those pleasant avocations which fill up the elegant morning leis-
ure of our fashionable ladies at home. But in these occupations,
slight and agreeable though they were, the giddy young girls
very seldom engaged. Indeed, these willful, care-killing damsels
were averse to all useful employment. Like so many spoiled
beauties, they ranged through the groves, bathed in the stream,
danced, flirted, played all manner of mischievous pranks, and
passed their days in one merry round of thoughtless happiness.
During my whole stay on the island I never witnessed a sin-
gle quarrel, nor anything that in the slightest degree approached
even to a dispute. The natives appeared to form one household,
whose members were bound together by the ties of strong affec-
tion. The love of kindred I did not so much perceive, for it
seemed blended to the general love; and where all were treated
as brothers and sisters, it was hard to tell who were actually
related to each other by blood.
TABOO
From ( Typee >
is a marked similarity, almost an identity, between the
1 religious institutions of most of the Polynesian islands;
and in all exists the mysterious "Taboo," restricted in its
uses to a greater or less extent. So strange and complex in its
9882
HERMAN MELVILLE
arrangements is this remarkable system, that I have in several
cases met with individuals who after residing for years among
the islands in the Pacific, and acquiring a considerable knowl-
edge of the language, have nevertheless been altogether unable
to give any satisfactory account of its operations. Situated as I
was in the Typee valley, I perceived every hour the effects of
this all-controlling power, without in the least comprehending it.
Those effects were indeed wide-spread and universal, pervading
the most important as well as the minutest transactions of life.
The savage, in short, lives in the continual observance of its dic-
tates, which guide and control every action of his being.
For several days after entering the valley, I had been saluted
at least fifty times in the twenty-four hours with the talismanic
word (( Taboo w shrieked in my ears, at some gross violation of
its provisions, of which I had unconsciously been guilty. The
day after our arrival I happened to hand some tobacco to Toby
over the head of a native who sat between us. He started up as
if stung by an adder; while the whole company, manifesting an
equal degree of horror, simultaneously screamed out <( Taboo ! w
I never again perpetrated a similar piece of ill manners, which
indeed was forbidden by the canons of good breeding as well as
by the mandates of the taboo. But it was not always so easy to
perceive wherein you had contravened the spirit of this institu-
tion. I was many times called to order, if I may use the phrase,
when I could not for the life of me conjecture what particular
offense I had committed.
One day I was strolling through a secluded portion of the val-
ley; and hearing the musical sound of the cloth-mallet at a little
distance, I turned down a path that conducted me in a few
moments to a house where there were some half-dozen girls em-
ployed in making tappa. This was an operation I had frequently
witnessed, and had handled the bark in all the various stages of
its preparation. On the present occasion the females were intent
upon their occupation; and after looking up and talking gayly
to me for a few moments, they resumed their employment. I
regarded them for awhile in silence, and then carelessly picking
up a handful of the material that lay around, proceeded uncon-
sciously to pick it apart. While thus engaged, I was suddenly
startled by a scream, like that of a whole boarding-school of
young ladies just on the point of going into hysterics. Leaping
tip with the idea of seeing a score of Happar warriors about to
HERMAN MELVILLE 9883
perform anew the Sabine atrocity, I found myself confronted by
the company of girls, who, having dropped their work, stood be-
fore me with starting eyes, swelling bosoms, and fingers pointed
in horror towards me.
Thinking that some venomous reptile must be concealed in
the bark which I held in my hand, I began cautiously to sepa-
rate and examine it. Whilst I did so the horrified girls redoubled
their shrieks. Their wild cries and frightened motions actually
alarmed me; and throwing down the tappa, I was about to
rush from the- house, when in the same instant their clamors
ceased, and one of them, seizing me by the arm, pointed to the
broken fibres that had just fallen from my grasp, and screamed
in my ear the fatal word (( Taboo ! >}
I subsequently found out that the fabric they were engaged
in making was of a peculiar kind, destined to be worn on the
heads of females; and through every stage of its manufacture
was guarded by a rigorous taboo, which interdicted the whole
masculine gender from even so much as touching it.
Frequently in walking through the groves, I observed bread-
fruit and cocoanut trees with a wreath of leaves twined in a
peculiar fashion about their trunks. This was the mark of the
taboo. The trees themselves, their fruit, and even the shadows
they cast upon the ground, were consecrated by its presence. In
the same way a pipe which the King had bestowed upon me was
rendered sacred in the eyes of the natives, none of whom could
I ever prevail upon to smoke from it. The bowl was encircled
by a woven band of grass, somewhat resembling those Turks'-
heads occasionally worked in the handles of our whip-stalks.
A similar badge was once braided about my wrist by the
royal hand of Mehevi himself, who, as soon as he had concluded
the operation, pronounced me <( Taboo. J> This occurred shortly
after Toby's disappearance; and were it not that from the first
moment I had entered the valley the natives had treated me
with uniform kindness, I should have supposed that their con-
duct afterwards was to be ascribed to the fact that I had received
this sacred investiture.
The capricious operation of the taboo is not its least remark-
able feature; to enumerate them all would be impossible. Black
hogs, infants to a certain age, women in an interesting situation,
young men while the operation of tattooing their faces is going
on, and certain parts of the valley during the continuance of a
shower, are alike fenced about by the operation of the taboo.
9884
HERMAN MELVILLE
I witnessed a striking instance of its effects in the bay of
Tior, my visit to which place has been alluded to in a former
part of this narrative. On that occasion our worthy captain
formed one of the party. He was a most insatiable sportsman.
Outward bound, and off the pitch of Cape Horn, he used to
sit on the taffrail and keep the steward loading three or four
old fowling-pieces, with which he would bring down albatrosses,
Cape pigeons, jays, petrels, and divers other marine fowl, who
followed chattering in our wake. The sailors were struck aghast
at his impiety; and one and all attributed our forty days' beating
about that horrid headland to his sacrilegious slaughter of these
inoffensive birds.
At Tior he evinced the same disregard for the religious preju-
dices of the islanders as he had previously shown for the supersti-
tions of the sailors. Having heard that there was a considerable
number of fowls in the valley, — the progeny of some cocks and
hens accidentally left there by an English vessel, and which, being
strictly tabooed, flew about almost in a wild state, — he deter-
mined to break through all restraints and be the death of them.
Accordingly he provided himself with a most formidable-looking
gun, and announced his landing on the beach by shooting down
a noble cock, that was crowing what proved to be his own funeral
dirge on the limb of an adjoining tree. "Taboo," shrieked the
affrighted savages. <( Oh, hang your taboo, }> says the nautical
sportsman : (< talk taboo to the marines ; }> and bang went the
piece again, and down came another victim. At this the natives
ran scampering through the groves, horror-struck at the enormity
of the act.
All that afternoon the rocky sides of the valley rang with suc-
cessive reports, and the superb plumage of many a beautiful fowl
was ruffled by the fatal bullet. Had it not been that the French
admiral, with a large party, was then in the glen, I have no
doubt that the natives, although their tribe was small and dis-
pirited, would have inflicted summary vengeance upon the man
who thus outraged their most sacred institutions: as it was, they
contrived to annoy him not a little.
Thirsting with his exertions, the skipper directed his steps to
a stream; but the savages, who had followed at a little distance,
perceiving his object, rushed towards him and forced him away
from its bank, — his lips would have polluted it. Wearied at last,
he sought to enter a house, that he might rest for a while on
the mats: its inmates eathered tumultuously about the door and
HERMAN MELVILLE
9885
denied him admittance. He coaxed and blustered by turns, but
in vain, — the natives were neither to be intimidated nor appeased;
and as a final resort he was obliged to call together his boat's
crew, and pull away from what he termed the most infernal place
he ever stepped upon.
Lucky was it for him and for us that we were not honored
on our departure by a salute of stones from the hands of the
exasperated Tiors. In this way, on the neighboring island of
Ropo, were killed but a few weeks previously, and for a nearly
similar offense, the master and three of the crew of the K .
I cannot determine with anything approaching to certainty
what power it is that imposes the taboo. When I consider the
slight disparity of condition among the islanders, the very limited
and inconsiderable prerogatives of the king and chiefs, and the
loose and indefinite functions of the priesthood, — most of whom
were hardly to be distinguished from the rest of their country-
men,— I am wholly at a loss where to look for the authority which
regulates this potent institution. It is imposed upon something
to-day, and withdrawn to-morrow; while its operations in other
cases are perpetual. Sometimes its restrictions only affect a sin-
gle individual, sometimes a particular family, sometimes a whole
tribe; and in a few instances they extend not merely over the
various clans on a single island, but over all the inhabitants of
an entire group. In illustration of this latter peculiarity, I may
cite the law which forbids a female to enter a canoe, — a prohi-
bition which prevails upon all the northern Marquesas Islands.
The word itself ((( taboo w) is used in more than one signifi-
cation. It is sometimes used by a parent to his child, when in
the exercise of parental authority he forbids it to perform a par-
ticular action. Anything opposed to the ordinary customs of the
islanders, although not expressly prohibited, is said to be (< taboo. >J
9886
FELIX MENDELSSOHN-BARTHOLDY
(1809-1847)
THE personality of Mendelssohn the musician, and of the
professional activities of a career of perhaps as complete
artistic felicity and success as can be pointed out, few
essential facts are unfamiliar at this date. In connection with a lit-
erary work they need but general review. Not many masters in art
have come into the world with so many amiable fairies to rock the cra-
dle, so prompt to bestow almost a superfluity of gracious gifts. Born
at Hamburg, February 3d, 1809, of Hebrew blood, and of a prosper-
ous and distinguished family that numbered
the Platonist, Moses Mendelssohn, among its
immediate ancestry, the boy's temperament
and talents received peculiarly careful cul-
tivation. Indeed, so far was this the case
that it would not have been singular had
Felix made music a mere avocation, instead
of accepting it as the business and pas-
sion of his life; one which he pursued with
that splendid system and industry, in nine
cases out of ten having much to do with
the recognition of what the world thinks
the irresistibility of genius. From being a
youthful prodigy at the pianoforte and in
original composition, from studying dili-
gently with his charming sister Fanny, the lad outgrew the interest
attaching to merely a young virtuoso, and stood forth as one of his
art's mature and accepted masters. Mendelssohn's career of triumph
may be spoken of as beginning with the familiar music to Shake-
speare's ( Midsummer Night's Dream } ; its later milestones are familiar
in a long series of orchestral works of large form, and in the large
body of chamber music, vocal and instrumental, of greater or less in-
terest; and it can be said to have culminated in ( Elijah, y the best of
his oratorios, — indeed, the best oratorio on a Handelian pattern yet
heard. Life to him from year to year meant incessant and delight-
ful labor, bringing admiration and substantial honor. Only Mozart —
with whom Mendelssohn's affinity is emphatic — was as prolific, with
so little that in the general result can be dismissed as dull or trashy.
MENDELSSOHN
FELIX MENDELSSOHN-BARTHOLDY
9887
After Germany and England had been the scene of a career which,
reviewed at this date, appears to us to have brought not only fame
but a personal and musical idolatry, the composer died in the flush of
manhood, at Leipzig, in 1847. There was soon after a certain nat-
ural reaction against his music, save in England. Lisztian influences
affected it, in especial. Much of it still is laid aside, if not actually
dismissed. But his place in his art seems securer now than it was a
decade ago; and however the forms and the emotional conception of
music have changed, whatever the shifting currents of popular taste,
it seems now probable that Mendelssohn's best orchestral works, his
best compositions for the voice, and even the best of his pianoforte
pieces, will long retain their hold on the finer public ear and the
more sensitive musical heart. The world has begun to re-esteem
them, and to show signs of feeling a new conviction of their beauty
of idea and their singular perfection of form. This is the day of the
dramatic in music; but Mendelssohn's expression of that element is
not feeble nor uncertain, albeit it must be caught rather between
the lines by a generation concentrated on Beethoven, Schubert,
Schumann, Brahms, and Wagner.
Mendelssohn's letters are — like his music, like his drawings, like
everything that he did — a faithful and delightful expression of him-
self. His temperament was charming, his nature was sound, his heart
affectionate, and his appreciations wide. His sense of humor was
unfailing. He poured himself out to his friends and relations in his
correspondence in all his moods, whether on professional tours or
stationary in one city or another. Every mood, every shade of emo-
tion, is latent in his <( pages of neat, aristocratic chirography. » He
knew everybody of note; he wrote to dozens of people — musical and
unmusical — regularly and voluminously. His epistolary style is as
distinct as his musical one, — what with its precision in conveying just
what came into his head, united to lucidity, elegance, finish, a knack
of making even a trifling thing interesting; and showing a serious
undercurrent from a deeply thoughtful intelligence. He was a born
letter-writer, just as he was a born musician. Those few volumes
that the kindness of his friends has gradually given to the world
(for the original letters of the composer have always been difficult to
procure), depict his moral and aesthetic nature, so limpid and happily
balanced, with an obvious fidelity and an almost lavish openness.
9888 FELIX MENDELSSOHN-BARTHOLDY
FROM A LETTER TO F. KILLER
LEIPZIG, January 24th, 1836.
NOTHING is more repugnant to me than casting blame on the
nature or genius of any one: it only renders him irritable
and bewildered, and does no good. No man can add one
inch to his stature; in such a case all striving and toiling is vain,
therefore it is best to be silent. Providence is answerable for
this defect in his nature. But if it be the case, as it is with
this work of yours, that precisely those very themes, and all that
requires talent or genius (call it as you will), are excellent and
beautiful and touching, but the development not so good, — then
I think silence should not be observed; then I think blame can
never be unwise; for this is the point where great progress can
be made by the composer himself in his works; and as I believe
that a man with fine capabilities has the absolute duty imposed
on him of becoming something really superior, so I think that
blame must be attributed to him if he does not develop himself
according to the means with which he is endowed. And I main-
tain that it is the same with a musical composition. Do not tell
me that it is so, and therefore it must remain so. I know well
that no musician can alter the thoughts and talents which Heaven
has bestowed on him; but I also know that when Providence
grants him superior ones, he must also develop them properly.
FROM A LETTER TO HERR ADVOCAT CONRAD SCHLEINITZ.
AT LEIPZIG
BERLIN, August ist, 1838.
I ALWAYS think that whatever an intelligent man gives his
heart to, and really understands, must become a noble voca-
tion: and I only personally dislike those in whom there is
nothing personal, and in whom all individuality disappears; as
for example the military profession in peace, of which we have
instances here. But with regard to the others it is more or less
untrue. When one profession is compared with another, the one
is usually taken in its naked reality, and the other in the most
beautiful ideality; and then the decision is quickly made. How
easy it is for an artist to feel such reality in his sphere, and yet
esteem practical men happy who have studied and known the
FELIX MENDELSSOHN-BARTHOLDY 9889
different relations of men towards each other, and who help
others to live by their own life and progress, and at once see the
fruits of all that is tangible, useful, and benevolent instituted by
them! In one respect too an upright man has the hardest stand
to make, in knowing that the public are more attracted by out-
ward show than by truth. But individual failures and strife must
not be allowed to have their growth in the heart: there must be
something to occupy and to elevate it far above these isolated
external things. This speaks strongly in favor of my opinion;
for it is the best part of every calling, and common to all, — to
yours, to mine, and to every other. Where is it that you find
beauty when I am working at a quartet or a symphony ? Merely
in that portion of myself that I transfer to it, or can succeed in
expressing; and you can do this in as full a measure as any
man, in your defense of a culprit, or in a case of libel, or in any
one thing that entirely engrosses you: and that is the great point.
If you can only give utterance to your inmost thoughts, and
if these inmost thoughts become more and more worthy of being
expressed, ... all the rest is indifferent.
HOURS WITH GOETHE, 1830
From the < Letters from Italy and Switzerland >
YESTERDAY evening I was at a party at Goethe's, and played
alone the whole evening: the Concert-Stuck, the ( Invitation
a la Valse,* and Weber's Polonaise in C, my three Welsh
pieces, and my Scotch Sonata. It was over by ten o'clock, but I
of course stayed till twelve o'clock, when we had all sorts of fun,
dancing and singing; so you see I lead a most jovial life here.
The old gentleman goes to his room regularly at- nine o'clock,
and as soon as he is gone we begin our frolics, and never sep-
arate before midnight. ^
To-morrow my portrait is to be finished: a large black-crayon
sketch, and very like, but I look rather sulky. Goethe is so
friendly and kind to me that I don't know how to thank him
sufficiently, or what to do to deserve it. In the forenoon he likes
me to play to him the compositions of the various great masters,
in chronological order, for an hour, and also tell him the progress
they have made; while he sits in a dark corner, like a Jupiter
Tonans, his old eyes flashing on me. He did not wish to hear
FELIX MENDELSSOHN-BARTHOLDY
anything of Beethoven's; but I told him that I could not let him
off, and played the first part of the Symphony in C minor. It
seemed to have a singular effect on him : at first he said, (( This
causes no emotion, nothing but astonishment; it is grandios*
He continued grumbling in this way, and after a long pause he
began again, — (< It is very grand, very wild; it makes one fear
that the house is about to fall down: and what must it be when
played by a number of men together!" During dinner, in the
midst of another subject, he alluded to it again. You know that
I dine with him every day, when he questions me very minutely,
and is always so gay and communicative after dinner that we
generally remain together alone for an hour while he speaks on
uninterruptedly.
I have no greater pleasure than when he brings out engrav-
ings and explains them to me, or gives his opinion of <Ernani,)
or Lamartine's Elegies, or the theatre, or pretty girls. He has
several times lately invited people; which he rarely does now, so
that most of the guests had not seen him for a long time. I
then play a great deal, and he compliments me before all these
people, and *ganz stupend* is his favorite expression. To-day he
has invited a number of Weimar beauties on my account, because
he thinks I ought to enjoy the society of young people. If I
go up to him on such occasions, he says, <( My young friend, you
must join the ladies, and make yourself agreeable to them." I
am not however devoid of tact, so I contrived to have him asked
yesterday whether I did not come too often; but he growled out
to Ottilie, who put the question to him, that <(he must now begin
to speak to me in good earnest, for I had such clear ideas that
he hoped to learn much from me." I became twice as tall in
my own estimation when Ottilie repeated this to me. He said so
to me himself yesterday: and when he declared that there were
many subjects he had at heart that I must explain to him, I
said, <( Oh, certainly ! w but I thought, « This is an honor I can
never forget ; w — often it is the very reverse. FELIX.
FELIX MENDELSSOHN-BARTHOLDY 9891
A CORONATION IN PRESBURG
From <The Letters from Italy and Switzerland >
THE King is crowned — the ceremony was wonderfully fine.
How can I even try to describe it to you ? An hour hence
we will all drive back to Vienna, and thence I pursue my
journey. There is a tremendous uproar under my windows; and
the Burgher-guards are flocking together, but only for the pur-
pose of shouting <( Vivat! }) I pushed my way through the crowd,
while our ladies saw everything from the windows, and never
can I forget the effect of all this brilliant and almost fabulous
magnificence.
In the great square of the Hospitalers the people were
closely packed together: for there the oaths were to be taken on
a platform hung with cloth, and afterwards the people were to
be allowed the privilege of tearing down the cloth for their own
use; close by was a fountain spouting red and white Hungarian
wine. The grenadiers could not keep back the people; one
unlucky hackney coach that stopped for a moment was instantly
covered with men, who clambered on the spokes of the wheels,
and on the roof, and on the box, swarming on it like ants, so
that the coachman, unable to drive on without becoming a mur-
derer, was forced to wait quietly where he was. When the pro-
cession arrived, which was received bare-headed, I had the utmost
difficulty in taking off my hat and holding it above my head:
an old Hungarian behind me, however, whose view it inter-
cepted, quickly devised a remedy, for without ceremony he made
a snatch at my unlucky hat, and in an instant flattened it to the
size of a cap; then they yelled as if they had all been spitted,
and fought for the cloth. In short, they were a mob; but my
Magyars! the fellows look as if they were born noblemen, and
privileged to live at ease, looking very melancholy, but riding
like the devil.
When the procession descended the hill, first came the court
servants, covered with embroidery, the trumpeters and kettle-
drums, the heralds and all that class; and then suddenly galloped
along the street a mad count, en pleine carriere, his horse plun-
ging and capering, and the caparisons edged with gold; the count
himself a mass of diamonds, rare herons' plumes, and velvet
embroidery (though he had not yet assumed his state uniform,
FELIX MENDELSSOHN-BARTHOLDY
being- bound to ride so madly — Count Sandor is the name of
this furious cavalier). He had an ivory sceptre in his hand with
which he urged on his horse, causing it each time to rear and
to make a tremendous bound forward.
When his wild career was over, a procession of about sixty
more magnates arrived, all in the same fantastic splendor, with
handsome colored turbans, twisted mustaches, and dark eyes.
One rode a white horse covered with a gold net; another a dark
gray, the bridle and housings studded with diamonds; then came
a black charger with purple cloth caparisons. One magnate was
attired from head to foot in sky-blue, thickly embroidered with
gold, a white turban, and a long white dolman; another in cloth
of gold, with a purple dolman; each one more rich and gaudy
than the other, and all riding so boldly and fearlessly, and with
such defiant gallantry, that it was quite a pleasure to look at
them. At length came the Hungarian Guards, with Esterhazy
at their head, dazzling in gems and pearl embroidery. How can
I describe the scene ? You ought to have seen the procession
deploy and halt in the spacious square, and all the jewels and
bright colors, and the lofty golden mitres of the bishops, and the
crucifixes glittering in the brilliant sunshine like a thousand stars1.
FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF VENICE
From the < Letters from Italy and Switzerland >
IN TREVISO there was an illumination, — paper lanterns suspended
in every part of the great square, and a large gaudy trans-
parency in the centre. Some most lovely girls were walking
about in their long white veils and scarlet petticoats. It was
quite dark when we arrived at Mestre last night, when we got
into a boat and in a dead calm gently rowed across to Venice.
On our passage thither, where nothing but water is to be seen,
and distant lights, we saw a small rock which stands in the
midst of the sea; on this a lamp was burning. All the sailors
took off their hats as we passed, and one of them said this was
the <( Madonna of Tempests, » which are often most dangerous
and violent here. We then glided quietly into the great city,
under innumerable bridges, without sound of post-horns, or rat-
tling of wheels, or toll-keepers. The passage now became more
FELIX MENDELSSOHN-BARTHOLDY
9893
thronged, and numbers of ships were lying near; past the theatre,
where gondolas in long rows lie waiting for their masters, just
as our own carriages do at home; then into the great canal, past
the church of St. Mark, the Lions, the palace of the Doges, and
the Bridge of Sighs. The obscurity of night only enhanced my
delight on hearing the familiar names and seeing the dark out-
lines.
And so I am actually in Venice! Well, to-day I have seen
the finest pictures in the world, and have at last personally
made the acquaintance of a very admirable man, whom hitherto I
only knew by name; I allude to a certain Signer Giorgione, an
inimitable artist, — and also to Pordenone, who paints the most
noble portraits, both of himself and many of his simple scholars,
in such a devout, faithful, and pious spirit, that you seem to con-
verse with him and to feel an affection for him. Who would
not have been confused by all this ? But if I am to speak of
Titian I must do so in a more reverent mood. Till now, I
never knew that he was the felicitous artist I have this day s.een
him to be. That he thoroughly enjoyed life in all its beauty and
fullness, the picture in Paris proves; but he has fathomed the
depths of human sorrow, as well as the joys of heaven. His
glorious ^ntombment^ and also the ( Assumption, > fully evince
this. How Mary floats on the cloud, while a waving movement
seems to pervade the whole picture; how you see at a glance
her very breathing, her awe, and piety, and in short a thousand
feelings, — all words seem poor and commonplace in comparison!
The three angels too, on the right of the picture, are of the
highest order of beauty, — pure, serene loveliness, so unconscious,
so bright and so seraphic. But no more of this! or I must per-
force become poetical, — or indeed am so already, — and this does
not at all suit me; but I shall certainly see it every day.
I must however say a few words about the c Entombment, y
as you have the engraving. Look at it, and think of me. This
picture represents the conclusion of a great tragedy, — so still,
so grand, and so acutely painful. Magdalene is supporting Mary, .
fearing that she will die of anguish; she endeavors to lead her
away, but looks round herself once more, — evidently wishing to
imprint this spectacle indelibly on her heart, thinking it is for
the last time; — it surpasses everything; — and then the sorrow-
ing John, who sympathizes and suffers with Mary; and Joseph,
who, absorbed in his piety and occupied with the tomb, directs
5894 FELIX MENDELSSOHN-BARTHOLDY
and conducts the whole; and Christ himself, lying there so tran-
quil, having endured to the end; then the blaze of brilliant color,
and the gloomy mottled sky! It is a composition that speaks to
my heart and fills me with enthusiasm, and will never leave my
memory.
IN ROME: ST. , PETER'S
From the < Letters from Italy and Switzerland >
IWAS in St. Peter's to-day, where the grand solemnities called
the absolutions have begun for the Pope, — which last till
Tuesday, when the Cardinals assemble in conclave. The
building surpasses all powers of description. It appears to me
like some great work of. nature, — a forest, a mass of rocks, or
something similar; for I never can realize the idea that it is the
work of man. You strive as little to distinguish the ceiling as
the canopy of heaven. You lose your way in St. Peter's; you take
a walk in it, and ramble till you are quite tired; when Divine
service is performed and chanted there, you are not aware of it
till you come quite close. The angels in the Baptistery are mon-
strous giants; the doves, colossal birds of prey; you lose all
idea of measurement with the eye, or proportion; and yet who
does not feel his heart expand when standing under the dome
and gazing up at it ? At present a monstrous catafalque has
been erected in the nave in this shape.* The coffin is placed in
the centre under the pillars; the thing is totally devoid of taste,
and yet it has a wondrous effect. The upper circle is thickly
studded with lights, — so are all the ornaments; the lower circle
is lighted in the same way, and over the coffin hangs a burn-
ing lamp, and innumerable lights are blazing under the statues.
The whole structure is more than a hundred feet high, and stands
exactly opposite the entrance. The guards of honor, and the
Swiss, march about in the quadrangle; in every corner sits a
cardinal in deep mourning, attended by his servants, who hold
large burning torches; and then the singing commences with
responses, in the simple and monotonous tone you no doubt
remember. It is the only occasion when there is any singing
in the middle of the church, and the effect is wonderful. Those
who place themselves among the singers (as I do) and watch
*A little sketch of the catafalque was inclosed in the letter.
FELIX MENDELSSOHN-BARTHOLDY 9895
them, are forcibly impressed by the scene: for they all stand
round a colossal book from which they sing, and this book is in
turn lit up by a colossal torch that burns before it; while the
choir are eagerly pressing forward in their vestments, in order to
see and to sing properly; and Baini with his monk's face, mark-
ing time with his hand and occasionally joining in the chant with
a stentorian voice. To watch all these different Italian faces was
most interesting; one enjoyment quickly succeeds another here,
and it is the same in their churches, especially in St. Peter's,
where by moving a few steps the whole scene is changed. I
went to the very furthest end, whence there was indeed a won-
derful coup d'ceil. Through the spiral columns of the high altar,
which is confessedly as high as the palace in Berlin, far beyond
the space of the cupola, the whole mass of the catafalque was
seen in diminished perspective, with its rows of lights, and num-
bers of small human beings crowding round it. When the music
commences, the sounds do not reach the other end for a long
time, but echo and float in the vast space, so that the most
singular and vague harmonies are borne towards you. If you
change your position and place yourself right in front of the
catafalque, beyond the blaze of light and the brilliant pageantry,
you have the dusky cupola replete with blue vapor; all this is
quite indescribable. Such is Rome!
A SUNDAY AT FORIA
From the < Letters from Italy and Switzerland >
NEXT morning, Sunday, the weather was again fine. We went
to Foria, and saw the people going to the cathedral in
their holiday costumes. The women wore their well-known
head-dress of folds of white muslin placed flat on the head; the
men were standing 'in the square before the church in their
bright red caps gossiping about politics, and we gradually wound
our way through these festal villages up the hill. It is a huge
rugged volcano, full of fissures, ravines, cavities, and steep preci-
pices. The cavities being used for wine cellars, they are filled
with large casks. Every declivity is clothed with vines and fig-
trees, or mulberry-trees. Corn grows on the sides of the steep
rocks, and yields more than one crop every year. The ravines
are covered with ivy and innumerable bright-colored flowers and
9896
FELIX MENDELSSOHN-BARTHOLDY
herbs; and wherever there is a vacant space young chestnut-trees
shoot up, furnishing the most delightful shade. The last village,
Fontana, lies in the midst of verdure and vegetation. As we
climbed higher, the sky became overcast and gloomy; and by the
time we reached the most elevated peaks of the rocks, a thick
fog had come on. The vapors flitted about; and although the
rugged outlines of the rocks and the telegraph and the cross
stood forth strangely in the clouds, still we could not see even
the smallest portion of the view. Soon afterwards rain com-
menced; and as it was impossible to remain and wait as you do
on the Righi, we were obliged to take leave of Epomeo without
having made his acquaintance. We ran down in the rain, one
rushing after the other; and I do believe that we were scarcely
an hour in returning.
A VAUDOIS WALKING TRIP: PAULINE
From the < Letters from Italy and Switzerland J
AFTER BREAKFAST.
HEAVENS! here is a pretty business. My landlady has just told
me with a long face that there is not a creature in the
village to show me the way across the Dent, or to carry
my knapsack, except a young girl; the men being all at work.
I usually set off every morning very early and quite alone, with
my bundle on my shoulders, because I find the guides from the
inns both too expensive and too tiresome; a couple of hours later
I hire the first honest-looking lad I see, and so I travel famously
on foot. I need not say how enchanting the lake and the road
hither were: you must recall for yourself all the beauties you
once enjoyed there. The footpath is in continued shade, under
walnut-trees and up-hill, past villas and castles, along the lake
which glitters through the foliage; villages everywhere, and
brooks and streams rushing along from every nook in every vil-
lage; then the neat tidy houses, — it is all quite too charming,
and you feel so fresh and so free. Here comes the girl with her
steeple hat. I can tell you she is vastly pretty into the bargain,
and her name is Pauline; she has just packed my things into
her wicker basket. Adieu!
FELIX MENDELSSOHN-BARTHOLDY 9897
EVENING, CHATEAU D'OEX, CANDLE-LIGHT.
I have had the most delightful journey. What would I not
give to procure you such a day! But then you must first become
two youths and be able to climb actively, and drink milk when
the opportunity offered, and treat with contempt the intense
heat, the many rocks in the way, the innumerable holes in the
path and the still larger holes in your boots, — and I fear you
are rather too dainty for this; but it was most lovely! I shall
never forget my journey with Pauline: she is one of the nicest
girls I ever met, — so pretty and healthy-looking, and naturally
intelligent; she told me anecdotes about her village, and I in re-
turn told her about Italy: but I know who was the most amused.
The previous Sunday, all the young people of distinction in
her village had gone to a place far across the mountain, to dance
there in the afternoon. They set off shortly after midnight,
arrived while it was still dark, lighted a large fire, and made
coffee. Towards morning the men had running and wrestling
matches before the ladies (we passed a broken hedge testifying
to the truth of this) ; then they danced, and were at home again
by Sunday evening, and early on Monday morning they all re-
sumed their labors in the vineyards. By Heavens! I felt a strong
inclination to become a Vaudois peasant while I was listening
to Pauline, when from above she pointed out to me the villages
where they dance when the cherries are ripe, and others where
they dance when the cows go to pasture in the meadows and
give milk. To-morrow they are to dance in St. Gingolph; they
row across the lake, and any one who can play takes his instru-
ment with him: but Pauline is not to be of the party, because
her mother will not allow it, from dread of the wide lake; and
many other girls also do not go for the same reason, as they all
cling together.
She then asked my leave to say good-day to a cousin of hers,
and ran down to a neat cottage in the meadow; soon the two
girls came out together and sat on a bench and chattered; on
the Col de Jaman above, I saw her relations busily mowing, and
herding the cows.
What cries and shouts ensued! Then those above began to
jodel, on which they all laughed. I did not understand one
syllable of their patois, except the beginning, which was "Adieu,
Pierrot ! }> All these sounds were taken up by a merry mad echo,
that shouted and laughed and jodeled too. Towards noon we
9898 FELIX MENDELSSOHN-BARTHOLDY
arrived at Alliere. When I had rested for a time, I once more
shouldered my knapsack, for a fat old man provoked me by
offering to carry it for me; then Pauline and I shook hands and
we took leave of each other. I descended into the meadows:
and if you do not care about Pauline, or if I have bored you
with her, it is not my fault, but that of the mode in which 1
have described her; nothing could be more pleasant in reality,
and so was my further journey. I came to a cherry orchard,
where the people were gathering the fruit; so I lay down on the
grass and ate cherries for a time along with them. I took my
midday rest at Latine in a clean wooden house. The carpenter
who built it gave me his company to some roast lamb, and
pointed out to me with pride every table and press and chair.
At length I arrived here, at night, through dazzling green
meadows, interspersed with houses, surrounded by fir-trees and
rivulets; the church here stands on a velvet-green eminence;
more houses in the distance, and still further away, huts and
rocks; and in a ravine, patches of snow still lying on the plain.
It is one of those idyllic spots such as we have seen together in
Wattwyl, but the village smaller and the mountains more green
and lofty. I must conclude, however, to-day by a high eulogy on
the Canton de Vaud. Of all the countries I know, this is the
most beautiful, and it is the spot where I should most like to
live when I become really old: the people are so contented and
look so well, and the "country also. Coming from Italy, it is quite
touching to see the honesty that still exists in the world, — happy
faces, a total absence of beggars or saucy officials: in short, there
is the most complete contrast between the two nations. I thank
God for having created so much that is beautiful; and may it be
his gracious will to permit us all, whether in Berlin, England, or
in the Chateau d'Oex, to enjoy a happy evening and a tranquil
night 5
A CRITICISM
From a Letter to his Sister, of September 2d, 1831
r-pELL me, Fanny, do you know Auber's ( Parisienne ) ? I con-
sider it the very worst thing he has ever produced; perhaps
because the subject was really sublime, and for other rea-
sons also. Auber alone could have been guilty of composing for
a great nation, in the most violent state of excitement, a cold,
FELIX MENDELSSOHN-BARTHOLDY
insignificant piece, quite commonplace and trivial. The refrain
revolts me every time I think of it: it is as if children were
playing with a drum, and singing to it — only more objectionable.
The words also are worthless: little antitheses and points are
quite out of place here. Then the emptiness of the music! a
march for acrobats, and at the end a mere miserable imitation
of the ( Marseillaise. } Woe to us if it be indeed what suits this
epoch, — if a mere copy of the ( Marseillaise Hymn> be all that
is required. What in the latter is full of fire and spirit and
impetus, is in the former ostentatious, cold, calculated, and arti-
ficial'. The ( Marseillaise y is as superior to the ( Parisienne > as
everything produced by genuine enthusiasm must be to what is
made for a purpose, even if it be with a view to promote enthu-
siasm: it will never reach the heart, because it does not come
from the heart.
By the way, I never saw such a striking identity between
a poet and a musician as between Auber and Clauren. Auber
faithfully renders note for note what the other writes word for
word, — braggadocio, degrading sensuality, pedantry, epicurism,
and parodies of foreign nationality. But why should Clauren be
effaced from the literature of the day ? Is it prejudicial to any
one that he should remain where he is ? and do you read what is
really good with less interest ? Any young poet must indeed be
degenerate, if he does not cordially hate and despise such trash:
but it is only too true that the people like him; so it is all very
well — it is only the people's loss. Write me your opinion of the
( Parisienne^ I sometimes sing it to myself as I go along: it
makes a man walk like a chorister in a procession.
9900
CATULLE MENDfeS
(1843-1909)
|HE writings of Catulle Mendes are representative of the
cameo-art in literature. His little stories and sketches are
of a dainty and polished workmanship, and of minute, com-
plex design. The French faculty of attaining perfection in miniature
was his to a high degree. He was born in Bordeaux in 1843, and in
1860 he began writing for the reviews. His short tales were written
with exquisite nonchalance of style; but underneath their graceful
lightness there are not wanting signs of a deep insight into human
nature, and into life's little ironies. The
pretty stories, so delicately constructed, hint
of a more serious intention in their fram-
ing than merely to amuse. (The Mirror*
might be read to nursery children and to
an audience of sages with equal pertinence.
The < Man of Letters > condenses the experi-
ence of a thousand weary writers into a few
paragraphs. In the pastoral of vagabond
Philip and the little white goat with gilded
horns, there is all the fragrance of the
country and of a wandering outdoor life.
< Charity Rewarded* embodies the unique
quality of Mendes in its perfection. He was
able to put a world of meaning into a
phrase, as when he wrote that the pretty lasses and handsome lads
did not see the beggar at the roadside because they were occupied
« with singing and with love." Sometimes he put a landscape into
a sentence, as when Philip in the country hears (< noon rung out from
a slender steeple. »
Mendes was a poet as well as a writer of stories. It should be said,
however, that much that he produced in later years did not represent
his higher gifts. Catulle Mendes died on Februry 8, 1909.
