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of  Toronto 

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Mrs.   J,S.   Hart 


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WHAT  GREAT  MEN   HAVE 
SAID  ABOUT  GREAT  MEN 

A  DICTIONARY  OF  QUOTATIONS 


WILLIAM    WALE 


LONDON 
SWAN    SONNENSCHEIN    &    CO.,    LIM. 

PATERNOSTER   sniTAUp 


1902 


SEEN  BY 

PRESERVATION 

SERVICES 


CONTENTS. 


PAGE 

Abelard,  Peter  i 

ADDISON,  Joseph  i 

AESCHYLUS         ....  3 

AKKNSIDE,  Mark  5 

ALBAN,  St.          ....  6 

ALBERTI,  Leone  Battista    .         .  6 

ALEXANDER  THK  GRKAT  .        .  6 

ALFIERI,  Vittorio        ...  7 

ALFRED  THE  GREAT  ...  7 

AMBROSE,  St 9 

ANAXAGORAS     ....  9 

ANDRE  WES,  Lancelot  ...  9 

ANNE,  Queen      .         .         .         .  10 

ANSELM,  St 10 

ANTONIUS,  Marcus     .        .        .11 

AQUINAS,  Thomas      .        .  n 

ARBLAY,  D',  Madame         .         .  12 

ARCHILOCHUS  ....  12 
ARCHIMEDES  .  .  .  .12 

ARISTIDES 13 

ARISTIPPUS  ....  13 
ARISTOPHANES  .  .  .  .13 

ARISTOTLE         ....  14 

ARKWRIGHT,  Sir  Richard  .        .  16 

ARNOLD,  Dr.  Thomas         .        .  17 

AUGUSTIN,  St 17 

AUGUSTINE,  St 17 

AUSTEN,  Jane     .        ,  -19 

Bach,  Johann  Sebastian  .  .  19 
BACON,  Francis,  Lord  .  .  19 
BACON,  John  .  .  .  .21 
BACON,  Sir  Nicholas  ...  21 
BACON,  Roger  .  22 

BAGEHOT,  Walter  ...  22 
BALMERINO,  Lord  ...  22 
BARROW,  Dr.  Isaac  ...  22 
BAXTER,  Richard  ...  23 
BEACONSKIELD,  Earl  of  -24 

BEAUMONT,  Francis  ...  25 
BECKET,  Thomas  ...  25 
BEDE,  The  Venerable  .  .  26 
BEETHOVEN,  Ludwig  von  .  .  26 
BEHMEN,  Jacob  .  .  .26 

BENEDICT  XIV.,  Pope        .        .      27 


PACK 

BENTHAM,  Jeremy      .        ...  27 

BKNTLEY,  Richard      ...  28 

BERKELEY,  George     ...  28 

BEWICK,  Thomas       ...  29 

BISMARCK,  Prince      ...  29 

BLAKE,  Robert  ....  30 

BOADICEA 31 

BOILEAU,  Nicolas  Despreaux      .  31 

BOLEYN,  Anne     ....  31 

BOLINGBROKE,   Viscount       .            .  32 

BONNER,  Edmund      ...  32 

BOSSUET,  Jacques  Benigne          .  33 

BOSWELL,  James  33 

BOYLE,  Robert    ....  34 
BRAKE,  Tycho    ...         .35 

BRIGHT,  John     ....  35 

BRINDLEY,  James  35 

BRONTE,  Charlotte      ...  36 

BROUGHAM  AND  VAUX,  Lord    .  36 

BROWNE,  Sir  Thomas         .         .  38 

BROWNING,  Elizabeth  Barrett     .  38 

BROWNING,  Robert     ...  38 

BRUCE,  Robert    ....  41 

BRUTUS,  Marcus  Junius      .         .  41 

BUNYAN,  John    ....  42 

BURKE,  Edmund         ...  44 

BURLEIGH,  William  Cecil,  Lord  46 

BURNEY,  Fanny           ...  12 

BURNS,  Robert    ....  47 

BURTON,  Robert         ...  51 

BUSBY,  Dr.  Richard    ...  51 

BUTLER,  Joseph          ...  52 

BUTLER,  Samuel  53 

BYNG,  John         ....  54 

BYRON,  Lord      .        .        .        .  55 

Caesar,  Caius  Julius        .        .  59 

CALIGULA 60 

CALVIN,  John    ....  60 

CAMDEN,  William      ...  62 

CAMPBELL,  Thomas  ...  62 

CANNING,  George       ...  63 

CANOVA,  Antonio       ...  64 

CANUTE 64 

CARACTACUS     ....  65 


CONTENTS. 


\  homus     . 
CARTKRET,  John,  Earl  of  Gran- 

ville 

IS  I>ONGINUS      . 
KKKAt.H,  Lord  Robert 
CATIUNK,  Lucius  Sergius  . 
CATO,  Marcus  Portius 
•  N,  William 

-•AAVF.DRA,    Miguel 

de 

(  MAi.MKKS,  Dr.  Thomas    . 

INING,  Dr.  William  Ellery  . 

(    HAKLEMAGNE   . 

is  I.,  of  England     . 

CHARLES  II.,  of  England  . 

<  HAKI.KS  IV.,  of  Germany 
CHARLES  y.,  of  Germany  . 

(  HATKAUBRIAND, 

de 

t  HA  i  HAM,  William  Pitt,  Earl  of 
(  HATTKKTON,  Thomas 
leoffrey     . 

.  KI  IKI.I),  the  Earl  of 
( 'mi. i. INGWOKTH,  William 
CHRISTINA          .         .        .        . 
( 'HKYSOSTOM,  St.  John 

nil. i.,  Charles  . 

<  'niiiKR,  Colley    .... 

O,  Marius  Tullius 
i  'iMAi-.ri -.,  Giovanni    . 
MX  >N,  Earl  of  . 
CI.AKKK,  I  Jr.  Samuel 
(  I.AKKSON,  Thomas  . 

MKA  .  .  .  . 

.  Lord        .... 

,  i ,  William 
N,  Richard 

'  'i.r.HAM.sir  |ohnOldcastle,Lord 
0,  Dr.  J.  W.   . 
IDGE,  Samuel  Taylor 
NS,  William        . 

. 

•  lipdr      . 
,  Auguste 
• 

William  . 

'ii   [allies 

Nicholas 

ilottc      . 

M,  Arcangelo  . 

• 

\ntonio  Allcgri 
v,  Abraham     . 
,  William 

•i  go 

.  MKK,  Thoinas     . 
CROMWKLL,  Oliver     .         .         '. 
(  KOMUKI.I.,  Richard  . 


PAGC 
65 

CUMBERLAND,  William  Augus- 

PAGE 

tus,  Duke  of  . 

114 

69 

CUNNINGHAM,  Allan  . 

114 

69 

CURRAN,  John  Philpot 

"5 

69 

70 

Dante,  Alighieri 

"5 

70 

DANTON,  George  James      . 

117 

71 

D'ARBLAY,  Madame  . 

12 

DARWIN,  Charles 

118 

72 

DAVY,  Sir  Humphrey  . 

1  20 

73 

DEFOE,  Daniel    . 

1  20 

73 

DEMOSTHENES   .... 

122 

74 

DKSCARTES,  Rene"  du  Perrot 

122 

74 

DICKENS,  Charles 

J23 

76 

DIDEROT,  Denis. 

125 

78 

DIOCLETIAN       .... 

I25 

78 

DlONYSIUS  

DISRAELI,  Benjamin  . 

24 

78 

DODDRIDGE,  Dr.  Philip 

126 

79 

DONNE,  Dr.  John 

126 

82 

DRAKE,  Sir  Francis    . 

127 

83 

DRYDEN,  John    .... 

127 

86 

DUNS  SCOTUS     .... 

87 

DURER,  Albrecht 

I32 

88 

88 

Edgeworth,  Maria 

132 

89 

EDWARD  THE  CONFESSOR  . 

89 
90 

EDWARD  I.,  of  England      . 
EDWARD  III.,  of  England  . 

133 
133 

EDWARD  VI.,  of  England  . 
EDWARDS,  Jonathan  . 

134 

91 

ELDON,  Earl  of  . 

'35 

92 

ELIOT,  George    .... 
ELI/ARETH,  Queen     . 

III 

93 
93 

EMERSON,  Ralph  Waldo    . 
EMPEDOCLES      .... 

i37 

94 

EPICTETUS  

140 

94 

EPICURUS  

141 

94 

ERASMUS,  Desiderius  . 

141 

95 

Km,  in        

142 

97 

EURIPIDES  

143 

97 

EVELYN,  John     .... 

144 

IOO 

TOO 

Fairfax,  Lord  Thomas    . 

144 

IOI 

FALKLAND,  Viscount  . 

144 

IOI 

KARA  DAY,  Michael     . 

102 

•'KNKLON,  Frangois  de  Salignac 

IO2 

de  la  Motte  .... 

j  -  r 

I03 

MCH  IK,  Johann  Gottlieb    . 

I46 

I04 

MELDING,  Henrv 

146 

104 

MSHER,  John       '. 

Z47 

I04 

'LAXMAN,  John  .... 

148 

105 

•"ox,  Charles  James    . 

148 

106 
108 

rox,  George        .... 
-'RANCIS  D'Assisi 

150 
151 

108 

•'RANKLIN,  Benjamin  . 

152 

no 

FRANKLIN,  Sir  John  . 

114 

FREDERICK  THE  GREAT    . 

T.S3 

FRY,  Elizabeth    . 
FULLER,  Thomas 

Gainsborough,  Thomas 
GALEN,  Claudius 
GALILEO,  Galilei 
GARDINER,  Stephen    . 
GARIBALDI,  Guiseppi . 
GARRICK,  David 
GAY,  John  .... 

GEORGE  I 

GEORGE  II. 
GEORGE  III. 
GEORGE  IV. 
GIBBON,  Edward 
GIKFORD,  William 
GIOTTO       .... 
GLADSTONE,  William  Ewart 
GOETHE,  Johann  Wolfgang 
GOLDSMITH,  Oliver 
GORDON,  General  Charles  George 
GRATTAN,  Henry 
GRAY,  Thomas   .. 
GREY,  Lady  Jane 
Gui/.OT,  Fran9ois  P.  G. 
GUTENBERG,  John 
GUYON,    Jeanne   Maria    Bouvier 
de  la  Motte   ... 

Hallam,  Arthur  Henry    . 
HALL  AM,  Henry 
HAMILTON,  Sir  William     . 
HAMPDEN,  John 
HANDEL,  George  Frederick 
HANNIBAL 
HARCOURT,  Viscount 
HARLEY,  Robert,  Earl  of  Oxford 
HARVEY,  Dr.  William 
HASTINGS,  Wrarren     . 
HAVELOCK,  Sir  Henry 
HAWKWOOD,  Sir  John 
HAWTHORNE,  Nathan  el    . 
HAYDN,  Franz  Joseph 
HAYDON,  Benjamin  Robert 
HAZLITT,  William 
HEBER,  R  ginald 
HEGEL,  Georg  W.  F. 
HEINE,  Heinrich 
HEMANS,  Felicia  Dorothea . 
HENRY  IV.,  of  France 
HENRY  V. ,  of  England 
HENRY  VIII. ,  of  England  . 
HERBERT,  George 
HERODOTUS       ... 
HERRICK,  Robert 
HERRING,  Dr.  Thomas 
HERVEY,  James  . 
HESIOD 


CONTENTS. 

V 

PAGF 

PAOE 

J53 

HlLDEBRAND,  St.          ... 

188 

•        15; 

HILL,  Rev.  Rowland  . 

188 

HILL,  Sir  Rowland 

189 

154 

HOBBES,  Thomas 

189 

I5C 

HOGARTH,  William    . 

190 

I^E 

HOGG,  James       .... 

191 

•     156 

HOLLAND,  Lord 

192 

.     156 

HOLMES,  Oliver  Wendell    . 

192 

•     157 

HOME,  Henry,  Lord  Kames 

193 

.     158 

HOMER        ..... 

193 

•     JS9 

HOOK,  Dr.  Walter  Farquhat 

197 

HOOKER,  Richard 

197 

.     160 

HORACE     

198 

.     161 

HOUGH,  Dr.  John 

199 

.     161 

HOUGHTON,   Richard  Monckton 

.     162 

Milnes,  Lord 

200 

.     162 

HOWARD,  John 

2OO 

.      162 

HUGO,  Victor      .... 

2O  I 

.      163 

HUMBOLDT,  Friedrich  H.  A.  von 

204 

.     166 

HUME,  David      .... 

205 

ge   168 
.     168 

HUNT,  Leigh      .... 
HUNTER,  Dr.  John 

205 
207 

.     169 

HUNTINGDON,  Selina,  Countess  of 

208 

.     169 

Huss,  John         .... 

208 

.     170 

.     170 

Inchbald,  Elizabeth 

209 

*r 

IRVING,  Edward 

209 

.     170 

IRVING,  Washington  . 

209 

•      17I 

James  I.         .... 

2IO 

•     r?i 

JAMES  II  

210 

.     172 

JEANNE  D'ARC    .... 

210 

.     172 

JEFFREY,  Francis,  Lord 

212 

•     173 

JEFFREYS,  Lord  George 

212 

JENNER,  Dr.  Edward 

212 

.'     176 

JEROME  OF  PRAGUE  . 

213 

d     176 

JEWEL,  Dr.  John 

2I3 

.     176 

JOHN  

213 

.     176 

JOHN  OF  GAUNT 

214 

•     177 

[OHNSON,  Dr.  Samuel 

214 

.     178 

IONKS,  Inigo        .... 

217 

.     178 

[ONSON,  Benjamin 

2I7 

.     179 

UVENAL      

22O 

•     !79 

.      180 

Kant,  Immanuel 

2  .1 

.      181 

KEATS,  John       .... 

221 

.     182 

KEBLE,  John      .... 

225 

.      182 

KEPLER,  John    .... 

225 

.     183 

KINGSLEY,  Charles     . 

226 

.     184 

KNELLER,  Sir  Godfrey 

227 

184 

KEN,  Thomas     .... 

228 

.     184 

KNOX,  John        .... 

229 

.      185 

KOSSUTH,  Louis 

231 

.     186 

.     186 

La  Fayette,  Gilbert  Motier, 

.     187 

Marquis  de    . 

231 

.      187 

^AMARTINE,  Alphonse  de  . 

232 

.      188 

LAMB,  Charles    .... 

232 

CONTENTS. 


LAMI  NNAis,  Robert  de  . 
I.  \NDOR,  Walter  Savage  . 
L  \TIMKK,  Hugh 

>.  Dr.  Will  am     . 
LAWKKNCK,  Sir  Henry 
1  lottfried  W. 

ING,  Gotthold  Ephraim 
LINCOLN,  Abraliam     . 
LINN  i.rs,  Carl  von     . 
LIVINGSTON)-:.  David  . 
l.oi  KK.  John 
l.nN'.i  KI.I.OU.  Henry  \\'ads\v< 

Loci.  IX 

Lot  IS  XIV. 
XVI. 
LOUKLL,  James  Russell 

i  :i,  Dr.  Ro!:ert    . 
I.  'YOI.A,  Ignatius 

.  \ 

LcciAN  .... 
Lr<  KKIIUS 

ii  R,    Martin 
LYTTON,   Edward  Bulwcr,   Lo 

Macaulay,  Lord    . 
MACIMAVKLLI,  Nicholas    . 

MACKINTOSH,  Sir  lames     . 

M  \lloMI.T    .  . 

MAISTKK     .... 
MALI  KK  \N<  HI,  Nicholas  de 
MANNING,  Henry  Edward  . 

i  Ii  i.i).     William      Murra 

of 

MARAT,  |.  an  I'aul 
M  AR<  i  8  AURELIUS  ANTONINT 
M  IRIE  ANTOINETTE 

M  \Ri.HOkorGii,  John 

Duke  of        ... 

MARI.O\\  !•.,  (  'hristophi-r 

i  .  Andrew      . 
MARY  J 

MAKYSlI'AIM      . 

MASM.M.KK,  Philip     . 
MAUKICK.  i--n-(i,.rii:k  Dehison 
MA/ARIN,  Giulio 
••:>h 

n  i  HON,  Philip 
'•KR 
I'KR 

:  8SOHN-BARTHOLDY, 
M<  II,   Prnic  •  von 
,     . 

MICHELANGELO  MI-ONARKO-I 

MILL,  |ohn  Stuart 

.  Mm     . 

U',  <  iorntc  de 
MriH.Kn,  Mary  Russell 
MOI.IKRE,  Jean  Baptiste      . 


PADS 

.      236 

MOLTKE,  Count  von  . 

PAGE 

286 

•      236 

MONTAIGNE,  Michel  Eyquem  de 

287 

•      237 

MONTESQUIEU,    Charles   de  Se- 

.      238 

condat,  Baron  de 

287 

•      239 

MOORE,  Thomas 

288 

•      239 

MORE,  Sir  Thomas      . 

289 

.      240 

MORRIS,  William 

290 

.      240 

MOZART,  J.  C.  W.  T. 

291 

.      240 
.      241 

Napoleon  I  

291 

241 

NELSON      ..... 

298 

orth  243 
244 

NERO          
NEWMAN,  John  Henry 

300 
301 

24.4 

NEWTON,  Sir  Isaac     . 

302 

•      **Hr 

241; 

NEWTON,  Rev.  John  .        .        . 

305 

•         ^TO 
.          246 

NORFOLK,  Mowbray,  Duke  of    . 

305 

.         246 

O'Connell,  Daniel  . 

3°5 

247 
.         248 

.         248 

ORIGEN      
OVID  

306 
306 

.         248 

Paine,  Thomas 

3°7 

.          249 

PALEY,  William 

3°7 

id     253 

PALMERSTON,  Viscount 

308 

PARACELSUS      .... 

308 

•     254 

PARNELL,  Charles  Stewart 

309 

•     2S7 

PARNELL,  Dr.  Thomas      . 

3°9 

•     257 

PASCAL,  Blaise   .... 

310 

.     258 
•     2S9 

PATTESON,  lohn  Coleridge 
PEEL,  Sir  Robert 

310 
311 

•     259 

PEMBROKE,  Mary,  Countess  of  . 

313 

•     259 

PENN,  William   .... 

313 

iy, 

PEPVS,  Samuel    .... 

314 

.   260 

PERICLES  

315 

.   261 

PETER  THE  GREAT     . 

315 

us    261 

PETERBOROUGH,    Charles    Mor- 

263 

daunt,  Earl  of      ... 

316 

11, 

PETRARCH,  Francis     . 

3J7 

.     264 

PINDAR       

320 

.    266 

PITT,  William     .... 

323 

.    267 

PITT,  William,  Earl  of  Chatham 

79 

.     268 

PIZARRO,  Francis 

324 

.   269 

PLATO        

32  c; 

.    270 

PLUTARCH          .... 

3^3 

327 

.   270 

POE,  Edgar  All  en 

328 

271 

POMPEY        

329 

.    271 
.    272 

POPE,  Alexander 
PORSON,  Richard 

33° 
336 

.    272 
•    273 

PRIESTLEY,  Dr.  Joseph 
PRIOR,  Matthew". 

336 
336 

VI  ix  273 

PTOLEMY,  Claudius     . 

oo^ 
337 

.    274 

PULTENEY,  Earl  of  Bath     . 

337 

•    274 
.    274 

PURCELL,  Henry 
PU.SEY,  Dr.  Edward  Bouverie 

338 
338 

.    275 

PYM,  John  

008 

.    277 

.  285 

PYTHAGORAS     .... 

oo1-* 

340 

.  285 
.   286 

Quincey,  Thomas  de 

QlJINTILIAN          .... 

34i 
341 

CONTENTS. 


Rabelais,  Fra^ois         .        .  341 

RACINE,  Jean     ....  343 

RADCLIFFE,  Ann        .        .        .  343 

RALEIGH,  Sir  Walter          .         .  344 

RAMSAY,  Allan   ....  346 

RAPHAEL 346 

REMBRANDT,  Van  Rhyn  Paul    .  348 

REYNOLDS,  Sir  Joshua        .        .  348 

RICHARD  1 350 

RICHARD  II.       ....  350 

RICHARD  III 351 

RICHARDSON,  Samuel         .        .  352 

RICHELIEU,  Due  de    .         .         .  353 

RICHTER,  Jean  Paul   .         .         .  354 

ROBERTSON,  Frederick  William,  354 

ROBESPIERRE,  Maximilien  .         .  354 
'  ROCHEFOUCAULD,  Francis,  Due 

dela 355 

ROGERS,  Samuel         .        .        .  356 
ROMNEY,  George        .         .         -357 

ROSCOMMON,  Earl  of  .         .         .  357 

ROSSETTI,  Dante  Gabriel    .         .  357 

ROSSINI,  Joachim         .         .         .  358 

ROUBILLAC,  Louis  Francois        .  358 

ROUSSEAU,  Jean  Jacques'    .         .  359 

RUNDLE,  Dr.  Thomas          .         .  361 

RUSKIN,  John      ....  361 

RUSSELL,  Lord  William      .         .  363 

RUTHERFORD,  Samuel        .        .  364 

Sacheverell,  Dr.  Henry        .  364 

SALES,  Francis  de  364 

SAND,  George     ....  364 

SAPPHO       .        .        .        .        .  365 

SAVONAROLA      ....  365 

SCALIGER,  Julius  Caesar      .         .  366 

SCHILLER,  Friedrich  von     .         .  366 

SCHOPENHAUER,  Arthur     .        .  369 

SCHUBERT,  Franz  Peter      .         .  370 

SCHUMANN,  Robert    .        .        .  370 

SCIPIO  AFRICANUS     .        .        .  370 

SCOTT,  Sir  Walter       .         .         .  370 

SELDEN, John     ....  377 

SELWYN,  George  Augustus          .  378 

SENECA 378 

SHAFTESBURY,    Anthony  Ashley 

Cooper,  Earl  of    .         .         .  379 

SHAKSPERE,  William          .        .  380 

SHELLEY,  Percy  Bysshe      .         .  392 

SHENSTONE,  William           .         .  398 

SHERIDAN,  Richard  Brinsley        .  399 

SHERLOCK,  Thomas  .        '.        .  400 

SIDNEY,  Sir  Philip       .        .        .  400 

SIMONIDES  .....  403 

SlXTUS  IV 403 

SMITH,  Adam     ....  404 

SMITH,  Rev.  Sydney  .         .         .  404 

SMOLLETT,  Tobias  George          .  406 


PAGE 

SOCINUS,  Faustus        .        .        .  407 

SOCRATES 407 

SOLON 410 

SOPHOCLES 410 

SOUTH,  Dr.  Robert     .         .         .411 

SOUTHEY,  Robert         .         .         .  412 

SPENSER,  Edmund       .         .         .  413 

SPINO/.A,  Benedict  Baru^h  .        .  416 

STANLEY,  Arthur  Penrhyn  .         .  417 

STEELE,  Sir  Richard  .  .  .  417 
STERNE,  Laurence  .  .  •  .418 
STKAFFORD,  Thomas  Went- 

worth,  Earl  of       ...  420 

STRAUSS,  David  Friedrich  .         .  422 

SUCKLING,  Sir  John   .        .         .  422 

SWEDENBORG,  Emanuel      .         .  422 

SWIFT,  Dr.  Jonathan  .         .         .  423 

SYDENHAM,  Thomas  .        .        .  427 

Tacitus 427 

TASSO,  Torquato        .         .         .  428 

TAYLOR,  Jeremy         .         .         .  430 

TENIERS,  David  ....  431 

TENNYSON,  Alfred,  Lord    .         .  431 

THACKERAY.William  Makepeace  434 

THEOCRITUS       ....  436 

THERESA,  St 436 

THOMSON,  James        .        .        .  437 

THOREAU,  "Henry  David     .         .  438 

THURLOW,  Lord  Edward    .         .  438 

TILLOTSON, John        .         .        .  438 

TITIAN 439 

TITUS,    Flavius  Sabinus  Vespa- 

sianus   .....  440 

TRAJANUS,  Marcus  Ulpius  Nerva  440 

TURENNE,  Henri,  Vicomte  de     .  440 

TURNER,  Joseph  Mallord  William  440 

Vandyck,  Sir  Anthony    .         .441 

VANE,  Sir  Henry        .         .         .  442 

VANE,  the  Younger,  Sir  Henry    .  442 

VESALIUS,  Andreas     .         .         .  443 

VINCI,  Leo'nardo  da   .         .         .  443 

VIRGIL 443 

VOLTAIRE,      Fran9ois       Marie 

Arouet  de     .         .         .         -445 

Wallace,  Sir  William       .         .  449 

WALLER,  Edmund     .         .         .  449 

WALPOLE,  Horace      .        .         .  450 

WALPOLE,  Sir  Robert         .  451 

WALTON,  Izaac  .        .        .  452 

WARWICK,  Nevill,  Earl  of  .  452 

WASHINGTON,  George        .  452 

WATTS,  Dr.  Isaac  .  .  454 
WELLINGTON,  Arthur  Wellesley 

Duke  of        ...  454 

WESLEY,  John    .         .         .  456 


CONTENTS. 


Wiii^TON,  William      . 
\VniTK,  Henry  Kirke 
\\'m  i  KIKLD,  George  . 
WHITMAN,  Walt 
Win  i  i  IKK,  John  Greenleaf 
Win. IK  ,  lolin      . 

WlI.BKKKOKCK.    William       . 
\VlLKI-.s.    Mill       . 

WU.KIK.  Sir  David      . 
\Vll.l.lAM   I. 
Wll.l.lAM   II. 

WILLIAM  111.  . 
WUI.KK.  James  . 


PAGE 

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WOLSEY,  Thomas 

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WORDSWORTH,  William 

459 

WREN,  Sir  Christopher 

461 

WYCHERLEY,  William 

462 

464 

Xavier,  Francis 

466 

XENOPHON 

466 

XERXES  I.  . 

467 

467 

Young,  Dr.  Edward 

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469 

Zeno 

470 

ZOROASTER 

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Quote  quotation  on  quotation. 

—SWIFT. 

The  living  words 
Of  our  great  men  .  .  . 
Pass  not  from  door  to  door  and  out  again, 
But  sit  within  the  house. 

— LORD  TKNNYSON. 

Many  are  the  sayings  of  the  wise, 

In  ancient  and  in  modern  books  enrolled. 

— MILTON. 

He  rang'd  his  tropes,  and  preach'd  up  patience, 
Back'd  his  opinion  with  quotations. 

—PRIOR. 

It  often  happens  that  the  quotations  constitute  the  most  valuable  part  of  a  book.— 
Dr.  VICKSIMUS  KNOX. 

A  collection  of  good  sentences  resembles  a  string  of  pearls.— Chinese  Saying. 

By  necessity,  by  proclivity,  and  by  delight,  we  all  quote.  We  quote  not  only  books 
and  proverbs,  but  arts,  sciences,  religion,  customs,  and  laws;  nay,  we  quote  temples  and 
houses,  tables  and  chairs,  by  imitation EMERSON. 

Kvcry  book  is  a  quotation :  and  every  house  is  a  isolation  out  of  all  forests,  and 
mines,  and  stone-quarries ;  and  every  man  is  a  quotation  from  all  his  ancestors. — Idem. 


PETER  ABELARD. 
French  Scholastic  Philosopher  :  1079-1142. 

The  most  eminent  and  the  most  orthodox  Doctor  of  the  eleventh 
century. — F.  D.  MAURICE,  Medieval  Philosophy, 

Abelard  was  almost  the  first  who  awakened  mankind  in  the  ages  of 
darkness  to  a  sympathy  with  intellectual  excellence.  .  .  .  Abelard  was 
the  first  of  recorded  name,  who  taught  the  banks  of  the  Seine  to  resound 
a  tale  of  love ;  and  it  was  of  Eloise  that  he  sang. — HALLAM,  Student's 
Middle  Ages. 

In  the  twelfth  century  was  there  any  mind  which  shone  more  brightly, 
was  there  any  eloquence  which  flowed  more  mightily,  than  that  of  Peter 
Abelard  ?  Yet  Abelard  sank  beneath  the  meanest  of  his  scholastic  con- 
temporaries in  the  degradation  of  his  career  as  much  as  he  towered 
above  the  highest  of  them  in  the  grandeur  of  his  genius. — F.  W.  FARRAR, 
Seekers  after  God. 

JOSEPH  ADDISON. 
English  Essayist  and  Dramatist :  1672-1719^ 

Thus  Addison,  by  lords  carest, 
Was  left  in  foreign  lands  distrest. 

— SWIFT,  A  Libel. 

On  Addison's  sweet  lays  attention  waits 
And  silence  guards  the  place  while  he  repeats ; 
His  Muse  alike  on  every  subject  charms, 
Whether  he  paints  the  God  of  Love,  or  Arms. 

—GAY,  Epistle  XIV. 
No  whiter  page  than  Addison  remains. 

— POPE,  Satires,  etc.,  of  Horace  imitated. 

With  graceful  steps  see  Addison  advance 
The  sweetest  child  of  Attic  elegance. 

— THOMAS  WARTON,  The  Triumph  of  I  sis. 

If  Addison,  or  Rowe,  or  Prior  write, 
We  study  them  with  profit  and  delight. 

— CONGREVE,  Of  Pleasing. 
Guilt's  chief  foe  in  Addison  is  dead. 

— YOUNG,  Satire  I. 
I 


2  ADDISON. 

Our  age  demands  correctness ;  Addison 
And  vou  this  commendable  hurt  have  done. 

— YOUNG,  Epistle  II. 

Urge  on  my  soul,  with  no  ignoble  pride, 
To  woo  the  Muse,  whom  Addison  enjoy'd, 
See  that  bold  swain  to  heaven  sublimely  soar, 
Pursue  at  distance,  and  his  steps  adore. 

— TICKELL,  Poem  to  the  Lord  Privy  Seal. 

Every  Muse  was  fond  of  Addison. 

— Id.,  Oxford :  a  Poem. 

Where  Addison  and  Tickell  lay  inspir'd, 
Inebriated,  from  the  classic  springs, 
And  tun'd  to  various-sounding  harps  the  song, 
Sublime  or  tender,  humorous  or  grave, 
Quaffing  the  Muses'  nectar  to  their  fill. 

— THOMSON,  Progress  of  Sickness. 

In  front  of  those  came  Addison.     In  him 
Humour  in  holiday  and  sightly  trim, 
Sublimity  and  Attic  taste  combined, 
To  polish,  furnish,  and  delight  the  mind. 

— COWPER,  Table  Talk. 

Every  true  critic — from  the  Stagyrite 
To  Schlegel  and  to  Addison — hath  won 
His  fame  by  serving  a  reflected  light, 
And  clearing  vapour  from  a  clouded  sun. 

— LYTTON,  The  True  Cntic. 

Whoever  wishes  to  attain  an  English  style,  familiar,  but  not  coarse, 
and  elegant,  but  not  ostentatious,  must  give  his  days  and  nights  to  the 
volumes  of  Addison. — DR.  JOHNSON,  Lives  of  the  Poets  :  Addison. 

The  exquisite  taste  and  fine  observation  of  Addison. — LORD  JEFFREY, 
Essays. 

It  is  the  extremely  moral  and  didactic  tone  of  the  Spectator  which  makes 
us  apt  to  think  of  Addison  (according  to  Mandeville's  sarcasm)  as  "  a 
parson  in  a  tie-wig  ". — HAZLITT,  Lectures  on  the  English  Comic  Writers. 

No  praise  of  Addison's  style  can  exaggerate  its  merits.  Its  art  is  per- 
fectly marvellous.  No  change  of  time  can  render  the  workmanship 
obsolete.  His  style  has  that  nameless  urbanity  in  which  we  recognise 
the  perfection  of  manner — courteous,  but  not  courtier-like ;  so  dignified, 
yet  so  kindly  ;  so  easy,  yet  so  high-bred.  Its  form  of  English  is  fixed — a 
safe  and  eternal  model,  of  which  all  .imitation  pleases — to  which  all 
approach  is  scholarship — like  the  Latin  of  the  Augustan  age. — LYTTON, 
Miscellaneous  Prose  Works,  Vol.  III. 

Joseph  was  of  a  cold  nature,  and  needed  perhaps  the  fire  of  wine  to 
warm  his  blood.  If  he  was  a  parson,  he  wore  a  tye-wig,  recollect.  A 
lu-tu:r  and  more  Christian  man  scarcely  ever  breathed  than  Joseph 
Addison.  If  he  had  not  that  Little  weakness  for  wine— why,  we  could 
scarcely  have  found  a  fault  with  him,  and  could  not  have  liked  him  as  we 


ADDISON,  &SCHYLUS. 


f0'  '  V  ?•!  "V3S  a  man's  man'  remember.  The  only  woman  he  did 
know,  he  didn't  wr.te  about.  I  take  it  there  would  not  have  been  much 
humour  m  that  story.  .  .  .  Is  the  glory  of  heaven  to  be  sung  only  by 
gentlemen  in  black  coats  ?  Must  the  truth  be  only  expounded  in  gown 
and  surplice,  and  out  of  those  two  vestments  can  nobody  preach  it  ? 
Commend  me  to  this  dear  preacher  without  orders—  this  parson  in  the 
tye-wig.  When  this  man  looks  from  the  world,  whose  weaknesses  he 
describes  so  benevolently,  up  to  the  Heaven  which  shines  over  us  all  I 
can  hardly  fancy  a  human  face  lighted  up  with  a  more  serene  rapture  :  a 
human  intellect  thrilling  with  a  purer  love  and  adoration  than  Joseph 
Addison's.—  THACKERAY,  English  Humorists. 

To  Addison  himself  we  are  bound  by  a  sentiment  as  much  like  affection 
as  any  sentiment  can  be  which  is  inspired  by  one  who  has  been  sleeping 
a  hundred  and  twenty  years  in  Westminster  Abbey.  It  is  i 

enough  to  say  of  a  writer  that,  in  a  high  department  of  'literature  in 
which  many  eminent  writers  have  distinguished  themselves,  he  has  had 

10  equal  ;  and  this  may  with  strict  justice  be  said  of  Addison  If 

we  wish  to  find  anything  more  vivid  than  Addison's  best  portraits  'we 
must  go  either  to  Shakespeare  or  to  Cervantes  ____  That  which  chiefly 
distinguishes  Addison  from  Swift,  from  Voltaire,  from  almost  all  the  other 
jreat  masters  of  ridicule,  is  the  grace,  the  nobleness,  the  moral  purity, 
which  we  find  even  in  his  merriment.—  MACAULAY,  Essays  :  Addison. 

Addison  is  as  true  as  Truth  itself.—  RUSKIN,  Fors  Clavigera. 

FERGUSON™  WC  diSCer"  thC  amCnity  and  ideal  grace  °f  RaPhael-  -JAMES 


In   every  thousand  of  those  who  have  been  delighted  with  the  papers 
of  Addison,  perhaps  not  more  than  one  has  seen  the  Principia  of  Newton 
-DR.  VICESIMUS  KNOX,  Essays:  on  Essay  Writing. 


m?  P  Krd  n0"  at  HiS  rCal  V3lue  We  must  re£ard  him  as  the  chief 
of  Public  Opinion  in  the  eighteenth  century.  .  .  The  work  of 
Addison  consisted  in  building  up  a  public  opinion  which,  in  spite  of  its 
durable  solidity  seems,  like  the  great  Gothic  cathedrals/to  absorb  into 
If  the  individuality  of  the  architect.  A  vigorous  effort  of  thought  is 

strong  this  " 


AESCHYLUS. 

Greek  Tragic  Poet  :  B.C.  525-456. 

Brave  /Eschylus  and  Sophocles,  around 
Whose  sacred  brows  the  tragic  ivy  twin'd. 

—  RICHARD  GLOVER,  London. 
But,  do  you  see  my  friend,  that  thus 
You  leave  Saint  Paul  for  ^Eschylus  ? 
—Who  made  his  Titan's  arch-device 
The  giving  men  blind  hopes  to  spice 
The  meal  of  life  with. 

—ROBERT  BROWNING,  Christmas  Eve  and  Easter  Day. 


4  .ESCHYLUS. 

Are  ^Eschylus  and  Sophocles  and  Euripides  dead  ?  No  ;  the  wondrous 
three  are  still  in  constellation.  Bright  are  they  as  when  they  first  shone, 
thousands  of  years  ago,  in  the  heavenly  sky.  But  which  are  they  ?  In 
what  quarter  of  the  region  hang  their  golden  lamps  ?  Yonder.  You  see 
the  glorious  gems,  enclosing  as  in  a  triangle  a  deep  blue  portion  of  stain- 
less ether.  The  apex-star  is  ^ischylus — to  the  east  is  Sophocles — to  the 
west,  Euripides  ! — JOHN  WILSON,  Essays  :  Greek  Drama. 

yEschylus,  Shakespeare,  and  Schiller,  three  poetic  worlds. — MAZZINI, 
Life  and  Writings. 

In  yEschylus  and  Sophocles,  in  Pindar  and  Plato,  you  see  conscience 
asserting  its  sovereignty  over  the  most  sacred  beliefs — instinctive  rever- 
ence and  piety  struggling  sometimes  to  express  themselves  under  the 
names  and  forms  of  the  past,  sometimes  bursting  out  uncontrollably  into 
indignant  abhorrence. — FROUDE,  Calvinism. 

That  orthodox  Christian  and  true  Gospel  preacher,  ^Eschylus. — F.  D. 
MAURICE,  Life,  Vol.  II. 

All  tragic  poets,  I  presume,  from  JEschylus,  the  god-like  father  of  them 
all,  to  the  last  aspirant  who  may  struggle  after  the  traces  of  his  steps, 
have  been  poets  before  they  were  tragedians. — SWINBURNE,  A  Study  of 
Shakespeare. 

Every  character  that  is  so  much  as  touched  by  men,  like  ^Eschylus, 
Homer,  Dante,  or  Shakespeare,  is  by  them  held  by  the  heart,  and  every 
circumstance  or  sentence  of  their  being,  speaking,  or  seeming,  is  seized 
by  process  from  within,  and  is  referred  to  that  inner  secret  spring  of  which 
the  hold  is  never  lost  for  an  instant ;  so  that  every  sentence,  as  it  has 
been  thought  out  from  the  heart,  opens  for  us  a  way  down  to  the  heart, 
leads  us  to  the  centre,  and  then  leaves  us  to  gather  what  more  we  may. 
It  is  the  Open  Sesame  of  a  huge,  obscure,  endless  cave,  with  inexhaustible 
treasure  of  pure  gold  scattered  in  it ;  the  wandering  about  and  gathering 
the  pieces  may  be  left  to  any  of  us,  all  can  accomplish  that  ;  but  the  first 
opening  of  that  invisible  door  in  the  rock  is  of  the  imagination  only. — 
RUSKIN,  Modern  Painters,  Vol.  II. 

As  water,  when  heated  to  100°  C.,  is  incapable  of  calorific  increase,  and 
can  rise  no  higher,  so  human  thought  attains  in  certain  men  its  maximum 
intensity.  YEschylus,  Job,  Phidias,  Isaiah,  St.  Paul,  Juvenal,  Dante, 
Michael  Angelo,  Rabelais,  Cervantes,  Shakespeare,  Rembrandt,  Beetho- 
ven, with  some  others,  mark  the  100°  of  genius.  .  .  .  /Eschylus  is 
magnificent  and  powerful ;  as  though  you  saw  him  knitting  his  brows 
beyond  the  sun.  He  has  two  Cains,  Eteocles  and  Polynices  ;  Genesis  has 
but  one.  His  swarm  of  sea  monsters  come  and  go  in  the  dark  sky,  as  a 
flock  of  driven  birds.  Aeschylus  has  none  of  the  known  proportions.  He 
is  rough,  abrupt,  immoderate,  incapable  of  smoothing  the  way,  almost 
ferocious,  with  a  grace  of  his  own  which  resembles  the  flowers  in  wild 
places,  less  haunted  by  nymphs  than  by  the  Eumenides,  of  the  faction  of 
the  Titans,  among  goddesses  choosing  the  sombre  ones,  and  smiling 
darkly  at  the  Gorgons,  a  son  of  the  earth  like  Othryx  and  Briareus,  and 
ready  to  attempt  again  the  scaling  of  heaven  against  that  parvenu  Jupiter. 
YEschylus  is  ancient  mystery  made  man  ;  something  like  a  pagan  prophet. 
His  work,  if  we  had  it  all,  would  be  a  kind  of  Greek  Bible.  .  .  .  yKschylus 
is  up  to  hi?  shoulders  in  the  ashes  of  ages  ;  his  head  alone  remains  out  of 


&SCHYLUS,  AKENSIDE.  5 

that  burying,  and,  like  the  giant  of  the  desert,  with  his  head  alone  he  is 
as  immense  as  all  the  neighbouring  gods  standing  on  their  pedestals. 
Man  passes  before  this  unsubmergable  wreck.  Enough  remains  for  an 
immense  glory.  What  the  darkness  has  taken  adds  the  unknown  to  this 
greatness.  Buried  and  eternal,  his  brow  projecting  from  the  grave, 
^Eschylus  looks  at  generations.  .  .  .  yEschylus  is  the  ancient  Shakes- 
peare. .  .  .  Whoever  does  not  comprehend  ^Eschylus  is  irremedially  an 
ordinary  mind.  Intellects  may  be  tried  on  ^Eschylus. — VICTOR  HUGO, 
William  SJuikespearc  (transl.}. 

As  befits  a  demiurgic  nature,  ^Eschylus  conceived  and  executed  upon  a 
stupendous  scale.  His  outlines  are  huge ;  his  figures  are  colossal ;  his 
stj'le  is  broad  and  sweeping — like  a  river  in  its  fulness  and  its  might. 
Each  of  his  plays  might  be  compared  to  a  gigantic  statue,  whereof  the 
several  parts,  taken  separately,  are  beautiful,  while  the  whole  is  put  to- 
gether with  some  majestic  harmony.  But  as  the  sculptor,  in  modelling  a 
colossus,  cannot  afford  to  introduce  the  details  which  would  grace  a 
chimney  ornament,  so  ^Eschylus  was  forced  to  sacrifice  the  working  out 
of  minor  motives.  His  imagination,  penetrated  through  and  through  with 
the  spirit  of  his  subject  as  a  whole,  was  more  employed  in  presenting  a 
series  of  great  situations,  wrought  together  and  combined  into  a  single 
action,  than  in  elaborating  the  minutiae  of  characters  and  plots.  The 
result  has  been  that  those  students  who  delight  in  detail,  have  complained 
of  a  certain  disproportion  between  his  huge  design  and  his  insufficient 
execution.  It  has  too  frequently  been  implied  that  he  could  rough-hew 
like  a  Cyclops,  but  that  he  could  not  finish  like  a  Praxiteles ;  that  he  was 
more  capable  of  sketching  in  an  outline  than  of  filling  up  its  parts. — J. 
ADDINGTON  SYMONDS,  Studies  of  the  Greek  Poets,  Second  Series. 

fgThe  general  spirit  of  ^Eschylus  has  been  much  misunderstood,  owing 
to  the  external  circumstance  that  his  life  came  at  the  beginning  of  an  age 
of  rapid  progress.  The  pioneer  of  490  is  mistaken  for  a  reactionary  of 
404.  Aeschylus  is  in  thought  generally  a  precursor  of  the  sophistic  move- 
ment, as  Euripides  is  the  outcome  of  it.  He  is  an  enthusiastic  democrat 
of  the  early  type.  Listen  to  the  paeans  about  freedom  in  the  Persa. 
That  is  the  very  spirit  recorded  by  Herodotus  as  having  made  Athens  rise 
from  a  commonplace  Ionian  state  to  be  the  model  and  the  leader  of  Hellas. 
And  the  Pcrsce  is  not  isolated. — GILBERT  MURRAY,  Ancient  Greek  Litera- 
ture. 

MARK  AKENSIDE. 
English  Poet :   1721-1770. 

Th'  Athenian  Akenside  may  deign 
To  stamp  me  deathless  with  his  pen. 

— CHRISTOPHER  SMART,  Fable  VII. 

His  images  are  displayed  with  such  luxuriance  of  expression,  that  they 
are  hidden,  like  Butler's  Moon,  by  a  "Veil  of  Light"  ;  they  are  forms 
fantastically  lost  under  superfluity  of  dress. — DR.  JOHNSON,  Lives  of  the 
Poets :  Akenside. 

Akenside  was  one  of  the  fiercest  and  most  uncompromising  of  the 
young  patriots  out  of  Parliament.  When  he  found  that  the  change  of 


6        AKEXSIDE,  ALEXANDER  THE  GREAT. 

administration  had  produced  no  change  of  system,  he  gave  vent  to  his 
indignation  in  the  "  Epistle  to  Curio,"  the  best  poem  that  he  ever  wrote, 
a  poem,  indeed,  which  seems  to  indicate,  that,  if  he  had  left  lyric  com- 
position to  Gray  and  Collins,  and  had  employed  his  powers  in  grave  and 
elevated  satire,  he  might  have  disputed  the  pre-eminence  of  Dryden. 
— MACAULAY,  Essays  :  Walpole's  Letters. 

Akenside  attempted  a  sort  of  classical  and  philosophical  rapture,  which 
no  elegance  of  language  could  easily  have  rendered  popular,  but  which 
had  merits  of  no  vulgar  order  for  those  who  could  study  it. — LORD 
JEFFREY,  Essays. 

ST.  ALBAN. 
Britain's  Proto-Martyr. 

Thus  was  Alban  tried, 

England's  first  martyr,  whom  no  threats  could  shake  ; 
Self-offered  victim,  for  his  friend  he  died, 
And  for  the  faith — nor  shall  his  name  forsake 
That  hill,  whose  flowery  platform  seems  to  rise 
By  nature  decked  for  holiest  sacrifice. 

— WORDSWORTH,  Persecution. 

LEONE  BATTISTA  ALBERTI. 
Italian  Poet,  Painter,  Architect:  1404-1484. 

Leo  Baptista  Alberti  was  a  man,  who,  if  measured  by  the  universality 
of  his  genius,  may  claim  a  place  in  the  temple  of  glory  he  has  not  filled. 
— HALLAM,  Literature  of  the  Middle  Ages,  Vol.  I. 


ALEXANDER  THE  GREAT. 
B.C.  356-323. 

The  storie  of  Alexandre  is  so  commune 
That  every  wight  that  hath  discretioun 
Hath  herd  somewhat  or  all  of  his  fortune. 

—CHAUCER,  Canterbury  Talcs  :  The  Monkes  Tale. 

Twtt  at  the  royal  feast,  for  Persia  won 
By  Philip's  warlike  son  : 
Aloft  in  awful  state 
The  godlike  hero  sate 
On  his  imperial  throne. 

—DRYDEN,  Alexander's  Feast. 
Children  at  toys,  as  men  at  titles,  aim  • 
And  in  effect  both  covet,  but  the  same. 

Philip's  son  prov'd  in  revolving  years  ; 
it  for  rattles,  then  for  worlds,  shed  tears. 

— GARTH,  The  Dispensary. 


ALEXANDER  THE  GREAT,  ALFRED  THE  GREAT.    7 

Fathers,  that,  like  so  many  Alexanders, 

Have  in  these  parts  from  morn  till  even  fought 

And  sheath'd  their  swords  for  lack  of  argument. 

—  SHAKSPERE,  King  Henry  V 


VITTORIO  ALFIERI. 
Italian  Poet:  1749-1803 


aS  'he  MUSe  °f  A'fi«i.-MACA,,LAY,  Essays:  Moore's  "Life 


ALFRED  THE  GREAT. 
King  of  England:  849-901. 

.~r  0  The  crown 

t  baxon  liberty  that  Alfred  wore. 

—WORDSWORTH,  The  Warning. 
Behold  a  pupil  of  the  monkish  gown 
The  pious  Alfred,  king  to  justice  dear  • 
Lord  of  the  harp  and  liberating  spear  • 
Mirror  of  princes ! 

—Id.,  Alfred. 

A  thousand [years  the  Earth  cried,  where  are  thou  ? 
And  then  the  shadow  of  thy  coming  fell 
On  Saxon  Alfred's  olive-cinctured  brow. 

—SHELLEY,  Ode  to  Liberty. 


8  ALFRED  THE  GREAT. 

I  saw  the  spirit  of  Alfred  ; 

Alfred  than  whom  no  prince  with  loftier  intellect  gifted, 
Nor  with  a  finer  soul,  nor  in  virtue  more  absolute,  ever 
Made  a  throne  twice-hallowed,  and  reign'd  in  the  hearts  of  his  people. 

— SOUTHEY,  Vision  of  Judgment. 

What  though  the  Danish  raven  spread 
Awhile  his  wings  o'er  English  ground, 
The  bird  of  prey  funereal  fled 
When  Alfred  call'd  his  peers  around. 

—JOHN  GILBERT  COOPER,  T/ic  Genius  of  Britain. 

A  single  gaol,  in  Alfred's  golden  reign, 

Could  half  the  nation's  criminals  contain  ; 

Fair  justice  then,  without  constraint  ador'd, 

Held  high  the  steady  scale,  but  sheath'd  the  sword. 

— DR.  JOHNSON,  London. 

Twas  Alfred  first,  with  letters  and  with  laws, 
Adorn'd  as  he  advanc'd  his  country's  cause. 

— THOMAS  WARTON,  The  Triumph  of  I  sis. 

Soon  illustrious  Alfred  came, 

And  pitch'd  fair  wisdom's  tent  on  Isis'  plenteous  plain. 

Alfred,  on  thee  shall  all  the  muses  wait. 

— Id.,  Ode  to  Music. 

Here  patriot  Alfred,  stain'd  with  Danish  blood, 
Rear'd  on  one  base,  the  king's,  the  people's  good. 

— Id.,  On  the  Marriage  of  the  King,  MDCCLXI. 

Tickler:  "  Napoleon  and  Alfred!  The  one  is  already  dead,  the  other 
will  live  for  ever.  Alfred !  the  mighty  warrior,  who  quelled  and  drove 
afar  from  him  the  terrible  enemy  that  had  baffled  the  prowess  of  all  his 
predecessors  ;  the  Father  of  his  people,  who  listened  to  all  complaints,  and 
redressed  all  wrongs ;  the  philosopher  who  raised  up  a  barbarous  age 
towards  the  height  of  his  own  mind,  and  founded  the  civilisation  of 
ind ;  the  legislator,  whose  laws,  after  a  thousand  years,  make  part 
of  the  liberties  of  his  country ! " — JOHN  WILSON,  Noctes  Ambrosiancz, 
Vol.  III. 

In  Alfred,  in  the  Northmen,  one  may  read  the  genius  of  the  English 
v,  namely,   that  private   life   is   the  place  of   honour. — EMERSON, 
Character. 

Truth-teller  was  our  own  Alfred  named. — F.  W.  FARRAR,  Social  and 
'  Day  Questions. 

So  stands  the  image  of  Alfred,  shining  brightly  in  the  book  of  the 
world's  history,  never  defaced  by  malice  or  ignorance,  nor  dimmed  by 
•.  n  errors.  These  he  necessarily  possessed,  but  they  have  been 
entirely  forgotten  in  the  blaze  of  his  virtues,  over  which  the  lapse  of 
centuries  has  cast  no  cloud.  Severe  trial  and  purifying  cleansed  him  like 
a  n.»ble  metal  from  all  dross.  Praise  can  never  degenerate  into  flattery 
in  the  cnsc  of  a  great  man  whose  strong  sense  of  duty  and  exalted 
principles  of  morality  have  led  him  to  employ  his.  time  in  a  truly  noble 
manner.  No  king  nor  hero  of  antiquity  or  modern  times  can  be  com- 


ALFRED  THE  GREAT,  ANDREWES.  g 

pared  with  Alfred  for  so  many  distinguished  qualities,  and  each  so  excellent. 
Princes  more  renowned  for  power  and  glory,  and  reigning  over  greater 
nations,  have  always  had  some  defect  in  their  moral  character  which 
forcibly  contrasts  with  our  high  estimation  of  their  mental  qualities ;  and 
although  by  the  side  of  Alfred,  ruling  in  his  narrow  Wessex,  their  forms 
appear  to  tower  high  amongst  the  stars,  yet  his  figure,  in  its  smaller 
proportions,  remains  one  of  the  most  perfect  ever  held  up  by  the  hand  of 
God  as  a  mirror  to  the  world  and  its  rulers. — REINHOLD  PAULI,  Life  of 
Alfred  the  Great  (transl.). 

Alfred,  the  unwilling  author  of  these  great  changes,  is  the  most  perfect 
character  in  history.  He  is  a  singular  instance  of  a  prince  who  has  become 
a  hero  of  romance,  who,  as  such,  has  had  countless  imaginary  exploits 
attributed  to  him,  but  to  whose  character  romance  has  done  no  more  than 
justice,  and  who  appears  in  exactly  the  same  light  in  history  and  in  fable. 
No  other  man  on  record  has  ever  so  thoroughly  united  all  the  virtues  both 
of  the  ruler  and  of  the  private  man.  In  no  other  man  on  record  were  so 
many  virtues  disfigured  by  so  little  alloy.  A  saint  without  superstition, 
a  scholar  without  ostentation,  a  warrior  all  whose  wars  were  fought  in 
the  defence  of  his  country,  a  conqueror  whose  laurels  were  never  stained 
by  cruelty,  a  prince  never  cast  down  by  adversity,  never  lifted  up  to 
insolence  in  the  day  of  triumph — there  is  no  other  name  in  history  to 
•compare  with  his. — E.  A.  FREEMAN. 

SAINT  AMBROSE. 
BisJiop  of  Milan  :  340-397. 

Never,  surely,  was  holier  man 

Than  Ambrose,  since  the  world  began  ; 

With  diet  spare  and  raiment  thin, 

He  shielded  himself  from  the  father  of  sin  ; 

With  bed  of  iron  and  scourgings  oft, 

His  heart  to  God's  hand  as  wax  made  soft. 

— J.  R.  LOWELL,  Poems:  Ambrose. 

ANAXAGORAS. 
Greek  Philosopher  :  i;.c.  499-428. 

For  Anaxagoras,  long  agone, 
Saw  hills,  as  well  as  you,  i'  th'  moon, 
And  held  the  sun  was  but  a  piece 
Of  red-hot  iron  as  big  as  Greece. 

— SAMUEL  BUTLER,  Hitdibras,  Part  II.,  Canto  III. 

LANCELOT  ANDREWES. 
BisJiop  successively  of  Chichester,  Elv,  Winchester:   1565-1626. 

Andrewes,  a  man  far  more  learned  in  patristic  theology  than  any  of  the 
-Elizabethan  bishops. — HALLAM,  Literature  of  Europe. 


io  ANDREWES,  QUEEN  ANNE,  ST.  ANSELM.. 

Whoever  wishes  to  entertain  himself  with  the  quaintness  of  the  old 
sermon  writers,  will  find  a  fund  of  such  entertainment  as  he  seeks  in  the 
sermons  of  Bishop  Andrewes,  Barten,  Halliday,  Gataker,  Donne,  Saunder- 
son,  South,  and  many  others  of  the  last  century.— DR.  VICESIMUS  KNOX, 
Essays. 

Andrewes  claimed  for  the  English  Church  its  full  interest  and  member- 
ship in  the  Church  universal,  from  which  Puritan  and  Romanist  alike 
would  cut  off  the  island  Church  by  a  gulf  as  deep  as  the  sea.— R.  W. 
CHURCH,  Masters  in  English  Theology. 

QUEEN  ANNE. 
Queen  of  Great  Britain  :  1665-1714. 

At  length  great  Anna  said,  "  Let  discord  cease," 
She  said,  the  world  obey'd,  and  all  was  peace ! 

— POPE,  Windsor  Forest. 

Hail,  Anna,  hail !  O  may  each  muse  divine 

With  wreaths  eternal  grace  thy  holy  shrine  ! 

Grav'd  on  thy  tomb  this  sacred  verse  remain, 

This  verse,  more  sweet  than  conquest's  sounding  strain. 

"  She  bade  the  rage  of  hostile  nations  cease, 

The  glorious  arbitress  of  Europe's  peace." 

— LANGHORNE,  Genius  and  Valour. 

To  Britain's  queen  the  nations  turn  their  eyes ; 
On  her  resolves  the  western  world  relies ; 
Confiding  still,  amidst  its  dire  alarms, 
In  Anna's  councils,  and  in  Churchill's  arms. 

— ADDISON,  The  Campaign. 

ST.  ANSELM. 
Archbishop  of  Canterbury  :  (?)  1033-1105. 

Old  Anselm,  exiled  Archbishop  of  Canterbury,  one  of  the  purest-minded 
"men  of  genius". — CARLYLE. 

Among  the  followers  of  Anselm  are  to  be  reckoned  not  merely  the 
Doctors — Venerable,  Invincible,  Irrefragable,  Angelical,  and  Seraphic  — 
but  a  far  greater  than  they,  even  Descartes  himself.— SIR  JAMES  STEPHEN,. 
Essnvs  in  Ecclesiastical  Biographv. 

For  Anselm  was  a  philosopher,  the  philosopher  of  the  nth  century. — 
F.  I).  MAURICE,  Malncral  Philosophy. 

Anselm,  therefore,  was  a  monk  throughout,  and  in  all  his  thoughts  and 
.  just  as  a  soldier  who  is  loyal  to  his  profession  can  nowhere  be  un- 
influenced by  its  rules  and  habits.     But  he  was  much  more  than  a  monk. 
A  great  teacher,  a  great  thinker,  a  great  kindler  of  thought  in  others,  he 
was  also  an  example  of  gallant   and  unselfish  public   service,  rendered 
without   a   thought  of  his  own   convenience  or  honour,   to  fulfil  what 
<  d  a  plain  duty,  in  itself  very  distasteful,  and  not  difficult  to  evade, 
if  he  had  wished  to  evade  it.     Penetrated,  too,  as  he  was  by  the  unflinching 
austerity  of  that  hard  and  stern  time,  he  was  remembered  among  men,. 


ST.  ANSELM,  ANTONIUS,  AQUINAS.  n 

less  as  the  great  sage  who  had  opened  new  paths  to  thought,  or  as  the 
great  archbishop  who  had  not  been  afraid  of  the  face  of  kings,  or  as  the 
severe  restorer  of  an  uncompromising  and  high-aiming  discipline,  than  as 
the  loving  and  sympathising  Christian  brother,  full  of  sweetness,  full  of 
affection,  full  of  goodness,  full  of  allowances  and  patience  for,  others, 
whom  men  of  all  conditions  liked  to  converse  with,  and  whom  neither 
high  nor  low  ever  found  cold  in  his  friendship,  or  unnatural  and  forced 
in  his  condescension.  — R.  W.  CHURCH,  Anselni. 

MARCUS  ANTONIUS. 
Roman  Triumvir  :  B.C.  83-30. 

Out  of  Rome  was  sent  a  senatour 
TO  conquerin  relmis,  and  bring  honour 
Unto  the  toune  of  Rome,  as  was  usaunce, 
To  have  the  worlde  at  her  obeisaunce, 
And,  sothe  to  saie,  Antonius  was  his  name. 

— CHAUCER,  Legendc  of  Cleopatra, 

Oft  has  my  soul  with  strong  compassion  strove, 
To  think  of  Anthony's  ill-fated  love. 

—SAMUEL  BOYSE,  To  Mrs.  OldfichL 

I  think  it  is  not  meet, 

Mark  Antony,  so  well  belov'd  of  Caesar, 

Should  outlive  Caesar  :  we  will  find  of  him 

A  shrewd  contriver.  — SHAKSPERE,  Julius  Ccesar. 

Caesar  ?  why,  he's  the  Jupiter  of  men. 
What's  Antony  ?     The  god  of  Jupiter. 

— Id.,  Antony  and  Cleopatra. 

THOMAS  AQUINAS. 
Scholastic  Theologian  :  (?)  1224-1274. 

What  in  Aquinas'  bulky  works  are  found, 
Does  not  enlighten  Reason,  but  confound. 

— JOHN  POMFRET,  Reason  :  a  Poem. 

The  Fifth  Doctor  of  the  Church.— POPE  Pius  V. 

The  great  lawgiver  of  the  schools,  Thomas  Aquinas,  whose  opinions 
the  Dominicans'  especially  treat  as  almost  infallible,  went  into  the  ex- 
aggerated principles  of  his  age  in  favour  of  the  See  of  Rome. — HALLAM, 
Student's  Middle  Ages. 

Thomas  Aquinas  stands  without  a  rival  at  the  head  of  the  scholastic 
theologians. — DR.  VICESIMUS  KNOX,  Essays. 

The  "  Angelical  Doctor,"  standing  in  contrast  with  the  "  Seraphic 
Doctor,"  which  is  the  title  given  to  the  Franciscan  Bonaventura,  denotes 
that  the  one  was  regarded  as  a  pure  Intelligence,  the  other  as  a  being  in 
whom  the  heart  and  affections  were  vastly  predominant. — F.  D.  MAURICE, 
Moral,  etc.,  Philosophy. 


u  D'ARBLAY,  ARCHILOCHUS,  ARCHIMEDES. 

MADAME  D'ARBLAY  (nee  BURNEY). 
English  Novelist  and  Diarist  :   1752-1840. 

Miss  Burney  did  for  the  English  novel  what  Jeremy  Collier  did  for  the 
English  drama;  and  she  did  it  in  a  better  way.  She  first  showed  that  a 
tale  might  he  written  in  which  both  the  fashionable  and  the  vulgar  life  of 
London  might  be  exhibited  with  great  force,  and  with  broad  comic  humour, 
and  which  yet  should  not  contain  a  single  line  inconsistent  with  rigid 
morality,  or  even  with  virgin  delicacy. — MACAULAY,  Essays:  D'Arblay. 

ARCHILOCHUS. 
(ii-ft'k  Satiric  Poet :  fl.  about  B.C.  714-676. 

The  facts  of  the  life  of  Archilochus  are  briefly  these.  He  was  engaged 
to  be  married  to  Neobule,  daughter  of  Lycambes.  Her  father  retracted 
his  consent  to  the  marriage,  having  possibly  discovered  that  the  temper 
of  his  proposed  son-in-law  was  a  mixture  of  gall,  wormwood,  vinegar, 
verjuice,  vitriol  and  nitric  acid.  Thereupon,  as  Horace  says  : — 
"  Archilochum  proprio  armavit  iambo." 

He  made  the  Iambic  metre  his  own,  and  sharpened  it  into  a  terrible 
weapon  of  attack.  Each  verse  he  wrote  was  polished  and  pointed  like  an 
arrow-head.  Each  line  was  steeped  in  the  poison  of  hideous  charges 
against  his  sweetheart,  her  sisters  and  her  father.  The  set  of  poems 
which  he  produced,  and,  as  it  would  appear,  recited  publicly  at  the 
festival  of  Demeter,  were  so  charged  with  wit  and  fire,  that  the  country 
rang  with  them.  The  daughters  of  Lycambes,  tradition  avers,  went 
straightway  and  hanged  themselves — unable  to  endure  the  flight  of  fiery 
serpents  that  had  fallen  on  them  :  for,  to  quote  the  words  of  Browning, 
Archilochus  had  the  art  of  writing  verse  that  "  bit  into  the  live  man's  flesh 
like  parchment,"  that  sent  him  wandering,  branded  and  for  ever  ashamed, 
about  his  native  streets  and  fields.  After  this  murderous  exhibition  of  his 
power  Archilochus  left  Paros. 

"  Away  with  Paros  !  her  figs  and  fishy  life  !  " 
— J.  ADDINGTON  SYMONDS,  Studies  of  the  Greek  Poets. 

ARCHIMEDES. 
Cn'i-t'k  Geometrician  :  B.C.  287-212. 

Call  Archimedes  from  his  buried  tomb 
Upon  the  plain  of  vanished  Syracuse, 
And  feelingly  the  sage  shall  make  report 
How  insecure,  how  baseless  in  itself, 
Is  the  philosophy,  whose  sway  depends 
On  mere  material  instruments: — how  weak 
Those  arts,  and  high  inventions,  if  unpropped 
Hy  virtue. 

—WORDSWORTH,  The  Excursion. 
Thus  Archimedes,  in  his  crystal  sphere, 
Sci-m'd  to  correct  the  world's  Artificer. 

—DR.  THOMAS  YALDEN,  The  Insect. 


ARCHIMEDES,  ARISTOPHANES.  13. 

O  !  for  an  Archimedes  new, 

Of  moral  powers  possess'd, 

The  world  to  move,  and  quite  expel 

That  traitor  from  the  breast. 

— YOUNG,  Resignation. 

ARISTIDES  THE  JUST. 
Athenian  Archon  :  B.C.  489-468. 

Then  Aristides  lifts  his  honest  front ; 
Spotless  of  heart,  to  whom  th'  unflattering  voice 
Of  freedom  gave  the  noblest  name  of  Just ; 
In  pure  majestic  poverty  rever'd. 

— -THOMSON,  The  Seasons  :   Winter. 

O  noblest,  happiest  age  ! 

When  Aristides  rul'd,  and  Cimon  fought. 

— AKENSIDE,  Ode  XVIII. 

Just  Aristides  here  maintain'd  the  cause, 

Whose  sacred  precepts  shine  through  Solon's  laws. 

— FALCONER, \The  Shipivreck. 

ARISTIPPUS. 
Greek  Philosopher  :  d.  B.C.  380. 

Sometimes  with  Aristippus,  or  St.  Paul, 
Indulge  my  candour,  and  grow  all  to  all. 

— POPE,  Imitations  of  Horace* 

ARISTOPHANES. 
Greek  Comic  Dramatist :  B.C.  (?)  440-380. 

The  merry  Greek,  tart  Aristophanes. 

— BEN  JoNSON,ljTo  the  Memory  of  Shakespeare. 

Son  of  Philippos,  Aristophanes 

Surmounts  his  rivals  now  as  heretofore, 

Though  stinted  to  mere  sober  prosy  verse — 

"  Manners  and  men,"  so  squeamish  gets  the  world. 

— ROBERT  BROWNING,  Aristophanes'1  Apology. 

Aristophanes  paints  town-life  with  a  suburb  of  gardens. — R.  A.  WILL- 
MOTT,  Pleasures  .  .  .  of  Literature. 

The  brazen  mask  which  crowns  his  theatre  smiles  indeed  broadly, 
serenely,  as  if  its  mirth  embraced  the  universe  ;  but  its  hollow  eye-sockets 
suggest  infinite  possibilities  of  profoundest  irony.  Buffoonery  carried 
to  the  point  of  paradox,  wisdom  disguised  as  insanity,  and  gaiety  con- 
cealing the  whole  sum  of  human  disappointment,  sorrow,  and  disgust, 
seem  ready  to  escape  from  its  open  but  rigid  lips,  which  are  moulded  to 
a  proud  perpetual  laughter.  It  is  a  laughter  which  spares  neither  God 
nor  man,  which  climbs  Olympus  only  to  drag  down  the  Immortals  to  its 
scorn,  and  trails  the  pall  of  august  humanity  in  the  mire  ;  but  which, 
amid  its  mockery  and  blasphemy,  seems  everlastingly  asserting,  as  by 
paradox,  that  reverence  of  the  soul  which  bends  our  knees  to  Heaven  and 


i4  ARISTOPHANES,  ARISTOTLE. 

makes  us  respect  our  brothers.  There  is  nothing  sinister  or  even  serious 
in  Aristophanes.  He  did  not  write  in  the  sarcastic,  cynical  old  age  of 
his  nation  or  his  era.  He  is  rather  the  voice  of  its  superabundant  youth- 
fulness.  ...  It  is  hard  for  the  modern  Christian  world  to  tolerate  his 
freedom  of  speech  and  coarseness.  Of  all  the  Greeks,  essentially  a  rude 
nation,  he  is  the  most  naked,  the  most  audacious  in  his  revelation  of  all 
that  human  nature  is  supposed  to  seek  to  hide.  The  repugnance  felt 
of  his  ironical  insouciance  and  for  his  profound  indelicacy  has  prevented 
us  from  properly  valuing  his  poetry.  Critics  begin  their  panegyrics  of 
him  with  apologies  ;  they  lift  their  skirts  and  tread  delicately,  passing 
over  his  broadest  humour  sicco  pcde,  picking  their  way  among  his  hetero- 
geneous images,  winking  and  blinking,  hesitating  and  condoning,  omitting 
a  passage  here,  attempting  to  soften  an  allusion  there,  until  the  real 
Aristophanes  has  almost  disappeared. — J.  ADDINGTON  SYMONDS,  Studies 
of  t he  Greek  Poets. 

As  a  dramatist,  Aristophanes  is  careless  about  construction ;  but  he 
has  so  much  "  go  "  and  lifting  power  that  he  makes  the  most  absurd 
situations  credible.  He  has  a  real  gift  for  imposing  on  his  audience's 
credulity.  His  indecency  comes  partly,  no  doubt,  from  that  peculiarly 
Greek  miircte,  which  is  the  result  of  simple  and  unaffected  living ;  partly 
it  has  no  excuse  to  urge  except  that  it  is  not  deliberately  vicious.  It  is 
instructive  to  know  that  Plato  liked  Aristophanes.  .  .  .  The  comedian's 
speech  in  the  Symposium  shows  the  inner  bond  which  united  these  two 
great  princes  of  imagination.  But  only  his  own  age  could  really  stand 
Aristophanes.  The  next  century  wanted  more  refinement  and  character- 
work,  more  plot  and  sentiment  and  sobriety.  It  got  what  it  wanted  in 
Menander. — GILBERT  MURRAY,  Ancient  Greek  Literature. 

ARISTOTLE. 

Greek  Philosopher:  B.C.  384-322. 
The  longest  tyranny  that  ever  sway'd, 
Was  that  wherein  our  ancestors  betray'd 
Their  free  born  reason  to  the  Stagyrite, 
And  made  his  torch  their  universal  light. 

— DRYDEN,  Epistle  II. :  To  Dr.  Charleton. 
The  mighty  Stagyrite  first  left  the  shore, 
Spread  all  his  sails,  and  durst  the  deeps  explore  ; 
He  steer'd  securely,  and  discover'd  far, 
Led  by  the  light  of  the  Maeonian  star. 

— POPE,  Essay  on  Criticism. 
Welcome,  great  Stagyrite !  and  teach  me  now 
All  I  was  born  to  know  : 
Thy  scholar's  vict'ries  thou  dost  far  out-do ; 
He  conquer'd  the  earth,  the  whole  world  you. 

— COWLEY,  The  Motto. 
Great  Stagyrite,  the  lost  inquirer  show 

•ing  whence  motion  did  for  ever  flow  ; 
Since  nothing  of  itself  e'er  moves  or  strives, 
Tell  what  begins,  what  the  first  impulse  gives. 

— SIR  RICHARD  BLACKMORE,  Creation. 


ARISTOTLE. 

The  Stagyrite,  who  rules  from  nature  drew, 
Opinions  gave,  but  gave  his  reasons  too. 

— CHURCHILL,  The  Apology. 

'Tis  true,  I  love  the  ancients — but  what  then  ? 

Plato  and  Aristotle  were  but  men. 

I  grant  'em  wise — the  wisest  disagree, 

And  therefore  no  sufficient  guide  for  me. 

— DODSLEY,  Modern  Reasoning. 

All  these  things  will  be  specified  in  time, 
With  strict  regard  to  Aristotle's  rules, 
The  Vadc  Mecuni  of  the  true  sublime, 
Which  makes  so  many  poets  and  some  fools. 

— BYRON,  Don  Juan,  CCI. 

Aristotle  hath  the  same  authority  in  philosophy,  that  the  Apostle  Paul 
hath  in  divinity. — ROGER  BACON. 

I  do  not  think  it  possible  that  any  one  born  an  Aristotelian  can  become 
a  Platonist.— S.  T.  COLERIDGE,  Table  Talk. 

The  Aristotelian  philosophy,  even  in  the  hands  of  the  Master,  was 
like  a  barren  tree  that  conceals  its  want  of  fruit  by  profusion  of  leaves. 
— HALLAM,  Student's  Middle  Ages,  Chap.  IX.,  Part  II. 

Aristotle  and  Plato  are  reckoned  the  respective  heads  of  two  schools. 
A  wise  man  will  see  that  Aristotle  Platonizes. — EMERSON,  Essays  : 
Circles. 

The  robust  Aristotelian  method,  with  its  breadth  and  adequateness, 
shaming  our  sterile  and  leaner  logic  by  its  genial  radiation,  conversant 
with  series  and  degree,  with  effects  and  ends,  skilful  to  discriminate 
power  from  form,  essence  from  accident,  and  opening,  by  its  terminology 
and  definition,  high  roads  into  nature,  had  trained  a  race  of  athletic 
philosophers. — Id.,  Representative  Men  :  Swedenborg. 

Were  nothing  else  to  be  learnt  from  the  Rhetoric  and  Ethics  of  Aristotle, 
they  should  be  studied  by  every  educated  Englishman  as  the  best  of  com- 
mentaries on  Shakespeare. — J.  C.  HARE,  Guesses  at  Truth.' 

What  a  contrast  is  the  style  of  Aristotle  !  He  sees  nothing — he  is 
like  a  man  groping  in  the  dark  about  a  room  which  he  knows.  He 
hesitates  and  suggests ;  proposes  first  one  formula  and  then  another ; 
rejects  both,  gives  a  multitude  of  reasons,  and  ends  at  last  with  an 
expression  which  he  admits  to  be  incorrect  and  an  apologetic  "  let  it 
make  no  difference".  There  are  whole  passages  in  his  writings — the 
discussion  about  Solon  and  happiness  in  the  Ethics,  is  an  instance — in 
which  he  appears  like  a  schoolboy  who  knows  the  answer  to  a  sum,  but 
cannot  get  the  figures  to  come  to  it. — WALTER  BAGEHOT,  Literary 
Studies,  Vol.  II. 

The  piercing  sagacity  of  Aristotle. — W.  E.  GLADSTONE,  Gleanings, 
Vol.  VI. 

It  is  difficult  to  speak  of  Aristotle  without  exaggeration :  he  is  felt  to 
be  so  mighty,  and  is  known  to  be  so  wrong.  History,  surveying  the 
whole  scope  of  his  pretensions,  gazes  on  him  with  wonder.  Science, 


16  ARISTOTLE,  ARKWRIGHT. 

challenging  these  separate  pretensions,  and  testing  their  results,  regards. 
them  with  indifference ;  an  indifference  easily  exasperated,  into  an- 
tagonism by  the  clamorous  urgency  of  unauthenticated  praise.  It  is 
difficult  to  direct  the  opposing  streams  of  criticism  into  the  broad  equable 
current  of  a  calm  appreciation  ;  because  the  splendour  of  his  fame 
perpetuates  the  memory  of  his  failure  ;  and  to  be  ju»t  we  must  appreci- 
ate both.  His  intellect  was  piercing  and  comprehensive  ;  his  attainments 
surpassed  those  of  every  known  philosopher ;  his  influence  has  only  been 
exceeded  by  the  great  founders  of  religions ;  nevertheless,  if  we  now 
estimate  the  product  of  his  labours  in  the  discovery  of  positive  truths* 
it  appears  insignificant,  when  not  erroneous.  None  of  the  great  germinal 
discoveries  in  science  are  due  to  him,  or  to  his  disciples.  His  vast  and 
active  intellect  gave  an  impulse  to  philosophy,  and  for  twenty  centuries 
held  the  world  in  awe.  Then  came  a  change  ;  the  long-murmuring  spirit 
of  rebellion  grew  strong  enough  to  dethrone  him.  Ages  of  servility  had 
raised  him  to  an  unexampled  eminence  ;  in  the  tumult  of  revolution  this 
pedestal  became  a  pillory. — G.  H.  LKWES,  Aristotle. 

It  is  said  that  metaphysics  owe  their  name  to  the  fact  that,  in  Aristotle's 
works,  questions  of  pure  philosophy  are  dealt  with  immediately  after  those 
of  physics.  If  so,  the  accident  is  happily  symbolical  of  the  essential 
relation  of  things ;  for  metaphysical  speculation  follows  as  closely  upon 
physical  theory  as  black  care  upon  the  horseman. — HUXLEY,  Hume. 

As  a  physicist,  Aristotle  displayed  what  we  should  consider  some  of 
the  worst  attributes  of  a  modern  physical  investigator — indistinctness 
of  ideas,  confusion  of  mind,  and  a  confident  use  of  language,  which  led 
to  the  delusive  notion  that  he  had  really  mastered  his  subject,  while  he 
had  as  yet  failed  to  grasp  even  the  elements  of  it.  He  put  words  in  the 
place  of  things,  subject  in  the  place  of  object.  He  preached  induction 
without  practising  it,  inverting  the  true  order  of  inquiry  by  passing  from 
the  general  to  the  particular,  instead  of  from  the  particular  to  the  general. 
— TYNDALL,  Address  before  the  British  Association  at  Belfast,  1874. 

SIR  RICHARD  ARKWRIGHT. 

Inrentor  of  the  Spinning  Jenny  :   1732-1792. 

The  gospel  of  Richard  Arkwright  once  promulgated,  no  monk  of  the 
old  sort  is  any  longer  possible  in  this  world.  .  .  .  But  Richard  Arkwright 
too  will  have  his  monument,  a  thousand  years  hence  :  all  Lancashire  and 
Yorkshire,  and  how  many  other  shires  and  countries,  with  their  machin- 
eries and  industries,  for  his  monument. — CARLYLE,  Past  find  Present. 

I  )«>  not  the  constructive  fingers  of  Watt,  Fulton,  Whitlemore,  Arkwright, 
predict  the  fusible,  hard  and  temperable  texture  of  metals,  the  properties  of 
stone,  water  and  wood  ?— EMERSON,  Essays  :  History. 

Watt,  Arkwright,  Crompton— these  giants  of  intellectual  power,  whose 

have  augmented  tenfold,  often  a  hundredfold,  the  productive 

powers  of  manufacturing  labour — have  been  the  worst  enemies  that  the 

happiness   and   morals   of  the  working  manufacturers   ever  knew.-— SIR 

ARCHIBALD  ALISON,  Essays  :  Sisniondi. 


ARNOLD,  ST.  AUGUSTIN,  ST.  AUGUSTINE.  17 

DR.  THOMAS  ARNOLD. 
Headmaster  of  Rugby  School:  1795-1842. 

The  name  of  Dr.  Arnold  is  a  household  word  in  England,  not  only  as 
the  great  typical  Christian  schoolmaster,  but  as  the  leader  of  modern 
Liberal  or  Broad-Church  theology. — W.  M.  SINCLAIR,  Leaders  of 
Thought. 

Dr.  Arnold  .  .  .  was  a  man  whose  whole  study  was  to  elevate  the  tone 
of  common  life  to  a  Christian  standard.— W.  E.  GLADSTONE,  Gleanings  of 
Past  Years,  Vol.  II. 

In  the  nineteenth  century  think  how  the  sermons  of  Dr.  Arnold  tended 
to  regenerate  the  spirit  of  public  schools. — F.  W.  FARRAR,  Social  and 
Present-Day  Questions. 

Since  Laud  there  had  been  no  such  ecclesiastical  statesman  as  Thomas 
Arnold. — A.  I.  FITZROY,  Dogma  and  the  Church  of  England. 

In  plain  truth,  the  English  clergy  must  Arnold-ise,  if  they  do  not  wish 
to  go  either  to  Rome  or  to  the  workhouse,  before  fifty  years  are  out. 
There  is,  I  do  believe,  an  Arnold-ite  spirit  rising ;  but  most  "  laudant, 
non  sequuntur  ".  Decent  Anglicanism,  decent  Evangelical  Conservatism 
(or  Evangelicalism)  having  become  the  majority,  is  now  quite  Conserva- 
tive, and  each  party  is  playing  Canute  and  the  tide,  as  it  can  scramble  in 
turn  into  the  chair  of  authority.  I  would  devote  soul  and  body  to  get 
together  an  Arnold-ite  party  of  young  men. — KINGSLEY,  Letters  and 
Memoirs,  Vol.  I. 

ST.  AUGUSTIN. 
Monk :  d.  605. 

For  ever  hallowed  be  this  morning  fair, 

Blest  be  the  unconscious  shore  on  which  ye  tread, 

And  blest  the  silver  cross,  which  ye,  instead 

Of  martial  banner,  in  procession  bear  ; 

The  cross  preceding  Him  who  floats  in  air, 

The  pictured  Saviour  ! — By  Augustin  led, 

They  come — and  onward  travel  without  dread, 

Chanting  in  barbarous  ears  a  tuneful  prayer, 

Sung  for  themselves,  and  those  whom  they  would  free ! 

— WORDSWORTH,  Glad  Tidings. 

ST.  AUGUSTINE. 
Bishop  of  Hippo  ;  354-430. 

As  Saint  Augustine  in  his  fine  confessions, 
Which  make  the  reader  envy  his  transgressions. 

—BYRON,  Don  Juan,  XLVII. 

St.  Augustine  described  the  nature  of  God  as  a  circle  whose  centre 
was  everywhere,  and  its  circumference  nowhere.  We  are  all  our  lifetime 
reading  the  copious  sense  of  this  first  of  forms. — EMERSON,  Essays  : 
Circles. 


18  ST.  AUGUSTINE. 

The  deepest  spiritual  natures  that  the  world  has  ever  known— St.  Paul, 
Augustine,  Luther,  Pascal.— DR.  JOHN  TULLOCH,  Beginning  Life. 

Two  names  stand  out  conspicuous,  and  almost  alone,  as  those  of  men 
who  have  told  to  the  world  the  utter  truth  about  themselves ;  they  are 
the  names  of  St.  Augustine  and  Rousseau. — F.  W.  FARRAR,  Social  and 
Present-Day  Questions. 

Augustine's  Saviour  is  not  the  Saviour  of  the  world.  He  is  only  the 
Saviour  of  the  Church,  and  even  in  the  Church  itself  the  Saviour  only  of 
a  mere  handful  of  the  elect,  whom  he  saves  only  under  strictly  ecclesi- 
astical conditions.  It  is  the  Church,  not  the  living  Christ,  which  becomes 
in  the  Augustinian  system  the  one  Mediator  between  God  and  man.  .  .  . 
Augustine  was  so  incessantly  occupied  with  proving  the  countless  errors 
of  individuals  and  of  sects,  that  he  came  to  regard  theology  as  a  series  of 
propositions  as  clear  and  as  exactly  definable  as  those  of  Euclid.  The 
gate  of  the  Church  began  to  bristle  with  a  fence-work  of  finely-articulated 
dogmas,  many  of  them  arrived  at  by  pure  sophistry,  defended  with  hard 
intolerance,  and  enforced  by  sheer  authority.  In  each  of  his  chief  con- 
troversies he  mingled  a  great  error  with  great  truths. — Id.,  Lives  of  the 
Fathers,  Vol.  II. 

We  need  only  add  here,  to  the  appreciations  of  Augustine's  personal 
character  and  literary  genius  which  we  have  made  from  time  to  time  as 
the  occasion  arose,  that  no  human  mind  since  that  of  St.  Paul  has  so 
widely,  deeply,  permanently  influenced  the  Church  of  Christ.  The 
theology  of  the  Western  Church  throughout  the  Middle  Ages  was  deeply 
affected  by  his  writings ;  the  Reformers  of  the  sixteenth  century  went 
back  to  them  for  their  dogmatic  theology ;  and  we,  perhaps,  in  the  per- 
plexities of  our  age,  might  do  well  to  go  back  to  the  philosophical  and 
doctrinal  writings  of  the  great  thinker  of  the  Western  Church. — E. 
L.  CUTTS,  Augustine. 

In  the  Confessions  of  St.  Augustine,  passion,  nature,  human  individu- 
ality only  appear  in  order  to  be  immolated  to  Divine  grace.  They  are  a 
history  of  a  crisis  of  the  soul,  of  a  new  birth,  of  a  Vita  Nuova;  the  Saint 
would  have  blushed  to  relate  more  than  he  has  done  of  the  life  of  the 
man,  which  he  had  quitted.  With  Rousseau  the  case  is  precisely  the 
reverse;  here  grace  is  nothing,  nature  everything;  nature  dominant, 
triumphant,  displaying  herself  with  a  daring  freedom,  which  at  times 
amounts  to  the  distasteful —nay,  to  the  disgusting.— MICHELET,  Life  of 
Liit her  (transl.). 

The  ship  of  the  Church  never  has  been,  and  never  will  be  "  put  about" 
by  Augustines.  This  work  must  be  done  by  rougher  hands,  and  bolder 
tempers,  and  truer  hearts.  We  say  truer  hearts,  not  as  if  Augustine  and 
his  company  were  not  honest,  or  did  not  intend  what  they  believed  to  be 
right ;  but  integrity,  using  the  word  in  an  active  sense,  is  a  force  which 
may  be  either  that  of  a  watch-spring  maintaining  a  faithful  whisper — a 
faint  tick,  tick  from  day  to  day ;  or  it  may  be  that  of  a  coach-spring, 
sustaining  a  ton  weight  in  the  concussions  of  the  roughest  roads. — ISAAC 
TAYLOR,  Introduction  to  Pfizer's  "  Luther  ". 

The  vehement  temperament,  the  bold  assertion,  the  ecstatic  energy  of 
men  like  St.  Augustine  or  St.  Paul,  burn,  so  to  speak,  into  the  minds  and 
memories  of  men,  and  remain  there  at  once  and  for  ever.  Such  men 


ST.  AUGUSTINE,  AUSTEN,  BACH,  BACON.  ig 

excel  in  the  broad  statement  of  great  truths  which  flash  at  once  with  vivid 
evidence  on  the  minds  which  receive  them.  The  very  words  seem  to 
glow  with  life;  and  even  the  sceptical  reader  is  half  awakened  by  them 
to  a  kindred  and  similar  warmth.  Such  are  the  men  who  move  the  creeds 
of  mankind,  and  stamp  a  likeness  of  themselves  on  ages  that  succeed 
them. — WALTER  BAGEHOT,  Literary  Studies,  Vol.  II. 

No  Christian  teacher  since  the  days  of  the  Apostles  has  influenced 
Christian  thought  so  powerfully  as  St.  Augustine.  This  influence  has 
sometimes  been,  so  to  speak,  imperial:  the  "Doctor  of  Grace"  has 
reigned  in  the  schools  of  theology ;  his  Benedictine  editors  in  the  seven- 
teenth century  described  him  as  "  the  oracle  of  the  Church  " ;  and,  as 
Archbishop  Trench  has  told  us,  a  Spanish  sermon  was  proverbially  said 
to  lack  its  best  ingredient  if  it  contained  nothing  out  of  Augustine. — DR. 
WILLIAM  BRIGHT,  Three  Great  Fathers. 

JANE  AUSTEN. 
English  Novelist :    1775-1817. 

Shakespeare  has  had  neither  equal  nor  second.  But  among  the  writers 
who,  in  the  point  which  we  have  noticed,  have  approached  nearest  to  the 
manner  of  the  great  master,  we  have  no  hesitation  in  placing  Jane 
Austen,  a  woman  of  whom  England  is  justly  proud.  She  has  given  us  a 
multitude  of  characters,  all  in  a  certain  sense,  commonplace,  as  such  as 
we  meet  every  day.  Yet  they  are  all  as  perfectly  discriminated  from  each 
other  as  if  they  were  the  most  eccentric  of  human  beings. — MACAULAY, 
Essays  :  Madame  D"1  Arblay. 

Read  Northanger  Abbey  ;  worth  all  Dickens  and  Pliny  together.  Yet 
it  was  the  work  of  a  girl.  She  was  certainly  not  more  than  twenty-six. 
Wonderful  creature ! — Id.,  Life  and  Letters,  Vol.  II. 

JOHANN  SEBASTIAN  BACH. 
German  Musician  :  1685-1750. 

Are  all  men  born  to  play  Bach's  fiddle-fugues  ? 

— ROBERT  BROWNING,  Mr.  Sludge :  "  The  Medium  ". 

Bach  is  the  musical  type  of  Protestantism. — FELIX  MENDELSSOHN 
BARTHOLDY. 

Every  room  in  which  Sebastian  Bach  is  sung  is  transformed  into  a 
church. — Id. 

FRANCIS,  LORD  BACON. 
English  Philosopher:  1561-1626. 

If  Bacon's  eagle  spirit  had  not  leapt 

Like  lightning  out  of  darkness — he  compelled 

The  Proteus  shape  of  Nature  as  it  slept 

To  wake,  and  lead  him  to  the  caves  that  held 

The  treasure  of  the  secrets  of  its  reign. 

— SHELLEY,  The  Triumph  of  Life. 


20  BACON. 

If  parts  allure  thee,  think  how  Bacon  shin'd, 
The  wisest,  brightest,  meanest  of  mankind ! 

— POPE,  Essay  on  Man. 

This  is  the  sixtieth  year 

Since  Bacon,  and  thy  lord  was  born,  and  here ; 
Son  to  the  grave  wise  keeper  of  the  seal, 
Fame  and  foundation  of  the  English  weal. 
What  then  his  father  was,  that  since  is  he, 
Now  with  a  title  more  to  the  degree  ; 
England's  High  Chancellor  :  the  destin'd  heir 
In  his  soft  cradle  to  his  father's  chair ; 
Whose  even  thread  the  fates  spin  round  and  full, 
Out  of  their  choicest  and  their  whitest  wool. 

— BEN  JONSON,  Lord  Bacon's  Birthday. 

Among  th'  asserters  of  free  reason's  claim, 
Our  nation's  not  the  least  in  worth  or  fame. 
The  world  to  Bacon  does  not  only  owe 
Its  present  knowledge,  but  its  future  too. 

— DRYDEN,  Epistle  II.  :  To  Dr.  Charleton. 

Thine  is  a  Bacon ;  hapless  in  his  choice, 

Unfit  to  stand  the  civil  storm  of  state, 

And  through  the  smooth  barbarity  of  courts, 

With  firm,  but  pliant  virtue,  forward  still 

To  urge  his  course :  him  for  the  studious  shade 

Kind  Nature  form'd,  deep,  comprehensive,  clear, 

Exact,  and  elegant ;  in  one  rich  soul, 

Plato,  the  Stagyrite,  and  Tully  join'd. 

The  great  deliverer  he !  who  from  the  gloom 

Of  cloister'd  monks,  and  jargon-teaching  schools, 

Led  forth  the  true  philosophy,  there  long 

Held  in  the  magic  chain  of  words  and  forms, 

And  definitions  void :  he  led  her  forth, 

Daughter  of  heaven  !  that  slow-ascending  still 

Investigating  sure  the  chain  of  things, 

With  radiant  finger  points  to  heaven  again. 

— THOMSON,  The  Seasons :  Summer^ 

By  truth  inspir'd,  our  Bacon's  force 
Open'd  the  way  to  learning's  source. 

—CHURCHILL,  The  Ghost,  Bk.  II. 

First  Bacon  usher'd  in  the  dawning  day, 

And  drove  the  mists  of  sophistry  away  ; 

Pervaded  nature  with  amazing  force 

Following  experience  still  throughout  his  course, 

And  finishing  at  length  his  destin'd  way, 

To  Newton  he  bequeath'd  the  radiant  lamp  of  day. 

Illustrious  souls ! 

— SOAME  JENYNS,  On  the  Immortality  of  the  Soul. 

Bacon,  at  last,  a  mighty  man  !  arose. 
Whom  a  wise  King  and  Nature  chose 


BACON.  21 

Lord  Chancellor  of  both  their  laws, 

And  boldly  undertook  the  injured  pupil's  cause. 

— COWLEY,  Epistle  :  To  the  Royal  Society. 

Bacon  discovered  new  tracts  of  learning ;  he  gave  directions  to  pursue 
them  ;  he  banished  hypothesis,  and  introduced  experiment :  he  is  deservedly 
the  glory  of  our  nation,  as  the  restorer  of  true  philosophy. — DR.  VICE- 
SIMUS  KNOX,  Essays  :  On  Essay  Writing. 

Lord  Bacon  .  .  .  might  have  been  more  emphatically  the  high  priest 
of  nature,  if  he  had  not  been  the  chancellor  of  James  I. — HALLAM, 
Introduction  to  the  Literature  of  Europe,  Vol.  III. 

To  give  to  the  human  mind  a  direction  which  it  shall  retain  for  ages  is 
the  rare  prerogative  of  a  few  imperial  spirits.  It  cannot,  therefore,  be 
uninteresting  to  inquire  what  was  the  moral  and  intellectual  constitution 
which  enabled  Bacon  to  exercise  so  vast  a  benefit  on  society.  .  .  .  The 
art  which  Bacon  taught  was  the  art  of  inventing  arts.  The  knowledge 
in  which  Bacon  excelled  all  men  was  a  knowledge  of  the  mutual  relations 
of  all  departments  of  knowledge. — MACAULAY,  Essays  :  Lord  Bacon. 

The  prince  of  professed  philosophers — the  Lord  Chancellor  of  Nature 
— Bacon. — LYTTON,  Essays  :  On  the  Normal  Clairvoyance. 

Bacon — Bacon,  who  served  darkness  in  the  hope  that  when  he  had 
raised  himself  to  power  his  science  would  make  the  darkness  light,  the 
dupe  of  a  dream  of  beneficent  despotism,  a  warning  to  fastidious  minds 
if  they  would  work  for  the  people  to  work  with  and  by  the  people. — 
GOLDWIN  SMITH,  Three  English  Statesmen. 

But  Bacon  has  a  still  greater  place  in  English  literature  ;  he  first  clearly 
set  forth  the  claims  of  inductive  philosophy  as  against  the  old  methods  of 
metaphysical  speculation.  He  asserted  that  knowledge  was  to  be  found 
by  careful  investigation  of  nature,  not  by  spinning  cobwebs  of  the  brain. 
He  turned  men  from  disputations  of  words  to  an  observation  of  the  world 
around  them.  Bacon's  method  was  faulty,  as  was  natural  for  a  beginner  ; 
but  modern  science  has  still  to  point  to  him  as  the  man  who  first  brought 
into  due  prominence  the  principles  on  which  its  method  was  to  be 
founded. — BISHOP  MANDELL  CREIGHTON,  The  Age  of  Elizabeth. 

JOHN  BACON. 

English  Sculptor :  1740-1799. 

Bacon  there 
Gives  more  than  female  beauty  to  a  stone. 

— COWPER,  The  Task  :  The  Sofa. 

SIR  NICHOLAS  BACON. 
Lord  Keeper :  1510-1579. 

Sir  Nicholas  was  no  ordinary  man.  He  belonged  to  a  set  of  men 
whom  it  is  easier  to  describe  collectively  than  separately,  whose  minds 
were  formed  by  one  system  of  discipline,  who  belonged  to  one  rank  in 
society,  to  one  university,  to  one  party,  to  one  sect,  to  one  administration, 


22     BACON,  BAGEHOT,  BALMERINO,  BARROW. 

and  who  resembled  each  other  so  much  in  talents,  in  opinions,  in  habits, 
in  fortunes,  that  one  character,  we  had  almost  said  one  life,  may,  to  a 
considerable  extent,  serve  for  them  all. — MACAULAY,  Essays:  Lord  Bacon. 

ROGER  BACON. 
English  Philosopher:  1214-1294. 

Bacon  also  was  there,  the  marvellous  Friar. 

— SOUTHEY,  A  Vision  of  Judgment. 

The  mind  of  Roger  Bacon  was  strangely  compounded  of  almost  pro- 
phetic gleams  of  the  future  course  of  science,  and  the  best  principles  of 
the  inductive  philosophy. — HALLAM,  Literature  of  the  Middle  Ages, 
Vol.  I. 

Bacon  must  be  dearer  to  us  than  Duns  can  be.  For  he  was  an  Eng- 
lishman, not  only  in  virtue  of  his  birth-place,  which  no  one  disputes,  but 
in  virtue  of  gifts  and  of  a  character  which  we  may  boast  of  as  specially 
national.  Moreover,  he  was  a  martyr  of  science,  and  we  should  certainly 
be  disposed  to  enlarge  the  canon  which  Anselm  established  in  the  case 
of  another  English  divine  by  contending  that  the  martyrs  of  science  are 
the  martyrs  of  God. — F.  D.  MAURICE,  Medieval  Philosophy. 

WALTER  BAGEHOT. 
English  Economist :  1826-1877. 

He  was  like  a  man  that  made  you  free  of  his  house,  not  like  a  trades- 
man handing  you  goods  over  the  counter.  .  .  .  His  writings  were  an 
armoury  against  fools  and  pompous  persons.  ...  A  man  may  print  his 
private  thoughts,  but  he  does  not  speak  them.  .  .  .  There  is  more  meat 
on  Bagehot's  bones  than  on  those  of  any  other  writer,  and  a  deft  cook 
makes  them  into  a  hundred  dishes.  ...  He  was  one  of  those  men  whose 
remarks  never  seem  to  have  been  made  before.  ...  He  did  not  exactly 
revere  business,  but  he  spoke  of  it  and  other  mundane  matters,  like  the 
House  of  Lords,  with  respect  tempered  with  amusement. — AUGUSTINE 
BIRRELL,  Lecture  on  Bagehot  (Leighton  House,  i^th  March,  1901). 

LORD  BALMERINO. 
Friend  of  Prince  Charles  Edward  :  1688-1746. 

To  hold  Balmerino's  undying  name, 

Whose  soul  of  fire,  lighted  at  heaven's  high  flame, 

Deserves  the  proudest  wreath  departed  heroes  claim. 

—BURNS,  Ode  on  the  Birthday  of  Prince  Charles  Edward. 

DR.  ISAAC  BARROW. 

English  Theologian  and  Mathematician :  1630-1677. 

I  learned  the  little  that  I  knew  by  this. 

That  is,  some  words  of  Spanish,  Turk,  and  Greek, 

Italian  not  at  all,  having  no  teachers : 


BARROW,  BAXTER.  23 

Much  English  I  cannot  pretend  to  speak, 
Learning  that  language  chiefly  from  its  preachers, 
Barrow,  South,  Tillotson,  whom  every  week 
I  study. 

— BYRON,  Don  Juan. 

Barrow's  style, 

Redundant  and  involv'd  would  soon  oppress 
Thy  auditors. 

— REV.  RICHARD  POLWHELE,  Pulpit  Eloquence. 

These  are  the  sermons  which  will  ever  live, 
By  these  our  Tonsons  and  our  Knaptons  thrive ; 
How  such  are  read,  and  prais'd,  and  how  they  sell, 
Let  Barrow's,  Clarke's,  and  Butler's  sermons  tell. 
Preachers  should  either  make  us  good  or  wise, 
Him  that  does  neither,  who  but  must  despise  ? 

— DODSLEY,  The  Art  of  Preaching. 

Barrow  must  be  considered  as  closing  the  first  great  period  of  the 
English  language. — S.  T.  COLERIDGE. 

Isaac  Barrow,  a  mighty  genius,  whose  ardour  was  capable  of  accom- 
plishing all  it  undertook.  The  tide  of  his  eloquence  flows  with  smooth 
yet  irresistible  rapidity.  He  treats  his  subject  almost  with  mathematical 
precision,  and  never  leaves  it  till  he  has  exhausted  it. — DR.  VICESIMUS 
KNOX,  Essays  :  On  Preaching  and  Sermon  Writers. 

RICHARD  BAXTER. 
English  Nonconformist  Divine  :  1615-1691. 

In  necessary  things,  unity;  in  doubtful  things,  liberty;  in  all  things, 
charity. — Richard  Baxter's  maxim. 

Barclay  or  Baxter,  wherefore  do  we  blame 
For  innovations,  yet  approve  the  same 
In  Wickliffe  and  in  Luther  ?     Why  are  these 
Call'd  wise  reformers,  those  mad  sectaries  ? 

— DODSLEY,  The  Art  of  Preaching. 

The  Democritus  and  the  Heraclitus  of  Nonconformity. — SIR  JAMES 
STEPHEN,  Essays  on  Ecclesiastical  Biography. 

Pray  read  with  great  attention  Baxter's  Life  of  himself.  It  is  an  in- 
estimable work.  ...  I  could  almost  as  soon  doubt  the  Gospel  verity  as 
his  veracity.— S.  T.  COLERIDGE,  Table  Talk. 

It  is  impossible  to  read  Baxter  without  hesitating  which  to  admire  most, 
the  uncommon  clearness  (perspicuity  and  perspicacity)  of  his  understand- 
ing, or  the  candour  and  charity  of  his  spirit.  Under  such  accursed  perse- 
cutions he  feels  and  reasons  more  like  an  angel  than  a  man. — Id.,  Notes 
on  English  Divines,  Vol.  II. 

No  eminent  chief  of  a  party  has  ever  passed  through  so  many  years  of 
civil  and  religious  dissension  with  more  innocence  than  Richard  Baxter. 
— MACAULAY,  History  of  England,  Vol.  I.,  Chapter  IV. 


24  BAXTER,  BEACONSFIELD. 

Richard,  Richard,  dost  thou  think  we  will  let  thee  poison  the  court  ? 
Richard,  thou  art  an  old  knave.  Thou  hast  written  books  enough  to  load 
a  cart,  and  every  book  as  full  of  sedition  as  an  egg  is  full  of  meat.  By 
the  grace  of  God,  I'll  look  after  thee.  I  see  a  great  many  of  your  brother- 
hood waiting  to  know  what  will  befal  their  mighty  Don. — LORD  GEORGE 
JEFFREYS,  Address  at  Baxter's  Trial. 

Richard  Baxter  was  the  Paul  of  his  century  in  manifold  ways.  .  .  .  The 
epithets,  "  Venerable  "  for  Bede,  and  "Judicious"  (by  which  I  suppose 
judicial  is  meant)  for  Hooker,  are  not  more  irreversible  down  the  ages  than 
is  that  of  "  Holy"  applied  to  Richard  Baxter.  "  The  holy  Baxter,"  says 
an  able  anonymous  essayist,  "  is  just  the  verdict  which  a  seraph,  '  full  of 
eyes  within  and  without,'  might  be  expected  to  pronounce  after  having 
deliberately  reviewed  the  whole  history  and  work  of  the  sage  of  Kidder- 
minster".— A.  B.  GROSART,  Representative  Nonconformists. 

To  no  times  are  Englishmen  so  deeply  indebted  for  their  civil  and 
religious  liberty  as  the  times  in  which  Baxter  lived.  To  no  body  of  men 
do  they  owe  such  an  unpaid  debt  of  gratitude  as  they  do  to  that  noble 
host,  of  which  Baxter  was  a  standard-bearer — I  mean  the  Puritans.  To 
no  man  among  the  Puritans  are  the  lovers  of  religious  freedom  under  such 
large  obligations  as  they  are  to  Richard  Baxter. --BISHOP  JOHN  C.  RYLE, 
The  Bishop,  the  Pastor,  and  the  Preacher. 


EARL  OF  BEACONSFIELD. 
English  Statesman  and  Novelist :  1805-1881. 

Keen  must  be  the  critical  faculty  which  can  nicely  discern  where 
the  novelist  ended  and  the  statesman  began  in  Benjamin  Disraeli. — 
AUGUSTINE  BIRRELL,  Obiter  Dicta,  First  Series. 

The  most  remarkable  feature  in  Disraeli's  novels  is  the  way  in  which 
they  reflect  his  life  and  interpret  his  statesmanship.  The  magniloquence, 
the  flash  and  the  glitter  of  the  early  novels  seem  of  a  piece  with  the  tales 
current  regarding  the  author's  manners  and  character,  his  dress  designed 
to  attract  attention,  and  his  opinions  cut  after  the  pattern  of  his  dress. 
So  in  the  Coningsby  group  we  are  struck  with  the  forecast  of  the  writer's 
future  political  action.  His  later  policy  seems  to  be  just  the  realisation  of 
his  earlier  dreams. — HUGH  WALKER,  The  Age  of  Tennyson. 

When  the  whole  drama  of  his  life  shall  be  displayed  to  view ;  when  his 
relations  with  his  colleagues  and  his  opponents,  with  the  Crown  and  the 
aristocracy,  with  friends  and  enemies,  shall  stand  fully  revealed  to  us ; 
when  all  the  difficulties  and  all  the  jealousies  which  impeded  him  on  the 
threshold  of  his  career  shall  be  clearly  understood  :  then,  indeed,  we 
think  that  the  life  of  Benjamin  Disraeli  will  be  recognised  as  one  of  the 
most  "  wondrous  tales"  which  sober  truth  has  ever  told. — J.  E.  KEBBEL, 
Beaconsficld. 

The  professed  creed  of  Disraeli  was  that  of  a  "complete  Jew,"  that  is 
to  say,  he  believed  in  "  Him  that  had  come  "  ;  and  "  did  not  look  for 
another  ".  To  use  his  own  words,  he  "  believed  in  Calvary,  as  well  as 
Sinai". — SIR  WILLIAM  ERASER,  Disraeli  and  his  Day. 


BEACONSFIELD,  BEAUMONT,  BECKET.  25 

It  was  not  merely  by  his  great  work  in  the  Palace  of  Westminster  that 
Lord  Beaconsfield  obtained  his  hold  upon  the  feelings  and  the  affections 
•of  the  people  of  England.  .  .  .  But  it  was  by  his  life  in  general,  and  by 
the  interest  which  he  took  in  all  that  was  of  interest  to  the  people.  .  .  . 
There  was  something  about  him  at  the  moment  of  defeat  which  was 
great  beyond  description.  The  courage,  the  gaiety,  the  patience,  with 
Avhich  he  set  himself  to  repair  the  disaster  which  might  have  befallen  him, 
was  a  great  example  to  statesmen  and  to  his  followers  of  every  class  and 
shade  in  society.  And  I  say  he  had  his  reward,  for  no  man  more  com- 
pletely commanded  the  affections  of  the  people  of  this  country  than  Lord 
Beaconsfield. — THE  EARL  OF  IDDESLEIGH. 


FRANCIS  BEAUMONT. 
English  Dramatist:  1585-1616. 

How  I  do  love  thee  Beaumont,  and  thy  muse, 
That  unto  me  dost  such  religion  use. 
How  I  do  fear  myself,  that  am  not  worth 
The  least  indulgent  thought  thy  pen  drops  forth ! 
At  once  thou  mak'st  me  happy,  and  unmak'st : 
And  giving  largely  to  me,  more  thou  tak'st. 

— BEN  JONSON,  Epigram  LV. 

Witty  Beaumont's  poetry,  and  Fletcher's, 

Who  for  a  few  misprisions  of  wit, 

Are  charg'd  by  those  who  ten  times  worse  commit. 

— SAMUEL  BUTLER,  Upon  Critics. 

Two  men  once  united  by  friendship,  and  forever  by  fame,  the  Dioscuri 
•of  our  zodiac,  Beaumont  and  Fletcher,  rose  upon  the  horizon  as  the  star 
•of  Shakespeare,  though  still  in  its  fullest  brightness,  was  declining  in  the 
•sky. — HALLAM,  Introduction  to  the  Literature  of  Europe,  Vol.  III. 

THOMAS  BECKET. 
Archbishop  of  Canterbury  :  1118-1170. 

King  Henri  wondede  muche,  to  abbe  men  in  offis 
Mid  him,  that  of  conseil  were  god  and  wis. 
Ercedekne  of  Kanterbury  Sein  Tomas  tho  was. 
The  king  him  made  is  chaunceler,  at  is  wille  it  nout  nas. 
To  him  the  king  trust  mest.     Ne  ther  nas  non  so  heye 
That  so  muche  wuste  is  priuite,  ne  that  him  were  so  ney. 

— ROBERT  OF  GLOUCESTER. 

.As  proud  as  Becket.  — TENNYSON,  Queen  Mary. 

De  Tracy  :  "  Where  is  the  Archbishop,  Thomas  Becket  ?  " 

Becket :  »  Here. 

No  traitor  to  the  King,  but  Priest  of  God, 

Primate  of  England."  — Id.,  Becket. 


26  BECKET,  BEDE,  BEETHOVEN,  BEHMEN. 

St.  Thomas  Becket  then,  which  Rome  did  so  much  hery, 

As  to  his  christen'd  name  they  added  Canterbury ; 

There  to  whose  sumptuous  shrine  the  near-succeeding  ages, 

So  mighty  off 'rings  sent,  and  made  such  pilgrimages, 

Concerning  whom,  the  world  since  then  hath  spent  much  breath, 

And  many  questions  made  both  of  his  life  and  death  : 

If  he  were  truly  just,  he  hath  his  right ;  if  no, 

Those  times  were  much  to  blame,  that  have  him  reckon'd  so. 

— DRAYTON,  Polyolbion. 

Saxon  Becket  spilt  his  life  in  Canterbury  Cathedral,  as  Scottish  Wallace 
did  on  Tower-Hill,  and  as  generally  a  noble  man  and  martyr  has  to  do, — 
not  for  nothing ;  no,  but  for  a  divine  something  other  than  he  had  alto- 
gether calculated. — CARLYLE,  Past  and  Present, 

THE  VENERABLE  BEDE. 
English  Historian  :  673  (?)  -735. 

Bede  I  beheld,  who,  humbly  and  holy, 
Shone  like  a  single  star,  serene  in  a  night  of  darkness. 

— SOUTHEY,  A  Vision  of  Judgment. 

Certain  Trolls  or  working  brains,  under  the  names  of  Alfred,  Bede, 
Caxton,  Bracton,  Camden,  Drake,  Selden,  Dugdale,  Newton,  Gibbon, 
Brindlcy,  Watt,  Wedgwood,  dwell  in  the  troll-mounts  of  Britain,  and 
turn  the  sweat  of  their  face  to  power  and  renown. — EMERSON,  English 
Traits:  Ability. 

LUDWIG  VON  BEETHOVEN. 
German  Musician :  1770-1827. 

Suppose,  the  spirit  Beethoven  wants  to  shed 

New  music  he's  brimful  of;  why  he  turns 

The  handle  of  this  organ,  grinds  with  Sludge, 

And  what  he  poured  in  at  the  mouth  o'  the  mill 

As  a  Thirty-third  Sonata  (fancy  now  !) 

Comes  from  the  hopper  as  bran-new  Sludge,  nought  else. 

—ROBERT  BROWNING,  Mr.  Sludge :  "  The  Medium  ".. 

Beethoven,  Raphael,  cannot  reach 

The  charm  which  Homer,  Shakespeare,  teach. 

— MATTHEW  ARNOLD,  Epilogue  to  Lessing's  Laocoon. 

JACOB  BEHMEN. 
German  Mystic  :   1575-1624. 

As  German  Boehme  never  cared  for  plants 

Until  it  happed,  a-walking  in  the  fields, 

He  noticed  r.ll  at  once  that  plants  could  speak, 

Nay,  turned  with  loosened  tongue  to  talk  with  him. 

— ROBERT  BROWNING,  Transcendentalism.. 
Jacob  Behmen  !  most  obscurely  wise. 

— WALTER  HARTE,  An  Essay  on  Satire.. 


BEHMEN,  BENEDICT  XIV.,  BENTHAM.  27 

Men  like  Behmen,  Novalis,  and  Fourier,  who  can  soar  into  the  inner 
cloud-world  of  man's  spirit,  even  though  they  lose  their  way  there,  dazzled 
by  excess  of  wonder — men  who,  like  Wordsworth,  can  give  utterance  to 
such  subtle  anthropologic  wisdom  as  the  Ode  on  the  Intimations  of  Immor- 
tality, will  for  that  very  reason,  most  humbly  and  patiently  "  consider  the 
lilies  of  the  field,  how  they  grow". — KINGSLEY,  Literary  and  General 
Lectures,  etc. 

Such,  then,  is  the  track  of  Behmen's  journeying  across  the  speculative 
wilderness,  following  the  fiery  pillar  of  an  imaginary  illumination — a 
pillar,  be  it  observed,  much  like  that  column  of  glory  which,  as  we  stand 
upon  the  sea-shore,  descends  to  us  from  the  setting  sun, — a  luminous  line 
which  moves  as  we  move,  and  which,  whatever  point  we  occupy,  glows 
from  the  ripples  at  our  feet  up  to  the  fiery  horizon  beneath  which  day  is 
sinking.  Behmen's  work  was  done  chiefly  among  the  educated.  Had 
.  his  mission  been  to  the  lower  orders,  we  should  probably  have  heard  of 
him  as  the  founder  of  a  sect. — R.  A.  VAUGHAN,  Hours  with  the  Mystics. 

The  more  a  man  originates,  the  less  he  needs  to  know  ;  and  those  who 
take  the  trouble  to  read  such  a  writer  as  Jacob  Boehme  will  not  complain 
that  he  places  before  them  little  except  the  visions  of  his  own  brain,  or 
rather  of  his  own  heart.  A  man's  originality  may  occasionally  consist  in 
his  power  to  interpret  symbols — often,  it  may  be,  fancifully  enough. — 
WILLIAM  MACCALL,  The  New  Materialism. 

Why  need  I  be  afraid  ?  Say  rather  how  dare  I  be  ashamed  of  the 
Teutonic  theosophist,  Jacob  Behmen  ?  Many,  indeed,  and  gross  were 
his  delusions ;  and  such  as  furnish  frequent  and  ample  occasion  for  the 
triumph  of  thellearned  over  the  poor  ignorant  shoemaker,  who  had  dared 
think  for  himself.  But  while  we  remember  that  these  delusions  were 
such  as  might  be  anticipated  from  his  utter  want  of  all  intellectual  dis- 
cipline, and  from  his  ignorance  of  rational  psychology,  let  it  not  be  for- 
gotten that  the  latter  defect  he  had  in  common  with  the  most  learned 
theologians  of  his  age.  Neither  with  books  nor  with  book-learned  men 
was  he  conversant.  A  meek  and  shy  quietist,  his  intellectual  powers 
were  never  stimulated  into  feverous  energy  by  crowds  of  proselytes,  or 
by  the  ambition  of  proselyting.  Jacob  Behmen  was  an  enthusiast  in  the 
strictest  sense,  as  not  merely  distinguished,  but  as  contra-distinguished, 
from  a  fanatic. — S.  T.  COLERIDGE,  Biographia  Literaria. 

POPE  BENEDICT  XIV. 
1675-1758. 

Benedict  the  Fourteenth,  the  best  and  wisest  of  the  two  hundred  and 
fifty  successors  of  St.  'Peter. — MACAULAY,  Essays  :  Frederic  the  Great. 

JEREMY  BENTHAM. 

English  Political  Philosopher  :   1747-1832. 

I  consider,  then,  that  two  series  of  causes  conspired  to  produce  Bentham 
— the  one  national,  the  other  belonging  to  all  Europe  ;  the  same  causes, 
on  the  one  hand  which  produced  with  us  the  Economists — the  same 
causes  on  the  other  hand  which  produced  in  France,  Helvetius,  and 


28         BENTHAM,  BENTLEY,  BERKELEY. 

Diderot,  Volney,  Condorcet,  and  Voltaire.  He  combined  what  had  not 
been  yet  done,  the  spirit  of  the  Philanthropic  with  that  of  the  Practical. 
He  was  the  very  Theseus  of  legislative  reform,  he  not  only  pierced  the 
labyrinth — he  destroyed  the  monster. — LYTTON,  England  and  the  English 
Intellectual  Spirit. 

The  writers  of  whom  we  speak  have  never  been  read  by  the  multitude 
.  .  .  but  they  have  been  the  teachers  of  the  teachers ;  there  is  hardly  to  be 
found  in  England  an  individual  of  any  importance  in  the  world  of  mind 
who  (whatever  opinions  he  may  have  afterwards  adopted)  did  not  first 
learn  to  think  from  one  of  these  two  ;  and  though  their  influences  have 
but  begun  to  diffuse  themselves  through  these  intermediate  channels  over 
society  at  large,  there  is  already  scarcely  a  publication  of  any  consequence 
addressed  to  the  educated  classes,  which,  if  these  persons  had  not  existed, 
would  not  have  been  different  from  what  it  is.  These  men  are,  Jeremy 
Bentham  and  Samuel  Taylor  Coleridge — the  two  great  seminal  minds  of 
England  in  their  age.  .  .  .  If  we  were  asked  to  say,  in  the  fewest  possible 
words,  what  we  conceive  to  be  Bentham's  place  among  these  great  intel- 
lectual benefactors  of  humanity  .  .  .  we  should  say — he  was  not  a  great 
philosopher,  but  he  was  a  great  reformer  in  philosophy.  ...  It  was  not 
his  opinions,  in  short,  but  his  method,  that  constituted  the  novelty  and 
the  value  of  what  he  did  ;  a  value  beyond  all  price,  even  though  we  should 
reject  the  whole,  as  we  unquestionably  must  a  large  part,  of  the  opinions 
themselves. — JOHN  STUART  MILL,  Dissertations  and  Discussions. 

RICHARD  BENTLEY. 
English  Classical  Scholar  :  1662-1742. 

So  diamonds  take  a  lustre  from  their  soil ; 
And  to  a  Bentley  'tis  we  owe  a  Boyle. 

— GARTH,  The  Dispensary. 

While  Bentley,  long  to  wrangling  schools  confin'd, 
And,  but  by  books,  acquainted  with  mankind, 
Dares,  in  the  fulness  of  the  pedants'  pride, 
Rhyme,  tho'  no  genius  ;  though  no  judge,  decide  ; 
Yet  he,  prime  pattern  of  the  captious  art, 
Out-tibbalding  poor  Tibbald,  tops  his  part : 
Holds  high  the  scourge  o'er  each  fam'd  author's  head  ; 
Nor  are  their  graves  a  refuge  for  the  dead. 

— DAVID  MALLET,  On  Verbal  Criticism. 

The  greatest  of  English  critics  in  this,  or  possibly  any  other  age, 
Richard  Bentley.— HALLAM,  Literature  of  the  Middle  Ages,  Vol.  IV. 

Those  giants  of  ancient  learning,  Bentley  and  Parr.— CHANNING, 
Remarks  on  Petition. 

GEORGE  BERKELEY. 
Irish  Philosopher;  Bishop  of  Cloy  ne  :  1684-1753. 

And  Berkeley  angelic 

Now  in  substance  as  soul,  that  kingdom  enjoying  where  all  things 
Are  what  they  seem,  and  the  good  and  the  beautiful  there  are  eternal. 

— SOUTHEY,  A  Vision  of  Judgment. 


BERKELEY,  BEWICK,  BISMARCK.  29- 

To  Berkeley,  every  virtue  under  heaven. 

— POPE,  Epilogue  to  the  Satires. 

Such  men  as  Berkeley,  Butler  and  Paley,  each  according  to  his  light,, 
fought  the  battle  fairly,  on  the  common  ground  of  reason  and  philosophy. 
— KINGSLEY,  Historical  Lectures  and  Essays. 

Berkeley  can  only  be  confuted,  or  answered,  by  one  sentence.  His 
premises  granted,  the  deduction  is  a  chain  of  adamant. — S.  T.  COLERIDGE,. 
Table  Talk. 

The  idealism  of  Berkeley  is  only  a  crude  statement  of  the  idealism  of 
Jesus. — EMERSON,  Essays  :  Circles. 

The  idealism  of  Berkeley,  though  it  has  never  organised  a  sect,  has  yet 
sensibly  influenced  the  modes  of  thinking  among  metaphysicians ;  and 
the  coincidence  of  this  system  with  the  theory  of  certain  Hindoo  philoso- 
phers may  lead  us  to  suspect  that  it  contains  some  great  latent  truth,  of 
which  the  European  and  Hindoo  intellect,  so  generally  at  variance,  have 
caught  a  glimpse. — CHANNING,  On  the  Character  of  Milton. 

If  any  one  chose  to  write  in  the  antique  style  a  debate  between  Philo- 
sophy, Tar-water  and  Laudanum,  it  would  be  almost  enough  to  put  in 
the  mouth  of  Philosophy,  "  This  gave  me  Berkeley  and  that  deprived  me 
of  De  Quincey  ". — GEORGE  SAINTSBURY,  Essays  in  English  Literature. 

Berkeley,  the  strongest,  the  honestest  thinker  among  our  English  meta- 
physicians— Berkeley,  who  loved  truth  with  his  whole  heart  and  soul, 
and  who,  in  pursuing  it,  was  as  humble  as  he  was  courageous.  Berkeley, 
who,  though  he  reasoned  from  narrow  premisses,  and  therefore  never  dis- 
covered the  whole  breadth  and  universality  of  the  principles  he  sought 
after,  yet  was  able,  such  was  the  spirituality  of  his  intellect,  even  out  of 
that  narrow  system,  which  conducted  every  one  else  who  reasoned  from 
it  to  materialism,  to  bring  out  the  other  and  far  more  important  side  of 
truth.  Berkeley,  whose  understanding,  indeed,  missed  the  "  circumfer- 
ence," but  who  found  the  "  centre  "  in  his  heart. — F.  D.  MAURICE,  Life 
by  His  Son,  Vol.  I. 

THOMAS  BEWICK. 
English  Wood-engraver;  1753-1828. 

Oh,  now  that  the  genius  of  Bewick  were  mine, 
And  the  skill  which  he  learned  on  the  banks  of  the  Tyne  ! 
Then  the  muses  might  deal  with  me  just  as  they  chose, 
For  I'd  take  my  last  leave  both  of  verse  and  of  prose. 

What  feats  would  I  work  with  my  magical  hand ! 
Book-learning  and  books  should  be  banished  the  land  : 
And,  for  hunger  and  thirst,  and  such  troublesome  calls, 
Every  alehouse  should  then  have  a  feast  on  its  walls. 

— WORDSWORTH,  The  Two  Thieves. 

PRINCE  BISMARCK. 
German  Chancellor :   1815-1898. 

The  resolute  will  and  clear  eye  of  Count  Bismarck. — W.  E.  GLAD- 
STONE, Gleanings,  Vol.  IV. 


3o  BISMARCK,  BLAKE. 

The  greatest  of  War  Ministers,  Chatham,  Bismarck. — LORD  ROSEBERY, 
Life  of  Pitt. 

If  he  has  a  military  genius,  like  Belisarius,  or  administrative  faculty, 
like  Chatham  or  Bismarck,  he  is  the  king's  king, — EMERSON,  Progress 
cf  Culture. 

Bismarck  seems  to  me  a  genial,  marvellous  personification  of  Prussia^ 
...  A  cool  head  controlling  a  warm  heart — the  maximum  of  ingenuity 
and  audacity — Ulysses  and  Achilles  in  one ;  such  will,  to  many  besides 
ourselves,  have  appeared  to  be  the  solution  of  the  enigma  of  Prince 
Bismarck's  successes. — MORITZ  BUSCH,  Our  Chancellor  (transl.),  Vol.  I. 

To  the  posterity  of  a  hundred  years  hence  Martin  Luther  and  Prince 
Bismarck  will  undoubtedly  be  regarded  as  the  Castor  and  Pollux  of 
German  history;  and  it  is  a  remarkable  coincidence  that  each  of  these 
greatest  heroes  of  the  German  nation  made  his  debut,  so  to  speak,  as 
European  actors  on  the  very  same  obscure  provincial  stage.  It  was  in  the 
University  library  of  Erfurt  that  Luther  first  discovered  the  Bible,  while 
it  was  in  the  church  of  the  Augustines  that  he  was  consecrated  and  read 
his  first  mass ;  and  it  was  in  this  identical  church  of  the  Augustines  that 
Herr  von  Bismarck,  as  a  member  of  the  futile  Union  Parliament  of  1850, 
first  gave  indication  to  his  countrymen  of  how  national  unity  could,  or 
rather  could  not,  be  attained. — CHARLES  LOWE,  Prince  Bismarck, 
Vol.  II. 

ROBERT  BLAKE. 
English  Admiral :  1599-1657. 

Ev'n  in  those  troubled  times,  when  dreadful  Blake 
Aw'd  angry  nations  with  the  British  name. 

— THOMSON,  Britannia. 
O  ever  faithful,  vigilant,  and  brave, 
Thou  bold  asserter  of  Britannia's  fame, 
Unconquerable  Blake. 

— RICHARD  GLOVER,  London. 
So  like  a  Sailor  Saint  was  he, 
Our  Sea  King  ;  grave  and  sweet 
In  temper  after  victory, 
And  cheerful  in  defeat. 
And  men  would  leave  their  quiet  home, 
To  follow  in  his  wake, 
And  fight  in  fire,  or  float  in  foam, 
For  love  of  Robert  Blake. 

Till  she  forget  her  old  sea-fame, 

"Shall  England  honour  him, 

And  keep  the  grave-grass  from  his  name 

Till  her  old  eyes  be  dim. 

And  long  as  free  waves  folding  round, 

Brimful  with  blessing  break, 

At  heart  she  holds  him,  calm  and  crown'd, 

Immortal  Robert  Blake. 

—GERALD  MASSEY,  Robert  Blake. 


BOADICEA,  BOILEAU,  BOLEYN.  31 

BOADICEA. 

Queen  of  the  Iceni :  d.  61. 

So  the  Queen  Boadicea,  standing  loftily  charioted, 
Brandishing  in  her  hand  a  dart  and  rolling  glances  lioness-like, 
Yell'd  and  shriek'd  between  her  daughters  in  her  fierce  volubility. 

— TENNYSON,  Boadicea. 

When  the  British  warrior  Queen, 
Bleeding  from  the  Roman  rods, 
Sought,  with  an  indignant  mien, 
Councils  of  her  country's  gods  .  .  . 
Regions  Caesar  never  knew 
Thy  posterity  shall  sway  ; 
Where  his  eagles  never  flew, 
None  invincible  as  they. 

— COWPER,  Boadicea. 


NICOLAS  DESPREAUX  BOILEAU. 
French  Satirical  Poet :   1636-1711. 

Thence  arts  o'er  all  the  northern  world  advance, 
But  critic-learning  flourish'd  most  in  France : 
The  rules  a  nation,  born  to  serve,  obeys ; 
And  Boileau  still  in  right  of  Horace  sways. 

— POPE,  Essay  on  Criticism. 

Here  Boileau,  strong  in  sense  and  sharp  in  wit, 
Who,  from  the  ancients,  like  the  ancients  writ, 
Permission  gain'd  inferior  vice  to  blame, 
By  flattering  incense  to  his  master's  fame. 

— LORD  LYTTLETON,  To  the  Rev.  Dr.  Ayscough. 

Boileau  had  undoubtedly  some  of  the  qualities  of  a  great  critic.  He 
wanted  imagination  ;  but  he  had  strong  sense.  His  literary  code  was 
formed  on  narrow  principles ;  but  in  applying  it,  he  showed  great  judg- 
ment and  penetration.  In  mere  style,  abstracted  from  the  ideas  of  which 
style  is  the  garb,  his  taste  was  excellent. — MACAULAY,  Essays :  Addison. 


ANNE  BOLEYN. 
Queen  of  Henry  VIII.:  1510  (?)-i536. 

Wolsey  :  "  Leave  me  awhile, — 

It  shall  be  to  the  duchess  of  Alencon, 

The  French  king's  sister ;  he  shall  marry  her. — 

Anne  Bullen  !  No  ;  I'll  no  Anne  Bullens  for  him  : 

There's  more  in't  than  fair  visage — Bullen ! 

No,  we'll  no  Bullens — Speedily  I  wish 

To  hear  from  Rome." 

— SHAKSPERE,  King  Henry  VIII. 


32  BOLEYN,  BOLINGBROKE,  BONNER. 

From  a  private  gentlewoman  you  have  made  me  first  a  marchioness, 
then  a  queen ;  and,  as  you  can  raise  me  no  higher  in  this  world,  you  are 
now  sending  me  to  be  a  saint  in  Heaven. — ANNE  BOLEYN,  Last  Message- 
to  Henry  VIII. 

HENRY  ST.  JOHN,  VISCOUNT  BOLINGBROKE. 
English  Statesman  and  Writer:  1678-1751. 

O,  Bolingbroke  !  O  favourite  of  the  skies, 
O  born  to  gifts  by  which  the  noblest  rise, 
Improv'd  in  arts  by  which  the  brightest  please, 
Intent  to  business,  and  polite  for  ease ; 
Sublime  in  eloquence,  where  loud  applause 
Hath  styl'd  thee  patron  of  a  nation's  cause. 

— PARNELL,  Different  Styles  of  Poetry* 

By  different  methods  Bolingbroke  shall  raise 

His  growing  honours  and  immortal  praise. 

He,  fir'd  with  glory  and  the  public  good, 

Betwixt  the  people  and  their  danger  stood : 

Arm'd  with  convincing  truths,  he  did  appear  ; 

And  all  he  said  was  sparkling,  bright,  and  clear. 

The  listening  senate  with  attention  heard, 

And  some  admired,  while  others  trembling  fear'd  ; 

Not  from  the  tropes  of  formal  eloquence, 

But  Demosthenic  strength,  and  weight  of  sense, 

Such  as  fond  Oxford  to  her  son  supplied, 

Design'd  her  own,  as  well  as  Britain's  pride  ; 

Who,  less  beholden  to  the  ancient  strains, 

Might  shew  a  nobler  blood  in  English  veins, 

Outdo  whatever  Homer  sweetly  sung 

Of  Nestor's  counsels,  or  Ulysses'  tongue. 

Oh !  all  ye  nymphs,  whilst  time  and  youth  allow, 

Prepare  the  rose  and  lily  for  his  brow. 

Much  he  has  done,  but  still  has  more  in  view ; 

To  Anna's  interest  and  his  country  true. 

More  I  could  prophesy,  but  must  refrain  : 

Such  truths  would  make  another  mortal  vain  ! 

— WILLIAM  KING,  Britain*}  Palladium. 

It  is  impossible  to  find  lights  and  shades  strong  enough  to  paint  the 
character  of  Lord  Bolingbroke,  who  was  a  most  mortifying  instance  of 
the  violence  of  human  passions,  and  of  the  most  improved  and  exalted 
human  reason.  His  virtues  and  his  vices,  his  reason  and  his  passions, 
did  not  blend  themselves  by  a  gradation  of  tints,  but  formed  a  shining 
and  sudden  contrast. — LORD  CHESTERFIELD. 

EDMUND  BONNER. 
Bishop  of  London  :  1495-1569. 

Gardiner  out-Gardiners  Gardiner  in  his  heat, 
Bonner  cannot  out-Bonner  his  own  self — 


BOSSUET,  BOSWELL.  33 

;ast ! — but  they  play  with  fire  as  children  do, 
And  burn  the  house. 

— TENNYSON,  Queen  Mary. 

When  persecuting  zeal  made  royal  sport 
With  tortured  innocence  in  Mary's  court, 
And  Bonner,  blithe  as  shepherd  at  a  wake, 
Enjoy'd  the  show,  and  danced  about  the  stake. 

— COWPER,  Expostulation. 

We  have  not  the  smallest  doubt  that,  when  Bonner  was  in  the 
Marshalsea,  he  thought  it  a  very  hard  thing  that  a  man  should  be  locked 
up  in  a  gaol  for  not  being  able  to  understand  the  words,  "This  is  my 
body,"  in  the  same  way  with  the  lords  of  the  council.— MACAULAY, 
Essays  :  Sir  James  Mackintosh. 

JACQUES  BE*NIGNE  BOSSUET. 
Bishop  of  Meanx  :  1627-1704. 

Bossuet,  Fenelon  and  Massillon  .  .  .  worthy  soldiers  of  the  militia  of 
Christ. — SIR  ARCHIBALD  ALISON,  Essays  :  Madame  de  Stael. 

Would  not  the  man  stamp  himself  as  a  barbarian  who  in  French 
literature  could  not  value  the  majesty  of  Bossuet  ? — F.  W.  FARRAR, 
Social  and  Present-Day  Questions. 

Bossuet,  however,  required  to  be  seen  at  the  distance,  as  it  were,  of 
many  miles ;  and  that,  too,  from  a  spot  in  which  all  irregularities  might 
be  reduced  to  a  level.  He  was  naturally  moral  and  religious ;  but 
bigotry  converted  his  religion  first  into  intolerance,  and  then  into  cruelty. 
— CHARLES  BUCKE,  Anecdotes  of  Human  Character. 

JAMES  BOSWELL. 
Biographer  of  Dr.  Johnson;  1740-1795. 

But  could  I  like  Montgomeries  fight, 
Or  gab  like  Boswell. 

— BURNS,  The  Author's  Earnest  Cry  and  Prayer. 

Johnson  found  in  James  Boswell  such  a  biographer  as  no  man  but 
himself  ever  had,  or  ever  deserved  to  have.  The  performance,  which 
chiefly  resembles  it  in  structure,  is  the  life  of  the  philosopher  Demophon 
in  Lucian  ;  but  that  slight  sketch  is  far  inferior  in  detail  and  in  vivacity  to 
Boswell's  Life  of  Johnson,  which,  considering  the  eminent  persons  to 
whom  it  relates,  the  quantity  of  miscellaneous  information  and  entertain- 
ing gossip  which  it  brings  together,  may  be  termed,  without  exception, 
the  best  parlour- window  book  that  ever  was  written. — SIR  WALTER 
SCOTT,  Lives  of  the  Novelists. 

Johnsons  are  rare ;  yet,  as  has  been  asserted,  Boswells  perhaps  still 
rarer — the  more  is  the  pity  on  both  sides. — CARLYLE,  Hero- Worship. 

Jemmy  had  a  sycophantish,  but  a  sincere  admiration  of  the  genius, 
erudition  and  virtue  of  Ursa-Major,  and  in  recording  the  noble  growlings 
of  the  Great  Bear,  thought  not  of  his  own  Scotch  snivel. — JOHN  WILSON, 
Nodes  Ambrosiana:,  Vol.  I. 


34  BOS  WELL,  BOYLE. 

It  is  Boswell's  eternal  merit  to  have  deeply  reverenced  the  man  whose 
littlenesses  and  asperities  he  could  keenly  discern,  and  has  courageously 
depicted ;  and  his  work  stands  alone  in  Biography  because  he  had  this 
vision  and  this  courage.  The  image  of  Johnson  is  not  defaced  by  these 
revelations  ;  it  only  becomes  more  intelligible  in  becoming  more  human. 
— G.  H.  LEWES,  Introduction  to  Life  of  Dr.  Johnson. 

The  Life  of  Johnson  is  assuredly  a  great,  a  very  great  work.  Homer 
is  not  more  decidedly  the  first  of  heroic  poets,  Shakespeare  is  not  more 
decidedly  the  first  of  dramatists,  Demosthenes  is  not  more  decidedly  the 
first  of  orators,  than  Boswell  is  the  first  of  biographers.  He  has  no 
second.  .  .  .  Eclipse  is  first,  and  the  rest  nowhere. — MACAULAY,  Essays  : 
Boswell's  "  Life  of  Johnson  ". 

Boswell's  is  one  of  the  very  few  books  which,  after  many  years  of 
familiarity,  will  still  provoke  a  hearty  laugh  even  in  the  solitude  of  a 
study ;  and  the  laughter  is  of  that  kind  which  does  one  good. — LESLIE 
STEPHEN,  Hours  in  a  Library,  Second  Series. 

Boswell  has  a  little  of  the  true  Shakesperian  secret.  He  lets  his 
characters  show  themselves  without  obtruding  unnecessary  comment.  .  .  . 
Any  one  who  will  try  to  put  down  the  pith  of  a  brilliant  conversation 
within  the  same  space  .  .  .  will  learn  to  appreciate  Boswell's  powers  not 
only  of  memory  but  artistic  representation. — Id.,  Life  of  Johnson. 

No  one,  I  presume,  is  ignorant  how  specially  fortunate  was  Samuel 
Johnson  in  having  Alexander  Boswell  the  younger,  of  Auchinleck,  Esq., 
for  his  biographer.  Could  Boswell's  Life  of  Jolmson  be  expunged  from 
English  literature,  the  world  would  be  poorer  by  the  loss  of  one  of  the 
small  number  of  books  fit  to  live  for  ever. — J.  ADDINGTON  SYMONDS,  Ben 
Jonson. 

Boswell's  book  is  an  arch  of  triumph,  through  which,  as  we  read,  we 
see  his  hero  passing  into  eternal  fame,  to  take  up  his  place  with  those — 
"  Dead  but  sceptred  sovereigns  who  still  rule 
Our  spirits  from  their  urns." 

— AUGUSTINE  BIRRELL,  Obiter  Dicta,  Second  Series. 

ROBERT  BOYLE. 
English  Philosopher:   1627-1691. 

And  now  with  lab'ring  Boyle  I  trace 
Nature  through  every  winding  maze  ; 
The  latent  qualities  admire 
Of  vapours,  water,  air,  and  fire  ; 
With  pleasing  admiration  see 
Matter's  surprising  subtilty. 

— SOAME  JENYNS,  An  Epistle  written  in  the  Country. 

And  noble  Boyle,  not  less  in  nature  seen, 
Than  his  great  brother  read  in  states  and  men. 

— DRYDEN,  Epistle  II. :  To  Dr.  Charleton. 

So  Locke  the  days  of  studious  quiet  spent ; 
So  Boyle  in  wisdom  found  divine  content. 

— LORD  LYTTLETON,  To  the  Rev.  Dr.  Ayscough. 


BOYLE,  BRAHE,  BRIGHT,  BRINDLEY.  35 

Boyle  through  the  works  of  Nature  ran. 

—CHURCHILL,  The  Ghost,  Bk.  II. 

TYCHO  BRAKE. 
Danish  Astronomer :  1546-1601. 

In  mathematics  he  was  greater 
Than  Tycho  Brahe  or  Erra  Pater ; 
For  he,  by  geometric  scale, 
Could  take  the  size  of  pots  of  ale  ; 
Resolve  by  sines  and  tangents  straight 
If  bread  or  butter  wanted  weight. 

— SAMUEL  BUTLER,  Hudibras. 

JOHN  BRIGHT. 
English  Statesman:  1811-1889. 

If  rhetoric  were  poetry,  John  Bright  would  be  a  poet  at  least  equal  to 
John  Milton. — SWINBURNE,  Studies  in  Prose  and  Poetry. 

So  long  as  virtue,  courage,  and  patriotism  retain  their  significance,  so 
long  will  these  noble  qualities  continue  to  be  associated  with  the  name  of 
John  Bright.  He  takes  rank  with  the  Pyms,  the  Hampdens,  the  Miltons, 
and  other  incorruptible  great  men  of  the  past,  who,  in  times  of  difficulty 
and  of  peril,  have  unswervingly  fought  the  battle  of  freedom,  and  asserted 
the  liberties  of  England.— G.  BARNETT  SMITH,  Life  and  Speeches  of  J. 
Bright. 

Bright  was  a  man  of  less  catholic  temper,  less  comprehensive  gifts 
[than  Cobden].  But  his  singleness  of  aim,  his  combative  spirit — it  was 
wittily  said  of  him  that  if  he  had  not  been  a  Quaker  he  must  have  been 
a  prize-fighter — his  superb  eloquence— unsurpassed  for  purity  and  nobility 
of  language,  for  spontaneous  grace  of  gesture  and  native  majesty  of 
intonation,  for  pathos,  for  humour,  and  for  a  command  of  imagery  at 
once  simple  and  direct,  and  withal  profoundly  appropriate  and  impressive, 
his  sympathetic  insight  into  the  sober,  serious,  righteous  gravity  of  the 
English  character,  his  noble  scorn  of  wrong  and  his  inflexible  love  of  right 
made  him  an  irresistible  advocate  and  an  indispensable  ally. — J.  R. 
THURSFIELD,  Life  of  Peel. 

JAMES  BRINDLEY. 
English  Engineer :  1716-1772. 

Ploughers,  Spinners,  Builders ;  Prophets,  Poets,  Kings ;  Brindleys  and 
Goethes,  Odins,  and  Arkwrights ;  all  martyrs,  and  noble  men,  and  gods 
are  of  one  grand  Host ;  immeasurable ;  marching  ever  forward  since  the 
beginnings  of  the  world. — CARLYLE,  Past  and  Present :  The  Didactic. 

The  rugged  Brindley  has  little  to  say  for  himself;  the  rugged  Brindley, 
when  difficulties  accumulate  on  him,  retires  silent,  "  generally  to  his  bed  "  ; 
retires  "  sometimes  for  three  days  together  to  his  bed  that  he  may  be  in 
perfect  privacy  there,"  and  ascertain  in  his  rough  head  how  the  diffi- 


36  BRINDLEY,  BRONTE,  BROUGHAM. 

culties  may  be  overcome.  The  ineloquent  Brindley,  behold  he  has 
chained  seas  together ;  his  ships  do  visibly  float  over  valleys,  invisibly 
through  the  hearts  of  mountains;  the  Mersey  and  the  Thames,  the 
Humber  and  the  Severn  have  shaken  hands :  Nature  most  audibly 
answers,  yea  I— Id.,  Ibid. :  The  English. 

CHARLOTTE  BRONTE. 
English  Novelist :  1816-1855. 

It  would  hardly  be  safe  to  name  Miss  Austen,  Miss  Bronte,  and  George 
Eliot  as  the  three  greatest  women  novelists  the  United  Kingdom  can 
boast,  and  were  one  to  go  on  and  say  that  the  alphabetical  order  of  their 
names  is  also  their  order  of  merit,  it  would  be  necessary  to  seek  police 
protection,  and  yet  surely  it  is  so.— AUGUSTINE  BIRRELL,  Life  of  C. 
Bronte. 

Some  portion  of  a  faculty  such  as  this,  some  touch  of  the  same  god- 
like and  wonder-working  might  of  imperious  moral  quality,  some  flush 
of  the  same  divine  and  plenary  inspiration,  there  was  likewise  in  the 
noble  genius  and  heroic  instinct  of  Charlotte  Bronte.  Some  part  of  the 
power  denied  to  many  a  writer  of  more  keen  and  rare  intelligence  than 
even  hers  we  feel  "to  the  finest  fibre  of  our  nature"  at  the  slight  strong 
touch  of  her  magnetic  hand. — SWINBURNE,  Charlotte  Bronte. 

Turning  to  the  Brontes,  does  not  one  feel  the  very  heartbeats  of 
womanhood  in  those  powerful  utterances  that  seem  to  spring  from  some 
central  emotional  energy  ? — MATHILDE  BLINDE,  George  Eliot. 

Charlotte  Bronte  had,  in  the  highest  degree,  that  which  Ruskin  had 
called  the  "  pathetic  fallacy,"  the  eye  which  beholds  Nature  coloured  by 
the  light  of  the  inner  soul.  In  this  quality  she  really  reaches  the  level  of 
fine  poetry.  Her  intense  sympathy  with  her  native  moors  and  glens  is 
akin  to  that  of  Wordsworth.  She  almost  never  attempts  to  describe  any 
scenery  with  which  she  is  not  deeply  familiar.  But  how  wonderfully 
she  catches  the  tone  of  her  own  moorland,  skies,  storm-winds,  secluded 
hall  or  cottage.  .  .  .  Charlotte  Bronte  is  great  in  clouds,  like  a  prose 
Shelley.  .  .  .  Charlotte  Bronte  painted  not  the  world,  hardly  a  corner 
of  the  world,  but  the  very  soul  of  one  proud  and  loving  girl.  That  is. 
enough  :  we  need  ask  no  more.  It  was  done  with  consummate  power. 
We  feel  that  we  know  her  life,  from  ill-used  childhood  to  her  proud 
matronhood  ;  we  know  her  home,  her  school,  her  professional  duties, 
her  loves  and  hates,  her  agonies  and  her  joys,  with  that  intense  famili- 
arity and  certainty  of  vision  with  which  our  own  personal  memories  are 
graven  on  our  brain. — FREDERIC  HARRISON,  Early  Victorian  Literature. 

The  most  obvious  of  all  remarks  about  Miss  Bronte  is  the  close  con- 
nection between  her  life  and  her  writings.  In  no  books  is  the  author 
more  completely  incarnated. — LESLIE  STEPHEN,  Hours  in  a  Library. 
Vol.  III. 

LORD  BROUGHAM  AND  VAUX. 

Lord  Chancellor:  1779-1868. 

In  the  picture  of  our  century,  as  taken  from  life  by  History,  this  very 
man  should  have  been  a  central  figure ;  but  now,  owing  to  his  want  of 


BROUGHAM. 


37 


steadfastness,  there  will  be  for  ever  a  blur  where  Brougham  should  have 
been. — HARRIET  MARTINEAU,  Biographical  Sketches. 

Lord  Chancellor  Brougham  has  repeatedly  declared,  that  he  desired  no 
other  epitaph  on  his  monument  than  that  he  was  the  founder  of  Universal 
English  Education. — SIR  ARCHIBALD  ALISON,  Essays :  The  Old  Scottish 
Parliament. 

With  energies  less  dissipated  and  temper  more  controlled,  Brougham's 
place  in  history,  and  even  in  literature,  must  have  been  very  high.  As  it 
was,  his  life  was  a  splendid  failure. — T.  F.  TOUT,  Celebrities  of  the 
Century. 

Tickler:  "Brougham  is  a  volcano— an  eruption — a  devouring  flame — a 
storm — a  whirlwind — a  cataract — a  torrent — a  sea — thunder  and  earth- 
quake. You  might  apply  the  same  terms,  with  the  same  truth,  to  a  Bil- 
lingsgate fishwife." 

North  :  "  Brougham's  invective  is  formidable  chiefly  for  its  vulgarity. 
One  hates,  loathes,  fears  to  be  pelted  with  the  mud  and  missiles  of  an 
infuriated  demagogue — just  as  a  gentleman  declines  the  proffered  combat 
with  a  carman,  although  conscious  that  in  three  rounds  he  would  leave 
the  ruffian  senseless  in  the  ring." 

Tickler  :   "  That  sometimes  occurs — as  in  the  case  of  Canning." 
North  :  "  The  straight  hitting  of  the  Foreign  Secretary  soon  dorses  your 
round-about  hand-over-head  millers,  like  Harry  Brougham." 
Tickler:  "Yet  how  that  outrageous  violence  and  fury,  arms  aloft,  eyes 
agog,  cheeks  convulsed,  and  lips  quivering,  passes  with  the  multitude  for 
demonstration  of  strength  and  science  !  " 

North  :  "  Brougham  never  fights  at  points — he  throws  away  his  blows — 
and  beyond  all  the  other  men,  lays  himself  open  to  fatal  punishment, 
although  he  has  weight,  length,  and  reach,  and  generally  enters  the  ring 
in  good  condition,  and  after  long  and  severe  training,  yet  has  he  lost 
every  battle.  His  backers  are  never  confident — yet  in  a  casual  turn-up, 
it  must  be  allowed  that  he  is  an  ugly  customer."— JOHN  WILSON,  Nodes 
Ambrosiance,  Vol.  I. 

Tickler:  "  Brougham  in  his  robes!  Lord  High  Chancellor  of  England  ! 
Stern  face  and  stalwart  frame — and  his  mind,  people  say,  is  gigantic. 
They  name  him  with  Bacon.  Be  it  so ;  the  minister  he  and  interpreter 
of  Nature !  Henry  Brougham,  in  the  eyes  of  his  idolaters,  is  also  an 
Edmund  Burke.  Be  it  so ;  at  once  the  most  imaginative  and  most  philo- 
sophical of  orators  that  ever  sounded  lament  over  the  decline  and  fall  of 
empires,  while  wisdom,  listening  to  his  lips,  exclaimed  : — 

'  Was  ne'er  prophetic  sound  so  full  of  woe  ! '  " 

North:  "Come — come,  Tickler — none  of  your  invidious  eulogies  on  the 
Man  of  the  People." 

Tickler :  "  There  he  sits — a  strong  man — not  about  to  run  a  race — " 
North  :  "  But  who  has  run  it,  and  distanced  all  competitors.     There  is 
something  great,  Tickler,  in  unconquerable  and  victorious  energy — ' 
Tickler :  "  A  man  of  many  talents  he — some  of  them  seeming  to  be  of 
the  highest  order.     Sword-like  acuteness — sun-like  perspicacity — ' 
North  :  "  And  sledge-hammer-like  power." 
Tickler :  "  There  is  a  wicked  trouble  in  his  keen  grey  eyes." 
North  :  "  No.     Restless,  but  not  unhappy." 
Tickler  :  "  Scorn  has  settled  on  that  wide-nostril'd  probo — " 


38  BROUGHAM,  BROWNE,  BROWNING. 

North  :  "  No.     It  comes  and  goes — the  nose  is  benevolent." 

Tickler :  "  Do  you  say  there  is  no  brass  on  that  hard  forehead  ?  " 

North  :    "  I  see  but  bone — and  though  the  brain  within  is  of  intellect 

'  all  compact,'  the  heart  that  feeds  it  burns  with  passions  not  unheroic." 

Tickler:  "King  of  them  all— ambition." 

North  :  "  '  The  last  infirmity  of  noble  minds  ! '  " 

Tickler :  "  No — you  misunderstand — you  misrepresent  Milton.     He  spoke 

of  the  love  of  fame." 

North  :  "  So  do  I.     In  Brougham— do  him  justice — the  two  passions  are 

one,  and  under  its  perpetual  inspiration  he  has 

'  Scorned  delights,  and  lived  laborious  days,' 

till  with  all  his  sins,  by  friend  and  foe,  he  is  held  to  be,  in  his  character 
of  statesman,  the  first  man  in  England." — Id.,  Ibid.,  Vol.  III. 

SIR  THOMAS  BROWNE. 
English  Physician  and  Author  :  1605-1682. 

The  exclusive  Sir  Thomas-Browne-ness  of  all  the  fancies  and  modes  of 
illustration.  .  .  .  Strong  feeling  and  an  active  intellect  conjoined  lead 
almost  necessarily,  in  the  first  stage  of  philosophising,  to  Spinozism. 
Sir  T.  Browne  was  Spinozist  without  knowing  it.  His  own  character 
was  a  fine  mixture  of  humourist,  genius,  and  pedant.  A  library  was  a 
living  world  to  him,  and  every  book  a  man,  absolute  flesh  and  blood  ! 
and  the  gravity  with  which  he  records  contradictory  opinions  is  exquisite. 
— S.  T.  COLERIDGE,  Notes,  Theological,  Political,  etc. 

ELIZABETH  BARRETT  BROWNING. 
English  Poetess :  1809-1861. 

Miss  Barrett  .  .  .  the  most  imaginative  poetess  that  has  appeared  in 
England,  perhaps  in  Europe.  .  .  .  She  is  like  an  ultra-sensitive  sister  of 
Alfred  Tennyson. — LEIGH  HUNT,  Men,  Women,  and  Books. 

The  notes  of  Mrs.  Browning's  poetry  are  emotion,  purity,  pathos,  intense 
earnestness,  sympathy  with  every  form  of  suffering,  with  everything  great 
and  good,  hatred  of  everything  evil,  specially  of  all  oppression.  Her 
want  of  humour,  a  few  rough  and  careless  rhymes,  an  occasional  forcing 
of  sense  and  phrase,  have  made  some  critics  of  word  and  style  complain  ; 
but  students  may  rely  on  it,  that  to  know  Mrs.  Browning  as  she  reveals 
herself  in  her  works  is  a  liberal  education,  and  to  enter  into  her  spirit 
one  of  the  most  ennobling  pursuits  that  a  man  can  undertake. — F.  J. 
FURNIVALL,  Celebrities  of  the  Century. 

ROBERT  BROWNING. 
English  Poet :   1812-1889. 

Well,  any  how  here  the  story  stays, 

So  far  at  least  as  I  understand  : 

And,  Robert  Browning,  you  writer  of  plays, 

Here's  a  subject  made  to  your  hand  ! 

— ROBERT  BROWNING,  A  Light  Woman. 


BROWNING.  39 

Shoddy  :  "  The  Brownings  too  ? 

Give  me  a  glossary — 

Of  English  in  frills  and  flounces,  with  a  lot 
Of  cyclopedias,  guide-books,  catalogues, 
To  search  out  the  allusions.     I'll  read  them, 
And  let  the  Brownings  slide,  if  slide  they  will  !  " 

— DR.  MILO  MAHAN,  The  Yorkshireman  in  Boston. 

I  suppose,  reader,  that  you  see  whereabouts  rmong  the  poets  I  place 
Robert  Browning  ;  high  among  the  poets  of  all  time,  and  I  scarce  know 
whether  first,  or  second,  in  our  own  :  and  it  is  a  bitter  thing  to  me  to  see 
the  way  in  which  he  has  been  received  by  almost  everybody. — WILLIAM 
MORRIS,  Oxford  and  Cambridge  Magazine,  March,  1856. 

If  there  is  any  great  quality  more  perceptible  than  another  in  Mr. 
Browning's  intellect,  it  is  his  decisive  and  incisive  faculty  of  thought, 
'his  sureness  and  intensity  of  perception,  his  rapid  and  trenchant  resolu- 
tion of  aim.  To  charge  him  with  obscurity  is  about  as  accurate  as  to 
call  Lynceus  purblind,  or  complain  of  the  sluggish  action  of  the  telegraph 
wire.  He  is  something  too  much  the  reverse  of  obscure;  he  is  too 
brilliant  and  subtle  for  the  ready  reader  to  follow  with  any  certainty  the 
track  of  an  intelligence  which  moves  with  such  incessant  rapidity,  or 
even  to  realise  with  what  spider-like  swiftness  and  sagacity  his  building 
spirit  leaps  and  lightens  to  and  fro  and  backward  and  forward,  as  it  lives 
along  the  animated  line  of  its  labour,  springs  from  thread  to  thread,  and 
darts  from  centre  to  circumference  of  the  glittering  and  quivering  web  of 
living  thought,  woven  from  the  inexhaustible  stores  of  his  perception, 
and  kindled  from  the  inexhaustible  fire  of  his  imagination. — SWINBURNE, 
George  Chapman. 

When  the  news  was  flashed  from  Venice  that  Robert  Browning  had 
died,  men  felt  as  of  old  they  felt  when  a  great  king  had  passed  away  — 
one  who,  at  a  time  of  change,  had  absorbed  the  new  aims  and  thoughts 
of  his  nation  while  they  were  yet  unshaped,  who  had  given  them  form  in 
himself,  and  sent  them  forth  alive  and  fresh,  to  be  loved  and  used  by  his 
folk,  and  who,  continuing  to  shape  and  reshape  them  with  more  and  more 
completeness,  had  himself  quietly  grown  into  such  a  power  that  he  im- 
pressed the  seal  and  spirit  of  his  personality  upon  the  character  of  his 
people.  .  .  .  Song  alone  did  not  content  him.  Music  .  .  .  claimed  him, 
and  painting,  and  then  the  study  of  the  great  poets,  in  whom  he  "  explored 
passion  and  mind  for  the  first  time  "  ;  till  now  his  soul,  fed  at  these  great 
springs,  rose  into  keen  life ;  all  his  powers  burst  forth,  and  he  gazed  on 
all  things,  and  systems  and  schemes,  and  heard  ineffable  things  unguessed 
by  man.  Then  he  vowed  himself  to  liberty,  to  the  new  world  that  liberty 
was  to  bring  where 

"  Men  were  to  be  as  gods,  and  earth  as  heaven  ". 

All  Plato  entered  into  him  ;  it  seemed  he  had  the  key  to  life ;   his  soul 
rose  to  meet  the  glory  he  conceived. — STOPFORD  BROOKE. 

Lovers  of  Browning  are  multiplying  with  great  rapidity  throughout 
the  land.  To  claim  to  be  his  champicn  is  to  dress  in  rusty  armour. 
Writings  in  defence  of  Browning  are  as  much  out  of  date  as  pamphlets 
on  the  Corn  Laws.— ALEX.  HILL  in  Browning  Notes. 

There  is  no  form  of  energy  which  to  Browning  seems  so  high,  or  on 
which  he  dwells  with  such  evident  delight,  as  that  which  sums  up  in 


40  BROWNING. 

itself  all  the  vital  faculties  of  man — which  raises  all  his  powers  of  resolve, 
of  thought,  of  passion,  of  self-devotion,  to  the  highest  pitch  of  intensity — 
the  energy  of  love ;  the  "  infinite  passion  and  the  pain  of  finite  hearts 
that  yearn,"  the  "  moment  which  lets  us  through  into  eternity,  our  due  ". 
— C.  E.  VAUGHAN  in  Browning  Notes. 

Through  Nature,  Wordsworth  would  lead  the  soul  to  rest.  Through 
the  spiritual  struggles  of  the  soul  itself,  Browning  reveals  the  divine 
touch  that  discloses  the  true  end  of  living  and  thinking. — G.  D.  BOYLE 
in  Browning  Notes. 

Most  thinkers  write  and  speak  of  man  ;  Mr.  Browning  of  men.  With 
man  as  a  species,  with  man  as  a  society,  he  does  not  concern  himself, 
but  with  individual  man  and  man.  Every  man  is  for  him  an  epitome  of 
the  universe,  a  centre  of  creation. — ARTHUR  SYMONS,  Introduction  to 
Broivning. 

Mr.  Browning  evidently  loves  what  we  may  call  the  realism,  the  gro- 
tesque realism,  of  orthodox  Christianity.  Many  parts  of  it  in  which  great 
divines  have  felt  keen  difficulties  are  quite  pleasant  to  him.  He  must  see 
his  religion,  he  must  have  an  "  object-lesson  "  in  believing.  He  must  have  a 
creed  that  will  take,  which  wins  and  holds  the  miscellaneous  world,  which 
stout  men  will  heed,  which  nice  women  will  adore.  The  spare  moments 
of  solitary  religion — the  "obdurate  questionings,"  the  high  "instincts," 
the  "  first  affections,"  the  "  shadowy  recollections," 

"  Which,  do  they  what  they  may, 

Are  yet  the  fountain-light  of  all  our  day — 

Are  yet  a  master-light  of  all  our  seeing  ;  " 

the  great  but  vague  faith — the  unutterable  tenets — seem  to  him  worthless, 
visionary  ;  they  are  not  enough  immersed  in  matter  ;  they  move  about  "  in 
worlds  not  realised  ".  We  wish  he  could  be  tried  like  the  prophet  once ; 
he  would  have  found  God  in  the  earthquake  and  the  storm  ;  he  would 
have  deciphered  from  them  a  bracing  and  a  rough  religion  :  he  would 
have  known  that  crude  men  and  ignorant  women  felt  them  too,  and  he 
would  accordingly  have  trusted  them ;  but  he  would  have  distrusted  and 
disregarded  the  "still  small  voice":  he  would  have  said  it  was  "fancy" 
— a  thing  you  thought  you  heard  to-day,  but  were  not  sure  you  had  heard 
to-morrow :  he  would  call  it  a  nice  illusion,  an  immaterial  prettiness  ;  he 
would  ask  triumphantly  "  How  are  you  to  get  the  mass  of  men  to  heed 
this  little  thing  ?  "  he  would  have  persevered  and  insisted  "My  wife  did 
not  hear  it". — WALTER  BAGEHOT,  Literary  Studies,  Vol.  II. 