CATULLE MENDES
CATULLE MENDES 9901
THE FOOLISH WISH
From the <Contes du Rouet>
BAREFOOT, his hair blowing in the wind, a vagabond was pass-
ing along the way before the King's palace. Very young,
he was very handsome, with his golden curls, his great
black eyes, and his mouth fresh as a rose after rain. As if the
sun had taken pleasure in looking at him, there was more joy
and light on his rags than on the satins, velvets, and brocades
of the gentlemen and noble ladies grouped in the court of honor.
<( Oh, how pretty she is ! }) he exclaimed, suddenly stopping.
He had discovered the princess Rosalind, who was taking the
fresh air at her window; and indeed it would be impossible to
see anything on earth as pretty as she. Motionless, with arms
lifted toward the casement as toward an opening in the sky
which revealed Paradise, he would have stayed there until even-
ing if a guard had not driven him off with a blow of his par-
tisan, with hard words.
He went away hanging his head. It seemed to him now that
everything was dark before him, around him, — the horizon, the
road, the blossoming trees. Now that he no longer saw Rosa-
lind he thought the sun was dead. He sat down under an oak
on the edge of the wood, and began to weep.
(( Well, my child, why are you sorrowing thus ? }> asked an
old woman who came out of the wood, her back bowed under
a heap of withered boughs.
<( What good would it do me to tell you ? You can't do any-
thing for me, good woman. w
<( In that you are mistaken, w said the old woman.
At the same time she drew herself up, throwing away her
bundle. She was no longer an old forester, but a fairy beautiful
as the day, clad in a silver robe, her hair garlanded with flowers
of precious stones. As to the withered boughs, they had taken
flight, covering themselves with green leaves; and returned to
the trees from which they had fallen, shaken with the song of
birds.
<(O Madame Fairy!" said the vagabond, throwing himself on
his knees, <( have pity on my misfortune. Since seeing the King's
daughter, who was taking the fresh air at her window, my heart
is no longer my own. I feel that I shall never love any other
woman but her."
CATULLE MENDES
(< Good ! w said the fairy : (< that's no great misfortune. w
"Could there be a greater one for me? I shall die if I do
not become the princess's husband. w
<( What hinders you ? Rosalind is not betrothed. J>
<( O madame, look at my rags, my bare feet. I am a poor
boy who begs along the way."
"Never mind! He who loves sincerely cannot fail to be
loved. That is the happy eternal law. The King and Queen
will repulse you with contempt, the courtiers will make you a
laughing-stock: but if your love is genuine, Rosalind will be
touched by it; and some evening when you have been driven off
by the servants and worried by the dogs, she will come to you
blushing and happy. }>
The boy shook his head. He did not believe that such a
miracle was possible.
<( Take care ! >y continued the fairy. <( Love does not like to
have his power doubted, and you might be punished in some
cruel fashion for your little faith. However, since you are suf-
fering, I am willing to help you. Make a wish: I will grant it.*
<( I wish to be the most powerful prince on the earth, so that
I can marry the princess whom I adore. )}
<(Ah! Why don't you go without any such care, and sing a
love song under her window ? But as I have promised, you shall
have your desire. But I must warn you of one thing: when you
have ceased to be what you are now, no enchanter, no fairy —
not even I — can restore you to your first state. Once a prince,
you will be one for always. >}
(< Do you think that the royal husband of Princess Rosalind
will ever want to go and beg his bread on the roads ? >}
(< I wish you happiness, >} said the fairy with a sigh.
Then with a golden wand she touched his shoulder; and in
a sudden metamorphosis, the vagabond became a magnificent
lord, sparkling with silk and jewels, astride a Hungarian steed,
at the head of a train of plumed courtiers, and of warriors in
golden armor who sounded trumpets.
So great a prince was not to be ill received at court. They
gave him a most cordial welcome. For a whole week there were
carousals, and balls, and all kinds of festivities in his honor.
But these pleasures did not absorb him. Every hour of the day
and night he thought of Rosalind. When he saw her he felt
his heart overflow with delight. When she spoke he thought he
CATULLE MENDES
heard divine music; and once he almost swooned with joy when
he gave her his hand to dance a pavan. One thing vexed him
a little: she whom he loved so much did not seem to heed the
pains he took for her. She usually remained silent and melan-
choly. He persisted, nevertheless, in his plan of asking her
in marriage; and naturally Rosalind's parents took care not to
refuse so illustrious a match. Thus the former vagabond was
about to possess the most beautiful princess in the world! Such
extraordinary felicity so agitated him that he responded to the
King's consent by gestures hardly compatible with his rank, and
a little more and he would have danced the pavan all alone
before the whole court. Alas! this great joy had only a short
duration. Hardly had Rosalind been informed of the paternal
will, when she fell half dead into the arms of her maids of
honor; and when she came to, it was to say, sobbing and wring-
ing her hands, that she did not want to marry, that she would
rather kill herself than wed the prince.
More despairing than can be expressed, the unhappy lover
precipitated himself in spite of etiquette into the room where
the princess had been carried; and fell on his knees, with arms
stretched toward her.
<( Cruel' girl ! » he cried : <( take back the words which are kill-
ing me!"
She slowly opened her eyes, and answered languidly yet
firmly : —
<( Prince, nothing can overcome my resolve : I will never
marry you.*
"What! you have the barbarity to lacerate a heart which is
all your own? What crime have I committed to deserve such a
punishment ? Do you doubt my love ? Do you fear that some
day I may cease to adore you ? Ah ! if you could read within
me, you would no longer have this doubt nor these fears. My
passion is so ardent that it renders me worthy even of your
incomparable beauty. And if you will not be moved by my
complaints, I will find only in death a remedy for my woes!
Restore me to hope, princess, or I will go to die at your feet."
He did not end his discourse there. He said everything that
the most violent grief can teach a loving heart; so that Rosalind
was touched, but not as he wished.
t( Unhappy prince, » she said, (<if my pity instead of my
love can be a consolation to you, I willingly grant it. I have as
99o4
CATULLE MENDES
much reason to complain as you; since I myself am enduring
the torments which are wringing you."
* What do you mean, princess ? }>
<(Alas! if I refuse to marry you, it is because I love with a
hopeless love a young vagabond with bare feet and hair blowing
in the wind, who passed my father's palace one day and looked
at me, and who has never come back ! w
THE SLEEPING BEAUTY
From the <Contes du Rouet>
IT is not alone history which is heedlessly written, but legend
as well; and it must be admitted that the most conscien-
tious and best-informed story-tellers — Madame d'Aulnoy, good
Perrault himself — have frequently related things in not exactly
the fashion in which they happened in fairyland. For example,
Cinderella's eldest sister did not wear to the prince's ball a red
velvet dress with English garniture, as has been hitherto sup-
posed: she had a scarlet robe embroidered with silver and laced
with gold. Among the monarchs of all the countries invited
to the wedding of Peau d'Ane some indeed did come in sedan
chairs, others in cabs, the most distant mounted on eagles, tigers,
or elephants; but they have omitted to tell us that the King
of Mataguin entered the palace court between the wings of a
monster whose nostrils emitted flames of precious stones. And
don't think to catch me napping by demanding how and by
whom I was enlightened upon these important points. I used to
know, in a cottage on the edge of a field, a very old woman;
old enough to be a fairy, and whom I always suspected of being
one. As I used to go sometimes and keep her company when
she was warming herself in the sun before her little house, she
took me into friendship; and a few days before she died, — or
returned, her expiation finished, to the land of Vivians and
Melusinas, — she made me a farewell gift of a very old and
very extraordinary spinning-wheel. For every time the wheel is
turned it begins to talk or to sing in a soft little voice, like that
of a grandmother who is cheerful and chatters. It tells many
pretty stories: some that nobody knows; others that it knows
better than any one else; and in this last case, as it does not
lack malice, it delights to point out and to rectify the mistakes of
those who have taken upon themselves to write these accounts.
CATULLE MENDES
9905
You will see that I had something to learn, and you would
be very much astonished if I were to tell you all that has been
revealed to me. Now you think you know all the details ot
the story of the princess, who having pierced her hand with a
spindle, fell into a sleep so profound that no one could wake
her; and who lay in a castle in the midst of a park, on a bed
embroidered with gold and silver. I am sorry to say that you
know nothing at all about it, or else that you are much mistaken
as to the end of this accident; and you will never know if I do
not make it my duty to inform you.
Yes, yes, — hummed the Wheel, — the princess had been sleep-
ing for a hundred years, when a young prince, impelled by love
and by glory, resolved to penetrate to her and to waken her.
The great trees, the thorns and brambles, drew aside of their
own accord to let him pass. . He walked toward the castle, which
he saw at the end of a broad avenue; he entered; and what
surprised him a little, none of his company had been able to fol-
low him, because the trees had grown together again as soon as
he had passed. At last, when he had crossed several courts paved
with marble, — where porters with pimpled noses and red faces
were sleeping beside their cups, in which were remaining a few
drops of wine, which showed plainly enough that they had gone
to sleep while drinking; when he had traversed long vestibules
and climbed staircases where the guards were snoring, his car-
bine on his shoulder, — he finally found himself in a gilded
room, and saw on a bed with open curtains the most beautiful
sight he had ever beheld, — a princess who seemed about fifteen
or sixteen, and whose resplendent beauty had something lumi-
nous and divine.
I grant that things happened in this way. — it is the Wheel
who is speaking, — and up to this point the author has not been
audaciously false. But nothing is more untrue than the rest of
the tale; and I cannot admit that the awakened Beauty looked
lovingly at the prince, or that she said to him, (< Is it you ? you
have kept me waiting a long time."
If you want to know the truth, listen.
The princess stretched her arms, raised her head a little, half
opened her eyes, closed them as if afraid of the light, and sighed
long, while Puff her little dog, also awakened, yelped with rage.
"What has happened ? w asked the fairy's goddaughter at last;
<(and what do they want of me?*
9906
CATULLE MENDES
The prince on his knees exclaimed: —
<(He who has come is he who adores you, and who has braved
the greatest dangers » (he flattered himself a little) <(to draw you
from the enchantment in which you were captive. Leave this
bed where you have been sleeping for a hundred years, give me
your hand, and let us go back together into brightness and life.*
Astonished at these words, she considered him, and could not
help smiling; for he was a very well made young prince, with
the most beautiful eyes in the world, and he spoke in a very
melodious voice.
"So it is true," she said, pushing back her hair: <(the hour is
come when I can be delivered from my long, long sleep?*
" Yes, you can. }>
«Ah!» said she.
And she thought. Then she went on: —
"What will happen to me if I come out of the shadows, if 1
return among the living ? »
<( Can't you guess ? Have you forgotten that you are the
daughter of a king ? You will see your' people hastening to wel-
come you, charmed, uttering cries of pleasure, and waving gay
banners. The women and children will kiss the hem of your
gown. In short, you will be the most powerful, most honored
queen in the world. )}
(< I shall like to be queen, w she said. "What else will happen
to me ? »
"You will live in a palace bright as gold; and ascending
the steps to your throne, you will tread upon mosaics of dia-
monds. The courtiers grouped about you will sing your praises.
The most august brows will incline under the all-powerful grace
of your smile."
" To be praised and obeyed will be charming, " she said.
" Shall I have other pleasures ? "
<( Maids of honor as skillful as the fairies. Your godmothers
will dress you in robes the color of moon and sun. They will
powder your hair, put tiny black patches at the brink of your
eye or at the corner of your mouth. You will have a grand
golden mantle trailing after you."
"Good!" she said. <( I was always a little coquettish."
" Pages as pretty as birds will offer you dishes of the most
delicious sweetmeats, will pour in your cup the sweet wines which
are so fragrant. w
CATULLE MENDES
<(That is very fine," she said. <( I was always a little greedy
Will those be all of my joys ? "
<( Another delight, the greatest of all, awaits you."
«Ah! what?"
<( You will be loved. "
«By whom?"
(< By me ! — Unless you think me unworthy to claim your af-
fection. "
(< You are a fine-looking prince; and your costume is very
becoming. "
(< If you deign not to repel my prayers, I will give you my
whole heart for another kingdom of which you shall be sovereign;
and I will never cease to be the grateful slave of your cruelest
caprices. "
(< Ah ! what happiness you promise me ! "
(< Rise then, sweetheart, and follow me. "
« Follow you ? Already ? Wait a little. I must reflect. There
is doubtless more than one tempting thing among all that you
offer me; but do you know if I may not have to leave better in
order to obtain it ? "
(< What do you mean, princess ? "
<( I have been sleeping for a century, it is true ; but I have
been dreaming too, for a century. In my dreams I am also a
queen, and of what a divine kingdom! My palace has walls of
light. I have angels for courtiers, who celebrate me in music of
infinite sweetness. I tread on branches of stars. If you knew
what beautiful dresses I wear, the peerless fruits I have on my
table, and the honey wines in which I moisten my lips! As for
love, believe me, I don't lack that either; for I am adored by a
husband who is handsomer than all the princes of the earth, and
who has been faithful for a hundred years. Everything con-
sidered, I think, my lord, that I should gain nothing by coming
out of my enchantment. Please let me sleep. "
Thereupon she turned toward the side of the bed, drew her
hair over her eyes, and resumed her long nap; while Puff the
little dog stopped yelping, content, her nose on her paws.
The prince went away much abashed. And since then, thanks
to the protection of the good fairies, no one has come to disturb
the slumbers of the Sleeping Beauty.
9908 CATULLE MENDES
THE CHARITY OF SYMPATHY
From <The Humor of France >
ON THE Spanish high-road, where the pretty lasses and the
handsome lads arm-in-arm were returning1 from the Cor-
rida, a young beggar, wrapped in his ragged cloak, asked
alms, saying he had eaten nothing for two days. Judging from
his miserable appearance and his hollow cheeks, it was plain he
did not lie. However, no one took any heed of him, occupied
as they were with singing and love. Must he be left to die of
hunger, the handsome beggar, by the roadside ?
But three girls of twenty years, plump, laughing, stopped and
took pity on him.
The first gave him a real.
« Thank you," he said.
The second gave him a smaller coin.
<(May God reward you," he said.
The third — the poorest and the prettiest — had neither small
coins nor reals; she gave him a kiss. The starving man spoke
never a word; but a flower-seller happening to come by, he
spent all the money they had just given him on a big bunch of
roses, and presented it to the pretty girl.
Translated by Elizabeth Lee.
THE MIRROR
From (The Humor of France*
IT WAS in a kingdom in which there was no mirror. All the
mirrors — those you hang on the walls, those you hold in
your hand, those you carry on the chatelaine — had been
broken, reduced to the tiniest bits by order of the Queen. If the
smallest glass was found, no matter in what house, she never
failed to put the inhabitants to death with terrible tortures. I
can tell you the motives of the strange caprice. Ugly to a
degree that the worst monsters would have seemed charming
beside her, the Queen did not wish when she went about the
town to run the risk of encountering her reflection; and knowing
herself to be hideous, it was a consolation to her to think that
others at least could not see their beauty. What was the good
CATULLE MENDES
9909
of having the most beautiful eyes in the world, a mouth as fresh
as roses, and of putting flowers in your hair, if you could not see
your head-dress, nor your mouth, nor your eyes ? You could not
even count on your reflection in the brooks and lakes. The
rivers and ponds of the country had been hidden under deftly
joined slabs of stone; water was drawn from wells so deep that
you could not see their surface, and not in pails in which reflec-
tion would have been possible, but in almost flat troughs. The
grief was beyond anything you can imagine, especially among the
coquettes, who were not rarer in that country than in others.
And the Queen did not pity them at all; but was well content
that her subjects should be as unhappy at not seeing themselves
as she would have been furious at sight of herself.
However, there was in a suburb of the town a young girl
called Jacinthe, who was not quite so miserable as the rest, be-
cause of a lover she had. Some one who finds you beautiful, and
never tires of telling you so, can take the place of a mirror.
(< What, truly ? }> she asked, (< there is nothing unpleasant in
the color of my eyes ? J>
<( They are like corn-flowers in which a clear drop of amber
has fallen.*
«My skin isn't black ?»
<( Know that your brow is purer than snow crystals ; know that
your cheeks are like roses fair yet pink ! }>
« What must I think of my lips ? »
<( That they are like a ripe raspberry. w
(<And what of my teeth, if you please ? w
"That grains of rice, however fine, are not as white. w
<( But about my ears, haven't I reason for disquiet ? })
(<Yes, if it disquiets you to have in a tangle of light hair, two
little shells as intricate as newly opened violets. })
Thus they talked, — she charmed, he more ravished still; for
he did not say a word which was not the very truth. All that
she had the pleasure of hearing praised, he had the delight of see-
ing. So their mutual tenderness grew livelier from hour to hour.
The day he asked if she would consent to have him for her hus-
band, she blushed, but certainly not from fear; people who seeing
her smile might have thought she was amusing herself with the
thought of saying no, would have been much mistaken. The
misfortune was, that the news of the engagement came to the
ears of the wicked Queen, whose only joy was to trouble that of
99 10 CATULLE MENDES
others; and she hated Jacinthe more than all, because she was
the most beautiful of all.
Walking one day, a short time before the wedding1, in the
orchard, an old woman approached Jacinthe asking alms; then
suddenly fell back with a shriek, like some one who has nearly
trodden on a toad.
(<Ah, heaven! what have I seen?"
<( What's the matter, my good woman, and what have you
seen ? Speak. "
"The ugliest thing on the face of the earth.0
"Certainly that isn't me," said Jacinthe, smiling.
"Alas! yes, poor child, it is you. I have been a long time in
the world, but I never yet met any one so hideous as you are."
" Do you mean to say that I am ugly — I ? "
<( A hundred times more than it is possible to express ! "
« What ! my eyes ? "
"They are gray as dust; but that would be nothing if you
did not squint in the most disagreeable way."
« My skin ? "
" One would say that you had rubbed your forehead and
cheeks with coal-dust."
« My mouth ? "
<( It is pale like an old autumnal flower,"
« My teeth ? "
" If the beauty of teeth was to be large and yellow, I should
not know any more beautiful than yours."
<(Ah! At least my ears—"
" They are so big, so red, and so hairy, one cannot look at
them without horror. I am not at all pretty myself, and yet I
think I should die of shame if I had the like."
Thereupon the old woman, who must have been some wicked
fairy, a friend of the wicked Queen, fled, cruelly laughing; while
Jacinthe, all in tears, sank down on a bench under the apple-
trees.
Nothing could divert her from her affliction. <( I am ugly ! I
am ugly ! " she repeated unceasingly. In vain her lover assured
her of the contrary with many oaths. <( Leave me ! you are lying
out of pity. I understand everything now. It is not love but
pity that you feel for me. The beggar-woman had no interest
in deceiving me ; why should she do so ? It is only too true : I
am hideous. I cannot conceive how you even endure the sight
CATULLE MENDES
of me." In order to undeceive her, it occurred to him to make
many people visit her: every man declared that Jacinthe was
exactly made for the pleasure of eyes; several women said as
much in a fashion a little less positive. The poor child persisted
in the conviction that she was an object of horror. <( You are
planning together to impose upon me ! " and as the lover pressed
her, in spite of all, to fix the day for the wedding, (< I your
wife ! " she cried, <( never ! I love you too tenderly to make you
a present of such a frightful thing as I am." You can guess the
despair of this young man, so sincerely enamored. He threw
himself on his knees, he begged, he supplicated. She always
answered the same thing, that she was too ugly to marry. What
was he to do ? The only means of contradicting the old woman,
of proving the truth to Jacinthe, would have been to put a mir-
ror before her eyes. But there was not a mirror in the whole
kingdom; and the terror inspired by the Queen was so great that
no artisan would have consented to make one.
(< Well, I shall go to court, " said the lover at last. <( However
barbarous our mistress is, she cannot fail to be moved by my
tears and Jacinthe's beauty. She will retract, if only for a few
hours, the cruel command from which all the harm comes." It
was not without difficulty that the young girl allowed herself to
be conducted to the palace. She did not want to show herself,
being so ugly; and then, what would be the use of a mirror
except to convince her still more of her irremediable misfor-
tune ? However, she finally consented, seeing that her lover was
weeping.
<( Well, what is it ? " said the wicked Queen. <( Who are these
people, and what do they want of me ? "
"Your Majesty, you see before you the most wretched lover
on the face of the earth."
tt That's a fine reason for disturbing me."
«Do not be pitiless."
<( But what have I to do with your love troubles ? "
(< If you would allow a mirror — "
The Queen rose, shaking with anger.
<( You dare to talk of a mirror ! " she said, gnashing her teeth.
<( Do not be angry, your Majesty. I beseech you, pardon me
and deign to hear me. The young girl you see before you labors
under the most unaccountable error: she imagines that she is
ugly — "
CATULLE MENDES
"Well!" said the Queen with a fierce laugh, «she is right! 1
never saw, I think, a more frightful object. w
At those words Jacinthe thought she should die of grief.
Doubt was no longer possible, since to the Queen's eyes as well
as to those of the beggar she was ugly. Slowly she lowered her
eyelids, and fell fainting on the steps of the throne, looking like
a dead woman. But when her lover heard the cruel words, he
was by no means resigned; he shouted loudly that either the
Queen was mad, or that she had some reason for so gross a lie.
He had not time to say a word more; the guards seized him and
held him fast. At a sign from the Queen some one advanced,
who was the executioner. He was always near the throne, be-
cause he might be wanted at any moment.
(< Do your duty," said the Queen, pointing to the man who had
insulted her.
The executioner lifted a big sword, while Jacinthe, not know-
ing where she was, beating the air with her hands, languidly
opened one eye, and then two very different cries were heard.
One was a shout of joy, for in the bright naked steel Jacinthe
saw herself, so deliciously pretty! and the other was a cry of
pain, a rattle, because the ugly and wicked Queen gave up the
ghost in shame and anger at having also seen herself in the
unthought-of mirror.
THE MAN OF LETTERS
From <The Humor of France*
LAST, evening, a poet, as yet unknown, was correcting the last
sheets of his first book. A famous man of letters, who
happened to be there, quickly caught hold of the young
man's hand, and said in a rough voice, <( Don't send the press
proofs! Don't publish those poems!*
<( You consider them bad ? w
(< I haven't read them, and I don't want to read them. They
are possibly excellent. But beware of publishing them."
«Why?w
<( Because, the book once out, you would henceforth be irre-
mediably an author, an artist — that is to say. a monster ! }>
«A monster ? »
«Yes.»
CATULLE MENDES
(<Are you a monster, dear master ?"
« Certainly ! and one of the worst kind ; for I have been writ-
ing poems, novels, and plays longer than many others."
The young man opened his eyes wide. The other, walking
up and down the room, violently gesticulating, continued: —
"True, we are honest, upright, and loyal! Twenty or thirty
years ago it was the fashion for literary men to borrow a hun-
dred sous and forget to return them; to leave their lodgings
without giving the landlord notice; and never to pay, even in a
dream, their bootmaker or their tailor. To owe was a sort of
duty. Follies of one's youth! The Bohemians have disappeared;
literature has become respectable. We have cut our hair and
put our affairs in order. We no longer wear red waistcoats;
and our concierge bows to us because we give him tips, just as
politely as he does to the banker on the ground floor or the law-
yer on the second. Good citizens, good husbands, good fathers,
we prepare ourselves epitaphs full of honor. I fought in the last
war side by side with Henri Regnault; I have a wife to whom
I have never given the slightest cause for sorrow; and I myself
teach my three children geography and history, and bring them
up to have a horror of literature. Better still: it happened to
me — a remarkable turning of the tables — to lend six thousand
francs to one of my uncles, an ironmonger at Angouleme, who
had foolishly got into difficulties, and not without reading him a
severe lecture. In a word, we are orderly, correct persons. But
I say we are monsters. For isn't it indeed a monstrous thing,
being a man, not to be — not to be able to be — a man like other
men ? to be unable to love or to hate, to rejoice or to suffer,
as others love or hate, rejoice or suffer? And we cannot, — no,
no, never, — not under any circumstances! Obliged to consider
or observe, obliged to study, analyze, in ourselves and outside
ourselves, all feelings, all passions; to be ever on the watch for
the result, to follow its development and fall, to consign to our
memory the attitudes they bring forth, the language they inspire, —
we have definitely killed in ourselves the faculty of real emotion,
the power of being happy or unhappy with simplicity. We have
lost all the holy unctuousness of the soul! It has become impos-
sible for us, when we experience, to confine ourselves to expe-
riencing. We verify, we appraise our hopes, our agonies, our
anguish of heart, our joys; we take note of the jealous torments
that devour us when she whom we expect does not come to the
CATULLE MENDES
tryst; our abominable critical sense judges kisses and caresses,
compares them, approves of them or not, makes reservations;
we discover faults of taste in our transports of joy or grief; we
mingle grammar with love, and at the supreme moment of pas-
sion, when we say to our terrified mistress, ( Oh, I want you to
love me till death ! } are victims of the relative pronoun, of the
particle. Literature! literature! you have become our heart, our
senses, oilr flesh, our voice. It is not a life that we live — it is
a poem, or a novel, or a play. Ah! I would give up all the
fame that thirty years of work have brought me, in order to
weep for one single moment without perceiving that I am
weeping !)}
Translation of Elizabeth Lee.
MARCELINO MENENDEZ Y PELAYO
(1856-1912)
BY FEDERICO DE ONIS
>ENENDEZ Y PELAYO was born in Santander, a centre of Old
Castile, and he died in Madrid. His life was entirely devoted
to books. His first works were published when he was barely
twenty years old; and coming from one so young, they occasioned great
surprise for the amount of reading they presupposed. His death, forty
years later, occurred in his splendid library in Santander, one of the best
in the whole world of Spanish books. The fact seems symbolic of his
regret at leaving the world when so many books still remained to be
read. Much of his writing, especially of his early production, is bound
up with the passions and quarrels of politics. To this is due in large
measure the rapid popularity he attained — a success far greater than
usually comes to scholars and men of science. However he never came
to take an active part in politics. His whole energy was consecrated to
his literary studies, to the writing and publication of his own volumes.
In the work of Menendez y Pelayo there is no unifying system of
philosophical thought, nor is there any original method of literary
criticism. As regards his ideas we have the two cardinal points of his
traditionalism and his Catholicism; but they present neither the con-
sistency nor the rigorousness that might be expected. At bottom he was
a tolerant person, much more deeply sensitive to aesthetic beauty than
interested in purely rational questions: he finally settled down, in his
Spanish environment, as an avowed enemy of uncompromising scholas-
ticism, as a prudent and amiable eclectic. . Indeed his religious feeling
seems to have arisen in his mind largely as an attitude toward a problem
of Spanish history: Catholicism is the essence of Spanish civilization, of
Spanish mentality; in defending it, therefore, we defend our racial, our
national tradition.
This nationalistic spirit, combined with a deep intuitive sense of
beauty and art, is the only unifying bond of Menendez y Pelayo's work.
When he appeared before the public, Spanish literary studies were in the
hands of a few scholars more or less deserving, but who lacked the power
of creating general ideas capable of interpreting as a whole the vast
field of Spanish bibliography. This was the task Menendez y Pelayo
set himself; and he performed it with a success equalled neither before
nor since.
His first publications were polemical works directed to the defense of
99I4b MARCELINO MENENDEZ Y PELAYO
Spanish traditions against the attacks leveled against them, before
and during his time, both by Spanish and foreign writers. Thus his
(History of Spanish Heretics) was written to prove that the genuine
thought of Spain is Catholic, and that outside of Catholicism, only by
rare exception have works of any value been produced. Catholicism,
far from being the cause of the national backwardness, is on the con-
trary the inspiration of the best and noblest elements of Spanish culture.
Similarly his (Spanish Science) is a response to the long-standing
accusation that Spain has not contributed as much as other peoples to
the development of the scientific civilization of modern times. These
((theses,)) these ((apologies)) of Spanish life, brought their author rapidly
into the public eye. They have the merits and defects of all such works.
They possess emotional tone and enthusiasm but they are not always
statements of the exact truth. It may well be that the two theses there
sustained by Menendez y Pelayo are true, or indeed true with certain
restrictions. It is apparent however that the method used by the
author — that of passionate affirmation — is not the best adapted to
carrying conviction. In fact, to prove his point Menendez y Pelayo
would have been obliged to undertake the for him impossible task of
writing the whole history of Spanish science and Spanish religion in its
minutest details. That is why these works remain valuable exclusively
for the rich bibliography they contain, for the precious citations of rare
documents made in them.
On the other hand, in the field of literary criticism, the work of
Menendez y Pelayo is less debated and less debatable. We may say
that there is no important point of Spanish literature about which he
has not said something decisive, something which will, at least, have to
be reckoned with as the interpretation of a man of fine taste and extra-
ordinary insight, who is the most illustrious and representative writer
of an epoch of Spanish criticism. It was he who broke the almost virgin
soil of Spanish literature, establishing an order and a hierarchy in the
midst of a vast chaos of writings, fixing evaluations which have hitherto
stood as the most exact and discerning yet attained. Some of his sub-
jects were treated with the greatest detail, and all his work shows a
vast erudition. He clothed his learning with a noble Castilian style
which makes many of his pages models of Spanish prose. This critical
work he supplemented with original productions in prose and verse.
His volume of elegant verse, of classic tendencies, is far from being
without interest.
Among these critical works, above referred to, an important place is
occupied by the (History of ^Esthetic Ideas in Spain.) This was a
study made by the author as, to his notion, a necessary preliminary to a
general history of Spanish literature which he had in view, but which
was never completed, though many of the chapters written for it appear
in other works. The (History of ^Esthetic Ideas) however remains
MARCELINO MENENDEZ Y PELAYO 99I4C
perhaps the most important general study of Spanish literature that we
possess, though the greater part of the work is devoted to the history of
aesthetic ideas outside of Spain. Such a comprehensive work could
hardly be of equal value in all its parts. Critics usually consider the
portions devoted to the early periods of Christianity and to modern
Romanticism as the most solid.
The most important chapters of his history of Spanish literature,
left complete by Menendez y Pelayo, are the studies on the novela
(prefaces to the relative volumes in his ( New Library of Spanish Au-
thors)) and on Spanish poetry (preface to his (Anthology of Spanish
Lyric Poets)). The fact that mere prefaces constitute the most valu-
able portion of his work gives some idea of the spontaneity of his dis-
organized talent, so exuberant and rich, so incapable of method and
system. These prefaces, both as regards scope and preparation, form
real treatises, easily capable of extension into one or several volumes.
The other subjects of the history were conceived along vast lines —
so comprehensively in fact that almost all of them, though begun
many years ago, remained incomplete at the author's death.
The same may be said of another monumental work planned by
Menendez y Pelayo, his critical edition of the works of Lope de Vega,
published by the Spanish Academy. While the text-constitution of this
edition is not overscrupulous, the introduction to each of the comedies
is a treasure-store of erudition and a masterpiece of criticism. Taking
these introductions together, and in view of the extraordinary wealth
of suggestion in an author like Lope, we get another surprising result,
though here again the disorder that reigned in the critic's mind mars
the utility of his work. Another great work on the Spanish theatre is
his study on Calderon.
Barely to mention the bibliographical studies on (Horace in Spain)
and on classic Latin letters in Spain, we come to the (Studies in Literary
Criticism) which complete Menendez y Pelayo's varied production.
Here in short essays and lectures, brilliant and eloquent in execution, we
have discussions of the most diverse themes of Spanish literature.
These essays are of quite general competence, though the author, in his
inattention to an occasional detail, cannot be called a ((specialist)) in the
modern sense of the term. Here his mind plays freely with all its
power of suggestiveness and vision, running over wide territories, with-
out ever losing the sense of perspective. In his erudition Menendez y
Pelayo is neither a compiler nor a synthetizer. He does indeed use to
advantage the studies of other scholars, but in reality the subjects he
attacks are most often new. In this work lay his special gift, his distinc-
tive originality. He had the power of rapid evaluation, the faculty of
erecting solid structures in criticism from among the scattered' relics of
the whole civilization of a people. On this kind of work rests the title
of Menendez y Pelayo as the greatest Spanish historian of the nineteenth
99l4d MARCELINO MENENDEZ Y PELAYO
century. The advance of modern learning may perhaps render much of
this labor antiquated to future generations of scholars, as far as the
groundwork of erudition and documentation on which it rests is con-
cerned. But they have then a generous residue of artistic merit on which
to rely. The permanent elements in the writing of Menendez y Pelayo
are his passionate national spirit and his intense love of beauty.
CALDERON
From (Calderon y su Teatro) (pp. 374-402), por Marcelino Menendez y Pelayo,
Madrid, 1884, Vol. xxi, of the Coleccion de Escritorcs Castellanos.
Translated by Arthur Livingston.
LET us examine Calderon in his historical significance, viewing
him as part of the seventeenth century where the dramatic
school is led by Lope de Vega. As regards certain literary
qualities of the first importance, Calderon proves to be not only our
leading dramatist, but the symbol, the compendium, the crown of
the Spanish stage. On the other hand as regards certain secondary
but nevertheless very important artistic considerations he is far from
being our leader. Comparing without preconceptions or prejudice
the theatre of Calderon with that of Lope, of Tirso de Molina, of
Alarcon — we may add even a number of quite inferior men — it
is evident that Calderon yields to Lope in variety, in amplitude and
ease of execution, in facile and spontaneous inspiration, in simplicity
and fullness of expression, in naturalness and fidelity to life. He
falls far short of Lope's excellence in the interpretation of human
sentiment, in the portrayal of female character, in the presentation
of jealousy and love.
Tirso likewise surpasses Calderon in the creation of living, ener-
getic, animated characters, rich with all the complexities of human
nature, endowed with personalities as real and vivacious as those
offered to us by life itself. One looks in vain through Calderon's
work for something to approach Tirso's (Don Juan) — a figure in a
class by itself, not only superior to any other character of the Span-
ish stage, but as vital and full of energy as the personages of Shake-
speare. Calderon never attained to a conception of such universality.
Calderon lacks also Tirso's grace and -liveliness of fancy, his
picaresque licentiousness, his depth of irony, his comic spirit, his
malicious and exuberant dialogue, his happy inventiveness and pic-
turesque audacity of idiom. In the comedy of contemporary man-
MARCELINO MENENDEZ Y PELAYO
ners, of ((character,); he is second to Alarcon, who, for that matter,
has no rival among our dramatists for elegance and polish of style,
for unerring taste, for exquisite perfection of dialogue.
But in other respects, Calderon, taken as a whole, has no reason
to envy two authors generally considered as of the first class — Rojas
and Moreto — nor any of those of the second order. These second-
rate men have to be sure in occasional moments of inspiration pro-
duced works superior in merit to some plays of Calderon. But no
one of them offers a complete theatre sufficient to give them a clearly
defined and distinct dramatic physiognomy. The glory of Guillem
de Castro, for example, rests on the legendary drama entitled (Las
Modedades del Cid ) — a work superior to anything of the kind on
our stage. Similarly Mira de Amescua offers one play, (El esclavo
del Demonio, > which can rival the best work of Calderon, without
however surpassing it and remaining certainly inferior to (El Con-
denado por desconfiado) of Tirso. Rojas is distinguished by his
tragic violence, a gift possessed to quite as remarkable degree by Cal-
deron, save that Rojas attains an actual superiority in his (Garcia
del Castanar, ) and in a few lines of a monologue in (El Cain de
Cataluna.)
Calderon, then, in certain secondary qualities is inferior to Lope,
to Tirso and Alarcon; he is superior to all the others even in these
lesser qualities, or at least equals them in their most fortunate moments.
In his distinctive traits, he possesses virtues however which raise him
to a solitary pedestal: vastness of conception, loftiness in the initial,
genetic vision of his subjects. It is, for instance, useless to look in
our literature for a concept to equal that of (La vida es suefio,) as,
indeed, it would be useless to look for one anywhere else.
Calderon is a Catholic poet pre-eminently. In bringing a sort
of Christian symbolism upon the stage he is without a peer among
all our writers. We may go even farther: in the history of allegory
within the limits of Christian literature, his place is in the immediate
vicinity of Dante. Calderon has vastness of idea, a certain compre-
hensive, synthetic vigor, a sense of harmony, which, especially in
the (Autos sacramentales, ) unites the real with the ideal, the visible
with the invisible, the tangible with the intangible, earth with heaven,
and the ephemeral with the eternal. He reduces these contrarieties
to unity, making everything contribute to the greater praise of the
((Real God Pan)) — the sacramental body of Christ, as he entitled
one of his sacred plays. This symbolism, at times slovenly perhaps
and incongruous, is always however informed with a lofty and supe-
99 Uf MARCELINO MENENDEZ Y PELAYO
rior sentiment, the Christian spirituality of unhesitating faith, which
constitutes the true greatness of Calderon. In this regard Calderon
is almost a unique phenomenon in world literature. He succeeded,
if not in creating, at least in perfecting the theological drama —
which, at best, is an exceptional curiosity, one may even say, an
aberration of the aesthetic sense. It is a drama without human pas-
sions, devoid of characters and emotions, a dialogue between allegori-
cal beings, abstractions, vices, and virtues. We have evidence of
Calderon's exceptional power of imagination, of his deep penetration
into the profoundest notions of theology and philosophy, when we
consider that he was able to clothe such things with an aesthetic dress,
and actually introduce them to the theatre. The feat is a gigantic
one, even if it proved not always fortunate. Considered simply as
a tour de force it strikes the imagination for its audacity which was
never inspired by vulgar motives. This dogmatic, resolute, Christian
idealism is the soul of all the religious dramas of our poet, though
these are not, on the whole, the best in our literature. We have in
(El condenado por desconfiado) a drama more theological and more
artistic still. But leaving aside this marvelous work, the gem of the
whole religious theatre of Spain, and one of the few that show a
loving compenetration of feeling and form, the religious plays of
Calderon merit recognition as the leaders in this genre. And of these
the best is (El Principe Constante,) in which the author solved an-
other aesthetic paradox as great as that of the (Autos sacramentales. )
I refer to the successful exploitation on the stage of the impeccably
just man, free from doubts, passions, vacillations, struggles — a
character which the drama absolutely excludes, but, which, never-
theless, is here clothed with a successfully dramatic form. Aside
from this play, (La Devocion de la Cruz) will always be sure of
appreciation from intelligent audiences as a jewel in the crown of
our national literature. It is less a theological than a militant play;
but it is written with all the freedom and charm which characterize
the florid springtime of the poet, the period when he was still un-
affected by the vicious mannerisms which later attacked his work.