Whatever  we  hold  about  the  insight  and  imagination  of  Browning,  no 
one  can  doubt  that  he  often  chose  to  be  uncouth,  crabbed,  grotesque,  and 
even  clownish,  when  the  humour  was  on  him.  There  are  high  precedents 
for  genius  choosing  its  own  instrument  and  making  its  own  music.  But 
whatever  were  Browning's  latent  powers  of  melody,  his  method  when  he 
chose  to  nlay  upon  the  gong,  or  the  ancient  instrument  of  marrow-bone 
and  cleavers,  was  the  exact  antithesis  of  Tennyson's ;  and  he  set  on  edge 
the  teeth  of  those  who  love  the  exquisite  cadences  of  In  Memoriam  and 
Ma  ml.  Browning  has  left  deep  influence  if  not  a  school.— FREDERIC 
HARRISON,  Studies  in  Early  Victorian  Literature. 


BROWNING,  BRUCE,  BRUTUS.  41 

Boldness  of  design  then,  and  an  even  excessive  opulence  of  intellect, 
•were  from  the  first  the  characteristics  of  Browning.  He  did  not  acquire 
them,  they  were  his  birthright.  Carlyle  stood  out  from  among  his  con- 
temporaries by  virtue  of  conquests  won  through  toil  and  pain,  Browning 
entered  into  his  inheritance  at  once  and  without  effort.  The  one  might 
have  said,  like  the  chief  captain,  "  With  a  great  sum  obtained  I  this  free- 
dom "  ;  and  the  other  might  have  answered,  with  St.  Paul,  "  But  I  was 
free  born  ". — HUGH  WALKER,  The  Age  of  Tennyson. 

ROBERT  BRUCE. 
King  of  Scotland  :   1274-1329. 

Where  are  the  Muses  fled  that  should  produce 
A  drama  worthy  of  the  name  of  Bruce  ? 

—Robert  Bruce  (Scott's  Prologue.) 

Scots !  wha  hae  wi'  Wallace  bled, 
Scots !  wham  Bruce  has  aften  led, 
Welcome  to  your  gory  bed, 

Or  to  victory ! 

Now's  the  day,  and  now's  the  hour ; 
See  the  front  o'  battle  lour : 
See  approach  proud  Edward's  power — 

Chains  and  slavery. 

Id.,  Bruce' s  Address  at  Bannockburn. 

Everything  is  interesting  where  Robert  Bruce  is  the  subject. — SIR 
WALTER  SCOTT,  History  of  Scotland. 

Scotland  recovered,  during  his  administration,  in  a  great  measure,  from 
the  devastation  that  had  preceded  it ;  and  the  peasants,  forgetting  the 
stern  warrior  in  the  beneficent  monarch,  long  remembered  his  sway,  under 
the  name  of  the  "  good  King  Robert's  "  reign.  .  .  .  In  our  national  fond- 
ness, therefore,  for  the  memory  of  Robert  Bruce,  the  English  should 
perceive  the  growth  of  those  principles  from  which  their  own  unequalled 
greatness  has  arisen ;  nor  should  they  envy  the  glory  of  the  field  of 
Bannockburn,  when  we  appeal  to  it  as  our  best  title  to  be  quartered  in 
their  arms. — SIR  ARCHIBALD  ALISON,  Essays  :  Robert  Bruce. 

MARCUS  JUNIUS  BRUTUS. 
C&sar's  Chief  Assassin  :  B.C.  85-42. 

Alas,  the  lofty  city  !  and  alas, 
The  trebly  hundred  triumphs  !  and  the  day 
When  Brutus  made  the  dagger's  edge  surpass 
The  conqueror's  sword  in  bearing  fame  away  ! 

—  BYRON,  Childe  Harold's  Pilgrimage,  LXXXII. 

Touch  but  a  nerve — and  Brutus  is  a  slave  ; 
A  nerve,  and  Plato  drivels  !     Was  it  mind, 
Or  soul,  that  taught  the  wise  one  in  the  cave, 
The  freeman  in  the  wind  ? 

— LYTTON,  Mind  and  Soul. 


42  BRUTUS,  BUNYAN. 

Su/olk  :  "  A  Roman  sworder  and  banditto  slave 
Murder'd  sweet  Tully ;  Brutus'  bastard  hand 
Stabb'd  Julius  Caesar  ;  savage  islanders 
Pompey  the  Great." 

— SHAKSPERE,  King  Henry  VI.,  Part  IT.. 

Ccfsar :  "  Et  tit,  Brute  ?— Then  fall,  Caesar  !  " 

— Id.,  Julius  C&sar. 

Stern  Brutus  was  with  too  much  horror  good, 
Holding  his  fasces  stain'd  with  filial  blood. 

— PRIOR,  Carmen  Secular e- 

Who  speaks  the  truth  stabs  Falsehood  to  the  heart, 
And  his  mere  word  makes  despots  tremble  more 
Than  ever  Brutus  with  his  dagger  could. 

— J.  R.  LOWELL,  L'Envoi.. 

And  thou,  unhappy  Brutus,  kind  of  heart, 
Whose  steady  arm,  by  awful  virtue  urg'd, 
Lifted  the  Roman  steel  against  thy  friend. 

— THOMSON,  The  Seasons  :  Winter.. 

O  bluddy  Brutus,  rightly  didst  thou  rew, 

And  thou  Cassius  justly  came  thy  fall, 

That  with  the  swurd  wherewith  thou  Caesar  slewe 

Murdr^st  thy  selfe,  and  rest  thy  life  withall. 

A  myrrour  let  him  be  unto  you  all 

That  murderers  be,  of  murder  to  your  meede  : 

For  murder  crieth  out  vengeance  on  your  seede. 

— LORD  BUCKHURST,  Complaynt  of  Henry e,  Duke  of  Buckingham.. 

JOHN  BUNYAN:  1628-1688. 

He  rang'd  his  tropes,  and  preach'd  up  patience, 
Back'd  his  opinion  with  quotations, 
Divines  and  moralists  ;  and  run  ye  on 
Quite  through  from  Seneca  to  Bunyan. 

— PRIOR,  Pauls  Purganti  and  his  Wife. 

More  to  mankind  is  one  page  of  the  Bedford  tinker,  than  all  the  banks; 
of  the  Rothschilds. — F.  W.  FARRAR,  Social  and  Present-Day  Questions. 

I  know  of  no  book,  the  Bible  excepted  as  above  all  comparison,  which 
I,  according  to  my  judgment  and  experience,  could  so  safely  recommend 
as  teaching  and  enforcing  the  whole  saving  truth  according  to  the  mind 
that  was  in  Christ  Jesus,  as  the  Pilgrim's  Progress.  It  is,  in  my  con- 
viction, incomparably  the  best  summa  theologice  evangelicce  ever  pro- 
duced by  a  writer  not  miraculously  inspired. — S.  T.  COLERIDGE,  Table 
Talk.  ' 

The  style  of  Bunyan  is  delightful  to  every  reader,  and  invaluable  as  a 
study  to  every  person  who  wishes  to  obtain  a  wide  command  over  the 
English  language.  The  vocabulary  is  the  vocabulary  of  the  common 
people.  There  is  not  an  expression,  if  we  except  a  few  technical  terms 
of  theology,  which  would  puzzle  the  rudest  peasant.  We  have  observed 
several  pages  which  do  not  contain  a  single  word  of  more  than  two* 


BUN  VAN.  43. 

syllables.  Yet  no  writer  has  said  more  exactly  what  he  meant  to  say. 
For  magnificence,  for  pathos,  for  vehement  exhortation,  for  subtle  dis- 
quisition, for  every  purpose  of  the  poet,  the  orator  and  the  divine,  this, 
homely  dialect,  the  dialect  of  plain  working  men,  was  perfectly  sufficient. 
There  is  no  book  in  our  literature  on  which  we  would  so  readily  stake  the 
fame  of  the  old  unpolluted  English  language,  no  book  which  shows  so 
well  how  rich  that  language  is  in  its  own  proper  wealth,  and  how  little 
it  has  been  improved  by  all  that  it  has  borrowed. — MACAULAY,  Essays  : 
John  B  tiny  an. 

His  is  a  homespun  style,  not  a  manufactured  one  :  and  what  a  difference 
is  there  between  its  homeliness  and  the  flippant  vulgarity  of  the  Roger 
L'Estrange  and  Tom  Brown  school.  If  it  is  not  a  well  of  English  unde- 
filed,  to  which  the  poet  as  well  as  the  philologist  must  repair,  if  they 
would  drink  of  the  living  waters,  it  is  a  clear  stream  of  current  English, 
'the  vernacular  speech  of  his  age,  sometimes  indeed  in  its  rusticity  and 
coarseness,  but  always  in  its  plainness  and  its  strength.  John  Bunyan — 
the  one  man  who  has  attained  to  write  a  successful  prose  allegory  on  a 
large  scale,  and  to  infuse  true  emotion  into  an  exercise  of  ingenuity, 
and  who  probably  owed  less  to  study  and  training  than  any  other  of  the 
great  authors  of  the  modern  world.  .  .  .  Of  Bunyan's  character  there  can 
be  but  one  opinion ;  he  was  a  truly  Apostolic  man.  As  no  one's  diction 
is  more  forcible,  unadulterated  Saxon,  so  no  life  has  better  expressed 
the  sturdy,  sterling  virtues  of  the  Englishman. — RICHARD  GARNETT,  The 
Age  of  Dry  den. 

Now  in  Bunyan  there  is  a  strong  German  (Albert  Diirer)  element  which 
you  must  express,  viz.  (r)  a  tendency  to  the  grotesque  in  imagination  ; 
(2)  a  tendency  to  spiritual  portraiture  of  the  highest  kind,  in  which  an 
ideal  character  is  brought  out,  not  by  abstracting  all  individual  traits  (the 
Academy  plan),  but  by  throwing  in  strong  individual  traits  drawn  from 
common  life.  .  .  .  But  there  is  another  [element]  of  which  Bunyan,  as 
a  Puritan  tinker,  was  not  conscious,  though  he  had  it  in  his  heart,  that 
is,  classic  grace  and  purity  of  form.  He  had  it  in  his  heart,  as  much  as 
Spenser.  His  women,  his  Mr.  Greatheart,  his  Faithful,  his  shepherds, 
can  only  be  truly  represented  in  a  lofty  and  delicate  outline,  otherwise 
the  ideal  beauty  which  lifts  them  into  a  supernatural  and  eternal  world  is 
lost,  and  they  become  mere  good  folks  of  the  seventeenth  century.  Some 
illustrators,  feeling  this,  have  tried  to  medievalize  them — silly  fellows. 
What  has  Bunyan  to  do  with  the  Middle  Age  ?  He  writes  for  all  ages, 
he  is  full  of  an  eternal  humanity,  and  that  eternal  humanity  can  only  be 
represented  by  something  of  the  eternal  form  which  you  find  in  Greek 
statues. — KINGSLEY,  Life  and  Memories  of  his  Life,  Vol.  II. 

A  stranger,  who  admires  and  loves  Bunyan,  approaches  Bedford  as  a 
poet  or  a  divine  would  enter  Smyrna  ;  the  former  thinking  only  of  Homer, 
and  the  latter  only  of  Polycarp ;  and  both  trying  how  vividly  they  can 
realise  the  image  of  their  favourite,  amidst  the  scenes  once  consecrated 
by  his  presence,  and  still  enshrined  by  his  memory.  I  felt  no  difficulty, 
on  entering  Bedford,  and  walking  around  it,  to  associate  everything  with 
Bunyan,  or  to  enshrine  anything  with  his  Pilgrim.  The  town,  indeed^ 
did  not  seem  to  rne  "the  City  of  Destruction  "  ;  and  the  bridge  was  too 
good,  and  the  water  too  clear,  to  allow  the  river  to  be  regarded  as  "  the 
Slough  of  Despond  "  :  but  it  was  hardly  possible  not  to  see  Christian  in 


4,  BUNYAN,  BURKE. 

every  poor  man  who  carried  a  burden,  and  Christina  in  every  poor  woman 
who  carried  a  market-basket  in  one  hand,  and  led  a  child  with  the  other. 
One  sweet-looking  peasant  girl,  also,  might  have  been  Mercy's  youngest 
sister.  She  would  have  been  beautiful  anywhere  ;  but  she  was  enchanting 
upon  the  spot  where  Bunyan's  Mercy  (that  finished  portrait  of  female 
loveliness)  had  walked  and  wept.  In  like  manner,  any  ragged  urchin,  if 
only  robust  and  boisterous  enough,  and  evidently  the  ringleader  of  fun 
or  mischief,  seemed  the  boy  Bunyan  himself,  although  only  a  few  minutes 
before  a  venerable  old  man  had  seemed  the  very  personification  of  the 
Baptist  Minister  of  Bedford  :  but  no  one  seemed  to  be  the  Glorious 
Dreamer,  although  many  looked  sleepy  enough.— ROBERT  PHILIP,  Life 
und  Times  of  John  Bunyan. 

EDMUND  BURKE. 
Irish  Orator :  1729-1797. 

Daddie  Burke  the  plea  was  cookin'. 

— BURNS,  Lines  written  to  a  Gentleman. 

And  Burke  I  beheld  there, 
Eloquent  statesman  and  sage,  who,  though  late,   broke  loose  from  his 

trammels, 
Giving  them  to  mankind  what  party  too  long  had  diverted. 

— SOUTHEY,  A  Vision  of  Judgment,  X. 

Yet  never,  Burke  !  thou  drank'st  Corruption's  bowl ! 
Thee  stormy  Pity  and  the  cherished  lure 
Of  Pomp,  and  proud  Precipitance  of  soul 
Wildered  with  meteor  fires.     Ah  Spirit  pure  ! 
That  error's  mist  had  left  thy  purged  eye  : 
So  might  I  clasp  thee  with  a  Mother's  joy  ! 

S.  T.  COLERIDGE,  Monody  on  the  Death  of  Chatterton. 

If  a  man  were  to  go  by  chance  at  the  same  time  with  Burke  under  a 
shed  to  shun  a  shower,  he  would  say  "  this  is  an  extraordinary  man  ". — 
DR.  JOHNSON  in  BOSWELL,  Life  of  Johnson. 

Edmund  Burke — and  Sir  Joshua — par  nobile  Fratnim. — JOHN  WILSON, 
Noctes  Ambrosiance,  Vol.  II. 

Burke  spoke  daggers,  especially  when  he  used  none. — Id.,  Homer  and 
his  Translators. 

Edmund  Burke,  one  of  the  greatest  men  whom  the  United  Kingdom 
has  produced.  With  a  fertility  of  fancy  sufficient  to  make  a  poet  of  the 
rank  of  Milton,  and  a  power  of  general  reasoning  which  might  have 
furnished  a  philosopher  of  the  rank  of  Bacon,  he  devoted  these  rare  gifts 
to  political  pursuits.  He  was  not  indeed  the  ivory  paper-knife  which 
Swift  considers  as  the  true  measure  of  sharpness  of  intellect  for  a 
practical  statesman,  but  was  rather  the  razor  to  which  Goldsmith  com- 
pares him. — EARL  RUSSELL,  Life  of  Charles  Fox,  Vol.  III. 

The  transcendent  greatness  of  Burke. — SIR  ARCHIBALD  ALISON, 
Essays  :  The  Greek  Drama. 

How  much  soever  men  may  differ  as  to  the  soundness  of  Mr.  Burke's 
doctrines,  or  the  purity  of  his  public  conduct,  there  can  be  no  hesitation 


BURKE.  45 

in  according  to  him  a  station  among  the  most  extraordinary  persons  that 
have  ever  appeared  ;  nor  is  there  now  any  diversity  of  opinion  as  to  the 
place  which  it  is  fit  to  assign  him. — LORD  BROUGHAM,  Statesmen  of  the 
Time  of  George  III, 

How  are  we  to  explain  the  notorious  fact,  that  the  speeches  and  writ- 
ings of  Edmund  Burke  are  more  interesting  at  the  present  day  than  they 
were  found  at  the  time  of  their  first  publication  ?  .  .  .  The  satisfactory 
solution  is,  that  Edmund  Burke  possessed  and  had  sedulously  sharpened 
that  eye  which  sees  all  things,  actions  and  events,  in  relation  to  the  laws 
that  determine  their  existence  and  circumscribe  their  possibility.  He 
referred  habitually  to  principles.  He  was  a  scientific  statesman  ;  and 
therefore  a  seer.  For  every  principle  contains  in  itself  the  germs  of  a 
prophecy. — S.  T.  COLERIDGE,  Biographia  Litcraria. 

.  Many  of  the  passages  to  be  found  in  Burke  .  .  .  shine  by  their  own 
light,  belong  to  no  class,  have  neither  equal  nor  counterpart,  and  of  which 
we  say  that  no  one  but  the  author  could  have  written  them  ! — HAZLITT, 
Lectures  on  the  English  Comic  Writers. 

Europe  was  conceived  to  be  on  the  point  of  dissolution.  Burke  heard 
the  death-watch,  and  rang  the  alarm.  A  hollow  sound  passed  from 
nation  to  nation,  like  that  which  announces  the  splitting  and  breaking 
up  of  ice  in  the  regions  around  the  Pole.  .  .  .  Burke  was  a  fine  specimen 
of  a  third-thoughted  man.  So  in  our  own  times,  consciously  and  pro- 
fessedly was  Coleridge;  who  delighted  in  nothing  more  than  in  the 
revival  of  a  dormant  truth,  and  who  ever  looked  over  the  level  of  the 
present  age  to  the  hills  containing  the  sources  and  springs  whereby  that 
level  is  watered. — J.  C.  HARE,  Guesses  at  Truth,  First  Series. 

Often  when  we  contemplate  the  mind  and  history  of  Edmund  Burke — 
the  plenitude  of  his  knowledge,  the  profound  wisdom  of  his  intellect,  the 
vast  ken  of  his  imaginative  vision,  the  disinterestedness  of  his  purpose, 
and  the  wide  and  watchful  eye  he  kept  on  the  progress  of  the  human 
race  everywhere,  as  well  as  the  righteous  and  terrible  anger  which  he 
felt  at  its  oppressors — we  are  reminded  less  of  a  man,  than  of  some 
benevolent  angel  or  genie,  incarnate  in  human  flesh,  for  the  purpose  of 
furthering  the  great  designs  of  God,  and  counteracting  the  machinations 
or  the  infuriated  madness  of  infernal  beings. —  GEORGE  GILFILLAN, 
Dissertation,  prefixed  Shakespeare's  Works. 

Burke's  command  of  style  is  so  great,  that,  as  by  some  he  was  mistaken 
for  Bolingbroke,  so  by  others  he  has  been  identified  with  Junius. — LYTTON, 
Essays  :  Style  and  Diction. 

The  power  to  detach,  and  to  magnify  by  detaching,  is  the  essence  of 
rhetoric  in  the  hand  of  the  orator  and  the  poet.  This  rhetoric,  or  power 
to  fix  the  momentary  eminency  of  an  object,  so  remarkable  in  Burke,  in 
Byron,  in  Carlyle,  the  painter  and  sculptor  exhibit  in  colour  and  in  stone. 
— EMERSON,  Essays  :  Art. 

What  I  once  heard  a  benevolent  physician  say  of  a  madman !  "  Be 
sure  you  speak  only  the  most  direct  truth  to  him  ;  poor  fellow,  his  mind 
is  confused  enough  already  with  his  own  false  impressions,"  is  just  the 
doctrine  which  Burke  was  preaching  to  the  artificial  world  of  the 
eighteenth  century. — F.  D.  MAURICE,  Friendship  of  Books. 


46  BURKE,  BURLEIGH. 

The  Arch-Whig  Trumpeter,  Mr.  Burke.— LORD  BEACONSFIELD. 
The  yet  more  venerable  name  of  Burke. — W.  E.  GLADSTONE. 

Burke  is  a  name  never  to  be  mentioned  without  reverence ;  not  only 
because  Burke  was  incomparably  the  greatest  of  all  English  political 
writers,  and  a  standing  refutation  of  the  theory  which  couples  rhetorical 
excellence  with  intellectual  emptiness,  but  also  because  he  was  a  man 
whose  glowing  hatred  of  all  injustice  and  sympathy  for  all  suffering  never 
•evaporated  in  empty  words. — LESLIE  STEPHEN,  Hours  in  a  Library, 
Second  Series. 

Burke,  the  Cobden  of  that  era. — WALTER  BAGEHOT,  Literary  Studies, 
Vol.  II. 

Apart  from  any  systematic  political  speculation,  it  is  difficult  to  name 
another  publicist  whose  writings  are  so  thickly  studded  with  those  un- 
systematic products  of  an  acute,  enlarged,  and  reflective  mind,  which  are 
vaguely  labelled  as  wisdom.  Burke's  mind  was  so  vigorous,  his  acquired 
knowledge  so  large,  and  his  opportunities  of  observation  so  wide,  that 
the  accumulation  of  this  kind  of  wisdom  in  his  pages,  and  the  addition 
which  he  made  to  the  human  stock  of  so  valuable  a  possession,  appear 
no  more  than  a  natural  result.  In  his  wildest  moment  these  sagacious 
apophthegms  were  present,  green  places  in  a  wilderness  of  declamation. 
Many  of  them  have  got  imbedded  in  the  current  phraseology,  and  men 
use  Burke's  maxims  without  knowing  who  is  their  teacher.  His  pages, 
as  we  turn  them  over,  are  bright  with  these  luminous  utterances. — JOHN 
MORLEY,  Edmund  Burke. 

There  are  great  personalities  like  Burke  who  march  through  history 
with  voices  like  a  clarion  trumpet  and  something  like  the  glitter  of  swords 
in  their  hands.  They  are  as  interesting  as  their  work.  Contact  with 
them  warms  and  kindles  the  mind. — Id.,  Studies  in  Literature. 

I  have  often  been  struck  with  a  resemblance,  which  I  hope  is  not  really 
fanciful,  between  the  attitude  of  Burke's  mind  towards  government  and 
that  of  Cardinal  Newman  towards  religion.  Both  these  great  men  belong, 
by  virtue  of  their  imaginations,  to  the  poetic  order,  and  they  both  are  to 
be  found  dwelling  with  amazing  eloquence,  detail,  and  wealth  of  illustra- 
tion on  the  varied  elements  of  society.  Both  seem  as  they  write  to  have 
•one  hand  on  the  pulse  of  the  world,  and  to  be  forever  alive  to  the  throb 
of  its  action  ;  and  Burke,  as  he  regarded  humanity  swarming  like  bees 
into  and  out  of  their  hives  of  industry,  is  ever  asking  himself,  how  are 
these  men  to  be  saved  from  anarchy  ?  whilst  Newman  puts  to  himself 
the  question,  how  are  these  men  to  be  saved  from  atheism  ?  Both  saw 
•the  perils  of  free  inquiry  divorced  from  practical  affairs. — AUGUSTINE 
BIRRKLL,  Res  Judicatce. 

The  meteoric  mind  of  Burke. — LORD  ROSEBERY,  Life  of  Pitt. 

WILLIAM  CECIL,  LORD  BURLEIGH. 
Lord  High  Treasurer:  1520-1598. 

Elizabeth  :  "  But  with  Cecil's  aid 

And  others,  if  our  person  be  secured 

From  traitor  stabs — we  will  make  England  great." 

—TENNYSON,  Queen  Mary. 


47 

Burleigh,  the  subtlest  builder  of  thy  fame, — 
The  serpent  craft  of  Walsingham. 

— LYTTON,  The  Last  Days  of  Elizabeth. 

Cecil,  the  grave,  the  wise,  the  great,  the  good, 
What  is  there  more  that  can  ennoble  blood  ? 
The  orphan's  pillar,  the  true  subject's  shield, 
The  poor's  full  store-house,  and  just  servant's  field, 
The  only  faithful  watchman  for  the  realm, 
That  in  all  tempests  never  quit  the  helm. 

— BEN  JONSON,  Epigram  on  William  Lord  Burleigh. 

And  Cecil,  whose  wisdom 
"'Stablish'd  the  Church  and  State,  Eliza's  pillar  of  council. 

— SOUTHEY,  A  Vision  of  Judgment. 

Eliza  first  the  sable  scene  withdrew, 
And  to  the  ancient  world  display'd  the  new ; 
When  Burleigh  at  the  helm  of  state  was  seen, 
The  truest  subject  to  the  greatest  queen. 

— DR.  WILLIAM  KING.  Britain's  Palladium. 

Wise  Cecil,  lov'd  by  people  and  by  prince, 
As  often  broke  his  word  as  any  since. 

— SOAME  JENYNS,  First  Epistle  of  Bk.  II.  of  Horace  imitated. 

Burleigh,  like  the  old  Marquess  of  Winchester,  who  preceded  him  in 
the  custody  of  the  White  Staff,  was  of  the  willow,  and  not  of  the  oak. 
He  first  rose  into  notice  by  defending  the  supremacy  of  Henry  the 
Eighth. — MACAULAY,  Essays :  Burleigh  and  his  Times. 


ROBERT  BURNS. 
Scottish  Poet :  1759-1796. 


While  Terra  firma,  on  her  axis, 

Diurnal  turns, 
Count  on  a  friend,  in  faith  an'  practice, 

In  Robert  Burns. 


This  wot  ye  all  whom  it  concerns, 
I,  Rhymer  Robin,  alias  Burns- 
October  twenty-third — 
A  ne'er  to  be  forgotten  day — 
Sae  far  I  sprackled  up  the  brae. 
I  dinner'd  wi'  a  Lord. 


— BURNS,  To  William  Simpson. 


— Id.,  On  Dining  with  Lord  Daer. 


Him  who  walked  in  glory  and  joy 

Following  his  plough,  along  the  mountain-side, 

By  our  own  spirits  are  we  deified : 

We  poets  in  our  youth  begin  in  gladness  ; 

But  thereof  comes  in  the  end  despondency  and  madness. 

— WORDSWORTH,  Resolution  and  Independence. 


48  BURNS. 

'Mid  crowded  obelisks  and  urns, 

I  sought  the  untimely  grave  of  Burns  ; 

Sons  of  the  bard,  my  heart  still  mourns 

With  sorrow  true ; 
And  more  would  grieve,  but  that  it  turns 

Trembling  to  you ! 

—Id.,  To  the  Sons  of  Burns. 

The  boast  of  Scotland,  Robert  Burns. 

— SIR  WALTER  SCOTT. 

This  mortal  body  of  a  thousand  days 

Now  fills,  O  Burns,  a  space  in  thine  own  room, 

Where  thou  didst  dream  alone  on  budded  bays, 

Happy  and  thoughtless  of  thy  day  of  doom  ! 

My  pulse  is  warm  with  thine  own  Barley-bree, 

My  head  is  light  with  pledging  a  great  soul, 

My  eyes  are  wandering,  and  I  cannot  see. 

Fancy  is  dead  and  drunken  at  its  goal  ; 

Yet  can  I  stamp  my  foot  upon  thy  floor, 

Yet  can  I  ope  thy  window-sash  to  find 

The  meadow  thou  hast  tramped  o'er  and  o'er, — 

Yet  can  I  think  of  thee  till  thought  is  blind, — 

Yet  can  I  gulp  a  bumper  to  thy  name, — 

0  smile  among  the  shades,  for  this  is  fame  ! 

— KEATS,  Sonnet  written  in  Burns1  Cottage,  Alloway* 
Shakespeare  was  of  us,  Milton  was  for  us, 
Burns,  Shelley,  were  with  us, — they  watch  from  their  graves ! 

— ROBERT  BROWNING,  The  Lost  Leader* 

He  spoke  of  Burns  :   men  rude  and  rough 

Pressed  round  to  hear  the  praise  of  one 
Whose  heart  was  made  of  rnanly,  simple  stuff, 

As  homespun  as  their  own. 

— J.  R.  LOWELL,  An  Incident  in  a  Railroad  Car* 

The  lark  of  Scotia's  morning  sky  ! 

Whose  voice  may  sing  his  praises  ? 
With  Heaven's  own  sunlight  in  his  eye, 

He  walked  among  the  daisies, 
Till  through  the  cloud  of  fortune's  wrong 

He  soared  to  fields  of  glory  ; 
But  left  his  land  her  sweetest  song 

And  earth  her  saddest  story. 

— OLIVER   WENDELL    HOLMES,  For  the  Meeting  of  the 
Burns  Club,  1856. 

1  like  full  well  the  deep  resounding  swell 

Of  mighty  symphonies  with  cords  inwoven  ; 
But  sometimes,  too,  a  song  of  Burns, — don't  you  ? 
After  a  solemn  storm-blast  of  Beethoven. 

— Id.,  How  not  to  Settle  it* 

Yes,  there  is  such  a  human  glow 
Of  life  and  love  in  Robin's  breast ; 


BURNS.  49 

Its  warmth  can  melt  the  winter  snow 

In  Poverty's  cold  nest.   .  .  . 
And  near  or  far,  where  Briton's  band 
To-day,  the  leal  and  true  heart  turns 
Move  fondly  to  the  fatherland, 

For  love  of  Robin  Burns. 

— GERALD  MASSEY,  Robin  Burns. 

Search  Scotland  over,  from  the  Pentland  to  the  Solway,  and  there  is 
not  a  cottage-hut  so  poor  and  wretched  as  to  be  without  its  Bible  ;  and 
hardly  one  that,  on  the  same  shelf,  and  next  to  it,  does  not  treasure  a 
Burns.  Have  the  people  degenerated  since  their  adoption  of  this  new 
manual?  Has  their  attachment  to  the  Book  of  Books  declined?  Are 
their  hearts  less  firmly  bound,  than  were  their  fathers',  to  the  old  faith 
and  the  old  virtues  ?  I  believe  he  that  knows  the  most  of  the  country 
will  be  the  readiest  to  answer  all  these  questions,  as  every  lover  of  genius 
and  virtue  would  desire  to  hear  them  answered.  .  .  .  Extraordinary  .  .  .  has 
been  the  inanity  of  his  critics.  While  differing  widely  in  their  estimates 
of  his  character  and  morale,  they  have,  without  a  single  exception,  ex- 
pressed a  lofty  idea  of  his  powers  of  mind  and  of  the  excellence  of  his 
poetry.  Here,  as  on  the  subject  of  Shakespeare,  and  on  scarcely  any 
other,  have  Whigs  and  Tories,  Infidels  and  Christians,  bigoted  Scotch- 
men and  bigoted  sons  of  John  Bull,  the  high  and  the  low,  the  rich  and 
the  poor,  the  prosaic  and  the  enthusiastic  lovers  of  poetry,  the  strait-laced 
and  the  morally  lax,  met  and  embraced  each  other. — LOCKHART,  Life 
of  Burns. 

Scotland  had  lost  that  very  year  the  great  poet  Burns — her  glory  and 
her  shame.— Id.,  Life  of  Sir  W.  Scott. 

Who  has  not  a  thousand  times  seen  snow  fall  on  the  water  ?  Who 
has  not  watched  it  with  a  new  feeling  from  the  time  that  he  has  read 
Burns'  comparison  of  sensual  pleasure  : 

"  To  snow  that  falls  upon  a  river 

A  moment  white — then  gone  for  ever  !  " 

— S.  T.  COLERIDGE,  Biographia  Literaria* 

The  inspired  Ploughman. — LEIGH  HUNT,  Men,  Women,  and  Books^ 

Ay,  for  many  a  deep  reason  the  Scottish  people  love  their  own  Robert 
Burns.  Never  was  the  personal  character  of  poet  so  strongly  and  en- 
dearingly exhibited  in  his  song.  They  love  him,  because  he  loved  his 
own  order,  nor  ever  desired  for  a  single  hour  to  quit  it.  They  love 
him,  because  he  loved  the  very  humblest  condition  of  humanity,  where 
everything  good  was  only  the  more  commended  to  his  manly  mind  by 
disadvantages  of  social  position.  They  love  him,  because  he  saw  with 
just  anger,  how  much  the  judgments  of"  silly  coward  man  "  are  determined 
by  such  accidents  to  the  neglect  or  contempt  of  native  worth.  They  love 
him  for  his  independence.  What  wonder !  To  be  brought  into  contact 
with  rank  and  wealth — a  world  inviting  to  ambition,  and  tempting  to 
a  thousand  desires — and  to  choose  rather  to  remain  lowly  and  poor,  than 
seek  an  easier  or  a  brighter  lot,  by  courting  favour  from  the  rich  and  great 
—was  a  legitimate  ground  of  pride,  if  any  ground  of  pride  be  legitimate. 
He  gave  a  tongue  to  this  pride,  and  the  boast  is  inscribed  in  words  of  fire 
in  the  Manual  of  the  Poor. — JOHN  WILSON,  Speech  at  the  Burns  Festival. 

4 


5o  BURNS. 

Burns,  though  conscious  of  the  influences  which  formed  him  into  a 
poet,  was  unable  to  tell  how  he  trained  his  genius  into  art,  yet  an  artist 
he  indisputably  was,  and  it  is  astonishing  how  marvellously  correct,  both 
in  details  and  as  wholes,  most  of  the  writings  are.  He  is  one  of  the  most 
correct  poets  that  the  world  has  known. — LYTTON,  Essays:  Gray's 
Works. 

Nevertheless,  upon  English  soil,  and  among  the  mists  of  Scotland, 
arose  the  poetry  most  redundant  in  descriptive  power ;  and  for  the  last 
thirty  years  no  country  has  produced  poets  who  have  understood  the 
language  of  solitude,  and  transfused  the  very  soul  of  nature,  like  Burns, 
Crabbe,  and  Wordsworth. — MAZZINI,  Life  and  Writings,  Vol.  II. 

Do  you  think  Burns  has  had  no  influence  on  the  life  of  men  and  women 
in  Scotland,  has  opened  no  eyes  and  ears  to  the  face  of  nature  and  the 
dignity  of  man  and  the  charm  and  excellence  of  women  ? — EMERSON, 
Poetry  and  Imagination. 

It  was  a  curious  phenomenon,  in  the  withered  unbelieving,  second-hand 
Eighteenth  Century,  that  of  a  Hero  starting  up,  among  the  artificial 
pasteboard  figures  and  productions,  in  the  guise  of  a  Robert  Burns.  .  .  . 
One  of  the  most  considerable  Saxon  men  of  the  eighteenth  century  was 
an  Ayrshire  Peasant  named  Robert  Burns.  Yes,  I  will  say,  here  too  was 
a  piece  of  the  right  Saxon  stuff :  strong  as  the  Harz-rock,  rooted  in  the 
depths  of  the  world ; — rock,  yet  with  wells  of  living  softness  in  it !  ... 
Our  peasant  (Burns)  showed  himself  among  us,  "  a  soul  like  an  ^Eolian 
harp,  in  whose  strings  the  vulgar  wind,  as  it  passed  through  them, 
changed  itself  into  articulate  melody". — CARLYLE,  Hero-Worship. 

The  greatest  Peasant — next  perhaps  to  King  David  of  the  Jews,  a 
peasant,  a  poet,  a  patriot,  and  a  king — whom  any  age  had  produced. — 
CHARLES  MACKAY,  Fifty  Years'  Recollections. 

To  Sir  Walter  and  Carlyle  and  Tennyson  it  has  been  revealed  that  life 
as  sung  by  Burns  is  life  indeed,  that  joy  and  change  and  death  are,  save 
for  a  few  insignificant  details,  the  same  in  the  cottage  as  in  the  palace, 
and  that  whosoever  has  thrilled  the  heart  of  one  honest  man  with  his  verse 
may  thrill  the  whole  world,  and  that  the  Laureate  of  toil  is  the  Laureate 
•of  the  human  race. — P.  ANDERSON  GRAHAM,  Nature  in  Books. 

If  ever  there  was  a  song-writer  who  could  say  with  the  most  catholic 
comprehensiveness  in  the  words  of  the  old  comedian,  "  /  am  a  man,  and 
all  things  human  are  kin  to  me,"  it  was  Robert  Burns.  In  this  respect  he 
is  the  Shakespeare  of  lyric  poetry. — J.  STUART  BLACKIE,  Burns. 

In  such  poets  as  Burns  and  Tennyson,  the  element  of  what  may  be 
called  human  reference  is  always  so  decided  that,  though  no  poets  describe 
nature  more  beautifully  when  they  have  occasion,  it  would  still  be  im- 
proper to  speak  of  them  specially  as  descriptive  poets.  To  borrow  a 
distinction  from  the  sister  art,  it  may  be  said  that,  if  Burns  and  Tennyson 
are  more  properly  classed  with  the  figure-painters,  notwithstanding  the 
extreme  beauty  and  finish  of  their  natural  backgrounds,  so,  on  the  same 
principle,  Wordsworth,  whose  skill  in  delineating  the  human  subject  is 
also  admitted,  may  yet  not  erroneously  be  classed  with  the  landscape- 
painters. — DAVID  MASSON,  Wordsworth,  Shelley,  Keats. 


BURNS,  BURTON,  BUSBY.  51 

No  wonder  the  peasantry  of  Scotland  have  loved  Burns  as  perhaps 
never  people  loved  a  poet.  He  not  only  sympathised  with  the  wants,  the 
trials,  the  joys  and  sorrows  of  their  obscure  lot,  but  he  interpreted  these 
to  themselves,  and  interpreted  them  to  others,  and  this  too  in  their  own 
language  made  musical,  and  glorified  by  genius.  He  made  the  poorest 
ploughman  proud  of  his  station  and  his  toil,  since  Robbie  Burns  had 
shared  and  sung  them.  He  awoke  a  sympathy  for  them  in  many  a  heart 
that  otherwise  would  never  have  known  it.  In  looking  up  to  him,  thei 
Scottish  people  have  seen  an  impersonation  of  themselves  on  a  large 
scale — of  themselves,  both  in  their  virtues  and  in  their  vices. — J.  C. 
SHAIRP,  Robert  Burns. 

ROBERT  BURTON. 

English  Writer:  1576-1639. 

The  book,  in  my  opinion,  most  useful  to  a  man  who  wishes  to  acquire 
the  reputation  of  being  well  read,  with  the  least  trouble,  is  Burton's 
Anatomy  of  Melancholy,  the  most  amusing  and  instructive  medley  of 
quotations  and  classical  anecdotes  I  ever  perused.  But  a  superficial 
reader  must  take  care,  or  his  intricacies  will  bewilder  him.  If,  however, 
he  has  patience  to  go  through  his  volumes,  he  will  be  more  improved  for 
literary  conversation  than  by  the  perusal  of  any  twenty  other  works  with 
which  I  am  acquainted,  at  least  in  the  English  language. — BYRON 
in  Moore's  Life  of  Byron. 

Burton's  Anatomy  of  Melancholy  is  a  valuable  work.  It  is,  perhaps, 
overloaded  with  quotation  ;  but  there  is  a  great  spirit  and  great  power  in 
what  Burton  says,  when  he  writes  from  his  own  mind.  It  is  the  only 
book  that  ever  took  me  out  of  bed  two  hours  sooner  than  I  wished  to 
rise. — DR.  JOHNSON. 

Twenty  lines  of  a  poet,  a  dozen  lines  of  a  treatise  on  agriculture,  a  folio 
page  of  heraldry,  a  description  of  rare  fishes,  a  paragraph  of  a  sermon  on 
patience,  the  record  of  the  fever  fits  of  hypochondria,  the  history  of  the 
particle  that,  a  scrap  of  metaphysics, — that  is  what  passes  through  his 
brain  in  a  quarter  of  an  hour  ;  it  is  a  carnival  of  ideas  and  phrases — Greek, 
Latin,  German,  French,  Italian,  philosophical,  geometrical,  medical,  poeti- 
cal, astrological,  musical,  pedagogical,  heaped  one  upon  the  other :  an 
enormous  medley,  a  prodigious  mass  of  jumbled  quotations,  jostling 
thoughts,  with  the  vivacity  and  the  transport  of  a  feast  of  unreason.  He 
is  never-ending ;  words,  phrases  overflow,  are  heaped  up,  overlap  each 
other,  and  flow  on,  carrying  the  reader  along,  deafened,  stunned,  half- 
drowned,  unable  to  touch  ground  in  the  deluge.  Burton  is  inexhaustible. 
There  are  no  ideas  which  he  does  not  iterate  under  fifty  forms,  and  when 
he  has  exhausted  his  own,  he  pours  out  upon  us  other  men's — the  classics, 
the  rarest  authors  known  only  to  the  savants — authors  rarer  still,  known 
only  to  the  learned  :  he  borrows  from  all. — HENRI  TAINK  (transl.). 

DR.  RICHARD  BUSBY. 
Head-Master  of  Westminster  School :    1606-1695. 

I  laugh,  and  wish  the  hot-brain'd  fustian  fool 
In  Busby's  hands,  to  be  well  lash'd  at  school. 

— EARL  OF  ROCHESTER,  An  Allusion. 


52  BUSBY,  BUTLER. 

When  Busby's  skill,  and  judgment  sage, 
Repress'd  the  poet's  frantic  rage, 
Cropt  his  luxuriance  bold,  and  blended  taught 
The  flow  of  numbers  with  the  strength  of  thought. 

— ROBERT  LLOYD,  Ode  spoken  at  Westminster  School. 

As  we  stood  before  Busby's  tomb  (in  Westminster  Abbey),  the  Knight 
(Sir  Roger  de  Coverley)  uttered  himself  again  in  the  same  manner,  "  Dr. 
Busby,  a  great  man !  he  whipped  my  grandfather !  a  very  great  man  .* 
I  should  have  gone  to  him  myself,  if  I  had  not  been  a  blockhead ;  a  very 
great  man  ". — ADDISON,  The  Spectator. 

JOSEPH  BUTLER. 
Bishop  of  Durham  :   1692-1752. 

Born  in  dissent,  and  in  the  school  of  schism 

Bred,  he  withstood  the  withering  influence 

Of  that  unwholesome  nurture.     To  the  Church, 

In  strength  of  mind,  nature  and  judgment  clear, 

A  convert,  in  sincerity  of  heart 

Seeking  the  truth,  deliberately  convinced, 

And  finding  there  the  truth  he  sought,  he  came. 

In  honour  must  his  high  desert  be  held 

While  there  is  any  virtue,  any  praise ; 

For  he  it  was  whose  gifted  intellect 

First  apprehended,  and  developed  first 

The  analogy  connate,  which  in  its  course 

And  constitution  Nature  manifests 

To  the  Creator's  word  and  will  divine ; 

And  in  the  depth  of  that  great  argument 

Laying  his  firm  foundation,  built  thereon 

Proofs  never  to  be  shaken  of  the  truths 

Reveal'd  from  Heav'n  in  mercy  to  mankind  ; 

Allying  thus  Philosophy  with  Faith, 

And  finding  in  things  seen  and  known,  the  type 

And  evidence  of  those  within  the  veil. 

— SOUTHEY,  Epitaph  on  Butler  in  Bristol  Cathedral  (11.  8— end). 

I  have  learned  from  four  writers  far  beyond  any,  perhaps  all,  others — 
Butler,  Aristotle,  Dante,  Saint  Augustine,  my  four  doctors. — W.  E. 
GLADSTONE,  Life  of  Manning,  Vol.  II. 

The  solid  sense  of  Butler  left  the  Deism  of  the  Freethinkers  not  a  leg 
to  stand  upon.  Perhaps,  however,  he  did  not  remember  the  wise  saying 
that  "  a  man  seemeth  right  in  his  own  cause,  but  another  cometh  after 
and  judgeth  him ".  Hume's  Epicurean  philosopher  adopts  the  main 
arguments  of  the  Analogy,  but  unfortunately  drives  them  home  to  a 
conclusion  of  which  the  good  Bishop  would  hardly  have  approved. — 
HUXLEY,  Hume. 

Ninety  years  subsequent  to  Gassendi  the  doctrine  of  bodily  instru- 
ments, as  it  may  be  called,  assumed  immense  importance  in  the  hands. 


BUTLER. 


53 


of  Bishop  Butler,  who,  in  his  famous  Analogy  of  Religion,  developed, 
from  his  own  point  of  view,  and  with  consummate  sagacity,  a  similar 
idea.  The  Bishop  still  influences  superior  minds.  .  .  .  This  is  the  key 
of  the  Bishop's  position;  "our  organised  bodies  are  no  more  a  part  of 
ourselves  than  any  other  matter  around  us".  In  proof  of  this  he  calls 
attention  to  the  use  of  glasses,  which  "prepare  objects"  for  the  per- 
cipient power  exactly  as  the  eye  does.  The  eye  itself  is  no  more 
percipient  than  the  glass ;  is  quite  as  much  the  instrument  of  the  true 
self,  and  also  as  foreign  to  the  true  self,  as  the  glass  is.  "  And  if  we  see 
with  our  eyes  only  in  the  same  manner  as  we  do  with  glasses,  the  like 
may  justly  be  concluded  from  analogy  of  all  our  senses." — TYNDALL, 
Address  before  the  British  Association  at  Belfast,  1874.  BBEAdJ  -:1JT"J 

Now  of  the  poetic  religion  there  is  nothing  in  Butler.  No  one  could 
tell  from  his  writings  that  the  universe  was  beautiful.  If  the  world  were 
a  Durham  mine  or  an  exact  square,  if  no  part  of  it  were  more  expressive 
than  a  gravel-pit  or  a  chalk-quarry,  the  teaching  of  Butler  would  be  as 
true  as  it  is  now.  A  young  poet,  not  a  very  wise  one,  once  said,  "  he  did 
not  like  the  Bible,  there  was  nothing  about  flowers  in  it ".  He  might 
have  said  so  of  Butler  with  great  truth ;  a  most  ugly  and  stupid  world 
one  would  fancy  his  books  were  written  in.  But  in  turn  and  by  way  of 
compensation  for  this,  there  is  a  religion  of  another  sort,  a  religion  the 
source  of  which  is  within  the  mind,  as  the  other's  was  found  to  be  in  the 
world  without ;  the  religion  to  which  we  have  just  now  alluded  as  the 
religion  (by  an  odd  yet  expressive  way  of  speaking)  of  superstition. — 
WALTER  BAGEHOT,  Literary  Studies,  Vol.  II. 

Perhaps  Butler  has  scarcely  yet  been  sufficiently  appreciated  as  the 
champion  of  "  Human  Nature  ".  He  cast  to  the  winds,  not  in  words 
exactly,  but  by  implication  in  almost  the  whole  course  of  his  argument, 
that  doctrine  of  its  total  depravity  which  was  held,  by  some  of  the  best 
men  of  his  day,  with  whom  on  other  grounds  he  would  have  gladly  made 
common  cause.  .  .  .  But  not  only  does  he  recognise  our  natural  affec- 
tions as  so  many  helps,  not  hindrances,  to  our  due  cultivation  of  goodwill 
to  men,  and  our  following  the  moral  rule  within  us,  but  he  holds  that  even 
our  passions  (using  the  word  in  its  lower  sense)  may  contribute  to  the 
same  end  if  kept  duly  under  control.  "  No  passion  that  God  has  en- 
dowed us  with  can  be  in  itself  evil."  Anger,  in  man's  moral  constitution, 
like  pain  in  the  natural  world,  is  but  an  instance  of  the  wisdom  and 
goodness  of  Him  who  made  us.  How  bold  and  wise  are  these  words ! — 
REV.  W.  L.  COLLINS,  Joseph  Butler. 

Butler  was,  I  think,  the  only  man  of  real  genius,  who,  between  the 
Restoration  and  the  Revolution,  showed  a  bitter  enmity  to  the  new 
philosophy,  as  it  was  then  called. — MACAULAY,  History  of  England,  Vol. 
I.,  ch.  3,  n. 

SAMUEL  BUTLER. 
English  Satirical  Poet:  1612-1680. 

Unmatch'd  by  all,  save  matchless  Hudibras. 

— BYRON. 


44  BUTLER,  BYNG. 

Though  Butler's  wit,  Pope's  numbers,  Prior's  ease, 
With  all  that  fancy  can  invent  to  please 
Adorn  the  polish'd  periods  as  they  fall, 
One  madrigal  of  theirs  is  worth  them  all. 

— COWPER,  Table  Talk. 

And  though  sometimes  a  lucky  hit 
May  give  a  zest  to  Butler's  wit ; 
Whatever  makes  the  measure  halt 
Is  beauty  seldom,  oft  a  fault. 

— ROBERT  LLOYD,  On  Rhyme. 

But  he  enfranchis'd  from  his  tutor's  care, 
Who  places  Butler  near  Cervantes'  chair. 

— DR.  JOHN  ARMSTRONG,  Taste. 

We  grant  that  Butler  ravishes  the  heart, 

As  Shakespeare  soar'd  beyond  the  reach  of  art. 

— WALTER  HARTE,  An  Essay  on  Satire. 

Sir  Hudibras  talks  Babylonian. 

— R.  A.  WILLMOTT,  Advantages  of  Literature. 

If  the  French  boast  the  learning  of  Rabelais,  we  need  not  be  afraid  of 
confronting  them  with  Butler.  If  inexhaustible  wit  could  give  perpetual 
pleasure,  no  eye  would  ever  leave  half-read  the  work  of  Butler ;  for  what 
poet  has  ever  brought  so  many  remote  images  so  happily  together  ?  It  is 
scarcely  possible  to  peruse  a  page  without  rinding  some  association  of 
images  that  was  never  found  before.  By  the  first  paragraph  the  reader 
is  amused,  by  the  next  he  is  delighted,  and  by  a  few  more  strained  to 
astonishment ;  but  astonishment  is  a  toilsome  pleasure ;  he  is  soon  weary 
of  wondering,  and  longs  to  be  diverted. — DR.  JOHNSON,  Lives  of  the  Poets  : 
Butler. 

Hudibras  is  an  Encyclopaedia  turned  topsy-turvy — a  large  joking 
Geography — a  Universal  History,  first  reduced  to  its  component  parts, 
and  then  bound  up  again  in  the  oddest  possible  style,  and  with  all  its 
pages  awry. — REV.  G.  GILFILLAN,  Introduction  to  Butler's  Works. 

The  perpetual  scintillation  of  Butler's  wit  is  too  dazzling  to  be  delight- 
ful ;  and  we  can  seldom  read  far  in  Hudibras  without  feeling  more  fatigue 
than  pleasure.  His  fancy  is  employed  with  the  profusion  of  a  spendthrift, 
by  whose  eternal  round  of  banqueting  his  guests  are  at  length  rather 
wearied  out  than  regaled. — SIR  WALTER  SCOTT,  Prose  Works,  Vol.  I. 

JOHN  BYNG. 
English  Admiral,  Executed  for  Error  of  Judgment :  1704-1757. 

We  think  the  punishment  of  the  Admiral  altogether  unjust  and  absurd. 
Treachery,  cowardice,  ignorance,  amounting  to  what  lawyers  have  called 
crassa  ignorantia,  are  fit  objects  of  severe  penal  inflictions.  But  Byng 
was  not  found  guilty  of  treachery,  of  cowardice,  or  of  gross  ignorance  of 
his  profession.  He  died  for  doing  what  the  most  loyal  subject,  the  most 
intrepid  warrior,  the  most  experienced  seaman,  might  have  done.  He  died 


BY  NO,  BYRON.  55 

for  an  error  in  judgment,  an  error  such  as  the  greatest  commanders, 
Frederic,  Napoleon,  Wellington,  have  often  committed,  and  have  often 
acknowledged. — MACAULAY,  Essays  :  The  Earl  of  Chatham. 

LORD  BYRON. 
English  Poet:  1788-1824. 

He  is  now  at  rest ; 

And  praise  and  blame  fall  on  his  ear  alike, 
Now  dull  in  death.     Yes,  Byron,  thou  art  gone, 
Gone  like  a  star  that  through  the  firmament 
Shot  and  was  lost,  in  its  eccentric  course, 
Dazzling,  perplexing.     Yet  thy  heart,  methinks, 
'Was  generous,  noble — noble  in  its  scorn 
Of  all  things  low  or  little ;  nothing  there 
Sordid  or  servile. 

— SAMUEL  ROGERS. 

Byron  !  how  sadly  sweet  thy  melody ! 

Attuning  still  the  soul  to  tenderness, 

As  if  soft  Pity,  with  unusual  stress, 

Had  touched  her  plaintive  lute,  and  thou,  being  by, 

Hadst  caught  the  tones,  nor  suffered  them  to  die. 

O'ershading  sorrow  doth  not  make  thee  less 

Delightful :  thou  thy  griefs  doth  dress 

With  a  bright  halo,  shining  beamily, 

.\s  when  a  cloud  the  golden  moon  doth  veil, 

Its  sides  are  tinged  with  a  resplendent  glow, 

Through  the  dark  robe  oft  amber  rays  prevail, 

And  like  fair  veins  in  sable  marble  flow ; 

Still  warble,  dying  swan  !  still  tell  the  tale, 

The  enchanting  tale,  the  tale  of  pleasing  woe. 

—KEATS,  To  Byron. 

When  Byron's  eyes  were  shut  in  death, 
We  bow'd  our  head  and  held  our  breath. 
He  taught  us  little  ;  but  our  soul 
Had  felt  him  like  the  thunder's  roll. 

—  MATTHEW  ARNOLD,  Memorial  Verses. 

What  helps  it  now,  that  Byron  bore, 

With  haughty  scorn  which  mock'd  the  smart, 

Through  Europe  to  the  ^Eolian  shore 

The  pageant  of  his  bleeding  heart  ? 

That  thousands  counted  every  groan, 

And  Europe  made  his  woe  her  own  ? 

— Id.,  Stanzas  from  the  Grand  Chartreuse. 

Nay,  Byron,  nay  !  not  under  where  we  tread, 
Dumb  weight  of  stone,  lies  thine  imperial  head ! 
Into  no  vault  lethargic,  dark  and  dank 
The  splendid  strength  of  thy  swift  spirit  sank  : 


56  BYRON. 

No  narrow  church  in  precincts  cold  and  grey 

Confines  the  plume  that  loved  to  breast  the  day ; 

Thy  self-consuming,  scathing  heart  of  flame 

Was  quenched  to  feed  no  silent  coffin's  shame  ! 

A  fierce,  glad  fire  in  buoyant  hearts  art  thou, 

A  radiance  in  auroral  spirits  now ; 

A  stormy  wind,  an  ever-sounding  ocean  ; 

A  life,  a  power,  a  never-wearying  motion  ! 

Or  deadly  gloom,  or  terrible  despair. 

An  earthquake-mockery  of  strong  creeds  that  were 

Assured  possession  of  calm  earth  and  sky, 

Where  doom-distraught  pale  souls  took  sanctuary, 

As  in  strong  temples.     The  same  blocks  shall  build, 

Iconoclast,  the  edifice  you  spilled, 

More  durable,  more  fair.     O  Scourge  of  God, 

It  was  Himself  who  urged  thee  on  thy  road. 

— RODEN  NOEL,  Byron's  Grave. 

Did  not  Byron's  heart  and  soul  overflow  with  all  manly  and  humane 
affections,  in  spite  of  spite,  and  during  the  very  disease  of  rancour  ?  Is 
not  one  love-poem  of  his,  breathed  one  hour,  and  forgotten  by  him  the 
next,  worth  all  the  drivelling  of  you  and  all  the  other  amiable  characters 
in  the  kingdom,  were  you  to  drivel  amatory  effusions  till  the  rheum 
ceased  to  flow  from  your  over-aged  eyes  ?  What  although  he  libelled 
his  way  through  society,  from  the  King  upon  the  throne  to  the  very 
meanest  of  his  subjects  ?  All  the  world  loves  his  memory. — JOHN  WILSON, 
Essays :  Streams. 

It  is  in  this  contrast  between  his  august  conceptions  of  man,  and  his 
contemptuous  opinion  of  men,  that  much  of  the  almost  incomprehensible 
charm,  and  power,  and  enchantment  of  his  poetry  exists.  We  feel  our- 
selves alternately  sunk  and  elevated,  as  if  the  hand  of  an  invisible  being 
had  command  over  us.  At  one  time  we  are  a  little  lower  than  the  angels  ; 
in  another,  but  little  higher  than  the  worms.  We  feel  that  our  elevation 
and  our  disgrace  are  alike  the  lot  of  our  nature ;  and  hence  the  poetry  of 
Byron  ...  is  read  as  a  dark,  but  still  a  divine  revelation. — Id.,  Ibid.  : 
Wordsworth. 

Byron  hits  the  mark  where  I  don't  even  pretend  to  fledge  my  arrow. — 
SIR  WALTER  SCOTT. 

What  Goethe  has  said  of  Byron  I  believe  to  be  true,  viz.,  "  He  was 
essentially  a  born  poet  ".  He  had  very  little  art,  very  little  of  the  ordinary 
knowledge  which  is  essential  to  most  writers,  whether  in  prose  or  verse. — 
LYTTON,  Essays  :  Knoivledge  of  the  World. 

Lord  Byron  founded  what  may  be  called  an  esoteric  Lake  school ;  and 
all  the  readers  of  verse  in  England,  we  might  say  in  Europe,  hastened  to 
sit  at  his  feet.  What  Mr.  Wordsworth  had  said  like  a  recluse,  Lord  Byron 
said  like  a  man  of  the  world,  with  less  profound  feeling,  but  with  more 
perspicuity,  energy,  and  conciseness. — MACAULAY,  Essays  :  Moore's  "  Life 
of  Lord  Byron  ". 

The  mass  of  sentimental  literature,  concerned  with  the  analysis  and 
description  of  emotion,  headed  by  the  poetry  of  Byron,  is  altogether  of 
lower  rank  than  the  literature  which  merely  describes  what  it  saw.  The 


BYRON.  57 

true  Seer  always  feels  as  intensely  as  any  one  else  ;  but  he  does  not  much 
describe  his  feelings. — RUSKIN,  Modern  Painters,  Vol.  III. 

Among  the  many  good-going  gentlemen  and  ladies,  Byron  is  generally 
spoken  of  with  horror — he  is  "so  wicked,"  forsooth;  while  poor  Shelley, 
"poor  dear  Shelley,"  is  "very  wrong,  of  course,"  but  "so  refined,"  "so 
beautiful,"  "  so  tender  " — a  fallen  angel,  while  Byron  is  a  satyr  and  a  devil. 
We  boldly  deny  the  verdict.  Neither  of  the  two  are  devils  ;  as  for  angels, 
when  we  have  seen  one,  we  shall  be  better  able  to  give  an  opinion ;  at 
present,  Shelley  is  in  our  eyes  far  less  like  one  of  those  old  Hebrew  and 
Miltonic  angels,  fallen  or  unfallen,  than  Byron  is. — KINGSLEY,  Literary 
find  General  Lectures. 

His  acule  sensibility,  intellectual  independence,  profound  thought,  and 
giant  soul,  would  have  fitted  Lord  Byron  to  become  the  model  of  an 
European  poet,  had  not  calumny,  envy,  and  the  lack  of  all  response  to  his 
own  aspiration  among  the  men  of  his  time,  driven  him  into  the  isolation 
of  despair. — MAZZINI,  Life  and  Writings,  Vol.  II. 

Under  a  thin  disguise  of  name,  country,  and  outward  incident,  they 
(the  poems]  present  us  with  the  desires  which  actuated,  the  passions 
which  agitated,  and  the  characters  which  were  the  ideals  of  the  fashion- 
able men  and  women  of  the  earlier  part  of  this  century.  Limited  and 
monotonous  as  they  are  in  their  essential  nature,  ringing  perpetual  changes 
upon  one  passion  and  one  phase  of  passion,  the  brilliance  of  their  diction, 
the  voluptuous  melody  of  their  verse,  the  picturesque  beauty  of  their 
scenery,  well  enough  represent  that  life  of  the  richer  classes,  which  chases 
with  outstretched  arms  all  the  Protean  forms  of  pleasure,  only  to  find  the 
subtle  essence  escape  as  soon  as  grasped,  leaving  behind  in  its  place 
weariness,  disappointment,  and  joyless  stagnation.  .  .  .  And  so,  into 
whatever  field  the  wide  and  restless  energies  of  men  like  Lord  Byron 
carry  them,  they  bring  home  no  treasures  that  will  endure — no  marble  of 
which  world-lasting  statue  or  palace  may  be  hewn  or  built— no  iron,  of 
which  world-subduing  machines  may  be  wrought. — GEORGE  BRIMLEY, 
Essays. 

His  passion  for  glory  was  not  of  the  genuine  stamp ;  he  thirsted  not  so 
much  for  fame  as  for  celebrity — celebrity  at  any  price.  This  was  the 
true  end  and  purpose  of  his  life,  though  he  here  and  there  denies  it.  He 
knew  .  .  .  only  too  well,  that  the  eyes  of  the  world  were  fixed  upon  him, 
and  he  did  his  utmost  to  maintain  the  fascination.  He  stood  before  the 
world  as  before  a  mirror,  and  the  pose  became  at  last  a  second  nature ; 
he  lived,  as  it  were,  on  the  stage,  and  coquetted  with  the  world.  Although 
he  pretended  to  despise  it,  he  could  not  live  without  its  admiration,  which 
he  claimed  even  for  his  faults.— KARL  ELZE,  Life  of  Lord  Byron. 

Byron  lived  longer  and  produced  more  than  his  brother  poets.  Yet  he 
was  extinguished  when  his  genius  was  still  ascendant,  when  his  swift  and 
fair  creations  were  issuing  like  worlds  from  an  archangel's  hands. — 
J.  ADDINGTON  SYMONDS,  Shelley. 

If  it  could  be  shown  that  all  the  evil  things  said  of  Byron  fall  short  of 
the  truth,  his  writings  would  be  no  less  delightful ;  could  he  be  proved  to 
have  been  as  pious  as  Heber,  his  poetry  would  be  none  the  better.— 
J.  CORDY  JEAFFRESON,  The  Real  Lord  Byron,  Vol.  II. 


58  BYRON. 

Byron's  mind  was,  like  his  own  ocean,  sublime  in  its  yesty  madness, 
beautiful  in  its  glittering  summer  brightness,  mighty  in  the  lone  magnifi- 
cence of  its  waste  of  waters,  gazed  upon  from  the  magic  of  its  own  nature, 
yet  capable  of  representing,  but  as  in  a  glass  darkly,  the  natures  of  all 
others. — LORD  BEACONSFIELD. 

It  was.  I  think,  pure  gain  for  Byron  to  be  no  mere  bookman,  hide-bound 
in  calf,  instead  of  human  skin,  and  treating  the  universe  as  so  much 
docile  material  for  such  as  he  to  make  pretty  little  things  out  of.  He  was 
a  Berserker,  whose  wild  spirit  found  vent  in  song,  and  his  was  a  bleeding 
human  heart,  even  though  he  made  of  it  "  a  pageant".  What  he  does 
has  the  salt  breath  of  impetuously  moving  sea,  the  thrill  of  warm-blooded 
life ;  his  fervid  voice  has  the  living  accent. — RODEN  NOEL,  Life  of  Lord 
Byron. 

It  was  an  easy  thing  for  Lord  Byron  to  be  a  great  poet ;  it  was  merely 
indulging  his  nature;  he  was  an  eagle  and  must  fly;  but  to  have  curbed 
his  wilful  humour,  soothed  his  fretful  discontent,  and  learned  to  behave 
like  a  reasonable  being  and  a  gentleman,  that  was  a  difficult  matter,  which 
he  does  not  seem  ever  seriously  to  have  attempted.  His  life,  therefore, 
with  all  his  genius,  and  fits  of  occasional  sublimity,  was,  on  the  whole,  a 
terrible  failure,  and  a  great  warning  to  all  who  are  willing  to  take  a 
lesson. — J.  STUART  BLACKIE,  On  Self-Culture. 

In  the  last  great  episode  of  his  own  career  Byron  was  as  lofty  as  the 
noblest  side  of  his  creed.  The  historic  feeling  for  the  unseen  benefactors 
of  old  time  was  matched  by  vehemence  of  sympathy  with  the  struggles  for 
liberation  of  his  own  day.  And  for  this,  history  will  not  forget  him. 
Though  he  may  have  no  place  in  our  own  Minster,  he  assuredly  belongs 
to  the  band  of  far-shining  men,  of  whom  Pericles  declared  the  whole  world 
to  be  the  tomb. — JOHN  MORLEY,  Miscellanies,  Vol.  I. 

Byron  has  no  relation  to  the  master-minds  whose  works  reflect  a  nation 
or  an  era,  and  who  keep  their  own  secrets.  His  verse  and  prose  is  alike 
biographical,  and  the  inequalities  of  his  style  are  those  of  his  career.  He 
lived  in  a  glass  case,  and  could  not  hide  himself  by  his  habit  of  burning 
blue  lights.  He  was  too  great  to  do  violence  to  his  nature,  which  was  not 
great  enough  to  be  really  consistent.  It  was  thus  natural  for  him  to  pose 
as  the  spokesman  of  two  ages — as  a  critic  and  as  an  author ;  and  of  two 
orders  of  society — as  a  peer,  and  as  a  poet  of  revolt.  Sincere  in  both,  he 
could  never  forget  the  one  character  in  the  other.  To  the  last,  he  was  an 
aristocrat  in  sentiment,  a  democrat  in  opinion.  .  .  .  This  scion  of  a  long 
line  of  lawless  bloods — a  Scandinavian  Berserker,  if  there  ever  was  one — 
the  literary  heir  of  the  Eddas — was  specially  created  to  wage  that  war — to 
smite  the  conventionality  which  is  the  tyrant  of  England  with  the  hammer 
of  Thor,  and  to  sear  with  the  sarcasm  of  Mephistopheles  the  hollow 
hypocrisy — sham  taste,  sham  morals,  sham  religion — of  the  society  by 
which  he  was  surrounded  and  infected,  and  which  all  but  succeeded  in 
seducing  him.  But  for  the  ethereal  essence, — 

The  fount  of  fiery  life 
Which  served  for  that  Titanic  strife, 

Byron  would  have  been  merely  a  more  melodious  Moore  and  a  more 
accomplished  Brummel.  But  the  caged  lion  was  only  half  tamed,  and 
his  continual  growls  were  his  redemption. — JOHN  NICHOL,  Life  of  Byron. 


C.J-SAK.  59 

CAIUS  JULIUS  C.^SAR. 
Roman  Dictator  :  B.C.  100-44. 

This  Julius  to  the  Capitolie  wente 
Upon  a  day,  as  he  was  wonte  to  gon, 
And  in  the  Capitolie  anon  him  hente 
This  false  Brutus  and  his  other  soon, 
And  stiked  him  with  bodekins  anon 
With  many  a  wound. 

—CHAUCER,  The  Monkcs  Talc. 

Antony  :  "  O  mighty  Caesar  !  dost  thou  lie  so  low  ? 

Are  all  thy  conquests,  glories,  triumphs,  spoils. 

Shrunk  to  this  little  measure  ?     Fare  thee  well. 

I  know  not,  gentlemen,  what  you  intend, 

Who  else  must  be  let  blood,  who  else  is  rank ; 

If  I  myself,  there  is  no  hour  so  fit 

As  Caesar's  death-hour  ;  nor  no  instrument 

Of  half  that  worth  as  those  your  swords,  made  rich 

With  the  most  noble  blood  of  all  this  world." 

— SHAKESPERE,  Julius  Ccesar. 

Antony  :  "  Here  was  a  Caesar  !  when  comes  such  another  ? 
Never,  never !  " 

—Id.,  Ibid. 

There  Caesar,  grac'd  with  both  Minervas,  shone  ; 
Caesar,  the  world's  great  master,  and  his  own. 

— POPE,  The  Temple  of  Fame. 

The  laurel  wreaths  were  first  by  Caesar  worn, 
And  still  they  Caesar's  successors  adorn  : 
One  leaf  of  this  is  immortality, 
And  more  of  worth  than  all  the  world  can  buy. 

— DRYDEN,  TJie  Flower  and  the  Leaf. 

That  Julius,  with  ambitious  thoughts, 
Had  virtues  too,  his  foes  could  find  ; 
These  equal  him  in  all  his  faults, 
But  never  in  his  noble  mind. 

— SHEFFIELD,   DUKE  OF    BUCKINGHAMSHIRE,  Chorus  III. 
in  Marcus  Brutus. 

Or  to  the  nobler  Caesar,  on  whose  brow 
O'er  daring  vice  deluding  virtue  smil'd, 
And  who  no  less  a  vein  superior  scorn'd. 
Both  bled  but  bled  in  vain. 

— THOMSON,  Liberty. 

When  Caesar  in  the  senate  fell, 
Did  not  the  sun  eclips'd  foretell, 
And  in  resentment  of  his  slaughter, 
Look'd  pale  for  almost  a  year  after  ? 

— SAMUEL  BUTLER,  Hudibras. 


60  C.ESAR,  CALIGULA,  CALVIN. 

Caesar — the  greatest  man  of  ancient  times. — LORD  BROUGHAM,  States- 
men of  the  Time  of  George  III.,  Vol  II. 

Caesar  was  endowed  with  every  great  and  noble  quality  that  could 
exalt  human  nature,  and  give  a  man  the  ascendant  in  society  ;  formed  to 
excel  in  peace,  as  well  as  war  ;  provident  in  council ;  fearless  in  action  ; 
and  executing  what  he  had  resolved  with  an  amazing  celerity ;  generous 
beyond  measure  to  his  friends ;  placable  to  his  enemies ;  and  for  parts, 
learning,  eloquence,  scarce  inferior  to  any  man. — DR.  CONYERS  MIDDLETON. 

Did  not  Julius  Caesar  show  himself  as  much  of  a  man  in  conducting 
his  campaigns  as  in  composing  his  Commentaries? — HAZLITT,  Table 
Talk. 

In  this  class  three  men  stand  pre-eminent,  Caesar,  Cromwell  and 
Bonaparte.  The  highest  place  in  this  remarkable  triumvirate  belongs 
undoubtedly  to  Caesar.  He  united  the  talents  of  Bonaparte  to  those  of 
Cromwell ;  and  he  possessed  also,  what  neither  Cromwell  nor  Bonaparte 
possessed,  learning,  taste,  wit,  eloquence,  the  sentiments  and  the  manners 
of  an  accomplished  gentleman. — MACAULAY,  Essays  :  Hallam's  "-Con- 
stitutional History  ". 

CALIGULA. 
Roman  Emperor :  12-41. 

So  wise  Caligula,  in  days  of  yore, 
His  helmet  fill'd  with  pebbles  on  the  shore, 
Swore  he  had  rifled  ocean's  richest  spoils, 
And  claim'd  a  trophy  for  his  martial  toils. 

— DAVID  MALLET,  Of  Verbal  Criticism. 

The  ladies  prove  averse, 
And  more  untoward  to  be  won 
Than  by  Caligula  the  moon. 

— SAMUEL  BUTLER,  Hudibras,  Part  III. 

So  th'  Emperor  Caligula, 
That  triumph'd  o'er  the  British  sea, 
Took  crabs  and  oysters  prisoners, 
And  lobsters,  'stead  of  cuirassiers  ; 
Engag'd  his  legions  in  fierce  bustles, 
With  periwinkles,  prawns,  and  mussles, 
And  led  his  troops  with  furious  gallops, 
To  charge  whole  regiments  of  scallops. 

— Id.,  Ibid. 

JOHN  CALVIN. 
Swiss  Reformer:    1509-1564. 

One  thinks,  on  Calvin  Heaven's  own  Spirit  fell  ; 
Another  deems  him  instrument  of  Hell. 
If  Calvin  feel  Heaven's  blessing,  or  its  rod, 
This  cries  there  is,  and  that,  there  is  no,  God. 

— POPE,  Essay  on  Man,  Epistle  IV. 


CALVIN.  6 1 

But  Calvin's  dogma  shall  my  lips  deride  ? 
In  that  stern  faith  my  angel  Mary  died. 

— OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES,  A  Rhymed  Lesson. 

No  one  can  suppose  that  Calvin  did  not  deem  that  the  angels  smiled 
approbation  when  he  burned  Servetus. — LYTTON,  Essays  :  Self-Control. 

Calvin  was  incomparably  the  wisest  man  that  ever  the  French  Church 
enjoyed. — RICHARD  HOOKER. 

Calvin  has  been  taxed  with  fierceness  and  bigotry.  But  his  meekness 
and  benevolence  were  as  eminent  as  the  malice  of  his  traducers  is  shame- 
less.— TOPLADY. 

Nevertheless,  for  hard  times,  hard  men  are  needed,  and  intellects  which 
can  pierce  to  the  roots  where  truth  and  lies  part  company.  It  fares  ill 
with  the  soldiers  of  religion  when  "  the  accursed  thing  "  is  in  their  camp. 
And  this  is  to  be  said  of  Calvin,  that  so  far  as  the  state  of  knowledge 
permitted,  no  eye  could  have  detected  more  keenly  the  unsound  spots  in 
the  received  creed  of  the  Church,  nor  was  there  reformer  in  Europe  so 
resolute  to  exercise,  tear  our,  and  destroy  what  was  distinctly  seen  to  be 
false — so  resolute  to  establish  what  was  true  in  its  place,  and  make  truth 
to  the  last  fibre  of  it  the  rule  of  practical  life. — J.  A.  FROUDE,  Calvinism* 

Unless  I  can  get  from  you  some  of  your  moderate  and  charitable  and 
two-sided  notions,  I  shall  begin  to  regard  Calvin  as  a  child  of  the  Devil, 
and  Calvinism  as  the  upas-tree,  which  Satan  planted  in  the  Lord's  garden 
at  the  Reformation  to  poison  all  with  its  shade.  The  influence  of 
Calvinism  abroad  seems  to  me  to  have  been  uniformly  ruinous,  destructive 
equally  of  political  and  moral  life,  a  blot  and  a  scandal  on  the  Reformation  ; 
and  now  that  it  has  at  last  got  the  upper  hand  in  England,  can  we  say 
much  more  for  it  ? — KINGSLEY,  Letter  to  F.  D.  Maurice. 

There  was  an  infinite  amount  of  what  was  good  and  noble  about  himr 
despite  his  own  ingenuous  confession,  to  which  the  episode  of  Servetus 
attaches  force,  that  he  was  "  a  ferocious  beast,  animated  by  great  and 
numerous  vices". — REV.  F.  ARNOLD,  Reminiscences  of  a  Literary  and 
Clerical  Life,  Vol.  I. 

History,  as  Dollinger  has  said,  is  no  simple  game  of  abstractions ;  men 
are  more  than  doctrines.  It  is  not  a  certain  theory  of  grace  that  makes 
the  Reformation  ;  it  is  Luther,  it  is  Calvin.  Calvin  shaped  the  mould  in 
which  the  bronze  of  Puritanism  was  cast.  That  commanding  figure,  of 
such  vast  power  yet  somehow  with  so  little  lustre,  by  his  unbending  will, 
his  pride,  his  severity,  his  French  spirit  of  system,  his  gift  for  government, 
for  legislation,  for  dialectic  in  every  field,  his  incomparable  industry  and 
persistence,  had  conquered  a  more  than  pontificial  ascendancy  in  the 
Protestant  world.  He  meets  us  in  England,  as  in  Scotland,  Holland, 
France,  Switzerland,  and  the  rising  England  across  the  Atlantic.  He 
was  dead  (1564)  a  generation  before  Cromwell  was  born,  but  his  influence 
was  still  at  its  height.  Nothing  less  than  to  create  in  man  a  new  nature 
was  his  far-reaching  aim,  to  regenerate  character,  to  simplify  and  con- 
solidate religious  faith.  .  .  .  It  is  a  theory  that  might  have  been  expected 
to  sink  men  crouching  and  paralysed  into  the  blackest  abysses  of  despair, 
and  it  has  in  fact  been  answerable  for  much  anguish  in  many  a  human 
heart.  Still  Calvinism  has  proved  itself  a  famous  soil  for  rearing  heroic 


€2  CALVIN,  CAMDEN,  CAMPBELL. 

natures.  Founded  on  St.  Paul  and  on  Augustine  .  .  .  Calvinism  exalted 
its  votaries  to  a  pitch  of  heroic  moral  energy  that  has  never  been  surpassed. 
— JOHN  MORLEV,  Oliver  Cromwell. 

WILLIAM  CAMDEN. 
English  Antiquary:  1551-1623. 

Camden,  most  reverend  head,  to  whom  I  owe 
All  that  I  am  in  arts,  all  that  I  know. 

— BEN  JONSON,  Epigram  to  William  Camden. 

Cambden!  the  nourice  of  Antiquity, 

And  lanthorn  unto  late  succeeding  age, 

To  see  the  light  of  simple  verity, 

Buried  in  ruines,  through  the  great  outrage 

Of  her  own  people,  led  with  warlike  rage  ; 

Cambden  !  though  time  all  monuments  obscure, 

Yet  thy  just  labours  ever  shall  endure. 

— SPENSER,  The  Ruines  of  Time. 

THOMAS  CAMPBELL. 
ScottisJi  Poet:  1777-1844. 

Why,  how  now,  saucy  Tom  ? 
If  you  thus  must  ramble, 
I  will  publish  some 
Remarks  on  Mister  Campbell. 

— BYRON,   Bowles  and  Campbell. 

Come  forth,  O  Campbell !  give  thy  talents  scope ; 
Who  dares  aspire  if  thou  must  cease  to  hope. 

— Id.,  English  Bards  and  Scotch  Reviewers. 

But  many  admire  it,  the  English  pentameter, 

And  Campbell,  I  think,  wrote  most  commonly  worse, 

With  less  nerve,  swing,  and  fire  in  the  same  kind  of  verse. 

— J.  R.  LOWELL,  A  Fable  for  Critics. 

The  lyric  fire  of  Campbell. — SIR  ARCHIBALD  ALISON,  Essays :  the 
Greek  Drama. 

Campbell  was  himself  a  master  in  a  distinct  school  of  poetry,  and 
distinguished  by  a  very  peculiar  and  fastidious  style  of  composition. — 
— LORD  JEFFREY,  Essays. 

Thomas  Campbell  is  the  other  pet  poet — the  last  of  all  the  flock.  Ay 
— he,  we  allow,  is  a  star  that  will  know  no  setting ;  but  of  this  we  can 
assure  the  world  .  .  .  that  were  Mr.  Campbell's  soul  deified,  and  a  star 
in  the  sky,  and  told  by  Apollo,  who  placed  him  in  the  blue  region,  that 
Scott  and  Byron  were  both  buried  somewhere  between  the  Devil  and  the 
Deep  Sea,  he,  the  author  of  LochieVs  Warning,  would  either  leap  from 
heaven  in  disdain,  ori  nsist  on  there  being  instanter  one  triple  constellation. 
What  to  do  with  his  friend  Mr.  Rogers,  it  might  not  be  easy  for  Mr. 


CAMPBELL,  CANNING.  63 

Campbell  to  imagine  or  propose  at  such  a  critical  juncture ;  but  \ve  think 
it  probable  that  he  would  hint  to  Apollo,  on  the  appearance  of  his  Lord- 
ship and  the  Baronet,  that  the  Banker,  with  a  few  other  pretty  poets, 
might  be  permitted  to  scintillate  away  to  all  eternity  as  their — Tail. — JOHN 
WILSON,  Essays  :  Days  Departed. 

What  a  pity  it  is  that  Campbell  does  not  write  more  and  oftener,  and 
give  full  sweep  to  his  genius !  He  has  wings  that  would  bear  him  to  the 
skies ;  and  he  does,  now  and  then,  spread  them  grandly,  but  folds  them 
up  again,  and  resumes  his  perch,  as  if  he  was  afraid  to  launch  away. — 
SIR  WALTER  SCOTT,  Lockharfs  Life,  Vol.  I. 

Campbell  was  greatly  more  of  a  poet  in  faculty  than  he  was  in  fact  and 
performance.  Few  men  have  approached  nearer  to  a  poet  in  the  former 
respect  than  he  did ;  and  it  was  only  his  almost  morbid  delicacy  of  taste, 
of  tact,  and  of  ear,  and  his  extreme  fastidiousness,  which  prevented  him 
from  turning  his  powers  to  much  greater  practical  results  than  he  did. 
No  man  ever  enjoyed  so  high  and  wide  a  poetical  reputation  upon  so 
slender  an  amount  of  actual  performance,  and  yet  no  man  ever  deserved 
his  reputation  more  truly  than  Campbell  did.  Had  it  not  been  so,  he 
would  have  done  more  ;  and,  perhaps,  have  done  better.  But  he  had 
none  of  that  vulgar  hungering  and  hankering  after  fame  which,  write 
what  they  will  to  the  contrary,  no  real  poet  ever  felt  as  anything  more  than 
a  momentary  aspiration.  Campbell  knew  and  felt  that  he  was  a  poet ;  and 
as  the  world  in  some  sort  assented  to  his  own  faith  on  this  point,  he  was 
content  "  to  know  no  more  ".  .  .  .  Tom  Campbell  was  a  very  good  fellow, 
and  a  very  pleasant  one  withal ;  but  he  prevented  Thomas  Campbell  from 
being  a  great  poet,  though  not  from  doing  great  things  in  poetry. — P.  G. 
PATMORE,  My  Friends  and  Acquaintances,  Vol.  I. 

GEORGE  CANNING. 
English  Prime  Minister  :  1770-1827. 

Even  this  thy  genius,  Canning !  may  permit, 
Who,  bred  a  statesman,  still  wast  born  a  wit, 
And  never,  even  in  that  dull  House,  couldst  tame 
To  unleaven'd  prose  thine  own  poetic  flame ; 
Our  last,  our  best,  our  only  orator, 
Even  I  can  praise  thee — Tories  do  no  more. 

— BYRON,  The  Age  of  Bronze. 

Or,  like  Canning,  have  silenced  and  charm'd  a  tumultuous  Senate, 
When  to  the  height  of  his  theme,  the  consummate  Orator  rising, 
Makes  our  Catilines  pale,  and  rejoices  the  friends  of  their  country. 

— ROBERT  SOUTHEY,  A  Vision  of  Judgment. 

I  was  bred  under  the  shadow  of  the  great  name  of  Canning. — W.  E. 
GLADSTONE. 

The  death  of  the  Premier  is  announced — late  George  Canning — the 
witty,  the  accomplished,  the  ambitious ;  he  who  had  toiled  thirty  years, 
and  involved  himself  in  the  most  harassing  discussions,  to  attain  this 
dizzy  height ;  he  who  had  held  it  for  three  months  of  intrigue  and  obloquy 
— and  now  a  heap  of  dust,  and  that  is  all. — SIR  WALTER  SCOTT  in 
LOCKHART,  Life  of  Scott. 


64  CANNING,  CAN  OVA,  CANUTE. 

Canning's  wit  is  infallible.  It  is  never  out  of  time  or  place,  and  is  finely 
proportioned  to  its  object.  Has  he  a  good-natured,  gentlemanly,  well- 
educated  blockhead — say  of  the  landed  interest — to  make  ridiculous,  he 
does  it  so  pleasantly,  that  the  Esquire  joins  in  the  general  smile.  Is  it  a 
coarse  calculating  dunce  of  the  mercantile  school,  he  suddenly  hits  him 
such  a  heavy  blow  on  the  organ  of  number,  that  the  stunned  economist  is 
unable  to  sum  up  the  total  of  the  whole.  Would  some  pert  prig  of  the  pro- 
fession be  facetious  overmuch,  Canning  ventures  to  the  very  borders  of 
vulgarity,  and  discomforts  him  with  an  old  Joe.  Doth  some  mouthing 
member  of  the  mediocrity  sport  orator,  and  make  use  of  a  dead  tongue, 
then  the  classical  secretary  runs  him  through  and  through  with  apt 
quotations,  and  before  the  member  feels  himself  wounded,  the  whole 
House  sees  that  he  is  a  dead  man.—  JOHN  WILSON,  Nodes  Ambrosiana:, 
Vol.  I. 

First  Canning,  and  then  Brougham,  may  be  said,  for  a  certain  time,  to 
have  represented,  more  than  any  other  individuals,  the  common  Intellectual 
Spirit ;  and  the  interest  usually  devoted  to  the  imaginative,  was  trans- 
ferred to  the  real. — LYTTON,  England  and  the  English :  Intellectual  Spirit. 

I  never  saw  Mr.  Canning  but  once,  but  I  can  recollect  it  but  as  yester- 
day, when  I  listened  to  almost  the  last  accents — I  may  say  the  dying 
words — of  that  great  man.  I  can  recall  the  lightning  flash  of  that  eye, 
and  the  tumult  of  that  ethereal  brow  ;  still  lingers  in  my  ear  the  melody 
of  that  voice. — LORD  BEACONSFIELD. 

Canning,  a  great  master  of  sparkling  fancy  and  of  playful  sarcasm. — 
W.  E.  H.  LECKY,  History  of  England,  Vol.  I. 

Men  not  measures — in  these  three  words  the  political  creed  of  George 
Canning  is  summed  up.  It  mattered  little  to  him  whether  a  man  was 
Whig  or  Tory,  Papist  or  Protestant,  provided  that  in  seasons  of  crisis  he 
knew  how  to  mould  circumstances  to  the  best  advantage,  to  inspire  con- 
fidence in  his  followers,  and  to  do  battle  against  the  common  danger  till 
it  bites  the  dust.  History  teaches  us  that  in  this  maxim  of  Canning  there 
is  no  little  truth. — A.  C.  EWALD,  Representative  Statesmen,  Vol.  II. 

ANTONIO  CANOVA. 
Italian  Sculptor :  1757-1822. 

Thy  decay 

Is  still  impregnate  with  divinity, 
Which  gilds  it  with  revivifying  ray  ; 
Such  as  the  great  of  yore,  Canova  is  to-day. 

— BYRON,  Childe  Harold's  Pilgrimage. 

CANUTE. 
King  of  Denmark  and  England:  994-1035. 

A  pleasant  music  floats  along  the  mere, 

From  monks  in  Ely  chanting  service  high, 

While  as  Canute  the  King  is  rowing  by 

"  My  oarsmen,"  quoth  the  mighty  King,  "draw  near, 

That  we  the  sweet  song  of  the  monks-may  hear  ". 

— WORDSWORTH,  Canute, 


CANUTE,  CARACTACUS,  CARLYLE.  65 

No : — the  wild  wave  contemns  your  sceptred  hand  ; — 
It  roll'd  not  back  when  Canute  gave  command. 

— CAMPBELL. 

Now  at  Xerxes  and  Knut  we  all  laugh,  yet  our  foot 

With  the  same  wave  is  wet  that  mocked  Xerxes  and  Knut. 

— J.  R.  LOWELL,  A  Fable  for  Critics. 

King  Canute  died.     Encoffined  he  was  laid. 
Of  Aarhus  came  the  Bishop  prayers  to  say, 
And  sang  a  hymn  upon  his  tomb,  and  held 
That  Canute  was  a  saint — Canute  the  Great, 
That  from  his  memory  breathed  celestial  perfume, 
And  that  they  saw  him,  they  the  priests,  in  glory, 
Seated  at  God's  right  hand,  a  prophet  crowned. 

— VICTOR  HUGO,  Poems  collected  by  H.  L.  Williams. 

CARACTACUS. 
King  of  the  Silures  :  fl.  50. 

All  which  his  sonne  Careticus  awhile 
Shall  well  defend  and  Saxons  powre  suppresse, 
Untill  a  straunger  king  from  unknowne  soyle 
Arriving,  him  with  multitude  oppresse. 

— SPENSER,  The  Faerie  Quecne. 

The  spirit  of  Caractacus  defends 
The  patriots,  animates  their  glorious  task  : — 
Amazement  runs  before  the  towering  casque 
Of  Arthur,  bearing  through  the  stormy  field 
The  Virgin  sculptured  on  his  Christian  shield. 

— WORDSWORTH,  Struggle  of  the  Britons. 

THOMAS  CARLYLE. 
English  Philosopher  and  Historian  :  1795-1881. 

To  compare  with  Plato  would  be  vastly  fairer. 
Carlyle's  the  more  burly,  but  E.  [Emerson]  is  the  rarer. 

— J.  R.  LOWELL,  A  Fable  for  Critics. 

She  is  talking  aesthetics,  the  dear  clever  creature ; 
Upon  man  and  his  functions  she  speaks  with  a  smile, 
Her  ideas  are  divine  upon  Art,  upon  Nature, 
The  Sublime,  the  Heroic,  and  Mr.  Carlyle. 

— OWEN  MEREDITH  (LORD  LYTTON),  Midges. 

Gods  spring  from  dust,  and  Hero- Worship  wakes. 
Out  of  that  Past  the  humble  Present  makes. 

— LYTTON,  The  New  Timon. 

Shoddy  :  "  And  mighty  Carlyle,  whose  Cyclopean  skull, 
Encloses  forges,  and  furnaces,  and  foundries 
Of  molten  metallic  thought." 

5 


66  CARLYLE. 

Gas:  "Is  he  a  poet?" 

Shoddy  :  "  Aye  Sir,  a  poet,  a  very  Vesuvius, 

A  deep  of  song,  an  intellectual  ocean, 

Wherein  Leviathan  disports  himself, 

And  at  each  breath  snorts  water-spouts  of  thought, 

Clothed  in  hues  of  myriad-tinted  rainbows!  " 

Gas :  "  Tis  true,  he's  a  whole  Typhos,  hundred-headed, 

Whose  jerks  and  throes  breed  earthquakes  ;  but  his  style 

Is  rather  addicted  to  hobbling.     Is  it  not  ?  " 

Shoddy  :  "  'Tis  a  divine  and  transcendental  hobbling! 

Rough,  smoke-begrimed,  and  haggard  like  old  Vulcan, 

He  has  his  charms,  for  Venus  is  his  spouse, 

And  the  three  graces  ever  move  around  him. 

His  forged  words  are  spears,  and  shields  and  swords, 

And  helmets  terror-crested  Gorgon-like  : — 

Meet  armour  for  an  age  of  heroic  workers  !  " 

— MILO  MAHAN,  Yorkshireman  in  Boston. 

The  pure  lightning  of  Carlyle.  ...  I  find  Carlyle's  stronger  thinking 
colouring  mine  continually ;  and  should  be  very  sorry  if  I  did  not ; 
otherwise  I  should  have  read  him  to  little  purpose. — RUSKIN,  Modern 
Painters,  Vol.  III. 

Carlyle  was  a  man  from  his  youth,  an  author  who  did  not  need  to  hide 
from  his  readers,  and  as  absolute  a  man  of  the  world,  unknown  and  exiled 
on  that  hill-farm,  as  if  holding  on  his  own  terms  what  is  best  in  London. 
— EMERSON,  First  Visit  to  England. 

As  a  representative  author,  a  literary  figure,  no  man  else  will  bequeath 
to  the  future  more  significant  hints  of  our  stormy  era,  its  fierce  paradoxes, 
its  din,  and  its  struggling  periods,  than  Carlyle.  He  belongs  to  our  own 
branch  of  the  stock,  too ;  neither  Latin  nor  Greek,  but  altogether  Gothic. 
Rugged,  mountainous,  volcanic,  he  was  himself  more  a  French  Revolution 
than  any  of  his  volumes.  ...  As  launching  into  the  self-complacent 
atmosphere  of  our  days  a  rasping,  questioning,  dislocating  agitation  and 
shock,  is  Carlyle's  final  value. — WALT  WHITMAN,  Specimen  Days. 

No  surer  does  the  Auldgarth  bridge,  that  his  father  helped  to  build, 
•carry  the  traveller  over  the  turbulent  water  beneath  it,  than  Carlyle's 
books  convey  the  reader  over  chasms  and  confusions,  where  before  there 
"was  no  way,  or  only  an  inadequate  one. — JOHN  BURROUGHS. 

Carlyle  is  an  old  Hebrew  prophet,  who  goes  to  prince  and  beggar,  and 
says,  "  If  you  do  this  or  that  you  will  go  to  Hell,  not  the  hell  the  priests 
talk  of— but  a  hell  on  this  earth  ". — KINGSLEY,  Letters  and  Memoirs. 
Vol.  I. 

St.  Thomas  Coprostom,  late  of  Craigenputtock  and  Chelsea.  .  .  .  The 
Gospel  according  to  St.  Coprostom  has  the  invaluable  merit  of  pungent 
eccentricity  and  comparatively  novel  paradox.  The  evangelist  of  "  golden 
silence  " — whose  own  speech,  it  may  be  admitted,  was  "  quite  other  "  than 
"silvern" — is  logically  justified  in  his  blatant  but  ineffable  contempt  for 
the  dull  old  doctrines  of  mere  mercy  and  righteousness,  of  liberty  that 
knows  no  higher  law  than  duty,  of  duty  that  depends  for  its  existence  on 
the  existence  of  liberty. — SWINRURNE,  A  Study  of  Victor  Hugo. 


CARLYLE.  67 

Thomas  Carlyle,  it  is  true,  puts  on  the  gloves  with  the  ostensible  and 
single  purpose  of  covering  the  fair  fame  of  a  friend  [Sterling] ;  but  his  foot 
once  in  the  ring,  his  arm  once  fairly  raised,  and  he  thinks  of  nothing  but 
punishing  the  foe.  And  what  a  foe  !  We  may  doubt  the  prudence  of  the 
undertaking,  but  who  shall  question  the  valour  of  the  man  who,  single- 
handed,  takes  upon  himself  to  thrash  the  whole  world  ? — SAMUEL  PHILLIPS, 
Essays  from  "  The  Times  ". 

Carlyle,  the  apostle  of  agnostic  stoicism. — FRANCIS  DE  PRESSENS£, 
Cardinal  Manning. 

One  of  those  enquiring  minds,  who  are  to  history  what  ex'cavators  are 
to  monuments — Thomas  Carlyle. — LAMARTINE,  Celebrated  Characters 
(transl.},  Vol.  II. 

•  Mr.  Carlyle  is  no  homoeopathist ;  he  never  administers  remedies  for  evil 
in  infinitesimal  doses ;  he  never  pollutes  the  sacredness  of  thought  by  out- 
ward concession  or  compromise  with  error.  .  .  .  There  is  profit  for  us  in  the 
very  errors  of  a  writer  like  Carlyle. — MAZZINI,  Life  and  Writings,  Vol.  IV. 

The  most  obvious  of  all  remarks  about  Carlyle  is  one  expressed  (I  think) 
by  Sir  Henry  Taylor  in  the  phrase  that  he  was  a  "  Calvinist  who  had  lost 
his  creed".  Rather  we  should  say  he  was  Calvinist  who  had  dropped  the 
dogmas  out  of  his  creed. — LESLIE  STEPHEN,  Hours  in  a  Library,  Vol.  III. 

Carlyle's  dazzling  effects  of  white  light  are  frequently  surrounded  by  the 
blackest  gloom. — J.  COTTER  MORISON,  Life  of  Macaulay. 

Carlylism  is  the  male  of  Byronism.  It  is  Byronism  with  thew  and  sinew, 
bass  pipe  and  shaggy  bosom. — JOHN  MORLEY,  Miscellanies,  Vol.  I. 

Carlyle's  style  is  Carlylese.  It  would  be  the  most  affected  of  affectations 
for  any  one  else  to  write  in  it.  To  him  it  was  perfectly  natural — as  natural 
.as  the  Miltonic  style  was  to  Milton.  And  that  is  its  sufficient  vindication. 
It  was  the  only  style  in  which  he  could  deliver  his  prophetic  message. — 
W.  S.  LILLY,  Four  English  Humourists. 

Carlyle  cannot  be  killed  by  an  epigram,  nor  can  the  many  influences 
that  moulded  him  be  referred  to  any  single  source.  The  rich  banquet  his 
genius  has  spread  for  us  is  of  many  courses.  .  .  .  Carlyle's  eye  was  indeed  a 
terrible  organ  :  he  saw  everything. — AUGUSTINE  BIRRELL,  Obiter  Dicta, 
First  Series. 

Carlyle  no  doubt  was  a  great  talker — no  man  talked  against  talk  or 
broke  silence  to  praise  it  more  eloquently  than  he,  but  unfortunately  none 
of  it  is  in  evidence.  All  that  is  given  us  is  a  sort  of  Commination  Service 
writ  large.  We  soon  weary  of  it.  Man  does  not  live  by  curses  alone. — 
Id.,  Ibid.,  Second  Series. 

The  dominant  stratum  ot  Carlyle's  character  was  morality,  hard  Scotch 
granite,  out  of  which  the  sweetest  waters  could  break,  and  on  whose  top 
soil  the  tenderest  seedlings  could  thrive — humour,  pathos,  poetry,  the  most 
subduing  gentleness,  all  were  there ;  but  the  main  formation  of  his  mind 
was  all  the  same  vehement  sternness,  with  more  than  a  touch  of  the 
Pharisaism  that  metes  and  judges,  and  swears  by  the  law  rather  than  the 
gospel.  He  had  little  love  of  music,  no  love  of  art,  and  considerable 


68  CARLYLE. 

contempt  for  any  poetry  but  the  poetry  of  action. — W.  J.  DAWSON,  Quest 
and  Vision. 

Carlyle,  if  not  the  greatest  prose  master  of  our  age,  must  be  held  to  be,, 
by  virtue  of  his  original  genius  and  mass  of  stroke,  the  literary  Dictator 
of  Victorian  prose.  And,  though  we  all  know  how  wantonly  he  often 
misused  his  mighty  gift,  though  no  one  would  venture  to  imitate  him  even 
at  a  distance,  and  though  Matthew  Arnold  was  ever  taking  up  his  parable 
«  Flee  Carlylese  as  the  very  Devil !  " — we  are  sliding  into  Carlylese  un- 
consciously from  time  to  time,  and  even  Culture  itself  fell  into  the  trap  in 
the  very  act  of  warning  others. — FREDERIC  HARRISON,  Studies  in  Early 
Victorian  Literature. 

Shelley  works  his  will  with  language  gracefully,  as  one  guides  a  spirited 
steed ;  Carlyle  with  convulsive  effort,  as  one  hammers  a  red-hot  bar,  but 
in  both  cases  the  end  is  achieved.  The  two  should  be  painted,  like  Plato 
and  Verulam  in  the  Palace  of  Art,  as  twin  masters  of  speech,  if  such 
masters  have  pupils.  But  such  power  is  not  granted  for  the  expression  ot 
vain  and  shallow  thought,  and  whoever  shares  their  gift  will  stand  by 
their  side.  .  .  .  But  it  is  not  as  a  man  of  letters  that  we  would  chiefly 
think  of  Carlyle,  nor  is  it  in  his  study  that  we  would  part  with  him. 
Great  and  deathless  writer  as  he  was,  he  will  be  honoured  by  posterity 
for  his  influence  on  human  life,  rather  than  for  his  supremacy  as  a  literary 
artist.  "  The  way  to  test  how  much  he  has  left  his  country,"  says  a  great 
writer  of  another  country,  "were  to  consider,  or  try  to  consider,  for  a 
moment,  the  array  of  British  thought,  the  resultant  ensemble  of  the  last 
fifty  years,  as  existing  to-day,  but  with  Carlyle  left  out.  It  would  be  like 
an  army  with  no  artillery."  The  true  legend  for  his  monument  is  the 
dying  witness  of  John  Sterling  :  "  Towards  England  no  man  has  been  and 
done  like  you". — RICHARD  GARNETT,  Carlyle. 

Carlyle  adopted  the  stirring  and  dignified  hypothesis,  that  the  working  of 
the  universe  is  informed  with  purpose,  that,  come  how  it  may,  good  in 
the  end  must  be  the  final  goal  of  ill  ;  and  if  this  be  true,  Laborare  est 
orare  is  not  the  stern  incredible  creed  it  would  appear.- — P.  ANDERSON 
GRAHAM,  Nature  in  Books. 

In  one  sense,  Carlyle  was  as  a  city  set  upon  a  hill,  that  cannot  be  hid ; 
in  another,  he  was  an  "  open  secret,"  hid  by  the  very  simplicity  of  his 
unconscious  disguises,  the  frank  perversities  whose  meaning  could  be 
known  only  by  those  close  enough  to  hear  the  heart-beat  beneath  them  ; 
and  many  who  have  fancied  that  they  had  him  rightly  labelled  with  some 
moody  utterance,  or  safely  pigeon-holed  in  some  outbreak  of  a  soul 
acquainted  with  grief,  will  be  found  to  have  measured  the  oak  by  it& 
mistletoe.  .  .  .  Graduation  from  "Carlyle  Close,"  now  a  shamble,  to  the 
highest  intellectual  distinction  of  the  nineteenth  century  implies  the 
realization  of  several  worlds  dim  to  others.  Out  of  a  depth  like  this  his 
voice  will  always  go  forth,  and  to  it  the  deeps  will  always  answer.  The 
influence  of  Carlyle  will  never  "  stop  "  :  wherever  shams  are  falling,  his 
sturdy  blows  will  still  be  heard ;  generations  of  the  free  will  recognize 
that  they  are  offspring  of  the  fire  in  his  heart,  burning  all  fetters ;  and 
when  the  morning  stars  sing  together  of  dawning  days,  when  heroes  of 
humanity  replace  nobles  without  nobility  and  bauble-crowned  kings, 
his  voice,  so  long  a  burden  of  pain,  will  be  heard  again  rising  into  song.. 
— MONCURE  CONWAY,  Thomas  Carlyle. 


CARTERET,  CASSIUS,  CASTLEREAGH.  69 

JOHN  CARTERET,  EARL  OF  GRANVILLE. 
Lord-Lieutenant  of  Ireland  :  1690-1763. 

Go,  Carteret,  go ;  and,  with  thee,  go  along 
The  nation's  blessing,  and  the  poet's  song; 
Loud  acclamations,  with  melodious  rays, 
The  kindest  wishes,  and  sincerest  praise. 

— AMBROSE  PHILIPS,  To  Lord  Carteret. 

No  public  man  of  that  age  had  greater  courage,  greater  ambition,  greater 
activity,  greater  talents  for  debate,  or  for  declamation.  No  public  man 
had  such  profound  and  extensive  learning.  He  was  familiar  with  the 
ancient  writers,  and  loved  to  sit  up  till  midnight  discussing  philological 
and  metrical  questions  with  Bentley.  His  knowledge  of  modern  lan- 
guages was  prodigious.  The  privy  council,  when  he  was  present,  needed 
no  interpreter.  He  spoke  and  wrote  French,  Italian,  Spanish,  Portuguese, 
German,  even  Swedish.  .  .  .  With  all  his  learning,  Carteret  was  far  from 
being  a  pedant.  His  was  not  one  of  those  cold  spirits  of  which  the  fire  is 
put  out  by  the  fuel.  In  council,  in  debate,  in  society,  he  was  all  life  and 
energy. — MACAULAY,  Essays  :  Horace  Walpole. 

CASSIUS  LONGINUS. 
Roman  Tribune  of  the  People  :  d.  B.C.  42. 

Ccesar :  "  Let  me  have  men  about  me  that  are  fat ; 

Sleek-headed  men,  and  such  as  sleep  o'  nights  : 

Yond  Cassius  has  a  lean  and  hungry  look  ; 

He  thinks  too  much :  such  men  are  dangerous." 

Antony  :  "  Fear  him  not,  Caesar  ;  he's  not  dangerous ; 

He  is  a  noble  Roman,  and  well  given." 

Ccesar :  "  Would  he  were  fatter  !  but  I  fear  him  not : 

Yet  if  my  name  were  liable  to  fear, 

I  do  not  know  the  man  I  should  avoid 

So  soon  as  that  spare  Cassius." 

— SHAKESPEARE,  Julius  Ccesar. 

Titinius  :  "  But  Cassius  is  no  more.     O  setting  sun, 
As  in  thy  red  rays  thou  dost  sink  to-night, 
So  in  his  red  blood  Cassius'  day  is  set, 
The  sun  of  Rome  is  set." 

— Id.,  Ibid. 

LORD  ROBERT  CASTLEREAGH. 
English  Statesman:  1769-1822. 

Oh  Castlereagh  !  thou  art  a  patriot  now  ; 
Cato  died  for  his  country,  so  didst  thou : 
He  perished  rather  than  see  Rome  enslaved, 
Thou  cutt'st  thy  throat  that  Britain  may  be  saved. 

— LORD  BYRON,  Epigram. 


7o  CASTLEREAGH,  CATILINE,  CATO. 

And  ne'er  (enough)  lamented  Castlereagh, 
Whose  pen-knife  slit  a  goose-quill  t'other  day. 

— LORD  BYRON,  The  Age  of  Bronze. 

Lord  Castlereagh  is  certainly  the  most  striking  example  of  the  effects 
produced  by  our  Parliamentary  system  of  Government  in  most  unjustly 
lowering  the  reputation  of  public  men  who  happen  not  to  succeed  in  de- 
bate.— LORD  BROUGHAM,  Statesmen  of  the  Time  of  George  III.,  Vol.  II. 

I  would  rather  be  Lord  Castlereagh,  as  far  as  a  sense  of  power  is 
concerned  (principle  is  out  of  the  question),  than  such  a  man  as  Mr. 
Canning,  who  is  a  mere  fluent  sophist,  and  never  knows  the  limits  of  dis- 
cretion.— HAZLITT,  Table  Talk. 


Lucius  SERGIUS  CATILINE. 
Roman  Patrician  :  B.C.  109-62. 

Reason  the  bias  turns  to  good  from  ill, 
And  Nero  reigns  a  Titus  if  he  will. 
The  fiery  soul  abhorr'd  in  Catiline, 
In  Decius  charms,  in  Curtius  is  divine. 

— POPE,  Essay  on  Man. 

Shall  treason  walk  ?  shall  proud  oppression  yoke 
The  neck  of  virtue  !    Lo  the  wretch  abash'd, 
Self-betray'd  Catiline ! 

— DYER,  The  Ruins  of  Rome. 

Waiting  till  discord  havoc  cries, 
In  hopes,  like  Catiline,  to  rise 
On  anarchy  to  pow'r  ! 

— EDWARD  MOORE,  The  Discovery. 

MARCUS  PORTIUS  CATO. 
Roman  Philosopher:  B.C.  95-46. 

All  that  the  sun  surveys  subdued, 

But  Cato's  mighty  mind. 
How  grand  !  most  true  ;  yet  far  beneath 

The  soul  of  the  resign'd, 

To  more  than  kingdoms,  more  than  worlds, 

To  passion  that  gives  law ; 
Its  matchless  empire  could  have  kept 

Great  Cato's  pride  in  awe. 

— YOUNG,  Resignation. 

Unconquer'd  Cato,  virtuous  in  extreme. 

— THOMSON,  The  Seasons  :  Winter. 

Describe  his  awful  look,  and  God-like  mind, 
And  Caesar's  power  with  Cato's  virtue  join'd. 

— ADDISON,  Cato  :  A  Tragedy. 


CM  TO,  CAXTON.  71 

But  where  shall  Cato's  praise  begin  or  end ; 
Inclin'd  to  melt,  and  yet  untaught  to  bend, 
The  firmest  patriot,  and  the  gentlest  friend  ? 
How  great  his  genius. 

— GEORGE  JEFFREYS,  Recommend  itory  Poem  of  Addison's  "  Cato  ". 

And  Cato,  dying,  seem'd  to  own  he  fear'd. 

— PRIOR,  Carmen  Secularc. 

Had  Cato  bent  beneath  the  conquering  cause, 
He  might  have  liv'd  to  give  new  senates  laws  ; 
But  on  vile  terms  disdaining  to  be  great, 
He  perish'd  by  his  choice,  and  not  his  fate. 

— LORD  LANSDOWNE,  Occasioned  by  the  foregoing  Verses. 

Once  Cato's  virtue  did  the  gods  oppose  ; 
While  they  the  victor,  he  the  vanquish'd  chose. 

— DRYDEN,  Epistle  III. 

Even  by  the  rule  of  that  philosophy, 
By  which  I  did  blame  Cato  for  the  death 
Which  he  did  give  himself:   I  know  not  how, 
But  I  do  find  it  cowardly  and  vile. 

— SHAKESPEARE,  Julius  Ccesar. 

If  we  consider  the  character  of  Cato  without  prejudice,  he  was  certainly 
a  great  and  worthy  man  ;  a  friend  to  truth,  virtue,  liberty ;  yet  false  by 
measuring  all  duty  by  the  absurd  vigour  of  the  stoical  rule,  he  was 
generally  disappointed  of  the  end  which  he  sought  by  it,  the  happiness 
both  of  his  private  and  public  life.  .  .  .  The  last  act  of  his  life  was 
agreeable  to  his  nature  and  philosophy  :  when  he  could  no  longer  be 
what  he  had  been  ;  or  when  the  ills  of  life  overbalanced  the  good  ;  which, 
by  the  principles  of  his  sect,  was  a  just  cause  for  dying  ;  he  put  an  end  to 
his  life  with  a  spirit  and  resolution  which  would  make  one  imagine  that 
he  was  glad  to  have  found  an  occasion  of  dying  in  his  proper  character. 
On  the  whole,  his  life  was  rather  admirable  than  amiable  ;  fit  to  be 
praised,  rather  than  imitated. — DR.  CONYERS  MIDDLETON. 


WILLIAM  CAXTON. 
Introducer  of  Printing  into  England  :  1422-91. 

Thy  prayer  was  Light — more  Light — while  Time  shall  last ! 

Thou  sawest  a  glory  growing  on  the  night, 
But  not  the  shadows  which  that  light  would  cast, 

Till  shadows  vanish  in  the  Light  of  Light. 

— TENNYSON,  Epitaph  on  Caxton. 

We  submit  that  Caxton's  press  in  Westminister  Abbey,  rude  as  it  is, 
ought  to  be  looked  at  with  quite  as  much  respect  as  the  best  constructed 
machinery  that  ever,  in  our  time,  impressed  the  clearest  type  on  the  finest 
paper. — MACAULAY,  Essays  :  Sir  James  Mackintosh. 

Thank  Heaven,  such  times  are  past ;  never,  let  us  hope,  to  return  !  The 
printing  press  will  save  the  world.  Let  us  place  the  inventor  of  it,  then, 


?2  CAXTON,  CERVANTES-SAAVEDRA. 

at  the  head  of  mankind,  after  Memnon,  the  inventor  of  letters. — CHARLES 
BUCKE,  Book  of  Human  Character. 

MIGUEL  DE  CERVANTES-SAAVEDRA. 
Spanish  Novelist  and  Poet :  1547-1616. 

The  chymic  secret  which  your  pains  would  find, 
Breaks  out,  unsought  for,  in  Cervantes'  mind; 
And  Quixote's  wildness,  like  that  king's  of  old, 
Turns  all  he  touches  into  pomp  and  gold. 

— WALTER  HARTE,  Essay  on  Satire. 

Till  by  the  muses  arm'd,  in  all  the  ire 

Of  wit,  resistless  as  electric  fire, 

Forth  rode  La  Mancha's  knight ;  and  sudden  fled 

Goblins  and  beauteous  nymphs,  and  pagans  dread, 

As  the  delirious  dream  of  sickness  flies, 

When  health  returning  smiles  from  vernal  skies. 

— W.  J.  MICKLE,  Epistle  from  Lisbon. 

Don  Quixote  is  the  only  book  in  the  Spanish  language  which  can  now  be 
said  to  possess  much  of  an  European  reputation.  It  has,  however,  enjoyed 
enough  to  compensate  for  the  neglect  of  all  the  rest. — HALLAM,  Introduc- 
tion t<)  the  Literature  of  Europe,  Vol.  III. 

Don  Quixote  and  Sancho  Panza  can  never  have  less  than  a  world  of 
admirers  and  lovers.  Where  they  pass,  there  will  ever  be  laughter  and 
sympathy — the  first  infallible,  the  other  according  to  the  capacity  of  the 
reader.  The  most  ignorant  person  who  is  within  the  range  of  education 
at  all  understands  the  allusions,  of  which  all  literature  is  full,  to  those  two 
personages  and  their  ways ;  and  those  who  are  without  that  range  have 
perhaps  a  heartier  delight  still  in  the  wonderful  adventures  which  a  child 
can  understand,  though  a  wise  man  cannot  exhaust  them. — MRS.  OLIPHANT, 
Cervantes. 

Cervantes  is  in  the  front  rank  of  all  imaginative  creators,  because  he 
has  given  birth  to  Don  Quixote  and  Sancho  Panza. — LESLIE  STEPHEN, 
Hours  in  a  Library,  First  Series. 

Hardly  is  there  one  immortal  book  the  reading  of  which  does  not 
provoke  to  sadness ;  the  mirth  of  Cervantes  himself  ends  in  tears,  like  the 
tragical  fifth  Act  of  Biography. — P.  ANDERSON  GRAHAM,  Nature  in  Books. 

Cervantes,  as  poet,  has  the  three  sovereign  gifts  ;  creation,  which 
produces  types,  and  clothes  ideas  with  flesh  and  bone ;  invention,  which 
hurls  passions  against  events,  makes  man  flash  brightly  over  destiny,  and 
brings  forth  the  drama ;  imagination,  sun  of  the  brain,  which  throws  light 
and  shade  everywhere,  and,  giving  relievo,  creates  life.  Observation, 
which  is  acquired,  and  which,  in  consequence,  is  a  quality  rather  than  a 
gift,  is  inclrded  in  creation.  If  the  miser  was  not  observed,  Harpagon 
would  not  be  created.  In  Cervantes,  a  newcomer,  glimpsed  at  in  Rabelais, 
puts  in  a  decided  appearance ;  it  is  common-sense.  You  have  caught 
sight  of  it  in  Panurge,  you  see  it  plainly  in  Sancho  Panza.  It  arrives 
like  the  Silenus  of  Plautus,  and  it  may  also  say,  "  I  am  the  god  mounted 
on  an  ass". — VICTOR  HUGO,  William  Shakespeare  (trausl.). 


CHALMERS,  CHANNING.  73 

DR.  THOMAS  CHALMERS. 
Scottish  Clergyman  and  Natural  Philosopher  :  1780-1847. 

A  man  whose  name  will  always  remain  illustrious  as  perhaps  the  most 
distinguished  son  and  greatest  ornament  of  the  Presbyterian  system — I 
mean  Dr.  Chalmers. — W.  E.  GLADSTONE. 

It  was  a  smart  saying  of  Robert  Hall,  that  the  mind  of  Chalmers 
seemed  to  "  move  on  hinges,  not  on  wheels.  There  is  incessant  motion, 
but  no  progress."  Hall  was  more  discursive  in  thought,  and  in  style  far 
more  finished.  But  Chalmers  knew  what  he  was  about,  and  secured  the 
effect  at  which  he  aimed.  He  concentrated  his  force  on  one  important 
truth  at  a  time,  turned  it  round  and  round  in  every  light,  and  would  not 
leave  it  till  he  had  made  full  demonstration  of  it  to  those  who  heard  him, 
and  pressed  it  home  upon  them  with  all  his  energy.  Till  this  was 
^accomplished  he  would  not,  and  could  not,  pass  on  to  other  matters.  In 
this  sense  it  may  be  admitted  that  he  moved — he  was  born  to  move — on 
hinges,  and  not  on  wheels.  And  it  must  also  be  admitted  that  this,  while 
it  may  arrest  and  convince  an  audience,  may  not  suit  so  well  the  quiet 
examination  of  students.  .  .  .  Let  Thomas  Chalmers  be  remembered. 
Those  who  knew  him  need  no  such  exhortation,  those  who  were  his 
students  or  his  helpers  cry  with  an  air  of  triumph,  "  We  were  with 
Chalmers,"  as  soldiers  who  had  been  in  the  Peninsular  or  at  Waterloo 
used  to  say,  "  We  were  with  Wellington  ". — DR.  DONALD  FRASER, 
Thomas  Chalmers. 

Dr.  Chalmers  was  a  ruler  among  men  :  this  we  know  historically  ;  this 
every  man  who  came  within  his  range  felt  at  once.  He  was  like  Aga- 
memnon, a  native  «i/a|  av8pcai>,  and  with  all  his  homeliness  of  feature  and 
deportment,  and  his  perfect  simplicity  of  expression,  there  was  about  him 
"that  divinity  that  doth  hedge  a  king".  You  felt  a  power,  in  him,  and 
going  from  him,  drawing  you  to  him  in  spite  of  yourself.  He  was  in  this 
respect  a  solar  man,  he  drew  after  him  his  own  firmament  of  planets. 
They,  like  all  free  agents,  had  their  centrifugal  forces  acting  ever  towards 
an  independent,  solitary  course,  but  the  centripetal  also  was  there,  and  they 
moved  with  and  around  their  imperial  sun, — gracefully  or  not,  as  the  case 
might  be,  but  there  was  no  breaking  loose :  they  again,  in  their  own  spheres 
of  power,  might  have  their  attendant  moons,  but  all  were  bound  to  the  great 
massive  luminary  in  the  midst.  .  .  .  Dr.  Chalmers  would  have  made  a 
sorry  Balaam ;  he  was  made  of  different  stuff,  and  for  other  purposes. 
Your  respectable  men  are  ever  doing  their  best  to  keep  their  status,  to 
maintain  their  position.  He  never  troubled  himself  about  his  status; 
indeed,  we  would  say  status  was  not  the  word  for  him.  He  had  a  sedes 
on  which  he  sat,  and  from  which  he  spoke :  he  had  an  itnperium,  to  and 
fro  which  he  roamed  as  he  listed :  but  a  status  was  as  little  in  his  way  as 
in  that  of  a  Mauritanian  lion. — DR.  JOHN  BROWN,  Horce  Subsecivce,  Second 
•Series. 

DR.  WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING. 
American  Unitarian  :  1780-1842. 

And  Channing  with  his  bland  superior  look, 
Cool  as  a  moonbeam  on  a  frozen  brook. 

— OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES,  Vestigia  Quinque  Retrorsnm. 


74  CHANNING,  CHARLEMAGNE,  CHARLES  I. 

Farewell !  good  man,  good  angel  now  !  this  hand, 

Soon  like  thine  own,  shall  lose  its  cunning,  too ; 
Soon  shall  this  soul,  like  thine,  bewildered  stand, 

Then  leap  to  thread  the  free,  unfathomed  blue. 

— J.  R.  LOWELL,  Channing* 

CHARLEMAGNE. 
Emperor  of  the  West:  742-814. 

A  sway  surpassing  that  of  Charlemagne. 

— BYRON,  The  Age  of  Bronze.. 

Turn  then  to  Pharamond  and  Charlemain, 
And  the  long  heroes  of  the  Gallic  strain  ; 
Experienc'd  chiefs,  for  hardy  prowess  known, 
And  bloody  wreaths  in  venturous  battles  won. 

— PRIOR,  Carmen  Secularc. 

Messengers  of  God  and  masters  of  men,  five  kings,  in  whose  arms  the- 
life  of  the  world  lay  as  a  nursling  babe.  .  .  .  Theodoric,  Charlemagne,, 
Alfred,  Canute,  and  the  Confessor. — RUSKIN. 

Three  Christain  Kings,  Henry  the  Fowler  in  Germany,  Charlemagne 
in  France,  and  Alfred  in  England,  typically  represent  the  justice  of 
humanity,  gradually  forming  the  feudal  system  out  of  the  ruined  elements- 
of  Roman  luxury  and  law. — Id.,  Fors  Clavigera,  Vol.  II. 

But,  perhaps  the  greatest  eulogy  of  Charlemagne  is  written  in  the  dis- 
graces of  succeeding  times  and  the  miseries  of  Europe.  He  stands  alone, 
like  a  beacon  upon  a  waste,  or  a  rock  in  the  broad  ocean.  His  sceptre 
was  the  bow  of  Ulysses,  which  could  not  be  drawn  by  any  weaker  hand- 
In  the  dark  ages  of  European  history  the  reign  of  Charlemagne  affords  a 
solitary  resting-place  between  two  long  periods  of  turbulence  and  ignominy.. 
— HALLAM,  The  Student's  Middle  Ages. 

CHARLES  I. 
King  of  England  :  1600-1649. 

Strajford  :  "  From  this  day  begins 

A  new  life,  founded  on  a  new  belief 

In  Charles." 

Hollis  :  "  In  Charles  ?     Rather  believe  in  Pym  !  " 

— ROBERT  BROWNING,  Strafford. 

King  Charles,  and  who'll  do  him  right  now  ? 
King  Charles,  and  who's  ripe  for  fight  now  ? 
Give  a  rouse :  here's,  in  hell's  despite  now, 
King  Charles ! 

— Id.,  Cavalier  Tunes. 

Earth  cannot  check.     Oh,  terrible  excess 

Of  headstrong  will !     Can  this  be  pity  ? 

No — some  fierce  maniac  hath  usurped  her  name, 


CHARLES  I.  75 

And  scourges  England  struggling  to  be  free : 
Her  peace  destroyed !  her  hopes  a  wilderness ! 
Her  blessings  cursed — her  glory  turned  to  shame ! 

— WORDSWORTH,  Troubles  of  Charles  the  First. 

Him  I  knew :  and  the  Stuart,  he  who,  serene  in  his  meekness, 
Bow'd  his  anointed  head  beneath  the  axe  of  rebellion, 
Calm  in  that  insolent  hour,  and  over  his  fortune  triumphant. 

— SOUTHEY,  A  Vision  of  Judgment* 

God  save  King  Charles  !  God  knows  that  pleasant  knave 
His  grace  will  find  it  hard  enough  to  save. 

— OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES,  Vestigia  Qiiinquc  Retrorsnin. 

The  martyrs'  blood  was  said,  of  old,  to  be 

The  seed  from  whence   the  church  did  grow : 

The  royal  blood  which  dying  Charles  did  sow, 

Becomes  no  less  the  seed  of  royalty  : 

'Twas  in  dishonour  sown, 

We  find  it  now  in  glory  grown. 

— COVVLEY,  Odes,  IX. 

How  many  books  are  still  written  and  published  about  Charles  the 
First  and  his  times !  Such  is  the  fresh  and  enduring  interest  of  that 
grand  crisis  of  morals,  religion  and  government ! — S.  T.  COLERIDGE,. 
Table  Talk. 

We  detest  the  character  of  Charles ;  but  a  man  ought  not  to  be 
removed  by  a  law  ex  post  facto,  even  constitutionally  procured,  merely 
because  he  is  detestable.  He  must  also  be  very  dangerous.  We  can 
scarcely  conceive  that  any  danger  which  a  state  can  apprehend  from  any 
individual  could  justify  the  violent  measures  which  were  necessary  to 
procure  a  sentence  against  Charles. — MACAULAY,  Essays  :  Hallani. 

The  Evil  Genius  of  the  House  of  Stuart.  .  .  .  Charles  acted  at  this 
conjuncture  as  he  acted  at  every  important  conjuncture  throughout  his 
life.  After  oppressing,  threatening,  and  blustering,  he  hesitated  and 
failed.  He  was  bold  in  the  wrong  place,  and  timid  in  the  wrong  place. — 
Id.,  Ibid.  :  John  Hampden. 

Charles  I.,  with  a  person  and  countenance  that,  seen  in  the  canvas  of 
Vandyke,  command  our  admiring  interest,  failed  to  conciliate  or  impose 
on  those  whom  he  addressed.  .  .  .  An  ungracious  and  chilling  manner,, 
an  imperfection  of  speech,  a  something  about  the  living  man  which  the 
painter  has  not  transferred  to  the  portrait,  seem  to  have  made  him 
singularly  unsuccessful  wherever  he  relied  on  the  effect  of  his  presence. 
But  of  this  he  was  insensible. — LYTTON,  Essays  :  Pym  versus  Falkland* 

We  regard  the  death  of  Charles  as  an  atrocious  and  abominable 
murder,  vindicated  by  no  reasons  of  expedience,  authorised  by  no  prin- 
ciple of  justice,  which  has  lowered  for  ever  England  to  the  level  of  the 
adjoining  nations  in  the  scale  of  crime;  and  which  had  it  not  been 
vindicated  by  subsequent  loyalty  and  chivalrous  feeling  in  the  better  part 
of  the  people,  would  long  since  have  extinguished  alike  its  liberties  and 
its  independence. — SIR  ARCHIBALD  ALISON,  Essays  :  Macaulay. 

King  Charles  I.  was  a  prince  whose  conduct  was  grave  and  pure,  and 
whose  piety  was  acknowledged  ;  and  was  diligent,  learned  and  frugal,  but 


76  CHARLES  I.,  CHARLES  II. 

little  given  to  prodigality ;  reserved,  yet  not  morose ;  dignified,  yet  not 
arrogant ;  he  maintained  order  and  decorum  in  his  house ;  his  whole 
demeanour  announced  a  noble,  upright  mind ;  a  friend  of  justice  ;  his 
deportment  and  manners  awed  his  courtiers  and  pleased  his  subjects,  his 
virtues  had  gained  him  the  esteem  of  all  good  people.  But  neither  Charles 
nor  the  English  knew  how  much  they  were  estranged  from  each  other, 
nor  the  causes  at  work,  and  growing  into  power  to  prevent  them  from 
mutually  appreciating  each  other. — F.  P.  G.  GUIZOT  (transl.). 

The  blood  of  the  Royal  Martyr  has  been  the  seed  of  flunkeyism  from  that 
day  to  this.  What  man,  what  woman,  feels  any  sentimental  attachment 
to  the  memory  of  James  II.  ?  There  would  have  been  less  attachment,  it 
possible,  to  the  memory  of  the  weak  and  perfidious  Charles,  if  his  weakness 
and  his  perfidy  had  not  been  glorified  by  his  death. — GOLDWIN  SMITH, 
Three  English  Statesmen. 

Charles  had  neither  vision  nor  grasp.  It  is  not  enough  to  say  that  he 
was  undone  by  his  duplicity.  There  are  unluckily  far  too  many  awkward 
cases  in  history  where  duplicity  has  come  off  triumphant.  Charles  was 
double,  as  a  man  of  inferior  understanding  would  be  double  who  had 
much  studied  Bacon's  essay  on  Simulation  and  Dissimulation,  without 
digesting  it  or  ever  deeply  marking  its  first  sentence,  that  dissimulation 
is  but  a  faint  kind  of  policy  or  wisdom,  for  it  asketh  a  strong  wit  and  a 
strong  heart  to  know  when  to  tell  truth  and  to  do  it ;  therefore  it  is  the 
worst  sort  of  politicians  that  are  the  great  dissemblers.  This  pregnant 
truth  Charles  never  took  to  heart.  His  fault — and  no  statesman  can  have 
a  worse— was  that  he  never  saw  things  as  they  were.  He  had  taste, 
imagination,  logic,  but  he  was  a  dreamer,  an  idealist,  and  a  theoriser,  in 
which  there  might  have  been  good  rather  than  evil  if  only  his  dreams, 
theories,  and  ideals  had  not  been  out  of  relation  with  the  hard  duties  of  a 
day  of  storm.  ...  In  other  words,  he  was  the  Royal  Egotist  without  the 
mask.  .  .  . 

This  at  least  is  certain,  that  the  execution  of  Charles  I.  kindled  and 
nursed  for  many  generations  a  lasting  flame  of  cant,  flunkeyism,  or  what- 
ever else  be  the  right  name  of  spurious  and  unmanly  sentimentalism,  more 
lively  than  is  associated  with  any  other  business  in  our  whole  national 
history. 

The  two  most  sensible  things  to  be  said  about  the  trial  and  execution 
of  Charles  I.  have  often  been  said  before.  One  is  that  the  proceeding 
was  an  act  of  war,  and  was  just  as  defensible  or  just  as  assailable,  and  on 
the  same  grounds,  as  the  war  itself.  The  other  remark,  thought  tolerably 
conclusive  alike  by  Milton  and  by  Voltaire,  is  that  the  regicides  treated 
Charles  precisely  as  Charles,  if  he  had  won  the  game,  undoubtedly  promised 
himself  with  law  or  without  law  that  he  would  treat  them.  The  author  of 
the  attempt  upon  the  Five  Members  in  1642  was  not  entitled  to  plead 
punctilious  demurrers  to  a  revolutionary  jurisdiction.  From  the  first  it 
had  been  My  head  or  thy  head,  and  Charles  had  lost. — JOHN  MORLEY, 
Oliver  Cromwell. 

CHARLES  II. 
King  of  England  :  1630-1685. 

Who  comes  with  rapture  greeted,  and  caressed 
With  frantic  love — his  kingdom  to  regain  ? 


CHARLES  II.  77 

Him  virtue's  nurse,  adversity,  in  vain 

Received,  and  fostered  in  her  iron  breast : 

For  all  she  taught  of  hardiest  and  of  best, 

Or  would  have  taught,  by  discipline  of  pain 

And  long  privation,  now  dissolves  amain, 

Or  is  remembered  only  to  give  zest 

To  wantonness. — Away,  Circean  revels  ! 

Already  stands  our  country  on  the  brink 

Of  bigot  rage,  that  all  distinction  levels 

Of  truth  and  falsehood,  swallowing  the  good  name, 

And,  with  that  draught,  the  life-blood,  misery,  shame, 

By  poets  loathed ;  from  which  historians  shrink ! 

— WORDSWORTH,  diaries  the  Second. 

•But  when  the  second  Charles  assumed  the  sway, 

And  arts  revived  beneath  a  softer  day, 

Then,  like  a  bow  long  forced  into  a  curve, 

The  mind,  released  from  too  constrained  a  nerve, 

Flew  to  its  first  position  with  a  spring 

That  made  the  vaulted  roofs  of  pleasure  ring. 

His  court,  the  dissolute  and  hateful  school 

Of  wantonness,  where  vice  was  taught  by  rule, 

Swarm'd  with  a  scribbling  herd,  as  deep  inlaid 

With  brutal  lust  as  ever  Circe  made. 

— COWPER,' Table  Talk. 

Here  lies  our  sovereign  lord  the  King, 
Whose  word  no  man  relies  on  ; 
He  never  says  a  foolish  thing, 
Nor  ever  does  a  wise  one. 

— EARL   OF    ROCHESTER,   Written   on  the  Bed-C/iamber 
Door  of  Charles  II. 

Farewell,  great  Charles,  monarch  of  blest  renown, 
The  best  good  man  that  ever  fill'd  a  throne  : 
Whom  Nature  as  her  highest  pattern  wrought, 
And  mix'd  both  sexes'  virtues  in  one  draught. 

— MONTAGUE,  EARL  OF  HALIFAX,  On  the  Death  of  King  Charles  II. 

And  if  the  second  Charles  brought  in  decay 

Of  ancient  virtue,  if  it  well  nigh  wring 
Souls  that  had  broadened  'neath  a  nobler  day, 

To  see  a  losel,  marketable  king 
Fearfully  watering  with  his  realm's  best  blood 
Cromwell's  quenched  bolts. 

— J.  R.  LOWELL,  To  John  G.  Palfrey. 

In  private  life,  Charles  II.  was  frugal  to  economy  and  meanness;  in 
public  affairs,  thoughtless,  negligent,  and  profuse.  He  cared  not  one 
single  grain  of  dust  where  the  money  came  from,  as  long  as  it  came  to 
him.  In  one  respect  he  resembled  his  father  ;  for,  if  viewed  on  one  side, 
he  was  worthy  the  highest  applause ;  if  on  the  other,  the  most  decided 
indignation. — CHARLES  BUCKE,  Book  of  Human  Character. 

That  King  of  debauchees,  Charles  II.— WILLIAM  HOWITT,  The  North- 
ern Heights  of  London. 


78  CHARLES  II.,  CHATEAUBRIAND. 

Charles  II.  was  one  of  the  most  worthless  of  our  monarchs,  and  the 
most  beloved.  The  responsibility  of  all  evils,  troubles,  or  crimes,  was 
laid  upon  his  advisers,  his  mistresses,  and  any  one  but  upon  himself,  by 
his  loving  subjects.  His  readiness  of  access,  and  good-humoured  freedom 
of  manner  charmed  all  who  came  in  contact  with  him.  "  Unthinkingness  " 
was  said  by  Halifax  to  be  one  of  his  characteristics,  and  Rochester  used 
the  expression,  "Unthinking  Charles";  yet  this  was  more  an  apparent 
than  a  real  characteristic.  Like  most  indolent  men,  he  tried  to  get  his 
own  way,  and  he  was  one  of  the  earliest  to  find  out  that  if  the  people  are 
allowed  their  way  when  they  are  in  earnest,  they  will  let  their  governors 
do  as  they  wish  at  other  times.  It  has  been  said  that  the  strongest  resolve 
he  ever  formed  was  a  determination  not  to  go  on  his  travels  again ;  there- 
fore he  never  opposed  a  strong  popular  movement. — H.  B.  WHEATLEY, 
Samuel  Pepys  and  the  World  he  lived  in. 

CHARLES  IV. 
Emperor  of  Germany  :  1316-1378. 

Charles  IV.  has  been  treated  with  more  derision  by  his  contemporaries, 
and  consequently  by  later  writers,  than  almost  any  prince  in  history ; 
yet  he  was  remarkably  successful  in  the  only  objects  which  he  seriously 
pursued.  Deficient  in  personal  courage,  insensible  of  humiliation,  bending 
without  shame  to  the  Pope,  to  the  Italians,  to  the  electors,  so  poor  and  so 
little  reverenced  as  to  be  arrested  by  a  butcher  at  Worms  for  want  of 
paying  his  demand,  Charles  IV.  affords  a  proof  that  a  certain  dexterity 
and  cold-blooded  perseverance  may  occasionally  supply  in  a  sovereign 
the  want  of  more  respectable  qualities. — HALLAM,  The  Student's  Middle 
Ages,  Chap.  V. 

CHARLES  V. 
Emperor  of  Germany  :  1500-1558. 

The  too  much  vaunted  ages  of  Charles  V.,  Leo  X.,  and  Louis  XIV. — 
MAZZINI,  Life  and  Writings,  Vol.  II. 

Charles  possessed,  in  the  most  eminent  degree,  the  science  which  is  of 
greatest  importance  to  a  monarch,  that  of  knowing  men  and  of  adapting 
their  talents  to  the  various  departments  which  he  allotted  to  them.  From 
the  death  of  Chievres  to  the  end  of  his  reign,  he  employed  no  general  in 
the  field,  no  minister  in  the  cabinet,  no  ambassador  to  a  foreign  court,  no 
governor  to  a  province,  whose  abilities  were  inadequate  to  the  trust  which 
he  reposed  in  them. — WILLIAM  ROBERTSON. 

FRAN90IS  RENE"  DE  CHATEAUBRIAND. 

French  Writer  and  Statesman  :  1768-1848. 

There  Chateaubriand  forms  new  books  of  martyrs  ; 
And  subtle  Greeks  intrigue  for  stupid  Tartars. 

— BYRON,  The  Age  of  Bronze. 

Pension  and  Chateaubriand  are  poets  as  much  through  sentiment  as 
by  the  power  of  imagery. — LAMARTINE,  Celebrated  Characters  (transl.), 
Vol.  II. 


CHATEAUBRIAND,  CHATHAM.  79 

Chateaubriand  poured  forth  all  its  lustre  in  his  resplendent  descriptions. 
'Strange,  that  when  prose  and  poetry,  in  the  hands  of  such  masters, 
should  all  but  put  the  colours  on  the  canvas,  painting  itself,  in  the 
midst  of  such  mighty  allies,  should  still  slumber  on  in  comparative  medio- 
crity.— SIR  ARCHIBALD  ALISON,  Essays  :  The  British  School  of  Painting. 


WILLIAM  PITT,  EARL  OF  CHATHAM. 
English  Statesman :  1708-1778. 

Shall  dastard  tongues  essay  to  blast  the  name 
•Of  him  whose  meed  exists  in  endless  fame  ? 
When  Pitt  expired  in  plenitude  of  power, 
Though  ill  success  obscured  his  dying  hour, 
Pity  her  dewy  wings  before  him  spread, 
For  noble  spirits  "  war  not  with  the  dead  ". 

— BYRON,  On  the  Death  of  Mr.  Fox. 

A  :  Patriots,  alas !  the  few  that  have  been  found, 
Where  most  they  flourish  upon  English  ground, 
The  country's  need  have  scantily  supplied  ; 
And  the  last  left  the  scene  when  Chatham  died. 
B  :  Not  so — the  virtue  still  adorns  our  age, 
Though  the  chief  actor  died  upon  the  stage. 
In  him,  Demosthenes  was  heard  again  ; 
Liberty  taught  him  her  Athenian  strain  ; 
She  clothed  him  with  authority  and  awe, 
Spoke  from  his  lips,  and  in  his  looks  gave  law, 
His  speech,  his  form,  his  action  full  of  grace, 
And  all  his  country  beaming  in  his  face. 
He  stood,  as  some  inimitable  hand 
Would  strive  to  make  a  Paul  or  Tully  stand, 
No  sycophant  or  slave  that  dared  oppose 
Her  sacred  cause,  but  trembled  when  he  rose, 
And  every  venal  stickler  for  the  yoke 
Felt  himself  crush'd  at  the  first  word  he  spoke. 
Such  men  are  raised  to  station  and  command, 
When  Providence  means  mercy  to  a  land. 

— COWPER,  Table  Talk. 

That  Chatham's  language  was  his  mother-tongue, 
And  Wolfe's  great  name  compatriot  with  his  own. 
Farewell  those  honours,  and  farewell  with  them 
The  hope  of  such  hereafter.     They  have  fallen 
Each  in  his  field  of  glory:  one  in  arms, 
And  one  in  Council — Wolfe  upon  the  lap 
Of  smiling  Victory  that  moment  won, 
And  Chatham,  heart-sick  of  his  country's  shame  ! 
They  made  us  many  soldiers.     Chatham  still 
Consulting  England's  happiness  at  home, 
Secured  it  by  an  unforgiving  frown 
If  any  wrong'd  hen 

— Id.,  The  Task  :  The  Time-Piece. 


8o  CHATHAM. 

Or  how  our  merry  lads  at  hame, 

In  Britain's  court,  kept  up  the  game ; 

How  Royal  George — the  Lord  leuk  o'er  him  ! — 

Was  managing  St.  Stephen's  quorum  ; 

If  sleekit  Chatham  Will  was  livin', 

Or  glaikit  Charlie  got  his  nieve  in. 

— BURNS,  Lines  Written  to  a  Gentleman. 

Long  had  thy  virtues  mark'd  thee  out  for  fame, 
Far,  far  superior  to  a  cornet's  name  ; 
This  generous  Walpole  saw,  and  griev'd  to  find 
So  mean  a  post  disgrace  that  noble  mind. 
The  servile  standard  from  the  freeborn  hand 
He  took  and  bade  thee  lead  the  patriot  band. 

— LORD  LYTTLETON,  To  William  Pitt. 

Or  dine,  when  business  would  permit, 
With  that  great  statesman  William  Pitt. 

— JAMES  CAWTHORN,  Wit  and  Learning* 

From  each  low  view  of  selfish  factions  free, 
To  think,  to  speak,  to  live,  O  Pitt,  like  thee. 

— JOHN  GILBERT  COOPER,  The  Genius  of  Britain. 

Or  Pitt,  can  thy  example  be  unknown, 
While  each  fond  father  marks  it  to  his  son  ? 

— PAUL  WHITEHEAD,  Manners. 

Secure  under  Brunswick  and  heaven, 

I  trust  the  state  vessel  shall  ride ; 
To  Bute  let  the  rudder  be  given, 

Or  Pitt,  be  permitted  to  guide. 

— EDWARD  LOVIBOND,  On  Politics. 

O  Pitt,  while  honour  points  thy  liberal  plan, 
And  o'er  the  minister  exalts  the  man, 
Isis  congenial  greets  thy  faithful  sway, 
Nor  scorns  to  bid  a  statesman  grace  her  lay. 

— THOMAS  WARTON,  On  the  Death  of  King  George  II. 

The  pinnacle  of  glory  to  which  the  elder  Pitt  raised  his  country  is  a 
sufficient  proof  of  the  almost  unequalled  administrative  genius  which  he 
displayed  in  the  conduct  of  a  war. — W.  E.  H.  LECKY,  History  of  England, 
Vol.  II. 

There  is  hardly  any  man  in  modern  times,  with  the  exception,  perhaps, 
of  Lord  Somers,  who  fills  so  large  a  space  in  our  history,  and  of  whom 
we  know  so  little,  as  Lord  Chatham ;  and  yet  he  is  the  person  to  whom 
every  one  would  at  once  point,  if  desired  to  name  the  most  successful 
statesman  and  most  brilliant  orator  that  this  country  ever  produced.  .  .  . 
As  soon  as  Mr.  Pitt  took  the  helm,  the  steadiness  of  the  hand  that  held 
it  was  instantly  felt  in  every  motion  of  the  vessel. — LORD  BROUGHAM. 

Lord  Chatham,  who  stands  at  the  head,  perhaps,  of  your  orators  and 
statesmen.  .  .  .  W.  E.  GLADSTONE,  Speeches,  Vol.  X. 

The  greatest  of  War  Ministers — Chatham,  Bismarck. — EARL  OF  ROSE- 
BERY,  Life  of  Pitt. 


CHATHAM.  8 1 

Behold  Chatham's,  Hampden's,  Bayard's,  Alfred's,  Scipio's,  Pericles's 
day, — day  of  all  that  are  born  of  women. — EMERSON,  Literary  Ethics. 

Yet  with  all  his  faults  and  affectations,  Pitt  had,  in  a  very  extraordinary 
degree,  many  of  the  elements  of  greatness.  He  had  splendid  talents,  strong 
passions,  quick  sensibility,  and  vehement  enthusiasm  for  the  grand  and  the 
beautiful.  There  was  something  about  him  which  ennobled  tergiversation 
itself.  .  .  .  Pitt  desired  power,  and  he  desired  it,  we  really  believe,  from 
high  and  generous  motives.  He  was,  in  the  strict  sense  of  the  word,  a 
patriot.  He  had  none  of  that  philanthropy  which  the  great  French 
writers  of  his  time  preached  to  all  the  nations  of  Europe.  He  loved 
England  as  an  Athenian  loved  the  City  of  the  Violet  Crown,  as  a  Roman 
loved  the  City  of  the  Seven  Hills.  He  saw  his  country  insulted  and 
defeated.  He  saw  the  national  spirit  sinking.  Yet  he  knew  what  the 
resources  of  the  empire,  vigorously  employed,  could  effect ;  and  he  felt 
that  he  was  the  man  to  employ  them  vigorously.  "  My  Lord,"  he  said 
to  the  Duke  of  Devonshire,  "  I  am  sure  that  1  can  save  my  country,  and 
that  nobody  else  can." — MACAULAY,  Essays  :  Earl  of  Chatham. 

If  the  two  men  were  to  be  compared  in  point  of  age,  Fox  seemed  the 
wild  boy,  Pitt  the  matured  man.  .  .  .  Pitt's  great  passion,  no  doubt,  was 
the  love  of  power,  but  it  was  made  pure  by  its  very  intensity — a  love  that 
chastened  itself  by  exalting  the  character  of  its  object.  To  govern  England, 
but  to  govern  nobly,  was  the  one  end  to  which  he  devoted  all  the  vigour 
of  surpassing  faculties,  with  that  singleness  of  purpose  which  gives  even 
to  mediocrity  successes  that  fail  to  genius,  when  genius  renounces  its  own 
superiority  of  force  by  relaxing  its  discipline  and  scattering  its  troops. — . 
LYTTON,  Essays  :  Pitt  and  Fox. 

Glorious  was  the  eloquence  of  Mr.  Pitt.  Nations  shook  at  the  thunder 
of  his  voice. — DR.  VICESIMUS  KNOX,  Essays. 

Lord  Chatham  is  a  great  and  celebrated  name  ;  a  name  that  keeps  the- 
name  of  this  country  respectable  in  every  other  on  the  globe.  It  may  be- 
truly  called — 

"  Clarum  et  venerabile  nomen 
Gentibus,  et  multum  nostrae  quod  proderat  urbi." 

The  venerable  age  of  this  great  man,  his  merited  rank,  his  superior 
eloquence,  his  splendid  qualities,  his  eminent  services,  the  vast  space  he 
fills  in  the  eye  of  mankind,  and,  more  than  all  the  rest,  his  fall  from 
power,  which,  like  death,  canonizes  and  sanctifies  a  greater  character 
will  not  suffer  me  to  censure  any  part  of  his  conduct.  I  am  afraid  to 
flatter  him ;  I  am  sure  I  am  not  disposed  to  blame  him ;  let  those  who 
have  betrayed  him  by  their  adulation,  insult  him  with  their  malevolence. 

But  what  I  do  not  presume  to  censure,  I  may  have  leave  to  lament. 

EDMUND  BURKE. 

As  Walpole  was  essentially  the  Minister  of  Peace,  so  the  haughty 
Chatham  was  essentially  the  Minister  of  War.  ...  In  his  eyes  the  only 
means  by  which  a  people  could  command  respect  and  maintain  authority 
in  the  family  of  nations  was  by  the  display  of  a  resolute  warlike  policy. 
He  was  the  first  of  our  parliamentary  statesmen  who  believed  in,  arid 
carried  out,  the  maxim — If  peace  be  sought  after,  prepare  for  war. — A.  C. 
EWALD,  Representative  Statesmen. 


82  CHATHAM,  CHATTERTON. 

Cromwell  and  Chatham,  these  are  the  two  English  statesmen  the 
memory  of  whose  sympathy  America  still  cherished  ;  and  were  Cromwell 
and  Chatham  great  un-Englishmen  and  traitors  to  their  country  ? — 
GOLDWIN  SMITH,  Three  English  Statesmen. 

THOMAS  CHATTERTON. 
The  Boy  Poet :  1752-1770. 

I  thought  of  Chatterton,  the  marvellous  boy. 
The  sleepless  soul  that  perished  in  his  pride. 

— WORDSWORTH,  Resolution  and  Independence. 

The  inheritors  of  unfulfilled  renown 

Rose  from  their  thrones,  built  beyond  mortal  thought, 

Far  in  the  Unapparent.     Chatterton 

Rose  pale,  his  solemn  agony  had  not 

Yet  faded  from  him. 

— SHELLEY,  Adonais,  XLV. 

Here  too,  early  lost   and   deplored,  were   the   youths  from  the    Muses 

sprinkled  : 

Mark'd  for  themselves  at  birth,  and  with  dews  from  Castalia, 
Chatterton  first  (for  not  to  his  affectionate  spirit 
Could  the  act  of  madness  innate  for  guilt  be  accounted) : 
Marvellous  boy,  whose  antique  songs  and  unhappy  story 
Shall  by  gentle  hearts  be  in  mournful  memory  cherish'd 
Long  as  thy  ancient  towers  endure,  and  the  rocks  of  St.  Vincent, 
Bristol !  my  birth-place  dear. 

— SOUTHEY,  A  Vision  of  Judgment :  The  Young  Spirits. 

Sweet  Flower  of  Hope !  free  Nature's  genial  child  ! 

That  didst  so  fair  disclose  thy  early  bloom, 

Filling  the  wide  air  with  a  rich  perfume ! 

For  thee  in  vain  all  heavenly  aspects  smiled ; 

From  the  hard  world  brief  respite  could  they  win — 

'The  frost  nipped  sharp  without,  the  canker  preyed  within  ! 

— S.  T.  COLERIDGE,  Monody  on  the  Death  of  Chatterton. 

<O  Chatterton  !  how  very  sad  thy  fate  ! 

Dear  child  of  sorrow — son  of  misery  ! 

How  soon  the  film  of  death  obscured  that  eye, 

When  Genius  mildly  flashed,  and  high  debate. 

How  soon  that  voice,  majestic  and  elate, 

Melted  in  dying  numbers  !     Oh  !  how  nigh 

Was  night  to  thy  fair  morning.     Thou  didst  die 

A  half-blown  flow'ret  which  cold  blasts  amate. 

But  this  is  past :  thou  art  among  the  stars 

Of  highest  Heaven  :  to  the  rolling  spheres 

Thou  sweetly  singest :  nought  thy  hymning  mars, 

Above  the  ingrate  world  and  human  fears. 

On  earth  the  good  man  base  detraction  bars 

From  thy  fair  name,  and  waters  it  with  tears. 

— KEATS,  To  Chatterton. 


CHATTERTON,  CHAUCER.  83 

Strong  derivative  points  are  to  be  found  in  Keats  and  Coleridge  from 
the  study  of  Chatterton.  .  .  .  Not  to  know  Chatterton  is  to  be  ignorant 
of  the  true  day-spring  of  modern  romantic  poetry. — D.  G.  ROSSETTI  in 
T.  HALL  CAINE'S  Recollections  of  Rossetti. 

Where  were  ye,  O  ye  friends  to  genius,  when,  stung  with  disappoint- 
ment, distressed  for  food  and  raiment,  with  every  frightful  form  of  human 
misery  painted  on  his  fine  imagination,  poor  Chatterton  sunk  in  despair  ? 
Alas  !  ye  knew  him  not  then,  and  now  it  is  too  late, — 

For  now  he  is  dead  ; 
Gone  to  his  deathbed, 
All  under  the  willow  tree. 

So  sang  the  sweet  youth,  in  as  tender  an  elegy  as  ever  flowed  from  a 
feeling  heart. — DR.VICESIMUS  KNOX,  Essays  :  On  the  Poems  attributed  to 
Rowley. 

Nothing  in  Chatterton  can  be  separated  from  Chatterton.  His  noblest 
flight,  his  sweetest  strains,  his  grossest  ribaldry,  and  his  most  common- 
place imitations  of  the  productions  of  magazines,  were  all  the  effervescences 
of  the  same  ungovernable  impulse,  which,  chameleon-like,  imbibed  the 
colours  of  all  it  looked  on.  It  was  Ossian,  or  a  Saxon  monk,  or  Gray,  or 
Smollett,  or  Junius — and  if  it  failed  most  in  what  it  most  affected  to  be,  a 
poet  of  the  fifteenth  century,  it  was  because  it  could  not  imitate  what  had 
not  existed. — EARL  OF  ORFORD. 

GEOFFREY  CHAUCER. 
The  Father  of  English  Poetry  :  1340-1400. 

Alias  !  my  worthy  maister  honorable, 

This  londes  verray  tresour  and  richesse  ! 

Dethe  by  thy  dethe  hath  harm  irreparable 

Unto  us  done  ;  hir  vengeable  duresse 

Despoiled  hath  this  lond  of  swetnesse 

Of  rhetoryk  for  unto  Tullius 

Was  never  man  so  like  amonges  us. 

Also  who  was  heyr  [heir]  in  philosofye 

To  Aristotle  in  our  tunge  but  thou  ? 

The  steppes  of  Virgile  in  poesye 

Thou  folwedst  eke,  men  wote  wel  ynow. 

She  might  have  tarried  hir  vengeance  a  whyle 

Til  that  some  man  had  egal  to  thee  be  ; 

Nay,  let  be  that !  she  knew  wel  that  this  yle 

May  never  man  bring  forthe  like  to  thee, 

And  hir  office  nedes  do  mote  she  : 

God  bade  hir  do  so,  I  truste  for  the  beste ; 

O  maister,  maister,  God  thy  soule  reste  ! 

— THOMAS  HOCCLEVE,  Lament  for  Chaucer. 

Dan  Chaucer,  the  first  warbler,  whose  sweet  breath 
Preluded  those  melodious  bursts  that  fill 
The  spacious  times  of  great  Elizabeth 
With  sounds  that  echo  still. 

— TENNYSON,  A  Dream  of  Fair  Women. 


84  CHAUCER. 

"  Sweet  is  the  holiness  of  youth  " — so  felt 
Time-honoured  Chaucer  when  he  framed  the  lay 
By  which  the  prisoners  beguiled  the  way, 
And  many  a  pilgrim's  rugged  heart  did  melt. 

— WORDSWORTH,  Edward  VI. 

But  let  a  portion  of  ethereal  dew 
Fall  on  my  head,  and  presently  unmew 
My  soul ;  that  I  may  dare,  in  wayfaring, 
To  stammer  where  old  Chaucer  used  to  sing. 

— KEATS,  Endymion. 

But  what  old  Chaucer's  merry  page  befits, 
The  chaster  muse  of  modern  days  omits. 

— COWPER,  Anti-Thelyphthora. 

Thee  too,  Father  Chaucer  !  I  saw,  and  delighted  to  see  thee, 
At  whose  well  undefiled  I  drank  in  my  youth,  and  was  strengthen'd: 
With  whose  mind  immortal  so  oft  I  have  communed,  partaking 
All  its  manifold  moods,  and  willingly  moved  at  its  pleasure. 

— SOUTHEY,  A  Vision  of  Judgment :  The  Elder  Worthies. 

Old  Chaucer,  like  the  morning  star, 
To  us  discovers  day  from  far ; 
His  light  those  mists  and  clouds  dissolv'd 
Which  our  dark  nation  long  involv'd  ; 
But  he  descending  to  the  shades, 
Darkness  again  the  age  invades. 

— SIR  JOHN  DENHAM,  On  Mr.  Cowley's  Death. 

Thy  genuine  bards  immortal  Chaucer  leads  : 
His  hoary  head  o'erlooks  the  gazing  quire, 
And  beams  on  all  around  celestial  fire. 

— THOMAS  WARTON. 

But  Chaucer  (though  he  can  but  lewdely 
On  metres  and  on  riming  craftily) 
Hath  sayd  him  in  swiche  English  as  he  can 
Of  olde  time,  as  knoweth  many  a  man. 

— CHAUCER,  The  Man  of  Lawcs  Prologue. 

That  noble  Chaucer,  in  those  former  times, 
The  first  enrich'd  our  English  with  his  rhimes, 
And  was  the  first  of  ours  that  ever  brake 
Into  the  muses'  treasure,  and  first  spake 
In  weighty  numbers,  delving  in  the  mine 
Of  perfect  knowledge,  which  he  could  refine, 
And  coin  for  current,  and  as  much  as  then 
The  English  language  could  express  to  men, 
He  made  it  do ;  and  by  his  wondrous  skill, 
Gave  us  much  light  from  his  abundant  quill. 

— DRAYTON,  Elegy  to  Henry  Reynolds,  Esq. 

Since  Chaucer  lived,  who  yet  lives,  and  yet  shall, 
Though  (which  I  grieve  to  say)  but  in  his  last. 
Yet  what  a  time  hath  he  wrested  from  time, 
And  won  upon  mighty  waste  of  days, 


CHAUCER.  85 

Upon  th'  immortal  honour  of  our  clime, 
That  by  his  means  came  first  adorn'd  with  bays, 
Unto  the  sacred  relics  of  whose  time, 
We  yet  are  bound  in  zeal  to  offer  praise. 

— SAMUEL  DANIEL,  Musophilus. 

Such  was  the  case  when  Chaucer's  early  toil 
Founded  the  Muses'  empire  in  our  soil. 

— DR.  CHETWOOD,  To  the  Earl  of  Roscommon. 

Long  had  our  dull  forefathers  slept  supine, 
Nor  felt  the  raptures  of  the  tuneful  nine  ; 
Till  Chaucer  first,  a  merry  bard,  arose, 
And  many  a  story  told  in  rhyme  and  prose. 
But  age  has  rusted  what  the  poet  writ, 
Worn  out  his  language,  and  obscur'd  his  wit. 

— ADDISON,  An  Account  of  the  Greatest  English  Poets. 

The  god  of  shepheards,  Tityrus,  is  dead, 
Who  taught  mee  homely,  as  I  can,  to  make : 
Hee,  whilst  hee  lived,  was  the  sovereigne  head 
Of  shepheards  all  that  bene  with  love  ytake : 
Well  couth  hee  waile  his  woes,  and  lightly  slake 
The  flames  which  love  within  his  heart  had  bredd, 
And  tell  us  merry  tales  to  keepe  us  wake, 
The  while  our  sheepe  about  us  safely  fedde. 
Now  dead  hee  is,  and  lyeth  wrapt  in  lead, 
(O  why  should  Death  on  him  such  outrage  showe  ?) 
And  all  his  passing  skill  with  him  is  fledde, 
The  fame  whereof  doth  daylie  greater  growe. 

— SPENSER,  A  Lament  for  Chaucer. 

But,  could  I  chaunt,  or  rhyme,  pardie, 
Clear  as  Dan  Chaucer,  or  as  thee. 

— PRIOR,  Erie  Robert's  Mice. 

There  sprightly  Chaucer  charms  our  hours  away 
With  stories  quaint,  and  gentle  roundelay. 
Muse  !  at  that  name  each  thought  of  pride  recall, 
Ah,  think  how  soon  the  wise  and  glorious  fall. 

— ELIJAH  FENTON,  To  a  Young  Lady. 

Such  was  old  Chaucer.     Such  the  placid  mien 
Of  him  who  first  with  harmony  inform'd 
The  language  of  our  fathers. 

— AKENSIDE,  For  a  Statue  of  Chaucer. 

Not  far  from  these,  Dan  Chaucer,  ancient  wight, 
A  lofty  seat  on  Mount  Parnassus  held, 
Who  long  had  been  the  muses'  chief  delight ; 
His  reverend  locks  were  silver'd  o'er  with  eld ; 
Grave  was  his  visage,  and  his  habit  plain ; 
And  while  he  sang,  fair  nature  he  display'd, 
In  verse  albeit  uncouth,  and  simple  strain. 

— ROBERT  LLOYD,  The  Progress  of  Envy. 

Yune  Norman  tymes,  Turgotus  and 
Good  Chaucer  dydd  excelle, 


86  CHAUCER,  CHESTERFIELD. 

Then  Stowe,  the  Bryghtstowe  Carmelyte, 
Dydd  bare  awaie  the  belle. 

— CHATTERTON,  Song  to  (Ella. 

Vernal  Chaucer,  whose  fresh  words 

Throb  thick  with  merle  and  mavis  all  the  year. 

— J.  R.  LOWI-;LL. 

Humanity  shines  in  Homer,  in  Chaucer,  in  Spenser,  in  Shakespeare,  in 
Milton.  They  are  content  with  truth.  They  use  the  positive  degree. 
— EMERSON,  Essays  :  The  Over-Soul. 

The  influence  of  Chaucer  is  conspicuous  in  all  our  early  literature ;  and, 
more  recently,  not  only  Pope  and  Dryden  have  been  beholden  to  him,  but, 
in  the  whole  society  of  English  writers,  a  large  unacknowledged  debt  is 
easily  traced.  One  is  charmed  with  the  opulence  which  feeds  so  many 
pensioners. — Id.,  Ibid. :  Shakespeare,  or  the  Poet. 

I  take  unceasing  delight  in  Chaucer.  His  manly  cheerfulness  is 
especially  delicious  to  me  in  my  old  age. — S.  T.  COLERIDGE,  Table  Talk. 

Chaucer,  "  the  poet  of  the  dawn  ".  For  in  him  there  are  many  things 
significant  of  the  age  of  transition  in  which  he  lived ;  in  him  the  mixture 
of  Frenchman  and  Englishman  is  still  in  a  sense  incomplete,  as  that  of 
their  language  is  in  the  diction  of  his  poems.  His  gaiety  of  heart  is 
hardly  English ;  nor  is  his  willing  (though  to  be  sure,  not  invariably 
unquestioning)  acceptance  of  forms  into  the  inner  meaning  of  which  he 
does  not  greatly  vex  his  soul  by  entering;  nor  his  airy  way  of  ridiculing 
what  he  has  no  intention  of  helping  to  overthrow ;  nor  his  light  uncon- 
cern in  the  question  whether  he  is,  or  is  not,  an  immoral  writer.  .  .  . 
But  he  is  English  in  his  freedom  and  frankness  of  spirit ;  in  his  manliness 
of  mind ;  in  his  preference  for  the  good  in  things  as  they  are  to  the  good 
in  things  as  they  might  be ;  in  his  loyalty,  his  piety,  his  truthfulness. — 
A.  W.  WARD,  Chaucer. 

Chaucer's  humour  is  the  most  universally  patent  and  easily  recognised 
of  his  gifts.  The  smile  or  laugh  that  he  raises,  by  refined  irony  or  by 
broad  rough  jest  and  incident,  is  conspicuously  genial.  Mephistophelian 
mockery  and  Satanic  grimness  are  not  in  his  way.  This  had  nothing  to 
do  with  his  being  the  bright  morning  of  English  poetry — writing  with  the 
buoyancy  of  youth  at  a  time  when  the  struggle  for  existence  was  less  fierce, 
when  there  was  no  bitter  feeling  between  high  and  low,  no  envenomed 
warfare  of  civil  or  religious  party.  There  never  has  been  age  nor  country 
in  which  the  fierce  spirit  has  wanted  fuel  for  its  fierceness.  It  was  simply 
the  nature  of  the  man  to  be  genial, — "  attempered  and  soft"  as  the  climate 
of  his  gardens  of  Venus.  He  would  have  been  so  in  whatever  age  he  had 
lived. — WILLIAM  M INTO,  Characteristics  of  English  Poets. 

Chaucer  sparkles  with  the  dew  of  morning. — J.  C.  HARE,  Guesses  at 
Truth,  First  Series. 

THE  EARL  OF  CHESTERFIELD. 
English  Statesman  and  Author  :  1694-1773. 

How  can  I  Pult'ney,  Chesterfield  forget, 
While  Roman  spirit  charms,  and  Attic  wit  ? 

— POPE,  Epilogue  to  the  Satires  :  Dialogue  //. 


CHESTERFIELD,  CHILLINGWORTH.  87 

O,  thou,  whose  wisdom,  solid  yet  refin'd, 

Whose  patriot  virtues,  consummate  skill 

To  touch  the  finer  springs  that  move  the  world, 

Join'd  to  whate'er  the  graces  can  bestow, 

And  all  Apollo's  animating  fire, 

Give  thee,  with  pleasing  dignity  to  shine 

At  once  the  guardian,  ornament,  and  joy, 

Of  polish'd  life  ;  permit  the  rural  muse, 

O  Chesterfield,  to  grace  with  thee  her  song ! 

— THOMSON,  The  Seasons  :  Winter. 
Hence,  Chesterfield,  that  openness  of  heart, 
And  just  disdain  for  that  poor  mimic  art ; 
Hence  (manly  praise  !)  that  manner  nobly  free, 
Which  a'll  admire,  and  I  commend,  in  thee. 

— YOUNG,  Love  of  Fame  :  Satire  II. 

Lord  Chesterfield  stands  much  lower  in  the  estimation  of  posterity  than 
he  would  have  done  if  his  letters  had  never  been  published. — MACAULAY, 
Essays :  Horace  Walpole. 

Chesterfield  was  specious,  plausible,  and  penetrating  ;  with  conversation 
not  only  brilliant,  but  frequently  solid.  His  action,  we  are  told,  was  digni- 
fied, and  his  eloquence  mellifluent ;  yet,  occasionally  deficient  in  argument ; 
therefore  deficient  in  strength ;  at  times  indicating  a  plausible  and  empty 
elegance,  like  double-distilled  lavender  water ;  but  he  had  not  that  pre- 
eminence of  art,  that  could  prompt  him  to  enlist  manners  and  conduct  on 
the  true  side  of  virtue. — CHARLES  BUCKE,  Book  of  Human  Character. 

The  late  Lord  Chesterfield,  though  justly  decried  as  a  moral  instructor, 
is  admired  as  a  writer  of  peculiar  elegance.  No  man  more  closely  and 
successfully  imitated  the  French  in  every  circumstance.  Like  them,  he 
writes  with  perspicuity,  vivacity,  and  that  gracefulness  which  is  sure  to 
please,  and  which  he  so  strenuously  recommends. — DR.  VICESIMUS  KNOX, 
Cursory  Thoughts  on  Epistolary  Writers. 

The  name  of  Chesterfield  has  become  a  synonym  for  good  breeding 
and  politeness.  It  is  associated  in  our  minds  with  all  that  is  graceful  in 
manner  and  cold  in  heart,  attractive  in  appearance  and  unamiable  in  reality. 
The  image  it  calls  up  is  that  of  a  man  rather  below  the  middle  height,  in 
a  court  suit  and  blue  riband,  with  regular  features,  wearing  an  habitual 
expression  of  gentlemanlike  ease.  His  address  is  insinuating,  his  bow 
perfect,  his  compliments  rival  those  of  Le  Grande  Monarque  in  delicacy : 
laughter  is  too  demonstrative  for  him,  but  the  smile  of  courtesy  is  ever  on 
his  lip  ;  and  by  the  time  he  has  gone  through  the  circle,  the  avowed  object 
of  his  daily  ambition  is  accomplished — all  the  women  are  already  half  in 
love  with  him,  and  every  man  is  desirous  to  be  his  friend. — ABRAHAM 
HAYWARD,  Biographical  and  Critical  Essays,  Vol.  I. 

WILLIAM  CHILLINGWORTH. 
English  Theologian  :  1602-1643. 

See  Chillingworth  the  depths  of  doubt  explore 
And  Selden  ope  the  rolls  of  ancient  lore. 

— THOMAS  WARTON,  The  Triumph  of  I  sis. 


88          CHILLINGWORTH,  CHRISTINA,  CHRYSOSTOM. 

He  was  called  the  immortal  Chillingworth. — HALLAM,  Introduction  to 
the  Literature  of  Europe,  Vol  III. 

I  should  propose  the  constant  reading  of  Chillingworth,  who,  by  his 
example,  will  teach  both  perspicuity  and  the  way  of  right  reasoning, 
better  than  any  book  that  I  know :  and  therefore  will  deserve  to  be  read 
upon  that  account  over  and  over  again  ;  not  to  say  anything  of  his 
argument. — LOCKE. 

The  wide  fame  of  William  Chillingworth  may  be  said,  with  scarcely  an 
exaggeration,  to  rest  almost,  if  not  altogether,  on  a  single  paragraph.  It 
is,  as  its  popularity  has  proved,  telling  and  effective  enough.  He  had 
been  challenged  to  say  what  he  meant  when  he  said  that  the  religion  of 
Protestants  was  a  safe  way  of  salvation,  and  he  accepted  the  challenge 
and  replied,  near  the  close  of  his  great  argument:  "By  the  religion  of 
Protestants  I  do  not  understand  the  doctrine  of  Luther,  or  Calvin,  or 
Melancthon  ;  nor  the  confession  of  Augusta  (Augsburg),  or  Geneva  ;  nor 
the  Catechism  of  Heidelberg,  nor  the  Articles  of  the  Church  of  England ; 
no,  nor  the  harmony  of  Protestant  confessions ;  but  that  wherein  they  all 
agree,  and  which  they  all  subscribe  with  a  greater  harmony  as  a  perfect 
rule  of  their  faith  and  actions,  that  is,  the  BIBLE.  The  Bible,  I  say,  the 
Bible  only,  is  the  religion  of  Protestants."  .  .  .  Our  last  words  of  counsel 
for  the  student  of  religious  thought,  in  relation  to  Chillingworth  and  the 
writings  with  which  his  name  is  identified,  may  well  be,  after  the  pattern 
of  those  which  were  spoken  of  old  to  the  wavering  disciple,  "  Let  the 
dead  bury  their  dead ;  but  go  thou  and  preach  the  Kingdom  of  God ". 
Let  pamphleteer  wrangle  with  pamphleteer ;  but  go  thou,  and  study, 
faithfully  and  patiently,  boldly  and  yet  reverentially,  reverentially  and  yet 
boldly,  the  Books  which  have  made  Christendom  what  it  is,  and  the 
Christendom  which  the  Books  have  made. — DEAN  PLUMPTRE,  Masters  in 
English  Theology. 

CHRISTINA. 
Queen  of  Sweden  :  1628-1689. 

Christina,  maiden  of  heroic  mien  ! 

Star  of  the  North  !  of  northern  stars  the  queen  ! 

— COWPER,  To  Christina,  Queen  of  Sweden. 

ST.  JOHN  CHRYSOSTOM. 
Archbishop  of  Constantinople:  347-407.. 

Sermons  he  read,  and  lectures  he  endured, 

And  homilies,  and  lives  of  all  the  saints : 
To  Jerome  and  to  Chrysostom  inured, 

He  did  not  take  such  studies  for  restraints. 

—BYRON,  Don  yuan,  XLVII. 

A  Chronicle  of  ancient  standing ; 

A  Chrysostom  to  smooth  thy  band  in.  , 

—PoPE,  The  Happy  Life  of  a  Country  Parson. 


,L,  CIBBER. 

it  mostly  Chrysostom  engag'd  his  mind : 
Great  without  labour,  without  art  refin'd  ! 
Now  see  his  gentle  elocution  flows, 
Soft  as  the  flakes  of  heav'n — descending  snows  ; 
Now  see  him,  like  th'  impetuous  torrent  roll ; 
Pure  in  his  diction,  purer  in  his  soul: 
By  few  men  equall'd,  and  surpass'd  by  none  ; 
A  Tully  and  Demosthenes  in  one! 

— WALTER  HARTE,  Macarius ;  or,  The  Confessor. 

CHARLES  CHURCHILL. 
English  and  Satiric  Poet:  1731-1764. 

I  stood  beside  the  grave  of  him  who  blazed 
'    The  comet  of  a  season,  and  I  saw 
The  humblest  of  all  sepulchres,  and  gazed 
With  not  the  less  of  sorrow  and  of  awe. 

— BYRON,  Churchill's  Grave. 

•Contemporaries  all  surpass'd,  see  one, 
Short  his  career  indeed,  but  ably  run. 
Churchill,  himself  unconscious  of  his  powers, 
In  penury  consumed  his  idle  hours, 
And  like  a  scatter'd  seed  at  random  sown, 
Was  left  to  spring  by  vigour  of  his  own. 
Lifted  at  length,  by  dignity  of  thought 
And  dint  of  genius,  to  an  affluent  lot, 
He  laid  his  head  in  luxury's  soft  lap, 
And  took  too  often  there  his  easy  nap. 
If  brighter  beams  than  all  he  threw  not  forth, 
'Twas  negligence  in  him,  not  want  of  worth. 
Surly  and  slovenly,  and  bold  and  coarse, 
Too  proud  for  art,  and  trusting  in  mere  force, 
Spendthrift  alike  of  money  and  of  wit, 
Always  at  speed,  and  never  drawing  bit, 
He  struck  the  lyre  in  such  a  careless  mood, 
And  so  disdain'd  the  rules  he  understood, 
The  laurel  seem'd  to  wait  on  his  command, 
He  snatch'd  it  rudely  from  the  Muse's  hand. 

— COWPER,  Table  Talk. 

COLLEY  CIBBER. 
English  Poet  Laureate:  1671-1757. 

With  just  desert  enroll'd  in  endless  fame, 
Conscious  of  worth  superior,  Gibber  came. 

— CHURCHILL,  The  Rosciad. 

It  wants  a  touch  of  Cibber's  ease, 
A  higher  kind  of  talk  to  please  : 
Such  as  your  titled  folks  would  choose, 
And  lords  and  ladyships  might  use. 

—  ROBERT  LLOYD,  A  Familiar  Epistle  to  G.  Column,  Esq. 


go  GIBBER,  CICERO. 

Ye  laughter-loving  pow'rs,  ye  gods  of  mirth, 
What !  not  regard  my  deputy  on  earth  ? 
Whose  chemic  skill  turns  brass  to  gold  with  ease, 
And  out  of  Gibber  forges  Socrates. 

— CHRISTOPHER  SMART,  The  Hilliad,  Book  /- 

MARIUS  TULLTUS  CICERO. 
Roman  Orator:  B.C.  100-43. 

I  slept  never  on  the  Mount  of  Pernaso, 
Ne  lerned  Marcus  Tullius  Cicero. 

— CHAUCER,  The  Frankelcinc's  Prologue.. 

Calphurnia's  cheek  is  pale  ;  and  Cicero 
Looks  with  such  ferret  and  such  fiery  eyes, 
As  we  have  seen  him  in  the  Capitol, 
Being  cross'd  in  conference  by  some  senators. 

— SHAKESPEARE,  Julius  Ccesar. 

0  come,  that  easy,  Ciceronian  style, 
So  Latin,  yet  so  English  all  the  while, 

As,  though  the  pride  of  Middleton  and  Bland, 
All  boys  may  read,  and  girls  may  understand ! 

— POPE,  Epilogue  to  the  Satires  :  Dialogue  I. 

Welcome  learn'd  Cicero  !  whose  bless'd  tongue  and  wit 
Preserves  Rome's  greatness  yet : 
Thou  art  the  first  of  orators  ;  only  he 
Who  best  can  praise  thee  next  must  be. 

— COWLEY,  The  Motto. 

This,  Cicero,  is  thy  heart ; 

1  hear  it  beating  thro'  each  purple  line. 

— LYTTON,  The  Souls  of  Books. 

This  name  [Cicero]  represents  not  merely  an  orator,  but  eloquence  itself.. 
— LAMARTINE,  Celebrated  Characters  (transl.),  Vol.  I. 

In  the  case  of  Cicero,  we  have  the  first  eminent  example  (though  he 
himself  records  some  elder  examples  amongst  his  own  countrymen)  of  a. 
man's  standing  up  manfully  to  support  the  pretensions  of  his  mother- 
tongue.  And  this  might  be  done  in  a  mere  spirit  of  pugnacious  defiance 
to  the  arrogance  of  another  nation — a  spirit  which  finds  matter  of  quarrel 
in  a  straw.  But  here  also  we  find  the  first  example  of  a  statesman's, 
seriously  regarding  a  language  in  the  light  of  a  foremost  jewel  amongst 
the  trophies  of  nationality. — DE  QUINCEY,  Leaders  in  Literature. 

If  Cato's  virtue  seems  more  splendid  in  theory,  Cicero's  will  be  found: 
superior  in  practice ;  the  one  was  romantic,  the  other  rational ;  the  one 
drawn  from  the  refinements  of  the  schools,  the  other  from  nature  and 
social  life;  the  one  always  unsuccessful,  often  hurtful  ;  the  other  always, 
beneficial,  often  salutary  to  the  republic. — CONYERS  MIDDLETON. 

Cicero,  the  world's  great  model  in  the  oratorical  and  the  philosophical,, 
is  no  less  eminent  in  the  epistolary  style.  He  rivalled  his  great  patterns, 
the  Greeks,  in  eloquence  and  philosophy :  and  he  excelled  them  in  his- 
letters. — DR.  VICESIMUS  KNOX. 


CIMABUE,  CLARENDON,  CLARKE,  CLARKSON.  gi 

GIOVANNI  CIMABUE. 
Italian  Painter  and  Architect :  1240-1302. 

Long  slumber'd  Painting  in  a  stupid  trance 
Of  heavy  zeal,  and  Monkish  ignorance: 
(When  faith  itself  for  mere  dispute  was  given, 
Subtle  was  wise,  and  wranglers  went  to  heav'n.) 
Till  glorious  Cimabue  restor'd  her  crown, 
And  dipp'd  the  pencil,  studious  of  renown. 

— WALTER  HARTE,  An  Essay  on  Painting. 

The  early  efforts  of  Cimabue  and  Giotto  are  the  burning  messages  of 
prophecy,  delivered  by  the  stammering  lips  of  infants. — RUSKIN,  Modern 
Painters,  Vol.  I. 

EARL  OF  CLARENDON. 
English  Statesman  and  Author  :  1608-1674. 

Clarendon  had  law  and  sense, 
Clifford  was  fierce  and  brave. 

— DRYDEN,  On  the  Young  Statesmen. 

We  suffer  ourselves  to  be  delighted  by  the  keenness  of  Clarendon's 
observation,  and  by  the  sober  majesty  of  his  style,  till  we  forget  the 
oppressor  and  the  bigot  in  the  historian. — MACAULAY,  Essays :  Lord 
Bacon. 

DR.  SAMUEL  CLARKE. 
English  Theologian  and  Philosopher :  1675-1729. 

And  Clarke's  exactness,  rigorous  and  precise, 
Might  vainly  torture  the  protracted  thought. 

— REV.  RICHARD  POLWHELE,  Pulpit  Eloquence. 

The  subtle  mind  of  Clarke,  the  champion  of  God  Himself. — LYTTON, 
England  and  the  English  :  Survey  of  Education. 

By  Dr.  Clarke's  death,  the  world  was  deprived  of  as  bright  a  light, 
and  masterly  a  teacher  of  truth  and  virtue,  as  ever  yet  appeared  amongst 
us ;  and  his  works  must  last  as  long  as  any  language  remains  to  convey 
them  to  future  times. — BISHOP  B.  HOADLY. 

THOMAS  CLARKSON. 
English  Philanthropist :  1760-1846. 

Clarkson  !  it  was  an  obstinate  hill  to  climb  ; 
How  toilsome,  nay,  how  dire  it  was,  by  thee 
Is  known, — by  none,  perhaps,  so  feelingly ; 
But  thou,  who,  starting  in  thy  fervent  prime, 
Didst  first  lead  forth  this  pilgrimage  sublime, 
Hast  heard  the  constant  voice  its  charge  repeat, 


g2  CLARKSON,  CLEOPATRA. 

Which,  not  of  the  young  heart's  oracular  seat, 

First  roused  thee. — Oh,  true  yoke — fellow  of  Time 

With  unabating  effort,  see  the  palm 

Is  won,  and  by  all  nations  shall  be  worn  ! 

The  bloody  writing  is  for  ever  torn, 

And  thou  henceforth  shall  have  a  good  man's  calm, 

A  great  man's  happiness  ;  thy  zeal  shall  find 

Repose  at  length,  firm  friend  of  human  kind! 

— WORDSWORTH,  To  Thomas  Clarkson. 

Clarkson,  I  answer'd,  first;  whom  to  have  seen 
And  known  in  social  hours  may  be  my  pride, 
Such  friendship  being  praise. 

— SOUTHEY,  The  Poet's  Pilgrimage  :  The  Hopes  of  Man. 

'  Mid  the  August  and  never-dying  light 
Of  constellated  spirits,  who  have  gained 
A  throne  in  heaven,  by  power  of  heavenly  acts, 
And  leave  their  names  immortal  and  unchanged 
On  earth,  even  as  the  names  of  sun  and  moon, 
Seest  thou,  my  soul !  'mid  all  that  radiant  host 
One  worthier  of  thy  love  and  reverence 
Than  He,  the  fearless  spirit  who  went  forth, 
Mailed  in  the  armour  of  invincible  faith, 
And  bearing  in  his  grasp  the  spear  of  truth, 
Fit  to  destroy  or  save,  went  forth  to  wage, 
Against  the  fierce  array  of  bloody  men, 
Avarice  and  ignorance,  cruelty  and  hate, 
A  holy  warfare ! 

— JOHN  WILSON,  Lines  written  on  Reading  Mr.  Clarkson's 
History  of  the  Abolition  of  the  Slave  Trade. 

An  institution  is  the  lengthened  shadow  of  one  man ;  as  Monachism, 
of  the  Hermit  Antony  ;  the  Reformation,  of  Luther  ;  Quakerism,  of  Fox  ; 
Methodism,  of  Wesley  ;  Abolition,  of  Clarkson.  Scipio  Milton  called  "  the 
height  of  Rome "  ;  and  all  history  resolves  itself  very  easily  into  the 
biography  of  a  few  stout  and  earnest  persons. — EMERSON,  Essays :  Self- 
Reliance. 

CLEOPATRA. 
Queen  of  Egypt :  B.C.  69-30. 

Yet  sawe  I  more,  howe  in  right  pilous  caas, 
For  Antony  was  slaine  Cleopatras. 

— CHAUCER,  The  Assemble  of  Ladies. 

High-minded  Cleopatra,  that  with  slroke 

Of  ashes  sling  her  selfe  did  sloutly  kill ; 

And  thousands  moe  the  like,  that  did  that  dongeon  fill. 

—  SPENSER,  The  Faery  Queene,  Book  I.,  Canto  V. 

Age  cannot  wilher  her,  nor  cuslom  slale 
Her  infinile  variely. 

—SHAKESPEARE,  Antony  and  Cleopatra. 


CLEOPATRA,  CL1VE,  COBBETT.  93 

Though  Helen's  form,  and  Cleopatra's  charms, 
The  boast  of  fame,  once  kindled  dire  alarms : 
Those  dazzling  lights  the  world  no'more  must  view, 
And  scarce  would  think  the  bright  description  true. 

— JOHN  HUGHES,  Greenwich  Park. 

LORD  CLIVE. 
Indian  Governor :  1725-1774. 

To  keep  one  lover's  flame  alive, 
Requires  the  genius  of  a  Clive. 

— CHATTERTON,  The  Advice. 

Clive,  like  most  men  who  are  born  with  strong  passions  and  tried  by 
strong  temptations,  committed  great  faults.  But  every  person  who  takes 
a  fair  and  enlightened  view  of  his  whole  career  must  admit  that  our  island, 
so  fertile  in  heroes  and  statesmen,  has  scarcely  ever  produced  a  man  more 
truly  great  either  in  arms  or  in  council. — MACAULAY,  Essays  :  Lord  Clive. 

WILLIAM  COBBETT. 
English  Political  Writer:  1762-1835. 

Imposing,  undoubting,  Cobbett-like  manners. — S.  T.  COLERIDGE,  Table 
Talk. 

The  late  Lord  Thurlow  used  to  say  that  Cobbett  was  the  only  writer 
that  deserved  the  name  of  a  political  reasoner.  .  .  .  People  have  about  as 
substantial  an  idea  of  Cobbett  as  they  have  of  Cribb.  ...  He  might  be 
said  to  have  the  clearness  of  Swift,  the  naturalness  of  Defoe,  and  the 
picturesque  satirical  description  of  Mandeville. — HAZLITT,  Table  Talk. 

One  is  slow  to  believe  that  a  man  is  much  in  earnest,  when  he  will  not 
stand  out  and  bear  the  brunt  of  the  public  gaze ;  when  he  shrinks  from 
avowing,  What  I  have  written,  I  have  written.  Whereas  a  certain  respect 
and  deference  is  ever  felt  almost  instinctively  for  the  personality  of  another, 
when  it  is  not  impertinently  obtruded :  and  it  is  pleasant  to  be  reminded 
now  and  then  that  we  are  reading  the  words  of  a  man  not  the  words  of  a 
book.  .  .  .  This  was  one  of  the  things  which  added  to  the  power  of  Cob- 
bett's  style.  His  readers  knew  who  was  talking  to  them.  They  knew  it  was 
William  Cobbett,  not  the  Times,  or  the  Morning'  Chronicle, — that  the  words 
proceeded  from  the  breast  of  a  man,  not  merely  from  the  mouth  of  a  print- 
ing-press. It  is  only  under  his  own  shape,  we  all  feel,  that  we  can  constrain 
Proteus  to  answer  us,  or  rely  on  what  he  says. — J.  C.  HARE,  Guesses  at 
Truth,  First  Series. 

It  is  worth  while  to  read  Cobbett,  and  especially  the  Rural  Rides,  not 
only  to  enjoy  his  fine  homespun  English,  but  to  learn  to  know  the  man  a 
little  better.  Whatever  the  deserts  or  demerits  of  Cobbett  as  a  political 
agitator,  the  true  man  was  fully  as  much  allied  to  modern  Young  England 
and  the  later  type  of  conservatism  as  to  the  modern  radical.  He  hated  the 
Scotch  "  feelosophers  " — as  he  calls  them — Parson  Malthus,  the  political 
communists,  the  Manchester  men,  the  men  who  would  break  up  the  old 
social  system  of  the  country,  at  the  bottom  of  his  heart. — LESLIE  STEPHEN,. 
Hours  in  a  Library,  Vol.  III. 


W  COBDEN,  COBHAM,  COLENSO. 

RICHARD  COBDEN. 
English  Politician  and  Economist :  1804-1865. 

Cobden  believed  that  the  real  interests,  of  the  individual,  of  the  nation, 
and  of  all  nations  are  identical ;  and  that  these  several  interests  are  all 
in  entire  and  necessary  accord  with  the  highest  interests  of  morality. 
With  this  belief,  an  economic  truth  acquired  with  him  the  dignity  and 
vitality  of  a  moral  law,  and,  instead  of  remaining  a  barren  doctrine  of  the 
intellect,  became  a  living  force,  to  move  the  hearts  and  consciences  of 
men. — SIR  Louis  MALLET,  Introductory  Essay  to  Writings  of  Cobden. 

Cobden  made  his  way  to  men's  hearts  by  the  union  which  they  saw 
in  him  of  simplicity,  earnestness,  and  conviction,  with  a  singular  faculty  of 
exposition.  This  facility  consisted  in  a  remarkable  power  of  apt  and 
"homely  illustration,  and  a  curious  ingenuity,  in  framing  the  argument 
that  happened  to  be  wanted.  Besides  his  skill  in  thus  hitting  on  the  right 
argument,  Cobden  had  the  oratorical  art  of  presenting  it  in  the  way  that 
made  its  admission  to  the  understanding  of  a  listener  easy  and  undenied. 
He  always  seemed  to  have  made  the  right  allowance  for  the  difficulty  with 
which  men  follow  a  speech,  as  compared  with  the  ease  of  following  the  same 
argument  on  a  printed  page.  .  .  .  Then  men  were  attracted  by  his  mental 
alacrity,  by  the  instant  readiness,  with  which  he  turned  round  to  grapple 
with  a  new  objection.  Prompt  and  confident,  he  was  never  at  a  loss, 
and  he  never  hesitated.  This  is  what  Mr.  Disraeli  meant  when  he  spoke 
•of  Cobden's  sauciness. — JOHN  MORLEY,  Life  of  Cobden,  Vol.  I. 

Cobden,  must  be  looked  on  rather  as  a  political  missionary  than  as  a 
statesman,  as  an  agitator  rather  than  as  an  administrator. — A.  J.  BALFOUR, 
Essays  and  Addresses. 

SIR  JOHN  OLDCASTLE,  LORD  COBHAM. 
English  Soldier  and  Reformer  :  1360-1417. 

Why  there  ?  they  came  to  hear  their  preacher.     Then 
Some  cried  on  Cobham,  on  the  good  Lord  Cobham : 
Ay,  for  they  love  me  !  but  the  king — nor  voice 
Nor  finger  raised  against  him — took  and  hang'd. 

— TENNYSON,  Sir  John  Oldcastle,  Lord  Cobham. 

Sir  John  Oldcastle,  Lord  Cobham,  was  the  most  conspicuous  of  the  first 
heretics,  or,  in  other  words,  of  the  first  who  preferred  death  to  insincerity, 
under  the  new  law  for  burning  heretics. — SIR  JAMES  MACKINTOSH,  History 
of  England,  Vol.  I. 

Sir  John  Oldcastle,  Lord  Cobham,  was  a  man  whose  virtue  made  him  a 
reformer,  whose  valour  made  him  a  martyr. — HORACE  WALPOLE. 

.DR.  J.  W.  COLENSO. 
Bishop  of  Natal  and  Biblical  Critic  :  1814-1883. 

For  our  Essays  and  Reviews'  debate 
Begins  to  tell  on  the  public  mind, 
And  Colenso's  words  have  weight. 

— ROBERT  BROWNING,  Gold  Hair. 


COLERIDGE.  95 

SAMUEL  TAYLOR  COLERIDGE. 
English  Poet  and  Philosopher  :  1772-1834. 

Stop,  Christian  passer-by  ;  stop,  child  of  God, 

And  read,  with  gentle  breast.     Beneath  this  sod 

A  poet  lies,  or  that  which  once  seemed  he — 

O,  lift  a  prayer  in  thought  for  S.  T.  C. ! 

That  he  who  many  a  year  with  toil  of  breath, 

Found  death  in  life,  may  here  find  life  in  death ! 

Mercy  for  praise — to  be  forgiven,  for  fame 

He  asked,  and  hoped  through  Christ.     Do  thou  the  same. 

— S.  T.  COLERIDGE,  Epitaph  composed  for  Himself. 

You  will  see  Coleridge ;  he  who  sits  obscure 

Iji  the  exceeding  lustre  and  the  pure 

Intense  irradiation  of  a  mind,     , 

Which,  with  its  own  internal  lustre  blind ; 

Flags  wearily  through  darkness  and  despair — 

A  cloud-encircled  meteor  of  the  air, 

A  hooded  eagle  among  blinking  owls. 

— SHELLEY,  Letter  to  Maria  Gisborne. 

And  Coleridge,  too,  has  lately  taken  wing, 
But  like  a  hawk  encumber'd  with  his  hood, 
Explaining  metaphysics  to  the  nation — 
I  wish  he  would  explain  his  explanation. 

— BYRON,  Don  yuan,  Canto  I. 

Nor  has  the  rolling  year  twice  measured, 
From  sign  to  sign,  its  steadfast  course, 
Since  every  mortal  power  of  Coleridge, 
Was  frozen  at  its  marvellous  source ; 
The  'rapt  One,  of  the  godlike  forehead, 
The  heavened-eyed  creature  sleeps  in  earth. 

— WORDSWORTH,   Extempore   Effusion   upon    the   Death 
of  James  Hogg. 

One  whose  fame  is  in  all  the  churches.  .  .  .  Samuel  Taylor  Coleridge, 
logician,  metaphysician,  bard. — AUGUSTINE  BIRRELL,  Obiter  Dicta,  First 
Series. 

Coleridge,  a  catholic  mind,  with  a  hunger  for  ideas,  with  eyes  looking 
before  and  after  to  the  highest  bards  and  sages,  and  who  wrote  and  spoke 
the  only  high  criticism  in  his  time,  is  one  of  those  who  save  England  from 
the  reproach  of  no  longer  possessing  the  capacity  to  appreciate  what  rarest 
wit  the  island  has  yielded. — EMERSON,  English  Traits :  Literature. 

The  magnificent  imagery  and  the  varied  music  of  Coleridge  and  Shelley. 
— LORD  MACAULAY,  Essays  :  Moore's  Life  of  Lord  Byron. 

This  Manichean  of  poesy. — BYRON  in  MOORE'S  Life  of  Byron. 

Coleridge  exerted  so  large  an  influence  over  so  many  of  those  minds 
"which  are  in  themselves  reproductive,  and  yield  in  the  sheaf  what  they 
receive  in  the  germ,  that  if  we  were  asked  "  What  he  had  done  in  this 
life  ?  "  it  might  be  enough  to  answer,  "  he  has  lived  ".  We  might  almost 


96  COLERIDGE. 

suppress  reference  to  his  own  writings,  we  might  point  to  the  writings  of 
others. — LYTTON,  Essays  :  Charles  Lamb. 

If  it  be  true,  as  Lord  Bacon  affirms,  that  a  knowledge  of  the  speculative 
opinions  of  the  men  between  twenty  and  thirty  years  of  age  is  the  great 
source  of  political  prophecy,  the  existence  of  Coleridge  will  show  itself  by 
no  slight  or  ambiguous  traces  in  the  coming  history  of  our  country ;  for 
no  one  has  contributed  more  to  shape  the  opinions  of  those  among  its 
younger  men,  who  can  be  said  to  have  opinions  at  all.  .  .  .  He  has  been 
the  great  awakener  in  this  country  of  the  spirit  of  philosophy,  within  the 
bounds  of  traditional  opinions.  He  has  been,  almost  as  truly  as  Bentham, 
"the  great  questioner  of  things  established"  ;  for  a  questioner  needs  not 
necessarily  be  an  enemy. — JOHN  STUART  MILL,  Dissertations  and  Dis- 
cussions, Vol.  I. 

"You  can  never  say  too  much  about  Coleridge  for  me,"  Rossetti  would 
write,  "for  I  worship  him  on  the  right  side  of  idolatry,  and  I  perceive  you 
know  him  well."  Upon  this  one  of  my  first  remarks  was  that  there  was 
much  in  Coleridge's  higher  descriptive  verse  equivalent  to  the  landscape 
art  of  Turner.  The  critical  parallel  Rossetti  warmly  approved  of,  adding 
however,  that  Coleridge,  at  his  best  as  a  pictorial  artist,  was  a  spiritualised 
Turner. — HALL  CAINE,  Recollections  of  Dante  Gabriel  Rossetti. 

Coleridge  sat  on  the  brow  of  Highgate  Hill  in  those  years,  looking 
down  on  London  and  its  smoke-tumult,  like  a  sage  escaped  from  the 
inanity  of  life's  battle  ;  attracting  towards  him  the  thoughts  of  innumerable 
brave  souls  still  engaged  there.  His  express  contributions  to  poetry, 
philosophy,  or  any  specific  province  of  human  literature  or  enlightenment, 
had  been  small  and  sadly  intermittent ;  but  he  had,  especially  among 
young  inquiring  men,  a  higher  than  literary,  a  kind  of  prophetic  or  magician 
character.  He  was  thought  to  hold,  he  alone  in  England,  the  key  of 
German  and  other  Transcendentalisms ;  knew  the  sublime  secret  of 
believing  by  "  the  reason  "  what  "the  understanding"  had  been  obliged 
to  fling  out  as  incredible ;  and  could  still,  after  Hume  and  Voltaire  had 
done  their  best  and  worst  with  him,  profess  himself  an  orthodox  Christian, 
and  say  and  point  to  the  Church  of  England,  with  its  singular  old  rubrics 
and  surplices  at  Allhallowtide,  Esto  perpetua.  A  sublime  man ;  who, 
alone  in  those  dark  days,  had  saved  his  crown  of  spiritual  manhood* 
escaping  from  the  black  materialisms,  and  revolutionary  deluges,  with 
"  God,  Freedom,  Immortality"  still  his:  a  king  of  men. — CARLYLE,  Life 
of  John  Sterling. 

I  have  heard  Coleridge.  That  man  is  entitled  to  speak  on  till  Dooms- 
day— or  rather  the  genius  within  him — for  he  is  inspired.  Wind  him  up, 
and  away  he  goes,  discoursing  most  excellent  music — without  a  discord — 
full,  ample,  inexhaustible,  serious  and  divine ! — JOHN  WILSON,  Noctes 
Ambrosiance,  Vol.  I. 

Coleridge,  that  rich-freighted  Argosie  tilting  in  sunshine  over  Imagina- 
tion's Seas. — Id.,  Ibid.  :  Old  North  and  Young  North. 

The  Fakeer  of  Highgate. — KINGSLEY,  Literary  and  General  Lectures. 

Coleridge's  own  imagination,  too,  enabled  him  to  accompany  all  other 
poets  in  their  boldest  flights,  and  then  to  feel  most  truly  in  his  element. 
Nor  could  anything  be  too  profound  or  too  subtle  for  his  psychological! 


COLERIDGE,  COLLINS,  COLUMBUS. 


97 


analysis.  In  fact  his  chief  failing  as  a  critic  was  his  fondness  for  seeking 
depth  below  depth,  and  knot  within  knot :  and  he  would  now  and  then 
try  to  dive,  when  the  water  did  not  come  up  to  his  ankles. — J.  C.  HARE, 
Guesses  at  Truth,  First  Scries, 

Coleridge's  singular  history  may  throw  some  light  upon  his  teaching. 
Here  we  meet  the  hagiologist  and  the  iconoclast,  the  twin  plagues  of  the 
humble  biographer.  The  hagiologist  burns  incense  before  his  idol  till  it  is 
difficult  to  distinguish  any  fixed  outline  through  the  clouds  of  gorgeously- 
tinted  vapour.  Coleridge  thought  himself  to  have  certain  failings.  His 
relations  fully  agreed  with  him.  His  worshippers  regard  these  meek 
confessions  as  mere  illustrations  of  the  good  man's  humility,  and  even 
manage  to  endow  the  poet  and  philosopher  with  all  the  homely  virtues 
of  the  respectable  and  the  solvent.  To  put  forward  such  claims  is  to 
challenge  the  iconoclast.  ...  To  tell  the  story  of  Coleridge  without  the 
opium  is  to  tell  the  story  of  Hamlet  without  mentioning  the  Ghost. — 
LESLIE  STEPHEN,  Hours  in  a  Library,  Vol.  III. 


WILLIAM  COLLINS. 
English  Poet :  1720-1756. 

Collins  was  simply  a  reed,  cut  short  and  notched  by  the  great  god  Pan, 
for  the  production  of  enchanting  flute-melodies  at  intervals ;  but  for  all 
other  human  purposes  a  vain  and  empty  thing  indeed. — E.  W.  GOSSE, 
Gray. 


CHRISTOPHER  COLUMBUS. 
Discoverer  of  America  :  1438-1506. 


Spain  once  the  most  chivalric  race  on  earth, 

Spain  then  the  mightiest,  wealthiest  realm  of  earth, 

So  made  by  me,  may  seek  to  unbury  me, 

To  lay  me  in  some  shrine  of  this  old  Spain, 

Or  in  that  vaster  Spain  I  leave  to  Spain. 

Then  someone  standing  by  my  grave  will  say, 

"  Behold  the  bones  of  Christopher  Colon  " — " 

"  Ay,  but  the  chains,  what  do  they  mean — the  chains  ?  " — 

I  sorrow  for  that  kindly  child  of  Spain 

Who  then  will  have  to  answer,  "  These  same  chains 

Bound  these  same  bones  back  thro'  the  Atlantic  sea, 

Which  he  unchain'd  for  all  the  world  to  come." 

— TENNYSON,  Columbus. 

Remember  whose  and  not  how  short  it  is ! 
It  is  God's  day,  it  is  Columbus's. 
O  lavish  day  !     One  day,  with  life  and  heart, 
Is  more  than  time  enough  to  find  a  world. 

— J.  R.  LOWELL,  Columbus. 

Did  great  Columbus  tame  his  eagle  soul 

To  jostle  with  the  daws  that  perch  in  courts  ? 

— Id.,  L' Envoi. 

7 


98  COLUMBUS. 

Who  bid  the  stork,  Columbus-like,  explore 
Heav'ns  not  his  own,  and  worlds  unknown  before  ? 

— POPE,  Essay  on  Man  :  Epistle  III. 

Columbus  was  the  first  that  shook  his  throne  ; 
And  found  a  temperate  in  a  torrid  zone. 

— DRYDEN,  Epistle  II. :  To  Dr.  Charleton. 

By  the  virtue  led 

Of  Gama  and  Columbus.     The  whole  globe 
Is  now,  of  commerce,  made  the  scene  immense, 
Which  daring  ships  frequent,  associated, 
Like  doves,  or  swallows,  in  th'  ethereal  flood, 
Or,  like  the  eagle,  solitary  seen. 

—DYER,  The  Fleece :  Book  IV. 

Columbus  !  scarce  inferior  fame 

For  thee  to  find,  than  heaven  to  frame 

That  womb  of  gold  and  gem  :  her  wide  domain, 

An  universe !  her  rivers  seas  ! 

Her  fruits,  both  men  and  gods  to  please  ! 

Heaven's  fairest  birth  !  and,  but  for  thee,  in  vain  ! 

—YOUNG,  The  Merchant :  Strain  IV. 

Columbus,  boast  of  science,  boast  of  man  ; 

Yet,  by  the  great,  the  learned,  and  the  wise, 

Long  held  a  visionary  ;  who,  like  thee 

Could  brook  their  scorn  ;  wait  seven  long  years  at  court, 

A  selfish,  sullen,  dilatory  court ; 

Yet  never  from  thy  purpos'd  plan  decline  ? 

No  god,  no  hero  of  poetic  times, 

In  truth's  fair  annals  may  compare  with  thee  1 

— JAMES  GRAINGER,  The  Sugar  Cane. 

Have  we  not  lately,  in  the  moon, 
Found  a  new  world,  to  th'  old  unknown  ? 
Discover'd  sea  and  land,  Columbus 
And  Magellan  cou'd  never  compass  ? 
Made  mountains  with  our  tubes  appear, 
And  cattle  grazing  on  'em  there  ? 

—SAMUEL  BUTLER,  Hudibras,  Part  II.,  Canto  3. 

Still  steer  on,  brave  heart !  though  witlings  laugh  at  thy  emprize,    . 
And  though  the  helmsmen  drop  weary  and  nerveless  their  hands ; 
Westward,  westward  still !  there  land  must  emerge  to  the  vision  ; 
There  it  lies  in  its  light,  dear  to  the  eye  of  thy  mind ; 
Trust  in  the  power  that  guides  :  press  on  o'er  the  convex  of  ocean  : 
What  thou  seekest — were  it  not — yet  it  would  rise  from  the  wave. 
Nature  with  genius  holds  a  pact  that  is  fixt  and  eternal : 
All  that  is  promised  by  this,  that  never  fails  to  perform. 

—DR.  WM.  WHEWELL,  From  Schiller's  Columbus. 

Columbus  enriched  kings  with  the  wealth  of  a  new  hemisphere,  and 
Columbus  came  back  in  chains  from  the  New  World  he  had  discovered. — 
F.  W.  FARRAR,  Social  and  Present-Day  Questions. 


COLUMBUS.  99 

Columbus  found  the  New  World  in  an  undecked  boat.  It  is  curious  to 
see  the  periodical  disuse  and  perishing  of  means  and  machinery,  which 
were  introduced  with  loud  laudation  a  few  years  or  centuries  before.  The 
great  genius  returns  to  essential  man. — EMERSON,  Essays  :  Self-Reliance. 

Columbus,  too,  read  men  sideways,  as  it  were.  No  one  has  ever  yet 
lived,  whose  career  has  had  so  great  an  effect  on  human  affairs  as  Colum- 
bus ;  yet  was  he  fated  to  die  in  ignorance  of  the  grandeur  of  his  own 
discovery. — CHARLES  BUCKE,  Book  of  Human  Character. 

Columbus  had  all  the  spirit  of  a  crusader,  and,  at  the  same  time,  the 
investigating  nature  of  a  modern  man  of  science.  The  Arabs  have  a  pro- 
verb that  a  man  is  more  the  son  of  the  age  in  which  he  lives  than  of  his 
own  father.  This  was  not  so  with  Columbus  ;  he  hardly  seems  to  belong 
at  all  to  his  age.  At  a  time  when  there  was  never  more  of  worldliness 
and  self-seeking ;  when  Alexander  Borgia  was  Pope ;  when  Louis  the 
Eleventh  reigned  in  France,  Henry  the  Seventh  in  England,  and  Ferdinand 
the  Catholic  in  Arragon  and  Castile — about  the  three  last  men  in  the 
world  to  become  Crusaders — Columbus  was  penetrated  with  the  ideas  of 
the  twelfth  century,  and  would  have  been  a  worthy  companion  of  Saint 
Louis  in  that  pious  king's  crusade. — SIR  ARTHUR  HELPS,  Life  of  Columbus. 

Like  Joan  of  Arc,  and  other  gifted  beings  who  have  been  the  instruments 
to  work  out  great  events,  Columbus  heard  voices,  which  had  the  practical 
effect  of  rousing  him  from  despondency  and  bracing  him  to  his  work.  He 
has  recorded  two  occasions  on  which  this  happened,  but  probably  "  the 
voices  "  made  themselves  heard  at  other  critical  turning-points  of  his  life. 
Yet  there  was  no  danger  of  his  becoming  a  mere  missionary.  His  clear 
penetrating  intellect  saved  him  from  that ;  and  it  was  this  unrivalled  power, 
combined  with  a  brilliant  imagination,  which  constituted  his  genius.  He 
prepared  himself  for  his  great  work  by  long  study,  by  the  acquisition  of 
vast  experience,  and  by  a  minute  knowledge  of  every  detail  of  his  profes- 
sion. But  this  would  not  have  sufficed.  He  added  to  these  qualifications 
a  master  mind  endowed  with  reasoning  powers  of  a  high  order  ;  and  an 
ingenious,  almost  subtle,  way  of  seizing  upon  and  utilising  every  point 
which  had  a  relation  to  the  subject  he  was  considering.  His  forecasts 
amount  to  precision.  Assuredly  the  New  World  was  no  accident. — C.  R. 
MARKHAM,  Life  of  Christopher  Columbus. 

In  Columbus  were  singularly  combined  the  practical  and  the  poetical. 
His  mind  had  grasped  all  kinds  of  knowledge,  whether  procured  by  study 
or  observation,  which  bore  upon  his  theories ;  impatient  of  the  scanty  ali- 
ment of  the  day,  "his  impetuous  ardour,"  as  has  well  been  observed, 
"  threw  him  into  the  study  of  the  fathers  of  the  Church,  the  Arabian  Jews, 
and  the  ancient  geographers";  while  his  daring,  but  irregular  genius, 
bursting  from  the  limits  of  imperfect  science,  bore  him  to  conclusions  far 
beyond  the  intellectual  vision  of  his  contemporaries.  If  some  of  his  con- 
clusions were  erroneous,  they  were  at  least  ingenious  and  splendid ;  and 
their  error  resulted  from  the  clouds  which  still  hung  over  his  peculiar  path 
of  enterprise.  His  own  discoveries  enlightened  the  ignorance  of  the  age, 
guided  conjecture  to  certainty,  and  dispelled  that  very  darkness  with  which 
he  had  been  obliged  to  struggle. — WASHINGTON  IRVING,  Life  and  Voyages 
of  Columbus,  Vol.  II. 

The  men  of  that  time  justly  deserving  the  title  of  innovators  were  those 


ioo  COLUMBUS,  COMINES,  COMTE. 

who  foresaw  the  progress  of  civilization  towards  a  vaster  synthesis  of  the 
human  race,  and  felt  drawn  nearer  to  God.  Their  hot  blood  burned  like 
fever  in  their  veins  ;  their  ideas  changed  with  delirious  rapidity  :  they  were 
dominated  by  a  superior  force,  impelling  them  across  unknown  seas  to  the 
discovery  of  unseen  but  truly  imagined  lands.  Of  these  men  Christopher 
Columbus  was  the  veritable  type  and  exponent.  Rather  than  downright, 
genuine  thinkers,  they  are  champions  of  thought.  It  is  useless  to  ask 
them  what  they  seek  and  whither  they  go.  They  only  know  that  they 
are  pressing  forward,  and  drawing  the  world  after  them  in  their  course — • 
nothing  more.  Nor  should  we  wonder  at  their  unconsciousness,  for  it  is 
their  essential  characteristic  and  merit.  They  disperse  the  darkness,  and 
cleave  a  passage  for  the  new  road,  rather  by  force  of  will  and  faith,  than 
by  force  of  reason.  Theirs  is  the  prophetic  mind,  the  hero's  heart,  the 
martyr's  fate. — PROF.  VILLARI,  Life  and  Times  of  Savonarola  (transl.). 

PHILIP  DE  COMINES. 
French  Historian  and  Statesman  :  1445-1509. 

If  Froissart,  by  his  picturesque  descriptions,  and  fertility  of  historical 
invention,  may  be  reckoned  the  Livy  of  France,  she  had  her  Tacitus  in 
Philip  de  Comines. — HALLAM,  Literature  of  the  Middle  Ages,  Vol.  I. 

Comines  has  made  as  many  heretics  in  politics  as  Luther  has  in  religion. 
— CATHERINE  DE  MEDICI. 

AUGUSTE  COMTE. 
French  Philosopher:  1798-1857. 

Let  it  by  no  means  be  supposed  from  all  I  have  said,  that  I  do  not 
regard  M.  Comte's  speculations  as  of  great  value.  True  or  untrue,  his 
system  as  a  whole,  has  doubtless  produced  important  and  salutary  revolu- 
tions of  thought  in  many  minds  ;  and  will  doubtless  do  so  in  many  more. 
.  .  .  And  he  has  done  especial  service  by  familiarizing  men  with  the  idea 
of  a  social  science,  based  on  the  other  sciences. — HERBERT  SPENCER, 
Philosophy  of  Comtc. 

The  most  reverend  prelate  might  dialectically  hew  M.  Comte  in  pieces, 
as  a  modern  Agag,  and  I  should  not  attempt  to  stay  his  hand.  In  so  far 
as  my  study  of  what  specially  characterises  the  Positive  Philosophy  has 
led  me,  I  find  therein  little  or  nothing  of  any  scientific  value,  and  a  great 
deal  which  is  as  thoroughly  antagonistic  to  the  very  essence  of  science  as 
anything  in  ultramontane  Catholicism.  In  fact,  M.  Comte's  philosophy, 
in  practice,  might  be  compendiously  described  as  Catholicism  minus 
Christianity. — HUXLEY,  Method  and  Results. 

A  man  wishing  to  build  a  house  must  indeed  obey  the  law  of  universal 
gravitation,  but  it  will  help  him  little  practically  to  have  that  law  enunciated 
with  the  most  convincing  pomp  of  historical  proof  and  the  most  rigid 
mathematical  precision.  We  are  obliged  to  conclude,  then,  that  positivism 
in  M.  Comte's  hands,  while  pretending  to  take  upon  itself  the  regulation 
of  human  conduct,  fails  to  furnish  a  guiding  principle  for  either  individuals 
or  societies.  It  sends  us  to  sea  with  an  admirable  chart  of  the  tides, 
currents,  and  winds ;  instructs  us  how  eminently  modifiable  these  forces. 


COMTE,  CONFUCIUS,  CONGREVE.  101 

are  by  the  rudder ;  but  declines  to  provide  us  with  a  compass,  or  to  say 
anything  about  the  port  for  which  we  have  to  steer.  All  that  can  be  done 
in  such  a  case  is  to  lie  on  one's  back  and  look  at  the  stars,  or  exercise  an 
empirical  prudence  in  selecting  such  a  course  as  fancy  or  foresight  may 
suggest.  To  drop  metaphor,  we  must  still  have  recourse  to  our  celestial 
guides,  or  to  our  internal  monitions,  in  our  voyage  along  the  stormy  sea 
of  life  :  for  M.  Comte  provides  us  with  no  satisfactory  substitute. — GEORGE 
BRIMLEY,  Essays. 

All  Comte's  books  are  dull.  This  Positivist  Catechism  is  one  of  the 
dullest.  And  yet  it  is  throughout  abundantly  entertaining.  This  may 
sound  paradoxical  ;  but  the  paradox  at  once  vanishes  if  we  consider  that 
there  is  nothing  more  ludicrous  even  to  the  gravest  than  the  gravity  of  a 
goose,  an  animal  whose  majestic  strut  along  a  common  after  it  is  tired  of 
feeding  is  a  familiar,  but  not,  it  must  be  confessed,  an  imposing,  spectacle. 
M.  Comte's  pace  and  presence  are  kindred  to  those  of  this  useful  bird. 
And  as  destitute  as  the  goose  of  humour,  he  provokes  mirth  by  his  solemn 
airs  and  by  a  ponderousness  of  speech  which  is  meant  for  regal  dignity. — 
WILLIAM  MACCALL,  The  Newest  Materialism. 


CONFUCIUS. 
Chinese  Philosopher:  B.C.  551-479. 

Superior,  and  alone,  Confucius  stood, 

Who  taught  that  useful  science, — to  be  good. 

— POPE,  The  Temple  of  Fame. 

And  he  talks  in  one  breath  of  Confutzee,  Cass,  Zerduscht. 

— J.  R.  LOWELL,  A  Fable  for  Critics. 

Confucius  perhaps  displayed  as  much  sagacity  as  benevolence,  in  making 
politeness  one  of  his  five  cardinal  virtues. — W.  B.  CHULOW. 

What  a  pity  their  philosopher  Confucius  did  not  write  poetry,  with  his 
precepts  of  mortality  ! — BYRON  in  MOORE'S  Life  of  Byron. 

No  great  character  in  history  can  appeal  more  surely  from  the  opinion 
of  his  contemporaries  to  the  verdict  of  posterity  than  Confucius. — PROF. 
R.  K.  DOUGLAS,  Confucianism  and  Taouisin. 

Confucius  might  well  be  the  saint  of  modern  Agnosticism. — C.  L.  BRACE, 
Gcsta  Christi. 


WILLIAM  CONGREVE. 
English  Dramatist  and  Poet:  1670-1729. 

Did  not  the  muses'  other  hope  appear, 
Harmonious  Congreve,  and  forbid  our  fear  : 
Congreve,  whose  fancy's  unexhausted  store 
Has  given  already  much,  and  promis'd  more. 
Congreve  shall  still  preserve  thy  fame  alive, 
And  Dryden's  music  shall  in  his  friend  survive. 

— ADDISON,  Account  of  the  Greatest  English  Poets. 


102  CONGREVE,  COOK,  COPERNICUS: 

The  comic  tone,  inspir'd  by  Congreve,  draws 
At  every  word,  loud  laughter  and  applause. 

— ADDISON,  The  Play  House. 

No  writers  have  injured  the  Comedy  of  England  so  deeply  as  Congreve 
and  Sheridan.  Both  were  men  of  splendid  wit  and  polished  taste.  Un- 
happily they  made  all  their  characters  in  their  own  likeness.  Their  works 
bear  the  same  relation  to  the  legitimate  drama  which  a  transparency  bears 
to  a  painting.  There  are  no  delicate  touches,  no  hues  imperceptibly  fading 
into  each  other  :  the  whole  is  lighted  up  with  an  universal  glare.  Outlines 
and  tints  are  forgotten  in  the  common  blaze  which  illuminates  all.  The 
flowers  and  fruits  of  the  intellect  abound;  but  it  is  the  abundance  of  a 
jungle,  not  a  garden,  unwholesome,  bewildering,  unprofitable  from  its  very 
plenty,  rank  from  its  very  fragrance.  Every  fop,  every  boor,  every  valet, 
is  a  man  of  wit. — MACAULAY,  Essays  :  Machiavclli. 

He  formed  a  peculiar  idea  of  comic  excellence,  which  he  supposed  to 
consist  in  gay  remarks  and  unexpected  answers  ;  but  that  which  he 
endeavoured,  he  seldom  failed  of  performing.  His  scenes  exhibit  not 
much  of  humour,  imagery,  or  passion :  his  personages  are  a  kind  of  in- 
tellectual gladiators :  every  sentence  is  to  ward  or  strike ;  the  contest  of 
smartness  is  never  intermitted  ;  his  wit  is  a  meteor  playing  to  and  fro  with 
alternate  coruscations. — DR.  JOHNSON,  Lives  of  the  Poets  :  Congreve. 

CAPTAIN  JAMES  COOK. 
English  Circumnavigator :  1728-1779. 

When  Cook — lamented,  and  with  tears  as  just 

As  ever  mingled  with  heroic  dust, — 

Steer'd  Britain's  oak  into  a  world  unknown, 

And  in  his  country's  glory  sought  his  own, 

Wherever  he  found  man,  to  nature  true, 

The  rights  of  man  were  sacred  in  his  view ; 

He  soothed  with  gifts,  and  greeted  with  a  smile, 

The  simple  native  of  the  new-found  isle  ; 

He  spurn'd  the  wretch  that  slighted  or  withstood 

The  tender  argument  of  kindred  blood. 

Nor  would  endure  that  any  should  control 

His  freeborn  brethren  of  the  southern  pole. 

But  though  some  nobler  minds  a  law  respect, 

That  none  shall  with  impunity  neglect, 

In  baser  souls  unnumber'd  evils  meet, 

To  thwart  its  influence,  and  its  end  defeat. 

While  Cook  is  loved  for  savage  lives  he  saved, 

See  Cortez  odious  for  a  world  enslaved ! 

— COWPER,  Charity. 

NICHOLAS  COPERNICUS. 
German  Astronomer:  1473-1543. 

The  learned  Scaliger  complain'd 
'Gainst  what  Copernicus  maintain'd, 
That  in  twelve  hundred  years  and  odd, 


COPERNICUS,  CORD  AY.  103 

The  sun  had  left  its  ancient  road, 
And  nearer  to  the  earth  is  come 
'Bove  fifty  thousand  miles  from  home. 

—SAMUEL  BUTLER,  Hitdibras,  Part  II.,  Canto  3. 

If  to  the  old  you  the  new  schools  prefer, 

And  to  the  fam'd  Copernicus  adhere  ; 

If  you  esteem  that  supposition  best, 

Which  moves  the  earth,  and  leaves  the  sun  at  rest ; 

With  a  new  veil  your  ignorance  you  hide, 

Still  is  the  knot  as  hard  to  be  untied  ; 

You  change  your  scheme,  but  the  old  doubts  remain, 

And  still  you  leave  th'  inquiring  mind  in  pain. 

— SIR  RICHARD  BLACKMORE,  Creation. 

The  Founder  of  Modern  Astronomy. — HALLAM,  Literature  of  the 
Middle  Ages,  Vol.  I. 

Is  it  so  bad,  then,  to  be  misunderstood  ?  Pythagoras  was  misunderstood, 
and  Socrates,  and  Jesus,  and  Luther,  and  Copernicus,  and  Galileo,  and 
Newton,  and  every  pure  and  wise  spirit  that  ever  took  flesh.  To  be  great 
is  to  be  misunderstood. — EMERSON,  Essays  :  Self-Reliance. 

In  1543  the  epoch-making  work  of  Copernicus  on  the  paths  of  the 
heavenly  bodies  appeared.  The  total  crash  of  Aristotle's  closed  universe 
with  the  earth  at  its  centre  followed  as  a  consequence,  and  "the  earth 
moves!  "  became  a  kind  of  watchword  among  intellectual  freemen.  .  .  . 
In  the  last  year  of  the  life  of  Copernicus  his  book  appeared  :  it  is  said  that 
the  old  man  received  a  copy  of  it  a  few  days  before  his  death,  and  then 
departed  in  peace. — TYNDALL,  Address  before  the  British  Association  at 
Belfast,  1874. 


,J 


CHARLOTTE  CORDAY. 
Marat's  Murderer :  1768-1793. 


Judith  and  Charlotte  Corday  sacrificed  themselves,  but  they  sacrificed 
themselves  even  unto  crime.  .  .  .  As  for  us,  if  we  were  to  seek  a  name  for 
this  sublime  saviour  of  her  country,  and  generous  murderess  of  tyranny,  a 
name  which  should  express  equally  the  enthusiasm  of  our  emotion  for 
her,  and  the  severity  of  our  judgment  on  her  act,  we  should  create  an  ex- 
pression which  unites  the  two  extremes  of  admiration  and  horror  in  human 
speech,  and  call  her  the  Angel  of  Assassination. — LAMARTINE,  Celebrated 
Characters  (transl.),  Vol.  II. 

Among  the  many  heroic  women  of  history  there  is  not  one  whose  name 
thrills  us  with  as  strange  a  mingling  of  admiration  and  repulsion  as  that 
of  Charlotte  Corday.  We  shudder  when  we  think  of  the  cool,  deliberately- 
planned  murder ;  but  after  studying  her  beautiful,  womanly  face,  and 
tracing  her  life  step  by  step,  from  innocent  childhood  to  the  unsullied 
girlhood  full  of  noble  dreams  and  unselfish  desires,  we  learn  first  to 
understand  and  then  to  love  her. — JEANETTE  VAN  ALSTYNE,  Charlotte 
Corday. 


104  CORELLI,  CORNEILLE,  CORREGGIO. 

ARCANGELO  CORELLI. 
Italian  Musician  :  1653-1713. 

No  charms  are  wanting  to  thy  artful  song, 
Soft  as  Corelli,  and  as  Virgil  strong. 

— TICKELL,  To  Mr.  Addisoti. 

The  country  scraper,  when  he  wakes  his  crowd, 
And  makes  the  tortur'd  cat-gut  squeak  aloud, 
Is  often  ravish'd,  and  in  transport  lost : 
What  more,  my  friend,  can  fam'd  Corelli  boast, 
When  harmony  herself  from  heaven  descends, 
And  on  the  artist's  moving  bow  attends  ? 

— AMBROSE  PHILLIPS,  Epistle  :  To  a  Friend. 

PIERRE  CORNEILLE. 
French  Dramatist:  1606-1684. 

How  the  big  Roman  soul  shook,  in  Corneille, 
The  trembling  stage. 

— THOMSON,  Liberty. 

Till  late  Corneille,  with  Lucan's  spirit  fir'd, 
Breath'd  the  free  strain,  as  Rome  and  he  inspir'd. 

— COLLINS,  Epistle  to  Sir  Thomas.  Hanmer. 

Exact  Racine,  and  Corneille's  noble  fire, 
Show'd  us  that  France  had  something  to  admire  ! 

—POPE,  The  First  Epistle  of  the  First  Book  of  Horace. 

Our  neighbour's  stage-art  too  bare-fac'd  betrays, 
'Tis  great  Corneille  at  every  scene  we  praise  ; 
On  nature's  surer  aid  Britannia  calls, 
None  think  of  Shakespeare  till  the  curtain  falls. 

— YOUNG,  Epistle  to  Lord  Landsdowne,  1712. 

Napoleon,  at  St.  Helena,  forgot  the  empire  of  the  world  on  hearing,  in 
the  long  evenings,  the  masterpieces  of  Corneille  read  aloud. — SIR  ARCHI- 
BALD ALISON,  Essays:  The  Greek  Drama. 

ANTONIO  ALLEGRI  CORREGGIO. 
Italian  Painter:  1494-1534. 

Correggio's  softer  line. 

—POPE,  Epistle  to  Mr.  Jervas. 

And  Parma's  pride,  the  Jerome,  let  us  add ! 
'Twere  pleasant  could  Correggio's  fleeting  glow 
Hang  full  in  face  of  one  where'er  one  roams, 
Since  he  more  than  the  others  brings  with  him 
Italy's  self, — the  marvellous  Modenese  ! 

— ROBERT  BROWNING,  Bishop  Blougrani's  Apology. 


CORREGGIO,  COW  LEY.  105 

I  know,  Correggio  loves  to  mass,  in  rifts 
Of  heaven,  his  angel  faces,  orb  on  orb 
Breaking  its  outline,  burning  shades  absorb. 

— ROBERT  BROWNING,  A  Face. 

The  Correggiosity  of  Correggio. 

— RUSKIN,  On  the  Old  Road,  Vol.  I. 

Like  Euripides,  Correggio  was  condemned  to  the  misfortune  of  separ- 
ating beauty  from  the  idea,  the  body  from  the  spirit.  With  them  the 
forces  inherent  in  the  germs  of  their  respective  arts  were  exhausted. 
But  those  who  rightly  understand  them  must,  we  imagine,  be  prepared 
to  accept  with  gratitude  the  existence  of  Correggio  and  Euripides,  both 
as  complementing  Giotto  and  ^Bschylus,  and  also  as  accounting  for  the 
meridian  splendour  of  Sophocles  and  Raphael.  Without  the  cadence  of 
Euripides  the  majestic  aria  of  Sophocles  would  hardly  be  played  out. 
By  studying  the  Correggiosity  of  Correggio  we  comprehend  how  much 
'of  mere  aesthetic  beauty  is  held  in  solution  in  the  work  of  Raphael.  It  is 
thus,  as  it  were,  that,  like  projectiles,  arts  describe  their  parabolas  and 
end. — J;  ADDINGTON  SYMONDS,  Studies  of  Greek  Poets. 

ABRAHAM  COWLEY. 
English  Lyric  Poet:  1618-1667. 

Cowley  blossomed  soon,  yet  flourished  long. 

— DRYDEN,  Epilogue  to  "  Tamerlane  the  Great". 

Time,  which  made  their  fame  outlive, 
To  Cowley  scarce  did  ripeness  give. 
To  him  no  author  was  unknown, 
Yet  what  he  wrote  was  all  his  own. 

— SIR  JOHN  DENHAM,  On  Cowley's  Death  and  Burial. 

Who  now  reads  Cowley  ?  if  he  pleases  yet, 
His  moral  pleases,  not  his  pointed  wit, 
Forget  his  epic,  nay  Pindaric  art ! 
But  still  I  love  the  language  of  his  heart. 

—POPE,  The  First  Epistle  of  the  Second  Book  of  PI  or  ace. 

Nor  yet  shall  Waller  yield  to  time, 
Nor  pensive  Cowley 's  moral  lay. 

— Id.,  Imitations  of  Horace,  Bk.  IV., Ode  g. 

The  Muses  did  young  Cowley  raise  : 
They  stole  thee  from  thy  nurse's  arms, 
Fed  thee  with  sacred  love  of  praise, 
And  taught  thee  all  their  charms : 
As  if  Apollo's  self  had  been  thy  fire, 
They  daily  rock'd  thee  on  his  lyre.  .  .  . 
Whatever  Cowley  writes  must  please  ; 
Sure,  like  the  gods,  he  speaks  all  languages. 
Whatever  theme  by  Cowley's  muse  is  dress'd, 
Whatever  he'll  essay, 
Or  in  the  softer  or  the  nobler  way, 
He  still  writes  best. 

— SAMUEL  WESLEY,  On  Mr.  Cowley's  Juvenile  Poems. 


io6  COWLEY,  COW  PER. 

Great  Cowley  then  (a  mighty  genius)  wrote ; 
O'er-run  with  wit,  and  lavish  of  his  thought : 
His  turns  too  closely  on  the  reader  press  : 
He  more  had  pleas'd  us,  had  he  pleas'd  us  less. 
One  glittering  thought  no  sooner  strikes  our  eyes 
With  silent  wonder,  but  new  wonders  rise. 
As  in  the  milky-way  a  shining  white 
O'erflows  the  heavens  with  one  continued  light ; 
That  not  a  single  star  can  show  his  rays, 
Whilst  jointly  all  promote  the  common  blaze. 

— ADDISON,  Account  of  the  Greatest  English  Poets. 

How,  in  this  toilsome  age, 

Didst  thou,  immortal  man  !  when  arts  were  overthrown, 

When  all  the  muses'  garden  was  o'er  grown, 

And  whole  Parnassus  tumbled  down, 

Stand  on  its  ruins,  and  erect  a  new  one  of  thy  own  ? 

— AARON  HILL,  On  Mr.  Cowley' s  Introducing  Pindaric  Verse. 

Blest  Cowley,  too,  who  on  the  banks  of  Cam 

So  sweetly  sighed  his  wrongs,  and  told  his  flame. 

— OLDHAM,  Pastoral  on  the  Death  of  the  Earl  of  Rochester. 

Cowley's  verse  keeps  fair  Orinda  young. 

— PRIOR,  To  the  Countess  of  Exeter. 

In  genius  Cowley  !  and  though  now,  reclaim'd 

By  modern  lights  from  an  erroneous  taste, 

I  cannot  but  lament  thy  splendid  wit 

Entangled  in  the  cobwebs  of  the  schools  : 

I  still  revere  thee,  courtly  though  retired, 

Though  stretch'd  at  ease  in  Chertsey's  silent  bowers, 

Not  unemploy'd,  and  finding  rich  amends 

For  a  lost  world  in  solitude  and  verse. 

— COWPER,  The  Task  :   The  Winter  Evening. 

The  power  of  Cowley  is  not  so  much  to  move  the  affections,  as  to 
exercise  the  understanding.  The  Chronicle  is  a  composition  unrivalled 
and  alone :  such  gaiety  of  fancy,  such  facility  of  expression,  such  varied 
similitude,  such  a  .succession  of  images,  and  such  a  dance  of  words, 
it  is  in  vain  to  expect  except  from  Cowley.  His  strength  always  appears 
-in  his  agility ;  his  volatility  is  not  the  flutter  of  a  light,  but  the  bound  of 
an  elastic  mind.  His  levity  never  leaves  his  learning  behind  it;  the 
moralist,  the  politician,  and  the  critic,  mingle  their  influence  even  in  this 
airy  frolic  of  genius. — DR.  JOHNSON,  Lives  of  the  Poets:  Coivlcy. 


WILLIAM  COWPER. 
English  Poet:  1731-1800. 

What  !  must  deserted  Poesy  still  weep 
Where  her  last  hopes  with  pious  Cowper  sleep  ? 
Unless,  perchance,  from  his  cold  bier  she  turns 
To  deck  the  turf  that  wraps  her  minstrel,  Burns? 

— BYRON,  English  Bards  and  Scotch  Revieivers. 


COW  PER.  107 

Cowper,  thy  lovely  spirit  was  there,  by  death  disenchanted 

From  that  heavy  spell  which  had  bound  it  in  sorrow  and  darkness, 

Thou  wert  there,  in  the  kingdom  of  peace  and  of  light  everlasting. 

— SOUTHEY,  A   Vision  of  Judgment. 

Shoddy  :  "  How  like  you,  then,  the  music  unutterable 

Of  epic  blank  verse,  Miltonian  or  Cowperian  ?  " 

Gas  :  "  Its  merits,  doubtless  are  unutterable  ! 

To  get  it  out,  one  has  to  mouth  and  lick  it, 

Like  a  she-bear,  her  charming  cubs  adorning 

For  a  bear-dance  on  meteor-lighted  snows 

Of  Lapland  or  Kamschatka  !  " 

— DR.  MILO  MAHAN,  The  YorksJiireman  in  Boston,  Sc.  II. 

The  Poet  of  Christianity,  the  Monitor  of  the  world. — WILLIAM  HAYLEY, 
Life  of  Cowper. 

Is  not  The  Task  a  glorious  poem  ?  The  religion  of  The  Task,  bating  a 
few  scraps  of  Calvinistic  divinity,  is  the  religion  of  God  and  nature,  the 
religion  that  exalts,  that  ennobles  man. — BURNS. 

Religion  was  the  muse  of  Cowper. — MACAULAY,  Essays  :  Moore's  "  Life 
of  Byron  ". 

I  was  brought  up  on  Cowper. — BENJAMIN  JOWETT  in  ABBOTT  and 
CAMPBELL'S  Life  of  Jowett. 

The  Laureate  of  Evangelicism  .  .  .  Cowper  was,  intns  ct  in  cute,  an 
Englishman  and  his  poetry  contains  the  refined  essence  of  John  Bullism. 
Its  manliness,  its  clearness,  its  avoidance  of  mist  and  mysticism,  its 
bluntness,  its  dogged  sincerity,  its  prejudices,  and  its  patriotic  glow,  are 
all  characteristic  of  his  native  nook  of  earth ;  and  well  might  he  indite 
that  line,  so  noble  in  its  simple  strength — 

"  England,  with  all  thy  faults,  I  love  thee  still ". 
— REV.  GEORGE  GILFILLAN,  Introduction  to  Cowper's  Works. 

He  read  few  books  writ  by  man — but  they  were  among  the  best — the 
books  of  his  great  native  poets.  His  library  was  the  Bible  and  the  Book 
of  Nature.  We  could  prove  that — but  must  not  now.  Moreover,  in  the 
art  of  poetry  he  is  a  consummate  master.  Teniers,  Hogarth,  Wilkie — 
each  of  them  in  his  own  art  is  a  great  master  too ;  but  in  conception,  in 
comprehension,  and  in  breadth  and  depth  of  colouring,  Cowper  was  greater 
than  them  all  three — could  you  conceive  them  all  three  in  one  ; — and  then, 
what  is  painting  compared  with  poetry !  So  much  by  the  way  of  a  short 
imperfect  notice  of  the  greatest  poet  of  the  Poor. — JOHN  WILSON,  Essays  : 
Poetry  of  Ebenezer  Elliott. 

In  no  natural  struggle  for  existence  would  he  have  been  the  survivor, 
by  no  natural  process  of  selection  would  he  ever  have  been  picked  out  as 
a  vessel  of  honour.  If  the  shield  which  for  eighteen  centuries  Christ  by 
His  teaching  and  His  death  has  spread  over  the  weak  things  of  this  world 
should  fail,  and  might  should  again  become  the  title  to  existence  and  the 
measure  of  worth,  Cowper  will  be  cast  aside  as  a  specimen  of  despicable 
infirmity,  and  all  who  have  said  anything  in  his  praise  will  be  treated  with 
the  same  scorn. — GOLDWIN  SMITH,  Cowper. 


io8  COWPER,  CRABBE,  CRANMER. 

There  is  no  more  interesting  poet  than  Cowper,  and  hardly  one  the  area 
of  whose  influence  was  greater.  No  man,  it  is  unnecessary  to  say,  courted 
popularity  less,  yet  he  threw  a  very  wide  net,  and  caught  a  great  shoal  of 
readers.  For  twenty  years  after  the  publication  of  The  Task  in  1785,  his 
general  popularity  never  flagged,  and  even  when  in  the  eyes  of  the  world 
it  was  eclipsed,  when  Cowper  became,  in  the  opinion  of  fierce  Byronians, 
and  moss-trooping  Northerners,  "a  coddled  Pope"  and  a  milksop,  our 
great,  sober,  Puritan  middle-class  took  him  to  their  warm  firesides  for  two 
generations  more.  Some  amongst  these  were  not,  it  must  be  owned, 
lovers  of  poetry  at  all ;  they  liked  Cowper  because  he  is  full  of  a  peculiar 
kind  of  religious  phraseology,  just  as  some  of  Burns'  countrymen  love 
Burns  because  he  is  full  of  a  peculiar  kind  of  strong  drink  called  whisky. 
— AUGUSTINE  BIRRELL,  Res  Judicatce, 

GEORGE  CRABBE. 
Descriptive  English  Poet:  1754-1832. 

With  Crabbe  it  may  be  difricult-to  cope. 

— BRYON,  Don  Juan. 

The  plebeian  pathos  of  Crabbe. — LORD  JEFFREY,  Essays. 

Read  me  some  amusing  thing — read  me  a  bit  of  Crabbe. — SIR  WALTER 
SCOTT  in  LOCKHART'S  Life  of  Scott. 

It  is  not  purple  patches  that  offend  the  reader  in  Crabbe,  but  the  beads 
of  clay  strung  at  intervals  upon  the  chain  of  pearls.— T.  E.  KEBBEL,  Life 
of  George  Crabbe. 

If  Crabbe's  verses  retain  rather  too  much  of  the  earthly  elements,  he 
is  capable  of  transmuting  his  minerals  into  genuine  gold  as  well  as  of 
simply  collecting  them.  .  .  .  Though  Crabbe  may  not  prompt  such  out- 
ward and  visible  signs  of  emotion,  I  think  that  he  produces  a  more  distinct 
titillation  of  the  lachrymatory  glands  than  almost  any  poet  of  his  time. — 
LESLIE  STEPHEN,  Hours  in  a  Library,  Second  Series. 

It  has,  I  think,  been  observed,  and  if  not  the  observation  is  obvious, 
that  he  has  done  with  the  pen  for  the  neighbourhood  of  Aldborough  and 
Glemham  what  Crome  and  Cotman  have  done  for  the  neighbourhood  of 
Norwich  with  the  pencil.  .  .  .  You  could  play  on  Crabbe  that  odd  trick 
which  used,  it  is  said,  to  be  actually  played  on  some  mediaeval  verse  chroni- 
clers and  unrhyme  him — that  is  to  say,  put  him  into  prose  with  the  least 
possible  changes — and  his  merits  would,  save  in  rare  instances,  remain 
very  much  as  they  are  now.  You  could  put  other  words  in  the  place  of 
his  words,  keeping  the  verse,  and  it  would  not  as  a  rule  be  much  the 
worse.  You  cannot  do  either  of  these  things  with  poets  who  are  poets. 
— GEORGE  SAINTSBURY,  Essays  in  English  Literature. 

THOMAS  CRANMER. 
Archbishop  of  Canterbury  :  1489-1566. 

King  Henry  :  "  Stand  up,  good  Canterbury  : 

Thy  truth,  and  thy  integrity,  is  rooted 

In  us,  thy  friend.     Give  me  thy  hand,  stand  up : 


CRANMER.  iog. 

Pr'ythee,  let's  walk.     Now,  by  my  holy-dame, 
What  manner  of  man  are  you  ?     My  lord,  I  look'd 
You  would  have  given  me  your  petition,  that 
I  should  have  ta'en  some  pains  to  bring  together 
Yourself  and  your  accusers  ;  and  to  have  heard  you, 
Without  indurance,  further." 
Cranmcr  :  "  Most  dread  liege, 

The  good  I  stand  on  is  my  truth  and  honesty : 
If  they  shall  fail,  I,  with  mine  enemies, 
Will  triumph  o'er  my  person ;  which  I  weigh  not, 
Being  of  those  virtues  vacant.     I  fear  nothing 
What  can  be  said  against  me." 

— SHAKESPEARE,  King  Henry  VIII.,  Act  V.,  Sc.  7. 

Outstretching  flame — ward  his  upbraided  hand 

(O  God  of  mercy,  may  no  earthly  seat 

Of  judgment  such  presumptuous  doom  repeat!) 

Amid  the  shuddering  throng  doth  Cranmer  stand ; 

Firm  as  the  stake  to  which  with  iron  band 

His  frame  is  tied ;  firm  from  the  naked  feet 

To  the  bare  head,  the  victory  complete  ; 

The  shrouded  body,  to  the  soul's  command, 

Answering  with  more  than  Indian  fortitude, 

Through  all  her  nerves  with  finer  sense  endued, 

Till  breath  departs  in  blissful  aspiration : 

Then,  'mid  the  ghastly  ruins  of  the  fire, 

Behold  the  unalterable  heart  entire, 

Emblem  of  faith  untouched,  miraculous  attestation. 

— WORDSWORTH,  Cranmcr. 

Bearing  the  palm  of  martyrdom,  Cranmer  was  there  in  his  meekness 
Holy  name  to  be  ever  revered  ! 

— SOUTHEY,  A  Vision  of  Judgment :  The  Elder  Worthies. 

Mary  :  "  Cranmer  is  head  and  father  of  these  heresies, 

New  learning  as  they  call  it ;  yea  may  God 

Forget  me  at  most  need  when  I  forget 

Her  foul  divorce — my  sainted  mother — 

No  !  "  — TENNYSON,  Queen  Mary. 

Yes  England  !  with  all  thy  sins,  thou  boldest  with  fast  devotion  to  the 
Faith,  for  which  so  many  of  thy  sainted  sons  did  perish  in  the  fires  of  per- 
secution. The  smoke  of  those  fierce  faggots  is  dead  ;  but,  as  that  inspired 
man  prophesied,  while  he  held  up  his  withered  hand  in  the  scorching  flame 
— such  a  fire  has  been  kindled  as  lights  all  the  land,  centuries  after  his 
martyred  ashes  were  given  to  the  heedless  winds — and  the  names  of 
Cranmer  and  Ridley  are  reverenced  for  ever  more! — JOHN  WILSON, 
Essays :  Old  North  and  Young  North. 

If  we  consider  Cranmer  merely  as  a  statesman,  he  will  not  appear  a 
much  worse  man  than  Wolsey,  Gardiner,  Cromwell,  or  Somerset.  But, 
when  an  attempt  is  made  to  set  him  up  as  a  saint,  it  is  scarcely  possible 
for  any  man  of  sense  who  knows  the  history  of  the  times  to  preserve  his 
gravity. — MACAULAY,  Essays  :  Henry  Hallain. 


no  CROMWELL. 

OLIVER  CROMWELL. 
Lord  Protector  of  the  Commonwealth  of  England  :  1599-1658. 

So  Cromwell,  with  deep  oaths  and  rows, 
Swore  all  the  Commons  out  o'  th'  House. 

— SAMUEL  BUTLER,  Hudibras,  Part  II.,  Canto  2. 

Cromwell,  our  chief  of  men,  who  through  a  cloud 

Not  of  war  only,  but  detractions  rude, 

Guided  by  faith,  and  matchless  fortitude, 

To  peace  and  truth  thy  glorious  way  hast  plough'd, 

And  on  the  neck  of  crowned  Fortune  proud 

Hast  rear'd  God's  trophies,  and  His  work  pursued, 

While  Darwen  stream  with  blood  of  Scots  imbrued, 

And  Dunbar  field  resounds  thy  praises  loud, 

And  Worcester's  laureat  wreath.     Yet  much  remains 

To  conquer  still ;  Peace  hath  her  victories 

No  less  renown'd  than  war  :  new  foes  arise 

Threat'ning  to  bind  our  souls  with  secular  chains : 

Help  us  to  save  free  conscience  from  the  paw 

Of  hireling  wolves,  whose  gospel  is  their  maw. 

— MILTON,  To  the  Lord  General  Cromwell. 

Or  ravish'd  with  the  whistling  of  a  name, 
See  Cromwell  damn'd  to  everlasting  fame  ! 

— POPE,  Essay  on  Man  :  Epistle  IV. 

So  restless  Cromwell  could  not  cease 
In  the  inglorious  arts  of  peace, 

But  through  adventurous  war 

Urged  his  active  star  : 
And  like  the  three- forked  lightning  first, 
Breaking  the  clouds  where  it  was  nurst, 

Did  through  his  own  side 

His  fiery  way  divide. 

— MARVELL. 

When  Cromwell  fought  for  power,  and  while  he  reigned 

The  proud  protector  of  the  power  he  gain'd, 

Religion,  harsh,  intolerant,  austere, 

Parent  of  manners  like  herself  severe, 

Drew  a  rough  copy  of  the  Christian  face, 

Without  the  smile,  the  sweetness,  or  the  grace; 

The  dark  and  sullen  humour  of  the  time 

Judged  every  effort  of  the  Muse  a  crime  ; 

Verse,  in  the  finest  mould  of  fancy  cast, 

Was  lumber  in  an  age  so  void  of  taste. 

— COWPER,  Table  Talk. 

Sylla  was  first  of  victors  ;  but  our  own, 

The  sagest  of  usurpers,  Cromwell ! — he 

Too  swept  off  senates  while  he  hew'd  the  throne 

Down  to  a  block — immortal  rebel !     See 

What  crimes  it  cost  to  be  a  moment  free 


CROMWELL.  in 

And  famous  through  all  ages  !     But  beneath 

His  fate  the  moral  lurks  of  destiny ; 

His  day  of  double  victory  and  death 

Beheld  him  win  two  realms,  and  happier,  yield  his  breath. 

— BYRON,  Childe  Harold's  Pilgrimage. 

Power's  the  same  imposing  thing, 
In  Lord  Protector,  as  in  King. 

— REV.  JOHN  DAVIES,  Historic  Prologues. 

O  Cromwell,  we  are  fallen  on  evil  times ! 
There  was  a  day  when  England  had  wide  room 
For  honest  men  as  well  as  foolish  kings ; 
But  now  the  uneasy  stomach  of  the  time 
'Turns  squeamish  at  them  both. 

— J.  R.  LOWELL,  A  Glance  behind  the  Curtain. 

Man,  friend,  remain  a  Cromwell !  in  thy  name, 
Rule,  and  if  thy  son  be  worthy,  he  and  his, 
So  rule  the  rest  for  ages !  be  it  grander  thus 
To  be  a  Cromwell  than  a  Carolus. 

— VICTOR  HUGO,  Milton's  Appeal  to  Cromwell  (transl.). 

Behind,  lo  Cromwell  looms,  and  dusks  the  land 
With  the  swart  shadow  of  his  giant  hand. 

— LYTTON,  The  Last  Days  of  Elizabeth. 

The  scourge  and  servant  of  the  Lord, 
This  hand  the  Bible — that  the  sword — 
The  Phantom — Cromwell  rides  ! 

— Id.,  Cromwell's  Dream. 

So  Cromwell  too 

Was  a  great  hero,  and  rilled  whole  reams  of  paper 
With  thoughts  chaotic, — the  mightiest  kind  of  thought — 
The  true  sublime !     For  what  can  be  sublimer, 
Than  a  dun  lurid  smoke,  with  fire-flakes  flashing, 
A  dim  fire-dappled  mass,  belched  forth  in  volumes 
From  the  depths  of  a  bubbling  bottomless  abyss  ? 
The  true  sublime,  sir,  and  the  true  heroic, 
The  great,  the  wonderful,  the  soul-enlarging, 
The  thing  to  worship,  and  to  marvel  at, 
Stands  ever  in  the  chaotic. 

— DR.  MILO  MAHAN,  The  Yorkshireman  in  Boston,  Sc.  IV. 

Cromwell  was  a  saint-like  thief,  who,  under  the  double  cloak  of  religion 
and  patriotism,  committed  a  burglary  in  the  constitution,  and  robbed  the 
people  of  their  title  to  liberty.  He  looked  upon  dissimulation  as  the  only 
test  of  human  wisdom,  and  made  it  the  keystone  of  the  arch  on  which 
he  built  his  fortune. — EARL  OF  CHATHAM. 

It  was  very  fortunate  for  Cromwell,  that  he  appeared  upon  the  stage 
at  the  precise  moment  when  the  people  were  tired  of  Kings:  and  as  un- 
fortunate for  his  son  Richard,  that  he  had  to  make  good  his  pretensions, 
at  a  moment  when  the  people  were  equally  tired  of  Protectors. — VOLTAIRE. 


ii2  CROMWELL. 

Cromwell,  the  iron  leader  of  English  vengeance.  .  .  .  Without  detracting 
from  the  well-earned  fame  of  the  Protector  in  this  respect,  it  may  safely 
be  affirmed,  that  the  main  cause  of  his  success  in  foreign  transactions 
was,  that  he  had  got  the  means  of  making  the  English  pay  taxes.  He 
levied  them  with  the  sabre  and  the  bayonet.  He  had  a  standing  army 
of  forty  thousand  men  for  his  tax  gatherers. — SIR  ARCHIBALD  ALISON, 
Essays :  Macaulay. 

The  unity  which  makes  the  whole  life  of  an  individual  the  manifestation 
of  a  potent  hidden  idea  .  .  .  that  unity  which  is  evinced  in  Cromwell  and 
Bonaparte,  as  much  as  in  Franklin  and  Washington. — MAZZINI,  Life  and 
Writings,  Vol.  II. 

The  inspiration  of  Scripture  predominated,  in  1600,  over  the  three 
kingdoms.  Cromwell,  more  imbued  than  any  other  with  this  sentiment,, 
was  neither  a  politician,  nor  an  ambitious  conqueror,  nor  an  Octavius, 
nor  a  Caesar.  He  was  a  Judge  of  the  Old  Testament. — LAMARTINE, 
Celebrated  Characters  (transL),  Vol.  II. 

If  a  French  or  Spanish  army  had  invaded  England,  and  if  that  army 
had  been  cut  to  pieces,  as  we  have  no  doubt  that  it  would  have  been,  on 
the  first  day  on  which  it  came  face  to  face  with  the  soldiers  of  Preston 
and  Dunbar,  with  Colonel  Fight-the-good-Fight,  and  Captain  Smite-' 
them-hip-and-thigh,  the  House  of  Cromwell  would  probably  now  have 
been  reigning  in  England.  The  nation  would  have  forgotten  all  the 
misdeeds  of  the  man  who  had  cleared  the  soil  of  foreign  invaders. — 
MACAULAY,  Essays  :  Sir  James  MackintosJi. 

Oliver  Cromwell  quitted  his  farming ;  undertook  a  Hercules'  Labour 
and  life-long  wrestle  with  that  Lernaean  Hydra-coil,  wide  as  England, 
hissing  heaven-high  through  its  thousand  crowned,  coroneted,  shovel- 
patted  quack-heads  ;  and  he  did  wrestle  with  it,  the  truest  and  terriblest 
wrestle  I  have  heard  of;  and  he  wrestled  it,  and  mowed  and  cut  it  down  a 
good  many  stages,  so  that  its  hissing  is  ever  since  pitiful  in  comparison, 
and  one  can  walk  abroad  in  comparative  peace  from  it. — CARLYLE,  Past 
and  Present :  Manchester  Insurrection. 

Oliver  Cromwell,  whose  body  they  hung  on  their  Tyburn  gallows 
because  he  had  found  the  Christian  Religion  inexecutable  in  this  country, 
remains  to  me  by  far  the  remarkablest  Governor  we  have  had  here  for 
the  last  five  centuries  or  so.  For  the  last  five  centuries,  there  has  been 
no  Governor  among  us  with  anything  like  similar  talent — with  an  idea 
in  the  heart  of  him  capable  to  inspiring  similar  talent,  capable  of  co- 
existing therewith. — Id.,  Ibid.  :  Sir  Jabesli  Windbag. 

The  religion  which  teaches  us  our  duty  to  others  is  not  very  likely  to 
fail  us  in  regard  to  ourselves.  Watch  Cromwell  in  any  great  crisis  of  his 
life,  and  judge  whether  the  faith  he  held  could  have  rested  on  any 
doubtful  or  insecure  foundation.  Take  him  at  the  moment  of  his  greatest 
triumph,  or  in  the  hour  of  his  darkest  peril,  and  observe  whether  the  one 
so  unduly  elates  or  the  other  so  unworthily  depresses  him,  as  to  cause 
him  to  lose  the  sense  either  of  his  own  weakness  or  of  his  Creator's 
power,  either  of  the  littleness  of  time  or  of  the  greatness  of  eternity. 
—JOHN  FORSTER,  Historical  and  Biographical  Essays,  Vol.  I. 

God  works  by  instruments ;  and  if  there  is  any  one  man  who,  in  times 
past,  has  contributed  more  than  another,  more  than  all  others,  to  the 


CROMWELL.  113 

wonders  of  the  present  age,  that  man  is  ...  Oliver  Cromwell.  The 
existing  greatness  of  England  is  but  the  realisation  of  the  plan  he  had 
conceived. — MERLE  D'AUBIGNK,  The  Protector  (trausl.). 

Cromwell  was,  and  felt  himself  to  be,  a  dictator  called  in  by  the 
winning  cause  in  a  revolution  to  restore  confidence  and  secure  peace. 
He  was,  as  he  said  frequently,  "  the  Constable  set  to  keep  order  in  the 
Parish  ".  Nor  was  he  in  any  sense  a  military  despot.  He  was  no  pro- 
fessional soldier ;  and  he  had  no  taste  for  arbitrary  or  martial  rule. 
— FREDERIC  HARRISON,  Cromwell. 

What  may  be  fairly  demanded  alike  of  Cromwell's  admirers  and  of  his 
critics  is  that  they  shall  fix  their  eyes  upon  him  as  a  whole.  To  one  of 
them  he  is  the  champion  of  liberty  and  peaceful  progress,  to  another  the 
forcible  crusher  of  free  institutions,  to  a  third  the  defender  of  oppressed 
peoples,  to  a  fourth  the  assertor  of  his  country's  right  to  dominion. 
'Every  one  of  the  interpreters  has  something  in  which  to  base  his  conclu- 
sions. All  the  incongruities  of  human  nature  are  to  be  traced  somewhere 
or  other  in  Cromwell's  career.  What  is  more  remarkable  is  that  this 
union  of  apparently  contradictory  forces  is  precisely  that  which  is  to  be 
found  in  the  English  people,  and  has  made  England  what  she  is  at  the 
present  day.  .  .  .  With  Cromwell's  memory  it  has  fared  as  with  ourselves.. 
Royalists  painted  him  as  a  devil.  Carlyle  painted  him  as  the  masterful 
saint  who  suited  his  peculiar  Valhalla.  It  is  time  for  us  to  regard  him 
as  he  really  was,  with  all  his  physical  and  moral  audacity,  with  all  his. 
tenderness  and  spiritual  yearnings,  in  the  world  of  action  what  Shakespeare 
was  in  the  world  of  thought,  the  greatest  because  the  most  typical 
Englishmen  of  all  time.  This,  in  the  most  enduring  sense,  is  Cromwell's 
place  in  history. — S.  R.  GARDINER,  CromweWs  Place  in  History. 

Cromwell  was  not  only  a  religious  man,  he  was  a  man  to  whom  his. 
religion  was  everything.  To  understand  him,  it  is  necessary  to  understand 
his  religion  and  to  sympathise  with  it.  His  life,  which  makes  an  impres- 
sion on  the  world  simply  as  a  factor  in  the  politics  of  the  time,  was  to 
him  a  piece  of  work  wrought  under  the  great  Taskmaster's  eye,  which 
could  only  be  judged  in  relation  to  eternity. — R.  F.  HORTON,  Cromwell. 

Cromwell,  at  the  beginning,  probably  sincere,  was  doubtless  a  dissembler 
from  the  hour  at  which  he  aspired  to  rule  ;  but  he  had  to  deal  with  many- 
bad  men  ;  and  dissimulation  was  the  weapon  which  they  used.  Cromwell! 
took  it  up  and  vanquished  them.  Cromwell  was  a  tyrant ;  but,  of  his 
personal  ambition,  this  is  truly  to  be  said,  that  it  was  never  seen  but 
directed  to  the  promotion  of  his  country's  greatness. — LORD  NUGENT, 
Some  Memorials  of  John  Hampdcn. 

In  calm  weather  a  small  man  may  steer  the  ship  of  State  safely  through 
the  rocks  and  shoals  which  always  beset  public  life.  But  it  is  only  the 
courageous  and  lofty  spirits,  such  as  Cromwell,  Marlborough,  Washington, 
Napoleon  and  Pitt,  who  can  create  the  circumstances  required  for  their 
own  genius  to  work  in.  They  alone  can  ride  safely  through  the  storms 
and  upheavals  which  their  policy  necessarily  occasions. — VISCOUNT 
WOLSELEY,  Life  of  Marlborough,  Vol.  I. 

As  often  as  danger  threatens  us,  the  thought  returns,  not  that  we  may 
have  again  a  Marlborough  or  a  Black  Prince ;  but  that  the  race  which 
produced  Cromwell  may,  at  its  need,  produce  his  peer,  and  that  the  spirit 


n4          CROMWELL,  CUMBERLAND,  CUNNINGHAM. 

of  the  Great  Usurper  may  once  more  stand  forth  in  arms. — GOLDWIN 
SMITH,  Three  English  Statesmen. 

What  is  the  secret  of  this  extraordinary  power  ?  .  .  .  There  is  one  answer 
I  suppose  everybody  here  would  give  —  that  the  secret  of  Cromwell's 
strength  rested  in  his  religious  faith.  I  discard  that  answer,  because  it 
would  be  begging  the  question.  No,  my  answer  is  this— that  he  was  a 
practical  mystic,  the  most  formidable  and  terrible  of  all  combinations.  A 
man  who  combines  inspiration  apparently  derived — in  my  judgment  really 
derived — from  close  communion  with  the  supernatural  and  the  celestial, 
a  man  who  has  that  inspiration  and  adds  to  it  the  energy  of  a  mighty  man 
of  action,  such  a  man  as  that  lives  in  communion  on  a  Sinai  of  his  own, 
and  when  he  pleases  to  come  down  to  this  world  below  seems  armed  with 
no  less  than  the  terrors  and  decrees  of  the  Almighty  himself. — LORD 
ROSEBERY,  Speech  at  the  Cromwell  Tercentenary,  1899. 

His  rule  was  the  rule  of  the  sword.  Yet  his  name  stands  first,  half 
warrior,  half  saint,  in  the  calendar  of  English-speaking  democracy. — 
JOHN  MORLEY,  Oliver  Cromwell. 

RICHARD  CROMWELL. 
Lord  Protector  (1658-9) .-  1626-1712. 

A  man  of  timid,  vacillating,  and  undecided  character,  with  no  religious  or 
political  convictions  or  passions,  Richard  complacently  accepted  the  good 
fortune  which  he  inherited  from  his  father,  though  he  had  never  reckoned 
upon  it,  and  was  no  more  disposed  to  sacrifice  it  than  he  was  capable  of 
achieving  it.  It  would  even  appear  that,  during  his  father's  lifetime,  and 
in  the  chambers  of  Whitehall,  he  had  stated  what  the  character  of  his 
government  should  be,  after  the  storms  of  the  preceding  administration — 
*'  a  golden  mediocrity  between  a  tripping  head  and  a  filthy  tail  ". — GUIZOT, 
Richard  Cromwell  (transl.). 

WILLIAM  AUGUSTUS,  DUKE  OF  CUMBERLAND. 
English  Soldier,  son  of  George  II. :   1721-1765. 

The  bravery  of  the  Duke  of  Cumberland  was  such  as  distinguished  him 
even  among  the  princes  of  his  brave  house.  The  indifference  with  which 
he  rode  about  midst  musket  balls  and  cannon  balls  was  not  the  highest 
proof  of  his  fortitude.  Hopeless  maladies,  horrible  surgical  operations, 
far  from  unmanning  him,  did  not  even  discompose  him.  With  courage, 
he  had  the  virtues  which  are  akin  to  courage.  He  spoke  the  truth,  was 
open  in  enmity  and  friendship,  and  upright  in  all  his  dealings.  But  his 
nature  was  hard ;  and  what  seemed  to  him  justice  was  rarely  tempered 
with  mercy.  He  was,  therefore,  during  many  years  one  of  the  most  un- 
popular men  in  England.  The  severity  with  which  he  had  treated  the 
rebels  after  the  battle  of  Culloden,  had  gained  for  him  the  name  of  the 
Butcher. — MACAULAY,  Essays  :  The  Earl  of  Chatham,  1844. 

ALLAN  CUNNINGHAM. 
Scottish  Author  and  Critic  :  1784-1842. 

Allan,  true  child  of  Scotland,  thou  who  art 
So  oft  in  spirit  on  thy  native  hills, 


DAR  WIN.  1 19 

Darwinism  has  conferred  upon  philosophy  and  religion  an  inestimable 
benefit  by  showing  us  that  we  must  choose  between  two  alternatives  :  either 
God  is  everywhere  present  in  Nature,  or  He  is  nowhere. — AUBREY  MOORE, 
Life  and  Letters  of  George  Romanes. 

The  glory  of  Charles  Darwin,  of  which  no  change  of  view  respecting 
his  theories  can  rob  him,  is  that  he  passed  through  the  world  with  open 
eyes. — F.  W.  FARRAR,  Social  and  Present-Day  Questions. 

In  fine,  the  spirit  of  Mr.  Darwin's  teaching  may  be  traced  all  through 
the  literature  of  science,  even  in  departments  which  he  never  himself 
entered.  No  branch  of  research  has  benefited  more  from  the  infusion  of 
this  spirit  than  geology.  Time-honoured  prejudices  have  been  broken 
down,  theories  that  seemed  the  most  surely  based  have  been  reconsidered, 
and  when  found  untenable,  have  been  boldly  discarded.  That  the 
Present  must  be  taken  as  a  guide  to  the  Past,  has  been  more  fearlessly 
•  asserted  than  ever.  And  yet  it  has  been  recognised  that  the  Present 
differs  widely  from  the  Past,  that  there  has  been  a  progress  everywhere, 
that  Evolution  and  not  Uniformitarianism  has  been  the  law  by  which 
geological  history  has  been  governed.  For  the  impetus  with  which  these 
views  have  been  advanced  in  every  civilised  country,  we  look  up  with 
reverence  to  the  loved  and  immortal  name  of  Charles  Darwin. 
— ARCHIBALD  GEIKIE  in  "Nature"  Memorial  Notices  of  Darwin. 

One  could  not  converse  with  Darwin  without  being  reminded  of  Socrates. 
There  was  the  same  desire  to  find  some  one  wiser  than  himself;  the 
same  belief  in  the  sovereignty  of  reason  ;  the  same  ready  humour ;  the 
same  sympathetic  interest  in  all  the  ways  and  works  of  men.  But  instead 
of  turning  away  from  the  problems  of  nature  as  hopelessly  insoluble,  our 
modern  Philosopher  devoted  his  whole  life  to  attacking  them  in  the  spirit 
of  Heraclitus  and  of  Democritus,  with  results  which  are  as  the  substance 
of  which  their  speculations  were  anticipatory  shadows.  .  .  .  None  have 
fought  better,  and  none  have  been  more  fortunate,  than  Charles 
Darwin.  He  found  a  great  truth  trodden  under  foot,  reviled  by 
bigots,  and  ridiculed  by  all  the  world  ;  he  lived  long  enough  to  see  it, 
chiefly  by  his  own  efforts,  irrefragably  established  in  science,  inseparably 
incorporated  with  the  common  thoughts  of  men,  and  only  hated  and 
feared  by  those  who  would  revile,  but  dare  not.  What  shall  a  man 
desire  more  than  this?  Once  more  the  image  of  Socrates  rises  unbidden, 
and  the  noble  peroration  of  the  Apology  rings  in  our  ears  as  if  it  were 
Charles  Darwin's  farewell : — 

"  The  hour  of  departure  has  arrived,  and  we  go  our  ways — I  to  die,  and 
you  to  live.  Which  is  the  better,  God  only  knows." — HUXLEY  in 
"  Nature  "  Memorial  Notices  of  Darwin. 

This  largeness  of  knowledge  and  readiness  of  resource  render  Mr. 
Darwin  the  most  terrible  of  antagonists.  Accomplished  naturalists  have 
levelled  heavy  and  sustained  criticisms  against  him — not  always  with  the 
view  of  fairly  weighing  his  theory,  but  with  the  express  intention  of 
exposing  its  weak  points  only.  This  does  not  irritate  him.  He  treats 
every  objection  with  a  soberness  and  thoroughness  which  even  Bishop 
Butler  might  be  proud  to  imitate,  surrounding  each  fact  with  its  appro- 
priate detail,  placing  it  in  its  proper  relations,  and  usually  giving  it  a 
significance  which,  as  long  as  it  was  kept  isolated,  failed  to  appear.  This 
is  done  without  a  trace  of  ill-temper.  He  moves  over  the  subject  with 


120  DARWIN,  DAVY,  DEFOE. 

the  passionless  strength  of  a  glacier  ;  and  the  grinding  of  the  rocks  is  not 
always  without  a  counterpart  in  the  logical  pulverization  of  the  objector. 
— TYNDALL,  Address  before  British  Association  at  Belfast,  1874. 


SIR  HUMPHREY  DAVY. 
English  Chemist:  1778-1829. 

Others  came  in  that  goodly  band  whom  benigner  fortune 
Led  into  pleasanter  ways  on  earth  :  the  children  of  Science 
Some,  whose  unerring  pursuit  would,  but  for  death,  have  extended 
O'er  the  unknown  and  material,  Man's  intellectual  empire, 
Such  their  intuitive  power  ;  like  Davy,  disarming  destruction 
When  it  moves  on  the  vapour.  .  .   . 

— SOUTHEY,  A  Vision  of  Judgment:  The  Young  Spirits. 

If  Davy  had  not  been  the  first  Chemist,  he  would  have  been  the  first 
Poet  of  his  age.  .  .  .  Sir  Humphrey  Davy,  who  may  be  said  to  have 
elevated  the  art  of  chemistry  to  the  dignity  of  a  science :  who  has 
discovered  that  one  common  law  is  applicable  to  the  mind  and  to  the 
body,  and  who  has  enabled  us  to  give  a  full  and  perfect  Amen  to  the 
great  axiom  of  Lord  Bacon,  that  knowledge  is  power. — S.  T.  COLERIDGE. 


DANIEL  DEFOE. 

Miscellaneous  Writer  :  1663-1731. 

Perhaps  there  exists  no  book,  either  of  instruction  or  entertainment,  in 
the  English  language,  which  has  been  more  generally  read,  and  more 
universally  admired,  than  the  Life  and  Adventures  of  Robinson  Crusoe. 
It  is  difficult  to  say  in  what  the  charm  consists,  by  which  persons  of  all 
classes  and  denominations  are  thus  fascinated  ;  yet  the  majority  of  readers 
will  recollect  it  as  among  the  first  works  which  awakened  and  interested 
their  youthful  attention ;  and  feel,  even  in  advanced  life,  and  in  the 
maturity  of  their  understanding,  that  there  are  still  associated  with  Robin- 
son Crusoe,  the  sentiments  peculiar  to  that  period,  when  all  is  new,  all 
glittering  in  prospect,  and  when  those  visions  are  most  bright,  which  the 
experience  of  after-life  tends  only  to  darken  and  destroy. — SIR  WALTER 
SCOTT,  Prose  Works,  Vol.  IV. 

I  cannot  understand  the  mania  of  some  people  about  Defoe.  They 
think  him  a  man  of  the  first  order  of  genius,  and  a  paragon  of  virtue.  He 
certainly  wrote  an  excellent  book — the  first  part  of  Robinson  Crusoe — one 
of  those  feats  which  can  only  be  performed  by  the  union  of  luck  with 
ability.  That  awful  solitude  of  a  quarter  of  a  century — that  strange  union 
of  comfort,  plenty,  and  security  with  the  misery  of  loneliness — was  my 
delight  before  I  was  five  years  old,  and  has  been  the  delight  of  hundreds 
of  thousands  of  boys.  But  what  has  Defoe  done  great  except  the  first  part  of 
Robinson  Cru~oe  P  The  second  part  is  poor  in  comparison.  The  History 
of  the  Plague,  and  the  Memoirs  of  a  Cavalier,  are  in  one  sense  curious 
works  of  art.  They  are  wonderfully  like  true  histories ;  but,  considered 
as  novels,  which  they  are,  there  is  not  much  in  them.  He  had  undoubtedly 
a  knack  at  making  fiction  look  like  truth.  But  is  such  a  knack  much  to 


DEFOE. 

be  admired  ?  .  .  .  As  a  political  writer  Defoe  is  merely  one  of  the  crowd. 
He  seems  to  have  been  an  unprincipled  hack,  ready  to  take  any  side  of 
any  question.  Of  all  writers  he  was  the  most  unlucky  in  irony.  Twice 
he  was  prosecuted  for  what  he  meant  to  be  ironical ;  but  he  was  so  un- 
skilful that  everybody  understood  him  literally.  Some  of  his  tracts  are 
worse  than  immoral ;  quite  beastly.  Altogether  I  do  not  like  him. — 
MACAULAY,  Life  and  Letters,  by  Sir  G.  O.  Trevelyan,  Vol.  II. 

But  it  will  remain  the  chief  distinction  of  Defoe  to  have  been,  in  these 
minor  tales  of  English  scenes  arid  manners,  the  father  of  the  illustrious 
family  of  the  English  Novel.  Swift  directly  copied  from  him  ;  Richardson 
founded  his  style  of  minute  narrative  wholly  upon  him  ;  Fielding,  Smollett, 
Sterne  and  Goldsmith,  —  Godwin,  Scott,  Bulwer,  and  Dickens,  —  have 
been  more  or  less  indebted  to  him.  Shall  we  scruple  to  add,  then,  that 
while  he  remains  unapproached  in  his  two  great  masterpieces,  he  has 
been  surpassed  in  his  minor  works  by  these  his  successors  ?  His  language 
is  as  easy  and  copious,  but  less  elegant  and  harmonious ;  his  insight  into 
character  is  as  penetrating,  but  not  so  penetrating  into  the  heart ;  his 


wit  and  irony  are  as  playful,  but  his  humour  is  less  genial  and  expansive  ; 
delicate  fancy,  the  richness  of  imagery,  the  sympathy, 
the  truth   and  depth  of  feeling,  which  will   keep   the  later   Masters   of 


our  English  Novel  the  delightful  companions,  the  gentle  monitors,  the 
welcome  instructors,  of  future  generations.  So  true  it  is,  that  every 
great  writer  promotes  the  next  great  writer  one  step  ;  and  in  some  cases 
gets  himself  superseded  by  him. — JOHN  FORSTER,  Historical  and  Bio- 
graphical Essays,  Vol.  II. 

To  Defoe,  if  we  may  imitate  the  language  of  the  Arabian  Nights,  was 
given  a  tongue  to  which  no  one  could  listen  without  believing  every  word 
that  he  uttered — a  qualification  by  the  way  which  would  serve  its  owner 
far  more  effectually  in  this  commonplace  world  than  swords  of  sharpness 
or  cloaks  of  darkness,  or  other  paraphernalia.  In  other  words,  he  had  the 
most  marvellous  power  ever  known  of  giving  verisimilitude  to  his  fictions  ; 
or,  in  other  words  again,  he  had  the  most  amazing  talent  on  record  for 
telling  lies. — LESLIE  STEPHEN,  Hours  in  a  Library,  First  Series. 

Defoe  cannot  be  held  up  as  an  exemplar  of  moral  conduct,  yet  if  he  is 
judged  by  the  measures  that  he  laboured  for,  and  not  by  the  means  that 
he  employed,  few  Englishmen  have  lived  more  deserving  than  he  of  their 
country's  gratitude.  He  may  have  been  self-seeking  and  vain-glorious, 
but  in  his  political  life  self-seeking  and  vain-glory  were  elevated  by  their 
alliance  with  higher  and  wider  aims.  Defoe  was  a  wonderful  mixture  of 
knave  and  patriot.  Sometimes  pure  knave  seems  to  be  uppermost,  some- 
times pure  patriot,  but  the  mixture  is  so  complex  and  the  energy  of  the  man 
so  restless,  that  it  almost  passes  human  skill  to  unravel  the  two  elements. 
The  author  of  Robinson  Crusoe  is  entitled  to  the  benefit  of  every  doubt. 
— WILLIAM  MINTO,  Daniel  Defoe. 

f*  Of  Robinson  Crusoe  what  necessity  is  there  to  speak  ?  Who  is  not 
familiar  with  its  pages  ?  What  boy  has  not  undergone  a  whipping  for 
leaving  his  lessons  unstudied  while  he  has  been  sitting  in  the  Solitary's 
hut,  or  spending  an  afternoon  with  "  man  Friday  "  ?  How  many  in  the 
decline  of  life  have  over  the  leaves  of  that  wonderful  book  grown  young 
again ! — J.  CORDY  JEAFFRESON,  Novels  and  Novelists. 


122  DEMOSTHENES,  DESCARTES. 

DEMOSTHENES. 
Athenian  Orator  and  Statesman  :  B.C.  385-322. 

Demosthenes  has  sanction'd  the  transaction, 
In  saying  eloquence  meant  "  Action,  action  !  " 

— LORD  BYRON,  The  Age  of  Bronze. 

Not  from  the  tropes  of  formal  eloquence, 

But  Demosthenic  strength,  and  weight  of  sense. 

— DR.  WILLIAM  KING,  Britain's  Palladium. 

Demosthenes  can  never  be  judged  apart  from  his  circumstances.  He 
is  no  saint  and  no  correct  mediocrity.  He  is  a  man  of  genius  and  some- 
thing of  a  hero ;  a  fanatic,  too,  no  doubt,  and  always  a  politician.  He 
represents  his  country  in  that  combination  of  intellectual  subtlety  and 
practical  driving-power  with  fervid  idealism,  that  union  of  passion  with 
art,  and  that  invariable  insistence  on  the  moral  side  of  actions,  on  the  just 
and  the  noble,  that  characterises  most  of  the  great  spirits  of  Greek  literature. 
To  say  with  Quintilian  that  Demosthenes  was  a  "  bad  man,"  is  like  saying 
the  same  of  Burke  or  even  of  Isaiah.  It  implies  either  that  noble  words 
and  thoughts  are  not  nobility,  or  else,  what  is  hardly  more  plausible,  that 
the  greatest  expressions  of  soul  in  literature  can  be  produced  artificially  by 
a  dodge. — GILBERT  MURRAY,  History  of  Ancient  Greek  Literature. 

RENE  DU  PERROT  DESCARTES. 
French  Philosopher:  1596-1650. 

Deny  Descartes  his  subtil  matter, 
You  leave  him  neither  fire  nor  water. 

—PRIOR,  Alma:  or,  The  Progress  of  The  Mind. 

Descartes  abolished  the  dogma  of  authoritv. — MAZZINI,  Life  and  Writ- 
ings,  Vol.  II. 

Dugald  Stewart  has  given  to  Descartes  a  very  proud  title,  "  Father  of  the 
experimental  philosophy  of  the  human  mind,"  as  if  he  were  to  man  what 
Bacon  was  to  nature. — HALLAM,  Introduction  to  the  Literature  of  Europe,. 
Vol.  III. 

These  deeper  questions  cannot  be  treated  in  this  short  appendix  to- 
Descartes'  life.  They  are  mentioned  here  merely  to  show  how  he  was  to 
modern  thought  what  Socrates  was  to  Greek  philosophy.  Far  greater,. 
too,  was  he  than  Socrates,  in  the  range  of  his  influence.  In  every  depart- 
ment of  his  thinking — in  his  first  philosophy,  his  theology,  his  physics,  his 
psychology,  his  physiology — he  sowed  the  dragons'  teeth  from  which 
sprang  hosts  of  armed  men,  to  join  in  an  intellectual  conflict,  internecine, 
let  us  trust,  to  their  many  errors  and  prejudices,  but  fraught  with  new  life 
and  energy  to  the  intellectual  progress  of  Europe. — J.  P.  MAHAFFY 
Descartes. 

It  was  not  uncommon,  in  the  Middle  Ages,  for  philosophers  to  denyr 
simply  as  philosophers,  what  they  vindicated  as  theologians.  And  Des- 
cartes, with  pretentious  Pharisaism,  with  abject  poltroonery,  and  probably 
with  a  keen  sense  of  the  comical,  before  entering  scientificially  on  universal 


DESCARTES,  DICKENS. 

doubt,  put  the  articles  of  theological  faith  aside  as  a  sacred  treasure.  That 
we  can  at  the  same  time  believe  and  not  believe  the  same  thing — believe 
it  as  theologians,  reject  it  as  philosophers— looks  a  good  deal  like  a  juggle, 
— WILLIAM  MACCALL,  The  Newest  Materialism. 

"  I  think,  therefore  I  am,"  said  Descartes.  Only  his  own  identity  was 
sure  to  him  ;  and  the  development  of  this  system  would  have  led  to  an 
idealism  in  which  the  outer  world  would  be  resolved  into  a  mere  phe- 
nomenon of  consciousness.  Gassendi,  one  of  Descartes'  contemporaries, 
.  .  .  quickly  pointed  out  that  the  fact  of  personal  existence  would  be  proved 
as  well  by  reference  to  any  other  act  as  to  the  act  of  thinking.  I  eat, 
therefore  I  am ;  or  I  love,  therefore  I  am,  would  be  quite  as  conclusive. 
Lichtenburg  showed  that  the  very  thing  to  be  proved  was  inevitably  pos- 
tulated in  the  first  two  words  "  I  think  "  ;  and  that  no  inference  from  the 
postulate  could  by  any  possibility  be  stronger  than  the  postulate  itself. — 
•TYNDALL,  Address  before  the  British  Association  at  Belfast,  1874. 

CHARLES  DICKENS. 
English  Novelist :  1812-1870. 

Dickens,  with  preternatural  apprehension  of  the  language  of  manners, 
and  the  varieties  of  street  life,  with  pathos  and  laughter,  with  patriotic  and 
still  enlarging  generosity,  writes  London  tracts.  He  is  a  painter  of  Eng- 
lish details,  like  Hogarth ;  local  and  temporary  in  his  tints  and  style,  and 
local  in  his  aims. — EMERSON,  English  Traits  :  Literature. 

Dickens  .  .  .  shows  that  life  in  its  rudest  forms  may  wear  a  tragic 
grandeur ;  that  amidst  follies  and  sensual  excesses,  provoking  laughter  or 
scorn,  the  moral  feelings  do  not  wholly  die ;  and  that  the  haunts  of  the 
blackest  crimes  are  sometimes  lighted  up  by  the  presence  and  influence  of 
the  noblest  souls.— CHANNING,  On  the  Present  Age. 

But  she,  the  genius  of  Charles  Dickens,  how  brilliant,  how  kindly,  how 
beneficent  she  is  !  dwelling  by  a  fountain  of  laughter  imperishable  ;  though 
there  is  something  of  an  alien  salt  in  the  neighbouring  fountain  of  tears. 
How  poor  the  world  of  fancy  would  be,  how  "  dispeopled  of  her  dreams" 
if,  in  some  ruin  of  the  social  system,  the  books  of  Dickens  were  lost. — 
ANDREW  LANG. 

Charles  Dickens,  the  most  popular  novelist  of  the  century  and  one  of  the 
greatest  humourists  that  England  has  produced. — JOHN  FORSTER. 

The  good,  the  gentle,  high-gifted,  ever-friendly,  noble  Dickens — every 
inch  of  him  an  Honest  Man. — CARLYLE. 

Many  of  his  portraits  excite  pity,  and  suggest  the  existence  of  crying 
social  sins  ;  but  of  almost  all  we  are  obliged  to  say  that  they  border  on 
and  frequently  reach  caricature,  of  which  the  essence  is  to  catch  a  striking 
likeness  by  exclusively  selecting  and  exaggerating  a  peculiarity  that  marks 
the  man  but  does  not  represent  him.  Dickens  belongs  in  literature  to 
the  same  class  as  his  illustrator,  Hablot  Browne,  in  design,  though  he 
far  surpasses  the  illustrator  in  range  and  power. — GEORGE  BRIMLEY, 
Essays. 

If  we  glance  over  the  wit  and  satire  of  the  popular  writers  of  the  day, 
we  shall  find  that  the  manner  of  it,  so  far  as  it  is  distinctive,  is  always. 


124  DICKENS. 

owing  to  Dickens  ;  and  that  out  of  his  first  exquisite  ironies  branched  in- 
numerable other  forms  of  wit,  varying  with  the  disposition  of  the  writers  ; 
original  in  the  matter  and  substance  of  them,  yet  never  to  have  been  ex- 
pressed as  they  now  are,  but  for  Dickens. — JOHN  RUSKIN,  Modern  Painters, 
Vol.  III. 

If  this  classification  of  men  be  admitted,  there  can  be  no  hesitation  in 
assigning  to  Mr.  Dickens  his  place  in  it.  His  genius  is  essentially 
irregular  and  unsymmetrical.  Hardly  any  English  writer  perhaps  is 
much  more  so.  His  style  is  an  example  of  it.  It  is  descriptive,  racy, 
and  flowing ;  it  is  instinct  with  new  imagery  and  singular  illustration ; 
but  it  does  not  indicate  that  due  proportion  of  the  faculties  to  one  another 
which  is  a  beauty  in  itself,  and  which  cannot  help  diffusing  beauty  over 
every  happy  word  and  moulded  clause. — WALTER  BAGEHOT,  Literary 
Studies,  Vol.  II. 

In  Dickens  we  have  the  Humourist  as  Democrat.  .  .  .  The  ethical 
sentiment  breathes  throughout  the  pages  of  Dickens,  and  it  may  well 
cover  a  multitude  of  sins  of  taste.  Whatever  the  judgment  of  posterity 
may  be  upon  him,  we  may  to-day  take  leave  of  him  with  that  judgment 
of  Carlyle,  "  Every  inch  of  him  an  honest  man  ". — W.  S.  LILLY,  Four 
English  Humourists. 

Of  Charles  Dickens'  fame  a  grand  feature  is  its  universality.  His  name 
is  as  much  a  "  Household  Word"  in  every  sequestered  hamlet  lying  be- 
tween the  most  extreme  points  of  our  home  islands,  as  it  is  in  the  metro- 
polis ;  and  he  is  as  well  known  in  the  United  States,  Canada,  and  Australia, 
as  he  is  in  the  city  round  St.  Paul's.  Wherever  there  are  men  of  English 
origin,  speaking  the  English  tongue,  there  the  genius  of  Charles  Dickens 
is  one  of  the  important  facts  of  life. 

It  would  be  a  long  task  to  say  all  that  Dickens  has  done  for  the  English 
novel.  It  would  be  easier  to  state  what  he  has  not  done  for  it.  Indeed 
the  novel  of  this  generation  is  so  completely  a  work  of  his  r^-creation,  that 
it  would  be  mere  ingratitude,  backed  up  by  stupidity,  not  to  hail  him  as  the 
immediate  parent  of  it. — J.  CORDY  JEAFFRESON,  Novels  and  Novelists, 
Vol.  II. 

The  philosophy  of  Dickens  certainly  is  the  professed  philosophy  of 
kindliness,  of  a  genial  interest  in  all  things  great  and  small,  of  a  light 
English  joyousness,  and  a  sunny  universal  benevolence. — DAVID  MASSON, 
British  Novelists  and  their  Styles. 

The  characters  of  Dickens,  then,  are  personified  humours,  his  method 
is  the  method  not  of  Shakespeare,  but  of  Ben  Jonson.  Pecksniff  is  just 
another  name  for  hypocrisy,  Jonas  Chuzzlewit  for  avarice,  Quilp  for  cruelty. 
The  result  is  excellent  of  its  kind.  The  repetitions  and  catch-words  are, 
within  limits,  highly  effective.  Sometimes  they  are  genuinely  illuminative ; 
but  sometimes,  on  the  other  hand,  they  reveal  nothing  and  are  used  to 
weariness. — HUGH  WALKKR,  The  Age  of  Tennyson. 

Millions  and  millions  of  old  and  young  love  Charles  Dickens,  know  his 
personages  by  heart,  play  at  games  with  his  incidents  and  names,  and 
from  the  bottom  of  their  souls  believe  that  there  never  was  such  fun,  and 
that  there  never  will  be  conceived  again  such  inimitable  beings,  as  they 
find  in  his  ever-fresh  and  ever-varied  pages.  This  is  by  itself  a  very  high 
title  to  honour  :  perhaps  it  is  the  chief  jewel  in  the  crown  that  rests  on 


T, 

' 


DICKENS,  DIDEROT,  DIOCLETIAN,  DIONYSIUS.       125 

the  head  of  Charles  Dickens. — FREDERIC   HARRISON,  Studies  in  Early 
Victorian  Literature. 

Dickens  is  always  a  boy  in  his  humour,  and  exaggerates  his  tragedy,  as 
a  man  would  who  relies  for  his  materials  on  imagination  rather  than 
experience ;  and,  moreover,  he  seldom  gives  us  any  sense  of  intellectual 
resource. — W.  J.  DAWSON,  Quest  and  Vision. 

DENIS  DIDEROT. 
French  Philosopher :  1713-1784. 

Diderot  .  .  .  wrote  things  which,  were  we  not  assured  to  the  contrary,, 
we  should  insist  were  composed  by  two  persons,  not  only  differing  in 
manners  and  morals,  but  even  in  age  and  country ;  for,  though  he 
'aspired  to  the  glory  of  Plato,  as  Barriere  was  accustomed  to  say,  he  did 
not  blush  to  imitate  Petronius. — CHARLES  BUCKE,  Book  of  Human 
Character. 

DIOCLETIAN. 
Emperor  of  Rome  :  245-313. 

In  every  Christian 

Hourly  tempestuous  persecutions  grow. 
Temptations  martyr  us  alive.     A  man 
Is  to  himself  a  Diocletian. 

— DR.  JOHN  DONNE,  The  Litany  :  The  Confessors. 

Lament !  for  Diocletian's  fiery  sword 
Works  busy  as  the  lightning ;  but  instinct 
With  malice  ne'er  to  deadliest  weapon  linked, 
Which  God's  ethereal  storehouses  afford  ; 
Against  the  followers  of  the  incarnate  Lord 
It  rages. 

— WORDSWORTH,  Persecution. 

The  slave  who  sets  his  soul  on  worthless  pelf, 
Is  a  mere  Diocletian  to  himself. 

— WALTER  HARTE,  The  Ascetic  :  or,  Thomas  a  Kempis. 


DIONYSIUS. 
Greek  Historian  and  Critic  :  d.  (?)  B.C.  18. 


See  Dionysius  Homer's  thoughts  refine, 
And  call  new  beauties  forth  from  every  line  ! 

— POPE,  Essay  on  Criticism. 
Though  Dionysius'  learned  taste 
Is  very  manly,  just,  and  chaste, 
Who,  like  a  skilful,  wise  physician, 
Dissects  each  part  of  composition, 
And  shows  how  beauty  strikes  the  soul 
From  a  just  compact  of  the  whole. 

— ROBERT  LLOYD,  Epistle  to  J.  B.,  Esq.,  1757. 


126  DODDRIDGE,  DONNE. 

DR.  PHILIP  DODDRIDGE. 
Nonconformist  Divine :  1702-1751. 

Philip  Doddridge,  one  of  those  who  have  breathed  most  freely  on  earth 
the  atmosphere  of  heaven. — SIR  JAS.  STEPHEN,  Essays  in  Ecclesiastical 
Biography. 

A  comparison  of  the  hymns  of  Doddridge,  Watts,  Ken,  and  Wesley 
would  show  that  Doddridge  rises  above  Watts  from  having  caught  the 
spirit  of  Ken  ;  and  Wesley  is  deep  and  interior  from  having  added  to  the 
Chrysostomian  piety  of  Ken  the  experimental  part  of  St.  Augustine. 
Watts  is  a  pure  Calvinist ;  Ken  is  as  pure  a  Chrysostomian.  Doddridge 
is  induced  to  blend  both,  and  the  effect  is  valuable  and  interesting  ; 
Wesley  advances  this  union. — ALEXANDER  KNOX. 

DR.  JOHN  DONNE. 
Dean  of  St.  Paul's:  1573-1631. 

Can  we  not  force  from  widow'd  poetry, 

Now  thou  art  dead,  Great  Donne,  one  elegy 

To  crown  thy  hearse  ?  Why  yet  did  we  not  crust, 

Though  with  unkneaded  dough — bak'd  prose,  thy  dust  ? 

.  .  .  The  Muses'  garden,  with  pedantic  weeds 
•O'erspread,  was  purg'd  by  thee ;  the  lazy  seeds 
Of  servile  imitation  thrown  away, 
And  fresh  invention  planted ;  thou  didst  pay 
The  debts  of  our  penurious  bankrupt  age.  .  .  . 

— THOMAS  CAREW,  Elegy  upon  the  Death  of  Dr.  Donne. 

""Twas  then  plain  Donne  in  honest  vengeance  rose, 
His  wit  refulgent,  though  his  rhyme  was  prose  ; 
He  midst  an  age  of  puns  and  pedants  wrote 
With  genuine  sense,  and  Roman  strength  of  thought. 

— DR.  BROWN,  Essay  on  Satire. 

Donne,  the  delight  of  Phoebus  and  each  Muse, 
Who,  to  thy  one,  all  other  brains  refuse ; 
Whose  every  work,  of  thy  most  early  wit, 
Came  forth  example,  and  remains  so  yet ; 
Longer  a  knowing  than  most  wits  do  live, 
And  which  no  affection  praise  enough  can  give  ! 
To  it,  thy  language,  letters,  arts,  best  life, 
Which  might  with  half  mankind  maintain  a  strife; 
All  which  I  meant  to  praise,  and  yet  I  would  ; 
But  leave,  because  I  cannot  as  I  should  ! 

—BEN  JONSON,  Epigram  to  John  Donne. 

Who  dares  say  thou  art  dead,  when  he  doth  see 

Unburied  yet  this  living  part  of  thee  ; 

This  part,  that  to  thy  being  gives  fresh  flame, 

And,  tho'  thou'rt  Donne,  yet  will  preserve  thy  name  ? 

— ARTHUR  WILSON,  Upon  Mr.  J.  Donne  and  his  Poems. 


DONNE,  DRAKE,  DRY  DEN.  127 

...  all  the  softnesses, 

The  Shadow,  Light,  the  Air,  and  Life,  of  Love  ; 
The  Sharpness  of  all  Wit ;  ev'n  bitterness 
Makes  Satire  Sweet ;  all  wit  did  God  improve, 
'Twas  flamed  in  him,  'Twas  but  warm  upon 
His  Embers  ;  He  was  more  ;  and  it  is  Donne. 

— GEORGE  DANIEL,  A  Vindication  of  Poesy. 

Donne  teem'd  with  wit,  but  all  was  maim'd  and  bruis'd, 
The  periods  endless,  and  the  sense  confus'd. 

— WALTER  HARTE,  An  Essay  on  Satire. 

Is  Donne,  great  Donne,  deceased  ?  then,  England,  say 
Thou  hast  lost  a  man  wher't  language  chose  to  stay 
And  show  its  graceful  power.     I  would  not  praise 
That  and  his  vast  wit  (which  in  these  vain  days 
Make  many  proud)  but  as  they  serv'd  to  unlock 
That  Cabinet,  his  mind  :  where  such  a  stock 
Of  knowledge  was  repos'd. 

— IZAAK  WALTON,  An  Elegy  upon  Dr.  Donne. 

.  .   .  Donne  .  .  . 

Of  stubborn  thoughts  a  garland  thought  to  twine ; 
To  his  fair  maid  brought  cabalistic  posies, 
And  sung  quaint  ditties  of  metempsychosis  ; 
Twists  iron  pokers  into  true  love-knots, 
Coining  hard  words,  not  found  in  polyglots. 

— HARTLEY  COLERIDGE,  Donne. 

The  vividness  of  the  descriptions  or  declamations  in  Donne,  or  Dryden, 
is  as  much  and  as  often  derived  from  the  force  and  fervour  of  the  describer, 
as  from  the  reflections,  forms,  or  incidents  which  constitute  their  subject 
and  materials.  The  wheels  take  fire  from  the  mere  rapidity  of  their 
motion. — COLERIDGE,  Bibliographia  Literaria. 

SIR  FRANCIS  DRAKE. 
English  Admiral :  1540-1596. 

Drake  round  the  world  his  sovereign's  honour  spread, 
Through  straights  and  gulfs  immense  her  fame  convey'd  ; 
Nor  rests  inquiry  here ;  his  curious  eye 
Descries  new  constellations  in  the  sky. 

— WILLIAM  KING,  Britain's  Palladium. 

Immortal  Drake,  the  British  thunder  drove, 
Swift,  as  the  bolt,  hot-hissing  from  above  ; 
Wide  o'er  the  main,  the  bright  infection  flew, 
And  flying,  with  tempestuous  fury  grew. 

— WILLIAM  PATTISON,  Verses  on  the  Fifth  of  November. 

JOHN  DRYDEN. 
English  Poet :  1631-1700. 

Here  let  me  bend,  great  Dryden,  at  thy  shrine, 
Thou  dearest  name  to  all  the  tuneful  nine. 


128  DRYDEN. 

What  if  some  dull  lines  in  cold  order  creep, 
And  with  his  theme  the  poet  seems  to  sleep  ? 
Still,  when  his  subject  rises  proud  to  view, 
With  equal  strength  the  poet  rises  too : 
With  strong  invention,  noblest  vigour  fraught, 
Thought  still  springs  up  and  rises  out  of  thought ; 
Numbers,  ennobling  numbers  in  their  course, 
In  varied  sweetness  flow,  in  varied  force  ; 
The  powers  of  genius  and  of  judgment  join, 
And  the  whole  Art  of  Poetry  is  thine. 

— CHURCHILL,  The  Apology. 

In  the  head  of  the  gang,  John  Dryden  appear'd, 
That  ancient  grave  wit  so  long  lov'd  and  fear'd. 

— EARL  OF  ROCHESTER,  A  Trial  of  the  Poets  for  the  Bays, 

Let  free,  impartial  men  from  Dryden  learn 
Mysterious  secrets,  of  a  high  concern, 
And  weighty  truths,  solid  convincing  sense, 
Explain'd  by  unaffected  eloquence. 

— EARL  OF  ROSCOMMON,  On  Mr.  Dryden's  Religio  Laid, 

But  see  where  artful  Dryden  next  appears, 

Grown  old  in  rhyme,  but  charming  ev'n  in  years, 

Great  Dryden  next,  whose  tuneful  muse  affords 

The  sweetest  numbers,  and  the  fittest  words. 

Whether  in  Comic  sounds  or  Tragic  airs 

She  forms  her  voice,  she  moves  our  smiles  or  tears. 

If  Satire  or  heroic  strains  she  writes, 

Her  Hero  pleases  and  her  Satire  bites. 

From  her  no  harsh  unartful  numbers  fall, 

She  wears  all  dresses,  and  she  charms  in  all. 

— ADDISON,  An  Account  of  the  Greatest  English  Poets, 

How  long,  great  Poet,  shall  thy  sacred  Lays 
Provoke  our  Wonder,  and  transcend  our  Praise  ? 
Can  neither  injuries  of  Time,  or  Age, 
Damp  thy  Poetic  Heat,  and  quench  thy  Rage  ?  .  .  . 

Prevailing  Warmth  has  still  thy  mind  possest, 
And  second  Youth  is  kindled  in  thy  breast ; 
Thou  mak'st  the  beauties  of  the  Romans  known, 
And  England  boasts  of  riches  not  her  own  ; 
Thy  lines  have  heighten'd  Virgil's  majesty, 
And  Homer  wonders  at  himself  in  thee. 
Thou  teachest  Persius  to  inform  our  isle 
In  smoother  Numbers,  and  a  clearer  Style  ; 
And  Juvenal,  instructed  in  thy  page, 
Edges  his  Satire,  and  improves  his  Rage. 
Thy  Copy  casts  a  fairer  Light  on  all, 
And  still  out-shines  the  bright  Original. 

—Id.,  To  Mr.  Dryden.. 

Pride,  malice,  folly,  against  Dryden  rose, 
In  various  shapes  of  parsons,  critics,  beaux  : 


DRY  DEN.  129 

But  sense  surviv'd,  when  merry  jests  were  past ; 
For  rising  merit  will  buoy  up  at  last. 

— POPE,  Essay  on  Criticism. 

Waller  was  smooth  ;  but  Dryden  taught  to  join 
The  varying  verse,  the  full  resounding  line, 
The  long  majestic  march,  and  energy  divine. 

— Id.,  Imitations  of  Horace,  Epistle  J. 

Dryden  is  dead,  Dryden  alone  could  sing 
The  full  grown  glories  of  a  future  king. 

—DR.  ISAAC  WATTS,  On  the  Death  of  the  Duke  of  Gloucester. 

Old  Dryden,  emulous  of  Caesar's  praise, 
Cover'd  his  baldness  with  immortal  bays  ; 
And  death  perhaps,  to  spoil  poetic  sport, 
Unkindly  cut  an  Alexandrine  short. 

— ELIJAH  FENTON,  An  Epistle  to  Thomas  Lombard,  Esq. 

At  length  the  matchless  Dryden  came, 
To  light  the  muses'  clearer  flame ; 
To  lofty  numbers  grace  to  lend, 
And  strength  with  melody  to  blend  ; 
To  triumph  in  the  bold  career  of  song, 
And  roll  th'  unwearied  energy  along. 

— WARTON,  Ode  on  His  Majesty's  Birthday,  June  4,  1787^ 

.  .  .  Dryden  in  immortal  strain, 
Had  raised  the  Table  Round  again, 
But  that  a  ribald  King  and  Court 
Bade  him  toil  on,  to  make  them  sport ;  .  .  . 
The  world  defrauded  of  the  high  design. 
Profaned  the  God-given  strength,  and  marr'd  the  lofty  line. 

— SCOTT,  Marmion,  Introduction  to  Canto  I. 

Like  him  great  Dryden  pour'd  the  tide  of  song, 
In  stream  less  smooth,  indeed,  but  doubly  strong. 

— BYRON,  English  Bards  and  Scotch  Reviewers. 

Chatting  on  deck  was  Dryden  too, 

The  Bacon  of  the  rhyming  crew  ; 

None  ever  crosst  our  mystic  sea 

More  richly  stored  with  thought  than  he ; 

Tho'  never  tender  nor  sublime, 

He  wrestles  with  and  conquers  Time. 

— LANDOR,  To  Wordsworth. 

.  .  .  Dryden,  with  imperial  grace, 
Gives  to  th'  obedient  lyre  his  rapid  laws ; 
Tones  yet  unheard,  with  touch  divine,  he  draws, 
The  melting  fall,  the  rising  swell  sublime, 
And  all  the  magic  of  melodious  rhyme. 

— HAYLEY,  Essay  on  Epic  Poetry,  Ep.  HI. 

To  Spenser  much,  to  Milton  much  is  due ; 
But  in  great  Dryden  we  preserve  the  two. 

— WALTER  HARTE,  The  Vision  of  Death. 


I3o  DRY  DEN. 

Behold  where  Dryden's  less  presumptuous  car, 

Wide  o'er  the  fields  of  glory  bear 

Two  courses  of  ethereal  race, 

With  necks  in  thunder  cloth'd,  and  long  resounding  pace. 

Hark,  his  hands  the  lyre  explore ! 

Bright-eyed  Fancy  hovering  o'er 

Scatters  from  her  pictured  urn 

Thoughts,  that  breathe,  and  words  that  burn. 

— THOMAS  GRAY,  The  Progress  of  Poesy. 

Dryden  may  be  properly  considered  as  the  father  of  English  criticism, 
as  the  writer  who  first  taught  us  to  determine  upon  principles  the  merit 
of  composition. — DR.  JOHNSON,  Lives  of  the  Poets:  Dryden. 

The  prose  works  of  Dryden  bear  repeated  evidence  to  his  philosophical 
powers.  His  philosophy  was  not  indeed  of  a  formed  and  systematic 
character ;  for  he  is  often  contented  to  leave  the  path  of  argument  which 
must  have  conducted  him  to  the  fountain  of  truth,  and  to  resort  with  in- 
dolence or  indifference  to  the  leaky  cisterns  which  had  been  hewn  out  by 
former  critics.  But  where  his  pride  or  his  taste  are  interested,  he  shows 
evidently  that  it  was  not  deficiency  in  the  power  of  systematizing,  but 
want  of  the  time  and  patience  necessary  to  form  a  system,  which 
occasioned  the  discrepancy  that  we  often  notice  in  his  critical  and  philo- 
logical disquisitions.  .  .  .  The  satirical  powers  of  Dryden  were  of  the 
highest  order.  He  draws  his  arrow  to  the  head,  and  dismisses  it  straight 
upon  his  object  of  aim.  In  this  walk  he  wrought  almost  as  great  a  re- 
formation as  upon  versification  in  general. — SIR  WALTER  SCOTT,  Life  of 
Dryden. 

Dryden's  genius  was  of  that  sort  which  catches  fire  by  its  own  motion  ; 
his  chariot  wheels  get  hot  by  driving  fast. — COLERIDGE,  Table  Talk. 

He  (C.  J.  Fox)  declared  that  he  would  use  no  word  which  was  not  to 
.be  found  in  Dryden. — MACAULAY,  Essays  :  Sir  James  Mackintosh. 

Dryden  too  often  violated  his  own  admirable  rule,  that  "  an  author  is 
not  to  write  all  he  can,  only  all  he  ought".  In  his  worst  images, 
however,  there  is  often  a  vividness  that  half  excuses  them.  But  it  is 
:a  grotesque  vividness,  as  from  the  flare  of  a  bonfire.  They  do  not  flash 
into  sudden  lustre,  as  in  the  great  poets,  where  the  imaginations  of  poet 
and  reader  leap  toward  each  other  and  meet  half  way.  .  .  .  But  if  he 
have  not  the  potent  alchemy  that  transmutes  the  lead  of  our  common- 
,place  associations  into  gold,  as  Shakespeare  knows  how  to  do  so  easily, 
yet  his  sense  is  always  up  to  the  sterling  standard ;  and  though  he  has 
not  added  so  much  as  some  have  done  to  the  stock  of  bullion  which 
others  afterwards  coin  and  put  in  circulation,  there  are  few  who  have 
minted  so  many  phrases  that  are  still  a  part  of  our  daily  currency. — J.  R. 
LOWELL,  Among  my  Books. 

Dryden  was  a  fine,  bold,  stout,  strong,  and  sweeping  satirist ;  but, 
vacillating  in  his  own  principles  and  practice,  in  many  of  the  highest 
affairs  which  a  man  has  to  discuss  and  settle  with  his  own  soul,  "  Glori- 
ous John,"  with  the  native  strength  of  a  giant,  sometimes  felt  his  own 
knees  smiting  against  one  another,  his  legs  tottering,  his  footing  unsure. 
,  .  .  Dryden  seems  to  have  been  a  man  of  wavering  principles,  but 
warm  and  generous  feelings  ;  so  he  had  one  of  the  best,  and  one  of  the 


DRYDEN,  SCOTUS.  131 

worst  qualities  which  a  satirist  can  possess.  But  then,  what  an  ear  for 
music  !  .  .  .  Even  when  the  satire  languishes,  the  poetry  is  magnificent : 
and  you  are  brought  back,  with  a  refreshed  appetite,  to  devour  the  casti- 
gation  of  the  knave  or  fool  whom  you  and  the  poet  had  for  a  while 
forgotten. — JOHN  WILSON,  Essays  :  The  Man  of  Ton. 

Dryden  is  always  striving,  and  consciously  striving,  to  find  better  liter- 
ary forms,  a  better  vocabulary,  better  metres,  better  constructions,  better 
style.  He  may,  in  no  one  branch,  have  attained  the  entire  and  flawless 
perfection  which  distinguishes  Pope  as  far  as  he  goes.  But  the  range  of 
Dryden  is  to  the  range  of  Pope  as  that  of  a  forest  to  a  shrubbery,  and  in  this 
case  priority  is  everything,  and  the  priority  is  on  the  side  of  Dryden.  He  is 
not  our  greatest  poet ;  far  from  it.  But  there  is  one  point  in  which  the 
superlative  may  safely  be  applied  to  him.  Considering  what  he  started 
with,  what  he  accomplished,  and  what  advantages  he  left  to  his  suc- 
cessors, he  must  be  pronounced,  without  exception,  the  greatest  craftsman 
in  English  letters,  and  as  such  he  ought  to  be  regarded  with  peculiar 
veneration  by  all  who,  in  however  humble  a  capacity,  are  connected  with 
the  craft. — GEORGE  SAINTSBURY,  John  Dryden. 

The  moral  defects  of  his  writings,  coarse  licentiousness,  unmeasured 
invective,  and  equally  unmeasured  adulation,  belong  to  the  age  rather 
than  to  the  man.  On  the  whole,  we  may  say  that  he  was  one  whom  we 
should  probably  have  esteemed  if  we  could  have  known  him  ;  but  in  whom, 
apart  from  his  writings,  we  should  not  have  discovered  the  first  literary 
figure  of  his  generation. — RICHARD  GARNETT,  The  Age  of  Dryden. 

No  poetic  style  since  can,  in  such  respects,  be  compared  to  Dryden's. 
Pope's  to  his  is  feeble — and  Byron's  forced.  He  can  say  the  strongest 
things  in  the  swiftest  way,  and  the  most  felicitous  expressions  seem  to  fall 
unconsciously  from  his  lips.  Had  his  matter,  you  say,  but  been  equal  to 
his  manner,  his  thought  in  originality  and  imaginative  power  but  com- 
mensurate with  the  boundless  quantity,  and  no  less  admirable  quality,  of 
his  words !  His  versification  deserves  a  commendation  scarcely  inferior. 
It  is  "  all  ear,"  if  we  may  so  apply  an  expression  of  Shakespeare's.  No 
studied  rules, — no  elaborate  complication  of  harmonies, — it  is  the  mere 
sinking  and  swelling  of  the  wave  of  his  thought,  as  it  moves  onward  to 
the  shore  of  his  purpose.  And,  as  in  the  sea,  there  are  no  furrows  abso- 
lutely isolated  from  each  other,  but  each  leans  on,  or  melts  into  each,  and 
the  subsidence  of  the  one  is  the  rise  of  the  other — so  with  the  versification 
of  his  better  poetry. — REV.  G.  GILFILLAN,  Critical  Dissertation  prefixed 
to  Dryden's  Poetical  Works,  Vol.  II. 

DUNS  SCOTUS. 
Scottish  Philosopher:  1265-1308. 

Who  travels  Scotus'  swelling  tomes  shall  find 
A  cloud  of  darkness  rising  on  the  mind. 

— JOHN  POMFRET,  Reason  :  A  Poem. 

By  Michael  the  Stammerer  sent  from  the  East, 
And  done  into  Latin  by  that  Scottish  beast, 
Johannes  Duns  Scotus,  who  dares  to  maintain, 
In  the  face  of  the  truth,  and  error  infernal, 


i32  SCOTUS,  DURER,  EDGEWORTH. 

That  the  universe  is  and  must  be  eternal ; 

At  first  laying  down,  as  a  fact  fundamental, 

That  nothing  with  God  can  be  accidental ; 

Then  asserting  that  God  before  the  creation 

Could  not  have  existed,  because  it  is  plain 

That,  had  he  existed,  he  would  have  created ; 

Which  is  begging  the  question  that  should  be  debated, 

And  moveth  me  less  to  anger  than  laughter. 

— LONGFELLOW,  The  Golden  Legend. 

ALBRECHT  DURER. 
Painter:  1471-1528. 

Here,  when  Art  was  still  religion,  with  a  simple  reverent  heart, 
Lived  and  laboured  Albrecht  Diirer,  the  Evangelist  of  Art.   ... 
Not  thy  councils,  not  thy  Kaisers,  win  for  thee  the  world's  regard ; 
But  thy  painter,  Albrecht  Diirer,  and  Hans  Sachs,  thy  cobbler-bard. 

— LONGFELLOW,  Nuremberg. 

Albrecht  Diirer  fills  a  large  space  in  the  history  of  art.  So  far  as 
Germany  is  concerned  he  is  facile  princeps,  unrivalled  even  in  his  own 
age  by  so  great  an  artist  as  the  young  Hans  Holbein,  and  towering 
above  all  his  successors,  no  one  of  whom  can  raise  a  head  high  enough 
to  look  him  in  the  face,  with  the  exception  perhaps  of  Adolf  MenzeKat 
the  present  day.  Wherever  there  are  or  will  be  students  and  lovers  "of 
art,  there  must  be  a  great  majority  in  whom  instinct  and  intellect  will 
be  stimulated  by  the  study  of  the  works  of  Diirer,  whether  as  painter, 
engraver,  philosopher,  author,  or  merely  as  simple  burgher  citizen  of 
Nuremberg. — LIONEL  CUST,  Albrecht  Diirer. 

MARIA  EDGEWORTH. 
English  Novelist :  1766-1849. 

In  short,  she  was  a  walking  calculation, 

Miss  Edgeworth's  novels  stepping  from  their  covers. 

— BYRON,  Don  yuan. 

If  it  were  possible  for  reviewers  to  envy  the  authors  who  are  brought 
before  them  for  judgment,  we  rather  think  we  should  be  tempted  to  envy 
Miss  Edgeworth  .  .  .  for  the  delicate  consciousness  of  having  done  more 
good  than  any  other  writer,  male  or  female,  of  her  generation. — LORD 
JEFFREY,  Essays. 

We  owe  also  the  popularity  of  the  growing  principle  to  the  writings  of 
Miss  Edgeworth  and  of  Scott,  who  sought  their  characters  among  the 
people,  and  who  interested  us  by  a  picture  of  (and  not  a  declamation 
upon)  their  life  and  its  humble  vicissitudes,  their  errors  and  their  virtues. 
— LYTTON,  England  and  the  English  :  Intellectual  Spirit. 

Her  novels  have  been  described  as  a  sort  of  essence  of  common  sense, 
and  even  more  happily  it  has  been  said  that  it  was  her  genius  to  be  wise. 
We  must  be  content  to  take  that  which  she  can  offer  ;  and  since  she  offers 
so  much,  why  should  we  not  be  content?  Miss  Edgeworth  wrote  of 


EDGEWORTH,  EDWARD  III.  133 

ordinary  human  life,  and  not  of  tremendous  catastrophes  or  highly 
romantic  incidents.  Hers  was  no  heated  fancy  ;  she  had  no  comprehen- 
sion of  those  fiery  passions,  those  sensibilities  that  burn  like  tinder  at 
contact  with  the  feeblest  spark ;  she  does  not  believe  in  chance,  that 
favourite  of  so  many  novelists  ;  neither  does  she  deal  in  ruined  castles, 
underground  galleries  nor  spectres,  as  was  the  fashion  in  her  day. — HELEN 
ZIMMERN,  Maria  Edgeivorth. 

EDWARD  THE  CONFESSOR. 
Saxon  King  of  England  :  1004-1066. 

Edward  was  a  royal  anchorite,  who,  if  he  had  been  a  professed  recluse, 
or  even  a  private  man,  might  have  been  justly  thought  venerable  or 
excusable,  according  to  the  various  opinions  and  prepossessions  of  those 
wha  contemplated  his  character. — SIR  J.  MACKINTOSH,  History  of  Eng- 
land, Vol.  I. 

EDWARD  I. 

King  of  England  :  1239-1307. 

Go,  Edward,  triumph  now! 

•  Cambria  is  fallen,  and  Scotland's  strength  is  crush'd  ; 
On  Wallace,  on  Llewellyn's  mangled  limbs, 
The  fowls  of  heaven  have  fed. 

UnrivalPd,  unopposed, 
Go  Edward,  full  of  glory  to  thy  grave  ! 
The  weight  of  patriot  blood  upon  thy  soul, 
Go,  Edward,  to  thy  God ! 

— SOUTHEY,  The  Death  of  Wallace. 

So  conspicuous  a  station  at  the  head  of  the  authentic  history  of  our  unin- 
terrupted jurisprudence  has  contributed,  more  than  his  legislative  acts, 
to  procure  for  Edward  the  ambitious  name  of  the  English  Justinian. — 
SIR  J.  MACKINTOSH,  History  of  England,  Vol.  I. 

Edward  I.  assisted  the  march  of  liberty ;  that  is,  he  encouraged  the 
march  of  the  people  in  their  path  to  power  ;  but  he  did  so  because  he 
thought  it  would  operate  as  a  check  on  the  arrogance  of  the  nobles  and 
the  bigotry  of  the  clergy. — CHARLES  BUCKE,  Book  of  Human  Character. 

EDWARD  III, 
King  of  England  :  1312-1377. 

With  Edward's  acts  adorn  the  shining  page, 
Stretch  his  long  triumphs  down  through  every  age  ; 
Draw  monarchs  chain'd  and  Cressy's  glorious  field, 
The  lilies  blazing  on  the  regal  shield. 

— POPE,  Windsor  Forest. 

A  more  prosperous  era  began  with  Edward  III.,  the  father,  as  he  may 
also  be  called,  of  English  commerce,  a  title  not  indeed  more  glorious,  but 


134       EDWARD  III.,  EDWARD  VI.,  EDWARDS. 

by  which  he  may  perhaps  claim  more  of  our  gratitude  than  as  the  hero 
of  Cre?y.— HALLAM,  Student's  Middle  Ages,  Chap.  IX.,  Part  II. 

Edward  III.,  undoubtedly  one  of  the  greatest  princes  that  ever  swayed 
the  sceptre  of  England ;  whether  we  respect  him  as  a  warrior,  a  law- 
giver, a  monarch,  or  a  man.  He  possessed  all  the  romantic  spirit  of 
Alexander  ;  the  penetration,  the  fortitude,  the  polished  manners  of  Julius  ; 
the  liberality,  the  munificence,  the  wisdom,  of  Augustus  Caesar. — TOBIAS 
G.  SMOLLETT. 

EDWARD  VI. 
King  of  England  :  1537-1553. 

Now  may  that  blessed  edifice 

Of  public  good  be  rear'd 

Which  holy  Edward  traced, 

The  spotless  Tudor,  he  whom  Death 

Too  early  summon'd  to  his  heavenly  throne. 

— SOUTHEY,  Ode. 

"  Sweet  is  the  holiness  of  youth,"  so  felt 

Time-honoured  Chaucer  when  he  framed  the  lay 

By  which  the  prioress  beguiled  the  way, 

And  many  a  pilgrim's  rugged  heart  did  melt. 

Hadst  thou,  lov'd  bard  !  whose  spirit  often  dwelt 

In  the  clear  land  of  vision,  but  foreseen 

King,  child,  and  seraph,  blended  in  the  mien 

Of  pious  Edward  kneeling  as  he  knelt 

In  meek  and  simple  infancy,  what  joy 

For  universal  Christendom  had  thrilled 

Thy  heart !  what  hopes  inspired  thy  genius,  skilled 

(O  great  precursor,  genuine  morning  star) 

The  lucid  shafts  of  reason  to  employ, 

Piercing  the  papal  darkness  from  afar ! 

— WORDSWORTH,  Edward  VI. 

Henry  VIII.  was  the  Romulus,  and  Edward  VI.  the  Numa  Pompilius, 
of  the  English  Reformation. — WILLIAM  GUTHRIE. 

JONATHAN  EDWARDS. 
American  Divine  :  1703-1758.  * 

Who  is  this  preacher  our  Northampton  claims, 
Whose  rhetoric  blazes  with  sulphureous  flames 
And  torches  stolen  from  Tartarean  mines  ? 
Edrvards,  the  salamander  of  divines. 

— OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES,  Vestigia  Quinque  Retrorsum. 

The  greatest  of  New  England  reasoners,  Jonathan  Edwards,  the  Spinoza 
of  Calvinism. — RICHARD  GARNETT,  Life  of  Emerson. 

The  peculiarity  of  Edwards'  mind  was,  that  the  doctrine  had  thus  been 
expanded  along  peculiar  lines  of  thought,  without  equally  affecting  others. 
He  is  a  kind  of  Spinoza-Mather  ;  he  combines,  that  is,  the  logical  keenness 


EDWARDS,  ELDON,  ELIOT.  135 

of  the  great  metaphysician  with  the  puerile  superstitions  of  the  New 
England  divine  ;  he  sees  God  in  all  nature,  and  yet  believes  in  the  de- 
grading supernaturalism  of  the  Salem  witches. — LESLIE  STEPHEN,  Hours 
in  a  Library,  Second  Scries. 

EARL  OF  ELDON. 
Lord  Chancellor  of  England  :  1751-1838. 

Lord  Eldon,  to  great  legal  experience,  and  the  most  profound  profes- 
sional learning,  united  that  thorough  knowledge  of  men,  which  lawyers 
who  practise  in  the  courts,  and  especially  the  courts  of  common  law,  attain 
in  a  measure  and  with  an  accuracy  hardly  conceivable  by  those  out  of 
the  profession.  —  LORD  BROUGHAM,  Statesmen  of  the  Time  of  George 
III.,  Vol.  II. 

'  Lord  Eldon  might  have  carried  any  measure  of  legal  reform  as  easily 
as  the  Duke  of  Wellington  and  Sir  Robert  Peel  carried  Catholic  Emancipa- 
tion. In  his  own  court,  he  might  have  played  the  part  of  Hercules  in 
the  Augean  stable ;  but  he  preferred  to  sit  among  the  accumulations  of 
dirt  and  rubbish,  and  looked  with  marked  disfavour  on  all  who  approached 
to  meddle  with  them.  ...  It  is  going  far  enough  to  call  Lord  Eldon  a 
great  lawyer ;  but  to  call  him  a  great  man,  or  assign  him  the  honours 
paid  to  those  who  have  performed  noble  actions,  produced  immortal 
works,  or  conferred  lasting  benefits  on  mankind,  is  to  degrade  the  general 
standard  of  excellence,  to  canker  public  virtue  in  the  bud.  There  are 
rewards  of  a  different  order  set  apart  for  those  who  work  for  present 
objects  and  present  pay.  To  a  fair  share  of  these  he  was  entitled,  and  he 
had  it.  His  earldom,  his  half-million,  and  the  "one  cheer  more"  of  his 
biographer  are  enough  in  all  conscience  for  such  services  as  his,  even  if 
the  "  one  cheer  more "  should  not  be  caught  up  and  echoed  back  by 
posterity. — A.  HAYWARD,  Biographical  and  Historical  Essays,  Vol.  I. 

"  GEORGE  ELIOT"  (MARY  ANN  EVANS). 
English  Novelist :  1819-1880. 

In  George  Eliot  it  is  the  most  vivid  and  vital  impulse  which  lends  to 
her  large  intelligence  the  utmost  it  ever  has  of  the  spiritual  breath  and 
living  blood  of  genius  ;  and  never  had  any  such  a  gift  more  plainly  and 
immediately  as  from  the  very  heart  of  heaven. — SWINBURNE,  Charlotte 
Bronte. 

George  Eliot  loves  to  bathe  her  productions  in  the  broad  pitiless  mid- 
day light,  which  leaves  no  room  for  illusion,  but  reveals  all  nature  with 
uncompromising  directness.  .  .  .  George  Eliot,  contemplative,  observant, 
instinctively  conservative,  her  imagination  dearly  loving  to  do  "  a  little 
Toryism  on  the  sly,"  is  as  yet  the  sole  outcome  of  the  modern  positive 
spirit  in  imaginative  literature  —the  sole  novelist  who  has  incorporated  in 
an  artistic  form  some  of  the  leading  ideas  of  Comte,  of  Mazzini,  and  of 
Darwin.  In  fact,  underlying  all  her  art  there  is  the  same  rigorous  teaching 
of  the  inexorable  laws  which  govern  the  life  of  man.  The  teaching  that 
not  liberty  but  duty  is  the  condition  of  existence ;  the  teaching  of  the 


i36  ELIOT,  ELIZABETH. 

incalculable  effects  of  hereditary  transmission,  with  the  solemn  responsi- 
bilities it  involves ;  the  teaching  of  the  inherent  sadness  and  imperfection 
in  human  nature,  which  render  resignation  the  first  virtue  of  man. — 
MATHILDE  BLIND,  George  Eliot. 

Even  in  her  best  books  we  never  quite  get  over  the  sense  of  almost 
painful  elaboration,  of  a  powerful  mind  having  rich  gifts  striving  to  produce 
some  rare  music  with  an  unfamiliar  and  uncongenial  instrument.  It 
reminds  us  of  Beethoven  evolving  his  majestic  sonatas  on  an  untuned  and 
dilapidated  old  piano,  the  defects  of  which  he  could  not  himself  hear.  .  .  . 
As  the  Gospel  has  it — "Which  of  you  by  taking  thought  can  add  one 
cubit  unto  his  stature  ?  "  George  Eliot  had  not  sufficiently  meditated  on 
this  subject.  She  too  often  supposed  that  by  taking  thought — by  enormous 
pains,  profound  thought,  by  putting  this  thought  in  exquisite  and  noble 
words — she  might  produce  an  immortal  romance,  an  immortal  poem. — 
FREDERIC  HARRISON,  Studies  in  Early  Victorian  Literature. 