The (Devocion de la Cruz, > along with (El Purgatorio de San Patricio,)
where there are traces of a Dantesque vigor, in spite of the fantastic
exaggeration of the principal character; (El Magico Prodigioso,)
for the sublimity of its thought, rather than for the accuracy of its
execution, though certainly the most beautiful part of this play is
the portion derived from the popular legend, and the development
is in a measure inferior to the possibilities of the primitive idea itself;
MARCELINO MENENDEZ Y PELAYO 99*4g
and finally, the beautiful conception of (Los dos Amantes del Cielo,)
are sufficient to assure for Calderon a glorious position among the
world's cultivators of religious art.
Calderon possesses eminent tragic qualities, which doubtless
would have been more striking had he not, for perhaps unavoidable
circumstances of social environment, imprisoned them in an at-
mosphere distinctly conventional and false. Instead of real passion,
social preoccupations predominated in the society about him. Re-
lative morality held sway over absolute morality. Instincts and
passions rarely presented themselves in pure, frank, unadulterated
forms; they were veiled behind formulas of honor, reputation, etc.,
etc., which deprive them of universal, eternal value, and in fact
make them even unintelligible to other ages and other peoples. This
defect, on the other hand, explains the enormous enthusiasm with
which Calderon was welcomed in his own epoch. Unfortunately
what one gains from submission to the dominant tastes and preoccu-
pations of a given period, one loses later in universality and absolute
worth, which are independent of time and place.
To illustrate: Calderon wrote four dramas on the subject of
jealousy: (El Medico de su Honra, ) (A Secreto Agravio Secreta
Venganza,) (El Pintor de su Deshonra, ) and (El Tetrarca de Jeru-
salen. ) Yet hardly ever in these works does he touch on the real
passion of jealousy. He either subordinates that emotion to feelings
of pride and amour propre, as in (El Medico de su Honra) and (A
Secreto Agravio Secreta Venganza ) ; or he transforms it into blind
vindictiveness, as in the case of the Don Juan of (El Pintor de su
Deshonra) ; or, finally, he exaggerates and idealizes it into a delirium,
as happens in (El Tetrarca de Jerusalem. ) In his eagerness to subli-
mate the jealousy of Herod, Calderon has changed the king into a
sort of maniac quite removed from the conditions of reality. If, at
first glance, the jealousy of Herod may seem nobler and more gener-
ous than other similar passions presented on the stage, it is actually
far more irrational than that of Othello, for instance; since the Te-
trarch's jealousy springs neither from outraged honor, nor from the
suspicion thereof, nor again from the fear of any danger that may
befall him in this life; but purely and simply from his selfish
resentment that perhaps, after his death, someone else will come to
possess Marianna.
Great dramatic effects can be based only on something universal,
characteristic of the human heart in all ages ; they cannot be obtained
from the peculiar interests of a given moment in history. The sense
9914k MARCELINO MENENDEZ Y PELAYO
of honor may have been good in its origin, in the general principle
of personal dignity. But in the times of Calderon the sense of honor
had been pushed to the most remotely conceivable extremes, to the
point of justifying crime and treachery.
In spite of these serious defects, Calderon's treatment of tragic
themes is almost always of superior quality. And when by chance
he hits upon a passion consistently genuine, and free from the deadly
atmosphere in which he lived — this is the case in (El Alcalde de
Zalamea) — we get a masterpiece. In this connection we may men-
tion (Amar -despues de la muerte, ) and a few of his other efforts in
the field of the tragic.
In the comedy of contemporary manners, Calderon shows little
variety, especially if he is compared with Lope. Lope traversed and
experienced the whole of life. He excludes none of it from his come-
dies: picaros, panderers, Celestinas, they are all there, as witness
(Dorotea, ) (El Anzuelo de Fenisa, ) (El Arenal de Sevilla, ) (El
Rufian Castrucho. ) The comedy of (Capa y espada) has inimitable
models in Lope's (La Esclava de su Galan) and (El Premio del bien
hablar, > plays at once fanciful, pleasant, and facile. In a word, Lope
takes in everything; whereas Calderon is not so venturesome. His
circle is much more restricted. He scarcely ever oversteps the limits
of the middle class — hidalgos and chevaliers. He never descends
to the depths of society; rarely does he depict popular types; and
even in the social stratum which interested him, he confines himself
to a few figures, treated always in the same manner. Shall we at-
tribute this to poverty of imagination, sterility, lack of resourceful-
ness? I think not. There is hardly greater range in the comedies
of Tirso de Molina, which likewise move inside the boundaries of
conventional subjects: the lady in search of reparation for her lost
honor; the capricious princess inveigling the licentious adventurer.
The proof that it was not wholly a question of poor inventiveness
in the poet is to be found in some of the works of his early youth,
(El Astrologo fingido, ) (Hombre Pobre Todo es Trazas,) (El Alcalde
de si mismo, > and others still. There we discover the happiest apti-
tude for a comedy like that of Lope and Tirso, even for the comedy
of character. The fact is that Calderon felt an instinctive repugnance
toward presenting on the stage the prosaic, ugly, or less noble aspects
of human nature. Not only did this deprive him of an infinitude of
types, but even made such characters as he did derive from this source
artificial, thin, uninteresting, easily reducible to a formula. He
dispensed with all the figures of the brothel, which Lope had pre-
MARCELINO MENENDEZ Y PELAYO
served ; he never ventured even to represent a situation dear to Tirso
de Molina — rivalry in love between two sisters. Furthermore,
this idealistic tendency of Calderon, this willingness to present only
the poetic, generous, noble side of life, gives a similar contour even to
his favorite types: his lovers and ladies, his fathers, his brothers,
are emptied, so to speak, out of the same mold. Character, in each
of these personages, may be reduced to a simple expression. All
kinds of secondary traits, all that more or less vulgar element which
enters into the composition of all human nature along with the nobler
and more poetic impulses, are brushed aside by Calderon. Realism
is something foreign to his art ; there is no room for it in his view of
the world. Hence it is that all questions of social relations are some-
thing outside the jurisdiction of the poet: he never brought mothers
before his public — he had too much respect for the sanctity of the
home; nor would he present married ladies, save as the victims of
some terrible punishment after a fall, where the husband figures at
once as judge, avenger, and executioner.
Hence also his slight attention to the comedy of character, and
the superficial treatment accorded to such specimens of it as he pro-
duced. We may cite, in evidence, the two character sketches in
(Guardate del Agua Mansa) — that of the female hypocrite and that
of the coquette; and (No hay Burlas con el Amor) as well. As a
matter of fact, the character comedy does not exist for Calderon,
it is the exclusive inheritance of Tirso and Alarcon, — if you wish :
also of Lope, all men with tendencies toward realism much more
pronounced than is the case with Calderon.
Alarcon occasionally falls into the prosaic, after the manner of
the French, among them even Moliere; and he sometimes presents
his moral lesson didactically or as a thesis. He thus went as far as
was permissible in a literature so elegant and chivalric as that of
Spain at the beginning of the seventeenth century.
We must not forget moreover that Calderon worked in large part
by commission. He wrote for palace entertainments, for particular
spectacles, which in the nature of the case had to be quite as conven-
tional and artificial as they were ideal and fantastic. Considerations
of times, places, passions, characters were determined by the expecta-
tions of court or salon. Such were the circumstances in which his
mythological and chivalric works were produced. At best we may
hope in them for good specimens of lyric poetry, though hardly for
dramatic conditions properly so called.
Calderon 's idealism, thus, is not the harmonious perfect idealism
99I4J MARCELINO MENENDEZ Y PELAYO
of Greek tragedy or Greek sculpture, but an idealism so to speak of a
second order — the idealism of a race and of a period. He is idealistic
in the sense that he has excluded absolutely from his theatre all the
prosaic aspects — all the wrecks — of humanity. Meanwhile he
exalts, idealizes, transfigures whatever in the society of his time
seemed to him great, generous, and noble. Herein lies the real gran-
deur of his spirit. This gives him his figure as a symbol of the Spanish
race; this entitles him to the esteem he has won everywhere as our
distinctively national poet; this explains why, when an author is
sought to typify, to summarize all the intellectual and poetic great-
ness of our Golden Age, all eyes turn toward Don Pedro Calderon
de la Barca. This national character of the poet has prejudiced to
a certain extent his universality. Much of his worth and significance,
measured on the background of his age, is lost when he is considered
in the absolute and removed from the society for which he wrote.
He is, accordingly, one of the most antiquated of our authors. His
plays, save (El Alcalde,) have little interest for us on the stage and
they are very tiresome even when read. In spite of all that, the Span-
ish theatre presents no greater name.
His glory, then, rather than the glory of a poet, is the glory of an
entire nation. Calderon is ancient Spain, with all its lights and
shadows, with all its grandeur and its defects, its pretentious pomp,
its vanity, its slumber of decadence, its national pride unaffected by
national disaster, its religious sentiment, its monarchical sentiment,
its love of justice, its devotion to patriarchal privilege.. Calderon
reflects all this confusion of impulse that seethed in the vitals of
Spanish society.
99^5
GEORGE MEREDITH
(1828-1909)
BY ANNA MCCLURE SHOLL
>HAT Robert Browning is among English poets, George Mere-
dith is among English novelists. A writer of genius who
had no predecessors and who can have no posterity, the
isolation of Meredith is inherent in the very constitution of his re-
markable novels. These are so completely of the man himself that
their kind will perish with him. Their weaknesses elude the imi-
tation of the most scholarly contortionists
of English. Their strength -is altogether
superlative and unique.
In the preface to a late work Meredith
writes : <( The forecast may be hazarded that
if wre do not speedily embrace philosophy
in fiction, the art is doomed to extinction. }>
The Meredithian principle of the novel is
summed up in this prophecy. There have
not been wanting critics to whom the lusty
embraces of art with philosophy in Mr.
Meredith's novels seem productive of little
but intolerable weariness to the reader.
Be this as it may, the writer of < The Egoist >
and of the ( Tragic Comedians > has been
scrupulously faithful to his ideal of what constitutes vitality in fiction.
He never descends to the deadening, vulgarity of an intricate plot,
nor does he swamp character in incident. His men and women
reveal themselves by their subtle play upon one another in the slow
progress of situations lifelike in their apparent unimportance. They
are actors not in a romance nor in a melodrama, but in a drama of
philosophy. Sometimes this philosophy of Meredith's lies like a cloak
of lead about the delicate form of his rare poetical imagination.
The enchanting lines can only be faintly traced through the formless
shroud. The man who wrote this love passage in ( Richard Feverel*
might seem to have made sad uses of philosophy in his later books: —
GEORGE MEREDITH
<(The sweet heaven-bird shivered out his song above him. The gracious
glory of heaven fell upon his soul. He touched her hand, not moving his eyes
9916
GEORGE MEREDITH
from her nor speaking: and she with a soft word of farewell passed across the
stile, and up the pathway through the dewy shades of the copse, and out of
the arch of the light, away from his eyes.»
From the delight of pure beauty like this, the reader passes to
sentences where the metaphysician has buried the artist and poet
under the unhewn masses of his thought.
« A witty woman is a treasure : a witty beauty is a power. Has she actual
beauty, actual wit? not an empty, tidal, material beauty that pacses current
among pretty flippancy or staggering pretentiousness? Grant the combination;
she will appear a veritable queen of her period, fit for homage, at least meriting
a disposition to believe the best of her in the teeth of foul rumor; because the
well of true wit is truth itself, the gathering of the precious drops of right
reason, wisdom's lighting; and no soul possessing it and dispensing it can
justly be a target for the world, however well armed the world confronting
her. Our contemporary world, that Old Credulity and stone-hurling urchin
in one, supposes it possible for a woman to be mentally active up to the point
of spiritual clarity, and also fleshly vile — a guide to life and a biter at the
fruits of death — both open mind and a hypocrite. »
Between these two passages there is apparently a great gulf fixed,
but they are equally expressive of the genius of George Meredith.
He is a poet whose passion for mind has led him far enough away
from the poetical environment. Of all English novelists, none ap-
proach him in his absorption in the minds of men. He weaves his
novels not around what men do, but what they think. Mental sensa-
tions form the subject-matter of his chapters. He delights in minute
analyses, which, as in (The Egoist,* reveal human nature unclothed.
He laughs over his own amazing discoveries, but he seldom victim-
izes a woman. What sympathy he has with his creations falls to the
lot of his heroines. The minds of women are to George Meredith
the most fascinating subjects of research in the universe. He may
jest at times over their contradictions; but he attributes their worst
features to man, who should have been the civilizer of woman, but
who has been instead the refined savage, gloating over « veiled, vir-
ginal dolls. »
Meredith, who was born in 1828, was many years in revealing
himself to the British public, who loved him not. He had published
a volume of verse in 1851, and he was known to the narrow circle of
his friends as a poet only. His first wife was the daughter of Thomas
Love Peacock, who was in a sense the spiritual progenitor of George
Meredith the novelist. The eccentric author of < Headlong HalP and
<Maid Marian,* whose novels are peopled with « perfectibilians, dete-
riorationists, statu-quo-ites, phrenologists, transcendentalists, political
economists, theorists in all sciences, projectors in all arts, enthusiasts,
lovers of music, lovers of the picturesque, and lovers of good dinners,"
might well have influenced the author of <One of Our Conquerors.*
GEORGE MEREDITH
9917
Among- the earlier works of Meredith <The Shaving of Shagpat*
and < Farina > witness to the splendor of his imagination, but not to
the wealth of his psychological experience. < The Shaving of Shagpat '
is an extravaganza which puts the ( Arabian Nights > to shame. (The
Ordeal of Richard Feverel > is his first typical novel, and in a sense
one of his greatest, because it combines his passion for philosophical
estimates of character with his passion for beauty. Beauty to George
Meredith means women and nature. The genius -of the man forgets
theories when under this double inspiration.
One of the most perfect love scenes in the whole range of fiction
is that between Richard and Lucy alone together in the sweet fields.
Richard Feverel was a youth with whom it was intended that nature
should have little to do. He was reared upon a system, the fruit of
the dejected brain and hurt heart of his father, Sir Austin Feverel.
This system in its sublimated perfection overlooks human nature,
and provides for marriage as a play of < Hamlet y with Hamlet left
out. Richard, young, ardent, living in his youth as in a halo, breaks
through the paddock of the appointed order to marry Lucy, a farm-
er's daughter, the one woman of George Meredith adjusted to the
sentimental type. Separated from his bride, Richard is plunged
into his fiery ordeal. He comes out of it spotted, wretched, unwill-
ing to return to his girl bride, whose love had not held him from un-
faithfulness. The book closes in the sombreness of tragedy; an
ending unusual with Meredith, who inclines naturally to the comedy
of human nature. There is not a little of this comedy in < Richard
Feverel.* The household of Sir Austin is essentially the fruit of the
author's humorous insight into the eccentricities of men and women.
In his portrayal of the wise youth Adrian Harley, who will speak
only in epigrams; of Algernon Feverel, to whom dinner is both
heaven and hell; of the scheming mother; of the pale Clare, the type
of feminine submission to the inevitable, — Meredith exhibits his com-
prehension of twisted and damaged human nature and his detach-
ment from it.
No author ever took his creations less seriously, unless indeed
they are women, full of rich, vibrant life. Meredith's characters must
be a match for him, else he will hold them up to the subtle ridicule
of those who are in his secret. The men and women of < Evan Har-
rington > are thus put on the stage. Parts of this novel are supposed
to be pages from Meredith's own experience when living in a village
near London. The struggles of Evan and his sisters, who have been
hampered in their social career by their father, a tailor of foppish
pretensions, are related with delicate gusto. About these central
figures come and go a host of Meredith's own people, enveloped one
and all in the rose light of a dainty comedy of manners.
GEORGE MEREDITH
In ( Sandra Belloni * and in its sequel ( Vittoria > the transition be-
comes marked from the well-tempered realistic romance of ( Richard
Feverel,* and the frank comedy of ( Evan Harrington, } to the meta-
physical, enigmatic, subtle novels of Meredith's later manner. Yet
< Sandra Belloni > and ( Vittoria > are brilliant with (< noble strength on
fire.w The heroine Emilia is the daughter of great passions. Her
meteoric life is traced by flashes through heavy clouds of profound
and lengthy epigrams, — epigrams after the manner of Meredith, whole
paragraphs long.
In ( Diana of the Crossways > the peculiar genius of Meredith finds
more complete expression. This is a year-long novel for the reading,
and like <The Egoist * requires perhaps a lifetime for digestion. The
career of Diana, an Irish gentlewoman, strong and beautiful, pure and
fervid, made for love and leadership, is the subject of this remark-
able novel. The men who love her are seen and judged less by a
light of their own making than by the radiance of Diana. They are,
as is usual with Meredith's men, the dependents of the woman. The
author introduces his reader to his heroine by a preface unintelligible
to the uninitiated: —
(< To demand of us truth to nature excluding philosophy is really to bid
a pumpkin caper. As much as legs are wanted for the dance, philosophy
is required to make our human nature credible and acceptable. Fictioc
implores you to heave a bigger breast and take her in with this heavenly
preservative helpmate, her inspiration and her essence. There is a peep-
show and a Punch's at the corner of every street: one magnifying the lace-
work of life, another the ventral tumulus; and it is there for you, dry bones,
if you do not open to Philosophy. »
Philosophy, the guiding star of Meredith's artistic pilgrimage, leads
him in ( The Egoist ) into heavy quagmires of mannerisms. Yet this
novel is the most typical of his intricate genius. It reveals to the
full his passion for unveiling man to the gaze of man. Sir Willoughby
Patterne, the egoist, might be embodied satire on the dearest frailty
of man, were he not too lifelike and too remote from the region of
the abstract. His monstrous selfishness is set forth in such exquisite
detail that the lesson cannot possibly fail of its purpose through un-
due exaggeration. Clara Middleton, <(the dainty rogue in porcelain, }>
too precious for the clumsy fingers of Sir Willoughby, ranks with
Diana as one of the most finished creations of Meredith. She gives
to ( The Egoist > whatever charm it has. It is mainly for the sake
of George Meredith's women that the -reader adventures o'er moor
and fen and crag and torrent of his philosophical mysteries of style.
The prize is worth the quest. No one but Hardy has approached
Meredith in the portrayal of woman 'nature, and Hardy falls short of
GEORGE MEREDITH 99 rg
Meredith, because the creator of Diana has done what the creator of
Tess omits doing. He has given to the world its own nineteenth-
century women of the best type, — brilliant but not neurotic, thought-
ful but not morbid. Renee and Cecilia in <Beauchamp's Career, >
Clara Middleton in (The Egoist, > Aminta in <Lord Ormont,* Diana,
Vittoria, and others of their kin, are in their mentality women of no
century but the present; yet in their capacity for noble passion they
might be placed with Elaine in the airy tower of a forgotten castle,
or with Penelope" in the sea wanderer's palace, or with Senta in the
fisherman's hut. The milkmaid type of woman Meredith drew but
once, in Lucy. She is much more of a pink-and-white country lass
than Dahlia and Rhoda in ( Rhoda Fleming. > These sisters are in no
sense country women, unless the straightforward passionate career of
Rhoda seeking to right a ruined sister establishes her as a child of
nature. To George Meredith it is the woman who combines heart
and intellect who is to be worshiped on bended knees. His ideal of
women — and perhaps the best description of his own women — is
summed up in this passage from his essay on 'Comedy*: —
(<But those two ravishing women, so copious and so choice of speech, who
fence with men and pass their guard, are heartless ! Is it not preferable to
be the pretty idiot, the passive beauty, the adorable bundle of caprices, — very
feminine, very sympathetic of romantic and sentimental fiction ? Our women
are taught to think so. The Agnes of the < Ecole des Femmes > should be
a lesson for men. The heroines of comedy are like women of the world:
not necessarily heartless from being clear-sighted; they seem so to the sen-
timentally reared only for the reason that they use their wits, and are not
wandering vessels crying for a captain or a pilot. Comedy is an exhibition
of their battle with men, and that of men with them; and as the two, however
divergent, both look on one object, — namely, Life, — the gradual similarity of
their impressions must bring them to some resemblance. The comic poet
dares to show us men and women coming to this mutual likeness: he is for
saying that when they draw together in social life their minds grow liker ; just
as the philosopher discerns the similarity of boy and girl until the girl is
marched away to the nursery. Philosopher and comic poet are of a cousinship
in the eye they cast on life; and they are equally unpopular with our willful
English of the hazy region, and the ideal that is not to be disturbed. »
George Meredith explains himself and his doctrine so lucidly in
this paragraph, that it seems impossible ever again to join forces
with the (< willful English of the hazy region. » Yet in his latest nov-
els he sometimes compels his most penetrative disciples to apostasy.
Professor Dowden has well said that the obscurity of an author is
a matter for subsequent generations to decide; yet the obscurity of
Meredith in <One of Our Conquerors,* in the < Amazing Marriage,*
or in (Lord Ormont and his Aminta, J can scarcely be due to the
GEORGE MEREDITH
smoked glasses of his contemporaries. A writer like Meredith, who
possesses in the highest degree the unique gift of the comic insight
into life, with all that it implies of delicate sympathy and subtle
comprehension of human nature, must be expected to tell of his
extraordinary discoveries in an extraordinary tongue. The question is
pertinent, however, of whether supreme genius might not be able to
relate the same marvelous stories of humanity in a simpler speech.
MEREDITH'S POETRY
BY GERTRUDE E. T. SLAUGHTER
WHEN Meredith had become the acknowledged leader of English
letters and «the oracle of Box Hill)) he was still, as he himself
said, «an unpopular novelist and an' unaccepted poet.)) Official
criticism, having placed his novels where they will doubtless remain,
hesitates about his poems. And not without reason. For poetry such
as his cannot be accepted or rejected till the time is ripe. His forward-
reaching mind conceived ideas that were difficult to express and he
made demands upon his readers which only time can lessen. But if the
task of a poet is the reinterpretation of life, no quality is more requisite
than a ((forward imagination.)) And it may well happen that the
quality of Meredith's poetry which is the chief cause of its slow appeal
will be a reason for its final acceptance. Certainly, if poetry is to convey
a new realization of the meaning of things, it can be received only when
our highest intelligence is awake. It must be poetry that we shall cling
to with our strength and not with our weakness.
It is clear from the Letters that Meredith thought of himself always
as a poet and that he was inclined to poetical expression by every in-
stinct. Before he was twenty years old he had given proof of his ability
to sing; and the volume that he published at the age of seventy-three
shows over-concentration but no diminution of his power. Often when
he was writing the novels the ((curse of verse)) would come upon him to
((bedevil him)) and hinder his work. Poetry was his ((evil fairy who had
condemned him to poverty from the cradle through the love of verse.))
In middle life, when he was less driven by the pressure of remunerative
work, he said: ((Latterly I have felt poetically weakened by philo-
sophical reflection. But this is going and a greater strength comes of it.
For I believe I am in the shadow of the truth; and as it is my nature to
GEORGE MEREDITH 992Oa
sing I may yet do well.)) That he had the gifts of a poet none will den^:
The imaginative quality of his style, with all its ((passionate and various
beauty)) — its ability to flash meanings in a phrase and to translate
moods into pure lyrics — combined with his power over the elements
of tragedy and comedy to produce, in whatever medium, the work of a
poet. If he seemed to abuse his power at times, it was never willfully but
because of an overabundance of the intellectual vigor which enhances
the value of his most majestic lines and his most melodious cadences.
It was maintained by an English critic at the end of the century
that, in the true succession of English poets, Meredith stands next to
Wordsworth, inasmuch as no other poet after Wordsworth gave such
exalted expression to the passion of the century, which was the love of
nature, combined with so great faith in its virtue. Meredith's poetry
does in fact attach itself to Wordsworth's, although far exceeding it in
scope, in that both gave to natural phenomena, each as his own age
understood them, that (diving and colored representation)) which Sainte-
Beuve declared to be the function of poetry. To both of them nature
was the great revealing agency. Meredith accepted freely the scientific
teachings of his day toward which Tennyson's attitude was vacillating
and Browning's reactionary. He accepted them moreover with the en-
thusiasm of a poet and they became the justification of his faith, the
reasonable warrant of his dream. During the entire second half of the
century, while literary movements waxed and waned and the new world
ushered in by Darwin's popularization of scientific theories seemed
powerless to be born, Meredith was creating in his poetry an interpreta-
tion at once faithful and original of the theories and the spirit of the
new science.
His conclusions led him to none of the extremes to which, by the
subjectivity of logic, the tenets of science have led many modern thinkers.
Between the material determinism of modern literature which involves
every individual life in the energy that drives existence forward and
the narrowness of mid- Victorian individualism he held a middle ground,
asserting that by the power of the spirit the fates are within us even
while, by the laws of nature, we are in the hands of the fates, — the
inevitable paradox of life. He did not resort to the false line of reasoning
that constructs the moral world by literal deductions from the physical.
He is a poet and proceeds in a different way. Accepting the biological
theory of evolution without any sense of conflict, he sees an earth alive
with meanings; and to read those meanings is to behold the significance
of life in an impassioned vision of reality. The outlook is not through
science to despair. Nor is it to self-complacent optimism. For the
vision is not for those who (dean their heads on downy ignorance)) and
transfer their responsibilities to fate or circumstance or to the power
that somehow, in spite of us, will make for righteousness. It is for those
who have understanding minds and ((souls not lent in usury)); for those
9920 b GEORGE MEREDITH
who, scorning Fear and casting Self aside, are willing to throw them-
selves — their strength well knit — into the brave wars that must be
waged before mankind may attain to the stature of the gods. Although
struggle is the condition of growth and will never end, it is the glory of
man to share in the upward impulse of nature. And that upward
impulse, which has produced reason and love and laughter, is away
from rivalries and self-seeking toward brotherhood, away from slavery
toward liberty, from the senses to the spirit, from Earth ((Up to God's
footstool whither she reaches.)) •
It seems to Meredith that systems of religion and schemes of worship
have often ((slain the soul of brotherhood,)) whereas the aspect of nature
in the process of evolution creates both brotherhood and reverence. It
levels mankind. As old Martin says,
((It pours such a splendor on heaps of poor souls.))
But if it levels mankind and crushes the pretensions of the elect it
also creates distinctions that prove the soul. It is at this point that the
seer ventures beyond the sky-line of the scientist. For while life is at
the grindstone set to make good instruments of men, yet in the end the
fittest to survive is solved in spirit. For the spiritual is the eternal.
((Earth that gives the milk the spirit gives,)) and he whose spirit conquers
the flesh is the best-loved child of earth.
((Our lives are but a little holding lent
To do a mighty labor. We are one
With heaven and the stars if it is spent
To do God's will. Else die we with the sun.))
Among those who have admired Meredith's poems there is wide
divergence of opinion. One pronounces his fame secure because (Love
in the Valley) is the greatest love poem of the century. Another would
base his reputation on (The Woods of Westermain, ) which he regards
as a great and original achievement, while (Love in the Valley) is only a
successful venture in a popular vein. Another, who finds in (Juggling
Jerry) the universality of Homer and Shakespeare, condemns (Modern
Love,) that searching tragi-comedy which Swinburne declared to be
((above the aim and beyond the reach of any but its author,)) as artificial
and strained and false. While another who has only scorn for (Juggling
Jerry) .places (Modern Love) above Shakespeare's sonnets. Another
presses for the ballad poetry, declaring that (The Nuptials of Attila)
raises its author above the other poets of his day. Still another finds
the proof of his greatness in (Earth and Man,) another in (The Day of
the Daughter of Hades,) another in the (Ode to France,) and another in
(The Lark Ascending.)
These personal preferences have an interest as the opinions of
GEORGE MEREDITH 992Oc
interesting men. But the time has come to judge Meredith's poetry
more critically, to study it as a whole, and to inquire whether there is
not some poetic quality common to all of these types, — to nature
poetry and ballad poetry, to lyrical outbursts of simple melody and
analytical poems of deep reflection, to dramas of domestic life and
criticisms of literature, to impersonations and reminiscences and his-
tories. If they possess a unity of imaginative conception it is a greater
thing than unity of style. Similarity of form gives an easy vogue to
many a passing versifier and often betokens poverty of expression.
There is a deeper unity which is rooted in thoughtfulness and therefore
in the general life.
It is indeed difficult to understand how the rough and involved
expressions of some of the poems can be related in any way to the
melodious flow of others; how the lines of the (Ode to the Comic Spirit,)
for example, can have issued out of the same mind that produced the
stanzas of (Love in the Valley) — those stanzas that made Stevenson
((drunk like wine.)) Nothing can excuse the faults of faulty lines, and
there are many of Meredith's that nobody will read twice if he can help
it. But it is true that one may accustom oneself to inversions and
syncopated forms, and that there comes to be even a certain fascination
in the ruggedYiess and independence of the style. Its very asperities
impart a kind of strength, like the strength of the relentless sea. Whether
one will tempt this sea of verse will depend upon how forcibly one is
impelled by the power of the portions that have been revealed to one.
It is only by reading this poetry until one has penetrated through its
diversity of form to its unity of spirit that one is made aware of its power
to touch the soul with new life even as it haunts the ear with strange
melodies. The faithful reader will be led through some tangles and
desert wastes. Nevertheless he is led on an exhilarating journey. He is
taken into the secret haunt of every bird and flower of the English
countryside, where, in ((^olian silences.)) he will catch the sound of
((water, first of singers)) or the ((chirp of Ariel)) or the ((Dryad voices of
old hymning night.)) He is carried upward with the lark who ((wings our
green to wed our blue)) and taken delving into dark problems of evil and
left to rest where
((The soft night wind went laden to death
With smell of the orange in flower.))
He will meet a few members of the aristocratic world of the novels but
he will encounter oftener some roadside beggar or farmer or villager or
some princess of old romance. He will enter no unreal gardens of
Proserpine or the Sensitive Plant but in the meadows where he walks
among familiar sights he will meet Apollo and Daphne and Demeter and
Triptolemus and one who is close kin to Nausicaa. He will feel the teeth
of the fiercest wind and there is no mood of the woods that he will not
9920 d GEORGE MEREDITH
share. Wherever he is led he will find more than pictures and music,
or more than the emptiness of poetry that attempts to do the tasks of
pictures and music. But no weight of thought will prevent his tasting
((joy's excess)) and the ((savage freedom of the skies.)) He will be caught
up by the spirit of life until he echoes the poet's faith that forward sets
and his «dream of the blossom of good.))
The inherent magic of the poet is one with the fundamental tenet of
the philosopher. That which the philosopher counsels the poet realizes.
He realizes it most of all by the cumulative effect of the poetry as a
whole. It would be impossible to convey an impression of that effect
in prose, but it may be indicated by some lines in which the poet says of
Beauty and the Soul:
((He gives her homeliness in desert air
And sovereignty in spaciousness. He leads
Through widening chambers of surprise to where
Throbs rapture near an end that aye recedes
Because his touch is infinite and lends
A yonder to all ends.))
The effect of the poetry is to impart to the reader a sense of homeliness
in desert air, of sovereignty in spaciousness. ' It has the power so rare in
modern verse of compelling the mind to sink its fate, or enlarge its life,
in the encircling radiance of universal being.
It would be possible to go through the poems and show how they
contribute severally to this effect. The purest lyrics, like (The Lark
Ascending,) with its marvelous bird-song, take you into the heart of
things and make you one with nature. (The Day of the Daughter of
Hades) exalts life with ecstasy. It is a series of singing pictures, full of
the enchantment of growing things, of the glory of light, of the splendor
of storm, of the wonders wrought by the law of life and death. It is at
once the most beautiful transformation of the Demeter legend into a
modern poem and a perfect expression of the poet's view of reality.
(Love in the Valley) weaves the delights of nature and young love into
a pattern of exquisite harmonies. The sonnet-sequence, ( Modern Love,)
is the tragedy of two souls caught in the net of a subtle selfishness. It
reveals in trenchant and haunting phrases the dark depths of their
suffering and the littleness of their problem in the face of nature's great
simplicity. (The Woods of Westermain) is an alluring invitation to the
courageous soul to enter into the secrets of nature in her multitudinous
aspects and to learn joy and wisdom from every cone and seedling, from
growth and decay and birth and death, and from ((Change, the strongest
son of Life.))
((You of any well that springs
May unfold the heaven of things.))
GEORGE MEREDITH 9920 e
Meredith was always unfolding the secrets of the Woods of Wester-
main, from the (Pastorals) and (The Southwest Wind in the Woodland)
of his earliest volume, through (Melampus) and (Phcebus with Ad-
metus) and '(The Spirit of Earth in Autumn) and (The Thrush in
February) and the (Night of Frost in May,) even down to the youthful
song of his eightieth year:
((My heart shoots into the breast of the bird
As it will for sheer love till the last long sigh.))
Ballads, like (The Nuptials of Attila) ; poems of character and inci-
dent, like (Earth and the Wedded Woman,) (The Old Chartist,) (A
Ballad of Fair Ladies in Revolt,) and (Juggling Jerry); and delicate
lyrics like (Autumn Even-song) and (Wind on the Lyre) — all have
their inspiration in a consciousness of the unity of life. Everywhere man
and nature are held close together as nature holds them.
((Earth was not Earth before her sons appeared
Nor Beauty Beauty ere young Love was born.))
Some of the poems breathe less the spirit of life and expound more
coldly the views of the philosopher. (Earth and Man) is usually cited
as the most complete expression of the philosophy. But (Earth and
Man) presents ideas in gaunt outlines. It does not compel us ((to feel
that which we perceive and to imagine that which we know.)) It re-
presents the earth as producing man her offspring and leaving him to
contend with the elements for his existence. She gives him what he
needs but not what he desires. She bids him crush his personal longings;
and her only consolation is the maxim, ((Live in thy offspring as I live
in mine.)) She has planted a dream within him and he will learn that
she is spirit and that he may rest his faith in her. But these ideas are
not illumined. They lack the impassioned expression, the instinctive
joyfulness, and perception of beauty of many of his earlier poems and
his later softened understanding of life.
The sonnet, (Lucifer in Starlight,) contains the sterner aspect of
truth, but it does not leave the reader coldly speculating. It conveys a
sense of what it proclaims, the reign of unalterable law. In (A Medita-
tion under Stars) the measureless immensity is made palpable in lines
that contain the essence of the philosophy. The poet finds no answer
to his questions of the stars but he is satisfied with the belief that
(( The fire is in them whereof we are born,
The music of their motion may be ours.))
(The Test of Manhood,) written nearly twenty years later than
(Earth and Man,) is a more comprehensive and more poetical formation
of Meredith's philosophy. It describes in impressive words the brave
992 of ^ GEORGE MEREDITH
struggle of the race through crimson mire, like a seed toward light and
air; and when, in his effort to balance rightly the powers of life, man is
((dragged rearward, shamed, amazed,)) the poet asks what Jiope there is
and answers that with each recovery he acquires a surer sense of his
march ahead. Something permanent is gained at every new advance.
(( A sun goes down in wasted fire : a sun
Resplendent shines, to faith refreshed compels.))
As the philosopher's reading of life is condensed into (The Test of
Manhood,) the poet's enthusiasm for thebeauty-of nature is concentrated
in the (Hymn to Color.) The spirit that animates the poems and gives
them unity assumes in the (Hymn to Color) a form that bears witness
to the poet's constructive art. It is a form unique in modern verse.
It stands apart like an ode of Pindar, in a high light, aloof from the
beaten paths. Yet it is not elusive or fantastic. Its truth springs
from the actual. It is as if the poet, in the maturity of his years, were
standing on an eminence and looking down upon the world into whose
secrets he had penetrated and, gazing through the web of phenomena,
perceived the meaning of things more clearly because he stands apart;
or as if he had taken into his hand the bare essentials of his structure of
human life and molded them into a plastic form at once sensuous and
austere. This beauty that Meredith exalts is ((Color, the soul's bride-
groom,)) the beauty of nature seen through love, the beauty of dawn
that vanishes in an instant and yet lasts through eternity, that gives
warmth to life and gentleness to death; and, more than all, it is the
fount from which to drink delight of battle. It is the soul's armor for
the warfare of humanity in which he may go forth to triumph after
triumph of the spirit until
(( He shall uplift his earth to meet her Lord,
Himself the attuning chord.))