It  is  one  of  the  minor  lessons  George  Eliot  is  fond  of  teaching,  that 
faces  can  be  masks  as  well  as  mirrors :  it  is  the  heart  and  not  the  face 
that  makes  the  traitor. — W.  J.  DAWSON,  Quest  and  Vision. 

In  George  Eliot,  a  reader  with  a  conscience  may  be  reminded  of  the 
saying  that  when  a  man  opens  Tacitus  he  puts  himself  in  the  confessional. 
— JOHN  MORLEY,  Miscellanies,  Vol.  III. 

ELIZABETH. 
Queen  of  England  :  1533-1603. 

Eliza  then, 

Amid  these  doubtful  motions,  steady,  gave 
The  beam  to  fix.     She  !  like  the  secret  eye 
That  never  closes  on  a  guarded  world, 
So  sought,  so  mark'd,  so  seiz'd  the  public  good, 
That  self-supported,  without  one  ally, 
She  aw'd  her  inward,  quell'd  her  circling  foes. 

— THOMSON,  Liberty. 

Queen  of  the  eagle  eye,  thou  too,  O  matchless  Eliza, 
Excellent  Queen,  wert  there  !  and  thy  brother's  beautiful  spirit ! 
O'er  whose  innocent  head  there  hover'd  a  silvery  halo, 
Such  as  crowns  the  saint  when  his  earthly  warfare  is  ended. 

— SOUTHEY,  A  Vision  of  Judgment :  The  Sovereigns. 

Hail,  virgin  queen  !  o'er  many  an  envious  bar 
Triumphant — snatched  from  many  a  treacherous  wile ! 
All  hail,  sage  lady,  whom  a  grateful  isle 
Hath  blest,  respiring  from  that  dismal  war 
Stilled  by  thy  voice  ! 

— WORDSWORTH,  Elizabeth. 

When  great  Eliza  rul'd  this  state, 

On  English  hearts  she  plac'd  her  throne, 

And  in  their  happiness  her  fate. 

— JOHN  GILBERT  COOPER,  The  Genius  of  Britain. 


ELIZABETH,  EMERSON.  137 

Let  tyrants  fear :  I  have  always  so  behaved  myself  that,  under  God,  I 
have  placed  my  chiefest  strength  and  safeguard  in  the  loyal  hearts  and 
goodwill  of  my  subjects. — QUEEN  ELIZABETH. 

I  know  I  have  but  the  body  of  a  weak  and  feeble  woman,  but  I  have  the 
heart  of  a  king,  and  of  a  king  of  England  too. — Id. 

It  may  be  said  of  Elizabeth,  that  if  ever  there  was  a  monarch  whose 
•conduct  seemed,  according  to  the  speech  of  the  old  heathen,  to  be  governed 
alternately  by  two  souls  of  a  very  different  disposition  and  character,  the 
supposition  might  be  applied  to  her.  Possessing  more  than  masculine 
wisdom,  magnanimity,  and  fortitude  on  most  occasions,  she  betrayed,  at 
.some  unhappy  moments,  even  more  than  female  weakness  and  malignity. 
— SIR  WALTER  SCOTT. 

That  this  nation  is  what  it  is,  and  this  Church  is  what  it  is,  may  without 
praise  or  blame,  but  only  in  acknowledgment  of  the  fact,  be  owned  due  to 
Queen  Elizabeth  as  much  as  to  any  human  being  that  has  ever  in  this 
.island  enjoyed  or  suffered  the  stern  and  bracing  experience  of  life. — W.  E. 
GLADSTONE,  Queen  Elizabeth  and  the  Church  of  England. 

Elizabeth  made  herself  feared  by  the  nobility,  but  beloved  by  the  people. 
Wherefore  ? — That  she  might  make  herself  absolute. — CHARLES  BUCKE, 
Book  of  Human  Character. 

What  is  England  ?  She  is  Elizabeth.  There  is  no  incarnation  more 
-complete.  In  admiring  Elizabeth,  England  loves  her  own  looking-glass. 
Proud  and  magnanimous  with  strange  hypocrisies,  great  with  pedantry, 
haughty  with  ability,  prude  with  audacity,  having  favourites,  but  no 
masters,  her  own  mistress,  even  in  her  bed,  all-powerful  queen,  inacces- 
sible woman,  Elizabeth  is  a  virgin  as  England  is  an  island.  Like  England, 
.she  calls  herself  Empress  of  the  sea,  Basilea  marts. — VICTOR  HUGO, 
William  Shakespeare  (trans!.). 

With  Elizabeth  the  heart  never  really  spoke,  and  if  the  senses  did,  she 
.had  them  under  perfect  control.  And  this  was  why  she  never  loved  or 
was  loved,  and  never  has  been  or  will  be  regarded  with  enthusiasm  by 
•either  man  or  woman. — E.  S.  BEESLV,  Queen  Elizabeth. 

The  wisdom  of  Elizabeth  was  shown  in  nothing  so  strongly  as  in  her 
sagacity  in  the  choice  of  ministers  and  her  power  of  using  men  for  her 
•  own  purposes. — BISHOP  MANDELL  CREIGHTON,  The  Age  of  Elizabeth. 

RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON. 
American  Essayist  and  Philosopher:  1803-1882. 

Where  in  the  realm  of  thought,  whose  air  is  song, 
Does  he,  the  Buddha  of  the  West,  belong? 
He  seems  a  winged  Franklin,  sweetly  wise, 
Born  to  unlock  the  secrets  of  the  skies ; 
And  which  the  nobler  calling, — if  'tis  fair 
Terrestrial  with  celestial  to  compare, — 
To  guide  the  storm-cloud's  elemental  flame, 
•Or  walk  the  chambers  whence  the  lightning  came, 
Amidst  the  sources  of  its  subtile  fire, 
.And  steal  their  effluence  for  his  lips  and  lyre  ? 


i38  EMERSON. 

If  lost  at  times  in  vague  aerial  flights, 
None  treads  with  firmer  footstep  when  he  lights ; 
A  soaring  nature,  ballasted  with  sense, 
Wisdom  without  her  wrinkles  or  pretence, 
In  every  Bible  he  has  faith  to  read, 
And  every  altar  helps  to  shape  his  creed. 
Ask  you  what  name  this  prisoned  spirit  bears 
While  with  ourselves  this  fleeting  breath  it  shares  ? 
Till  angels  greet  him  with  a  sweeter  one 
In  heaven,  on  earth  we  call  him  Emerson. 

— OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES,  At  the  Saturday  Club. 

There  comes  Emerson  first,  whose  rich  words,  every  one, 
Are  like  gold  nails  in  temples  to  hang  trophies  on. 

— J.  R.  LOWELL,  A  Fable  for  Critics. 

...  in  this- book  you'll  find 
Music  from  a  prophet's  mind. 
Even  when  harsh  the  numbers  be, 
There's  an  inward  melody; 
And  when  sound  is  one  with  sense, 
'Tis  a  bird's  song — sweet,  intense. 

— R.  W.  GILDER,  To  an  English  Friend,  with  Emerson's  "  Poems  ". 

Emerson,  to  me,  stands  unmistakably  at  the  head,  but  for  the  others  I 
am  at  a  loss  where  to  give  any  precedence.  Each  illustrious,  each  rounded,, 
each  distinctive.  Emerson  for  his  sweet,  vital-tasting  melody,  rhym'd 
philosophy,  and  poems  as  amber-clear  as  the  honey  of  the  wild  bee  he 
loves  to  sing. — WALT  WHITMAN,  Specimen  Days. 

Mr.  Ruskin  and  Lord  Tennyson  have  thought  it  worth  their  while  to 
defend  themselves  from  the  charge  of  plagiarism.  Emerson  would  never 
have  taken  the  trouble  to  do  such  a  thing.  His  mind  was  overflowing 
with  thought  as  a  river  in  the  season  of  flood,  and  was  full  of  floating 
fragments  from  an  endless  variety  of  sources.  He  drew  ashore  whatever 
he  wanted  that  would  serve  his  purpose.  He  makes  no  secret  of  his 
mode  of  writing,  "  I  dot  evermore  in  my  endless  journal,  a  line  on  every 
knowable  in  nature  ;  but  the  arrangement  loiters  long,  and  I  get  a  brick- 
kiln instead  of  a  house".  .  .  .  The  natural  purity  and  elevation  of  Emerson's 
character  show  themselves  in  all  that  he  writes.  His  life  corresponded  to 
the  ideal  we  form  of  him  from  his  writings.  This  it  was  which  made 
him  invulnerable  amidst  all  the  fierce  conflicts  his  gentle  words  excited.. 
His  white  shield  was  so  spotless  that  the  least  scrupulous  combatants  did 
not  like  to  leave  their  defacing  marks  upon  it.  ...  His  writings,  whether 
in  prose  or  verse,  are  worthy  of  admiration,  but  his  manhood  was  the 
underlying  quality  which  gave  them  their  true  value.  It  was  in  virtue  of 
this  that  his  rare  genius  acted  on  so  many  minds  as  a  trumpet  call  to 
awaken  them  to  the  meaning  and  the  privileges  of  this  earthly  existence 
with  all  its  infinite  promise.  No  matter  of  what  he  wrote  or  spoke,  his 
words,  his  tones,  his  looks  carried  the  evidence  of  a  sincerity  which 
pervaded  them  all  and  was  to  his  eloquence  and  poetry  like  the  water  of 
crystallization ;  without  which  they  would  effervesce  into  mere  rhetoric. 
— OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES,  Life  of  R.  W.  Emerson. 

He  delights  to  lavish  his  varied  and  brilliant  resources  upon  some 
defiant  paradox — and  never  more  than  when  that  paradox  is  engaged; 


EMERSON,  EMPEDOCLES.  139 

in  behalf  of  an  optimism  extreme  enough  to  provoke  another  Voltaire  to 
write  another  Candidc.  He  displays  in  its  perfection  the  fantastic  in- 
coherence of  the  "  God-intoxicated  "  man.  .  .  .  The  Persian  aspired  to 
reach  a  divinity  above  him  by  self-conquest ;  the  Amercian  seeks  to 
realise  a  divinity  within  him  by  self-will.  Self-annihilation  is  the  watch- 
word of  the  one ;  self-assertion  that  of  the  other. — R.  A.  VAUGHAN, 
Hours  with  the  Mystics,  Vol.  II. 

Personally,  like  so  many  others,  to  Emerson  I  owe  my  freedom  and 
emancipation  from  those  Stocks  of  prejudice  and  those  Pillories  of  public 
opinion  which  still  make  many  sit  in  the  world  of  thought  like  frightened 
criminals  unable  or  afraid  to  stir. — REV.  H.  R.  HAWEIS,  American 
Humorists. 

More  than  any  of  the  other  great  writers  of  the  age,  he  is  a  Voice.  He 
is  almost  impersonal.  He  is  pure  from  the  taint  of  sect,  clique,  or  party. 
H.e  does  riot  argue,  but  announces ;  he  speaks  when  the  Spirit  moves 
him,  and  not  longer.  Better  than  any  contemporary,  he  exhibits  the 
might  of  the  spoken  word.  ...  He  would  have  been  a  light  of  the  age 
of  Buddha  or  of  Solon,  as  well  as  of  ours. — RICHARD  GARNETT,  Life  of 
Emerson. 

"  Can  you  emit  sparks  ?  "  said  the  cat  to  the  ugly  duckling  in  the  fairy 
tale,  and  the  poor  abashed  creature  had  to  admit  that  it  could  not.  Emer- 
son could  emit  sparks  with  the  most  electrical  of  cats.  He  is  all  sparks 
and  shocks.  If  one  were  required  to  name  the  most  non-sequacious  author 
one  had  ever  read,  I  do  not  see  how  we  could  help  nominating  Emerson. 
.  .  .  The  unparalleled  non-sequaciousness  of  Emerson  is  as  certain  as  the 
Correggiosity  of  Correggio.  You  never  know  what  he  will  be  at.  His 
sentences  fall  over  you  in  glittering  cascades,  beautiful  and  bright,  and  for 
the  moment  refreshing,  but  after  a  very  brief  while  the  mind,  having  no- 
thing to  do  on  its  own  account  but  to  remain  wide  open,  and  see  what 
Emerson  sends  it,  grows  first  restive  and  then  torpid.  Admiration  gives 
way  to  astonishment,  astonishment  to  bewilderment,  and  bewilderment  to 
stupefaction. — AUGUSTINE  BIRRELL,  Res  Judicata. 

Though  it  is  only  the  other  day  that  Emerson  walked  the  earth  and  was 
alive  and  among  us,  he  is  already  one  of  the  privileged  few  whom  the 
reader  approaches  in  the  mood  of  settled  respect,  and  whose  names  have 
surrounded  themselves  with  an  atmosphere  of  religion. — JOHN  MORLEY, 
Miscellanies,  Vol.  I. 

EMPEDOCLES. 
Sicilian  Philosopher  and  Poet :  fi.  about  B.C.  450. 

Even  in  his  lifetime,  and  among  contemporary  Greeks,  he  swept  the 
stage  of  life  like  a  great  tragic  actor,  and  left  to  posterity  the  fame  of  genius 
as  a  poet,  a  physician,  a  patriot,  and  a  philosopher.  The  well-known 
verses  of  Lucretius  are  enough  to  prove  that  the  glory  of  Empedocles  in- 
creased with  age,  and  bore  the  test  of  time.  Reading  them,  we  cannot  but 
regret  that  poems  which  so  stirred  the  reverent  enthusiasm  of  Rome's 
greatest  singer  have  been  scattered  to  the  winds,  and  that  what  we  now 
possess  of  their  remains  affords  but  a  poor  sample  of  their  unimpaired 
magnificence.  ...  In  his  comprehensive  mind  all  the  learning  he  had 


140  EMPEDOCLES,  EPICTETUS. 

acquired  from  men,  from  books,  from  the  world,  and  from  reflection,  was 
consolidated  into  one  system,  to  which  his  double  interest  for  mysticism 
and  physics  gave  a  double  aspect.  He  was  the  first  in  Greece  to  reconcile 
Eleatic  and  Heraclitean  speculations,  the  puzzle  of  plurality  and  unity,  the 
antagonism  of  good  and  evil,  in  one  theory,  and  to  connect  it  with  another 
which  revealed  a  solemn  view  of  human  obligations  and  destinies,  and 
required  a  life  of  social  purity  and  self-restraint.  The  misfortune  of 
Empedocles  as  a  philosopher  consisted  in  this — that  he  succeeded  only  in 
resuming  the  results  of  contemporary  speculation,  and  of  individual  re- 
search, in  a  philosophy  of  indisputable  originality,  without  anticipating 
the  new  direction  which  was  about  to  be  given  to  human  thought  by 
Socrates  and  Plato.  He  closed  one  period — the  period  of  poetry  and 
physical  theories  and  mysticism.  The  period  of  prose,  of  logic,  and  of 
ethics,  was  about  to  begin. — J.  ADDINGTON  SYMONDS,  Studies  of  Greek 
Poets. 


EPICTETUS. 
Greek  Stoic  Philosopher  :  2nd  cent. 

For  lofty  and  solid  principles  of  practical  ethics,  we  might  safely  match 
Epictetus  and  Antoninus  with  most  of  our  modern  speculators. — LORD 
JEFFREY,  Essays. 

The  teaching  of  Epictetus,  briefly  expressed,  is  that  man  ought  to  be 
thankful  to  God  for  all  things,  and  always  content  with  that  which 
happens,  for  what  God  chooses  is  better  than  \vhat  man  can  choose. 
His  great  merit  as  a  teacher  is  that  "  he  attempted  to  show  that  there  is  in 
man's  nature  and  in  the  constitution  of  things  sufficient  reason  for  living 
a  virtuous  life  ". — GEO.  LONG,  Introduction  to  Epictetus. 

Epictetus  and  Marcus  Aurelius  are  not  only  the  most  clear-sighted 
moralists  among  ancient  philosophers,  but  are  also,  with  the  single  ex- 
ception of  Socrates,  the  best  and  holiest  characters  presented  to  us  in  the 
records  of  antiquity.  .  .  .  Epictetus  was  one  of  the  few  "  in  the  very  dust 
of  whose  thoughts  was  gold  ".  .  .  .  Epictetus,  like  Seneca,  is  a  preacher  ; 
a  preacher  with  less  wealth  of  genius,  less  eloquence  of  expression,  less 
width  of  culture,  but  with  far  more  bravery,  clearness,  consistency,  and 
grasp  of  his  subject.  His  doctrine  and  his  life  were  singularly  homogene- 
ous, and  his  views  admit  of  brief  expression,  for  they  are  not  weakened 
by  any  fluctuations,  or  chequered  with  any  lights  and  shades. — F.  W. 
FARRAR,  Seekers  after  God. 

Epictetus  illustrates  the  difference  of  this  age  (A.D.  117-138)  from  that 
of  Plato  or  also  of  Chrysippus,  in  that  he  practically  abandons  all 
speculation,  and  confines  himself  to  dogmatic  practical  ethics.  He 
accepts  indeed,  and  hands  on  the  speculative  basis  of  morality  as  laid, 
down  by  the  earlier  Stoics,  but  his  real  strength  is  in  preaching  and  edifi- 
cation. He  called  his  school  a  "  healing-place  for  diseased  souls  ".  Such 
a  profession  is  slightly  repellent ;  but  the  breadth  and  concreteness  of 
the  teacher's  conceptions,  his  sublimity  of  thought,  and  his  humour,  win 
the  affection  of  most  readers. — GILBERT  MURRAY,  History  of  Ancient 
Greek  Literature. 


EPICURUS,  ERASMUS.  141 

EPICURUS. 
Greek  Philosopher :  B.C.  342-270. 

While  Epicurus,  blest  with  thought  refin'd, 

Makes  the  vast  globe  the  pastime  of  the  wind. 

Were  it  not  idle  labour  to  confute 

Notions  so  wild,  unworthy  of  dispute  ? 

I'd  of  the  learned  Epicurus  ask, 

If  this  were  for  the  winds  a  proper  task  ? 

— SIR  RICHARD  BLACKMORE,  Creation. 

Even  in  the  life-time  of  Epicurus  his  disciples  and  adherents  were 
numerous.  His  personal  influence  seems  to  have  acted  as  a  charm.  Yet 
probably  his  mind  was  one  neither  fitted  for  abstruse  speculation  nor  sus- 
ceptible of  deep  feeling  and  lofty  sentiment.  Everything  seems  to  show 
that  he  was  as  indifferent  to  the  vocations  of  the  scholar  and  the  artist  as 
he  confessedly  was  to  the  business  and  intrigues  of  political  life.  The 
magic  of  his  power  lay  in  the  bright  and  sweet  humanity  of  his  person  and 
character.  His  was  a  pre-eminently  social  nature,  finding  in  friendly 
communion  the  very  salt  without  which  life  lost  its  savour.  Women  were 
conspicuous  among  his  friends ;  and  without  going  so  far  as  to  call  him  a 
ladies'  man,  one  may  say  that  he  exhibited  a  decided  taste  for  feminine 
society  ;  of  deeper  relations  to  the  fair  sex,  however,  there  is  no  indication  ; 
and  it  seems  improbable  that  he  should  have  felt  a  grand  passion.  His 
nature  was  too  calm  and  his  affections  too  generically  human  for  that. — 
WILLIAM  WALLACE,  Epicureanism. 

DESIDERIUS  ERASMUS. 
Dutch  Reformer :  1467-1536. 

A  second  deluge  learning  thus  o'er-ran  ; 
And  the  monks  finished  what  the  Goths  began. 
At  length  Erasmus,  that  great  injur'd  name, 
(The  glory  of  the  priesthood,  and  the  shame  !) 
Stemm'd  the  wild  torrent  of  a  barb'rous  age, 
And  drove  those  holy  Vandals  off  the  stage. 

— POPE,  An  Essay  on  Criticism. 

But  ah  !  Erasmus  of  Rotterdam, 
He  is  the  vilest  miscreant 
That  ever  walked  this  world  below  ! 
A  Momus,  making  his  mock  and  mow 
At  Papist  and  at  Protestant, 
Sneering  at  St.  John  and  St.  Paul, 
At  God  and  Man,  at  one  and  all  ; 
And  yet  as  hollow  and  false  and  drear, 
As  a  cracked  pitcher  to  the  ear, 
And  ever  growing  worse  and  worse  ! 
Whenever  I  pray,  I  pray  for  a  curse 
On  Erasmus,  the  Insincere  ! 

— LONGFELLOW,  Martin  Luther. 


142  ERASMUS,  EUCLID. 

One  thing  was  manifest,  that  he  had  greatly  contributed  to  the  suc- 
cess of  the  Reformation.  It  was  said,  that  Erasmus  had  laid  the  egg, 
and  Luther  had  hatched  it. — HALLAM,  Literature  of  the  Middle  Ages, 
Vol.  I. 

You  cannot  expect  anything  very  deep  from  Erasmus. — COLERIDGE, 
Table  Talk. 

Of  the  two  imperial  virtues,  industry  and  self-denial,  the  literary  character 
of  Erasmus  was  adorned  by  the  first  much  more  than  by  the  second. — SIR 
JAMES  STEPHEN,  Essays  in  Ecclesiastical  Biography. 

Erasmus  sacrificed  Truth  to  a  love  of  Unity.  Luther  sacrificed  Unity  to 
a  love  of  Truth.  The  sacrifice  of  self  to  the  love  of  both  Truth  and  Unity 
would  have  immortalized  both,  and  have  restored  the  Church. — BISHOP 
CHRISTOPHER  WORDSWORTH,  Erasmus  and  the  Old  Catholics. 

In  a  comparative  estimate  of  genius,  according  to  its  kinds  and  degrees, 
I  should  not  hesitate  to  place  Erasmus  in  the  same  class  with  Lucian. 
There  is,  indeed,  a  seasoning  of  salt  in  all  his  writings,  in  which  the 
necessity  of  being  grave  did  not  forbid  him  to  be  facetious. — DR.  VICESIMUS 
KNOX,  Essays  :  On  the  Genius  of  Erasmus. 

Er?smus  was  a  great  literary  precursor  of  the  Reformation  ;  he  armed 
the  hands  of  the  Lutherans  :  but  to  call  him,  as  some  have  done,  a  Re- 
former before  the  Reformation,  seems  hardly  an  appropriate  description. 
If,  in  our  own  day,  those  who  are  denominated  Old  Catholics  had  confined 
themselves  to  urging  the  advisability  of  certain  reforms,  without  disput- 
ing the  authority  of  the  Pope  or  proposing  to  secede  from  communion 
with  Rome,  their  position  would  have  been  analogous  to  that  of  Erasmus. 
Viewed  as  a  whole,  his  conduct  was  essentially  consistent  and  independent. 

His  imperishable  claim  to  the  gratitude  of  the  world,  and  especially  of 
the  Teutonic  peoples,  rests  on  the  part  which  he  sustained  in  a  contest  of 
•even  larger  scope  than  that  waged  by  Luther--in  the  great  preliminary 
conflict  between  the  old  and  the  new  conception  of  knowledge,  between 
the  bondage  and  the  enfranchisement  of  the  human  mind,  between  a  life- 
less formalism  in  religion  and  the  spirit  of  practical  Christianity.  From 
youth  to  old  age,  through  many  trials,  he  worked  with  indomitable  energy 
in  the  cause  of  light ;  and  it  was  his  great  reward,  that,  before  he  died,  he 
saw  the  dawn  of  a  new  age  beginning  for  the  nations  of  the  north, — not 
without  clouds  and  storm,  but  with  the  assurance  that  the  reign  of  dark- 
ness was  past. — R.  C.  JEBB,  Erasmus. 

EUCLID. 
Alexandrian  Geometrician  :  B.C.  323-283. 

Some  people  are  unfortunately  born  scientific.  ...  An  aloofness  and 
abstractedness  cleave  to  their  greatness.  There  is  a  coldness  in  their  fame. 
We  think  of  Euclid  as  of  fine  ice ;  we  admire  Newton  as  we  admire  the 
Peak  of  Teneriffe.  Even  the  intensest  labours,  the  most  remote  triumphs 
of  the  abstract  intellect,  seem  to  carry  us  into  a  region  different  from  our 
own — to  be  in  a  terra  incognita  of  pure  reasoning,  to  cast  a  chill  on  human 
glory. — WALTER  BAGEHOT,  Literary  Studies,  Vol.  II. 


EURIPIDES.  143 

EURIPIDES. 

Greek  Tragic  Poet :  B.C.  480-406. 
Pella's  bard,  a  magic  name.  — COLLINS,  Ode  to  Pity. 

He,  the  sweet  Socratic  sage, 

Who  steep'd  in  tears  the  wide  Athenian  stage. 

— HAYLEY,  Ode  to  the  Countess  de  Genlis. 

If  in  less  stately  mould  thy  thoughts  were  cast 

Than  thy  twin  Masters  of  the  Grecian  stage, 
Lone,  'mid  the  loftier  wonders  of  the  Past, 

Thou  stand'st — more  household  to  the  Modern  Age  ; — 
Thou  mark'st  that  change  in  Manners  when  the  frown 

Of  the  vast  Titans  vanish'd  from  the  earth, 
When  a  more  soft  Philosophy  stole  down 

From  the  dark  heavens  to  man's  familiar  hearth. 
Thy  Phaedra,  and  thy  pale  Medea,  were 

The  birth  of  that  more  subtle  wisdom,  which 
Dawn'd  in  the  world  with  Socrates,  to  bear 

Its  last  most  precious  offspring  in  the  rich 
And  genial  soul  of  Shakespeare. 

— LYTTON,  Euripides. 

Our  Euripides,  the  human, 

With  his  droppings  of  warm  tears, 
And  his  touches  of  things  common 

Till  they  rose  to  touch  the  spheres ! 

— E.  B.  BROWNING,  Wine  of  Cyprus. 

Euripides  was  a  Wordsworth,  and  Wordsworth  is  an  Euripides. — 
JOHN  WILSON,  Essays :  Greek  Drama. 

For  this  reason,  because  he  so  exactly  expressed  the  feelings  and 
opinions  of  his  time,  which  feelings  and  opinions  produced  a  permanent 
national  habit  of  mind,  Euripides  became  the  darling  of  posterity. 
-^Eschylus  was  the  Titanic  product  of  a  bygone  period ;  Sophocles  dis- 
played the  pure  and  perfect  ideal ;  but  Euripides  was  the  artist  who, 
without  improving  on  the  spirit  of  his  age,  gave  it  a  true  and  adequate 
expression.  The  only  wonder  is,  that  during  his  lifetime  Euripides  was 
not  more  popular  at  Athens.  His  comparative  neglect  proves  him  to 
have  been  somewhat  in  advance  of  his  century,  and  justifies  Aristophanes 
in  the  reproach  that  he  anticipated  the  Athenians  in  the  break-up  of  their 
forms  of  thought. — JOHN  ADDINGTON  SYMONDS,  Studies  of  the  Greek 
Poets. 

In  the  end,  perhaps  this  two-sidedness  remains  as  the  cardinal  fact 
about  Euripides :  he  is  a  merciless  realist ;  he  is  the  greatest  master  of 
imaginative  music  ever  born  in  Attica.  He  analyses,  probes,  discusses 
and  shrinks  from  no  sordidness  ;  then  he  turns  right  away  from  the  world 
and  escapes  "  to  the  caverns  that  the  Sun's  feet  tread,"  or  similar  places, 
where  things  are  all  beautiful  and  interesting,  melancholy  perhaps,  like 
the  tears  of  the  sisters  of  Phaethon,  but  not  squalid  or  unhappy.  .  .  . 
Euripides  was  not  essentially  an  artist.  He  was  a  man  of  extraordinary 
brain-power,  dramatic-craft,  subtlety,  sympathy,  courage,  imagination  ; 


i44          EURIPIDES,  EVELYN,  FAIRFAX,  FALKLAND. 

he  saw  too  deep  into  the  world  and  took  things  too  rebelliously  to  produce 
calm  and  successful  poetry.  Yet  many  will  feel  as  Philemon  did  :  "  //  I 
were  certain  that  the  dead  had  consciousness,  I  would  hang  myself  to  see- 
Euripides". — GILBERT  MURRAY,  History  of  Ancient  Greek  Literature. 

JOHN  EVELYN. 
English  Diarist :  1620-1706. 

The  memoirs  of  Evelyn  and  Pepys  are  the  most  obvious  instances  of 
works  which  derive  their  chief  value  from  this  source  ;  and  which  are  read, 
not  for  any  great  interest  we  take  in  the  fortunes  of  the  writers,  but  for 
the  sake  of  the  anecdotes  and  notices  of  far  more  important  personages 
and  transactions  which  they  so  lavishly  [present  us. — LORD  JEFFREY, 
Essays. 

LORD  THOMAS  FAIRFAX. 
Parliamentary  General:  1612-1671. 

Fairfax,  whose  name  in  arms  through  Europe  rings, 
Filling  each  mouth  with  envy  or  with  praise, 
And  al!  her  jealous  monarchs  with  amaze 
And  rumours  loud,  that  daunt  remotest  kings 
Thy  firm  unshaken  virtue  ever  brings 
Victory  to  home,  though  new  rebellions  raise 
Their  Hydra  heads,  and  the  false  North  displays 
Her  broken  league  to  imp  their  serpent  wings. 

— MILTON,  To  the  Lord  General  Fairfax* 

VISCOUNT  FALKLAND. 
English  Soldier :  1610-1643. 

Callest  thou  thyself  a  Patriot  ?     On  this  field 
Did  Falkland  fall,  the  blameless  and  the  brave, 
Beneath  the  banners  of  that  Charles  whom  thou 
Abhorrest  for  a  Tyrant. 

— SOUTHEY,  Inscription  for  a  Column  at  Neivbury. 

See  Falkland  dies,  the  virtuous  and  the  just ! 

—POPE,  Essay  on  Man  :  Epistle  IV. 

This  man  is  no  renegade,  no  apostate,  but  the  purest  of  martyrs.  .  .  . 
And  such  a  martyr  was  Falkland ! — DR.  ARNOLD,  Introductory  Lectures 
on  Modern  History. 

The  charm  with  which  the  image  of  Falkland  fascinates  every  purer 
eye.  In  that  conflict  of  giants,  each  passion,  each  interest,  finds  its 
representative  and  type.  Honour  and  Genius  elect  Falkland  as  their 
own.  .  .  .  That  which  pre-eminently  distinguished  Falkland  amongst  the 
actors  of  his  time  was  his  passion  for  justice.  He  was  thus  naturally  the 
champion  of  the  weak;  he  could  not  endure  the  sight  of  oppression. 
And  by  a  consistency  of  character  which  bears  down  all  the  petty  incon- 


FALKLAND,  FARADAY,  FENELON.  145 

sistencies  in  detail  from  which  no  man  of  ardent  temperament  is  free, 
the  same  tendencies  that  made  him  oppose  Charles  when  powerful  and 
oppressive — attracted  him  to  Charles  when  feeble  and  oppressed. — 
LYTTON,  Essays  :  Pym  versus  Falkland. 

Falkland  is  commonly  selected  as  the  most  respectable  specimen  of  this 
class.  He  was  indeed  a  man  of  great  talents  and  of  great  virtues,  but, 
we  apprehend,  infinitely  too  fastidious  for  public  life.  He  did  not  perceive 
that,  in  such  times  as  those  on  which  his  lot  had  fallen,  the  duty  of 
a  statesman  is  to  choose  the  better  cause  and  to  stand  by  it,  in  spite 
of  those  excesses  by  which  every  cause,  however  good  in  itself,  will  be 
disgraced.  The  present  evil  always  seemed  to  him  the  worst.  He  was 
always  going  backward  and  forward ;  but  it  should  be  remembered  to  his 
honour  that  it  was  always  from  the  stronger  to  the  weaker  side  that  he 
deserted.  While  Charles  was  oppressing  the  people,  Falkland  was  a 
resolute  champion  of  liberty.- — MACAULAY,  Essays  :  Hallam. 

MICHAEL  FARADAY. 
English  Physicist  and  Chemist :  1791-1867. 

Many  readers  remember  that  Sir  Humphry  Davy  said,  when  he  was' 
praised  for  his  important  discoveries,  "  My  best  discovery  was  Michael 
Faraday  ". — EMERSON,  Greatness. 

You  might  not  credit  me  were  I  to  tell  you  how  lightly  I  value  the 
honour  of  being  Faraday's  successor  compared  with  the  honour  of  having 
been  Faraday's  friend.  His  friendship  was  energy  and  inspiration ;  his 
"mantle"  is  a  burden  almost  too  heavy  to  be  borne.  .  .  .  Surely  no 
memory  could  be  more  beautiful.  He  was  equally  rich  in  mind  and 
heart.  The  fairest  traits  of  a  character  sketched  by  Paul  found  in  him 
perfect  illustration.  For  he  was  "  blameless,  vigilant,  sober,  of  good 
behaviour,  apt  to  teach,  not  given  to  filthy  lucre".  ..."  Give  me  health 
and  a  day,"  says  the  brave  Emerson,  "and  I  will  make  the  pomp  of 
emperors  ridiculous."  In  an  eminent  degree  Faraday  could  say  the 
same.  What  to  him  was  the  splendour  of  a  palace  compared  with  a 
thunderstorm  upon  Brighton  Downs  ? — what  among  all  the  appliances  of 
royalty  to  compare  with  the  setting  sun  ?  I  refer  to  a  thunderstorm  and 
a  sunset,  because  these  things  excited  a  kind  of  ecstasy  in  his  mind,  and 
to  a  mind  open  to  such  ecstasy  the  pomps  and  pleasures  of  the  world  are 
usually  of  small  account.  Nature,  not  education,  rendered  Faraday 
strong  and  refined. — TYNDALL,  Faraday  as  a  Discoverer. 

FRANCOIS  DE  SALIGNAC  DE  LA  MOTTE  FKNELOX. 
French  Prelate :  1651-1715. 

Of  all  modern  men,  Fenelon  bears  the  strongest  resemblance  to  the 
sages  of  antiquity.  .  .  .  Fenelon — Shall  he  not  be  called  the  Pythagoras, 
or  Plato  of  France  ?  .  .  .  Fenelon  was  not  only  a  poet,  but  also  a  political 
legislator;  a  modern  Solon.  .  „  .  If  genius  acknowledged  a  sex,  it  might 
be  said  that  Fenelon  had  the  imagination  of  a  woman  to  dream  of  heaven, 
and  her  soul  to  love  the  earth. — LAMARTINE,  Celebrated  Characters 
(transl.),  Vol.  II. 

IO 


146  FENELON,  FICHTE,  FIELDING. 

When  we  think  of  Fenelon  in  the  palace  of  Louis  XIV.,  it  reminds  ws 
of  a  seraph  sent  on  a  divine  commission  into  the  abodes  of  the  lost ;  and 
when  we  recollect  that  in  that  atmosphere  he  composed  his  Telemachus, 
we  doubt  whether  the  records  of  the  world  furnish  stronger  evidence  of 
the  power  of  a  divine  virtue  to  turn  temptation  into  glory  and  strength, 
and  to  make  even  crowned  and  prosperous  vice  a  means  of  triumph  and 
exaltation. — CHANNING,  On  the  Character  and  Writings  of  Fenelon. 

Fenelon  could  not  be  approached  too  closely.  He,  at  all  times,  ap- 
peared like  a  messenger  from  heaven. — CHARLES  BUCKE,  Book  of  Human 
Character. 

JOHANN  GOTTLIEB  FICHTE. 
German  Philosopher:   1762-1814. 

I  cut  and  cut  again  ! 

First  cut  the  Liquefaction,  what  comes  last 
But  Fichte's  clever  cut  at  God  Himself? 
Experimentalise  on  sacred  things ! 

— BROWNING,  Bishop  Blougram's  Apology. 

There  exists  not  now,  there  never  did  exist  to  any  extent,  a  school  of 
followers  of  Fichte ;  it  may  well  be  doubted  if  there  are  at  present  half-a- 
dozen  students  of  his  works.  As  a  patriot,  as  representative  of  what  seems 
noblest  and  loftiest  in  the  German  character,  he  lives,  and  will  doubtless 
continue  to  live,  in  the  grateful  remembrance  of  his  countrymen ;  as  a 
metaphysician,  he  lives  not  at  all  beyond  the  learned  pages  of  the  historians 
of  philosophy. — ROBERT  ADAMSON,  Fichte. 

His  unbelief  proceeded  rather  from  the  despair  of  arriving  at  knowledge 
than  from  any  voluntary  choice  of  his  own  nature.  .  .  .  He  who  could 
forget  the  interests  of  personal  comfort  in  his  zeal  to  succour  the  sick  and 
wounded  [in  1813],  and  who  by  the  hand  of  the  pestilence  could  meet  a 
heroic  death,  a  martyr  to  his  own  unselfish  devotion,  is  worthy  to  live  in 
memory  when  his  system  of  philosophy  shall  have  crumbled  in  the  dust, 
and  shall  stand  as  an  eternal  monument  of  that  eternal  truth,  that  man 
is  greater  than  his  opinions,  and  larger  than  the  formula  of  his  faith. — 
.REV.  GEORGE  MATHESON,  Aids  to  the  Study  of  German  Theology. 

HENRY  FIELDING. 
English  Novelist  and  Magistrate  :  1707-1754. 

What  a  master  of  composition  Fielding  was !  Upon  my  word,  I  think 
the  CEdipus  Tyrannus,  The  Alchemist,  and  Tom  Jones,  the  three  most 
perfect  plots  ever  planned.  .  .  .  How  charming,  how  wholesome,  Field- 
ing always  is! — COLERIDGE,  Table  Talk. 

In  the  comic  part  of  their  writings,  we  have  already  said,  Fielding  is 
pre-eminent  in  grave  irony,  a  Cervantic  species  of  pleasantry  in  which 
Smollett  is  not  equally  successful. — SIR  WALTER  SCOTT,  Prose  Works, 
Vol.  III. 

Fielding,  the  prose  Homer  of  human  nature. — BYRON  in  MOORE'S  Life 
of  Byron. 

I  cannot  offer  or  hope  to  make  a  hero  of  Henry  Fielding.  Why  hide 
his  faults  ?  Why  conceal  his  weaknesses  in  a  cloud  of  periphrases  ?  Why 


FIELDING,  FISHER.  147 

not  show  him,  like  him  as  he  is,  not  robed  in  a  marble  toga,  and  draped 
and  polished  in  an  heroic  attitude,  but  with  inked  ruffles,  and  claret-stains 
on  his  tarnished  laced  coat,  and  on  his  manly  face  the  marks  of  good- 
fellowship,  of  illness,  of  kindness,  of  care,  and  wine.  Stained  as  you  see 
him,  and  worn  by  care  and  dissipation,  that  man  retains  some  of  the  most 
precious  and  splendid  human  qualities  and  endowments.  He  has  an  admir- 
able natural  love  of  truth,  the  keenest  instinctive  antipathy  to  hypocrisy, 
the  happiest  satirical  gift  of  laughing  it  to  scorn.  His  wit  is  wonderfully 
wise  and  detective  ;  it  flashes  upon  a  rogue  and  lightens  up  a  rascal  like  a 
policeman's  lantern.  He  is  one  of  the  manliest  and  kindliest  of  human 
beings :  in  the  midst  of  all  his  imperfections,  he  respects  female  innocence 
and  infantile  tenderness  as  you  would  suppose  such  a  great-hearted,  cour- 
ageous soul  would  respect  and  care  for  them.  He  could  not  be  so  brave, 
generous,  truth-telling  as  he  is,  were  he  not  infinitely  merciful,  pitiful  and 
tender.  He  will  give  any  man  his  purse — he  can't  help  kindness  and  pro- 
fusion. He  may  have  low  tastes,  but  not  a  mean  mind ;  he  admires  with 
all  his  heart  good  and  virtuous  men,  stoops  to  no  flattery,  bears  no  rancour, 
disdains  all  disloyal  arts,  does  his  public  duty  uprightly,  is  fondly  loved  by 
his  family  and  dies  at  his  work. — THACKERAY,  English  Humourists  of  the 
Eighteenth  Century. 

If  Fielding  had  painted  pictures,  it  would  have  been  in  the  style  of  the 
Marriage  d  la  Mode  ;  if  Hogarth  had  written  novels,  they  would  have  been 
in  the  style  of  Tom  Jones.  ...  It  may,  nevertheless,  be  safely  asserted 
that  there  are  few  English  novels  of  manners,  written  since  Fielding's  day, 
\vhich  do  not  descend  from  him  as  from  their  fount  and  source ;  and  that 
more  than  one  of  our  modern  masters  betrays  unmistakable  signs  of  a 
form  and  fashion  studied  minutely  from  his  frank  and  manly  ancestor. — 
AUSTIN  DOBSON  Life  of  Fielding. 

Regarded  merely  as  writers,  there  can,  I  suppose,  be  no  real  rivalry  be- 
tween Fielding  and  Richardson.  The  superiority  of  Fielding  is  apparent 
on  every  page.  Wit,  good  humour,  a  superb  lusty  style  which  carries  you 
along  like  a  pair  of  horses  over  a  level  moorland  road,  incidents,  adventures, 
inns,  and  all  the  glory  of  motion,  high  spirits,  huge  appetites,  pretty  women 
—what  a  catalogue  it  makes  ;  of  things  no  doubt  smacking  of  this  world 
and  the  kingdom  thereof,  but  none  the  less  delightful  on  that  account ! 
No  wonder  Tom  Jones  is  still  running ;  where,  I  should  like  to  know,  is 
the  man  bold  enough  to  stop  him  ? — AUGUSTINE  BIRRELL,  Res  Judicata. 

Fielding,  with  all  his  faults  and  all  his  recklessness,  was  a  manly,  great- 
hearted fellow,  with  more  of  the  right  heroic  blood  and  true  kingly  talent 
in  him,  though  he  did  but  occupy  a  police  bench,  and  live  by  his  wits, 
than  was  to  be  found  in  the  Austrian  Hapsburgs,  with  whom  he  counted 
kin. — DAVID  MASSON,  British  Novelists  and  their  Styles. 

JOHN  FISHER. 
Bishop  of  Rochester  :  1469-1535. 

Supremacy  from  Heaven  transmitted  pure 

As  many  hold ;  and,  therefore,  to  the  tomb 

Pass,  some  through  fire — and  by  the  scaffold  some — 

Like  saintly  Fisher,  and  unbending  More. 


148  FISHER,  FLAXMAN,  FOX. 

"  Lightly  for  both  the  bosom's  lord  did  sit 
Upon  his  throne  "  unsoftened,  undismayed 
By  aught  that  mingled  with  the  tragic  scene 
Of  pity  or  fear. 

— WORDSWORTH,  Apology* 

JOHN  FLAXMAN,  R.A. 

English  Sculptor :  1755-1826. 

Nature,  so  prodigal  to  the  English  race  in  men  of  genius  untutored,, 
singular,  and  solitary,  has  given  us  but  few  seers  who,  in  the  quality  of 
prolific  invention,  can  be  compared  with  Flaxman.  For  pure  conceptive 
faculty,  controlled  by  unerring  sense  of  beauty,  we  have  to  think  of 
Pheidias  or  Raphael  before  we  find  his  equal.  His  powers  were  often 
employed  on  uncongenial  subjects ;  nor  had  he,  perhaps,  a  true  notion  of 
the  limitations  of  his  art ;  else  he  would  not  have  attempted  to  give 
sculpturesque  form  even  in  outline  to  many  scenes  from  the  Divine  Comedy. 
...  It  may  also  be  conceded  that,  to  a  large  extent,  his  imagination, 
like  a  parasite  flower,  was  obliged  to  bloom  upon  the  branches  of  Greek 
art.  What  Flaxman  would  have  been  without  the  bas-reliefs,  the  vases, 
and  the  hand-mirrors  of  the  ancients,  it  is  difficult  to  conceive.  .  .  . 
Whatever  could  be  expressed  according  to  the  laws  of  bas-relief,  embossed 
in  metal,  or  hewn  out  of  stone,  or  indicated  in  pure  outline,  he  conveyed 
with  a  truth  to  nature,  a  grace  of  feeling,  and  an  originality  of  conception, 
absolutely  incomparable.  Moreover,  in  this  kind  his  genius  was  inex- 
haustible.— J.  ADDINGTON  SYMONDS,  Studies  of  the  Greek  Poets,  Second 
Series. 

CHARLES  JAMES  Fox. 
Orator  and  Statesman  :   1749-1806^ 

When,  lo  a  Hercules  in  Fox  appear'd 

Who  for  a  time  the  ruin'd  fabric  rear'd. 

He,  too,  is  fall'n  who  Britain's  loss  supplied, 

With  him  our  fast-reviving  hopes  have  died. 

Not  one  great  people  only  raise  his  urn, 

All  Europe's  far-extended  regions  mourn. 

"  These  feelings  wide,  let  sense  and  truth  undue, 

To  give  the  palm  where  Justice  points  its  due  ;  " 

Yet  let  not  canker'd  Calumny  assail, 

Or  round  our  statesman  wind  her  gloomy  veil. 

Fox !  o'er  whose  corse  a  mourning  world  must  weep, 

Whose  dear  remains  in  honour'd  marble  sleep  ; 

For  whom,  at  last,  e'en  hostile  nations  groan, 

While  friends  and  foes  alike  his  talents  own  ; 

Fox  shall  i.i  Britain's  future  annals  shine, 

Nor  e'en  to  Pitt  the  patriot's  palm  resign. 

—BYRON,  On  the  Death  of  Mr.  Fox. 

For  the  life  of  a  Fox,  of  a  Chatham  the  death, 

What  censure,  what  danger,  what  woe  would!  I  brave  !. 


FOX.  149 

Their  lives  did  not  end  when  they  yielded  their  breath  ; 
Their  glory  illumines  the  gloom  of  their  grave. 

—BYRON,  Lines  addressed  to  the  Rev.  J.  T.  Bcchcr. 

Yon  ill  tongu'd  tinkler,  Charlie  Fox, 
May  taunt  you  wi'  his  jeers  an'  mocks  ; 
But  gie  him't  het,  my  hearty  cocks ! 

E'en  cowe  the  cadie  ! 

— BURNS,  The  Author's  Earnest  Cry  and  Prayer. 

The  mighty  chiefs  sleep  side  by  side. 

Drop  upon  Fox's  grave  the  tear, 

'Twill  trickle  on  his  rival's  bier  ; 

O'er  Pitt's  the  mournful  requiem  sound, 

And  Fox's  shall  the  notes  rebound. 

The  solemn  echo  seems  to  cry— 

"  Here  let  their  discord  with  them  die," 

Speak  not  for  those  a  separate  doom, 

Whom  Fate  made  brothers  in  the  tomb. 

But  search  the  land  of  living  men, 

Where  wilt  thou  find  their  like  agen  ? 

— SIR  WALTER  SCOTT. 

Charles  James  Fox,  one  of  the  greatest  statesmen,  had  not  his  religion 
been  party,  and  if  not  the  greatest  orator,  certainly  the  most  accomplished 
debater,  that  ever  appeared  upon  the  theatre  of  public  affairs  in  any  age 
of  the  world. — LORD  BROUGHAM,  Statesmen  of  the  Time  of  George  III. 

The  most  Demosthenean  speaker  since  Demosthenes.  —  SIR  JAMES 
MACKINTOSH. 

Mr.  Fox  united,  in  a  most  remarkable  degree,  the  seemingly  repugnant 
characters  of  the  mildest  of  men  and  the  most  vehement  of  orators. — Id. 

Fox  and  Sheridan,  the  English  Demosthenes  and  the  English  Hyperides. 
— MACAULAY,  Essays  :  Warren  Hastings. 

Fox  had  many  noble  and  amiable  qualities,  which  in  private  life  shone 
forth  in  full  lustre,  and  made  him  dear  to  his  children,  to  his  dependents, 
and  to  his  friends  ;  but  as  a  public  man  he  had  no  title  to  esteem.  In  him 
the  vices  which  were  common  to  the  whole  school  of  Walpole  appeared, 
not  perhaps  in  their  worst,  but  certainly  in  their  most  prominent  form,  for 
his  parliamentary  and  official  talents  made  all  his  faults  conspicuous. — 
Id.,  Essays  :  Earl  of  Chatham,  1844. 

Nature  bestowed  on  Mr.  Fox  the  qualities  which  are  certain  to  command 
distinction  in  popular  assemblies.  He  possessed  in  the  highest  degree 
the  temperament  of  the  orator,  which,  equal  to  the  poet's  in  the  intensity 
of  feeling,  is  diametrically  opposed  to  the  poet's  in  the  direction  to  which 
its  instincts  impel  it.  ...  In  the  union  of  natural  passion  with  scholastic 
reasoning  Mr.  Fox  excelled  all  who  have  dignified  the  English  senate. 
He  required  no  formal  preparation  beyond  that  which  a  mental  review  of 
the  materials  of  a  question  in  debate  suggested  to  a  mind  rich  in  a  copious 
variety  of  knowledge,  and  so  charged  with  intellectual  heat  that  it  needed 
but  collision  to  flash  instantaneously  into  light. — LYTTON,  Essays :  Pitt 
and  Fox. 


150  FOX. 

In  Fox,  the  heart  warmed  the  genius  ;  in  Pitt,  the  genius  withered  the 
heart. — NAPOLEON  BONAPARTE. 

In  the  most  imperfect  relics  of  Fox's  speeches  the  bones  of  a  giant  arc 
to  be  discovered. — LORD  ERSKINE. 

The  sum  of  the  whole  character  of  Fox  as  a  statesman  is,  that  he  was 
an  ardent,  consistent,  and  thorough  lover  of  liberty.  Whether  in  France 
or  in  America,  whether  in  Ireland  or  in  England,  whether  with  reference 
to  the  Protestant  or  the  Roman  Catholic,  whether  to  be  applied  to  the 
white  or  the  black  man,  the  main  and  ruling  passion  of  Fox's  life  was  a 
love  of  liberty.  For  her  cause,  he  was  an  orator ;  for  her  cause,  he  was. 
a  statesman.  He  gave  his  life  to  the  defence  of  English  freedom;  he 
hastened  his  death  by  his  exertions  to  abolish  the  African  slave  trade. — 
EARL  RUSSELL,  Life  of  Charles  Fox,  Vol.  III. 

As  an  orator,  Fox's  marked  characteristic  was  his  directness.  He  went 
straight  to  his  goal  with  all  the  vigour  of  a  mathematician  working  out  a 
given  problem.  For  this  purpose  he  was  content  to  sacrifice  all  that 
profuseness  of  ornament  in  which  Burke  indulged,  and  that  accurate 
polish  of  diction  which  the  younger  Pitt  affected.  He  never  repeated 
himself;  never  went  over  a  line  of  reasoning  he  had  already  traced  ;  never 
(to  use  Lord  Brougham's  expressive  simile)  went  back  upon  a  ground 
which  he  had  utterly  wasted  and  withered  up  by  the  tide  of  fire  he  had 
rolled  over  it.  There  was  a  steadiness  and  progressiveness  of  movement 
in  his  oratory  which  resembled  the  resistless  march  of  Cromwell's  Iron- 
sides.— W.  H.  DAVENPORT  ADAMS,  English  Party  Leaders,  etc.,  Vol.  I. 

Fox,  ...  a  star  of  the  first  magnitude.  ...  It  may  be  said  once  for 
all  that  Fox  was  the  greatest  of  all  debaters,  the  most  genial  of  all  asso- 
ciates, the  most  honourable  of  all  friends. — LORD  ROSEBERY,  Life  of  Pitt. 

GEORGE  Fox. 
Founder  of  the  Society  of  Friends :  1624-1690. 

Quaker  Fox,  one  of  the  founders  of  that  pious  and  philosophic  sect,  who 
comprise  all  theology  in  charity. — LAMARTINE,  Celebrated  Characters' 
(transl.},  Vol.  II. 

Spinoza's  ideal  democracy  was  realised  by  a  contemporary — not  in  a 
nation,  for  that  is  impossible,  but  in  a  sect — I  mean  by  George  Fox  and 
his  Quakers. — COLERIDGE,  Table  Talk. 

He  is  a  Cato-Howard.  You  see  him  in  his  early  days,  refusing  to  join 
in  the  festivities  of  the  time  called  Christmas  ;  yet,  if  a  stranger  to  the 
mirth,  never  to  the  mercy,  of  that  kindly  season. — REV.  R.  A.  VAUGHAN, 
Hours  with  the  Mystics,  Vol.  II. 

George  Fox  was  a  man  who  had  studied  the  Bible  from  cover  to  cover. 
It  formed  practically  his  sole  education. — THOMAS  HODGKIN. 

It  is  difficult  for  a  reader  of  the  Journal  not  to  feel  that  Fox  is  too  con- 
fident of  the  absolute  Tightness  of  his  own  conduct,  and  the  utter  wicked- 
ness of  all  who  oppose  him.  This  is  of  course  the  usual  note  of  the 
Prophet,  and  one  of  the  things  whereby  he  is  most  distinguished  from  the 
Philosopher,  at  least  the  true  Philosopher.  It  is  the  spirit  of  Hosea  rather 


FOX,  FRANCIS  D' ASSISI.  151 

than  of  Marcus  Aurelius,  and,  paradoxical  as  it  may  sound,  if  Fox's 
education  had  been  such  as  to  give  him  a  little  less  of  the  teaching  of  the 
Minor  Prophets,  and  a  little  more — he  probably  had  none — of  the  teaching 
of  the  best  of  the  Greek  philosophers,  the  result  might  have  been  a  fuller 
manifestation  of"  the  meekness  and  gentleness  of  Christ". — Id.,  Life  of 
George  Fo.v. 

FRANCIS  o'Assisi. 
Founder  of  the  Franciscan  Order  :  1182-1226. 

But  lest  my  language  be  not  clearly  seen, 
Know,  that  in  speaking  of  these  lovers  twain, 
Francis  and  Poverty  I  mean. 

— DANTE. 

Clinging  to  the  silent  mother  !  Are  we  devils  ?  are  we  men  ? 
Sweet  St.  Francis  of  Assisi,  would  that  he  were  here  again  ! 

— TENNYSON,  Locksley  Hall,  Sixty  Years  After* 

Yet  hark — from  Mantuan  Albert  making  cease 
The  fierce  ones,  to  St.  Francis  preaching  peace, 
Yonder  !  God's  Truce — or  trick  to  supersede 
The  very  Use  of  Strength,  is  safe. 

— ROBERT  BROWNING,  Sordello. 

Francis  had  faith  to  see,  and  charity  to  love,  even  in  the  leprous,  the 
imperishable  traces  of  the  Divine  image  in  which  man  was  created,  and 
the  brethren  of  the  Divine  sufferer  by  whom  man  was  redeemed. — SIR 
JAMES  STEPHEN,  Essays  on  Ecclesiastical  Biography. 

Francis  of  Assisi  may  naturally  lead  us  to  the  last  mode  in  which  the 
spirit  of  theological  belief  manifested  itself;  the  confidence  in  a  particular 
man,  as  the  organ  of  a  special  divine  illumination. — HALLAM,  Literature 
of  the  Middle  Ages,  Vol.  I. 

It  would  be  absurd  to  claim  such  men  as  St.  Francis  for  one  Church  or 
religion  more  than  another.  They  are  the  property  of  the  universal 
human  race.  What  was  most  beautiful  in  Jeremy  Taylor,  what  was 
sweetest  in  Fenelon,  what  was  profoundest  in  Jacob  Boehme,  what  was 
purest  in  Oberlin,  what  was  bravest  in  Chalmers,  had  so  clearly  the  mark 
of  God,  that  a  sad  and  sinful  thing  would  it  be  if  the  pride  of  sects  were 
to  make  a  monopoly  thereof.  God's  apostles  are  for  all  the  world  ;  and 
let  all  the  world  bow  down  in  honour,  in  gratitude,  and  in  praise  unto 
them. — WILLIAM  MACCALL,  Foreign  Biographies,  Vol.  I. 

Would  you  learn  the  might  and  majesty  of  self-sacrifice  ?  Read  of 
Francis  of  Assisi  and  Francis  Xavier. — F.  W.  FARRAR,  Social  and 
Present-Day  Questions. 

Of  all  the  men  who  have  ever  lived  there  is  probably  not  one  who  has 
ever  made  it  so  absolutely  his  aim,  as  did  St.  Francis,  to  reproduce,  in 
letter  as  well  as  in  spirit,  the  very  life  of  Christ.  Among  the  hills  and 
villages  of  Umbria  he  strove  to  live  with  his  few  first  followers  the  very 
same  life  that  our  Lord  had  lived  with  His  Apostles  on  the  shores  of 
Galilee  and  in  the  villages  of  Palestine. — /(/.,  Saintly  Workers. 


i52  FRANCIS  D'ASSISl,  FRANKLIN. 

At  times  when  the  conviction  steals  upon  us  that  whatever  Nature  is, 
we  are  also,  till  we  are  ready  with  St.  Francis  to  claim  brotherhood  with 
sun  and  wind,  and  hail  even  the  last  pale  visitor  as  Sister  Death ;  when 
we  believe  with  Darwin,  as  well  as  the  poet,  that  every  glistening  little 
flower  and  green  herb  has  its  ego,  its  consciousness  of  pleasure  and  pain, 
then  we  may  turn  to  Wordsworth  as  the  supreme  high  priest  of  the 
mystery. — P.  ANDERSON  GRAHAM,  Nature  in  Books. 

When  we  read  the  F'ioretti  di  San  Francesco,  we  are  well  aware  that  the 
saint  lived — his  life  is  one  of  the  chief  realities  of  the  thirteenth  century  ; 
but  we  perceive  that  the  signs  and  wonders  wrought  by  him  proceed  from 
the  imagination  of  disciples  ascribing  to  St.  Francis  what  belongs  partly 
to  the  ideal  of  his  own  character  and  partly  to  that  of  monastic  sanctity  in 
general. — J.  A.  SYMONDS,  Studies  of  tin-  Greek  Poets,  Second  Series. 

BENJAMIN  FRANKLIN. 
American  Philosopher  and  Statesman  :  1706-1790. 

While  Franklin's  quiet  memory  climbs  to  heaven, 
Calming  the  lightning  which  he  thence  hath  riven. 
Or  drawing  from  the  no  less  kindled  earth 
Freedom  and  peace  to  that  which  boasts  his  birth. 

— BYRON,  The  Age  of  Bronze. 

This  self-taught  American  is  the  most  rational  perhaps  of  all  philoso- 
phers. He  never  loses  sight  of  common  sense  in  any  of  his  speculations. 
.  .  .  Upon  the  whole  we  look  upon  the  life  and  writings  of  Dr.  Franklin 
as  affording  a  striking  illustration  of  the  incalculable  value  of  a  sound 
and  well-directed  understanding :  and  of  the  comparative  uselessness  of 
learning  and  laborious  accomplishments. — LORD  JEFFREY,  Essays. 

Franklin  is,  indeed,  one  of  the  very  small  class  of  men  who  can  be  said 
to  have  added  something  of  real  value  to  the  art  of  living. — W.  E.  H. 
LECKY,  History  of  England,  Vol.  I. 

Where  is  the  Master  who  could  have  instructed  Franklin,  or  Wash- 
ington, or  Bacon,  or  Newton  ?  Every  great  man  is  a  unique. — EMERSON, 
Essays :  Self -Reliance. 

Franklin,  who  wrenched  the  lightning  from  heaven,  and  the  sceptre 
from  tyrants. — F.  W.  FARRAR,  Social  and  Present-Day  Questions. 

SIR  JOHN  FRANKLIN. 
English  Arctic  Explorer  :  1786-1847. 

Not  here !  the  white  North  has  thy  bones  ;  and  thou  heroic  sailor-soul, 
Art  passing  on  thine  happier  voyage  now  toward  no  earthly  pole. 

— TENNYSON,  Sir  John  Franklin. 

We  have  only  to  look  at  one  of  our  recent  maps,  as  compared  to  those 
which  were  published  fifty  years  ago,  to  see  how  much  we  owe  to  the 
courage  and  enterprise  of  Parry  and  Franklin,  Park  and  Horneman,  of 
Burckhardt  and  Lander. — SIR  ARCHIBALD  ALISON,  Essays  :  Humboldt. 


FREDERICK  THE  GREAT,  FRY,  FULLER.      153 

FREDERICK  THE  GREAT. 
King  of  Prussia  :   1712-1786. 

The  Justinian  of  the  North. — LORD  BROUGHAM,  Statesmen  of  the  Time 
of  George  III. 

Frederick  the  Second,  the  ablest  and  most  accomplished  of  the  long 
line  of  German  Caesars. — MACAULAY,  Essays  :  Von  Ranke. 

Most  of  the  vices  of  Frederick's  administration  resolve  themselves  into 
one  vice,  the  spirit  of  meddling.  The  indefatigable  activity  of  his  intellect, 
his  dictatorial  temper,  his  military  habits,  all  inclined  him  to  this  great 
fault.  He  drilled  his  people  as  he  drilled  his  grenadiers. — Id.,  Ibid.  : 
Frederick  tlie  Great. 

Frederick  is  by  no  means  one  of  the  perfect  demigods  :  and  there  are 
various  things  to  be  said  against  him  with  good  ground.  To  the  last,  a 
questionable  hero  ;  with  much  in  him  which  one  could  have  wished  not 
there,  and  much  wanting  which  one  could  have  wished.  But  there  is 
one  feature  which  strikes  you  at  an  early  period  of  the  inquiry :  That  in 
his  way  he  is  a  Reality  ;  that  he  always  means  what  he  speaks  ;  grounds 
his  actions,  too,  on  what  he  recognises  for  the  truth  :  and,  in  short,  has 
nothing  whatever  of  the  Hypocrite  or  Phantasm.  Which  some  readers 
will  admit  to  be  an  extremely  rare  phenomenon. — CARLYLE,  History  of 
Frederick  II.,  Vol.  I. 

It  is  a  peculiarity  of  great  men  that  they  have  a  tendency  to  wreck  the 
throne  on  which  they  sit.  Take  Frederick  the  Great — he  led  the  life  of  a 
drill  sergeant,  of  an  estate  steward,  of  a  bureaucrat  in  one,  making  the  de- 
tails of  every  department  of  government  centre  in  himself.  He  gradually 
absorbed  everything,  and  nothing  could  be  done  without  his  sanction  and 
knowledge.  Such  a  man  makes  himself  the  mainspring  of  the  machine, 
and  when  he  withdraws  the  machine  collapses  and  has  to  be  constructed 
afresh. — LORD  ROSEBERY,  Speech  at  the  Cromwell  Tercentenary,  Queen's 
Hall,  nth  Nov.,  1899. 

ELIZABETH  FRY. 
English  Prison  Reformer  :  1780-1845. 

At  Rome  .  .  .  Mrs.  Fry  would  be  foundress  and  first  Superior  of  the 
Blessed  Order  of  Sisters  of  the  Gaols. — MACAULAY,  Essays  :  Von  Ranke. 

THOMAS  FULLER. 
English  Theologian  :  1608-1661. 

Fuller's  language  !  Grant  me  patience,  Heaven  !  A  tithe  of  his  beauties 
would  be  sold  cheap  for  a  whole  library  of  our  classical  writers,  from  Addi- 
son  to  Johnson  and  Junius  inclusive.  And  Bishop  Nicolson  ! — a  pains- 
taking old  charwoman  of  the  Antiquarian  and  Rubbish  Concern !  The 
venerable  rust  and  dust  of  the  whole  firm  are  not  worth  an  ounce  of  Fuller's 
earth! — S.  T.  COLERIDGE,  Notes,TJieological,  Political,  etc. 


154  FULLER,  GAINSBOROUGH. 

Next  to  Shakespeare,  I  am  not  certain  whether  Thomas  Fuller,  beyond 
all  other  writers,  does  not  excite  in  me  the  sense  and  emotion  of  the  mar- 
vellous ;  the  degree  in  which  any  given  faculty  or  combination  of  faculties 
is  possessed  and  manifested,  so  far  surpassing  what  one  would  have  thought 
possible  in  a  single  mind,  as  to  give  one's  admiration  the  flavour  and 
quality  of  wonder  !  Wit  was  the  stuff  and  substance  of  Fuller's  intellect. 
It  was  the  element,  the  earthen  base,  the  material  which  he  worked  in,  and 
this  very  circumstance  has  defrauded  him  of  his  due  praise  for  the  practical 
wisdom  of  the  thoughts,  for  the  beauty  and  variety  of  the  truths,  into  which 
he  shaped  the  stuff.  .  .  .  God  bless  thee,  dear  old  man  !  may  I  meet  with 
thee !  which  is  tantamount  to — may  I  go  to  heaven  ! — Id.,  Notes  on  Eng- 
lish Divines,  Vol.  I. 

Thomas  Fuller,  one  of  the  liveliest  and  yet,  in  the  inmost  heart  of  him, 
one  of  the  most  serious  writers  one  can  meet  with.  I  speak  of  this  writer 
partly  because  there  is  no  one  who  is  so  resolute  that  we  should  treat  him  as 
a  friend,  and  not  as  a  solemn  dictator.  By  some  unexpected  jest,  or  comical 
turn  of  expression,  he  disappoints  your  purpose  of  receiving  his  words  as 
if  they  were  fixed  in  print,  and  asserts  his  right  to  talk  with  you,  and  con- 
vey his  subtle  wisdom  in  his  own  quaint  and  peculiar  dialect. — F.  D.  MAU- 
RICE, Friendship  of  Books. 

Thomas  Fuller  often  embroiders  his  history  with  sarcastic  touches  and 
humorous  allusions ;  they  fringe  a  sentence,  or  they  slash  it  by  a  paren- 
thesis ;  they  glitter  on  it,  or  they  wind,  like  a  button  or  a  braid. — REV.  R. 
A.  VAUGHAN,  Essays  and  Remains,  Vol.  II. 

THOMAS  GAINSBOROUGH. 

English  Painter :  1727-1788. 

If  Gainsborough  did  not  look  at  nature  with  a  poet's  eye,  it  must  be 
acknowledged  that  he  saw  her  with  the  eye  of  a  painter  ;  and  gave  a  faith- 
ful, if  not  a  poetical,  representation  of  what  he  had  before  him. — SIR 
JOSHUA  REYNOLDS. 

If  ever  this  nation  should  produce  a  genius  sufficient  to  acquire  to  us  the 
honourable  distinction  of  an  English  School,  the  name  of  Gainsborough 
will  be  transmitted  to  posterity,  in  this  history  of  the  art,  among  the  very 
first  of  that  rising  name. — Id. 

Whatever  may  have  been  Gainsborough's  failings,  they  vanished  when 
he  stood  to  his  easel.  If  he  was  often  wanting  in  judgment,  he  was  always 
wise  as  an  Artist,  for  he  never  attempted  any  style  of  work  in  which  he 
was  unable  to  succeed. — G.  W.  FULCHER,  Life  of  Thomas  Gainsborough. 

Not  so  Gainsborough  ;  a  great  name  his,  whether  of  the  English  or  any 
other  school.  The  greatest  colourist  since  Rubens,  and  the  last,  I  think, 
of  those  who  were  fully  acquainted  with  the  power  of  their  material. — 
RUSKIN,  Modern  Painters,  Vol.  I. 

Supremely  Gothic,  Gainsborough. — Idem. 

As  a  painter,  Gainsborough  was  the  artistic  temperament  made  visible. 
It  would  be  not  rash  to  call  him  both  the  first  and  the  best  of  the  impression- 
ists. In  every  task  he  set  himself  his  aim  was  purely  pictorial.  He  felt 
no  temptation  to  be  anecdotic,  to  be  didactic,  to  be  anything  but  artistic 


GAINSBOROUGH,  GALEN,  GALILEO.  153 

within  the  limits  marked  out  by  his  own  emotions  and  the  materials  he 
was  using.  His  pictures  are  examples  of  pure  reaction  between  object  and 
subject,  and  their  value  depends  more,  perhaps,  than  in  the  case  of  any 
other  man,  on  the  quality  of  the  senses  of  which  they  are  so  sincere  an 
income.  With  Reynolds  deliberation  counted  for  much  ;  Gainsborough's 
good  things  are  impromptus. — WALTER  ARMSTRONG,  Thomas  Gains- 
boron  gJi. 

CLAUDIUS  GALEN. 
(ii't'tk  Physician •:  131-201. 

Worthy  were  Galen  to  be  weighed  in  gold, 
Whose  help  doth  sweetest  life  and  health  uphold : 
Yet  by  Saint  Esculape  he  sollemne  swore, 
•That  for  diseases  they  were  never  more, 
Fees  never  lesse,  never  so  little  gaine, 
Men  give  a  groate,  and  aske  the  rest  againe. 
Groat' 's-ii'orth  of  health  can  anie  leech  allot  ? 
Yet  should  he  have  no  more  than  gives  a  groate. 

—BISHOP  J.  HALL,  Satire  IV. 

Only  in  this  be  no  Galenist.     To  make 
Courts  hot  ambitions  wholesome,  do  not  take 
A  dram  of  country's  dulness  ;  do  not  add 
Correctives,  but  as  chemics  purge  the  bad. 

— DR.  JOHN  DONNE,  To  Sir  Henry  Wotton. 

Who  can  this  field  of  miracles  survey 
And  not  with  Galen  all  in  rapture  say 
Behold  a  God,  adore  him  and  obey  ! 

— SIR  RICHARD  BLACKMORE,  Creation. 

That  yellow  blear-eyed  wretch  in  chief 

To  whom  the  rest  cringe  low  with  feigned  respect 

Galen  of  Pergamos  and  hell — may  speak 

The  tale,  old  man  ! 

— BROWNING,  Paracelsus. 

GALILEI  GALILEO. 
Italian  Astronomer  :  1564-1642. 

The  starry  Galileo  with  his  woes. 

— BYRON,  Childc  Harold's  Pilgrimage,  Canto  IV. 

That  for  which  Galileo  suffered  hurt 

Was  light  himself  had  seen  and  so  might  probe. 

— ALFRED  AUSTIN,  Human  Tragedy. 

Galileo  and  Newton  appear  to  us  triumphing  spirits.  The  sovereign 
and  sole  power  of  intellect  swallowing  up  their  life,  appears  to  have 
something  consecrating,  in  our  estimation.  We  do  not  ask  about  the 
will  of  such  men— perhaps  we  fear  to  do  so,  lest  we  should  find  a  flaw, 
some  evil  lurking  there  that  might  bring  down  the  starry  Galileo  from  his 


156  GALILEO,  GARDINER,  GARIBALDI. 

throne  in  the  skies,  and  show  him,  like  ourselves,  a  child  of  dust. — JOHN 
WILSON,  Essavs  :  Education  of  the  People. 

Galileo,  with  an  opera-glass,  discovered  a  more  splendid  series  of 
celestial  phenomena  than  any  one  since. — EMERSON,  Essays :  Self- 
Reliance. 

But  what  excuse  can  we  devise  for  the  humiliating  confession  and 
abjuration  of  Galileo  ?  Why  did  this  master-spirit  of  the  age — this  high- 
priest  of  the  stars — this  representative  of  science — this  hoary  sage,  whose 
career  of  glory  was  near  its  consummation — why  did  he  reject  the  crown 
of  martyrdom  which  he  had  himself  coveted,  and  which,  plaited  with  im- 
mortal laurels,  was  about  to  descend  upon  his  head  ?  If,  instead  of  dis- 
avowing the  laws  of  Nature,  and  surrendering  in  his  own  person  the 
intellectual  dignity  of  his  species,  he  had  boldly  asserted  the  truth  of  his 
•opinions,  and  confided  his  character  to  posterity,  and  his  cause  to  an  all- 
ruling  Providence,  he  would  have  strung  up  the  hair-suspended  sabre, 
and  disarmed  for  ever  the  hostility  which  threatened  to  overwhelm  him. 
The  philosopher,  however,  was  supported  only  by  philosophy ;  and  in 
the  love  of  truth  he  found  a  miserable  substitute  for  the  hopes  of  the 
martyr.  Galileo  cowered  under  the  fear  of  man,  and  his  submission  was 
the  salvation  of  the  Church.  The  sword  of  the  Inquisition  descended  on 
his  prostrate  neck ;  and  though  its  stroke  was  not  physical,  yet  it  fell 
with  a  moral  influence  fatal  to  the  character  of  its  victim,  and  to  the 
dignity  of  science. — SIR  DAVID  BREWSTER,  Martyrs  of  Science. 

God  is  in  nature ;  He  is  everywhere.  Galileo  saw  Him  in  the  farthest 
;Star. — F.  W.  FARRAR,  Social  and  Present-Day  Questions. 

STEPHEN  GARDINER. 
Bishop  of  Winchester  :   1483-1555. 
Gardiner  out-Gardiners  Gardiner  in  his  heat. — TENNYSON. 

I  look  on  Gardiner  as  canonisable  compared  with  Sheldon. — COLERIDGE, 
Notes  on  English  Divines,  Vol.  II. 

GUISEPPI  GARIBALDI. 
Italian  Patriot :  1807-1882. 

This  Garibaldi  now,  the  Italian  boys 

Go  mad  to  hear  him — take  to  dying — take 

To  passion  for  '  the  pure  and  high ' ;— God's  sake. 

— VICTOR  HUGO,  Poems  collected  by  H.  L.  Williams. 

He  is  the  Helper  that  Italy  wanted 

To  free  her  from  fetters  and  cerements  quite : 

His  is  the  great  heart  no  dangers  have  daunted  ; 

His  is  the  true  hand  to  finish  the  fight. 

Way,  for  a  Man  of  the  kingliest  nature  ! 

Scope,  for  a  soul  of  the  high  Roman  stature  ! 

His  great  deeds  have  crowned  him  ; 

His  heroes  are  round  him  ; 
On,  on  Garibaldi,  for  Freedom  and  Right. 

— GERALP  MASSEY,  Garibaldi. 


GARRICK.  157- 

DAVID  GARRICK. 
English  Dramatist  and  Actor  :  1717-1779. 

Here  lies  David  Garrick,  describe  him  who  can  ? 
An  abridgment  of  all  that  was  pleasant  in  man  ; 
As  an  actor,  confess'd  without  rival  to  shine  ; 
As  a  wit,  if  not  first,  in  the  very  first  line ; 
Yet  with  talents  like  these,  and  an  excellent  heart, 
The  man  had  his  failings,  a  dupe  to  his  art ; 
Like  an  ill-judging  beauty  his  colours  he  spread, 
And  beplaster'd  with  rouge  his  own  natural  red. 
On  the  stage  he  was  natural,  simple,  affecting  ; 
'Twas  only  that  when  he  was  off  he  was  acting. 

— GOLDSMITH,  Retaliation.. 

But  when  from  nature's  pure  and  genuine  source, 
These  strokes  of  acting  flow  with  gen'rous  force  ; 
When  in  the  features  all  the  soul's  portray'd ; 
And  passions,  such  as  Garrick's,  are  display'd ; 
To  me  they  seem  from  quickest  feelings  caught : 
Each  start  is  nature  ;  and  each  pause  is  thought.  .  .  . 
If  feelings  which  few  hearts  like  his  can  know, 
And  which  no  face  so  well  as  his  can  show  ; 
Deserve  the  prel'rence  ; — Garrick,  take  the  chair  ; 
Nor  quit  it — till  thou  place  an  equal  there. 

— CHURCHILL,  The  Rosciad. 

So  once  were  ranged  the  sons  of  ancient  Rome, 
O  noble  show  !  while  Roscius  trod  the  stage  ; 
And  so,  while  Garrick  as  renown'd  as  he, 
The  sons  of  Albion,  fearing  each  to  lose 
Some  note  of  Nature's  music  from  his  lips, 
And  covetous  of  Shakespeare's  beauty  seen 
In  every  flash  of  his  far-beaming  eye. 

— COVVPER,  The  Task  :  The  Garden.. 

Man  praises  man  ;  and  Garrick's  memory  next, 

When  time  hath  somewhat  mellow'd  it,  and  made 

The  idol  of  our  worship  while  he  lived, 

The  god  of  our  idolatry  once  more, 

Shall  have  its  altar ;  and  the  world  shall  go 

In  pilgrimage  to  bow  before  his  shrine,  .  .   . 

And  strut  and  storm  and  straddle,  stamp  and  stare, 

To  show  the  world  how  Garrick  did  not  act. 

For  Garrick  was  a  worshipper  himself: 

He  drew  the  liturgy,  and  framed  the  rites 

And  solemn  ceremonial  of  the  day, 

And  call'd  the  world  to  worship  on  the  banks 

Of  Avon  famed  in  song. 

— Id.,  Ibid.  :  The  Winter  Walk  at  Noon. 

Garrick  who  prefers  a  guinea 
To  all  the  eloquence  of  Pliny. 

— JAMES  CAWTHORN,  Wit  and  Learning. 


158  GARRICK,  GAY. 

Poet  and  actor  thus,  with  blended  skill, 
Mould  all  our  passions  to  their  instant  will ; 
'Tis  thus,  when  feeling  Garrick  treads  the  stage, 
(The  speaking  comment  of  his  Shakespeare's  page) 
Oft  as  I  drink  the  words  with  greedy  ears, 
I  shake  with  horror,  or  dissolve  with  tears. 

— ROBERT  LLOYD,  The  Actor. 

So  Shakespeare's  page,  the  flower  of  poesy, 
Ere  Garrick  rose  had  charms  for  every  eye ; 
'Twas  nature's  genuine  image  wild  and  grand, 
The  strong-mark'd  picture  of  a  master's  hand. 
But  when  his  Garrick,  nature's  Pallas,  came, 
The  bard's  bold  painting  burst  into  a  flame : 
Each  part  new  force  and  vital  warmth  receiv'd. 
.As  touch'd  by  heaven — and  all  the  picture  lived. 

— W.  J.  MICKLE,  Stanzas  on  Mr.  Garrick. 

JOHN  GAY. 
English  Poet  and  Dramatist :   1688-1732. 

Adieu  to  all  but  Gay  alone, 

Whose  soul,  sincere  and  free, 
Loves  all  mankind,  but  flatters  none, 

And  so  may  starve  with  me. 

— POPE,  A  Farewell  to  London. 

Of  Manners  gentle,  of  Affections  mild  ; 

In  Wit,  a  Man  ;  Simplicity,  a  Child  : 

With  native  Humour  temp'ring  virtuous  Rage, 

Form'd  to  delight  at  once  and  lash  the  age  : 

Above  Temptation,  in  a  low  Estate, 

And  uncorrupted,  ev'n  among  the  great : 

A  safe  Companion,  and  an  easy  Friend, 

Unblam'd  thro'  Life,  lamented  in  thy  End. 

—Id.,  On  Mr.  Gay. 

I  grieve  to  be  outdone  by  Gay 
In  my  own  humorous  biting  way. 

— SWIFT,  On  the  Death  of  Dr.  Swift. 

These  are  thy  honours !  not  that  here  thy  bust 
Is  mix'd  with  heroes,  or  with  kings  thy  dust ; 
But  that  the  worthy  and  the  good  shall  say, 
Striking  their  pensive  bosoms — Here  lies  Gay. 

— Id.,  On  Mr.  Gay. 

Thus  Gay,  the  hare  with  many  friends, 
Twice  seven  long  years  the  court  attends : 
Who,  under  tales  conveying  truth, 
To  virtue  form'd  a  princely  youth  : 
Who  paid  his  courtship  with  the  crowd 
As  far  as  modest  pride  allow'd  ; 
Rejects  a  servile  usher's  place, 
And  leaves  St.  James's  in  disgrace. 

—Id.,  A  Libel. 


GAY,  GEORGE  /.,  GEORGE  II.  159 

The  grinning  hobbinals  of  Gay. — JOHN  SCOTT. 

Now,  lend  thy  lug,  and  tent  me,  Gay, 
Thy  fate  appears  like  flow'rs  in  May, 
Fresh,  flourishing,  and  lasting  ay, 

Firm  as  the  aik, 
Which  envious  winds,  when  critics  bray, 

Shall  never  shake. 

Come,  show  your  loof.— Ay,  there's  the  line 
Foretells  thy  verse  shall  ever  shine, 
Dowted,  whilst  living,  by  the  nine, 

And  a'  the  best, 
And  be,  when  past  the  mortal  line, 

Of  fame  possest. 

Immortal  Pope,  and  skilfu'  John, 
The  learned  Leech  from  Caledon, 
With  mony  a  witty  dame  and  don, 

O'er  lang  to  name, 
Are  of  your  roundels  very  fon', 

And  sound  your  fame. 

— ALLAN  RAMSAY,  Epistle  to  Mr.  John  Gay. 

Gay  is  represented  as  a  man  easily  incited  to  hope,  and  deeply  depressed 
when  his  hopes  were  disappointed.  This  is  not  the  character  of  a  hero ; 
but  it  may  naturally  imply  something  more  generally  welcome,  a  soft  and 
civil  companion. — DR.  JOHNSON,  Lives  of  the  Poets  :  Gay. 

GEORGE  I. 
King  of  Great  Britain  :  1660-1727. 

There  are  stains  on  the  portrait  of  the  first  George,  and  traits  in  it 
Which  none  of  us  need  admire ;  but,  among  the  nobler  features,  are  justice, 
courage,  moderation — and  these  we  may  recognize  ere  we  turn  the  picture 
to  the  wall. — THACKERAY,  The  Four  Georges. 

No  shrewder  men  ever  sat  upon  a  throne  than  the  first  two  Georges, 
vnonarchs  of  this  realm. — AUGUSTINE  BIRRELL,  Essays  about  Mcn,Women, 
find  Books. 


GEORGE  II. 
King  of  Great  Britain  :  1683-1760. 

If  George  the  Second  had  been  a  more  common  man,  instead  of  being 
Elector  of  Hanover  and  King  of  England,  one  might  have  said  of  him 
frankly  enough  that  he  was  a  person  about  as  little  to  be  admired  as  a 
man  well  could  be  who  was  not  a  coward  or  in  the  ordinary  sense  of  the 
term  a  criminal.  But  because  he  was  a  crowned  king,  it  was  regarded  as 
a  patriotic  duty  then  to  make  much  of  the  departed  monarch  and  to  talk 
of  him  in  the  strain  which  would  have  been  appropriate  if  he  had  been  a 
Marcus  Aurelius.  The  best,  perhaps,  that  can  be  said  of  him  is  that,  on 


160  GEORGE  II.,  GEORGE  III. 

the  whole,  all  things  considered,  he  might   have  been  worse. — JUSTIN 
MCCARTHY,  History  of  the  Four  Georges,  Vol.  II. 

There  is  George  II.,  very  like  an  unintellectual  Voltaire. — KEATS 
in  HOUGHTON'S  Life  and  Letters  of  John  Keats. 

GEORGE  III. 
King  of  Great  Britain  :  1738-1820. 

Still  in  prayers  for  King  George,  I  most  heartily  join, 

The  Queen  and  the  rest  of  the  gentry, 
Be  they  wise,  be  they  foolish,  is  nothing  of  mine ; 

Their  title's  avow'd  by  my  country. 

—BURNS,  A  Poetical  Address  to  Mr.  William  Tytler. 

Ward  of  the  law  ! — dread  shadow  of  a  king  ! 

Whose  realm  had  dwindled  to  one  stately  room  ; 

Whose  universe  was  gloom  immersed  in  gloom, 

Darkness  as  thick  as  life  o'er  life  could  fling, 

Save  haply  for  some  feeble  glimmering 

Of  faith  and  hope  ;  if  thou,  by  nature's  doom, 

Gently  hast  sunk  into  the  quiet  tomb, 

Why  should  we  bend  in  grief,  to  sorrow  cling, 

When  thankfulness  were  best. 

— WORDSWORTH,  On  the  Death  of  His  Majesty  George  III. 

George  III.  possessed  much  of  the  firmness  of  purpose  which,  being 
exhibited  by  men  of  contracted  mind  without  any  discrimination,  and  as 
pertinaciously  when  they  are  in  the  wrong  as  when  they  are  in  the  right, 
lends  to  their  characters  an  appearance  of  inflexible  consistency,  often 
mistaken  for  greatness  of  mind,  and  not  seldom  received  as  a  substitute 
for  honesty. — LORD  BROUGHAM,  Statesmen  of  the  Time  of  George  III. 

Were  a  voice  from  heaven  to  proclaim  aloud  to  us  that  there  is  another 
and  a  better  world,  in  which  virtue  may  expect  its  assured  reward,  the 
testimony  of  a  miracle  could  not  impress  the  awful  truth  more  deeply 
upon  the  mind  than  the  life  and  death  of  GEORGE  the  THIRD.  .  .  .  Known 
popularly  and  familiarly  by  the  name  of  Farmer  George,  the  British  people 
at  once  loved  him  as  a  father,  respected  him  as  their  sovereign,  and  re- 
garded even  his  peculiarities  as  something  belonging  to  the  character  and 
humour  of  the  nation,  of  whom  he  might  be  termed  at  once  the  king  and 
the  representative.  .  .  .  Old  Farmer  George's  manly  simplicity,  modesty 
of  expense,  and  domestic  virtue  saved  this  country  at  its  most  perilous 
crisis. — SIR  WALTER  SCOTT,  Edinburgh  Weekly  Journal,  8th  Feb.,  1820. 

The  heart  of  Britain  still  beats  kindly  for  George  III.,  not  because  he 
was  wise  and  just,  but  because  he  was  pure  in  life,  honest  in  intent,  and 
because  according  to  his  lights  he  worshipped  heaven. — W.  M.  THAC- 
KERAY, Tin  Four  Georges. 

George  III.,  who  "gloried  in  the  name  of  Briton,"  who  obtained  his 
initial  popularity  by  being  an  Englishman  born,  and  who,  indeed,  never 
travelled  farther  than  York,  was  the  German  princelet  of  his  day. — LORD. 
ROSEBERY,  Life  of  Pitt. 


GEORGE  IV.,  GIBBON.  161 

GEORGE  IV. 
King  of  Great  Britain  :  1762-1830. 

be  the  father  of  the  fatherless, 
To  stretch  the  hand  from  the  throne's  height,  and  raise 
His  offspring,  who  expired  in  other  days 
To  make  thy  sire's  sway  by  a  kingdom  less, — 
This  is  to  be  a  monarch,  and  repress 
Envy  into  unutterable  praise. 

— BYRON,  Sonnet  to  George  the  Fourth. 

It  was  the  good  fortune  of  George  IV.  to  wield  the  English  sceptre 
during  the  most  glorious  period  in  our  annals  ;  yet  no  monarch  ever  owed 
less  to  his  own  wisdom  or  exertions. — SIR  ARCHIBALD  ALISON,  Epitome 
of  the  History  of  Europe. 

The  iron  age  of  George  IV. — GLADSTONE,  Gleanings,  Vol.  VI. 

EDWARD  GIBBON. 
English  Historian  :  1737-1794. 

A  far  greater  historian — the  greatest  our  literature  can  boast — Gibbon. 
— JOHN  G.  LOCKHART. 

Gibbon's  autobiography  is  the  most  perfect  account  of  an  eminent 
man's  life,  from  his  own  hand,  which  exists  in  any  language. — SIR  ARCHI- 
BALD ALISON,  Essays:  Autobiography. 

That  it  is  not  hopeless  to  look  for  such  a  mind  is  evident  to  all  who 
recollect  how  Gibbon  has  painted  the  still  wider  expanse,  and  traced  the 
longer  story,  of  The  Decline  and  Fall  of  the  Roman  Empire ;  but  how 
often  in  a  century  does  a  Gibbon  appear  in  the  world! — Id.,  Ibid.: 
Michelet's  France. 

Grave,  tranquil,  decorous  pageantry  is  a  part,  as  it  were,  of  the  essence 
of  the  last  age.  There  is  nothing  more  characteristic  of  Gibbon.  A  kind 
of  pomp  pervades  him.  He  is  never  out  of  livery.  He  ever  selects  for 
narration  those  themes  which  look  most  like  a  levee  :  grave  chamberlains 
seem  to  stand  throughout ;  life  is  a  vast  ceremony,  the  historian  at  once 
the  dignitary  and  the  scribe.  The  very  language  of  Gibbon  shows  these 
qualities.  Its  majestic  march  has  been  the  admiration — its  rather  pom- 
pous cadence  the  sport  of  all  perusers.  It  has  the  greatest  merit  of  an 
historical  style  :  it  is  always  going  on  ;  you  feel  no  doubt  of  its  continuing 
in  motion. — WALTER  BAGEHOT,  Literary  Studies,  Vol.  II. 

It  is  Gibbon's  triumph  that  he  made  his  thoughts  acts.  He  is  not 
exactly  what  you  call  a  pious  writer,  but  he  is  provocative  of  at  least  one 
pious  feeling.  A  sabbatical  calm  results  from  the  contemplation  of  his 
labours.  Succeeding  scholars  have  read  his  history  and  pronounced  it 
good.  It  is  likewise  finished.  Hence  this  feeling  of  surprise. — AUGUS- 
TINE BIRRELL,  Res  Judicatee. 

II 


162  GIFFORD,  GIOTTO,  GLADSTONE. 

WILLIAM  GIFFORD. 
English  Critic  and  Poet :  1757-1826. 

Where  could  you  find  a  bitterer,  more  venomous  body,  than  old  Gifford  ? 
Yet  he  is  universally  respected,  for  his  bitterness  changed  many  a  scribbling 
block-head  into  an  inoffensive  man,  and  he  spat  his  venom  chiefly  on  cor- 
roded Cockneys,  whom  it  was  pleasant  to  see  writhing  in  the  dead-thraws. 
His  friends  know  him  to  be  one  of  the  best  of  enlightened  and  religious 
men  ;  and  as  his  Quarterly  accounts  have  long  been  found  correct,  so  will 
his  accounts  of  all  sorts  pass  at  the  last  general  audit. — JOHN  WILSON, 
Essays :  Streams. 

GIOTTO. 
Italian  Painter  and  Architect :  1276-1336. 

Works  done  least  rapidly,  Art  most  cherishes. 
Thyself  shalt  afford  the  example,  Giotto  ! 
Thy  one  work,  not  to  decrease  or  diminish, 
Done  at  a  stroke,  was  just  (was  it  not  ?)  "  O  !  " 
The  great  Campanile  is  still  to  finish. 

— BROWNING,  Old  Pictures  in  Florence. 


WILLIAM  EWART  GLADSTONE. 
English]Statesman  :  1809-1898. 

The  two  Pitts  and  Mr.  Gladstone  are  the  three  examples  of  speakers  of 
transcendent  power  exercising  for  a  considerable  time  a  commanding  in- 
fluence over  English  politics. — W.  E.  H.  LECKY,  History  of  England, 
Vol.  I. 

Mr.  Gladstone  seems  to  us  to  be,  in  many  respects,  exceedingly  well 
•qualified  for  philosophical  investigation.  His  mind  is  of  large  grasp  ;  nor 
is  he  deficient  in  dialectical  skill.  But  he  does  not  give  his  intellect  fair 
play.  There  is  no  want  of  light,  but  a  great  want  of  what  Bacon  would 
have  called  dry  light.  Whatever  Mr.  Gladstone  sees  is  refracted  and  dis- 
torted by  a  false  medium  of  passions  and  prejudices.  His  style  bears  a 
remarkable  analogy  to  his  mode  of  thinking,  and  indeed  exercises  great 
influence  on  his  mode  of  thinking.  His  rhetoric,  though  often  good  of  its 
kind,  darkens  and  perplexes  the  logic  which  it  should  illustrate.  Half  his 
acuteness  and  diligence,  with  a  barren  imagination  and  a  scanty  vocabulary, 
would  have  saved  him  from  almost  all  his  mistakes.  He  has  one  gift  most 
dangerous  to  a  speculator,  a  vast  command  of  a  kind  of  language,  grave 
and  majestic,  but  of  a  vague  and  uncertain  import. — MACAULAY,  Essays  : 
Gladstone  on  Church  and  State  (April,  1839). 

His  choice  of  language  was  unbounded.  It  has  been  said  of  Lord  Hol- 
land and  his  illustrious  son,  Charles  James  Fox,  that  from  the  very  wealth 
of  their  vocabulary  there  arose  a  tendency  to  hesitation.  But  the  wealth 
of  vocabulary  which  was  at  Mr.  Gladstone's  command  never  produced  that 
effect.  His  flow  of  words  was  not  that  of  the  mountain-stream  which 
comes  tumbling  down  helter-skelter.  It  was  that  of  the  river  with  an  im- 


GLADSTONE,  GOETHE.  163 

mense  volume  of  water,  whose  downward  course  is  as  regular  as  it  is  stately. 
He  never  gabbled.  He  never  drawled.  ...  He  was  a  living  thesaurus  or 
"  Gradus,"  containing  synonym  after  synonym ;  and  it  was  this  extra- 
ordinary wealth  of  words  which  laid  him  open  to  the  charge,  not  without 
reason,  of  being  verbose.  Diffuseness  at  times  led  to  discursiveness  ;  and 
in  this  connection  I  am  reminded  of  a  remark  made  once  by  Mr.  Bright  on 
Mr.  Gladstone's  style  of  speaking :  "  I  sail,"  said  Mr.  Bright,  "  or  endeavour 
to  sail,  from  headland  to  headland.  Gladstone,  making  for  the  same  point, 
sails  round  the  coast,  and  whenever  he  comes  to  a  navigable  river  he  cannot 
resist  the  temptation  of  tracing  it  to  its  source. "  Mr.  Gladstone's  sentences 
were  often  very  long  ;  and  one  sometimes  wondered  how  he  would  ever  ex- 
tricate himself  from  the  maze  of  words.  But  there  was  nothing  faulty  in  the 
construction  of  a  sentence.  There  were  parentheses,  and  occasionally  even 
parentheses  within  parentheses  ;  but  no  sentence  was  ever  ungrammatical 
or  unfinished. — SIR  E.  W.  HAMILTON,  Mr.  Gladstone :  a  Monograph. 

Mr.  Gladstone  has  fascinated  two  generations,  not  merely  in  pellucid 
and  sparkling  statement,  but  in  those  rolling  and  interminable  sentences, 
which  come  thundering  in  mighty  succession  like  the  Atlantic  waves  on 
the  Biscayan  coast, — sentences,  which  other  men  have  "  neither  the  under- 
standing to  form  nor  the  vigour  to  utter  ". — LORD  ROSEBERY,  Life  of  Pitt. 

JOHANN  WOLFGANG  VON  GOETHE. 
German  Poet :  1749-1832. 

And  quiet  Weimar,  hush'd  of  look  and  staid, 

As  if  she  knew  the  passing  stranger  came, 

Drawn  to  her  by  the  splendour  and  the  fame 
Of  her  two  mighty  sons,  whose  dust  is  laid 
Within  her  bosom  side  by  side.     And  she 

Covers  their  ashes  still  with  flowers  that  bind 

Mortals  to  all  the  high  Immortals.  He, 
Goethe— a  sea  without  one  waft  of  wind ; 
Schiller — the  river  yearning  for  that  sea, 

High,  pure  and  restless,  with  an  upward  mind. 

So  let  her  keep  her  sacred  dust.     For  through 
The  march  of  ages  as  they  sweep  along, 

Will  rise  the  potent  voices  of  these  two — 

The  ocean  and  the  river  of  her  song. 

— ALEXANDER  ANDERSON,  Sonnets  to  a  Friend,  V. 

Faced  by  fulfilled  Ideals,  he  aspire'd 
To  win  the  perished  secret  of  their  grace, — 
To  dower  the  earnest  children  of  a  race 
Toil  never  tamed,  nor  acquisition  tired, 

With  Freedom  born  of  Beauty  ! — and  for  them 
His  Titan  soul  combined 
The  passions  of  the  mind, 
Which  blood  and  time  so  long  had  held  apart, 
Till  the  white  blossom  of  the  Grecian  Art 
The  world  saw  shine  once  more,  upon  a  Gothic  stem ! 

— BAYARD  TAYLOR,  Goethe. 


i64  GOETHE. 

Goethe,  raised  o'er  joy  and  strife, 
Drew  the  firm  lines  of  Fate  and  Life, 
And  brought  Olympian  wisdom  down 
To  court  and  mart,  to  gown  and  town  ; 
Stooping,  his  finger  wrote  in  clay 
The  open  secret  of  to-day. 

— EMERSON,  Solution. 

.  .  .  Goethe,  with  that  reaching  eye 
His  soul  reached  out  from,  far  and  high, 
And  fell  from  inner  entity. 

— E.  B.  BROWNING,  A  Vision  of  Poets. 

When  Goethe's  death  was  told,  we  said : 
Sunk,  then,  is  Europe's  sagest  head. 
Physician  of  the  iron  age, 
Goethe  has  done  his  pilgrimage. 

— MATTHEW  ARNOLD,  Memorial  Verses. 

And  Goethe's  course  few  sons  of  men 

May  think  to  emulate. 

For  he  pursued  a  lonely  road, 

His  eyes  on  Nature's  plan  ; 

Neither  made  man  too  much  a  God, 

Nor  God  too  much  a  man. 

— Id.,  In  Memory  of  the  Author  of  Obermann. 

Wordsworth's  world  is  not  Goethe's  world :  the  Wordsworthian  star, 
like  that  of  Jove  itself,  "so  beautiful  and  large,"  is  not  like  the  star 
Goethe.  Both  are  the  brightest  of  the  bright ;  but  the  breath  of  peace 
envelops  the  one,  with  "an  ampler  ether,  a  diviner  air" — at  its  height, 
the  other  often  looks  troubled,  and  seems  to  reel  in  its  sphere,  with  a 
lurid  but  still  celestial  light. — JOHN  WILSON,  Noctes  Ambrosiantz,  Vol.  IV- 

Goethe  has  been  likened  to  a  cupola  lighted  from  below. — LYTTON, 
Essays:  Charles  Lamb  and  some  of  his  Companions. 

It  seems  to  me  that,  among  modern  poets,  Goethe  ranks  next  to  Shake- 
speare, at  however  wide  an  interval,  in  the  combination  of  abstract,  meta- 
physical speculation,  and  genial,  easy,  clement  knowledge  of  the  actual 
world. — Ibid.,  Knowledge  of  the  World. 

Goethe  was  the  philosopher  of  this  multiplicity ;  hundred-handed, 
Argus-eyed,  able  and  happy  to  cope  with  this  rolling  miscellany  of  facts 
and  sciences,  and,  by  his  own  versatility,  to  dispose  of  them  with  ease ; 
a  manly  mind,  unembarrassed  by  the  variety  of  coats  of  convention,  with 
which  life  had  yet  incrusted.  .  .  .  Goethe,  the  head  and  body  of  the 
German  nation,  does  not  speak  from  talent,  but  the  truth  shines  through  : 
he  is  very  wise,  though  his  talent  often  veils  his  wisdom. — EMERSON, 
Goethe ;  or  the  Writer. 

This  perception  of  the  worth  of  the  vulgar  is  fruitful  in  discoveries. 
Goethe,  in  this  very  thing  the  most  modern  of  the  moderns,  has  shown 
us,  as  none  ever  did,  the  genius  of  the  ancients. — Id.,  The  American. 
Scholar. 


GOETHE.  165 

The  cosmopolitan  many-sidedness  of  Goethe.  Goethe  worked  in  the 
mornings,  and  husbanded  that  costly  thing  emotion.  Schiller,  who  lived 
in  the  region  of  the  ideal,  was  a  man  of  large  historic  view,  and  strongly 
moved  by  the  events  of  his  day.  Goethe,  who  lived  in  the  actual,  re- 
garded the  striving  multitudes  of  men  with  a  philosophic  smile.  For  the 
outer  world  of  Schiller  was  Humanity  ;  the  outer  world  of  Goethe,  Nature. 
Goethe  scrutinised  nature  with  the  man  of  science,  and  hence  the  accuracy 
of  his  delineation.  He  watched  it  lovingly  with  the  man  of  taste,  and 
hence  the  comprehensiveness  and  the  judgment  displayed  in  his  descrip- 
tions. He  had  seen  far  more  of  nature  than  Schiller,  and  seen  to  better 
purpose  every  object  within  that  wide  range.  Schiller  makes  nature 
speak  his  language ;  Goethe  forgets  himself  that  he  may  interpret  hers. 
As  a  word-painter  of  landscape,  the  superiority  of  Goethe  will  be  readily 
acknowledged.  Yet  the  descriptive  power  of  Schiller  was  in  reality  more 
rare  and  wonderful. — R.  A.  VAUGHAN,  Essays  and  Remains,  Vol.  II. 

•     His  great  philosophic  power,  endless  variety  of  fancy,  and  breadth  of 
vision,  render  Goethe  the  master  mind  of  the  epoch. — JOSEPH  MAZZINI. 

In  virtue  of  a  genius  such  as  modern  times  have  only  seen  equalled 
once  or  twice,  Goethe  deserves  the  epithet  of  great ;  unless  we  believe 
a  great  genius  can  belong  to  a  small  mind.  Nor  is  it  in  virtue  of  genius 
alone  that  he  deserves  the  name.  Merck  said  of  him  that  what  he  lived 
was  more  beautiful  than  what  he  wrote ;  and  his  life,  amid  all  its  weak- 
nesses and  all  its  errors,  presents  a  picture  of  a  certain  grandeur  of 
soul,  which  cannot  be  contemplated  unmoved. — G.  H.  LEWES,  Life  and 
Works  of  Goethe,  Vol.  I. 

The  man  who  can  read  Goethe's  works  and  not  perceive  in  them  a 
spirit  deeply  religious,  must  limit  the  word  religion  to  the  designation  of 
his  own  doctrines  ;  and  the  man  who,  reading  them,  discovers  that  Goethe 
was  not  orthodox,  is  discovering  the  sun  at  midday.  Orthodox  he  never 
pretended  to  be.  His  religious  experiences  had  begun  early,  and  his 
doubts  began  with  them.  There  are  those  who  regard  Doubt  as  criminal 
in  itself;  but  no  human  soul  that  has  once  struggled,  that  has  once  been 
perplexedi  with  baffling  thoughts  which  it  has  been  too  sincere  to  puddle 
away  and  stifle  in  precipitate  conclusions,  dreading  to  face  the  conse- 
quences of  doubt,  will  speak  thus  harshly  and  unworthily  of  it. — Id., 
Ibid.,  Vol.  II. 

"  Goethe,"  observes  Madame  de  Stael,  "  should  not  be  criticised  as  an 
author  good  in  one  kind  of  composition  and  bad  in  another.  He  rather 
resembles  nature,  which  produces  all  and  of  all ;  and  we  can  prefer  in 
him  his  climate  of  the  south  to  his  climate  of  the  north,  without  disregard- 
ing in  him  the  talents  which  harmonise  with  these  different  regions  of 
the  soul."  In  whichever  of  these  regions  we  encounter  him,  we  recognise 
a  master  mind  ;  and  without  pretending  to  fix  his  precise  place  amongst 
the  greatest  poets,  we  do  not  hesitate  to  declare  him  the  most  splendid 
specimen  of  cultivated  intellect  ever  manifested  to  the  world. — A.  HAY- 
WARD,  Life  of  Goethe. 

If  we  look  back  upon  the  course  of  Goethe's  long  life,  it  is  impossible 
not  to  be  struck  with  admiration  when  we  think  of  the  extraordinary 
range  of  his  activity.  There  are  few  departments  of  intellectual  life  into 
which  he  did  not  penetrate,  and  in  everything  which,  as  a  thinker,  he 
undertook,  he  displayed  the  highest  order  of  mental  power.  As  a  man 


166  GOETHE,  GOLDSMITH. 

of  science,  he  ranks  among  the  foremost  investigators  of  his  age.  He 
had  no  sooner  begun  to  reflect  seriously  on  scientific  problems  than  he 
placed  himself  in  what  proved  to  be  the  central  current  of  modern  thought. 
...  It  is  only,  indeed,  since  the  law  of  evolution  was  detected,  that  the 
world  has  recognised  the  full  meaning  and  importance  of  his  contributions 
to  scientific  progress. — JAMES  SIME,  Life  of  Goethe. 

The  analogy  between  the  history  of  a  race  so  undisturbed  in  its  develop- 
ment as  the  Greek,  and  the  life  of  a  man,  is  not  altogether  fanciful.  A 
man  like  Goethe,  beautiful  in  soul  and  body,  exceedingly  strong  and 
swift  and  active  and  inquisitive  in  all  the  movements  of  his  spirit,  first 
lives  the  life  of  the  senses  and  of  physical  enjoyment.  His  soul,  "im- 
mersed in  rich  foreshado wings  of  the  world,"  has  scarcely  begun  to  think 
consciously  in  the  first  period.  But  he  feels  the  glory  of  existence,  the 
strivings  of  inexhaustible  energy,  the  desire  of  infinite  expansion.  The 
second  period  is  one  of  Sturm  and  Drang.  New  things  are  learned : 
much  of  the  beautiful  physical  activity  is  sacrificed ;  he  discovers  that 
life  involves  care  and  responsibility  as  well  as  pleasure ;  he  concentrates 
his  mental  faculty  on  hard  and  baffling  study,  in  which  at  first  he  halts 
and  falters.  Then  he  goes  forth  to  the  world,  and  wins  great  fame,  and 
does  the  deeds  and  thinks  the  thoughts  by  which  he  shall  be  known  to  all 
posterity.  His  physical  and  mental  faculties  are  now  in  perfect  harmony  ; 
together  they  offer  him  the  noblest  and  most  enduring  pleasures.  But 
after  a  while  his  productiveness  begins  to  dwindle.  He  has  put  forth  his 
force,  has  fully  expressed  himself,  has  matured  his  principles,  has  formed 
his  theory  of  the  world.  Our  fourth  period  corresponds  to  the  early  old 
age  of  such  a  man's  life.  He  now  applies  his  principles,  propagates  his 
philosophy,  subordinates  his  fancy,  produces  less,  enjoys  with  more 
sobriety  and  less  exhilaration,  bears  burdens,  suffers  disappointments, 
yet  still,  as  Solon  says,  "learns  always  as  he  grows  in  years".  Then 
comes  the  fifth  stage.  He  who  was  so  vigorous  and  splendid,  now  has 
but  little  joy  in  physical  life;  his  brain  is  dry  and  withering ;  he  dwells 
on  his  old  thoughts,  and  has  no  faculty  for  generating  new  ones :  yet  his 
soul  contains  deep  mines  of  wisdom ;  he  gives  counsel  and  frames  laws 
for  younger  generations.  And  so  he  gradually  sinks  into  the  grave.  His 
acts  remain:  his  life  is  written. — J.  ADDINGTON  SYMONDS,  Studies  of  the 
Greek  Poets. 

All  the  reformation  that  was  done  in  England  by  Wordsworth  was 
done  at  the  same  time  for  Germany  by  Goethe.  It  was  done  not  indeed 
more  faithfully  and  in  the  face  of  less  opposition  ;  but  it  was  done  with 
far  wider  intelligence,  and  with  far  profounder  results.  But  that  it  should 
have  been  done  at  all,  adds  another  great  title  to  those  high  and  varied 
pretensions  which  Goethe  puts  forward.  The  Shakespeare  was  at  the 
same  time  the  Wordsworth.  .  .  .  To  Goethe,  reality  is  almost  the  sole 
source  of  poetry  ;  in  his  works  so  much  poetry,  so  much  experience.  .  .  . 
Goethe  is  a  perfect  Solomon  for  proverbs ;  they  pour  from  him  in  floods. 
— SIR  J.  R.  SEELEY,  Goethe  reviewed  after  Sixty  Years. 

OLIVER  GOLDSMITH. 
Irish  Poet  and  Novelist:  1728-1774. 

And  tender  Goldsmith  crowned  with  deathless  praise. 

— WORDSWORTH,  Stathwaite  Chapel. 


thou,  sweet  bard  of  Auburn  ! — Child  !  what  then  ? 
A  child  inspired,  and  worth  a  world  of  men. 

— LYTTON,  S*.  Stephen's,  Part  II. 

.  .  .  Goldsmith  .  .   . 

Whose  verse  shall  live  in  every  British  mind, 
Though  sweet,  yet  strong ;  though  nervous,  yet  refined. 

—HARTLEY  COLERIDGE,  Young  and  his  Contemporaries. 

Who  wanders  not  with  Erin's  wandering  bard  ? 
Who  sits  not  down  with  Auburn's  pastor  mild 
To  take  upon  his  knee  the  shyest  child  ? 
These  in  all  hearts  will  find  a  kindred  place, 
And  live  the  last  of  our  poetic  race. 

— LANDOR,  Goldsmith  and  Gray. 

No  man  was  more  foolish  when  he  had  not  a  pen  in  his  hand,  or  more 
wise  when  he  had. — DR.  JOHNSON. 

The  wreath  of  Goldsmith  is  unsullied ;  he  wrote  to  exalt  virtue  and  expose 
vice ;  and  he  accomplished  his  task  in  a  manner  which  raised  him  to  the 
highest  rank  among  British  authors. — SIR  WALTER  SCOTT,  Prose  Works, 
Vol.  III. 

Goldsmith's  poetry  enjoys  a  calm  and  steady  popularity.  It  inspires 
us,  indeed,  with  no  admiration  of  daring  design,  or  of  fertile  invention; 
but  it  presents,  within  its  narrow  limits,  a  distinct  and  unbroken  view  of 
poetical  delightfulness. — CAMPBELL. 

If  Goldsmith  had  never  written  anything  but  the  two  or  three  first 
chapters  of  the  Vicar  of  Wake  field,  or  the  character  of  a  Village-School- 
master, they  would  have  stamped  him  a  man  of  genius. — HAZLITT, 
Table  Talk. 

A  king  might  refuse  Goldsmith  a  pension,  as  a  publisher  might  keep 
his  masterpiece  and  the  delight  of  all  the  world  in  his  desk  for  two  years  ; 
but  it  was  a  mistake,  and  not  ill-will.  Noble  and  illustrious  names  of 
Swift,  and  Pope,  and  Addison  !  dear  and  honoured  memories  of  Gold- 
smith and  Fielding !  kind  friends,  teachers,  benefactors !  who  shall  say 
that  our  country,  which  continues  to  bring  you  such  an  unceasing  tribute 
of  applause,  admiration,  love,  sympathy,  does  not  do  honour  to  the 
literary  calling  in  the  honour  which  it  bestows  upon  you  ! — THACKERAY, 
English  Humourists  of  the  Eighteenth  Century. 

The  works  of  Goldsmith  are  distinguished  by  the  chastest  simplicity  ; 
yet  his  character  may  be  described  best  by  his  dress;  which  not  only 
Boswell,  but  Northcote,  represent  as  having  been  exceedingly  tawdry. — 
CHARLES  BUCKE,  Book  of  Human  Character. 

Goldsmith  is  one  of  those  characters  whom  the  present  generation  has 
rightly  determined  to  love,  and  foolishly  resolved  to  cover  with  unqualified 
praise.  .  .  .  But  Goldsmith  is  one  of  those  distinguished  writers  with  respect 
to  whom  a  plain  line  of  distinction  can  be  drawn  between  their  private  lives 
and  their  positions  as  artists.  As  a  mere  citizen,  Goldsmith  was  a  blunder  ; 
from  the  beginning  to  the  end  his  life  was  a  failure — a  series  of  unhappy 
experiences,  humiliations,  and  grave  errors  ;  as  an  artist  he  was  as  nearly 


i68  GOLDSMITH,  GORDON,  GRATTAN. 

perfect  as  it  is  possible  to  conceive  a  poor  human  being  striving  to  describe 
an  ideal  world,  too  beautiful  to  be  painted  by  the  pauper  hieroglyphics  of 
language,  to  be. — J.  CORDY  JEAFFRESON,  Novels  and  Novelists,  Vol.  I. 

"  Innocently  to  amuse  the  imagination  in  this  dream  of  life  is  wisdom." 
So  wrote  Oliver  Goldsmith  ;  and  surely  among  those  who  have  earned  the 
world's  gratitude  by  this  ministration  he  must  be  accorded  a  conspicuous 
place. — WILLIAM  BLACK,  Life  of  Goldsmith. 

GENERAL  CHARLES  GEORGE  GORDON. 

English  Soldier :  1833-1885. 

Warrior  of  God,  man's  friend,  and  tyrant's  foe, 

Now  somewhere  dead  far  in  the  waste  Soudan, 
Thou  livest  in  all  hearts,  for  all  men  know 

This  earth  has  never  borne  a  nobler  man. 

— TENNYSON,  General  Gordon. 

Some  men  live  near  to  God,  as  my  right  arm 
Is  near  to  me ;  and  thus  they  walk  about. 
Mailed  in  full  proof  of  faith,  and  bear  a  charm 
That  mocks  at  fear,  and  bars  the  door  on  doubt, 
And  dares  the  impossible.     So,  Gordon,  thou, 
Through  the  hot  stir  of  this  distracted  time, 
Dost  hold  thy  course,  a  flaming  witness  how 
To  go  and  dare,  and  make  our  lives  sublime 
As  God's  campaigners. 

— J.  STUART  BLACKIE. 

Poor  fellow  !  I  wonder  if  he  has  entered  upon  the  larger  sphere  of  action 
which  he  told  me  was  reserved  for  him  in  case  of  such  a  trifling  accident 
as  death.  Of  all  the  people  whom  I  have  met  with  in  my  life,  he  and 
Darwin  are  the  two  in  whom  I  have  found  something  bigger  than  ordinary 
humanity,  an  unequalled  simplicity  and  directness  of  purpose — a  sublime 
unselfishness.  Horrible  as  it  to  us,  I  imagine  that  the  manner  of  his  death 
was  not  unwelcome  to  himself.  Better  wear  out  than  rust  out,  and  better 
break  than  wear  out. — HUXLEY,  Letter  to  Donnelly  (on  hearing  of  Gordon's 
death)  in  his  Life  and  Letters,  Vol.  II. 

HENRY  GRATTAN. 
Irish  Orator :  1746-1820, 

Ever  glorious  Grattan  !  the  best  of  the  good  ! 
So  simple  in  heart,  so  sublime  in  the  rest ! 
With  all  which  Demosthenes  wanted  endued, 
And  his  rival  or  victor  in  all  he  possess'd. 
Ere  Tully  arose  in  the  zenith  of  Rome, 
Though  unequall'd,  preceded,  the  task  was  begun, 
But  Grattan  sprang  up  like  a  god  from  the  tomb 
Of  ages,  the  first,  last,  the  saviour,  the  one  ! 

— BYRON,  The  Irish  Avatar. 


GRAY,  GREY. 

THOMAS  GRAY. 
English  Lyric  Poet:  1716-1771. 

No  bard  divine!     For  many  a  care  beguil'd 

By  the  sweet  magic  of  thy  soothing  lay, 
For  many  a  raptur'd  thought,  and  vision  wild, 

To  thee  this  strain  of  gratitude  I  pay. 

— THOMAS  WARTON,  To  Mr.  Gray. 

.  .  .  Gray's  unlaboured  art 
Soothes,  melts,  alarms,  and  ravishes  the  heart ; 
While  the  lone  wanderer's  sweet  complainings  flow 
In  simple  majesty  of  manly  woe  ; 
Or  while,  sublime,  on  eagle  pinion  driven, 
He  soars  Pindaric  heights,  and  sails  the  waste  of  heaven. 

— BEATTIE,  On  the  Report  of  a  Monument,  etc. 

Or  pour,  with  Gray,  the  moving  flow 
Warm  on  the  heart. 

—BURNS,  The  Vision,  II. 

In  his  "  Elegy  written  in  a  Country  Churchyard,"  Gray  has  caught, 
•concentrated,  and  turned  into  a  line  essence,  the  substance  of  a  thousand 
meditations  among  the  tombs. — REV.  GEORGE  GILFILLAN,  Dissertation 
prefixed  to  Gray's  Poetical  Works. 

Gray's  style  in  prose,  as  exhibited  in  his  correspondence,  is  confessedly 
delightful.  Though  somewhat  quaint,  it  is  an  easy  quaintness.  He  was 
infinitely  more  natural  in  prose  than  verse.  Horace  Walpole  lets  us  into 
the  secret  of  this.  "Gray,"  says  that  piercing  reader  of  such  characters 
as  came  within  the  scope  of  his  actual  observation,  "  never  wrote  anything 
easily  but  things  of  humour" ;  and  humour,  his  natural  gift,  is  the  char- 
acteristic of  his  correspondence.  If  not  the  best  letter-writer  in  the  lan- 
guage, he  is  the  best  letter-writer  of  all  the  professed  scholars. — LYTTON, 
Essays  :  Gray's  Works. 

Gray,  as  a  poet  of  the  lyre,  appears  to  me  to  be  more  uniformly  grand 
and  majestic.  The  mind  is  elevated  by  him  to  ethereal  regions,  and  soars 
with  eagle  flight,  without  being  forced  to  fall  from  its  eminence,  like  the 
son  of  Daedalus.  Gray  wings  his  way  on  high  like  a  glorious  luminary, 
all  stately,  all  regularly  magnificent. — DR.  VICESIMUS  KNOX,  Winter 
Evenings :  Evening  C. 

LADY  JANE  GREY. 
Queen  of  England  (ten  days) :  1537-1554. 

Bagcnhall :  "  No — murder  fathers  murder  :  but  I  say 

There  is  no  man — there  was  one  woman  with  us — 

It  was  a  sin  to  love  her  married,  dead 

I  cannot  choose  but  love  her." 

Stafford:  "  Lady  Jane  ?" 

— TENNYSON,  Queen  Mary. 


170  GUIZOT,  GUTENBERG,  GUYON. 

FRANCOIS  P.  G.  GUIZOT. 

French  Statesman  and  Historian  :  1787-1874. 

He  is  not,  properly  speaking,  a  historian  ;  his  vocation  and  object  were 
different.  He  is  a  great  discourser  on  history.  If  ever  the  philosophy  of 
history  was  embodied  in  a  human  being,  it  is  in  M.  Guizot. — SIR  ARCHI- 
BALD ALISON,  Essays :  Guizot. 

JOHN  GUTENBERG. 
Supposed  Inventor  of  Movable  Types  for  Printing  :  1400-1468. 

Gutenberg  has  given  the  world  a  soul. — LAMARTINE,  Celebrated  Char- 
acters (transl.),  Vol.  II. 

The  multiplication  of  readers  is  the  multiplication  of  loaves.  On  the 
day  when  Christ  created  that  symbol,  he  caught  a  glimpse  of  printing. 
His  miracle  is  this  marvel.  Behold  a  book.  I  will  nourish  with  it  five 
thousand  souls,  a  hundred  thousand  souls — a  million  souls — all  humanity. 
In  the  action  of  Christ  bringing  forth  the  loaves,  there  is  Gutenberg  bring- 
ing forth  books.  One  sower  heralds  the  other.  .  .  .  Gutenberg,  in  the 
fifteenth  century  emerges  from  the  awful  obscurity,  bringing  out  of  the 
darkness  that  ransomed  captive  the  human  mind.  Gutenberg  is  for  ever 
the  auxiliary  of  life  ;  he  is  the  permanent  fellow-workman  in  the  great  work 
of  civilisation.  Nothing  is  done  without  him.  He  has  marked  the  transi- 
tion of  the  man-slave  to  the  free-man.  Try  and  deprive  civilisation  of 
him,  you  become  Egypt.  The  decrease  of  the  liberty  of  the  press  is 
enough  to  diminish  the  stature  of  a  people.  ...  A  Gutenberg  discovering 
the  method  for  the  sowing  of  civilisation  and  the  means  for  the  ubiquity 
of  thought,  will  be  followed  by  a  Christopher  Columbus  discovering  a  new 
field.  A  Christopher  Columbus  discovering  a  world  will  be  followed  by 
a  Luther  discovering  a  liberty.  After  Luther,  innovator  in  the  dogma,, 
will  come  Shakespeare,  innovator  in  art.  One  genius  completes  the  other, 
— VICTOR  HUGO,  William  Shakespeare  (transl.}. 

JEANNE  MARIA  BOUVIER  DE  LA  MOTTE   GUYON. 
French  Mystic  :   1648-1717. 

Madame  Guyon  was  gifted  by  nature  with  beauty  of  a  dreamy  and 
melancholy  order,  a  passionate  soul,  and  an  imagination  so  exalted  that 
earth  could  not  satisfy  it ;  but  seeking  for  love  it  mounted  to  heaven. — 
LAMARTINE,  Celebrated  Characters  (transl.),  Vol.  II. 

The  ecstatic  prophetess  Madame  de  Guyon. — DR.  J.  IGNATIUS  VON 
DOLLINGER,  Studies  in  European  History  (transl.). 

As  contrasted  with  the  mysticism  of  St.  Theresa,  that  of  Madame 
Guyon  appears  to  great  advantage.  She  guards  her  readers  against 
attempting  to  form  any  image  of  God.  She  aspires  to  an  intellectual 
elevation — a  spiritual  intuition,  above  the  sensuous  region  of  theurgy,  of 
visions,  and  of  dreams.  She  saw  no  Jesuits  in  heaven  bearing  white 
banners  among  the  heavenly  throng  of  the  redeemed.  She  beheld  no 
Devil,  "  like  a  little  negro"  sitting  on  her  breviary.  She  did  not  see  the 


GUYON,  HALLAM.  171 

Saviour  in  an  ecstasy,  drawing  the  nail  out  of  His  hand.  She  felt  no 
large  white  dove  fluttering  above  her  head.  But  she  did  not  spend  her 
days  in  founding  convents — a  slave  to  the  interests  of  the  clergy.  So 
they  made  a  saint  of  Theresa,  and  a  confessor  of  Madame  Guyon. — R. 
A.  VAUGHAN,  Hours  with  the  Mystics,  Vol.  II. 

ARTHUR  HENRY  HALLAM. 
Sow  of  the  Historian  :  1811-1838. 

Thus  it  is,  that  to  teach  one  of  us  the  death  of  Arthur  Hallam — his 
thoughts  and  affections — his  views  of  God,  of  our  relations  to  Him,  of 
duty,  of  the  meaning  and  worth  of  this  world  and  the  next — where  he 
now  is,  have  an  individual  significance.  He  is  bound  up  in  our  bundle  of 
life ;  we  must  be  the  better  or  the  worse  |Of  having  known  what  manner 
of  man  he  was  ;  and  in  a  sense  less  peculiar,  but  not  less  true,  each  of  us. 
may  say : — 

— "  The  tender  grace  of  a  day  that  is  dead 
Will  never  come  back  to  me." 

"A  life  that  all  the  Muses  deck'd 
With  gifts  of  grace,  that  might  express 
All  comprehensive  tenderness, 
All-subtilising  intellect." 

— "  Oh  for  the  touch  of  a  vanished  hand, 
And  the  sound  of  a  voice  that  is  still !  " 

— DR.  JOHN  BROWN,  Horce.  Subsecivce,  First  Series. 

HENRY  HALLAM. 
English  Historian  :  1777-1859. 

By  the  death  of  Mr.  Hallam  we  have  lost  an  eminent  representative  of 
a  class  of  men,  few  in  number,  but  inestimable  in  value  at  present — the 
scholar — author — the  Working  Man  of  Letters. — HARRIET  MARTINEAU, 
Biographical  Sketches. 

Almost  all  the  distinguished  writers  who  have  treated  of  English  history 
are  advocates.  Mr.  Hallam  and  Sir  James  Mackintosh  alone  are  entitled 
to  be  judges.  But  the  extreme  austerity  of  Mr.  Hallam  takes  away  some- 
thing from  the  pleasure  of  reading  his  learned,  eloquent,  and  judicious 
writings.  He  is  a  judge,  but  a  hanging  judge,  the  Page  or  Buller  of  the 
High  Court  of  Literary  Justice.  His  black  cap  is  in  constant  requisition. 
In  the  long  calendar  of  those  whom  he  has  tried,  there  is  hardly  one  who 
has  not,  in  spite  of  evidence  to  character  and  recommendations  to  mercy, 
been  sentenced  and  left  for  execution. — MACAULAY,  Essays  :  Sir  James. 
Mackintosh, 

We  manage  these  things  better  in  England.  Sir  Walter  Scott  gives 
us  a  novel ;  Mr.  Hallam  a  critical  and  argumentative  history.  Both  are 
occupied  with  the  same  matter.  But  the  former  looks  at  it  with  the  eye 
of  a  sculptor.  His  intention  is  to  give  an  express  and  lively  image  of  its 
external  form.  The  latter  is  an  anatomist.  His  task  is  to  dissect  the 
subject  of  its  inmost  recesses,  and  to  lay  bare  before  us  all  the  springs  of 
motion  and  all  the  causes  of  decay. — Id.,  Ibid.  :  Hallam. 


lya  HAMILTON,  HAMPDEN. 

SIR  WILLIAM  HAMILTON. 
Scottish  Philosopher:  1788-1856. 

Hamilton  .  .  . — the  Scottish  Stagyrite,  the  metaphysician  of  recent 
Europe. — DAVID  MASSON,  British  Novelists,  etc. 

As  Mill's  is  a  sweated  mind,  often  entangled  in  the  sudorific  blankets, 
Avhen  wanting  to  move,  and  incapable  of  walking,  though  a  splendid  rider 
— of  hobbies — so  Sir  William  Hamilton's  was  a  swollen  mind.  The  good 
Sir  William  was  the  Daniel  Lambert  of  Philosophy.  He  had  the  shark's, 
the  ostrich's  enormous  appetite,  with  no  more  power  of  discrimination 
than  the  ostrich  or  the  shark.  Quantity  was  everything,  quality  nothing. 
Blending  the  shark  and  the  ostrich,  he  could  make  a  decent  meal  of 
bricks,  empty  barrels,  copper  bolts,  and  tenpenny  nails.  He  is  almost 
the  only  learned  man  that  Scotland  has  had  since  George  Buchanan, 
and  there  are  no  signs  that  Scotland  will  ever  have  a  learned  man 
again.  But  his  learning  was  a  pedantic  plethora,  an  apoplectic  mon- 
strosity, an  asthmatic  ventriloquism  squeaking  and  growling  through 
layers  and  convolutions  of  fat.  It  would  be  difficult  to  say  whether  Sir 
William  Hamilton  devoured  books  and  systems,  or  was  devoured  by 
them.  The  result,  at  all  events,  was  chaotic  conglomeration.  Little 
would  it  have  mattered  how  many  books  or  systems  Sir  William  Hamil- 
ton had  swallowed,  if  he  had  not  been  tormented  by  the  unhappy 
yearning  to  be  a  creator  of  systems  himself. — WILLIAM  MACCALL,  The 
New  Materialism. 


JOHN  HAMPDEN. 
English  Patriot:  1594-1643. 

A  Hampden  too  is  thine,  illustrious  land, 
Wise,  strenuous,  firm,  of  unsubmitting  soul, 
Who  stem'd  the  torrent  of  a  downward  age 
To  slavery  prone,  and  bade  thee  rise  again, 
In  all  thy  native  pomp  of  freedom  bold. 
Bright,  at  his  call,  thy  age  of  men  effulg'd, 
Of  men  on  whom  late  time  a  kindling  eye 
Shall  turn,  and  tyrants  tremble  while  they  read. 

— THOMSON,  The  Seasons  :  Summer. 

See  Roman  fire  in  Hampden's  bosom  swell. 

— THOMAS  CAMPBELL. 

Dost  thou  boast 

Of  loyalty  ?     The  field  is  not  far  off 
Where  in  rebellious  arms  against  his  king 
Hampden  was  kill'd,  that  Hampden  at  whose  name 
The  heart  of  many  an  honest  Englishman 
Beats  with  congenial  pride. 

— SOUTHEY,  Inscription  for  a  Column  at  Newbury . 

Like  Hampden  struggling  in  his  country's  cause, 
The  first,  the  foremost  to  obey  the  laws, 
The  last  to  brook  oppression  !  On  he  moves, 


HAMPDEN,  HANDEL.  173 

Careless  of  blame  while  his  own  heart  approves, 
Careless  of  ruin — ("  For  the  general  good,. 
'Tis  not  the  first  time  I  have  shed  my  blood  ".) 

— SAMUEL  ROGERS. 

In  Hampden,  and  in  Hampden  alone,  were  united  all  the  qualities- 
which,  at  such  a  crisis,  were  necessary  to  save  the  state,  the  valour  and 
energy  of  Cromwell,  the  discernment  and  eloquence  of  Vane,  the  humanity 
and  moderation  of  Manchester,  the  stern  integrity  of  Hale,  the  ardent 
public  spirit  of  Sydney.  Others  might  possess  the  qualities  which  were 
necessary  to  save  the  popular  party  in  the  crisis  of  danger  ;  he  alone  had 
both  the  power  and  the  inclination  to  restrain  its  excesses  in  the  hour  of 
triumph.  Others  could  conquer  ;  he  alone  could  reconcile.  A  heart  as 
bold  as  his  brought  up  the  cuirassiers  who  turned  the  tide  of  battle  on 
Marston  Moor. — MACAULAY,  Essays  :  John  Hampden. 

Of  the  Revolution  in  all  countries  and  times,  John  Hampden  is  the 
perfect  symbol. — RUSKIN. 


GEORGE  FREDERICK  HANDEL. 
German  Musician  and  Composer  :  1684-1759. 

Some  say  that  Signior  Bononcini, 
Compar'd  to  Handel's  a  mere  ninny : 
Others  aver  that  to  him  Handel 
Is  scarcely  fit  to  hold  a  candle. 
Strange  1  that  such  difference  should  be 
'Twixt  Tweedledum  and  Tweedledee  ! 

— SWIFT,  Directions  for  Making  a  Birthday  Song.. 

There  Handel  strikes  the  strings,  the  melting  strain 
Transports  the  soul,  and  thrills  through  every  vein. 

— JOHN  GAY,  Trivia.. 

While  love  shall  live,  and  rapture  shall  rejoice, 
Fed  by  the  notes  of  Handel,  Arne  and  Boyce. 

— CHRISTOPHER  SMART,  The  Hilliad* 

Remember  Handel  ?  Who  that  was  not  born 
Deaf  as  the  dead  to  harmony,  forgets, 
Or  can,  the  more  than  Homer  of  his  age  ? 
Yes,  we  remember  him  ;  and  while  we  praise 
A  talent  so  divine,  remember  too 
That  His  most  holy  Book  from  whom  it  came 
Was  never  meant,  was  never  used  before, 
To  buckram  out  the  memory  of  a  man. 

— COWPER,  The  Task  :  The  Winter  Walk  at  Noon* 

The  mighty  musician  of  Germany,  ours  by  adoption, 
Who  beheld  in  the  king  his  munificent  pupil  and  patron. 

— SOUTHEY,  A  Vision  of  Judgment. 

While  men  of  sense,  with  Handel's  happier  skill, 
Correct  the  taste,  and  harmonise  the  will ; 


174  HANDEL. 

Teach  their  affections  like  his  notes  to  flow, 
Not  rais'd  too  high,  nor  ever  sunk  too  low. 

— JAMES  CAWTHORN,  Life  Unhappy,  because  we  use  it  Improperly. 

From  tyrant  Handel  rends  the  imperial  bay, 
And  guards  the  Magna  Charta  of — Sol-fa. 

— PAUL  WHITEHEAD,  Honour. 

Yet,  Handel,  raise, 

Yet  wake  to  higher  strains  thy  sacred  lyre : 
The  name  of  ages,  the  supreme  of  things, 
The  great  Messiah  asks  it ;  he  whose  hand 
Stretch'd  o'er  the  wilds  of  space  this  beauteous  ball, 
Whose  spirit  breathes  through  all  his  smiling  works 
Music  and  love — yet  Handel  raise  the  strain. 
Hark  !  what  angelic  sounds,  what  voice  divine 
Breathes  through  the  ravish'd  air  !  my  rapt  ear  feels 
The  harmony  of  heaven.  .  .   . 
Seraphic  Handel !  how  shall  words  describe 
Thy  music's  countless  graces,  nameless  powers  ! 

— DR.  JOHN  LANGHORNE,  A  Poem,  To  the  Memory  of  Mr.  Handel. 

Does  not  the  eye  of  the  human  embryo  predict  the  light  ?  the  ear  of 
Handel  predict  the  witch-craft  of  harmonic  sound  ? — EMERSON,  Essays : 
History. 

"  Of  what  use,"  answers  Madame  de  Stael,  "is  the  Apollo  Belvidere, 
or  the  poetry  of  Milton  ;  the  paintings  of  Raphael,  or  the  strains  of 
Handel  ?  Of  what  use  is  the  rose  or  the  eglantine  ;  the  colours  of  autumn 
•or  the  setting  sun  ?  "  And  yet  what  object  ever  moved  the  heart  as  they 
have  done,  and  ever  will  do  ?  Of  what  use  is  all  that  is  sublime  or  beauti- 
ful in  nature,  if  not  to  the  soul  itself? — SIR  ARCHIBALD  ALISON,  Essays  :. 
The  Crusades. 

Of  Handel,  and  of  Handel  alone,  can  we  say  that  the  most  splendid 
inspirations  of  Hebrew  poetry  gain  an  added  glory  from  his  music,  and 
that  thousands  exist  for  whom  passages  of  Scripture  which  have  for 
•eighteen  centuries  been  very  near  the  heart  of  Christendom  acquire  a  yet 
deeper  meaning,  a  yet  more  spiritual  power,  through  the  strains  with 
"which  his  genius  has  inseparably  associated  them. — A.  J.  BALFOUR, 
Essays  and  Addresses. 

It  may  sound  like  an  anachronism  to  call  Handel  a  contemporary ;  and 
yet  he  seems  so  constantly  with  us,  that  at  times  we  can  hardly  believe 
that  he  has  passed  away.  We  are  surrounded  by  his  effigies ;  no  living 
face  is  more  familiar — no  modern  minstrel  more  beloved  than  he  who  has 
now  lain  quietly  in  the  great  Abbey  for  some  one  hundred  and  ten  years. 
—  REV.  H.  R.  HAWEIS,  Music  and  Morals. 

Why,  Haudel  was  the  most  incorrigible  dreamer,  the  most  irrepressible 
romancist,  that  ever  lived  :  and  every  note  he  wrote  proves  it.  But,  be- 
neath his  dreams,  there  was  a  fund  of  practical  good  sense,  without  which 
he  would  never  have  completed  the  work  which  has  immortalised  him. 
We  read,  in  certain  old-world  stories,  of  dreams  which  work  their  own 
fulfilment.  His  dreams  were  of  that  order.  He  never  neglected  the 


HANDEL,  HANNIBAL.  175 

means.  Because  kind  Nature  had  endowed  him  with  genius,  he  did  not 
throw  himself  with  the  less  ardour  into  the  study  of  Counterpoint.  .  .  . 
Should  the  "  plagiarisms  "  ever  be  clearly  proved,  Handel  will  stand  forth 
not  only  as  the  greatest  constructor  of  Music  that  ever  lived,  but  also  as 
so  skilful  an  adapter  of  other  men's  ideas  to  purposes  of  his  own,  that,  in 
his  hands  "  filched  "  thoughts  were  as  great  as  original  ones,  and  "  pebbles  " 
as  brilliant  as  "diamonds". — W.  S.  ROCKSTRO,  Life  of  G.  F.  Handel. 

Grandeur  is  the  distinctive  characteristic  which  dominates  over  all  the 
compositions  of  Handel.  Even  in  the  exquisite  gracefulness  of  Ads  and 
Galatea  there  is  a  latent  vigour,  a  certain  solemnity  of  style,  which  elevates 
whilst  it  chains  the  mind.  Every  one  is  struck  with  this.  So  true  is  it, 
that  critics,  biographers,  friends,  and  enemies  all  concur  in  speaking  of 
him  as  a  "colossus,"  a  "giant,"  a  "man  mountain".  His  atmosphere 
is  the  Immensity  resplendent  with  the  sun.  Like  Corneille,  he  lived  in 
the  sublime.  .  .  .  Handel  has  treated  all  styles,  and  has  excelled  in  all, 
whether  the  subject  be  gay  or  serious,  light  or  solemn,  profane  or  sacred. 
He  would  be  the  Shakespeare  of  music  if  he  were  not  the  Michael 
Angelo.  .  .  .  In  that  musical  Olympus  the  most  divine  masters  have  given 
to  Handel  the  place  of  Jupiter  Tonans.  "  He  is  the  father  of  us  all,"  ex- 
claimed the  patriarchal  Haydn.  "  Handel,"  said  the  dogmatic  Mozart, 
"  knows  better  than  any  one  of  us  what  is  capable  of  producing  a  great 
effect;  when  he  chooses  he  can  strike  like  a  thunderbolt."  The  lyrical 
Beethoven  called  him  "  the  monarch  of  the  musical  kingdom.  He  was 
the  greatest  composer  that  ever  lived,"  said  he  to  Mr.  Moscheles.  "  I 
would  uncover  my  head,  and  kneel  before  his  tomb." — VICTOR  SCHOEL- 
CHER,  Life  of  Handel  (transl.}. 


HANNIBAL. 
Carthaginian  General :  B.C.  247-183. 

Or,  if  dire  Hannibal  thy  model  be, 
Dread  lest,  like  him,  thou  bear  the  thunder  home  I 
Perchance  ev'n  now  a  Scipio  dawns  for  thee, 
Thou  doomest  Carthage  while  thou  smitest  Rome — 
Write,  write  "  Let  carnage  cease  !  " 

— LYTTON,  Napoleon  at  Isola  Bella. 

At  his  name  the  heart  of  the  patriot  has  thrilled  through  every  subsequent 
age.  To  celebrate  his  virtues,  genius  and  learning  have  striven  in  every 
succeeding  country ;  and  the  greatest  praise  which  the  world  can  yet 
bestow  on  warriors  is  to  compare  them  to  Hannibal.  No  name,  even  in 
the  majestic  annals  of  Roman  victors,  stand  forth  with  lustre  equal  to  that 
of  the  Carthaginian  hero.  These  were  made  by  their  countrymen,  but 
his  countrymen  were  made  by  him.  .  .  .  Of  Hannibal's  political  wisdom 
and  far-seeing  sagacity,  ancient  history  is  full.  Alone  of  all  his  con- 
temporaries, he  clearly,  and  from  his  very  infancy,  perceived  the  extent 
of  the  danger  which  threatened  his  country  from  the  insatiable  ambition 
and  growing  power  of  the  Romans ;  alone  he  pointed  out  the  only  mode 
in  which  it  could  be  successfully  combated.  He  was  at  once  the  Burke, 
the  Pitt,  and  the  Wellington  of  his  country. — SIR  ARCHIBALD  ALISON, 
Essays  :  Hannibal. 


176  HARCOURT,  HARLEY,  HARVEY,  HASTINGS. 

VISCOUNT  HARCOURT. 
Lord  Chancellor  of  England  :  1660-1727. 

Harcourt  I  see,  for  eloquence  renown 'd, 
The  mouth  of  justice,  oracle  of  law  ! 
Another  Simon  is  beside  him  found, 
Another  Simon,  like  as  straw  to  straw. 

—GAY,  Epistle  VI. :  To  Mr.  Pope. 

And  Harcourt's  knowledge,  equitably  shown, 
Makes  justice  call  his  firm  decrees  her  own. 

-— PARNELL,  On  Queen  Anne's  Peace. 

ROBERT  HARLEY,  EARL  OF  OXFORD, 
Lord  Treasurer  of  England  :  1661-1724. 

On  Britain  Europe's  safety  lies ; 
Britain  is  lost  if  Harley  dies  : 
Harley  depends  upon  your  skill ; 
Think  what  you  save,  or  what  you  kill. 

— SWIFT,  Epigram  Extempore. 

DR.  WILLIAM  HARVEY. 
Discoverer  of  the  Circulation  of  the  Blood  :  1578-1657. 

Thus  Harvey  sought  for  truth  in  Truth's  own  book, 

The  creatures,  which  by  God  Himself  was  writ ; 

And  wisely  thought  'twas  fit 

Not  to  read  comments  only  upon  it, 

But  on  the  original  itself  to  look.  .  .  . 

Had  Harvey  to  this  road  confin'd  his  wit, 

His  noble  Circle  of  the  blood  had  been  untrodden  yet. 

Great  Doctor  !  the  art  of  curing's  cured  by  thee  ; 

We  now  thy  patient,  Physic,  see 

From  all  inveterate  diseases  free, 

Purg'd  of  old  errors  by  thy  care, 

New-dieted,  put  forth  to  clearer  air. 

— COWLEY,  Ode  Upon  Dr.  Harvey. 

The  circling  streams,  once  thought  but  pools,  of  blood 
(Whether  life's  fuel,  or  the  body's  food) 
From  dark  oblivion  Harvey's  name  shall  save 
While  Ent  keeps  all  the  honour  that  he  gave. 

— DRYDEN,  Epistle  II. :  To  Dr.  Charleton. 

WARREN  HASTINGS. 
Governor-General  oj  British  India  :  1732-1818. 

Hastings !  I  knew  thee  young,  and  of  a  mind 
While  young,  humane,  conversable,  and  kind ; 
Nor  can  I  well  believe  thee,  gentle  then, 


HASTINGS,  HAVELOCK.  177 

Now  grown  a  villain,  and  the  worst  of  men  : 
But  rather  some  suspect,  who  have  oppress'd 
And  worried  thee,  as  not  themselves  the  best. 

— COWPER,  To  Warren  Hastings,  Esq. 

Here,  where  wrongs  are  forgiven,  was  the  injured  Hastings  beside  him : 
Strong  in  his  high  deserts,  and  in  innocence  happy,  though  injured, 
He,  in  his  good  old  age,  outlived  persecution  and  malice. 

— SOUTHEY,  A  Vision  of  Judgment. 

The  just  fame  of  Hastings  rises  still  higher,  when  we  reflect  that  he 
was  not  bred  a  statesman  ;  that  he  was  sent  from  school  to  a  counting- 
house  ;  and  that  he  was  employed  during  the  prime  of  his  manhood  as  a 
commercial  agent,  far  from  all  intellectual  society. — MACAULAY,  Essays  : 
Warren  Hastings. 

It  is  no  wonder  that  among  the  sundry  and  manifold  difficulties  of  such 
a  period,  a  man  of  his  training  and  temper  should  have  occasionally  done 
things  that  are  hard  to  justify  and  easy  to  condemn,  or  that  his  public 
acts  should  have  brought  him  to  the  verge  of  private  ruin.  For  he  was 
undoubtedly  cast  in  the  type,  so  constantly  recurrent  in  political  history, 
of  the  sons  of  Zeruiah,  and  he  very  nearly  earned  their  historical  reward. 
— SIR  ALFRED  LYALL,  Life  of  Warren  Hastings. 

SIR  HENRY  HAVELOCK. 
English  Soldier :  1795-1857. 

Honour  to  Henry  Havelock  !  tho'  not  of  kingly  blood, 

He  wore  the  double  royalty  of  being  great  and  good. 

He  rose  and  reacht  the  topmost  height  ;  our  Hero  lowly  born  : 

So  from  the  lowly  grass  hath  grown  the  proud  embattled  Corn ! 

He  rose  up  in  our  cruel  need,  and  towering  on  he  trod  ; 

Bearing  his  brow  to  battle  bold,  as  humbly  to  his  God. 

He  did  his  work  nor  thought  of  nations  ringing  with  his  name, 

He  walkt  with  God,  and  talkt  with  God,  nor  cared  if  following  Fame 

Should  find  him  toiling  in  the  field,  or  sleeping  underground  ; 

Nor  did  he  mind  what  resting-place,  with  heaven  embracing  round; 

— GERALD  MASSEY,  Havelock's  March. 

Havelock's  religion  underlay  his  whole  character,  of  which  it  formed 
the  stamina.  For  thirty-five  years  of  his  life  religion  was  the  ruling 
principle  which  pervaded  his  mind  and  regulated  all  his  conduct.  It  was 
this  which  enabled  him  to  overcome  the  innate  defects  of  his  character, 
and  to  become  distinguished  for  qualities  which  nature  had  denied  him. 
In  all  circumstances  he  was  the  bold  and  unflinching  champion  of 
Christian  truth,  though  he  never  obtruded  his  religious  views  on  others. 
...  It  was  his  constant  aim  to  adorn  his  religious  profession,  and  to 
demonstrate  that  spiritual-mindedness  was  not  incompatible  with  the 
energetic  pursuit  of  a  secular  calling — that  "  a  saint  could  be  a  soldier  ". 
More  than  any  other  chief  did  he  appear  to  combine  the  great  military 
talents  of  the  generals  of  the  Commonwealth  with  the  fervour — though 
not  the  fanaticism — of  their  religious  feelings  ;  and  it  is,  perhaps,  owing 
in  a  great  measure  to  this  identity  of  character,  that  the  name  of  Have- 
lock  is  so  warmly  cherished  by  his  fellow  countrymen. — J.  C.  MARSHMAN, 
Memoirs  of  Sir  Henry  Havelock. 

12 


178  HAWK  WOOD,  HAWTHORNE. 

SIR  JOHN  HAWKWOOD. 
English  Soldier  of  Fortune  :  1394. 

Hawkwood  appears  to  me  the  first  real  general  of  modern  times :  the 
earliest  master,  however  imperfect,  in  the  science  of  Turenne  and  Welling- 
ton. Every  contemporary  Italian  historian  speaks  with  admiration  of  his 
skilful  tactics  in  battle,  his  stratagems,  his  well-conducted  retreats.  .  .  . 
Hawkwood  was  not  only  the  greatest  but  the  last  of  the  foreign  condottieri, 
or  captains  of  mercenary  bands. — HALLAM,  Student's  Middle  Ages,  Chap. 
III.,  Part  II. 

NATHANIEL  HAWTHORNE. 
American  Novelist  and  Poet :  1804-1864. 

There  is  Hawthorne,  with  genius  so  shrinking  and  rare 
That  you  hardly  at  first  see  the  strength  that  is  there : 
A  frame  so  robust,  with  a  nature  so  sweet, 
So  earnest,  so  graceful,  so  solid,  so  fleet, 
Is  worth  a  descent  from  Olympus  to  meet. 

— J.  R.  LOWELL,  A  Fable  for  Critics. 

Should  you  ask  me,  Who  is  Hawthorne  ? 

Who  this  Hawthorne  that  you  mention  ? 

I  should  answer,  I  should  tell  you, 

"  He's  a  Yankee,  who  has  written 

Many  books  you  must  have  heard  of; 

For  he  wrote  The  Scarlet  Letter 

And  The  House  of  Seven  Gables, 

Wrote,  too,  Rappacini's  Daughter, 

And  a  lot  of  other  stories  ; — 

Some  are  long,  and  some  are  shorter . 

Some  are  good,  and  some  are  better. 

And  this  Hawthorne  is  a  Consul, 

Sitting  in  a  dismal  office, — 

Dark  and  dirty,  dingy  office, 

Full  of  mates,  and  full  of  captains, 

Full  of  sailors  and  of  niggers, — 

And  he  lords  it  over  Yankees."  .  .  . 

Do  you  ask  me,  "  Tell  me  further 

Of  this  Consul,  of  this  Hawthorne?  " 

I  would  say,  "  He  is  a  sinner, — 

Never  goes  inside  a  chapel, 

Only  sees  outsides  of  chapels, 

Says  his  prayers  without  a  chapel ! 

I  would  say  that  he  is  lazy, 

Very  lazy,  good  for  nothing ; 

Hardly  ever  goes  to  dinners, 

Never  goes  to  balls  or  soirees : 

Thinks  one  friend  worth  twenty  friendly  ; 

Cares  for  love,  but  not  for  liking ; 

Hardly  knows  a  dozen  people." 

— HENRY  BRIGHT,  Song  of  Consul  Hawthorne. 


HAWTHORNE,  HAYDN,  HAYDON.  179 

There  are  few  authors  with  whom  the  world  is  more  intimate  than  the 
one  supposed  to  have  most  shunned  its  intimacy.  But  Nathaniel  Haw- 
thorne, though  his  peculiar  sensibility  shrank  from  men,  loved  mankind, 
and  described  his  earliest  writings  as  "attempts  to  open  an  intercourse 
with  the  world".  In  his  works  he  has  occasionally  taken  the  world  into 
his  confidence  in  matters  which  most  men  of  the  world  would  veil — as  in 
the  opening  chapter  of  The  Scarlet  Letter.  Like  his  own  Hilda,  in 
Transformation,  he  was  spiritually  compelled  to  descend  from  his  aerial 
hermitage,  and  unburden  his  heart  in  the  world's  confessional. — DR. 
MONCURE  CONWAY,  Life  of  Nathaniel  Hawthorne. 

We  may  hope  that,  though  America  may  never  produce  another  Haw- 
thorne, yet  other  American  writers  may  arise  who  will  apply  some  of  his 
principles  of  art,  and  develop  the  fineness  of  observation  and  delicate 
sense  of  artistic  propriety  for  which  he  was  so  conspicuous.  On  that 
matter,  at  least,  we  can  have  no  jealousies ;  and  if  our  cousins  raise  more 
Hawthornes,  we  may  possibly  feel  more  grateful  than  for  some  of  their 
•other  productions. — LESLIE  STEPHEN,  Hours  in  a  Library,  First  Scries, 

FRANZ  JOSEPH  HAYDN. 
German  Musical  Composer:  1732-1809. 

In  Haydn's  oratorios,  the  notes  present  to  the  imagination,  not  only 
motions,  as  of  the  snake,  the  stag,  and  the  elephant,  but  colours  also ;  as 
the  green  grass.  The  law  of  harmonic  sounds  reappears  in  the  harmonic 
colours. — EMERSON,  Miscellanies  :  Nature. 

We  can  assert  with  confidence  that  without  Haydn  we  should  not  have 
the  Mozart  we  know ;  that  without  Mozart  we  should  not  have  the 
Beethoven  we  know ;  and  that  without  Beethoven  the  whole  musical 
history  of  the  nineteenth  century  would  have  been  utterly  different  from 
what  it  is. — A.  J.  BALFOUR,  Essays  and  Addresses. 

BENJAMIN  ROBERT  HAYDON. 
English  Historical  Painter  :  1786-1846. 

Haydon  was  exactly  the  vulgar  idea  of  a  man  of  genius.  He  had  all  the 
morbid  peculiarities  which  are  supposed  by  fools  to  belong  to  intellectual 
superiority,— eccentricity,  jealous  caprice,  infinite  disdain  for  other  men  ; 
and  yet  he  was  as  poor,  commonplace,  a  creature  as  any  in  the  world.  He 
painted  signs,  and  gave  himself  more  airs  than  if  he  had  painted  the  Car- 
toons. .  .  .  Whether  you  struck  him  or  stroked  him,  starved  him  or  fed 
him,  he  snapped  at  your  hand  in  just  the  same  way.  He  would  beg  you 
in  piteous  accents  to  buy  an  acre  and  a  half  of  canvas  that  he  had  spoiled. 
Some  good-natured  Lord  asks  the  price.  Haydon  demands  a  hundred 
guineas.  His  Lordship  gives  the  money  out  of  mere  charity,  and  is  re- 
warded by  some  such  entry  as  this  in  Haydon's  journal:  "A  hundred 
guineas,  and  for  such  a  work  !  I  expected  that,  for  very  shame,  he  would 
have  made  it  a  thousand.  But  he  is  a  mean,  sordid  wretch."  In  the 
meantime  the  purchaser  is  looking  out  for  the  most  retired  spot  in  his 
house  to  hide  the  huge  daub  which  he  has  bought,  for  ten  times  its  value, 
out  of  mere  compassion. — MACAULAY,  Life  and  Letters,  Vol.  II. 


i8o  HAZLITT. 

WILLIAM  HAZLITT. 
English  Critic :  1778-1830. 

Hazlitt's  brilliancy  is  seen  chiefly  in  separate  splinterings  of  phrase  or 
image  which  throw  upon  the  eye  a  vitreous  scintillation  for  a  moment, 
but  spread  no  deep  suffusions  of  colour,  and  distribute  no  masses  of 
mighty  shadow.  A  flash,  a  solitary  flash,  and  all  is  gone.  Rhetoric,' 
according  to  its  quality,  stands  in  many  degrees  of  relation  to  the  per- 
manencies of  truth ;  and  all  rhetoric,  like  all  flesh,  is  partly  unreal,  and 
the  glory  of  both  is  fleeting.  .  .  .  Some  fireworks  require  an  hour's 
duration  for  the  expansion  of  their  glory  ;  others,  as  if  formed  from  ful- 
minating powder,  expire  in  the  very  act  of  birth.  Precisely  on  that  scale 
of  duration  and  of  power  stand  the  glitterings  of  rhetoric  that  are  not 
worked  into  the  texture,  but  washed  on  from  the  outside.  Hazlitt's 
thoughts  were  of  the  same  fractured  and  discontinuous  order  as  his  illus- 
trative images — seldom  or  never  self-diffusive;  and  that  is  a  sufficient 
argument  that  he  had  never  cultivated  philosophic  thinking. — THOMAS  DE 
QUINCEY,  Leaders  in  Literature. 

That  spiritual  essence,  Hazlitt  himself. — JOHN  WILSON,  Essays: 
Streams. 

Hazlitt  was,  even  by  nature,  but  by  circumstances  still  more  so,  a  lone 
man,  living,  moving,  and  having  his  being,  for  and  to  himself  exclusively ; 
ac  utterly  cut  off  from  fulfilling  and  exercising  the  ordinary  pursuits  and 
affections  of  his  kind,  and  of  his  nature,  as  if  he  had  been  bound  hand  and 
foot  in  a  dungeon,  or  banished  to  a  desert.  And  so,  indeed,  he  was — bound 
in  the  gloomiest  of  all  dungeons — that  built  for  us  by  our  own  unbridled 
passions — banished  to  that  dreariest  of  all  deserts,  spread  out  for  us  by 
seared  hopes  and  blighted  affections. — P.  G.  PATMORE,  M y  Friends  and 
Acquaintances,  Vol.  II. 

Hazlitt  harps  a  good  deal  on  one  string  ;  but  that  string  vibrates  forcibly. 
His  best  passages  are  generally  an  accumulation  of  short,  pithy  sentences, 
shaped  in  strong  feeling,  and  coloured  by  picturesque  association  ;  but  re- 
peating, rather  than  corroborating,  each  other.  The  last  blow  goes  home, 
but  each  falls  on  the  same  place.  He  varies  the  phrase  more  than  the 
thought ;  and  sometimes  he  becomes  obscure,  because  he  is  so  absorbed 
in  his  own  feelings  that  he  forgets  the  very  existence  of  strangers  who 
require  explanation. — LESLIE  STEPHEN,  Hours  in  a  Library,  Second  Scries. 

There  never  was  such  an  epicure  of  his  moods  as  Hazlitt. — A.  T. 
QuiLLER-CoucH,  Adventures  in  Criticism. 

There  may  be  others  who,  in  different  parts  of  their  work,  are  more  un- 
equal than  he  is ;  but  with  him  the  inequality  is  pervading,  and  shows 
itself  in  his  finest  passages,  in  those  where  he  is  most  at  home,  as  much 
as  in  his  hastiest  and  most  uncongenial  task-work.  It  could  not,  indeed, 
be  otherwise,  because  the  inequality  itself  is  due  less  to  an  intellectual  than 
to  a  moral  defect.  The  clear  sunshine  of  Hazlitt's  admirably  acute  intellect 
is  always  there ;  but  it  is  constantly  obscured  by  driving  clouds  of  furious 
prejudice.  Even  as  the  clouds  pass,  the  light  may  be  seen  on  distant  and 
scattered  parts  of  the  landscape  ;  but  wherever  their  influence  extends,  there 
is  nothing  but  thick  darkness,  gusty  wind  and  drenching  rain.  And  the 


HAZLITT,  HEBER.  181 

t\vo  phenomena,  the  abiding  intellectual  light,  and  the  fits  and  squalls  of 
moral  darkness,  appear  to  be  totally  independent  of  each  other,  or  of  any 
single  will  or  cause  of  any  kind. — GEORGE  SAINTSBURY,  Essay  sin  English 
Literature. 

For  an  author  to  fare  better  dead  than  alive  is  good  proof  of  his  literary 
vivacity  and  charm.  The  rare  merit  of  Hazlitt's  writing  was  recognised 
'in  his  lifetime  by  good  judges,  but  his  fame  was  obscured  by  the  unpopu- 
larity of  many  of  his  opinions,  and  the  venom  he  was  too  apt  to  instil 
into  his  personal  reminiscences.  He  was  not  a  safe  man  to  confide  in. 
He  had  a  forked  crest  which  he  sometimes  lifted.  Because  they  both 
wrote  essays  and  were  fond  of  the  Elizabethans,  it  became  the  fashion  to 
link  Hazlitt's  name  with  Lamb's.  Hazlitt  suffered  by  the  comparison. 
.  .  .  William  Hazlitt  had  to  take  a  thrashing  from  life.  He  took  it 
standing  up  like  a  man,  not  lying  down  like  a  cur ;  but  take  it  he  had  to 
do.  He  died  on  i8th  September,  1830,  tired  out,  discomfited,  defeated. 
Nobody  reviewing  the  facts  of  his  life  can  say  it  was  well  spent.  There 
is  nothing  in  it  of  encouragement.  He  leaped  what  he  sowed,  and  it 
proved  a  sorry  harvest. — AUGUSTINE  BIRRELL,  Res  Judicatrf. 

REGINALD  HEBER. 
Bishop  of  Calcutta  :  1783-1826. 

Yes,  to  the  Christian,  to  the  Heathen  world, 

Heber,  thou  art  not  dead,  .  .  .  thou  canst  not  die ! 

Nor  can  I  think  of  thee  as  lost. 

A  little  portion  of  this  little  isle 

At  first  divided  us  ;  then  half  the  globe  : 

The  same  earth  held  us  still ;  but  when, 

O  Reginald,  wert  thou  so  near  as  now ! 

— SOUTHEY,  Ode  on  the  Portrait  of  Bishop  Heber. 

Praise !  for  yet  one  more  name,  with  power  endow'd 

To  cheer  and  guide  us  onward  as  we  press ; 
Yet  one  more  image,  on  the  heart  bestow'd. 

To  dwell  there — beautiful  in  holiness  ! 
Thine,  Heber,  thine !  whose  mem'ry  from  the  dead 
Shines  as  the  star  which  to  the  Saviour  led. 

— FELICIA  HEMANS. 

We  have  no  bishops  on  our  establishment ;  and  have  been  accustomed 
to  think  that  we  are  better  without  them.  But,  if  we  could  persuade 
ourselves  that  bishops  in  general  were  at  all  like  Bishop  Heber,  we  should 
tremble  for  our  Presbyterian  orthodoxy ;  and  feel  not  only  veneration, 
but  something  very  like  envy,  for  a  communion  which  could  number 
many  such  men  among  its  ministers. — LORD  JEFFREY,  Essays. 