The ( Hymn to Color, ) written at the age of sixty, holds in perfect
balance the poetic ardors of Meredith's earlier poetry and the intellec-
tual abstractions that dominated more and more his later work. It
belongs to a group of poems which, issuing as they do out of a period of
great strain and suffering, when, as he said in one of the Letters, he
((trod on spikes where once were flowers,)) offer a certain corrective of his
earlier philosophy. One discerns in them a deepened vision of spiritual
reality, a fuller sense of the cost to the individual of the renunciation
that underlies his doctrine of acceptance. The ungrudging willingness
to be sword or block in the service of future generations is an ideal too
austere for the maintenance of the joy the poet cherishes. The change
is one of emphasis rather than of doctrine, but it has the effect of mellow-
ing and humanizing the philosophy.
The (Faith on Trial) is the story of the white heat of the ordeal.
GEORGE MEREDITH 992 Og
It takes the reader into the heart of the beech-woods in early spring and
into close intimacy with the poet. The heavens have broken upon him;
and his own soul as well as his philosophy is put on trial. He sees the
clearing vision in the folds of blossom on the wild white cherry-tree, but
it is only when he has wrestled with himself and bowed in resignation
and cried, ((Smite, sacred Reality,)) that his philosophy triumphs. The
triumph of his. philosophy is the triumph of his faith in the life of the
spirit. He has applied his test to himself unflinchingly, and like Me-
lampus and Juggling Jerry and Shakespeare and the Daughter of Hades
he has looked upon earth deeper than flower and tree and has found
((A soul beside our own to quicken, quell,
Irradiate, and through ruinous floods uplift.))
In the (Odes in Contribution to the Song of French History) Mere-
dith applied his test of human worth to nations. Three of the four odes
were written in the poet's seventieth year, the ode to (France, 1870)
thirty years earlier. Taken together they so far exceed in magnitude
any similar treatment of history in English poetry as to constitute a new
type of lyric. They give evidence of a close reading of history and they
uphold a conception of the responsibility of nations that forecasts the
((new internationalism)) of the present time.
The whole series is a vivid analysis of the ((radiance and the mon-
strous deeds)) of France since the days that preceded the Revolution
and a prophecy of her future task before the world. The character of
Napoleon, which is drawn with master strokes, is presented in its con-
trast with the national ideal of ((soaring France.)) In all of Meredith's
characters, whether he shows them caught in the snares of sentimen-
talism or in the tragic net of circumstance or escaping free of both, the
rock of disaster is the love of self. The root of evil in Napoleon's nature
is the same as that of the Egoist, and the high soul of France is trium-
phant after bitter conflict for the same reason that the devoted spirit of
Vittoria issued clear out of strife. Joan of Arc is greater than Napoleon
and will outlive him because she had tossed her heart into the furnace
pit for the sake of France, while he, the arbiter of circumstance, had
lured her by the promise of order in the state and held her as his slave.
When France in the Revolution rose to wed Liberty she had learned
to embrace mankind. She had listened to the song of Earth, and its
harmonies had taught her the laws of life. They had taught her the
meaning of accord, which is the only true liberty. The voice of liberty
was ((the voice of Earth's very soul.)) Whenever she was fresh from
nature's breast her only concern was to plant good seed for the young
generations. At the end the poet calls upon her to ((wash from her eyes
the Napoleonic glare)) forever, to forfeit the desire of glory for the sake
of Europe where war is fratricide, and to know that humanity is on trial
in her and it is her task to lead the nations through troubled seas.
992 Oh GEORGE MEREDITH
Meredith saw in France a resurgency of light that makes her the
hope of the age. But it was chiefly for the sake of England that he was
holding up in a new light his ideal of reason and sacrifice. With all of his
rapier thrusts at the faults of England, she was to him ((our England of the
ancient fortitude and the future incarnation.)) He identified the cause of
his country with the cause of humanity. He devoted a number of poems to
English national affairs, but they are unimportant compared with the criti-
cism of English society that permeates his work both as novelist and poet.
In one of the memorable conversations of his later years Meredith
said of his work that its aim had been to make John Bull understand
himself. He said too that although his verse was little read it was for
his verse that he cared most. ((Chiefly,)) he said, «by that in my verse
which emphasizes the unity of life, the soul that breathes through the
universe, do I wish to be remembered. For the spiritual is the eternal.))
These words express the twofold aspect of his achievement. Neither
aspect is limited to his poetry and neither to his prose. One represents
its extensive value and covers his treatment of character. The other is
intensive and indicates the attitude toward nature which is the basis of
his philosophy. To understand them both is to know that he has not
bequeathed us a ((Sphinx to tease the world again,)) as an American poet
said of him. It is to know that the most remarkable quality of his
genius is its unity in versatility, its simplicity in complexity. He who
overpowers us at times with the cudgels of his intellect or dazzles us
with the finely chiseled facets of his wit has in reality a philosophy so
simple that it resolves itself into the essence of religion. Humility and
reverence are its watchwords. Its fruit is a simple faith based on reality,
asking for no special indulgences in this world or another, learning of
nature the way of progress through patient fidelities toward an ideal of
brotherhood. Its guiding lights are reason and sanity. Its temper is the
((rapture of the forward view.))
Meredith's poetry has a vital and sustaining power. The energetic
faith that ((through disaster sings)) and the temper that is able
((To see in mold the rose unfold,
The soul through blood and tears,))
is imparted not by precept and persuasion but by the inspiration of
poetry. Meredith was not an experimenter in verse who succeeded once
or twice by chance. He proved himself a singer of simple melodies and
a master of complex metres; a bard of lyrical ecstasies and a dispassionate
seeker after truth. He said of his poems that they were ((flints, not
flowers.)) But they are both. They ((strike the spark out of our human clay))
and they reproduce that exalted mood when, for the reader as for the poet,
((Dead seasons quicken in one petal-spot
Of color unforgot.))
GEORGE MEREDITH 99 21
RICHARD AND LUCY: AN IDYL
From <The Ordeal of Richard Feverel >
WHEN nature has made us ripe for love, it seldom occurs
that the Fates are behindhand in furnishing a temple for
the flame.
Above green-flashing plunges of a weir, and shaken by the
thunder below, lilies, golden and white, were swaying at anchor
among the reeds. Meadow-sweet hung from the banks thick
with weed and trailing bramble, and there also hung a daughter
of earth. Her face was shaded by a broad straw hat with a
flexible brim that left her lips and chin in the sun, and some-
times nodding, sent forth a light of promising eyes. Across her
shoulders, and behind, flowed large loose curls, brown in shadow,
almost golden where the ray touched them. She was simply
dressed, befitting decency and the season. On a closer inspection
you might see that her lips were stained. This blooming young
person was regaling on dewberries. They grew between the
bank and the water. Apparently she found the fruit abundant,
for her hand was making pretty progress to her mouth. Fastid-
ious youth, which shudders and revolts at woman plumping her
exquisite proportions on bread and butter, and would (we must
suppose) joyfully have her quite scraggy to have her quite poeti-
cal, can hardly object to dewberries. Indeed, the act of eating
them is dainty and induces musing. The dewberry is a sister to
the lotus, and an innocent sister. You eat; mouth, eye, and hand
are occupied, and the undrugged mind free to roam. And so it
was with the damsel who knelt there. The little skylark went
up above her, all song, to the smooth southern cloud lying along
the blue; from a dewy copse standing dark over her nodding
hat the blackbird fluted, calling to her with thrice mellow note;
the kingfisher flashed emerald out of green osiers; a bow-winged
heron traveled aloft, seeking solitude; a boat slipped toward her,
containing a dreamy youth; and still she plucked the fruit, and
ate, and mused, as if no fairy prince were invading her territo
ries, and as if . she wished not for one, or knew not her wishes.
Surrounded by the green shaven meadows, the pastoral summer
buzz, the weirfall's thundering white, amid the breath and beauty
of wild flowers, she was a bit of lovely human life in a fair set-
ting; a terrible attraction. The Magnetic Youth leaned round to
note his proximity to the weir-piles, and beheld the sweet vision.
GEORGE MEREDITH
Stiller and stiller grew nature, as at the meeting of two electric
clouds. Her posture was so graceful that though he was making
straight for the weir, he dared not dip a scull. Just then one
most enticing dewberry caught her eyes. He was floating by
unheeded, and saw that her hand stretched low, and could not
gather what it sought. A stroke from his right brought him
beside her. The damsel glanced up dismayed, and her whole
shape trembled over the brink. Richard sprang from his boat
into the water. Pressing a hand beneath her foot, which she
had thrust against the crumbling wet sides of the bank to save
herself, he enabled her to recover her balance and gain safe
earth, whither, emboldened by the incident, touching her finger's
tip, he followed her.
HE HAD landed on an island of the still -vexed Bermoothes.
The world lay wrecked behind him ; Raynham hung in the mists,
remote, a phantom to the vivid reality of this white hand which
had drawn him thither away thousands of leagues in an eye-
twinkle. Hark, how Ariel sung overhead! What splendor in the
heavens! What marvels of beauty about his enchanted head!
And, O you wonder! Fair Flame! by whose light the glories of
being are now first seen. Radiant Miranda! Prince Ferdinand is
at your feet.
Or is it Adam, his rib taken from his side in sleep, and thus
transformed, to make him behold his Paradise, and lose it ?
The youth looked on her with as glowing an eye. It was the
First Woman to him.
And she — mankind was all Caliban to her, saving this one
princely youth.
So to each other said their changing eyes in the moment they
stood together; he pale, and she blushing.
She was indeed sweetly fair, and would have been held fair
among rival damsels. On a magic shore, and to a youth edu-
cated by a System, strung like an arrow drawn to the head, he,
it might be guessed, could fly fast and far with her. The soft
rose in her cheeks, the clearness of her eyes, bore witness to
the body's virtue; and health and happy blood were in her bear-
ing. Had she stood before Sir Austin among rival damsels,
that Scientific Humanist, for the consummation of his System,
would have thrown her the handkerchief for his son. The wide
summer-hat, nodding over her forehead to her brows, seemed to
GEORGE MEREDITH £923
flow with the flowing heavy curls, and those fire-threaded mellow
curls, only half -curls, — waves of hair, call them, — rippling at the
ends, went like a sunny red-veined torrent down her back almost
to her waist; a glorious vision to the youth, who embraced it as
a flower of beauty, and read not a feature. There were curious
features of color in her face for him to have read. Her brows,
thick and brownish against a soft skin showing the action of the
blood, met in the bend of a bow, extending to the temples long
and level: you saw that she was fashioned to peruse the sights
of earth, and by the pliability of her brows that the wonderful
creature used her faculty, and was not going to be a statue to
the gazer. Under the dark thick brows an arch of lashes shot
out, giving a wealth of darkness to the full frank blue eyes,
a mystery of meaning — more than brain was ever meant to
fathom; richer, henceforth, than all mortal wisdom to Prince
Ferdinand. For when nature turns artist, and produces contrasts
of color on a fair face, where is the Sage, or what the Oracle,
shall match the depth of its lightest look ?
Prince Ferdinand was also fair. In his slim boating attire
his figure looked heroic. His hair, rising from the parting to
the right of his forehead, in what his admiring Lady Blandish
called his plume, fell away slanting silkily to the temples across
the nearly imperceptible upward curve of his brows there, — felt
more than seen, so slight it was, — and gave to his profile a
bold beauty, to which his bashful, breathless air was a flattering
charm. An arrow drawn to the head, capable of flying fast and
far with her. 'He leaned a little forward to her, drinking her in
with all his eyes, — and young Love has a thousand. Then truly
the System triumphed, just ere it was to fall; and could Sir
Austin have been content to draw the arrow to the head and let
it fly, when it would fly, he might have pointed to his son again,
and said to the world, (< Match him 1 }> Such keen bliss as the
youth had in the sight of her, an innocent youth alone has
powers of soul in him to experience.
(( O women ! )J says The Pilgrim's Scrip, in one of its solitary
outbursts, <( women, who like, and will have for hero, a rake!
how soon are you not to learn that you have taken bankrupts to
your bosoms, and that the putrescent gold that attracted you is
the slime of the Lake of Sin ! »
If these two were Ferdinand and Miranda, Sir Austin was not
Prospero and was not present, or their fates might have been
different.
GEORGE MEREDITH
So they stood a moment, changing eyes, and then Miranda
spoke, and they came down to earth, feeling no less in heaven.
She spoke to thank him for his aid. She used quite com-
mon simple words; and used them, no doubt, to express a com-
mon simple meaning: but to him she was uttering magic, casting
spells, and the effect they had on him was manifested in the
incoherence of his replies, which were too foolish to be chron-
icled.
The couple were again mute. Suddenly Miranda, with an
exclamation of anguish, and innumerable lights and shadows play-
ing over her lovely face, clapped her hands, crying aloud, <( My
book! my book I w and ran to the bank.
Prince Ferdinand was at her side. <( What have you lost ? w
he said.
<( My book ! my book ! w she answered, her long delicious curls
swinging across her shoulders to the stream. Then turning to
him, divining his rash intention, <(Oh, no, no! let me entreat you
not to, }> she said : <( I do not so very much mind losing it. w And
in her eagerness to restrain him she unconsciously laid her gen-
tle hand upon his arm, and took the force of motion out of him.
<( Indeed, I do not really care for^ the silly book," she con-
tinued, withdrawing her hand quickly, and reddening. <( Pray do
not!»
The young gentleman had kicked off his shoes. No sooner
was the spell of contact broken than he jumped in. The water
was still troubled and discolored by his introductory adventure;
and though he ducked his head with the spirit of a dabchick,
the book was missing. A scrap of paper floating from the
bramble just above the water, and looking as if fire had caught
its edges, and it had flown from one adverse element to the
other, was all he could lay hold of; and he returned to land dis-
consolately, to hear Miranda's murmured mixing of thanks and
pretty expostulations.
(< Let me try again, }) he said.
(< No indeed ! w she replied, and used the awful threat, <( I will
run away if you do ; >} which effectually restrained him.
Her eye fell on the fire-stained scrap of paper, and bright-
ened as she cried, (< There, there ! you have what I want. It is
that. I do not care for the book. No, please! you are not to
look at it. Give it me."
Before her playfully imperative injunction was fairly spoken,
Richard had glanced at the document and discovered a Griffin
GEORGE MEREDITH
between Two Wheatsheaves ; his crest in silver; and below —
oh, wonderment immense, his own handwriting! remnant of his
burnt-offering! a page of the sacrificed poems! one blossom pre-
served from the deadly universal blight.
He handed it to her in silence. She took it, and put it in
her bosom.
Who would have said, have thought, that where all else per-
ished,— Odes, fluttering bits of broad -winged Epic, Idyls, Lines,
Stanzas, — this one Sonnet to the stars should be miraculously
reserved for such a starry fate! passing beatitude!
As they walked silently across the meadow, Richard strove
to remember the hour and the mood of mind in which he had
composed the notable production. The stars were invoked, as see-
ing and foreseeing all, to tell him where then his love reclined,
and so forth; Hesper was complaisant enough to do so, and
described her in a couplet —
<( Through sunset's amber see me shining fair,
As her blue eyes shine through her golden hair."
And surely no words could be more prophetic. Here were two
blue eyes and golden hair; and by some strange chance, that
appeared like the working of a Divine finger, she had become
the possessor of the prophecy, she that was to fulfill it! The
youth was too charged with emotion to speak. Doubtless the
damsel had less to think of, or had some trifling burden on her
conscience, for she seemed to grow embarrassed. At last she
drew up her chin to look at her companion under the nodding
brim of her hat (and the action gave her a charmingly freakish
air) , crying, (( But where are you going to ? You are wet through.
Let me thank you again; and pray leave me, and go home and
change instantly. })
<( Wet ? }> replied the magnetic muser, with a voice of tender
interest: <( not more than one foot, I hope? I will leave you
while you dry your stockings in the sun."
At this she could not withhold a shy and lovely laugh:
<( Not I, but you. You know you saved me, and would try to
get that silly book for me, and you are dripping wet. Are you
not very uncomfortable ? }>
In all sincerity he assured her that he was not.
<(And you really do not feel that you are wet ? w
He really did not; and it was a fact that he spoke truth.
9926
GEORGE MEREDITH
She pursed her sweet dewberry mouth in the most comical
way, and her blue eyes lightened laughter out of the half -closed
lids.
" I cannot help it," she said, her mouth opening, and sound-
ing harmonious bells of laughter in his ears. <( Pardon me, won't
you ? "
His face took the same soft smiling curves in admiration of
her.
" Not to feel that you have been in the water > the very mo-
ment after!" she musically interjected, seeing she was excused.
"It's true," he said; and his own gravity then touched him to
join a duet with her, which made them no longer feel strangers,
and did the work of a month of intimacy. Better than senti-
ment, laughter opens the breast to love; opens the whole breast
to his full quiver, instead of a corner here and there for a soli-
tary arrow. Hail the occasion propitious, O British young! and
laugh and treat love as an honest god, and dabble not with the
sentimental rouge. These two Iaughed4 and the souls of each
cried out to other, <( It is I. It is I.*
They laughed, and forgot the cause of their laughter; and the
sun dried his light river clothing; and they strolled toward the
blackbird's copse, and stood near a stile in sight of the foam of
the weir and the many-colored rings of eddies streaming forth
from it.
Richard's boat, meanwhile, had contrived to shoot the weir,
and was swinging, bottom upward, broadside with the current
down the rapid backwater.
<(Will you let it go?" said the damsel, eying it curiously.
"Yes," he replied, and low, as if he spoke in the core of his
thought. " What do I care for it now ! "
His old life was whirled away with it, dead, drowned. His
new life was with her, alive, divine.
She napped low the brim of her hat. (( You must really not
come any farther," she softly said.
<(And will you go and not tell me who you are ? " he asked,
growing bold as the fears of losing her came across him. "And
will you not tell me before you go" — his face burned — "how
you came by that — that paper ? "
She chose to select the easier question to reply to : <( You
ought to know me: we have been introduced." Sweet was her
winning off-hand affability.
GEORGE MEREDITH 9927
<(Then who, in heaven's name, are you? Tell me! I never
could have forgotten you."
"You have, I think, }> she said demurely.
(< Impossible that we could ever have met, and I forget you!>;>
She looked up to him quickly.
(< Do you remember Belthorpe ? w
<( Belthorpe ! Belthorpe ! }> quoth Richard, as if he had to touch
his brain to recollect there was such a place. (( Do you mean old
Blaize's farm ? })
(< Then I am old Blaize's niece. )J She tripped him a soft
curtsy.
The magnetized youth gazed at her. By what magic was it
that this divine sweet creature could be allied with that old
churl!
(< Then what — what is your name ? " said his mouth ; while
his eyes added, (<O wonderful creature I how came you to enrich
the earth ? »
(< Have you forgot the Desboroughs of Dorset, too ? * She
peered at him archly from a side bend of the flapping brim.
<( The Desboroughs of Dorset ? }> A light broke in on him.
<(And have you grown to this ? That little girl I saw there ! })
He drew close to her to read the nearest features of the
vision. She could no more laugh off the piercing fervor of his
eyes. Her volubility fluttered under his deeply wistful look,
and now neither voice was high, and they were mutually con-
strained.
(< You see,}) she murmured, C(we are old acquaintances. }>
Richard, with his eyes still intently fixed on her, returned,
<( You are very beautiful ! w
The words slipped out. Perfect simplicity is unconsciously
audacious. Her overpowering beauty struck his heart, and like
an instrument that is touched and answers to the touch, he
spoke.
Miss Desborough made an effort to trifle with this terrible
directness; but his eyes would not be gainsaid, and checked her
lips. She turned away from them, her bosom a little rebellious.
Praise so passionately spoken, and by one who has been a dam-
sel's first dream, dreamed of nightly many long nights, and
clothed in the virgin silver of her thoughts in bud, — praise from-
him is coin the heart cannot reject, if it would. She quickened
her steps to the stile.
9928
GEORGE MEREDITH
<(I have offended you!* said a mortally wounded voice across
her shoulder.
That he should think so were too dreadful.
<(Oh no, no! you would never offend me." She gave him her
whole sweet face
i( Then why — why do you leave me ? w
"Because," she hesitated, (( I must go."
<( No. You must not go. Why must you go? Do not go."
(< Indeed I must, " she said, pulling at the obnoxious broad
brim of her hat; and interpreting a pause he made for his assent
to her rational resolve, shyly looking at him, she held her hand
out, and said <( Good-by, " as if it were a natural thing to say.
The hand was pure white — white and fragrant as the frosted
blossom of a May night. It was the hand whose shadow, cast
before, he had last night bent his head reverentially above, and
kissed; resigning himself thereupon over to execution for pay-
ment of the penalty of such daring — by such bliss well rewarded.
He took the hand, and held it, gazing between her eyes.
<( Good-by," she said again, as frankly as she could, and at the
same time slightly compressing her fingers on his in token of
adieu. It was a signal for his to close firmly upon hers.
« You will not go ? »
(< Pray let me," she pleaded, her sweet brows suing in wrin-
kles.
(< You will not go ? " Mechanically he drew the white hand
nearer his thumping heart.
<( I must, " she faltered piteously.
<( You will not go ? "
«Oh yes! yes!"
(< Tell me — do you wish to go ? w
The question was subtle. A moment or two she did not
answer, and then forswore herself and said Yes.
(< Do you — do you wish to go ? " He looked with quivering
eyelids under hers.
A fainter Yes responded to his passionate repetition.
(< You wish — wish to leave me ? " His breath went with the
words.
« Indeed I must"
Her hand became a closer prisoner.
All at once an alarming delicious shudder went through her
frame. From him to her it coursed, and back from her to him.
GEORGE MEREDITH
Forward and back love's electric messenger rushed from heart to
heart, knocking at each till it surged tumultuously against the
bars of its prison, crying out for its mate. They stood trem-
bling in unison, a lovely couple under these fair heavens of the
morning.
When he could get his voice it said, <( Will you go ? w
But she had none to reply with, and could only mutely bend
upward her gentle wrist.
<( Then farewell ! >y he said ; and dropping his lips to the soft
fair hand, kissed it, and hung his head, swinging away from her,
ready for death.
Strange, that now she was released she should linger by him.
Strange, that his audacity, instead of the executioner, brought
blushes and timid tenderness to his side, and the sweet words,
<( You are not angry with me ? w
(( With you, O Beloved ! }) cried his soul. <( And you forgive
me, fair charity ! }>
She repeated her words in deeper sweetness to his bewildered
look; and he, inexperienced, possessed by her, almost lifeless with
the divine new emotions she had realized in him, could only sigh
and gaze at her wonderingly.
<l I think it was rude of me to go without thanking you
again, }) she said, and again proffered her hand.
The sweet heaven-bird shivered out his song above him. The
gracious glory of heaven fell upon his soul. He touched her
hand, not moving his eyes from her nor speaking; and she, with
a soft word of farewell, passed across the stile, and up the path-
way through the dewy shades of the copse, and out of the arch
of the light, away from his eyes.
And away with her went the wild enchantment. He looked
on barren air. But it was no more the world of yesterday.
The marvelous splendors had sown seeds in him, ready to spring
up and bloom at her gaze; and in his bosom now the vivid con-
juration of her tones, her face, her shape, makes them leap and
illumine him like fitful summer lightnings — ghosts of the van-
ished sun.
There was nothing to tell him that he had been making love
and declaring it with extraordinary rapidity; nor did he know it.
Soft flushed cheeks ! sweet mouth ! strange sweet brows ! eyes of
softest fire! — how could his ripe eyes behold you, and not plead
9930 GEORGE MEREDITH
to keep you f Nay, how could he let you go r And he seriously
asked himself that question.
To-morrow this place will have a memory, — the river and the
meadow, and the white falling weir; his heart will build a tem-
ple here; and the skylark will be its high priest, and the old
blackbird its glossy-gowned chorister, and there will be a sacred
repast of dewberries. To-day the grass is grass; his heart is
chased by phantoms and finds rest nowhere. Only when the
most tender freshness of his flower comes across him does he
taste a moment's calm; and no sooner does it come than it gives
place to keen pangs of fear that she may not be his forever.
Ere long he learns that her name is Lucy. Ere long he
meets Ralph, and discovers that in a day he has distanced him
by a sphere.
RICHARD'S ORDEAL IS OVER
From <The Ordeal of Richard Feverel*
WHERE are the dreams of the hero when he learns he has a
child ? Nature is taking him to her bosom. She will
speak presently Every domesticated boor in these hills
can boast the same; yet marvels the hero at none of his visioned
prodigies as he does when he comes to hear of this most com-
mon performance. A father ? Richard fixed his eyes as if he
were trying to make out the lineaments of his child.
Telling Austin he would be back in a few minutes, he sallied
into the air, and walked on and on. <(A father I )} he kept repeat-
ing to himself: <(a child I" And though he knew it not, he was
striking the keynotes of Nature. But he did know of a singular
harmony that suddenly burst over his whole being.
The moon was surpassingly bright; the summer air heavy
and still. He left the high-road and pierced into the forest. His
walk was rapid: the leaves on the trees brushed his cheeks;
the dead leaves heaped in the dells noised to his feet, Some-
thing of a religious joy — a strange sacred pleasure — was in
him. By degrees it wore; he remembered himself; and now he
was possessed by a proportionate anguish. A father! he dared
never see his child. And he had no longer his phantasies to fall
upon. He was utterly bare to his sin. In his troubled mind it
seemed to him that Clare looked down on him — Clare, who saw
GEORGE MEREDITH
him as he was — and that to her eyes it would be infamy for
him to go and print his kiss upon his child. Then came stern
efforts to command his misery and make the nerves of his face
iron.
By the log of an ancient tree, half buried in dead leaves of
past summers, beside a brook, he halted as one who had reached
his journey's end. There he discovered he had a companion in
Lady Judith's' little dog. He gave the friendly animal a pat of
recognition, and both were silent in the forest silence.
It was impossible for Richard to return; his heart was sur-
charged. He must advance ; and on he footed, the little dog fol-
lowing.
An oppressive slumber hung about the forest branches. In the
dells and on the heights was the same dead heat. Here where
the brook tinkled, it was no cool-lipped sound, but metallic, and
without the spirit of water. Yonder, in a space of moonlight
on lush grass, the beams were as white fire to sight and feeling.
No haze spread around. The valleys were clear, defined to the
shadows of their verges; the distances sharply distinct, and with
the colors of day but slightly softened. Richard beheld a roe
moving across a slope of sward far out of rifle mark. The breath-
less silence was significant, yet the moon shone in a broad blue
heaven. Tongue out of mouth trotted the little dog after him;
couched panting when he stopped an instant; rose weariedly
when he started afresh. Now and then a large white night-moth
flitted through the dusk of the forest.
On a barren corner of the wooded highland, looking inland,
stood gray topless ruins set in nettles and rank grass blades.
Richard mechanically sat down on the crumbling flints to rest,
and listened to the panting of the dog. Sprinkled at his feet
were emerald lights; hundreds of glow-worms studded the dark
dry ground.
He sat and eyed them, thinking not at all. His energies
were expended in action. He sat as a part of the ruins, and the
moon turned his shadow westward from the south. Overhead,
as she declined, long ripples of silver cloud were imperceptibly
stealing toward her. They were the van of a tempest. He did
not observe them, or the leaves beginning to chatter. When he
again pursued his course with his face to the Rhine, a huge
mountain appeared to rise sheer over him, and he had it in his
mind to scale it. He got no nearer to the base of it for all his
0932 GEORGE MEREDITH
vigorous outstepping. The ground began to dip; he lost sight of
the sky. Then heavy thunder drops struck his cheek, the leaves
were singing, the earth breathed, it was black before him and
behind. All at once the thunder spoke. The mountain he had
marked was bursting over him.
Up started the whole forest in violet fire. He saw the coun-
try at the foot of the hills, to the bounding Rhine, gleam, quiver,
extinguished. Then there were pauses: and the lightning seemed
as the eye of heaven, and the thunder as the tongue of heaven,
each alternately addressing him; filling him with awful rapture
Alone there — sole human creature among the grandeurs and
mysteries of storm — he felt the representative of his kind; and
his spirit rose and marched and exulted, — let it be glory, let it
be ruin! Lower down the lightened abysses of air rolled the
wrathful crash; then white thrusts of light were. darted from the
sky, and great curving ferns, seen steadfast in pallor a second,
were supernaturally agitated, and vanished. Then a shrill song
roused in the leaves and the herbage. Prolonged and louder it
sounded, as deeper and heavier the deluge pressed. A mighty
force of water satisfied the desire of the earth. Even in this,
drenched as he was by the first outpouring, Richard had a sav-
age pleasure. Keeping in motion, he was scarcely conscious of
the wet, and the grateful breath of the weeds was refreshing.
Suddenly he stopped short, lifting a curious nostril. He fancied
he smelt meadow-sweet. He had never seen the flower in Rhine-
land — never thought of it; 'and it would hardly be met with in
a forest. He was sure he smelt it fresh in dews. His little
companion wagged a miserable wet tail some way in advance.
He went on slowly, thinking indistinctly. After two or three
steps he stooped and stretched out his hand to feel for the
flower, — having, he knew not why, a strong wish to verify its
growth there. Groping about, his hand encountered something
warm that started at his touch; and he, with the instinct we
have, seized it and lifted it to look at it. The creature was very
small, evidently quite young. Richard's eyes, now accustomed
to the darkness, were able to discern it -for what it was, — a tiny
leveret; and he supposed that the dog had probably frightened
its dam just before he found it. He put the little thing on one
hand in his breast, and stepped out rapidly as before.
The rain was now steady; from every tree a fountain poured
So cool and easy had his mind become that he was speculating
GEORGE MEREDITH
9933
on what kind of shelter the birds could find, and how the butter-
flies and moths saved their colored wings from washing. Folded
close they might hang under a leaf, he thought. Lovingly he
looked into the dripping darkness of the coverts on each side, as
one of their children. Then he was musing on a strange sensa-
tion he experienced. It ran up one arm with an indescribable
thrill, but communicated nothing to his heart. It was purely
physical, ceased for a time, and recommenced, till he had it all
through his blood, wonderfully thrilling. He grew aware that
the little thing he carried in his breast was licking his hand
there. The small rough tongue going over and over the palm of
his hand produced this strange sensation he felt. Now that he
knew the cause, the marvel ended; but now that he knew the
cause, his heart was touched and made more of it. The gentle
scraping continued without intermission as on he walked. What
did it say to him ? Human tongue could not have said so much
just then.
A pale gray light on the skirts of the flying tempest dis-
played the dawn. Richard was walking hurriedly. The green
drenched weeds lay all about in his path, bent thick, and the
forest drooped glimmeringly. Impelled as a man who feels a
revelation mounting obscurely to his brain, Richard was passing
one of those little forest chapels, hung with votive wreaths, where
the peasant halts to kneel and pray. Cold, still, in the twilight
it stood, rain-drops pattering round it. He looked within, and
saw the Virgin holding her Child. He moved by. But not
many steps had he gone ere his strength went out of him, and
he shuddered. What was it ? He asked not. He was in other
hands. Vivid as lightning the Spirit of Life illumined him. He
felt in his heart the cry of his child, his darling's touch. With
shut eyes he saw them both. They drew him from the depths;
they led him a blind and tottering man. And as they led him,
he had a sense of purification so sweet he shuddered again and
again.
When he looked out from his trance on the breathing world,
the small birds hopped and chirped: warm fresh sunlight was
over all the hills. He was on the edge of the forest, entering a
plain clothed with ripe corn under a spacious morning sky.
GEORGE MEREDITH
AMINTA TAKES A MORNING SEA-SWIM: A MARINE DUET
From < Lord Ormont and his Aminta.* Copyright 1894, by Charles Scribner's
Sons
A GLORIOUS morning of flushed open sky and sun on a sea
chased all small thoughts out of it. The breeze was from
the west; and the Susan, lightly laden, took the heave of
smooth rollers with a flowing current-curtsy in the motion of her
speed. Foresail and aft were at their gentle strain; her shadow
rippled fragmentarily along to the silver rivulet and boat of her
wake. Straight she flew to the ball of fire now at spring above
the waters, and raining red gold on the line of her bows. By
comparison she was an ugly yawl, and as the creature of wind
and wave beautiful.
They passed an English defensive fort, and spared its walls,
in obedience to Matthew Shale's good counsel that they should
forbear from sneezing. Little Collett pointed to the roof of his
mother's house twenty paces rearward of a belt of tamarisks,
green amid the hollowed yellows of shore banks yet in shade,
crumbling to the sands. Weyburn was attracted by a diminutive
white tent of sentry-box shape; evidently a bather's, quite as evi-
dently a fair bather's. He would have to walk on some way for
his dip. He remarked to little Collett that ladies going into the
water half-dressed never have more than half a bath. His arms
and legs flung out contempt of that style of bathing, exactly in
old Matey's well-remembered way.
Half a mile off shore, the Susan was put about to flap her
sails, and her boat rocked with the passengers. Turning from a
final cheer to friendly Matthew, Weyburn at the rudder espied
one of those unenfranchised ladies in marine uniform issuing
through the tent-slit. She stepped firmly, as into her element.
A plain look at her, and a curious look, and an intent look, fixed
her fast, and ran the shock on his heart before he knew of a
guess. She waded, she dipped; a head across the breast of the
waters was observed: this one of them could swim. She was
making for sea, a stone 's-throw off the direction of the boat.
Before his. wits had grasped the certainty possessing them,
fiery envy and desire to be alongside her set his fingers fretting
at buttons. A grand smooth swell of the waters lifted her, and
her head rose to see her world. She sank down the valley,
where another wave was mounding for its onward roll: a gentle
GEORGE MEREDITH
9935
scene of the fidvr imovra of Weyburn 's favorite Sophoclean chorus.
Now she was given to him — it was she. How could it ever have
been any other! He handed his watch to little Collett, and gave
him the ropes, pitched coat and waistcoat on his knees, stood
free of boots and socks, and singing out truly enough the words
of a popular cry, (< White ducks want washing, )} went over and in.
Aminta soon had to know she was chased. She had seen the
dive from the boat, and received an illumination. With a chuckle
of delighted surprise, like a blackbird startled, she pushed sea-
ward for joy of the effort, thinking she could exult in imagina-
tion of an escape up to the moment of capture, yielding then
only to his greater will; and she meant to try it.
The swim was a holiday; all was new — nothing came to her
as the same old thing since she took her plunge; she had a sea-
mind — had left her earth^mind ashore. The swim, and Matey
Weyburn pursuing her, passed up out of happiness, through the
spheres of delirium, into the region where our life is as we
would have it be: a home holding the quiet of the heavens, if
but midway thither, and a home of delicious animation of the
whole frame, equal to wings.
He drew on her; but he was distant, and she waved an arm.
The shout of her glee sprang from her: "Matey!" He waved;
she heard his voice. Was it her name ? He was not so drunken
of the sea as she: he had not leapt out of bondage into buoyant
waters, into a youth without a blot, without an aim, satisfied in
tasting; the dream of the long felicity.
A thought brushed by her: How if he were absent?
It relaxed her stroke of arms and legs. He had doubled the
salt sea's rapture, and he had shackled its gift of freedom. She
turned to float, gathering her knees for the funny sullen kick,
until she heard him near. At once her stroke was renewed vig-
orously; she had the foot of her pursuer, and she called, (< Adieu,
Matey Weyburn ! )}
Her bravado deserved a swifter humiliation than he was able
to bring down on her; she swam bravely: and she was divine to
see as well as overtake.
Darting to the close parallel, he said, <( What sea-nymph sang
me my name ? w
She smote a pang of her ecstasy into him: <(Ask mine!®
« Browny ! »
9936 GEORGE MEREDITH
They swam; neither of them panted; their heads were water-
flowers that spoke at ease*.
« We've run from school; we won't go back."
<( We've a kingdom. "
(< Here's a big wave going to be a wall."
«Off he rolls. »
<( He's like the High Brent broad meadow tinder Elling
Wood.»
(< Don't let Miss Vincent hear you. "
(< They're not waves: they're sighs of the deep.);)
<(A poet I swim with! He fell into the deep in his first of
May-morning ducks. We used to expect him.*
<( I never expected to owe them so much. "
Pride of the swimmer and the energy of her joy embraced
Aminta, that she might nerve all her powers to gain the half-
minute for speaking at her ease.
<( Who'd have thought of a morning like this ? You were
looked for last night."
(<A lucky accident to our coach. I made friends with the
skipper of the yawl."
(< I saw the boat. Who could have dreamed — ? Anything
may happen now."
For nothing further would astonish her, as he rightly under-
stood her; but he said, a You 're prepared for the rites? Old
Triton is ready."
« Float, and tell me."
They spun about to lie on their backs. Her right hand, a1
piano-work of the octave-shake, was touched and taken, and she
did not pull it away. Her eyelids fell.
«Old Triton waits."
«Why?»
tfWe're going to him."
«Yes?"
(< Customs of the sea. K
<(Tell me."
<( He joins hands. We say, ( Browny — Matey, } and it's done."
She splashed, crying (<Swim," and after two strokes, (<You
want to beat me, Matey Weyburn.*'
« How ? "
•Not fair!*
«Say what"
GEORGE MEREDITH
* Take my breath. But, yes ! we'll be happy in our own way.
We're sea-birds. We've said adieu to land. Not to one another.
We shall be friends ? »
* Always. "
"This is going to last?"
" Ever so long. "
They had a spell of steady swimming, companionship to inspirit
it. Browny was allowed place a little foremost, and she guessed
not wherefore, in her flattered emulation.
"I'm bound for France."
" Slue a point to the right : southeast by south. We shall hit
Dunquerque. "
"I don't mean to be picked up by boats. »
"We'll decline. »
"You see I can swim."
" I was sure of it. "
They stopped their talk — for the pleasure of the body to be
savored in the mind, they thought; and so took Nature's counsel
to rest their voices awhile.
Considering that she had not been used of late to long immer-
sions, and had not broken her fast, and had talked much for a
sea-nymph, Weyburn spied behind him on a shore seeming flat
down, far removed.
"France next time," he said: "we'll face to the rear."
" Now ? " said she, big with blissful conceit of her powers, and
incredulous of such a command from him.
"You may be feeling tired presently."
The musical sincerity of her " Oh no, not I ! " sped through
his limbs: he had a willingness to go onward still some way.
But his words fastened the heavy land on her spirit, knocked
at the habit of obedience. Her stroke of the arms paused. She
inclined to his example, and he set it shoreward.
They swam silently, high, low, creatures of the smooth green
Toller.
He heard the water-song of her swimming. She, though
breathing equably at the nostrils, lay deep. The water shocked
at her chin, and curled round the under lip. He had a faint
anxiety; and not so sensible of a weight in the sight of land as
she was, he chattered by snatches, rallied her, encouraged her
to continue sportive for this once, letting her feel it was but a
once and had its respected limit with him. So it was not out of
the world.
GEORGE MEREDITH
Ah, friend Matey ! And that was right and good on land ; but
lightness and goodness flung earth's shadow across her brilliancy
here, and any stress on <( this once " withdrew her liberty to revel
in it, putting an end to a perfect holiday; and silence, too, might
hint at fatigue. She began to think her muteness lost her the
bloom of the enchantment, robbing her of her heavenly frolic
lead, since friend Matey resolved to be as eminently good in salt
water as on land. Was he unaware that they were boy and girl
again? — she washed pure of the intervening years, new born, by
blessing of the sea; worthy of him here! — that is, a swimmer
worthy of him, his comrade in salt water.
(< You're satisfied I swim well ? " she said.
<( It would go hard with me if we raced a long race."
<(I really was out for France."
tt I was ordered to keep you for England. "
She gave him Browny's eyes.
* We've turned our backs on Triton."
"The ceremony was performed."
«When?»
<(The minute I spoke of it and you splashed."
(< Matey ! Matey Weyburn ! "
«Browny Farrell!"
WO Matey! she's gone!"
« She's here."
(<Try to beguile me, then, that our holiday's not over. You
won't forget this hour ? "
(<No time of mine on earth will live so brightly for me."
<(I have never had one like it. I could go under and be
happy; go to old Triton and wait for you; teach him to speak
your proper Christian name. He hasn't heard it yet — heard
c Matey* — never yet has been taught ( Matthew. >"
«Aminta!»
<(O my friend! my dear!" she cried, in the voice of the
wounded, like a welling of her blood, (<my strength will leave
me. I may play — not you: you play with a weak vessel. Swim,
and be quiet. How far do you count it?" .
(< Under a quarter of a mile. "
(< Don't imagine me tired. "
(<If you are, hold on to me."
<( Matey, I'm for a dive."
He went after the ball of silver and bubbles, and they came
up together. There is no history of events below the surface.
GEORGE MEREDITH
9939
She shook off her briny blindness, and settled to the full
sweep of the arms, quite silent now. Some emotion, or exhaus-
tion from the strain of the swimmer's breath in speech, stopped
her playfulness. The pleasure she still knew was a recollection
of the outward swim, when she had been privileged to cast
away sex with the push from earth, as few men will believe
that women, beautiful women, ever wish to do; and often and
ardently during the run ahead they yearn for Nature to grant
them their one short holiday truce.
But Aminta forgave him for bringing earth so close to her
when there was yet a space of salt water between her and shore;
and she smiled at times, that he might not think she was look-
ing grave.
They touched the sand at the first draw of the ebb; and this
being earth, Matey addressed himself to the guardian and ab-
solving genii of matter-of-fact by saying, (( bid you inquire about
the tides ? »
Her head shook, stunned with what had passed. She waded
to shore, after motioning for him to swim on.
Men, in the comparison beside their fair fellows, are so little
sensationally complex, that his one feeling now as to what had
passed, was relief at the idea of his presence having been a war-
rantable protectorship. Aminta's return from sea-nymph to the
state of woman crossed annihilation on the way back to senti-
ence, and picked-up meaningless pebbles and shells of life, be-
tween the sea's verge and her tent's shelter: hardly her own life
to her understanding yet, except for the hammer Memory became
to strike her insensible, at here and there a recollected word or
nakedness of her soul. What had she done, what revealed, to
shiver at for the remainder of her days!
He swam along the shore to where the boat was paddled,
spying at her bare feet on the sand, her woman's form. He
waved, and the figure in the striped tunic and trousers waved
her response, apparently the same person he had quitted.
Dry and clad, and decently formal under the transformation,
they met at Mrs. Collett's breakfast table; and in each hung the
doubt whether land was the dream, or sea.
9939 a GEORGE MEREDITH
LOVE IN THE VALLEY
UNDER yonder beech-tree single on the green-sward,
Couched with her arms behind her golden head,
Knees and tresses folded to slip and ripple idly,
Lies my young love sleeping in the shade.
Had I the heart to slide an arm beneath her,
Press her parting lips as her waist I gather slow,
Waking in amazement she could not but embrace me:
Then would she hold me and never let me go?
Shy as the squirrel and wayward as the swallow,
Swift as the swallow along the river's light
Circleting the surface to meet his mirrored winglets,
Fleeter she seems in her stay than in her flight.
Shy as the squirrel that leaps among the pine-tops,
Wayward as the swallow overhead at set of sun,
She whom I love is hard to catch and conquer,
Hard, but 0 the glory of the winning were she won!
When her mother tends her before the laughing mirror,
Tying up her laces, looping up her hair,
Often she thinks, were this wild thing wedded,
More love should I have, and much less care.
When her mother tends her before the lighted mirror,
Loosening her laces, combing down her curls,
Often she thinks, were this wild thing wedded,
I should miss but one for many boys and girls.
Heartless she is as the shadow in the meadows
Flying to the hills on a blue and breezy noon.
No, she is athirst and drinking up her wonder:
Earth to her is young as the slip of the new moon.
Deals she an unkindness, 'tis but her rapid measure,
Even as in a dance; and her smile can heal no less:
Like the swinging May-cloud that pelts the flowers with hailstones
Off a sunny border, she was made to bruise and bless.
Lovely are the curves of the white owl sweeping
Wavy in the dusk lit by one large star.
Lone on the fir-branch, his rattle-note unvaried,
Brooding o'er the gloom, spins the brown evejar.
Darker grows the valley, more and more forgetting:
So were it with me if forgetting could be willed.
. Tell the grassy hollow that holds the bubbling well-spring,
Tell it to forget the source that keeps it filled.
GEORGE MEREDITH 993 9 b
Stepping down the hill with her fair companions,
Arm in arm, all against the raying West,
Boldly she sings, to the merry tune she marches,
Brave is her shape, and sweeter unpossessed.
Sweeter, for she is what my heart first awaking
Whispered the world was; morning light is she.
Love that so desires would fain keep her changeless;
Fain would fling the net, and fain have her free.
Happy happy time, when the white star hovers
Low over dim fields fresh with bloomy dew,
Near the face of dawn, that draws athwart the darkness,
Threading it with color, like yewberries the yew.
Thicker crowd the shades as the grave East deepens,
Glowing, and with crimson a long cloud swells.
Maiden still the morn is; and strange she is, and secret;
Strange her eyes; her cheeks are cold as cold seashells.
When at dawn she sighs, and like an infant to the window
Turns grave eyes craving light, released from dreams,
Beautiful she looks, like a white water-lily
Bursting out of bud in havens of the streams.
When from bed she rises clothed from neck to ankle
In her long nightgown sweet as boughs of May,
Beautiful she looks, like a tall garden lily
Pure from the night, and splendid for the day.
All the girls are out with their baskets for the primrose,
Up lanes, woods through, they troop in joyful bands.
My sweet leads; she knows not why, but now she loiters,
Eyes the bent anemones, and hangs her hands.
Such a look will tell that the violets are peeping,
Coming the rose: and unaware a cry
Springs in her bosom for odors and for color,
Covert and the nightingale; she knows not why.
Cool was the woodside; cool as her white dairy
Keeping sweet the cream-pan; and there the boys from school,
Cricketing below, rushed brown and red with sunshine;
0 the dark translucence of the deep-eyed cool!
Spying from the farm, herself she fetched a pitcher
Full of milk, and tilted for each in turn the beak.
Then a little fellow, mouth up and on tiptoe,
Said, «I will kiss you)); she laughed and leaned her cheek.
9939 c GEORGE MEREDITH
Doves of the fir-wood walling high our red roof
Through the long noon coo, crooning through the coo.
Loose droop the leaves, and down the sleepy roadway
Sometimes pipes a chaffinch; loose droops the blue.
Cows flap a slow tail knee-deep in the river,
Breathless, given up to sun and gnat and fly.
Nowhere is she seen; and if I see her nowhere,
Lightning may come, straight rains and tiger sky.
O the golden sheaf, the rustling treasure-armful!
0 the nutbrown tresses nodding interlaced!
0 the treasure-tresses one another over
Nodding! 0 the girdle slack about the waist!
Slain are the poppies that shot their random scarlet
Quick amid the wheatears: wound about the waist,
Gathered, see these brides of Earth one blush of ripeness!
0 the nutbrown tresses nodding interlaced!
Could I find a place to be alone with heaven,
1 would speak my heart out: heaven is my need.
Every woodland tree is flushing like the dogwood,
Flashing like the whitebeam, swaying like the reed.
Flushing like the dogwood crimson in October;
Streaming like the flag-reed South-west blown;
Flashing as in gusts the sudden-lighted whitebeam:
All seem to know what is for heaven alone.
THE LARK ASCENDING
HE rises and begins to round,
He drops the silver chain of sound,
Of many links without a break,
In chirrup, whistle, slur and shake,
All intervolved and spreading wide,
Like water-dimples down a tide
Where ripple ripple overcurls
And eddy into eddy whirls;
A press of hurried notes that run
So fleet they scarce are more than one
Yet changingly the trills repeat
And linger ringing while they fleet,
Sweet to the quick o' the ear, and dear
To her beyond the handmaid ear,
Who sits beside our inner springs,
Too often dry for this he brings,
GEORGE MEREDITH 9939 d
Which seems the very jet of earth
At sight of sun, her music's mirth,
As up he wings the spiral stair,
A song of light, and pierces air
With fountain ardor, fountain play,
To reach the shining tops of day,
And drink in everything discerned
An ecstasy to music turned,
Impelled by what his happy bill
Disperses; drinking, showering still,
Unthinking save that he may give
His voice the outlet, there to live
Renewed in endless notes of glee,
So thirsty of his voice is he,
For all to hear and all to know
That he is joy, awake, aglow,
The tumult of the heart to hear
Through pureness filtered crystal-clear,
And know the pleasure sprinkled bright
By simple singing of delight,
Shrill, irreflective, unrestrained,
Rapt, ringing, on the jet sustained
Without a break, without a fall,
Sweet-silvery, sheer lyrical,
Perennial, quavering up the chord
Like myriad dews of sunny sward
That trembling into fullness shine,
And sparkle dropping argentine;
Such wooing as the ear receives
From zephyr caught in choric leaves
Of aspens when their chattering net
Is flushed to white with shivers wet;
And such the water-spirits' chime
On mountain heights in morning's prime,
Too freshly sweet to seem excess,
Too animate to need a stress;
But wider over many heads
The starry voice ascending spreads,
Awakening, as it waxes thin,
The best in us to him akin;
And every face to watch him raised,
Puts on the light of children praised,
So rich our human pleasure ripes
When sweetness on sincereness pipes,
9939 e GEORGE MEREDITH
Though nought be promised from the seas,
But only a soft-ruffling breeze
Sweep glittering on a still content,
Serenity in ravishment.
For singing till his heaven fills,
'Tis love of earth that he instills,
And ever winging up and up,
Our valley is his golden cup,
And he the wine which overflows
To lift us with him as he goes:
The woods and brooks, the sheep and kine,
He is, the hills, the human line,
The meadows green, the fallows brown,
The dreams of labor in the town;
He sings the sap, the quickened veins;
The wedding song of sun and rains
He is, the dance of children, thanks
Of sowers, shout of primrose-banks,
And eye of violets while they breathe;
All these the circling song will wreathe,
And you shall hear the herb and tree,
The better heart of men shall see,
Shall feel celestially, as long
As you crave nothing save the song.
Was never voice of ours could say
Our inmost in the sweetest way,
Like yonder voice aloft, and link
All hearers in the song they drink.
Our wisdom speaks from failing blood,
Our passion is too full in flood,
We want the key of his wild note
Of truthful in a tuneful throat,
The song seraphically free
Of taint of personality,
So pure that it salutes the suns
The voice of one for millions,
In whom the millions rejoice
For giving their one spirit voice.
Yet men have we, whom we revere,
Now names, and men still housing here,
Whose lives, by many a battle dint
Defaced, and grinding wheels on flint,
GEORGE MEREDITH 9939 f
Yield substance, though they sing not, sweet
For song our highest heaven to greet:
Whom heavenly singing gives us new,
Enspheres them brilliant in our blue,
From firmest base to farthest leap,
Because their love of earth is deep,
And they are warriors in accord
With life to serve, and pass reward,
So touching purest' and so heard
In the brain's reflex of yon bird:
Wherefore their soul in me, or mine,
Through self-forgetfulness divine,
In them, that song aloft maintains,
To fill the sky and thrill the plains
With showerings drawn from human stores,
As he to silence nearer soars,
Extends the world at wings and dome,
More spacious making more our home,
Till lost on his aerial rings
In light, and then the fancy sings.
FROM (THE WOODS OF WESTERMAIN)
ENTER these enchanted woods,
You who dare.
Nothing harms beneath the leaves
More than waves a swimmer cleaves.
Toss your heart up with the lark,
Foot at peace with mouse and worm,
Fair you fare.
Only at a dread of dark
Quaver, and they quit their form:
Thousand eyeballs under hoods
Have you by the hair.
Enter these enchanted woods,
You who dare.
ii
Here the snake across your path
Stretches in his golden bath:
Mossy-footed squirrels leap
Soft as winnowing plumes of Sleep:
9939 g GEORGE MEREDITH
Yaffles on a chuckle skim
Low to laugh from branches dim:
Up the pine, where sits the star,
Rattles deep the moth- winged jar.
Each has business of his own;
But should you distrust a tone,
Then beware.
Shudder all the haunted roods,
All the eyeballs under hoods
Shroud you in their glare.
Enter these enchanted woods,
You who dare.
FROM (FRANCE, 1870)
WE look for her that sunlike stood
Upon the forehead of our day,
An orb of nations, radiating food
For body and for mind alway.
Where is the Shape of glad array;
The nervous hands, the front of steel,
The clarion tongue? Where is the bold proud face?
We see a vacant place;
We hear an iron heel.
0 she that made the brave appeal
For manhood when our time was dark,
And from our fetters struck the spark
Which was as lightning to reveal
New seasons, with the swifter play
Of pulses, and benigner day;
She that divinely shook the dead
From living man; that stretched ahead
Her resolute forefinger straight,
And marched towards the gloomy gate
Of earths Untried, gave note, and in
The good name of Humanity
Called forth the daring vision! she,
She likewise half corrupt of sin,
Angel and Wanton! Can it be?
Her star has foundered in eclipse,
The shriek of madness on her lips;
Shreds of her, and no more, we see.
There is a horrible convulsion, smothered din,
As of one that in a grave-cloth struggles to be free.
GEORGE MEREDITH 9939 h
Look not on spreading boughs
For the riven forest tree.
Look down where deep in blood and mire
Black thunder plants his feet and ploughs
The soil for ruin; that is France:
Still thrilling like a lyre,
Amazed to shivering discord from a fall
Sudden as that the lurid hosts recall
Who met in Heaven the irreparable mischance.
0 that is France!
The brilliant eyes to kindle bliss,
The shrewd quick lips to laugh and kiss,
Breasts that a sighing world inspire,
And laughter-dimpled countenance
Whence soul and senses caught desire!
Henceforth of her the Gods are known,
Open to them her breast is laid.
Inveterate of brain, heart-valiant,
Never did fairer creature pant
Before the altar and the blade!
She shall rise worthier of her prototype
Through her abasement deep; the pain that runs
From nerve to nerve some victory achieves.
They lie like circle-strewn soaked Autumn-leaves
Which stain the forest scarlet, her fair sons!
And of their death her life is: of their blood
From many streams now urging to a flood.
No more divided, France shall rise afresh.
Of them she learns the lesson of the flesh: —
The lesson writ in red since first Time ran
A hunter hunting down the beast in man:
That till the chasing out of its last vice,
The flesh was fashioned but for sacrifice.
Soaring France!
Now is Humanity on trial in thee:
Now may'st thou gather humankind in fee:
Now prove that Reason is a quenchless scroll;
Make of calamity thine aureole,
And bleeding lead us through the troubles of the sea.
9940 GEORGE MEREDITH
FROM (MODERN LOVE)
IV
ALL other joys of life he strove to warm,
And magnify, and catch them to his lip;
But they had suffered shipwreck with the ship.
And gazed upon him sallow from the storm.
Or if Delusion came, 'twas but to show
The coming minute mock the one that went.
Cold as a mountain in its star-pitched tent
Stood high philosophy, less friend than foe;
Whom self-caged passion, from its prison-bars,
Is always watching with a wondering hate.
Not till the fire is dying in the grate
Look we for any kinship with the stars.
Oh, Wisdom never comes when it is gold,
And the great price we pay for it full worth;
We have it only when we are half earth:
Little avails that coinage to the old!
XVI
In our old shipwrecked days there was an hour
When, in the firelight steadily aglow,
Joined slackly, we beheld the red chasm grow
Among the clicking coals. Our library-bower
That eve was left to us; and hushed we sat
As lovers to whom Time is whispering.
From sudden-opened doors we heard them sing;
The nodding elders mixed good wine with chat.
Well knew we that Life's greatest treasure lay
With us, and of it was our talk. ((Ah, yes!
Love dies!» I said: I never thought it less.
She yearned to me that sentence to unsay.
Then when the fire domed blackening, I found
Her cheek was salt against my kiss, and swift
Up the sharp scale of sobs her breast did lift; —
Now am I haunted by that taste! that sound!
GEORGE MEREDITH 9940 a
XLIII
Mark where the pressing wind shoots javelin-like
Its skeleton shadow on the broad-backed wave!
Here is a fitting spot to dig Love's grave;
Here where the ponderous breakers plunge and strike,
And dart their hissing tongues high up the sand;
In hearing of the ocean, and in sight
Of those ribbed wind-streaks running into white.
If I the death of Love had deeply planned
I never could have made it half so sure
As by the unblest kisses which upbraid
The full-waked senses; or, failing that, degrade!
'Tis morning; but no morning can restore
What we have forfeited. I see no sin:
The wrong is mixed. In tragic life, God wot
No villain need be! Passions spin the plot.
We are betrayed by what is false within.
XLVII
We saw the swallows gathering in the sky,
And in the osier-isle we heard their noise.
We had not to look back on summer joys,
Or forward to a summer of bright dye;
But in the largeness of the evening earth
Our spirits grew as we went side by side.
The hour became her husband and my bride.
Love that had robbed us so, thus blessed our dearth!
The pilgrims of the year waxed very loud
In multitudinous chatterings as the flood
Full brown came from the West and like pale blood
Expanded to the upper crimson cloud.
Love, that h'ad robbed us of immortal things,
This little moment mercifully gave,
Where I have seen across the twilight wave
The swan sail with her young beneath her wings.
9940 b GEORGE MEREDITH
Thus piteously Love closed what he begat;
The union of this ever-diverse pair!
These two were rapid falcons in a snare,
Condemned to do the flitting of the bat.
Lovers beneath the singing sky of May,
They wandered once; clear as the dew on flowers.
But they fed not on the advancing hours:
Their hearts held cravings for the buried day.
Then each applied to each that fatal knife,
Deep questioning, which probes to endless dole.
Ah! what a dusty answer gets the soul
When hot for certainties in this our life! — .
In tragic hints here see what evermore
Moves dark as yonder midnight ocean's force,
Thundering like ramping hosts of warrior horse,
To throw that faint thin line upon the shore.
9941
PROSPER MERIMEE
(1803-1870)
BY GRACE KING
*NE of the magisterial critics of Merimee's day, passing judg-
ment upon his writings, dismisses personal details about the
author with the remark: <(As for the biography of Prosper
Merimee, it is like the history of a happy people, — it does not exist.
One knows only that he was educated in a college of Paris, that he
has studied law. that he has been received as a lawyer, that he has
never pleaded; and the papers have taken
pains to inform us that he is to-day secre-
tary to M. le Comte d'Argout. Those who
know him familiarly see in him nothing
more than a man of very simple -manners,
with a solid education, reading Italian and
modern Greek with ease, and speaking Eng-
lish and Spanish with remarkable purity. »
This was written in 1832, when Merimee
in his thirtieth year had attained celebrity
not only in the literary world of Paris, but
in the world of literary Europe, as the
author of the < Theatre de Clara GazuP;
<La Guzla>; <La Chronique de Charles IX. >;
1 Mateo Falcone y ; < Tamango > ; < La Partie
de Tric-Trac > ; < Le Vase Etrusque > ; < La Double Meprise > ; < La Vision
de Charles XI.*: most of which Taine pronounced masterpieces of
fiction, destined to immortality as classics.
No tribute could have been better devised to please Merimee, and
praise his writings, than this one to the impersonality of his art, and
the dispensation of it from any obligation to its author. <(We should
write and speak, w he held, <( so that no one would notice, at least
immediately, that we were writing or speaking differently from any
one else." But as that most impersonal of modern critics, Walter
Pater, keenly observes: <( Merimee's superb self-effacement, his imper-
sonality, is itself but an effective personal trait, and transferred to
art, becomes a markedly peculiar quality of literary beauty. >J And
he pronounces in a sentence the judgment of Merimee's literary pos-
terity upon him : <( For in truth this creature who had no care for
half-lights, and like his creations, had no atmosphere about him, —
PROSPER MERIMEE
PROSPER MERIMEE
gifted as he was with pure mind, with the quality which secures
flawless literary structures, — had on the other hand nothing of what
we call soul in literature. w
And the brilliant young secretary and successful author, whose
happiness furnishes presumptive evidence against a biography, was no
more relieved from the fact of it than the hypothetical happy people
of their history. With that unfaltering rectification of contempo-
raneous values which time and the gravitation to truth bring about,
Merimee's position in regard to his works is quite the reverse of
what he contemplated and aimed for. Of the published volumes of
his writings, the many containing his artistic works could be better
spared than the few containing his letters. And of his letters, that
volume will longest carry his name into the future which contains
his most intimate, most confidential, least meditated, in short most
genuinely personal and most artistically perfect revelations, — his
<Lettres a une Inconnue* (Letters to an Unknown Woman).
Prosper Merimee was born in Paris in 1803, of parentage that
made his vocation, it would seem, mandatory. His father was an
artist of note, a pupil of David's, and long secretary of the Ecole des
Beaux-Arts, His mother was also, and in a double measure, an artist.
Her talent was for portraits of children, whose quiet sittings she
secured by her other talent of relating stories, — a gift inherited from
her grandmother, Madame de Beaumont, a charming writer of child-
ren's stories, and the author of the famous and entrancing ( Beauty
and the Beast. y At twenty, having finished his collegiate studies,
Merimee, in obedience to the will of his parents, began to fit himself
for the legal profession. Following his own tastes, however, he had
already sought and gained admission into the salons of the men of
letters, and was already under his first and only literary influence, —
that of Henri Beyle, the progenitor of modern French realism. It
was in one of these salons that he, not yet twenty-one, read his first
composition, a drama, < Cromwell } ; an effort inspired by Shakespeare
and composed according to the doctrines of Beyle. It was never
published. Shortly afterwards, in the same place and to the same
audience, he read aloud his second attempt, (The Spaniards in Den-
mark}; and ( Heaven and Hell,J a little dramatic scene which met
with spontaneous applause, and was praised as extremely witty and
still more undevout. Successive readings followed in successive even-
ings, under the encouragement of applause; and the collection, by a
last stroke of audacious wit, in which author and audience collab-
orated, was published as the ( Theatre de Clara GazuP (an imaginary
Spanish actress), with the portrait of Merimee, in low-necked dress
and mantilla, for frontispiece.
The strong individuality of Merimee's art is as easily discernible
to-day, under the thin disguise of his pseudonym, as his features
PROSPER MERIMEE
under his travesty: his clear, cold, impartial realism, unflinching wit,
and — a trait attributed also to his mother — his invincible irreligion.
The success of the mystification was immediate and effective. His
next adventure was of the same kind: the publication of (La Guzla,*
a collection of prose ballads, pseudo-translations from the Dalmatian
folk-songs, with prefatory notices, appendices, and biographical sketch
of the author, the bard Magdanovitch, accompanied by a dissertation
on vampires and the evil eye. The intrinsic beauty of the ballads,
the barbaric strength of the imagination, in the musical rhythm of
French prose, contributed to render the mystification one of the most
perfect in literary history. Goethe wrote an article upon it, Push-
kin made translations from it, and German scholars rejoiced in print
to find in it some long-lost Illyrian metrical measure. This success
disgusted Merimee with <( local color, )} — the shibboleth of the young
French Romantic school. — seeing, as he said, how easy it was to fab-
ricate it.
The c Famille Carvajal,' a continuation of the Spanish vein, — a
weird, grewsome, and pitiless tale, — and ( Le Jacquerie, } a dramatic
historical recital in the Shakespearean vein, followed. His next
venture was in historical fiction: 'The Chronicle of Charles IX., > an
evident inspiration from Walter Scott. From an English point of
view, it is the masterpiece of French fiction in historical domain; and
one, with a few reservations, not unworthy the hand of "Waverley"
himself.
In 1830 came the visit to Spain, related in his published letters,
and the forming of the friendship with the Countess of Montijo which
led to a correspondence, of which the fragments published are war-
rant that it will prove in the future an invaluable guide to the social,
literary, and political history of Paris during the yet controverted
period of the Empire. Always sensitive to feminine influence, if not
to local color, it is to the Countess of Montijo that Merimee owes the
Spanish inspiration, as it may well be called, which bore fruit in his
incomparable relation of ( Carmen^ And while a guest of his friend,
listening to her charming tales of the Alhambra and the Generalife,
Merimee formed his historical friendship with the Empress Eugenie,
then a little girl playing around her mother's knee.
Appointed inspector-general of the historical monuments of France,
Merimee threw his archaeological erudition into diligent performance
of official duties. His reports, written with minute and even pedan-
tic conscientiousness, bear out Faguet's assertion that — archaeologist,
traveler, art critic, historian, and philologist, man of the world and
senator, and competent and sure as each — he would and should
have belonged to four academies; it was only his discretion that re-
stricted him to two, — the Academic Frangaise and Academic des
Inscriptions. As a compatriot states, it was the inspector-general that
PROSPER MERIMEE
related to him two of his most perfect stories, the ( Venus d'llle*
and <Colombaf> while it was the philologist who found the episode of
< Carmen. >
It was at this point of his life, at the meridian of age and success,
that he received his first letter from the Inconnue, — a graceful tribute
from the graceful pen of a woman, who yielded to an impulse to
express her admiration, yet guarded her identity beyond possibility
of discovery. The correspondence ensued that a posthumous publi-
cation under the editorship of H. Taine has revealed to the public.
In it, for one who knows how to read the letters, as Taine says,
Merimee shows himself gracious, tender, delicate, truly in love, and a
poet. After nine years of expostulation and entreaty he obtained an
interview; and his mysterious friend proved to be a Mademoiselle
Jenny Dacquin, the daughter of a notary of Boulogne. The friend-
ship that ensued waxed into love through the thirty succeeding years,
and waned again into a friendship that ended only with Merimee's
life; his last letter to the Inconnue, a few lines, was written two
hours before he died.
Merimee's ( Studies in the History of Rome,* his Social War,* and
( Catiline,* were to have been followed ,and closed by a study of
Caesar. Circumstances, however, adjourned the task, which was after-
wards ceded to an illustrious competitor, or collaborator, — Napoleon
III. In 1844 he was elected to the French Academy. On the follow-
ing day he published (Arsene Guillot.* Had the publication preceded
the election, the result might have been different; for repentant
Academicians pronounced immoral the tale which Anglo-Saxon critics
have generally selected as the most simple, most pathetic, and only
human one the author ever wrote.
In 1852, the little girl whose growth and development Merimee
had watched with tenderest interest became Empress of the French.
He was appointed life senator in the reconstructed government ; and
became one of the most familiar members of the new and brilliant
court at the Tuileries, and always a conspicuous one. His pleased,
tender, sad, gay, and always frank and critical commentary of the
court and its circles, forms the interest of his weekly bulletins to
the Countess of Montijo. His conversational charm, his wit, and his
ever ready response to demands upon his artistic and historical lore,
in questions of etiquette, costumes, and precedent; his versatility as
dramatist and actor, and his genius for friendship with women,—
made him not only a favorite, but a spoiled favorite, in the royal cir-
cle. His coldness, reserve, cynicism, frank speech, and independent
political opinions saved him from even a suspicion of being a courtier.
He nevertheless lost none of his diligence in literature. It was the
period of his edition of Henri Beyle and of Brantome, of numerous
miscellaneous articles in reviews, and of those excursions into Russian
PROSPER MERIMEE
literature — critical dissertations upon Gogol, Pushkin, and Tourgue-
nieff — which may be considered the pioneer of that advance into
Russian literature which has resulted in throwing it open to, and
making it one with, the literature of Europe.
To this period also belongs his friendship with Panizzi, the ad-
ministrator of the British Museum; and the voluminous 'correspond-
ence in which he reveals himself in all the fineness and breadth of
his culture, — as Taine puts it, the possessor of six languages with
their literature and history, man of the world and politician, as well
as philosopher, artist, and historian.
So shrewd an observer of men and politics could not be unpre-
pared for the catastrophe of 1870. He had never been free from
vague apprehensions, and the acute presentiment overshadows the
gayety in his letters. In addition he was growing old, and infirm
health drove him during the winter months into annual exile at
Cannes. It was there that, in a crisis of his malady, the journals, in
anticipation of the end, published his death, and M. Guizot in conse-
quence made official announcement of it at the Academy. Merimee
lived, however, to return to Paris, and suffer through to the end of
the tragedy. He dragged himself to the Tuileries, had a last inter-
view with his mistress, sat for the last time in his seat in the Senate,
and voted for adjournment to a morrow which never came. Four
days afterwards he departed for Cannes, where a fortnight later he
died. He was buried in the Protestant cemetery.
«A gallant man and a gentleman, » says Faguet, <(he has had the reward
he would have wished. He has been discreetly and intimately enjoyed by
delicate tastes. He has not been brutally balloted about in the tumult of scho-
lastic discussions. He has not been attacked by any one, nor praised with
loud cries, nor admired with great reinforcement of adjectives. . . . His
glory is of the good ore, as are his character, his mind, and his style. . . .
He has entered posterity as one enters a parlor, without discussion and with-
out disturbance; received with the greatest pleasure, without vain effusion, he
installed himself comfortably in a good place, from which he will never be
moved. ... It was his rare talent to give us those limpid, rapid, full
tales, that one reads in an hour, re-reads in a day, which fill the memory and
occupy the thoughts forever.»
PROSPER MERIMEE
FROM <ARSENE GUILLOT>
THE last mass had just come to an end at St. Roch's, and the
beadle was going his rounds, closing the deserted chapels.
He was about drawing the grating of one of these aristo-
cratic sanctuaries, where certain devotees purchase the permission
to pray to God apart and distinguished from the rest of the faith-
ful, when he remarked a woman still remaining in it, absorbed
seemingly in meditation, her head bent over the back of her
chair. a It is Madame de Piennes, }) he said to himself, stopping
at the entrance of the chapel. Madame de Piennes was well
known by the beadle. At that period a woman of the world,
young, rich, pretty, who rendered the blessed bread, who gave
the altar clothes, who gave much in charity through the media-
tion of her curate, had some merit for being devout when she
did not have some employe of the government for a husband,
when she was not an attachee of Madame la Dauphine, and when
she had nothing to gain but her salvation by frequenting the
church. The beadle wished heartily top go to dinner, for people
of his kind dine at one o'clock; but he dared not trouble the de-
votions of a person so well considered in the parish of St. Roch.
He moved away, therefore, making his slipper-shod feet resound
against the marble floor, not without hope that, the round of the
church made, he would find the chapel empty.
He was already on the other side of the choir, when a young
woman entered the church, and walked along one of the side
aisles, looking with curiosity about her. She was about twenty-
five years old, but one had to observe her with much attention
not to think her older. Although very brilliant, her black eyes
were sunken, and surrounded by a bluish shadow; her dead-white
complexion and her colorless lips indicated suffering; and yet a
certain air of audacity and gayety in her glance contrasted with
her sickly appearance. Her rose-colored capote, ornamented with
artificial flowers, would have better suited an evening neglige.
Under a long cashmere shawl, of which the practiced eye of a
woman would have divined that she was not the first proprietor,
was hidden a gown of calico, at twenty cents a yard, and a little
worn. Finally, only a man would have admired her foot, clothed
as it was in common stockings and prunella shoes, very much
the worse for wear of the street. You remember, madam, that
asphalt was not invented yet.
PROSPER MERIMEE 9947
This woman, whose social position you have guessed, ap-
proached the chapel, in which Madame de Piennes still lingered;
and after having observed her for a moment with a restless,
embarrased air, she accosted her when she saw her arise and
on the point of leaving. <( Could you inform me, madam, w she
asked in a low voice and with a timid smile, — (( could you inform
me to whom I should go for a candle ? )} Such language was too
strange to the ears of Madame de Piennes for her to understand
it at once. She had the question repeated. <(Yes, I should like
to burn a candle to St. Roch, but I do not know whom to give
the money to."
Madame de Piennes was too enlightened in her piety for
participation in these popular superstitions. Nevertheless she
respected them; for there is something touching in every form
of adoration, however gross it may be. Supposing that the mat-
ter was a vow, or something of the kind, and too charitable to
draw from the costume of the young woman of the rose-colored
bonnet the conclusions that you perhaps have not feared to
form, she showed her the beadle approaching. The unknown one
thanked her, and ran towards the man, who appeared to under-
stand her at a word. While Madame de Piennes was taking up
her prayer-book and rearranging her veil, she saw the lady of the
candle draw out a little purse from her pocket, take from a
quantity of small-change a five-franc piece, and hand it to the
beadle, giving him at the same time, in a low voice, some long
instructions and recommendations, to which he listened with a
smile.
Both left the church at the same time; but, the lady of the
candle walking very fast, Madame de Piennes soon lost sight of
her, although she followed in the same direction. At the corner
of the street she lived in, she met her again. Under her tem-
porary cashmere the unknown was trying to conceal a loaf of
bread bought in a neighboring shop. On recognizing Madame
de Piennes she bent her head, could not suppress a smile, and
hastened her step. Her smile seemed to say: <( Well, what of
it? I am poor. Laugh at me if you will. I know very well
that one does not go to buy bread in a rose-colored capote and
cashmere shawl. w The mixture of false shame, resignation, and
good-humor did not escape Madame de Piennes. She thought,
not without sadness, of the probable position of the young
woman. <( Her rjiety," she said to herself, ((is more meritorious
PROSPER MERIMEE
than mine. Assuredly her offering of a five-franc piece is a
much greater sacrifice than what I give to the poor out of my
superfluity, without the imposition of a single privation. * She
then recalled the widow's mite, more acceptable to God than
the gaudy charities of the rich. <(I do not do enough good/*
she thought ; <( I do not do all that I might. )} While mentally
addressing these reproaches to herself, she entered her house.
The candle, the loaf of bread, and above all the offering of an
only five-franc piece, engraved upon the memory of Madame de
Piennes the figure of the young woman, whom she regarded
as a model of piety. She met her rather often afterwards, in
the street, near the church, but never at service. Every time
the unknown passed her she bent her head and smiled slightly.
The smile by its humility pleased Madame de Piennes. She
would have liked to find an occasion to serve the poor girl, who
had first interested her, but who now excited her pity; for she
remarked that the rose-colored capote had faded and the cash-
mere shawl had disappeared. No doubt it had returned to the
second-hand dealer. It was evident that St. Roch was not pay-
ing back a hundredfold the offering made him.
One day Madame de Piennes saw enter St. Roch a bier, fol-
lowed by a man rather poorly dressed and with no crape on
his hat. For more than a month she had not met the young
woman of the candle, and the idea came to her that this was
her funeral. Nothing was more probable, she was so pale and
thin the last time Madame de Piennes saw her. The beadle,
questioned, interrogated in his turn the man following the bier.