Heber  stands  alone  as  the  one  English  gentleman — rector  and  squire, 
poet  and  scholar— who  gave  himself  in  early  life  to  the  missionary  enter- 
prise when  the  Church  of  England  was  reproached  by  its  own  son, 
Southey,  for  that  hostility  which  Henry  Martyn  was  even  then  beginning 
to  convert  into  devotion  to  the  cause.  What  Heber,  representing  Oxford, 
as  Martyn  inspired  Cambridge,  did  "  to  elevate  the  Church  of  England," 
to  use  Mr.  Gladstone's  happy  phrase,  in  the  first  twenty  years  of  the 


i82  HEBEK,  HEGEL,  HEINE. 

century,  by  his  gracious  character,  broad  charity,  deep  spirituality,  parish 
work,  cultured  preaching,  genial  learning,  missionary  enthusiasm,  and 
sacred  gift  of  song,  he  crowned  in  the  last  three  by  his  statesman-like 
administration  of  the  vastest  of  all  Episcopal  dioceses,  and  by  his  martyr- 
like  death. — GEORGE  SMITH,  Life  of  Bishop  Hebcr. 

GEORG  W.  F.  HEGEL. 
German  Philosopher :  1770-1831. 

As  Socrates  was  compared  to  those  figures  of  Silenus  which  were  con- 
tained within  the  image  of  an  Olympic  god,  so  it  may  be  said  that  in 
Hegel  we  find  an  idealist,  for  whom  truth  is  poetry  and  religion  one  with 
philosophy,  in  the  dress  of  a  punctual  and  orderly  civil  servant  of  the 
Prussian  Government.  ...  To  him,  therefore,  the  great  aphorism,  in 
which  the  Christian  ethics  and  theology  may  be  said  to  be  summed  up, 
that  "  he  that  saveth  his  life  shall  lose  it,  and  he  that  loseth  his  life  shall 
save  it,"  is  no  mere  epigrammatic  saying,  whose  self-contradiction  is  not 
to  be  regarded  too  closely  ;  it  is  rather  the  first  distinct,  though  as  yet 
undeveloped,  expression  of  the  exact  truth  as  to  the  nature  of  the  spirit. 
— EDWARD  CAIRO,  Life  of  Hegel. 

Perhaps  no  primordial  thinker,  no  man  of  a  piercing  and  puissant 
brain,  ever  talked  so  much  hollow  and  high-sounding  nonsense  as  Hegel, 
though  the  more  unintelligible  he  was  to  himself  and  to  others  the  more 
his  ardent  acolytes  celebrated  him  as  the  Messiah  of  philosophy.  It 
would  be  juster  to  delineate  him  as  the  Archimimus  in  Philosophy's 
funeral  procession.  No  Materialist,  Hegel  yet  scattered  the  seeds  of 
loathsome  materialisms,  which  now  rankly  flourish.  Enlightened  in  his 
political  views,  he  yet  glorified  the  contemptible  Prussian  bureaucracy, 
taught  it  to  be  scientifically  cruel  where  before  it  had  simply  displayed 
the  coarse  cruelty  of  routine.  Despising  the  mob  he  yet  heralded  the 
silliest  of  democracies,  a  democracy  unanimously  condemned  by  Europe, 
a  dozen  years  ago,  a  democracy  compared  with  which  Red  Republicanism 
in  France  and  elsewhere  was  wise  and  worthy.  The  self-appointed 
renovator  of  moral  as  of  metaphysical  science,  Hegel  yet  perfected  lotos- 
eating  into  an  art  for  the  benefit  of  a  nation  of  lotos-eaters.  Such  is  the 
man  before  whom — a  clever  Vera — many  accomplished  students  would 
have  us  bow  down. — WILLIAM  MACCALL,  The  New  Materialism. 


HEINRICH  HEINE. 
German  Poet :  1797-1856. 
Heine  for  songs  ;  for  kisses,  how  ? 


— BROWNING,  Dis  alitcr  visttm. 


What,  then,  so  harsh  and  malign, 
Heine  !  distils  from  thy  life  ? 
Poisons  the  peace  of  thy  grave  ?  . 
The  Spirit  of  the  world 
Beholding  the  absurdity  of  men — 


HEINE,  HEMANS.  183 

Their  vaunts,  their  feats — let  a  sardonic  smile, 
For  one  short  moment,  wander  o'er  his  lips. 
That  smile  was  Heine  ! 

— MATTHEW  ARNOLD,  Heine's  Grave. 

The  moonlight  witchery  of  Heine's  song. 

— ALEXANDER  ANDERSON,  Sonnets  to  a  Friend,  II. 

This  was  a  singer,  a  poet  bold, 

Compact  of  Fire  and  Rainbow  Gold: 

Compact  of  Rainbow  Gold  and  of  Fire, 

Of  sorrow  and  sin  and  of  heart's  desire — 

Of  good  and  of  evil  and  things  unknown, 

A  merciless  poet  who  cut  to  the  bone. 

He  sounded  the  depths  of  our  grief  and  our  gladness, 

He  laughed  at  our  mirth  and  he  wept  at  our  madness ; 

He  knew  all  the  joy  of  the  world,  all  the  strife, 

He  knew,  and  he  knew  not,  the  meaning  of  life. 

— WALTER  HERRIES  POLLOCK,  Heinrich  Heine. 

The  exuberance  of  Heine's  heart,  as  has  been  well  said,  was  only 
equalled  by  the  dryness  of  his  spirit ;  a  real  enthusiasm  was  blended 
with  an  unquenchable  love  of  satire;  "his  exquisite  dilettantism  made 
him  adore  the  gods  and  goddesses  of  Greece  at  the  expense  even  of 
Christianity".  In  short,  qualities  scarcely  ever  found  in  combination, 
were  combined  in  him ;  in  one  weak,  suffering  body  two  distinct  and 
opposite  natures,  each  equally  mighty,  were  united.  Perhaps  the  best 
name  ever  applied  to  him  is  that  of  the  "Julian  of  poetry". — E.  A. 
BOWRING,  Sketch  of  Heine's  Life  (prefixed  to  his  Poems). 

Heine  passed  as  a  drifting  cloud :  but  his  songs  remain  like  stars  in 
the  heaven  of  poetry. — WILLIAM  SHARP,  Life  of  Heinrich  Heine. 

The  cynicism  of  Heine,  which  is,  after  all,  only  sentimentalism  soured. 
— J.  R.  LOWELL,  Among  my  Books. 

FELICIA  DOROTHEA  HEMANS. 
English  Poet :  1791-1835. 

Gone  is  she 

Who  shrouded  Casablanca,  she  who  cast 
The  iron  mould  of  Ivan,  yet  whose  song 
Was  soft  and  varied  as  the  nightingale's, 
And  heard  above  all  others. 

— LANDOR,  TJie  Heroines  of  England. 

Perhaps  she  shuddered  while  the  world's  cold  hand  her  brow  was  wreathing, 
But  never  wronged  that  mystic  breath  which  breathed  in  all  her  breathing, 
Which  drew  from  rocky  earth  and  man,  abstractions  high  and  moving, 
Beauty,  if  not  the  beautiful,  and  love,  if  not  the  loving.  .  .   . 
Be  happy,  crowned  and  living  One  !  and  as  thy  dust  decayeth 
May  thine  own  England  say  for  thee  what  now  for  Her  it  sayeth — 
"  Albeit  softly  in  our  ears  her  silver  song  was  ringing, 
The  foot-fall  of  her  parting  soul  is  softer  than  her  singing." 

— ELIZABETH  BARRETT  BROWNING,  Felicia  Hewans. 


184      HEMANS,  HENRY  IV.,  HENRY  V.,  HENRY  VIII. 

The  genius  of  Felicia  Hermans,  beautiful  and  lofty  as  Christian  fame, 
we  have  ever  loved,  and  admired,  and  honoured. — JOHN  WILSON,  Essays  : 
The  Loves  of  the  Poets. 

HENRY  IV. 

King  of  France  :  1553-1610. 

Take,  for  example,  the  best  French  sovereign,  Henry  IV.,  a  king  who 
restored  order,  terminated  a  terrible  civil  war,  brought  the  finances  into 
an  excellent  condition,  made  his  country  respected  throughout  Europe, 
and  endeared  himself  to  the  great  body  of  the  people  whom  he  ruled. 
Yet  this  man  was  twice  a  Huguenot,  and  twice  a  Papist.  He  was,  as 
Davila  hints,  strongly  suspected  as  having  no  religion  at  all  in  theory ; 
and  was  certainly  not  much  under  religious  restraints  in  his  practice. — 
MACAULAY,  Essays:  Gladstone  on  Church  and  State. 

HENRY  V. 
King  of  England  :  1388-1422. 

O  for  a  muse  of  fire,  that  would  ascend 

The  brightest  heaven  of  invention  ! 

A  kingdom  for  a  stage,  princes  to  act, 

And  monarchs  to  behold  the  swelling  scene  ! 

Then  should  the  warlike  Harry,  like   himself, 

Assume  the  port  of  Mars  :  and  at  his  heels, 

Leash'd  in  like  hounds,  should  famine,  sword,  and  fire, 

Crouch  for  employment. 

— SHAKSPERE,  King  Henry  V. 

King  Henry  the  Fifth,  too  famous  to  live  long ! 
England  ne'er  lost  a  king  of  so  much  worth.   .  .   . 
Henry  the  Fifth  !  thy  ghost  I  invocate  ; 
Prosper  this  realm,  keep  it  from  evil  broils ! 
Combat  with  adverse  planets  in  the  heavens  ! 
A  far  more  glorious  star  thy  soul  will  make, 
Than  Julius  Caesar,  or  bright — .  .  .   . 
That  ever-living  man  of  memory, 
Henry  the  Fifth. 

—Id.,  King  Henry  VI.,  Act  I.,  Sc.  I. 

Henry  the  Fifth,  that  man  made  out  of  fire. 

— DRAYTON,  The  Battle  of  Agincourt. 

HENRY  VIII. 

King  of  England  :  1491-1547. 

The  imperial  stature,  the  colossal  stride, 
Are  yet  before  me ;  yet  do  I  behold 
The  broad  full  visage,  chest  of  amplest  mould, 
The  vestments  broidered  with  barbaric  pride  : 
And  lo !  a  poniard,  at  the  monarch's  side, 


HENRY  VIII.,  HERBERT.  185 

Hangs  ready  to  be  grasped  in  sympathy 
With  the  keen  threatenings  of  that  fulgent  eye, 
Below  the  white-rimmed  bonnet,  far  descried. 
Who  trembles  now  at  thy  capricious  mood  ? 
'  Mid  those  surrounding  worthies,  haughty  king ! 
We  rather  think,  with  grateful  mind  sedate, 
How  Providence  educeth,  from  the  spring 
Of  lawless  will,  unlooked-for  streams  of  good, 
Which  neither  force  shall  check  nor  time  abate. 

— WORDSWORTH,  Sonnet  on  Henry  VIII. 

Henry  the  Eighth,  the  Caligula  of  England. — LAMARTINE. 

Henry  VIII.  perhaps  approached  as  nearly  to  the  ideal  standard  of 
perfect  wickedness  as  the  infirmities  of  human  nature  would  allow. — SIR 
JAMES  MACKINTOSH. 

It  can  hardly  be  a  matter  of  surprise  that  Henry  VIII.  should  be  taken 
by  some  persons  to  have  been  "our  first  Protestant  King".  Neverthe- 
less, it  is  a  great  mistake :  Henry's  mission  was  not  to  build,  but  to 
destroy.  It  is  a  wonderful  fact  that  in  the  last  fourteen  years  of  his 
reign  he  accomplished  the  two  remarkable  exploits,  of  separating  his 
kingdom  from  the  Church  of  Rome,  and  of  clearing  monasticism  out  of 
England.  To  accomplish  these  two  great  achievements  a  man  of  re- 
markable kind  was  needed.  He  must  be  a  man  of  strong  will  and  of  a 
strong  right  arm.  His  chief  characteristic  must  be  that  which  was  seen 
in  the  Eighth  Henry  throughout.  It  was,  says  Bishop  Short,  "  want  of 
self-restraint". — ROBERT  BENTON  SEELEY,  England's  Training. 


GEORGE  HERBERT. 
English  Parson  and  Poet :  1593-1632. 

Of  lyrics,  he,  the  utmost  fame 

Has  gain'd  ;  and  how  they  vail,  to  hear  him  sing  ; 

Bocace  in  voice,  and  Casimire  in  wing. 

— G.  DANIEL,  An  Ode  upon  "  The  Temple". 

Two  centuries  have  vanished  since  thy  day, 

And  yet  that  venerable  Temple  stands 
Untouched  by  time,  impervious  to  decay  : 

But  thou,  blest  builder,  livest  in  other  lands — 
In  other  mansions,  fashioned  not  of  clay, 

Or  man's  device — thy  "  house  not  made  with  hands  ". 

— GEORGE  MORINE,  George  Herbert's  "  Temple". 

Such  as  the  Heaven-taught  skill  of  Herbert  drew. 

— WORDSWORTH. 

What  Quarles's  poetry  was  and  is  to  more  plebeian  Christians,  and  to 
those  fond  of  "  strong  meat  "  in  theology,  the  same  was  and  has  been 
Herbert's  "  Temple  "  to  Christians  of  more  aristocratic  breeding  or  of 
milder  theological  tastes. — DAVID  MASSON,  The  Life  of  Milton,  Vol.  I. 


i86  HERODOTUS,  HEKRICK. 

HERODOTUS. 
Greek  Historian:  B.C.  484-408. 

Herodotus  is  all  sweetness. — DR.  VICESIMUS  KNOX,  Essays  :  Cursory 
Thoughts  on  Biography. 

As  the  general  father  of  prose  composition,  Herodotus  is  nearly  related 
to  all  literature  whatsoever,  modern  not  less  than  ancient ;  and  as  the 
father  of  what  may  be  called  ethnographical  geography,  as  a  man  who 
speculated  most  ably  on  all  the  humanities  of  science — that  is,  on  all  the 
scientific  questions  which  naturally  interest  our  human  sensibilities  in 
this  great  temple  which  we  look  up  to,  the  pavilion  of  the  sky,  the  sun, 
the  moon,  the  atmosphere,  with  its  climates  and  its  winds ;  or  in  this 
home  which  we  inherit,  the  earth,  with  its  hills  and  rivers — Herodotus 
ought  least  of  all  to  be  classed  amongst  historians:  that  is  but  a 
secondary  title  for  him  ;  he  deserves  to  be  rated  as  the  leader  amongst 
philosophical  polyhistors,  which  is  the  nearest  designation  to  that  of 
encyclopedist  current  in  the  Greek  literature.  .  .  .  We  hold  that  Hero- 
dotus furnishes  by  much  the  largest  basis  for  vast  commentaries  revealing 
the  archaeologies  of  the  human  race  :  whilst,  as  the  eldest  of  prose  writers, 
he  justifies  his  majestic  station  as  a  brotherly  assessor  on  the  same  throne 
with  Homer. — -DE  QUINCEY,  Leaders  in  Literature. 

Herodotus  does  not  expect  to  be  pinned  to  conclusions.  As  Plutarch 
angrily  puts  it,  he  cares  for  accuracy,  in  such  points  "  no  more  than 
Hippocleides  "  !  .  .  .To  Plutarch  the  age  Herodotus  treated  is  an  age 
of  giants,  of  sages  and  heroes  in  full  dress,  with  surprising  gifts  for 
apothegm  and  repartee,  and  he  sees  all  their  deeds  in  a  glow  of  adoring  . 
humility.  He  hates,  he  rejects  their  meaner  side ;  and  he  cannot  bear 
the  tolerant  gossiping  realism  of  Herodotus.  Yet  it  is  this  power  of 
truthfulness  in  the  man,  combined  with  his  tragic  grasp  and  his  wide 
sympathy — this  way  of  seeing  men's  hearts  just  as  they  are  with  all 
their  greatness  and  their  failure,  that  causes  a  critic  who  weighs  his  every 
word,  to  claim  that  "  no  other  Greek  writer  has  covered  so  large  a  world 
with  so  full  a  population  of  living  and  immortal  men  and  women  as 
Herodotus"  [Macan,  LXXIII.],  and  to  place  his  work  opposite  Homer's,. 
"  irremovably  and  irreplaceably  "  at  the  fountain-head  of  European  prose 
literature. — GILBERT  MURRAY,  History  of  Ancient  Greek  Literature. 

ROBERT  HERRICK. 
English  Poet :  1591-1674. 

We  cry,  we  laugh  ;  ah,  life  is  half  and  half, 

Now  bright  and  joyous  as  a  song  of  Herrick's, 
Then  chill  and  bare  as  funeral-minded  Blair ; 

As  fickle  as  a  female  in  hysterics. 

— OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES,  How  not  to  settle  it. 

Brief  as  thy  lyrics,  Herrick,  are, 
And  polished  as  the  bosom  of  a  star. 

— T.  B.  ALDRICH,  Hesperides. 


HERRICK,  HERRING,  HERVEY.  187 

Hayrick  some  do  spell  thy  name, 
And  thy  verse  approves  the  same  ; 
For  'tis  like  fresh-scented  hay, — 
With  country  lasses  in  't  at  play. 

— W.  ALLINGHAM,  To  the  Author  of  "  Hespcridcs  ". 

Fresh  with  all  airs  of  woodland  brooks 

And  scents  of  showers, 
Take  to  your  haunt  of  holy  books 

This  saint  of  flowers. 

When  meadows  burn  with  budding  May, 

And  heaven  is  blue, 
Before  his  shrine  our  prayers  we  say, — 

Saint  Robin  true. 

— E.  W.  GOSSE,  With  a  copy  of  Hcrrick. 

The  most  amorous,  and  among  the  best  of  our  amorous  poets  was 
Robert  Herrick.  .  .  .  Herrick  has  as  much  variety  as  the  poetry  of  kisses 
can  well  have. — HALLAM,  Introduction  to  the  Literature  of  Europe,  Vol.  Ill* 

Herrick  is,  in  my  mind,  fully  entitled  to  the  reputation  he  has  ;  and  yet 
I  scarcely  wonder  that  many  of  his  readers  should  overlook  the  golden 
side  of  his  shield,  and  persist  in  estimating  him  by  the  reverse — I  fear  we 
must  not  call  it  silver.  One  cause  of  this  is  the  arrangement,  or  rather  no 
arrangement,  of  the  poems  in  the  Hesperidcs  ;  where  the  coarsest  epigram 
is  perhaps  followed  by  half  a  dozen  graceful  verses,  full  of  tender  feeling ; 
or  a  worthless  imitation  of  Martial  or  Ovid  by  a  solemn  prayer  for  the 
success  of  King  Charles.  They  remind  one  of  some  quaint  old  Roman 
Catholic  procession,  in  which  shaven  friars  and  morris-dancers,  saintly 
relics  and  frisking  dragons,  follow  each  other  in  the  happiest  confusion. — 
R.  J.  KING,  Sketches  and  Studies. 

DR.  THOMAS  HERRING. 
Archbishop  of  Canterbury  :  1693-1757. 

But  who  like  Herring  or  like  Hoadly  shine, 
Must  with  great  learning  real  virtue  join. 

— DODSLEY,  The  Art  of  Preaching. 

JAMES  HERVEY. 
English  Parson  and  Author  :  1714-1758. 

To  form  the  taste,  and  raise  the  nobler  part, 
To  mend  the  morals,  and  to  warn  the  heart ; 
To  trace  the  genial  source  we  nature  call, 
And  prove  the  God  of  nature,  friend  of  all ; 
Hervey  for  this  his  mental  landscape  drew, 
And  sketch'd  the  whole  creation  out  to  view. 

— DR.  NATHANIEL  COTTON,  To  the  Rev.  James  Hervey. 


i88  HERVEY,  HESIOD,  ST.  HILDEBRAND,  HILL. 

I  venture  to  think  it  would  be  well  for  the  Church  of  our  day,  if  we  had 
a  few  more  hard  students  and  careful  writers  of  the  stamp  of  James 
Hervey.  I  therefore  boldly  claim  for  him  a  high  place  among  the 
spiritual  heroes  of  the  last  century.  Let  us  admire  Whitfield  and 
Wesley;  but  let  us  not  grudge  Hervey  his  crown.  He  deserves  to  be 
had  in  remembrance. — BISHOP  J.  C.  RYLE,  Christian  Leaders  of  the  Last 
Century. 

HESIOD. 

Greek  Poet:  fl.  about  B.C.  870. 

That  Ascraean  bard,  whose  fame  now  rings 
Through  the  wide  world. 

— SPENSER,  Virgil's  Gnat. 

Homer  strung  his  lyre  in  the  halls  of  princes  who  loved  to  dwell  on  the 
great  deeds  of  their  god-descended  ancestors.  Hesiod  utters  a  weaker 
and  more  subdued  note  to  the  tillers  of  the  ground  and  the  watchers  of 
the  seasons.  In  Homer  we  see  the  radiant  heroes  expiring  with  a  smile 
upon  their  lips  as  on  the  ^Eginetan  pediment.  In  Hesiod  we  hear  the 
low  sad  outcry  of  humanity.  The  inner  life,  the  daily  loss  and  profit,  the 
duties  and  the  cares  of  men  are  his  concern. — J.  ADDINGTON  SYMONDS, 
Studies  of  the  Greek  Poets. 

ST.  HILDEBRAND. 
Pope  Gregory  VII.:  1013-1085. 

Hildebrand,  the  very  impersonation  of  Papal  Arrogance  and  of  Spiritual 
Despotism. — SIR  JAMES  STEPHEN,  Essays  in  Ecclesiastical  Biography. 

The  last  words  of  Gregory — "  I  have  loved  righteousness  and  hated 
iniquity  " — were  no  more  than  the  truth.  He  had  no  selfish  or  sordid 
aims  ;  the  moral  purification  of  the  Church,  its  organisation  as  a  great 
spiritual  empire  under  one  supreme  head,  and  its  emancipation,  for  this 
purpose,  from  all  secular  control — this  was  the  ideal  for  which  he  lived. 
The  dying  words  of  one  of  our  archbishops,  "  Pro  ecclesid  Dei,  pro  ecclesid 
Dei"  might  well  stand  as  the  motto  of  Gregory's  life  ;  the  victories  of  the 
Church  were  his  joys,  her  defeats  his  sorrows. — W.  R.  W.  STEPHENS, 
Hildebrand  and  His  Times. 

REV.  ROWLAND  HILL. 
Dissenting  Minister :  1744-1833. 

Rector  of  Surrey  Chapel,  Vicar  of  Wotton-under-Edge,  and  Curate  of 
all  the  fields  and  commons  throughout  England  and  Wales. — REV.  ROW- 
LAND HILL. 

I  go  to  hear  Rowland  Hill,  because  his  ideas  come  red-hot  from  the 
heart. — SHERIDAN. 

At  his  [Whitfield's]  death  there  was  only  one  young  man  to  be  found 
Avho  had  caught  the  fire  of  his  zeal,  possessed  similar  powers  of  eloquence, 


and  was  actuated  by  the  same  self-denying  and  disinterested  spirit.  This 
was  Mr.  Rowland  Hill,  who  appeared  in  many  respects  to  have  been  cast 
in  the  same  mould.  His  doctrines,  his  preaching  talents,  his  popularity,, 
his  want  of  any  definite  system,  were  all  Whitfield  again. — REV.  EDWIN 
SIDNEY,  Life  of  the  Rev.  Rowland  Hill. 

SIR  ROWLAND  HILL. 
Originator  of  the  Cheap  Postage  System  :  1795-1879. 

So  long  as  men  keep  warm  feelings,  and  the  name  of  home  has  still  its 
charm ;  so  long  as  there  are  sorrowful  partings  and  hearts  that  need  com- 
forting ;  so  long  as  our  high  aim  is  towards  peace  on  earth,  good-will 
toward  men,  Rowland  Hill  is  not  likely  to  be  forgotten.  For  he  has  done 
almost  more  than  any  other  man  to  bring  near  those  who  are  far  off,  to  bind 
the  nations  together,  and  to  make  the  whole  world  kin. — G.  B.  HILL,  Life- 
of  Sir  Rowland  Hill,  Vol.  II. 

THOMAS  HOBBES. 
English  Philosopher :  1588-1679. 

Thou  great  Columbus  of  the  golden  lands  of  new  philosophies, 

Thy  task  was  harder  much  than  his, 

For  thy  learn'd  America  is 

Not  only  found  out  first  by  thee, 

And  rudely  left  to  future  industry, 

But  thy  eloquence  and  thy  wit 

Has  planted,  peopled,  built,  and  civili/ed  it. 

— COWLEY,  To  Mr.  Hobbes. 

Th'  envenom'd  stream  that  flows  from  Toland's  quill, 
And  the  rank  dregs  of  Hobbes  and  Mandeville. 
Detested  names  !  yet  sentenc'd  ne'er  to  die  :     , 
Snatch'd  from  oblivion's  grave  by  infamy ! 

— DR.  JOHN  BROWN,  On  Honour. 

Thus  Hobbes  on  one  dear  system  fix'd  his  eyes, 
And  prov'd  his  nature  wretched — to  be  wise. 
Each  zealot  thus,  elate  with  ghostly  pride, 
Adores  his  God,  and  hates  the  world  beside. 

— DR.  JOHN  LANGHORNE,  The  Enlargement  of  the  Mind. 

Hobbes  is  perhaps  the  first  of  whom  we  can  say  that  he  is  a  good  Eng- 
lish writer. — HALLAM,  Introduction  to  the  Literature  of  the  Middle  Ages, 
Vol.  IV. 

Hobbes  was  perfect  in  the  "  noble  vulgar  speech  ". — EMERSON,  English 
Traits :  Literature. 

Hobbes  was  a  thinker  and  writer  of  marvellous  power,  and,  take  him 
altogether,  is  probably  the  greatest  of  English  philosophers. — HUXLEY,. 
Method  and  Results. 


ago  HOGARTH. 

WILLIAM  HOGARTH. 
English  Painter :  1697-1764. 

Farewell,  great  painter  of  mankind, 

Who  reach'd  the  noblest  point  of  art ; 
Whose  pictur'd  morals  charm  the  mind, 

And  through  the  eye  correct  the  heart ! 
If  genius  fire  thee,  reader,  stay ; 

If  nature  touch  thee,  drop  a  tear  : — 
If  neither  move  thee,  turn  away, 

For  Hogarth's  honour'd  dust  lies  here. 

— DAVID  GARRICK,  Epitaph  on  William  Hogarth. 

That  praise  be  Hogarth's ;  freely  let  him  wear 
The  wreath  which  genius  wove,  and  planted  there. 
Foe  as  I  am,  should  envy  tear  it  down, 
Myself  would  labour  to  replace  the  crown. 
Hogarth  unrivall'd  stands,  and  shall  engage 
Unrivall'd  praise  to  the  most  distant  age. 

— CHURCHILL,  An  Epistle  to  William  Hogarth. 

But  O  for  Hogarth's  magic  pow'r 
To  show  Sir  Bardy's  willyart  glowr ! 

— BURNS,  On  Dining  with  Lord  Daer. 

And  Hogarth,  who  follow'd  no  master, 
Nor  by  pupil  shall  e'er  be  approached,  alone  in  his  greatness. 

— SOUTHEY,  A  Vision  of  Judgment. 

Thy  Hogarth  first  of  every  clime 
For  humour  keen,  or  strong  sublime, 
And  hail  him  from  his  fire  and  spirit, 
The  child  of  genius  and  merit. 

— ROBERT  LLOYD,  Genius,  Envy,  and  Time. 

I  count  those  persons  fools  who  think  it  a  pity  Hogarth  did  not  succeed 
"better  in  serious  subjects. — HAZLITT,  Table  Talk. 

It  is  not  hazarding  too  much  to  assert  that  he  [Hogarth]  was  one  of  the 
greatest  comic  geniuses  that  ever  lived,  and  he  was  certainly  one  of  the 
most  extraordinary  men  this  country  has  produced.  Criticism  has  not 
done  him  justice,  though  public  opinion  has.  His  works  have  received  a 
sanction  which  it  would  be  vain  to  dispute,  in  the  universal  delight  and 
admiration  with  which  they  have  been  regarded,  from  their  first  appearance 
to  the  present  moment.  .  .  .  They  stimulate  the  faculties  as  well  as 
soothe  them.  "  Other  pictures  we  see,  Hogarth's  we  read." — Id., 
Lectures  on  the  English  Comic  Writers  :  Hogarth. 

It  is  the  fashion  with  those  who  cry  up  the  great  Historical  School  in 
this  country,  at  the  head  of  which  Sir  Joshua  Reynolds  is  placed,  to  exclude 
Hogarth  from  that  school,  as  an  artist  of  an  inferior  and  vulgar  class. 
Those  persons  seem  to  me  to  confound  the  painting  of  subjects  in  common 
•or  vulgar  life  with  the  being  a  vulgar  artist.  The  quantity  of  thought  which 
Hogarth  crowds  into  every  picture  would  alone  unvulgarise  every  subject 
•which  he  might  choose. — CHARLES  LAMB. 


HOGARTH,  HOGG.  191 

I  very  much  doubt  whether  the  sermons  of  a  Tillotson  ever  dissuaded 
so  efficaciously  from  lust,  cruelty,  and  intemperance,  as  the  prints  of  a 
Hogarth. — DR.  VICESIMUS  KNOX,  Essays  :  On  the  Moral  Effects  of  Paint- 
ing and  Prints. 

The  true  ideal  is  not  opposed  to  the  real,  nor  is  it  any  artificial  heighten- 
ing thereof,  but  lies  in  it,  and  blessed  are  the  eyes  that  find  it !  It  is  the 
mens  divinior  which  hides  within  the  actual,  transfiguring  matter-of-fact 
into  matter-of-meaning  for  him  who  has  the  gift  of  second  sight.  In  this 
sense  Hogarth  is  often  more  truly  ideal  than  Raphael,  Shakespeare  often 
more  truly  so  than  the  Greeks. — J.  R.  LOWELL,  Among  My  Books. 

What  has  been  said  of  Rabelais  applies  with  even  greater  force  to 
Hogarth,  whose  absolute  sincerity  is  as  great  as  that  of  Aristophanes,  but 
who  is  never  light  and  careless.  His  coarseness  is  the  product  of  a  coarse 
nature,  of  coarse  manners,  of  a  period  of  national  coarseness.  We  tolerate 
it  because  of  the  moral  earnestness  beneath  :  the  artist  is  striving  diligently 
to  teach  us  by  warning  us  of  vice.  This  is  hardly  ever  the  case  with 
Aristophanes.  When  he  is  coarse,  we  pardon  him  for  very  different 
reasons.  In  his  wilful  degradation  of  humanity  to  the  level  of  animals  we 
recognize  a  portion  of  the  Weltvernichtungsidee. — JOHN  ADDINGTON 
SYMONDS,  Studies  of  the  Greek  Poets. 

It  is  neither  as  engraver,  draughtsman,  nor  painter  that  William  Hogarth 
claims  pre-eminence  among  English  artists  ;  it  was  as  a  wit,  a  humorist, 
a  satirist  upon  canvas.  To  take  some  social  blot,  some  fashionable  vice,  and 
hold  it  up  sternly  to  "  hard  hearts  "  ;  to  imagine  it  vividly  and  dramatically, 
and  body  it  forth  with  all  the  resources  of  unshrinking  realism  ;  to  tear 
away  its  trappings  of  convention  and  prescription,  to  probe  it  to  the  quick, 
and  lay  bare  all  its  secret  shameful  workings  to  their  inevitable  end ;  to 
play  upon  it  with  inexhaustible  invention,  with  the  keenest  and  happiest 
humour  ;  to  decorate  it  with  the  utmost  prodigality  of  fanciful  accessory 
and  allusive  suggestion  ;  to  be  conscious  at  his  gravest  how  the  grotesque 
in  life  elbows  the  terrible,  and  the  strange  grating  laugh  of  Mephistopheles 
is  heard  through  the  sorriest  story :— these  were  his  gifts,  and  this  was 
his  vocation — a  vocation  in  which  he  has  never  yet  been  rivalled. — AUSTIN 
DOBSON,  Life  of  Hogarth. 

JAMES  HOGG. 
The  Ettrick  Shepherd,  Poet:  1772-1835. 

You  will  see  Hogg,  and  I  cannot  express 
His  virtues,  though  I  know  they  are  great, 
Because  he  locks,  then  barricades,  the  gate 
Within  which  they  inhabit ; — of  his  wit 
And  wisdom,  you'll  cry  out  when  you  are  bit. 
He  is  a  pearl  within  an  oyster  shell, 
One  of  the  richest  of  the  deep. 

— SHELLEY,  Letter  to  Maria  Gisborne. 

In  pace  requiescat.  There  will  never  be  such  an  Ettrick  Shepherd  again. 
— LOCKHART,  Life  of  Scott. 


i92  HOGG,  HOLLAND,  HOLMES. 

Next  to  Robert  Burns,  the  Ettrick  Shepherd  is  unquestionably  the  most 
distinguished  of  Scottish  bards  sprung  from  the  ranks  of  the  people :  in 
the  region  of  the  supernatural  he  stands  alone. — REV.  CHARLES  ROGERS, 
Memoir  prefixed  to  Tales  and  Sketches  by  the  Ettrick  Shepherd. 

Towards  the  last  he  occupied  a  very  curious  position,  never  I  think 
quite  paralleled  elsewhere — the  position  of  a  Boswell  who  would  fain  be 
a  Boswell  and  is  not  allowed  to  be,  who  has  wild  notions  that  he  is  really 
a  greater  man  than  Johnson  and  occasionally  blasphemes  against  his 
idol,  but  who  in  the  intervals  is  truly  Boswellian. — SAINTSBURY,  Essays 
in  English  Literature. 

LORD  HOLLAND. 

English  Statesman  and  Author  :  1773-1840. 

It  may  be  doubted  if  any  man  in  any  age  ever  had  so  few  enemies,  so 
many  attached  friends,  as  Lord  Holland;  and  no  man  could  better  deserve 
the  universal  affection  of  which  he  was  the  object. — LORD  BROUGHAM, 
Statesmen  of  the  Time  of  George  III.,  Vol.  II. 

Lord  Holland  is  the  most  agreeable  man  I  ever  knew ;  in  criticism,  in 
poetry,  he  beats  those  whose  whole  study  they  have  been.  No  man  in 
England  has  a  more  thorough  knowledge  of  English  authors,  and  he 
expresses  himself  so  well  that  his  language  illustrates  and  adorns  his 
thoughts,  as  light  streaming  through  coloured  glass  heightens  the  brilliancy 
of  the  objects  it  falls  upon. — SIR  WALTER  SCOTT  in  LOCKHART'S  Life  of 
Scott. 

OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES. 
American  Poet  and  Essayist :  1809-1894. 

His  still  the  keen  analysis 

Of  men  and  moods,  electric  wit, 
Free  play  of  mirth,  and  tenderness 

To  heal  the  slightest  wound  from  it. 

And  his  the  pathos  touching  all 

Life's  sins  and  sorrows  and  regrets, 
Its  hopes  and  fears,  its  final  call 

And  rest  beneath  the  violets. 

— WHITTIER,  Our  Autocrat. 

There's  Holmes,  who  is  matchless  among  you  for  wit, 
A  Leyden-jar  always  full-charged,  from  which  flit 
The  electrical  jingles  of  hit  after  hit. 

— J.  R.  LOWELL,  A  Fable  for  Critics. 

Master  alike  in  speech  and  song 

Of  fame's  great  antiseptic — Style, 
You  with  the  classic  few  belong 

Who  tempered  wisdom  with  a  smile. 

—Id.,  To  Holmes  on  his  Seventy-fifth  Birthday. 


HOME,  HOMER.  193 

HENRY  HOME,  LORD  KAMES. 
Scottish  Jtidge  and  Philosopher :  1696-1782. 

The  truth  seems  to  be  that  the  soil  of  Scotland  is  most  happily  adapted 
for  the  cultivation  of  philosophical  criticism.  There  was  old  Kames, 
though  flawed  and  cracked,  a  diamond  almost  of  the  first  water.  Hold  up 
his  Elements  between  your  eye  and  the  firmament,  and  you  see  the  blue 
and  the  clouds.  To  speak  sensibly,  he  was  the  very  first  person  produced 
by  this  island  of  ours  entitled  to  the  character  of  a  philosophical  inquirer 
into  the  principles  of  poetical  composition.  He  is  the  father  of  such 
criticism  in  this  country — the  Scottish — not  the  Irish — Stagyrite.  He  is 
ours — let  the  English  show  their  Aristotle.  That  his  blunders  are  as 
plentiful  as  blackberries,  is  most  true  ;  but  that  they  are  so  is  neither 
wonder  nor  pity — for  so  are  Burke's  ;  yet  is  his  treatise  on  the  Sublime 
and  Beautiful,  juvenile  as  it  is,  full  of  truth  and  wisdom.  Change  the 
image  ;  and  fling  Kames'  Elements  of  Criticism  into  the  fanners  of  Words- 
.worth's  wrath  ;  and  after  the  air  has  been  darkened  for  a  while  with  chaff, 
the  barn-floor  will  be  like  a  granary  rich  in  heaps  of  the  finest  white  wheat 
which,  baked  into  bolted  bread,  is  tasteful  and  nutritive  sustenance  even 
for  a  Lake  poet. — JOHN  WILSON,  P^ssays  :  Homer  and  His  Translators. 

HOMER. 
Early  Greek  Poet. 

So  from  one  Homer  all  the  holy  fire 

That  ever  did  the  hidden  heat  inspire 

In  each  true  Muse  came  clearly  sparkling  down, 

And  must  for  him  compose  one  flaming  crown. 

— CHAPMAN,  Epistle  Dedicatory  to  Robert,  Earl  of  Somerset. 

None  like  Homer  hath  the  world  ensphered, 
Earth,  seas,  and  heaven,  fix'd  in  his  verse,  and  moving ; 
Whom  all  times'  wisest  men  have  held  unpeer'd. 

— Id.,  Sonnet  to  the  Earl  of  Salisbury* 

I  can  no  more  believe  old  Homer  blind 

Than  those  who  say  the  Sun  hath  never  shin'd  ; 

The  age  wherein  he  liv'd  was  dark,  but  he 

Could  not  want  sight,  who  taught  the  world  to  see : 

They  who  Minerva  from  Jove's  head  derive, 

Might  make  old  Homer's  Skull  the  Muses'  Hive ; 

And  from  his  Brain  that  Helicon  distil 

Whose  Racy  Liquor  did  his  offspring  fill. 

— DENHAM,  The  Progress  of  Learning. 

And  as  the  prince 
Of  poets,  Homer,  sung  long  since, 
A  skilful  leech  is  better  far 
Than  half  a  hundred  men  of  war. 

— SAMUEL  BUTLER,  Hudibras,  Part  /.,  Canto  II. 

Blind  Homer's  Muse  and  Virgil's  stately  verse, 
While  any  live,  shall  never  need  a  hearse. 

— SUCKLING,  An  Answer  to  some  Verses  made  in  his  Praise. 

13 


194  HOMER. 

High  on  the  first  the  mighty  Homer  shone, 
Eternal  adamant  compos'd  his  throne  ; 
Father  of  verse  !  in  holy  fillets  drest, 
His  silver  beard  wav'd  gently  o'er  his  breast ; 
Though  blind,  a  boldness  in  his  looks  appears : 
In  years  he  seem'd,  but  not  impair'd  by  years. 

—POPE,  The  Temple  of  Fame. 

Be  Homer's  works  your  study  and  delight, 

Read  them  by  day,  and  meditate  by  night ; 

Thence  form  your  judgment,  thence  your  maxims  bring, 

And  trace  the  muses  upward  to  their  spring.  .  .  . 

Those  oft  are  stratagems  which  errors  seem, 

Nor  is  it  Homer  nods,  but  we  that  dream. 

— Id.,  Essay  on  Criticism. 

Read  Homer  once,  and  you  can  read  no  more, 
For  all  books  else  appear  so  mean,  so  poor, 
Verse  will  seem  prose ;  but  still  persist  to  read, 
And  Homer  will  be  all  the  books  you  need. 

— DUKE  OF  BUCKINGHAM,  An  Essay  on  Poetry. 

Hang  Homer  and  Virgil !  their  meaning  to  seek, 

A  man  must  have  pok'd  into  Latin  and  Greek ; 

Those  who  love  their  own  tongue,  we  have  reason  to  hope, 

Have  read  them  translated  by  Dryden  and  Pope. 

—PRIOR,  Down-Hall,  A  Ballad. 

"Where  are  they  ? — Homer's  reverend  page 
Holds  empire  to  the  thirtieth  age, 
And  tongues  and  climes  obey. 

— AKENSIDE,  Ode  VII.,  OH  the  Use  of  Poetry. 

•Great  Homer  too  appears,  of  daring  wing, 
Parent  of  song! 

— THOMSON,  The  Seasons :  Winter. 

The  Fountain  Bard, 
Whence  each  poetic  stream  derives  its  course. 

—Id.,  Liberty,  Part  II.  (Greece}. 

The  great  Maeonian,  sire  of  tuneful  song, 
And  prototype  of  all  that  soar'd  sublime. 

— SHENSTONE,  Economy. 

Aye  on  the  shores  of  darkness  there  is  light 

And  precipices  show  untrodden  green, 
There  is  a  budding  morrow  in  midnight, 

There  is  a  triple  sight  in  blindness  keen  ; 
Such  seeing  hadst  thou,  as  it  once  befel 
To  Dian,  Queen  of  Earth,  and  Heaven,  and  Hell. 

— KEATS,  To  Homer. 

Homer  the  great  Thunderer. 

— WORDSWORTH.  The  Prelude,  Book  V. 


HOMER.  195 

Twice  is  almighty  Homer  far  above 

Troy  and  her  towers,  Olympus  and  his  Jove. 

First,  when  the  God-led  Priam  bends  before 

Him  sprung  from  Thetis,  dark  with  Hector's  gore : 

A  second  time,  when  both  alike  have  bled, 

And  Agamemnon  speaks  among  the  dead. 

— LANDOR,  Miscellaneous  Poems,  CXVI. 

The  strong-wing'd  music  of  Homer. 

— TENNYSON,  On  Translations  of  Homer. 

.  .  .  Homer,  with  the  broad  suspense 
Of  thunderous  brows,  and  lips  intense 
Of  garrulous  god-innocence. 

— E.  B.  BROWNING,  A  Vision  of  Poets. 

That  wit  and  joy  might  find  a  tongue, 
And  earth  grow  civil,  Homer  sung. 

— EMERSON,  Solution. 

Beethoven,  Raphael,  cannot  reach 

The  charm  which  Homer,  Shakespeare,  teach. 

To  these,  to  these,  their  thankful  race 

Gives,  then,  the  first,  the  fairest  place  : 

And  brightest  is  their  glory's  sheen, 

For  greatest  hath  their  labour  been. 

— MATTHEW  ARNOLD,  Epilogue  to  Lessing's  Laocoon. 

Sometimes  come  pauses  of  calm,  when  the  rapt  bard,  holding  his  heart 

back, 

Over  his  deep  mind  muses,  as  when  o'er  awe-stricken  ocean 
Poises  a  heapt  cloud  luridly,  ripening  the  gale  and  the  thunder  : 
Slow  rolls  onward  the  verse  with  a  long  swell  heaving  and  swinging, 
Seeming  to  wait  till,  gradually  wid'ning  from  far-off  horizons, 
Piling  the  deeps  up,  heaping  the  glad-hearted  surges  before  it, 
Gathers  the  thought  as  a  strong  wind  darkening  and  cresting  the  tumult. 
— J.  R.  LOWELL,  Impressions  of  Homer. 

Homer's  poem  is  intellectual,  and  full  of  affections ;  it  would  go  as 
near  to  make  a  philosopher  as  a  soldier.  I  should  say  that  war  appears 
as  the  business  of  Homer's  heroes,  not  often  a  matter  of  pure  enjoyment. 
One  would  conceive,  that  if  there  could  be  found  anywhere,  in  language, 
the  real  breathing  spirit  of  lust  for  fight,  which  is  in  some  nations,  there 
would  be  conceptions,  and  passion  of  blood-thirst,  which  are  not  in  Homer. 
There  are  flashes  of  it  in  ^Eschylus. — JOHN  WILSON,  Nodes  Ambrosiance, 
Vol.  I. 

Every  novel  is  a  debtor  to  Homer. — EMERSON,  Uses  of  Great  Men. 
Homer  lies  in  sunshine. — Id.,  Shakespeare ;  or  the  Poet. 

A  man  may  have  a  high  Intellect  with  little  or  no  Imagination  ;  but  he 
cannot  have  a  high  Imagination  with  little  or  no  Intellect.  The  Intellect 
of  Homer,  Dante,  Milton  and  Shakespeare,  was  higher  than  that  of 
Aristotle,  Newton  and  Bacon.  When  elevated  by  feeling  into  Imagina- 


ig6  HOMER. 

tion,  their  intellect  became  transcendent — and  thus  were  they  poets — the 
noblest  name  by  far  and  away  that  belongs  to  any  of  the  children  of  men. 
— JOHN  WILSON,  Nodes  Ambrosiancz,  Vol.  II. 

Oh  !  call  not  Greek  a  dead  language,  if  you  have  a  soul  to  be  saved ! 
The  bard  who  created,  and  the  heroes  who  fought  in  the  Iliad,  are  therein 
not  entombed,  but  enshrined ;  and  their  spirits  will  continue  to  breathe 
and  burn  there,  till  the  stars  are  cast  from  the  firmament,  and  there  is  an 
end  to  what  we  here  call  Life. — Id.,  Essays  :  Homer  and  his  Translators. 

Milton  strove  to  raise  earth  to  heaven  :  Homer  brought  down  heaven  to 
earth.  The  latter  attempt  was  a  much  easier  one  than  the  former  ;  it  was 
more  consonant  to  human  frailty  ;  and,  therefore,  it  has  met  with  more  suc- 
cess. No  one  can  doubt  that  Homer  was  endowed  with  the  true  poetic 
spirit,  and  yet  there  is  very  little  of  what  we  now  call  poetry  in  his  writings. 
There  is  neither  sentiment  nor  declamation — painting  nor  reflection.  He 
is  neither  descriptive  nor  didactic.  With  great  powers  for  portraying 
nature,  as  the  exquisite  choice  of  his  epithets  and  the  occasional  force  of 
his  similes  prove,  he  never  makes  any  laboured  attempt  to  delineate  her 
features.  He  had  the  eye  of  a  great  painter  ;  but  his  pictorial  talents  are 
employed,  almost  unconsciously,  in  the  fervour  of  narrating  events,  or 
the  animation  of  giving  utterance  to  thoughts.  He  painted  by  an  epithet 
or  a  line.  .  .  .  There  never  was  a  greater  painter  of  nature  than  Homer  ; 
there  never  was  a  man  who  aimed  less  at  being  so. — SIR  ARCHIBALD 
ALISON,  Essays  :  Homer,  Dante,  etc. 

That  "Greek  Gazette,"  the  Iliad  of  Homer. — GEORGE  GILFILLAN, 
Dissertation  prefixed  to  the  Poetical  Works  of  John  Dry  den,  Vol.  II. 

Without  doubt,  in  his  influence  over  future  mankind,  Homer  is  emi- 
nently the  Greek  of  Greeks :  if  I  were  to  associate  any  one  with  him  it 
would  be  Herodotus.  .  .  .  But  Homer  is  the  great  type,  and  the  more 
notable  one  because  of  his  influence  on  Virgil,  and,  through  him,  on 
Dante,  and  all  the  after  ages. — RUSKIN,  Modern  Painters,  Vol.  III. 

Homer  is  the  huge  poet-child.  The  world  is  born,  Homer  sings.  He 
is  the  bird  of  this  aurora.  Homer  has  the  holy  sincerity  of  the  early  dawn. 
He  almost  ignores  shadow.  .  .  .  Homer  to  the  Greeks,  was  God  ;  he  had 
priests,  the  Homerides.  Alcibiades  gave  a  bombastic  orator  a  cuff  for 
boasting  that  he  had  never  read  Homer.  The  divinity  of  Homer  has 
survived  paganism.  Michael  Angelo  said,  "  When  I  read  Homer,  I  look 
at  myself  to  see  if  I  am  not  twenty  feet  high  ".  .  .  .  If  anything  is  greater 
than  God  seen  in  the  sun,  it  is  God  seen  in  Homer. — VICTOR  HUGO, 
William  Shakespeare  (trans I.). 

I  take  Homer  and  Herodotus  as  two  men  who,  while  separated  in 
time  by  a  number  of  centuries  even  greater  than  the  four  which  the  his- 
torian allows,  were  both  of  them,  according  to  the  lights  and  opportunities 
of  their  day,  pious  men.  But  how  far  stronger,  more  familiar,  and  more 
vivid,  is  the  sense  of  a  providence  truly  divine,  of  the  theos  and  theoi  quite 
apart  from  polytheistic  limitations,  in  Homer  than  in  Herodotus !— W.  E. 
GLADSTONE,  On  the  Ancient  Beliefs  in  a  Future  State. 

The  Greek  mind,  which  became  one  of  the  main  factors  of  the  civilised 
life  of  Christendom,  cannot  be  fully  comprehended  without  the  study  of 
Homer,  and  is  nowhere  so  vividly  or  so  sincerely  exhibited  as  in  his  works. 


HOMER,  HOOK,  HOOKER.  197 

He  has  a  world  of  his  own,  into  which,  upon  his  strong  wing,  he  carries 
us.  There  we  find  ourselves  amidst  a  system  of  ideas,  feelings  and  actions 
different  from  what  are  to  be  found  anywhere  else,  and  forming  a  new 
and  distinct  standard  of  humanity.  Many  among  them  seem  as  if  they 
were  then  shortly  about  to  be  buried  under  a  mass  of  ruins,  in  order  that 
they  might  subsequently  reappear,  bright  and  fresh  for  application,  among 
later  generations  of  men.  Others  of  them  almost  carry  us  back  to  the 
early  morning  of  our  race,  the  hours  of  its  greater  simplicity  and  purity, 
and  more  free  intercourse  with  God.  In  much  that  this  Homeric  world 
exhibits,  we  see  the  taint  of  sin  at  work,  but  far,  as  yet,  from  its  perfect 
work  and  its  ripeness ;  it  stands  between  Paradise  and  the  vices  of  later 
heathenism,  far  from  both,  from  the  latter  as  well  as  the  former,  and  if 
among  all  earthly  knowledge  the  knowledge  of  man  be  that  which  we 
should  chiefly  court,  and  if  to  be  genuine  it  should  be  founded  upon  ex- 
perience, how  is  it  possible  to  over-value  this  primitive  representative  of 
the  human  race  in  a  form  complete,  distinct  and  separate,  with  its  own 
.  religion,  ethics,  policy,  history,  arts,  manners,  fresh  and  true  to  the  stan- 
dard of  its  nature,  like  the  form  of  an  infant  from  the  hand  of  the  Creator, 
yet  mature,  full  and  finished,  in  its  own  sense,  after  its  own  laws,  like 
some  master-piece  of  the  sculptor's  art. — W.  E.  GLADSTONE,  Studies  on 
Homer  and  the  Homeric  Age. 

In  Achilles,  Homer  summed  up  and  fixed  for  ever  the  ideal  of  the  Greek 
character.  He  presented  an  imperishable  picture  of  their  national  youth- 
fulness,  and  of  their  ardent  genius,  to  the  Greeks.  The  "  beautiful  human 
heroism  "  of  Achilles,  his  strong  personality,  his  fierce  passions  controlled 
and  tempered  by  divine  wisdom,  his  intense  friendship  and  love  that 
passed  the  love  of  woman,  above  all,  the  splendour  of  his  youthful  life  in 
death  made  perfect,  hovered  like  a  dream  above  the  imagination  of  the 
Greeks,  and  insensibly  determined  their  subsequent  development.  At  a 
later  age  this  ideal  was  destined  to  be  realised  in  Alexander.  The  reality 
fell  below  the  ideal :  for  rien  n'est  si  bean  qnc  la  fable  si  triste  que  la 
verite.  But  the  life  of  Alexander  is  the  most  convincing  proof  of  the 
importance  of  Achilles  in  the  history  of  the  Greek  race. — J.  ADDINGTON 
SYMONDS,  Studies  of  the  Greek  Poets. 

DR.  WALTER  FARQUHAR  HOOK. 
Dean  of  Chichester,  Author:   1798-1875. 
Christian  is  my  name,  Catholic  my  surname. — DEAN  HOOK. 

RICHARD  HOOKER. 
Theologian:  1553-1600. 

But  if  in  Hooker,  Sprat,  or  Tillotson, 
A  thought  unworthy  of  themselves  is  shown, 
I  grieve  to  see  it ;  but  'tis  no  surprise, 
The  greatest  men  are  not  at  all  times  wise. 

— DODSLEY,  The  Art  of  Preaching. 

The  "  Ecclesiastical  Polity"  of  Hooker  is  a  monument  of  real  learning, 
n  profane  as  well  as  theological  antiquity. — HALL  AM,  Literature  of  the 
Middle  Ages,  Vol.  II. 


ig8  HOOKER,  HORACE. 

Hooker  was  truly  judicious — the  consummate  synthesis  of  understanding 
and  sense.  .  .  .  Doubtless,  Hooker  was  a  theological  Talus,  with  a  club 
of  iron  against  opponents  with  pasteboard  helmets,  and  armed  only  with 
crabsticks. — COLERIDGE,  Notes  on  English  Divines,  Vol.  I. 

In  Hooker — more  (I  think)  than  in  many  great  theologians  who  suc- 
ceeded him — we  find,  under  some  archaism  of  form,  the  enunciation  of  the 
true  principles,  which  must  always  guide  the  believer  ;  whenever,  with  the 
beacon-light  or  the  revelation  of  Christ  before  his  eyes,  he  sees  new  cross- 
lights  breaking  in  on  every  side — lights  which,  if  they  be  true,  he  will 
neither  quench  nor  ignore — lights  of  which,  if  they  be  ever  so  true,  yet 
none  is  sufficient  to  be  his  guide. — BISHOP  BARRY,  Masters  in  English 
Theology. 

Hooker,  a  thinker  of  transcending  compass,  sweeping  in  the  range  of  his 
imperial  mind  the  whole  circumference  of  Christian  speculation— rising 
with  the  wings  of  boldness  to  the  heights  of  the  Divine  government,  and 
yet  folding  them  with  the  sweetest  reverence  before  the  throne. — DR.  JOHN 
TULLOCH,  Beginning  Life. 

QUINTUS  HORATIUS  FLACCUS. 

Latin  Poet  and  Critic:  B.C.  65-8. 

Horace's  lofty  Genius  boldlier  rear'd 
His  manly  Head,  and  through  all  Nature  steer'd ; 
Her  richest  Pleasures  in  his  Verse  refin'd, 
And  wrought  'em  to  the  Relish  of  the  Mind. 
He  lash'd  with  a  true  Poet's  fearless  Rage, 
The  Villainies  and  Follies  of  the  Age. 

— OTWAY,  Prologue  to  "  The  History  and  Fall  of  Caius  Marius  ". 

Serene,  and  clear,  Harmonious  Horace  flows, 
With  sweetness  not  to  be  exprest  in  Prose. 

— ROSCOMMON,  Essay  on  Translated  Verse. 

Horace  still  charms  with  graceful  negligence, 
And  without  method  talks  us  into  sense, 
Will,  like  a  friend,  familiarly  convey 
The  truest  notions  in  the  easiest  way. 

— TOPE,  Essay  on  Criticism. 

Here  happy  Horace  tun'd  th'  Ausonian  lyre 
To  sweeter  sounds,  and  temper'd  Pindar's  fire  : 
Pleas'd  with  Alcaeus'  manly  rage  t'  infuse 
The  softer  spirit  of  the  Sapphic  Muse. 

—Id.,  The  Temple  of  Fame. 

Then  farewell  Horace :  whom  I  hated  so, 
Not  for  thy  faults,  but  mine ;  it  is  a  curse 
To  understand,  not  feel  thy  lyric  flow, 
To  comprehend,  but  never  love  thy  verse, 
Although  no  deeper  Moralist  rehearse 
Our  little  life,  nor  Bard  prescribe  his  art, 


HORACE,  HOUGH.  199 

Nor  livelier  Satirist  the  conscience  pierce, 
Awakening  without  wounding  the  touch'd  heart, 
Yet  fare  thee  well — upon  Soracte's  ridge  we  part. 

— BYRON,  Childe  Harold's  Pilgrimage. 

Horace  and  Virgil,  in  whose  mighty  lines 
Immortal  wit,  and  solid  learning,  shines. 

— JOHN  POMFRET,  The  Choice. 

Above  all  rivals,  fit 
To  win  the  palm  of  gaiety  and  wit. 

— WORDSWORTH,  Liberty. 

Horace,  singing  yet 
Of  love,  regret, 

And  flowers  ; 
This  Roman  rose  is  ours. 

— F.  D.  SHERMAN,  The  Garland. 

Horace,  the  ailing  lord, 
Of  plaster  palaces  and  hollow  groves, 
Absorbed  in  half-a-hundred  tiny  arts, 
Master  of  none. 

— A.  C.  BENSON,  The  Professor  and  other  Poems. 

Horace,  the  politest  writer  whom  the  world  ever  produced,  adopted 
satirical  writing,  and  succeeded  in  it,  though  there  is  every  reason  to 
believe  that  his  natural  disposition  was  not  severe.  The  truth  is,  he  was 
a  man  of  the  world  as  well  as  a  man  of  reflection,  and  wrote  his  remarks 
on  men  and  things  in  careless  verse  ;  not  without  censuring  them  indeed, 
but  without  indulging  the  asperity  of  sarcasm.  He  probed  every  wound 
with  so  gentle  a  hand,  that  the  patient  smiled  under  the  operation. — DR. 
VICESIMUS  KNOX,  Essays  :  Cursory  Thoughts  on  Satire  and  Satirists. 

Horace  certainly  wrote  plenty  of  good  moral  sentiment  and  patriotism  of 
the  sort  possible  under  a  despotism  of  the  modern  French  type  ;  but  he  will 
always  be  for  us  the  little  fat  man  who  loved  and  lived  with  various  Lalages, 
and  made  them,  we  feel  perfectly  assured,  of  more  account  in  his  existence 
than  the  great  "  nephew  of  his  uncle,"  his  prime  minister  Maecenas,  or  even, 
we  fear,  than  the  Palatine  Apollo  himself,  and  that  Jupiter  Optimus  Maxi- 
mus  who  half  frightened  the  little  sceptic  with  summer  thunder. — GEORGE 
BRIMLEY,  Essays. 

DR.  JOHN  HOUGH. 
Bishop  of  Worcester  :  1651-1743. 

Such  as  on  Hough's  unsullied  mitre  shine. 

— POPE,  Epilogue  to  the  Satires. 

So  good,  so  blest  th'  illustrious  Hough  we  find, 
Whose  image  dwells  with  pleasure  on  my  mind ; 
The  mitre's  glory,  freedom's  constant  friend, 
In  times  which  ask'd  a  champion  to  defend  ; 
Who  after  near  a  hundred  virtuous  years, 


2oo  HOUGH,  HOUGHTON,  HOWARD. 

His  senses  perfect,  free  from  pains  and  fears, 
Replete  with  life,  with  honours,  and  with  age, 
Like  an  applauded  actor  left  the  stage. 

— SOAME  JENYNS,  On  the  Immortality  of  the  Soul,  Book  II. 

A  Bishop  by  his  neighbours  hated 
Has  cause  to  wish  himself  translated. 
But  why  should  Hough  desire  translation, 
Lov'd  and  esteem'd  by  all  the  nation  ? 

— SWIFT. 

RICHARD  MONCKTON  MILNES,  LORD  HOUGHTON. 
English  Poet:   1809-1885. 

Adieu,  dear  Yorkshire  Milnes !  we  think  not  now 

Of  coronet  or  laurel  on  thy  brow  ; 

The  kindest,  faithfullest  of  friends  wast  thou. 

— W.  ALLINGHAM. 

Of  Houghton  himself  it  may  be  said,  in  the  words  of  Landor,  that  he 
"  warmed  both  hands  before  the  fire  of  life  ".  But  this  also  may  be  truly 
claimed  for  him  by  his  biographer,  that  from  first  to  last  no  object  was 
dearer  to  him  than  the  sharing  of  the  pleasures  and  the  blessings  which  he 
himself  relished  so  keenly  with  those  who  were  less  happily  placed.  "  Other 
people,"  he  once  said  to  a  neighbour  at  Fryston,  "  like  to  give  their  friends 
bread;  I  like  to  give  them  cake."  And  the  whimsical  saying  was  ab- 
solutely true.  He  never  stinted  his  deeds  of  kindness  and  goodwill,  even 
when  prudence  might  have  led  him  to  do  so.  It  was  his  greatest  delight 
to  give,  not  the  savourless  bread  of  charity,  but  the  rich  fruits  of  sympathy 
and  love  to  all  who  stood  in  need  of  them.  "  Write  me  as  one  that  loved 
his  fellow-men  "  was  an  epitaph  he  would  never  have  thought  of  claiming 
for  himself;  for  cant  and  the  affectation  of  virtue  were  alike  hateful  to  him. 
But  it  may  justly  be  claimed  for  him  by  his  friends ;  and  if  those  words 
had  been  written  upon  his  tomb,  for  once  an  epitaph  would  not  have  lied. 
—SiR  T.  WEMYSS  REID,  Life,  Letters,  and  Friendships  of  R.  M.  Milnes, 
First  Lord  Houghton,  Vol.  II. 

JOHN  HOWARD. 

Englis/t  Philanthropist :  1726-1790. 

I  may  alarm  thee,  but  I  fear  the  shame 

(Charity  chosen  as  my  theme  and  aim) 

I  must  incur,  forgetting  HOWARD'S  name. 

Blest  with  all  wealth  can  give  thee,  to  resign 

Joys  doubly  sweet  to  feelings  quick  as  thine, 

To  quit  the  bliss  thy  rural  scenes  bestow, 

To  seek  a  nobler  amidst  scenes  of  woe, 

To  traverse  seas,  range  kingdoms,  and  bring  home, 

Not  the  proud  monuments  of  Greece  or  Rome, 

But  knowledge  such  as  only  dungeons  teach, 

And  only  sympathy  like  thine  could  reach. 

— COWPER,  Charity. 


HOWARD,  HUGO.  201 

The  name  of  Howard  is  a  great  name.  When  the  preacher  wishes  to 
freight  a  precept,  or  the  writer  to  round  a  phrase,  no  name  occurs  more 
readily  to  the  mind.  Howard  stands  for  benevolence.  With  the  religious 
public  his  name  is  a  shining  light :  it  is  dear  to  the  patriot,  it  is  sacred  to 
the  philanthropist.  Yet  the  man  himself  is  little  more  than  a  myth.  Ex- 
cept among  a  certain  class  of  earnest  enthusiasts,  his  form  and  figure,  his 
presence  in  the  world,  and  his  influence  on  the  age  in  which  he  lived,  are 
well-nigh  forgotten.  The  cause  of  this  is  not  far  to  seek.  Howard  does 
not  belong  to  literature  ;  his  work  lay  apart.  He  did  not  talk  with  John- 
son, or  dine  with  Fox.  Reynolds  never  painted  his  portrait,  and  he 
passed  through  life  unnoticed  by  Gibbon.— W.  HEPWORTH  DIXON,  John 
Howard. 

There  was  more  than  humanity  in  his  conduct.  Charity  better  describes 
it.  It  was  the  energy  of  holiness,  actuated  by  love.  He  went  about  doing 
good,  because  he  had  practically  learned  the  precept,  "  That  he  who  loveth 
God,  loves  his  brother  also  ". — REV.  J.  FIELD,  Life  of  John  Howard. 

Of  Mr.  Howard's  heroic  philanthropy  the  world  wants  no  monument 
more  honourable  than  the  loud  plaudits  of  his  own  countrymen. — DR. 
VICESIMUS  KNOX,  Winter  Evenings  :  Evening  LXIV. 

Conceive  a  Puritan  of  the  sternest  days  of  Cromwell,  dressed  in  the 
simple  and  austere  garb  of  his  order,  armed  resolutely  for  battle,  resolved 
upon  victory,  and  fighting  less  for  personal  triumph  than  for  the  glory  of 
God.  You  have  then  a  picture  of  John  Howard.  But  remember  that 
the  weapons  are  not  of  steel,  and  that  the  glory  by  no  means  consists  in 
the  shedding  of  blood.  Howard  assailed  inhumanity  as  the  Roundhead 
battled  against  Royalty ;  in  either  case  it  was  war  to  the  extremity,  and 
the  prosecution  of  work  in  the  spirit  of  a  divinely  appointed  missionary.  .  .  . 
Measure  him  by  the  vulgar  standard,  and  all  the  elements  of  heroism  are 
missing  in  his  composition.  Judge  him  in  his  own  peculiar  light,  and  you 
may  search  the  annals  of  heroism  in  vain  for  one  more  illustrious  than  he. 
— SAMUEL  PHILLIPS,  Essays  from  "  The  Times". 

Would  you  learn  how  "  the  high  desire  that  others  may  be  blessed  savours 
of  heaven  "  ?  Read  of  John  Howard,  and  Elizabeth  Fry,  and  Father 
Damien. — F.  W.  FARRAR,  Social  and  Present-Day  Questions. 

VICTOR  HUGO. 
French  Poet,  Dramatist,  and  Novelist :   1802-1885. 

Victor  in  Drama,  Victor  in  Romance, 
Cloud-weaver  of  phantasmal  hopes  and  fears, 
French  of  the  French,  and  Lord  of  human  tears  ; 
Child-lover  ;  Bard  whose  fame-lit  laurels  glance 
Darkening  the  wreaths  of  all  that  would  advance. 

— TENNYSON,  To  Victor  Hugo. 

He  set  the  trumpet  to  his  lips,  and  lo  ! 
The  clash  of  waves,  the  roar  of  winds  that  blow, 
The  strife  and  stress  of  Nature's  warring  things, 
Rose  like  a  storm-cloud,  upon  angry  wings. 


202  HUGO. 

He  set  the  reed-pipe  to  his  lips  and  lo ! 
The  wreck  of  landscape  took  a  rosy  glow, 
And  life,  and  love,  and  gladness  that  love  brings 
Laughed  in  the  music,  like  a  child  that  sings. 

Master  of  each,  Arch-Master  !     We  that  still 
Wait  in  the  verge  and  outskirt  of  the  Hill 
Look  upward  lonely — lonely  to  the  height 
Where  thou  hast  climbed,  for  ever,  out  of  sight ! 

— AUSTIN  DOBSON,  Victor  Hngo~ 

Sun,  that  hast  not  seen  a  loftier  head  wax  hoary, 

Earth,  which  hast  not  shown  the  sun  a  nobler  birth, 
Time,  that  hast  not  on  thy  scroll  denied  and  gory 

One  man's  name  writ  brighter  in  its  whole  wide  girth, 
Witness,  till  the  final  years  fulfil  their  story, 

Till  the  stars  break  off  the  music  of  their  mirth, 
What  among  the  sons  of  men  was  this  man's  glory, 

What  the  vesture  of  his  soul  revealed  on  earth. 

— SWINBURNE,  The  Statue  of  Victor  Hugo- 

O  light  of  song,  whose  fire  is  perfect  light ! 

No  speech,  no  voice,  no  thought, 

No  love,  avails  us  aught 
For  service  of  thanksgiving  in  his  sight 

Who  hath  given  us  all  for  ever 

Such  gifts  that  man  gave  never 
So  many  and  great  since  first  Time's  wings  took  flight. 

Man  may  not  praise  a  spirit  above 
Man's  :  life  and  death  shall  praise  him  :  we  can  only  love. 

Life,  everlasting  while  the  worlds  endure, 

Death,  self-abased  before  a  power  more  high, 
Shall  bear  one  witness,  and  their  word  stand  sure, 

That  not  till  time  be  dead  shall  this  man  die. 
Love,  like  a  bird,  comes  loyal  to  his  lure ; 

Fame  flies  before  him,  wingless  else  to  fly. 
A  child's  heart  towards  his  kind  is  not  more  pure, 

An  eagle's  toward  the  sun  no  lordlier  eye. 
Awe  sweet  as  love  and  proud 
As  fame,  though  hushed  and  bowed, 

Yearns  toward  him  silent  as  his  face  goes  by : 

All  crowns  before  his  crown 

Triumphantly  bow  down, 
For  pride  that  one  more  great  than  all  draws  nigh : 

All  souls  applaud,  all  hearts  acclaim, 
One  heart  benign,  one  soul  supreme,  one  conquering  name. 

— Id.,  A  Neiv-Year  Ode  to  Victor  Hugo. 

Victor  Hugo  is  always  fine,  always  a  master-spirit. — MAZZINI,  Life  and 
Writings,  Vol.  II. 

Hugo,  undoubtedly,  was  a  much  greater  lyrical  poet  than  Dryden,  and 
was  enkindled  by  spontaneous  inspirations  which  never  visited  Dryden  ; 
yet  the  two  are  essentially  of  the  same  genus ;  the  differences  between 


HUGO.  203. 

them  are  rather  characteristic  of  their  eras  than  of  themselves  ;  and  while 
Hugo's  imagination  would  have  pined  in  the  seventeenth  century,  Dryden's- 
intellect  and  Dryden's  modesty  would  have  been  highly  serviceable  to  Hugo 
in  the  nineteenth. —  DR.  RICHARD  GARNETT,  The  Age  of  Dry  den. 

There  are  some  men  round  whose  name  and  fame  and  work  it  would 
almost  seem  as  if  human  opinion  were  destined  to  range  in  never-ending 
strife.  Such  a  man  was  Victor  Hugo.  For  upwards  of  sixty  years  he  re- 
mained conspicuous  among  his  contemporaries,  an  object  of  passionate 
admiration,  and  almost  equally  passionate  dislike.  During  the  earlier 
portion  of  that  period  he  stood  in  the  forefront  of  the  great  battle  between 
the  Romantic  and  Classical  schools  in  French  literature.  To  his  followers 
he  was  the  man  of  men,  the  "  impeccable  master,"  the  genius  of  his  age, 
a  kind  of  sun-god  dispelling  the  drear  darkness  of  poetic  routine  and  ancient 
night.  To  his  adversaries  he  was  a  mere  savage,  a  monster,  rudely  violat- 
ing his  mother  tongue,  and  setting  all  sane  traditions  at  defiance.  Then,, 
•when  that  battle  had  in  a  measure  fought  itself  out,  came  even  fiercer 
warfare  in  the  world  of  politics. — FRANK  T.  MARZIALS,  Life  of  Victor 
Hugo. 

But  if  for  the  Latin  peoples  generally  Hugo  is  a  typical  hero,  represent- 
ing fully  their  sharp  scorn  of  conventions,  their  distrust  of  governing 
classes,  and  their  deep  sense  of  universal  right — for  France  he  is  all  that 
and  something  more.  In  him  all  Frenchmen  find  the  proof  that  France 
has  been  the  support  of  liberal  and  humanitarian  ideas  in  the  century  of 
their  birth  ;  to  them  he  is  the  sign,  as  Renan  puts  it,  that  liberalism  is  the 
national  work  of  France.  ...  He  completes  the  ideal  of  modern  France 
as  Caesar  did  that  of  Roman  conquest,  or  Nelson  that  of  England's 
supremacy  on  the  seas.  That  is  why  Frenchmen  of  all  ranks  and  opinions 
— even  those,  and  they  were  many,  who  distrusted  and  dreaded  his 
utterances  while  he  lived — gratefully  accord  him  unprecedented  national 
honours  now  that  he  is  dead. — JAMES  CAPPON,  Victor  Hugo  :  A  Memoir 
and  a  Study. 

Poet,  dramatist,  novelist,  historian,  philosopher,  and  patriot,  the  spiritual 
sovereign  of  the  nineteenth  century  was  before  all  things,  and  above  all 
things  a  poet.  Throughout  all  the  various  and  ambitious  attempts  of  his 
marvellous  boyhood — criticism,  drama,  satire,  elegy,  epigram,  and  romance 
— the  dominant  vein  is  poetic.  His  example  will  stand  for  ever  as  the 
crowning  disproof  of  the  doubtless  more  than  plausible  opinion  that  the 
most  amazing  precocity  of  power  is  a  sign  of  ensuing  impotence  and  pre- 
mature decay.  There  was  never  a  more  brilliant  boy  than  Victor  Hugo  : 
but  there  has  never  been  a  greater  man.  .  .  .  But  from  the  first,  without 
knowing  it,  he  was  on  the  road  to  Damascus  :  if  not  to  be  struck  down  by 
sudden  miracle,  yet  by  no  less  inevitable  a  process  to  undergo  a  no  less 
unquestionable  conversion.  .  .  .  Hugo,  for  all  his  dramatic  and  narrative 
mastery  of  effect,  will  always  probably  remind  men  rather  of  such  poets 
as  Dante  or  Isaiah  than  of  such  poets  as  Sophocles  or  Shakespeare.  We 
cannot  of  course  imagine  the  Florentine  or  the  Hebrew  endowed  with 
his  infinite  variety  of  sympathies,  of  interests,  and  of  powers;  but  as 
little  can  we  imagine  in  the  Athenian  such  height  and  depth  of  passion, 
in  the  Englishman  such  unquenchable  and  sleepless  fire  of  moral  and 
prophetic  faith. — SWINBURNE,  A  Study  of  Victor  Hugo. 


204  HUMBOLDT. 

FRIEDRICH  H.  A.  VON  HUMBOLDT. 
Prussian  Naturalist  and  Geographer  :  1769-1859. 

Humboldt,  "the  first  of  travellers,"  but  not 
The  last,  if  late  accounts  be  accurate, 
Invented,  by  some  name  I  have  forgot, 
As  well  as  the  sublime  discovery's  date, 
An  airy  instrument,  with  which  he  sought 
To  ascertain  the  atmospheric  state, 
By  measuring  the  "  intensity  of  blue  ". 

— BYRON,  Don  yuan,  Canto  the  Fourth. 

Humboldt  is,  in  many  respects,  and  perhaps  upon  the  whole,  at  the 
head  of  the  list.  He  unites,  in  a  degree  that  perhaps  has  never  before 
been  witnessed,  the  most  varied  qualities,  and  which,  from  the  opposite 
•characters  of  mind  which  they  require,  are  rarely  found  in  unison.  A 
profound  philosopher,  an  accurate  observer  of  nature,  an  unwearied 
statist,  he  is  at  the  same  time  an  eloquent  writer,  an  incomparable 
describer,  and  an  ardent  friend  of  social  improvement.  Science  owes  to 
his  indefatigable  industry  some  of  her  most  valuable  acquisitions;  geo- 
graphy, to  his  intrepid  perseverance,  many  of  its  most  important  dis- 
coveries ;  the  arts  to  his  poetic  eye  and  fervid  eloquence,  not  a  few  of 
their  brightest  pictures.  He  unites  the  austere  grandeur  of  the  exact 
sciences  to  the  bewitching  charm  of  the  fine  arts.  .  .  .  There  are  few 
Humboldts  either  in  the  reading  or  thinking  world. — SIR  ARCHIBALD 
ALISON,  Essays :  Lamartine. 

With  all  Humboldt's  great  and  transcendent  merits,  he  is  a  child  of 
Adam,  and  therefore  not  without  his  faults.  The  principal  of  these  is 
the  want  of  arrangement. — Id.,  Ibid. :  Humboldt. 

Almost  every  man  of  science  in  Germany  who  has  found  his  place  has 
"been  conducted  to  it  by  Humboldt  .  .  .  the  Monarch  of  Science. 

Wellington  never  showed  more  studious  skill  in  the  arrangement  of 
his  forces,  nor  Napoleon  a  more  efficient  will  in  the  distribution  of  the 
sceptres  of  European  empires,  than  Humboldt  to  the  very  last,  in  disposing 
his  forces,  and  conferring  crowns  in  the  interests  of  the  kingdoms  of  the 
higher  realm  of  Nature. — HARRIET  MARTINEAU,  Biographical  Sketches. 

Humboldt,  the  Encyclopaedia  of  Science.— EMERSON,  Society  and  Soli- 
tude :  Old  Age. 

Perfect  symmetry  never  produces  the  effect  of  vastness.  It  is  only  by 
studying  the  details  that  we  comprehend  the  character  of  the  whole. 
Humboldt,  however,  may  be  termed  the  Father  of  Physical  Geography, 
and  the  suggester,  if  not  the  discoverer,  of  that  system  of  the  distribution 
of  plants  and  animals  which  opens  to  our  view  another  field  of  that 
Divine  Order,  manifested  in  the  visible  world.  He  strove  to  grasp  those 
secrets,  which,  perhaps,  no  single  mind  will  ever  be  able  to  comprehend 
— the  aggregate  of  the  laws  which  underlie  the  mysteries  of  Creation, 
Growth,  and  Decay;  and  though  he  fell  short  of  the  sublime  aim,  he 
was  at  least  able  to  say,  like  Kepler,  when  he  discovered  the  mathe- 
matical harmonies  of  the  solar  system,  "  Oh,  Almighty  God,  I  think 
Thy  thoughts  after  Thee  !  "—BAYARD  TAYLOR,  Introduction  to  the  Life, 
Travels,  and  Books  of  Alexander  Von  Humboldt. 


HUME,  HUNT.  205 

DAVID  HUME. 
Scottisli  Historian  and  Philosopher  :   1711-1776. 

There  nations  yet  unborn  shall  trace 

In  Hume's  perspicuous  page, 

How  Britain  rose,  and  through  what  storms  attain 'd 

Her  eminence  of  power. 

— SOUTHEY,  Ode  written  after  the  King's  Visit  to  Scotland. 

Hume,  from  whose  fascinating  narrative  the  great  mass  of  the  reading 
public  are  still  contented  to  take  their  opinions,  hated  religion  so  much 
that  he  hated  liberty  for  having  been  allied  with  religion,  and  has  pleaded 
the  cause  of  tyranny  with  the  dexterity  of  an  advocate,  while  affecting 
the  impartiality  of  a  judge. — MACAULAY,  Essays:  Milton. 

Hume  seems  to  have  had  but  two  hearty  dislikes :  the  one  to  the 
English  nation,  and  the  other  to  all  professors  of  dogmatic  theology. 
.The  one  aversion  he  vented  only  privately  to  his  friends ;  but,  if  he  is 
ever  bitter  in  his  public  utterances,  it  is  against  priests  in  general  and 
theological  enthusiasts  and  fanatics  in  particular ;  if  he  ever  seems 
insincere,  it  is  when  he  wishes  to  insult  theologians  by  a  parade  of 
sarcastic  respect. — HUXLEY,  Hume. 

It  is  assuredly  one  of  Hume's  greatest  merits  that  he  clearly  recognised 
the  fact  that  philosophy  is  based  upon  psychology  ;  and  that  the  inquiry 
into  the  contents  and  the  operations  of  the  mind  must  be  conducted  upon 
the  same  principles  as  a  physical  investigation,  if  what  he  calls  the  "  moral 
philosopher  "  would  attain  results  of  as  firm  and  definite  a  character  as. 
those  which  reward  the  "  natural  philosopher ".  .  .  .  For  kindly  David 
Hume,  "  the  damnation  of  one  man  is  an  infinitely  greater  evil  in  the 
universe  than  the  subversion  of  a  thousand  million  of  kingdoms".  And 
he  would  have  felt  with  his  countryman  Burns,  that  even  "auld  Nickie 
Ben  "  should  "  hae  a  chance  ". — Id.,  Ibid. 

In  David  Hume,  however,  our  British  Philosophy  reached  the  most 
significant  crisis  it  has  as  yet  passed  through,  mainly  because  of  the 
thoroughness  and  consistency  with  which  he  developed  to  its  furthest 
issues  the  doctrine  of  Experience,  on  which  that  philosophy  had  been 
founded  by  Bacon,  expanded  by  Hobbes,  and  wrought  out  by  Locke. 
He  saw,  with  consummate  clearness,  the  logical  result  of  a  system  of 
which  Experience  is  the  alpha  and  omega  ;  and  his  destructive  criticism 
has  been  quite  as  helpful  to  the  progress  of  the  human  mind,  as  the 
constructive  efforts  which  it  overthrew,  chiefly  because  it  cleared  the 
atmosphere  of  mist. — WILLIAM  KNIGHT,  Life  of  Hume. 

LEIGH  HUNT. 
English  Poet  and  Essayist :  1784-1859. 

You  will  see  Hunt ;  one  of  those  happy  souls 
Which  are  the  salt  of  the  earth,  and  without  whom 
This  world  would  smell  like  what  it  is — a  tomb ; 
Who  is,  what  others  seem : — his  room  no  doubt 


2o6  HUNT. 

Is  still  adorned  by  many  a  cast  from  Shout, 
With  graceful  flowers,  tastefully  placed  about ; 
And  coronals  of  bay  from  ribbons  hung. 
And  brighter  wreaths  in  neat  disorder  flung, 
The  gifts  of  the  most  learned  among  some  dozens 
Of  female  friends,  sisters-in-law,  and  cousins. 
And  there  is  he  with  his  eternal  puns, 
Which  beat  the  dullest  brain  for  smiles,  like  duns 
Thundering  for  money  at  a  poet's  door  ; 
Alas !  it  is  no  use  to  say,  "  I'm  poor  !  " 
Or  oft  in  graver  mood,  when  he  will  look 
Things  wiser  than  were  ever  said  in  book, 
Except  in  Shakespeare's  wisest  tenderness. 

— SHELLEY,  Letter  to  Maria  Gisborne. 

What  though,  for  showing  truth  to  flatter'd  state, 

Kind  Hunt  was  shut  in  prison,  yet  has  he, 

In  his  immortal  spirit,  been  as  free 
As  the  sky-searching  lark,  and  as  elate. 
Minion  of  Grandeur  !  think  you  he  did  wait  ? 

Think  you  he  nought  but  prison-walls  did  see, 

Till,  so  unwilling,  thou  unturn'dst  the  key  ? 
Ah,  no  !  far  happier,  nobler  was  his  fate  ! 
In  Spenser's  halls  he  stray'd,  and  bowers  fair, 

Culling  enchanted  flowers  ;  and  he  flew 
With  daring  Milton  through  the  fields  of  air  : 

To  regions  of  his  own  his  genius  true 
Took  happy  flights.     Who  shall  his  fame  impair 
When  thou  art  dead,  and  all  thy  wretched  crew  ? 

— KEATS,  Written  on  the  Day  that  Mr.  Leigh  Hunt  Left  Prison. 

I^eigh  Hunt,  the  bloom  I  name  for  thine 
Is  pretty,  pointed  Eglantine  ; 
Flusht  with  the  gentlest  garden  hue, 
"Yet  with  a  wilding  freshness  too ; 
With  fragment  breath  in  fine  flower-lips, 
And  fragrance  to  green  finger-tips  ; 
And  all  its  sweetness  sweeter  yet, 
With  dews  or  showery  droppings  wet. 
Por  not  in  blossom  books  alone 
Thy  Poetry  and  Love  are  shown  ; 
And  tearful  trials  of  this  earth 
But  draw  their  richest  essence  forth. 

— WILLIAM  ALLINGHAM,  Poets  and  Flowers. 

We  have  a  kindness  for  Mr.  Leigh  Hunt.  We  form  our  judgment  of 
him,  indeed,  only  from  events  of  universal  notoriety,  from  his  own  works, 
and  from  the  works  of  other  writers,  who  have  generally  abused  him  in 
the  most  rancorous  manner.  But,  unless  we  are  greatly  mistaken,  he  is 
a  very  clever,  a  very  honest,  and  a  very  good-natured  man.  We  can 
clearly  discern  together  with  many  merits,  many  faults  both  in  his  writings 
and  in  his  conduct.  But  we  really  think  that  there  is  hardly  a  man  living 
whose  merits  have  been  so  grudgingly  allowed,  and  whose  faults  have 
been  so  cruelly  expiated. — MACAULAY,  Essays :  Leigh  Hunt. 


To  pass  from  Hazlitt  to  Leigh  Hunt  is  like  passing  from  a  rough 
landscape  sketch  by  Salvator,  in  which,  according  to  Coleridge,  the 
rocks  take  vague  likeness  of  the  human  figure,  to  a  garden  scene  by 
Lancret,  with  a  group  seated  round  a  fountain  engaged  in  dining  off 
peaches,  and  listening  to  a  gentle  shepherd  who  is  playing  a  guitar  or 
telling  a  pleasant  story.  Leigh  Hunt  is  as  constitutionally  gay  as  Hazlitt 
is  constitutionally  saturnine. — LYTTON,  Essays  :  Charles  Lamb  and  some 
•of  his  Companions. 

Something  not  to  be  replaced  would  be  struck  out  of  the  gentler  litera- 
ture of  our  century,  could  the  mind  of  Leigh  Hunt  cease  to  speak  to  us  in 
a  book.— Id.,  I  bid. 

Though  Leigh  Hunt's  character  was  simple  and  his  gifts  distinct,  he  is 
not  easy  to  class  either  as  an  author  or  a  man.  His  literary  pretentions 
were  well  summed  up  by  Charles  Lamb  in  the  couplet : — 

i,"  Wit,  poet,  proseman,  partyman,  translator, 
Hunt,  thy  best  title  yet  is  Indicator." 

With  a  nature  filled  with  poetry,  but  yet  most  faulty  as  a  poet ;  learned 
beyond  the  average,  but  hardly  a  scholar  ;  full  of  sweet  thoughts,  but  no 
thinker ;  vivacious  and  sportive  to  an  extraordinary  degree,  yet  falling 
short  of  supreme  qualities  as  a  humorist,  Leigh  Hunt  scarcely  attained 
to  the  first  rank  of  writers,  except  as  a  sentimentalist,  an  anthologist,  and 
a  gossip,  yet  he  so  nearly  touched  it  at  so  many  points,  and  there  is  such 
a  special  quality  in  almost  everything  he  wrote,  that  one  hesitates  to  set 
him  in  a  duller  circle. — COSMO  MONKHOUSE,  Life  of  Leigh  Hunt. 

Leigh  Hunt,  if  "  Ariel  "  be  in  some  respects  too  complimentary  a  name 
for  him,  is  at  any  rate  a  most  tricksy  spirit.  The  finest  taste  in  some 
ways,  contrasting  with  what  can  only  be  called  the  most  horrible  vulgarity 
in  others ;  a  light  hand  tediously  boring  again  and  again  at  obviously 
•miscomprehended  questions  of  religion,  philosophy,  and  politics ;  a  keen 
appetite  for  humour  condescending  to  thin  and  repeated  jests  ;  a  reviler  of 
"kings  going  out  of  his  way  laboriously  to  beslaver  royalty ;  a  man  of  letters, 
•of  talent  almost  touching  genius,  who  seldom  writes  a  dozen  consecutive 
good  pages : — these  are  only  some  of  the  inconsistencies  that  meet  us  in 
Leigh  Hunt. — GEORGE  SAINTSBURY,  Essays  in  English  Literature. 

DR.  JOHN  HUNTER. 
Scottish  Surgeon :  1728-1793. 

John  Hunter  was  a  great  man — that  any  one  might  see  without  the 
smallest  skill  in  surgery.  His  style  and  manner  showed  the  man.  He 
would  set  about  cutting  up  the  carcass  of  a  whale  with  the  same  greatness 
•of  gusto  that  Michael  Angelo  would  have  hewn  a  block  of  marble. — 
HAZLITT,  Table  Talk. 

It  is  impossible  to  include  in  one  view  the  multitudinous  forms  of  Hunter's 
work  :  you  cannot  see  the  wood  for  the  trees.  He  was  anatomist,  biologist, 
naturalist,  physician,  surgeon,  and  pathologist,  all  at  once,  and  all  in  the 
highest. — STEPHEN  PAGET,  Life  of  John  Hunter. 


208  COUNTESS  OF  HUNTINGDON,  HUSS. 

SELINA,  COUNTESS  OF  HUNTINGDON. 
Founder  of  the  Calvinistic  Methodists  :  1707-1791. 

The  chief  perfection  of  both  sexes  joined, 

With  neither's  vice  nor  vanity  combined ; 

Of  this  our  age  the  wonder,  love,  and  care, 

The  example  of  the  following,  and  despair  ; 

Such  beauty,  that  from  all  hearts  love  must  flow, 

Such  majesty,  that  none  durst  tell  her  so ; 

A  wisdom  of  so  large  and  potent  sway, 

Rome's  Senate  might  have  wished,  her  Conclave  may : 

Which  did  to  earthly  thoughts  so  seldom  bow, 

Alive  she  scarce  was  less  in  heaven  than  now ; 

So  void  of  the  least  pride,  to  her  alone 

These  radiant  excellencies  seemed  unknown  ; 

Such  once  there  was  ;  but  let  thy  grief  appear, 

Reader,  there  is  not :  HUNTINGDON  lies  here. 

—  LORD  FALKLAND,  An  Epitaph  on  the  Excellent  Countess  of 
Huntingdon. 

At  Rome  the  Countess  of  Huntingdon  would  have  a  place  in  the  calen- 
dar as  St.  Selina. — M  \CAULAY,  Essays  :  Von  Ranke. 

That  grim  but  grand  old  Mother  in  Israel,  Selina,  Countess  of  Hunting- 
don.— [G.  W.  E.  RUSSELL],  Collections  and  Recollections. 

As  long  as  Christ  has  a  Church  on  earth,  and  disciples  animated  with 
zeal  for  the  glory  of  His  Name,  the  Countess  of  Huntingdon  will  live, 
and  enjoy  a  distinguished  niche  in  the  Temple  of  God.  The  world  has 
its  heroes,  whom  it  holds  up  to  universal  admiration  in  the  page  of  history 
— here  the  Church  of  Christ  presents  to  us  one  of  hers. — "  A  MEMBER  OF 
THE  HOUSES  OF  SHIRLEY  AND  HASTINGS,"  Life  and  Times  of  Selinar 
Countess  of  Huntingdon. 

JOHN  Huss. 
Bohemian  Reformer :  1373-1415. 

In  the  streets  of  Constance  was  heard  the  shout, 
"  Masters !  bring  the  arch-heretic  out  !  " 
The  stake  had  been  planted,  the  faggots  spread, 
And  the  tongues  of  the  torches  flickered  red. 
"  Huss  to  the  flames  "  they  fiercely  cried  : 
And  the  gates  of  the  Convent  opened  wide. 

— ALFRED  AUSTIN,  Soliloquies  in  Song. 

Huss  did  not  die  in  vain ;  his  arguments  against  religious  persecution 
remain  on  record  unanswered  and  unanswerable  for  ever ;  and  the  more 
civilized  and  the  more  highly  regarded  a  nation  is  in  the  polity  of  the 
world,  the  more  fully  will  it  be  found  to  have  accepted  his  two  grand 
principles  of  the  supremacy  of  the  conscience  in  the  individual  life  and 
soul,  and  of  the  scriptures  in  the  common  life  of  the  Church  and  in  matters 
of  faith. — A.  H.  WRATISLAW,  Life  of  John  Huss. 


HUSS,  INCH  BALD,  IRVING.  209 

Huss  died,  not  as  an  anabaptist,  but  as  a  Christian.  He  offers  an  ex- 
ample of  Christian  frailty,  but  at  the  same  time  there  was  roused  in  his 
soul  a  power  as  from  God  which  sustained  him.  The  struggle  between 
the  flesh  and  the  spirit,  with  Christ  and  with  Huss,  is  beautiful  to  behold. 
Constance  is  now  a  poor  wretched  city.  I  believe  that  God  has  thus 
punished  it.  John  Huss  was  burnt,  and  I  believe  that  I  shall,  if  it  please 
God,  be  also  slain.  Huss  weeded  from  out  of  Christ's  vineyard  a  few 
thorns,  in  attacking  only  the  scandalous  doings  of  the  papists ;  whereas  I, 
doctor  Martin  Luther,  found  myself  upon  a  well-tilled  and  already  black 
mould — I  attacked  the  doctrine  of  the  pope,  and  I  overthrew  it. — MARTIN 
LUTHER  (trans!.). 

ELIZABETH  INCHBALD. 
English  Authoress:  1753-1821. 

If  Mrs.  Radcliffe  touched  the  trembling  chords  of  the  imagination, 
making  wild  music  there,  Mrs.  Inchbald  has  no  less  power  over  the 
springs  of  the  heart.  She  not  only  moves  the  affections  but  melts  us  into 
"all  the  luxury  of  woe".  .  .  .  Mrs.  Inchbald  is  an  instance  to  confute 
the  assertion  of  Rousseau,  that  women  fail  wherever  they  attempt  to 
describe  the  passion  of  love. — HAZLITT,  Lectures  on  the  English  Comic 
Writers:  Lect.  VI.,  On  the  English  Novelists. 

EDWARD  IRVING. 
Scottish  Clergyman  :  1792-1834. 

Amongst  the  frequent  visitors  of  Coleridge  was  Edward  Irving,  who, 
himself  a  great  preacher  and  teacher  of  religion,  used  to  sit  at  the  feet  of 
Coleridge  as  at  those  of  Gamaliel,  meekly  listening.  Amongst  all  his 
admiring  auditors,  Coleridge  never  had  a  nobler  and  more  Christian  one 
than  Edward  Irving.  ...  He  continued  persecuted,  meek,  loving,  and' 
forgiving  to  the  last.  Since  the  days  of  his  great  prototype  and  Saviour,, 
we  know  of  no  man  who  so  much  resembled  Him  in  patient,  loving,  and 
unresentful  faith. — WILLIAM  HOWITT,  The  Northern  Heights  of  London. 

Irving  shows  the  other  side  of  Carlyle's  Puritanism.  He  was  utterly 
and  purely  a  theologian  ;  God  was  all  in  all  to  him.  From  God  he  must 
begin.  And  how  to  establish  a  relation  between  God  and  mankind  om 
the  Calvinistic  hypothesis,  which  he  nobly  determined  not  to  abandon  for 
any  Arminian  or  semi-Arminian  compromises ;  this  was  the  problem  ini 
trying  to  solve  which  he  gave  up  his  fame  and  his  life. — F.  D.  MAURICE,. 
Life  of  F.  D.  Maurice  by  His  Son,  Vol.  II. 

WASHINGTON  IRVING. 
.  American  Author  :  1783-1859. 

Perhaps,  of  all  American  writers,  in  Washington  Irving  the  polite  air 
of  the  man  of  the  European  world  is  the  most  seen  ;  but  then,  of  all 
American  writers,  Washington  Irving  is  the  one  who  most  sedulously 
imitated,  and  most  happily  caught,  the  spirit  of  European  writers,  formed 
under  aristocratic  as  well  as  popular  influences  ; — of  all  American  writers 
he  is  thus  the  least  American. — LYTTON,  Essays  :  Knowledge  of  the  World. 

14 


2io  JAMES  I.,  JAMES  II.,  JEANNE  D'ARC. 

JAMES  I. 
King  of  England  :  1566-1625. 

As  when  their  ancestors  be-verscd, 

That  glorious  STUART,  JAMES  the  FIRST. 

— ROBERT  LLOYD,  The  Poetry  Professors. 

In  a  word,  James  the  Sixth  was  an  example  that  neither  high  rank,  nor 
shrewd  sense,  nor  ready  wit,  nor  a  deep  acquaintance  with  the  learning 
of  the  age,  can  acquire  respectability  for  a  man  timid  both  by  moral  and 
physical  causes,  and  incapable  of  acting  upon  suiting  occasion,  with  total 
carelessness  to  his  own  comforts,  for  his  own  safety,  or,  if  the  case  calls 
for  it,  his  own  life. — SIR  WALTER  SCOTT,  History  of  Scotland,  Vol.  II. 

Of  James  the  First,  as  of  John,  it  may  be  said  that,  if  his  administration 
had  been  able  and  splendid,  it  would  probably  have  been  fatal  to  our 
country,  and  that  we  owe  more  to  his  weakness  and  meanness  than  to  the 
wisdom  and  courage  of  much  better  sovereigns. — MACAULAY,  History  of 
England,  Vol.  L 

The  most  ridiculous  weaknesses  seemed  to  meet  in  the  wretched 
Solomon  of  Whitehall,  pedantry,  buffoonery,  garrulity,  low-curiosity,  the 
most  contemptible  personal  cowardice.  Nature  and  education  had  done 
their  best  to  produce  a  finished  specimen  of  all  that  a  king  ought  not  to 
be.  His  awkward  figure,  his  rolling  eye,  his  rickety  walk,  his  nervous 
tremblings,  his  slobbering  mouth,  his  broad  Scotch  accent,  were  imper- 
fections which  might  have  been  found  in  the  best  and  greatest  man. 
Their  effect,  however,  was  to  make  James  and  his  office  objects  of  con- 
tempt, and  to  dissolve  those  associations  which  had  been  created  by 
the  noble  bearing  of  preceding  monarchs,  and  which  were  in  themselves 
no  inconsiderable  fence  to  royalty. — Id.,  Essays:  John  Hampden. 

The  wisest  fool  in  Christendom. — SULLY  (transl.). 

JAMES  II. 
King  of  England  :  1633-1701. 

And  James  his  brother  reigned  in  his  stead. 
But  such  a  reign — so  glaring  an  offence 
In  ev'ry  step  'gainst  freedom,  law,  and  sense, 
'Gainst  all  the  rights  of  nature's  gen'ral  plan, 
'Gainst  all  which  constitutes  an  Englishman. 

— CHURCHILL,  Gotham  :  Book  II. 

JEANNE  D'ARC. 

The  Maid  of  Orleans,  Deliverer  of  France  :  1412-1431. 

No  longer  in  Saint  Dennis  will  we  cry, 
But  Joan  la  Pucelle  shall  be  France's  saint. 

— SHAKSPERE,  King  Henry  VI. 

No ;  misconceived  Joan  of  Arc  hath  been 
A  virgin  from  her  tender  infancy, 
Chaste  and  immaculate  in  every  thought ; 


yEANNE  D'ARC. 

Whose  maiden  blood,  thus  vigorously  effus'd, 
Will  cry  for  vengeance  at  the  gates  of  heaven. 

— SHA 


iven. 

•SHAKSPERE,  King  Henry  VI . 


Or  Joan  de  Pucelle's  braver  name, 
Our  right  to  arms  and  conduct  claim  ; 
Who,  though  a  spinster,  yet  was  able 
To  serve  France  for  a  Grand  Constable. 

— SAMUEL  BUTLER,  Hndibras. 

Soon  as  the  saintly  sword  is  found. 
Long  time  entombed  in  holy  ground, 
Armed  cap-a-pie,  Joan  takes  the  field, 
Celestial  agency  her  shield. 

— REV.  JOHN  DAVIES,  Historic  Prologues. 

First  in  the  ranks  see  Joan  of  Arc  advance, 
The  scourge  of  England,  and  the  boast  of  France  ! 
Though  burnt  by  wicked  Bedford  for  a  witch, 
Behold  her  statue  placed  in  glory's  niche. 

— BYRON,  English  Bards  and  Scotch  Reviewers. 

So  as  he  spake  approaching,  cried  the  chief, 

•"  Well  hast  thou  proved  thy  mission,  as  by  words 

And  miracles  attested  when  dismay'd 

The  grave  theologists  dismiss'd  their  doubts, 

So  in  the  field  of  battle  now  confirm'd." 

— SOUTHEY,  Joan  of  Arc. 

Joan  of  Arc, 
A  light  of  ancient  France. 

— TENNYSON,  A  Dream  of  Fair  Women. 

The  history  of  Joan  of  Arc  is  as  mysterious  as  it  is  remarkable.  That 
she  believed  herself  inspired,  few  will  deny  ;  that  she  was  inspired,  no  one 
will  venture  to  assert ;  and  it  is  difficult  to  believe  that  she  was  herself 
imposed  upon  by  Charles  and  Dunois. — SOUTHEY,  Preface  to  Joan  of 
Arc. 

Joan  of  Arc,  the  prophetess,  the  heroine,  and  the  saint  of  French 
patriotism,  the  glory,  the  deliverance,  and  equally  the  shame  of  her 
country.  .  .  .  Angel,  maiden,  warrior — she  has  become  a  fit  blazon  for 
the  soldier's  banner. — LAMARTINE,  Celebrated  Characters  (transl.}. 

We  cannot  pretend  to  explain  the  surprising  story  of  the  Maid  ot 
Orleans ;  for,  however  easy  it  may  be  to  suppose  that  a  heated  and 
enthusiastic  imagination  produced  her  own  visions,  it  is  a  much  greater 
problem  to  account  for  the  credit  they  obtained,  and  for  the  success  that 
attended  her. — HALLAM,  Student's  Middle  Ages. 

But  the  military  desolation  of  France,  this  it  was  that  woke  the  faith  of 
Joanna  in  her  own  heavenly  mission  of  deliverance.  It  was  the  attitude 
of  her  prostrate  country,  crying  night  and  day  for  purification  from  blood, 
and  not  from  feudal  oppression,  that  swallowed  up  the  thoughts  of  the 
impassioned  girl.  But  that  was  not  the  cry  that  uttered  itself  afterwards 
in  the  French  Revolution.  In  Joanna's  days,  the  first  step  towards  rest 
for  France  was  by  expulsion  of  the  foreigner.  Independence  of  a  foreign 


2i2     JEANNE  D'ARC,  JEFFREY,  JEFFREYS,  JENNER. 

yoke,  liberation  as  between  people  and  people,  was  the  one  ransom  to  be 
paid  for  French  honour  and  peace.  That  debt  settled,  there  might  come 
a  time  for  thinking  of  civil  liberties.  But  this  time  was  not  within  the 
prospects  of  the  poor  shepherdess.  The  field — the  area  of  her  sympathies 
— never  coincided  with  that  of  the  revolutionary  period. — DE  QUINCEY, 
Leaders  in  Literature. 

The  Maid  of  Orleans — a  creature  as  noble  and  pure  minded  as  any  that 
the  Church  has  ever  canonised. — DR.  REIXHOLD  PAULI,  Pictures  of  Old 
England  (transl.}. 

FRANCIS,  LORD  JEFFREY. 
Scottish  Lawyer,  Critic,  and  Essayist :  1773-1850. 

Health  to  immortal  Jeffrey !  once,  in  name, 

England  could  boast  a  judge  almost  the  same  ; 

In  soul  so  like,  so  merciful,  so  just, 

Some  think  that  Satan  has  resign'd  his  trust, 

And  given  the  spirit  to  the  world  again, 

To  sentence  letters  as  he  sentenced  men. 

— BYRON,  English  Bards  and  Scotch  Reviewers. 

Mightiest  of  all  Dunedin's  beasts  of  chase! 
For  thee  my  Pegasus  would  mend  his  pace. 
Arise  my  Jeffrey  !  or  my  inkless  pen 
Shall  never  blunt  its  edge  on  meaner  men. 

— Id.,  Hints  from  Horace* 

Mr.  Jeffrey  said  so,  who  must  certainly  know, 

For  he  was  the  Edinburgh  Prophet. 
They  all  of  them  knew  Mr.  Jeffrey's  Review, 
Which  with  Holy  Writ  ought  to  be  reckon'd : 
It  was  through  thick  and  thin  to  its  party  true ; 
Its  back  was  buff,  and  its  sides  were  blue, 

Morbleu !  Parbleu  ! 
It  served  them  for  Law  and  for  Gospel  too. 

— SOUTHEY,  The  March  from  Moscow. 

LORD  GEORGE  JEFFREYS. 
Lord  Chancellor  of  England  :  1648-1689. 

And  murderous  rage  itself,  in  Jeffreys'  form. 

— THOMSON,  Liberty. 

The  person  selected  was  Sir  George  Jeffreys,  Chief  Justice  of  the  Court 
of  Queen's  Bench.  The  depravity  of  this  man  has  passed  into  a  proverb.. 
— MACATJLAY,  History  of  England,  Vol.  I.,  Chap.  IV. 

DR.  EDWARD  JENNER. 
Discoverer  of  Vaccination  :  1749-1823. 

Jenner  !  for  ever  shall  thy  honour'd  name 
Among  the  children  of  mankind  be  blestr 


JENNER,  JEROME,  JEWEL,  JOHN.  213 

Who  by  thy  skill  hast  taught  us  how  to  tame 
One  dire  disease,  the  lamentable  pest 
Which  Africa  sent  forth  to  scourge  the  West. 

— SOUTHEY,  A  Tale  of  Paraguay,  Canto  I. 

Jenner  introduced  vaccination  ;  we  admire  him  for  it,  and  we  shall 
continue  to  admire  him  for  it,  although  some  still  safer  and  more  agree- 
able preservative  should  be  discovered. — MACAULAY,  Essays  :  Sir  James 
Mackintosh. 

JEROME  OF  PRAGUE. 
Bohemian  Reformer:   1378-1416. 

Jerome  of  Prague,  the  friend  and  disciple  of  John  Huss,  has  hitherto 
held  the.position  of  a  mere  shadow  of  his  greater  master,  until,  after  that 
master's  martyrdom,  he  passes  once  for  all  across  the  stage  in  a  blaze  of 
.light  in  the  eloquent  letter  of  Poggio  Bracciolini. — REV.  A.  H.  WRATIS- 
LAW,  Life  of  John  Huss. 

DR.  JOHN  JEWEL. 
Bishop  of  Salisbury  :  1522-1571. 

Concerning  our  bishop  it  may  be  said  "  nomen  omen  ".  Jewel  was  his 
name,  and  precious  were  his  virtues.  So  that  if  the  like  ambition  led  us 
Englishmen  as  doth  foreigners,  specially  to  render  our  surnames  in  Greek 
or  Latin,  he  may  be  termed  Johannes  Gemma,  or  better  account  than 
Gemma  Frisius  entitled  himself  thereunto.— DR.  THOMAS  FULLER. 

JOHN. 
King  of  England  :   1166-1216. 

John  rests  below.     A  man  more  infamous 

Never  hath  held  the  sceptre  of  these  realms, 

And  bruised  beneath  the  iron  rod  of  Power 

The  oppressed  men  of  England.     Englishman  ! 

Curse  not  his  memory.     Murderer  as  he  was, 

Coward  and  slave,  yet  he  it  was  who  sign'd 

That  charter  which  should  make  thee  morn  and  night 

Be  thankful  for  thy  birth-place  ;  Englishman  ! 

That  holy  charter,  which,  shouldst  thou  permit 

Force  to  destroy  or  Fraud  to  undermine, 

Thy  children's  groans  will  persecute  thy  soul. 

For  they  must  bear  the  burthen  of  thy  crime. 

— SOUTHEY,  Epitaph  on  King  John. 

Lo  !  John  self-stripped  of  his  insignia  ; — 
Sceptre  and  mantle,  sword  and  ring,  laid  down 
At  a  proud  legate's  feet.     The  spears  that  line 
Baronial  halls,  the  opprobrious  insult  feel ; 
And  angry  ocean  roars  a  vain  appeal. 

— WORDSWORTH,  Papal  Abuses. 


ai4  JOHN  OF  GAUNT,  JOHNSON. 

JOHN  OF  GAUNT. 
Son  of  Edward  III. :   1340-1399. 

Old  John  of  Gaunt,  time-honoured  Lancaster. 

— SHAKSPERE,  King  Richard  II.,  Act  I.,  Scene  I. 

K.  Richard.     "  What  comfort,  man  ?     How  is't  with  aged  Gaunt  ?  " 

Gaunt.     "  O,  how  that  name  befits  my  composition  ! 

Old  Gaunt,  indeed  ;  and  gaunt  in  being  old  : 

Within  me  grief  hath  kept  a  tedious  fast ; 

And  who  abstains  from  meat,  that  is  not  gaunt  ? 

For  sleeping  England  longtime  have  I  watch'd ; 

Watching  breeds  leanness,  leanness  is  all  gaunt : 

The  pleasure  that  some  fathers  feed  upon, 

Is  my  strict  fast, — I  mean  my  children's  looks ; 

And  therein  fasting  hast  thou  made  me  gaunt : 

Gaunt  am  I  for  the  grave,  gaunt  as  a  grave." 

—Id.,  Ibid.,  Act  II.,  Scene  I. 

DR.  SAMUEL  JOHNSON. 
Lexicographer  and  Miscellaneous  Writer  :  1709-1784. 

Here  Johnson  lies,  a  sage  by  all  allow'd, 

Whom  to  have  bred,  may  well  make  England  proud ; 

Whose  prose  was  eloquence,  by  Wisdom  taught, 

The  graceful  vehicle  of  virtuous  thought : 

Whose  verse  may  claim,  grave,  masculine  and  strong, 

Superior  praise  to  the  mere  poet's  song ; 

Who  many  a  noble  gift  from  heaven  possess'd, 

And  faith  at  last,  alone  worth  all  the  rest. 

O  man,  immortal  by  a  double  prize, 

By  fame  on  earth,  by  glory  in  the  skies  ! 

— COWPER,  Epitaph  on  Dr.  Johnson. 

If  manly  JOHNSON,  with  satiric  rage, 

Lash  the  dull  follies  of  a  trifling  age, 

If  his  strong  muse  with  genuine  strength  aspire, 

Glows  not  the  reader  with  the  poet's  fire  ? 

His  the  true  fire,  where  creep  the  witling  fry 

To  warm  themselves,  and  light  their  rushlights  by. 

—ROBERT  LLOYD,  An  Epistle  to  C.  Churchill. 

If  from  the  tongue  the  period  round 
Fall  into  style,  and  swell  to  sound, 
'Tis  nature  which  herself  displays, 
And  JOHNSON  speaks  a  JOHNSON'S  phrase. 
But  can  you  hear,  without  a  smile, 
The  formal  coxcomb  ape  his  style  ? 

— Id.,  A  Familiar  Epistle. 

Here  Johnson  comes — unblest  with  outward  grace, 
His  rigid  morals  stamp'd  upon  his  face, 
While  strong  conceptions  struggle  in  his  brain 


JOHNSON.  215 

(For  even  wit  is  brought  to  bed  with  pain). 

To  view  him,  porters  with  their  loads  would  rest, 

And  babes  cling  frighted  to  their  nurse's  breast. 

— CUTHBERT  SHAW,  The  Race. 

And  oft  it  chances,  that  the  true  heroic 

In  man  or  spirit  is  undiscerned  for  ages 

Till  some  great  mind  discovers,  and  brings  it  out. 

Thus  whoe'er  thought  that  Johnson  was  a  hero 

For  knocking  a  bookseller  down  with  a  dictionary, 

Till  Carlyle  saw  it  ? 

— DR.  MILO  MAHAN,  The  Yorkshiretnan  in  Boston. 

Johnson  to  be  sure,  has  a  roughness  in  his  manner ;  but  no  man  alive 
has  a  more  tender  heart. — OLIVER  GOLDSMITH. 

Of  all  the  men  distinguished  in  this  or  any  other  age,  Dr.  Johnson  has 
left  upon  posterity  the  strongest  and  most  vivid  impression,  so  far  as 
person,  manners,  disposition  and  conversation  are  concerned.  We  do 
but  name  him,  or  open  a  book  which  he  has  written,  and  the  sound 
and  action  recall  to  the  imagination  at  once  his  form,  his  merits,  his 
peculiarities,  nay,  the  very  uncouthness  of  his  gestures,  and  the  deep, 
impressive  tone  of  his  voice.  We  learn,  not  only  what  he  said,  but  form 
an  idea  how  he  said  it ;  and  have,  at  the  same  time,  a  shrewd  guess  of 
the  secret  motive  why  he  did  so,  and  whether  he  spoke  in  sport  or  in 
anger,  in  the  desire  of  conviction,  or  for  the  love  of  debate.  .  .  .  When 
we  consider  the  rank  which  Dr.  Johnson  held,  not  only  in  literature  but 
in  society,  we  cannot  help  figuring  him  to  ourselves  as  the  benevolent 
giant  of  some  fairy  tale,  whose  kindness  and  courtesies  are  still  mingled 
with  a  part  of  the  rugged  ferocity  imputed  to  the  fabulous  sons  of  Anak ; 
or  rather,  perhaps,  like  a  Roman  dictator,  fetched  from  his  farm,  whose 
wisdom  and  heroism  still  relished  of  his  rustic  occupation. — SIR  WALTER 
SCOTT,  Lives  of  the  Novelists. 

I  am  not  here  saying  that  Dr.  Johnson  was  a  man  without  originality, 
compared  with  the  ordinary  run  of  men's  minds,  but  he  was  not  a  man 
of  original  thought  or  genius,  in  the  sense  in  which  Montaigne  or  Lord 
Bacon  was.  He  opened  no  new  vein  of  precious  ore,  nor  did  he  light 
upon  any  single  pebbles  of  uncommon  size  and  unrivalled  lustre. — 
HAZLITT,  Lectures  on  the  English  Comic  Writers,  Lect.  V. :  On  the 
Periodical  Essayists. 

Old  Sam — a  jewel  rough  set,  yet  shining  like  a  star  ;  and  though  sand- 
blind  by  nature,  and  bigoted  by  education,  one  of  the  truly  great  men  of 
England,  and  "  her  men  are  of  men  the  chief,"  alike  in  the  dominions 
of  the  understanding,  the  reason,  the  passions,  and  the  imagination.  No 
prig  shall  ever  persuade  me  that  Rasselas  is  not  a  noble  performance — in 
design  and  in  execution.  Never  were  the  expenses  of  a  mother's  funeral 
more  gloriously  defrayed  by  son,  than  the  funeral  of  Samuel  Johnson's 
mother  by  the  price  of  Rasselas,  written  for  the  pious  purpose  of  laying 
her  head  decently  and  honourably  in  the  dust. — JOHN  WILSON,  Nodes 
Ambrosiance,  Vol.  II. 

The  Johnsonian  magniloquence.  .  .  .  Johnson  had  neither  eye  nor  ear  ; 
for  nature,  therefore,  he  cared,  as  he  knew,  nothing.  His  knowledge  of 


2i6  JOHNSON. 

town  life  was  minute  ;  but  even  that  was  imperfect. — COLERIDGE,   Table 
Talk. 

He  was  a  good  man,  as  he  was  a  great  man  ;  and  he  had  so  firm  a 
regard  for  virtue  that  he  wisely  set  much  greater  store  by  his  worth  than 
by  his  fame. — LORD  BROUGHAM,  Men  of  Letters,  etc.,  Vol.  II. 

The  mighty  intellect,  the  eloquent  morality  and  lofty  style  of  Dr. 
Johnson. — LORD  JEFFREY,  Essays. 

No  critic  can  say  that  Johnson  and  Gibbon  are  obscure  ;  their  meaning 
is  much  plainer  than  thatof  many  a  writer  who  prefers  a  colloquial  diction. 
Not  only  in  spite  of  the  fault,  but  because  of  the  fault  we  impute  to  their 
styles,  Johnson  and  Gibbon  are — Johnson  and  Gibbon. — L,\T'r ox.  Essays  : 
Rhythm  in  Prose. 

Boswell's  Life  of  Johnson  is  in  everybody's  hands ;  you  will  hear  the 
pithy  sayings,  the  admirable  reflections,  the  sagacious  remarks  it  contains, 
from  one  end  of  the  world  to  the  other.  The  secret  of  this  astonishing 
success  is  to  be  found  in  the  caustic  tone,  sententious  brevity,  and  sterling 
good  sense  of  Johnson,  and  the  inimitable  accuracy,  faithful  memory,  and 
almost  infantile  simplicity  of  his  biographer. — SIR  ARCHIBALD  ALISON, 
Essays :  Autobiography. 

There  is  something  in  Archimedes  or  in  Luther  or  Samuel  Johnson 
that  needs  no  protection.  There  is  something  in  the  true  scholar  which 
he  cannot  be  laughed  out  of,  nor  be  terrified  or  bought  off  from.  — EMER- 
SON, Greatness. 

As  for  Johnson,  I  have  always  considered  him  to  be,  by  nature,  one  of 
our  great  English  souls.  A  strong  and  noble  man  ;  so  much  left  unde- 
veloped in  him  to  the  last :  in  a  kindlier  element  what  might  he  not  have 
been, — Poet,  Priest,  sovereign  Ruler  !  .  .  .  Johnson  was  a  Prophet  to  his 
people ;  preached  a  Gospel  to  them — as  all  like  him  always  do.  The 
highest  Gospel  he  preached  we  may  describe  as  a  kind  of  Moral  Prudence  : 
"in  a  world  where  much  is  to  be  done,  and  little  is  to  be  known,"  see 
how  you  will  do  it.  A  thing  well  worth  preaching.  .  .  .  Brave  old  Samuel : 
ultimus  Romanorum  /  .  .  .  Old  Samuel  Johnson,  the  greatest  soul  in 
England  in  his  day,  was  not  ambitious.  "Corsica  Boswell''  flaunted  at 
public  shows  with  printed  ribbons  round  his  hat ;  but  the  great  old  Samuel 
stayed  at  home.  The  world-wide  soul  wrapt-up  in  its  thoughts,  in  its 
sorrows ; — what  could  paradings,  and  ribbons  in  the  hat,  do  for  it  ?  ... 
Had  Johnson  left  nothing  but  his  Dictionary,  one  might  have  traced  there 
a  great  intellect,  a  genuine  man.  Looking  to  its  clearness  of  definition, 
its  general  solidity,  honesty,  insight,  and  successful  method,  it  may  be 
called  the  best  of  all  Dictionaries.  There  is  in  it  a  kind  of  architectural 
nobleness ;  it  stands  there  like  a  great  solid  sqnare-built  edifice,  finished, 
symmetrically  complete  :  you  judge  that  a  true  Builder  did  it. — CARLVLE, 
On  Heroes  and  Hero-Worship. 

King  Samuel  has  had  no  successor :  nobody  since  his  day,  and  that  of 
his  contemporary  Voltaire,  has  sat  on  a  throne  of  literature  either  in  Eng- 
land or  in  France. — G.  L.  CRAIK,  Sketches  of  the  History  of  Literature 
and  Learning  in  England. 

The  narries  of  many  greater  writers  are  inscribed  upon  the  walls  of 
Westminster  Abbey ;  but  scarcely  any  one  lies  there  whose  heart  was 


JOHXSOX,  JONES,  JONSOX. 

more  acutely  responsive  during  life  to  the  deepest  and  tenderest  of 
human  emotions.  In  visiting  that  strange  gathering  of  departed  heroes 
and  statesmen  and  philanthropists  and  poets,  there  are  many  whose  words 
and  deeds  have  a  far  greater  influence  upon  our  imaginations;  but  there 
are  very  few  whom,  when  all  has  been  said,  we  can  love  so  heartily  as 
Samuel  Johnson. — LESLIE  STEPHEN,  Life  of  Johnson. 

The  second  great  Dictator  of  literary  London  who  bore  the  name  of 
Johnson. — SWINBURNE,  A  Study  of  Ben  Jonson. 

The  great  and  dingy  Reality  of  the  eighteenth  century,  the  Immortal. 
— AUGUSTINE  BIRRELL,  Obiter  Dicta,  First  Series. 

A  hundred  years  can  make  no  difference  to  a  character  like  Johnson's, 
or  to  a  biography  like  Boswell's. — Id.,  Ibid.,  Second  Series. 

INIGO  JONES. 

English  Architect :  1573-1652. 

The  admirers  of  Inigo  Jones  have  always  maintained  that  his  works 
are  inferior  to  those  of  Sir  Christopher  Wren,  only  because  the  great 
fire  of  London  gave  Wren  such  a  field  for  the  display  of  his  powers  as  no 
architect  in  the  history  of  the  world  ever  possessed. — MACAULAY,  Essays  : 
Henry  Hal  I  am. 

BENJAMIN  JON  SON. 
English  Dramatist:  1574-1637. 

O  rare  Ben  Jonson  ! 

— SIR  JOHN  YOUNG,  Epitaph  in  Westminster  Abbey. 

Too  nicely  Jonson  knew  the  critic's  part ; 
Nature  in  him  was  almost  lost  in  art. 

— COLLINS,  An  Epistle  addressed  to  Sir  T.  Hanmer. 

Then  shall  we  see  that  these  two  names  are  one, 
Jonson  and  Poetry,  which  now  are  gone. 

— WILLIAM  CARTWRIGHT,  In  Memory  of  Ben  Jonson. 

After  the  rare  arch-poet  Jonson  died, 

The  sock  grew  loathsome,  and  the  buskin's  pride, 

Together  with  the  stage's  glory,  stood 

Each  like  a  poor  and  pitied  womanhood. 

The  cirque  profaned  was  ;  and  all  postures  racked  ; 

For  men  did  strut  and  stride  and  stare,  not  act. 

The  temper  flew  from  words  ;  and  men  did  squeak, 

Look  red,  and  blow  and  bluster,  but  not  speak. 

— HERRICK,  Upon  Mr.  Ben  Jonson,  An  Epigram. 

Here  lies  Jonson  with  the  rest 

Of  the  poets  ;  but  the  best. 

Reader,  wouldst  thou  more  have  known  ? 

Ask  his  story,  but  not  this  stone. 

That  will  speak  what  this  can't  tell 

Of  his  glory.     So  farewell. 

— Id.,  Upon  Ben  Jonson. 


2i8  JONSON. 

Drawn  to  the  life  of  every  line  and  limb, 

He  (in  his  truth  of  art,  and  that  in  him) 

Lives  yet,  and  will,  whilst  letters  can  be  read  ; 

The  loss  is  ours ;  now  hope  of  life  is  dead. 

Great  men,  and  worthy  of  report,  must  fall 

Into  their  earth,  and  sleeping  there  sleep  all : 

Since  he,  whose  pen  in  every  strain  did  use 

To  drop  a  verse,  and  every  verse  a  muse, 

Is  vowed  to  heaven  :  as  having  with  fair  glory, 

Sung  thanks  of  honour,  or  some  nobler  story. 

The  court,  the  university,  the  heat 

Of  theatres,  with  what  can  else  beget 

Belief,  and  admiration,  clearly  prove 

Our  Poet  first  in  merit,  as  in  love : 

Yet  if  he  do  not  at  his  full  appear, 

Survey  him  in  his  Works,  and  know  him  there. 

— FORD,  On  the  Best  of  English  Poets,  Ben  Jonson.. 

Look  up  !  where  Seneca  and  Sophocles, 
Quick  Plautus  and  sharp  Aristophanes, 
Enlighten  yon  bright  orb !   Doth  not  your  eye, 
Among  them,  one  far  larger  fire,  descry 
At  which  their  lights  grow  pale  ?     'Tis  Jonson. 

— W.  HABINGTON,  Upon  the  Death  of  Ben  Jonson* 

In  ancient  learning  train'd, 

His  rigid  judgment  Fancy's  flights  restrain'd  ; 

Correctly  pruned  each  wild  luxuriant  thought, 

Marked  out  her  course,  nor  spared  a  glorious  fault : 

The  book  of  man  he  read  with  nicest  art, 

And  ransack'd  all  the  secrets  of  the  heart ; 

Exerted  penetration's  utmost  force, 

And  traced  each  passion  to  its  proper  source ; 

Then,  strongly  mark'd,  in  liveliest  colours  drew, 

And  brought  each  foible  forth  to  public  view : 

The  coxcomb  felt  a  lash  in  every  word, 

And  fools,  hung  out,  their  brother  fools  deterr'd. 

His  comic  humour  kept  the  world  in  awe, 

And  laughter  frighten'd  folly  more  than  law. 

— CHURCHILL,  The  Rosciad. 

Great  Jonson  did  by  strength  of  judgment  please  ; 
Yet,  doubling  Fletcher's  force,  he  wants  his  ease. 
In  different  talents  both  adorn'd  their  age  ; 
One  for  the  study,  t'other  for  the  stage. 

— DRYDEN,  Epistle  X.,  To  my  dear  Friend,  Mr.  Congrevc. 

Then  Jonson  came,  instructed  from  the  school, 

To  please  by  method,  and  invent  by  rule. 

His  studious  patience,  and  laborious  art, 

With  regular  approach  assay'd  the  heart : 

Cold  approbation  gave  the  ling'ring  bays, 

For  they  who  durst  not  censure,  scarce  could  praise. 

— DR.  JOHNSON,  Prologue  spoken  by  Mr.  Garrick* 


219 

The  greatest  man  of  the  last  age,  Ben  Jonson,  was  willing  to  give  place 
to  the  classics  in  all  things :  he  was  not  only  a  professed  imitator  of 
Horace,  but  a  learned  plagiary  of  all  the  others ;  you  track  him  every- 
where in  their  snow.  If  Horace,  Lucan,  Petronius  Arbiter,  Seneca,  and 
Juvenal  had  their  own  from  him,  there  are  few  serious  thoughts  which 
are  new  in  him.  But  he  has  done  his  robberies  so  openly,  that  one 
may  see  he  fears  not  to  be  taxed  by  any  law.  He  invades  authors  like  a 
monarch  ;  and  what  would  be  theft  in  other  poets  is  only  victory  in  him. 
— DRYDEN,  Prose  Works,  Vol.  III. 

Ben  Jonson  is  a  great  borrower  from  the  works  of  others,  and  a 
plagiarist  even  from  nature ;  so  little  freedom  is  there  in  his  imitations 
of  her,  and  he  appears  to  receive  her  bounty  like  an  alms.  .  .  .  There 
are  people  who  cannot  taste  olives — and  I  cannot  much  relish  Ben 
Jonson,  though  I  have  taken  some  pains  to  do  it,  ahd  went  to  the  task 
with  every  sort  of  goodwill.  .  .  .  He  wears  out  a  jest  to  the  last  shred 
and  coarsest  grain.  His  imagination  fastens  instinctively  on  some  one 
mark  or  sign  by  which  he  designates  the  individual,  and  never  lets  it  go, 
for  fear  of  not  meeting  with  any  other  means  to  express  himself  by.  ... 
His  portraits  are  caricatures  by  dint  of  their  very  likeness,  being  extrava- 
gant tautologies  of  themselves. — HAZLITT,  Lectures  on  the  English  Comic 
Writers,  Leet.  II. :  On  Shakespeare  and  Ben  Jonson. 

In  Ben  Jonson  you  have  an  intense  and  burning  ait. — COLERIDGE, 
Table  Talk. 

He  held  the  prose  writers  and  poets  of  antiquity  in  solution  in  his 
spacious  memory.  He  did  not  need  to  dove-tail  or  weld  his  borrowings 
into  one  another  :  but  rather,  having  fused  them  in  his  own  mind,  poured 
them  plastically  forth  into  the  mould  of  thought.  Therefore,  unless  we 
are  happy  to  recognise  the  originals  on  which  he  has  been  drawing,  we 
shall  fancy  that  he  is  speaking  from  his  own  stores.  This  kind  of  looting 
from  classical  treasuries  of  wit  and  wisdom  was  accounted  no  robbery  in 
that  age ;  and  Jonson's  panegyrists  praised  him  as  a  conqueror  who 
spoiled  the  empires  of  the  past  like  Alexander.  ...  So  many  points  of 
close  resemblance  between  Ben  Jonson  and  Samuel  Johnson,  as  regards 
mind,  person,  character  and  habits,  present  themselves  unsought,  that  it 
would  argue  affectation  to  ignore  them.  Both  were  confirmed  Lon- 
doners ;  both  felt  the  town  to  be  their  element.  Both  were  huge, 
unwieldy,  unhealthy  men.  Both  possessed  vast  memories  and  mighty 
erudition,  and  were  of  a  stamp  to  have  been  eminent  in  many  branches 
of  human  activity,  if  circumstance  had  not  made  them  authors.  Both, 
as  characters,  were  greater  and  more  influential  even  than  as  men  of 
letters.  Both  as  it  happens,  made  short  journeys  into  France  and 
Scotland ;  and  each  found  in  a  Scotchman  his  biographer.  .  .  .  Those 
who  have  most  deeply  studied  Jonson  and  most  truly  felt  his  power,  will 
hesitate  the  longest  before  pronouncing  a  decisive  judgment  on  the  place 
he  occupies  among  the  foremost  poets  of  our  literature.  One  thing, 
however,  can  be  considered  as  certain  in  any  estimate  which  we  may 
form.  His  throne  is  not  with  the  Olympians  but  with  the  Titans;  not 
with  those  who  share  the  divine  gifts  of  creative  imagination  and  inevit- 
able instinct,  but  with  those  who  compel  our  admiration  by  their 
untiring  energy  and  giant  strength  of  intellectual  muscle.  What  we 
most  marvel  at  in  his  writings,  is  the  prodigious  brainwork  of  the  man, 


220  yONSON,  JUVENAL. 

the    stuff  of  constant   and   inexhaustible  cerebration    they   contain. — J. 
ADDINGTON  SVMONDS,  Ben  yonson. 

If  poets  may  be  divided  into  two  exhaustive  but  not  exclusive  classes — 
the  gods  of  harmony  and  creation,  the  giants  of  energy  and  invention — the 
supremacy  of  Shakespeare  among  the  gods  of  English  verse  is  not  more 
unquestionable  than  the  supremacy  of  Jonson  among  its  giants.  Shake- 
speare himself  stands  no  higher  above  Milton  and  Shelley  than  Jonson 
above  Dryden  and  Byron.  Beside  the  towering  figure  of  this  Enceladus 
the  stature  of  Dryden  seems  but  that  of  an  ordinary  man,  the  stature  of 
Byron  —  who  indeed  can  only  be  classed  among  giants  by  a  somewhat 
licentious  or  audacious  use  of  metaphor — seems  little  higher  than  a 
dwarfs.  >  .  .  No  giant  ever  came  so  near  to  the  ranks  of  the  gods: 
were  it  possible  for  one  not  born  a  god  to  become  divine  by  dint  of 
ambition  and  devotion,  this  glory  would  have  crowned  the  Titanic 
labours  of  Ben  Jonson.  .  .  .  There  is  much  in  the  work  of  Ben  Jonson 
which  may  seem  strange  and  perplexing  to  the  most  devout  and  rapturous 
admirer  of  his  genius :  there  is  nothing  so  singular,  so  quaint,  so  inex- 
plicable, as  his  selection  of  Horace  for  a  sponsor  or  a  patron  saint.  The 
affinity  between  Virgil  and  Tennyson,  between  Shelley  and  Lucretius,  is 
patent  and  palpable :  but  when  Jonson  assumes  the  mask  of  Horace  we 
can  only  wonder  what  would  have  been  the  sensation  on  Olympus  if 
Pluto  had  suddenly  proposed  to  play  the  part  of  Cupid,  or  if  Vulcan  had 
obligingly  offered  to  run  on  the  errands  of  Mercury. — SWINBURNE,  A 
Study  of  Ben  yonson. 

DECIMUS  JUNIUS  JUYEXALIS. 
Roman  Satirist :  42-120. 

I  read  to-day  a  Poet  dead 

In  old  Rome,  centuries  ago  ; 
Once  more  returned  the  days  long  fled. 

The  dried-up  waters  seemed  to  flow. 

Once  more  the  keen  tongue  known  in  youth 

Lashed  the  gross  vices  of  the  time, 
Portraying  with  a  dreadful  truth 

The  sloughs  of  sense,  the  deeps  of  crime. 

— LEWIS  MORRIS,  From  yurcnal. 

Juvenal  is  the  ancient  free  spirit  of  the  dead  republics  ;  in  him  there  is 
a  Rome,  in  the  bronze  of  which  Athens  and  Sparta  are  cast.  Thence  in 
his  poetry  something  of  Aristophanes  and  something  of  Lycurgus.  Take 
care  of  him  ;  he  is  severe.  Not  a  chord  is  wanting  to  his  lyre  or  to  the 
lash  he  uses.  He  is  lofty,  rigid,  austere,  thundering,  violent,  grave,  just, 
inexhaustible  in  imagery,  harshly  gracious  when  he  chooses.  His 
cynicism  is  the  indignation  of  modesty.  His  grace,  thoroughly  inde- 
pendent and  a  true  figure  of  liberty,  has  talons;  it  appears  all  at  once, 
enlivening,  we  cannot  tell  what  supple  and  spirited  undulations,  the  well- 
formed  majesty  of  his  hexameter.  You  may  imagine  that  you  see  the 
Cat  of  Corinth  roaming  on  the  frieze  of  the  Parthenon.  There  is  the 
epic  in  his  satire  ;  that  which  Juvenal  has  in  his  hand  is  the  sceptre 
of  gold  with  which  Ulysses  beat  Thersites. — VICTOR  HUGO,  William 
Shakespeare  (transl). 


KANT,  KEATS. 

IMMANUEL  KANT. 
nan  Philosopher :   1724-1804. 

The  Devil  then  sent  to  Leipsic  fair 

For  Bern's  translation  of  Kant's  book  ; 

A  world  of  words,  tail  foremost,  where 

Right,  wrong — false,  true — and  foul  and  fair — 

As  in  a  lottery-wheel  are  shook. 

—SHELLEY,  Peter  Bell  the  Third,  Part  VI. 

A  dunce  may  talk  on  the  subject  of  the  Kantian  philosophy  with  great 
impunity :  if  he  opened  his  lips  on  any  other,  he  might  be  found  out. — 
HAZLITT,  Table  Talk. 

A  modification  was  introduced  into  Rationalism  by  the  Philosophy  of 
one  of  the  most  celebrated  Metaphysicians  at  the  close  of  the  last  century. 
It  was  the  fundamental  principle  of  that  Philosophy— the  Philosophy  of 
Kant — that  Human  Reason  is  not  sufficient  to  discover  what  was  divine. 
It  even  professed  a  desire  to  make  common  cause  with  Christianity. — 
BISHOP  CHRISTOPHER  WORDSWORTH,  Miscellanies :  Kant's  Influence  on 
Biblical  Interpretations. 

Every  man  his  own  doctor,  every  man  his  own  lawyer,  every  man  his 
own  priest — that  was  the  ideal  of  Kant.  .  .  .  Kant  left  behind  him  no 
system,  but  he  threw  out  suggestions  of  matchless  fertility,  and  marked 
out  with  the  instinct  of  genius  the  true  form  of  philosophic  problems. 
His  philosophy  is  not,  indeed,  disconnected  or  self-contradictory,  but  its 
foundations  are  not  sufficiently  deep.  At  every  step  he  carries  us  beyond 
his  own  lines,  and  hints  at  a  systematic  unity  which  might  carry  us  over 
the  breaks  in  his  thought.  These  hints  were  followed  out  with  various 
success  by  the  succeeding  systems  of  Fichte,  Schelling,  and  Hegel. 
They  were  his  children,  though  he  disowned  them,  and  though  they, 
like  Schopenhauer,  and  with  more  reason  and  courtesy,  spoke  hardly  of 
their  father.  .  .  .  But  in  many  ways  Kant  is  honoured.  Kant-philology 
even  is  better  than  the  half-ignorant  worship  of  a  few  Kantian  phrases. 
For  those  who  have  learned  Kant,  many  questions  have  ceased  to  trouble  : 
many  are  bright  with  a  light  unknown  before :  and  others  are  at  least 
placed  in  a  fair  way  for  further  solution. — WILLIAM  WALLACE,  Kant  for 
English  Readers. 

The  revolution  achieved  by  Kant,  vigorously  grasped,  without  com- 
pletely solving,  the  ethical  problems  which  had  perplexed  the  philosopher's 
predecessors.  Kant  repeated  the  blunder  of  Socrates.  He  maintained 
that  the  moral  law  is  authoritative,  that  the  principle  of  virtue  is  impera- 
tive and  independent.  Yet  he  confessed  that  the  idea  of  happiness  could 
not  be  divorced  from  either  of  them,  and  that  to  reconcile  the  idea  of 
happiness  with  the  principle  of  virtue,  and  the  moral  law,  the  belief  in 
God  and  in  immortality  was  indispensable  ;  assertions  surely  not  a  little 
contradictory. — WILLIAM  MACCALL,  The  Newest  Materialism. 

JOHN  KEATS. 
English  Poet :  1795-1821. 

I  weep  for  Adonais — he  is  dead ! 

Oh  !  weep  for  Adonais,  though  our  tears 


222  '  KEATS. 

Thaw  not  the  frost  which  binds  so  deara  head ! 
And  thou,  sad  Hour,  selected  from  all  years 
To  mourn  our  loss,  rouse  thy  obscure  compeers, 
And  teach  them  thine  own  sorrow !  Say  :  "  With  me 
Died  Adonais  !  "  Till  the  future  dares 
Forget  the  past,  his  fate  and  fame  shall  be 
An  echo  and  a  light  unto  eternity. 

— SHELLEY,  Elegy  on  the  Death  of  John  Keats. 

Who  kiil'd  John  Keats  ? 
"  I,"  says  the  Quarterly, 
So  savage  and  Tartarly  ; 
*'  'Twas  one  of  my  feats." 

Who  shot  the  arrow  ? 
"  The  poet-priest  Milman 
{So  ready  to  kill  man), 
Or  Southey,  or  Barrow." 

— BYRON,  John  Keats. 

Keats,  the  Gods'  own  young  historian  of  Gods. 

—LEIGH  HUNT,  The  Feast  of  the  Poets  (Postscript). 

Keats,  that  sad  name,  which  time  shall  write  in  tears. 

— E.  ELLIOT,  The  Village  Patriarch,  Book  IV.,  II. 

Poesy  breath'd  over  him,  breath'd  constantly,  tenderly,  freshly. 

— LANDOR,  EnglisJi  Hexameters. 

By  Keats'  soul,  the  man  who  never  stepped 
In  gradual  progress  like  another  man, 
But,  turning  grandly  on  his  central  self, 
Ensphered  himself  in  twenty  perfect  years 
And  died,  not  young  (the  life  of  a  long  life 
Distilled  to  a  mere  drop,  falling  like  a  tear 
Upon  the  world's  cold  cheek  to  make  it  burn 
For  ever). 

— ELIZABETH  BARRETT  BROWNING,  Aurora  Leigh. 

Meek  child  of  earth  !  thou  wilt  not  shame 
The  sweet,  dead  poet's  holy  name ; 
The  God  of  music  gave  thee  birth, 
Called  from  the  crimson-spotted  earth, 
Where,  sobbing  his  young  life  away, 
His  own  fair  Hyacinthus  lay. 

— OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES,  After  a  Lecture  on  Keats. 

Great  soul,  thou  sittest  with  me  in  my  room, 

Uplifting  me  with  thy  vast,  quiet  eyes, 

On  whose  full  orbs,  with  kindly  lustre,  lies 

The  twilight  warmth  of  ruddy  ember-gloom  : 

Thy  clear,  strong  tones  will  oft  bring  sudden  bloom 

Of  hope  secure,  to  him  who  lonely  cries, 

Wrestling  with  the  young  poet's  agonies, 

Neglect  and  scorn,  which  seem  a  certain  doom : 

Yes !  the  few  words  which,  like  great  thunder-drops, 

Thy  large  heart  down  to  earth  shook  doubtfully. 


KEATS.  223 

Thrilled  by  the  inward  lightning  of  its  might. 
Serene  and  pure,  like  gushing  joy  of  light. 
Shall  track  the  eternal  chords  of  Destiny. 
After  the  moon-led  pulse  of  ocean  stops. 

— J.  R.  LOWELL,  To  the  Spirit  of  Keats. 

No  richer  more  equable  eye, 
No  tongue  or  more  musical  art 
Conversed  with  the  Gods  on  high, 
Among  all  the  minstrels  who  made 
Sweetness  'tween  Etna  and  Alp  : 

Nor  was  any  laid 
With  such  music  and  tears  in  the  tomb. 

— F.  T.  PALGRAVE,  Two  Graves  at  Rome. 

O  sweetest  lips  since  those  of  Mitylene  ! 

O  poet-painter  of  our  English  Land ! 

Thy  name  was  writ  in  water — it  shall  stand : 

And  tears  like  mine  will  keep  thy  memory  green, 

As  Isabella  did  her  Basil-tree. 

— OSCAR  WILDE,  The  Grave  of  Keats. 

The  epithet  (Cockney  School)  proved  too  much  for  one  of  the  writers 
in  question,  and  stuck  like  a  barbed  arrow  in  his  heart.  Poor  Keats ! 
What  was  sport  to  the  town,  was  death  to  him.  .  .  .  Young,  sensitive, 
delicate,  he  was  like 

"  A  bud  bit  by  an  envious  worm, 

Ere  he  could  spread  his  sweet  leaves  to  the  air, 

Or  dedicate  his  beauty  to  the  sun." 

— HAZLITT,  Table  Talk. 

Keats  was  a  rare  and  great  genius.  He  had,  I  think,  the  finest  and 
richest  fancy  that  has  been  since  Shakespeare,  and  his  imagination  gave 
promise  of  an  equal  development.  Ought  we  to  sorrow  for  his  early  death 
or  to  be  glad  that  we  have  in  his  works  an  eternal  dawn  of  poesy,  as  in 
Shakespeare  we  have  early  morning  and  full  day  ? — J.  R.  LOWELL. 

Past  question,  Keats  started  grandly,  and  has  left  us  a  monument  of 
Cyclopean  architecture  in  verse  almost  impeccable — a  Stonehenge  of  re- 
verberance ;  he  has  made  us  feel  that  his  elder  gods  were  profoundly  primeval , 
powers  so  august  and  abstract-natured  as  to  have  become  already  obsolete 
in  the  days  of  Zeus  and  Hades  :  his  Titans,  too,  were  so  vast  and  muscular 
that  no  feat  would  have  been  difficult  to  them  except  that  of  interesting 
us. — W.  M.  ROSSETTI,  Life  of  Keats. 

As  of  Keats'  character,  so  of  his  poetry,  enjoyment  is  the  primary  element, 
the  perpetual  undertone:  his  very  melancholy  is  the  luxury  of  sadness,  his 
despair  the  drained  and  reversed  cup  of  ecstasy.  Enjoyment  as  the  soul 
of  the  work,  profusion  as  its  body  ;  consummate  niceties  of  art  as  its  adorn- 
ment. The  spirit  of  art  was  always  vividly  near  and  precious  to  Keats. 
He  fashioned  it  exuberantly  into  a  thousand  shapes,  now  of  gem-like  ex- 
quisiteness,  now  mere  sightly  or  showy  trinkets ;  and  of  these  the  scrupulous 
taste  will  even  pronounce  the  cheapest,  and  rightly  pronounce  them,  to  be 
trumpery.  Still,  there  is  the  feeling  of  art,  however  provoking  its  masquer- 
ade ;  recognisable  here  as  clearly  as  it  is  in  the  formative  fine  art,  wrought 
by  a  cunning  hand,  in  a  period  of  great  and  overblown  development  and 


224  KEATS. 

impending  decadence — such  as  the  late  cinquecents  or  the  earlier  French 
rococo.  .  .  .  Keats,  youthful  and  prodigal,  the  magician  of  unnumbered 
heauties  which  neither  author  nor  reader  can  think  of  counting  or  assessing, 
is  the  Keats  of  our  affections.  Mature  him,  and  he  would  be  a  more  perfect 
planner  and  executant,  and  promoted  to  yet  loftier  office  among  the  im- 
mortals ;  but  he  could  not  win  upon  us  more, — could  not  leave  us  a  more 
lovely  memory,  nor  so  priceless  a  treasure  of  regret. — W.  M.  ROSSETTI, 
Critical  Memoir  prefixed  to  the  Poetical  Works  of  Keats. 

John  Keats  was  born  under  an  unlucky  star.  He  was  beset  with  evil 
influences  from  the  moment  that  he  felt  his  own  strength.  Had  he  been 
suffered  to  walk  alone,  unaided  but  by  the  might  of  his  spirit,  he  would  never 
have  been  struck  down  on  the  way  by  the  fury  of  men  who  were  waging  war 
to  the  death  against  his  associates.  Keats  at  starting  was  the  victim  of  a 
quarrel  between  parties  who,  like  most  antagonists,  were  wrong  and  were 
right  in  their  respective  grounds  of  opposition.  .  .  .  Keats  might  have 
sung  as  an  angel,  and  his  voice  would  have  made  no  impression  upon  ears 
that  listened  to  nothing  but  the  promptings  of  an  internal  and  most  vindic- 
tive rage.  ...  It  is  the  spirit  of  Keats  that  at  the  present  moment  hovers 
over  the  best  of  our  national  poesy,  and  inspires  the  poetic  genius — such 
as  it  is — of  our  unpoetic  age.  Had  he  lived,  he  would  eventually  have 
towered  over  his  contemporaries  ;  dying  before  he  was  twenty-six  years  of 
age,  he  took  his  place  at  once  amongst  the  examples  whom  he  so  passion- 
ately loved,  and  the  models  he  so  successfully  imitated,  and  so  closely 
approached. — SAMUEL  PHILLIPS,  Essays  from  "  The  Times"  Vol  I. 

In  Keats,  on  the  contrary,  the  originality  in  the  use  of  his  scanty 
materials,  his  expansion  of  them  to  the  proportions  of  his  own  imagination, 
and,  above  all,  his  field  of  diction  and  expression  extending  so  far  beyond 
his  knowledge  of  literature,  is  quite  inexplicable  to  any  of  the  ordinary 
processes  of  mental  education.  If  his  classical  learning  had  been  deeper, 
his  seizure  of  the  full  spirit  of  Grecian  beauty  would  have  been  less  sur- 
prising ;  if  his  English  reading  had  been  more  extensive,  his  inexhaustible 
vocabulary  of  picturesque  and  mimetic  words  could  more  easily  be 
accounted  for ;  but  here  is  a  surgeon's  apprentice,  with  the  ordinary 
culture  of  the  middle  classes,  rivalling,  in  aesthetic  perceptions  of  antique 
life  and  thought,  the  most  careful  scholars  of  his  time  and  country,  and 
reproducing  these  impressions  in  a  phraseology  as  complete  and  uncon- 
ventional as  if  he  had  mastered  the  whole  history  and  the  frequent 
variations  of  the  English  tongue,  and  elaborated  a  mode  of  utterance 
commensurate  with  his  vast  ideas.  .  .  .  Let  us  never  forget,  that  wonder- 
ful as  are  the  poems  of  Keats,  yet,  after  all,  the}'  are  rather  the  records  of 
a  poetical  education  than  the  accomplished  work  of  the  mature  artist. 
This  is  in  truth  the  chief  interest  of  these  pages ;  this  is  what  these 
letters  so  vividly  exhibit.  Day  by  day,  his  imagination  is  extended,  his 
fancy  enriched,  his  taste  purified;  every  fresh  acquaintance  with  the 
motive  minds  of  past  generations  leads  him  a  step  onwards  in  knowledge 
and  in  power  ;  the  elements  of  ancient  genius  become  his  own  ;  the  skill 
of  faculties  long  spent  revives  in  him  ;  ever,  like  Nature  herself,  he  gladly 
receives  and  energetically  reproduces.— LORD  HOUGHTON,  Life  of  Keats. 

From  the  height  to  which  the  genius  of  Keats  arose  during  the  brief 
period  between  its  first  effervescence  and  its  exhaustion — from  the  glowing 
humanity  of  his  own  nature,  and  the  completeness  with  which,  by  the 


KEATS,  KEBLE,  KEPLER.  225 

testimony  alike  of  his  own  consciousness  and  his  friend's  experience,  he  was 
accustomed  to  live  in  the  lives  of  others- -from  the  gleams  of  true  greatness 
of  mind  which  shine  not  only  in  his  poetry,  but  equally  amid  the  gossip 
and  pleasantry  of  his  familiar  letters — from  all  our  evidences,  in  a  word, 
as  to  what  he  was  as  well  as  from  what  he  did — I  think  it  probable  that 
by  power,  as  well  as  by  temperament  and  by  aim,  he  was  the  most 
Shakespearian  spirit  that  has  lived  since  Shakespeare;  the  true  Marcellus, 
as  his  first  biographer  has  called  him,  of  the  realm  of  English  song ;  and 
that  in  his  premature  death  our  literature  has  sustained  its  greatest  loss. 
— SIDNEY  COLVIN,  Life  of  Keats. 

In  the  soul  of  Keats,  if  ever  in  a  human  soul  at  all,  there  was  a  portion 
of  the  real  poetic  essence — the  real  faculty  divine.  .  .  .  His  most  obvious 
characteristic,  I  repeat,  is  the  universality  of  his  sensuousness.  And  this 
it  is,  added  to  his  exquisite  mastery  in  language  and  verse,  that  makes  it 
such  a  luxury  to  read  him. — DAVID  MASSON,  Wordsworth,  Shelley,  and 
Keats. 

Keats  is  the  very  minister  of  sensuous  beauty,  the  thrilling  voice  that 
sings  from  the  lattices  of 

Magic  casements  opening  on  the  foam, 
Of  perilous  seas  in  faery  lands  forlorn. 

— W.  J.  DAWSON,  Quest  and  Vision. 

JOHN  KEBLE. 
English  Theologian  and  Poet :  1792-1866.. 

For  its  golden  fraught 

Of  prayer  and  praise,  of  dream  and  thought. 
Where  poesy  finds  fitting  voice 
For  all  who  hope,  fear,  grieve,  rejoice, 

Long  have  I  loved,  and  studied  long,  ^ 

The  pious  minstrel's  varied  song. 

— PRAED,  To  Helen,  with  Keble's  "  Christian  Year  ". 
High  Churchmanship  had  been  hitherto  dry  and  formal ;  Keble  carried 
into  it  the  emotions  of  Evangelicalism  while  he  avoided  angry  collision 
with  Evangelical  opinions.  Thus  all  parties  could  find  much  to  admire 
in  him,  and  little  to  suspect.  English  religious  poetry  was  generally  weak 
— was  not,  indeed,  poetry  at  all.  Here  was  something  which  in  its  kind 
was  excellent  ;  and  every  one  who  was  really  religious,  or  wished  to  be 
religious,  or  even  outwardly  and  from  habit  professed  himself  and  believed 
himself  to  be  a  Christian,  found  Keble's  verses  chime  in  his  heart  like  church 
bells. — J.  A.  FROUDE,  Short  Studies  on  Great  Subjects,  Vol.  IV. 

Mr.  Keble,  the  "sweet  singer  of  Israel,"  and  a  true  saint,  if  this  genera- 
tion  has  seen  one.— W.  E.  GLADSTONE,  A  Chapter  of  Autobiography. 

JOHN  KEPLER. 
German  Astronomer :  1571-1630. 

Kepler  asserts  these  wonders  may  be  done 
By  the  magnetic  virtue  of  the  sun, 

15 


226  KEPLER,  KINGSLEY. 

Which  he,  to  gain  his  end,  thinks  fit  to  place 
Full  in  the  centre  of  that  mighty  space. 

—  SIR  RICHARD  BLACKMORE,  Creation. 

Galileo  was  a  great  genius,  and  so  was  Newton  ;  but  it  would  take  two 
or  three  Galileos  and  Newtons  to  make  one  Kepler. — S.  T.  COLERIDGE, 
Table  Talk. 

No  man  was  more  unassuming  than  Kepler,  but  he  wrote  in  reference 
to  his  great  discoveries,  and  the  neglect  they  at  first  met  with,  "  I  may 
well  be  a  century  without  a  reader,  since  God  Almighty  has  been  six 
thousand  years  without  such  an  observer  as  I  ". — SIR  ARCHIBALD  ALISON, 
Essays:  Autobiography. 

Kepler  was  the  wildest  of  guessers. — HUXLEY,  Method  and  Results. 

The  great  astronomer,  Kepler,  said  that  two  things  filled  him  with 
wonder ;  the  starry  heavens  above  and  the  moral  law  within  the  soul. — 
DR.  SILVANUS  P.  THOMPSON. 


CHARLES  KINGSLEY. 
Canon  of  Westminster,  Author,  Social  Reformer :  1819-1875. 

Never  shall  I  forget  the  moment  when  for  the  last  time  I  gazed  upon 
the  manly  features  of  Charles  Kingsley,  features  which  death  had  rendered 
calm,  grand,  sublime.  The  constant  struggle  that  in  life  seemed  to  allow 
no  rest  to  his  expression,  the  spirit,  like  a  caged  lion,  shaking  the  bars  of 
his  prison,  the  mind  striving  for  utterance,  the  soul  wearying  for  loving 
response — all  that  was  over.  There  remained  only  the  satisfied  expression 
of  triumph  and  peace,  as  of  a  soldier  who  had  fought  a  good  fight,  and 
who,  while  sinking  into  the  stillness  of  the  slumber  of  death,  listens  to 
the  distant  sounds  of  music  and  to  the  shouts  of  victory.  One  saw  the 
Ideal  man,  as  nature  had  meant  him  to  be,  and  one  felt  that  there  is  no 
.greater  sculptor  than  Death. — MAX  MULLER  in  Charles  Kingsley  :  His 
Letters  and  Memories  of  His  Life,  By  His  Widow,  Vol.  II. 

In  England,  Kingsley  has  been  loved  and  revered  for  many  years  as  a 
writer  and  a  poet.  But  he  has  been  much  more  than  that.  He  formed 
part  and  parcel  of  the  people  ;  nay,  one  might  say  he  formed  part  of  the 
English  conscience.  He  was  one  of  the  men  of  whom  one  thought  at 
once,  whenever  a  social  or  a  religious,  or  a  great  political  question  stirred 
the  people. — Id.,  Biographical  Essays. 

Kingsley  was  not  exactly  the  founder  of  a  new  school,  but  he  helped  in 
forming  a  new  school  of  the  Prophets,  a  new  order  of  truth-seeking  and 
truth-speaking  young  clerics,  whose  distinctive  characteristic  is  clergy- 
manliness,  who  in  directness,  spontaneity,  and  earnest  simplicity  which 
avoids  the  sanctimonious  tone,  but  looks  to  true  sanctity  as  the  aim  of 
all  Christian  teaching  and  life,  are  more  or  less  influenced  by  the  example 
of  what  Sir  Mountstuart  E.  Grant  Duff  calls  the  open-airness  in  the  tone 
and  teaching  of  Charles  Kingsley. — REV.  M.  KAUFMAN,  Charles  Kingsley, 
Christian  Socialist  and  Social  Reformer. 

Kingsley's  exuberant  faith  in  his  own  message  showed  the  high  spirits 
of  youth  rather  than  a  profound  insight  into  the  conditions  of  the  great 
problems  which  he  solved  so  fluently.  At  the  time,  however,  this  youth- 


KINGSLEY,  KNELLER.  227 

ful  zeal  was  contagious.  If  not  an  authority  to  obey,  he  was  a  fellow- 
worker  in  whom  to  trust  heartily  and  rejoice  unreservedly. — LESLIE 
STEPHEN,  Hours  in  a  Library,  Vol.  III. 

Certainly  no  intelligent  reader  ever  rose  from  a  perusal  of  Kingsley's 
books  without  feeling  himself  a  stronger,  more  natural,  more  sympathetic 
human  being,  or  without  an  increased  sense  of  that  faith  in  God  and 
nature  which  was  always  at  the  centre  of  Kingsley's  thought. — DEAN 
CHAS.  WM.  STUBBS,  Charles  Kingsley  and  the  Christian  Social  Movement. 

Kingsley's  three  masters  were — in  poetry,  Tennyson  ;  in  social  philo- 
sophy, Carlyle;  in  things  moral  and  spiritual,  Frederick  D.  Maurice.  He 
had  far  more  of  genius  than  had  Maurice  ;  he  was  a  much  more  passionate 
reformer  than  Tennyson  ;  he  was  far  more  genial  and  social  than  Carlyle. 
Not  that  he  imitated  any  of  the  three. — FREDERIC  HARRISON,  Studies  in 
Early  Victorian  Literature. 

SIR  GODFREY  KNELLER. 
German  Painter  :  1648-1723. 

What  god,  what  genius  did  the  pencil  move, 
When  Kneller  painted  these  ? 

'Twas  friendship — warm  as  Phoebus,  kind  as  love, 
And  strong  as  Hercules. 

— POPE,  On  Sir  Godfrey  Kneller1  s  painting  for  the  Author  the 
Statues  of  Apollo,  Venus,  and  Hercules. 

Kneller,  by  Heaven,  and  not  a  master  taught, 
Whose  art  was  nature,  and  whose  pictures  thought ; 
Now  for  two  ages  having  snatch'd  from  fate 
Whate'er  was  beauteous,  or  whate'er  was  great, 
Lies  crown'd  with  princes'  honours,  poets'  lays, 
Due  to  his  merit,  and  brave  thirst  of  praise. 
Living,  great  nature  fear'd  he  might  outvie 
Her  works  ;  and  dying,  fears  herself  may  die. 

— Id.,  Epitaph  on  Sir  Godfrey  Kneller. 

Such  are  thy  pictures,  Kneller  ;  such  thy  skill, 

That  nature  seems  obedient  to  thy  will ; 

Comes  out,  and  meets  thy  pencil  in  the  draught ; 

Lives  there,  and  wants  but  words  to  speak  her  thought. 

— DRYDEN,  To  Sir  Godfrey  Kneller. 

Thou,  Kneller,  long  with  noble  pride, 
The  foremost  of  thy  art,  hast  vied 
With  nature  in  a  generous  strife, 
And  touch'd  the  canvas  into  life. 

— ADDISON,  To  Sir  Godfrey  Kneller. 

When  Kneller's  works  of  various  grace 
Were  to  fair  Venus  shown, 
The  goddess  spied  in  every  face 
Some  features  of  her  own. 

— PRIOR,  The  Judgment  of  Venus. 


228  KNELLER,  KEN. 

I  yield,  O  Kneller !  to  superior  skill, 
Thy  pencil  triumphs  o'er  the  poet's  quill : 
If  yet  my  vanquish'd  muse  exerts  her  lays, 
It  is  no  more  to  rival  thee,  but  praise. 

— CONGREVE,  To  Sir  Godfrey  Kneller. 

O  Kneller  !  like  thy  pictures  were  my  song, 
Clear  like  thy  paint,  and  like  thy  pencil  strong ; 
These  matchless  beauties  should  recorded  be, 
Immortal  in  my  verse,  as  in  thy  gallery. 

— LORD  LANSDOWNE,  The  Progress  of  Beauty. 

Kneller  with  animated  art,  could  trace, 

The  magic  wonders  of  a  lovely  face  ; 

His  nice  creating  fancy  could  impart, 

Fire  to  each  charm,  and  flames  to  ev'ry  heart. 