He replied that he was the concierge of a house, Rue Louis
le-Grand, and that one of his tenants dying, — a Madame Guillot
who had no friends nor relations, only a daughter, — he, the con-
cierge, out of pure kindness of heart, was going to the funeral
of a person who was nothing whatever to him. Immediately
Madame de Piennes imagined that her unknown one had died
in misery, leaving a little girl without help; and she promised
herself to make inquiries, by means of an ecclesiastic whom she
ordinarily employed for her good deeds.
Two days following, a cart athwart the street stopped her
carriage for a few seconds, as she was leaving her door. Look-
ing out of the window absent-mindedly, she saw standing against
a wall the young girl whom she believed dead. She recognized
her without difficulty, although paler and thyiner than ever,
PROSPER MERIMEE
dressed in mourning, but shabbily, without gloves or a hat. Her
expression was strange. Instead of her habitual smile, her fea-
tures were all contracted; her great black eyes were haggard;
she turned them towards Madame de Piennes, but without recog-
nizing her, for she saw nothing. In her whole countenance was
to be read, not grief, but furious determination. The image of
the young girl and her desperate expression pursued Madame de
Piennes for several hours.
On her return she saw a great crowd in the street. All the
porters' wives were at their doors, telling their neighbors some
tale that was being listened to with vivid interest. The groups
were particularly, crowded before a house near to the one in
which Madame de Piennes lived. All eyes were turned towards
an open window in the third story, and in each little circle
cne or two arms were raised to point it out to the attention of
the public; then all of a sudden the arms would fall towards
the ground, and all eyes would follow the movement. Some
extraordinary event had happened.
<(Ah, madame!" said Mademoiselle Josephine, as she unfast-
ened the shawl of Madame de Piennes, (< My blood is all fro-
zen! Never have I seen anything so terrible — that is, I did not
see, though I ran to the spot the moment after. But all the
same — >}
<( What has happened ? Speak quickly, Mademoiselle. ®
"Well, madame — three doors from here, a poor young girl
threw herself out of the window, not three minutes ago; if
madame had arrived a moment earlier, she could have heard
the thud."
<(Ah, heaven! And the unfortunate thing has killed herself!"
(': Madame, it gave one the horrors to look at it. Baptiste,
who has been in the wars, said he had never seen anything like
it. From the third story, madame !}>
« Did the blow kill her ? »
(< Oh, madame ! she was still moving, she talked even. < I want
them to finish me ! > she was saying. But her bones were in a
jelly. Madame may imagine what a terrible fall it was. w
(< But the unhappy creature! Did some one go to her relief;
was a physician sent for — a priest?"
(< A priest, madame knows that as well as I. But if I were a
priest — A wretched creature, so abandoned as to kill herself!
And besides, she had no behavior, — that is easily seen. She
995°
PROSPER MERIMEE
belonged to the Opera, so they told me: all those girls end
badly. She put herself in the window; she tied her skirts with
a pink ribbon, and — flop ! "
"It is the poor young girl in mourning ! " cried Madame de
Piennes, speaking to herself.
"Yes, madame: her mother died three or four days ago. It
must have turned her head. And with that, her lover perhaps
had left her in the lurch. And then rent day came — and no
money. And that kind doesn't know how to work."
(< Do you know if the unhappy girl has what she needs in her
condition, — linen, a mattress? Find out im mediately. "
(( I shall go for madame, if madame wishes,", cried the maid;
enchanted to think of seeing, close by, a woman who had tried to
•kill herself. "But," she added, « I don't know if I should have
the strength to look at her, — a woman fallen from the third
story! When they bled Baptiste I felt sick: it was stronger
than I.»
"Well then, send Baptiste," cried Madame de Piennes; <(but
let me know immediately how the poor thing is getting along. "
Luckily her physician, Dr. K , arrived as she was giving
the order. He came to dine with her, according to his custom,
every Tuesday, the day for Italian opera.
<( Run quick, doctor ! " — without giving him time to put down
his cane or take off his muffler. " Baptiste will take you. A
poor girl has just thrown herself from a third-story window, and
she is without attention."
" Out of the window ! " said the doctor. <( If it was high, I
shall probably have nothing to do."
At the end of an hour the doctor reappeared, slightly un-
powdered, and his handsome jabot of batiste in disorder.
"These people who set out to kill themselves," he said, "are
born with a caul. The other day they brought to my hospital
a woman who had sent a pistol shot into her mouth. A poor
way! she broke three teeth and made an ugly hole in her left
cheek. She will be a little uglier, that is all. This one throws
herself from a third-story window. A poor devil of an honest
man, falling by accident from a first-story, would break his skull
This girl breaks her leg, has two ribs driven in, and gets the
inevitable bruises — and that is all. But the worst of it is, the
ratin on this turbot is completely dried up, I fear for the roast,
and we shall miss the first act of Othello. *
PROSPER MERIMEE 9951
"And the unfortunate creature — did she tell you what drove
her to it ? »
<(Oh, madame, I never listen to those stories. I ask them,
(Had you eaten before ?J and so forth, and so forth, — because
that is necessary for the treatment. Parbleu! When one kills
one's self, it is because one has some bad reason for it. You
lose a sweetheart, a landlord puts you out of doors, — and you
jump from the window to get even with him. And one is no
sooner in the air than one begins to repent"
ft I hope she repents, poor child. >J
<( No doubt, no doubt. She cried and made fuss enough to
distract me. What makes it the more interesting in her case
is, that if she had killed herself she would have been the gainer,
in not dying of consumption — for she is consumptive. To be in
such a hurry, when all she had to do was to let it come ! )J
The girl lay on a good bed sent by Madame de Piennes, in
a little chamber furnished with three straw-seated chairs and a
small table. Horribly pale, with flaming eyes. She had one arm
outside of the covering, and the portion of that arm uncovered
by the sleeve of her gown was livid and bruised, giving an idea
of the state of the rest of her body. When she saw Madame de
Piennes, she lifted her head, and said with a sad faint smile: —
(<I knew that it was you, madame, who had had pity upon
me. They told me your name, and I was sure that it was the
lady whom I met near St. Roch."
«You seem to be in a poor way here, my poor child, }) said
Madame de Piennes, her eyes traveling over the sad furnishment
of the room. (<Why did they not send you some curtains? You
must ask Baptiste for any little thing you need."
"You are very good, madame. What do I lack? Nothing.
It is all over. A little more or a little less, what difference does
it make ? »
And turning her head, she began to cry. ,
<(Do you suffer much, my poor child?" said Madame de
Piennes, sitting by the bed.
"No, not much. Only I feel all the time in my ears the
wind when I was falling, and then the noise — crack!, when 1 fell
on the pavement. >}
<(You were out of your mind then, my dear friend: you re-
pent now, do you not?
"Yes; but when one is unhappy, one cannot keep one's head.*
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(<I regret not having known your position sooner. But, my
child, in no circumstances of life should we abandon ourselves to
despair. })
(< Ah ! I do not know, B cried the sick girl, (< what got into
me; there were a hundred reasons if one. First, when mamma
died, that was a blow. Then I felt myself abandoned — no one
interested in me. And at last, some one of whom I thought
more than of all the rest of the world put together — madame,
to forget even my name! Yes, I am named Arsene Guillot, —
G, u, i, double 1: he writes it with a y!"
<(And so you have been deceived, poor child ? )} resumed Ma
dame de Piennes after a moment of silence.
<( I ? No. How can a miserable girl like myself be deceived ?
Only he did not care for me any longer. He was right: I am
not the kind for him. He was always good and generous. I
wrote to him, telling him how it was with me, and if he wished —
Then he wrote to me — what hurt me very much. — The other
day, when I came back to my room, I let fall a looking-glass
that he had given me; a Venetian mirror, he called it. It
broke. I said to myself, *That is the last stroke! That is a
sign that all is at an end.' I had nothing more from him. All
the jewelry I had pawned. And then I said to myself, that if I
destroyed myself that would hurt him, and I would be revenged.
The window was open, and I threw myself out of it.*
<( But, unfortunate creature that you are ! the motive was as
frivolous as the action was criminal.*
<(Well — what then? When one is in trouble, one does not
reflect. It is very easy for happy people to say, (Be reason-
able. >»
<(I know it, — -misfortune is a poor counselor; nevertheless,
even in the midst of the most painful trials there are things
one should not forget. I saw you a short while ago perform an
act of piety at St. Roch. You have the happiness to believe.
Your religion, my dear, should have restrained you, at the very
moment you were abandoning yourself to despair. You received
your life from God. It does not belong to you. But I am wrong
to scold you now, poor little one. You repent, you suffer: God
will have mercy upon you."
Arsene bent her head, and tears moistened her eyelids.
<(Ah, madame ! » she said with a great sigh, <(you believe me
to be better than I am. — You believe me to be pious. — I am not
PROSPER MERIMEE 9953
very much so. — 1 was not taught — and if you saw me at church
burning a candle, it was because I — did not know wnat else to
put my wits at."
<(Well, my dear, it was a good thought. In misfortune, it is
always to God that one must turn."
"They told me — that if I burned a candle to St. Roch — But
no, madame, I cannot tell you that. A lady like you does not
know what one can do when one has not a sou."
(<One must ask God for courage above all.®
<( Anyway, madame, I do not wish to make myself out better
than I am; and it would be stealing to profit by the charity
you show me, without knowing what I am. I am an unfortunate
girl — But in this world one lives as one can. — To come to
an end, madame, I burned a candle because my mother said that
when one burned a candle to St. Roch, eight days never passed
without finding some one — "
Madame de Piennes with downcast eyes murmured faintly:
<( Your mother! Pcor thing! how can you dare to say it?"
<( Oh, my mother was like all mothers — all the mothers of
such as we. She supported her mother; I supported her; — fortu-
nately I have no child — I see, madame, that it frightens you — -
but what would you have ? You have been well reared: you have
never lacked. When one is rich, it is easy to be honest. As for
me, I would have been honest had I had the means. I never
loved but one man, and he left me. — See, madame, I am talking
to you this way, so frankly, although I see what you think of
me; and you are right. But you are the only honest woman I
ever talked to in my life — and you look so good — that a while
ago I said to myself, (Even when she knows what I am, she
will take pity on me. I am going to die, and I ask of you only
one' favor: to have a mass said for me in the church where I
first saw you. One single prayer, that is all, and I thank you
from the bottom of my heart. "
<( No, you will not die," cried Madame de Piennes, greatly
moved. (< God will have pity upon you, poor sinful one. You
will repent of your faults and he will pardon you. Those who
have reared you are more guilty than you are. Only have
courage and hope. Try above all to be calmer, my poor child.
The body must be cured; the soul is ill too; but I will answer
for its cure."
She had risen while speaking, rolling in her fingers a piece
of paper that contained a few louis.
9954 PROSPER MER1MEE
*(Take this," she said, (< if you have any little fancy — " slip-
ping it tinder the pillow.
tt No, madame ! " cried Arsene impetuously, thrusting back the
paper : tt I do not wish anything from you but what you have
promised. Good-by. We shall see one another no more. Have
me taken to a hospital, so that I can die without bothering any
one. You would never be able to make anything out of me/
A great lady like you will have prayed for me; I am content
Adieu. »
And turning around as much as the apparatus that held her
to the bed would permit, she hid her head in the pillow, so as
to keep from seeing anything further.
<( Listen, Arsene," said Madame de Piennes in a grave tone.
<(I have plans for you: I want to make an honest woman of
you. I have confidence in your repentance. I shall see you
often, I shall take care of you. One day you will owe me your
self-esteem," — taking her hand, which she pressed lightly.
<(You have touched me," cried the poor girl, <(you have
pressed my hand."
And before Madame de Piennes could withdraw her hand, she
seized it and covered it with tears and kisses.
<( Calm yourself, calm yourself, my dear," said Madame de
Piennes. <( You must not talk any more. Now I know all, and
I understand you better than you understand yourself. It is I
who am to be the doctor of your head — your poor weak head.
And you must obey me — I insist upon that — just like any other
doctor. I shall send you in a priest, one of my friends. . You
must listen to him. I shall choose good books for you; you must
read them. We will talk together sometimes. And when you
get better, we will busy ourselves about your future."
The nurse entered, fetching a vial from the druggist. Arsene
continued to weep.
Repentance was not difficult for poor Arsene, who, with the
exception of a few hours of gross pleasure, had known only the
miseries of life.
The poor girl was in a pitiable condition. It was evident
that her last hour was near. Her respiration was nothing more
than a painful rattle ; and Madame de Piennes was told that sev-
eral times during the morning she had been delirious, and that
the physician did not think she could last until the next day.
Arsene, however, recognized her protectress and thanked her for
coming.
PROSPER MERIMEE
(< You will not tire yourself any more by mounting my stairs, "
she said in a faint voice.
Every word seemed to cost her a painful effort, and exhaust
the little strength she had left. They had to bend over her to
hear her. Madame de Piennes took her hand; it was alraady
cold and inanimate.
Max arrived shortly after, and silently approached the bed of
the dying girl. She made him a slight sign of the head, and
noticing that he had a book in his hand, — (< You will not read
to-day," she murmured faintly.
Abbe Dubignon, who had been all the morning with Arsene,
observing with what rapidity her strength was being exhausted,
wished to use for her salvation the few moments that yet re-
mained to her. He motioned Madame de Piennes and Max aside;
and bending over the bed of suffering, he spoke to the poor
girl those solemn and consoling words that religion reserves for
such moments. In a corner of the room, madame was on her
knees praying; Max, standing at a window, seemed transformed
into a statue.
(< You pardon all those who have offended you, my daughter ? "
said the priest in a moved voice.
"Yes. May they be happy, " said the dying girl, making an
effort to be heard.
<( Trust in the mercy of God, my daughter, " resumed the
Abbe : <( repentance opens the gates of heaven. "
For several minutes longer the Abbe continued his exhorta-
tions; then he ceased to speak, in doubt whether he had not a
corpse before him. Madame de Piennes softly arose to her feet,
and each one remained for awhile motionless, anxiously looking at
the livid face of Arsene. Each one was holding breath, for fear
of disturbing the terrible slumber that perhaps had commenced
for her; the ticking of a watch on the stand by the bed was dis-
tinctly heard in the room.
(< She has passed away, the poor young lady, " at last said the
nurse, after holding her snuff-bo^ before the lips of Arsene:
wsee, the glass is not dimmed. She is dead."
<( Poor child, " cried Max, coming out of the stupor in which
he seemed sunk, (< what happiness has she known in this world ! *
Of a sudden, as if recalled by his voice, Arsene opened her
eyes: <( I have loved," she said in a lifeless voice. (< I have
loved," she repeated with a sad smile. They were her last words.
Translated for < A Library of the World's Best Literature, > by Grace King.
9956
THE MEXICAN NUN
LA MONJA DE MEXICO — JUAN A YNEZ DE LA CRUZ
(1651-1695)
BY JOHN MALONE
IHILE, in the middle of the seventeenth century, that portion
of North America which now comprises the United States
was unexplored wilderness, the empire of Spain held a
brilliant court in the city of the Montezumas. Scholars, artists,
and philosophers, boasting the
best blood of proud Castilian
races, were gathered in the
New World about the persons
who represented the Crown and
its .authority. Great must have
been the surprise of the learned
and able in the imperial city of
Madrid, when in 1689, in that
city, Maria Luisa, Countess of
Parades, wife of the viceroy of
Mexico, caused to be published
a volume of poems by a native
of the wonderful country in
which Cortez and his daring fol-
lowers had set up the triumph-
ant standard of Spain. Still
greater was the wonder when
upon reading, it was found that
THE MEXICAN NUN these poems of (< La Monja
de Mexico }> (The Mexican Nun)
were brilliant enough to compare with any from the pen of the most
admired and distinguished authors of the home land. So eagerly was
the book read, and so passionately admired, that in three years it
went through as many editions, and gained for the cloistered writer
the unanimous tribute of the title <(La Decima Musa" (The Tenth
Muse). Her world called her simply "The Mexican Nun"; but sub-
sequent generations have added to that title the name of <( Immortal
honor of her sex and native land."
The distinguished Father Luis Morales, abbot of the monastery of
San Joaquin in Madrid, who approved the printing of the book, said of
THE MEXICAN NUN
9957
it; *No greater treasure has been wafted by happy breezes from the
Indies into Spain. )}
The person whose humble state of life was thus glorified bore the
name in her convent of Sister Juana Ynez de la Cruz; and was born
on the 1 2th or November 1651, at a country place about forty miles
from the City of Mexico, called San Miguel de Nepanthla. Her
parents were Don Manuel Asbaje, a gentleman of good rank belong-
ing to the city of Vegara, and Dona Isabel Ramirez de Santillana,
a native of the city of Ayacapixtla. As a child the gift of poetry
approved itself in this Mexican country girl as early as her eighth
year, when it is said she accomplished the marvelous task of writing
a dramatic eulogy or "Auto" in honor of the Blessed Sacrament. So
earnest was her disposition towards study, that having heard there
was a school of sciences in the City of Mexico devoted exclusively to
the education of boys, she earnestly begged her father to allow her
to assume male attire, and go to Mexico for the purpose of entering
this college. Her maternal grandmother, a resident of the City of
Mexico, learning of the child's impatience for larger opportunities of
study than were afforded by her father's house, obtained permission
to take the little one under her own roof and there superintend her
education. Finding in her grandmother's house a great store of
books, the future poetess eagerly, but with a discrimination beyond
the ordinary, absorbed a vast amount of knowledge. Under the
direction of Master Olivas, a teacher of Latin grammar, she easily
and quickly acquired a knowledge of classical authors, and became
proficient as a writer of prose and verse in the speech of VirgiL
The fame of this talented girl soon came to the ears of the vice-
roy, and caused his lady, the Marquesa de Macera, to bestow upon
the young poetess a position in the palace as one of the ladies of
honor. While occupying this distinguished place, Juana Ynez gave
so great evidence of the pre-eminence of her mental power, and was
withal so gentle and attractive, that many noble and brilliant offers
of marriage were laid at her feet.
In spite of the great praise and flattering hopes of social rank
poured daily down before her, she determined to take up a religious
life. In this she was encouraged by the direction and advice of
Father Antonio Nunez, a very learned Jesuit, who was at that time
the confessor of the viceroy. Dona Juana at first assumed the habit
of the barefooted Carmelites in the convent of San Jose, of the City
of Mexico; but shortly realizing that the rigor of their rule was
too great for her, and acting upon the advice of her physician, she
removed to the house of the Jeromite nuns, where she made her sol-
emn profession before the end of her eighteenth year. For twenty-
seven years she remained in this house, devoted to the study of the
Scriptures and sacred theology, as well as mathematics, history, and
9958
THE MEXICAN NUN
poetry. Her collected works, the best edition of which was published
in Madrid in the year 1725, in three quarto volumes, show that
the power of her Muse extended to all pleasing and soul-elevating
topics, whether connected with religion or with social life. Many
of her light and humorous sonnets to her private friends reveal the
very soul of wit. Her charming comedy on the obligations of hos-
pitality displays a delicate and masterful knowledge of the laws of
love and family, as well as of the somewhat severe and complicated
rules by which the Spanish comedy of the < Cloak and Sword > was
constructed. So perfect is this social comedy, that it causes one to
wonder how this secluded Mexican nun could have acquired a knowl-
edge of the practical needs of the stage as complete as any that
illuminated the work of Calderon or of Lope de Vega.
The greatest triumph of her genius, however, is the Corpus Christi
play entitled (The Divine Narcissus*; in which, by a simple yet
wonderful allegory, she weaves the fable of the pagan lover into a
marvelous broidery of the life and passion of the Christ. The dar-
ing of the thought and its treatment is Shakespearean in convincing
mastery.
But it was not in her impassioned verse alone that the genius of
this remarkable woman found expression. She was an artist in paint
as well, and her own exquisitely refined features have been preserved
for us by her own hand. The vignette which is here reproduced is
after a life-size copy in oil of the portrait that she painted of her-
self. Beneath it is a Spanish inscription of direct and simple elo-
quence : — <( Faithful copy of another which she herself made and
painted with her own hand. The Rev. Mother Juana Yiiez de la
Cruz, Phoenix of America, glorious perfection of her sex, honor of the
nation of the New World, and subject of the admiration and praises
of the Old. »
This copy was purchased by Dr. Robert H. Lamborn, and placed
in his collection of Mexican colonial works of art in Memorial Hall,
Philadelphia.
The quiet 01 the convent walks did not save the poetess from the
noise of envy and detraction. Many rude assaults were made upon
her name and fame; but her unassuming modesty, her virtue, and her
generous and unselfish devotion, drew finally even those who most
maligned her into the ranks of her true friends. It was about two
years before her death, and while her name and the music of her
song were being chanted in a chorus of the highest praise, that she
at once and willingly gave up all efforts toward any of the world's
works, and under the care of her old confessor, Father Nunez,
devoted herself and her remaining years to the study and hope of
eternity. Of this time of her life Father Nunez said, <(She seemed
to long for Heaven as the white dove longs for its nest."
THE MEXICAN NUN 9959
The plague broke out in the City of Mexico in the early spring of
1695; and amongst the devoted women of God who went to the care
of the sick and dying was Sister Juana Ynez. One day she came
back to her cell with the dread infection heavy upon her; and on
the 1 7th of April of this year, having been forty-four years and five
months amongst men, her soul departed. Her death was bemoaned
by the people of two continents, and her obsequies were attended
with almost royal honors.
ON THE CONTRARIETIES OF LOVE
(SECOND SONNET)
ONE loves me though his homage I disdain;
And one for whom I languish mocks my smile.
To double torment thus doth pride beguile,
And make me loathe and love at once in vain;
On him who honors casting wanton stain,
And hazarding to be esteemed vile
By wooing where I am not sought, the while
I waste the patience of a gentler swain.
So must I fear despite to my good fame;
For here with vanity, with conscience there,
My blushing cheeks betray my needless shame:
'Tis I am guilty towards this guiltless pair.
For shame ! to court a light-love's woeful name,
And leave an earnest lover to despair.
LEARNING AND RICHES
WHY should the world be apt to censure me ?
Wherein have I offended that I sought
To grace my mind with jewels dearly bought,
Nor turned my heart to jeweled vanity ?
From greed of riches I am fancy-free;
But deem no work of fancy fairly wrought
Till crowned with diamonds from the mine of thought,
That worth my wealth, not wealth my worth, may be.
I am not Beauty's votary. I know
Her conquests fall a spoil to age at last;
996° THE MEXICAN NUN
I find no joy in money's gaudy show;
For gold like chaff into the furnace cast
Fits but to feed Art's flame, and keep the glow
Of golden Truth a glory unsurpassed.
DEATH IN YOUTH
1 NOTED once a fair Castilian rose,
All blushing with the bloom of life new-born.
Flaunt lovingly her beauty to the morn,
Whose whisper woed the coy bud to unclose
Her dewy petals to his kiss. « Thy foes,))
I cried, (< the cankering elves of darkness, scorn !
The joys of purity thy day adorn,
And guard thee through the night's despoiling woes.
And thus, though withering Death may touch thy leaf,
And in his dusky veil thy fragrance fold,
Thy youth and beauty ever smile at grief.
Thy little life and story quickly told
Make blest the teaching of a sweet belief:
'Tis fairer fortune to die young than old. w
THE DIVINE NARCISSUS
A SACRAMENTAL PLAY
[NOTE. — The action begins with a Loa or prologue in which the Western
World and America appear as persons habited in the dress of Indians. They
are about to offer sacrifice to the god of seed-time, when Zeal, a Spanish
soldier, interrupts them, and with his armed companions endeavors to compel
them to desist. He is prevented and rebuked by Religion in the person of
a virgin, who invites the attention of all to the story of the passion of the
Divine Narcissus.
The persons of the play than take the place of those of the Loa. The
Hebrew and the Gentile as Synagogue and Gentility, in the guise .of nymphs
accompanied by an unseen chorus, alternate in songs of praise, — the first to
the Divine Narcissus, the Son of God, the second to the spirit of fountains
and flowers. Human Nature, another nymph, asks them to reconcile their
songs, and declares the divinity of Narcissus and her love for him. Grace,
Echo as Angelic Nature, Pride, Self-Love, and other nymphs, together with a
band of shepherds and the chorus, take part with Human Nature and her
loving Narcissus in acting a beautiful allegory in which the heathen myth is
wedded to Christ's passion. Echo, as Angelic Nature sues in vain for the
love of Narcissus, and Human Nature comes to the grove to seek him. On
her coming she gives voice to the lament on the following page.]
H
THE MEXICAN NUN 996i
Enter Human Nature
UMAN NATURE —
Ah, weary me! my perilous quest
I follow still with faith untired.
My wandering steps may have no rest
Until I find my well-desired,
My loved Narcissus, whom in vain
1 seek through shady grove and sunny plain.
Hope leads me to this pleasant glade,
With promise of my lost one's sight.
If I may trust her gentle aid,
His presence caused the sweet delight
Which beams in every fragrant flower,
And sets a-tremble all this leafy bower.
How many days, alas! have I
The woodland, flower by flower, searched
With many a heart-consuming sigh,
By thorns empierced, by slime besmirched;
Each woe to new hope giving birth !
Ages my days, my pilgrimage the earth!
My past declares our sacred troth;
The paths I've trod with ceaseless pain,
My sighs and groans commingling both
With tears that wet my cheeks like rainl
Nay, slavery and prison oft
My unforgetting fealty madly scoffed!
Once was I from his city driven,
E'en by the servants of his power, —
My mantle torn, my sceptre riven.
The watchers of his warden tower
My shoulders scourged with whips of flame.
And thrust me forth with Sin and Evil Fame*
O nymphs, who grace this fair retreat!
Your sympathy I pray impart:
Should you my soul's Beloved meet,
Tell him the longings of my heart ;
The patience of my passion tell,
My tortured spirit and my anguish fell.
If sign you need my Loved to know,
His brow is fair as rosy morn,
His bosom whiter than the snow,
With light like that by jasper borne.
9962 THE MEXICAN NUN
His eyes are limpid as the dove's,
And all their deep, unfathomed gleams are Love's.
His breath is like the fragrance thrown
From rarest incense; and his hand
Is jeweled with the jacynth stone,
The badge of Glory's knightly band,
The jewel of the sigh and tear, —
The crest of all who triumph over fear.
He stands as stately as the -shaft
That lifts the temple dome on high;
His graceful gestures gently waft
A spell o'er every gazer's eye.
O maids! perfections all combine
To mark the person of my Love divine! —
Among the myriads you will know him
O'er all the better or the worse;
His god-like form will ever show him
The flower of the universe.
No other shepherd is there, here
Or elsewhere, equal to this Shepherd dear I
Then tell me where my soul's adored
His swift and busy footsteps turns!
What shady bower he fleeth toward
When high the midday sunlight burns!
For sad and weary is my heart
With wandering through the forest's every part,
[The action passes naturally to a culmination in the following scene of
the resurrection of Narcissus after his supposed death in the fountain.]
Enter about the Fountain, Human Nature with all the nymphs and shep-
herds. They bewail the death of Narcissus. Grace enters, and
addressing Human Nature, says: —
Grace — Why weep you thus so grievously, fair nymph ?
What seek you, and what is your cause of woe ?
Human Nature —
. The Master of my love in vain I seek.
I know not where the jealous Fates have hid
Him from my eager sight.
Grace — Lament not! weep not!
Nor seek among the dead the Eternal One.
Narcissus, thy Beloved, lives.
THE MEXICAN NUN 9963
Narcissus, brilliantly dressed and crowned as from the Resurrection, enters,
accompanied by a troop of rejoicing shepherds. Human Nature turns
and sees . him.
Narcissus — Fair maid,
Thy pearly tears are precious to my sight,
And melt my heart to pity! Why does grief
Thus flood thy gentle eyes ?
Human Nature— I weep, my lord,
For my Narcissus. Oh, could you but tell
Me where to seek for my lost love !
Narcissus — Dear spouse,
Has heaven's glory shining on my brow
So masked me that you know me not ?
ffuman Nature —
0 spouse adorable! My joy! My heart
Bows to the earth with its great happiness!
1 kiss thy feet.
Narcissus — No, dear one, thou must not!
A little longer must thou wait, for I
Go now to join my Father on his throne.
Human Nature —
Thou wilt leave me here alone ? Dear Lord, I faint
To think without thine arm to shelter me
My enemy the serpent may destroy me.
Enter Echo, Pride, and Self-Love
Echo — True that! for he has laid in wait for her
With wary cunning for these many years.
[Narcissus rebukes the envious nymphs, and calls on Grace to declare the
will of God.]
Narcissus — Then to thy greater pain, since thou canst wish
Such evil to another, know my plan
Of safeguard for my chosen spouse. Speak, Grace,
The meaning of this parable which we
So far have acted. Tell my message.
Grace — List
Ye all! The master I obey.
Echo— Alas!
My woe grows heavier at thy words of dole.
Grace — So shall the beauty of Narcissus bloom
In sovereign state while he enjoys the bliss
Eternally prepared for him, the king
Of happiness, dispenser of all joys,
THE MEXICAN NUN
Perfection's treasurer and crowned cause
Of wonder-making miracles. The orbs
Whose crystal radiance lights the firmament
Shall be his lofty glory's witnesses;
Their circled courses, as with pens of fire,
Shall write his deeds upon the vast of space;
The splendor of the morning stars, the flame
Of purifying fires, the storm-tossed plumes
Of ocean, the uplifted crags of earth,
And the unceasing music of the winds,
Shall praise him, and from him the myriad suns
And brilliant stars shall proudly borrow light.
The sapphire of the deep and placid lakes,
The pearly radiance of the flying mis£ss
Shall be the mirrors of his smile ; the folds
Shall clothe themselves with flowers, and the peaks
With snow, to imitate his glory.
The wild things of the forest and the air
From den and eyrie shall adore his name.
The silent caverns of the deep shall teem
With servants of his word. The sea itself
Shall pile its jeweled waves aloft to make
The thunderous altars of the choir of storms.,
All growing things — the lofty pine, the moss
That clings about the desert rock — shall teach
His worship; him the boundless main declares,
Receiving all the waters of the earth
To give them back in helpful rain as he
Receives in adoration and gives back
In bliss.
And this has ever been since time
And movement of created things began.
For all things hold their being from his care.
Should he not care, chaos would mar the world.
This is the happy fear that sways the flowers,
The fear that tells the lily to grow pale
And brings a blush upon the rose.
He came
To see in man, creation's prince, the best
Reflection of himself. God-Man, he saw,
And loved the Godlike image of himself.
Godlike to God the only worth can be«
Translated for <A Library of the World's Best Literature. :
9965
KONRAD FERDINAND MEYER
(1825-1898)
FOREMOST among the German poets and novelists of our time
stand the two Swiss writers Gottfried Keller and Konrad
Ferdinand Meyer. Strongly contrasted as their lives were
in external circumstances, and widely different as were the fields from
which they chose their materials, in their artistic aims the two men
had much in common. Keller's life was a long battle with small
things, and fame was slow in coming; Meyer has led a life of literary
leisure, devoted to self-cultivation and indifferent to public recogni-
tion. But in the work of each of these poets
there is the same perfection of form and
fastidious polish of style. Keller is perhaps
more rugged and vigorous; Meyer depicts
life with the keen insight of a contemplat-
ive and poetic student of history. In both
cases the treatment is realistic. Keller's,
however, is obviously the realism of act-
ual observation and experience; Meyer's^is
the realism of a plastic mind infusing life
into the facts and forms of a bygone age.
Together these two men are the chief orna-
ments of modern Swiss literature.
Konrad Ferdinand Meyer was born at
Zurich on October i2th, 1825. His younger
years were passed in Geneva and Lausanne, where he acquired com-
mand of the French language. For a time it was his intention to
study law; but after a brief experience at the University of Zurich,
he abandoned the idea. Moved solely by his. own inclinations, and for
years with no other purpose than the gratification of his own tastes,
he devoted himself with scholarly ardor to the study of history. It
is a curious instance of a blind impulse guiding genius into its proper
course. Still unproductive, he went to Paris in 1857 to pursue his
historical studies, and spent the following year in Italy. Since 1875
he has lived at his country home, at Kilchberg near Zurich. His life
has been free from sordid cares, and filled chiefly with the joys of
scholarly labor and poetic creation.
K. F. MEYER
9966
KONRAD FERDINAND MEYER
. Meyer had reached the prime of life when he first entered the
field of literature. His first public venture was a collection of ( Bal-
lads} which came out in 1867, when their author was in his forty-
second year. In 1870 came a volume of poems entitled ( Romances
and Pictures. > But it was not until the appearance of (Hutten's Last
Days> — a highly original cycle of poems, half lyric, half epic — that
Meyer began to attract attention. This was in 1871; and in the same
year the idyllic <Engelberg> was published. Herein also may be
found the epic element which reveals the mind of a poet, whose
chief intellectual delight is the study of history.
But it was the long array of his vigorous and brilliant stories that
brought to Meyer the full measure of fame he now enjoys. ( Der
Heilige* (The Saint), in which is told the story of Thomas Becket.
is one of the most finished pieces of historical fiction in German lit-
erature. Next in finish of execution to this figure of Becket stands
that of the sombre and impressive Dante, into whose mouth, as
he sits in the halls of Cangrande, is put the thrilling tale of (The
Monk's Wedding. J This book, which appeared in 1884, and (The
Temptation of Pescara> (1889), may perhaps be singled out as the
best of these historical romances; but the list of Meyer's works is a
long one, and none of them shows hasty workmanship nor flagging
powers; and the public interest remains unabated.
Meyer is a master of clear objective treatment. He never inter-
poses himself, nor intrudes historical information. As the reader
accompanies the characters through their experiences, he has only
to look about to see how things once appeared, and how men once
behaved in the dead days which the. poet is re-creating. The thing
is presented as the author sees it in his plastic imagination, and the
vividness of the impression it conveys is independent of all historical
accessories and learned elucidation. Meyer died at Kilchberg on Nov-
ember 28th, 1898.
FROM <THE MONK'S WEDDING >
Copyright 1887, by Cupples & Kurd
« y s IT at all necessary that there should be monks ? w whispered
a voice out of a dim corner, as if to suggest that any sort
of escape from an unnatural condition was a blessing.
The audacious question caused no shock; for at this court the
boldest discussion of religious matters was allowed, — yes, smiled
upon, — whilst a free or incautious word in regard to the person
or policy of the Emperor was certain destruction.
KONRAD FERDINAND MEYER
9967
Dante's eyes sought the speaker, and recognized in him a
young ecclesiastic whose fingers toyed with the heavy gold cross
he wore over his priestly robe.
" Not on my account, " said the Florentine deliberately. <( May
the monks die out as soon as a race is born that understands
how to unite justice and mercy — the two highest attributes of
the human soul — which seem now to exclude one another. Until
that late hour in the world's history may the State administer the
one, and the Church the other. Since, however, the exercise of
mercy requires a thoroughly unselfish heart, the three monastic
vows are not only a proper but essential preparation; for expe-
rience has taught that total abnegation is less difficult than a
reserved and partial self-surrender."
"Are there not more bad than good monks ? " persisted the
doubting ecclesiastic.
"No," said Dante, (< when we take into consideration human
weakness; else there are more unjust than righteous judges, more
cowards than brave warriors, more bad men than good."
"And is not this the case ? " asked the guest in the dim cor-
ner.
"No, certainly not," Dante replied, a heavenly brightness sud-
denly illuminating his stern features. " Is not philosophy asking
and striving to find out how evil came into this world? Had the
bad formed the majority, we should, on the contrary, have been
asking how good came into the world."
This proud enigmatical remark impressed the party forcibly,
but at the same time excited some apprehension lest the Floren-
tine was going deeper into scholasticism instead of relating his
story.
Cangrande, seeing his pretty young friend suppress a yawn,
said, " Noble Dante, are you to tell us a true story, or will you
embellish a legend current among the people; or can you not
give us a pure invention out of your own laurel-crowned head ? "
Dante replied with slow emphasis, " I evolve my story from
an inscription on a grave."
"On a grave!"
"Yes, from an inscription on a gravestone which I read years
ago, when with the Franciscans at Padua. The stone was in a
corner of the cloister garden, hidden under wild rose-bushes, but
still accessible to the novices, if they crept on all fours and did
not mind scratching their cheeks with thorns. I ordered the
9968
KONRAD FERDINAND MEYER
prior — or, I should say, besought him — to have the puzzling
stone removed to the library, and there commended to the inter-
est of a gray-headed custodian.
ft What was on the stone ? w interposed somewhat listlessly the
wife of the Prince.
"The inscription, }> answered Dante, (<was in Latin, and ran
thus: —
0<Hic jacet monachus Astorre cum uxore Antiope. Sepeliebat
Azzolinus. > »
<( What does it mean ? ® eagerly cried the lady on Cangrande's
left.
The Prince fluently translated:- —
(<Here sleeps the monk Astorre beside his wife Antiope. Both
buried by Ezzelin.^
(< Atrocious tyrant ! M exclaimed the impressible maiden : (< I am
sure he had them buried alive, because they were lovers; and he
insulted the poor victims even in their graves, by styling her the
cwife of the monk,* — cruel wretch that he was!"
<( Hardly, w said Dante: <(I construe it quite differently, and
according to the history this seems improbable; for Ezzelin's
rigor was directed rather against breaches of ecclesiastical disci-
pline. He interested himself little either in the making or break-
ing of sacred vows. I take the ( sepeliebat * in a friendly sense,
and believe the meaning to be that he gave the two burial. M
<( Right, w exclaimed Cangrande. (< Florentine, I agree with
you! Ezzelin was a born ruler, and as such men usually are,
somewhat harsh and violent; but nine-tenths of the crimes im-
puted to him are inventions — forgeries of the clergy and scandal-
loving people. }>
(< Would it were so!" sighed Dante; (<at any rate, where he
appears upon the stage in my romance, he has not yet become
the monster which the chronicle^ be it true or false, pictures him
to be; his cruelty is only beginning to show itself in certain
lines about the mouth. >J
(<A commanding figure, >J exclaimed Cangrande enthusiastically,
desiring to bring him more palpably before the audience, « with
black hair bristling round his great brow, as you paint him, in
your Twelfth Canto, among the inhabitants of hell. But whence
have you taken this dark head ? »
KONRAD FERDINAND MEYER
* It is yours,® replied Dante boldly; and Cangrande felt him-
self flattered,
<(And the rest of the characters in my story, )} he said with
smiling menace, (( I will also take from among you, if you will
allow me," — and he turned toward his listeners: « I borrow your
names only, leaving untouched what is innermost; for that I can-
not read.'*
(< My outward self I lend you gladly, }> responded the Princess,
whose indifference was beginning to yield.
A murmur of intense excitement now ran through the courtly
circle, and (( Thy story, Dante, thy story ! }) was heard on all
sides,
a Here it is," he said, and began: —
[Dante begins his tale with a description of a bridal party returning in
festal barges upon the waters of the Brenta to Padua, where the wedding
is to be solemnized. Umberto Vicedomini, with his three sons by a former
marriage, and his bride, Diana, occupy one barge; an accident overturns
the vessel, and the entire party is drowned, with the exception of Diana,
who is rescued by Astorre, Umberto's younger brother. The news of this acci-
dent is brought to the aged head of the house of Vicedomini, who thus sees
all his hopes of a posterity cut off, for his only surviving son has already
assumed monastic vows. Upon his willingness to renounce these vows now
depends the future of the house of the Vicedomini. The old man is in the
midst of a heated interview with the ruler Ezzelin when Diana enters his
chamber.]
Just then he caught sight of his daughter-in-law, who had
pressed through the crowd of servants in advance of the monk,
and was standing on the threshold. Spite of his physical weak-
ness he rushed towards her, staggering; seized and wrenched her
hands apart, as if to make her responsible for the misfortune
which had befallen them.
<( Where is my son, Diana ? w he gasped out.
(< He lies in the Brenta, J) she answered sadly, and her blue
eyes grew dim.
<( Where are my three grandchildren ? w
(<In the Brenta, w she repeated.
*And you bring me yourself as a gift — you are presented to
me ? }> and the old man laughed discordantly.
(( Would that the Almighty, w she said slowly, <(had drawn me
deeper under the waves, and that thy children stood here in my
stead!* She was silent; then bursting into sudden anger,—
997°
KONRAD FERDINAND MEYER
<( Does my presence insult you, and am I a burden to you ?
Impute the blame to him (pointing to the monk). He drew me
from the water when I was already dead, and restored me to
The old man now for the first time perceived his son; and
collecting himself quickly, exhibited the powerful will which his
bitter grief seemed to have steeled rather than lamed.
<( Really — he drew you out of the Brenta ? H'm! Strange.
The ways of God are marvelous! >J
He grasped the monk by the shoulder and arm at once, as if
to take possession of nitn body and soul, and dragged him along
to his great chair, into which the old man fell without relaxing
his pressure on the arm of his unresisting son. Diana followed,
knelt down on the other side of the chair, and leaned her head
upon the arm of it, so that only the coil of her blond hair was
visible — like some inanimate object. Opposite the group sat Ezze-
lin, his right hand upon the rolled-up letter, like a commander-
in-chief resting upon his staff.
<( My son — my own one," whimpered the dying man, with a
tenderness in which truth and cunning mingled, (< my last and
only consolation! Thou staff and stay of my old age, thou wilt
not crumble like dust under my trembling fingers. Thou must
understand, M he went on, already in a colder and more practical
tone, <( that as things are, it is not possible for thee to remain
longer in the cloister. It is according to the canons, my son,
is it not, that a monk whose father is sick unto death, or impov-
erished, should withdraw in order to nurse the author of his
days, or to till his father's acres ? But I need thee even more
pressingly: thy brothers and nephews are gone, and now thou
must keep the life torch of our house burning. Thou art a little
flame I have kindled, and I cannot suffer it to glimmer and die
out in a narrow cell. Know one thing >J — he had read in the
warm brown eyes a genuine sympathy, and the reverent bear-
ing of the monk appeared to promise blind obedience • <( I am
more ill than you suppose — am I not, Issacher?" He turned
to look in the face a spare little man, who, with phial and spoon
in his hands, had stept behind the chair of the old Vicedominl,
and now bowed his white head in affirmation. <( I travel toward
the river; but I tell thee, Astorre, if my wish is not granted,
thy father will refuse to step into Charon's boat, and will sit
cowering on the twilight strand. >J
KONRAD FERDINAND MEYER
The monk stroked the feverish hand of the old man with
tenderness, but answered quietly in two words : (< My vows ! })
Ezzelin unfolded the letter. <( Thy vows, w said the old man in
a wheedling tone — (( loosened strings ; filed-away chains. Make a
movement and they fall. The Holy Church, to which thy obedi-
ence is due, has declared them null and void. There it stands
written, w and his thin finger pointed to the parchment with the
Pope's seal.
The monk approached the governor, took the letter from him
respectfully, and read it through, closely watched the while by
four eyes. Completely dazed, he took one step backward, as if
he were standing on .the top of a tower, and all at once saw the
rampart give way.
Ezzelin seized the reeling man by the arm with the curt ques-
tion, (< To whom did you make your vows, monk, — to yourself,
or to the Church ? »
(<To both, of course/' shrieked the old man angrily: "these
are cursed subtleties. Take care, son, or he will reduce us,
Vicedomini, to beggary. )}
Without a trace of feeling or resentment, Ezzelin laid his
right hand on his beard and swore — <( If Vicedomini dies, the
monk here inherits his property, and should the family become
extinct with him, if he love me and his native city, he shall
found a hospital of such size and grandeur that the hundred
cities }> (he meant the Italian) <( will envy us. Now, godfather,
having cleared myself from the charge of rapacity, may I put to
the monk a few questions ? — have I your permission ? >J
The fury of the old man now rose to such a pitch as to bring
on a fit of convulsions; but even then he did not release the arm
of the monk.
Issacher put carefully to the pale lips a spoon filled with
some strong-smelling essence. The sufferer turned his head
away with an effort. <( Leave me in peace, }) he groaned : <( you
are the governor's physician as well,** and closed his eyes again.
The Jew looked at the tyrant as if to beg forgiveness for this
suspicion. « Will he return to life ? }) asked Ezzelin. (< I think
so," replied the Jew, (< but not for long; I fear he will not live
to see the sun go down.®
The tyrant took advantage of the moment to speak to the
monk, who was exerting himself to the utmost to restore his
father.
9972 KONRAD FERDINAND MEYER
<(And whither do your own thoughts tend, monk ? w he in-
quired.
<( They are unchanged and persistent ; yet, God forgive me, I
would my father never woke again, that I should be forced to
oppose him so cruelly. If he had but received extreme unction ! a
He kissed passionately the cheek of the fainting man; who
thereupon returned to consciousness, and heaving a deep sigh,
raised his weary eyelids, from under whose gray bushy brows he
directed toward the monk a supplicating look. <( How is it ? }> he
asked: <(to what hast thou doomed me, dearest, — to heaven, or to
hell ? »
<( Father, w prayed Astorre in a tremulour voice, (< thy time has
come; only a short hour remains: banish all earthly cares and
interests, think of thy soul. See, thy priests )} (he meant those
of the parish church) (< are gathered together waiting to perform
the last sacrament. })
It was so! The door of the adjacent room had softly opened,
in which the faint glimmer of lighted candles was perceptible,
whilst a choir was intoning a prelude, and the gentle vibration of
a beli became audible.
Now the old man, who already felt his knees sinking into
Lethe's flood, clung to the. monk, as once St. Peter to the Sav-
ior on the Sea of Gennesaret. (< Thou wilt do it for my sake ? w
he stammered.
«If I could; if I dared, » sighed the monk. « By all that is
holy, my father, think on eternity; leave the earthly. Thine hour
is come ! w
This veiled refusal kindled the last spark of life in the old
man to a blaze. <( Disobedient, ungrateful one ! J> he cried.
Astorre beckoned to the priests.
<(By all the devils, spare me your kneadings and salvings,"
raved the dying man. <( I have nothing to gain ; I am already
like one of the damned, and must remain so in the midst of
Paradise, if my son wantonly repudiates me and destroys my
germ of life."
The horror-struck monk, thrilled to the soul by this frightful
blasphemy, pictured his father doomed to eternal perdition. (This
was his thought, and he was as firmly convinced of the truth of
it as I should have been in his place. ) He fell on his knees
before the old man, and in utter despair, bursting into tears,
said: « Father, I beseech thee, have pity on thyself and on me!"
KONRAD FERDINAND MEYER 9973
* Let the crafty one go his way," whispered the tyrant.
The monk did not hear him. Again he gave the astounded
priests a sign, and the litany for the dying was about to begin.
At this the old man doubled himself up like a refractory child,
and shook his head.
a Let the sly fox go where he must," admonished Ezzelin in
a louder tone.
<( Father, father ! " sobbed the monk, his whole soul dissolved
in pity.
(< Illustrious signer and Christian brother," said the priest with
unsteady voice, (< are you in the frame of mind to meet your
Creator and Savior ? " The old man took no notice.
(<Are you firm as a believer in the Holy Trinity ? Answer
me, signor," said the priest; and then turned pale as a sheet, for
<( Cursed and denied be it for ever and ever," fell from the dying
man's lips. <( Cursed and — "
<(No more," cried the monk, springing to his feet. <( Father, I
resign myself to thy will. Do with me what you choose, if only
you will not throw yourself into the flames of hell."
The old man gasped as after some terrible exertion; then
ga«ed about him with an air of relief, — I had almost said, of
pleasure. Groping, he seized the blond hair of Diana, lifted her
up from her knees, took her right hand, — which she did not
refuse, — opened the cramped hand of the monk, and laid the
two together.
<( Binding, in presence of the most holy sacrament ! " he ex-
claimed triumphantly, and blessed the pair. The monk did not
gainsay it; while Diana closed her eyes.
(< Now quick, reverend fathers : there is need of haste, I think,
and I am now in a Christian frame of mind."
The monk and his affianced bride would fain have stepped
behind the train of priests. "Stay," muttered the dying man;
"stay where my comforted eyes may look upon you until they
close in death." Astorre and Diana were thus with clasped hands
obliged to wait and watch the expiring glance of the obstinate
old man.
The latter murmured a short confession, received the last
sacrament, and breathed his final breath as they were anointing
his feet, while the priests uttered in his already deaf ears those
sublime words, <( Rise, Christian Soul. " . The dead face bore the
unmistakable expression of triumphant cunning.
KONRAD FERDINAND MEYER
The tyrant sat, whilst all around were upon their knees;
and with calm attention observed the performance of the sacred
office, much like a savant studying on a sarcophagus the repre-
sentation of some religious rites of an ancient people. He now
approached the dead man and closed his eyes.
He then turned to Diana. <( Noble lady, J> said he, <( let us
go home: your parents, even if assured of your safety, will long
to see you."
tt Prince, I thank you, and will follow, * she answered; but she
did not withdraw her hand from that of the monk, whose eyes
until then she had avoided. Now she looked her betrothed full
in the face, and said in a deep but melodious voice, whilst her
cheeks glowed : — <( My lord and master, we could not let your
father's soul perish: thus have I become yours. Hold your faith
to me better than to the cloister. Your brother did not love me;
forgive me for saying it, — I speak the simple truth. You will
have in me a good and obedient wife; but I have two peculiari-
ties which you must treat with indulgence. I am hot with anger
if any attack is made on my honor or my rights, and I am most
exacting in regard to the fulfillment of a promise once made.
Even as a child I was so I have few wishes, and desire noth-
ing unreasonable: but when a thing has once been shown and
promised me, I insist upon possessing it; and I lose my faith,
and resent injustice more than other women, if the promise I
have received is not faithfully kept. But how can I allow my-
self to talk in this way to you, my lord, whom I scarcely know?
I have done. Farewell, my husband; grant me nine days to
mourn your brother. }) At this she slowly released her hand from
his and disappeared with the tyrant.
Meanwhile the band of priests had borne away the corpse to
place it upon a bier in the palace chapel, and to bless it.
[In thus yielding to his father's importunities Astorre has weakened the
mainstays of his character ; and if one vow may be broken, so may another
also. He loves a fair shy girl, Antiope, and marries her; but the imperious
and implacable Diana insists upon her prior rights. Contemptuously she con-
descends to return her betrothal ring if Antiope will come to her in humble
supplication. Astorre's sense of justice leads him to give his consent to this
humiliation, and Antiope now prepares to obey his wishes. This brings about
the final catastrophe.]
Antiope now hastily completed her toilet. Even the frivolous
Sotte was frightened at the palior of the face reflected in the
KONRAD FERDINAND MEYER
9975
glass. There was no sign of life in it, save the terror in the
eyes and the glistening of the firmly set teeth. A red stripe,
caused by Diana's blow, was visible upon her white brow.
When at last arrayed, Astorre's wife rose with beating pulse
and throbbing temples; and leaving her safe chamber, hurried
through the halls to find Diana. She was urged on by the
excitement of both hope and fear. She would fly back jubilantly,
after she had recovered the ring, to meet her husband, whom she
wished to spare the sight of her humiliation.
Soon among the masqueraders she distinguished the conspicu-
ous figure of the goddess of ihe chase, recognized her enemy,
and followed, as with measured steps she passed through the
main hall and retired into one of the dimly lighted small side
rooms. It seemed the goddess desired not public humiliation,
but lowliness of heart.
Quickly Antiope bowed before Diana, and forced her lips to
titter, (< Will you give me the ring ? >- while she touched the pow-
erful finger.
<( Humbly and penitently ? w asked Diana.
<( How else ? w the unhappy child said feverishly. <( But yon
trifle with me ; cruelly — you have doubled up your finger ! w
Whether Antiope imagined it, or whether Diana really was
trifling with her, a finger is so easily curved! Cangrande, you
have accused me of injustice. I will not decide.
Enough ! the Vicedomini raised her willowy figure, and with
flaming eyes fixed on the severe face of Diana, cried out, <(Will
you torture a wife, maiden ? }> Then she bent down again, and
tried with both hands to pull the ring off her finger. Like a
flash of lightning a sharp pain went through her. The aven-
ging Diana, while surrendering to her the left hand, had with
the right drawn an arrow from ner quiver and plunged it into
Antiope's heart. She swayed first to the left, then to the right,
turned a little, and fell with the arrow still deep in her warm
flesh.
The monk, who, after bidding farewell to his rustic guests,
hastened back and eagerly sought his wife, found her lifeless.
With a shriek of horror he threw himself upon her and drew the
arrow from her side; a stream of blood followed. Astorre dropped
senseless.
When he recovered from his swoon, Germano was standing
over him with crossed arms. <(Are you the murderer ? w asked
KONRAD FERDINAND MEYER
the monk. <( I murder no women," replied the other sadly <(I
is my sister who has demanded justice."
Astorre groped for the arrow and found it. Springing up
with a bound, and grasping the long weapon with the bloody
point, he fell in blind rage upon his old playfellow. The war-
rior shuddered slightly before the ghastly figure in black, with
disheveled hair, and crimson-stained arrow in his hand.
He retreated a step. Drawing the short sword which in place
of armor he was wearing, and warding off the arrow with it, he
said compassionately, <(Go back to your cloister, Astorre, which
you should never have left "
Suddenly he perceived the tyrant, who, followed by the entire
company, was just entering the door opposite to them.
Ezzelin stretched out his right hand and commanded peace.
Germano dutifully lowered his weapon before his chief. The
infuriated monk seized the moment, and plunged the arrow into
the breast of the knight, whose eyes were directed toward Ezze-
lin. But he also met his death pierced by the soldier's sword,
which had been raised again with the 3peed of lightning.
Germano sank to the ground. The monk, supported by As
canio, made a few tottering steps toward his wife, and laying
himself by her side, mouth to mouth, expired.
The wedding guests gathered about the husband and wife.
Ezzelin gazed upon them for a moment; then knelt upon one
knee, and closed first Antiope's and then Astorre 's eyes. In the
hush, through the open windows came the sound of revelry. Out
of the darkness was heard the words, <(Now slumbers the monk
Astorre beside his wife Antiope," and a distant shout of laughter.
DANTE arose. ft I have paid for my place by the fire," he said,
<(and will now seek the blessing of sleep. May the God of peace
be with you!" He turned and stepped toward the door, which
the page had opened^ All eyes followed him, as by the dim
light of a flickering torch he slowly ascended the staircase.
Translation of Miss Sarah Holland Adams.
9977
MICHEL ANGELO
(1475-1564)
IHE mosc famous of Florentine artists, whose literary fame
rests on his sonnets and his letters, was born in Caprese,
Italy, March 6th, 1475. His father was Ludovico Buonarotti,
a poor gentleman of Florence, who loved to boast that he had never
added to his impoverished estates by mercantile' pursuits. The story
of Michel Angelo's career as painter, sculptor, and architect, belongs
to the history of art. Under the patronage of Lorenzo de' Medici,
Angelo Doni, Pope Julius II. , and Pope Paul III., his genius flow-
ered. In the decoration of the Sistine Chapel he seems to have put
forth his greatest energy both as poet and as painter. He described
the discomforts of working on this ceiling in a humorous sonnet
addressed to Giovanni da Pistoja; on the margin of which he drew a
little caricature of himself, lying upon his back and using his brush.
For a long time after these paintings were completed, he could read
only by holding the page above his head and raising his eyes. His
impaired sight occasioned a medical treatise on the eyes, which is
preserved in the MSS. of the Vatican. The twelve years between
1522 and 1534 he spent in Florence, occupied with sculpture and
architecture, under the capricious patronage of the Medici family.
His fine allegory of Night, sculptured upon the Medici tomb, was
celebrated in verse by the poets of the day. To Strozzi this quatrain
is attributed: —
« La Notte, che tu vedi in si dolci atti
Dormire, fu da un angelo scolpita
In questo sasso: e perche dorme, ha vita;
Destala. se no'l crcdi e parleratti.»
[This Night, which you see sleeping in such sweet abandon, was sculptured
by an angel. She is living, although she sleeps in marble. If you doubt,
wake her: she then will speak.]
Michel Angelo replied thus : —
« Grato mi e il sonno, e piu d'esser di sasso ;
Mentre che il danno e la vergogna dura,
Non veder, non seutir m'e gran ventura; .
Pero non mi destar; deh! parla basso. }>
[It is sweet to sleep, sweeter to be of marble. While evil and shame live,
it is my happiness to hear nothing and to feel nothing. Ah ! speak softly, and
wake me not.]
9978 MICHEL ANGELO
In 1535 he removed to Rome, where he spent the rest of his life;
dying there in 1564 at the ripe age of eighty-nine. During this period
he executed the ( Last Judgment,' and built the Farnese Palace.
Although Symonds considers his literary work merely « a scholastic
exercise upon the emotions, }> and says that (< his stock in trade con-
sists of a few Platonic notions and a few Petrarchian antitheses, » the
Italian critics place Michel Angelo's sonnets immediately after those
of Dante and Petrarch. It may be mentioned here that the sculptor
was a devoted student of Dante, as his sonnets to the great poet
show. Not only did he translate into painting much symbolical
imagery of the ( Inferno,* but he illustrated the ( Divina Commedia*
in a magnificent series of drawings, which unfortunately perished at
sea. The popular interest in so universal a genius lies not in descrip-
tions of his personality and traits of character, but in his theories
of art and 'life, and in those psychological moods which explain the
source of the intellectual and spiritual power expressed in his mys-
tical conceptions. These moods have free utterance in his poems,
written at all periods of his life.
The name most frequently associated with his poetry is that of
Vittoria Colonna, Marchesa di Pescara, whom he met in Rome after
he had passed the meridian of life. She had been for two years a
widow; and refusing to reward Michel Angelo's devotion by the
gift of her hand, finally entered a convent. Their friendship lasted
from 1527 to her death in 1547. Whether she was the Egeria of his
spiritual life, or a romantic love, has long been the subject of criti-
cal speculation. The first editor of Michel Angelo's poems attributed
most of his sonnets and madrigals to her inspiration; but only a few
may be thus credited with certainty. His extravagant admiration foi
Tommaso dei Cavalieri, a young Roman gentleman of extraordinary
physical beauty and grace of manner, — the only person of whom
Michel Angelo ever drew a cartoon portrait, — is expressed with as
much devotion. Symonds speaks thus of M1'chel Angelo's ambiguous
beauty- worship : <( Whether a man or a woman is in the case (for both
were probably the objects of his aesthetical admiration), the tone of
feeling, the language, and the philosophy do not vary. He uses the
same imagery, the same conceits, the same abstract ideas, for both
sexes; and adapts the leading motive which he had invented . for a
person of one sex to a person of the other when it suits his purpose. w
In his art too is found no imaginative feeling for what is specifically
feminine. With few exceptions, his women, as compared with those
of Raphael, Correggio, TMan, and Tintoretto, are really colossal
companions for primeval gods; such as, for example, his Sibyls and
Fates, which are Titanic in the?.! majesty. Although tranquil women
of maturity exist by means oi his marvelous brush and chisel, to
woman in the magic of youthful beauty his art seems insensible.
MICHEL ANGELO 9979
The inference is, that emotionally he never feels the feminine spirit,
and reverences alone that of eternal and abstract beauty.
The literature that clusters around the name of Michel Angelo is
enormous. The chief storehouse of material is preserved in the Casa
Buonarotti in Florence. This consists of letters, poems, and memo-
landa in Michel Angelo's autograph; copies of his sonnets made by
his grandnephew and Michel Angelo the younger; and his corre-
spondence with famous contemporaries. In 1859 the British Museum
purchased a large manuscript collection' of memoranda, used first
by Hermann Grimm in his (Leben Michelangelos > (1860), the fifth
edition of which was published in Hanover in 1875. Public and pri-
vate libraries possess valuable data and manuscripts, more or less
employed by the latest biographers. To celebrate Michel Angelo's
fourth centenary, a volume of his ( Letters ) was edited by Gaetano
Milanesi and published in Florence in 1875. The first edition of the
artist's poems was published in 1623 by Michel Angelo the younger,
as ( Le Rime di Michelangelo Buonarotti > ; and they were known only
to the world in this distorted form until 1863, when a new edition
was brought out in Florence by Cesare Guasti. This is considered
the first classical and valuable presentation of his poetry. The
earliest lives of Michel Angelo are by Vasari, in his first edition of
the ( Lives of Italian Artists,* published in 1550, enlarged and repub-
lished in 1579; and by Condovi, who published his biography in 1553,
while his master was still living. Other important biographies are
by Aurelio Gotti in two volumes (Florence, 1875); by Charles Heath
Wilson (London, 1876); and by John Addington Symonds (two vol-
umes, London, 1892), which contains a bibliography, a portrait, and
valuable guidance for research upon Michel Angelo's genius, works,
and character. The same author translated his sonnets, and pub-
lished them with those of Campanella (London, 1878). His transla-
tions are used in the following selections.
A PRAYER FOR STRENGTH
BURDENED with years and full of sinfulness,
With evil custom grown inveterate,
Both deaths I dread that close before me wait,
Yet feed my heart on poisonous thoughts no less.
No strength I find in my own feebleness
To change or life, or love, or use, or fate,
Unless Thy heavenly guidance come, though late,
Which only helps and stays our nothingness.
9980 MICHEL ANGELO
5Tis not enough, dear Lord, to make me yearn
For that celestial home where yet my soul
May be new-made, and not, as erst, of naught'.
Nay, ere thou strip her mortal vestment, turn
My steps toward the steep ascent, that whole
And pure before thy face she may be brought.
THE IMPEACHMENT OF NIGHT
WHAT time bright Phoebus doth not stretch and bend
His shining arms around this terrene sphere,
The people call that season dark and drear,
Night, — for the cause they do not comprehend.
So weak is Night that if our hand extend
A glimmering torch, her shadows disappear,
Leaving her dead; like frailest gossamere,
Tinder and steel her mantle rive and rend.
Nay, if this Night be anything at all,
Sure she is daughter of the sun and earth;
This holds, the other spreads that shadowy pall.
Howbeit, they err who praise this gloomy birth,
So frail and desolate and void of mirth
That one poor firefly can her might appall.
LOVE, THE LIFE-GIVER
To TOMMASO DE' CAVALIERI
WITH your fair eyes a charming light I see,
For which my own blind eyes would peer in vain;
Stayed by your feet, the burden I sustain
Which my lame feet find all too strong for me;
"Wingless, upon your pinions forth I fly;
Heavenward your spirit stirreth me to strain.
E'en as you will, I blush and blanch again,
Freeze in the sun, burn 'neath a frosty sky.
Your will includes and is the lord of mine;
Life to my thoughts within your heart is given;
My words begin to breathe upon your breath:
Like to the moon am I, that cannot shine
Alone; for lo! our eyes see naught in heaven
Save what the living sun illumineth.
MICHEL ANGELO 9981
IRREPARABLE LOSS
AFTER THE DEATH OF VITTORIA COLONNA
WHEN my rude hammer to the stubborn stone
Gives human shape, now that, now this, at will,
Following his hand who wields and guides it still,
It moves upon another's feet alone:
But tha.t which dwells in heaven, the world doth fill
With beauty by pure motions of its own;
And since tools fashion tools which else were none,
Its life makes all that lives with living skill.
Now, for that every stroke excels the more
The higher at the forge it doth ascend,
Her soul that fashioned mine hath sought the skies ;
Wherefore unfinished I must meet my end,
If God, the great Artificer, denies
That aid which was unique on earth before,,
9982
JULES MICHELET
(1798-1874)
BY GRACE KING
>ICHELET said of himself: <( My book created me; it was I that
was its work.*' The book he referred to was his <Histoire
de France,* in sixteen volumes, the laborious task of forty
years; the work of his life, the work that was his life. His other
books were accessory to it; the sprouts, as it were, from its roots in
the over-rich soil of his mind. <(I have been much favored by des-
tiny,w he continued. al have possessed two rare gifts which have
made this work: First, liberty, which was
the soul of it; then, useful duties, which,
by dragging it out and retarding its execu-
tion, made it more reflective and stronger,
— gave it the solidity, the robust foundation
of time. . . I was free, by my solitude,
by my poverty, and by my teaching. . . .
I had but one master, Vico. His principle
of vital force — Humanity, which created
itself — made my book and made my edu-
cation. »
Michelet's life confirms this personal tes-
timony. He was born in 1798, of humble
parentage; and his childhood was a hard,
sad, poverty-stricken one. His father and
uncle were printers; and he himself, as soon as he was old enough,
was apprenticed to the same trade. But at the same time he .began
his other apprenticeship to the spiritual head of printing, — Litera-
ture; and while learning to set type he made his first efforts at
study under an old librarian, an ex-schoolmaster. It was proposed to
his family to enter him in the ^Imprimerie Royale.^ This his father
not only refused, but on the contrary employed his last meagre
resources to enter the youth in the Lycee Charlemagne. Here Miche-
let began his career at once by hard study, and received his degree
in 1821 after passing a brilliant examination. This obtained for him
a professorship of history in the College Rollin, where he remained
until 1826. His first writings date from this period, and were sketches
and chronological tables of modern history. Although elementary in
JULES MICHELET
JULES MICHELET 9983
character and purpose, and precise in style, they give evidence of the
latent tendencies, the personal coloring, which became the distinguish-
ing force of his later work. In 1827 he was appointed «Maitre de
Conferences » at the Ecole Normale; and in 1831 he wrote an < Intro-
duction to Universal History,* in which his literary originality appears
rvtill more marked, and his confidence in his own erudition assured.
The revolution of 1830, by putting in power his old professors,
Guizot and Villemain, secured him the position of « Chef de la Sec-
tion Historiques aux Archives"; and he became Guizot's deputy in
the professorship of history in the University. He also obtained a
chair of history in the College de France, from which he delivered a
course of lectures, attended by all the students of the day. It was
from this chair that he also gained popular acclamation by his attack
upon ecclesiasticism and the Jesuits, denouncing the latter for their
intrigues and encroachments. The < History of France > had already
been begun in 1833. The results of his lectures were published in
1843 as <Le Pretre> (The Priest), ( La Femme > (Woman), <La Famille*
(The Family), < Le Peuple > (The People). By the influence of the
clergy, Michelet's course of lectures was suspended, and his career
seemed permanently arrested. The revolution of 1848 favored him,
and he could have obtained reinstatement in his chair; but he re-
fused to avail himself of the opportunity, having resolved to devote
himself thenceforth to his studies and his work. As he has said, his
history henceforth became his life; interrupted again and again by
other work, but always resumed with increasing ardor and passion.
"Augustin Thierry, » he said, <( called history narrative; Guizot called
it analysis: but I call it resurrection." And to quote him again, as
his own master authority: — <( I had a fine disease that clouded my
youth, but one very proper to a historian. I loved death. I lived
nine years at the gates of Pere la Chaise, and there was my only
promenade. Then I lived near La Bievre, in the midst of great con-
vent gardens; more tombs. I lived a life that the world would have
called buried, with no society but the past, my only friends buried
people. The gift that St. Louis asked, and did not obtain, I had, —
the gift of tears. All those I wept over — peoples and gods — revived
for me. I had no other art."
All the criticism that has been written about Michelet is little
more than sermons from this text, furnished by himself. In it he
himself furnishes all the commentary needed upon his work; it is a
rtsumd of all his talent, and of his faults,— which are only the faults
of this talent, as Taine points out. Michelet's exalted sensibility he
calls (< imagination of the heart. » To summarize Taine's conclusions:
(<His impressionable imagination is touched by general as well as by par-
ticular facts, and he sympathizes with the life of centuries as with the life of
9984 JULES MICHELET
men. He sees the passions of an epoch as clearly as the passions of a man.
and paints the Middle Age or the Renaissance with as much vivacity as Phi-
lippe le Bel or Frangois I. ... Every picture or print he sees, every
document he reads, touches and impresses his imagination ; vividly moved and
eloquent himself, he cannot fail to move others. His book, the < History,>
seizes the mind fast at the first page ; in vain you try to resist it, you read to
the end. You think of the dialogue where Plato describes the god drawing
to himself the soul of the poet, and the soul of the poet drawing to himself
the souls of his auditors. . . . Is it possible, where facts and men impress
themselves so vividly upon an inflamed imagination, to keep the tone of nar-
ration ? No, the author ends by believing them real; — he sees them alive, he
speaks to them. Michelet's emotions thus become his convictions; history
unrolls before him like a vision, and his language rises to Apocalyptic. »
In his first design or vision of the ( History of France, > Michelet
saw men and facts not chained to one another, and to past and
future, by chains of logical sequence, — he saw them as episodes
rising in each period to a culminating and dramatic point of inter-
est; and however interrupted his work was, he pursued his original
design. Hence his volumes bear the titles of episodes: (The Renais-
sance, y 'The Reformation,* ( Religious Wars,* < The League and Henry
IV., > < Henry IV. and Richelieu, * ( Richelieu and the Fronde, > < Louis
XIV., > <The Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, > < Louis XV., > < Louis
XV. and Louis XVI., > <The French Revolution. > The Renaissance he
incarnated in Michel Angelo, the Revolution in Danton. He in fact
breathed a human soul into every epoch, period, and event that came
under his pen: and (<a soul,* lie says, (< weighs infinitely more than a
kingdom or an empire; at times, more than the human race." <( He
wrote as Delacroix painted,® Taine says: <( risking the crudest color-
ing; seeking means of expression in the gutter mud itself; borrowing
from the language of medicine, and the slang of the vulgar, details
and terms which shock and frighten one.® His prolific suggestions
swarm and multiply over the diseased tissue of a character, in the
tainted spot of a heart, until, as in the description of the moral
decadence of Louis XV., the imaginative reader shudders and stops
reading; for suggestion has suggested what it is unbearable to think.
It is to the perfect happiness of his marriage to a second wife —
an incomparable companion — that we owe that series of books whose
dithyrambic strains were poured out under the silvery light of a
continuous honey-moon, as a biographer expresses it: <L'Oiseau,)
<L'Insecte,> c I/Amour,* < La Mer,> to which later a fifth, < La Mon-
tagne,} was added; and which Taine says adds him to the three
great poets of France during the century, — De Musset, Lamartine,
and Hugo: (<for art and genius, his prose is worth their poetry.8
The c Bible of Humanity* and some volumes of collected essays com-
plete the series of his published writings
JULES MICHELET 9985
In 1870 the Franco-Prussian war called out his ( France before
Europe,' a passionate appeal to the common fraternity of all peoples.
He was ardently engaged upon a history of the nineteenth century,
his last return to his ( History of France, > when he died in 1874 of
heart disease contracted during the Prussian invasion of his country.
He lies buried in Pere la Chaise, where in youth he used to wander
among the dead he loved so well; who, responding to the passionate
evocation of his imagination, resumed their being before his mental
vision with such vivified reality, that in their turn they evoked from
his heart the genius that was henceforth to be his life.
THE DEATH OF JEANNE D'ARC
From the ( History of France >
THE end of the sad journey was the Vieux-Marche, the fish-
market. Three scaffolds had been erected. Upon one were
the episcopal and royal chairs, and the throne of the car-
dinal of England amid the- seats of his prelates. On the other
were to figure the personages of the dismal drama: the preacher,
the judges, the bailiff, and lastly the condemned one. Apart
was seen a large scaffold of masonry, loaded and overloaded with
wood. As to the pyre, there was nothing to complain of: it
frightened by its height. This was not merely to make the exe-
cution more solemn: there was an intention in it; it was that
the pile being built so high, the executioner could only reach
the bottom portion to light it, and thus he could not abridge the
martyrdom nor expedite the end, as he sometimes did to others,
sparing them the flame. Here there was no idea of defrauding
justice, or giving a dead body to the fire; they wished her to
be well burned, alive, and so that, placed on the summit of this
mountain of wood, and dominating the circle of lances and swords
around her, she could be seen from all parts of the place. Slowly
burned tinder the eyes of a curious crowd, there was reason
to believe that at the end she would be surprised into some
weakness, that something would escape her that might pass as
a disavowal; at the least, confused words to be interpreted, low
prayers, humiliating cries for mercy, as from a distracted woman
JULES MICHELET
The ghastly ceremony began by a sermon. Master Nicolay
Midy, one of the lights of the University of Paris, preached on
this edifying text: "When a member of the Church is ill, the
whole Church is ill.® This poor Church could only cure itself
by cutting off a member. He concluded by the formula, <( Jeanne,
go in peace: the Church cannot defend you."
Then the judge of the Church, the bishop of Beauvais, be-
nignly exhorted her to think of her soul, and to recall all her
misdeeds in order to excite herself to contrition. The Assertors
had judged that it was according to law to read to her her abju-
ration: the bishop did not do anything of the kind, — he feared
her denials, her reclamations. But the poor girl did not dream
of thus quibbling for her life: she had far other thoughts.
Before they could even exhort her to contrition, she was on her
knees invoking God, the Virgin, St. Michael, and St. Catherine;
forgiving everybody, and asking forgiveness; saying to the assist-
ants, tt Pray for me. w She requested each of the priests, particu-
larly, to say a mass for her soul. All this in such a devout
fashion, so humble, so touching, that emotion spreading, no one
could control himself: the bishop of Beauvais began to weep, he
of Boulogne sobbed; and behold the English themselves crying
and weeping also — Winchester with the others.
But the judges, who had for a moment lost countenance, recov-
ered and hardened themselves. The bishop of Beauvais, wiping his
eyes, began to read the condemnation. He reminded the culprit
of her crimes, — schism, idolatry, invocation of demons; how she
had been admitted to penitence; and how, seduced by the Prince
of Lies, she had fallen again — oh sorrow! — like the dog which
returns to his vomit. <( Therefore we pronounce you a rotten
member, and as such, cut off from the Church, We deliver you
over to the secular power, praying it nevertheless to moderate
its judgment, by sparing you death and the mutilation of your
members. w
Thus forsaken by the Church, she committed herself in all
confidence to God. She asked for the cross. An Englishman
passed to her a cross, which he made of sticks: she received it
none the less devoutly; she kissed it, and placed it, this rough
cross, beneath her clothes and on her flesh. But she wished
to hold the Church's cross before her eyes till death; and the
good bailiff Massieu and brother Isambart were so moved by
her insistence that they brought her that of the parish church
of Saint- Sauveur. As she was embracing this cross and being
JULES MICHELET 9987
couraged by Isambart^ the English began to find all this very
long: it must be at least midday; the soldiers grumbled, the cap-
tains said, <( How, priest, will you make us dine here ? >} Then
losing patience, and not awaiting the order of the bailiff, who
nevertheless alone had authority to send her to death, they made
two soldiers climb up to remove her out of the priests' hands.