— WILLIAM  PATTISON,  To  an  Old  Lady  that  used  to  Paint. 

You  know  they  paint  the  great  man's  soul  as  like, 
As  can  his  features  Kneller  or  Vandyke. 

— SOAME  JENYNS,  The  First  Epistle  of  Book  II.  of  Horace  imitated. 

It  is  said  that  the  hasty  and  rapacious  Kneller  used  to  send  away  the 
ladies  who  sate  to  him  as  soon  as  he  had  sketched  their  faces,  and  to 
paint  the  figure  and  hands  from  his  housemaid. — MACAULAY,  Essays  : 
Horace  Walpole. 

THOMAS  KEN. 
Bishop  of  Bath  and  Wells:  1637-1711. 

As  for  my  religion,  I  die  in  the  Holy  Catholic  and  Apostolic  Faith, 
professed  by  the  whole  Church  before  the  disunion  of  the  East  and  the 
West  ;  more  particularly,  I  die  in  the  communion  of  the  Church  of 
England,  as  it  stands  distinguished  from  all  Papal  and  Puritan  innova- 
tions, and  as  it  adheres  to  the  doctrine  of  the  Cross. —  BISHOP  KEN,  Part 
of  His  Will  that  relates  to  Religion. 

Who  was  this  father  of  the  Church, 

So  secret  in  his  glory  ? 
In  vain  might  antiquarians  search 

For  record  of  his  story  ; 
But  preciously  tradition  keeps 

The  fame  of  holy  men  ; 
So  there  the  Christian  smiles  or  weeps 

For  love  of  Bishop  Ken. 
A  name  his  country  once  forsook, 

But  now  with  joy  inherits, 
Confessor  in  the  Church's  book 

And  martyr  in  the  Spirit's  ! 
That  dared  with  royal  power  to  cope, 

In  peaceful  faith  persisting, 
A  braver  Becket — who  could  hope 

To  conquer  unresisting. 

— LORD  HOUGHTON,  Lines  on  Ken's  Grave. 


KEN,  KNOX.  229 

The  life  of  Ken  presents  an  almost,  if  not  altogether,  unique  instance 
of  a  man  who,  while  continually  writing  poetry,  probably  from  early  man- 
hood to  the  very  close  of  life,  reserved  all  that  he  had  written,  the  three 
Hymns  for  Morning,  Evening,  and  Midnight  excepted,  for  posthumous 
publication.  The  fact  seems  to  me  singularly  suggestive.  If  I  under- 
stand his  character  rightly,  he  was  one  of  those  who  find,  in  writing  verse, 
what  Keble  in  his  Preelections  calls  the  vis  medica  of  the  poetic  art.  He 
wrote  to  relieve  his  mind  from  emotions,  which  otherwise  would  have 
been  too  strong  for  him,  from  thoughts,  for  which  other  men  might  have 
found  utterance  in  sermons  or  controversial  treatises. — DEAN  PLUMTRE, 
Life  of  Thomas  Ken,  Vol.  II. 

When  the  Ahaz  of  England  would  have  combined  an  altar  of  Damascus 
with  one  of  higher  origin  and  purer  design,  Dr.  Ken  appeared  there  as  the 
Prophet  of  the  English  Church,  to  plead  for  civil  and  religious  liberty. 
Before  that  time  he  had  boldly  rebuked  royal  vice.  "  I  must  go  and  hear 
little  Ken  tell  me  of  my  faults,"  said  Charles  the  Second  with  what  for 
him  may  have  been  a  melancholy  smile.  The  monarch  knew  his  man. 
He  remembered  why  and  when  his  Chaplain  had  said  "  Not  for  his  king- 
dom". ...  It  is  evident  that  Ken's  knowledge  was  compacted  and  ac- 
cessible. The  grosser  particles  of  his  learning  were  fused  and  clarified  by 
the  fires  of  thought,  of  feeling,  and  of  prayer.  In  this  he  stands  almost 
alone  among  our  elder  divines.  But  with  Ken  the  dogma  is  simple  and 
catholic,  the  devotion  tender  and  ardent,  and  the  dogma  and  the  devotion 
are  one.  With  most  orthodox  theologians  dogma  is  like  an  armour, 
necessary  indeed,  but  cumbrous ;  with  Ken  the  armour  becomes  winged, 
and  lifts  him  from  the  earth.  .  .  .  By  loving  contemporaries  he  was  called 
"  the  seraphic  Ken  ".  But  while  his  heart  was  rapt  in  the  ardours  of 
devotion  before  the  altar,  his  grave  and  serious  intellect  was  on  its  guard. 
His  words  were  wise  as  well  as  burning — explained  or  modified,  if  mis- 
understood. If  he  never  "  evaporated  "  the  Sacrament  into  a  "  metaphor," 
he  never  materialised  the  presence  which  he  confessed.  .  .  .  One  gift  was 
bestowed  upon  Ken  in  no  ordinary  measure  — the  gift  of  producing  prayers 
which  can  really  be  used.  If  we  measure  the  value  of  products  by  their 
rarity,  then  such  prayers  are  the  most  precious  of  all  products.  They  are 
not  compositions.  They  are  not  rhapsodies.  They  are  effusions.  The 
press  teems  with  Manuals  of  Devotion.  But  to-day  they  are,  to-morrow 
are  cast  into  the  oven.  Monarchs,  senates,  convocations,  may  order  forms 
of  prayer.  They  may  get  speeches  to  be  spoken  upward  by  people  on 
their  knees.  But  prayers  which  have  the  one  condition  of  peccability  they 
can  no  more  command  than  they  can  order  a  new  Cologne  Cathedral  or 
a  new  epic  poem.  .  .  .  Ken,  with  Wesley's  impatience,  out  upon  a  theo- 
logical campaign,  might  have  rent  the  Church  of  England  in  sunder. 
With  himself  and  his  friends  he  would  have  carried  away  from  the  National 
Establishment  the  acorn  in  which  lay  folded  the  Church  Revival. — ARCH- 
BISHOP W.  ALEXANDER,  Ibid. 

JOHN  KNOX. 
ScottisJi  Reformer:   1505-1572. 

Orthodox  !  orthodox  ! — 
Wha  believe  in  John  Knox. 

— BURNS,  The  Kirk's  Alarm. 


230  KNOX. 

As  if  you  had  carried  sour  John  Knox 

To  the  play-house  at  Paris,  Vienna  or  Munich, 

Fastened  him  into  a  front-row  box, 

And  danced  off  the  ballet  with  trousers  and  tunic. 

— BROWNING,  Garden  Fancies. 

John  Knox,  a  man  of  a  fearless  heart  and  a  fluent  eloquence  ;  violent, 
indeed,  and  sometimes  coarse,  but  the  better  fitted  to  obtain  influence  in 
a  coarse  and  turbulent  age,  capable  at  once  of  reasoning  with  the  wiser 
nobility,  and  inspiring  with  his  own  spirit  and  zeal  the  fierce  populace. 
Toleration,  and  that  species  of  candour  which  makes  allowance  for  the 
prejudices  of  birth  or  situation,  were  unknown  to  his  uncompromising 
mind  :  and  this  deficiency  made  him  the  more  fit  to  play  the  distinguished 
part  to  which  he  was  called.— SIR  WALTER  SCOTT,  History  of  Scotland. 

We  must  spare  a  few  words  for  Knox ;  himself  a  brave  and  remarkable 
man  ;  but  still  more  important  as  Chief  Priest  and  Founder,  which  one 
may  consider  him  to  be,  of  the  Faith  that  became  Scotland's,  New  Eng- 
land's, Oliver  Cromwell's.  .  .  .  This  that  Knox  did  for  his  Nation,  I  say, 
we  may  really  call  a  resurrection  as  from  death.  It  was  not  a  smooth 
business ;  but  it  was  welcome  surely,  and  cheap  at  that  price,  had  it 
been  far  rougher.  On  the  whole,  cheap  at  any  price ; — as  life  is.  The 
people  began  to  live  :  they  needed  first  of  all  to  do  that,  at  what  cost  and 
costs  soever.  Scotch  Literature  and  Thought,  Scotch  Industry ;  James 
Watt,  David  Hume,  Walter  Scott,  Robert  Burns :  I  find  Knox  and  the 
Reformation  acting  in  the  heart's  core  of  every  one  of  these  persons  and 
phenomena ;  I  find  that  without  the  Reformation  they  would  not  have 
been.— CARLYLE,  On  Heroes  and  Hero-Worship. 

It  may  surprise  many  a  reader,  if  we  designate  John  Knox  as  a  "  Man 
of  Genius  "  :  and  truly  it  was  not  with  what  we  call  "  Literature,"  and 
its  harmonies  and  symmetries,  addressed  to  man's  Imagination,  that  Knox 
was  ever  for  an  hour  concerned  ;  but  with  practical  truths  alone,  addressed 
to  man's  inmost  Belief,  with  immutable  Facts,  accepted  by  him,  if  he  is 
of  loyal  heart,  as  the  daily  voices  of  the  Eternal — even  such  in  all  degrees 
of  them.  It  is,  therefore,  a  still  higher  title  than  "  Man  of^ Genius  "  that 
will  belong  to  Knox ;  that  of  a  heaven-inspired  seer  and  heroic  leader  of 
men.  But  by  whatever  name  we  call  it,  Knox's  spiritual  endowment  is 
of  the  most  distinguished  class;  intrinsically  capable  of  whatever  is  noblest 
in  literature  and  in  far  higher  things. — Id.,  An  Essay  on  the  Portraits  of 
jfohn  Knox. 

Without  Knox,  humanly  speaking,  the  Reformation  would  not  have 
been  at  all,  or  at  least  would  not  have  been  what  it  actually  became. 
He  had  not  the  lyric  thrill  of  genius  that  vibrates  in  the  songs  of  Robert 
Burns;  but  in  his  own  way  and  to  his  own  tune  he  sang,  "A  man's 
a  man  for  a'  that,''  two  hundred  years  before  the  Ayrshire  bard  was  born. 
...  He  had  the  near  sight  which  sees  what  is  closest  to  it  with  admirable 
distinctness,  and  the  far  sight  which  descries  with  equal  accuracy  what  is 
distant,  and  with  these  he  combined  the  philosophic  spirit  which  marked 
very  correctly  the  connection  between  the  two.  He  was  a  true  patriot, 
and  ever  willing  to  sacrifice  himself  in  the  welfare  of  his  country.  And 
all  these  qualities  in  him  were  raised  to  the  white  heat  of  enthusiasm, 
and  fused  into  the  unity  of  holiness  by  his  devotion  to  the  God  and 
Father  of  his  Saviour  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ.  He  spoke,  and  wrote,  and 


KNOX,  KOSSUTH,  LA  FAYETTE.  231 

acted  as  ever  in  His  sight.  This  was  the  secret  of  his  courage,  the  root 
of  his  inflexibility,  and  the  source  of  his  power.  As  a  Reformer  he  had 
in  him  the  boldness  of  Luther,  combined  with  some  of  the  qualities  of 
Calvin,  and  though  as  a  whole  he  was  inferior  to  both,  yet  more  than 
either  he  reminds  us  of  a  Hebrew  prophet.  When  we  see  him  before 
Queen  Mary,  we  think  at  once  of  Elijah  before  Ahab,  and  more  appropri- 
ately perhaps  than  any  other  man  in  modern  history  he  might  have  taken 
for  the  motto  of  his  life  the  oft-repeated  asseveration  of  the  Tishbite, 
"As  the  Lord  God  of  Israel  liveth,  before  whom  I  stand". — W.  M. 
TAYLOR,  Life  of  John  Knox. 

Of  the  Reformation  in  all  countries  and  times,  John  Knox  is  the 
perfect  symbol. — RUSKIN. 

No  one  in  England  or  Scotland  who  values  liberty,  national,  civil,  or 
religious,  can  speak  of  Knox  without  reverence  or  gratitude. — SIR  W.  S. 
MAXWELL,  Miscellaneous  Essays  and  Addresses,  Vol.  VI. 

•  Broadly  viewed,  the  true  worth  of  Knox  was  that  in  a  measure  beyond 
any  of  his  countrymen  he  revealed  the  heart  and  mind  of  the  nation  to 
itself,  and  thus  made  clear  its  precise  vocation  among  the  peoples. 
Among  the  great  personages  of  the  past  it  would  be  difficult  to  name 
one  who  in  the  same  degree  has  vitalised  and  dominated  the  collective 
energies  of  his  countrymen.  .  .  .  What  has  been  said  of  all  religion  when 
it  takes  full  possession  of  man's  nature  is  eminently  true  of  the  religion  of 
Knox:  it  was  something  "savage  and  bare,  but  infinitely  strong".  It 
was  the  religion  of  St.  Columba,  who  rushed  knee-deep  into  the  sea  after 
a  sacrilegious  robber,  pursuing  him  with  curses  ;  of  St.  Bernard,  who 
believed  that  the  slaying  of  an  infidel  was  a  service  to  God.  ...  As  the 
exaggerated  type  of  his  own  countrymen,  Knox,  like  Voltaire  and  Dr. 
Johnson,  necessarily  repels  men  of  other  nations ;  while  his  own  people, 
even  those  who  differ  most  widely  from  his  religious  and  political  teaching,, 
regard  even  his  asperities  with  the  kindly  allowance  that  is  made  for 
family  idiosyncrasies. — P.  HUME  BROWN,  John  Knox:  A  Biographv* 
Vol.  II. 


Louis  KOSSUTH. 
Hungarian  Patriot  and  Statesman  :   1806-1894. 

I  Kossuth  am  :  O  Future,  thou 
That  clear'st  the  just  and  blott'st  the  vile, 
O'er  this  small  dust  in  reverence  bow, 
Remembering  what  I  was  erewhile. 

— J.  R.  LOWELL,  Kossuth. 

GILBERT  MOTIER,  MARQUIS  DE  LA  FAYETTE. 
French  General  and  Politician  :  1757-1834. 

Thou  Fayette !  who  didst  wake  with  startling  voice 
Life's  better  sun  from  that  long  wintry  night, 
Thus  in  thy  Country's  triumphs  shalt  rejoice, 


232  LA  FAYETTE,  LAMARTINE,  LAMB. 

And  mock  with  raptures  high  the  dungeon's  might : 

For  lo  !  the  morning  struggles  into  day, 

And  Slavery's  spectres  shriek  and  vanish  from  the  ray ! 

— S.  T.  COLERIDGE,  Sonnet  VIII. 

Lafayette's  inflexible  integrity. 

It  was  the  great  and  rare  praise  of  Lafayette — a  praise  hardly  shared 
by  him  with  any  other  revolutionary  chief — that  he  both  bore  a  forward 
part  in  the  scenes  of  two  Revolutions,  and  refused  steadily  to  move  one 
step  farther  in  either  than  his  principles  justified,  or  his  conscientious 
opinion  of  the  public  good  allowed. — LORD  BROUGHAM,  Statesmen  of  the 
Time  of  George  III. 

Lafayette — the  purest,  the  most  temperate,  and  therefore  the  most  in- 
flexible friend  of  rational  liberty  in  France. — LORD  JEFFREY,  Essays. 

There  was  something  aristocratic  even  in  the  Revolution,  so  long  as  the 
white  steed  and  lofty  plume  of  Lafayette  were  visible  amid  the  riot,  rolling 
back  the  carnage. — LYTTON,  Essays  :  The  Reign  of  Terror. 

ALPHONSE  DE  LAMARTINE. 
French  Poet  and  Historian  :  1792-1869. 

Who  says  thy  day  is  o'er  ?     Control, 

My  heart,  that  bitter  first  emotion  ; 

While  men  shall  reverence  the  steadfast  soul, 

The  heart  in  silent  self-devotion 

Breaking,  the  mild,  heroic  mien, 

Thou'll  need  no  prop  of  marble,  Lamartine. 

— J.  R.  LOWELL,  Lamartine. 

Honour  to  Alphonse  Lamartine  for  his  knowledge  of  the  heart  in  that 
moment  which  saved  the  dignity  of  France  and  the  peace  of  Europe,  no 
matter  what  were  his  defects  in  the  knowledge  of  the  world — defects  by 
which  rulers  destined  to  replace  him  learned  to  profit !  Honour  to  that 
one  triumph  of  poetry  put  into  action. — LYTTON,  Essays  :  Knowledge  of 
the  World. 

CHARLES  LAMB. 
English  Essayist  and  Poet :  1775-1834. 

Genius  triumphed  over  seeming  wrong, 
And  poured  out  truth  in  works  by  thoughtful  love 
Inspired — works  potent  over  smiles  and  tears. 
And  as  round  mountain-tops  the  lightning  plays, 
Thus  innocently  sported,  breaking  forth 
As  from  a  cloud  of  some  grave  sympathy, 
Humour  and  wild  instinctive  wit,  and  all 
The  vivid  flashes  of  his  spoken  words. 

— WORDSWORTH,  Written  after  the  Death  of  Charles  Lamb. 

And  Lamb,  the  frolic  and  the  gentle, 
Has  vanished  from  his  lonely  hearth. 

— Id. ,  Extempore  Effusion. 


Steadfast  and  rooted  in  the  heavenly  Muse, 
And  washed  and  sanctified  to  Poesy. 

— S.  T.  COLERIDGE,  To  a  Friend  who  had  declared  his  intention 
of  writing  no  more  Poetry. 

•Cordial  old  man  !  what  youth  was  in  thy  years, 

What  wisdom  in  thy  levity,  what  truth 

In  every  utterance  of  that  purest  soul ! 

Few  are  the  spirits  of  the  glorified 

I'd  spring  to  earlier  at  the  gate  of  heaven. 

— LANDOR,  Miscellaneous  Poems,  CCLXXXVI. 

Beloved  beyond  all  names  of  English  birth, 
More  dear  than  mightier  memories ;  gentlest  name 
That  ever  clothed  itself  with  flower-sweet  fame, 
Or  linked  itself  with  loftiest  names  of  old 
By  right  and  might  of  loving.  .  .  . 

— SWINBURNE,  On  Lamb's  Specimens  of  Dramatic  Poets,  I. 

Charles  Lamb,  if  any  ever  was,  is  amongst  the  class  here  contemplated  ; 
lie,  if  any  ever  has,  ranks  amongst  writers  whose  works  are  destined  to  be 
for  ever  unpopular,  and  yet  for  ever  interesting ;  interesting,  moreover,  by 
means  of  those  very  qualities  which  guarantee  their  non-popularity.  The 
same  qualities  which  will  be  found  forbidding  to  the  world  and  the  thought- 
less, which  will  be  found  insipid  to  many  even  amongst  robust  and  power- 
ful minds,  are  exactly  those  which  will  continue  to  command  a  select 
audience  in  every  generation.  The  prose  essays,  under  the  signature  of 
Elia,  form  the  most  delightful  section  amongst  Lamb's  works.  They 
traverse  a  peculiar  field  of  observation,  sequestered  from  general  interest ; 
and  they  are  composed  in  a  spirit  too  delicate  and  unobtrusive  to  catch 
the  ear  of  the  noisy  crowd,  clamouring  for  strong  sensations.  But  this 
retiring  delicacy  itself,  the  pensiveness  chequered  by  gleams  of  the  fanciful, 
and  the  humour  that  is  touched  with  cross  lights  of  pathos,  together  with 
the  picturesque  quaintness  of  the  objects  casually  described,  whether  men, 
•or  things,  or  usages,  and,  in  the  rear  of  all  this,  the  constant  recurrence  to 
ancient  recollections  and  to  decaying  forms  of  household  life,  as  things 
retiring  before  the  tumult  of  new  and  revolutionary  generations  ;  these 
traits  in  combination  communicate  to  the  papers  a  grace  and  strength  of 
originality  which  nothing  in  any  literature  approaches,  whether  for  degree 
or  kind  of  excellence,  except  the  most  felicitous  papers  of  Addison,  such 
as  those  on  Sir  Roger  de  Coverly,  and  some  others  in  the  same  vein  of 
composition.  They  resemble  Addison's  papers  also  in  the  diction,  which 
is  natural  and  idiomatic,  even  to  carelessness.  .  .  .  The  syll  ibles  lurk  up 
and  down  the  writings  of  Lamb  which  decipher  his  eccentric  nature.  His 
character  lies  there  dispersed  in  anagram  ;  and  to  any  attentive  reader  the 
regathering  and  restoration  of  the  total  word  from  its  scattered  parts  is 
inevitable  without  an  effort.  .  .  .  Charles  Lamb  is  gone;  his  life  was  a 
continued  struggle  in  the  service  of  love  the  purest,  and  within  a  sphere 
visited  by  little  of  contemporary  applause.  Even  his  intellectual  displays 
won  but  a  narrow  sympathy  at  any  time,  and  in  his  earlier  period  were 
saluted  with  positive  derision  and  contumely  on  the  few  occasions  when 
they  were  not  oppressed  by  entire  neglect.  But  slowly  all  things  right 
themselves.  All  merit,  which  is  founded  in  truth,  and  is  strong  enough, 
reaches  by  sweet  exhalations  in  the  end  a  higher  sensory;  reaches  higher 


234  LAMB. 

organs  of  discernment,  lodged  in  a  selecter  audience.  But  the  original' 
obtuseness  or  vulgarity  of  feeling  that  thwarted  all  iust  estimation  of  Lamb- 
in  life,  will  continue  to  thwart  its  popular  diffusion.  There  are  even  some 
that  continue  to  regard  him  with  the  old  hostility,  and  the  old  unmitigated 
scorn.  And  we,  therefore,  standing  by  the  side  of  Lamb's  grave,  seemed 
to  hear,  on  one  side  (but  in  abated  tones),  strains  of  the  ancient  malice — 
"  This  man,  that  thought  himself  to  be  somebody,  is  dead — is  buried — is 
forgotten  !  "  and,  on  the  other  side,  seemed  to  hear  ascending  as  with  the 
solemnity  of  a  saintly  requiem — "  This  man,  that  thought  himself  to  be 
nobody,  is  dead — is  buried  ;  his  life  has  been  searched  ;  and  his  memory 
hallowed  for  ever  !  " — DE  QUINCEY,  Leaders  in  Literature. 

Charles  and  Mary  Lamb !  what  recollections,  pleasant  and  painful,  do 
these  twin  names  recall.  Well  do  I  remember,  the  first  time  I  met  this 
most  delightful  couple,  and  the  kindness  with  which  I  was  received  and 
greeted  by  this  twin  union  in  partition  ;  now,  alas !  for  a  short  time 
separated.  No  man  that  I  have  ever  known  was  so  well  fitted  to  attract 
and  engage  the  sympathies,  the  love,  the  affectionate  regards,  and  the 
respect  of  ingenious  natures. — S.  T.  COLERIDGE,  Letters,  Conversations,, 
and  Recollections, 

Charles  Lamb  ought  really  not  to  abuse  Scotland  in  the  pleasant  way 
he  so  often  does  in  the  sylvan  shades  of  Enfield  ;  for  Scotland  loves  Charles. 
Lamb ;  but  he  is  wayward  and  wilful  in  his  wisdom,  and  conceits  that 
many  a  Cockney  is  a  better  man  even  than  Christopher  North.  But  what 
will  not  Christopher  forgive  to  genius  and  goodness  ?  Even  Lamb  bleat- 
ing libels  on  his  native  land.  Nay,  he  learns  lessons  of  humanity,  even 
from  the  mild  malice  of  Elia,  and  breathes  a  blessing  on  him  and  his 
household  in  their  Bower  of  Rest. — JOHN  WILSON,  Essays:  Anglomania.. 

Charles  Lamb  had  a  head  worthy  of  Aristotle,  with  as  fine  a  heart  as- 
ever  beat  in  human  bosom,  and  limbs  very  fragile  to  sustain  it.— LEIGH 
HUNT,  Autobiography. 

Lamb  is  one  of  those  rare  favourites  of  the  Graces  on  whom  the  gift  of 
charm  is  bestowed — a  gift -not  indeed  denied  to  Hunt,  but  much  more 
sparingly  granted  to  him  and  much  more  alloyed  in  its  nature.  .  .  . 
Humour  in  itself  is  among  the  most  popular  gifts  of  genius ;  amiable 
humour  among  the  most  lovable.  The  humour  of  Charles  Lamb  is  at 
once  pure  and  genial ;  it  has  no  malice  in  its  smile.  His  keenest  sarcasm 
is  but  his  archest  pleasantry. — LYTTON,  Essays  :  Charles  Lamb  and  some 
of  his  Companions. 

In  Charles  Lamb's  instance,  the  quaintness  of  the  dress  fits  with  the 
quaintness  of  the  mind.  Through  this  cloudy  medium  of  language  which 
always  hangs  as  a  curtain  between  reader  and  author,  we  see  glimpses  of 
the  real  man — his  shape  and  colour,  even  his  gait  and  manner.  He  takes 
the  reader  by  the  button,  as  he  would  his  friend,  and  pours  out  upon  him 
a  current  of  delightful  humours,  and  fine  mental  oddities,  almost  too 
delicate  to  be  seen  by  vulgar  eye.  He  is  the  Montaigne  of  English 
essayists,  and  has  all  the  engaging  confidence  of  the  Frenchman.  Yet 
never  does  he  slide  into  an  offensive  familiarity,  which  is  sure  to  be  the 
case  when  the  lower  journeyman  of  letters  begins  to  talk  with  the  same 
freedom.  He,  in  truth,  seems  to  be  only  thinking  aloud,  and  we  are- 
behind  the  tapestry  listening.  .  .  .  Yet  with  all  his  quaintness  and  dis- 


LAMB.  235 

orderly  current  of  thought,  the  mere  "English"  of  Lamb  is  wonderful. 
In  this  apparent  no-art,  there  is  everywhere  an  abundant  artfulness. 
Those  little  "  dashes  "  which  he  used  so  profusely  are  disposed  with  the 
nicest  harmony  both  for  eye  and  ear.  Somehow  it  has  always  seemed  to 
me,  that  he  extracts  a  new  force  out  of  italics,  which  he  used  very  spar- 
ingly. He  has  charming  little  forms  of  his  own,  which  fit  him,  and  him 
only.  They  are  truly  Lambesque,  if  we  may  use  the  word. —  PERCY 
FITZGERALD,  Charles  Lamb;  His  Friends,  His  Haunts,  and  His  Books. 

As  an  Essayist,  Charles  Lamb  will  be  remembered,  in  years  to  come,, 
with  Rabelais  and  Montaigne,  with  Sir  Thomas  Browne,  with  Steele.  and 
with  Addison.  He  unites  many  of  the  finest  characteristics  of  these 
several  writers.  He  has  wisdom  and  wit  of  the  highest  order,  exquisite 
humour,  a  genuine  and  cordial  vein  of  pleasantry,  and  the  most  heart- 
touching  pathos.  In  the  largest  acceptation  of  the  word  he  is  a  humanist. 
No  one  of  the  great  family  of  authors  past  or  present  has  shown  in  matters 
the  most  important  or  the  most  trivial  so  delicate  and  extreme  a  sense  of 
all  that  is  human.  .  .  .  We  know  of  no  inquisition  more  curious,  no 
speculation  more  lofty,  than  may  be  found  in  the  Essays  of  Charles  Lamb. 
We  know  no  place  where  conventional  absurdities  receive  so  little  quarter  ; 
where  stale  evasions  are  so  plainly  exposed ;  where  the  barriers  between 
names  and  things  are  at  times  so  completely  flung  down.  And  how 
indeed  could  it  be  otherwise  ?  For  it  is  truth  that  plays  upon  his  writings 
like  a  genial  and  divine  atmosphere.— JOHN  FORSTER. 

Charles  Lamb,  the  most  supremely  competent  judge  and  exquisite  critic 
of  lyrical  and  dramatic  art  that  we  have  ever  had. — SWINBURNE,  William 
Blake:  A  Critical  Essay. 

In  short,  to  sum  up  the  case  as  paradoxically  as  we  have  been  tempted, 
from  the  peculiar  nature  of  the  theme,  to  commence  and  carry  it  on, 
Charles  Lamb's  face,  like  his  other  attributes,  amounts  to  a  "  contradiction 
in  terms,"  with  this  special  qualification  in  every  particular  of  the  case, 
that  the  contradiction  is  invariably  in  favour  of  right,  of  truth,  and  of  good, 
wherever  these  are  brought  into  momentary  contention  with  their  opposites, 
— P.  G.  PATMORE,  My  Friends  and  Acquaintance,  Vol.  I. 

He  did  more  than  recall  attention  to  certain  forgotten  writers.  He 
flashed  a  light  from  himself  upon  them,  not  only  heightening  every  charm 
and  deepening  every  truth,  but  making  even  their  eccentricities  beautiful 
and  lovable.  And  in  doing  this  he  has  linked  his  name  for  ever  with 
theirs.  When  we  think  of  the  sweetest  names,  and  which  carry  a  perfume 
in  the  mention — Kit  Marlowe,  Drayton,  Drummond  of  Hawthornden, 
and  Cowley — then  the  thought  of  Charles  Lamb  will  never  be  far  off. 
His  name,  too,  has  a  perfume  in  the  mention.  "There  are  some  reputa- 
tions," wrote  Southey  to  Caroline  Bowles,  "which  will  not  keep,  but 
Lamb's  is  not  of  that  kind.  His  memory  will  retain  his  fragrance  as  long 
as  the  best  spice  that  ever  was  expended  upon  one  of  the  Pharaohs."— 
CANON  ALFRED  AINGER,  Life  of  Charles  Lamb. 

We  want  Lambs,  not  Coleridges.  The  verdict  to  be  striven  for  is  not 
"  Well  guessed,"  but  "  well  done  ".  .  .  .  I  believe,  however,  I  run  no  great 
risk  in  asserting  that,  of  all  English  authors,  Charles  Lamb  is  the  one  loved 
most  warmly  and  emotionally  by  his  admirers.— AUGUSTINE  BIRRELL, 
Obiter  Dicta,  First  Series. 


236  LAMB,  LAMENNAIS,  LANDOR. 

Lamb's  letters  from  first  to  last  are  full  of  the  philosophy  of  life ;  he 
was  as  sensible  a  man  as  Dr.  Johnson.  One  grows  sick  of  the  expression, 
"  poor  Charles  Lamb,"  as  if  he  were  one  of  those  grown-up  children  of  the 
Leigh  Hunt  type,  who  are  perpetually  begging  and  borrowing  through  the 
round  of  every  man's  acquaintance.  Charles  Lamb  earned  his  own  living, 
paid  his  own  way,  was  the  helper,  not  the  helped  ;  a  man  who  was  beholden 
to  no  one,  who  always  came  with  gifts  in  his  hand,  a  shrewd  man  capable 
of  advice,  strong  in  council.  Poor  Lamb  indeed! — AUGUSTINE  BIRRELL, 
Obiter  Dicta,  Second  Senes. 

There  are  certain  people  whose  biographies  ouglit  to  be  long.  Who 
•could  learn  too  much  concerning  Lamb  ? — A.  T.  QUILLER-COUCH,  Adven- 
tures in  Criticism. 

ROBERT  DE  LAMENNAIS. 
French  Abbe  and  Philosopher :  1782-1854. 

Lamennais  was  gifted  by  nature  with  far  more  of  the  temperament  of 
the  martyr  than  of  the  sectary  of  public  applause. — MAZZINI,  Life  and 
Writings,  Vol.  VI. 

There  is,  and  will  always  be,  an  irresistible  attraction  in  the  story  of 
those  lives  that  have  described  vast  parabola,  that  have  known  great 
sorrows,  and  made  great  sacrifices.  The  story  of  a  Lamennais  has 
passionately  affected  our  contemporaries,  beginning  with  faith,  or  at  least 
with  the  steep  will  of  faith,  imposed  by  main  force  on  himself  and  others, 
and  ending  in  the  most  grievous  of  shipwrecks,  and  in  that  gloomy  isola- 
tion of  a  Titan,  crushed  by  the  thunderbolt,  able  indeed  to  renounce  Christ, 
but  not  to  shake  off  his  priest's  robe. — FRANCIS  DE  PRESSENSE,  Cardinal 
Manning  (transl.). 

Lamennais,  the  greatest  genius  of  the  French  clergy  of  his  day. — 
GLADSTONE,  Gleanings,  Vol.  III. 

WALTER  SAVAGE  LANDOR. 
English  Poet  and  Essayist :  1775-1864. 

High  from  his  throne  in  heaven  Simonides, 

Crowned  with  wild  aureole  of  memorial  tears 
That  the  everlasting  sun  of  all  time  sees 

All  golden,  molten  from  the  forge  of  years, 
Smiled,  as  the  gift  was  laid  upon  his  knees 

Of  songs  that  hang  like  pearls  in  mourners'  ears, 
Mild  as  the  murmuring  of  Hymettian  bees 

And  honeyed  as  their  harvest,  that  endears 
The  toil  of  flowery  days  ; 
And  smiling  perfect  praise 

Hailed  his  one  brother  mateless  else  of  peers :   .  .  . 

The  mightiest  heart  since  Milton's  leapt, 

The  gentlest  since  the  gentlest  heart  of  Shakespeare  slept.  .  .   . 

All  sweet,  all  sacred,  all  heroic  things, 

All  generous  names  and  loyal,  and  all  wise, 


LANDOR,  LATIMER.  237 

With  all  his  heart  in  all  its  wayfarings 

He  sought,  and  worshipped,  seeing  them  with  his  eyes 
In  very  present  glory,  clothed  with  wings 

Of  words  and  deeds  and  dreams  immortal,  rise 
Visible  more  than  living  slaves  and  kings, 

Audible  more  than  actual  vows  and  lies.   .   .  . 

— SWINBURNE,  Song  for  the  Centenary  of  Walter  Savage  Landor. 

We  pour  the  Greek  honey,  grown  blander, 
Of  Landor. 

— AUSTIN  DoBSON/yotosa  Lyra. 

O,  old  man  eloquent,  your  place  is  sure, 

Your  place,  how  high,  amid  thought's  sceptred  kings. 

— W.  C.  BENNETT,  Sonnet  XIX. 

Another  flaring  beacon  of  the  rock,  on  which  great  wits  are  often 
wrecked  for  want  of  a  little  kindly  culture  of  unselfishness,  is  Walter 
Savage  Landor,  the  most  finished  master  of  style,  perhaps,  that  ever  used 
the  English  tongue ;  but  a  person  at  the  same  time  so  imperiously  wilful, 
and  so  majestically  cross-grained,  that,  with  all  his  polished  style  and 
pointed  thought,  he  was  constantly  living  on  the  verge  of  insanity. — J. 
STUART  BLACKIE,  On  Self -Culture. 

Landor  was  not  one  of  our  modern  dressing-gown-and-slippers  kind  of 
authors.  He  always  took  pains  to  be  splendid,  and  preferred  stately 
magnificence  to  chatty  familiarity. — AUGUSTINE  BIRRELL,  Obiter  Dicta, 
Second  Series. 

HUGH  LATIMER. 
Bishop  of  Worcester,  Martyr  :  1490-1555. 

Old  Latimer  preaching  did  fairly  describe 

A  bishop,  who  rul'd  all  the  rest  of  his  tribe : 

And  who  is  this  bishop  ?  and  where  does  he  dwell  ? 

Why  truly  'tis  Satan,  archbishop  of  hell. 

And  he  was  a  primate  and  he  wore  a  mitre 

Surrounded  with  jewels  of  sulphur  and  nitre. 

— SWIFT,  On  the  Irish  Bishops,  1731. 

How  fast  the  Marian  death-list  is  unrolled  ! 

See  Latimer  and  Ridley  in  the  might 

Of  faith  stand  coupled  for  a  common  flight ! 

One  (like  those  prophets  whom  God  sent  of  old) 

Transfigured,  from  this  kindling  hath  foretold 

A  torch  of  inextinguishable  light; 

The  other  gains  a  confidence  as  bold  ; 

And  thus  they  foil  their  enemy's  despite. 

The  penal  instruments,  the  shows  of  crime, 

Are  glorified  while  this  once-mitred  pair 

Of  saintly  friends,  the  "  murtherer's  chain  partake, 

Corded,  and  burning  at  the  social  stake :  " 

Earth  never  witnessed  object  more  sublime 

In  constancy,  in  fellowship  more  fair ! 

— WORDSWORTH,  Latimer  and  Ridley.. 


238  LATIMER,  LAUD. 

Here  Latimer  and  Ridley  in  the  flames 
Bore  witness  to  the  truth.     If  thou  hast  walk'd 
Uprightly  through  the  world,  just  thoughts  of  joy 
May  nil  thy  breast  in  contemplating  here 
Congenial  virtue. 

— ROBERT  SOUTHEY,  For  a  Monument  at  Oxford. 

He  was  the  Cobbett  of  the  Reformation,  with  more  honesty  than 
Cobbett,  and  more  courage ;  but  very  like  him  in  the  character  of  his 
understanding. — MACAULAY,  Life  and  Letters,  Vol.  II. 

Would  that  every  age  had  its  own  Latimer ! — ARCHDEACON  W.  M. 
SINCLAIR,  Leaders  of  Thought,  etc. 

DR.  WILLIAM  LAUD. 
Archbishop  of  Canterbury  :  1573-1645. 

Prejudged  by  foes  determined  not  to  spare, 

An  old  weak  man  for  vengeance  thrown  aside, 

Laud,  "  in  the  painful  art  of  dying  "  tried, 

(Like  a  poor  bird  entangled  in  a  snare 

Whose  heart  still  flutters,  though  his  wings  forbear 

To  stir  in  useless  struggle)  hath  relied 

On  hope  that  conscious  innocence  supplied, 

And  in  his  prison  breathes  celestial  air. 

— WORDSWORTH,  Laud. 

Oh,  thank  Laud ! 

You  know  when  Laud  once  gets  on  Church  affairs 
The  case  is  desperate. 

— BROWNING,  Strafford. 

Laud  was  not  exactly  a  Papist,  to  be  sure  ;  but  he  was  on  the  road 
with  the  Church  with  him  to  a  point,  where  declared  popery  would  have 
been  inevitable.— S.  T.  COLERIDGE,  Table  Talk. 

Poor  Laud  seems  to  me  to  have  been  weak  and  ill-starred,  not  dis- 
honest;  an  unfortunate  Pedant,  rather  than  anything  worse.  His 
"  Dreams"  and  superstitions,  at  which  they  laugh  so,  have  an  affection- 
ate, lovable  kind  of  character.  He  is  like  a  College-Tutor,  whose  whole 
world  is  forms,  College-rules  ;  whose  notion  is  that  these  are  the  life  and 
safety  of  the  world. — CARLYLE,  On  Heroes  and  Hero-Worship. 

Of  all  the  prelates  of  the  Anglican  Church,  Laud  had  departed  farthest 
from  the  principle  of  the  Reformation,  and  had  drawn  nearest  to  Rome. 
His  theology  was  more  remote  than  even  that  of  the  Dutch  Arminians 
from  the  theology  of  the  Calvinists. — MACAULAY,  History  of  England, 
Vol.  /.,  Chap.  I. 

Like  many  a  mischief-maker  before  and  since,  Laud  pulled  the  house 
upon  his  own  head.  He  raised  a  storm  at  length  before  which  the 
Church,  the  Throne,  and  the  Bishops,  all  went  down  together,  and  in  the 
midst  of  which  he  himself  was  put  on  his  trial  and  lost  his  life. — BISHOP 
RYLE,  The  Bishop,  the  Pastor,  and  the  Preacher. 


LAUD,  LAWRENCE,  LEIBNITZ.  239 

One  would  fain  think  and  speak  with  some  respect  of  any  man  who 
has  been  beheaded ;  much  more  of  one  who  was  beheaded  for  a  cause  to 
which  he  had  conscientiously  devoted  his  life,  and  which  thousands  of 
his  countrymen,  two  centuries  after  his  death,  still  adhere  to,  still  ex- 
pound, still  uphold,  albeit  with  the  difference,  incalculable  to  themselves, 
of  all  that  time  has  flung  between.  But  it  is  impossible  to  like  or  admire 
Laud.  The  nearer  we  get  to  him,  the  more  all  soft  illusion  falls  off,  and 
the  more  distinctly  we  have  before  us  the  hard  reality,  as  D'Ewes  and 
others  saw  it,  of  a  "little,  low,  red-faced  man,"  bustling  by  the  side  of 
that  king  of  the  narrow  forehead  and  the  melancholy  Vandyke  air,  or 
pressing  his  notions  with  a  raspy  voice  at  the  council-board  till  Weston 
became  peevish  and  Cottington  wickedly  solemn,  or  bowing  his  head  in 
•churches  not  very  gracefully. — DAVID  MASSON,  Life  of  Milton,  Vol.  I. 

SIR  HENRY  LAWRENCE. 
Indian  Administrator :  1806-1857. 

"  Never  surrender,  I  charge  you,  but  every  man  die  at  his  post !  " 
Voice  of  the  death  whom  we  loved,  our  Lawrence  the  best  of  the  brave : 
Cold  were  his  brows  when  we  kiss'd  him — we  laid  him  that  night  in  his  grave. 
— TENNYSON,  The  Defence  of  Lncknow. 

Lawrence,  who  feared  man  so  little  because  he  feared  God  so  much ! 
— F.  W.  FARRAR,  Social  and  Present-Day  Questions. 

GOTTFRIED  W.  LEIBNITZ. 
German  Philosopher :  1646-1716. 

But,  in  a  point  obscure  and  dark, 
We  fight  as  Leibnitz  did  with  Clarke  ; 
And,  when  no  reason  we  can  show, 
Why  matters  this  or  that  way  go, 
The  shortest  way  the  thing  we  try, 
And  what  we  know  not,  we  deny. 

— PRIOR,  Alma,  Canto  III. 

The  pith  of  all  we  would  say  about  Leibnitz,  even  if  we  had  time  or 
wish  to  write  a  long  dissertation,  is,  that  he  was  a  man  of  cyclopaedic 
perspicacity,  not  of  catholic  vision  ;  of  immense  faculty,  unwarmed,  un- 
leavened, unfecundated  by  genius.  What  looks  like  genius  in  his  works 
is  nothing  more  than  capricious  analogy  hammering  the  incongruous  into 
the  symmetrical  through  the  brave  blows  of  a  most  imperious  will.  Pan- 
theism spiritualises  all  matter;  materialism  denies  spirit;  the  dualism, 
which  is  a  distinguishing  feature,  as  it  has  been  a  most  effective  weapon, 
of  Christianity,  separates  matter  from  spirit  by  a  gulf  deep  as  the  Infinite. 
Leibnitz  does  nothing  of  all  this,  but  transforms  the  universe  and  Deity 
Himself  into  a  dead  and  ghastly  mechanism.  With  his  optimism,  his 
monadalogy,  his  pre-established  harmony  and  his  other  jargons  and 
crotchets,  we  hold  that  Liebnitz  has  been  absolutely  barren  in  philosophy 
itself,  while  he  will  have  a  large  and  abiding  renown  as  a  primordial 
harmoniser  of  metaphysical  idealism  with  that  physical  science  which  at 
this  hour,  for  good  or  for  evil,  is  the  chief  conqueror  of  the  earth. — 
WILLIAM  MACCALL,  Foreign  Biographies,  Vol.  II. 


24o  LESSING,  LINCOLN,  LINN&US. 

GOTTHOLD  EPHRAIM  LESSING. 
German  Poet  and  Critic  :  1729-1781. 

Neither  Schiller's  nor  Goethe's  prose  style  approaches  to  Lessing's,, 
whose  writings,  for  manner,  are  absolutely  perfect. — S.  T.  COLERIDGE, 
Table  Talk. 

Well  does  Heine  exclaim,  that  "  Lessing  was  the  literary  Arminius, 
who  freed  the  German  theatre  from  every  foreign  domination  ".  Nor  the 
theatre  alone — all  German  Art  was  embraced  by  the  vast  range  of  his 
criticism  and  the  stalwart  vigour  of  his  genius.  It  is  impossible  to  over- 
rate the  excellence  of  Lessing's  intellectual  nature,  and  the  noble  ten- 
dencies of  his  ambition. — LYTTON,  Life  of  Schiller,  Chapter  II. 

There  is  that  life  in  Lessing's  thought  which  engenders  life,  and  not 
only  thinks  for  us,  but  makes  us  think.  Not  sceptical,  but  for  ever  testing 
and  inquiring,  it  is  out  of  the  cloud  of  his  own  doubt  that  the  flash  comes 
at  last  with  sudden  and  vivid  illumination.  Flashes  they  are  indeed, 
his  finest  intuitions,  and  of  very  different  quality  from  the  equable  north- 
light  of  the  artist.  He  felt  it,  and  said  it  of  himself,  "  Ever  so  many 
flashes  of  lightning  do  not  make  daylight". — J.  R.  LOWELL,  Among  My 
Books. 

ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 
President  of  the  United  States  :  1809-1865. 

Abraham  Lincoln  .  .  .  leaves  for  America's  history  and  biography,  so 
far,  not  only  its  most  dramatic  reminiscence — he  leaves,  in  my  opinion, 
the  greatest,  best,  most  characteristic,  artistic,  moral  personality.  Not 
but  that  he  had  faults,  and  showed  them  in  the  presidency ;  but  honesty, 
goodness,  shrewdness,  conscience,  and  (a  new  virtue,  unknown  to  other 
lands,  and  hardly  yet  really  known  here,  but  the  foundation  and  tie  of  all, 
as  the  future  will  grandly  develop),  UNIONISM,  in  its  truest  and  amplest 
sense,  formed  the  hard-pan  of  his  character.  These  he  sealed  with  his 
life.  The  tragic  splendour  of  his  death,  purging,  illuminating  all,  throws 
round  his  form,  his  head,  an  aureole  that  will  remain  and  will  grow 
brighter  through  time,  while  history  lives,  and  love  of  country  lasts. — 
WALT  WHITMAN,  Specimen  Days. 

CARL  VON  LINN^US. 
Sivedish  Naturalist :  1707-1778. 

And  oft  we  searcfi'd  Linnaeus'  page  ; 
The  Scanian  sage,  whose  wondrous  toil 
Had  class'd  the  vegetable  race. 

—JOHN  SCOTT,  Ode  XII.,  To  a  Friend. 

Linnaeus  worshipped  Him  in  the  humblest  flower. — F.  W.  FARRAR, 
Social  and  Present-Day  Questions. 


LIVINGSTONE,  LOCKE.  241 

DAVID  LIVINGSTONE. 
English  Missionary  :  1813-1873. 

Livingstone,  whose  name  cannot  be  mentioned  .  .  .  anywhere,  without 
awakening  the  sympathy  of  all  Christian  men. — CARDINAL  MANNING, 
Pure  ell's  Life  of  Manning,  Vol.  II. 

JOHN  LOCKE. 
English  Philosopher :  1632-1704. 

Locke  hath  a  soul  wide  as  the  sea, 
Calm  as  the  night,  bright  as  the  day, 
There  may  his  vast  ideas  play, 
Nor  feel  a  thought  confin'd. 

— ISAAC  WATTS,  To  John  Locke,  Esq. 

Locke,  who  made  the  whole  internal  world  his  own. 

— THOMSON,  The  Seasons  :  Summer. 

Long  had  the  mind  of  man  with  curious  art, 
Search'd  nature's  wond'rous  plan  through  every  part, 
Measur'd  each  tract  of  ocean,  earth  and  sky, 
And  number'd  all  the  rolling  orbs  on  high ; 
Yet  still,  so  learn'd  herself  she  little  knew, 
Till  Locke's  unerring  pen  the  portrait  drew. 

— SOAME  JENYNS,  Written  on  Mr.  Locke's  "Essay  on  Human 
Understanding  ". 

See  Locke  lead  Reason,  his  majestic  bride. 

— THOMAS  WARTON,  The  Triumph  of  I  sis  ^ 

When  Locke  walk'd  musing  forth  !  e'en  now  I  view 
Majestic  Wisdom  thron'd  upon  his  brow  ; 
View  Candour  smile  upon  his  modest  cheek, 
And  from  his  eye  all  Judgment's  radiance  break. 

— WILLIAM  MASON,  I  sis  :  An  Elegy. 

A  French  lady,  who  had  married  an  Englishman  who  said  little,  ex- 
cused him  by  saying,  "  He  is  always  thinking  of  Locke  and  Newton  ". — 
HAZLITT,  Table  Talk. 

No  quality  more  remarkably  distinguishes  Locke  than  his  love  of  truth. 
— HALLAM,  Literature  of  the  Middle  Ages,  Vol.  IV. 

Locke  is  as  surely  the  influx  of  decomposition  and  of  prose,  as  Bacon 
and  Platonists,  of  growth. — EMERSON,  English  Traits  :  Literature. 

In  metaphysical  knowledge,  I  ngland  has  not  advanced  since  Locke.  .  .  . 
The  philosophy  of  Locke  is  still  the  system  of  the  English,  and  all  their 
new  additions  to  his  morality  are  saturated  with  his  spirit. — LYTTON, 
England  and  the  English  :  Survey  of  Education. 

The  name  of  John  Locke  is  familiar  to  every  scholar.  He  rendered  dis- 
tinguished service  to  the  philosophy  of  the  human  mind ;  nor  is  this  his 
highest  praise.  His  writings  on  government  and  toleration  contributed 
more  than  those  of  any  other  individual  to  the  diffusion  of  free  and  generous 

16 


242  LOCKE. 

sentiments  through  Europe  and  America ;  and  perhaps  Bishop  Watson 
was  not  guilty  of  great  exaggeration  when  he  said,  "  This  great  man  has 
done  more  for  the  establishment  of  pure  Christianity  than  any  author  I 
am  acquainted  with". — DR.  W.  E.  CHANNING,  Unitarian  Christianity. 

Whether  as  public  patriot  or  private  friend,  Locke  appears  "  a  spirit  with- 
out spot,"  and  his  resolute  temper,  his  intellectual  ardour,  and  his  brilliant 
achievements,  effectually  preserve  him  from  the  insipidity  which  so  fre- 
quently mars  the  moral  physiognomies  of  good  men.  His  countenance 
indeed  is  not  illumined  by  the  spirituality  of  a  Channing  ;  but  the  robuster 
virtues  stand  forth  in  even  bolder  relief,  and  his  apparent  exemption  from 
the  minor  failings  which  beset  even  a  Newton,  is  the  more  remarkable  as 
he  wanted  neither  for  enemies  nor  biographers. — RICHARD  GARNETT,  The 
Age  of  Dry  den. 

The  conqueror  of  a  new  world  is  not  to  be  blamed  for  not  at  once 
mastering  every  inch  of  its  territory,  or  endeavouring  to  quell,  in  anticipa- 
tion, any  insurrections  that  may  afterwards  arise  in  it.  That  Locke  did 
conquer  his  new  world,  far  more  thoroughly  than  Columbus  conquered  his, 
and  showed  how  prosperous  colonies  might  be  planted  in  it,  albeit  to  con- 
tend with  one  another  until  one  grand  empire  should  be  constructed  out 
of  them  under  the  sway  of  truth  alone,  was  praise  enough.  To  pursue  his 
conquest  he  found  it  necessary  almost  to  invent,  out  of  the  rusted  materials 
handed  down  from  the  days  of  Aristotle,  with  much  new  and  bright 
material  of  his  own  unearthing,  the  art  of  logic.  Then,  having  shown, 
according  to  his  light,  what  ideas  are,  and  how  words  are  to  be  used  as 
their  weapons,  he  showed  what  use  is  to  be  made  of  them  in  the  acquisition 
of  knowledge.— H.  R.  Fox  BOURNE,  Life  of  John  Locke,  Vol.  II. 

Locke's  writings,  which  everywhere  express  his  character,  have  made 
his  intellectual  and  moral  features  not  less  familiar  to  Englishmen  than 
his  countenance  has  been  made  by  Kneller.  ..."  I  can  no  more  know 
anything  by  another  man's  understanding,"  he  would  say,  "  than  I  can  see 
by  another  man's  eyes.  The  knowledge  which  one  man  possesses  cannot 
be  lent  to  another."  Reluctance  to  believe  in  the  dark,  on  blindly  accepted 
.authority,  instead  of  faith  sustained  in  the  judgment  by  self-evident  or 
•demonstrative  reason,  or  by  good  probable  evidence,  runs  through  his 
life.  He  is  the  typically  English  philosopher  in  his  love  for  concrete  exem- 
plifications of  the  abstractions  in  which  more  speculative  minds  delight; 
;in  his  reverence  for  facts — facts  in  nature,  or  facts  in  conscious  life ;  in 
indifference  to  speculation  on  its  own  account ;  in  aversion  to  verbal  reason- 
jngs ;  in  suspicion  of  mystical  enthusiasm  ;  in  calm  reasonableness,  and 
*eady  admission  to  truth,  even  when  the  truth  could  not  be  reduced  to 
system  by  a  human  understanding ;  and  in  the  honest  originality  which 
stamped  the  features  of  his  intellect  and  character  upon  all  that  he  wrote. 
— A.  C.  ERASER,  Biography  and  Philosophy  of  John  Locke. 

But  far  more  important  than  their  specific  influence  on  other  writers,  or 
even  on  the  development  of  the  subjects  with  which  they  deal,  has  been 
jche  effect  of  Locke's  writings  on  the  history  of  progress  and  civilization. 
Jn  an  age  of  excitement  and  prejudice,  he  set  men  the  example  of  thinking 
calmly  and  clearly.  When  philosophy  was  almost  synonymous  with  the 
.•arid  discussion  of  scholastic  subtleties,  he  wrote  so  as  to  interest  statesmen 
and  men  of  the  world.  At  a  time  when  the  chains  of  dogma  were  far 
tighter,  and  the  penalties  of  attempting  to  loosen  them  far  more  stringent, 


LOCKE,  LONGFELLOW.  243 

than  it  is  now  easy  to  conceive,  he  raised  questions  which  stirred  the  very 
depths  of  human  thought.  And  all  this  he  did  in  a  spirit  so  candid,  so 
tolerant,  so  liberal,  and  so  unselfish,  that  he  seemed  to  be  writing  not  for 
his  own  party  or  his  own  times,  but  for  the  future  of  knowledge  and  of 
mankind. — THOMAS  FOWLER,  Life  of  John  Locke. 

HENRY  WADSWORTH  LONGFELLOW. 
American  Poet :  1807-1882. 

With  loving  breath  of  all  the  winds  his  name 
Is  blown  about  the  world. 

— J.  R.  LOWELL,  To  H.  W.  Longfellow. 

Surely  if  skill  in  song  the  shears  may  stay 

And  of  its  purpose  cheat  the  charmed  abyss, 
If  our  poor  life  be  lengthened  by  a  lay, 
He  shall  not  go,  although  his  presence  may, 

And  the  next  age  in  praise  shall  double  this. 

—Id.,  To  H.  W.  L.,  on  his  Birthday. 

Kind,  soft-voiced,  gentle,  in  his  eye  there  shines 
The  ray  serene  that  filled  Evangeline's, 

Modest  he  seems,  not  shy  ;  content  to  wait 
Amid  the  noisy  clamour  of  debate 
The  looked-for  moment  when  a  peaceful  word 
Smooths  the  rough  ripples  louder  tongues  have  stirred. 
In  every  tone  I  mark  his  tender  grace 
And  all  his  poems  hinted  in  his  face  ; 
What  tranquil  joy  his  friendly  presence  gives  ! 
How  could  I  think  him  dead  ?   He  lives  !  He  lives ! 

— O.  W.  HOLMES,  At  the  Sattirday  Club. 

Of  Cambridge's  dear  poet  was  our  talk, 
Who  gave  Evangeline  with  us  to  dwell, 

And  wild,  sweet  Indian  visions  to  our  eyes, 
With  their  strange  beauty,  which  we  love  so  well. 

— W.  C.  BENNETT,  Sonnet  VI. 

Lie  calm,  O  white  and  laureate  head ! 
Lie  calm,  O  Dead,  thou  art  not  dead, 

Since  from  the  voiceless  grave, 
Thy  voice  shall  speak  to  old  and  young 
While  song  yet  speaks  an  English  tongue 

By  Charles'  or  Thamis'  wave  ! 

— AUSTIN  DOBSON,  Henry  Wadsworth  Longfellow. 

Longfellow  for  rich  colour,  graceful  forms  and  incidents — all  that  makes 
life  beautiful  and  love  refined — competing  with  the  singers  of  Europe  on 
their  own  ground,  and,  with  one  exception,  better  and  finer  work  than 
that  of  any  of  them. — WALT  WHITMAN,  Specimen  Days. 

Longfellow  was  content  to  be  humanity's  city  missionary,  so  long  as 
the  common  people  heard  him  gladly.  Although  he  was  not  of  heroic 
mould,  he  was  at  least  twenty  times  a  nobler  man  than  Poe,  with  a  fund 
of  miscellaneous  culture,  and  a  knowledge  of  human  nature  that  in  the 


244  LONGFELLOW,  LOUIS  IX.,  LOUIS  XIV. 


long  run  more  than  compensated  for  any  inferiority  his  imagination  pre- 
sented in  comparison  with  Poe's  brightest  inspirations.  He  had  not  the 
keenness  of  Poe's  artistic  sensibility,  yet  it  can  at  least  be  said  of  him 
that  he  would  have  scorned  the  atrocious,  if  rare,  faults  that  so  disfigure 
Poe's  writings  in  verse.  The  same  width  of  learning  in  matters  of  general 
culture,  to  which  allusion  has  just  been  made,  gave  Longfellow  an  appeal 
to  far  larger  audiences  than  those  that  Whittier  can  attract ;  and  by  his 
gracious  choice  of  subjects,  and  his  treatment  of  these  in  almost  every 
form  of  verse  dear  to  the  people,  Longfellow  has  of  course  laid  himself 
out — and  successfully —to  win  a  hearing  where  Whitman,  with  all  his 
boasted  feeling  for  democracy,  is  looked  upon  as  an  intellectual  Coriolanus 
contemptuous  and  uncouth. — ERIC  S.  ROBERTSON,  Life  of  Henry  Wads- 
worth  Longfellow. 

Longfellow  is  exactly  the  antithesis  of  Poe,  who,  with  all  his  science 
of  verse  and  ghostly  skill,  has  no  humanity,  or  puts  none  of  it  into  his 
lines.  One  is  the  poet  of  Life,  and  every-day  life;  the  other  is  the  poet 
of  Death,  and  of  bizarre  shapes  of  death,  from  which  Heaven  deliver  us  ! 
—ANDREW  LANG,  Letters  on  Literature. 

The  place  that  Longfellow  claims  is  the  place  of  a  singer  in  the  great 
temple,  and  if  his  voice  has  not  the  resonant  volume  of  the  great  masters, 
it  has  the  delightful  flute-like  freshness  of  the  choir-boy's  unspoiled  alto. 
...  It  is  one  of  the  distinctive  charms  of  Longfellow  that  he  is  the 
children's  poet ;  the  fresh  grace,  the  agile  hope,  the  dew-like  purity  of 
the  child's  heart  and  mind  perpetually  fascinate  him.  More  than  once 
he  takes  a  little  child  and  sets  him  in  the  midst  of  the  world's  feverish 
circle,  preaching  by  the  child's  innocence  the  highest  of  all  lessons.  -  W. 
J.  DAWSON,  Quest  and  Vision. 

Louis  IX. 

King  of  France  :  1215-1270. 

The  noblest  and  holiest  of  monarchs,  Louis  the  Ninth. — DR.  THOMAS 
ARNOLD,  Introductory  Lectures  on  Modern  History. 

Louis  XI.  had  methods  of  preserving  his  ascendancy  very  different  from 
military  prowess.  That  excellent  prince  was  perhaps  the  most  eminent 
pattern  of  unswerving  probity  and  Christian  strictness  of  conscience  that 
ever  held  the  sceptre  in  any  country.  There  is  a  peculiar  beauty  in  the 
reign  of  St.  Louis,  because  it  shows  the  inestimable  benefit -which  a  virtu- 
ous king  may  confer  on  his  people,  without  possessing  any  distinguishable 
genius. — HALLAM,  Student's  Middle  Ages,  Chap.  /.,  Part  I. 

Louis  XIV. 
King  of  France  :  1638-1715. 

Louis  the  Fourteenth  must  be  looked  upon  as  an  exception  to  every- 
thing, even  to  humanity  itself.  This  king  must  not  be  judged  like  other 
kings ;  h  j  seems  to  have  had  a  conscience,  a  virtue,  a  God,  apart  from 
the  rest  of  mortals. — LAMARTINE,  Celebrated  Characters  (transl.},  Vol.  II. 

Louis  the  Fourteenth  is  justly  censured  for  trying  to  dragoon  his  sub- 
jects to  heaven. — MACAULAY,  Essays  :  Sir  James  Mackintosh. 


LOUIS  XIV.,  LOUIS  XVI.  245 

M.  Guizot  well  observes,  at  the  close  of  the  reign  of  Louis  XIV., 
monarchy  was  as  decrepit  as  the  monarch.  The  splendid  progress  of  art 
and  mind  which  characterised  that  noble  reign,  announced  the  anomaly 
which  always  ends  in  gigantic  innovation — viz.,  a  restless  population  and 
a  stationary  government. — LYTTON,  Essays  :  The  Reign  of  Terror. 

The  French  Revolution  is  perpetually  sounded  in  our  ears  as  a  warning 
against  the  lawlessness  of  the  people.  But  whence  came  this  Revolution  ? 
Who  were  the  regicides  ?  Who  beheaded  Louis  the  Sixteenth  ?  You 
tell  me  the  Jacobins  ;  but  history  tells  a  different  tale.  I  will  show  you 
the  beheaders  of  Louis  the  Sixteenth.  They  were  Louis  the  Fourteenth, 
and  the  Regent  who  followed  him,  and  Louis  the  Fifteenth.  These 
brought  their  descendant  to  the  guillotine. — DR.  W.  E.  CHANNING,  On 
the  Present  Age. 

In  the  seventeenth  century  there  were  but  two  men  :  Louis  XIV.,  and 
Oliver  Cromwell ;  the  former  representing  absolutism  and  Roman  Catholi- 
cism ;  the  latter,  evangelical  Christianity  and  liberty.  There  were  certainly 
in  that  age  other  important  personages  ;  and  the  name  of  the  generous 
Gustavus  Adolphus  immediately  recurs  to  every  mind.  But  the  two  chief 
figures  are  Louis  and  Oliver.  Between  them — between  their  systems,  if 
not  between  their  persons — the  struggle  was  fought ;  and  the  victory, 
although  slow  and  long  disputed,  particularly  in  France,  remained  with 
Oliver.  They  are  the  representatives  of  two  principles,  of  two  worlds. 
These  two  gigantic  figures  are  each  raised  on  a  lofty  pedestal  ;  and  their 
shadows  fall  not  only  on  their  own  age,  but  extend  over  all  future  times. 
— J.  H.  MERLE  D'AUBIGNE,  The  Protector  (transl.}. 

Probably  there  are  not  five  historical  personages  upon  whom  the  world's 
judgment  is  so  irreconcilably  divided,  so  sharply  at  variance,  as  upon 
Louis  XIV.  .  .  .  The  reign  of  Louis  XIV.  afforded  the  most  brilliant, 
imposing  spectacle  of  pure  monarchy  that  the  world  had  yet  seen.  The 
consciousness  of  royalty  was  developed  in  him  to  the  highest  degree ;  he 
possessed,  to  the  greatest  perfection,  the  art  of  playing  the  king. — J.  I. 
VON  DOLLINGER,  Studies  iu  European  History  (transl.). 

Louis   XVI. 
King  of  France  :   1 754-1 793. 

Of  all  the  monarchs  who  ever  sat  on  the  French  throne,  Louis  XVI. 
was  the  least  calculated  either  to  provoke  or  to  subdue  a  revolution. — SIR 
ARCHIBALD  ALISON. 

Had  Louis  XVI.  shown  half  the  courage  and  firmness  of  Charles  I. 
he  would  have  triumphed. — NAPOLEON  BONAPARTE. 

By  a  people  contented  with  Reforms,  such  a  king  would  have  been 
adored.  For  Louis  XVI.  was  by  nature  a  Reformer — and  happy  had  it 
been  for  France  had  her  population  possessed  half  the  virtues  of  her  king. 
But  amongst  a  people  less  desirous  to  reform  than  eager  to  destroy,  the 
safety  of  the  ruler  depends  little  on  the  qualities  that  beget  affection, 
unless  he  has  also  those  which  inspire  awe.  Louis  was  never  more 
insecure  than  in  those  periods  of  his  reign  when  he  was  most  popular. — 
LYTTON,  Essays  :  The  Reign  of  Terror. 


246  LOUIS  XVI.,  LOWELL,  LOWTH. 

Had  the  French  aristocracy  been  less  strong  and  less  odious,  Louis 
XVI.  would  not  have  fallen  a  victim  to  that  fearful  glamoury  which  con- 
jured a  scaffold  from  a  throne.  That  unfortunate  king  may  justly  be 
called  a  martyr  ; — he  was  a  martyr  to  the  vices  of  his  noblesse  ! — LYTTON, 
England  and  the  English  :  A  View  of  Our  Political  State. 

JAMES  RUSSELL  LOWELL. 
American  Poet :  1819-1891. 

There's  Lowell  who's  striving  Parnassus  to  climb, 

With  a  whole  bale  of  isms  tied  together  in  rhyme. 

He  might  get  on  alone,  spite  of  brambles  and  boulders, 

But  he  can't  with  that  bundle  he  has  on  his  shoulders. 

The  top  of  the  hill  he  will  ne'er  come  nigh  reaching, 

Till  he  learns  the  distinction  between  singing  and  preaching. 

His  lyre  has  some  chords  that  would  ring  pretty  well, 

But  he'd  rather  by  half  make  a  drum  of  the  shell, 

And  rattle  away  till  he's  old  as  Methusalem, 

At  the  head  of  a  march  to  the  last  new  Jerusalem. 

— J.  R.  LOWELL,  A  Fable  for  Critics. 

This  singer  whom  we  long  have  held  so  dear 

Was  Nature's  darling,  shapely  strong,  and  fair  ; 
Of  keenest  wit,  of  judgment  crystal-clear, 

Easy  of  converse,  courteous,  debonair,  .  .  . 
Peace  to  thy  slumber  in  the  forest  shade ! 

Poet  and  patriot,  every  gift  was  thine ; 
Thy  name  shall  live  while  summers  bloom  and  fade, 

And  grateful  Memory  guard  thy  leafy  shrine  ! 

— O.  W.  HOLMES,  James  Russell  Lowell. 

Lowell  :  the  labours  of  your  noble  life, 
Your  state-craft,  and  your  high  poetic  skill 
Were  aye  a  force  that  made  for  union,  till 
The  peace  now  reigning  hushed  the  ancient  strife 
Between  the  mighty  land  that  gave  you  life, 
And  that  whose  kinship  distance  could  not  kill. 
I  think  your  death  has  drawn  us  nearer  still ! 
Now  with  your  praise  our  island  home  is  rife, 
While  rings  your  continent  with  equal  praise ; 
And  here,  as  there,  we  sadly  quote  your  lays. 

— J.  K.  STEPHEN,  J.  R.  Lowell. 

DR.  ROBERT  LOWTH. 
Bishop  of  Durham  :  1710-1787. 

Boast  we  true  critics  in  their  proper  right, 
While  LOWTH  and  Learning,  HURD  and  Taste  unite. 
Hail  sacred  names !     O  guard  the  Muse's  page, 
Save  your  lov'd  mistress  from  a  ruffian's  rage. 

— ROBERT  LLOYD,  An  Epistle  to  C.  Churchill. 


LOWTH,  LOYOLA. 

For  Providence,  that  seems  concerned  to  exempt 
The  hallowed  bench  from  absolute  contempt, 
In  spite  of  all  the  wrigglers  into  place, 
Still  keeps  a  seat  or  two  for  worth  and  grace ; 
And  therefore  'tis,  that  though  the  sight  be  rare, 
We  sometimes  see  a  Lowth  or  Bagot  there. 

— COWPER,  Tirocinium. 

IGNATIUS  LOYOLA. 
Founder  of  the  Jesuit  Order  :  1491-1556. 

Who  hath  not  heard  Loyola's  sainted  name, 
Before  whom  Kings  and  Nations  bow'd  the  knee  ? 

—  SOUTHEY,  A  Tale  of  Paraguay. 

The  course  prescribed  by  Loyola  led  his  disciples  not  to  solitude,  but 
to  the  world.  They  became  the  associates  and  counsellors,  as  well  as 
•the  confessors  of  the  great.  They  had  to  wield  the  powers  of  the  earth 
for  the  service  of  heaven. — HALLAM,  Introduction  to  the  Literature  of 
Europe,  Vol.  III. 

It  is  Loyola  who  has  shown  the  world  what  might  be  meant  by  the 
phrase  "  Spiritual  Polity  "  :  it  is  he  who  has  shown  how  to  smelt  soul  ore 
into  one  mass — a  mass  uniformly  crystallised,  and  shining  on  its  surface, 
and  mathematical  in  its  figure,  and  thoroughly  malleable  and  ductile,  and 
a  good  conductor  of  sounds  :  it  is  he  who  has  brought  to  perfection  the 
process — often  attempted— of  forging  hundreds  of  individual  wills  into  so 
true  a  continuity  of  substance  that  the  volitions  of  single  mind  should 
pass,  like  galvanic  currents,  through  the  whole,  and  become  intelligible  and 
effective  at  the  remotest  distances.  .  .  .  His  biographers  assure  us  that 
he  was  accustomed  frequently  to  cast  his  eyes  heaven-ward  ;  yet  he  was 
neither  the  mystic  nor  the  contemplatist : — his  Institute  is  all  earthward- 
bent.  Spiritualism  would  have  been  to  him  idleness  ;  he  could  occupy 
himself  with  nothing  that  had  no  product.  The  depths  which  he  fathomed 
were  not  those  abysses  of  the  moral  world  whereinto  sombre  and  solitary 
meditation  plunges  ;  but  those  near-at-hand  deeps  of  human  nature  which 
a  few  minds  are  gifted  to  reach,  as  at  a  step,  by  intuition  of  the  way.  As 
our  Shakespeare  knew  human  nature  to  paint  it  truly  in  all  its  moods,  so 
Loyola  knew  it  to  rule  it  absolutely  in  all  those  moods.  .  .  .  Loyola 
could  never  have  been  the  reformer  of  established  systems ;  for  he  wor- 
shipped every  shred  of  the  ecclesiastical  tatters  of  past  ages.  But  he  was 
the  inventor  of  a  scheme  essentially  his  own,  and  with  marvellous 
sagacity,  and  a  tact  fertile  in  resources,  he  contrived  to  lodge  the  pro- 
digious novelty — the  Society  of  Jesus — within  the  very  adytum  of  the 
old  system,  and  to  do  so,  without  noise,  without  any  displacement  of 
parts,  or  the  breaking  off  even  of  a  moulding !  By  his  hands  a  house 
was  built  within  a  house ;  yet  none  had  heard  the  din  of  the  builder's 
tools  while  it  was  in  progress. — ISAAC  TAYLOR,  Loyola  and  Jesuitism  in 
its  Rudiments. 

If  there  be  in  any  of  our  universities  a  professor  of  moral  philosophy 
initiating  his  pupils  into  the  science  of  human  nature,  let  him  study  the 
constitutions  of  Ignatius  Loyola. — SIR  JAMES  STEPHEN,  Essays  in  Ec- 
clesiastical Biography. 


248  LOYOLA,  LUC  AN,  LUCIAN,  LUCRETIUS. 

Ignatius  Loyola  upstayed  a  falling  Church  by  genuine  devotion ;  but 
the  Jesuits,  adopting  the  ambitious  machinery,  forgetting  the  true  self- 
denials,  became  the  curse  and  the  shame  of  Rome. — F.  W.  FARRAR, 
Social  and  Present-Day  Questions. 

Compared  with  St.  Francis  the  life  of  Ignatius  is  poor  in  vision  and  in 
-  miracle.      But  his  relics  have  since  made  him  ample  amends. — R.  A. 
VAUGHAN,  Hours  with  the  Mystics,  Vol.  II. 

LUCAN. 
Roman  Poet:  39-65. 

The  great  poet  Dan  Lucan, 
And  on  his  shoulders  bare  up  then, 
As  high  as  that  I  might  see, 
The  fame  of  Julius,  and  Pompey. 

— CHAUCER,  The  House  of  Fame,  Book  III. 

It  makes  me  ravish'd  with  just  wonder,  cry, 
What  muse,  or  rather  god  of  harmony, 
Taught  Lucan  these  true  moods  ?  replies  my  sense, 
What  gods,  but  those  of  arts,  in  eloquence  ? 

— BEN  JONSON,  To  my  chosen  Friend,  the  learned  Translator 
of  Lucan,  Thomas  May,  Esq. 

LUCIAN. 
Greek  Satirist :  120-200. 

The  greatest  of  the  second-century  Sophists  was  Lucian.  He  and 
Plutarch  are  the  only  writers  of  the  period  who  possess  a  real  importance 
to  the  world,  who  talk  as  no  one  else  can  talk,  and  who  continue  to  attract 
readers  on  their  own  merits.  Lucian  has  been  compared  to  Erasmus  in 
general  cast  of  mind.  He  is  learned,  keen-eyed,  before  all  things  humor- 
ous ;  too  anxious  for  honesty,  too  critical,  and  too  little  inspired,  to  be 
carried  into  the  main  currents  of  his  time.  He  lived  through  the  great 
reformation  and  literary  revival  of  Marcus,  but  he  seems  not  to  have  shared 
in  it.  He  read  philosophy  deeply  and  widely,  but  always  as  an  outsider 
and  with  an  amused  interest  in  its  eccentricities. — GILBERT  MURRAY, 
History  of  Ancient  Greek  Literature. 


CARUS  TITUS  LUCRETIUS. 
Roman  Philosopher  and  Poet :  B.C.  95-51. 

He  soared  beyond  our  utmost  sphere, 

And  other  worlds  discovered  there. 

His  boundless  and  unruly  wit, 

To  Nature  does  no  bounds  permit; 

But  boldly  has  removed  those  bars 

Of  heaven  and  earth  and  seas  and  stars, 

By  which  she  was  before  supposed, 


LUCRETIUS,  LUTHER.  249 

TBy  moderate  wits,  to  be  enclosed, 

Till  his  free  muse  threw  down  the  pale, 

And  did  at  once  dispark  them  all. 

— WALLER,  To  Master  Evelyn. 

'Come  from  thy  niche,  Lucretius !  Thou  didst  give 
Man  the  black  creed  of  Nothing  in  the  tomb ! 

— LYTTON,  The  Souls  of  Books. 

Lucretius,  nobler  than  his  mood, 

Who  dropped  his  plummet  down  the  broad 

Deep  universe  and  said  "  No  God" — 

-Finding  no  bottom  :  he  denied 
Divinely  the  divine,  and  died 
•Chief  poet  on  the  Tiber-side 

-By  grace  of  God :  his  face  is  stern 
As  one  compelled,  in  spite  of  scorn, 
To  teach  a  truth  he  would  not  learn. 

— E.  B.  BROWNING,  A  Vision  of  Poets. 

That  Lucretius  had  a  strong  scientific  imagination  the  foregoing  refer- 
ences prove.  A  fine  illustration  of  his  power  in  this  respect  is  his  explana- 
tion of  the  apparent  rest  of  bodies  whose  atoms  are  in  motion.  He 
employs  the  image  of  a  flock  of  sheep  with  skipping  lambs,  which,  seen 
from  a  distance,  present  simply  a  white  patch  upon  a  green  hill,  the  jumping 
of  the  individual  lambs  being  quite  invisible. — JOHN  TYNDALL,  Address 
•before  the  British  Association,  1874. 

MARTIN  LUTHER. 
German  Reformer:  1483-1546. 

Still  in  thy  heart,  heroic  England !  long 
May  Luther's  voice  and  Luther's  spirit  live 
Unsilenced  and  unshamed. 

— ROBERT  MONTGOMERY. 

Thou  huntress  swifter  than  the  Moon  !  thou  terror 
Of  the  world's  wolves  !  thou  bearer  of  the  quiver, 
Whose  sunlike  shafts  pierce  tempest-winged  Error, 
As  light  may  pierce  the  clouds  when  they  dissever 
In  the  calm  regions  of  the  orient  day  ! 

Luther  caught  thy  wakening  glance, 

Like  lightning,  from  his  leaden  lance 
Reflected,  it  dissolved  the  visions  of  the  trance 
In  which,  as  in  a  tomb,  the  nations  lay. 

— SHELLEY,  Ode  to  Liberty. 

Thence  the  flame,  long  and  hardly  preserved,  was  to  Luther  transmitted 
Mighty  soul,  and  he  lifted  his  torch,  and  enlighten'd  the  nations. 

— SOUTHEY,  A  Vision  of  Judgment :   The  Elder  Worthies. 

*Grand  rough  old  Martin  Luther.  — BROWNING,  The  Tivins. 


250  LUTHER. 

Why,  to  be  Luther—  that's  a  life  to  lead, 

Incomparably  better  than  my  own. 

He  comes,  reclaims  God's  earth  for  God,  he  says, 

Sets  up  God's  rule  again  by  simple  means, 

Re-opens  a  shut  book,  and  all  is  done. 

He  flared  out  in  the  flaring  of  mankind ; 

Such  Luther's  luck  was  :  how  shall  such  be  mine  ? 

— BROWNING,  Bishop  Blougram's  Apology.. 

Well  done  !     Thy  words  are  great  and  bold  ; 
At  times  they  seem  to  me, 
Like  Luther's  in  the  days  of  old, 
Half-battles  for  the  free. 

— LONGFELLOW,  To  W.  E.  Channing. 

What !  shall  one  monk,  scarce  known  beyond  his  cell, 
Front  Rome's  far-reaching  bolts,  and  scorn  her  frown  ? 
Brave  Luther  answered  YES  ;  that  thunder's  swell 
Rocked  Europe,  and  discharmed  the  triple  crown. 

— J.  R.  LOWELL,  To  W.  L.  Garrison. 

Luther  is,  in  parts,  the  most  evangelical  writer  I  know,  after  the  apostles 
and  apostolic  men.  ...  All  Germany,  England,  Scotland  and  other 
countries,  started  like  giants  out  of  their  sleep  at  the  first  blast  of  Luther's 
trumpet.  The  only  fit  commentator  on  Paul  was  Luther — not  by  any 
means  such  a  gentleman  as  the  Apostle,  but  almost  as  great  a  genius. — 
S.  T.  COLERIDGE,  Table  Talk. 

Notwithstanding  the  great  things  he  had  performed,  he  gave  himself 
no  air  of  grandeur  or  importance.  He  seemed  to  consider  himself  as 
a  common  man  among  common  men.  He  was  doctor  Martin  Luther, 
and  nothing  more.  There  was  a  simplicity  and  commonness  in  his 
habits  and  conversation  which  contrasts  wonderfully  with  the  mighty 
revolution  he  brought  about.  This  simplicity,  we  were  going  to  say, 
shows  his  native  greatness,  but  we  correct  ourselves,  and  add,  that  it 
exhibits  that  apostolic  frame  of  mind  which  all  the  messengers  of  God, 
from  Moses  downwards,  have  displayed.  Such  men  are  moulded  at  once 
by  the  hand  that  sends  them.  The  accidents  of  this  world  have  no  power 
(as  they  have  upon  others)  to  change  or  modify  their  moral  conformation. 
There  is  a  oneness,  a  wholeness,  an  uncompoundedness  of  character  in 
these  elect  instruments :  on  their  moral  frame  is  chiselled  by  the  Divine 
finger  one  idea,  and  one  only — and  that  external  to  their  worldly  condition. 
Hence  was  begotten  the  simplicity  and  homeliness  of  Luther's  walk  in  life- 
Had  he  acted  the  great  man,  he  would  have  proved  that  he  was  not  the 
apostle. — WM.  HAZLITT,  Jun.,  Introduction  to  Michelet's  Life  of  Luther. 

I  will  call  this  Luther  a  true  Great  Man  ;  great  in  intellect,  in  courage,, 
affection  and  integrity  ;  one  of  our  most  lovable  and  precious  men.  Great, 
not  as  a  hewn  obelisk  ;  but  as  an  Alpine  mountain  ; — so  simple,  honest, 
spontaneous,  not  setting  up  to  be  great  at  all ;  there  for  quite  another 
purpose  than  being  great ! — CARLYLE,  On  Heroes  and  Hero-Worship. 

In  the  primal  and  restless  consciousness  of  the  new  spirit,  Luther 
appealed  to  the  people — the  first,  since  Christ,  who  so  adventured.  From 
that  moment  all  the  codes  of  classic  dogmatists  were  worthless — the- 


LUTHER.  251 

expired  leases  to  an  estate  just  let  to  new  tenants,  and  upon  new  condi- 
tions.— LYTTON,  England  and  the  English  :  A  View,  etc. 

It  is  not,  therefore,  inexact  to  say  that  Luther  was  in  point  of  fact,  the 
restorer  of  liberty  to  the  ages  which  followed  his  era.  He  denied  it 
theoretically,  indeed,  but  he  established  it  in  practice;  if  he  did  not  ab- 
solutely create,  he  at  least  courageously  signed  his  name  to  the  great 
revolution  which  legalised  in  Europe  the  right  of  free  examination.  To 
him  it  is,  in  great  measure,  owing  that  we  of  the  present  day  exercise  in 
its  plenitude  that  first  great  right  of  the  human  understanding,  to  which 
all  the  rest  are  annexed,  without  which  all  the  rest  are  naught.  We 
cannot  think,  speak,  write,  read,  for  a  single  moment,  without  gratefully 
recalling  to  mind  this  enormous  benefit  of  intellectual  enfranchisement. 
The  very  lines  I  here  trace,  to  whom  do  I  owe  it  that  I  am  able  to  send 
them  forth,  if  not  to  the  liberator  of  modern  thought  ?  .  .  .  Saxon  Luther 
was  the  Arminius  of  modern  Germany. — JULES  MICHELET,  Life  of  Martin 
Luther  (transl.). 

Luther,  moreover,  though  eminently  a  revolutionist,  rejected  all  other 
weapons  than  words. — MAZZINI,  Life  and  Writings,  Vol.  II. 

There  is  an  Apostolical  Succession.  It  is  not  the  power  of  God  con- 
veyed by  physical  contact,  it  is  not  a  line  of  priests ;  it  is  a  succession  of 
prophets,  a  broken,  scattered  one,  but  a  real  one.  John  was  the  successor 
of  Elias'  spirit.  In  the  spiritual  birth  Luther  was  the  offspring  of  the  mind 
of  St.  Paul.  Mind  acts  on  mind,  whether  by  ideas  or  character:  herein 
is  the  spiritual  succession. — F.  W.  ROBERTSON,  Life  and  Letters,  Vol.  II. 

If  any  such  pseudo-scientific  method  were  adopted  and  applied  to  the 
instances  of  Martin  Luther  and  of  Ignatius  Loyola,  it  might  be  easy  to 
shed  upon  our  theme  a  glare  of  philosophic  splendour.  Thus  this  pair  of 
worthies  might  he  held  up  to  view  as  binary  stars,  revolving  round  a 
common  centre,  and  exhibiting  the  counter-active  forces,  moral  and 
religious,  of  the  sixteenth  century!  Each,  it  might  be  said,  and  each,  as 
related  to  the  other,  was  the  necessary  consequence  of  the  conflicting 
ferments  of  that  stirring  age.  Each  of  these  great  men  came  forth,  we 
might  be  told,  when  he  came,  and  each  was  what  he  was,  and  each  did 
what  he  did,  in  obedience  to  certain  occult  forces  which  from  the  depth 
of  ages,  had  been  working  themselves  up  to  the  surface  of  European 
civilisation!  The  one  was  "an  Idea"  proper  to  Germany;  the  other 
"an  Idea"  proper  to  Spain;  and  the  two  were  simultaneously  evolved 
by  a  silent  energy  of  the  moral  system,  then  struggling  into  light,  and 
asking  to  be  defined,  and  to  be  uttered  aloud,  and  to  be  defended,  and  to 
be  consigned  to  future  ages !  Luther,  according  to  some  such  theory,, 
was  the  spokesman  of  the  Teutonic  idea  of  Christianity ;  Loyola,  of  the 
Spanish  ;  and  thus  we  should  have  before  us  the  philosophy  of  the  religious 
movements  of  the  sixteenth  century ;  that  is  to  say,  of  the  Reformation 
throughout  the  northern,  and  of  the  Catholic  reaction  throughout  the 
southern  nations  of  Europe. — ISAAC  TAYLOR,  Loyola  and  Jesuitism. 

Perhaps  there  is  no  one  in  the  whole  history  of  the  world,  against  whom 
such  a  host  of  implacable  prejudices  and  antipathies  have  been  perma- 
nently arrayed  as  against  Luther.  For  the  contest  in  which  he  engaged 
is  the  most  momentous  ever  waged  by  a  single  man  :  it  had  been  secretly 
preparing  for  centuries  ;  and  its  issue  is  still  pending.  Even  in  our  days. 


252  LUTHER. 

the  dark,  terrible  power,  which  Luther  assailed  and  cast  down,  has  been 
lifting  itself  up  in  renewed  vigour :  Dagon  has  been  set  up  again  in  the 
very  presence  of  the  ark  of  God  ;  and  all  they  who  are  fighting  for  Dagon, 
who  are  upholding  the  cause  attacked  by  Luther,  cannot  possibly  be  just 
to  Luther,  whose  whole  life  and  character,  his  heart  and  soul  and  mind, 
are  identified  and  one  with  his  great  work,  in  a  manner  very  different 
from  what  we  see  in  other  men.  .  .  .  Luther,  apart  from  the  Reformation, 
would  cease  to  be  Luther.  His  work  was  not  something  external  to  him, 
like  Saturn's  ring,  on  which  he  shone,  and  within  which  he  revolved :  it 
was  his  own  very  self,  that  grew  out  of  him,  while  he  grew  out  of  his 
work.  .  .  .  Luther,  if  we  take  the  two  masses  of  his  writings,  those  in 
Latin,  and  those  in  his  own  tongue,  which  display  different  characters  of 
style,  according  to  the  persons  and  objects  they  are  designed  for,  in  the 
highest  qualities  of  excellence,  in  the  faculty  of  presenting  grand  truths, 
moral  and  spiritual  ideas,  clearly,  vividly,  in  words  which  elevate  and 
enlighten  men's  minds,  and  stir  their  hearts,  and  control  their  wills,  seem 
incomparably  superior  to  Bossuet.  almost  as  superior  as  Shakespeare  to 
Racine,  or  as  Ulswater  to  the  Serpentine.  In  fact,  when  turning  from 
one  to  the  other,  I  have  felt  at  times  as  if  I  were  passing  out  of  a  gorgeous, 
crowded  drawing-room,  with  its  artificial  lights  and  dizzying  sounds,  to 
run  up  a  hill  at  sunrise.  .  .  .  Verily  Luther  is  a  strange  sort  of  Antino- 
mian.  Yea,  he  belongs  to  that  great  Antinomian  multitude,  which  com- 
prises the  glorious  company  of  the  Apostles,  and  the  goodly  fellowship 
of  the  Prophets  and  the  noble  army  of  martyrs.  Day  by  day  he  rose  up 
to  wield  the  sword  of  the  gospel,  almost  single-handed,  against  all  the 
force  and  fraud  of  a  corrupt  and  lying  Church,  which  had  cast  its  fetters 
over  the  mind,  and  breathed  its  rottenness  into  the  heart  of  Christendom. 
Day  by  day,  too,  he  turned  from  this  grand  conflict,  to  refresh  himself  by 
relieving  the  simplest  and  deepest  wants  of  the  poor  and  ignorant,  by 
teaching  them  their  duty  to  God  and  man,  by  explaining  the  mysteries 
of  the  Gospel  to  them  in  the  plainest,  homeliest  speech,  by  telling  them 
what  they  were  to  pray  for,  and  by  putting  words  into  their  mouths  to 
pray  with.  ...  A  No  has  little  power,  unless  it  be  the  rebound  of  a  Yes, 
the  thunderclap  following  the  lightning-flash.  Erasmus's  No,  Voltaire's 
No,  merely  awakened  echoing  Noes  in  the  hollow  caverns  of  men's  hearts, 
and,  the  latter  at  least,  gnawed  at  men's  hearts,  dried  up  the  fountains 
of  tears,  and  turned  their  smiles  into  sneers.  Luther's  shook  the  world, 
but  shook  it  in  order  to  steady  it.  It  burst  the  chains  of  death,  to  set 
free  the  spirit  of  life. — J.  C.  HARE,  Vindication  of  Luther. 

There  came  upon  Christendom,  initiated  by  the  bravery  of  Luther,  a 
powerful  impulse,  which  passed  into  a  mighty  struggle. — GLADSTONE, 
Gleanings,  Vol.  III. 

Luther  told  the  Papacy  to  stand  out  of  the  world's  light,  to  give  free 
course  to  whatever  sunbeams  might  be  struggling  down  to  cheer  us.  .  .  . 
The  printing-press  is  the  most  puissant  agency  that  ever  gave  wings  to 
thought,  or  turned  ideas  into  forces.  It  has  a  speciality  of  interest  in 
connection  with  the  revolution  inaugurated  by  Luther.  In  this  instance, 
for  the  first  time  did  it  show  its  full  power.  Luther  without  his  printing- 
press  would  have  been  Moses  without  his  rod.  Luther  was  the  first,  and 
to  this  hour  he  continues  the  greatest,  of  those  tribunes  of  the  people  who 
have  addressed  their  audience  through  the  press.  It  is  the  grandest  of 
all  the  mechanical  implements  of  Democracy ;  and  Luther,  whether  he 


LUTHER,  LYTTON.  253 

would  have  liked  to  be  told  so  or  not,  initiated  modern   Democracy. — 
PETER  BAYNE,  Life  and  Work  of  Martin  Luther,  Vol.  I. 

Not  unjustly  might  Luther  be  named  the  last  of  the  scholastics.  Luther's 
awful  remorse,  the  curse  of  his  cloister,  the  burden  and  the  pang  which 
he  bore  till  he  died,  was  the  heritage  of  a  time  when  the  idolatry  of 
Aristotle  was  at  once  the  confession  of  guilt  and  the  atonement  for  it. 
If  Luther,  as  a  monk,  had  not  been  harassed  by  the  perplexities  which 
were  both  the  crucifixion  and  the  crown  of  the  mediaeval  philosophy,  he 
would  never  have  been  a  reformer.  But  Luther  and  the  Reformation 
overlooked  the  principal  element  of  that  philosophy,  its  relation  to  the 
religious  life. — WILLIAM  MACCALL,  The  Newest  Materialism. 

Luther  himself  was  one  of  the  grandest  men  that  ever  lived  on  earth. 
Never  was  any  one  more  loyal  to  the  light  that  was  in  him,  braver, 
truer,  or  wider  minded  in  the  noblest  sense  of  the  word.  The  share  of  the 
work  which  fell  to  him  Luther  accomplished  most  perfectly.  But  he  was 
exceptionally  fortunate  in  one  way,  that  in  Saxony  he  had  his  sovereign  on 
his  side,  and  the  enemy,  however  furious,  could  not  reach  him  with  fleshly 
weapons,  and  could  but  grind  his  teeth  and  curse. — J.  A.  FROUVE, Calvinism. 

There  are  some  men  whose  greatness  no  person  of  common  sense  thinks 
of  disputing.  They  tower  above  the  rest  of  mankind  like  the  Pyramids, 
the  Parthenon,  and  the  Colosseum,  among  buildings.  Such  men  were 
Luther  and  Augustine,  Gustavus  Adolphus  and  George  Washington, 
Columbus  and  Sir  Isaac  Newton.  He  who  questions  their  greatness, 
must  be  content  to  be  thought  very  ignorant,  very  prejudiced,  or  very 
eccentric. — BISHOP  RYLE,  The  Bishop,  the  Pastor,  and  the  Preacher. 

Of  all  our  historic  names,  no  single  one  ever  exerted  an  influence  so 
broad  and  lasting  as  that  of  Martin  Luther.  The  revolution  which  he 
inaugurated  still  progresses  ;  the  Christian  world  goes  on  divided.  Per- 
haps it  need  not  have  been  so ;  at  all  events  it  is  so.  That  single  united 
body  of  Christians  which  recognised  Rome  as  its  head,  was  doubtless  the 
most  intelligent,  the  strongest  coalition  of  men  the  world  ever  saw.  That 
it  could  have  been  disintegrated  by  the  efforts  of  one  man  is  something 
remarkable.  We  may  go  on  explaining  it  all,  still  the  presence  of  that 
superior  manhood  confronts  us ;  unerring,  resolute,  fearless,  he  flung 
back  the  gates  that  resisted  John  Huss,  and  through  them  men  are  walk- 
ing to  this  day. — JOHN  H.  TREADWELL,  Life  of  Martin  Luther. 

The  German  Apostle  of  Light  and  Freedom. — LORD  ROSEBERY,  Life 
of  Pitt. 

Two  hundred  and  fifty  years  afterwards,  another  gifted  mind,  in  looking 
back,  took  much  the  same  view  that  Erasmus  had  taken  in  looking  for- 
ward. Goethe  deplored  Luther's  violence.  But  Luther  might  have 
quoted  Ajax.  To  dream  that  such  evils  could  be  cured  by  the  gentle 
magic  of  literature  was  indeed  to  chant  incantations  over  a  malady  that 
craved  the  surgeon's  knife. — SIR  R.  C.  JEBB,  Erasmus. 

EDWARD  BULWER,  LORD  LYTTON. 
English  Novelist,  Poet,  Dramatist:  1806-1873. 

Bulwer  is,  in  every  point  of  view,  a  highly  distinguished  writer.  His 
work  on  England  and  the  English  is  a  brilliant  performance,  abounding 


254  LYTTON,  MACAU  LAY. 

with  sparkling  observations,  containing  many  profound  ones,  and  parti- 
cularly interesting  to  the  multitude  of  persons  to  whom  foreign  travelling 
has  rendered  the  comparison  of  English  and  French  character  and  in- 
stitutions an  object  of  interest.  The  great  defects  of  this  work,  in  a 
political  point  of  view,  is  that  he  does  not  assign  sufficient  weight  to  the 
agency  of  a  superintending  Providence,  and  the  laboured  attempt  to 
exculpate  the  errors,  and  screen  the  vices,  and  draw  a  veil  over  the 
perils  of  democratic  government. — SIR  ARCHIBALD  ALISON,  Essays  :  The 
Athenian  Democracy. 

Bulwer,  an  industrious  writer,  with  occasional  ability,  is  distinguished 
for  his  reverence  of  intellect  as  a  temporality,  and  appeals  to  the  worldly 
ambition  of  the  student. — EMERSON,  English  Traits  :  Literature. 

LORD  MACAULAY. 
English  Historian,  Critic,  Poet :  1800-1859. 

The  dreary  rhymer's  measured  snore 
Falls  heavy  on  our  ears  no  more  ; 
And  by  long  strides  are  left  behind 
The  dear  delights  of  woman-kind, 
Who  win  their  battles  like  their  loves, 
In  satin  waistcoats  and  kid  gloves, 
And  have  achieved  the  crowning  work 
When  they  have  truss'd  and  skewer'd  a  Turk. 
Another  comes  with  stouter  tread, 
And  stalks  among  the  statelier  dead : 
He  rushes  on,  and  hails  by  turns 
High-crested  Scott,  broad-breasted  Burns  ; 
And  shows  the  British  youth,  who  ne'er 
Will  lag  behind,  what  Romans  were, 
When  all  the  Tuscans  and  their  Lars 
Shouted,  and  shook  the  towers  of  Mars. 

— LANDOR,  To  Macaulay. 

I  wish  I  were  only  as  sure  about  any  one  thing  as  Macaulay  is  about 
every  thing. — LORD  MELBOURNE. 

The  son  of  the  Saint,  who  seems  himself  to  be  something  of  a  reviewer, 
is  insidious  as  a  serpent,  but  fangless  as  the  slow- worm. — JOHN  WILSON, 
Nodes  Ambrosiance,  Vol.  II. 

What !  Poetry  from  Macaulay  ?  Ay,  and  why  not  ?  The  House 
hushes  itself  to  hear  him,  even  though  Stanley  is  the  cry!  If  he  be  not 
the  first  of  critics  (spare  our  blushes),  who  is  ?  Name  the  young  Poet 
who  could  have  written  the  Armada.,  The  Young  Poets  all  want  fire; 
Macaulay  is  full  of  fire.  The  Young  Poets  are  somewhat  weakly ;  he  is 
strong.  The  Young  Poets  are  rather  ignorant ;  his  knowledge  is  great. 
The  Young  Poets  mumble  books ;  he  devours  them.  The  Young  Poets 
dally  with  their  subject ;  he  strikes  its  heart.  The  Young  Poets  are  still 
their  own  heroes  ;  he  sees  but  the  chiefs  he  celebrates.  The  Young  Poets 
weave  dreams  with  shadows  transitory  as  clouds  without  substance ;  he 
builds  realities  lasting  as  rocks.  The  Young  Poets  steal  from  all  and 


MACAU  LAY.  255 

sundry,  and  deny  their  thefts  ;  he  robs  in  the  face  of  day.    Whom  ?    Homer. 
— JOHN  WILSON,  Blackwood's  Magazine,  1847. 

Macaulay  can  afford  to  smile  at  all  reviewers  who  affect  to  possess 
more  than  his  own  gigantic  stores  of  information.  .  .  .  Macaulay's  style, 
like  other  original  things,  has  already  produced  a  school  of  imitators. 
Its  influence  may  distinctly  be  traced,  both  in  the  periodical  and  daily 
literature  of  the  day.  Its  great  characteristic  is  the  shortness  of  the 
sentences,  which  often  equals  that  of  Tacitus  himself,  and  the  rapidity 
with  which  new  and  distinct  ideas  or  facts  succeed  each  other  in  his 
richly-stored  pages.  He  is  the  Pope  of  English  prose :  he  often  gives 
two  sentiments  or  facts  in  a  single  line.  No  preceding  writer  in  prose, 
in  any  modern  language  with  which  we  are  acquainted,  has  carried  this 
art  of  abbreviation,  or  rather  cramming  of  ideas,  to  such  a  length:  and  to 
its  felicitous  use  much  of  the  celebrity  which  he  has  acquired  is  to  be 
ascribed. — SIR  ARCHIBALD  ALISON,  Essays  :  Macaulay. 

The  brilliant  Macaulay,  who  expresses  the  tone  of  the  English  govern- 
ing classes  of  the  day,  explicitly  teaches  that  good  means  good  to  eat, 
good  to  wear,  material  commodity  ;  that  the  glory  of  modern  philosophy 
is  its  direction  on  "  fruit "  ;  to  yield  economical  inventions :  and  that  its 
merit  is  to  avoid  ideas,  and  avoid  morals. — EMERSON,  English  Traits  : 
Literature. 

I  hear  that  Mr.  Macaulay  is  to  be  returned.  If  he  speaks  half  as  well 
as  he  writes,  the  House  will  be  in  fashion  again. — LORD  BEACONSFIELD, 
The  Young  Duke. 

The  fancy  tires,  if  you  appeal  only  to  the  fancy ;  the  understanding  is 
aware  of  its  dulness,  if  you  appeal  only  to  the  understanding:  the  curi- 
osity is  soon  satiated  unless  you  pique  it  with  variety.  This  is  the  very 
opportunity  for  Macaulay.  He  has  fancy,  sense,  abundance ;  he  appeals 
to  both  fancy  and  understanding.  There  is  no  sense  of  effort.  His 
books  read  like  an  elastic  dream.  There  is  a  continual  sense  of  instruc- 
tion :  for  who  had  an  idea  of  the  transactions  before  ?  The  emotions, 
too,  which  he  appeals  to  are  the  easy  admiration,  the  cool  disapprobation, 
the  gentle  worldly  curiosity,  which  quietly  excite  us,  never  fatigue  us, 
which  we  could  bear  for  ever.  To  read  Macaulay  for  a  day,  would  be 
to  pass  a  day  of  easy  thought,  of  pleasant  placid  emotion. — WALTER 
BAGEHOT,  Literary  Studies,  Vol.  II. 

What  his  violins  were  to  Stradivarius,  and  his  fresco  to  Leonardo,  and 
his  campaigns  to  Napoleon,  that  was  his  History  to  Macaulay.  How 
fully  it  occupied  his  thoughts  did  not  appear  in  his  conversation  ;  for  he 
steadily  and  successively  resisted  any  inclination  to  that  most  subtle  form 
of  selfishness,  which  often  renders  the  period  of  literary  creation  one  long 
penance  to  all  members  of  an  author's  family.  But  none  the  less  his 
book  was  always  in  his  rnind  :  and  seldom  indeed  did  he  pass  a  day  or 
turn  over  a  volume  without  lighting  upon  a  suggestion  which  could  be 
turned  to  useful  purpose. — SIR  GEORGE  O.  TREVELYAN,  Life  and  Letters 
of  Lord  Macaulay. 

Lord  Macaulay  lived  a  life  of  no  more  than  fifty-nine  years  and  three 
months.  But  it  was  an  extraordinarily  full  life,  of  sustained  exertion  ;  a 
high  table-land,  without  depressions.  .  .  .  The  laboriousness  of  Macaulay 


256  MACAULAY. 

as  an  author  demands  our  gratitude.  ...  It  is  delightful  to  find,  that  the 
most  successful  prose-writer  of  the  day  was  also  the  most  painstaking. — 
GLADSTONE,  Gleanings,  Vol.  II. 

Macaulay's  knowledge  was  not  only  very  wide,  it  was  both  thoroughly 
accurate  and  instantly  ready.  For  this  stream  of  apt  illustrations  he  was 
indebted  to  his  extraordinary  memory,  and  his  rapid  eye  for  contrasts  and 
analogies.  They  come  to  the  end  of  his  pen  as  he  writes ;  they  are  not 
laboriously  hunted  out  in  indexes,  and  then  added  by  way  of  after-thought 
and  extraneous  interpolation.  Hence  quotations  and  references  that  in 
a  writer  even  of  equal  knowledge,  but  with  his  wits  less  piomptly  about 
him,  would  seem  mechanical  and  awkward,  find  their  place  in  a  page  of 
Macaulay  as  if  by  a  delightful  process  of  complete  assimilation  and 
spontaneous  fusion.  .  .  .  Macaulay  is  like  the  military  king  who  never 
suffered  himself  to  be  seen,  even  by  the  attendants  in  his  bed-chamber, 
until  he  had  had  time  to  put  on  his  uniform  and  jack-boots.  His  severity 
of  eye  is  very  wholesome ;  it  makes  his  writing  firm,  and  firmness  is 
certainly  one  of  the  first  qualities,  that  writing  must  have. — JOHN 
MORLEY,  Miscellanies,  Vol.  I. 

From  Eton  and  Harrow  down  to  an  elementary  school  in  St.  Giles's  or 
Bethnal  Green,  Macaulay's  Essays  are  a  text-book.  At  home  and  in  the 
colonies,  they  are  on  every  shelf  between  Shakespeare  and  the  Bible. — 
Id.,  Ibid.,  Vol.  III. 

I  recall  no  writer  who  is  Macaulay's  equal  in  this  art  of  covering  his  larger 
surfaces  with  minute  work  which  is  never  out  of  place.  Like  the  delicate 
sculpture  on  the  sandals  of  Athene  in  the  Parthenon,  it  detracts  nothing 
from  the  grandeur  of  the  statue.  Or,  to  take  a  more  appropriate  figure, 
it  resembles  a  richly  decorated  Gothic  porch,  in  which  every  stone  is, 
curiously  carved,  and  yet  does  its  duty  in  bearing  the  weight  of  the 
mighty  arch  as  well  as  if  it  were  perfectly  plain. — J.  COTTER  MORISON, 
Life  of  Macaulay. 

Macaulay  is  brilliant  and  emphatic,  but  we  weary  at  last  of  his  ever- 
lasting staccato  on  the  trumpet.  .  .  .  Macaulay  turned  his  back  on  social 
problems  and  disdained  any  kind  of  gospel.  He  had  no  mission  to  tell 
the  world  how  bad  it  is :  on  the  contrary,  he  was  never  wearied  with  his 
proofs  that  it  ought  to  be  well  satisfied  with  its  lot  and  its  vast  superiority 
in  all  things  to  its  ancestors.  .  .  .  Macaulay  has  conferred  most  memor- 
able services  on  the  readers  of  English  throughout  the  world.  He  stands 
between  philosophic  historians  and  the  public  very  much  as  journals  and 
periodicals  stand  between  the  masses  and  great  libraries.  Macaulay  is  a 
glorified  journalist  and  reviewer,  who  brings  the  matured  results  of 
scholars  to  the  man  in  the  street  in  a  form  that  he  can  remember  and 
enjoy,  when  he  could  not  make  use  of  a  merely  learned  book. — FREDERIC 
HARRISON,  Studies  in  Early  Victorian  Literature. 

In  several  respects  Macaulay  is  the  natural  antithesis  to  Carlyle :  to 
some  extent  they  may  even  be  regarded  as  complementary.  We  may 
correct  the  excess  of  the  one  by  the  opposite  excess  of  the  other. 
Macaulay  was  an  optimist,  Carlyle  a  pessimist;  Macaulay  was  the 
panegyrist  of  his  own  time,  Carlyle  was  its  merciless  critic ;  Macaulay 
devoutly  believed  all  the  formulas  of  the  Whig  creed  and  had  great  faith 
in  Reform  Bills  and  improvements  in  parliamentary  machinery,  Carlyle 


MACAULAY,  MACHIAVELLI,  MACKINTOSH.  257 

accepted  no  formulas  whatsoever,  and  set  small  store  by  any  reforms  that 
were  merely  parliamentary;  Macaulay  was  orthodox  in  his  literary  tastes 
and  methods,  Carlyle  was  revolutionary  and  scornful  of  rule. — HUGH 
WALKER,  The  Age  of  Tennyson. 

We  do  well  to  be  proud  of  Macaulay. — AUGUSTINE  BIRRELL,  Obiter 
Dicta,  First  Series. 

Lord  Macaulay  was  a  royal  eclectic,  and  was  quite  out  of  sympathy 
with  the  majority  of  that  brotherhood  who  are  content  to  tone  down 
their  contradictories  to  the  dull  level  of  ineptitudes.  Macaulay  never 
toned  down  his  contradictories,  but,  heightening  everything  all  round, 
went  on  his  sublime  way,  rejoicing  like  a  strong  man  to  run  a  race,  and 
well  knowing  that  he  could  give  anybody  five  yards  in  fifty  and  win 
easily. — Id.,  Ibid.,  Second  Series. 

NICHOLAS  MACHIAVELLI. 
Florentine  Historian  and  Political  Writer  :  1467-1527. 

One  great  luminary,  however,  appeared  at  this  time,  though,  as  has 
been  usually  deemed,  rather  a  sinister  meteor,  than  a  benignant  star.  It 
is  easy  to  anticipate  the  name  of  Nicholas  Machiavel. — HALLAM,  Litera- 
ture of  the  Middle  Ages,  Vol.  I. 

The  subtle  observant  intelligence  of  Machiavelli. — GLADSTONE,  Glean- 
ings, Vol.  VI. 

Machiavelli,  a  man  whose  public  conduct  was  upright  and  honourable, 
whose  views  of  morality,  where  they  differed  from  those  of  the  persons 
around  him,  seemed  to  have  differed  for  the  better,  and  whose  only  fault 
was,  that,  having  adopted  some  of  the  maxims  then  generally  received, 
he  arranged  them  more  luminously,  and  expressed  them  more  forcibly,, 
than  any  other  writer. — MACAULAY,  Essays  :  Machiavelli. 

SIR  JAMES  MACKINTOSH. 
British  Statesman  and  Historian  :  1765-1832. 

Sir  James  Mackintosh  was  fitted  to  have  been  the  Guizot  of  English 
history.  His  mind  was  essentially  didactic.  Reflection,  not  action,  was 
both  the  bent  of  his  disposition  and  the  theatre  of  his  glory. — SIR  ARCHI- 
BALD ALISON,  Essays :  Macaulay. 

Sir  James  Mackintosh  is  the  king  of  the  men  of  talent.  He  is  a  most 
elegant  converser. — S.  T.  COLERIDGE,  Table  Talk. 

We  will  venture  to  say  that  Sir  James  Mackintosh  often  did  more  for 
religious  liberty  and  for  parliamentary  reform  in  a  quarter  of  an  hour  than 
most  of  those  zealots  who  are  in  the  habit  of  depreciating  him  have  done 
or  will  do  in  the  whole  course  of  their  lives.  .  .  .  Whatever  was  valuable 
in  the  compositions  of  Sir  James  Mackintosh  was  the  ripe  fruit  of  study 
and  of  meditation.  It  was  the  same  with  his  conversation.  In  his  most 
familiar  talk  there  was  no  wildness,  no  inconsistency,  no  amusing  nonsense, 
no  exaggeration  for  the  sake  of  momentary  effect.  His  mind  was  a  vast 
magazine,  admirably  arranged.  Everything  was  there ;  and  everything 

17 


258  MACKINTOSH,  MAHOMET. 

was  in  its  place.  His  judgments  on  men,  on  sects,  on  books,  had  been 
often  and  carefully  tested  and  weighed,  and  had  then  been  committed, 
each  to  its  proper  receptacle,  in  the  most  capacious  and  accurately  con- 
structed memory  that  any  human  being  ever  possessed.  It  would  have  been 
strange  indeed  if  you  had  asked  for  anything  that  was  not  to  be  found  in 
that  immense  storehouse.  The  article  which  you  required  was  not  only 
there.  It  was  ready. — MACAULAY,  Essays  :  Sir  James  Mackintosh. 

MAHOMET. 
Apostle  of  Islam  :  571-632. 

The  moon  of  Mahomet 
Arose,  and  it  shall  not  set : 

While,  blazoned  as  on  heaven's  immortal  noon, 
The  Cross  leads  generations  on. 

— SHELLEY,  Hellas. 

Utter  the  song,  O  my  soul !  the  flight  and  return  of  Mohammed, 
Prophet  and  priest,  who  scatter'd  abroad  both  evil  and  blessing, 
Huge  wasteful  empires  founded  and  hallow'd  slow  persecution, 
Soul-withering,  but  crush'd  the  blasphemous  rites  of  the  Pagan 
And  idolatrous  Christians— For  veiling  the  Gospel  of  Jesus, 
They,  the  best  corrupting,  had  made  it  worse  than  the  vilest. 
Wherefore  Heaven  decreed  th'  enthusiast  warrior  of  Mecca, 
Choosing  good  from  iniquity  rather  than  evil  from  goodness. 

— S.  T.  COLERIDGE,  Mahomet. 

It  is  probably  true  of  Mohammed  himself,  it  is  certainly  true  of  such 
men  as  Loyola  and  George  Fox,  that  a  vein  of  insanity  which  ran  through 
their  natures,  was  one  great  element  of  their  power. — W.  E.  H.  LECKY, 
History  of  England,  Vol.  I. 

The  sensual  and  sanguinary  creed  of  Mahomet. — LORD  JEFFREY,  Essays. 

Mahomet  said  that  he  experienced  more  difficulty  in  persuading  his  four 
wives  of  his  divine  mission  than  all  the  rest  of  the  world  besides ;  and 
this,  says  Gibbon,  was  not  surprising,  for  they  knew  best  his  weaknesses 
:as  a  man. — SIR  ARCHIBALD  ALISON,  Essays  :  Autobiography. 

Moses  and  Mahomet  were  not  men  of  speculation,  but  men  of  action ; 
and  it  is  the  stress  they  laid  upon  the  latter  that  has  given  them  the 
power  they  wield  over  the  destinies  of  mankind. — ERNEST  RENAN  (transl.). 

I  like  Mahomet  for  his  total  freedom  from  cant.  He  is  a  rough  self- 
helping  son  of  the  wilderness;  does  not  pretend  to  be  what  he  is  not. 
There  is  no  ostentatious  pride  in  him ;  but  neither  does  he  go  much  upon 
humility :  he  is  there  as  he  can  be,  in  cloak  and  shoes  of  his  own  clout- 
ing;  speaks  plainly  to  all  manner  of  Persian  kings,  Greek  emperors, 
•what  it  is  they  are  bound  to  do ;  knows  well  enough,  about  himself,  "  the 
respect  due  unto  thee". — CARLYLE,  On  Heroes  and. Hero -Worship. 

The  message  of  Mahomet,  when  he  first  unfolded  the  green  banner, 
was  one  of  the  most  simple.  There  is  no  god  but  God :  God  is  King, 
and  you  must  and  shall  obey  His  will.  This  was  Islam,  as  it  was  first 
offered  at  the  sword's  point  to  people  who  had  lost  the  power  of  under- 
standing any  other  argument.  Your  images  are  wood  and  stone ;  your 


MAHOMET,  MAISTRE,  MALEBRANCHE,  MANNING.     259 

metaphysics  are  words  without  understanding ;  the  world  lies  in  wicked- 
ness because  you  have  forgotten  the  statutes  of  your  Master,  and  you 
shall  go  back  to  those ;  you  shall  fulfil  the  purpose  for  which  you  were 
set  to  live  upon  the  earth,  or  you  shall  not  live  at  all.  Tremendous  inroad 
upon  the  liberties  of  conscience  ! — J.  A.  FROUDE,  Calvinism. 

Mahomet  arose  in  a  barbarous  country,  and  with  no  human  aid  so 
great  as  his  own  indomitable  will  abolished  the  outward  expression  of  a 
cherished  idolatry  in  his  native  land,  bowed  to  himself  the  hearts  of  his 
countrymen,  and  finally  gave  to  the  world  that  creed  which  has  exercised 
so  tremendous  an  influence  on  its  destiny.  In  the  man,  no  one  can  fail 
to  see  elements  of  power  and  human  greatness,  which  compel  our  wonder, 
if  not  our  admiration  ;  but  in  that  Islam  which  he  founded,  history  recog- 
nises, in  its  ultimate  effects,  one  of  the  greatest  evils  which  have  afflicted 
humanity,  arising  both  from  its  hostility  to  the  purer  faith  of  Christianity, 
and  also  from  its  essential  antagonism  to  progress,  civilisation,  and  the 
truth.--].  W.  H.  STOBART,  Islam  and  its  Founder. 

COUNT  DE  MAISTRE. 
Italian  State  sman^and  Writer'-:  1754-1821. 

The  name  of  the  Count  de  Maistre  has  become  one  of  European  celebrity. 
He  is  one  of  the  writers  who  have  had  the  very  largest  share  in  shaping 
the  modern  tendencies  of  the  devout  and  energetic  portion  of  the  Roman 
Catholics  of  Western  Europe. — GLADSTONE,  Gleanings,  Vol.  V. 

NICHOLAS  DE  MALEBRANCHE. 
French  Priest  and  Philosopher  :  1638-1715. 

And  Malebranche  has  an  odd  conceit, 

As  ever  enter'd  Frenchman's  pate  : 

Says  he,  so  little  can  our  mind 

Of  matter  or  of  spirit  find 

That  we  by  guess  at  least  may  gather 

Something,  which  may  be  both,  or  neither. 

— PRIOR,  Alma,  Canto  III. 

Perhaps  France  has  never  had  but  one  real  metaphysician — Malebranche. 
— WILLIAM  MACCALL,  The  Newest  Materialism. 

In  Malebranche  there  is  a  less  overpowering  sense  of  religion  ;  his  eye 
roams  unblenched  in  the  light,  before  which  that  of  Pascal  had  been  veiled 
in  awe. — HALLAM,  Literature  of  the  Middle  Ages,  Vol  IV. 

We  are  not  surprised  to  be  told  that  a  fly  interested  Malebranche  more 
than  all  the  Greek  and  Roman  history. — R.  A.  WILLMOTT,  Advantages 
of  Literature. 

HENRY  EDWARD  MANNING. 
Cardinal  of  the  Roman  Church  :  1808-1892. 

Ecce  sacerdos  magnus — that  is  the  conclusion  to  which  from  every  point 
we  come  when  we  review  the  various  aspects  of  Manning's  life  and  work. 


260  MANNING,  MANSFIELD. 

Whatever  we  find,  either  to  praise  or  perhaps  to  blame,  it  is  always  a 
characteristic  of  a  great  and  good  priest.  Those  to  whom  the  idea  of  the 
Catholic  priesthood  is  altogether  unwelcome,  and  who  regard  it  as  the 
very  incarnation  of  evil  on  this  earth,  can  hardly  be  expected  therefore  to 
admire  a  man  who  was  always  and  before  all  things  a  priest.  But  yet  it 
is  true  that,  whatever  may  be  the  inevitable  tendency  of  the  teachings  of 
Catholicism  towards  intellectual  obscurantism,  it  yet  remains,  and  is 
likely  long  to  remain,  the  greatest  social  force  for  good  that  the  world 
possesses ;  and  it  is  true  that,  whatever  may  be  the  moral  shortcomings 
of  a  small  percentage  of  its  priesthood,  and  although  no  man  penetrated 
with  modern  ideas  can  permanently  remain  in  its  service  without  a  con- 
sciousness of  intellectual  dishonesty  which  must  sooner  or  later  be  fatal 
to  the  moral  sense,  the  Catholic  priesthood  is  far  away  the  greatest  organi- 
sation that  exists  on  earth  of  good  and  able  men  working  for  the  moral 
welfare  of  the  human  race. — A.  W.  HUTTON,  Cardinal  Manning. 

WILLIAM  MURRAY,  EARL  OF  MANSFIELD. 
Scottish  Judge:    1705-1793. 

And  burning  with  the  glorious  flame 
Of  public  virtue,  Mansfield  came. 

— CHURCHILL,  The  Ghost,  Book  IV * 

Eclipse  great  Mansfield's  strong  meridian  light. 

— FALCONER,  The  Demagogue. 

And  Mansfield  the  just  and  intrepid  ; 

Wise  Judge,  by  the  craft  of  the  Law  ne'er  seduced  from  its  purpose; 
And  when  the  misled  multitude  raged  like  the  winds  in  their  madness, 
Not  to  be  moved  from  his  rightful  resolves. 

— SOUTHEY,  A  Vision  of  Judgment. 

Dost  not  know  that  old  Mansfield,  who  writes  like  the  Bible, 
Says — the  more  'tis  a  truth,  sir,  the  more  'tis  a  libel  ? 

— BURNS,  On  the  Window  of  an  Inn  at  Stirling. 

O  for  thy  spirit,  MANSFIELD  !  at  thy  name 
What  bosom  glows  not  with  an  active  flame  ? 
Alone  from  jargon  born  to  rescue  law, 
From  precedent,  grave  hum,  and  formal  saw ! 
To  strip  chican'ry  of  its  vain  pretence, 
And  marry  common  law  to  common  sense ! 

— ROBERT  LLOYD,  The  Law  Student. 

Young  lawyers  copy  Murray  where  they  can. 

— ROBERT  DODSLEY,  The  Art  of  Preaching. 

Two  men,  little,  if  at  all,  inferior  to  Pitt  in  powers  of  mind,  held,  like 
him,  subordinate  offices  in  the  government.  One  of  these,  Murray,  was 
successively  Solicitor-General  and  Attorney-General.  This  distinguished 
person  far  surpassed  Pitt  in  correctness  of  taste,  in  power  of  reasoning,  in 
depth  and  variety  of  knowledge.  His  parliamentary  eloquence  never  blazed 
into  sudden  flashes  of  dazzling  brilliancy  ;  but  its  clear,  placid,  and  mellow 
splendour  was  never  for  an  instant  over-clouded.  Intellectually  he  was, 
we  believe,  fully  equal  to  Pitt ;  but  he  was  deficient  in  the  moral  qualities 


MANSFIELD,  MARAT,  MARCUS  AURELIUS.  261 

to  which  Pitt  owed  most  of  his  success.  Murray  wanted  the  energy,  the 
courage,  the  all-grasping  and  all-risking  ambition,  which  make  men  great 
in  stirring  times. — MACAULAY,  Essays  :  Earl  of  Chatham,  1834. 

Nature  and  education  prepared  William  Murray  for  the  very  highest 
forensic  distinction,  and  his  career  is  chiefly  remarkable  for  the  certain, 
though  gradual,  steps  by  which  he  reached  it.  His  success  was  the  legiti- 
mate and  logical  result  of  the  means  sedulously  taken  to  obtain  it.  Had 
William  Murray  failed  to  win  his  race,  it  would  have  been  because  he  had 
dropped  down  dead  on  the  course,  or  violent  hands  had  forbidden  his  pro- 
gress. The  conditions  of  victory  were  secured  at  starting  in  his  own  person, 
let  the  competitors  be  whom  they  might. — SAMUEL  PHILLIPS,  Essays  from 
"  The  Times  ". 

JEAN  PAUL  MARAT. 
French  Revolutionist :  1744-1793. 

Yes,  this  was  Marat ! — And  in  him  appeared  the  friend  of  the  populace 
(peuple),  because  the  true  son  of  the  populace.  This  rickety,  bilious, 
scrofulous,  diseased  victim  of  the  neglect,  the  ailments,  and  the  vices  of 
his  parents,  represented  in  himself  the  squalid  masses  who  formed  the 
procession  of  Jourdain  Couptete,  or  filled  the  gloomy  pandemonium  of  the 
Jacobin  Club.  But  beneath  all  this  external  debasement  moved  the  iron 
springs  of  an  indomitable,  dogged,  frantic  energy  ;  a  spirit  of  blood  and 
vengeance  which  made  a  virtue  of  crime,  so  honest  was  it,  so  sincere. 
Marat  shrieking  day  after  day  for  300,000  heads— Marat  emerging  from 
cave  and  garret  into  a  power  that  shook  alike  court  and  temple — the  Arch 
Alecto  starting  from  the  rags  and  decrepitude  in  which  the  fury  had  been 
a  while  concealed — Marat  was  as  willing  to  be  the  martyr  as  the  hang- 
man :  those  filthy  hands  would  have  spurned  the  gold  that  sullied  the 
ruffles  of  the  corrupt  Danton.  Nothing  could  soften,  nothing  humanize, 
but  nothing  could  intimidate,  nothing  bribe.  For  a  time  Marat  was  the 
peuple  and  the  peuple  Marat. — LYTTON,  Essays  :  The  Reign  of  Terror. 

MARCUS  AURELIUS  ANTONINUS. 
Emperor  of  Rome  :  121-180. 

And  wise  Aurelius,  in  w.hose  well-taught  mind 
With  boundless  pow'r  unbounded  virtue  join'd  ; 
His  own  strict  judge,  and  patron  of  mankind. 

— POPE,  The  Temple  of  Fame. 

The  disadvantage  of  being  known  to  posterity  by  general  commendation, 
instead  of  discriminating  description,  is  common  to  Alfred  with  Marcus 
Aurelius. — SIR  JAMES  MACKINTOSH,  History  of  England,  Vol.  I. 

It  is  more  delightful  to  speak  of  Marcus  Aurelius  than  of  any  man  in 
history;  for  if  there  is  any  sublime  human  virtue  it  is  his.  He  was  cer- 
tainly the  noblest  character  of  his  time,  and  I  know  no  other  man  who 
combined  such  unaffected  kindness,  mildness,  and  humility,  with  such 
conscientiousness  and  severity  towards  himself.  We  possess  innumerable 
busts  of  him,  for  every  Roman  of  his  time  was  anxious  to  possess  his  por- 


262  MARCUS  AURELIUS. 

trait,  and  if  there  is  anywhere  an  expression  of  virtue  it  is  in  the  heavenly 
features  of  Marcus  Aurelius. — BARTHOLD  GEORG  NIEBUHR  (transl.}. 

As  Epictetus  gives  a  higher  tone  to  the  theology  of  the  school  (Stoic), 
so  the  writings  of  M.  Aurelius  manifest  an  improvement  in  its  ethical  teach- 
ing. The  manifold  opportunities  of  his  position  would  cherish  in  an 
emperor  naturally  humane  and  sensitive  wider  sympathies  than  were  pos- 
sible to  a  lame  old  man  born  and  bred  a  slave,  whom  cruel  treatment  had 
estranged  from  his  kind  and  who  was  still  further  isolated  by  his  bodily 
infirmity.  At  all  events  it  is  in  this  point,  and  perhaps  in  this  alone,  that 
the  meditations  of  M.  Aurelius  impress  us  more  favourably  than  the  dis- 
courses of  Epictetus.  As  a  conscious  witness  of  God  and  a  stern  preacher 
of  righteousness,  the  Phrygian  slave  holds  a  higher  place  :  but  as  a  kindly 
philanthropist,  conscientiously  alive  to  the  claims  of  all  men  far  and  near, 
the  Roman  emperor  commands  deeper  respect. — BISHOP  JOSEPH  B.  LIGHT- 
FOOT,  Epistle  to  the  Philippians. 

A  Stoic  in  Marcus  Aurelius  gave  a  passing  dignity  to  the  dishonoured 
purple. — J.  A.  FROUDE,  Calvinism. 

In  the  texture  and  whole  bent  of  his  mind  Marcus  Aurelius  was  far  more 
of  a  Greek  than  a  Roman,  of  a  philosopher  than  a  ruler.  In  his  campaigns 
he  was  surrounded  by  a  train  of  philosophers ;  in  the  camp  he  composed 
his  Meditations,  one  of  the  most  remarkable  books  in  the  Greek  language, 
the  mature  fruit  of  a  mind  strengthened  and  ennobled  by  severe  self-dis- 
cipline.— JOHN  I.  VON  DOLLINGER,  Studies  in  European  History  (transl.). 

The  Meditations  of  Marcus  Aurelius  were  in  fact  his  private  diary  ;  they 
are  a  noble  soliloquy  with  his  own  heart,  an  honest  examination  of  his  own 
conscience;  there  is  not  the  slightest  trace  of  their  having  been  intended 
for  any  eye  but  his  own.  In  them  he  was  acting  on  the  principle  of  St. 
Augustine :  "  Go  up  into  the  tribunal  of  thy  conscience,  and  set  thyself 
before  thyself".  He  was  ever  bearing  about — 

"A  silent  court  of  justice  in  himself, 
Himself  the  judge  and  jury,  and  himself 
The  prisoner  at  the  bar." 

— F.  W.  FARRAR,  Seekers  after  God. 

We  may  reasonably  hold  that  the  most  perfect  man  would  live  the  life 
of  Christ  in  obedience  to  the  maxims  of  the  Roman  Emperor,  and  that 
Christianity  provides  us  with  precisely  what  was  wanting  in  the  Aurelian 
system.  Stoicism  stood  in  need  of  a  criterion.  What  is  reason  ?  what  is 
the  true  character  of  truth  and  goodness  ?  Christianity  appears  with  a 
criterion  which  approves  itself  to  our  intuitive  apprehension.  The  life  of 
Christ  is  the  perfect  life.  Learn  that,  and  follow  that,  and  you  will  reach 
the  height  of  human  nature.  To  live  in  harmony  with  the  universe  is  to 
live  as  Christ  lived.  It  is  the  wrong  done  in  the  name  of  Christ,  the  fig- 
ments falsely  stamped  with  Christ's  superscription,  the  follies  of  Bibliolatry 
and  dogmatic  orthodoxy,  that  must  be  abjured  ;  and  I  maintain  that  in  our 
present  mood  the  best  hope  of  not  casting  away  the  wheat  together  with 
the  chaff,  of  retaining  what  is  fit  for  human  use  in  Christianity,  consists 
in  first  assuming  the  scientific  standpoint  of  Aurelius. — J.  ADDINGTON 
SYMONDS,  Studies  of  the  Greek  Poets,  Second  Series. 

Among  philosophers,  Marcus  is  neither  prophet,  law-giver,  nor  scribe ; 
he  is  not  a  teacher  expounding  a  creed,  confirming  doubters  or  contro- 


MARCUS  AURELIUS,  MARIE  ANTOINETTE.  263 

verting  opponents.  He  is  a  diarist  conversing  with  himself,  not  claiming 
even  for  the  doctrines  of  his  school,  much  less  for  his  own  judgments,  any 
absolute  infallibility,  or  certitude.  There  is  no  pretence  to  completeness, 
little  even  to  method,  in  the  handling  of  ethical  topics.  .  .  .  Marcus 
Aurelius  Antoninus  survives  as  perhaps  the  loftiest  exemplar  of  unassisted 
duty  whom  history  records— unalterably  loyal  to  the  noblest  hypothesis 
of  life  he  knew.  For  him,  life  was  indeed  more  like  wrestling  than  danc- 
ing, yet  "  in  his  patience  he  won  his  soul  ".  He  lived  when  national  virtue 
was  dead,  and  almost  buried  ;  yet  by  integrity,  by  industry,  and  by  mere 
fairness  of  mind,  he  helped  not  a  little  to  make  Roman  Law  the  mother  of 
codes  and  the  saviour  of  society.  War  was  to  him  a  hateful  "  hunting  of 
Sarma'tians,"  yet  "duty  made  him  a  great  Captain,"  and  he  stayed  the 
barbarian  till  Western  civilization  was  Christian  and  safe.  Intellectually, 
he  had  neither  genius  nor  learning,  and  wrote  only  for  relief  of  sleepless- 
ness and  solitude,  yet  the  centuries  still  turn  to  him  for  wisdom  ;  and  the 
Thoughts  remain  imperishable,  dignifying  duty,  shaming  weakness,  and 
rebuking  discontent. — G.  H.  KENDALL,  Marcus  Aurelius  to  Himself. 

Picturesque  as  the  external  circumstances  of  Epictetus  are,  they  are 
dimmed  by  comparison  with  those  which  make  the  figure  of  Marcus 
Aurelius  so  uniquely  fascinating.  And  the  clear,  strong  style  of  the  pro- 
fessional lecturer  does  not  attain  that  extraordinary  power  of  appeal  which 
underlies  the  emperor's  awkward  Commiinings  with  Himself.  With 
Marcus,  as  with  so  many  great  souls,  everything  depends  on  whether 
you  love  him  or  not.  If  the  first  three  chapters  win  you,  every  word  he 
writes  seems  precious ;  but  many  people,  not  necessarily  narrow-minded 
or  vicious  in  taste,  will  find  the  whole  book  dreary  and  unmeaning.  It 
would  be  hard  to  deny,  however,  that  the  ethical  teaching  of  the  old  Stoa, 
as  expounded  by  these  two  men,  is  one  of  the  very  highest,  the  most 
spiritual,  and  the  most  rational  ever  reached  by  the  human  intellect. — 
GILBERT  MURRAY,  History  of  Ancient  Greek  Literature. 

MARIE  ANTOINETTE. 
Queen  of  France  :  1755  1793. 

Marie  Antoinette  .  .  .  suffered  on  the  same  spot  where  her  husband 
perished,  with  a  firmness  and  Christian  hope  worthy  of  the  daughter  of 
the  Caesars.  Few  human  beings  have  passed,  in  a  life  of  thirty-nine 
years,  through  more  awful  vicissitudes,  and  her  character  passed  pure 
and  unsullied  through  the  revolutionary  furnace. — SIR  ARCHIBALD  ALISON. 

To  the  trials  of  that  stern  inquisitress  adversity,  Marie  Antoinette  was 
fully  exposed  in  her  later  years ;  and  not  only  did  she  rise  above  them, 
but  the  more  terrible  and  unexampled  they  were,  the  more  conspicuous 
was  the  superiority  of  her  mind  to  fortune.  It  is  no  exaggeration  to  say 
that  the  history  of  the  whole  world  has  preserved  no  record  of  greater 
heroism,  in  either  sex,  than  was  shown  by  Marie  Antoinette  during  the 
closing  years  of  her  life.  No  courage  was  ever  put  to  the  proof  by  such 
a  variety  and  such  an  accumulation  of  dangers  and  miseries ;  and  no  one 
ever  came  out  of  an  encounter  with  even  far  inferior  calamities  with 
greater  glory. — C.  D.  YONGE,  Life  of  Marie  Antoinette. 

Is  there  a  man's  heart  that  thinks  without  pity  of  those  long  months 
and  years  of  slow  wasting  ignominy  ;  of  thy  birth,  self-cradled  in  imperial 


264  MARIE  ANTOINETTE,  MARLBOROUGH. 

Schonbrunn,  the  winds  of  heaven  not  to  visit  thy  face  too  roughly,  thy 
foot  to  light  on  softness,  thy  eye  on  splendour ;  and  then  of  thy  death,  or 
hundred  deaths,  to  which  the  guillotine  and  Fouquier  Tinville's  judgment- 
bar  was  but  the  merciful  end  !  Look  there,  O  man  born  of  woman  !  The 
bloom  of  that  fair  face  is  wasted,  the  hair  is  grey  with  care  ;  the  brightness 
of  those  eyes  is  quenched,  their  lids  hang  drooping,  the  face  is  stony  pale, 
as  of  one  living  in  death.  Mean  weeds,  which  her  own  hand  has  mended, 
attire  the  Queen  of  the  World.  The  death-hurdle  where  thou  sittest  pale, 
motionless,  which  only  curses  environ,  has  to  stop ;  a  people,  drunk  with 
vengeance,  will  drink  it  again  in  full  draught  looking  at  thee  there.  Far 
as  the  eye  reaches,  a  multitudinous  sea  of  maniac  heads,  the  air  deaf  with 
their  triumph-yell !  The  living-dead  must  shudder  with  yet  one  other 
pang ;  her  startled  blood  yet  again  suffuses  with  the  hue  of  agony  that 
pale  face,  which  she  hides  with  her  hands.  There  is  there  no  heart  to  say 
God  pity  thee!  O  think  not  of  these;  think  of  HIM  whom  thou  wor- 
shippest,  the  crucified— who  also  treading  the  winepress  alone,  fronted 
sorrow  still  deeper ;  and  triumphed  over  it  and  made  it  holy,  and  built  of 
it  a  "  sanctuary  of  sorrow  "  for  thee  and  all  the  wretched  !  Thy  path  of 
thorns  is  nigh  ended,  one  long  last  look  at  the  Tuileries,  where  thy  step 
was  once  so  light — where  thy  children  shall  not  dwell.  The  head  is  on 
the  block  ;  the  axe  rushes — dumb  lies  the  world  ;  that  wild-yelling  world, 
and  all  its  madness  is  behind  thee. — CARLYLE,  History  of  the  French 
Revolution. 

JOHN  CHURCHILL,  DUKE  OF  MARLBOROUGH. 
English  General:    1650-1722. 

Marlborough's  exploits  appear  divinely  bright, 
And  proudly  shine  in  their  own  native  light ; 
Rais'd  of  themselves,  their  genuine  charms  they  boast, 
And  those  who  paint  them  truest  praise  them  most. 

— ADDISON,  The  Campaign. 

Dost  thou  recall  to  mind  with  joy,  or  grief, 
Great  Marlborough's  actions  ;  that  immortal  chief, 
Whose  slightest  trophy  rais'd  in  each  campaign, 
More  than  suffic'd  to  signalize  a  reign  ? 

— CONGREVE,  A  Letter  to  Lord  Viscount  Cobham,  1729. 

Though  in  your  life  ten  thousand  summers  roll, 
And  though  you  compass  earth  from  pole  to  pole, 
Where'er  men  talk  of  war  and  martial  fame, 
They'll  mention  Marlborough's  and  Caesar's  name. 

—GAY,  Epistle  V. 

From  Marlb'rough's  eyes  the  streams  of  dotage  flow. 

— DR.  JOHNSON,  The  Vanity  of  Human  Wishes. 

Marlborough  and  Alexander  vie  for  fame 

With  glorious  competition  ;  equal  both 

In  valour  and  in  fortune :  but  their  praise 

Be  different,  for  with  different  views  they  fought ; 

This  to  subdue,  and  that  to  free  mankind. 

— LORD  LYTTLETON,  Blenheim. 


MARLBOROUGH.  265 

The  present  century  was  growing  blind 

To  the  great  Marlborough's  skill  in  giving  knocks, 

Until  his  late  Life  by  Archdeacon  Coxe. 

— BYRON,  Don  Juan. 

Marlborough,  wise  in  council  as  in  field. 

— SOUTHEY,  Ode  written  during  the  War  with  America. 

And  the  Victor  of  Blenheim,  alike  in  all  virtues  accomplish'd, 

Public  or  private,  he ;  the  perfect  soldier  and  statesman, 

England's  reproach  and  her  pride ;  her  pride  for  his  noble  achievements, 

Her  reproach  for  the  wrongs  he  endured. 

— Id.,  A  Vision  of  Judgment :  The  Elder  Worthies. 

With  all  his  weaknesses,  or  rather  with  his  one  great  weakness,  of 
always  playing  to  win,  Marlborough  had  in  perhaps  the  greatest  measure 
of  any  Englishman  every  great  practical  quality  of  the  English  character, 
except  unflinching  honesty  and  truth.  His  covetousness,  though  not  his 
parsimony,  can,  it  is  to  be  feared  hardly  be  set  down  as  altogether  un- 
English.  But  the  entire  absence  of  vainglory  and  forfanterie  in  him,  the 
intense  business-like  energy  with  which  he  set  about  his  work,  the  com- 
plete freedom  from  flightiness  and  fidgetiness  with  which  he  carried  it 
out,  the  thoroughness  with  which  he  put  the  final  touches  to  it,  are  all 
examples,  on  the  greatest  scale,  of  qualities  on  which  Englishmen  especi- 
ally pride  themselves.  In  Marlborough's  fashion  of  war-making  there 
was  emphatically  no  nonsense.  He  never  wasted  a  man  or  a  movement ; 
he  never  executed  a  single  manoeuvre  for  show ;  he  never,  either  in  words 
or  deeds,  indulged  in  the  least  gasconading.  Probably  no  man  ever  had 
such  a  superhuman  business  as  he  had  put  on  his  shoulders  in  the  busi- 
ness of  at  once  fighting  half  Europe  and  keeping  the  other  half  in  fighting 
order.  .  .'.  A  slight,  if  not  a  reproach,  of  centuries  was  rolled  away  from 
the  nation  in  the  course  of  those  ten  years.  It  is  for  this,  first  of  all,  that 
Englishmen  ought  to  reverence  the  memory,  stained  as  it  is,  and  even  if 
it  were  worse  stained  than  it  is,  of  Jack  of  Marlborough. —  GEORGE 
SAINTSBURY,  Life  of  Marlborough. 

Marlborough  had  many  failings,  and  great  as  he  was,  it  is  not  easy 
to  love  his  memory  as  we  all  love  that  of  Nelson,  nor  to  respect  it  as  we 
•do  that  of  Wellington.  Yet  still  there  is  something  so  attractive  about 
the  man's  personality  that  we  feel  drawn  towards  him  in  spite  of  his  faults. 
He  was  no  saint,  and  he  was  too  fond  of  money,  but  throughout  his  whole 
life  he  displayed  a  simplicity  and  gentleness  of  disposition,  a  touching 
sympathy  with  grief  and  sorrow,  and  a  loathing  of  cruelty  and  injustice, 
that  go  far  to  counterbalance  his  many  faults.  Mercy  was  always  in  his 
thoughts,  and  if  in  action  he  smote  hard,  he  always  sheathed  his  sword 
with  unaffected  pleasure,  and  upon  any  good  excuse.  ...  It  must  be  ad- 
mitted that  the  reputation  of  our  army  only  dates  from  Marlborough's 
victories.  His  wars  first  proved  to  modern  Europe  that  Great  Britain 
could  produce  not  only  stalwart  soldiers  as  hard  to  beat  as  the  victors  of 
Crecy  and  Agincourt,  but  able  commanders  also ;  and  that  England  pos- 
sessed a  native  army  officered  by  English  gentlemen  and  led  by  an  English 
General  before  which  no  other  army  of  equal  number  could  hold  its  own. 
It  was  Marlborough  who  first  taught  us  to  be  proud  of  our  standing  army 
as  a  national  institution,  and  the  spirit  of  confidence  which  pervaded 


266  MARLBOROUGH,  MARLOWE. 

Wellington's  army  in  the  Peninsular,  and  to  a  still  more  remarkable  degree 
shows  itself  now  in  Queen  Victoria's  army,  may  be  said  to  have  been  born 
at  Blenheim,  baptized  at  Ramillies,  and  confirmed  at  Oudenarde. — LORD> 
WOLSELEY,  Life  of  Marlborongh,  Vol.  I. 

CHRISTOPHER  MARLOWE. 
English  Dramatist:  1564-1593. 

Neat  Marlowe  bathed  in  the  Thespian  springs, 
Had  in  him  those  brave  translunary  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. 

— DRAYTON,  Elegy  to  Henry  Reynolds,  Esq. 

Marlowe,  renown'd  for  his  rare  art  and  wit.   .  .  . 

— T.  HEYWOOD,  The  Hierarchy  of  the  Blessed  Angels,  IV. 

"  If  all  the  pens  that  ever  poets  held 

Had  fed  the  feeling  of  their  masters'  thoughts," 

And  as  with  rush  of  hurtling  chariots 
The  flight  of  all  their  spirits  were  impelled 

Toward  one  great  end,  thy  glory — nay,  not  then, 
Not  yet  might'st  thou  be  praised  enough  of  men. 

— SWINBURNE,  Christopher  Marlowe.- 

Marlowe  of  all  our  fathers  first  beheld 

Beyond  the  tidal  ebb  and  flow  of  things 
The  tideless  depth  and  height  of  souls,  impelled 

By  thought  or  passion,  borne  on  waves  or  wings, 
Beyond  all  flight  or  sight  but  song's :  and  he 
First  gave  our  song  a  sound  that  matched  our  sea. 

— Id.,  Inscriptions  for  a  Pedestal.. 

For  thou,  if  ever  godlike  foot  there  trod 

These  fields  of  ours,  wert  surely  like  a  god. 

Who  knows  what  splendour  of  strange  dreams  was  shed 

With  sacred  shadow  and  glimmer  of  gold  and  red 

From  hallowed  windows,  over  stone  and  sod, 

On  thine  unbowed  bright  insubmissive  head  ? 

The  shadow  stayed  not,  but  the  splendour  stays, 

Our  brother,  till  the  last  of  English  days. 

No  day  nor  night  on  English  earth  shall  be 

For  ever,  spring  nor  summer,  Junes  nor  Mays, 

But  somewhat  as  a  sound  or  gleam  of  thee 

Shall  come  on  us  like  morning  from  the  sea. 

—Id.,  In  the  Bay,  XV 1 1 1.,  XIX.. 

'Tis  Marlowe  falls  !     That  last  lunge  rent  asunder 
Our  lyre  of  spirit  and  flesh,  wild  Marlowe's  life, 
Whose  chords  seemed  strung  by  earth  and  heav'n  at  strife, 

Yet  ever  strung  to  beauty  above  or  under  ! 

Heav'n  kens  of  Man,  but  still  the  stars  can  blunder 


MARLOWE,  MARVELL.  267 

If  Fate's  hand  guided  yonder  villain's  knife 

Through  that  rare  brain,  so  teeming,  daring,  rife 
With  all  that  makes  us  sing,  our  love  and  wonder. 
Or  was  it  Chance  ? — Shakespeare — who  art  supreme 

O'er  man  and  men,  yet  sharest  Marlowe's  sight 

To  pierce  the  clouds  that  hide  the  inhuman  height 
Where  man  and  men  and  gods  and  all  that  seem 
Are  Nature's  mutterings  in  her  changeful  dream — 

Come  read  the  runes  these  bloody  rivulets  write ! 

— THEODORE  WATTS,  The  Death  of  Marlowe. 

When  Christopher  Marlowe  came  up  to  London  from  Cambridge,  a  boy 
in  years,  a  man  in  genius,  and  a  god  in  ambition,  he  found  the  stage  which 
he  was  born  to  transfigure  and  re-create  by  the  might  and  masterdom  of 
his  genius,  encumbered  with  a  litter  of  rude  rhyming  farces  and  tragedies 
which  the  first  wave  of  his  imperial  hand  swept  so  utterly  out  of  sight  and 
hearing  that  hardly  by  piecing  together  such  fragments  of  that  buried 
rubbish  as  it  is  now  possible  to  unearth  can  we  rebuild  in  imagination  so- 
much  of  the  rough  and  crumbling  walls  that  fell  before  the  trumpet-blast 
of  Tamburlaine  as  may  give  us  some  conception  of  the  rabble  dynasty  of 
rhymers  whom  he  overthrew — of  the  citadel  of  dramatic  barbarism  which 
was  stormed  and  sacked  at  the  first  charge  of  the  young  conqueror  who 
came  to  lead  English  audiences  and  to  deliver  English  poetry. — SWIN- 
BURNE, A  Study  of  Shakespeare^ 

The  sv/eetest  names,  and  which  carry  a  perfume  in  the  mention,  are  Kit 
Marlowe,  Drayton,  Drummond  of  Hawthornden,  and  Cowley. — CHARLES. 
LAMB. 


ANDREW  MARVELL. 
English  Politician,  Poet  and  Satirist :   1620-1678. 

In  those  worst  of  times, 

The  hardy  poet  raised  his  honest  rhymes 

To  dread  rebuke,  and  bade  Controlment  speak. 

In  guilty  blushes  on  the  villain's  cheek  ; 

Bade  Power  turn  pale,  kept  mighty  rogues  in  awe, 

And  made  them  fear  the  Muse,  who  fear'd  not  law. 

— CHURCHILL,  The  Author. 

Marvell,  wit,  patriot,  and  poet,  who  knew 

How  to  give,  both  at  once,  Charles  and  Cromwell  their  due. 

— LEIGH  HUNT,  To  Charles  Lamb. 

As  Marvell  stood, 

Loyal  to  Truth  dethroned,  nor  could  be  wooed 
To  trust  the  playful  tiger's  velvet  paws. 

— J.  R.  LOWELL,  To  John  G,  Palfrey. 

We  read  the  verses  of  one  of  the  great  English  poets,  of  Chaucer,  of 
Marvell,  of  Dryden,  with  the  most  modern  joy — with  a  pleasure,  I  mean, 
which  is  in  great  part  caused  by  the  abstraction  of  all  time  from  their 
verses.  There  is  some  awe  mixed  with  the  joy  of  our  surprise,  when  this 
poet,  who  lived  in  some  past  world,  two  or  three  hundred  years  ago,  says 


268  MARVELL,  MARY  I. 

that  which  lies  close  to  my  own  soul,  that  which  I  also  had  well  nigh 
thought  and  said. — EMERSON,  The  American  Scholar. 

It  was  a  prophetic  coincidence  that  named  him  a — Marvel.  Rare  are 
the  men  of  this  divine  stamp !  In  a  most  debased  and  demoralised  age 
Marvell  stood  poor — willingly,  voluntarily  poor  and  incorruptible.  Like 
the  angel  Abdiel,  he  stood 

Among  the  faithless,  faithful  only  he. 

Witty  beyond  most  of  his  age  ;  the  friend  of  Milton,  and  one  of  the  first 
to  discern  and  proclaim  the  magnificent  genius  of  Paradise  Lost,  express- 
ing his  amazement  at  it  in  those  fine  lines,  beginning 

When  I  beheld  the  poet  blind,  yet  bold ; 

learned  and  accomplished  by  study  and  travel ;  having  a  wonderful  in- 
fluence in  the  House  of  Commons  ;  capable  by  his  talents  and  personal 
suavity  of  reaching  the  highest  honours  of  the  state,  he  preferred  to  be  the 
unshaken  friend  of  England,  liberty,  and  Magna  Charta ;  the  advocate  of 
justice  and  virtue,  and  the  terror  of  the  evil  and  corrupt,  who  never  felt 
safe  till,  having  missed  him  with  the  dagger  of  the  assassin,  they  de- 
spatched him  with  poison.  .  .  .  God's  true  Nobleman.  —  WILLIAM 
HOWITT,  The  Northern  Heights  of  London. 

MARY  I. 
Queen  of  England  :  1516-1558. 

Mary's  horrid  days 

To  fancy  bleeding  rose,  and  the  dire  glare 
Of  Smithfield  lighten'd  in  its  eyes  anew. 

— THOMSON,  Liberty. 

Still  amourous,  and  fond,  and  billing, 
Like  Philip  and  Mary  on  a  shilling. 

— SAMUEL  BUTLER,  Hudibras,  Part  III.,  Canto  I. 

When  persecuting  zeal  made  royal  sport 
With  tortured  innocence  in  Mary's  court. 

— COWPER,  Expostulation. 

Queen  Mary's  saying  serves  for  me — 

(When  fortune's  malice 

Lost  her — Calais) 
Open  my  heart  and  you  will  see 
Graved  inside  of  it,  "  Italy  ". 

— BROWNING,  "  De  Gustibus — " 

Mary.  "  Calais  ! 

Our  one  point  on  the  main,  the  gate  of  France ! 

I  am  the  Queen  of  England ;  take  mine  eyes,  mine  heart, 

But  do  not  lose  me  Calais.   .  .    ." 

Mary.     "  I  am  a  byword.     Heretic  and  rebel 

Point  at  me  and  make  merry.     Philip  gone  ! 

And  Calais  gone  !     Time  that  I  were  gone  too  !  " 

— TENNYSON,  Queen  Mary. 


MARY  /.,  MARY  STUART.  269 

Of  the  first  Mary,  long  and  too  deservedly  known  by  the  title  of  "  Bloody 
Mary,"  ...  we  confess  we  can  never  think  without  commiseration. — 
LEIGH  HUNT,  Men,  Women,  and  Books. 

Queen  Mary  left  none  to  lament  her,  and  there  was  not  the  semblance 
of  sorrow  for  her  loss.  She  died  in  the  morning ;  in  the  afternoon  the 
bells  of  all  the  churches  in  London  were  rung  for  the  accession  of  Eliza- 
beth, and  at  night  bonfires  were  made,  and  tables  set  out  in  the  streets,, 
at  which  the  citizens  caroused. — SOUTHEY. 

The  reign  of  Mary  the  Bigot  is  stigmatised,  and  justly,  for  the  enormity 
of  religious  persecutions.  She  is,  therefore,  almost  universally  believed 
to  have  united  the  three  pestilent  vices  of  avarice,  pride  and  revenge  'f 
chastened  only  by  the  affection  which  she  entertained  for  a  worthless- 
husband.  During  her  reign  two  hundred  and  seventy-seven  persons  died 
at  the  stake ;  but  it  ought  not  to  be  forgotten,  that  if  Mary  was  attached 
to  the  stake,  Elizabeth  seems  to  have  been  equally  attached  to  the  halter  ; 
for  in  her  reign  one  hundred  and  sixty-eight  persons  were  executed  for 
being  priests,  for  harbouring  priests,  or  for  being  converts. — CHARLES. 
BUCKE,  Book  of  Human  Character. 

MARY  STUART. 
Queen  of  Scots  :  1542-1587. 

0  for  a  Shakespeare  or  an  Otway  scene, 

To  paint  the  lovely,  hapless  Scottish  Queen  ! 
Vain  ev'n  the  omnipotence  of  female  charms 
'Gainst  headlong,  ruthless,  mad  rebellion's  arms. 

— BURNS,  Scots  Prologue. 

The  meanest  hind  in  fair  Scotland 

May  rove  their  sweets  amang  ; 
But  I,  the  Queen  of  a'  Scotland, 

Maun  lie  in  prison  strang ! 

1  was  the  Queen  o'  bonie  France, 

Where  happy  I  hae  been ; 
Fu'  lightly  rase  I  in  the  morn, 

As  blythe  lay  down  at  e'en  : 
And  I'm  the  Sovereign  of  Scotland, 

And  mony  a  traitor  there  ; 
Yet  here  I  lie  in  foreign  bands, 

And  never-ending  care. 

— Id.,  Lament  of  Mary,  Queen  of  Scots. 

Hark  !  the  death-note  of  the  year 

Sounded  by  the  castle  clock  ! 
From  her  sunk  eyes  a  stagnant  tear 

Stole  forth,  unsettled  by  the  shock ; 
But  oft  the  woods  renewed  their  green, 
Ere  the  tired  head  of  Scotland's  queen 
Reposed  upon  the  block  ! 

— WORDSWORTH,  Lament  of  Mary,  Queen  of  Scots. 


270  MARY  STUART,  MASSINGER,  MAURICE. 

Falsehood  unmask'd  withdraws  her  ugly  train, 

And  Mary's  virtues  all  illustrious  shine — 
Yes,  thou  hast  friends,  the  godlike  and  humane 

Of  latest  ages,  injur'd  queen,  are  thine. 

— W.  J.  MICKLE,  Mary,  Queen  of  Scots. 

This  may  be  truly  said,  that  if  a  life  of  exile  and  misery,  endured  with 
almost  saintly  patience,  from  the  i5th  of  June,  1567,  until  the  day  of  her 
death,  upon  the  8th  of  February,  1587,  could  atone  for  crimes  and  errors 
of  the  class  imputed  to  her,  no  such  penalty  was  ever  more  fully  dis- 
charged than  by  Mary  Stuart. — SIR  WALTER  SCOTT,  History  of  Scotland. 

Yet  in  the  darkest  hours  of  her  existence,  even  when  she  hailed  the  pros- 
pect of  a  scaffold  as  a  blessed  relief  from  her  protracted  sufferings,  she  never 
•once  expressed  a  doubt  as  to  the  verdict  that  would  be  finally  pronounced 
between  her  and  her  enemies.  "  The  theatre  of  the  world,"  she  calmly 
reminded  her  judges  at  Fotheringay,  "  is  wider  than  the  realm  of  England." 
She  appealed  from  the  tyranny  of  her  persecutors  to  the  whole  human 
race  ;  and  she  has  not  appealed  in  vain.  The  history  of  no  woman  that 
ever  lived  approaches  in  interest  to  that  of  Mary  Stuart ;  and  so  long  as 
beauty  and  intellect,  a  kindly  spirit  in  prosperity  and  matchless  heroism 
in  misfortune,  attract  the  sympathies  of  men,  this  illustrious  victim  of 
sectarian  violence  and  barbarous  statecraft  will  ever  occupy  the  most 
prominent  place  in  the  annals  of  her  sex. — JOHN  HOSACK,  Life  of  Mary, 
•Queen  of  Scots. 

PHILIP  MASSINGER. 
English  Dramatist :  1584-1640. 

Grave  and  great-hearted  Massinger,  thy  face 
High  melancholy  lights  with  loftier  grace 

Than  gilds  the  brows  of  revel  :  sad  and  wise, 
The  spirit  of  thought  that  moved  thy  deeper  song, 
Sorrow  serene  in  soft  calm  scorn  of  wrong, 

Speaks  patience  yet  from  thy  majestic  eyes. 

— SWINBURNE,  Philip  Massinger. 

The  richer  genius  of  Massinger,  whose  main  fault,  perhaps,  lies  in  an 
over-fondness  for  metaphysical  research  in  the  creation  of  exceptional 
characters  influenced  by  exceptional  motives,  and  a  lavish  beauty  of  ex- 
pression, which  is  often  inharmonious  to  the  displeasing  nature  of  the 
action. — LYTTON,  Essays:  Knowledge  of  the  World. 

Massinger  reminds  us  of  the  intricacies  of  Sansovino,  Shakespeare  of 
Gothic  aisles  or  heaven's  cathedral,  Fletcher  of  the  sylvan  architecture  of 
wild  greenwoods,  Ford  of  glittering  Corinthian  colonnades,  Webster  of 
vaulted  crypts,  Heywood  of  homely  manor-houses  on  our  English  country- 
side, Marlowe  of  masoned  clouds,  and  Marston,  in  his  better  moments,  of 
the  fragmentary  vigour  of  a  Roman. — J.  A.  SYMONDS,  Ben  jfonson:  A 
Memoir. 

FREDERICK  DENISON  MAURICE. 
English  Clergyman  and  Author  :  1805-1872. 

Come,  Maurice,  come :  the  lawn  as  yet 
Is  hoar  with  rime,  or  spongy  wet ; 


MAURICE,  MAZARIN,  MAZZINI.  271 

But  when  the  wreath  of  March  has  blossom'd, 
Crocus,  anemone,  violet. 

'  — TENNYSON,  To  the  Rev.  F.  D.  Maurice, 

The  most  beautiful  human  soul  whom  God  has  ever  in  His  great  mercy 
allowed  me  most  unworthy  to  meet  with  on  this  earth ;  the  man  who  of 
all  men  I  have  seen  approached  nearest  to  my  conception  of  St.  John, 
the  Apostle  of  Love. — KINGSLEY,  Life  of  F.  D.  Maurice  by  his  Son, 
Vol.  II. 

It  is  hardly  too  much  to  say  that  it  was  the  doctrine  of  Maurice  rather 
than  that  of  Pusey  or  Newman,  which  for  forty  years — Maurice  began  his 
work  in  1835  ;  he  died  in  1872 — "  kept  the  whole  of  his  forward  movement 
in  the  social  and  political  life  of  the  English  people  in  union  with  God 
and  identified  with  religion,"  a  doctrine  which,  idealized  and  transfigured 
in  the  two  great  poets  of  the  century,  Tennyson  and  Browning,  .  .  .  has, 
during  this  last  decade  of  the  century,  turned  so  wisely  the  current  of  our 
English  Christianity  to  the  consideration  of  the  great  social  problems  of 
the  age,  and  is  at  this  moment  so  profoundly  affecting,  moulding,  inspir- 
ing, transfusing  the  social  ideals  of  the  present. — DEAN  C.  W.  STUBBS, 
Charles  Kingsley  and  the  Christian  Social  Movement. 

GIULIO  MAZARIN. 
Italian  Cardinal  and  Statesman  :  1602-1661. 

Fox-Mazarin. 

— VICTOR  HUGO. 

Veil'd  in  the  Roman  purple,  preys 

The  canker-worm  within ; 
And  more  than  Bourbon's  sceptre,  sways 

The  crook  of  Mazarin. 

• — LYTTON,  Mazarin. 

Amongst  those  bad  men  who  have  had  some  fine  qualities,  may  be 
ranked  Cardinal  Mazarin.  Envy,  ingratitude,  deception,  ignorance  of 
legislation,  obliquity,  hypocrisy,  insatiable  avarice ;  these  are  some  of  the 
qualities  by  which  he  was  dishonoured.  "  Alike  insensible  to  injuries  and 
to  favours,"  says  Deformaux,  "  he  knew  not  how  to  punish  or  to  reward. 
Hence  favours,  the  best  deserved,  were  only  forced  from  him  by  threats, 
or  by  working  on  his  fears."  Yet  had  this  very  cardinal  many  virtues, 
arising  from  grace  of  action  and  sweetness  of  temper. — CHARLES  BUCKE, 
Book  of  Human  Character. 

JOSEPH]MAZZINI. 
Italian  Patriot ;  1808-1872. 

I  think  Mazzini  has  done  a  very  noble  work  for  his  country,  and  that 
his  watchword  "  God  and  the  people  "  is  one  which  all  nations  must  be 
the  better  for :  one  which  is  the  truest  possible  testimony  against  the  in- 
tellectual liberalism  which  seems  to  abhor  God  and  the  people. — F.  D. 
MAURICE  in  Life  of  F.  D.  Maurice  by  his  Son. 


272  MELANCHTHON,  MELEAGER. 

PHILIP  MELANCHTHON. 
German  Reformer :  1497-1560. 

Philip  Melanchthon  !  thou  alone 
Faithful  among  the  faithless  known, 
Thee  I  hail,  and  only  thee  ! 
Behold  the  record  of  us  three  ! 

Res  et  verba  Philippus, 

Res  sine  verbis  Lutherus  ; 

Erasmus  verba  sine  re  ! 
My  Philip,  prayest  thou  for  me  ? 
Lifted  above  all  earthly  care, 
From  these  high  regions  of  the  air, 
Among  the  birds  that  day  and  night 
Upon  the  branches  of  tall  trees 
Sing  their  lauds  and  litanies, 
Praising  God  with  all  their  might, 
My  Philip,  unto  thee  I  write. 

My  Philip  !  thou  who  knowest  best 
All  that  is  passing  in  this  breast ; 
The  spiritual  agonies, 
The  inward  deaths,  the  inward  hell, 
And  the  divine  new  births  as  well, 
That  surely  follow  after  these, 
As  after  winter  follows  spring  ; 
My  Philip,  in  the  night-time  sing 
This  song  of  the  Lord  I  send  to  thee, 
And  I  will  sing  it  for  thy  sake, 
Until  our  answering  voices  make 
A  glorious  antiphony, 
And  choral  chant  of  victory  ! 

—LONGFELLOW,  Martin  Luther. 

MELEAGER. 
Greek  Epigrammatist:  fl.  B.C.  60 

While  reading  his  verse,  it  is  impossible  to  avoid  laying  down  the  book 
and  pausing  to  exclaim  :  How  modern  is  the  phrase,  how  true  the  passion, 
how  unique  the  style  !  Though  Meleager's  voice  has  been  mute  a  score 
of  centuries,  it  yet  rings  clear  and  vivid  in  our  ears  ;  because  the  man  was 
a  real  poet,  feeling  intensely,  expressing  forcibly  and  beautifully,  steeping 
his  style  in  the  fountain  of  tender  sentiment  which  is  eternal.  We  find 
in  him  none  of  the  cynicism  which  defiles  Straton,  or  of  the  voluptuary's 
despair  which  gives  to  Agathias  the  morbid  splendour  of  decay,  the  colours 
of  corruption.  All  is  simple,  lively,  fresh  with  joyous  experience  in  his 
verse.  .  .  .  The  first  great  merit  of  Meleager  as  a  poet  is  limpidity.  A 
crystal  is  not  more  transparent  than  his  style ;  but  the  crystal  to  which 
we  compare  it  must  be  coloured  with  the  softest  flush  of  beryl  or  of 
amethyst. — J.  ADDINGTON  SYMONDS,  Studies  of  the  Greek  Poets. 


273 

MENANDER. 
Chief  Poet  of  the  (Greek]  New  Comedy  :  B.C.  342-29  ? 

Thou  [William  Wycherley],  whom  the  Nine  with  Plautus'  wit  inspire, 

The  art  of  Terence,  and  Menander's  fire  ; 

Whose  sense  instructs  us,  and  whose  humour  charms, 

Whose  judgment  sways  us,  and  whose  spirit  warms  ! 

— POPE,  Pastorals. 

If  we  were  to  judge  by  the  fragments  transmitted  to  us,  we  should  have 
to  say  that  Menander's  comedy  was  ethical  philosophy  in  verse ;  so 
mature  is  their  wisdom,  so  weighty  their  language,  and  so  grave  their 
tone.  The  brightness  of  the  beautiful  Greek  spirit  is  sobered  down  in  him 
almost  to  sadness.  Middle  age,  with  its  maturity,  has  been  substituted 
for  youth  with  its  passionate  intensity.  Taking  Menander  for  our  guide, 
we  cannot  cry:  "You  Greeks  are  always  children".  .  .  .  There  is 
something  even  almost  awful  in  the  placid  acquiescence  of  Menander. 
He  has  come  to  the  end  of  passions  and  pleasures :  he  expects  pain  and 
is  prepared  to  endure  it ;  his  happiness  consists  in  tranquil  contemplation 
of  life,  from  which  he  no  longer  hopes  for  more  than  what  Balzac  calls 
the  a  peu  pres  of  felicity.  This  tranquillity  does  not  diminish  but  rather 
increases  his  power  of  enjoyment  and  the  clearness  of  his  vision.  He 
combines  the  exact  knowledge  of  the  scientific  analyst  with  judicial  im- 
partiality;  and  yet  his  worldly  wisdom  is  not  cold  or  dry.  To  make 
selections  from  fragments,  every  word  whereof  is  golden,  would  be  weary 
work  ;  nor  is  it  possible  to  preserve  in  translation  the  peculiar  savour  of 
this  Attic  salt.  Menander  should  be  spared  this  profanation.  Before  we 
leave  him,  let  us  remember  what  Goethe,  a  man  as  like  Menander  as  a 
modern  man  can  be,  has  said  of  him :  "  He  is  thoroughly  pure,  noble, 
great,  and  cheerful,  and  his  grace  is  unattainable.  It  is  to  be  lamented 
that  we  possess  so  little  of  him,  but  that  little  is  invaluable." — J.  ADDING- 
TON  SYMONDS,  Studies  of  the  Greek  Poets,  Second  Series. 


FELIX  MENDELSSOHN-BARTHOLDY. 
German  Musical  Composer  :  1809-1847. 

The  fame  of  this  illustrious  musician  may,  and  probably  will,  reach  into 
future  ages :  but  a  knowledge  of  the  qualities  which  distinguished  him  as 
a  man,  can  never  be  adequately  communicated  to  posterity.  Those  only 
who  possessed  the  blessed  privilege  of  calling  him  friend,  can  either  know 
or  feel  how  much  of  virtue,  genius,  and  charm  of  character,  was  extiiv 

§uished  in  the  person  of  that  miracle  of  humanity,  Felix  Mendelssohn  !-U 
IR  JULIUS  BENEDICT,  Sketch  of  the  Life  and  Works  of  the  late  Felix 
Mcndelssohn-Bartholdy. 

In  this  age  of  mercenary  musical  manufacture  and  art  degradation, 
Mendelssohn  towers  above  his  contemporaries  like  a  moral  lighthouse 
in  the  midst  of  a  dark  and  troubled  sea.  His  light  always  shone  strong 
and  pure.  The  winds  of  heaven  were  about  his  head,  and  the  "  STILL 
SMALL  VOICE"  was  in  his  heart. — REV.  H.  R.  HAWEIS,  Music  and 
Morals. 

18 


274  MENDELSSOHN,  MICHELANGELO. 

No  man  ever  wrote  more  in  the  presence  of  his  public  and  less  in  the 
seclusion  of  his  study  than  Mendelssohn.— REV.  H.  R.  HAWEIS,  Con- 
temporary Review,  1870. 

Mendelssohn,  whose  music  uplifts  the  soul  as  on  dovelike  wings. — F. 
W.  FARRAR,  Social  and  Present-Day  Questions. 

PRINCE  VON  METTERNICH. 
Austrian  Statesman :  1773-1859. 

There  Metternich,  power's  foremost  parasite, 

Cajoles.  —BYRON,  The  Age  of  Bronze. 

The  life  of  Metternich,  which  is  the  real  thread  of  Austrian  history  from 
the  beginning  of  the  century — a  thread  now  and  then  snapped  or  worn, 
but  knotted  together  again,  for  more  pearls  of  policy  to  be  strung  on. — 
HARRIET  MARTINEAU,  Biographical  Sketches. 

JACOB  MEYERBEER. 
German  Musical  Composer  :   1791-1864. 

In  a  period  of  transition  like  our  own,  we  may  not  expect  the  High 
Priest  of  the  music  of  the  future  to  appear  amongst  us  ;  but  Meyerbeer  is 
the  precursor  spirit,  sent  to  announce  his  coming. — MAZZINI,  Life  and 
Writings,  Vol.  IV. 

MICHELANGELO  BUONARROTI. 
Italian  Painter,  Sculptor,  Architect,  Poet :  1474-1563. 

Michael  Angelo  has  exercised  an  influence  on  modern  art  little,  if  at  all, 
inferior  to  that  produced  on  the  realms  of  thought  by  Homer  and  Dante. 
..  .  .  Michael  Angelo  was,  in  one  sense,  the  painter  of  the  Old  Testament, 
as  his  bold  and  aspiring  genius  aimed  at  delineating  the  events  of  warfare, 
,passion,  or  suffering,  chronicled  in  the  records  of  the  Jews,  rather  than  the 
:scenes  of  love,  affection,  and  benevolence,  depicted  in  the  gospels.  But 
his  mind  was  not  formed  merely  on  the  events  recorded  in  antiquity :  it  is 
no  world  doubtful  of  the  immortality  of  the  soul  which  he  depicts. — SIR 
-ARCHIBALD  ALISON,  Essays  :  Homer,  Dante,  and  Michael  Angelo. 

We  still  feel  the  force  of  Michel  Angelo,  wearing  the  four  crowns  of 
architecture,  sculpture,  painting,  and  poetry. — EMERSON,  Society  and 
Solitude :  Old  Age. 

Let  nonejjpresume  to  measure  the '(irregularities  of  Michel  Angelo  and 
Socrates  by  village  scales. — Id.,  Plato  :  New  Readings. 

Michel  Angelo  was  the  conscience  of  Italy.  We  grow  free  with  his 
name,  and  find  it  ornamental  now ;  but  in  his  own  days,  his  friends  were 
few.— Id.,  Progress  of  Culture. 

Michael  Angelo,  the  creator  of  gigantic  and  preternatural  powers. — 
LYTTON,  England  and  the  English  :  Intellectual  Spirit. 


MICHELANGELO,  MILL.  27 

I  believe  there  is  nearly  as  much  occasion,  at  the  present  day,  for  ad- 
vocacy of  Michael  Angelo  against  the  pettiness  of  the  moderns,  as  there 
is  for  support  of  Turner  against  the  conventionalities  of  the  ancients. 
For,  though  the  names  of  the  fathers  of  sacred  art  are  on  all  our  lips,  our 
faith  in  them  is  much  like  that  of  the  great  world  in  its  religion — nominal, 
but  dead. — RUSKIN,  Modern  Painters,  Vol.  I. 

Michael  Angelo,  in  whose  hands  the  marble  was  said  to  be  flexible. — 
W.  E.  CHANNING,  Character  and  Writings  of  Milton. 

Michelangelo,  then,  as  Carlyle  might  have  put  it,  is  the  Hero  as  Artist. 
When  we  have  admitted  this,  all  dregs  and  sediments  of  the  analytic 
alembic  sink  to  the  bottom,  leaving  a  clear  crystalline  elixir  of  the  spirit. 
About  the  quality  of  his  genius  opinions  may,  will,  and  ought  to  differ. 
It  is  so  pronounced,  so  peculiar,  so  repulsive  to  one  man,  so  attractive  to 
another,  that,  like  his  own  dread  statue  of  Lorenzo  de'  Medici,  "  it  fascin- 
ates and  is  intolerable  ".  There  are  few,  I  take  it,  who  can  feel  at  home 
with  him  in  all  the  length  and  breadth  and  dark  depths  of  the  regions 
that  he  traversed.  The  world  of  thoughts  and  forms  in  which  he  lived 
habitually  is  too  arid,  like  an  extinct  planet,  tenanted  by  mighty  elemen- 
tary beings  with  little  human  left  to  them  but  visionary  Titan-shapes,  too 
vast  and  void  for  common  minds  to  dwell  in  pleasurably.  The  sweetness 
that  emerges  from  his  strength,  the  beauty  which  blooms  rarely,  strangely 
in  unhomely  wise,  upon  the  awful  crowd  of  'his  conceptions,  are  only  to 
be  apprehended  by  some  innate,  sympathy  or  by  long  incubation  of  the 
brooding  intellect.  .  .  .  Each  supreme  artist  whom  God  hath  sent  into 
the  world  with  inspiration  and  a  particle  of  the  imperishable  fire,  is  a  law 
to  himself,  an  universe,  a  revelation  of  the  divine  life  under  one  of  its  in- 
numerable attributes.  We  cannot  therefore  classify  Michelangelo  with 
any  of  his  peers  throughout  the  long  procession  of  the  ages.  Of  each 
and  all  of  them  it  must  be  said  in  Ariosto's  words,  "  Nature  made  him, 
and  then  broke  the  mould".  Yet  if  we  seek  Michelangelo's  affinities,  we 
find  them  in  Lucretius  and  Beethoven,  not  in  Sophocles  and  Mozart. 
He  belongs  to  the  genus  of  deep,  violent,  colossal,  passionately  striving 
natures ;  not,  like  Raffaello,  to  the  smooth,  serene,  broad,  exquisitely 
finished,  calmly  perfect  tribe. — J.  ADDINGTON  SYMONDS,  Life  of  Michel- 
angelo Buonarroti,  Vol.  II. 

The  stern,  sad  spirit  of  Michael  Angelo. — F.  W.  FARRAR,  Social  and 
Present-Day  Questions. 

JOHN  STUART  MILL. 
English  Philosopher  and  Economist :  1806-1873. 

Mr.  Mill's  more  popular  writings  are  remarkable  for  a  lofty  earnestness, 
more  stern  than  genial,  and  which  rather  flagellates  or  shames  men  out 
of  wrong,  than  allures  them  to  the  right.  Perhaps  this  is  the  style  most 
natural  to  a  man  of  deep  moral  convictions,  writing  in  an  age  and  in  a 
state  of  society  like  that  in  which  we  live.  But  it  seems,  also,  to  be  con- 
genial to  the  character  of  his  own  mind  ;  for  he  appears,  on  most  occasions, 
much  more  strongly  alive  to  the  evil  of  what  is  evil  in  our  destiny,  than 
to  the  good  of  what  is  good.  He  rather  warns  us  against  the  errors  that 


276  MILL. 

tend  to  make  us  miserable,  than  affords  us  the  belief  that  by  any  means 
we  can  attain  to  much  positive  happiness.  He  does  not  hope  enough 
from  human  nature — something  despondent  and  unelevating  clings  round 
his  estimate  of  its  powers.  He  saddens  the  Present  by  a  reference  to  the 
Past — he  does  not  console  it  by  any  alluring  anticipations  of  the  Future  ; 
— he  rather  discontents  us  with  vice  than  kindles  our  enthusiasm  for 
virtue. — LYTTON,  England  and  the  English,  Appendix  C. 

Mill  laid  up  in  his  capacious  mind  a  variety  of  things  ;  but,  with  all  his 
getting,  he  got  this  special  understanding — the  understanding  of  principles. 
If  you  wanted,  at  any  time,  to  commend  yourself  to  his  favourable  regards, 
you  had  but  to  start  a  doctrinal  discussion — to  bring  a  new  logos  to  his 
view.  .  .  .  Who  shall  sum  up  Mill's  collective  influence  as  an  instructor 
in  Politics,  Logic,  and  Metaphysics  ?  No  calculus  can  integrate  the 
innumerable  little  pulses  of  knowledge  and  of  thought  that  he  has  made 
to  vibrate  in  the  minds  of  his  generation. — ALEXANDER  BAIN,  John  Stuart 
Mill :  A  Criticism. 

I  used  familiarly  to  call  him  the  Saint  of  Rationalism,  a  phrase  roughly 
and  partially  expressing  what  I  now  mean.  Of  all  the  motives,  stings, 
and  stimulants  that  reach  men  through  their  egoism  in  Parliament,  no 
part  could  move  or  even  touch  him.  His  conduct  and  his  language  were, 
in  this  respect,  a  sermon.  Again,  though  he  was  a  philosopher,  he  was 
not,  I  think,  a  man  of  crotchets. — W.  E.  GLADSTONE. 

He  was  the  natural  leader  of  Liberal  thought  ;  not  in  the  House,  but 
out  of  it.  "  Saint  of  Rationalism,"  however,  in  Mr.  Gladstone's  happy 
phrase,  he  remained.  He  had  been  declared  to  be  Adam  Smith  and 
Petrarch  rolled  into  one ;  and  if  he  thus  combined  sentimentalism  with 
the  doctrines  of  political  economy,  he  equally  exhibited  the  cold  clearness 
of  the  Rationalistic  thinker,  tempered  by  the  emotional  warmth  of  high 
moral  ideas. — W.  L.  COURTNEY,  Life  of  John  Stuart  Mill. 

Himself  pervadingly  an  intellectual  machine,  Mr.  Mill  seems  to  have 
interest  in  his  countrymen  only  to  the  extent  that  they  can  be  made  intel- 
lectual machines  too.  His  faith  appears  to  be  boundless  in  the  omnipo- 
tence of  the  alphabet :  his  test  of  merit  and  of  fitness  is  wholly  mental. 
.  .  .  Mr.  Mill,  by  the  inexorable  directness  and  the  faultless  limpidity  of 
his  speech,  forces  back  to  reality  the  brain  which  has  been  bewildered  by 
a  vapoury,  chaotic  pictorialism.  He  is  the  Priessnitz  of  Literature,  and 
much  is  a  Priessnitz  of  Literature  needed  when  there  has  been  a  reckless 
revel  in  furibond  and  fantastic  phrases.  If,  then,  you  know  any  one  who 
has  been  ensnared  of  the  Carlyle  apes — for  whom,  however,  the  great  and 
good  man  they  outrageously  imitate  should  not  be  held  responsible — send 
him  to  the  physician  Mill.  .  .  .  The  physician  Mill,  though  he  gives  us 
water  in  abundance,  furnishes  us  with  rather  scanty  fare  ;  and  those  of  us 
who  have  a  good  appetite  are  obliged  to  go  elsewhither.  .  .  .  The  works 
of  Mr.  Mill,  masterpieces  under  more  than  one  aspect,  reveal  to  us  a  mind 
cultivated,  disciplined  to  excess ;  a  mind  trained  like  the  body  of  a  boxer, 
sweated  like  the  body  of  a  jockey.  Never  was  a  more  perfect  thinking 
and  calculating  machine.  And  by  thinking  and  calculating  machines 
alone  has  Mr.  Mill  in  his  studies  been  attracted.  If  ever  Mr.  Mill  deserts 
for  a  moment  his  own  province,  it  is  from  an  artificial  taste. — WILLIAM 
MACCALL,  The  Newest  Materialism. 


MILTON.  277 

JOHN  MILTON. 
English  Poet  and  Writer :  1608-1674. 

Three  poets,  in  three  distant  ages  born, 
Greece,  Italy  and  England  did  adorn. 
The  first  in  loftiness  of  thought  surpass'd  ; 
The  next  in  majesty :  in  both  the  last. 
The  force  of  Nature  could  no  further  go ; 
To  make  a  third  she  joined  the  former  two. 

— DRYDEN,  Under  Mr.  Milton's  Picture. 

I  ope  thy  pages,  Milton,  and,  behold, 

Thy  spirit  meets  me  in  the  haunted  ground ! 

— Id. ,  The  Souls  of  Books. 

Our  wives  read  Milton,  and  our  daughters  plays. 

—POPE,  The  First  Epistle  of  the  Second  Book  of  Horace. 

Milton  .  .   .  with  high  and  haughty  stalks, 

Unfettered  in  majestic  numbers  walks  ; 

No  vulgar  hero  can  his  Muse  engage  ; 

Nor  earth's  wide  scene  confine  his  hallow'd  rage. 

See !  see,  he  upward  springs,  and  tow'ring  high 

Spurns  the  dull  province  of  mortality, 

Shakes  heav'n's  eternal  throne  with  dire  alarms, 

And  sets  th'  Almighty  thunderer  in  arms. 

Whate'er  his  pen  describes  I  more  than  see, 

Whilst  ev'ry  verse,  array'd  in  majesty, 

Bold,  and  sublime,  my  whole  attention  draws, 

And  seems  above  the  critic's  nicer  laws. 

— ADDISON,  An  Account  of  the  Greatest  English  Poets. 

So  mark  thou  Milton's  name  ; 

And  add,  "  Thus  differs  from  the  throng 

The  spirit  which  inform'd  thy  awful  song, 

Which  bade  thy  potent  voice  protect  thy  country's  fame  ". 

— AKENSIDE,  Ode  XVIII..  To  the  Earl  of  Huntingdon. 

Is  not  each  great,  each  amiable  Muse 
Of  classic  ages  in  thy  Milton  met  ? 
A  genius  universal  as  his  theme  ; 
Astonishing  as  chaos,  as  the  bloom 
Of  blowing  Eden  fair,  as  heaven  sublime. 

— THOMSON,  The  Seasons  :  Summer. 

There  Milton  dwells  :  The  mortal  sung 

Themes  not  presum'd  by  mortal  tongue  ; 

New  terrors,  or  new  glories  shine 

In  every  page,  and  flying  scenes  divine 

Surprise  the  wondering  sense,  and  draw  our  souls  along. 

— ISAAC  WATTS,  The  Adventurous  Muse. 
Then  Milton  had  indeed  a  poet's  charms : 
New  to  my  taste,  his  Paradise  surpass'd 
The  struggling  efforts  of  my  boyish  tongue 
To  speak  its  excellence  :  I  danced  for  joy. 


278  MILTON. 

I  marvell'd  much  that,  at  so  ripe  an  age 
As  twice  seven  years,  his  beauties  had  then  first 
Engaged  my  wonder,  and  admiring  still, 
And  still  admiring,  with  regret  supposed 
The  joy  half  lost  because  not  sooner  found. 

—  COWPER,  The  Task  :  The  Winter  Evening. 

Milton,  whose  genius  had  angelic  wings, 
And  fed  on  manna. 

— Id.,  Ibid.,  The  Garden. 

Ages  elapsed  ere  Homer's  lamp  appear'd, 
And  ages  ere  the  Mantuan  swan  was  heard  ; 
To  carry  nature  lengths  unknown  before, 
To  give  a  Milton  birth,  ask'd  ages  more. 

— Id.,  Table  Talk. 

In  Homer's  craft  Jock  Milton  thrives. 

— BURNS,  Poem  on  Pastoral  Poetry. 

If,  fallen  in  evil  days  on  evil  tongues, 

Milton  appeal'd  to  the  Avenger,  Time, 

If  Time,  the  Avenger,  execrates  his  wrongs, 

And  makes  the  word  "  Miltonic  "  mean  sublime, 

He  deign'd  not  to  belie  his  soul  in  songs, 

Nor  turn  his  very  talent  to  a  crime,  .  .  . 

Milton's  the  prince  of  poets — so  we  say; 

A  little  heavy,  but  no  less  divine : 

An  independent  being  in  his  day  — 

Learn'd,  pious,  temperate  in  love  and  wine ; 

But  his  Life  falling  into  Johnson's  way, 

We're  told  this  great  high  priest  of  all  the  Nine 

Was  whipt  at  college — a  harsh  sire — odd  spouse, 

For  the  first  Mrs.  Milton  left  his  house. 

— BYRON,  Don  yuan. 

The  immortal  wars  which  gods  and  angels  wage, 
Are  they  not  shown  in  Milton's  sacred  page  ? 
His  strain  will  teach  what  numbers  best  belong 
To  themes  celestial  told  in  epic  song. 

— Id.,  Hints  from  Horace. 

He  died, 

Who  was  the  Sire  of  an  immortal  strain, 
Blind,  old  and  lonely,  when  his  country's  pride, 
The  priest,  the  slave  and  the  liberticide, 
Trampled  and  mocked  with  many  a  loathed  rite 
Of  lust  and  blood;  he  went,  unterrified, 
Into  the  gulf  of  death  ;  but  his  clear  Sprite 
Yet  reigns  o'er  earth  ;  the  third  among  the  sons  of  light. 

—  SHELLEY,  Adonais,  IV. 

Chief  of  organic  numbers  ! 

Old  scholar  of  the  Spheres  ! 
Thy  spirit  never  slumbers, 


MILTON.  279 


But  rolls  about  our  ears 
For  ever  and  for  ever  ! 


How  heavenward  thou  soundest ! 

Live  Temple  of  sweet  noise, 
And  Discord  unconfoundest, 

Giving  Delight  new  joys. 
And  Pleasure  nobler  pinions  : 
O  where  are  thy  dominions  ? 

—KEATS,  To  Milton. 

.  .   .  He,  that  rode  sublime 
Upon  the  seraph  wings  of  ecstasy, 
The  secrets  of  th'  abyss  to  spy. 
He  pass'd  the  flaming  bounds  of  Place  and  Time : 
The  living  Throne,  the  sapphire-blaze, 
Where  Angels  tremble,  while  they  gaze. 

—GRAY,  Progress  of  Poesy. 

Milton's  severer  shade  I  saw,  and  in  reverence  humbled 
Gazed  on  that  soul  sublime:  of  passion  now  as  of  blindness 
Heal'd  and  no  longer  here  to  Kings  and  to  Hierarchs  hostile, 
He  was  assoil'd  from  taint  of  the  fatal  fruit ;  and  in  Eden 
Not  again  to  be  lost,  consorted  and  equal  with  Angels. 

— SOUTHEY,  A  Vision  of  Judgment :  The  Elder  Worthies. 

Milton's  mind 
Shall  dwell  with  us,  an  influence  and  a  power. 

— Id.,  Oliver  Newman  :  The  Voyage. 

That  mighty  orb  of  song, 
The  divine  Milton. 

— WORDSWORTH,  The  Excursion,  Book  I. 

Thy  soul  was  like  a  star,  and  dwelt  apart : 

Thou  hadst  a  voice  whose  sound  was  like  the  sea  : 

Pure  as  the  naked  heavens,  majestic,  free, 

So  didst  thou  travel  on  life's  common  way, 

In  cheerful  godliness  ;  and  yet  thy  heart 

The  lowliest  duties  on  herself  did  lay. 

— Id.,  London,  1802. 

And  dart,  like  Milton,  an  unerring  eye 
Through  the  dim  curtains  of  Futurity.  .   .  . 
And  Milton's  self  (at  that  thrice-honoured  name, 
Well  may  we  glow — as  men,  we  share  his  fame) 
And  Milton's  self,  apart  with  beaming  eye, 
Planning  he  knows  not  what — that  shall  not  die ! 

—  ROGERS,  Human  Life. 

Homer  and  Milton, — can  we  call  them  blind  ? — 
Of  godlike  sight,  the  vision  of  the  mind. 

— J.  G.  SAXE,  The  Library. 

When,  where  yon  beech  tree  veil'd  the  soft'ning  ray, 
On  violet  banks  young  Milton  dreaming  lay. 


28o          .  MILTON. 

For  him  the  earth  below,  the  heaven  above, 

Doubled  each  charm  in  the  clear  glass  of  youth ; 
And  the  vague  spirit  of  unsettled  love  j 

Rov'd  thro'  the  visions  that  precede  the  truth, 
While  Poesy's  low  voice  so  hymn'd  thro'  all 
That  ev'n  the  very  air  was  musical. 

— LYTTON,  Milton. 

The  mighty  man  who  open'd  Paradise, 

Harmonious  far  above  Homeric  song, 

Or  any  song  that  human  ears  shall  hear.  .  .   . 

— LANDOR,  To  the  Author  of  Festus. 

O  mighty-mouth'd  inventor  of  harmonies, 

0  skill'd  to  sing  of  Time  or  Eternity, 
God-gifted  organ-voice  of  England, 
Milton,  a  name  to  resound  for  ages. 

— TENNYSON,  Milton. 

Nor  shall  the  grateful  Muse  forget  to  tell, 
That — not  the  least  among  his  many  claims 
To  deathless  honour — he  was  Milton's  friend. 

— J.  R.  LOWELL. 

1  pace  the  sounding  sea-beach  and  behold 

How  the  voluminous  billows  roll  and  run, 

Upheaving  and  subsiding,  while  the  sun 

Shines  through  their  sheeted  emerald  far  unrolled, 
And  the  ninth  wave,  slow  gathering  fold  by  fold 

All  its  loose-flowing  garments  into  one, 
Plunges  upon  the  shore,  and  floods  the  dun 

Pale  reach  of  sands,  and  changes  them  to  gold. 

So  in  majestic  cadence  rise  and  fall 

The  mighty  undulations  of  thy  song, 

O  sightless  bard,  England's  Maeonides  ! 
And  ever  and  anon,  high  over  all 

Uplifted,  a  ninth  wave,  superb  and  strong, 

Floods  all  the  soul  with  its  melodious  seas. 

— LONGFELLOW,  Milton. 

No  later  song 

Has  soar'd,  as  wide-winged,  to  the  diadem'd  thrones 
That,  in  their  inmost  heaven,  the  Muses  high 
Set  for  the  sons  of  immortality. 

— F.  T.  PALGRAVE,  The  Poet's  Euthanasia. 

High  the  chant  of  Paradise  and  Hell 

Rose,  when  the  soul  of  Milton  gave  it  wings. 

— SWINBURNE,  A  New  Year's  Ode  to  Victor  Hugo. 

With  whatever  faculties  we  are  born,  and  to  whatever  studies  our  genius 
may  direct  us,  studies  they  must  still  be.  I  am  persuaded  that  Milton  did 
not  write  his  Paradise  Lost,  nor  Homer  his  Iliad,  nor  Newton  his  Prin- 
cipia,  without  immense  labour. — COWPER. 

Mikon  was  a  great  poet ;  but  a  bad  divine,  and  a  miserable  politician. — 
JOHN  WILSON,  Nodes  Ambrosiance,  Vol.  I. 


MILTON.  281 

What  moral  man  in  majestic  wisdom  of  moral  imagination — that  is, 
•"  in  the  vision  and  the  faculty  divine,""  ever  equalled  Milton  ? — JOHN 
WILSON,  Nodes  Ambrosiana',  Vol.  IV. 

The  worst  you  can  say  of  Milton  is  that  he  was  a  regicide;  yet  was 
he,  like  his  own  Adam,  the  first  of  men. — Id. ,  Essays  :  The  Loves  of  the 
Poets. 

Milton  spoke  historical  pictures  in  the  Paradise  Lost. — SIR  ARCHIBALD 
ALISON,  Essays  :  The  British  School  of  Painting. 

The  genius  of  Milton,  more  particularly  in  respect  to  its  span  in  im- 
mensity, calculated  him  by  a  sort  of  birth-right  for  such  an  argument  as 
the  Paradise  Lost.  He  had  an  exquisite  passion  for  what  is  properly,  in 
the  sense  of  ease  and  pleasure,  poetical  luxury;  and  with  that,  it  appears 
to  me,  he  would  fain  have  been  content,  if  he  could,  so  doing,  preserve 
his  self-respect  and  feeling  of  duty  performed ;  but  there  was  working  in 
him,  as  it  were,  that  same  sort  of  thing  which  operates  in  the  great  world 
to  the  end  of  a  prophecy's  being  accomplished.  Therefore  he  devoted 
himself  rather  to  the  ardours  than  the  pleasures  of  song,  solacing  himself, 
at  intervals,  with  cups  of  old  wine ;  and  those  are,  with  some  exceptions, 
the  finest  parts  of  the  poem.  With  some  exceptions  ;  for  the  spirit  of 
mounting  and  adventure  can  never  be  unfruitful  nor  unrewarded.  Had  he 
not  broken  through  the  clouds  which  envelop  so  deliciously  the  Elysian 
fields  of  verse,  and  committed  himself  to  the  extreme,  we  should  never 
have  seen  Satan  as  described.  .  .  .  Milton  has  put  vales  in  Heaven  and 
Hell  with  the  very  utter  affection  and  yearning  of  a  great  Poet.  It  is  a 
sort  of  Delphic  abstraction,  a  beautiful  thing  made  more  beautiful  by  being 
.reflected  and  put  in  a  mist.  .  .  .  Milton  in  many  instances  pursues  his 
imagination  to  the  utmost,  he  is  "  sagacious  of  his  quarry,"  he  sees  beauty 
on  the  wing,  pounces  upon  it,  and  gorges  it  to  the  producing  his  essential 
verse. — KEATS  in  HOUGHTON'S  Life  and  Letters  of  John  Keats. 

Milton  almost  requires  a  solemn  service  of  music  to  be  played  before 
you  enter  upon  him.  But  he  brings  his  music,  to  which  who  listens  had 
need  bring  docile  thoughts,  and  purged  ears. — LAMB,  Essays  of  Elia  and 
Eli  ana. 

A  purpose  of  the  same  nature  is  answered  by  the  higher  literature,  viz., 
the  literature  of  power.  What  do  you  learn  from  Paradise  Lost? 
Nothing  at  all.  What  do  you  learn  from  a  cookery-book  ?  Something 
new — something  that  you  did  not  know  before,  in  every  paragraph.  But 
would  you  therefore  put  the  wretched  cookery-book  on  a  higher  level  of 
estimation  than  the  divine  poem  ?  What  you  owe  to  Milton  is  not  any 
knowledge,  of  which  a  million  separate  items  are  still  but  a  million  of 
advancing  steps  on  the  same  earthly  level ;  what  you  owe,  is  power,  that 
is,  exercise  and  expansion  to  your  own  latent  capacity  of  sympathy  with 
the  infinite,  where  every  pulse  and  each  separate  influx  is  a  step  upwards 
— a  step  ascending  as  upon  a  Jacob's  ladder  from  earth  to  mysterious 
altitudes  above  the  earth.  All  the  steps  of  knowledge,  from  first  to  last, 
carry  you  further  on  the  same  plane,  but  could  never  raise  you  one  foot 
above  your  ancient  level  of  earth  :  whereas,  the  very  first  step  in  power  is 
a  flight — is  an  ascending  movement  into  another  element  where  earth  is 
forgotten. — DE  QUINCEY,  Leaders  in  Literature. 


282  MILTON. 

I  think  that  it  would  take  many  Newtons  to  make  one  Milton.  .  .  .  John* 
Milton  himself  is  in  every  line  of  the  Paradise  Lost.  .  .  .  Milton  is  the- 
deity  of  prescience ;  he  stands  ab  extra,  and  drives  a  fiery  chariot  and' 
four,  making  the  horses  feel  the  iron  curb  which  holds  them  in. — S.  T. 
COLERIDGE,  Table  Talk. 

In  Milton  there  may  be  traced  obligations  to  several  minor  English, 
poets  :  but  his  genius  had  too  great  a  supremacy  to  belong  to  any  school. 
.  .  .  If  we  call  diction  the  garb  of  thought,  Milton  in  his  style  may  be- 
said  to  wear  the  costume  of  sovereignty. — CAMPBELL. 

As  the  needle  turns  away  from  the  rising  sun,  from  the  meridian,  from 
the  occidental,  from  regions  of  fragrancy  and  gold  and  gems,  and  moves 
with  unerring  impulse  to  the  frosts  and  deserts  of  the  north,  so  Milton  and 
some  few  others,  in  politics,  philosophy,  and  religion,  walk  through  the 
busy  multitude,  wave  aside  the  importunate  trader,  and,  after  a  momentary 
oscillation  from  eternal  agency,  are  found  in  the  twilight  and  in  the  storm,, 
pointing  with  certain  index  to  the  pole-star  of  immutable  truth. — LANDOR. 

Milton  is  one  of  the  three  great  Christian  poets  who  were  to  the  theo- 
gony  of  the  Middle  Ages  what  Homer  was  to  the  Olympus  of  paganism. 
.  .  .  The  immortal  name  of  the  great  poet  Milton,  the  English  Dante. — 
LAMARTINE,  Celebrated  Characters  (transl.),  Vol.  II. 

Goethe  compares  the  joy  of  the  poet  to  the  joy  of  the  bird;  the  bird 
sings  because  it  is  its  nature  to  sing,  not  because  it  is  to  be  praised  for 
singing.  But  Milton's  joy  was  high  beyond  the  bird's,  it  was  the  joy  of 
a  sublime  human  soul,  the  joy  of  lifting  himself  above  man's  judgment, 
as  a  great  soul  ever  seeks  to  do,  high  above  the  evil  days,  the  dangers 
and  the  darkness,  with  which  he  was  encompassed  round. — LYTTON,. 
Essays :  Posthumous  Reputation. 

I  suspect  that  every  great  writer  of  a  nation  a  little  corrupts  its  tongue. 
His  knowledge  suggests  additions  and  graces  from  other  tongues :  his 
genius  applies  and  makes  them  popular.  Milton  was  the  greatest  poet  of 
our  country,  and  there  is  scarcely  an  English  idiom  which  he  has  not 
violated,  or  a  foreign  one  which  he  has  not  borrowed. — Id.,  England  and' 
the  English. 

We  turn  for  a  short  time  from  the  topics  of  the  day,  to  commemorate, 
in  all  love  and  reverence,  the  genius  and  virtues  of  John  Milton,  the  poet, 
the  statesman,  the  philosopher,  the  glory  of  English  literature,  the  cham- 
pion and  the  martyr  of  English  liberty.  .  .  .  Milton  did  not  strictly  be- 
long to  any  of  the  classes  which  we  have  described.  He  was  not  a 
Puritan.  He  was  not  a  free  thinker.  He  was  not  a  Royalist.  In  his 
character  the  noblest  qualities  of  every  party  were  combined  in  harmonious 
union.  From  the  parliament  and  from  the  court,  from  the  conventicle 
and  from  the  Gothic  cloister,  from  the  gloomy  and  sepulchral  circles  of 
the  Roundheads,  and  from  the  Christmas  revel  of  the  hospital  cavalier,, 
his  nature  selected  and  drew  to  itself  whatever  was  great  and  good,  while 
it  rejected  all  the  base  and  pernicious  ingredients  by  which  those  finer 
elements  were  defiled.  ...  It  is  to  be  regretted  that  the  prose  writings 
of  Milton  should,  in  our  time,  be  so  little  read.  As  compositions,  they 
deserve  the  attention  of  every  man  who  wishes  to  become  acquainted, 
with  the  full  power  of  the  English  language.  They  abound  with  passages. 


MILTON.  283 

compared  with  which  the  finest  declamations  of  Burke  sink  into  insigni- 
ficance. They  are  a  perfect  field  of  cloth  of  gold.  The  style  is  stiff  with 
gorgeous  embroidery.  ...  It  is,  to  borrow  his  own  majestic  language,  "a 
sevenfold  chorus  of  hallelujahs, and  harping  symphonies". — MACAULAY, 
Essays :  Milton. 

Did  you  ever  read  Paradise  Lost  ?  If  not,  I  would  advise  you  to  read 
it  now ;  for  it  is  the  best  commentary  that  I  know  on  the  Prometheus. 
There  was  a  great  resemblance  between  the  genius  of  ^Eschylus  and  the 
genius  of  Milton  ;  and  this  appears  most  strikingly  in  those  two  wonder- 
ful creations  of  the  imagination,  Prometheus  and  Satan.  I  do  not  believe 
that  Milton  borrowed  Satan  from  the  Greek  drama.  For  though  he  was 
an  excellent  scholar  after  the  fashion  of  his  time,  yEschylus  was,  I  sus- 
pect, a  little  beyond  him. — Id.,  Life  and  Letters,  Vol.  II. 

But  when  we  adhere  to  the  ideal  of  the  poet,  we  have  our  difficulties 
even  with  Milton  and  Homer.  Milton  is  too  literary,  and  Homer  too 
literal  and  historical. — EMERSON,  Essays  :  The  Poet. 

Milton,  who  was  the  stair  or  high  table-land  to  let  down  the  English 
genius  from  the  summits  of  Shakespeare. — Id.,  English  Traits  :  Literature. 

In  delineating  Milton's  character  as  a  poet,  we  are  saved  the  necessity 
of  looking  far  for  its  distinguishing  attributes.  His  name  is  almost  identi- 
fied with  sublimity.  He  is  in  truth  the  sublimest  of  men.  He  rises,  not 
by  effort  or  discipline,  but  by  a  native  tendency  and  a  godlike  instinct,  to 
the  contemplation  of  objects  of  grandeur  and  awfulness.  He  always 
moves  with  a  conscious  energy.  There  is  no  subject  so  vast  or  terrific  as 
to  repel  or  intimidate  him.  The  overpowering  grandeur  of  a  theme  kindles, 
and  attracts  him.  .  .  .  We  should  not  fulfil  our  duty  were  we  not  to  say 
one  word  on  what  has  been  justly  celebrated,  the  harmony  of  Milton's 
versification.  His  numbers  have  the  prime  charm  of  expressiveness.  They 
vary  with,  and  answer  to,  the  depth,  or  tenderness,  or  sublimity  of  his  con- 
ceptions, and  hold  intimate  alliance  with  the  soul.  Like  Michael  Angelo, 
in  whose  hands  the  marble  was  said  to  be  flexible,  he  bends  our  language, 
which  foreigners  reproach  with  hardness,  into  whatever  forms  the  subject 
demands.  All  the  treasures  of  sweet  and  solemn  sound  are  at  his  com- 
mand. Words,  harsh  and  discordant  in  the  writings  of  less  gifted  men, 
flow  through  his  poetry  in  a  full  stream  of  harmony.  This  power  over 
language  is  not  to  be  ascribed  to  Milton's  musical  ear.  It  belongs  to  the 
soul. — W.  E.  CHANNING,  On  the  Character  and  Writings  of  Milton. 

Milton  is  saved  from  making  total  shipwreck  of  his  large-utteranced 
genius  on  the  desolate  Neman's  Land  of  a  religious  epic  only  by  the 
lucky  help  of  Satan  and  his  colleagues,  with  whom,  as  foiled  rebels  and 
republicans,  he  cannot  conceal  his  sympathy.  .  .  .  Milton  sets  everywhere 
his  little  pitfalls  of  bookish  association  for  the  memory.  I  know  that 
Milton's  manner  is  very  grand.  It  is  slow,  it  is  stately,  moving  as  if  in 
triumphal  procession,  with  music,  with  historic  banners,  with  spoils  from 
every  time  and  every  region  ;  and  captive  epithets,  like  huge  Sicambriams, 
thrust  their  broad  shoulders  between  us  and  the  thought  whose  pomp  they 
decorate.— J.  R.  LOWELL,  Among  My  Books. 

Milton  glows  with  orient  light.  One  might  almost  fancy  that  he  had 
gazed  himself  blind,  and  had  then  been  raised  to  the  sky,  and  there  stood 
and  waited,  like  "  blind  Orion  hungering  for  the  morn  ".  So  abundantly 


284  MILTON. 

had  he  stored  his  mind  with  visions  of  natural  beauty,  that,  when  all  with- 
out became  dark,  he  was  still  most  rich  in  his  inward  treasure,  and  "  Ceast 
not  to  wander  where  the  Muses  haunt  clear  spring,  or  shady  grove,  or 

sunny  hill" When   Milton  lost  his  eyes,  Poetry  lost  hers. — J.  C. 

HARE,  Guesses  at  Truth. 

I  do  not  know  any  one  who  makes  us  feel  more  than  Milton  does  the 
grandeur  of  the  ends  which  we  ought  to  keep  always  before  us,  and  there- 
fore our  own  pettiness  and  want  of  courage  and  nobleness  in  pursuing  them. 
I  believe  he  failed  to  discern  many  of  the  intermediate  relations  which 
God  has  established  between  Himself  and  us ;  but  I  know  no  one  who 
teaches  us  more  habitually  that  disobedience  to  the  Divine  will  is  the  seat 
of  all  misery  to  men. — F.  D.  MAURICE,  The  Friendship  of  Books. 

Milton's  diction  is  the  elaborated  outcome  of  all  the  best  words  of  all 
antecedent  poetry,  not  by  a  process  of  recollected  reading  and  storage,  but 
by  the  same  mental  habit  by  which  we  learn  to  speak  our  mother  tongue. 
Only,  in  the  case  of  the  poet,  the  vocabulary  acquired  has  a  new  meaning 
superadded  to  the  words,  from  the  occasion  on  which  they  have  been 
previously  employed  by  others.  ...  If  Milton  resembled  a  Roman  re- 
publican in  the  severe  and  stoic  elevation  of  his  character,  he  also  shared 
the  aristocratic  intellectualism  of  the  classical  type.  He  is  in  marked 
contrast  to  the  levelling  hatred  of  excellence,  the  Christian  trades-unionism 
of  the  model  Catholic  of  the  mould  of  S.  Francis  de  Sales,  whose  maxim 
of  life  is  marchons  avec  la  troupe  de  nos  freres  et  compagnons,  doucement, 
paisiblement,  et  aimablement. — MARK  PATTISON,  Life  of  Milton. 

Milton — a  man  than  whom  England  never  produced  another  more 
worthy  of  her  pride — a  man  raised  by  his  endowments  almost  above  the 
level  and  the  lot  of  humanity — in  whom  a  genius  that  resembled  inspiration, 
and  attainments  which  might  have  been  thought  too  various  and  extensive 
for  human  capacity,  were  sanctified  by  the  grace  of  God,  and  devoted  to 
the  freedom,  the  advancement,  and  the  happiness  of  man.  -  C.  R.  EDMONDS, 
Life  of  John  Milton. 

Milton  played  on  his  metre  like  his  organ.  He  brings  out  with  a  daring 
finger  every  grand  and  various  note,  sometimes — with  wonderful  effect — 
striking  a  momentary  crash  of  discord  into  the  full  swell  of  the  music. — 
R.  A.  WILMOTT,  Advantages  of  Literature. 

Had  it  been  otherwise — had  that  pure,  courageous  youth,  who,  two  hun- 
dred and  thirty  years  ago,  stood  dubious  by  the  threshold,  but  crossed  the 
black  marble  line  and  advanced  into  the  sacred  vestibule  and  the  aisles 
beyond — what  might  the  result  not  have  been  !  Milton,  as  an  ecclesiastic, 
would  have  been  Milton  still;  such  an  archbishop,  mitred  or  unmitred,  as 
England  has  never  had.  The  tread  of  such  a  foot  across  the  sacred  floor, 
what  it  might  have  trampled  into  extinction ;  the  magnanimity  of  such  a 
soul,  breathed  into  the  counsels  of  the  Church  through  that  approaching 
revolution  when  Church  as  well  as  State  was  to  be  riven  asunder  for 
repair,  how  it  might  have  affected  these  counsels  while  yet  the  future 
model  was  in  doubt,  and  only  the  site  and  the  materials  solicited  the 
architect !  But  it  was  not  so  to  be. — DAVID  MASSON,  Life  of  Milton,  Vol.  I. 

It  is  possible  to  dislike  Milton.  Men  have  been  found  able  to  do  so,  and 
women  too ;  amongst  these  latter  his  daughters,  or  one  of  them  at  least, 
must  even  be  included.  But  there  is  nothing  sickening  about  his  biography, 


MILTON,  MIRABEAU,  MITFORD.  285 

for  it  is  the  life  of  one  who  early  consecrated  himself  to  the  service  of  the 
highest  Muses,  who  took  labour  and  intent  study  as  his  portion,  who 
aspired  himself  to  be  a  noble  poem,  who,  Republican  though  he  became, 
is  what  Carlyle  called  him,  the  moral  king  of  English  literature. — AUGUS- 
TIXK  BIRRELL,  Obiter  Dicta,  Second  Series. 

COMTE  DE  MIRABEAU. 
French  Orator  and  Revolutionist :  1749-1791. 

That  Mirabeau  understood  how  to  act  with  others,  and  by  others — this 
was  his  genius,  this  was  his  originality,  this  was  his  greatness. — GOETHE. 

"There  is  but  one  step,"  roared  Mirabeau  from  his  stormy  tribune, 
"  from  the  Capitol  to  the  Tarpeian  Rock  !  "  And  on  that  step  stood,  from 
the  taking  of  the  Bastille  till  the  fall  of  Robespierre,  all  the  philosophers, 
legislators,  dreamers;  with  the  certainty  that  for  him  who  lost  the 
Capitol,  there  was  no  destiny  but  the  rock.  .  .  .  There  is  indeed,  to  a 
vulgar  gaze,  something  almost  captivating  in  this  Mirabeau  of  the  Mob, 
despite  his  horrible  excesses.  He  was  free  from  all  personal  vindictive- 
ness,  he  was  not  naturally  cruel ;  he  spilt  blood  in  torrents,  but  always 
for  a  purpose  and  from  policy ;  he  could  not  be  sanguinary  in  detail ;  he 
had  no  coward  in  him,  no  envy.  About  his  character  was  a  large  rough 
good-nature ;  he  was  affectionate  and  loyal  to  those  he  loved  (for  he  did 
love  and  he  was  loved,  this  master  butcher  who  could  order  the  massacre 
of  2,000  prisoners  in  cold  blood).  He  had  no  religion,  even  of  atheism,  for 
atheism  is  not  like  scepticism,  lukewarm  and  hesitating,  but  is  ardent  and 
intolerant  in  its  creed  ;  he  laughed  at  the  Goddess  of  Reason  :  he  had  there- 
fore no  vestige  of  hypocrisy  or  cant.  Frankly  he  confessed  his  total  infi- 
delity, candidly  he  owned  his  theories  of  Revolutions,  "  things  not  made 
with  rose-water,"  in  which  (as  he  said)  "the  boldest  scoundrel  was  the 
most  successful  actor  ".  He  was  profligate,  lustful,  and  corrupt  in  money 
matters,  but  he  was  all  these  so  undisguisedly,  that  the  vulgar,  who  like 
a  frank  villain,  ranked  them  amongst  his  merits. — LYTTON,  Essays  ;  The 
Reign  of  Terror. 

MARY  RUSSELL  MITFORD. 
English  Poet  and  Novelist :   1786-1855. 

North.  ..."  Miss  Mitford  has  not,  in  my  opinion,  either  the  pathos  or 
humour  of  Washington  Irving  ;  but  she  excels  him  in  vigorous  concep- 
tion of  character,  and  in  the  truth  of  her  pictures  of  English  life  and 
manners.  Her  writings  breathe  a  sound,  pure,  and  healthy  morality,  and 
are  pervaded  by  a  genuine  rural  spirit — the  spirit  of  merry  England. 
Every  line  bespeaks  the  lady." 

Shepherd.  "I  admire  Miss  Mitford  just  excessively.  I  dinna  wunner 
at  her  being  able  to  write  sae  weel  as  she  does  about  drawing  rooms  wi* 
sofas  and  settees,  and  about  the  fine  folk  in  them  seein'  themsels  in  lookin'- 
glasses  frae  tap  to  tae  ;  but  what  puzzles  the  like  o'  me,  is  her  pictures  o' 
poachers,  and  tinklers,  and  pottery-trampers,  and  ither  ne'er-do-weels,  and 
o'  huts  and  hovels  without  riggin'  by  the  wayside,  and  the  cottages  o' 
honest  puir  men,  and  byres,  and  barns,  and  stack-yards;  and  merry- 
makin's  at  winter-ingles,  and  courtship  aneath  trees,  and  at  the  gable-ends 


286  MITFORD,  MOLIERE,  MOLTKE. 

o'  farmhouses,  atween  lads  and  lasses  as  laigh  in  life  as  the  servants  in 
her  father's  ha'.  That's  the  puzzle,  and  that's  the  praise.  But  ae  word 
explains  a' — Genius — Genius — wull  a'  the  metaphizzians  in  the  warld 
ever  expound  that  mysterious  monysyllable  ?  " — JOHN  WILSON,  Nodes 
Ambrosiancz,  Vol.  I. 

JEAN  BAPTISTE  MOLIERE. 
French  Dramatist  and  Poet :  1622-1673. 

How  Moliere's  scene, 

Chastis'd  and  regular,  with  well-judg'd  wit, 
Not  scatter'd  wild,  and  native  humour,  grac'd, 
Was  life  itself. 

— THOMSON,  Liberty. 

Here  Moliere,  first  of  comic  wits,  excell'd 
Whate'er  Athenian  theatres  beheld  ; 
By  keen,  yet  decent,  satire  skill'd  to  please, 
With  morals  mirth  uniting,  strength  with  ease. 

— LORD  LYTTLETON,  To  the  Rev.  Dr.  Ayscough. 

Moliere  is  perhaps,  of  all  French  writers,  the  one  whom  his  country  has 
most  uniformly  admired,  and  in  whom  her  critics  are  most  unwilling  to 
acknowledge  faults. — HALLAM,  Literature  of  the  Middle  Ages,  Vol.  IV. 

Moliere  is  one  of  that  rarest  order  of  poets  whose  very  faults  become 
sacred  in  the  eyes  of  admirers.  He  is  not  only  revered  as  a  master,  but 
beloved  by  us  as  a  friend.  Of  all  the  French  dramatists,  he  is  the  only 
one  whose  genius  is  as  conspicuous  to  foreign  nations  as  it  is  to  his  own. 
Like  Shakespeare  he  is  for  all  time  and  for  all  races.  A  piercing  observer 
of  the  society  around  him,  he  selects  from  that  society  types  the  least 
socially  conventional.  His  very  men  of  fashion  are  never  out  of  the 
fashion. — LYTTON,  Essays:  Knowledge  of  the  World. 

Of  Moliere  I  think  very  differently.  Living  in  the  blindest  period  of 
the  world's  history,  in  the  most  luxurious  city,  and  the  most  corrupted 
court,  of  the  time,  he  yet  manifests  through  all  his  writings  an  exquisite 
natural  wisdom  ;  a  capacity  for  the  most  simple  enjoyment ;  a  high  sense  of 
all  nobleness,  honour,  and  purity,  variously  marked  throughout  his  slighter 
work,  but  distinctly  made  the  theme  of  his  two  perfect  plays — the  Tartuffe 
and  Misanthrope ;  and  in  all  that  he  says  of  art  or  science  he  has  an  un- 
erring instinct  for  what  is  useful  and  sincere,  and  uses  his  whole  power 
to  defend  it,  with  as  keen  a  hatred  of  everything  affected  and  vain. — 
RUSKIN,  Modern  Painters,  Vol.  III. 

COUNT  VON  MOLTKE. 
Prussian  Field-Marshal:  1800-1891. 

A  Moltke  in  council,  on  the  eve  of  a  great  battle  which  is  to  shift  the 
centre  of  gravity  of  our  western  political  system,  is  only  acting  on  a  maxim 
of  practical  wisdom  that  requires  to  be  applied  with  as  much  discrimina- 
tion, tact,  and  delicacy,  by  the  provost  of  a  provincial  town,  planning  a 
water-bill  or  a  tax  for  the  improvement  of  the  city. — J.  STUART  BLACKIE, 
On Self -Culture. 


MONTAIGNE,  MONTESQUIEU.  287 

MICHEL  EYQUEM  DE  MONTAIGNE. 
French  Philosopher  and  Essayist:   1533-1592. 

For't  has  been  held  by  many,  that 
As  Montaigne,  playing  with  his  cat, 
Complains  she  thought  him  but  an  ass, 
Much  more  she  would  Sir  Hudibras. 

— SAMUEL  BUTLER,  Hudibras,  Part  I.,  Canto  I. 

I  love  to  pour  out  all  myself,  as  plain 

As  downright  Shippen,  or  as  old  Montaigne : 

In  them,  as  certain  to  be  lov'd  as  seen, 

The  soul  stood  forth,  nor  kept  a  thought  within. 

— POPE,  Satires  and  Epistles  of  Horace  imitated. 

Montaigne  is  the  earliest  classical  writer  in  the  French  language,  the 
first  whom  a  gentleman  is  ashamed  not  to  have  read. — HALLAM,  Literature 
of  the  Middle  Ages,  Vol.  II. 

Montaigne  is  the  frankest  and  honestest  of  all  writers.  His  French 
freedom  runs  into  grossness ;  but  he  has  anticipated  all  censure  by  the 
bounty  of  his  own  confessions.  In  his  time,  books  were  written  to  one 
sex  only,  and  almost  all  were  written  in  Latin ;  so  that,  in  a  humorist,  a 
certain  nakedness  of  statement  was  permitted,  which  our  manners  of  a 
literature  addressed  equally  to  both  sexes  do  not  allow.  But  though  a 
Biblical  plainness,  coupled  with  a  most  uncanonical  levity,  may  shut  his 
pages  to  many  sensitive  readers,  yet  the  offence  is  superficial. — EMERSON, 
Montaigne,  or  the  Sceptic. 

The  Father  of  Modern  Essay.  .  .  .  Montaigne  is  the  antipodes  to 
Shakespeare,  inasmuch  as  he  is  intensely  subjective,  obtrusively  per- 
sonal. So,  as  a  narrator  of  his  own  personal  experiences  and  opinions,  he 
ought  to  have  been  ;  just  as  Shakespeare,  where  a  dramatist,  could  not 
have  been  obtrusively  personal,  even  where  writing  his  own  most  haunt- 
ing thoughts.  But  where  Montaigne  is  to  be  likened  to  Shakespeare  is  in 
the  similar  result  at  which  through  so  antagonistic  a  process  he  arrives. 
Though  apparently  only  studying  himself,  he  himself  has  a  nature  so  large 
that  it  comprehends  mankind.  Never  did  one  man  in  his  egotism  more 
faithfully  represent  the  greatest  number  of  attributes  common  to  the 
greatest  number  of  men.  His  grasp  comprehends  materials  for  thought 
that  it  might  task  a  thousand  sages  to  work  up  into  systems.  His  fineness 
of  vision  seizes  on  subtleties  in  character  and  mysteries,  in  feeling  that 
might  open  new  views  of  the  human  heart  to  a  thousand  poets. — LYTTON, 
Essays  :  Knowledge  of  the  World. 


CHARLES  DE  SECONDAT,  BARON  DE  MONTESQUIEU. 
French  Jurist  and  Philosopher  :  1689-1755. 

Montesquieu — an  author  who  frequently  appears  profound  when  he  is 
only  paradoxical,  and  seems  to  have  studied  with  great  success  the  art  of 
hiding  a  desultory  and  fantastical  style  of  reasoning  in  imposing  aphorisms 
and  epigrams  of  considerable  effect. — LORD  JEFFREY,  Essays. 


288  MONTESQUIEU,  MOORE. 

Montesquieu  errs,  because  he  has  a  fine  thing  to  say,  and  is  resolved  to 
say  it.  If  the  phenomena  which  lie  before  him  will  not  suit  his  purpose, 
all  history  must  be  ransacked.  If  nothing  established  by  authentic  testi- 
mony can  be  racked  or  chipped  to  suit  his  Procrustean  hypothesis,  he  puts 
up  with  some  monstrous  fable  about  Siam,  or  Bantam,  or  Japan,  told  by 
writers  compared  with  whom  Lucian  and  Gulliver  were  veracious,  liars 
by  a  double  right,  as  travellers  and  as  Jesuits. — MACAULAY,  Essays  r 
Machiavelli. 


THOMAS  MOORE. 

Irish  Poet :  1779-1852. 

My  boat  is  on  the  shore, 
And  my  bark  is  on  the  sea ; 
But  before  I  go,  Tom  Moore, 
Here's  a  double  health  to  thee  ! 

— BYRON,  To  Thomas  Moore* 

From  her  wilds  lerne  sent 
The  sweetest  lyrist  of  her  saddest  wrong, 
And  love  taught  grief  to  fall  like  music  from  his  tongue. 

— SHELLEY,  Adonais,  XXX* 

The  falling  of  fountains — the  slight  summer  rain  — 
The  voice  of  the  dove,  were  less  sweet  than  thy  strain  ; 
Till  stirred  with  delight,  would  her  exquisite  wings 
Beat  time  on  the  west  wind,  to  echo  thy  strings.  .  .  . 
Thy  song  has  its  sunshine — perhaps  to  that  sun 
It  owes  half  the  loveliest  wreaths  it  has  won. 
It  still  lofty  hopes  and  sad  thoughts  has  betrayed — 
Where  on  earth  is  the  sunshine  that  flingeth  no  shade  ? 

— L.  E.  LANDON,  Thomas  Moore,  Esq. 

The  land  where  the  staff  of  Saint  Patrick  was  planted, 
Where  the  shamrock  grows  green  from  the  cliffs  to  the  shore, 
The  land  of  fair  maidens  and  heroes  undaunted, 
Shall  wreathe  her  bright  harp  with  the  garlands  of  Moore ! 

— OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES,  For  the  Moore  Centennial. 

Moore  has  a  peculiarity  of  talent,  or  rather  talents — poetry,  music, 
voice,  all  his  own  ;  and  an  expression  in  each,  which  never  was,  nor  will 
be,  possessed  by  another.  But  he  is  capable  of  still  higher  flights  in 
poetry.  By  the  by,  what  humour,  what — everything,  in  the  "  Post-Bag  !  " 
There  is  nothing  Moore  may  not  do,  if  he  will  but  seriously  set  about  it. 
In  society,  he  is  gentlemanly,  gentle,  and  altogether  more  pleasing  than 
any  individual  with  whom  I  am  acquainted.  For  his  honour,  principle, 
and  independence,  his  conduct  to  ...  speaks  "trumpet  tongued  ".  He 
has  but  one  fault — and  that  one  I  daily  regret — he  is  not  here. — BYRON 
in  MOORE'S  Life  of  Byron. 

Mr.  Moore's  poetry  is  the  thornless  rose,  its  touch  is  velvet,  its  hue 
vermilion,  and  its  graceful  form  is  cast  in  beauty's  mould. —  LORD 
JEFFREY,  Essays. 


MOORE,  MORE.  289 

As  a  satirist  Moore  stands  at  the  head  of  his  class,  and  as  constructor 
and  embellisher  of  metrical  romances  he  is  the  cleverest  of  the  poets.  It 
is,  in  truth,  a  reproach  to  him  to  have  been  too  clever,  to  have  been  too 
little  of  an  inspired  bard,  and  too  much  of  a  man  of  letters.  He  could 
have  excelled  in  anything  demanded  by  the  taste  of  his  day;  the  one  dis- 
tinctively poetical  endowment  which  he  really  possessed  was  an  inex- 
haustible fount  of  melody.  .  .  .  Intellectually,  Moore's  defect  is  a  certain 
smallness.  He  has  excellent  sense  and  spirit,  but  when  measured,  even 
by  himself,  against  any  contemporary  of  much  distinction,  he  invariably 
appears  the  shorter.  ...  If  he  was  less  distinctively  a  poet  than  a  man 
of  letters,  the  same  may  be  said  of  his  contemporary,  adversary,  and  yet 
in  many  respects  counterpart,  Robert  Southey.  The  poetry  of  both 
survives,  and  will  survive,  yet  their  better  title  to  fame  is  their  brilliant 
versatility  in  many  and  various  fields  of  literature. — RICHARD  GARNETT, 
Introduction  to  "  Thomas  Moore :  Anecdotes  ". 

Of  Moore's  character  not  much  need  be  said,  nor  need  what  is  said  be 
otherwise  than  favourable.  Not  only  to  modern  tastes,  but  to  the  sturdier 
tastes  of  his  own  day,  and  even  of  the  days  immediately  before  his,  there 
was  a  little  too  much  of  the  parasite  and  the  hanger-on  about  him.  It  is 
easy  to  say  that  a  man  of  his  talents,  when  he  had  once  obtained  a  start, 
might  surely  have  gone  his  own  way  and  lived  his  own  life,  without  taking 
up  the  position  of  a  kind  of  superior  gamekeeper  or  steward  at  rich  men's 
gates.  But  race,  fashion,  and  a  good  many  other  things  have  to  be  taken 
into  account ;  and  it  is  fair  to  Moore  to  remember  that  he  was,  as  it  were 
from  the  first,  bound  to  the  chariot-wheels  of  "  the  great,"  and  could 
hardly  liberate  himself  from  them  without  churlishness  and  violence. 
Moreover  it  cannot  possibly  be  denied  by  any  fair  critic  that  if  he  accepted 
to  some  extent  the  awkward  position  of  led-poet,  he  showed  in  it  as  much 
independence  as  was  compatible  with  the  function. — SAINTSBURY,  Essays, 
in  English  Literature. 

SIR  THOMAS  MORE.  , 

English  Statesman :  1480-1535. 

Cromwell.     "  The  next  is,  that  Sir  Thomas  More  is  chosen 

Lord  Chancellor  in  your  place." 

Wolsey.     "  Thai's  somewhat  sudden  : 

But  he's  a  learned  man.     May  he  continue 

Long  in  his  highness'  favour,  and  do  justice 

For  truth's  sake,  and  his  conscience  ;  that  his  bones, 

When  he  has  run  his  course  and  sleeps  in  blessings, 

May  have  a  tomb  of  orphans'  tears  wept  on  them." 

— SHAKSPERE,  King  Henry  VIII.,  Act  III.,  Scene  II. 

Where  learned  More  and  Gardiner  I  met. 
Men  in  those  times  immatchable  for  wit, 
Able  that  were  the  dullest  spirit  to  whet, 
And  did  my  humour  excellently  fit. 

— DRAYTON,  Legend  of  Thomas  Cromwell,  Earl  of  Essex. 

In  statesmen  thou, 

And  patriots  fertile.     Thine  a  steady  More, 
Who,  with  a  generous,  though  mistaken  zeal, 

19 


ago  MORE,  MORRIS. 

Withstood  a  brutal  tyrant's  useful  rage, 
Like  Cato  firm,  like  Aristides  just, 
Like  rigid  Cincinnatus  nobly  poor, 

A  dauntless  soul  erect,  who  smil'd  on  death.  I 

— THOMSON,  The  Seasons  :  Summer. 

Unsoftened,  undismayed 
By  aught  that  mingled  with  the  tragic  scene 
Of  pity  or  fear  ;  and  More's  gay  genius  played 
With  the  inoffensive  sword  of  native  wit, 
Than  the  bare  axe  more  luminous  and  keen. 

— WORDSWORTH,  Apology. 

When  we  reflect  that  Sir  Thomas  More  was  ready  to  die  for  the  doctrine 
of  transubstantiation,  we  cannot  but  feel  some  doubt  whether  the  doctrine 
of  transubstantiation  may  not  triumph  over  all  opposition.  More  was  a 
man  of  eminent  talents.  He  had  all  the  information  on  the  subject  that 
we  have,  or  that,  while  the  world  lasts,  any  human  being  will  have.  The 
text,  "  This  is  my  body,"  was  in  his  New  Testament  as  it  is  in  ours.  The 
absurdity  of  the  literal  interpretation  was  as  great  and  as  obvious  in  the 
sixteenth  century  as  it  is  now.  No  progress  that  science  has  made,  or 
will  make,  can  add  to  what  seems  to  us  the  overwhelming  force  of  the 
argument  against  the  real  presence.  We  are,  therefore,  unable  to  under- 
stand why  what  Sir  Thomas  More  believed  respecting  transubstantiation 
may  not  be  believed  to  the  end  of  time  by  men  equal  in  abilities  and 
honesty  to  Sir  Thomas  More.  But  Sir  Thomas  More  is  one  of  the  choice 
specimens  of  human  wisdom  and  virtue;  and  the  doctrine  of  transub- 
stantiation is  a  kind  of  proof  charge.  A  faith  which  stands  that  test  will 
stand  any  test. — MACAULAY,  Essays :  Von  Ranke. 

No  estimate  of  More's  life  would  be  satisfactory  which  did  not  consider 
his  position  and  his  influence  in  relation  to  the  great  movements  of  his 
age.  Posterity  will  here  rank  him  at  least  as  highly  as  did  his  contem- 
poraries. No  one  who  reverences  the  heritage  of  faith  bequeathed  to  the 
Christian  Church  will  remember  him  without  gratitude.  He  was  placed 
suddenly  in  face  of  a  critical  question.  He  answered  it  as  his  successors 
in  the  English  Church  would  not  now  answer.  But  it  would  be  difficult 
to  find  in  his  writings  any  formal  statement  of  doctrine  which  the  English 
•Church  since  his  day  has  ever  formally  abandoned.  It  would  be  idle  in- 
deed to  dispute  with  Roman  hagiologists  their  right  to  revere  him  as  a 
martyr  of  their  own  ;  but  no  true  theological  estimate  would  deny  that  he 
belongs  to  the  historic  and  continuous  Church  of  England.  A  close  study 
of  his  religious  writings,  as  of  his  life,  shows  that  More  was  a  saint  of 
whom  England  may  still  be  proud. — W.  H.  HUTTON,  Life  of  Sir  Thomas 
More. 

WILLIAM  MORRIS. 
English  Poet :  1834-1896. 

Morris,  our  sweet  and  simple  Chaucer's  child, 
Dear  heritor  of  Spenser's  tuneful  reed, 
With  soft  and  sylvan  pipe  hast  oft  beguiled 
The  weary  soul  of  man  in  troublous  need, 


MORRIS,  MOZART,  NAPOLEON  I.  291 

And  from  the  far  and  flowerless  fields  of  ice 

Hast  brought  fair  flowers  to  make  an  earthly  paradise. 

— OSCAR  WILDE,  The  Garden  of  Eros. 

Glory  lends  unto  thy  name 

All  the  lustre  that  is  fame  ;   .   .  . 

God  such  singers  wills  to  us, 

High  above  the  world's  poor  fuss 

To  lift  up  our  rarer  thought 

Where  the  airs  of  heaven  are  caught,  .   .  . 

Lo,  a  new  creation  thou 

Wiliest,  wondrous  singer,  now, 

Now  and'always,  while  go  by 

Generations  born  to  die  ; 

Thou,  Columbus,  from  the  night 

Hast  a  new  world  sunned  to  sight, 

Peopled  full  of  shapes  that  awe, 

Kin  to  those  that  Homer  saw ; 

Brother  thou,  the  fit  eye  sees, 

Unto  blind  Maeonides :  .  .   . 

Life  with  Spenser  through  the  years, 

Virgil,  Milton,  thy  high  peers; 

In  our  memory  shalt  thou  dwell 

When  of  Dante's  Dream  we  tell.   .   .  . 

— W.  C.  BENNETT,  To  William  Morris  (written  in  "  Sigurd 
the  Volsnng"). 

William  Morris  has  a  sunny  slope  of  Parnassus  all  to  himself.— AUGUS- 
TINE BIRRELL,  Obiter  Dicta,  First  Scries. 

J.  C.  W.  T.  MOZART. 
German  Musical  Composer  :  1756-1791. 

Such  multitudes  of  heavenly  strains 
As  from  the  kings  of  sound  are  blown, 
Mozart,  Beethoven,  Mendelssohn. 

— MATTHEW  ARNOLD,  Epilogue  to  Lessing's  Laocoon. 

The  bewitching  melody  of  Mozart  .  .  .  will  captivate  mankind  to  the 
end  of  the  world. — SIR  ARCHIBALD  ALISON,  Essays  :  The  British  Theatre, 

True  composition  is  inexplicable.  No  one  can  explain  how  the  notes 
of  a  Mozart  melody,  or  the  folds  of  a  piece  of  Titian's  drapery,  produce 
their  essential  effects  on  each  other.  If  you  do  not  feel  it,  no  one  can  by 
reasoning  make  you  feel  it. — RUSKIN,  Modern  Painters,  Vol.  V. 

Music  could  no  longer  be  called  a  terra  incognita.  When  Mozart 
died,  all  its  great  mines,  as  far  as  we  can  see,  had  at  least  been  opened. 
— H.  R.  HAWEIS,  Music  and  Morals. 

NAPOLEON  I. 
Emperor  of  the  French  :   1769-1821. 

I  grieved  for  Bonaparte,  with  a  vain 

And  an  unthinking  grief !  for,  who  aspires 


292  NAPOLEON  I. 

I 

To  genuine  greatness  but  from  just  desires, 
And  knowledge  such  as  he  could  never  gain  ? 

— WORDSWORTH,  1801. 

'Tis  done — but  yesterday  a  King! 

And  arm'd  with  Kings  to  strive — 

And  now  thou  art  a  nameless  thing  : 

So  abject — yet  alive  ! 

Is  this  the  man  of  thousand  thrones, 

Who  strew'd  our  earth  with  hostile  bones, 

And  can  he  thus  survive  ? 

Since  he,  miscall'd  the  Morning  Star, 

Nor  man  nor  fiend  hath  fallen  so  far. 

— BYRON,  Napoleon. 

He  teaches  them  the  lesson  taught  so  long, 

So  oft,  so  vainly — learn  to  do  no  wrong ! 

A  single  step  into  the  right  had  made 

This  man  the  Washington  of  worlds  betray'd  : 

A  single  step  into  the  wrong  has  given 

His  name  a  doubt  to  all  the  winds  of  heaven  ; 

The  reed  of  Fortune,  and  of  thrones  the  rod, 

Of  Fame  the  Moloch  or  the  demigod  ; 

His  country's  Caesar,  Europe's  Hannibal, 

Without  their  decent  dignity  of  fall. 

— Id.,  The  Age  of  Bronze, 

"  Fall'n,  as  Napoleon  fell." — I  felt  mv  cheek 

Alter,  to  see  the  shadow  pass  away 

Whose  grasp  had  left  the  giant  world  so  weak. 

—SHELLEY,  The  Triumph  of  Life. 

Such  was  the  danger  when  that  Man  of  Blood 
Burst  from  the  iron  Isle,  and  brought  again, 
Like  Satan  rising  from  the  sulphurous  flood, 
His  impious  legions  to  the  battle  plain. 

— SOUTHEY,  The  Poet's  Pilgrimage  :   Tlte  Journey* 

You,  the  Earth-shakers  from  whose  right  hands,  war 

Far,  as  from  Jove's  the  thunderbolt,  obey ; 

Gaul's  sceptic  Caesar  had  his  guardian  star, 

Stout  Cromwell's  iron  creed  its  chosen  day. 

'Tis  in  proportion  as  men's  lives  are  great 

That,  fates  themselves, — they  glass  the  shades  of  fate. 

— LYTTON,  Forebodings* 

— Be  a  Napoleon,  and  yet  disbelieve — 
Why,  the  man's  mad,  friend,  take  his  light  away ! 
What's  the  vague  good  o'  the  world,  for  which  you  dare 
With  comfort  to  yourself  blow  millions  up  ? 

— ROBERT  BROWNING,  Bishop  Blotigram's  Apology. 

What  st.ange  tidings  from  that  Anakim  of  anarchy — Buonaparte  !  Ever 
since  I  defended  my  bust  of  him  at  Harrow  against  the  rascally  time- 
servers,  when  the  war  broke  out  in  1803,  he  has  been  a  "  Heros  de  Roman  " 
of  mine — on  the  Continent ;  I  don't  want  him  here.  But  I  don't  like  those 


.  293 

same  flights — leaving  of  armies,  etc. ,  etc.  I  am  sure  when  I  fought  for 
his  bust  at  school,  I  did  not  think  he  \vould  run  away  from  himself. — 
BYRON  in  MOORE'S  "Life  of  Byron  ". 

Napoleon  will  live  when  Paris  is  in  ruins  ;  his  deeds  will  survive  the  dome 
of  the  Invalides:  no  man  can  show  the  tomb  of  Alexander! — SIR  ARCHI- 
BALD ALISON. 

There  never  were  monarchs  who  mowed  down  the  population  and 
wasted  the  resources  of  France  like  Napoleon  and  Louis  XIV. ;  but  as 
long  as  they  were  successful,  and  kept  open  the  career  of  elevation  to  the 
people,  they  commanded  their  universal  attachment.  It  was  when  they 
grew  unfortunate,  and  could  call  them  only  to  discharge  the  mournful 
duties  of  adversity,  that  they  became  the  objects  of  universal  execration. 
The  revolution  has  ever  been  true  to  its  polar  star — worldly  success. — Id., 
Essays  :  The  Fall  of  the  Throne  of  the  Barricades. 

Napoleon  said  truly,  that  he  was  so  long  successful  because  he  always 
marched  with  the  opinions  of  five  millions  of  men. — Id.,  Ibid. :  The 
Copyright  Question. 

No  man  ever  surpassed  the  French  Emperor  in  the  clearness  of  his  ideas, 
or  the  stretch  of  his  glance  into  the  depths  of  futurity.  But  he  was  often 
misled  by  the  vigour  of  his  conceptions,  and  mistook  the  dazzling  brilliancy 
of  his  own  genius  for  the  steady  light  of  truth. — Id.,  Ibid. :  Wellington. 

Bonaparte — a  name  that  will  go  down  to  posterity,  and  of  whom  it  is 
not  yet  clear,  perhaps,  how  posterity  will  judge.  The  greatest  of  con- 
querors, in  an  age  when  great  conquests  appeared  no  longer  possible — the 
most  splendid  of  usurpers,  where  usurpation  had  not  been  heard  of  for 
centuries — who  entered  in  triumph  almost  all  the  capitals  of  continental 
Europe  ;  and  led,  at  last,  to  his  bed,  the  daughter  of  her  proudest  sovereign 
— who  set  up  kings  and  put  them  down  at  his  pleasure,  and  for  sixteen 
years  defied  alike  the  swords  of  his  foreign  enemies  and  the  daggers  of  his 
domestic  factions! — LORD  JEFFREY,  Essays. 

What  a  fine  iron  binding  Buonaparte  had  round  his  face,  as  if  it  had  been 
cased  in  steel !— HAZLITT,  Table  Talk. 

Buonaparte  was  only  above  his  competitors,  but  under  his  age '!—  S.  T. 
COLERIDGE,  Table  Talk. 

Napoleon  Buonaparte,  certainly  the  most  extraordinary  person  who  has 
appeared  in  modern  times,  and  to  whom,  in  some  respects,  no  parallel  can 
be  found,  if  we  search  the  whole  annals  of  the  human  race.  ...  It  is 
quite  certain  that  the  mighty  genius  of  Napoleon  was  of  the  highest  order  ; 
he  was  one  of  the  greatest  masters  of  the  art  of  war;  he  is  to  be  ranked 
among  the  generals  of  the  highest  class,  if  indeed  there  be  any  but  Hannibal 
who  can  be  placed  on  a  level  with  him. — LORD  BROUGHAM,  Statesmen  of 
the  Time  of  George  III.,  Vol.  III. 

It  is  very  true  that  I  have  said  that  I  considered  Napoleon's  presence  in 
the  field  equal  to  forty  thousand  men  in  the  balance.  This  is  a  very  loose 
way  of  talking  ;  but  the  idea  is  a  very  different  one  from  that  of  his  presence 
at  a  battle  being  equal  to  a  reinforcement  of  forty  thousand  men. — DUKE 
OF  WELLINGTON. 


294  XAPOLEOX  I. 

Napoleon  has  words  in  him  which  are  like  Austerlitz  Battles.  .  .  . 
Napoleon  does  by  no  means  seem  to  me  so  great  a  man  as  Cromwell. 
His  enormous  victories  which  reached  over  all  Europe,  while  Cromwell 
ahode  mainly  in  our  little  England,  are  but  as  the  high  stilts  on  which  the 
man  is  seen  standing ;  the  stature  of  the  man  is  not  altered  thereby.  I 
find  in  him  no  such  sincerity  as  in  Cromwell ;  only  a  far  inferior  sort.  No 
silent  walking  through  long  years,  with  the  Awful  Unnameable  of  this  Uni- 
verse ;  "  walking  with  God,"  as  he  called  it  ;  and  faith  and  strength  in 
that  alone  :  latent  thought  and  valour,  content  to  lie  latent,  then  burst  out 
as  in  blaze  of  Heaven's  lightning !  Napoleon  lived  in  an  age  when  God 
was  no  longer  believed  ;  the  meaning  of  all  Silence,  Latency,  was  thought 
to  be  Nonentity :  he  had  to  begin  not  out  of  the  Puritan  Bible,  but  out 
of  poor  Sceptical  Encyclopedies.  .  .  .— CARLYLE,  On  Heroes  and  Hero- 
Worship. 

The  three  names  of  Bonaparte,  Byron  and  Greece  suggest  poetry  enough 
for  ten  generations. — MAZZINI,  Life  and  Writings,  Vol.  II. 

Put  Napoleon  in  an  island  prison,  let  his  faculties  find  no  men  to  act 
on,  no  Alps  to  climb,  no  stake  to  play  for,  and  he  would  beat  the  air  and 
appear  stupid.  Transport  him  to  large  countries,  dense  populations,  com- 
plex interests,  and  antagonist  power,  and  you  shall  see  that  the  man 
Napoleon,  bounded,  that  is,  by  such  a  profile  and  outline,  is  not  the  virtual 
Napoleon. — EMERSON,  Essays:  History. 

Every  one  of  the  million  readers  of  anecdotes,  or  memoirs,  or  lives  of 
Napoleon,  delights  in  the  page,  because  he  studies  in  it  his  own  history. 
Napoleon  is  thoroughly  modern,  and,  at  the  highest  point  of  his  fortunes, 
has  the  very  spirit  of  the  newspaper.  He  is  no  saint, — to  use  his  own 
word,  "  no  capuchin," — and  he  is  no  hero  in  the  high  sense.  The  man  in 
the  street  finds  in  him  the  qualities  and  powers  of  other  men  in  the  street. 
He  finds  him,  like  himself,  by  birth  a  citizen,  who,  by  very  intelligible 
merits,  arrived  at  such  a  commanding  position,  that  he  could  indulge  all 
those  tastes  which  the  common  man  possesses,  but  is  obliged  to  conceal 
and  deny. — Id.,  Napoleon,  or  the  Man  of  the  World. 

Bonaparte  obeyed  that  law  of  progress  to  which  the  highest  minds  are 
peculiarly  subjected  ;  and  acquisition  inflamed,  instead  of  appeasing,  the 
spirit  of  dominion.  He  had  long  proposed  to  himself  the  conquest  of 
Europe,  of  the  world  :  and  the  title  of  Emperor  added  intenseness  to  this 
purpose.  Did  we  not  fear  that  by  repetition  we  might  impair  the  conviction 
which  we  are  most  anxious  to  impress,  we  would  enlarge  on  the  enormity 
of  the  guilt  involved  in  the  project  of  universal  empire.  Napoleon  knew 
distinctly  the  price  which  he  must  pay  for  the  eminence  which  he  coveted. 
He  knew  that  the  path  to  it  lay  over  wounded  and  slaughtered  millions, 
over  putrefying  heaps  of  his  fellow-creatures,  over  ravaged  fields,  smoking 
ruins,  pillaged  cities.  He  knew  that  his  steps  would  be  followed  by  the 
groans  of  widowed  mothers  and  famished  orphans  :  of  bereaved  friendship 
and  despairing  love ;  and  that,  in  addition  to  this  amount  of  misery,  he 
would  create  an  equal  amount  of  crime,  by  multiplying  indefinitely  the  in- 
struments and  participators  of  his  rapine  and  fraud.  He  knew  the  price 
and  resolved  to  pay  it.  ...  Henceforth,  to  rule  was  not  enough  for  Bona- 
parte. He  wanted  to  amaze,  to  dazzle,  to  overpower  men's  souls,  by 
striking,  bold,  magnificent,  and  unanticipated  results.  To  govern  ever  so 
absolutely  would  not  have  satisfied  him,  if  he  must  have  governed  silently. 


NAPOLEON  I.  295 

He  wanted  to  reign  through  wonder  and  awe,  by  the  grandeur  and  terror 
of  his  name,  by  displays  of  power  which  would  rivet  on  him  every  eye,  and 
make  him  the  theme  of  every  tongue.  Power  was  his  supreme  object,  but 
a  power  which  should  be  gazed  at  as  well  as  felt,  which  should  strike  men 
as  a  prodigy,  which  should  shake  old  thrones  as  an  earthquake,  and,  by 
the  suddenness  of  his  new  creations,  should  awaken  somethin'g  of  the  sub- 
missive wonder  which  miraculous  agency  inspires. — W.  E.  CHANNING, 
On  the  Life  and  Character  of  Napoleon  Bonaparte. 

Napoleon  had  a  great  genius  for  war  ;  Wellington,  great  military  talent. 
— ARCHBISHOP  R.  C.  TRENCH,  Letters  and  Memorials, 

Napoleon  I.  ruthlessly  destroyed,  in  the  municipality  and  the  commune, 
the  remaining  depositories  of  public  spirit,  responsibility,  and  manhood. — 
W.  E.  GLADSTONE. 

Many  know  man  well  who  do  not  know  men  ;  many  know  men  who  do  not 
know  man.  To  know  man  well  without  knowing  men  well  is  to  overrate 
the  human  race ;  to  know  men  well  without  knowing  man  is  to  underrate 
him.  Napoleon  knew  men  well,  but  not  man.  Men  he  needed  as  tools, 
and  man  he  despised.  Scott,  with  his  genial  nature  and  broad  sympathies, 
knew  man  and  men  equally  well ;  and  painted  no  less  faithfully  than 
vividly. — WILLIAM  MACCALL,  The  Newest  Materialism. 

The  first  Napoleon,  in  his  thunderous  career  over  our  western  world, 
was  a  notable  example  of  superhuman  force  in  a  human  shape,  without 
any  real  human  greatness. — J.  STUART  BLACKIE,  On  Self -Culture. 

I  am  convinced  that  with  the  perfidy  and  rapine  of  Bonaparte  no  peace 
could  be  made,  that  the  struggle  with  him  was  a  struggle  for  the  independ- 
ence of  all  nations  against  the  armed  and  disciplined  hordes  of  a  conqueror 
as  cruel  and  as  barbarous  as  Attila.  The  outward  mask  of  civilization 
Bonaparte  wore,  and  he  could  use  political  and  social  ideas  for  the  purposes 
of  his  ambition  as  dexterously  as  cannon  ;  but  in  character  he  was  a 
Corsican  and  as  savage  as  any  bandit  of  his  isle.  If  utter  selfishness,  if 
the  reckless  sacrifice  of  humanity  to  your  own  interest  and  passions  be 
vileness,  history  has  no  viler  name. — GOLDWIN  SMITH,  Three  English 
Statesmen. 

Such  a  worshipper  of  self,  ready  for  self's  sake  to  deluge  the  world  in 
blood  and  steep  his  conscience  in  crime,  was  Bonaparte. — F.  W.  FARRAK, 
Social  and  Present-Day  Questions. 

What  we  complain  of  in  Napoleon  Bonaparte,  for  instance,  is  not  that 
he  sought  power,  but  that  he  sought  it  in  the  interests  of  a  coarse,  brutal, 
and  essentially  unmeaning  personal  ambition. — JOHN  MORLEY,  Miscel- 
lanies, Vol.  I. 

The  series  of  Napoleon's  successes  is  absolutely  the  most  marvellous  in 
history.  No  one  can  question  that  he  leaves  far  behind  him  the  Turennes, 
Marlboroughs,  and  Fredericks ;  and  when  we  bring  up  for  comparison  an 
Alexander,  a  Hannibal,  a  Caesar,  a  Charles,  we  find  in  the  single  point  of 
marvellousness  Napoleon  surpassing  them  all.  Every  one  of  those  heroes 
was  born  to  a  position  of  exceptional  advantage.  Two  of  them  inherited 
thrones;  Hannibal  inherited  a  position  royal  in  all  but  name  ;  Caesar  in- 
herited an  eminent  position  in  a  great  empire.  But  Napoleon,  who  rose 
as  high  as  any  of  them,  began  life  as  an  obscure  provincial,  almost  as  a 


2g6  NAPOLEON  I. 

man  without  a  country.  It  is  this  marvellousness  which  paralyses  our  judg- 
ment. We  seem  to  see  at  once  a  genius  beyond  all  estimate,  and  a  fortune 
utterly  unaccountable.  .  .  .  The  Napoleon  who  was  himself,  who  executed 
his  plans  with  almost  unlimited  power,  has  no  monument.  All  that  he 
built,  at  such  a  cost  of  blood  and  tears,  was  swept  away  before  he  himself 
ended  his  short  life. — SIR  J.  R.  SEELEY,  Napoleon  the  First. 

The  Man  of  Miracles  himself,  the  one  unique  man,  perhaps,  in  the 
history  of  the  human  race.  Napoleon  is  the  greatest  of  Frenchmen,  or- 
the  greatest  of  Italians,  according  to  the  fancy  of  his  historian. — K. 
WALISZEWSKI,  Life  of  Peter  the  Great  (transl.),  Vol.  I. 

It  is  very  difficult,  by  any  process  of  criticism,  to  define  the  impression 
of  splendour  and  of  glory  which  the  character  of  Achilles  leaves  upon  the 
mind.  There  is  in  him  a  kind  of  magnetic  fascination,  something  incom- 
mensurable and  indescribable,  a  quality  like  that  which  Goethe  defined 
as  daemonic.  They  are  not  always  the  most  noble  or  the  most  admirable 
natures  which  exert  this  influence  over  their  fellow-creatures.  The 
Emperor  Napoleon  and  our  own  Byron  had  each,  perhaps,  a  portion  of 
this  Achilleian  personality.  Men  of  their  stamp  sway  the  soul  by  their 
prestige,  by  their  personal  beauty  and  grandeur,  by  the  concentrated  in- 
tensity of  their  character,  and  by  the  fatality  which  seems  to  follow  them. 
To  Achilles,  to  Alexander,  to  Napoleon,  we  cannot  apply  the  rules  of  our 
morality.  It  is,  therefore,  impossible  for  us,  who  must  aim  first  at  being 
good  citizens,  careful  in  our  generation,  and  subordinate  to  the  laws  of 
society  around  us,  to  admire  them  without  a  reservation.  Yet,  after  all 
is  said,  a  great  and  terrible  glory  does  rest  upon  their  heads ;  and  though 
our  sentiments  of  propriety  may  be  offended  by  some  of  their  actions,  our 
sense  of  what  is  awful  and  sublime  is  satisfied  by  the  contemplation  of 
them. — J.  A.  SYMONDS,  Studies  of  the  Greek  Poets,  Second  Series. 

Upon  many  remarkable  occasions  Napoleon  showed  his  contempt  of 
danger  and  how  recklessly  he  could  expose  his  own  body  when  his  doing 
so  was  calculated  to  help  him  to  success.  He  knew  how  to  win  the 
imagination  of  Frenchmen  and  how  with  French  armies  to  conquer  ;  but 
he  did  not  know  how  to  die  a  hero's  death.  Why,  oh  why  did  he  not  end 
his  days  with  those  gallant  souls  who,  when  everything  was  lost,  tried  in 
his  cause  on  the  evening  of  that  appalling  overthrow  to  stem  the  over- 
whelming current  of  pursuit  ?  Why  did  he  not  die  with  those  who  died 
for  him  upon  that  most  eventful  day  of  his  life  ?  But  as  a  patriot  how 
little  worthy  was  he  of  all  the  reverence  and  devoted  love  bestowed  upon 
him  by  his  brave,  faithful,  and  loyal  army  !  It  is  as  natural  to  die  as  to 
be  born,  and  it  can  matter  little  whether  you  fall  like  a  soldier  on  the  field 
of  battle  when  young  and  vigorous,  or  "sicken  years  away"  to  die  in 
your  bed.  .  .  .  Bonaparte's  march  through  the  world  was  marked  by  the 
blood-trail  of  tens  of  thousands  of  gallant  soldiers  who,  had  it  not  been  for 
his  inordinate  personal  ambition,  might  have  lived  for  years  longer.  Yet 
it  is  not  for  this  reason  or  because  he  wasted  upon  horrible  war  the  means 
of  national  prosperity  and  of  individual  enjoyment  that  men  specially 
loathe  his  memory.  It  is  because  his  whole  career,  from  childhood  to 
the  day  of  his  death,  was  one  great  untruth,  and  was  made  up  of  deceit, 
treachery,  and  the  most  appalling  and  selfish  indifference  to  the  feelings 
and  wan;s  of  others — was,  in  fact,  one  great  unholy  deception. — LORD 
WOLSELEY,  The  Decline  and  Fall  of  Napoleon. 


NAPOLEON  I.  297 

The  genius  of  war  in  the  shape  of  Napoleon. — LORD  RoSEBERY,  Life 
of  Pitt. 

It  is  a  peculiarity  of  great  men  that  they  have  a  tendency  to  wreck  the 
throne  on  which  they  sit.  .  .  .  Take  Napoleon--he  differed  from  Frederic 
in  that  he  did  not  find  a  throne,  and  had  to  construct  one,  but,  being  on 
it,  one  of  his  objects  was  to  make  it  impossible  for  any  one  else  to  sit  upon 
it.  Combining  the  activity  of  a  score  of  men  with  a  mind  embracing  the 
largest  questions  and  the  smallest  details,  absorbing  all,  everything  deriv- 
ing light  and  guidance  from  him,  so  completely  did  he  centralize  everything, 
that  had  he  died  as  Emperor  his  disappearance  would  have  caused  not 
a  vacancy,  but  a  gulf  in  which  the  whole  apparatus  of  government  would 
have  disappeared. — Id.,  SpeeeJi  at  the  Cromwell  Tercentenary,  Queen's  Hall, 
i^tJi  Nov.,  1899. 

We  have  more  chance  of  seeing  the  man  Napoleon  at  St.  Helena  than 
at  any  other  period  of  his  career.  In  the  first  years  of  the  consulate  the 
man  was  revealed,  but  then  he  was  undeveloped.  On  the  throne  he 
ceased  to  be  human.  At  Elba  he  had  no  present  existence ;  he  was 
always  in  the  past  or  the  future.  .  .  :  Scavenger  is  a  coarse  word,  yet  it 
accurately  represents  Napoleon's  first  function  as  ruler.  The  volcano  ot 
the  French  Revolution  had  burned  itself  out.  He  had  to  clear  away  the 
cold  lava  ;  the  rubbish  of  past  destruction  ;  the  cinders  and  the  scoriae  ; 
the  fungus  of  corruption  which  had  overgrown  all,  and  was  for  the  moment 
the  only  visible  resuh)/  What  he  often  said  of  the  Crown  of  France  is 
absolutely  true  of  its  government.  "  I  found  it  in  the  gutter,  and  I  picked 
it  up  on  my  sword's  point."  The  gutter  government  he  replaced  by  a  new 
administrative  machine,  trim,  pervading,  and  efficient ;  efficient,  that  is  to 
say,  so  long  as  the  engineer  was  a  man  of  extraordinary  energy  and  genius. 
„  .  .  Then  he  is  a  Scourge.  He  purges  the  floor  of  Europe  with  fire.  As  the 
Sword  and  Spirit  of  the  Revolution,  though  in  all  the  pomp  of  the  purple, 
he  visits  the  ancient  monarchies,  and  compels  them  to  set  their  houses  in 
order.  .  .  .  Was  Napoleon  a  good  man  ?  The  irresistible  smile  with 
which  we  greet  the  question  proves,  we  think,  not  the  proved  iniquity, 
but  the  exceptional  position  of  this  unique  personality.  Ordinary  measures 
and  tests  do  not  appear  to  apply  to  him.  We  seem  to  be  trying  to  span 
a  mountain  with  a  tape.  In  such  a  creature  we  expect  prodigious  virtues 
and  prodigious  vices,  all  beyond  our  standard.  We  scarcely  remember  to 
have  seen  this  question  seriously  asked  with  regard  to  Napoleon,  though 
Metternich  touches  on  it  in  a  fashion ;  it  seems  childish,  discordant, 
superfluous.  But  asked  nakedly  in  the  ordinary  sense,  without  reference 
to  the  circumstances  of  the  time,  it  can  admit  but  of  one  prompt  reply. 
He  was  not,  of  course,  good  in  the  sense  that  Wilberforce  or  St.  Francis 
was  good.  Nor  was  he  one  of  the  virtuous  rulers  :  he  was  not  a  Wash- 
ington or  an  Antonine.  Somewhere  or  other  he  has  said  that  he  could  not 
have  achieved  what  he  did  had  he  been  religious,  and  this  is  undoubtedly 
true.  In  England  his  name  was  a  synonym  for  the  author  of  all  evil.  He 
was,  indeed,  in  our  national  judgment,  a  devil  seven  times  worse  than  the 
others.  But  then  we  knew  nothing  at  all  about  him.  .  .  .  To  use  a 
•common  vulgarism,  he  was  not,  we  think,  so  black  as  he  is  painted.  The 
tone  of  his  age,  the  accepted  and  special  latitude  accorded  to  monarchs 
in  the  eighteenth  century,  the  circumstances  and  temptations  of  his  position 
must  be  taken  into  account.  Men  must  judge  men  not  absolutely  but 
xelatively,  as  they  would  themselves  be  judged.  Circumstance,  epoch. 


2g8  NAPOLEON  /.,  NELSON. 

environment,  training,  temptation,  must  all  be  taken  into  account  if  you 
would  test  the  virtues  of  mankind.  .  .  .  His  lot  was  not  cast  in  a  monastery 
or  in  a  pulpit.  He  came  from  Corsica  a  little  Pagan,  viewing  the  world 
as  his  oyster.  He  was  reared  in  the  life  of  camps  and  in  the  terrors  of 
revolution.  He  was  raised  to  rule  a  nation,  which,  in  the  horrors  of  a 
great  convulsion,  had  formally  renounced  and  practically  abjured  Chris- 
tianity. He  had  to  fight  for  his  own  hand  against  the  whole  world.  It 
was  breathless  work  which  gave  little  time  for  reflection.  .  .  .  Was 
he  a  great  man  ?  That  is  a  much  simpler  question,  but  it  involves  defini- 
tions. If  by  (i  great "  be  intended  the  combination  of  moral  qualities 
with  those  of  intellect,  great  he  certainly  was  not.  But  that  he  was  great 
in  the  sense  of  being  extraordinary  and  supreme  we  can  have  no  doubt. 
If  greatness  stands  for  natural  power,  for  predominance,  for  something 
human  beyond  humanity,  then  Napoleon  was  assuredly  great.  Besides 
that  indefinable  spark  which  we  call  genius,  he  represents  a  combination 
of  intellect  and  energy  which  has  never  perhaps  been  equalled,  never 
certainly  surpassed.  He  carried  human  faculty  to  the  furthest  point  of 
which  we  have  accurate  knowledge.  .  .  .  But  Napoleon  lived  under  the 
modern  microscope.  Under  the  fiercest  glare  of  scrutiny  he  enlarged  in- 
definitely the  limits  of  human  conception  and  human  possibility.  Till  he 
had  lived,  no  one  could  realise  that  there  could  be  so  stupendous  a  com- 
bination of  military  and  civil  genius,  such  comprehension  of  view  united 
to  such  grasp  of  detail,  such  prodigious  vitality  of  body  and  mind.  .  .  . 
The  name  of  General  Bonaparte — the  young  eagle  that  tore  the  very  heart 
out  of  glory — as  to  our  mind  superior  to  the  title  of  First  Consul  or  of 
Emperor. — LORD  ROSEBERY,  Napoleon,  the  Last  Phase. 

HORATIO,  VISCOUNT  NELSON. 
EnglisJi  Admiral  :  1758-1805. 

The  vernal  sun  new  life  bestows 

Even  on  the  meanest  flower  that  blows ; 

But  vainly,  vainly,  may  he  shine 

Where  Glory  weeps  o'er  NELSON'S  shrine. 

— SIR  WALTER  SCOTT. 

Nelson,  Glory's  favourite  son. 

— SOUTHEY,  The  Lay  of  the  Laureate  :  The  Dream. 

Nelson  was  also  there  in  the  kingdom  of  peace,  though  his  calling 
While  upon  earth  he  dwelt,  was  to  war  and  the  work  of  destruction, 
Not  in  him  had  that  awful  ministry  deaden'd,  or  weaken'd 
Quick  compassion,  and  feelings  that  raise  while  they  soften  our  nature. 
Wise  in  council,  and  steady  in  purpose,  and  rapid  in  action, 
Never  thought  of  self  from  the  course  of  his  duty  seduced  him, 
Never  thought  of  the  issue  unworthily  wrapt  his  intention, 
Long  shall  his  memory  live,  and  while  his  example  is  cherished, 
From  the  Queen  of  the  Seas,  the  sceptre  shall  never  be  wrested. 

— /</.,  A  Vision  of  Judgment :   Worthies  of  the  Georgian  Age. 

The  Sailor  :  "  'Tis  there,  the  quarter-deck 
On  which  brave  Admiral  Nelson  stood — 
A  sight  that  would  have  roused  your  blood ! 


NELSOX. 


One  eye  he  had,  which,  bright  as  ten, 

Burnt  like  a  fire  among  his  men  ; 

Let  this  be  land,  and  that  be  sea, 

Here  lay  the  French— and  thus  came  we !  " 

To  Nelson,  England's  pride  and  treasure, 
Her  bulwark  and  her  tower  of  strength. 

— WORDSWORTH,  The  Waggoner,  Canto  II. 

Here's  to  Nelson's  memory  ! 

'Tis  the  second  time  that  I,  at  sea, 

Right  off  Cape  Trafalgar  here, 

Have  drunk  it  deep  in  British  beer. 

Nelson  for  ever — any  time 

Am  I  his  to  command  in  prose  or  rhyme  ! 

Give  me  of  Nelson  only  a  touch, 

And  I  save  it,  be  it  little  or  much. 

—  ROBERT  BROWNING,  Nationality  in  Drinks. 

Brave  as  a  lion  was  our  Nel, 

And  gentle  as  a  lamb.  .  .  . 

"  Not  a  great  sinner."     No,  dear  heart, 

God  grant  in  our  death-pain, 

We  may  have  played  as  well  our  part, 

And  feel  as  free  from  stain . 

We  see  the  spots  on  such  a  star, 

Because  it  burned  so  bright ; 

But  on  the  side  next  God  they  are 

All  lost  in  greater  light. 

— GERALD  MASSEY,  Nelson. 

"  Oh,  brave  Nelson,  glorious  Nelson,  the  liberator  of  Italy,  the  hope  and 
tutelary  angel  of  Naples  !  " — QUEEN  OF  NAPLES. 

My  friend  Nelson,  whose  spirit  is  equal  to  all  undertakings,  and  whose 
resources  are  fitted  to  all  occasions. — LORD  COLLINGWOOD. 

Lord  Nelson  was,  in  truth,  the  greatest  naval  officer  of  this  or  any  other 
age  or  nation  ;  and  if  a  veil  could  be  drawn  over  the  deeds  at  Naples,. 
his  public  character  might  be  deemed  perfect. — SIR  ARCHIBALD  ALISON, 
Epitome  of  History  of  Europe. 

The  most  triumphant  death  is  that  of  the  martyr  ;  the  most  splendid  that 
of  the  hero  in  hour  of  victory  ;  and  if  the  chariot  and  the  horses  of  fire  had 
been  vouchsafed  for  Nelson's  translation,  he  could  scarcely  have  departed 
in  a  brighter  blaze  of  glory.  He  has  left  us,  not  indeed  his  mantle  of  in- 
spiration, but  a  name  and  an  example,  which  are  at  this  hour  inspiring 
thousands  of  the  youth  of  England,  a  name  which  is  our  pride,  and  an 
example  which  will  continue  to  be  our  shield  and  our  strength. — SOUTHEY, 
Life  of  Nelson. 

Lord  Nelson  was  a  great  naval  commander ;  but  for  myself,  I  have  not 
much  opinion  of  a  sea-faring  life. — HAZLITT,  Table  Talk. 

It  is  not  every  man  who  has  the  audacious  ambition  to  measure  the 
waves  as  a  Scoresby,  or  to  rule  them  as  a  Nelson. — LYTTON,  Essays  : 
Knowledge  of  t/te  World. 


300  NELSON,  NERO. 

The  fame  of  Nelson  has  more  than  expiated  the  errors  of  his  life. — 
LAMARTINE,  Celebrated  Characters  (trans!.),  Vol.  I. 

The  charm  in  Nelson's  history  is  the  unselfish  greatness  ;  the  assurance 
of  being  supported  to  the  uttermost  by  those  whom  he  supports  to  the 
uttermost. — EMERSON,  English  Traits:  Ability. 

No  truer  Englishman  ever  lived  than  Nelson.  .  .  .  Nelson  was  of  the 
same  breed  as  Cromwell,  though  his  shoulders  were  not  so  broad. — LESLIE 
STEPHEN,  Hours  in  a  Library,  First  Series. 

Wherever  danger  has  to  be  faced  or  duty  to  be  done,  at  cost  to  self,  men 
will  draw  inspiration  from  the  name  and  deeds  of  Nelson.  Happy  he  who 
lives  to  finish  all  his  task.  The  words,  "  I  have  done  my  duty,"  sealed  the 
closed  book  of  Nelson's  story  with  a  truth  broader  and  deeper  than  he  him- 
self could  suspect.  His  duty  was  done,  and  its  fruit  perfected.  ...  To 
use  again  St.  Vincent's  words,  "  There  is  but  one  Nelson  ". — CAPT.  A.  T. 
MAHAN,  Life  of  Nelson,  Vol.  II. 


NERO. 
Emperor  of  Rome  :  37-68. 

Although  that  Nero  were  as  vicious 

As  any  send  that  lieth  ful  low  adoun, 

Yet  he,  as  telleth  us  Suetonius, 

This  wide  world  had  in  subjectioun, 

Both  est  and  west,  south  and  septentrioun. 

—CHAUCER,  The  Monkes  Tale. 

Like  Nero,  who,  to  raise  his  fancy  higher 

And  finish  the  great  work,  set  Rome  on  fire. 

Such  crimes  make  treason  just,  and  might  compel 

Virginius,  Vindex,  Galba,  to  rebel  ; 

For  what  could  Nero's  self  have  acted  worse 

To  aggravate  the  wretched  nation's  curse  ? 

— GEORGE  STEPNEY,  Juvenal,  Satire  VIII. 

Could  height  of  power  assuage 
The  mad  excess  of  Nero's  rage  ? 
Hard  is  the  fate,  when  subjects  find 
The  sword  unjust  to  pojson  join'd  ! 

— DR.  WILLIAM  KING,  Nero  :  A  Satire. 

When  Nero  perish'd  by  the  justest  doom, 

Which  ever  the  destroyer  yet  destroy'd, 

Amidst  the  roar  of  liberated  Rome, 

Of  nations  freed,  and  the  world  overjoy'd, 

Some  hands  unseen  strew'd  flowers  upon  his  tomb  ; 

Perhaps  the  weakness  of  a  heart  not  void 

Of  feeling  for  some  kindness  done,  when  power 

Had  left  the  wretch  an  uncorrupted  hour. 

—BYRON,  Don  yuan,  Canto  III. 


NERO,  NEWMAN.  301 

Nero  is  the  most  formidable  figure  of  ennui  that  has  ever  appeared 
among  men.  The  yawning  monster  that  the  ancients  called  Livor  and 
the  moderns  call  Spleen  gives  us  this  enigma  to  divine — Nero. — VICTOR 
HUGO,  William  Shakespeare  (transl.}. 

JOHN  HENRY  NEWMAN. 
Cardinal  of  the  Roman  Catholic  Church  :  1801-1890. 

What  are  the  laws  of  nature,  not  to  bend 
If  the  Church  bid  them  ? — brother  Newman  asks. 
Up  with  the  Immaculate  Conception,  then — 
On  to  the  rack  with  faith  ! — is  my  advice. 

— ROBERT  BROWNING,  Bishop  Bloiigram's  Apology. 

The  history  of  our  land  will  hereafter  record  the  name  of  John  Henry 
Newman  among  the  greatest  of  our  people,  as  a  confessor  for  the  faith, 
a  great  teacher  of  men,  a  preacher  of  justice,  of  piety,  and  of  compassion. 
— CARDINAL  MANNING  in  PURCELL'S  Life  of  Manning,  Vol.  II. 

It  is  hardly  an  overstrained  inference  to  believe  that,  with  that  half- 
conscious  aspiration  which  rises  in  the  minds  of  most  men,  when  they 
contemplate  a  life  in  which  they  recognise  the  embodiment  of  their  own 
ideal,  the  John  Henry  Newman  of  those  days  sought  to  be  the  Ken  of 
the  nineteenth  century,  striving  to  lead  the  Church  of  England,  and, 
through  her,  other  Christian  communities,  to  the  doctrine  and  the  worship 
of  that  undivided  Church  of  the  East  and  West,  after  which  Ken  yearned 
even  to  his  dying  hour. — DEAN  PLUMPTRE,  Life  of  Thomas  Ken,  Vol.  II. 

Newman  knew  well,  and  taught  his  followers,  that  no  man  can  be  said 
to  know  anything  of  religious  importance  till  he  has  done  something  in 
consequence  of  it.  So  far  as  he  imbued  his  party  with  this  very  practical 
truth  he  helped  them  to  success.  Whatever  is  done  regularly,  in  the 
definite  name  of  religion,  drives  a  nail  through  the  character,  and  fixes  a 
man  in  his  adherence  to  what  he  professes.  .  .  .  Newman  has  left  us 
something  to  imitate,  much  more  to  avoid.  Our  debt  to  him  is  negative 
rather  than  positive.  Not  to  despise  God's  facts,  and  not  to  be  afraid  of 
God's  justice,  are  the  two  great  lessons  to  be  learned  by  all  Englishmen, 
but  especially  by  English  theologians,  from  Newman's  Anglican  career. 
— E.  A.  ABBOTT,  Anglican  Career  of  Cardinal  Newman. 

If  any  man  ever  succeeded  in  anything,  Cardinal  Newman  has  suc- 
ceeded in  convincing  all  those  who  study  his  career  with  an  approach  to 
candour  and  discrimination,  that  the  depth  and  luminousness  of  his  com 
viction,  that  the  true  key  to  the  enigma  of  life,  is  God's  revelation  of  Him- 
self in  Christ  and  in  His  Church,  are  infinitely  deeper  in  him,  and  more 
of  the  intimate  essence  of  his  mind  and  heart,  than  his  appreciation,  keen 
as  it  is,  of  the  obstacles  which  stand  in  the  way  of  those  convictions  and 
appear  to  bar  the  access  to  them.  ...  No  life  known  to  me  in  the  last 
century  of  our  national  history  can  for  a  moment  compare  with  it,  so  far  as 
we  can  judge  of  such  deep  matters,  in  unity  of  meaning  and  constancy  of 
purpose.  It  has  been  carved,  as  it  were,  out  of  one  solid  block  of  spiritual 
substance,  and  though  there  may  be  weak  and  wavering  lines  here  and 


302  NEWMAN,  NEWTON. 

there  in  the  carving,  it  is  not  easy  to  detect  any  flaw  in  the  material  upon 
which  the  long  indefatigable  labour  has  been  spent. — RICHARD  H.  HUTTON, 
Life  of  Cardinal  Newman. 

Far  different  from  Keble,  from  my  brother,  from  Dr.  Pusey,  from  all 
the  rest,  was  the  true  chief  of  the  Catholic  revival — John  Henry  Newman. 
Compared  with  him,  they  were  all  but  as  ciphers,  and  he  the  indicating 
number.  .  .  .  Credo  in  Ncwmannum  was  a  common  phrase  at  Oxford, 
and  is  still  unconsciously  the  faith  of  nine-tenths  of  the  English  converts 
to  Rome.  ..."  Lead  kindly  Light  "  is  the  most  popular  hymn  in  the 
language.  All  of  us,  Catholic,  Protestant,  or  such  as  can  see  their  way 
to  no  positive  creed  at  all,  can  here  meet  on  common  ground  and  join  in 
a  common  prayer.  .  .  .  Two  writers  have  affected  powerfully  the  present 
generation  of  Englishmen.  Newman  is  one,  Thomas  Carlyle  is  the  other. 
But  Carlyle  has  been  at  issue  with  all  the  tendencies  of  his  age.  Like  a 
John  the  Baptist,  he  has  stood  alone  preaching  repentance  in  a  world 
"which  is  to  him  a  wilderness.  Newman  has  been  the  voice  of  the  intel- 
lectual reaction  of  Europe,  which  was  alarmed  by  an  era  of  revolutions, 
and  is  looking  for  safety  in  the  forsaken  beliefs  of  the  ages  which  it  had 
been  tempted  to  despise. — J.  A.  FROUDE,  Short  Studies  on  Great  Subjects, 
Vol.  IV. 

Oh,  Spirit  of  Truth,  where  wert  thou,  when  the  remorseless  deep  of 
superstition  closed  over  the  head  of  John  Henry  Newman,  who  surely 
deserved  to  be  thy  best  loved  son? — AUGUSTINE  BIRRELL,  Obiter  Dicta, 
First  Series. 

Dr.  Newman's  style  is  pellucid,  it  is  animated,  it  is  varied ;  at  times 
icy  cold,  it  oftener  glows  with  a  fervid  heat ;  it  employs  as  its  obedient 
and  well-trained  servant  a  vast  vocabulary,  and  it  does  so  always  with  the 
•ease  of  the  educated  gentleman,  who  by  a  sure  instinct  ever  avoids  alike 
the  ugly  pedantry  of  the  book- worm,  the  forbidding  accents  of  the  lawyer, 
and  the  stiff  conceit  of  the  man  of  scientific  theory.  Dr.  Newman's 
sentences  sometimes  fall  upon  the  ear  like  well-considered  and  final  judg- 
ments, each  word  being  weighed  and  counted  out  with  dignity  and  pre- 
cision ;  but  at  other  times  the  demeanour  and  language  of  the  judge  are 
hastily  abandoned,  and,  substituted  for  them,  we  encounter  the  impetuous 


torrent — the  captivating  rhetoric,  the  brilliant  imagery,  the  frequent  ex- 
amples, the  repetition  of  the  same  idea  in  different  words,  of  the  eager 
and  accomplished  advocate  addressing  men  of  like  passions  with  himself.  1 

,  .  .  Dr.  Newman  always  aims  at  effect,  and  never  misses  it.  He  writes  as 
an  orator  speaks,  straight  at  you.  His  object  is  to  convince  by  engaging 
your  attention,  exciting  your  interest,  enlivening  your  fancy.  It  is  not  his 
general  practice  to  address  the  pure  reason.  .  .  .  Newman's  books  have 
long  had  a  large  and  increasing  sale.  They  stand  on  all  sorts  of  shelves, 
and  wherever  they  go  a  still,  small  voice  accompanies  them.  They  are 
speaking  books;  an  air  breathes  from  their  pages. — Id.,  Res  Judicata. 

SIR  ISAAC  NEWTON. 
English  Mathematician:  1642-1727. 

Nature  and  nature's  laws  lay  hid  in  night; 
God  said  "  Let  Newton  be"  ;  and  all  was  light. 

— POPE,  Epitaph  intended  for  Sir  Isaac  Newton. 


NEWTON.  303 

Let  Newton,  pure  intelligence,  from  God 
To  mortals  lent,  to  trace  his  boundless  works 
From  laws  sublimely  simple,  speak  thy  fame 
In  all  philosophy. 

— THOMSON,  The  Seasons  :  Summer. 

Shall  the  great  soul  of  Newton  quit  this  earth 

To  mingle  with  his  stars  ;  and  every  muse, 

Astonish'd  into  silence,  shun  the  weight 

Of  honours  due  to  his  illustrious  name  ? 

But  what  can  man  ?     Ev'n  now  the  sons  of  light, 

In  strains  high  warbled  to  seraphic  lyre, 

Hail  his  arrival  on  the  coast  of  bliss. 

— Id.,  A  Poem  sacred  to  the  Memory  of  Sir  Isaac  Newton. 

These  nations  Newton  made  his  own  : 

All  intimate  with  him  alone. 

His  mighty  soul  did,  like  a  giant,  run 

To  the  vast  volume's  closing  star ; 

Decipher'd  every  character : 

His  reason  pour'd  new  light  upon  the  sun. 

—YOUNG,  The  Merchant,  Strain  III. 

And  Newton,  something  more  than  man, 
Div'd  into  nature's  hidden  springs, 
Laid  bare  the  principles  of  things, 
Above  the  earth  our  spirits  bore, 
And  gave  us  worlds  unknown  before. 

— CHURCHILL,  The  Ghost,  Book  II. 

See  Newton  chase  conjecture's  twilight  ray, 
And  light  up  nature  into  certain  day ! 
He  wide  creation's  trackless  mazes  trod ; 
And  in  each  atom  found  the  ruling  God. 

— DR.  JOHN  BROWN,  On  Honour. 

Newton,  who  first  th'  Almighty's  works  display'd, 
And  smooth'd  that  mirror,  in  whose  polish'd  face 
The  great  Creator  now  conspicuous  shines ; 
Who  open'd  Nature's  adamantine  gates, 
And  to  our  minds  her  secret  powers  expos'd. 

— RICHARD  GLOVER,  Poem  on  Sir  Isaac  Newton. 

And  finishing  at  length  his  destin'd  way, 

To  Newton  he  bequeath'd  the  radiant  lamp  of  day. 

— SOAME  JENYNS,  On  the  Immortality  of  the  Soul,  Book  I. 

Patient  of  contradiction  as  a  child, 

Affable,  humble,  diffident,  and  mild, 

Such  was  Sir  Isaac,  and  such  Boyle  and  Locke, 

Your  blunderer  is  as  sturdy  as  a  rock. 

•  — COWPER,  Progress  of  Error. 

Newton  reaches  heights  unreach'd  before. 

— RICHARD  SAVAGE,  An  Epistle  to  Sir  R.  Walpole. 


304  NEWTON. 

O'er  Nature's  laws  God  cast  the  veil  of  night, 
Out-blaz'd  a  Newton's  soul — and  all  was  light. 

— AARON  HILL,  On  Sir  Isaac  Newton. 

Lo  !   Newton,  Priest  of  Nature,  shines  afar, 
Scans  the  wide  world,  and  numbers  ev'ry  star  ! 

— CAMPBELL. 

There  Priest  of  Nature  !  dost  thou  shine, 
NEWTON  !  a  King  among  the  Kings  divine. 

— SOUTHEY,  Translation  of  a  Greek  Ode  on  Astronomy. 

And  Newton,  exalted 

There  above  those  orbs  whose  motions  from  earth  he  had  measured, 
Through  infinity  ranging  in  thought. 

—Id.,  A  Vision  of  Judgment :   The  Elder  Worthies. 

'Tis  he — as  I  approach  more  near 

The  great  Columbus  of  the  skies  I  know ! 

'Tis  Newton's  soul,  that  daily  travels  here 

In  search  of  knowledge  for  mankind  below. 

O  stay,  thou  happy  spirit,  stay, 

And  lead  me  on  through  all  th'  unbeaten  wilds  of  day. 

— JOHN  HUGHES,  The  Ecstasy  :  An  Ode. 

It  is  a  Newton  who  sees  himself  in  a  child  on  the  seashore,  and  his 
discoveries  in  the  coloured  shells. — R.  A.  WILLMOTT,  Advantages  of 
Literature. 

A  monument  to  Newton  !  a  monument  to  Shakespeare !  Look  up  to 
Heaven — look  into  the  Human  Heart.  Till  the  planets  and  the  passions 
— the  affections  and  the  fixed  stars  are  extinguished — their  names  cannot 
die. — JOHN  WILSON,  Noctcs  Ambrosiana;,  Vol.  III. 

Such  men  as  Newton  and  Linnaeus  are  incidental,  but  august,  teachers 
of  religion. — Id.,  Essays  :  Education  of  the  People. 

The  contemplation  of  Newton's  discoveries  raises  other  feelings  than 
wonder  at  his  matchless  genius.  The  light  with  which  it  shines  is  not 
more  dazzling  than  useful.  The  difficulties  of  his  course,  and  his  expedients, 
alike  copious  and  refined  for  surmounting  them,  exercise  the  faculties  of 
the  wise,  while  commanding  their  admiration  ;  but  the  results  of  his  in- 
vestigations, often  abstruse,  are  truths  so  grand  and  comprehensive,  yet 
so  plain,  that  they  both  captivate  and  instruct  the  simple.  .  .  .  Nor 
when  we  recollect  the  Greek  orator's  exclamation,  "  The  whole  earth  is 
the  monument  of  illustrious  men,"  can  we  stop  short  of  declaring  that  the 
whole  universe  is  Newton's. — LORD  BROUGHAM,  Speech  at  the  Inaugura- 
tion of  Statue  at  Grantham. 

To  the  highest  powers  of  invention  Newton  added,  what  so  seldom 
accompanies  them,  the  talent  of  simplifying  and  communicating  his  pro- 
foundest  speculations.  In  the  economy  of  her  distributions,  Nature  is 
seldom  thus  lavish  of  her  intellectual  gifts.  The  inspired  genius  which 
creates  is  rarely  conferred  along  with  the  matured  judgment  which  combines, 
and  yet  without  the  exertion  of  both,  the  fabric  of  human  wisdom  could 
never  have  been  reared.  Though  a  ray  from  heaven  kindled  the  vestal 


NEWTON,' DUKE  OF  NORFOLK,  O'CONNELL.          305 

fire,  yet  a  humble  priesthood  was  required  to  keep  alive  the  flame. — SIR 
DAVID  BREWSTER,  Life  of  Sir  Isaac  Newton. 

Newtcn  and  Laplace  need  myriads  of  ages  and  thick-strewn  celestial 
areas.  One  may  say  a  gravitating  solar  system  is  already  prophesied  in 
the  nature  of  Newton's  mind.  — EMERSON,  Essays  :  History. 

No  one  since  the  creation  has  ever  so  clearly  unfolded,  as  Newton  has 
done,  the  laws  by  which  the  material  World  is  regulated  ;  or  has  done  the 
work  with  more  of  that  reverential  and  devout  spirit  of  faith  and  love 
which  is  the  fairest  ornament  of  the  Christian  Philosopher. — BISHOP 
WORDSWORTH,  Miscellanies  :  Religion  in  Science. 

In  Natural  Philosophy,  the  airy  fabrics  of  hypothetical  visions  ought 
not  to  claim  the  attention  of  a  moment.  The  sun  of  Newton  has  absorbed 
the  radiance  of  all  other  luminaries  in  this  department.  His  works  and 
those  of  his  followers  will,  of  course,  supersede  the  infinite  number  of 
folios,  which,  to  use  the  expressions  of  Horace,  may  be  sent  to  wrap  up 
frankincense  and  perfumes,  the  only  way  in  which  they  can  now  be  useful. 
— DR.  VICESIMUS  KNOX,  Essays :  Cursory  and  General  Hints  on  the 
Choice  of  Books. 

REV.  JOHN  NEWTON. 
English  Hymn  Writer:  1725-1807. 

If  the  section  of  the  Church  of  England  which  usually  bears  that  title 
[Evangelical]  be  properly  so  distinguished,  there  can  be  no  impropriety 
in  designating  as  her  four  Evangelists,  John  Newton,  Thomas  Scott, 
Joseph  Milner  and  Henry  Venn.— SIR  JAMES  STEPHEN,  Essays  in 
Ecclesiastical  Biography. 

Out  of  the  profligate  slave-dealer,  John  Newton,  Methodism  formed  one 
of  the  purest  and  most  unselfish  of  saints.— W.  E.  H.  LECKY,  History  of 
England,  Vol.  I. 

MOWBRAY,  DUKE  OF  NORFOLK. 
First  Earl  Marshal  of  England  :  (?)-i39Q.. 

Bishop  :  "  Many  a  time  hath  banish'd  Norfolk  fought 
For  Jesu  Christ  in  glorious  Christian  field, 
Streaming  the  ensign  of  the  Christian  Cross 
Against  black  pagans,  Turks,  and  Saracens ; 
And,  toil'd  with  works  of  war,  retired  himself 
To  Italy ;  and  there,  at  Venice,  gave 
His  body  to  that  pleasant  country's  earth, 
And  his  pure  soul  unto  his  captain  Christ, 
Under  whose  colours  he  had  fought  so  long." 

— SHAKSPERE,  King  Richard  II.,  Act  IV.,  Scene  I. 

DANIEL  O'CONNELL. 
Irish  Orator  and  Agitator :   1775-1847. 

The  Political  Apostle  of  the  day. 

— HARRIET  MARTINEAU,  Biographical  Sketches. 
2O 


306  O'CONNELL,  ORIGEN,  OVID. 

See  how  triumphant  in  debate  and  in  action  O'Connell  is  !  Why  ? 
because  he  asserts  a  broad  principle  and  acts  up  to  it,  rests  all  his  body 
on  it  and  has  faith  in  it. — S.  T.  COLERIDGE,  Table  Talk. 

There  is  something  almost  awful  in  so  dark  a  close  of  so  brilliant  a 
career.  The  more  I  dwell  upon  the  s-ubject,  the  more  I  am  convinced  of 
the  splendour  and  originality  of  the  genius  and  of  the  sterling  character 
of  O'Connell,  in  spite  of  the  calumnies  that  surround  his  memory,  and  the 
many  and  grievous  faults  that  obscured  his  life.  But  when  to  the  great 
services  he  rendered  to  his  country,  we  oppose  the  sectarian  and  class 
warfare  that  resulted  from  his  policy,  the  fearful  elements  of  discord  he 
evoked,  and  which  he  alone  could  in  some  degree  control,  it  may  be 
questioned  whether  his  life  was  a  blessing  or  a  curse  to  Ireland. — W.  E. 
H.  LECKY,  Leaders  of  Public  Opinion  in  Ireland. 

ORIGEN. 

Greek  Father  of  the  Church:   186-254. 

Origen  was  a  mystic,  Tertullian  a  puritan.  Origen  was  profound  and 
speculative,  Tertullian  narrow  and  logical.  Origen  was  gentle  and  tolerant, 
Tertullian  bitter  and  exclusive.  Nor  do  they  differ  less  in  their  style. 
"  The  eloquence  of  the  one,"  says  Pressense,  "  is  large  and  limpid  as  his 
genius ;  it  is  a  beautiful  river,  abundant  and  majestic ;  that  of  the  other 
is  a  mountain  torrent."  Origen  lightens,  Tertullian  thunders,  Origen 
speaks  to  philosophers  like  a  Christian  philosopher  ;  Tertullian  is  a  tribune 
of  the  people  who  has  gone  down  to  the  forum  and  the  cross  roads  to 
kindle  the  passions  of  the  crowd  ;  he  is  the  ancient  orator  with  his  unre- 
strained gestures,  his  vivid  images,  his  grandiose  pathos. — F.  W.  FARRAR, 
Lives  of  the  Fathers,  Vol.  I. 

OVID. 
Roman  Poet :  B.C.  43-18  A.D. 

T)  noble  Ovide ! 

— CHAUCER,  The  Merchant's  Tale. 

Venus'  clerk,  Ovid, 

That  hath  sown  wonder  wide 

'The  great  god  of  love's  name. 

— Id.,  The  House  of  Fame,  Book  III. 

The  wanton  Ovid,  whose  enticing  rimes 
Have  with  attractive  wonder  forc'd  attention. 

— JOHN  FLETCHER,  On  Mr.  Francis  Beaumont's  Imitations  of  Ovid. 

Wonder  at  Ovid,  when  he  doth  rehearse 

The  Change  of  Things.     What  mighty  flame  doth  fill 

His  varied  fancy  to  enrich  his  Quill ! 

— GEORGE  DANIEL,  An  Essay  Endeavouring  to  Ennoble  our 
English  Poesy. 

Familiar  Ovid  tender  thoughts  inspires, 
And  Nature  seconds  all  his  soft  desires. 

— ROSCOMMON,  An  Essay  on  Translated  Verse. 


OVID,  PAINE,  PA  LEY.  307 

His  tender  accents  pitying  virgins  move, 
And  charm  the  list'ning  ear  with  tales  of  love. 

—GAY,  To  Bernard  Lintott. 

Though  Ovid  was  a  merry  man,  love  ever  kept  him  sad ; 
He  was  as  far  from  happiness,  as  one  that  is  stark  mad. 

— SIR  JOHN  SUCKLING,  Love  and  Debt  Alike  Troublesome. 

Well  sung  sweet  Ovid,  in  the  days  of  yore, 
What  flight  is  that,  which  love  will  not  explore  ? 

— POPE,  January  and  May. 

THOMAS  PAINE. 
English  Deist :  1737-1809. 

Burke  talked  of  "  that  digest  of  anarchy,  called  the  Rights  of  Man  ".— 
SIR  ARCHIBALD  ALISON. 

Even  Paine,  the  most  plausible  and  attractive  of  all  popular  theorists, 
was  scarcely  known  to  any  classes  but  the  lowest,  at  the  moment  when 
the  government  suddenly  thought  fit  to  toss  him  into  celebrity  on  the 
horns  of  a  prosecution. — LYTTON,  England  and  the  English. 

WILLIAM  PALEY. 

English  Philosopher  and  Divine  :  1743-1805. 

It  is  a  doubt  whether  mankind  are  most  indebted  to  those  who,  like 
Bacon  and  Butler,  dig  the  gold  from  the  mine  of  literature,  or  to  those 
who,  like  Paley,  purify  it,  stamp  it,  fix  its  real  value,  and  give  it  currency 
and  utility.  For  all  the  practical  purposes  of  life,  truth  might  as  well  be 
in  a  prison  as  in  the  folio  of  a  schoolman,  and  those  who  release  her  from 
her  cobwebbed  shelf,  and  teach  her  to  live  with  men,  have  the  merit  of 
liberating,  if  not  of  discovering  her. — REV.  C.  C.  COLTON,  Bacon. 

Paley  never  was  a  bishop — nor,  with  all  his  great  virtues  and  talents, 
did  he  deserve  to  be  one — for  he  was  not  orthodox  either  in  his  morality 
or  his  religion.  And  we  will  never  allow  heterodoxy  to  wear  the  lawn 
sleeves,  and  ominously  squint  on  bench  episcopal.  But  Paley  was  a 
pellucid  writer,  and  a  bloody  angler  ;  he  was  a  ten-dozen-trout-a-day 
man,  dressed  his  own  flies,  and  threw  as  far  and  fine  a  line  as  ever 
dropped,  gossamer-like,  on  deep  or  shallow. — JOHN  WILSON,  Essays : 
Anglomania. 

It  is  even  yet  more  remarkable,  that  while  Locke  should  be  the  great 
metaphysician  of  a  clerical  University,  so  Paley  should  be  its  tutelary 
moralist.  Of  all  the  systems  of  unalloyed  and  unveiled  selfishness,  which 
human  ingenuity  ever  devised,  Paley's  is,  perhaps,  the  grossest  and  most 
sordid. — LYTTON,  England  and  the  English. 

Paley  saw  what  he  did  see  through  an  atmosphere  of  light.  He  seized 
on  the  strong  points  of  his  subject  with  an  intuitive  sagacity,  and  has 
given  his  clear  bright  thoughts  in  a  style  which  has  made  them  the  pro- 
perty of  his  readers  almost  as  perfectly  as  they  were  his  own.  In  what, 
then,  did  he  fail  ?  We  have  said  that  he  was  characterised  by  the  dis- 


308  PALEY,  PALMERSTON,  PARACELSUS. 

tinctness  of  his  vision.  He  was  not,  we  think,  equally  remarkable  for  its 
extent.  He  was  popular,  rather  than  philosophical.  He  was  deficient  in 
that  intellectual  thirst  which  is  a  chief  element  of  the  philosophical  spirit. 
He  had  no  irrepressible  desire  to  sound  the  depths  of  his  own  nature,  or 
to  ascend  to  wide  and  all-reconciling  views  of  the  works  and  ways  of  God. 
Moral  philosophy  he  carried  backward  ;  nor  had  he  higher  claims  in 
religious  than  in  ethical  science. — W.  E.  CHANNING,  On  the  Character 
and  Writings  of  Fenelon. 

VISCOUNT  PALMERS  ION. 
English  Statesman :  1784-1865. 

Lord  Palmerston,  then,  was  a  great  man  chiefly  in  the  sense  that  he  was 
so  complete  a  man.  His  character  deserves  our  attention  more  from  its 
unusual  combination  of  good  qualities  than  from  the  marked  presence  of 
any  one  great  quality  or  attribute.  He  had  about  him  neither  the  glories 
nor  the  follies  of  a  genius  ;  but  he  possessed  in  rare  harmony  characteristics 
which  are  generally  in  antagonism. — EVELYN  ASHLEY,  Life  of  Viscount 
Palmerston,  Vol.  II. 

No  one  ever  heard  Lord  Palmerston  as  the  Laudator  temporis  acti. 
He  had  no  feeble  allusions  to  former  triumphs,  nor  complacent  recallings 
of  the  great  deeds  of  yore.  One  could  not  tell,  save  from  the  striking 
maturity  of  his  views  and  the  firmness  of  his  conclusions,  that  his  experi- 
ence had  been  greater  than  that  of  his  audience.  That  which  showed  the 
true  power  of  his  mind  was  the  lucid,  well-balanced,  rapid  grasp  with  which 
he  apprehended  the  question  immediately  to  hand,  shutting  out  entirely 
all  others,  and  bringing  to  bear  on  the  topic  before  him  all  the  resources 
of  his  knowledge. — MARQUIS  OF  LORNE,  Life  of  Viscount  Palmerston. 

There  are  men  whose  patriotism  is  loyal  and  single-minded,  to  whom 
politics  is  a  creed  and  not  a  profession,  and  whose  efforts  to  increase  the 
prosperity  of  their  country  and  the  welfare  of  its  people,  are  purely  animated 
by  honest  and  unselfish  motives.  To  this  class  belonged  Lord  Palmerston. 
In  the  finest  sense  of  the  word  he  was  a  patriot.  .  .  .  The  history  of  Lord 
Palmerston  is  that  of  a  man  who  attained  to  power  and  kept  it,  not  by  a 
birth  more  illustrious  than  that  of  many  of  his  contemporaries,  nor  by 
an  industry  which  was  insatiable,  nor  by  talents  of  the  very  highest  order  ; 
but  because  his  patriotism  was  loyal  and  undaunted,  his  honour  and  good 
faith  undoubted,  his  tact  consummate,  his  knowledge  of  the  world  accurate 
and  varied,  his  sympathy  with  the  people  over  whom  he  ruled  ready,  sin- 
cere, and  never  at  fault — because  in  tastes  and  characteristics  he  was  the 
most  representative  Englishman  of  his  day.  On  the  list  of  our  Premiers 
he  will  be  remembered  as  he  himself  would  wish  to  be  remembered,  not  as 
the  greatest,  but  as  the  most  English  of  our  statesmen. — A.  C.  EWALD, 
Representative  Statesmen,  Vol.  II. 

PARACELSUS. 
Swiss  Physician,  Alchemist,  and  Astrologer :  1493-1541. 

The  wondrous  Paracelsus,  life's  dispenser, 
Fate's  commissary,  idol  of  the  schools. 

—  ROBERT  BROWNING,  Paracelsus. 


PARACELSUS,  PARNELL.  309 

The  sixteenth  century  was  fertile  in  men,  like  Paracelsus,  full  of  arrogant 
pretensions,  and  eager  to  substitute  their  own  dogmatism  for  that  they  en- 
deavoured to  overthrow. — HALLAM,  Literature  of  the  Middle  Ages,  Vol.  I. 

That  medical  Ishmael,  Paracelsus.  .  .  .  Paracelsus  gloried  in  grandilo- 
quent shabbiness  and  boisterous  vulgarity. — R.  A.  VAUGHAN,  Hours  with 
the  Mystics,  Vol.  II. 

Paracelsus  was  one  of  the  most  remarkable  exemplars  of  knowledge  and 
nonsense,  wisdom  and  folly,  science  and  ignorance,  credulity  and  in- 
credulity, honesty  and  dishonesty,  religion  and  atheism,  with  which 
biography  has  made  us  acquainted.  I  say  this,  however,  without  any 
obstinacy,  or  attempt  at  accuracy.  For  his  friends  have  been  so  lavish  in 
his  praise,  and  his  enemies  so  unmeasured  in  their  censures,  that  to  acquire 
a  true  knowledge  of  his  tenets,  philosophy,  morals,  discoveries,  and  irregu- 
larities, would  require  more  time  than  the  subject  is  worth,  and  a  skill  that 
were  better  appropriated  to  other  purposes.  We  may  safely  assert,  how- 
ever, that  he  was  a  quack  of  the  first  order,  though  his  quackery  did  not 
command  the  greatest  success. — CHARLES  BUCKE,  Book  of  Human 
Character. 

CHARLES  STEWART  PARNELL. 
Irish  Statesman  :  1846-1891. 

The  strength  of  Parnell  was  character  rather  than  intellect.  But  the 
more  you  say  in  depreciation  of  the  intellectual  side,  the  more  you  at  the 
same  time  raise  the  estimate  of  his  strength  of  character.  What  that 
strength  was,  the  whole  world  has  learned  to  know.  To  bad  ends  and  to 
self-destruction,  the  same  terrible  strength  of  will  and  tenacity  of  purpose 
were  devoted,  which  formerly  were  given  to  noble  and  wise  ends,  but  the 
qualities  remained  the  same  amid  their  diverse  employment.  Parnell 
defying  and  conquering  the  whole  British  Parliament,  was  not  a  more 
picturesque,  or  daring,  or  potent  figure  than  Parnell  fighting  week  after 
week  his  desperate  and  forlorn  struggle  against  the  Irish  nation.  .  .  . 
No,  there  is  no  doubt  about  Parnell's  greatness.  He  was  a  portent,  a 
great  and  tragic  exception  to  Nature's  ordinary  laws,  like  an  eclipse  or  an 
earthquake. — T.  P.  O'CONNOR,  Charles  Stewart  Parnell :  A  Memory. 

DR.  THOMAS  PARNELL. 

English  Poet :   1679-1717. 

Admir'd  and  mourn'd  ! 

With  softest  manners,  gentlest  Arts  adorn'd  ! 
Blest  in  each  science,  blest  in  ev'ry  strain  ! 

—POPE,  Epistle  to  Robert,  Earl  of  Oxford. 

This  tomb  inscribed  to  gentle  Parnell's  name, 

May  speak  our  gratitude,  but  not  his  fame. 

What  heart  but  feels  his  sweetly-moral  lay, 

That  leads  to  truth  through  pleasure's  flowery  way  ? 

Celestial  themes  confess'd  his  tuneful  aid  : 

And  Heaven,  that  lent  him  genius  was  repaid. 

— GOLDSMITH,  Epitaph  on  Dr.  Parnell. 


3io  PARNELL,  PASCAL,  PATTESON. 

The  correct  and  equable  sweetness  of  Parnell. 

— CAMPBELL. 

A  gentle  wit  was  pure,  polite  Parnell, 

By  many  praised,  for  many  loved  him  well. 

His  muse  glides  on  "with  gentle  swimming  walk," 

And  e'en  while  singing  only  seems  to  talk. 

In  fact  she  is  an  English  gentlewoman, 

Whom  no  one  would  believe  a  thing  uncommon, 

Till  by  experience  taught,  we  find  how  rare 

Such  truly  English  gentlewomen  are. 

— HARTLEY  COLERIDGE,  Parnell. 

BLAISE  PASCAL. 
French  Philosopher  and  Mathematician  :  1623-1662. 

Pascal,  by  his  Provincial  Letters,  did  more  to  ruin  the  name  of  Jesuit 
than  all  the  controversies  of  Protestantism,  or  all  the  fulminations  of  the 
parliament  of  Paris. — HALLAM,  Literature  of  the  Middle  Ages,  Vol.  IV. 

As  it  is  easier  to  see  the  reflection  of  the  great  sphere  in  large  globes, 
though  defaced  by  some  crack  or  blemish,  than  in  drops  of  water,  so  men 
of  large  calibre,  though  with  some  eccentricity  for  madness,  like  Pascal 
or  Newton,  help  us  more  than  balanced  mediocre  minds. — EMERSON, 
Swedenborg  ;  or,  the  Mystic. 

The  chief  accuser  was  Blaise  Pascal.  His  powers  of  mind  were  such 
as  have  rarely  been  bestowed  on  any  of  the  children  of  men  ;  and  the 
vehemence  of  the  zeal  which  animated  him  was  but  too  well  proved  by 
the  cruel  penances  and  vigils  under  which  his  macerated  frame  sank  into 
an  early  grave.  His  spirit  was  the  spirit  of  St.  Bernard  :  but  the  delicacv 
of  his  wit,  the  purity,  the  energy,  the  simplicity  of  his  rhetoric,  had  never 
been  equalled,  except  by  the  great  masters  of  Attic  eloquence.  All  Europe 
read  and  admired,  laughed  and  wept.  The  Jesuits  attempted  to  reply  ; 
but  their  feeble  answers  were  received  by  the  public  with  shouts  of  mockery. 
— MACAULAY,  History  of  England,  Vol.  I.,  Chap.  VI. 

When  we  read  the  Provincial  Letters  or  the  Pensees,  we  feel  ourselves 
in  communion  with  a  living  writer  who  knew  how  to  light  up  with  an 
immortal  touch  both  the  follies  of  ecclesiasticism  and  the  struggles  of  a 
solitary  spirit  after  truth.  The  tenderness  of  a  genuine  insight  mingles 
with  all  the  sublimity  and  severe  reserve  of  the  thought,  and  so  we  get 
close  to  a  true  soul,  distant  as  Pascal  himself  in  some  respects  remains 
to  us.  The  play  of  human  feeling  which  we  miss  in  the  man  moves  in 
his  writings,  and  touches  our  hearts  with  an  ineffable  sympathy,  even 
when  we  remain  unconvinced  or  unenlightened. — DR.  JOHN  TULLOCH, 
Life  of  Pascal. 

JOHN  COLERIDGE  PATTESON. 
Missionary  Bishop  of  Melanesia  :   1827-1871. 

The  three  highest  titles  that  can  be  given  to  man  are  those  of  martyr, 
hero,  saint ;  and  which  of  the  three  is  there  that  in  substance  it  would  be 


PATTESON,  PEEL.  311 

irrational  toattach  to  the  name  of  John  Coleridge  Patteson  ? — GLADSTONE, 
Gleanings,  Vol.  II. 

"  He  loved  them  all  alike !  "  That  was  the  secret  of  John  Coleridge 
Patteson's  history  and  his  labours.  Need  more  be  said  of  him  ?  Surely 
the  simple  islander's  summary  of  his  character  is  the  honour  he  would 
prefer.— C.  M.  YONGE,  Life  ofj.  C.  Patteson,  Vol.  II. 


SIR  ROBERT  PEEL. 
English  Statesman  :   1788-1850. 

Sir  Robert  rides — he  never  rides  at  speed — 

Careful  his  seat,  and  circumspect  his  gaze  ; 

And  still  the  cautious  trot  the  cautious  mind  betrays. 

Wise  is  thy  heed  ! — how  stout  soe'er  his  back, 

Thy  weight  has  oft  proved  fatal  to  thy  hack  !  .  .  . 

From  the  starved  wretch  its  own  loved  child  we  steal — 

And  "  Free  Trade  "  chirrups  on  the  lap  of  Peel. 

— LYTTON,  The  New  Timon. 

In  all  the  course  of  my  acquaintance  with  Sir  Robert  Peel,  I  never  knew 
a  man  in  whose  truth  and  justice  I  had  a  more  lively  confidence,  or  in 
whom  I  saw  a  more  invariable  desire  to  promote  the  public  service.  In 
the  whole  course  of  my  communication  with  him,  I  never  knew  an  instance 
in  which  he  did  not  show  the  strongest  attachment  to  truth  ;  and  I  never 
saw  in  the  whole  course  of  my  life  the  smallest  reason  for  suspecting  that 
he  stated  anything  which  he  did  not  firmly  believe  to  be  the  fact. — DUKE 
OF  WELLINGTON,  Speech  in  House  of  Lords. 

In  truth  Sir  Robert  Peel  is  a  remarkable  man,  confessedly  a  puissance 
in  himself,  confessedly  the  leading  member  of  the  representatives,  yes, 
even  of  your  reformed  assembly  ;  he  is  worth  our  stopping  in  our  progress 
for  a  moment,  in  order  to  criticise  his  merits. — LYTTON,  England  and  the 
English. 

Sir  Robert  Peel  was  a  very  circumspect  statesman,  and  not  the  least  so 
in  those  matters  in  which  the  public  purse  was  concerned. — GLADSTONE. 

No  man  knew  better  than  Sir  Robert  Peel  how  evanescent  and  worth- 
less a  thing  was  the  applause  of  the  mob ;  and  at  the  same  time,  no  man 
more  ardently  longed  for  applause  than  he  did.  Yet  it  must  be  said,  that 
he  looked  far  beyond  the  loud  voices  and  the  clapping  of  hands  of  to-day. 
He  looked  like  "  mighty  Verulam,"  a  man  whose  greatness  he  almost 
equalled,  and  whose  virtues  he  far  excelled' — to  foreign  natio  ns,  and  to 
posterity,  to  confirm  the  verdict  of  his  own  time,  if  it  should  happen  to 
be  favourable ;  or  to  reserve  it,  if  it  should  happen  to  be  against  him. 
As  regards  foreign  nations,  his  wish  was  abundantly  gratified  before  he 
died.  His  was  the  name  that  represented  alike  the  common  sense,  the 
business  tact,  and  the  enlightened  statesmanship  of  England.  Europe 
rang  with  his  fame  ;  and  nations  who  never  heard  of  his  rivals  or  his 
enemies,  were  familiar  with  his  actions,  and  respected  England  in  his 
person. — CHARLES  FITZHUGH,  Life  and  Character  of  Sir  Robert  Peel. 


3i2  PEEL. 

His  character  has  been  termed  an  "  enigma  ".  It  is  no  enigma  to  me. 
His  apparent  inconsistencies,  for  I  think  them  apparent  only,  cause  me 
no  surprise.  He  is  an  enigma  only  in  the  sense  in  which  all  true,  high 
and  struggling  nature  is  an  enigma.  The  true  life  of  thought  is  a  life  of 
struggle.  His  inconsistencies  are  the  outward  and  visible  signs  of  his 
struggles.  Man  has  been  termed  a  "bundle  of  habits";  he  might  be 
called  also  a  bundle  of  inconsistencies.  .  .  .  Perhaps,  when,  in  future 
times,  the  interest  shall  have  subsided  concerning  some  questions,  which 
in  his  time  so  rent  the  world,  and  men  speak  of  Peel  as  we  now  speak  of 
Walpole,  with  calm  approval  of  a  wise  and  moderate  statesman,  it  may 
be  recorded  of  him  as  his  highest  honour,  that  whilst  others  spoke  of  his 
talents;  his  works,  and  his  virtues  too,  Wellington,  a  man  truthful  himself 
above  most  men,  in  his  old  age,  on  the  very  brink  of  his  own  grave,  spoke 
of  one  virtue  which  was  particularly  prominent  in  Peel,  and  praised  him 
as  one  of  the  most  truthful  men  he  had  ever  known  ;  a  golden  key  to  un- 
lock the  "enigma"  of  his  character.— SIR  LAURENCE  PEEL,  Life  and 
Character  of  Sir  R.  Peel. 

Not  that  Sir  Robert  Peel  was  a  theorist,  a  philosopher  governed  by 
general  ideas  and  abstract  principles.  He  was,  on  the  contrary,  a  man 
of  essentially  practical  mind,  consulting  facts  at  every  step  just  as  the 
mariner  consults  the  face  of  heaven,  seeking  success  above  all  things,  and 
prudent  even  to  circumspectness.  But  if  he  was  not  the  servant  of 
principles,  neither  was  he  their  detractor ;  he  respected  political  phil- 
osophy without  adoring  it,  believing  it  to  be  neither  sovereign  nor  futile, 
and  equally  a  stranger  to  the  insane  confidence  of  those  who  pretend  to 
regulate  all  things  according  to  the  bent  of  their  own  mind,  and  to  the 
impertinence  of  those  who  affect  to  despise  the  human 'mind,  as  if  they 
themselves  had  some  other.  .  .  .  God  seldom  accords  to  a  man  so  many 
favours.  He  had  endowed  Sir  Robert  Peel,  at  his  birth,  with  the  gifts  of 
intellect  as  well  as  the  gifts  of  fortune.  He  had  placed  him  in  an  age 
when  his  great  qualities  could  be  employed  with  success  on  great  objects. 
When  success  was  achieved,  He  recalled  him  suddenly  to  Himself,  in  the 
fulness  of  his  strength  and  glory,  like  a  noble  workman  who  has  performed 
his  task  before  the  close  of  the  day,  and  who  goes  to  receive  his  final  re- 
ward from  the  master  whom  he  has  well  served. — GUIZOT,  Memoirs  of  Sir 
Robert  Peel. 

Peel  was,  undoubtedly,  as  Lord  Beaconsfield  has  said,  a  great  member 
of  Parliament :  but  he  was  surely  very  much  more  than  that ;  he  was  a 
great  statesman,  a  great  Minister.  He  must  always  rank  among  the 
foremost  of  English  Ministers.  The  proud  boast  of  Heine  is  that,  if  any 
one  names  the  best  half-dozen  of  German  poets  his  name  must  be  brought 
in  among  them.  If  we  name  the  best  half-dozen  of  modern  English 
.Prime  Ministers,  we  can  hardly  fail  to  bring  in  the  name  of  Peel. — JUSTIN 
MCCARTHY,  Life  of  Sir  Robert  Peel. 

Peel  has  been  deservedly  praised  for  his  sagacity.  He  saw  clearly 
though  he  did  not  see  far.  He  could  thoroughly  appreciate  whatever  lay 
within  the  range  of  his  vision  ;  but  his  want  of  imagination  prevented  him 
from  computing  the  issues  of  the  future.  He  had  an  intellect  exactly  fitted 
to  grasp  details,  and  group  them  together  with  infallible  accuracy  ;  but  the 
bolder  outlines  of  the  picture  generally  escaped  him.  The  valleys  and  the 
plains  were  his  own  ;  but  his  eyes  did  not  reach  the  sunlit  mountain-peaks. 


PEEL,  COUNTESS  OF  PEMBROKE,  PENN.  313 

Take  him  all  in  all,  he  was  emphatically  a  silent  man  ;  but  his  silence  was 
the  silence  of  reflection  passing  into  resolution — not  like  that  of  Napoleon 
the  Third,  the  silence  of  doubt  and  hesitation. — W.  H.  DAVENPORT 
ADAMS,  English  Party  Leaders,  Vol.  II. 

In  his  last  tenure  of  office  Peel  speaks  of  himself  more  than  once  as 
working  seventeen  hours  a  day.  Even  with  that  desperate  diet  of  labour 
it  seems  difficult  to  understand  how  Peel  accomplished  all  that  he  did  at 
that  time.  .  .  .  Aloof  from  his  party  he  certainly  was.  In  the  Tom, 
Dick,  and  Harry  business,  as  it  may  be  called,  he  was  certainly  deficient : 
it  is  the  charge  brought  against  all  great  ministers.  But  he  had  one 
crowning  merit  which  finds  its  place  in  any  view  oT  him  as  a  parlia- 
mentary leader.  He  had  disciples :  he  made  men  :  he  formed  a  school. 
Of  no  other  minister  since  Pitt  can  this  be  said,  and  even  of  Pitt  only  in 
a  lesser  degree.  What  men  he  shaped  !  What  a  creed  of  honest  work 
he  left  with  them !  What  a  tradition  of  public  duty  !  Graham,  Glad- 
stone, Hardinge,  Dalhousie,  Canning,  Cardwell,  Sidney  Herbert,  and 
Newcastle.  These  men  stood  together  after  his  death  like  the  last  square 
of  a  broken  army,  firm  in  their  faith,  in  their  leader,  in  their  cause.  To 
be  a  Peelite  was  a  distinction  in  itself:  it  denoted  statesmanship,  industry, 
conscience.  .  .  .  For  then,  and  now,  and  for  all  time,  above  and  beyond 
that  Government  and  the  perished  passions  of  the  time,  there  looms  the 
great  figure  of  the  great  Minister,  with  feet  perhaps  of  clay  as  well  as 
iron,  but  with  a  heart  at  least  of  silver,  and  a  head  of  fine  gold. — LORD 
ROSEBERY,  Sir  Robert  Peel. 

MARY,  COUNTESS  OF  PEMBROKE. 
Sister  of  Sir  Philip  Sidney  :  1550-1621. 

Underneath  this  marble  hearse 
Lies  the  subject  of  all  verse, 
Sidney's  sister,  Pembroke's  mother  ; 
Death,  ere  thou  hast  slain  another, 
Learn'd  and  fair,  and  good  as  she, 
Time  shall  throw  a  dart  at  thee. 

— BEN  JONSON,  Epitaph  for  Countess  of  Pembroke. 


WILLIAM  PENN. 
English  Quaker:  Founder  of  Pennsylvania  :  1644-1718. 

All  who  revere  the  memory  of  Penn 
•Grieve  for  the  land  on  whose  wild  woods  his  name 
Was  fondly  grafted  with  a  virtuous  aim, 
Renounced,  abandoned  by  degenerate  Men 
For  state-dishonour  black  as  ever  came 
To  upper  air  from  Mammon's  loathsome  den. 

— WORDSWORTH,  To  the  Pennsylvanians. 

It  should  be  sufficient  for  the  glory  of  William  Penn,  that  he  stands 
upon  record  as  the  most  humane,  the  most  moderate,  and  the  most 
pacific  of  all  rulers.  — LORD  JEFFREY,  Essays. 


3M  PENN,  PEPYS. 

William  Penn,  the  great  legislator  of  the  Quakers,  had  the  success  of  a 
conqueror  in  establishing  and  defending  his  colony,  among  savage  tribes,, 
without  ever  drawing  the  sword ;  the.  goodness  of  the  most  benevolent 
rulers  in  treating  his  subjects  as  his  own  children ;  and  the  tenderness  of 
an  Universal  Father,  who  opened  his  arms  to  all  mankind,  without  dis- 
tinction of  sect  or  party.  In  his  republic  it  was  not  the  religious  creed,, 
but  personal  merit,  that  entitled  every  member  of  society  to  the  protection 
and  emoluments  of  the  state. — FATHER  G'LEARY,  Essay  on  Toleration. 

To  speak  the  whole  truth  concerning  Penn  is  a  task  which  requires, 
some  courage ;  for  he  is  rather  a  mythical  than  a  historical  person. 
Rival  nations  and*hostile  sects  have  agreed  in  canonizing  him.  England 
is  proud  of  his  name.  A  great  commonwealth  beyond  the  Atlantic  re- 
gards him  with  a  reverence  similar  to  that  which  the  Athenians  felt  for 
Theseus,  and  the  Romans  for  Quirinus.  The  respectable  society  of 
which  he  was  a  member  honours  him  as  an  apostle.  By  pious  men  of 
other  persuasions,  he  is  generally  regarded  as  a  bright  pattern  of 
Christian  virtue.  Meanwhile  admirers  of  a  very  different  sort  have 
sounded  his  praises.  The  French  philosophers  of  the  eighteenth  century 
pardoned  what  they  regarded  as  his  superstitious  fancies  in  consideration 
of  his  contempt  for  priests,  and  of  his  cosmopolitan  benevolence,  im- 
partially extended  to  all  races  and  to  all  creeds.  His  name  has  thus  be- 
come, throughout  all  civilised  countries,  a  synonym  for  probity  and 
philanthropy. — MACAULAY,  History  of  England,  Vol.  I.,  Chap.  IV. 

SAMUEL  PEPYS. 
Diarist:  1632-1703. 

Reading  this  book  [Pepys'  Diary},  in  short,  seems  to  us  to  be  quite 
as  good  as  living  with  Mr.  Samuel  Pepys  in  his  proper  person. — LORD 
JEFFREY,  Essays. 

Samuel  Pepys — the  most  confiding  of  diarists,  the  most  harmless  of 
turncoats,  the  most  wondering  of  quidnuncs. — LEIGH  HUNT,  Men,  Women,, 
and  Books. 

Samuel  Pepys  stands  incontestably  at  the  head  of  the  world's  litera- 
ture in  his  own  department.  .  .  .  Pepys'  Diary  has  been  frequently 
compared  with  Boswell's  Life  of  Johnson,  and  with  justice  in  so  far  as 
the  charm  of  each  arises  from  the  inimitable  naivete  of  the  author's  self- 
revelations.  Boswell  had  a  much  greater  character  than  his  own  to  draw,, 
but  Pepys  had  to  be  his  own  Johnson.  It  is  giving  him  no  excessive  praise 
to  say  that  he  makes  himself  as  interesting  as  Johnson  and  Boswell  to- 
gether. .  .  .  Another  Milton  is  more  likely  to  appear  than  another 
Pepys. — RICHARD  GARNETT,  The  Age  of  Dry  den. 

Certainly  Pepys  was  blest  with  the  queerest  and  most  omnivorous 
taste  that  ever  fell  to  the  lot  of  one  man  !  .  .  .  In  S.  Pepys,  the  under- 
standing is  hypertrophies  to  the  necrosis  or  marasmus  of  the  Reason  and' 
Imagination,  while  far-sighted  (yet,  ah !  how  short-sighted)  Self-interest 
fills  the  place  of  Conscience.  .  .  .  Pepys  was  always  a  Commonwealth's 
man  in  his  heart.  N.B. — Not  a  Democrat ;  but,  even  more  than  the  Con- 
stitutional Whigs,  the  very  antipode  of  the  modern  Jacobins,  or  Tail-up' 
Head-down  Politicians.  A  Voluptuary,  and  without  a  spark  of  bigotry 


PEPYS,  PERICLES,  PETER  THE  GREAT.  315 

in  his  nature,  he  could  not  be  a  Puritan  ;  but  of  his  free  choice  he  would 
have  preferred  Presbyterianism  to  Prelacy,  and  a  mixed  Aristocracy  of 
Wealth  and  talent  to  a  Monarchy,  or  even  a  mixed  Government — such 
at  least  as  the  latter  was  in  his  time. — S.  T.  COLERIDGE,  Notes,  Theolo- 
gical, Political,  etc. 

Pepys  has  been  likened  to  the  barber  of  King  Midas,  who  relieved 
his  mind  by  communicating  to  a  bundle  of  reeds  the  fact  that  his  master 
had  the  ears  of  an  ass  ;  and  assuredly  no  other  writer  has  so  unreservedly 
stripped  his  soul  bare. — H.  B.  WHEATLEY,  Samuel  Pepys  and  the  World 
he  lived  in. 

PERICLES. 

Athenian  Statesman  :  B.C.  499-429. 