At the foot of the tribunal she was seized by armed men, who
dragged her to the executioner and said to him, (< Do your
work.-0 This fury of the soldiers caused horror; several of the
assistants, even the judges, fled in order not to see more. When
she found herself below in the open square amid these English-
men, who laid hands on her, nature suffered and the flesh was
troubled ; she cried anew, (( O Rouen ! you will then be my last
dwelling-place. }> She said no more, and sinned not by her lips
even in this moment of terror and trouble; she accused neither
her king nor his saints. But, the top of the pile reached, seeing
that great city, that immovable and silent crowd, she could not
keep from saying, (( O Rouen ! Rouen ! I have a great fear that
you will have to suffer for my death ! w She who had saved the
people and whom the people abandoned, expressed in dying only
admirable sweetness of soul, only compassion for them. She was
tied beneath the infamous writing, crowned with a mitre, on
which was to be read, (( Heretic, pervert, apostate, idolater w — and
then the executioner lighted the fire. She saw it from above, and
uttered a cry. Then, as the brother who was exhorting her paid
no attention to the flames, she feared for him; forgetting herself,
she made him go down.
Which well proves that up to then she had retracted noth-
ing expressedly; and that the unfortunate Cauchon was obliged,
no doubt by the high Satanic will which presided, to come to
the foot of the pyre, to front the face of his victim, to try to
draw out some word. He only obtained one despairing one.
She said to him with sweetness what she had already said:
<( Bishop, I die by your hand. If you had put me in the Church's
prisons this would not have happened. )} They had doubtless
hoped that believing herself abandoned by her king, she would
at the last accuse him, say something against him. She still
defended him. « Whether I did well or ill, my king had nothing
to do with it; it was not he who counseled me."
But the flame rose. At the moment it touched her, the un-
fortunate one shuddered, and asked for holy water; for water —
9988 JULES MICHELET
it was apparently the cry of fright. But recovering herself
instantly, she no longer named any but God, his angels and his
saints. She testified, (( Yes, my voices were from God ; my voices
did not deceive me ! » This vanishing of all doubt, in the flames,
should make us believe that she accepted death as the deliv-
erance promised; that she no longer understood salvation in a
Judaistic and material sense, as she had done till then; that
she saw clear at last, and that coming out of the shadows, she
obtained that which she still lacked of light and holiness.
Ten thousand men wept. A secretary of the King of Eng-
land said aloud, on returning from the execution, <( We are lost:
we have burned a saint 1^ This word escaped from an enemy is
none the less grave. It will remain. The future will not con-
tradict it. Yes, according to Religion, according to Patriotism,
Jeanne d'Arc was a saint.
What legend more beautiful than this incontestable history!
But we should take care not to make a legend of it: every
feature, even the most human, should be piously preserved; the
touching and terrible reality of it should be respected. Let the
spirit of romance touch it if it dare: poetry never will do it.
And what could it add ? The idea which all during the Middle
Ages it had followed from legend to legend — this idea was
found at last to be a person ; this dream was tangible. The
helping Virgin of battles, .upon whom the soldiers called, whom
they awaited from on high — she was here below. In whom!
This is the marvel. In that which was despised, in that which
was of the humblest, — in a child, in a simple girl of the fields,
of the poor people of France. For there was a people, there
was a France. This last figure of their Past was also the first
of the time that was beginning. In her appeared at the same
time the Virgin and already the country.
Such is the poetry of this great fact ; such is the philosophy,
the high truth of it. But the historical reality is not the less
certain; it was only too positively and too cruelly established.
This living enigma, this mysterious creature whom all judged
to be supernatural, this angel or demon who according to some
would fly away some morning, was found to be a young woman,
a young girl: she had no wings, but, attached like us to a
mortal body, she was to suffer, die; and what a hideous death!
But it is just in this reality, which seems degrading, in this sad
trial of nature, that the ideal is found again and shines out. The
JULES MICHELET 9989
contemporaries themselves recognized in it Christ among the
Pharisees. Yet we should see in it still another thing: the pas-
sion of the Virgin, the martyrdom of purity.
There have been many martyrs; history cites innumerable
ones, more or less pure, more or less glorious. Pride has had its
own, and hatred, and the spirit of dispute. No century has lacked
righting martyrs, who no doubt died with good grace when they
could not kill. These fanatics have nothing to see here. The
holy maid is not of them; she had a different sign, — goodness,
charity, sweetness of soul. She had the gentleness of the ancient
martyrs, but with a difference. The early Christians only re-
mained sweet and pure by fleeing from action, by sparing them-
selves the struggle and trial of the world. This one remained
sweet in the bitterest struggle of good amid the bad; peaceful
even in war, — that triumph of the Devil, — she carried into it the
spirit of God. She took arms when she knew <(the pity there
was in the kingdom of France. J> She could not see French blood
flow. This tenderness of heart she had for all men; she wept
after victories, and nursed the wounded English. Purity, sweet-
ness, heroic goodness — that these supreme beauties of soul should
be met in a girl of France may astonish strangers, who only like
to judge our nation by the lightness of its manners. Let us say
to them (and without self-partiality, since to-day all this is so far
from us) that beneath this lightness of manner, amid her follies
and her vices, old France was none the less the people of love
and of grace.
The savior of France was to be a woman. France was a
woman herself. She had the nobility of one; but also the ami-
able sweetness, the facile and charming pity, the excellence at
least of impulse. Even when she delighted in vain elegances
and exterior refinements, she still remained at the bottom nearer
to nature. The Frenchman, even when vicious, kept more than
any one else his good sense and good heart. May new France
not forget the word of old France: (< Only great hearts know
how much glory there is in being good. ° To be and remain
such, amid the injustices of men and the severities of Provi-
dence, is not only the gift of af fortunate nature, but it is strength
and heroism. To keep sweetness and benevolence amid so many
bitter disputes, to traverse experience without permitting it to
touch this interior treasure, — this is divine. Those who persist
and go thus to the end are the true elect. And even if they
9990 JULES MICHELET
have sometimes stumbled in the difficult pathways of the world,
amid their falls, their weakness, and their childishnesses they will
remain none the less children of God.
Translated for <A Library of the World's Best Literature,* by Grace King.
MICHEL ANGELO
From <The Renaissance >
WHERE was the soul of Italy in the sixteenth century? In
the placid facility of the charming Raphael ? In the
sublime ataraxy of the great Leonardo da Vinci, the
centralizer of arts, the prophet of sciences ? He who wished
for insensibility, he who said to himself, (( Fly from storms, w he
nevertheless, whether he wished it or not, left in his ( St. John/
in the ( Bacchus, > and even in the ( Jocunda, > in the nervous
and sickly memory that all those strange heads express on their
lips — he has left a painful trace of the convulsing pains of the
Italian mind; of the kind of Maremma fever, which was cov-
•ered by a false hilarity; of the jesting, rather light than gay, of
Pulci and Ariosto. There was a man in these times, a heart, a
true hero. Have you seen in the ( Last Judgment,* towards
the middle of the immense canvas, him who is disputing with
demons and angels, — have you seen in that face and in others
those swimming eyes struggling to look above; mortal anxiety
of a soul in which two opposing infinities are struggling ? True
image of the sixteenth century, between old and new beliefs;
image of Italy among nations; image of the man of the time,
and of Michel Angelo himself.
It has been marvelously well said, (< Michel Angelo was the
conscience of Italy. From birth to death, his work was the
Judgment. >J One must not pay attention to the first pagan
sculptures of Michel Angelo, or to the Christian velleities that
crossed his life. In St. Peter he had no thought of the triumph
of Catholicism; his only dream was the triumph of the new art,
the completion of the great victory of his master Brunelleschi,
before whose work he had his tomlb placed, in order, as he said,
to contemplate it throughout eternity. He proceeded from two
men, Savonarola and Brunelleschil He belongs to the religion
of the Sibyls, of that of the prophet Elias, of the savage locust-
JULES MICHELET
eaters of the Old Testament. His one glory and his crown —
nothing like it before, nothing afterwards — is his having put
into art that eminently novel thing, the thirst for and aspiration
towards the good. Ah, how well he deserves to be called the
defender of Italy! Not for having fortified the walls of Florence
in his last days; but for having, in the infinite number of days
that followed and will follow, showed in the Italian soul, mar-
tyred like a soul without right, the triumphant idea of a right
that the world did not yet see.
To recall his origin is to tell why he alone could do these
things. Born in the city of judges, Arezzo, to which all others
came to get podestas, he had* a judge for a father. He de-
scended from the counts of Canossa, relatives of the Emperor
who founded at Bologna, against the popes, the school of Roman
law. We must not be astonished that his family at his birth
gave him the name of the angel of justice, Michael, just as the
father of Raphael gave him the name of the angel of grace. It
was a choleric race, Arezzo, an old Etruscan city, petty fallen
republic, was despised by the great banking city; Dante gave
it a knock in passing. One of the most ordinary subjects of
Italian farces was the podesta, representing the powerlessness of
the law in stranger cities that called him, paid him, and drove
him out. Again everybody in Italy made mockery of his justice.
There was needed a heroic effort, like that of Brancaleone's, to
make the sword of justice respected. It needed a lion-hearted
man, stranger and isolated as he was, to execute his own judg-
ments disputed by all. Michel Angelo would have been one of
these warrior judges of the thirteenth century. By heart and
stature he belonged to the great Ghibellines of that time; to the
one whom Dante honored on his couch of fire; to the other with
the tragic face: <( Lombard soul, why the slow moving of thine
eyes ? one would say a lion in his repose. }> Not wearing the
sword, under the reign of men of money, in its place he took the
chisel. He was the Brancaleone, the judge and podesta, of Ital-
ian art. He exercised in marble and stone the high censure of
his time. For nearly a century his life was a combat, a contin-
ual contradiction. Noble and poor, he was reared in the house of
the Medici, where we have seen him sculpturing statues of snow.
Republican, all his life he served princes and popes. Envy dis-
figures him, a rival has deformed him forever. Made to love
and be loved, always he will remain alone.
9992
JULES MICHELET
What was of great assistance to Michel Angelo was the fact
that the Sixtine Chapel, the work of Sixtus IV., uncle of Julius
IV., was only a second thought of the latter, who attached the
glory of his pontificate to the construction of St. Peter's. He
obtained the favor of alone having the key of the chapel, and of
not having any visitors. The visits of the Pope, which he dared
not refuse, he rendered difficult by leaving no access to his scaf-
folding save by a steep step-ladder, upon which the old Pope had
to risk himself. This obscure and solitary vault, in which he
passed five years, was for him the cave of Mount Carmel; and
he lived in it like Elias. He had a bed suspended from the arch,
upon which he painted with his 'head stretched back. No com-
pany but the prophets and the sermons of Savonarola. It was
thus, in the absolute solitude of the years 1507, 1508, 1509, 1510,
— it was during the war of the League of Cambray, when the
Pope gave a last blow to Italy in killing Venice, — that the great
Italian made his prophets and his sibyls, realized that work of
sorrow, of sublime liberty, of obscure presentments, of inter-
penetrating lights.
He put four years into it. And I — I have put thirty years
into interrogating it. Not a year at longest has passed without
my taking up again this Bible, this Testament, which is never old
nor new, but of an age still unknown. Born out of the Jewish
Bible, it passes and goes far beyond it. One must take care
not to go into the chapel, as is done during the solemnities
of Holy Week and with the crowd. One must go there alone,
slip in as the Pope sometimes did (only Michel Angelo would
frighten him by throwing down a plank) ; one must confront it,
tete-a-tete, alone. Reassure yourself: that painting, extinguished
and obscured by the smoke of incense and of candles, has no
longer its old trait of inspiring terror; it has lost something of
its frightening power, gained in harmony and sweetness; it par-
takes of the long patience and equanimity of time. It appears
blackened from the depths of ages; but all the more victorious,
not surpassed, not contradicted. Dante did not see these things
in his last circle. But Michel Angelo saw them, foresaw them,
dared to paint them in the Vatican, writing the three words of
Belshazzar's feast upon the walls, soiled by the Borgias, the mur-
derers of Robera. Happily he was not understood. They would
have had it all effaced. We know how for years he defended the
door of the Sixtine Chapel, and how Julius II. told him: <( If
JULES MICHELET 9993
you are slow, I will throw you down from the top of your scaf-
fold. J) On the perilous day when the door was at last opened,
and when the Pope entered in processional pomp, Michel Angelo
could see that his work remained a dead letter; that in looking
at it they saw nothing. Stunned by the enormous enigma, ma-
licious but not daring to malign those giants whose eyes shot
thunderbolts, they all kept silence. The Pope, to put a good
countenance upon it, and not let himself be subdued by the terri-
fying vision, grumbled out these words : <( There is no gold in it
at all.® Michel Angelo, reassured now and certain of not being
understood, replied to this futile censure, his bitter tragic mouth
laughing: (( Holy Father, the people up there, they were not
rich, but holy personages, who did not wear gold, and made little
of the goods of this world. w
Translated for <A Library of the World's Best Literature, > by Grace King.
SUMMARY OF THE INTRODUCTION TO <THE RENAISSANCE >
WHY did the Renaissance arrive three hundred years too late ?
Why did the Middle Age live three hundred years after
its death ? Its terrorism, its police, its stakes and fagots,
would not have sufficed. The human mind would have shattered
everything. Salvation came from the School, from the creation
of a great people of reasoners against Reason. The void became
fecund, created. Out of the proscribed philosophy was born the
infinite legion of wranglers: the serious, violent disputation of
emptiness, nothingness. Out of the smothered religion was born
the sanctimonious world of reasoning mystics; the art of raving
sagely. Out of the proscription of nature and the sciences was
brought forth a throng of impostors and dupes, who read the
stars and made gold. Immense army of the sons of Eolus, born
of wind and puffed out with words. They blew. At their breath,
a babel of lies and humbugs, a solid fog, thickened by magic in
which reason would not take hold, arose in the air. Humanity
sat at the foot, mournful, silent, renouncing truth. If at least,
in default of truth, one could attain justice ? The king opposes
it against the pope. Great tumult, great combat by our gods!
And all for nothing. The two incarnations come to an agree-
ment, and all liberty is despaired of. People fall lower than
before. The communes have perished; the burgher class is born,
9994 JULES MICHELET
and with it a petty prudence. The masses thus deadened, what
can great souls .effect ? Superhuman apparitions to awaken the
dead will come, and will do nothing. The people see a Joan of
Arc pass by, and say, <( Who is that girl ? w Dante has built his
cathedral, and Brunelleschi is makinp- his calculations for Santa
Maria del Fiore. But Boccaccio alone is enjoyed. The goldsmith
dominates the architect The old Gothic church, in extremis, is
overlaid with all kinds of little ornaments, crimpings, lace-work,
etc. She is tricking herself off, making herself pretty. The per-
severing cultivation of the false, continued so many centuries, the
sustained care to flatten the human brain, has produced its fruit.
To the proscribed natural has succeeded the anti-natural, out of
which by spontaneous generation is born the monster with two
faces: monster of false science, monster of perverse ignorance.
The scholastic and the shepherd, the inquisitor and the witch,
represent two opposing peoples. Withal the fools in ermine and
the fools in rags have fundamentally the same faith, — faith in
Evil as the master and prince of this world. Fools, terrified at
the triumph of the Devil, burn fools to protect God. Here lies
the deepest depth of the darkness. And a half -century passes
without printing's bringing even a little light into it. The great
Jewish Encyclopaedia, published with its discordance of centu-
ries, schools, and doctrines, confuses at first and complicates the
perplexities of the human mind. The fall of Constantinople and
Greece's taking refuge in Europe do not help at all: the arriv-
ing manuscripts seek serious readers; the principal ones will not
be printed until the following century. Thus great discoveries —
machinery, material means, fortuitous aids, all — are still useless.
At the death of Louis XL, and during the first years that fol-
lowed, there is naught that permits one to predict the dawn of a
new day. All the honor of it will belong to the soul, to heroic
will. A great movement is going to take place — of war and
events, confused agitations, vague inspirations. These obscure
intimations, coming out of the masses and little understood by
them, some one (Columbus, Copernicus, or Luther) will take fof
himself; alone, will rise and answer, <( Here I am."
Translated for <A Library of the World's Best Literature, > by Grace King.
9995
ADAM MICKIEWICZ
(1798-1855)
BY CHARLES HARVEY GENUNG
*ITH the passing of Poland from the family of European States,
the genius of her people received a fresh and passionate
impulse. Her political dominion was gone, but she set to
work in the world of spirit to create a new and undivided realm.
She put her adversity to sweet uses, and won a brilliant place in the
history of human culture. In the works of her poets the ancient
glories of the annihilated commonwealth re-
gained their lustre; and a host of splendid
names bear witness, in this century of her
political obliteration, to the fervid strength
of the old national spirit. Love of country,
pride in her great past, grief at her mis-
fortunes, and inextinguishable hope — these
are her poets' themes and the inspiration
of her noblest achievements.
The golden age of Polish letters was
ushered in by the Romanticists. In the
presence of the world-stirring events of a
great social revolution, the pseudo-classical
themes lost their vitality. German culture
wrought a widening of the intellectual hori-
zon. Goethe, Schiller, Scott, and Byron became almost Polish poets.
In the background loomed Ossian and Shakespeare and Dante. Her-
mits, knights, and spectres took the place of the ancient gods in
the scenery of the new ballads. Mickiewicz began his literary career
with a collection of such ballads, and was hailed at once as a leader
of the Romantic movement; and this movement, although accom-
panied by much sound and fury, was yet the necessary prologue
to the splendid outburst of Polish poetry in the second quarter
of this century. It put an end to the domination of Paris, and set
free the national genius. Genuine poets arose, possessing the essen-
tials of high art, — a perfected technique, a deep and sympathetic
insight into the most diverse human motives, and a strong individu-
ality. Byron was the dominant literary influence. It is evident in
ADAM MICKIEWIC'Z
9996
ADAM MICKIEWICZ
Malczewski's superb poem, < Maria, > whose appearance in 1825 marked
the beginning of the great age. Malczewski had known Byron in
Venice, and had suggested to him the theme of (Mazeppa); but Mic-
kiewicz, Krasinski, Slowacki, all bear the marks of Byronic inspira-
tion. The literature of this golden age in Poland was one of exiles
and emigrants. Scarcely one of the great works of the time was
written on Polish soil, and yet never was a literature more intensely
national. The scenes are laid in Poland, the themes are drawn
from Polish history, and everything is treated with a passionate
patriotism. Even when, as in Krasinski's <Irydion,) the subject is
taken from the history of a foreign people, its application to the
situation of Poland is obvious. And it was Mickiewicz, wandering
for thirty years far from his native land, who finally gave to the
spirit of Poland its highest literary expression; he revived the pride
of the Poles in the spiritual achievements of their race, and restored
to them the consciousness of their national solidarity. He created
the great national poem of Poland in ( Pan Tadeusz ' (Pan Thad-
deus), which ranks with the finest poetry of the world's literature.
It is the crystallized product of all the centuries of Polish culture;
in it centre the pride, the hopes, and the ambitions of the Polish
people.
Adam Mickiewicz was born at Zaosie, near Novogrodek, on Decem-
ber 24th, 1798. His childhood was passed in the midst of the most
stirring scenes, which left a deep impression upon him. During the
Russian campaign, his father's house was the headquarters of the
King of Westphalia. All the hopes of Poland were then founded
upon Napoleon; and for Napoleon, Mickiewicz cherished a lifelong
enthusiastic reverence, which in his latter days assumed a mystical
character. For Byron he felt a similar regard; but it was not Byron
but Burger who gave the impulse to the volume of ballads with
which Mickiewicz made his first appearance in literature in 1822.
The ballad of 'Lenore* had a wonderful fructifying power: it gave
to Scott his earliest inspiration; it caught the youthful fancy of Vic-
tor Hugo ; it awoke the genius of Mickiewicz. But the first distinctive
work of the Polish poet was written in the spirit of <Werther,) and
was wrung from him by his grief over an unfortunate love affair.
This was (Dziady} (In Honor of our Ancestors), a broadly conceived
but never finished poem, of which the first installment appeared in
1823. It is not the poet's own sorrow alone that here finds expres-
sion, for under this we hear the despairing cry of an enslaved people.
In 1824 Mickiewicz left his native land, never to return. He lived
in an age of unions and associations, of unrest and suspicion. Liter-
ary societies easily became involved in political discussions, and ac-
quired a reputation for revolutionary sentiments. Mickiewicz belonged
ADAM MICKIEWICZ
9997
to the Philareths; and on account of the part he took in a student
demonstration, he was arrested and sent to St. Petersburg. Banished
thence to Odessa, he obtained permission in the autumn of 1825 to
visit the Crimea. In the following year this visit bore fruit in the
splendid Oriental series of ( Crimean Sonnets.* Meanwhile Mickiewicz,
whose personal relations with the Russian government had always
remained cordial, was given a post in the office of the Governor-
General at Moscow. He never had pretended to play the martyr; for
with his genuine Polish patriotism he combined a coldly objective
view of the political situation. When in 1828 he settled in St. Peters-
burg, he was received into the great world by the leading spirits of
the time with an enthusiasm that bordered on glorification. He stood
in close spiritual intercourse with Pushkin, the other great Slavic
poet of- the age, and his junior by just six months. The fame of Mic-
kiewicz in Russia was based upon the translations of the ( Crimean
Sonnets } and of ( Konrad Wallenrod. ) This powerful epic, written
in Moscow in 1827 and published in St. Petersburg in 1828, treats of
the relations between Russia and Poland, and the burning questions
of the day are presented with cold objectivity. The manner is
Byronic. This poem at once took its place as a national epic, con-
tributed incalculably to the strengthening of the national feeling, and
furthermore it signalized the triumph of Romanticism.
Mickiewicz never definitely renounced Romanticism as Goethe
did. The classic and the romantic existed in him side by side. He
freed himself, however, from the shackles of a one-sided tendency, and
began to seek the sources of .his poetry in reality and truth. And
for Mickiewicz truth came more and more to assume a religious color-
ing. Even where the influence of ( Faust > and < Cain ' and ( Manfred *
is most apparent, the heroes of Mickiewicz are at strife only with
the sins and evils of humanity; they are never in revolt against the
Divine power. But the work in which Mickiewicz first definitely
abandoned purely romantic methods was 'Grazyna.* It appeared at
about the same time that the publication of ( Konrad Wallenrod*
marked the culmination of the Romantic movement. Both poems
treat of the Lithuanian struggles against the encroachments of the
Teutonic Knights; but <Grazyna> is full of epic reserve, classic sim-
plicity, and majestic repose. It reveals Mickiewicz as an epic poet of
the grand style. By these two works he rose at once above the
strife of schools and tendencies into the regions of universal poetry,
and became the national poet of his people.
In the adulation with which Mickiewicz was surrounded in St.
Petersburg there lurked a certain danger: it threatened to drag his
genius down into the epicurean dolce far niente of the gay capital ; but
the deep earnestness of his character saved him. In 1829 he obtained
9998 ADAM MICKIEWICZ
permission to leave Russia. As when, five years before, he had left
Poland forever, so when he crossed the Russian border he crossed it
never to return; he never again set foot on Slavic soil. The five
years in Russia had given to his genius its universality and cosmo-
politan range. And the travels which now began brought him a rich
harvest of experience and friends. In -Weimar he met Goethe; in
Switzerland his two greatest Polish contemporaries, Krasinski and
Slowacki; and in the cosmopolitan society of Rome he formed a close
friendship with James Fenimore Cooper. In 1830 the revolution
which Mickiewicz had foreseen broke out in Warsaw, with the singing
of the closing stanzas of his own * Ode to Youth. } The poet hastened
to join his countrymen, but he was met at Posen with the news of
Polish defeat. He turned back,f saddened and aimless. Sorrow of a
keenly personal sort followed close upon the grief of the patriot. In
Italy he fell in love with the daughter of a Polish magnate. His love
was reciprocated; but encountering the father's haughty opposition,
Mickiewicz suddenly departed. The literary result of this sorrow wag
( Pan Tadeusz, > written, as Goethe wrote, for self-liberation. It was
begun in Paris in 1832 and published in 1834. It is the most per-
fect work of the poet, the culminating point of Polish poetry, — and
indeed, the pearl of all Slavic literature/
The scene of ( Pan Tadeusz * is laid in Lithuania in 1812, when
Poland's hopes were high, and Napoleon's star still in the ascendant.
It is the story of the last raid in Lithuania; and the lawlessness of
private war is here portrayed in vivid pictures. These civil feuds
were a late survival of the many disruptive evils upon which the com-
monwealth was finally wrecked. The poem abounds in rich poetic
scenes of Lithuanian life, the sublime sweep of the landscapes, the
solemn gloom and loneliness of vast primeval forests. There is in it
all a tone of majesty which reveals a great poet in his loftiest mood.
< Pan Tadeusz * was Mickiewicz's last important work. To be
mentioned, however, are < The Books of the Polish People and of the
Polish Pilgrimage, > and the ( Lectures on Slavic Literature.* In the
former the poet treats in Biblical style of the function of Poland in
history, and of her mission in the future. The Slavic lectures were
those delivered at the College de France, where in 1840 Cousin had
founded a chair of Slavic literature. Mickiewicz was the first incum-
bent, and his lectures were received with unbounded enthusiasm. All
literary Paris flocked to hear the famous poet tell of the spiritual
conquests of his countrymen. The lectures are distinguished by feli-
city of phrase and fineness of fancy; less by careful scholarship.
The last decade of the poet's life was clouded by sorrow, illness,
and financial embarrassment. In 1834 he had married the daughter
of the celebrated pianiste Szymanowska. It was not a marriage of
ADAM MICKIEWICZ
love, but seems not to have been unhappy. Mickiewicz's nature was
deeply religious; in Italy he had been in close communion with such
men as Montalembert and Lamennais; in Paris he became fascinated
by the mystic Messianism of the uncultured fanatic Towianski, and
with all the poetic fervor of his being he plunged into the depths of
mysticism. He was removed from his professorship on this account
in 1844. The genius of the poet was darkened; only the patriot
remained. In 1848 he tried to raise in Italy a Polish legion against
Austria. In 1849 he edited the Tribune des Peuples, but at the end
of three months the paper was suppressed. When Napoleon III.
seized the imperial throne in 1852, Mickiewicz was made librarian of
the Arsenal Library. During the war in the Orient, he was sent as
a special emissary of the French government to raise Polish legions
in Turkey. The camp life which his duties rendered necessary ruined
a constitution already undermined; and at Constantinople, on Novem-
ber 26th, 1855, he died. His body was brought to Montmorency, but
in 1890 was removed to the royal vaults at Cracow.
Mickiewicz, with his wide knowledge of literatures and languages,
and with his cosmopolitan experience, nevertheless succeeded by sheer
force of genius, infused with ardent patriotism, in so blending all the
foreign elements of his own culture with the characteristics of his
race and country as to create a distinctively Polish literature, and
deserve the name of supreme national poet. His poetry exercises in
Poland that cohesive force which Greece found in Homer and Italy
derived from Dante. He is the rallying-point for the poets and
patriots of Poland, and the consolation of a proud and oppressed race.
SONNET
THE tricks of pleasing thou hast aye disdained;
Thy words are plain, and simple all thy ways;
Yet throngs, admiring, tremble 'neath thy gaze,
And in thy queenly presence stand enchained.
Amid the social babble unconstrained,
I heard men speak of women words of praise,
And with a smile each turned some honeyed phrase.
Thou cam'st, — and lo! a sacred silence reigned.
Thus when the dancers with each other vie,
I oooo ADAM MICKIEWICZ
And through the merry mazes whirling go,
Abruptly all is hushed: they wonder why,
And no one can the subtle reason show.
The poet speaks: <( There glides an angel by!*
The guest all dimly feel, but few do know.
Translation of Charles Harvey Genung.
[The following poems are from the < Poets and Poetry of Poland. > Edited, and
copyrighted 1881, by Paul Soboleski.]
FATHER'S RETURN
A BALLAD
G
o, CHILDREN, all of you together.
To the pillar upon the hill,
And there before the miraculous picture
Kneel and pray with a fervent will.
<( Father returns not. Mornings and evenings
I await him in tears, and fret.
The streams are swollen, the wild beasts prowling.
And the woods with robbers beset. ®
The children heard, and they ran together
To the pillar upon the hill;
And there before the miraculous picture
Knelt and prayed with a fervent will.
<(Hear us, O Lord! Our father is absent,
Our father so tender and dear.
Protect him from all besetting danger!
Guide him home to us safely here!*
They kiss the earth in the name of the Father,
Again in the name of the Son.
Be praised the name of the Trinity holy,
And forever their will be done.
*
Then they said Our Father, the Ave and Credo,
The Commandments and Rosary too;
And after these prayers were all repeated,
A book from their pockets they drew.
And the Litany and the Holy Mother
They sang while the eldest led :
ADAM MICKIEWICZ IOOOI
(<O Holy Mother, w implored the children,
<( Be thy sheltering arms outspread ! })
Soon they heard the sound of wheels approaching.
And the foremost wagon espied.
Then jumped the children with joy together:
<(Our father is coming !» they cried.
The father leaped down, his glad tears flowing,
Among them without delay.
"And how are you all, my dearest children?
Were you lonesome with me away ?
<(And is your mother well — your aunt and the servants?
Here are grapes in the basket, boys.w
Then the children jumped in their joy around him,
Till the air was rent with their noise.
* Start on,n the merchant said to the servants,
t( With the children I will follow on ; }>
But while he spoke the robbers surround them,
A dozen, with sabres drawn.
Long beards had they, and curly mustaches,
And soiled the clothes they wore;
Sharp knives in their belts and swords Beside them,
While clubs in their hands they bore.
Then shrieked the children in fear and trembling,
And close to their father clung,
While helpless and pale in his consternation,
His hands he imploringly wrung.
wTake all I have!* he cried; <(take my earnings.
But let us depart with life.
Make not of these little children orphans,
Or a widow of my young wife.**
But the gang, who have neither heard nor heeded,
Their search for the booty begin.
a Money P they cry, and swinging their truncheons,
They threaten with curses and din.
Then a voice is heard from the robber captain,
<(Hold, hold, with your plundering hereP'
And releasing the father and frightened children,
He bids them go without fear.
I0002 ADAM MICKIEWICZ
To the merchant then the robber responded: —
"No thanks — for I freely declare
A broken head you had hardly escaped with,
Were it not for the children's prayer.
(<Your thanks belong to the children only;
To them alone your life you owe.
Now listen while I relate to you briefly
How it came to happen, and go.
ttl and my comrades had long heard rumors
Of a merchant coming this way;
And here in the woods that skirt the pillar
We were lying in wait to-day.
*And lying in wait behind the bushes,
The children at prayer I heard.
Though I listened at first with laugh derisive,
Soon to pity my heart was stirred.
<(I listened, and thoughts of my home came to me
From its purpose my heart was won.
I too have a wife who awaits my coming,
And with her is my little son.
tt Merchant, depart, — to the woods I hasten;
And children, come sometimes here,
And kneeling together beside this pillar
Give me a prayer and a tearl*
PRIMROSE
SCARCE had the happy lark begun
To sing of Spring with joyous burst,
When oped the primrose to the sun —
The golden-petaled blossoms first
ii
Tis yet too soon, my little flower, —
The north wind waits with chilly breath;
Still capped by snow the mountains tower,
And wet the meadows lie beneath.
ADAM MICKIEWICZ 10003
Hide yet awhile thy golden light,
Hide yet beneath thy mother's wing,
Ere chilly frosts that pierce and blight
Unto thy fragile petals cling.
in
PRIMROSE
<(LiKE butterflies our moments are;
They pass, and death is all our gain:
One April hour is sweeter far
Than all December's gloomy reign.
<( Dost seek a gift to give the gods ?
Thy friend or thy beloved one ?
Then weave a wreath wherein there nods
My blossoms — fairer there are none.'*
IV
'Mm common grass within the wood,
Beloved flower, thou hast grown;
So simple, few have understood
What gives the prestige all thy own.
Thou hast no hues of morning star,
Nor tulip's gaudy turbaned crest,
Nor clothed art thou as lilies are,
Nor in the rose's splendor drest.
When in a wreath thy colors blend,
When comes thy sweet confiding sense
That friends — and more beloved than friend—
Shall give thee kindly preference ?
v
PRIMROSE
aWiTH pleasure friends my buds will greet, —
They see spring's angel in my face;
For friendship dwells not in the heat,
But loves with me the shady place.
<( Whether of Marion, beloved one,
Worthy I am, can't tell before ?
If she but looks this bud upon,
I'll get a tear — if nothing more!®
10004
ADAM MICKIEWICZ
NEW-YEAR'S WISHES
THE old year is dead, and from its ashes blossoms bright
New Phoenix, spreading wings o'er the heavens far and
near;
Full of hopes and wishes, earth salutes it with delight.
What should I for myself desire on this glad New Year?
Say, happy moments! I know these lightning flashes swift;
When they the heavens open and gild the wide earth o'er,
We wait the assumption till the weary eyes we lift
Are darkened by a night sadder than e'er known before.
Say, 'tis love I wish! — that youthful frenzy full of bliss
Bears one to spheres platonic — to joys divine I know;
Till the strong and gay are hurled down pain's profound abyss,
Hurled from the seventh heaven upon the rocks below.
I have dreamed and I have pined. I soared, and then I fell.
Of a peerless rose I dreamed, and to gather it I thought,
When I awoke. Then vanished the rose with the dream's bright
spell,
Thorns in my breast alone were left — Love I desire not!
Shall I ask for friendship ? — that fair goddess who on earth
Youth creates ? Ah ! who is there who would not friendship
crave ?
She is first to give imagination's daughter birth;
Ever to the uttermost she seeks its life to save.
Friends, how happy are ye all! Ye live as one, and hence
Ever the selfsame power has o'er ye all control;
Like Armida's palm, whose leaves seemed separate elements
While the whole tree was nourished by one accursed soul.
But when the fierce and furious hail-storms strike the tree.
Or when the venomous insects poison it. with their bane,
In what sharp suffering each separate branch must be
For others and itself! — I desire not friendship's pain!
For what, then, shall I wish, on this New Year just begun ?
Some lovely by-place — bed of oak — where sweet peace de-
scends,
From whence I could see never the brightness of the sun,
Hear the laugh of enemies, or see the tears of friends!
ADAM MICKIEWICZ
10005
There until the world should end, and after that to stay
In sleep which all my senses against all power should bind,
Dreaming as I dreamt my golden youthful years away,
Love the world — wish it well — but away from humankind.
TO M-
H
ENCE from my sight! — I'll obey at once.
Hence from my heart! — I hear and understand.
But hence from memory? Nay, I answer, nay!
Our hearts won't listen to this last command!
As the dim shadows that precede the night
In deepening circles widen far and near,
So when your image passes from my sight
It leaves behind a memory all too dear.
In every place — wherever we became
As one in joy and sorrow that bereft —
I will forever be by you the same,
For there a portion of my soul is left.
When pensively within some lonely room
You sit and touch your harp's melodious string,
You will, remembering, sigh in twilight's gloom,
<(I sang for him this song which now I sing.0
Or when beside the chess-board — as you stand
In danger of a checkmate — you will say,
(<Thus stood the pieces underneath my hand
When ended our last game — that happy day!®
When in the quiet pauses at the ball
You, sitting, wait for music to begin,
A vacant place beside you will recall
How once I used to sit by you therein.
When on the page that tells how fate's decree
Parts happy lovers, you shall bend your eyes,
You'll close the volume, sighing wearily,
(('Tis but the record of our love likewise. »
But if the author after weary years
Shall bid the current of their lives reblend,
You'll sit in darkness, whispering through your tears,
<(Why does not thus our story find an end?"
10006 ADAM MICKIEWICZ
When night's pale lightning darts with fitful flash
O'er the old pear-tree, rustling withered leaves,
The while the screech-owl strikes your window-sash,
You'll think it is my baffled soul that grieves.
In every place — in all remembered ways
Where we have shared together bliss or dole —
Still will I haunt you through the lonely days,
For there I left a portion of my soul.
FROM <THE ANCESTORS >
SHE is fair as a spirit of light,
That floats in the ether on high,
And her eye beams as kindly and bright
As the sun in the azure-tinged sky.
The lips of her lover join hers
Like the meeting of flame with flame,
And as sweet as the voice of two lutes
Which one harmony- weds the same.
FROM < PARIS >
No PALMS are seen with their green hair,
Nor white-crested desert tents are there;
But his brow is shaded by the sky,
That flingeth aloft its canopy;
The mighty rocks lie now at rest,
And the stars move slowly on heaven's breast.
MY ARAB steed is black —
Black as the tempest cloud that flies
Across the dark and muttering skies,
And leaves a gloomy track.
His hoofs are shod with lightning's glare;
I give the winds his flowing mane,
And spur him smoking o'er the plain;
And none from earth or heaven dare
My path to chase in vain.
And as my barb like lightning flies,
I gaze upon the moonlit skies,
And see the stars with golden eyes
Look down upon the plain.
BINDING SECT. JUN It>
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