Pericles,  called  half  in  derision  by  the  comic  poets  the  Zeus  of  Athens, 
called  afterwards,  with  reverence,  by  Plutarch,  the  Olympian — Pericles  ex- 
presses in  himself  the  spirit  of  this  age.  He  is  the  typical  Athenian,  who 
governed  Athens  during  the  years  in  which  Athens  governed  Greece,  who 
formed  the  taste  of  the  Athenians  at  the  time  when  they  were  educating 
the  world  by  the  production  of  immortal  works  of  beauty.  We  have  seen 
that  the  conquest  of  the  Persians  was  the  triumph  of  the  spirit,  and  that 
after  the  conquest  the  spirit  of  Humanity  found  itself  lor  the  first  time 
absolutely  and  consciously  free  in  Athens.  This  spirit  was,  so  to  speak,, 
incarnated  in  Pericles.  Verbum  carofactnm  est — the  Word  of  the  Greek 
genius  was  made  flesh  in  him,  and  dwelt  at  Athens.  In  obedience  to  its- 
dictates,  he  extended  the  political  liberties  of  the  Athenians  to  the  utmost, 
while  he  controlled  those  liberties  with  the  laws  of  his  own  reason.  In 
obedience  to  the  same  spirit,  he  expended  the  treasures  of  the  Ionian 
League  upon  the  public  works,  which  formed  the  subsequent  glory  of 
Hellas,  and  made  her  august  even  in  humiliation. — J.  ADDINGTON 
SYMONDS,  Studies  of  Greek  Poets. 

PETER  THE  GREAT. 
Emperor  of  Russia  :  1672-1725. 

Immortal  Peter  !  first  of  monarchs  !   He 
His  stubborn  country  tam'd,  her  rocks,  her  fens, 
Her  floods,  her  seas,  her  ill-submitting  sons  ! 
And  while  the  fierce  barbarian  he  subdu'd, 
To  more  exalted  soul  he  rais'd  the  man. 

— THOMSON,  The  Seasons  :   Winter. 

Illustrious  Peter  came. 
Wise  traveller  he,  who  over  Europe  went, 

Marking  the  ways  of  men  ; 
That  so  to  his  dear  country,  which  then  rose 
Among  the  nations  in  uncultured  strength, 
He  might  bear  back  the  stores 

Of  elder  polity, 
Its  sciences  and  arts. 

— SOUTHEY,  Ode  to  Emperor  Alexander  I.  of  Russia. 


316   PETER  THE  GREAT,  EARL  OF  PETERBOROUGH. 

The  creative  genius  of  Peter  the  Great  added  Russia  to  the  list  of 
civilised  nations. — MAZZINI,  Life  and  Writings,  Vol.  II. 

What  shall  we  say  of  him  ?  The  story  of  his  life  and  works  is  his  best 
monument.  Most  remarkable  is  the  energy  of  his  vitality,  the  passion 
which  he  put  into  everything  he  did,  work  and  play,  humanity  and 
cruelty.  .  .  .  Never  answer  "  Presently  "  was  his  order.  The  road  of 
"  To-morrow,"  he  knew,  leads  to  the  house  of"  Never  ".  He  might  have 
said,  with  Napoleon,  "  I  may  lose  a  battle,  but  I  will  never  lose  a  minute  ". 
Everything  stuck  fast  when  he  was  not  there  to  push  it.  He  was  no 
friend  of  luxury.  He  slept  on  a  plank,  ate  plainly  and  little,  drank  indeed 
too  much,  wore  simple  clothing,  drove  about  in  a  gig.  Yet  his  simplicity 
was  not  free  from  parsimony.  His  rough  and  boisterous  horse-play  has 
been  already  noticed.  Some  of  it  belonged  to  his  age.  He  had  a  demonic 
side  to  his  personality  ;  one  might  say  that  he  was  European  in  his  intellect, 
Asiatic  in  his  spirit,  Savage  in  his  wrath.  He  possessed  an  extraordinary 
power  of  enjoyment.  His  nature  flowed  out  on  all  sides  in  an  abundant 
stream.— OSCAR  BROWNING,  Life  of  Peter  the  Great. 

Peter  is  Russia — her  flesh  and  blood,  her  temperament  and  genius,  her 
virtues  and  her  vices.  With  his  various  aptitudes,  his  multiplicity  of 
effort,  his  tumultuous  passions,  he  rises  up  before  us,  a  collective  being. 
This  makes  his  greatness.  This  raises  him  far  above  the  pale  shadows 
which  our  feeble  historical  evocation  strives  to  snatch  out  of  oblivion. 
There  is  no  need  to  call  his  figure  up.  He  stands  before  us,  surviving 
his  own  existence  perpetuating  himself — a  continual  actual  fact. — K. 
WALISZEWSKI,  Life  of  Peter  the  Great  (transl.),  Vol.  I. 

CHARLES  MORDAUNT,  EARL  OF  PETERBOROUGH. 
English  General :   1658-1735. 

The  English  government  had  determined  to  send  an  expedition  to 
Spain,  under  the  command  of  Charles  Mordaunt,  Earl  of  Peterborough. 
This  man  was,  if  not  the  greatest,  yet  assuredly  the  most  extraordinary 
character  of  that  age,  the  King  of  Sweden  himself  not  excepted.  Indeed, 
Peterborough  may  be  described  as  a  polite,  learned,  and  amorous  Charles 
the  Twelfth.  His  courage  had  all  the  French  impetuosity,  and  all  the 
English  steadiness.  His  fertility  and  activity  of  mind  were  almost  beyond 
belief.  They  appeared  in  everything  that  he  did,  in  his  campaigns,  in 
his  negociations,  in  his  familiar  correspondence,  in  his  lightest  and  most 
unstudied  conversation.  He  was  a  kind  friend,  a  generous  enemy,  and 
in  deportment  a  thorough  gentleman.  But  his  splendid  talents  and 
virtues  were  rendered  almost  useless  to  his  country,  by  his  levity,  his 
restlessness,  his  irritability,  his  morbid  craving  for  novelty  and  for  ex- 
citement. His  weaknesses  had  not  only  brought  him,  on  more  than  one 
occasion,  into  serious  trouble ;  but  had  impelled  him  to  some  actions 
altogether  unworthy  of  his  humane  and  noble  nature.  Repose  was 
insupportable  to  him.  He  loved  to  fly  round  Europe  faster  than  a 
travelling  courier.  He  was  at  the  Hague  one  week,  at  Vienna  the  next. 
Then  he  took  a  fancy  to  see  Madrid  ;  and  he  had  scarcely  reached 
Madrid,  when  he  ordered  horses  and  set  off  for  Copenhagen.  No 
attendants  could  keep  up  with  his  speed.  No  bodily  infirmities  could 
confine  him.  Old  age,  disease,  imminent  death,  produced  scarcely  any 


EARL  OF  PETERBOROUGH,  PETRARCH.      317 

effect  on  his  intrepid  spirit.  Just  before  he  underwent  the  most  horrible 
of  surgical  operations,  his  conversation  was  as  sprightly  as  that  of  a 
young  man  in  the  full  vigour  of  health.  On  the  day  after  the  operation, 
in  spite  of  the  entreaties  of  his  medical  advisers,  he  would  set  out  on  a 
journey.  His  figure  was  that  of  a  skeleton.  But  his  elastic  mind  sup- 
ported him  under  fatigues  and  sufferings  which  seemed  sufficient  to  bring 
the  most  robust  man  to  his  grave.  Change  of  employment  was  as 
necessary  to  him  as  change  of  place.  He  loved  to  dictate  six  or  seven 
letters  at  once. — MACAULAY,  Essays  :  War  of  the  Succession  in  Spain. 

FRANCIS  PETRARCH. 
Italian  Poet :  1304-1374. 

Franceis  Petrark,  the  Laureat  poete, 
Highte  this  clerk  whos  rethorike  swete 
Enlumined  all  Itaille  of  poetrie. 

—CHAUCER,  The  Clerk's  Prologue. 

Therefore  Petrark  writeth 
This  storie,  which  with  high  stile  he  enditeth. 

— Id.,  The  Clerk's  Talc. 

Or  filch  whole  pages  at  a  clap  for  need 
From  honest  Petrarch,  clad  in  English  weed. 

—BISHOP  HALL,  Satires,  Book  VI.,  Satire  I. 

Then  Petrarch  follow'd,  and  in  him  we  see 
What  rhyme  improv'd  in  all  its  height  can  be. 

— DRYDEN,  Epistle  V. :  To  the  Earl  of  Roscotninon. 

When  wit  and  science  trimm'd  their  wither'd  bays, 
At  Petrarch's  voice,  and  beam'd  with  half  their  rays. 

— JAMES  CAWTHORN,  To  Miss of  Horsemandcn  in  Kent. 

.  .  .  Laura  lies 

In  Petrarch's  learned  arms,  drying  those  eyes 
That  did  in  such  sweet  smooth  pac'd  numbers  flow, 
As  made  the  world  enamour'd  of  his  woe. 

— CAREW,  A  Rapture. 

Hark  yet  again,  like  flute-tones  mingling  rare, 
Comes  the  keen  sweetness  of  Petrarca's  moan. 
Pass  thou  the  lintel  freely  ;  without  fear 
Feast  on  the  music. 

— A.  H.  HALLAM. 

For  Petrarch's  Laura  still  survives : 
She  died,  but  ne'er  will  die  again. 

— BYRON,  Answer  to  a  beautiful  Poem  entitled  "  The  Common  Lot ". 

And  the  crown 
Which  Petrarch's  laureate  brow  supremely  wore. 

— Id.,  Childe  Harold's  Pilgrimage,  Canto  IV \ 


318  PETRARCH. 

Petrarch  !  when  we  that  name  repeat, 

Its  music  seems  to  fall 

Like  distant  bells,  soft  voiced  and  sweet, 

But  sorrowful  withal ; — 

That  broken  heart  of  love  !  that  life 

Of  tenderness  and  tears  ! 

So  weak  on  earth — in  earthly  strife, — 

So  strong  in  holier  spheres ! 

How  in  his  boast  of  godlike  pride, 

While  em'lous  nations  ran 

To  kiss  his  feet,  he  slept  aside, 

And  wept  the  woes  of  man  ! 

— LORD  HOUGHTON. 

That  voice  so  sweet,  which  still  enchants,  inspires  ; 
That  voice,  which  sung  of  love,  of  liberty. 

— SAMUEL  ROGERS,  Italy  :  The  Campagna  of  Florence. 

One  whose  verse  shall  live, 
When  the  wave  rolls  o'er  Venice. 

—Id.,  Italy  :  St.  Mark's  Place. 

Petrarch  pale, 

From  whose  brain -lighted  heart  were  thrown 
A  thousand  thoughts  beneath  the  sun, 
Each  lucid  with  the  name  of  One. 

— E.  B.  BROWNING,  A  Vision  of  Poets. 

Arise,  O  Petrarch,  from  th'  Elysian  bowers, 

With  never-fading  myrtles  twin'd, 

And  fragrant  with  ambrosial  flowers, 

Where  to  thy  Laura  thou  again  art  join'd  ; 

Arise,  and  hither  bring  the  silver  lyre, 

Tun'd  by  thy  skilful  hand, 

To  the  soft  notes  of  elegant  desire, 

With  which  o'er  many  a  land 

Was  spread  the  fame  of  thy  disastrous  love. 

— LORD  LYTTLETON,  To  the  Memory  of  Miss  Lucy  Fortescue. 

The  ideal  world  in  which  Thou  so  long  didst  dwell  was  not  disenchanted 
by  thy  Laura's  death — -it  only  lay  in  more  pensive  shade,  more  melancholy 
lustre.  She  who  on  earth  had  dwelt  apart  from  thee  in  body,  seemed  not 
to  be  more  remotely  removed  when  she  went  to  Heaven.  Her  spirit  per- 
haps visited  Thee  more  frequently  than  ever  before  did  either  her  bodily 
presence,  or  the  idea  of  her  living.  Lost  at  last  utterly  and  for  ever 
in  the  grave  that  Madonna-like  countenance,  which  for  so  many  long 
years  shone  on  Thee  but  by  glimpses,  hurried  and  stealthy,  and  not  with- 
out trouble  and  tears.  But  memory,  strong  as  the  eye  in  undying  passion, 

"  Could  give  Thee  back  the  dead, 
Even  in  the  loveliest  looks  she  wore  !  " 

That  unengaged  delight  saved  Thee  from  many  sins,  and  thus 
"  Thy  soul  was  like  a  star,  and  dwelt  apart !  " 

and  immortal   fame  came  flying  to  thee  on   the  wings  of  love  ! — JOHN 
WILSON,  Essays :   The  Loves  of  the  Poets. 


PETRARCH.  319 

The  moral  character  of  Petrarch  was  formed  of  dispositions  peculiarly 
•calculated  for  a  poet.  An  enthusiast  in  the  emotions  of  love  and  friendship, 
of  glory,  of  patriotism,  of  religion,  he  gave  the  rein  to  all  their  impulses; 
and  there  is  not  perhaps  a  page  in  his  Italian  writing  which  does  not  bear 
the  trace  of  one  or  other  of  these  affections.  By  far  the  most  predomi- 
nant, and  that  which  has  given  the  greatest  celebrity  to  his  name,  is  his 
passion  for  Laura.  Twenty  years  of  unrequited  and  almost  unaspiring 
love  were  lightened  by  song  ;  and  the  attachment,  which,  having  long 
survived  the  beauty  of  its  object,  seems  to  have  at  one  time  nearly  passed 
from  the  heart  to  the  fancy,  was  changed  to  an  intenser  feeling,  and  to  a 
sort  of  celestial  adoration,  by  her  death.  .  .  .  The  general  excellences  of 
Petrarch  are  his  command  over  the  music  of  his  native  language,  his  cor- 
rectness of  style,  scarcely  two  or  three  words  that  he  has  used  having 
been  rejected  by  later  writers,  his  exquisite  elegance  of  diction,  improved 
by  the  perpetual  study  of  Virgil ;  but,  far  above  all,  that  tone  of  pure  and 
melancholy  sentiment,  which  has  something  in  it  unearthly,  and  forms  a 
strong  contrast  to  the  amatory  poems  of  antiquity.  .  .  .  The  great  defect 
of  Petrarch  was  his  want  of  strong  original  conception,  which  prevented 
him  from  throwing  off  the  affected  and  overstrained  manner  of  the  Pro- 
•ven^al  troubadours,  and  of  the  earlier  Italian  poets. — HALLAM,  Student's 
Middle  Ages,  Chap.  IX.,  Part  II. 

Petrarch  appears  to  me  a  corollary  from  Dante ;  the  same  spirit  in  a 
•different  mould  of  individual  character,  and  that  a  weaker  mould ;  yet 
better  adapted,  by  the  circumstances  of  his  position,  to  diffuse  the  great 
thought  which  possessed  them  both,  and  to  call  into  existence  so  great  a 
number  of  inferior  recipients  of  it,  as  might  affect  insensibly,  but  surely, 
the  course  of  general  feeling. — A.  H.  HALLAM. 

Petrarch  introduced  a  more  profound,  liberal,  and  elegant  scholarship, 
and  communicated  to  his  countrymen  that  enthusiasm  for  the  literature, 
the  history,  and  the  antiquities  of  Rome,  which  divided  his  own  heart 
with  a  frigid  mistress  and  a  more  frigid  Muse. — MACAULAY,  Essays : 
MackiavellL 

Of  all  Italian  writers,  I  prefer  my  much  loved  Petrarch.  No  poet  in 
the  whole  world  has  ever  surpassed  him  in  depth  and  fervency  of  feeling, 
and  its  expression  which  goes  straight  to  the  heart.  Therefore,  I  much 
prefer  his  sonnets,  Trionfi  and  Canzoni,  to  the  fantastic  follies  of 
Ariosto  and  horrid  distortions  of  Dante.  I  find  the  natural  flow  of 
words  which  comes  straight  from  the  heart  much  more  congenial  than 
Dante's  studied,  even  affected  chariness  of  speech.  He  has  always  been, 
and  will  remain  the  poet  of  my  heart. — SCHOPENHAUER  (transl.). 

One  of  the  first  and  brightest  luminaries  which  appeared  in  the  literary 
horizon,  after  a  long  and  dismal  night,  was  the  illustrious  Francesco  Pet- 
rarch. .  .  .  Enough  of  his  meaning  and  of  his  beauties  has  been  understood 
.by  his  own  countrymen,  to  give  him  the  title  of  the  Father  of  the  Tuscan 
poetry.  The  classical  excellence  of  his  language  has  contributed  to  give 
a  name  to  the  century  in  which  he  lived ;  for  the  Italians  call  it  the  good 
•age  of  their  language,  and  attribute  the  happy  effect  in  a  great  measure  to 
Petrarch.  Sweet,  indeed,  are  the  greater  part  of  his  sonnets,  sweet  their 
language,  and  sweet  their  sentiments.  Though  criticism  may  point  out 
quaintnesses  and  unnatural  conceits,  may  censure  one  part  as  metaphysical, 
and  another  as  affected,  yet  the  sensible  reader  will  not  judge  by  parts, 


320  PETRARCH,  PINDAR. 

but  by  the  whole  effect  of  an  entire  piece ;  and  if  his  feelings  have  been 
often  finely  touched,  and  his  imagination  delighted,  he  will  give  himself 
up  to  the  magic  of  the  poet,  and  joining  in  the  general  applause,  leave 
the  cold  critic  to  whisper  his  detraction  disregarded. — DR.  VICESIMUS 
KNOX,  Essays  :  Petrarch. 

Petrarch  was  great,  not  only  by  a  bootless  passion  which  his  poetical 
genius  clothed  in  imperishable  language — the  chaste  language  of  tender- 
ness and  regret  without  a  single  line  that  can  wound  the  most  refined 
sensibility — but  he  was  great  by  the  love  of  letters  to  which  he  devoted  a 
life  of  indefatigable  industry  ;  by  his  extraordinary  learning  and  memory, 
which  enabled  him,  we  know  not  how,  to  acquire  and  retain  a  minute 
knowledge  of  classical  literature  and  history,  inconceivable  in  an  age  when 
every  writer  had  to  be  studied  in  manuscript,  and  manuscripts  themselves 
were  scarce  and  costly ;  by  his  independence  of  character  and  love  of 
truth,  which  made  him  the  fearless  advocate  of  every  good  and  great 
cause,  speaking  his  mind  with  an  eloquence  and  energy  then  unknown 
to  Europe,  and  without  regard  to  consequences ;  and  by  his  devoted  and 
passionate  adherence  to  the  freedom  and  glory  of  Italy,  which  he  sought 
to  promote  alike  by  imperial  or  aristocratic  influence  and  by  the  democracy 
of  Rome — the  inspired  herald  of  a  struggle  of  five  centuries,  which  has  ac- 
complished in  our  times  and  the  liberation  of  united  Italy. — HENRY  REEVE, 
Life  of  Petrarch. 

But  Petrarch's  highest  merit  by  no  means  consists  in  this  new  classic 
elegance  ;  it  consists  in  the  fact  that  he  was  the  first  to  write  freely  of  all 
things  in  the  same  way  that  a  man  speaks.  He  was  the  first  to  throw 
aside  all  scholastic  crutches,  and  prove  how  much  more  swiftly  a  man 
could  walk  without  leaning  upon  them. — PASQUALE  VILLARI,  Machiavelli 
and  his  Times  (transl.),  Vol.  I. 

The  lines  of  Petrarch  and  Dante  are  woven  like  golden  threads  into  the 
fabric  of  our  conversation  and  literature. — H.  R.  HAWEIS,  Music  and 
Morals. 

PINDAR. 
Greek  Lyric  Poet :  B.C.  522-442. 

Here,  like  some  furious  prophet,  Pindar  rode, 
And  seem'd  to  labour  with  th'  inspiring  God. 
Across  the  harp  a  careless  hand  he  flings, 
And  boldly  sinks  into  the  sounding  strings. 

—POPE,  The  Temple  of  Fame.. 

O  noblest,  happiest  age  ! 

When  Aristides  rul'd,  and  Cimon  fought; 

When  all  the  generous  fruits  of  Homer's  page 

Exulting  Pindar  saw  to  full  perfection  brought. 

O  Pindar,  oft  shall  thou  be  hail'd  of  me  : 

Not  that  Apollo  fed  thee  from  his  shrine ; 

Not  that  thy  lips  drank  sweetness  from  the  bee ; 

Nor  yet  that,  studious  of  thy  notes  divine, 

Pan  danc'd  their  measure  with  the  sylvan  throng  : 

But  that  thy  song  was  proud  to  unfold 


PINDAR.  321 

What  thy  base  rulers  trembled  to  behold ; 
Amid  corrupted  Thebes  was  proud  to  tell 
The  deeds  of  Athens  and  the  Persian  shame  : 
Hence  on  thy  head  their  impious  vengeance  fell. 

— AKENSIDE,  Ode  XVIII. :  To  Francis,  Earl  of  Huntingdon. 

Pindar,  that  eagle,  mounts  the  skies. 

— PRIOR,  An  English  Ballad,  etc. 

O  thou  Dircaean  swan,  on  high, 
Round  whom  familiar  thunders  fly, 
While  Jove  attends  a  language  like  his  own  ! 

— YOUNG,  Impcrium  Palagi,  Strain  IV. 

Pindar's  unnavigable  Song 
Like  a  swoln  Flood  from  some  steep  Mountain  pours  along ; 

The  Ocean  meets  with  such  a  Voice 
From  his  enlarged  Mouth,  as  drowns  the  Ocean's  Noise. 
So  Pindar  does  new  Words  and  Figures  roll 
Down  his  impetuous  Dithyrambic  Tide, 

Which  in  no  Channel  deigns  t'  abide, 

Which  neither  Banks  nor  Dykes  control. 

Whether  th'  Immortal  Gods  he  sings, 

In  a  no  less  Immortal  Strain, 
Or  the  great  Acts  of  God-descended  Kings, 
Who  in  his  Numbers  still  survive  and  reign. 

Each  rich  embroidered  Line, 
Which  their  triumphant  Brows  around, 

By  his  sacred  Hand  is  bound, 
Does  all  their  starry  Diadems  out-shine. 

— COWLEY,  The  Praise  of  Pindar,  /.,  //. 

though  he  inherit 
Nor  the  pride,  nor  ample  pinion, 

That  the  Theban  Eagle  bear 
Sailing  with  supreme  dominion 
Thro'  the  azure  deep  of  air. 

— GRAY,  The  Progress  of  Poesy. 

Bold 

Electric  Pindar,  quick  as  fear, 
With  race-dust  on  his  cheeks,  and  clear 
Slant  startled  eyes  that  seem  to  hear 
The  chariot  rounding  the  last  goal, 
To  hurtle  past  it  in  his  soul. 

— E.  B.  BROWNING,  A  Vision  of  Poets. 

Pindar  unfortunately  gave  himself  up  to  the  turf,  the  prize-ring,  and  a 
curious  kind  of  Pagan  high-church  hagiology,  much  as  if  the  editor  of 
Bell's  Life,  the  author  of  Boxiana,  and  the  poet  of  the  Christian  Year, 
were  all  three  gentlemen  in  one.  The  universal  human  vein  shows  itself, 
however,  here  and  there,  with  a  strange  gleam  of  tenderness,  in  stray 
biographical  allusions  and  moral  reflections,  interspersed  with  the  main 
subject  in  hand,  which  is  always  to  celebrate  some  Derby  event  of  that 

21 


322  PINDAR. 

old   time,  or   to  trace   up  the  lineage  of  Hellenic  game-chickens  and 
White-headed  Bobs  to  Hercules. — GEORGE  BRIMLEY,  Essays. 

Here  we  must  stop  short  in  the  front  of  Pindar — the  Hamlet  among 
these  lesser  actors,  the  Shakespeare  among  a  crowd  of  inferior  poets. 
To  treat  of  Greek  lyrical  poetry  and  to  omit  Pindar  is  a  paradox  in  action. 
Yet  Pindar  is  so  colossal,  so  much  apart,  that  he  deserves  a  separate 
study,  and  cannot  be  dragged  in  at  the  end  of  a  bird's-eye  view  of  a 
period  of  literature.  At  the  time  of  Pindar,  poetry  was  sinking  into 
mannerism.  He  by  the  force  of  his  native  originality  gave  it  a  wholly 
fresh  direction,  and  created  a  style  as  novel  as  it  was  inimitable.  Like 
Athos,  like  Atlas,  like  the  Matterhorn,  like  Monte  Viso,  like  the  Peak  of 
Teneriffe,  he  stands  alone,  sky-piercing  and  tremendous  in  his  solitary 
strength.  .  .  .  The  grand  pre-eminence  of  Pindar  as  an  artist  was  due  in 
a  great  measure  to  his  personality.  Frigid,  austere,  and  splendid  ;  not 
genial  like  that  of  Simonides,  not  passionate  like  that  of  Sappho,  not 
acrid  like  that  of  Archilochus  ;  hard  as  adamant,  rigid  in  moral  firm- 
ness, glittering  with  the  strong  keen  light  of  snow  ;  haughty,  aristocratic, 
magnificent — the  unique  personality  of  the  man  Pindar,  so  irresistible  in 
its  influence,  so  hard  to  characterise,  is  felt  in  every  strophe  of  his  odes. 
In  his  isolation  and  elevation  Pindar  stands  like  some  fabled  heaven- 
aspiring  peak — a  Matterhorn  of  solid  gold,  conspicuous  from  afar,  girdled 
at  the  base  with  ice  and  snow,  beaten  by  winds,  wreathed  round  with 
steam  and  vapour,  jutting  a  sharp  and  dazzling  outline  into  cold  blue 
ether.  Few  things  that  have  life  dare  to  visit  him  at  this  grand  altitude. 
Glorious  with  sunlight  and  with  stars,  touched  by  rise  and  set  of  day 
with  splendour,  he  shines  when  other  lesser  heights  are  dulled.  Pindar 
among  his  peers  is  solitary.  He  had  no  communion  with  the  poets  of 
his  day.  He  is  the  eagle,  Simonides  and  Bacchylides  are  jackdaws. 
He  soars  to  the  empyrean  ;  they  haunt  the  valley  mists. 

Reading  his  poetry  is  like  quaffing  wine  that  bubbles  in  a  bowl  of 
;gold.  .  .  .  The  splendour-loving  Pindar  is  his  name  and  title  for  all 
time.  .  .  .  To  Pindar's  soul  splendour  was  as  elemental  as  harmony  to 
Milton's.  Of  the  graces,  Aglaia  must  have  been  his  favourite.  Nor, 
love  as  he  did  the  gorgeousness  of  wealth,  was  it  mere  transitory  pomp, 
the  gauds  and  trappings  of  the  world,  which  he  admired.  There  must 
be  something  to  stir  the  depths  of  his  soul — beauty  of  person,  or  perfection 
of  art,  or  moral  radiance,  or  ideal  grandeur.  The  blaze  of  real  magnifi- 
cence draws  him  as  the  sun  attracts  the  eagle  ;  he  does  not  flit  moth-like 
about  the  glimmer  of  mere  ephemeral  lights.  ...  In  plain  critical  lan- 
guage, Pindar  combines  the  strong  flight  of  the  eagle,  the  irresistible  force 
of  the  torrent,  the  richness  of  Greek  wine,  the  majestic  pageantry  of 
Nature  in  one  of  her  sublimer  moods. — J.  ADDINGTON  SYMONDS,  Studies 
.of  Greek  Poets. 

Often  in  thinking  over  the  best  pieces  of  Pindar — the  majestic  organ- 
playing,  the  grave  strong  magic  of  language,  the  lightning-flashes  of 
half-revealed  mystery — one  wonders  why  this  man  is  not  counted  the 
greatest  poet  that  ever  lived,  why  he  has  not  done  more,  mattered  more. 
The  answer  perhaps  is  that  he  was  a  poet  and  nothing  else.  He  thought 
in  music ;  he  loved  to  live  among  great  and  beautiful  images — Heracles, 
Achilles,  Perseus,  lason,  the  daughters  of  Cadmus.  When  any  part  of 
his  beloved  saga  repelled  his  moral  sensitiveness,  he  glided  away  from  it, 
careful  not  to  express  scepticism,  careful  also  not  to  speak  evil  of  a  god. 


PINDAR,  PITT.  323 

He  loved  poetry  and  music,  especially  his  own.  As  a  matter  of  fact, 
there  was  no  poetry  in  the  world  like  his,  and  when  other  people  sang 
they  jarred  on  him,  he  confesses,  like  crows.— GILBERT  MURRAY,  History 
of  Ancient  Greek  Literature. 

WILLIAM  PITT. 
English  Statesman:  1759-1806. 

With  more  than  mortal  powers  endowed, 
How  high  they  soared  above  the  crowd  ! 
Theirs  was  no  common  party  race. 
Jostling  by  dark  intrigue  for  place  ; 
Like  fabled  gods,  their  mighty  war 
Shook  realms  and  nations  in  its  jar  : 
Beneath  each  banner  proud  to  stand, 
Looked  up  the  noblest  of  the  land  ; 
Till  through  the  British  world  were  known 
The  names  of  Pitt  and  Fox  alone. 

—SiR  WALTER  SCOTT. 

And  thou,  blest  star  of  Europe's  darkest  hour, 

Whose  words  were  wisdom,  and  whose  counsels  power, 

Whom  earth  applauded  through  her  peopled  shores ; 

Alas  !  whom  earth  too  early  lost  deplores  : 

Young  without  follies,  without  rashness  bold, 

And  greatly  poor  amidst  a  nation's  gold ; 

In  every  veering  gale  of  faction  true, 

Untarnish'd  Chatham's  genuine  child  adieu  ! 

Unlike  our  common  suns,  whose  gradual  ray 

Expands  from  twilight  to  intenser  day ; 

Thy  blaze  broke  forth  in  full  meridian  sway. 

— HEBER. 

In  Pitt  the  genius  withered  the  heart.— NAPOLEON  BONAPARTE. 

Nor  were  his  political  abilities  his  only  talents :  his  eloquence  was  an 
era  in  the  senate,  peculiar  and  spontaneous  ;  familiarly  expressing  gigantic 
sentiments  and  instinctive  wisdom  :  not  like  the  torrent  of  Demosthenes, 
or  the  splendid  conflagration  of  Tully,  it  resembled  sometimes  the  thunder, 
and  sometimes  the  music  of  the  spheres.  Like  Murray,  he  did  not  con- 
duct the  understanding  through  the  painful  subtlety  of  argumentation  ; 
nor  was  he,  like  Townshend,  for  ever  on  the  rack  of  exertion ;  but  rather 
lightened  upon  the  subject,  and  reached  the  point  by  the  flashings  of  his 
mind  ;  which,  like  those  of  his  eye,  were  felt,  but  could  not  be  followed. — 
HENRY  GRATTAN. 

The  greatest  warrior  of  modern  times  is  not  Napoleon,  it  is  Pitt. 
Napoleon  carried  on  warfare,  Pitt  created  it.  It  is  Pitt  who  willed  all  the 
wars  of  the  Revolution  and  of  the  Empire.  They  proceeded  from  him. 
Take  away  Pitt  and  put  Fox  in  his  place,  there  would  then  be  no  reason 
for  that  exorbitant  battle  of  twenty-three  years. — VICTOR  HUGO,  William 
.Shakespeare  (transl.). 


324  PITT,  PIZARRO. 

Certainly  no  Minister  ever  better  understood  his  time  and  country  than 
the  younger  Pitt.  The  main  cause  of  his  precocious  and  enduring  as- 
cendency may  be  found  in  that  remarkable  sympathy  with  public  opinion, 
which  is  the  most  incontestable  proof  of  a  statesman's  comprehension  of 
the  spirit  of  his  age  and  nation. — LYTTON,  Essays :  Knowledge  of  the 
World. 

But  separating  the  man  from  the  policy,  we  find  in  Pitt  statesmanship 
of  the  highest  order.  Though  ruling  by  the  sterner  forms  of  command, 
he  exercised  the  most  complete  sway  over  the  House  of  Commons.  Not 
even  the  tyrannical  Chatham,  who  treated  members  of  Parliament  very 
much  as  the  severe  Dr.  Busby  treated  his  Westminster  boys,  was  more 
implicitly  obeyed.  He  was  the  greatest  parliamentary  minister  that  has 
ever  been  ;  none  knew  better  than  he  how  to  obtain  a  majority,  how  to 
quell  opposition,  and  how  to  address  the  assembly.  He  had  the  great 
gift,  which  is  often  more  allied  with  common  sense  than  with  genius,  of 
seeing  what  was  the  right  course  to  be  pursued  precisely  at  the  right 
moment.  .  .  .  There  have  been  on  the  beadroll  of  English  ministers  men 
more  popular,  more  kindly,  more  generous,  but  none  more  able,  more 
straightforward,  or  more  worthy  the  high  position  he  held,  than  the  great, 
the  disinterested,  the  severe  William  Pitt. — A.  C.  EWALD,  Representative 
Statesmen,  Vol.  I. 

We  can  well  believe,  from  a  perusal  of  Pitt's  orations,  that  his  con- 
temporaries did  not  exaggerate  when  they  compared  his  deportment  and 
learning  in  debate  to  those  of  Marlborough  in  the  field.  If  he  descended 
into  the  arena  it  was  as  an  acknowledged  chief  rather  than  as  a  combatant. 
It  was  for  him  to  ride  on  the  whirlwind  and  direct  the  storm.  His  courage 
was  invincible,  but  it  was  not  without  fire  or  passion,  deriving  nothing 
from  the  ebullitions 

"  Of  mounting  spirits,  or  fermenting  blood." 

He  never  lost  his  self-possession  ;  no  tempest  of  opposition  could  shake 
his  firmness. — W.  H.  DAVENPORT  ADAMS,  English  Party  Leaders. 

William  Pitt,  that  is,  the  second  William  Pitt,  was  a  great  Palliator  ; 
insomuch,  that,  though  of  a  high  mind,  personally,  he  defended  almost 
every  public  delinquent,  during  the  long  period  of  his  administration. — 
CHARLES  BUCKE,  Book  of  Human  Character. 

That  is  where  we  are;  on  the  one  side,  timid  imbecility  "waiting  for 
instructions  from  the  constituencies";  furious  imbecility  on  the  other, 
looking  out  for  party  advantage.  Oh  !  for  a  few  months  of  William  Pitt ! 
— HUXLEY,  Letter  to  Sir  J.  Donnelly  :  Life  and  Letters,  Vol.  II. 

No  country  could  have  too  many  Pitts :  the  more  she  has  the  greater 
will  she  be. — LORD  ROSEBERY,  Life  of  Pitt. 

FRANCIS  PIZARRO. 
Spanish  Warrior,  Conqueror  of  Peru  :  1475-1541. 

Pizarro  here  was  born  ;  a  greater  name 
The  list  of  Glory  boasts  not.     Toil  and  Pain, 
Famine  and  hostile  Elements,  and  Hosts 
Embattled,  fail'd  to  check  him  in  his  course, 


PIZARRO,  PLATO.  325 

Not  to  be  wearied,  not  to  be  deterr'd, 

Not  to  be  overcome.     A  mighty  realm 

He  over-ran,  and  with  relentless  arm 

Slew  or  enslaved  its  unoffending  sons, 

And  wealth,  and  power,  and  fame,  were  his  rewards. 

There  is  another  world,  beyond  the  grave, 

According  to  their  deeds  where  men  are  judged. 

— SOUTHEY,  For  a  Column  at  Trnxillo. 


PLATO. 
Greek  Philosopher:  B.C.  429-347. 

Go,  soar  with  Plato  to  th'  empyreal  sphere, 
To  the  first  good,  first  perfect,  and  first  fair ; 
Or  tread  the  mazy  round  his  followers  trod, 
And  quitting  sense  call  imitating  God. 

— POPE,  Essay  on  Man,  Epistle  II. 

The  sum  of  Plato's  wondrous  wisdom  is, 
This  is  not  that,  and  therefore,  that  not  this. 

— ROBERT  DODSLEY,  Modern  Reasoning. 

Like  Plato,  give  us  poetry  in  prose. 

— CHURCHILL,  The  Farewell. 

Form  Plato's  honey-dropping  tongue  distill'd 
In  copious  streams,  devolving  o'er  the  sense 

Its  sweet  regalement. 

And  Plato,  for  a  heathen,  nobler  dreams 

Than  dream  some  modern  poets. 

— WILLIAM  THOMPSON,  Sickness,  a  Poem. 

Then  Plato's  words  of  light  in  thee  and  me 
Lingered  like  moonlight  in  the  moonless  east. 

— SHELLEY,  Prince  Athanase,  Part  II. 

What !  are  thy  triumphs,  sacred  Truth,  belied  ? 
Why  then  hath  Plato  liv'd— or  Sydney  died  ? 

— CAMPBELL. 

The  lunar  beam 

Of  Plato's  genius,  from  its  lofty  sphere, 
Fell  round  him  in  the  grave  of  Academe 
Softening  their  inbred  dignity  austere. 

— WORDSWORTH,  Dion. 

Every  man  is  born  an  Aristotelian,  or  a  Platonist.  .  .  .  Plato's  works 
are  logical  exercises  for  the  mind.  ...  I  am  sure  no  born  Platonist  can 
ever  change  into  an  Aristotelian. — S.  T.  COLERIDGE,  Table  Talk. 

Schools  of  real  philosophy  there  are  but  two — best  named  by  the  arch- 
philosopher  of  each,  namely,  Plato  and  Aristotle. — Id.,  Notes  on  English 
Divines,  Vol.  I. 


326  PLATO. 

The  writings  of  Plato,  and  Bishop  Taylor,  and  the  Theoria  Sacra  of 
Burnet,  furnish  undeniable  proofs  that  poetry  of  the  highest  kind  may 
exist  without  metre,  and  even  without  the  contradistinguishing  objects  of 
a  poem. — S.  T.  COLERIDGE,  Biographla  Literaria. 

That  Plato,  more  even  than  Pericles,  saw  the  consummation  of  the 
Athenian  intellect,  and  witnessed  more  than  Pericles  himself  the  civili- 
sation wrought  by  Pericles.  This  consideration  gives  a  value  to  every 
sentiment  expressed  by  Plato.  The  Greek  mind  was  then  more  intensely 
Greek  than  at  any  subsequent  period. — DE  QUINCEY,  Leaders  in  Litera- 
ture. 

Plato  is  a  gownsman  :  his  garment  though  of  purple,  and  almost  sky- 
woven,  is  an  academic  robe,  and  hinders  action  with  its  voluminous  folds. 
— EMERSON,  Swedenborg ;  or,  the  Mystic. 

There  are  not  in  the  world  at  any  one  time  more  than  a  dozen  persons 
who  read  and  understand  Plato :  never  enough  to  pay  for  an  edition  of  his 
works  ;  yet  to  every  generation  these  come  duly  down,  for  the  sake  of  those 
few  persons,  as  if  God  brought  them  in  his  hand. — Id.,  Spiritual  Laws. 

Out  of  Plato  come  all  things  that  are  still  written  and  debated  about 
among  men  of  thought.  .  .  .  Plato  is  philosophy,  and  philosophy,  Plato, 
— at  once  the'glory  and  the  shame  of  mankind,  since  neither  Saxon  nor 
Roman  have  availed  to  add  any  idea  to  his  categories.  No  wife,  no 
children  had  he,  and  the  thinkers  of  all  civilized  nations  are  his  posterity, 
and  are  tinged  with  his  mind. — How  many  great  men  Nature  is  incessantly 
sending  up  out  of  night,  to  be  his  men, — Platonists !  the  Alexandrians,  a 
constellation  of  genius  ;  the  Elizabethans,  not  less;  Sir  Thomas  More, 
Henry  More,  John  Hales,  John  Smith,  Lord  Bacon,  Jeremy  Taylor,  Ralph 
Cudworth,  Sydenham,  Thomas  Taylor ;  Marcilius  Ficinus,  and  Picus 
Mirandola.  Calvinism  is  in  his  Phcedo  ;  Christianity  is  in  it.  Mahometan- 
ism  draws  all  its  philosophy,  in  its  handbook  of  morals,  the  Akhlak-y- 
Jalaly,  from  him.  Myticism  finds  in  Plato  all  its  texts. — Id.,  Plato  ;  or 
the  Philosopher. 

The  delicious  irony  of  Plato. — MACAULAY,  Essays  :  Lord  Bacon. 

According  to  the  opinions  of  the  best  judges,  ancient  and  modern,  the 
greatest  master  of  the  beauties  of  style  whom  the  world  ever  saw  was  the 
divine  Plato.  The  ancients  hesitated  not  to  assert,  in  the  zeal  of  their 
admiration,  that  if  Jupiter  were  to  speak  in  the  language  of  Greece,  he 
would  infallibly  express  himself  in  the  diction  of  Plato.  He  possessed  the 
art  of  combining  severity  with  grace,  and  sweetness  with  grandeur. — DR. 
VICESIMUS  KNOX,  Essays  :  On  the  Style  of  Xenephon  and  Plato. 

Plato  himself,  the  supreme  transcendentalist  of  antiquity,  and  to  this 
day  unapproached  among  mankind  for  the  magnificent  sweep  of  clear  in- 
tellect and  the  beauty  and  gorgeousness  of  poetic  expression  with  which 
he  expounded  Transcendentalism. — DAVID  MASSON,  Life  of  Carlyle. 

Philosophers  may  be  divided  into  seers  on  the  one  hand,  and  into  gropers 
on  the  other.  Plato,  to  use  a  contrast  which  is  often  used  for  other  pur- 
poses, is  the  type  of  the  first.  On  all  subjects  he  seems  to  have  before 
him  a  landscape  of  thought,  with  clear  outline,  and  pure  air,  keen  rocks 
and  shining  leaves,  an  Attic  sky  and  crystal  flowing-river,  each  detail 
which  was  as  present,  as  distinct,  as  familiar  to  his  mind  as  the  view  from 


PLATO,  PLUTARCH.  327 

the  Acropolis,  or  the  road  to  Decelea.     As  were  his  conceptions,  so  is  his 
style. — WALTER  BAGEHOT,  Literary  Studies,  Vol.  II. 

Plato  dies  in  the  school  to  appear  in  the  pulpit. — R.  A.  WILLMOTT, 
Advantages  of  Literature. 

It  is  just  this  inconclusiveness  of  Plato's  thought  that  has  made  it  im- 
mortal. We  get  in  him  not  a  system  but  a  spirit,  and  a  spirit  that  no 
discoveries  can  supersede.  It  is  a  mistake  to  think  of  Plato  as  a  dreamer  ; 
he  was  keen  and  even  satirical  in  his  insight,  but  he  rises  beyond  his 
own  satire,  and,  except  in  the  Gorgias  period,  cares  always  more  for  the 
beauty  he  can  detect  in  things  than  for  the  evil.  It  is  equally  a  mistake 
to  idealise  him  as  a  sort  of  Apolline  hero,  radiant  and  untroubled,  or  to 
take  that  triumphant  head  of  the  Indian  Bacchus  to  be  his  likeness.  He 
was  known  for  his  stoop  and  his  searching  eyes  ;  the  Letters  speak  often 
of  illness ;  and  Plato's  whole  tone  towards  his  time  is  like  Carlyle's  or 
Mr.  Ruskin's.  He  is  the  greatest  master  of  Greek  prose  style,  perhaps 
of  prose  style  altogether,  that  ever  lived.  ...  If  a  man's  life  can  be 
valued  by  what  he  thinks  and  what  he  lives  for,  Plato  must  rank  among 
the  saints  of  human  history. — GILBERT  MURRAY,  History  of  Ancient 
Greek  Literature. 

PLUTARCH. 
Greek  Biographer  and  Moralist :  50-120. 

Wise,  honest  Plutarch  !  to  thy  deathless  praise 

The  sons  of  Rome  this  grateful  statue  raise  : 

For  why  ?  both  Greece  and  Rome  thy  fame  have  shar'd ; 

Their  heroes  written,  and  their  lives  compar'd. 

But  thou  thyself  couldst  never  write  thy  own : 

Their  lives  had  parallels,  but  thine  has  none. 

— DRYDEN,  On  Plutarch's  Statue :  From  the  Greek. 

First  of  thy  votaries,  peerless  and  alone, 
Thy  PLUTARCH  shines,  by  moral  beauty  known  ; 
Enchanting  Sage  !  whose  living  lessons  teach 
What  heights  of  virtue  human  efforts  reach.  .  .  . 

— R.  A.  WILLMOTT,  Advantages  of  Literature. 

Plutarch,  by  the  general  consent  of  Criticism,  is  the  representative  of 
popular  Biography.  .  .  . 

Plutarch's  Lives  recall  Titian's  portraits.  .  .  . 

Plutarch  stands  between  the  Historian,  the  Poet,  and  the  Romancer, 
and  catches  the  beautiful  lights  of  all. — Id. 

If  we  explore  the  literature  of  Heroism,  we  shall  quickly  come  to 
Plutarch,  who  is  its  doctor  and  historian.  To  him  we  owe  the  Brasidas, 
the  Dion,  the  Epaminondas,  the  Scipio  of  old,  and  I  must  think  we  are 
more  deeply  indebted  to  him  than  to  all  the  ancient  writers. — EMERSON, 
Essays  :  Heroism. 

We  cannot  read  Plutarch  without  a  tingling  of  the  blood  ;  and  I  accept 
the  saying  of  the  Chinese  Mencius  :  "  A  sage  is  the  instructor  of  a  hundred 
ages  ". — Id.,  Uses  of  Great  Men. 


328  PLUTARCH,  POE. 

As  a  diligent  collector  of  facts,  as  a  warm  friend  to  virtue,  as  an  enter- 
taining narrator,  I  venerate  the  name  of  Plutarch.  His  writings  bear 
evident  marks  of  extensive  reading,  and  communicate  much  and  multi- 
farious knowledge.  Theodore  Gaza  has  said,  that  if  all  books  were  lost, 
and  he  might  recover  one,  it  should  be  Plutarch. — DR.  VICESIMUS  KNOX, 
Cursory  Thoughts  on  Biography. 

One  of  the  best  of  Greek  books,  once  in  everybody's  hands,  now,  I  fear, 
fallen  considerably  into  the  shade,  is  Plutarch.  Here  you  have,  whether 
for  youth  or  manhood,  in  the  shape  of  living  examples  of  the  most  rich 
and  various  types,  the  very  stuff  from  which  human  efficiency  must  ever 
be  made.  Our  accurate  critical  historians  have  a  small  educational  value 
when  set  against  that  fine  instinct  for  all  true  human  greatness,  and  that 
genial  sympathy  with  all  human  weakness,  which  shine  out  so  conspicu- 
ously in  the  classical  picture-gallery  of  that  rare  old  Boeotian. — J.  STUART 
BLACKIE,  On  Self-Culture. 

What  is  it  that  makes  Plutarch's  Lives  "the  pasture  of  great  souls," 
as  they  were  called  by  one  who  was  herself  a  great  soul  ?  Because  his 
aim  was  much  less  to  tell  a  story  than,  as  he  says,  "  to  decipher  the  man 
and  his  nature ;  and  in  deciphering  the  man,  to  strike  out  pregnant  and 
fruitful  thoughts  on  all  men  ". — JOHN  MORLEY,  Studies  in  Literature. 

EDGAR  ALLAN  POE. 
American  Poet  and  Novelist:  1809-1849. 

There  comes  Poe,  with  his  raven,  like  Barnaby  Rudge, 
Three-fifths  of  him  genius  and  two-fifths  sheer  fudge. 

— J.  R.  LOWELL,  A  Fable  for  Critics. 

His  was  a  music  tender,  strange,  and  wild  ; 

The  ghost  of  many  a  weird,  wan  melody 

Wailed  from  his  lines ;  wan  faces  through  them  smiled  ; 

The  sense  of  horror  there  unceasingly 

Haunts  us,  to  terror  and  to  awe  beguiled 

By  what  we  know  not — what  we  feel,  not  see. 

— W.  C.  BENNETT,  Sonnet  XLV. 

Behold  !  within  this  narrow  grave 
Is  shut  the  mortal  part  of  him. 
Behold  !  he  could  not  wholly  dim 
The  gracious  genius  Heaven  gave — 

For  strains  of  music  here  and  there, 
Weird  murmurings,  vague,  prophetic  tones, 
Are  blown  across  the  silent  zones 
Forever  in  the  midnight  air. 

— T.  B.  ALDRICH,  Poe. 

On  the  whole,  it  appears  to  us  that,  whether  we  regard  the  character  of 
Poe's  genius,  or  the  nature  of  his  career,  we  are  looking  upon  as  sad  and 
strange  a  phenomenon  as  can  be  found  in  literary  history.  Principle  he 
seems  to  have  had  none.  Decision  of  character  was  entirely  lacking. 
His  envy  of  those  more  favoured  by  fortune  than  himself  amounted  to 
raging  ferocity.  He  starved  his  wife  and  broke  her  heart.  He  estranged 


POE,  POMPEY  THE  GREAT.  329 

the  friends  who  were  most  firmly  resolved  to  hold  by  him.  He  foully 
slandered  his  best  benefactors.  He  had  no  faith  in  man  or  woman.  .  .  . 
And  we  carry  with  us  from  the  contemplation  of  the  entire  subject  the 
sad  recollection  of  a  powerful  intellect,  a  most  vivid  imagination,  an 
utterly  evil  heart,  and  a  career  of  guilt,  misery  and  despair.— A.  K.  H. 
BOYD,  Critical  Thoughts  of  a  Country  Parson. 

Mr.  Poe  had  that  indescribable  something  which  men  have  agreed  to 
call  genius.  No  man  could  ever  tell  us  precisely  what  it  is,  and  yet  there 
is  none  who  is  not  inevitably  aware  of  its  presence  and  its  power.  Let 
talent  writhe  and  contort  itself  as  it  may,  it  has  no  such  magnetism. 
Larger  of  bone  and  sinew  it  may  be,  but  the  wings  are  wanting.  Talent 
sticks  fast  to  earth,  and  its  most  perfect  works  have  still  one  foot  of  clay. 
Genius  claims  kindred  with  the  very  workings  of  Nature  herself,  so  that 
a  sunset  shall  seem  like  a  quotation  from  Dante  or  Milton,  and  if  Shake- 
speare be  read  in  the  very  presence  of  the  sea  itself,  his  verses  shall  seem 
but  nobler  for  the  sublime  criticism  of  ocean.  Talent  may  make  friends 
for  itself,  but  only  genius  can  give  to  its  creations  the  divine  power  of 
•  winning  love  and  veneration.  ...  To  the  eye  of  genius,  the  veil  of  the 
spiritual  world  is  ever  rent  asunder,  that  it  may  perceive  the  ministers  of 
good  and  evil  who  throng  continually  round  it.  No  man  of  mere  talent 
ever  flung  his  inkstand  at  the  devil. — J.  R.  LOWELL,  Poe's  Works  : 
Stoddard' 's  Edition. 

The  ancient  fable  of  two  antagonistic  spirits  imprisoned  in  one  body, 
•equally  powerful  and  having  the  complete  mastery  by  turns — of  one  man, 
that  is  to  say,  inhabited  by  both  a  devil  and  an  angel — seems  to  have 
been  realised,  if  all  we  hear  is  true,  in  the  character  of  the  extraordinary 
man  whose  name  we  have  written  above. — NATHANIEL  P.  WILLIS,  Ibid. 

Poe  is  a  kind  of  Hawthorne  and  delirium  tremens.  .  .  .  After  reading 
some  of  Poe's  stories  one  feels  a  kind  of  shock  to  one's  modesty.  We 
xequire  some  kind  of  spiritual  ablution  to  cleanse  our  minds  of  his  dis- 
gusting images. — LESLIE  STEPHEN,  Hours  in  a  Library,  First  Series. 

Edgar  Allan  Poe  was  fastidious — even  morbidly  fastidious — in  his  love 
•of  beautiful  form  ;  but  he  had  no  root  of  humanity  in  him,  and  little  passion 
for  actual  external  nature.  He  was  not  an  interpreter.  He  had  no 
mission,  save  to  create  dreams.  A  greater  dreamer  in  prose  than  in 
verse,  he  has  yet  added  to  American  literature  a  few  poems  of  the  most 
striking  originality ;  but  of  deep  spirituality  he  has  none.  His  loftiest 
flights  of  imagination  in  verse,  like  his  boldest  efforts  in  prose  fiction, 
rise  into  no  more  empyreal  realm  than  the  fantastic.  His  sense  of 
beauty  in  language  was  usually  fine.  Like  Gautier,  he  loved  to  work 
"in  onyx  and  enamel". — ERIC  S.  ROBERTSON,  Life  of  H.  W.  Long- 
fellow. 

POMPEY  THE  GREAT. 
Triumvir;  Roman  General :  B.C.  106-48. 

Alas,  Pompeie  !  of  the  orient  conquerour, 
That  Fortune  unto  swiche  a  sin  thee  brought. 

— CHAUCER,  Monk's  Tale. 


330  POMPEY  THE  GREAT,  POPE. 

Knew  you  not  Pompey  ?     Many  a  time  and  oft 
Have  you  climb'd  up  to  walls  and  battlements, 
To  towers  and  windows,  yea,  to  chimney-tops, 
Your  infants  in  your  arms,  and  there  have  sat 
The  live-long  day,  with  patient  expectation, 
To  see  great  Pompey  pass  the  streets  of  Rome. 

— SHAKSPERE,  Julius  Cczsar,  Act  I.,  Scene  I. 

When  the  world  bow'd  to  Rome's  almighty  sword, 
Rome  bow'd  to  Pompey,  and  confess'd  her  lord. 
Yet  one  day  lost,  this  deity  below 
Became  the  scorn  and  pity  of  his  foe. 
His  blood  a  traitor's  sacrifice  was  made, 
And  smok'd  indignant  on  a  ruffian's  blade. 
No  trumpet's  sound,  no  gasping  army's  yell, 
Bid,  with  due  horror,  his  great  soul  farewell. 

— YOUNG,  The  Last  Day,  Book  II. 

ALEXANDER  POPE. 
English  Poet:  1688-1744. 

A  voice  there  is,  that  whispers  in  my  ear, 

('Tis  Reason's  voice,  which  sometimes  one  can  hear,) 

"  Friend  Pope !  be  prudent,  let  your  Muse  take  breath, 

And  never  gallop  Pegasus  to  death  : 

Lest  stiff  and  stately,  void  of  fire  or  force, 

You  limp,  like  Blackmore  on  a  Lord  Mayor's  horse." 

—POPE,  Epistle  I.  of  the  First  Book  of  Horace.. 

Hail,  happy  Pope  !  whose  generous  mind 

Detesting  all  the  statesmen  kind, 

Contemning  courts,  at  courts  unseen, 

Refus'd  the  visits  of  a  queen. 

A  soul  with  every  virtue  fraught, 

By  sages,  priests,  or  poets  taught ; 

Whose  filial  piety  excels 

Whatever  Grecian  story  tells  ; 

A  genius  for  all  stations  fit, 

Whose  meanest  talent  is  his  wit ; 

His  heart  too  great,  though  fortune  little, 

To  lick  a  rascal  statesman's  spittle  ; 

Appealing  to  the  nation's  taste, 

Above  the  reach  of  want  is  plac'd  : 

By  Homer  dead  was  taught  to  thrive, 

Which  Homer  never  could  alive  ; 

And  sits  aloft  on  Pindus'  head, 

Despising  slaves  that  cringe  for  bread. 

— SWIFT,  A  Libel  on  Dr.  Delany  and  Lord  Carterct, 

When  Pope's  harmonious  Muse  with  pleasure  roves, 
Amidst  the  plains,  the  murmuring  streams,  and  groves, 
Attentive  echo,  pleas'd  to  hear  his  songs, 
Through  the  glad  glade  each  warbling  note  prolongs ; 


His  various  numbers  charm  our  ravish'd  ears, 
His  steady  judgment  far  out-shoots  his  years, 
And  early  in  the  youth  the  god  appears. 

—GAY,  Epistle  XIV.,  To  Bernard  Lintott. 

Like  the  young  spreading  laurel,  Pope,  thy  name 
Shoots  up  with  strength,  and  rises  into  fame. 

— TICKELL,  A  Poem  on  the  Prospect  of  Peace, 

Smile  all  thy  valleys  in  eternal  spring, 

Be  hush'd,  ye  winds !  while  Pope  and  Virgil  sing. 

In  English  lays,  and  all  sublimely  great, 

Thy  Homer  warms  with  all  his  ancient  heat. 

He  shines  in  council,  thunders  in  the  fight, 

And  flames  with  every  sense  of  great  delight. 

— PARNELL,  To  Mr.  Pope* 

'Tis  thine,  O  Pope,  who  choose  the  better  part, 
To  tell  how  false,  how  vain,  the  Scholiast's  art. 

— DAVID  MALLET,  Of  Verbal  Criticism. 

O  Pope!  instructor  of  my  studious  day, 
Who  fix'd  my  steps  in  virtue's  early  ways : 
On  whom  our  labours,  and  our  hopes  depend, 
Thou  more  than  patron,  and  ev'n  more  than  friend ! 

— WALTER  HARTE,  An  Essay  on  Satire. 

O  Pope !  too  great  to  copy,  or  to  praise, 
Whom  envy  sinks  not,  nor  encomiums  raise. 

— Id.,  Macarius  :  or  the  Confessor 

All  nature  trembles  !  save  the  throne  of  Jove  ! 
Have  mercy,  Pope,  and  kill  me  not  with  joy 
'Tis  tenfold  rage,  an  agony  of  bliss  ! 
Be  less  a  god,  nor  force  me  to  adore. 

— WILLIAM  THOMPSON,  On  Mr.  Pope's  Works* 

Others  more  daring,  fix  their  hope 
On  rivalling  the  fame  of  Pope. 

— ROBERT  LLOYD,  To  *  *  *,  Written  in  the  Year  1755. 

Ere  Pope  refin'd  the  chink  of  rhyme. 

— Ibid.,  Epistolary  Verses  to  George  Colman,  Esq* 

And  glow  and  warm  in  Pope's  immortal  line. 

— DR.  JOHN  BROWN,  On  Honour. 

Through  Pope's  soft  song  though  all  the  graces  breathe, 
And  happiest  art  adorn  his  Attic  page. 

— THOMAS  WARTON,  The  Pleasures  of  Melancholy* 

And  Pope,  the  monarch  of  the  tuneful  train  ! 
To  whom  be  nature's,  and  Britannia's  praise ! 
All  their  bright  honours  rush  into  his  lays ! 
And  all  that  glorious  warmth  his  lays  reveal, 
Which  only  poets,  kings,  and  patriots  feel ! 
Though  gay  as  mirth,  as  curious  thought  sedate, 
As  elegance  polite,  as  power  elate  ; 


.332  POPE. 

Profound  as  reason,  and  as  justice  clear  ; 
Soft  as  compassion,  yet  as  truth  severe; 
As  bounty  copious,  as  persuasion  sweet, 
Like  Nature  various,  and  like  art  complete ; 
So  fine  her  morals,  so  sublime  her  views, 
His  life  is  almost  equall'd  by  his  Muse. 

— SAVAGE,  The  Wanderer,  Canto  I. 

Then  Pope,  as  harmony  itself  exact, 

In  verse  well  disciplined,  complete,  compact, 

Gave  virtue  and  morality  a  grace, 

That,  quite  eclipsing  pleasure's  painted  face, 

Levied  a  tax  of  wonder  and  applause, 

Even  on  the  fools  that  trampled  on  their  laws. 

— COWPER,  Table  Talk. 

And  Cobham's  groves  and  Windsor's  green  retreats, 
When  Pope  describes  them,  have  a  thousand  sweets. 

— Id.,  Retirement. 

.  .  .  Pope,  with  energy  divine, 
In  one  strong  blaze  bade  wit  and  fancy  shine ; 
Whose  verse  by  Truth  in  Virtue's  triumph  borne, 
Gave  knaves  to  infamy,  and  fools  to  scorn  ; 
Yet  pure  in  manners,  and  in  thought  refined, 
Whose  life  and  lays  adorned  and  blessed  mankind. 

— BEATTIE,  On  the  Report  oj  a  Monument,  etc. 

Squire  Pope  but  busks  his  skinklin  patches 
O'  heathen  tatters ! 

— BURNS,  Poem  on  Pastoral  Poetry. 

Three  times  I've  read  your  Iliad  o'er ; 

The  first  time  pleas'd  me  well ; 
New  beauties,  unobserv'd  before, 

Next  pleas'd  me  better  still. 

Again  I  try'd  to  find  a  flaw  ; 

Examin'd  ilka  line ; 
The  third  time  pleas'd  me  best  of  a', 

The  labour  seem'd  divine. 

Henceforward  I'll  not  tempt  my  fate, 

On  dazzling  rays  to  stare, 
Lest  I  shou'd  tine  dear  self-conceit, 

And  read  and  write  nae  mair. 

—ALLAN  RAMSAY,  To  Mr.  Pope. 

Better  to  err  with  Pope,  than  shine  with  Pye. 


Then  in  this  happy  isle,  a  Pope's  pure  strain 
Sought  the  rapt  soul  to  charm,  nor  sought  in  vain  ; 
A  polish'd  nation's  praise  aspired  to  claim, 
And  raised  the  people's,  as  the  Poet's  fame. 

— BYRON,  English  Bards  and  Scotch  Reviewers. 


POPE.  333; 

Where  is  that  living  language  which  could  claim 
Poetic  more,  as  philosophic,  fame, 
If  all  our  bards,  more  patient  of  delay, 
Would  stop,  like  Pope,  to  polish  by  the  way  ? 

— BYRON,  Hints  from  Horace. 

Pope  was  not  content  to  satisfy;  he  desired  to  excel,  and  therefore 
always  endeavoured  to  do  his  best ;  he  did  not  court  the  candour,  but 
dared  the  judgment  of  his  reader,  and  expecting  no  indulgence  from  others, 
he  showed  none  to  himself.  He  examined  lines  and  words  with  minute 
and  punctilious  observation,  and  retouched  every  part  with  indefatigable 
diligence,  till  he  had  left  nothing  to  be  forgiven.  .  .  .  Dryden  knew  more 
of  man  in  his  general  nature,  and  Pope  in  his  local  manners.  The  notions 
of  Dryden  were  formed  by  comprehensive  speculation  ;  and  those  of  Pope 
by  minute  attention.  There  is  more  dignity  in  the  knowledge  of  Dryden,. 
and  more  certainty  in  that  of  Pope.  Poetry  was  not  the  sole  praise  of 
either ;  for  both  excelled  likewise  in  prose :  but  Pope  did  not  borrow  his 
prose  from  his  predecessor.  The  style  of  Dryden  is  capricious  and  varied  ; 
that  of  Pope  is  cautious  and  uniform.  Dryden  observes  the  motions  of 
his  own  mind  ;  Pope  constrains  his  mind  to  his  own  rules  of  composition. 
Dryden  is  sometimes  vehement  and  rapid ;  Pope  is  always  smooth,  uni- 
form, and  gentle.  Dryden's  page  is  a  natural  field,  rising  into  inequalities, 
and  diversified  by  the  varied  exuberance  of  abundant  vegetation  ;  Pope's 
is  a  velvet  lawn,  shaven  by  the  scythe,  and  levelled  by  the  roller. — DR. 
JOHNSON,  Lives  of  the  Poets  :  Pope. 

I  will  say  nothing  of  his  works,  they  speak  sufficiently  for  themselves  ;: 
they  will  live  as  long  as  letters  and  taste  remain  in  this  country,  and  be 
more  and  more  admired  as  envy  and  resentment  shall  subside.  But  I  will 
venture  this  piece  of  classical  blasphemy,  which  is,  that  however  he  may 
be  supposed  to  be  obliged  to  Horace,  Horace  is  more  obliged  to  him. — • 
LORD  CHESTERFIELD. 

Pope's  poetry  is  full  of  nature,  at  least  of  what  I  have  been  in  the 
constant  habit  of  accounting  nature  for  the  last  threescore  and  ten  years. 
But  leaving  nature  and  art,  and  all  that  sort  of  thing,  I  wish  to  ask  a 
single  question  :  What  poet  of  this  age,  with  the  exception  perhaps  of 
Byron,  can  be  justly  said,  when  put  into  close  comparison  with  Pope,  to 
have  written  the  English  language  at  all  ? — JOHN  WILSON,  Noctes  Am- 
brosiance,  Vol.  I. 

The  Nightingale  of  Twickenham.—/^.,  Ibid.,  Vol.  IV. 

Of  all  poets  that  have  practised  reasoning  in  verse,  Pope  is  the  one 
most  inconsequential  in  the  deduction  of  his  thoughts,  and  the  most 
severely  distressed  in  any  effort  to  effect  or  to  explain  the  dependency  of 
their  parts.  There  are  not  ten  consecutive  lines  in  Pope  unaffected  by 
this  infirmity.  All  his  thinking  proceeded  by  insulated  and  discontinuous, 
jets ;  and  the  only  resource  for  him,  or  chance  of  even  seeming  correct- 
ness, lay  in  the  liberty  of  stringing  his  aphoristic  thoughts  like  pearls, 
having  no  relation  to  each  other  but  that  of  contiguity.  To  set  them 
like  diamonds  was  for  Pope  to  risk  distraction  ;  to  systematise  was  ruin. 
On  the  other  hand,  if  this  elliptical  word  correctness,  for  elliptical  it  must 
be  until  its  subject  of  control  is  assigned,  is  to  be  understood  with  such  a 
complimentary  qualification  as  would  restrict  it  to  Pope's  use  of  language,. 


334  POPE. 

that  construction  is  even  more  untenable  than  the  other — more  con- 
spicuously untenable — for  many  are  they  who  have  erred  by  illogical 
thinking,  or  by  distracted  evolution  of  thoughts :  but  rare  is  the  man 
.amongst  classical  writers  in  any  language  who  has  disfigured  his  meaning 
more  remarkably  than  Pope  by  imperfect  expressions.  We  do  not  speak 
of  plebeian  phrases,  of  exotic  phrases,  of  slang,  from  which  Pope  was  not 
free,  though  more  free  than  many  of  his  contemporaries.  From  vulgarism 
indeed  he  was  shielded,  though  imperfectly,  by  the  aristocratic  society 
he  kept :  they  being  right,  he  was  right :  and  he  erred  only  in  the  cases 
where  they  misled  him :  for  even  the  refinement  of  that  age  was  often- 
times coarse  and  vulgar.  Still  it  is  indisputable  that  a  better  model  of 
diction  and  of  grammar  prevailed  a  century  before  Pope.  In  Spenser,  in 
Shakespeare,  in  the  Bible  of  King  James's  reign,  and  in  Milton,  there 
are  very  few  grammatical  errors.  ...  It  provokes  fits  of  laughter,  in  a 
man  who  knows  Pope's  real  nature,  to  watch  him  in  the  process  of 
brewing  the  storm  that  spontaneously  will  not  come :  whistling,  like  a 
mariner,  for  a  wind  to  fill  his  satiric  sails ;  and  pumping  up  into  his  face 
hideous  grimaces  in  order  to  appear  convulsed  with  histrionic  rages. 
Pope  should  have  been  counselled  never  to  write  satire,  except  on  those 
evenings  when  he  was  suffering  horribly  from  indigestion.  By  this 
means  the  indignation  would  have  been  ready-made.  The  rancour 
against  all  mankind  would  have  been  sincere ;  and  there  would  have 
needed  to  be  no  extra  expense  in  getting  up  the  steam.  As  it  is  the 
short  puffs  of  anger,  the  uneasy  snorts  of  fury  in  Pope's  satires,  give  one 
painfully  the  feeling  of  a  locomotive-engine  with  unsound  lungs.  Passion 
of  any  kind  may  become  in  some  degree  ludicrous,  when  disproportioned 
to  its  exciting  occasions.  But  it  is  never  entirely  ludicrous,  until  it  is 
self-betrayed  as  counterfeit.  Sudden  collapses  of  the  manufactured  wrath, 
sudden  oblivion  of  the  criminal,  announce  Pope's  as  always  counterfeit. 
....  If  the  question  were  asked,  What  ought  to  have  been  the  best  among 
Pope's  poems  ?  most  people  would  answer,  the  Essay  on  Man.  If  the 
•question  were  asked,  What  is  the  worst  ?  all  people  of  judgment  would 
say,  the  Essay  on  Man.  Whilst  yet  in  its  rudiments,  this  poem  claimed 
the  first  place  by  the  promise  of  its  subject ;  when  finished,  by  the  utter 
failure  of  its  execution,  it  fell  into  the  last. — DE  QUINCEY,  Leaders  in 
Literature. 

Where  Horace  is  the  poet  of  manners,  as  in  the  Epistles  and  Satires 
Pope  may  be  said  to  surpass,  in  his  paraphrases,  the  originals  from  which 
he  draws  inspiration.  .  .  .  But  Pope  can  never  approach  Horace  in  the 
other  and  diviner  side  of  the  Roman's  genius.  He  cannot  pretend  to  the 
lyrical  playfulness  and  fire,  the  mingled  irony  and  earnestness,  the  tender 
pathos,  the  exquisite  humanity,  the  wondrous  felicity  of  expression,  which 
render  the  Odes  of  Horace  matchless  in  the  power  of  charm.  He  cannot, 
in  his  Twickenham  villa,  seize  and  interpret  the  poetry  of  rural  life  and 
sylvan  scenery  like  the  recluse  of  the  Sabine  farm.  Pope's  genius,  in 
short,  is  didactic,  not  lyrical. — LYTTON,  Essays  :  Knowledge  of  the  World. 

I  think  of  the  works  of  young  Pope  as  I  do  of  the  actions  of  young 
Bonaparte  or  young  Nelson.  In  their  common  life  you  will  find  frailties 
and  meannesses,  as  great  as  the  vices  and  follies  of  the  meanest  men.  But 
in  the  presence  of  the  great  occasion,  the  great  soul  flashes  out,  and 
conquers  transcendent.  In  thinking  of  the  splendour  of  Pope's  young 


POPE.  335 

victories,  of  his  merit,  unequalled  as  his  renown,  I  hail  and  salute  the 
achieving  genius,  and  do  homage  to  the  pen  of  a  hero. — THACKERAY, 
English  Humourists  of  the  Eighteenth  Century. 

Pope,  like  Byron,  suffered  severely  from  the  feuds  and  strifes  of  the 
literary  world.  Both  poets  also  closely  resembled  each  other  in  ambition 
and  love  of  fame.  Pope  in  his  generation  stood  on  the  summit  of  Par- 
nassus, like  Byron  in  a  later,  and  each  with  the  weapons  of  his  satire 
hurled  down  all  aspirants  from  that  height.  Further,  Pope  was  the  poet 
of  aristocratic  society,  in  which  he  had  gained  a  position,  and  was  the 
acknowledged  representative  of  the  philosophy  and  the  morality  recog- 
nised by  this  society;  he  preached  self-love  as  the  basis  of  practical 
wisdom,  and  versified  the  philosophy  of  Shaftesbury  and  Bolingbroke. — 
KARL  ELZE,  Life  of  Lord  Byron  (transl.}. 

We  talk  of  Pope,  many  of  us,  as  the  too-often  cited  bourgeois  gentilhomme 

of  Moliere  talked  prose,  without  knowing  it.     There  is  hardly  a  line  of 

The  Rape  of  the  Lock  or  The  Dunciad  that  has  not  thus  passed  into  the 

habitual  conversation  of  our  lives. — JUSTIN  MCCARTHY,  History  of  the 

'  Four  Georges,  Vol.  II. 

In  Pope's  hands  individuals  became  types ;  and  his  creative  power  in 
this  respect  surpasses  that  of  the  Roman  satirists,  and  leaves  Dryden 
himself  behind. — A.  W.  WARD,  Memoir  prefixed  to  Pope's  Works. 

Admiration  for  the  extraordinary  literary  talents,  respect  for  the  energy 
which,  under  all  disadvantages  of  health  and  position,  turned  these  talents 
to  the  best  account ;  love  of  the  real  tender-heartedness  which  formed  the 
basis  of  the  man's  character ;  pity  for  the  many  sufferings  to  which  his 
morbid  sensitiveness  exposed  him ;  contempt  for  the  meannesses  into 
which  he  was  hurried ;  ridicule  for  the  insatiable  vanity  which  prompted 
his  most  degrading  subterfuges ;  horror  for  the  bitter  animosities  which 
must  have  tortured  the  man  who  cherished  them  even  more  than  his 
victims — are  suggested  simultaneously  by  the  name  of  Pope.  As  we 
look  at  him  in  one  or  other  aspect,  each  feeling  may  come  uppermost  in 
turn. — LESLIE  STEPHEN,  Life  of  Pope. 

As  a  banker's  clerk  can  tell  a  bad  coin  by  its  ring  on  the  counter, 
•without  need  of  a  testing  apparatus,  the  true  critic  can  instinctively 
estimate  the  amount  of  bullion  in  Pope's  epigrammatic  tinsel. — Id.,  Hours 
in  a  Library,  First  Series. 

When  we  turn  from  the  man  to  the  poet  we  have  at  once  to  change 
our  key.  A  cleverer  fellow  than  Pope  never  commenced  author.  He 
•was  in  his  own  mundane  way  as  determined  to  be  a  poet,  and  the  best 
going,  as  John  Milton  himself.  He  took  pains  to  be  splendid — he 
polished  and  pruned.  His  first  draft  never  reached  the  printer — though 
he  sometimes  said  it  did.  This  ought,  I  think,  to  endear  him  to  us  in 
these  hasty  days,  when  authors  high  and  low  think  nothing  of  emptying 
the  slops  of  their  minds  over  their  readers,  without  so  much  as  a  cry  of 
"Heads  below".  .  .  .  Indifference,  known  by  its  hard  heart  and  its 
•callous  temper,  is  the  only  unpardonable  sin.  Pope  never  committed  it. 
He  had  much  to  put  up  with.  We  have  much  to  put  up  with — in  him. 
He  has  given  enormous  pleasure  to  generations  of  men,  and  will  continue 
so  to  do..  We  can  never  give  him  any  pleasure.  The  least  we  can  do  is 


336  POPE,  PORSON,  PRIESTLEY,  PRIOR. 

to  smile  pleasantly  as  we  replace  him  upon  his  shelf,  and  say,  as  we  truth- 
fully may,  "  There  was  a  great  deal  of  human  nature  in  Alexander  Pope  ".. 
— AUGUSTINE  BIRRELL,  Obiter  Dicta,  Second  Series. 

RICHARD  PORSON. 
English  Scholar  and  Critic  :  1759-1808. 

Whoever  knew  Richard  Porson,  felt  that  he  knew  a  man  of  high  and' 
noble  mind,  who,  •with  all  his  irregularities,  and  all  his  inclination  to 
sarcasm  and  jest,  had  a  sincere  love  of  truth  and  honesty,  and  who,  with 
an  utter  contempt  for  pretence  and  presumption,  was  ever  ready  to  do 
justice  to  genuine  worth.  His  life  is  an  example,  and  an  admonition,  how 
much  a  man  may  injure  himself  by  indulgence  in  one  unhappy  propensity, 
and  how  much  an  elevated  mind  may  suffer  by  long  association  with  those 
of  an  inferior  order.  A  Porson  cannot  day  after  day  descend  to  the  level 
of  a  Hewardine,  without  finding  it  difficult  at  length  to  recover  his  original 
position  above  it. — REV.  J.  S.  WATSON,  Life  of  Richard  Porson. 

DR.  JOSEPH  PRIESTLEY. 
English  Chemist  and  Physicist :  1733-1804. 

Dr.  Priestley,  who  turns  the  whole  dictionary  of  human  nature  into  verbs 
impersonal  with  a  perpetual  subauditur  of  Dens  for  their  common  nomina- 
tive case ; — which  said  Dens,  however,  is  but  another  automaton,  self- 
worked  indeed,  but  yet  worked,  not  properly  working,  for  he  admits  no 
more  freedom  or  will  to  God  than  to  man.  The  Lutheran  leaves  the  free 
will  whining  with  a  broken  back  in  the  ditch ;  and  Dr.  Priestley  put  the 
poor  animal  out  of  his  misery ! — S.  T.  COLERIDGE,  Notes  on  English 
Divines,  Vol.  II. 

Some  men,  plunged  into  controversy,  acquire  fresh  heat  and  life, — as 
fire-flies  are  said  to  regain  their  fading  lustre  on  being  immersed  in  hot 
water.  Such  a  man  was  Priestley. — R.  A.  VAUGHAN,  Essays  and  Remains,, 
Vol.  II. 


MATTHEW  PRIOR. 
English  Poet  and  Diplomatist :  1664-1721. 

He  merited  much  for  his  wit  and  his  breeding. 

— SWIFT,  News  from  Parnassus. 

Let  Prior's  muse  with  soft'ning  accents  move, 

Soft  as  the  strains  of  constant  Emma's  love  : 

Or  let  his  fancy  choose  some  jovial  theme, 

As  when  he  told  Hans  Carvel's  jealous  dream  ; 

Prior  th'  admiring  reader  entertains, 

With  Chaucer's  humour,  and  with  Spenser's  strains. 

— GAY,  To  Bernard  Lintott. 

Dear  Mat  Prior's  easy  jingle. 

— COWPER,  An  Epistle  to  Robert  Lloyd,  Esq. 


PRIOR,  PTOLEMY,  PULTENEY.  337 

While  he  of  pleasure,  power  and  wisdom  sang, 
My  heart  lap  high,  my  lugs  wi'  pleasure  rang : 
These  to  repeat,  braid-spoken  I  wad  spill, 
Altho'  I  should  employ  my  utmost  skill. 
He  towr'd  aboon  :  but  ah  !  what  tongue  can  tell 
How  high  he  flew  ?  how  much  lamented  fell  ? 

— ALLAN  RAMSAY,  A  Pastoral  on  the  Death  of  M.  Prior. 

Observe  how  easy  Prior  flows, 

Then  runs  his  numbers  down  to  prose. 

— ROBERT  LLOYD,  To  *  *  *,   Written  in  the  Year  1755. 

Though  I  have  mention'd  Prior's  name, 
Think  not  I  aim  at  Prior's  fame. 

— Id.,  Epistolary  Verses  to  George  Colman,  Esq. 

The  famed  Mat  Prior,  it  is  said, 
Oft  bit  his  nails,  and  scratch'd  his  head, 
And  chang'd  a  thought  a  hundred  times, 
Because  he  did  not  like  the  rhymes. 

—Id.,  Ibid. 


CLAUDIUS  PTOLEMY. 
Alexandrian  Astronomer  and  Geographer. 

Of  alle  men  yblessed  mote  he  be 

The  wise  astrologian  Dan  Ptholomee, 

That  sayth  this  proverbe  in  his  Almageste, 

Of  alle  men  his  wisdom  is  higheste 

That  rekketh  not  who  hath  the  world  in  bond. 

— CHAUCER,  Wife  of  Bath's  Prologue^ 

First  Ptolemy  his  scheme  celestial  wrought, 
And  of  machines  a  wild  provision  brought ; 
Orbs  centric  and  eccentric  he  prepares, 
Cycles  and  epicycles,  solid  spheres, 
In  order  plac'd  and  with  bright  globes  inlaid, 
To  solve  the  tow'rs  by  heavenly  bodies  made. 

— SIR  RICHARD  BLACKMORE,  Creation. 

PULTENEY,  EARL  OF  BATH. 
English  Statesman:  1682-1764. 

Sing  how  a  Pult'ney  charms  the  list'ning  throng, 
While  senates  hang  enraptur'd  on  his  tongue  ; 
With  Tully's  fire  how  each  oration  glows, 
In  Tully's  music  how  each  period  flows ; 
Instruct  each  babe  to  lisp  the  patriot's  name, 
Who  in  each  bosom  breathes  a  Roman  flame. 

— PAUL  WHITEHEAD,  The  State  Dunces :  a  Satire. 
22 


338  PURCELL,  PUSEY,  PYM. 

HENRY  PURCELL. 
English  Musical  Composer  :  1658-1695. 

So  ceas'd  the  rival  crew,  when  Purcell  came ; 
They  sung  no  more,  or  only  sung  his  fame : 
Struck  dumb,  they  all  admir'd  the  god-like  man  : 

The  god-like  man 

Alas  !  too  soon  retir'd, 

As  he  too  late  began. 
The  gods  are  pleas'd  alone  with  Purcell's  lays. 

— DRYDEN,  On  the  Death  of  Mr.  Purcell. 

If  human  cares  are  lawful  to  the  blest, 
Already  settled  in  eternal  rest ; 
Needs  must  he  wish  that  Purcell  only  might 
Have  liv'd  to  set  what  he  vouchsafd  to  write. 

— SHEFFIELD,  DUKE  OF  BUCKINGHAM,  Ode  on  the  Death  of 
Henry  Purcell. 

DR.  EDWARD  BOUVERIE  PUSEY. 
English  Theologian:  1800-1882. 

If  you  knew  my  friend  Dr.  Pusey  as  well  as  I  do — nay,  as  well  as  those 
generally  who  come  tolerably  near  him — you  would  say,  I  am  sure,  that 
never  was  a  man  in  this  world  on  whom  one  should  feel  more  tempted  to 
bestow  a  name  which  belongs'only  to  God's  servants  departed,  the  name 
of  a  saint. — NEWMAN  in  LIDDON'S  Pusey,  Vol.  I. 

Remember,  I  am  a  Puseyite  of  the  very  deepest  dye. — KEBLE,  Ibid., 
Vol.  IV. 

Now  that  dearest  Dr.  Pusey  is  gone,  the  world  is  no  longer  the  same 
world.— DR.  H.  P.  LIDDON,  Ibid. 

No  man  was  more  variously  judged,  more  sternly  condemned,  more 
tenderly  loved. — DEAN  R.  W.  CHURCH. 

JOHN  PYM. 
English  Republican  Statesman:  1584-1643. 

•Strafford :   "  Then  join  again,  these  paths  ?     For,  huge  in  the  dusk, 
There's — Pym  to  face  ! 

Why  then,  I  have  a  foe 
To  close  with,  and  a  fight  to  fight  at  last 
Worthy  my  soul !  What  do  they  beard  the  King  ?  " 

— ROBERT  BROWNING,  Strafford,  Act  II.,  Scene  II. 

Mr.  Forster  has  shaped  forth  the  large  image  of  Pym,  and  has  placed 
it  on  the  height  which  its  proportions  demand.  Pym  was,  in  fact,  not 
only  the  most  popular  man  at  that  time  in  England,  but,  perhaps,  as  a 
practical  politician,  the  ablest  and  most  effective.  What  Mr.  Disraeli 
said  of  the  late  Sir  R.  Peel  may  more  accurately  be  said  of  Pym — "  He 
was  the  greatest  Member  of  Parliament  that  ever  lived  ".  He  thoroughly 


PYM.  339 

understood  his  audience  and  his  theatre.  No  business  was  too  large, 
none  too  small  for  him.  .  .  .  Pym  more  than  Hampden,  and  far  more  than 
Vane,  represents  the  House  of  Commons  in  its  quarrel  with  Charles  from 
the  date  of  the  Grand  Remonstrance  to  the  day  when  Pym  himself  was 
buried  at  Westminster  amongst  the  monuments  of  kings,  feebler  and  less 
despotic  than  himself.  He  was  a  chief  who  united  most  of  the  qualities 
that  serve  and  adorn  the  leader  of  party :  pre-eminent  experience  in  public 
affairs,  unrelaxing  vigilance  in  the  attention  bestowed  on  them,  profound 
mastery  in  those  ready  tactics  by  which  occasions  to  weaken  or  wound 
an  adversary  are  fearlessly  seized  and  unscrupulously  improved.  .  .  . 
Pym  can  see  nothing  but  deformity  when  he  looks  at  an  antagonist.  It 
would  be  ludicrous,  had  the  consequences  been  less  tragic,  to  observe  the 
gravity  with  which  he  accepts  the  absurdest  rumours  as  the  most  con- 
clusive testimonies,  if  only  those  rumours  affect  the  King  or  the  King's 
friends  ;  and  how,  undisturbed  by  the  substantial  dangers  in  which  his 
panic,  real  or  assumed,  involves  his  country,  he  keeps  the  public  in  con- 
stant terror  by  denunciations  of  visionary  massacres  and  impracticable 
•  plots.  In  the  casuistry  which  a  subtle  intellect  adapts  to  the  popular 
understanding,  Pym  was  unsurpassed. — LYTTON,  Essays  :  Pym  versus 
Falkland. 

The  greatest  member  of  parliament  that  ever  lived,  the  greatest  master 
of  the  convictions  and  the  feelings  of  the  House  of  Commons,  was  not 
Robert  Peel,  but  John  Pym.  But  if  Pym,  in  modern  garb  and  using 
modern  phrase,  could  now  rise  in  his  old  place,  his  words,  though  as 
practical  as  they  are  lofty,  would,  I  fear,  be  thought  "  too  clever  for  the 
House".  .  .  .  Pym  was  a  friend  of  constitutional  monarchy  in  politics,  a 
Protestant  Episcopalian  in  religion  ;  against  a  despot,  but  for  a  king ; 
against  the  tyranny  and  the  political  power  of  the  bishops,  but  satisfied 
with  the  form  of  Church  government.  He  was  no  fanatic,  and  no  ascetic. 
He  was  genial,  social,  even  convivial.  His  enemies  held  him  up  to  the 
hatred  of  the  sectaries  as  a  man  of  pleasure.  As  the  statesman  and  orator 
of  the  less  extreme  party,  and  of  the  first  period  of  the  revolution,  he  is 
the  English  counterpart  of  Mirabeau,  so  far  as  a  Christian  patriot  can  be 
the  counterpart  of  a  Voltairean  debauchee.  .  .  .  King  Pym  was  the 
name  given  to  Pym  by  the  lampooners,  and  though  in  jest  they  spoke  the 
truth. — GOLDWIN  SMITH,  Three  English  Statesmen. 

Besides  massive  breadth  of  judgment,  Pym  had  one  of  those  luminous 
and  discerning  minds  that  have  the  rare  secret  in  times  of  high  contention 
of  singling  out  the  central  issues  and  choosing  the  best  battle-ground. 
Early  he  perceived  and  understood  the  common  impulse  that  was  uniting 
throne  and  altar  against  both  ancient  rights  and  the  social  needs  of  a 
new  epoch.  He  was  no  revolutionist  either  by  temper  or  principle.  .  .  . 
Surrounded  by  men  who  were  often  apt  to  take  narrow  views,  Pym,  if 
ever  English  statesman  did,  took  broad  ones ;  and  to  impose  broad  views 
upon  the  narrow  is  one  of  the  things  that  a  party  leader  exists  for.  He 
had  the  double  gift,  so  rare  even  among  leaders  in  popular  assemblies,  of 
being  at  once  practical  and  elevated  ;  a  master  of  tactics  and  organising 
arts,  and  yet  the  inspirer  of  solid  and  lofty  principles.  How  can  we 
measure  the  perversity  of  a  King  and  counsellors  who  forced  into  opposi- 
tion a  man  so  imbued  with  the  deep  instinct  of  Government,  so  whole- 
hearted, so  keen  of  sight,  so  skilful  in  resource  as  Pym  ? — JOHN  MORLEY, 
^Oliver  Cromwell. 


340  PYTHAGORUS. 

PYTHAGORAS. 
Greek  Philosopher :  B.C.  580-500  (?). 

No  fool  Pythagoras  was  thought ; 
Whilst  he  his  weighty  doctrines  taught, 
He  made  his  listening  scholars  stand, 
Their  mouth  still  cover'd  with  their  hand  : 
Else,  may  be,  some  odd-thinking  youth, 
Less  friend  to  doctrine  than  to  truth, 
Might  have  refus'd  to  let  his  ears 
Attend  the  music  of  the  spheres  ; 
Denied  all  transmigrating  scenes, 
And  introduc'd  the  use  of  beans. 

— PRIOR,  Alma,  Canto  III. 

Pythagoras,  the  learned  sage, 

As  you  may  read  in  Pliny's  page, 

With  much  of  thought,  and  pains,  and  care, 

Found  the  proportions  of  a  square, 

Which  threw  him  in  such  frantic  fits 

As  almost  robb'd  him  of  his  wits, 

And  made  him,  awful  as  his  name  was, 

Run  naked  through  the  streets  of  Samos. 

— JAMES  CAWTHORN,  The  Antiquarians  :  A  Tale. 

Pythagoras  must  ever  remain  the  perfect  type  of  the  philosopher,  much 
though  fable  and  myth  may  have  mingled  with  the  record  of  his  astonish- 
ing career,  and  though  we  may  be  unable  to  distinguish  what  he  himself 
propounded  and  instituted  from  what  was  set  forth  and  established  in  his 
name.  Travelling  from  land  to  land  to  add  to  the  stores  of  his  knowledge, 
seeking  the  divinest  alike  in  his  own  deep  soul  and  in  the  mysteries  and 
symbols  of  the  East ;  never  severing  the  vastest,  loftiest  ontological  survey 
from  the  valiant  glance  at  human  destiny  and  duty ;  beholding  a  poetry 
in  numbers,  a  philosophy  in  poetry,  a  religion  in  music ;  teaching  the 
harmony  of  the  spheres  as  the  emblem  of  man's  virtues ;  enlarging,  en- 
nobling, transfiguring  all  sciences,  all  arts,  demonstrating  their  concatena- 
tion, promoting  their  mutual  relations ;  making  each  science,  each  art  a 
step  in  the  march  of  the  citizen  to  the  godlike  life ; — Plato,  Archimedes, 
Moses,  Pericles,  Pestalozzi  in  one — and  revealing  no  glory  of  the  sky, 
picturing  no  sublime  vision  of  the  Deity  that  could  not  be  turned  to  food 
and  force  for  the  education  of  our  erring  and  suffering  race. — WILLIAM 
MACCALL,  The  Newest  Materialism. 

In  Pythagoras,  and  Socrates,  and  Plato — in  Seneca,  Epictetus,  and 
Marcus  Aurelius — we  see  the  light  of  heaven  struggling  its  impeded  way 
through  clouds  of  darkness  and  ignorance ;  we  thankfully  recognise  that 
the  souls  of  men  in  the  Pagan  world,  surrounded  as  they  were  by  per- 
plexities and  dangers,  were  yet  enabled  to  reflect  as  from  the  dim  surface 
of  silver,  some  image  of  what  was  divine  and  true  ;  we  hail  with  the  great 
and  eloquent  Bossuet,  The  Christianity  of  Nature. — F.  W.  FARRAR, 
Seekers  after  God. 


QUINCEY,  QUINTILIAN,  RABELAIS.  341 

THOMAS  DE  QUINCEY. 
English  Essayist  and  Critic  :  1785-1859. 

The  Selections  Grave  and  Gay  of  Thomas  de  Quincey  will  always  be 
above  criticism,  and  belong  to  the  realm  of  rapture. — AUGUSTINE  BIRRELL, 
Essays  about  Men,  Women,  and  Books. 

A  De  Quincey  in  a  world  where  there  was  neither  reading  nor  writing 
of  books,  would  certainly  either  have  committed  suicide  or  gone  mad. — 
SAINTSBURY,  Essays  in  English  Literature. 

QUINTILIAN. 

Roman  Rhetorician:  42-118. 

In  grave  Quintilian's  copious  work  we  find 
The  justest  rules  and  clearest  method  join'd. 

— POPE,  Essay  on  Criticism. 

Though  judgment  in  Quintilian's  page, 
Holds  forth  her  lamp  for  ev'ry  age  ; 
Yet  Hypercritics  I  disdain, 
A  race  of  blockheads  dull  and  vain, 
And  laugh  at  all  those  empty  fools, 
Who  cramp  a  genius  with  dull  rules. 

— ROBERT  LLOYD,  Epistle  to  J.  B.,  Esq.,  1757. 

FRANCOIS  RABELAIS. 
French  Satirist :   1495-1553. 

Then  I  went  in-doors,  brought  out  a  loaf, 
Half  a  cheese,  and  a  bottle  of  Chablis  ; 
Lay  on  the  grass  and  forgot  the  oaf 
Over  a  jolly  chapter  of  Rabelais. 

— ROBERT  BROWNING,  Garden  Fancies. 

It  is  incomprehensible  to  me  that  this  great  and  genial  philosopher 
should  have  been  a  Frenchman,  except  on  my  hypothesis  of  a  continued 
dilution  of  the  Gothic  blood  from  the  reign  of  Henry  IV. ;  Descartes, 
Malebranches,  Pascal  and  Moliere  being  the  ultimi  Gothorum,  the  last  in 
whom  the  Gothic  predominates  over  the  Celtic.  .  .  .  One  cannot  help 
regretting  that  no  friend  of  Rabelais  (and  surely  friends  he  must  have 
had)  has  left  an  authentic  account  of  him.  His  buffoonery  was  merely 
Brutus'  rough  stick,  which  contained  a  rod  of  gold ;  it  was  necessary  as 
an  amulet  against  the  monks  and  bigots.  Beyond  a  doubt,  he  was 
amongst  the  deepest  as  well  as  the  boldest  thinkers  of  his  age.  Never 
was  a  more  plausible,  and  seldom,  I  am  persuaded,  a  less  appropriate  line 
than  the  thousand  times  quoted 

"  Rabelais  laughing  in  his  easy  chair  " 

of  Mr.  Pope.  The  caricature  of  his  filth  and  zanyism  proves  how  fully 
he  both  knew  and  felt  the  danger  in  which  he  stood.  I  could  write  a 
treatise  in  proof  and  praise  of  the  morality  and  moral  elevation  of 


342  RABELAIS. 

Rabelais'  work  which  would  make  the  Church  stare  and  the  conventicle 
groan,  and  yet  should  be  the  truth  and  nothing  but  the  truth.  I  class 
Rabelais  with  the  creative  minds  of  the  world,  Shakespeare,  Dante, 
Cervantes. — S.  T.  COLERIDGE,  Notes :  Theological,  Political,  etc. 

Rabelais,  Pierre  Leroux,  and  Ruskin.  The  first,  were  he  seven  times 
as  unspeakably  filthy  as  he  is,  I  consider  as  priceless  in  wisdom,  and 
often  in  true  evangelic  godliness — more  of  him  hereafter. — KINGSLEY  in 
KINGSLEY'S  Letters  and  Memories  of  his  Life,  Vol.  I. 

Rabelais  is  the  soul  of  Gaul ;  and  who  says  Gaul  says  also  Greece,  for 
the  Attic  salt  and  the  Gallic  jest  have  at  bottom  the  same  flavour  ;  and 
if  anything,  buildings  apart,  resembles  the  Pirceus,  it  is  La  Rapee. 
Aristophanes  is  distanced ;  Aristophanes  is  wicked.  Rabelais  is  good — 
Rabelais  would  have  defended  Socrates.  In  the  order  of  lofty  genius, 
Rabelais  chronologically  follows  Dante ;  after  the  stern  face,  the  sneering 
visage.  Rabelais  is  the  wondrous  mask  of  ancient  comedy  detached  from 
the  Greek  proscenium,  from  bronze  made  flesh,  henceforth  a  human  living 
face,  remaining  enormous,  and  coming  among  us  to  laugh  at  us,  and 
with  us.  Dante  and  Rabelais  spring  from  the  school  of  the  Franciscan 
friars,  as  later  Voltaire  springs  from  the  Jesuits ;  Dante  the  incarnate 
sorrow,  Rabelais  the  parody,  Voltaire  the  irony — they  came  from  the 
Church  against  the  Church.  Every  genius  has  his  invention  or  his 
discovery ;  Rabelais  has  made  this  one,  the  belly.  The  serpent  is  in 
man,  it  is  the  intestines.  It  tempts,  betrays,  and  punishes.  Man,  single 
being  as  a  spirit  and  complex  as  man,  has  within  himself  for  his  earthly 
mission  three  centres — the  brain,  the  heart,  the  stomach,  each  of  these 
centres  is  august  by  one  great  function  which  is  peculiar  to  it :  the  brain 
has  thought,  the  heart  has  love,  the  belly  has  paternity  and  maternity. 
.  .  .  Rabelais,  doctor  and  priest,  feels  the  pulse  of  papacy ;  he  shakes  his 
head  and  bursts  out  laughing.  Is  it  because  he  has  found  life  ?  No,  it 
is  because  he  has  left  death  ;  it  is,  in  reality,  breathing  its  last.  Whilst 
Luther  reforms,  Rabelais  jests.  Which  tends  best  to  the  end  ?  Rabelais 
ridicules  the  monk,  the  bishop,  the  pope  ;  laughter  and  death-rattle  to- 
gether ;  fool's  bell  sounding  the  tocsin  !  Well,  then,  what  ?  I  thought 
it  was  a  feast — it  is  agony :  one  may  be  deceived  by  the  nature  of  the 
hiccup.  Let  us  laugh  all  the  same ;  death  is  at  the  table ;  the  last  drop 
toasts  the  last  sigh.  The  agony  feasting — it  is  superb.  The  inner  colon 
is  king  ;  all  that  old  world  feasts  and  bursts ;  and  Rabelais  enthrones  a 
dynasty  of  bellies — Grangousier,  Pantagruel,  and  Gargantua.  Rabelais 
is  the  .^Eschylus  of  morals. — VICTOR  HUGO,  William  Shakespeare  (transl.). 

If  we  are  to  seek  for  an  approximation  to  Aristophanic  humour,  we 
shall  find  it  perhaps  in  Rabelais.  Rabelais  exhibits  a  similar  disregard 
for  decency,  combining  the  same  depth  of  purpose  and  largeness  of 
insight  with  the  same  coarse  fun.  But  in  Aristophanes  there  is  nothing 
quite  grotesque  and  homely,  whereas  Rabelais  is  full  of  these  qualities. 
Even  the  opening  of  the  Peace,  fantastic  as  it  is  in  its  absurdity,  does  not 
touch  the  note  of  grossness  peculiar  to  French  Pantagruelism. — J.  A. 
SYMONDS,  Studies  of  Greek  Poets. 

Alone  among  the  great  writers  of  the  world,  Rabelais  can  be  appreci- 
ated by  students  only.  To  the  general  reader,  to  the  young,  to  women 
in  all  ages,  he  is  a  closed  book.  For  very  shame  he  must  be  hidden 


RABELAIS,  RACINE,  RADCLIFFE.  343 

away.  His  real  features  are  only  revealed  to  those  who  lift  the  veil  with 
serious  intent  to  study  and  not  to  laugh.  To  all  others  the  man  is  a 
buffoon,  and  the  book  is  what  Voltaire  called  it  in  the  early  days  before 
he  understood  it,  Un  ramas  dcs  plus  grossieres  ordures  qiCun  moine  ivre 
puisse  vomir. — SIR  WALTER  BESANT,  Rabelais  for  English  Readers. 

Rabelais,  evangelist  and  prophet  of  the  Resurrection  of  the  Flesh  (so 
long  entombed,  ignored,  repudiated,  misconstrued,  vilified,  by  so  many 
generations  and  ages  of  Galilean  preachers  and  Pharisaic  schoolmen) — 
Rabelais  was  content  to  paint  the  flesh  merely,  in  its  honest  human 
reality — human  at  least,  if  also  bestial ;  in  its  frank  and  rude  reaction 
against  the  half  brainless  teachers  whose  doctrine  he  himself  on  the  one 
hand,  and  Luther  on  the  other,  arose  together  to  smite  severally — to 
smite  them  hip  and  thigh,  even  till  the  going  down  of  the  sun  ;  the  mock 
sun  or  marshy  meteor  that  served  only  to  deepen  the  darkness  encom- 
passing on  every  side  the  doubly  dark  ages — the  ages  of  monarchy  and 
theocracy,  the  ages  of  death  and  of  faith. — SWINBURNE,  A  Study  of 
Shakespeare. 

JEAN  RACINE. 
French  Dramatic  Poet:  1639-1699. 

Exact  Racine,  Corneille's  noble  fire, 

Showed  us  that  France  had  something  to  admire. 

— POPE,  Imitations  of  Horace,  Epistle  I. 

In  elegant  Racine 

How  the  more  powerful  though  more  humble  voice 
Of  nature-painting  Greece,  resistless,  breathed 
The  whole  awakened  heart. 

— THOMSON,  Liberty,  Part  V. 

classic  judgment  gained  to  sweet  Racine 

The  temperate  strength  of  Maro's  chaster  line. 

— WILLIAM  COLLINS,  Epistle  to  Sir  Thomas  Hanmcr. 

So  well  are  Racine's  meanest  persons  taught, 
But  change  a  sentiment  you  make  a  fault. 

— YOUNG,  Epistle:  To  Lord  Lansdowne,  1712. 

The  style  of  Racine  is  exquisite.  Perhaps  he  is  second  only  to  Virgil 
among  all  poets. — HALLAM,  Literature  of  the  Middle  Ages,  Vol.  IV. 


ANN  RADCLIFFE. 
English  Novelist :  1764-1823. 

She  makes  her  readers  twice  children  ;  and  from  the  dim  and  shadowy 
veil  which  she  draws  over  the  objects  of  her  fancy,  forces  us  to  believe  all 
that  is  strange,  and  next  to  impossible,  of  their  mysterious  agency. — 
HAZLITT,  Lectures  on  the  English  Comic  Writers. 


344  RALEIGH. 

SIR  WALTER  RALEIGH. 
English  Navigator,  Statesman,  Courtier,  Warrior:  1552-1618. 

To  thee,  that  art  the  summer's  Nightingale, 

Thy  sovereign  Goddess's  most  dear  delight, 
Why  do  I  send  this  rustic  Madrigal, 

That  may  thy  tuneful  ear  unseason  quite  ? 
Thou  only  fit  this  Argument  to  write, 

In  whose  high  thoughts  Pleasure  hath  built  her  bower, 
And  dainty  love  learned  sweetly  to  indite. 

My  rhymes  I  know  unsavoury  and  sour. 
To  taste  the  streams  that,  like  a  golden  shower, 

Flow  from  thy  fruitful  head,  of  thy  love's  praise ; 
Fitter,  perhaps,  to  thunder  Martial  stour 

When  so  thee  list  thy  lofty  Muse  to  raise ; 
Yet,  till  that  thou  thy  Poem  wilt  make  known, 
Let  thy  fair  Cynthia's  praises  be  thus  rudely  shown. 

— SPENSER,  To  Sir  Walter  Raleigh. 

Raleigh,  with  hopes  of  new  discoveries  fir'd, 
And  all  the  depths  of  human  wit  inspir'd, 
Rov'd  o'er  the  western  world  in  search  of  fame, 
Adding  fresh  glory  to  Eliza's  name  ; 
Subdued  new  empires,  that  will  records  be 
Immortal  of  a  queen's  virginity. 

—DR.  WILLIAM  KING,  Britain's  Palladium. 

But  who  can  speak 

The  numerous  worthies  of  the  maiden  reign  ? 
In  Raleigh  mark  their  every  glory  mix'd ; 
Raleigh,  the  scourge  of  Spain  !  whose  breast  with  all 
The  sage,  the  patriot,  and  the  hero  burn'd. 
Nor  sunk  his  vigour,  when  a  coward-reign 
The  warrior  fetter'd,  and  at  last  resign'd, 
To  glut  the  vengeance  of  a  vanquish'd  foe. 
Then,  active  still  and  unrestrain'd,  his  mind 
Explor'd  the  vast  extent  of  ages  past, 
And  with  his  prison-hours  enrich'd  the  world ; 
Yet  found  no  times,  in  all  the  long  research, 
So  glorious,  or  so  base,  as  those  he  prov'd, 
In  which  he  conquer'd,  and  in  which  he  bled. 

— THOMSON,  The  Seasons  :  Summer. 

Truth  fairly  must  record,  and,  pleas'd  to  live 
In  league  with  mercy,  justice  may  forgive 
Kingdoms  betray'd,  and  worlds  resign'd  to  Spain, 
But  never  can  forgive  a  Raleigh  slain. 

— CHURCHILL,  Gotham,  Book  II. 

On  Raleigh's  grave,  O  strew  the  fairest  flowers, 
That  on  the  bosom  of  the  green  vale  blow ! 
There  hang  your  vernal  wreaths,  ye  village-maids  ! 
Ye  mountain  nymphs,  your  crowns  of  wild  thyme  bring 
To  Raleigh's  honour'd  grave !     There  bloom  the  bay, 


RALEIGH. 


345 


The  virgin  rose,  that  blushing  to  be  seen, 

Folds  its  fair  leaves  ;  for  modest  worth  was  his : 

A  mind  where  truth,  philosophy's  first  born, 

Held  her  harmonious  reign  ;  a  Briton's  breast, 

That,  careful  still  of  freedom's  holy  pledge, 

Disdain'd  the  mean  arts  of  a  tyrant's  court, 

Disdain'd  and  died !     Where  was  thy  spirit  then, 

Queen  of  sea-crowning  isles,  when  Raleigh  bled  ? 

How  well  he  serv'd  thee,  let  Iberia  tell ! 

Ask  prostrate  Cales,  yet  trembling  at  his  name, 

How  well  he  serv'd  thee ;  when  her  vanquish'd  hand 

Held  forth  the  base  bribe,  how  he  spurn'd  it  from  him, 

And  cried,  I  fight  for  Britain  !     History  rise, 

And  blast  the  reigns  that  redden  with  the  blood 

Of  those  that  gave  them  glory  ! 

— DR.  JOHN  LANGHORNE,  Fragment,  1762. 

Raleigh,  the  soldier,  the  sailor,  the  scholar,  the  courtier,  the  orator,  the 
.poet,  the  historian,  the  philosopher,  whom  we  picture  to  ourselves  some- 
times reviewing  the  Queen's  guard,  sometimes  giving  chase  to  a  Spanish 
galleon,  then  answering  the  chiefs  of  the  country  party  in  the  House  of 
Commons,  then  again  murmuring  one  of  his  sweet  love-songs  too  near 
the  ears  of  her  Highness's  maids  of  honour,  and  soon  after  poring  over 
the  Talmud  or  collating  Polybius  with  Livy. — MACAULAY,  Essays  :  Bur- 
high  and  His  Times. 

The  name  of  Sir  Walter  Raleigh  is  unquestionably  one  of  the  most 
renowned  and  attractive,  and  in  some  respects  the  most  remarkable  in 
English  story.  He  acted  a  part  in  all  the  various  functions  of  public  life, 
military,  naval,  and  civil ;  and  was  illustrious  in  all.  He  was  a  projector 
on  the  grandest  scale,  an  improver  of  naval  architecture,  a  founder  of 
colonies,  a  promoter  of  distant  commerce.  As  the  introducer  or  dissemin- 
ator of  two  important  articles  of  subsistence  and  luxury  (potatoes  and 
tobacco),  he  in  a  vast  degree  contributed  to  augment  the  food,  and  to 
modify  the  habits  of  all  the  nations  of  Europe.  His  fortunes  were  alike 
remarkable  for  enviable  success  and  pitiable  reverses.  Raised  to  eminent 
station  through  the  favour  of  the  greatest  female  sovereign  of  England, 
he  perished  on  the  scaffold  through  the  dislike  and  cowardly  policy  of  the 
meanest  of  her  kings.  To  crown  all,  his  fame  in  letters  as  the  author  of 
that  memorable  work  with  which  "his  prison  hours  enriched  the  world," 
placed  his  name  in  glorious  association  with  those  of  Bacon  and  Hooker, 
as  it  otherwise  was  with  those  of  Essex  and  Vere,  of  Hawkins  and  Drake. 
— MACVEY  NAPIER,  Lord  Bacon  and  Sir  Walter  Raleigh. 

The  variety  of  Raleigh's  powers  and  tendencies,  and  of  their  exercise, 
is  the  distinctive  note  of  him,  and  of  the  epoch  which  needed,  fashioned, 
and  used  him.  A  whole  band  of  faculties  stood  ready  in  him  at  any  mo- 
ment for  action.  Several  generally  were  at  work  simultaneously.  For 
the  man  to  be  properly  visible,  he  should  be  shown  flashing  from  more 
facets  than  a  brilliant.  Few  are  the  pens  which  can  vividly  reflect 
versatility  like  his. — W.  STEBBING,  Life  of  Sir  Walter  Raleigh. 

The  Father  of  the  United  States. —A.  P.  STANLEY. 


346  RALEIGH,  RAMSAY,  RAPHAEL. 

I,  for  one,  would  rather  take  my  stand  with  Raleigh,  purged  in  the- 
seven-times-heated  furnace  of  affliction  and  forgiven  for  his  Saviour's  sake, 
than  with  millions  of  vulgar  and  every-day  respectabilities,  who  have 
passed  their  life  in  the  Pharisaism  of  false  orthodoxies,  and  the  pettiness, 
of  cheap  observances. — F.  W.  FARRAR,  Social  and  Present-Day  Questions.. 

ALLAN  RAMSAY. 
Scottish  Poet :  1685-1758. 

Ramsay  an'  famous  Ferguson 
Gied  Forth  an'  Tay  a  lift  aboon ; 
Yarrow  an'  Tweed,  to  monie  a  tune, 
Owre  Scotland  rings. 

— BURNS,  To  William  Simpson. 

Dear  Ramsay,  if  I  know  thy  soul  aright, 
Plain-dealing  honesty's  thy  dear  delight: 
Not  great,  but  candid  born  ;  not  rich,  but  free  ; 
Thinks  kings  most  wretched,  and  most  happy  me. 

— WILLIAM  HAMILTON,  Horace,  Book  I.,  Epistle  XVIII.,  imitated. 

Or  bonny  RAMSAY  please  thee  mo, 
Who  sang  sac  sweetly  aw  his  woe. 

— ROBERT  LLOYD,  The  Poetry  Professors. 

Like  the  poetry  of  Tasso  and  Ariosto,  that  of  the  Gentle  Shepherd  is; 
engraven  on  the  memory,  and  has  sunk  into  the  heart  of  its  native 
country.  Its  verses  have  passed  into  proverbs ;  and  it  continues  to  be 
the  delight  and  solace  of  the  peasantry  whom  it  describes. — THOMAS 
CAMPBELL. 

Ramsay  hits  with  the  hammer  of  Thor,  when  he  should  tap  as  lightly 
as  'twere  reproof  administered  by  a  fair  one  with  her  fan.  .  .  .  But 
though  I  do  not  rate  Burns  the  less,  I  value  Ramsay  the  more,  when  I 
say  that,  had  there  been  no  Ramsay  there  might  have  been  no  Burns  nor 
any  Ferguson — at  least,  the  genius  of  the  two  last  named  poets  would 
not  have  found  an  adequate  vehicle  of  expression  lying  ready-made  to 
their  hand.  Ramsay  it  was  who  virtually  rendered  the  Scots  vernacular 
a  possible  medium  for  the  use  of  Burns  ;  and  this  service,  unconsciously 
rendered  by  the  lesser  genius  to  the  greater,  is  generously  acknowledged 
by  the  latter,  who  could  not  but  be  aware  that,  as  his  own  star  waxed 
higher  and  yet  higher,  from  the  horizon  line  of  popularity,  that  of  his. 
elder  rival  waned  more  and  more. — OLIVER  SMEATON,  Life  of  Allan 
Ramsay. 

RAPHAEL. 
Italian  Painter :  1483-1520. 

Long  time  the  sister  arts,  in  iron  sleep, 

A  heavy  sabbath  did  supinely  keep  : 

At  length  in  Raphael's  age,  at  once  they  rise, 

Stretch  all  their  limbs,  and  open  all  their  eyes. 

— DRYDEN,  To  Sir  Godfrey  Kneller- 


RAPHAEL.  347 

Then  sculpture  and  her  sister-arts  revive  ; 
Stones  leap'd  to  form,  and  rocks  began  to  live  ; 
With  sweeter  notes  each  rising  temple  rung ; 
A  Raphael  painted,  and  a  Vida  sung. 

— POPE,  Essay  on  Criticism. 

Fain  would  I  Raphael's  godlike  art  rehearse, 

And  show  th'  immortal  labours  in  my  verse, 

Where  from  the  mingled  strength  of  shade  and  light, 

A  new  creation  rises  to  my  sight ; 

Such  heavenly  figures  from  his  pencil  flow, 

So  warm  with  life  his  blended  colours  glow, 

From  theme  to  theme  with  secret  pleasures  tost, 

Amidst  the  soft  variety  I'm  lost. 

— ADDISON,  A  Letter  from  Italy  to  Lord  Halifax,  1701. 

Raphael  shall  teach  thee,  friend,  exalted  thoughts 
And  intellectual  bliss.     'Twas  Raphael  taught 
The  patriarch  of  our  progeny  th'  affairs 
Of  heaven  :  (So  Milton  sings,  enlightened  bard  !). 

—DR.  WATTS,  To  Mitio,  my  Friend,  The  Second  Part. 

And,  from  the  deeps  of  Raphael,  rose 
Celestial  Love  again. 

— LYTTON,  Mazarin. 

Oh,  their  Rafael  of  the  dear  Madonnas, 
Oh,  their  Dante  of  the  dread  Inferno, 
Wrote  one  song — and  in  my  brain  I  sing  it, 
Drew  one  angel — borne,  see,  on  my  bosom  ! 

— ROBERT  BROWNING,  One  Word  More. 

Raphael  would  have  been  a  great  painter  even  if  he  had  come  into  the 
world  without  hands. — LESSING  (transl.). 

Who  would  not  prefer  one  Virgin  and  Child  of  Raphael,  to  all  the 
pictures  which  Rubens,  with  his  fat,  frouzy  Dutch  Venuses,  ever  painted  ? 
— J.  STUART  MILL,  Dissertations  and  Discussions,  Vol.  I. 

Three  penstrokes  of  Raffaelle  are  a  greater  and  a  better  picture  than 
the  most  finished  work  that  ever  Carlo  Dolci  polished  into  inanity. — 
RUSKIN,  Modern  Painters,  Vol.  I. 

The  rich  poets,  as  Homer,  Chaucer,  Shakespeare,  and  Raphael,  have 
obviously  no  limits  to  their  works,  except  the  limits  of  their  life-time, 
and  resemble  a  mirror  carried  through  the  street,  ready  to  render  an 
image  of  every  created  thing. — EMERSON,  Essays  :  The  Poet. 

When,  however,  Raphael's  divine  form  still  walked  the  earth,  painting 
then  stood  above  all  as  the  highest  acquisition  to  which  the  Romanic 
nations  had  ever  attained  ;  the  bond  between  religion  and  beauty,  heaven 
and  earth,  was  concluded.  And  yet  this  glorious  prime  contained  in  it- 
self even  then  the  germs  of  its  dissolution.  The  soul  of  Italian  art  perished, 
when  the  noble  author  of  that  incomparable  bond  was  snatched  from 
earth.  Because  he  had  summed  up  in  himself  all  the  perfections  of 
former  times,  there  was  now  only  a  fragmentary  sundering  of  his  univer- 
sal aims  left  behind  him  on  the  field  of  art.  Raphael  forms  no  school, 


348       RAPHAEL,  REMBRANDT,  REYNOLDS. 

because  he  is  the  end  and  close  of  an  era  in  mental  development ;  all  that 
could  be  expressed  within  the  sphere  of  art  which  he  embraced,  was 
•expressed  by  him ;  his  pupils  are  indeed  only  pupils,  who  cultivate  his 
manner. — BARON  VON  WOLZOGEN,  Life  of  Raphael  Santi  (transl.). 

VAN  RHVN  PAUL  REMBRANDT. 
DutcJi  Painter  and  Engraver:  1608-1669. 

Th'  immortal  Rembrandt  all  his  pictures  made 
Soft  as  their  union  into  light  and  shade : 
Whene'er  his  colours  wore  too  bright  an  air, 
A  kindred  shadow  took  off  all  the  glare  ; 
Whene'er  that  shadow,  carelessly  embrown'd, 
Stole  on  the  tints,  and  breath'd  a  gloom  around. 

—JAMES  CAWTHORN,  The  Regulation  of  the  Passions. 

I  have  seen  an  old  head  by  Rembrandt  at  Burleigh  House,  and  if  I 
could  produce  a  head  at  all  like  Rembrandt  in  a  year,  in  my  life-time, 
it  would  be  glory  and  felicity,  and  wealth  and  fame  enough  for  me. — 
HAZLITT,  Table  Talk. 

SIR  JOSHUA  REYNOLDS. 
English  Painter:  1723-1792. 

Here  Reynolds  is  laid,  and  to  tell  you  my  mind, 

He  has  not  left  a  wiser  or  better  behind  ; 

His  pencil  was  striking,  resistless  and  grand ; 

His  manners  were  gentle,  complying  and  bland  ; 

Still  born  to  improve  us  in  every  part, 

His  pencil  our  faces,  his  manners  our  heart ; 

To  coxcombs  averse,  yet  more  civilly  steering, 

When  they  judg'd  without  skill  he  was  still  hard  of  hearing : 

When  they  talk'd  of  their  Raphaels,  Correggios,  and  stuff, 

He  shifted  his  trumpet,  and  only  took  snuff. 

— GOLDSMITH,  Retaliation. 

There,  touch'd  by  Reynolds,  a  dull  blank  becomes 
A  lucid  mirror,  in  which  Nature  sees 
All  her  reflected  features. 

— COWPER,  The  Task  :  The  Sofa. 

Dear  President,  whose  art  sublime 

Gives  perpetuity  to  time, 

And  bids  transactions  of  a  day, 

That  fleeting  hours  would  waft  away 

To  dark  futurity,  survive, 

And  in  unfading  beauty  live. 

— Id.,  To  Sir  Joshua  Reynolds. 

Reynolds,  with  whom  began  that  school  of  art  which  hath  equall'd 
Richest  Italy's  works,  and  the  masterly  labours  of  Belgium, 
Came  in  that  famous  array. 

— SOUTHEY,  A  Vision  of  Judgment :   Worthies  of  the  Georgian  Age. 


REYNOLDS.  349* 

Sir  Joshua  Reynolds  was,  on  very  many  accounts,  one  of  the  most 
memorable  men  of  his  time.  He  was  the  first  Englishman  who  added 
the  praise  of  the  elegant  arts  to  the  other  glories  of  his  country.  In 
taste,  in  grace,  in  facility,  in  happy  invention,  and  in  the  richness  and 
harmony  of  colouring,  he  was  equal  to  the  great  masters  of  the  renowned 
ages.  In  portrait  he  went  beyond  them  ;  for  he  communicated  to  that 
description  of  the  art,  in  which  English  artists  are  the  most  engaged,  a 
variety,  a  fancy,  and  a  dignity  derived  from  the  higher  branches,  which 
even  those  who  professed  them  in  a  superior  manner  did  not  always 
preserve  when  they  delineated  individual  nature.  His  portraits  remind 
the  spectator  of  the  invention  of  history,  and  the  amenity  of  landscape. 
In  painting  portraits  he  appeared  not  to  be  raised  upon  that  platform  ; 
but  to  descend  to  it  from  a  higher  sphere.  His  paintings  illustrate  his 
lessons,  and  his  lessons  seem  to  be  derived  from  his  paintings. — BURKED 

Sir  Joshua  Reynolds  remains  a  memorable  proof  that  it  is  possible  for 
an  artist  to  unite  the  highest  genius  and  most  imaginative  power  of  mind 
to  the  wisdom  of  a  philosopher,  the  liberality  of  a  gentleman,  the  bene- 
volence of  a  Christian,  and  the  simplicity  of  a  child. — SIR  ARCHIBALD 
ALISON,  Essays:  Autobiography. 

It  is  related  of  Sir  Joshua  Reynolds,  that  "  he  took  no  other  exercise 
than  what  he  used  in  his  painting  room  " :  the  writer  means,  in  walking 
backwards  and  forwards  to  look  at  his  picture. — WILLIAM  HAZLITT. 

We  prefer  a  gipsy  by  Reynolds  to  his  Majesty's  head  on  a  sign-post. — 
MACAULAY,  Essays:  Moore's  Life  of  Byron. 

Nearly  every  word  that  Reynolds  wrote  was  contrary  to  his  own 
practice ;  he  seems  to  have  been  born  to  teach  all  error  by  his  precept, 
and  all  excellence  by  his  example  ;  he  enforced  with  his  lips  generalisation 
and  idealism,  while  with  his  pencil  he  was  tracing  the  patterns  of  the 
dresses  of  the  belles  of  his  day ;  he  exhorted  his  pupils  to  attend  only  to 
the  invariable,  while  he  himself  was  occupied  in  distinguishing  every  varia- 
tion of  womanly  temper  ;  and  he  denied  the  existence  of  the  beautiful,  at 
the  same  instant  that  he  arrested  it  as  he  passed,  and  perpetuated  it  for 
ever. — RUSKIN,  Modern  Painters,  Vol.  III. 

The  work  of  other  great  men  is  hidden  in  its  wonderfulness — you  can- 
not see  how  it  is  done.  But  in  Sir  Joshua's  there  is  no  mystery:  it  is  all 
amazement.  No  question  but  that  the  touch  was  so  laid  ;  only  that  it 
could  have  been  so  laid,  is  a  marvel  for  ever.  So  also  there  is  no  painting 
so  majestic  in  sweetness.  He  is  lily-sceptred  ;  his  power  blossoms,  but 
burdens  not.  All  other  men  of  equal  dignity  paint  more  slowly  ;  all  others 
of  equal  force  paint  less  lightly.  Tintoret  lays  his  line  like  a  king  mark- 
ing the  boundaries  of  conquered  lands ;  but  Sir  Joshua  leaves  it  as  a 
summer  wind  its  trace  on  a  lake ;  he  could  have  painted  on  a  silken  veil,, 
where  it  fell  free,  and  not  bent  it.—  Id.,  On  the  Old  Road,  Vol.  I. 

I  cannot  separate  the  character  of  Reynolds — calm,  simple,  unfussy, 
amiable,  and  tolerant,  prompt  to  kindly  construction  of  words  and  things, 
keenly  relishing  life  and  character  and  social  enjoyments,  yet  not  over- 
valuing money  or  distinction — from  the  delightfulness  of  his  pictures. — 
TOM  TAYLOR,  Life  and  Times  of  Sir  Joshua  Reynolds,  Vol.  II. 


350  RICHARD  /.,  RICHARD  II. 

RICHARD  I.,  CCEUR-DE-LION. 
King  of  England :  1157-1199. 
Was  Cceur-de-lion  blest  with  whiter  days  ? 

Of  ten  fair  suns  that  roll'd  their  annual  race, 
Not  one  beheld  him  on  his  vacant  throne. 

— SHENSTONE,  The  Ruined  Abbey. 

Lion-hearted  Richard  was  there,  redoubtable  warrior, 

At  whose  irresistible  presence  the  Saracen  trembled ; 

At  whose  name  the  Caliph  exclaim'd  in  dismay  on  Mahommed, 

Syrian  mothers  grew  pale,  and  their  children  were  scared  into  silence. 

Born  in  a  bloody  age,  did  he  in  his  prowess  exulting 

Run  like  a  meteor  his  course,  and  fulfil  the  service  assign'd  him, 

Checking  the  Mussulman  power  in  the  height  of  its  prosperous  fortune ; 

But  that  leonine  heart  was  with  virtues  humaner  ennobled, 

{Otherwhere  else,  be  sure,  his  doom  had  now  been  appointed), 

Friendship,  disdain  of  wrong,  and  generous  feeling  redeem'd  it, 

Magnanimity  there  had  its  seat,  and  the  love  of  the  Muses. 

— SOUTHEY,  A  Vision  of 'Judgment :  The  Sovereign. 

Redoubted  king,  of  courage  leonine, 
I  mark  thee,  Richard !  urgent  to  equip 
Thy  warlike  person  with  the  staff  and  scrip  ; 
I  watch  thee  sailing  o'er  the  midland  brine  ; 
In  conquered  Cyprus  see  thy  bride  decline 
Her  blushing  cheek,  love-vows  upon  her  lip, 
And  see  love-emblems  streaming  from  thy  ship, 
As  thence  she  holds  her  way  to  Palestine. 

— WORDSWORTH,  Richard  I. 

riis  armour  is  made  of  the  brass  most  strong, 
But  stronger  still  is  his  bosom  ; 
"Tis  Cceur  de  Lion  that's  riding  along, 
That  Christian  chivalry's  blossom. 

— H.  HEINE,  King  Richard  (transl.). 

Richard  I.  was  rather  a  knight-errant  than  a  king.  His  history  is  more 
that  of  a  Crusade  than  of  a  Reign. — SIR  JAMES  MACKINTOSH,  History  of 
England,  Vol.  I. 

Men  called  him  "Lion-heart,"  not  untruly;  and  the  English  as  a 
people  have  prided  themselves  somewhat  ever  since  on  having  every  man 
of  them  the  heart  of  a  lion. — RUSKIN. 

Coeur-de-Lion  was  not  a  theatrical  popinjay  with  greaves  and  steel-cap 
on  it,  but  a  man  living  upon  victuals. — CARLYLE,  Past  and  Present :  Jocelin 
of  Brakelond. 

RICHARD  II. 
King  of  England  :  1366-1400. 

Salisbury  :  "  Ah,  Richard,  with  the  eyes  of  heavy  mind, 
I  see  thy  glory,  like  a  shooting  star, 


RICHARD  II.,  RICHARD  III.  351 

Fall  to  the  base  earth  from  the  firmament ! 
Thy  sun  sets  weeping  in  the  lowly  west, 
Witnessing  storms  to  come,  woe,  and  unrest : 
Thy  friends  are  fled,  to  wait  upon  thy  foes ; 
And  crossly  to  thy  good  all  fortune  goes." 

— SHAKSPERE,  King  Richard  II.,  Act  II.,  Scene  IV. 

Richard  II.,  a  weak,  vain,  frivolous,  inconstant  prince;  without  weight 
to  balance  the  scales  of  government,  without  discernment  to  choose 
a  good  ministry  ;  without  virtue  to  oppose  the  measures,  or  advice,  of  evil 
•counsellors,  even  where  they  happened  to  clash  with  his  own  principles 
and  opinion.  He  was  a  dupe  to  flattery,  a  slave  to  ostentation,  and  not 
more  apt  to  give  up  his  reason  to  the  suggestion  of  sycophants  and 
vicious  ministers,  than  to  sacrifice  those  ministers  to  his  safety.  He 
was  idle,  profuse,  and  profligate ;  and,  though  brave  by  starts,  naturally 
pusillanimous,  and  irresolute.  His  pride  and  resentment  prompted  him 
to  cruelty  and  breach  of  faith :  while  his  necessities  obliged  him  to 
fleece  his  people,  and  degrade  the  dignity  of  his  character  and  situation. — 
SMOLLETT. 

RICHARD  III. 
King  of  England  :  1450-1485. 

For  having  rule  and  riches  in  our  hand, 
Who  durst  gaynsay  the  thing  that  we  averde  ? 
Wyl  was  wysedome,  our  lust  for  lawe  dyd  stand, 
In  sorte  so  straunge,  that  who  was  not  afeard 
When  he  the  sound  but  of  Kyng  Rychard  heard  ? 
So  hatefull  wart  the  hearyng  of  his  name, 
That  you  may  deeme  the  residewe  by  the  same. 

So  cruell  seemde  this  Rychard  Third  to  me, 
That  loe  my  selfe  now  loathde  his  crueltee. 

— SACKVILLE,  LORD  BUCKHURST,  Complaynt  of  Duke  of 
Buckinghame. 

So  were  his  children  young,  being  left  to  be  protected 
By  Richard :  who  nor  God,  nor  human  laws  respected. 
This  viper,  this  most  vile  devourer  of  his  kind 
i(Whom  his  ambitious  ends  had  struck  so  grossly  blind) 
From  their  dear  mother's  lap  them  seizing  for  a  prey, 
Himself  in  right  the  next,  could  they  be  made  away 
Most  wrongfully  usurp'd,  and  them  in  prison  kept ; 
Whom  cruelly  at  last  he  smothered  as  they  slept. 

— DRAYTON,  Polyolbion,  Song  XVII. 

Robespierre  vindicating,  in  the  midst  of  massacre,  the  existence  of  a 
<God  of  mercy,  is  like  our  own  Richard  III.  issuing  his  Proclamation 
against  Vice  after  the  murder  of  his  nephews.  The  sentiments  professed 
by  either  may  be  admirable  in  themselves,  but  they  only  serve  to  deepen 
the  general  abhorrence  of  the  character  they  contrast. — LYTTON,  Essays  : 
The  Reign  of  Terror^ 


352  RICHARDSON. 

SAMUEL  RICHARDSON. 
English  Novelist:  1689-1761. 

Oh,  Richardson,  I  dare  pronounce  that  the  most  veritable  history  is 
full  of  fictions,  and  thy  fictions  are  full  of  truths.  History  paints  some 
individuals ;  thou  paintest  the  human  species.  History  attributes  to 
some  individuals  what  they  have  never  said  or  done ;  all  that  thou 
attributes!  to  man  he  has  said  and  done.  History  embraces  but  a  point 
of  duration,  a  point  on  the  surface  of  the  globe  ;  thou  hast  embraced  all 
places  and  all  times.  The  human  heart,  which  has  been  and  ever  shall 
be  the  same,  is  the  model  which  thou  copiest.  If  we  were  severely  to 
criticise  the  best  historian,  would  he  maintain  his  ground  as  thou?  In 
this  point  of  view,  I  can  venture  to  say,  that  frequently  history  is  a 
miserable  romance ;  and  romance,  as  thou  hast  composed  it,  is  a  good 
history.  Painter  of  nature  thou  never  liest !  .  .  .  Richardson  is  no  more. 
His  loss  touches  me  as  if  my  brother  was  no  more.  I  love  him  as  my 
brother  without  having  seen  him,  and  knowing  him  but  by  his  works. 
He  has  not  had  all  the  reputation  he  merited.  Richardson  !  if  living  thy 
merit  has  been  disputed,  how  great  wilt  thou  appear  to  our  children's 
children,  when  they  shall  see  thee  at  the  distance  we  now  see  Homer ! 
Then  who  will  dare  steal  a  line  from  thy  sublime  works  ?  Thou  hast 
more  admirers  amongst  us  than  in  thine  own  country — and  at  this  I 
rejoice. — DIDEROT  (transl.). 

Richardson  was  well  qualified  to  be  the  discoverer  of  a  new  style  of 
writing,  for  he  was  a  cautious,  deep,  and  minute  examinator  of  the 
human  heart,  and,  like  Cooke  or  Parry,  left  neither  head,  bay,  nor  inlet 
behind  him,  until  he  had  traced  its  soundings,  and  laid  it  down  in  his 
chart,  with  all  its  minute  sinuosities,  its  depths,  and  its  shallows. — SIR 
WALTER  SCOTT,  Prose  Works,  Vol.  III. 

The  great  excellence  of  Richardson's  novels  consists,  we  think,  in  the 
unparalleled  minuteness  and  copiousness  of  his  descriptions,  and  in  the 
pains  he  takes  to  make  us  thoroughly  and  intimately  acquainted  with 
every  particular  in  the  character  and  situation  of  the  personages  with 
whom  we  are  occupied. — LORD  JEFFREY,  Essays, 

The  influence  of  Richardson  upon  the  fiction  and  poetry  of  Europe  was 
not  only  vast  at  the  time,  but,  enduring  still,  it  must  endure  for  ever. 
In  vain  his  language  grows  obsolete,  in  vain  his  minuteness  has  become 
wearisome,  in  vain  the  young  race  of  novel-readers  leave  him  on  the 
shelf — to  those  somewhat  tedious  pages  turns  every  genius  who  aspires 
to  rise  in  fiction ;  from  them,  though  with  toil  and  study,  can  best  be 
learned  the  art  of  extracting  from  the  homeliest  details  the  noblest  pathos. 
In  Clarissa  is  beheld  that  true  spirit  of  tragedy  which  first  dispensed 
with  kings  and  heroes  and  the  paraphernalia  of  the  outward  stage — 
teaching  how  the  compass  of  all  grandeur  in  fiction  can  be  attained  by 
him  who  can  describe  the  affection,  and  comprehend  the  virtue,  of  one 
human  being. — LYTTON,  Life  of  Schiller,  Chap.  II. 

As  De  Foe's  novels  are  simply  history  minus  the  facts,  so  Richardson's 
are  a  series  of  letters  minus  the  correspondents. — LESLIE  STEPHEN,  Hours 
in  a  Library,  First  Series. 


RICHARDSON,  RICHELIEU.  353 

Richardson  was  a  woman's  novelist,  as  Fielding  was  a  man's.  I  some- 
times think  of  Dr.  Johnson's  saying:  "Claret  for  boys,  port  for  men," 
and,  smiling,  "brandy  for  heroes".  So  one  might  fancy  him  saying: 
"  Richardson  for  women,  Fielding  for  men,  Smollett  for  ruffians,"  though 
some  of  his  rough  customers  were  heroes  too. — ANDREW  LANG,  Letters 
on  Literature. 

Richardson  has  always  been  exposed  to  a  strong  under-current  of 
ridicule.  I  have  known  people  to  smile  at  the  mention  of  his  name,  as 
if  he  were  a  sort  of  man-milliner — or,  did  the  thing  exist,  as  some  day  it 
may  do,  a  male  nursery  governess.  .  .  .  Richardson,  on  the  other  hand, 
had  his  quiver  full  of  new  ideas  ;  he  had  his  face  to  the  east ;  he  was  no 
mere  inheritor,  he  was  a  progenitor.  He  is,  in  short,  as  has  been  often 
said,  our  Rousseau  ;  his  characters  were  not  stock  characters. — AUGUSTINE 
BIRRELL,  Res  JudicatcE. 


Due  DE  RICHELIEU. 
French  Cardinal  and  Statesman  :  1585-1642. 

Ay,  take  the  sword 

To  Cardinal  Richelieu : — he  gives  gold  for  steel, 
When  worn  by  brave  men. 
Was  ever  lightning  swifter,  or  more  blasting, 
Than  Richelieu's  forked  guile  ? 

— LYTTON,  Richelieu. 

Let  the  world  speak  well  or  ill  of  the  famous  Cardinal,  neither  in  my 
prose  nor  verse  will  I  mention  his  name  ;  he  has  done  me  too  much 
kindness  to  speak  ill  of  him,  and  too  much  injury  to  speak  well. — 

CORNEILLE. 

Richelieu  himself  is  still  what  he  was  in  his  own  day — a  man  of  twc» 
characters.  If,  on  the  one  hand,  he  is  justly  represented  as  inflexible  and 
vindictive,  crafty  and  unscrupulous ;  so,  on  the  other,  it  cannot  be  denied 
that  he  was  placed  in  times  in  which  the  long  impunity  of  every  licence 
required  stern  examples — that  he  was  beset  by  perils  and  intrigues,  which 
gave  a  certain  excuse  to  the  subtlest  inventions  of  self-defence — that  his 
ambition  was  inseparably  connected  with  a  passionate  love  for  the  glory 
of  his  country — and  that,  if  he  was  her  dictator,  he  was  not  less  her  bene- 
factor.— LYTTON,  Preface  to  Richelieu. 

If  Richelieu  was  pitiless,  he  was  not,  like  most  revengeful  despots, 
either  capricious  or  unjust.  He  did  not  strike  the  tool  if  he  could  reach 
the  employer ;  nor  did  he  strike  till  guilt  was  obvious  and  incontestable ; 
his  was  no  reckless  reign  of  terror.  His  methods,  though  often  arbitrary 
and  contrary  to  legal  custom  and  tradition,  were  always  fearless  and 
above-board.  Political  considerations  sometimes  made  it  impossible  to 
inflict  a  fitting  penalty  upon  men  who  richly  deserved  it,  such  as  de 
Bouillon  and  the  traitorous  Gascon,  but  the  motive  that  allowed  them  to 
escape  was  never  terror  nor  a  wish  to  curry  favour. — RICHARD  LODGE, 
Life  of  Richelieu. 

23 


354  RICHTER,  ROBERTSON,  ROBESPIERRE. 

JEAN  PAUL  RICHTER. 
German  Novelist :   1763-1825. 

Once  more, — once  only, — we  must  stop  so  soon, — 
What  have  we  here  ?     A  GERMAN-SILVER  SPOON  ; 
A  cheap  utensil,  which  we  often  see 
Used  by  the  dabblers  in  aesthetic  tea, 
Of  slender  fabric,  somewhat  light  and  thin, 
Made  of  mixed  metal,  chiefly  lead  and  tin; 
The  bowl  is  shallow,  and  the  handle  small, 
Marked  in  large  letters  with  the  name  JEAN  PAUL. 

— OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES,  An  After-Dinner  Poem. 

All  who  are  acquainted  with  the  writings  of  Jean  Paul  must  be  aware 
that,  whatever  is  to  be  said  of  his  genius  as  a  whole  or  in  comparison  with 
that  of  his  compatriot  Goethe,  in  the  single  faculty  of  wild  and  rich  prose- 
poesy  he  is  the  most  astonishing  even  of  German  writers. — DAVID  MAS- 
SON,  Wordsworth,  Shelley,  and  Keats. 

FREDERICK  WILLIAM  ROBERTSON. 
English  Theologian :  1816-1853. 

It  is  always  to  be  borne  in  mind,  that  in  the  case  of  Robertson  it  is  a 
unique  phenomenon  that  we  are  witnessing,  the  making  of  thought ; 
that  in  his  case  we  are  not  witnessing  the  homogeneous  perfected  pro- 
cesses of  mind,  but  are,  as  it  were,  admitted  into  the  laboratory  of  the 
soul,  and  witness  the  gradual  evolution  of  opinion  and  experience.  .  .  . 
Robertson's  great  charm  is  that  he  goes  straight  to  the  human  heart. 
The  hearts  of  his  people  were  swayed  by  him  as  the  corn-fields  are  swept 
by  a  strong  wind  from  heaven.  We  must  believe  with  the  hearL — 
FREDERICK  ARNOLD,  Robertson  of  Brighton. 

He  lies  in  a  hollow  of  the  Downs  he  loved  so  well.  The  sound  of  the 
'waves  may  be  heard  there  in  the  distance  ;  and  standing  by  his  grave,  it 
.•seems  a  fair  and  fitting  requiem ;  for  if  the  inquietude  of  the  sea  was  the 
image  of  his  outward  life,  its  central  calm  is  the  image  of  his  deep  peace 
•of  activity  in  God.  He  sleeps  well ;  and  we,  who  are  left  alone  with  our 
love  and  his  great  result  of  work,  cannot  but  rejoice  that  he  has  entered 
into  his  Father's  rest.  .  .  .  He  respected  his  conscience ;  believed  in  his 
•own  native  force,  and  in  the  divine  fire  within  him.  He  looked  first  at 
everything  submitted  to  his  judgment  as  if  it  were  a  new  thing  upon  earth, 
and  then  permitted  the  judgments  of  the  past  to  have  their  due  weight 
with  him.  He  endeavoured  to  receive,  without  the  intervention  of  com- 
mentators, immediate  impressions  from  the  Bible. — STOPFORD  BROOKE, 
Life  and  Letters  of  F.  W.  Robertson,  Vol.  II. 

MAXIMILIEN  ROBESPIERRE. 
French  Revolutionary  Dictator  :  1758-1794. 

It  would  be  difficult  to  point  out  within  the  whole  range  of  history, 
ancient  or  modern,  any  person  who  played  so  great  a  part  as  Robespierre 


ROBESPIERRE,  ROCHEFOUCAULD.  355 

with  so  little  genius. — LORD  BROUGHAM,  Statesmen  of  the  Reign  of  George 

in.,  Vol.  in. 

These  butchers  so  atrocious  in  the  capital,  were  magnificent  as  states- 
men and  heroes  the  moment  their  mind  flew  to  the  borders  of  invaded 
France.  There,  the  iron  will  of  Robespierre,  the  savage  genius  of  St. 
Just,  the  reckless  daring  of  Danton,  changed  at  once  from  vices  into  virtues. 
.  .  .  The  more,  amidst  that  chaos  of  motives  and  actors,  we  regard  the  pro- 
minent individuals,  the  more  we  must  perceive  that  the  only  INTELLIGENCE 
of  the  time  was  Maximilien  Robespierre.  He  had  objects  and  purposes 
beyond  the  hour  ;  he  was  ever  looking  forward  to  the  time  when  the  Reign 
of  Blood  was  to  cease  ;  he  only  desired  to  destroy  his  enemies  in  order  to 
call  into  being  the  new  state  of  things  in  which  he  could  reduce  to  system 
the  theories  he  cherished.  ...  He  firmly  believed  in  all  the  principles  he 
professed;— a  hypocrite  in  his  conduct  to  men,  but  an  enthusiast  in  his 
faith  in  dogmas. — LYTTON,  Essays  :  The  Reign  of  Terror. 

Robespierre  was  a  kind  of  spinster.  Force  of  head  did  not  match  his 
spiritual  ambition.  He  was  not,  we  repeat,  a  coward  in  any  common 
sense;  in  that  case  he  would  have  remained  quiet  among  the  croaking 
frogs  of  the  Marsh,  and  by  and  by  have  come  to  hold  a  portfolio  under 
the  first  Consul.  He  did  not  fear  death,  and  he  envied  with  consuming 
envy  those  to  whom  nature  had  given  the  qualities  of  initiative.  But  his 
nerves  always  played  him  false.  The  consciousness  of  having  to  resolve 
to  take  a  decided  step  alone,  was  the  precursor  of  a  fit  of  trembling.  His 
heart  did  not  fail,  but  he  could  nor  control  the  parched  voice,  nor  the 
twitching  features,  nor  the  ghastly  palsy  of  inner  misgiving. — JOHN 
MORLEY,  Miscellanies,  Vol.  I. 

Had  the  reign  of  Robespierre  lasted  longer,  multitudes  would  have 
thrown  themselves  under  the  guillotine :  the  love  of  life  was  extinct  in 
every  heart. — L.  S.  FRERON  (transl.). 

FRANCIS,  Due  DE  LA  ROCHEFOUCAULD. 
French  Moralist :  1613-1680. 

As  Rochefoucauld  his  maxims  drew 
From  nature,  I  believe  them  true : 
They  argue  no  corrupted  mind 
In  him  ;  the  fault  is  in  mankind. 

— SWIFT,  On  the  Death  of  Dr.  Swift. 

Man  loves  this  sparkling  satire  on  himself; 
Gaze  round — see  Rochefoucauld  on  every  shelf! 

— LYTTON,  La  Rochefoucauld  and  Condorcet. 

Don't  Rochefoucault  my  motives. — BYRON  in  MOORE'S  Life  of  Byron. 

We  are  never  to  forget  the  extent  to  which  the  fashionable  philosophy 
of  France  has  operated  on  the  intellect  and  action  of  Europe ;  and  Vol- 
taire assures  us,  in  his  most  celebrated  work,  that  "  the  book  which  most 
contributed  to  form  the  taste  of  the  French  nation  was  the  Maxims  of 
Fran9ois,  Due  de  Rochefoucauld  ".  That  is  true  ; — not  only  the  taste  but 
the  mode  of  thought.  Helvetius,  preceding  the  Revolution,  is  but  a  learned 


356  ROCHEFOUCAULD,  ROGERS. 

and  lengthened  expositor  of  the  philosophy  contained  in  the  Maxims. 
Rochefoucauld  was  one  of  the  founders  of  the  Revolution,  for  his  work 
was  that  of  a  leveller. — LYTTON,  Essays  :  Knowledge  of  the  World. 

Rochefoucault's  precise  and  pregnant  satire  resolves  every  motive  of 
man  into  self-interest.  Self-interest  does,  indeed,  seem  to  be  the  grand 
cement  of  social  man.  But,  in  telling  this  secret,  Rochefoucault  stripped 
the  heart,  as  it  were,  naked,  with  all  its  deformities ;  careless  of  chances, 
and  reckless  of  consequences.  He  presented  poison  in  one  hand,  without 
administering  an  antidote  in  the  other  ;  like  an  unskilful  surgeon,  who, 
after  laying  open  a  deep  wound,  permits  it  to  gangrene,  with  little  or  no 
solicitude  as  to  the  cure  or  subsequent  contagious  expansion. — CHARLES 
BUCKE,  Book  of  Human  Character. 

SAMUEL  ROGERS. 
English  Poet :   1763-1855. 

And  thou,  melodious  Rogers !  rise  at.  last, 
Recall  the  pleasing  memory  of  the  past ; 
Arise  !  let  blest  remembrance  still  inspire, 
And  strike  to  wonted  tones  thy  hallow'd  lyre ; 
Restore  Apollo  to  his  vacant  throne, 
Assert  thy  country's  honour  and  thine  own. 

—BYRON,  English  Bards  and  Scotch  Reviewers. 

Absent  or  present,  still  to  thee, 

My  friend,  what  magic  spells  belong ! 
As  all  can  tell,  who  share  like  me, 

In  turn  thy  converse  and  thy  song. 

But  when  the  dreaded  hour  shall  come 

By  Friendship  ever  deem'd  too  nigh, 
And  "  Memory  "  o'er  her  Druid's  tomb 

Shall  weep  that  aught  of  thee  can  die, 

How  fondly  will  she  then  repay 

Thy  homage  offer'd  at  her  shrine, 
And  blend,  while  ages  roll  away, 

Her  name  immortally  with  thine ! 

— Id.,  Lines  written  on  a  blank  leaf  of  "  The  Pleasures  of  Memory  ". 

Two  living  Poets,  however,  it  seems  there  are,  who,  according  to  Mr. 
Jeffrey,  are  never  to  be  dead  ones — two  who  are  unforgetable,  and  who 
owe  their  immortality — to  what  think  ye  ? — their  elegance  !  That  Gracilis 
Piter,  Samuel  Rogers,  is  one  of  the  dual  number.  His  perfect  beauties 
will  never  be  brought  to  decay  in  the  eyes  of  an  enamoured  world.  He 
is  so  polished,  that  time  can  never  take  the  shine  out  of  him — so  classically 
correct  are  his  charms,  that  to  the  end  of  time  they  will  be  among  the 
principal  Pleasures  of  Memory. — JOHN  WILSON,  Essays  :  Days  Departed. 

Samuel  Rogers  has  been  spoken  of,  ever  since  anybody  can  remember, 
as  "  Rogers  the  Poet  ".  It  is  less  as  a  poet,  however,  that  his  name  will 
live  than  as  a  Patron  of  Literature — probably  the  last  of  that  class  who 
will  in  England  be  called  a  Maecenas. — HARRIET  MARTINEAU,  Biographi- 
cal Sketches. 


ROMNEY,  ROSCOMMON,  ROSSETTI.  357 

GEORGE  ROMNEY. 
English  Painter :   1734-1802. 

Romney,  expert  infallibly  to  trace, 
On  chart  or  canvas,  not  the  form  alone 
And  semblance,  but  however  faintly  shown 
The  mind's  impression  too  on  every  face. 

— COWPER,  Sonnet  to  George  Romney,  Esq. 

EARL  OF  ROSCOMMON. 
English  Poet :  1633-1684. 

The  Muse's  empire  is  restor'd  again, 
In  Charles's  reign,  and  by  Roscommon's  pen. 
Yet  modestly  he  does  his  work  survey, 
And  calls  a  finish'd  Poem  an  Essay. 

Roscommon,  whom  both  court  and  camps  commend, 

True  to  his  prince,  and  faithful  to  his  friend  ;  » 

Roscommon,  first  in  fields  of  honour  known, 

First  in  the  peaceful  triumphs  of  the  gown  ; 

Who  both  Minerva  justly  makes  his  own. 

— DRYDEN,  To  the  Earl  of  Roscommon. 

Such  was  the  muse  whose  rules  and  practice  tell, 
"  Nature's  chief  master-piece  is  writing  well." 
Such  was  Roscommon,  not  more  learn'd  than  good, 
With  manners  gen'rous  as  his  noble  blood  ; 
To  him  the  wit  of  Greece  and  Rome  was  known, 
And  ev'ry  author's  merit  but  his  own. 

— POPE,  Essay  on  Criticism. 

In  all  Charles's  days, 
Roscommon  only  boasts  unspotted  bays. 

— Id.,  Epistles  of  Horace  imitated,  Epistle  I.,  Book  II. 

Nor  must  Roscommon  pass  neglected  by, 

That  makes  ev'n  rules  a  noble  poetry : 

Rules  whose  deep  sense  and  heavenly  numbers  show 

The  best  of  critics,  and  of  poets  too. 

— ADDISON,  An  Account  of  the  Greatest  English  Poets. 

DANTE  GABRIEL  ROSSETTI. 
English  Poet  and  Painter  :  1828-1882. 

Yea,  thou  art  dead,  nor  hast  thou  any  care 

That  the  first  hawthorn  swells  in  bud  to-night, 

Nor  yet  for  our  despair  ; 

Nor  for  the  songs  that  once  were  thy  delight, 

Whose  singing  wings  shall  never  cease  to  beat 

In  music  strange  and  sweet, 

And  make  a  southern  April  in  our  air. 

— A.  MARY  F.  ROBINSON,  In  Memoriam :  Dante  Gabriel  Rossetti. 


358  ROSSETTI,  ROSSINI,  ROUBILLAC. 

Spirit  of  Beauty  tarry  yet  a- while  !  .  .   . 

For  One  at  least  there  is — He  bears  his  name 

From  Dante  and  the  seraph  Gabriel — 
Whose  double  laurels  burn  with  deathless  flame 

To  light  thine  altar. 

— OSCAR  WILDE,  The  Garden  of  Eros. 

Rossetti's  luscious  lines  seldom  fail  to  cast  a  spell. — AUGUSTINE 
BIRRELL,  Obiter  Dicta,  First  Series. 

With  the  choice  of  two  media,  in  the  use  of  both  of  which  he  was 
equally  proficient,  Rossetti  made  naturally  frequent  experiments  as  to 
which  was  the  better  adapted  to  his  powers.  To  this  moment  the  ques- 
tion remains  unanswered.  Unlike  some  poets,  however,  who  have  em- 
ployed verse  for  the  purpose  of  illustrating  problems,  polemical  and 
metaphysical,  with  the  result  that  they  are  regarded  as  poets  among 
philosophers  and  as  philosophers  among  poets,  Rossetti  has  been  received 
with  enthusiasm  in  both  capacities  by  both  poets  and  painters.  It  may, 
indeed,  be  said  that  he  is  a  painter's  painter,  and  a  poet's  poet. — JOSEPH 
KNIGHT,  Life  of  Dante  Gabriel  Rossetti  (1887).. 

Nowhere  in  Time's  vista,  where  the  forms  of  great  men  gather  thickly » 
do  we  see  many  shapes  of  those  who,  as  painters  and  as  poets,  have  been 
alike  illustrious.  Among  the  few  to  whom,  equally  on  both  accounts, 
conspicuous  honours  have  been  paid,  none  is  superior  to  Rossetti,  of  whose 
genius  doubly  exalted  the  artists  say  that  in  design  he  was  pre-eminent, 
while,  on  the  other  hand,  the  most  distinguished  poets  of  our  age  place 
him  in  the  first  rank  with  themselves.  As  to  this  prodigious,  if  not  unique, 
distinction,  of  which  the  present  age  has  not  yet,  perhaps,  formed  an 
adequate  judgment,  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  with  regard  to  the  con- 
structive portion  of  his  genius  Rossetti  was  better  equipped  in  verse  than 
in  design. — F.  G.  STEPHENS,  Dante  Gabriel  Rossetti  (1894). 

JOACHIM  ROSSINI. 
Italian  Musical  Composer  :  1792-1868. 

Enough  for  us  that  the  three  great  creative  minds  to  whose  exquisite 
inventions  all  nations  at  this  moment  yield,  Rossini,  Meyerbeer,  Mendels- 
sohn, are  of  Hebrew  race ;  and  little  do  your  men  of  fashion,  your 
muscadins  of  Paris,  and  your  dandies  of  London,  as  they  thrill  into 
raptures  at  the  notes  of  a  Pasta  or  a  Grisi,  little  do  they  suspect  that  they 
are  offering  their  homage  to  the  "  sweet  singers  of  Israel ". — LORD 
BEACONSFIELD,  Coningsby. 

Louis  FRANCOIS  ROUBILLAC. 

French  Sculptor  :  1695-1762. 

Like  statues  made  by  Roubillac, 
Though  form'd  beyond  all  skill  antique, 
They  can't  their  marble  silence  break ; 
They  only  breathe,  and  think,  and  start, 
Astonish'd  at  their  master's  art. 

— CHRISTOPHER  SMART,  Fable  IX.,  Madam  and  the  Magpie. 


ROUSSEAU.  359 

JEAN  JACQUES  ROUSSEAU. 
French  Philosopher  and  Writer:   1712-1778. 

Corruption  would  not  now  thus  much  inherit 
Of  what  was  once  Rousseau — nor  this  disguise 
Stained  that  which  ought  to  have  disdained  to  wear  it. 

—SHELLEY,  The  Triumph  of  Life. 

I  do  not  know  that  I  resemble  Jean  Jacques  Rousseau.  I  have  no 
ambition  to  be  like  so  illustrious  a  madman — but  this  I  know,  that  I  shall 
live  in  my  own  manner,  and  as  much  alone  as  possible. — BYRON  in 
MOORE'S  Life  of  Byron. 

The  life  of  Rousseau  neither  requires  so  full  a  consideration  as  that  of 
Voltaire,  nor  affords  the  materials  for  it.  Mankind  are  not  divided  upon 
his  character  and  his  merits,  nor  ever  were.  That  he  was  a  person  of 
rare  genius  within  limited,  nay,  somewhat  confined,  bounds,  of  a  lively 
imagination,  wholly  deficient  in  judgment,  capable  of  great  vices  as  well 
as  virtues,  and  of  a  mind  so  diseased  that  it  may  possibly  be  doubted  if 
he  was  accountable  for  his  actions,  is  the  opinion  which  his  contemporaries 
formed  of  him  during  his  life,  which  has  ever  since  prevailed,  and  which, 
indeed,  was  formed  by  his  own  testimony,  produced  after  his  decease, 
and  calculated  to  show  that  he  would  not  have  dissented  from  the  sentence 
or  even  have  hesitated  to  join  in  pronouncing  it. —  LORD  BROUGHAM,  Men 
of  Letters  of  the  Time  of  George  III.,  Vol.  II. 

With  Rousseau  rose  the  great  sect  of  HUMANITY;  the  school  which 
seeks  to  lift  human  nature  above  convention  ;  which  would  extract  from 
social  life  all  that  is  harsh  and  tyrannous ;  and  (to  use  the  phrase  of 
Seneca)  recognise  a  claim  to  kindness  wherever  it  looks  upon  the  face  of 
a  man. — LYTTON,  Life  of  Scliiller,  Vol.  II. 

Of  Rousseau's  literary  talents,  greatly  celebrated  still  among  his 
countrymen,  I  do  not  say  much.  His  books,  like  himself,  are  what  I 
call  unhealthy ;  not  the  good  sort  of  books.  There  is  a  sensuality  in 
Rousseau.  Combined  with  such  an  intellectual  gift  as  his,  it  makes 
pictures  of  a  certain  gorgeous  attractiveness :  but  they  are  not  genuinely 
poetical.  Not  white  sunlight :  something  operatic ;  a  kind  of  rosepink, 
artificial  bedizenment.  It  is  frequent,  or  rather  it  is  universal,  among 
the  French  since  his  time. — CARLYLE,  On  Heroes  and  Hero-Worship. 

The  interests  which  the  loves  of  Petrarch  excited  in  his  own  time,  and 
the  pitying  fondness  with  which  half  Europe  looked  upon  Rousseau,  are 
well  known.  To  readers  of  our  age,  the  love  of  Petrarch  seems  to  have 
been  love  of  that  kind  which  breaks  no  hearts,  and  the  sufferings  of 
Rousseau  to  have  deserved  laughter  rather  than  pity,  to  have  been  partly 
counterfeited,  and  partly  the  consequences  of  his  own  perverseness  and 
vanity. — MACAULAY,  Essays  :  Life  of  Byron. 

Every  man  has  within  himself  an  abyss,  which  he  strives  to  conceal. 
Rousseau  and  Byron  revealed  theirs  to  the  crowd,  not  as  speaking  of 
themselves  only,  but,  to  a  certain  extent,  in  the  name  and  as  the  re- 
presentative of  society.  Their  moral  defects  they  held  up,  like  a  Medusa's 
head,  to  the  gaze  of  the  world,  with  an  unmistakably  malignant  pleasure, 


360  ROUSSEAU. 

and  they  had  no  right  to  effect  surprise  if  society,  offended  by  the  sight, 
averted  its  eyes  from  them. — KARL  ELZE,  Life  of  Lord  Byron  (transt.). 

It  was  Rousseau  who  first  in  our  modern  time  sounded  a  new  trumpet 
note  for  one  of  the  great  battles  of  humanity.  He  makes  the  poor  very 
proud,  it  was  truly  said.  Some  of  his  contemporaries  followed  the  same 
view  of  thought,  as  we  shall  see,  and  he  was  only  continuing  work  which 
others  had  prepared.  But  he  alone  had  the  gift  of  the  golden  mouth.  It 
was  in  Rousseau  that  polite  Europe  first  hearkened  to  strange  voices  and 
faint  reverberation  from  out  of  the  vague  and  cavernous  shadow  in  which 
the  common  people  move.  ...  It  was  this  spiritual  part  of  him  which 
made  Rousseau  a  third  great  power  in  the  century,  between  the  en- 
cyclopaedic party  and  the  Church.  He  recognised  a  something  in  men, 
which  the  encyclopaedists  treated  as  a  chimera  imposed  on  the  imagina- 
tion by  theologians  and  others  for  their  own  purposes  ;  and  he  recognised 
this  in  a  way  which  did  not  offend  the  rational  feeling  of  the  times,  as 
the  catholic  dogmas  offended  it.  In  a  word  he  was  religious.  In  being 
so,  he  separated  himself  from  Voltaire  and  his  school,  who  did  passably 
well  without  religion.  Again,  he  was  a  puritan — a  puritan  of  the 
eighteenth  century,  it  will  be  understood. — JOHN  MORLEY,  Life  of 
Rousseau,  Vol.  I. 

In  judging  Rousseau,  it  would  be  unfair  not  to  take  note  of  the  malari- 
ous atmosphere  in  which  he  grew  up.  The  constitution  of  his  mind  was 
thus  early  infected  with  a  serious  taint  that  made  him  shiveringly  sensitive 
to  a  temperature  which  hardier  natures  found  bracing.  To  him  this 
rough  world  was  but  too  literally  a  rack.  Good-natured  Mother  Nature 
commonly  imbeds  the  nerves  of  her  children  in  a  padding  of  self-conceit 
that  serves  as  a  buffer  against  the  ordinary  shocks  to  which  even  a  life  of 
routine  is  liable,  and  it  would  seem  at  first  sight  as  if  Rousseau  had  been 
better  cared  for  in  this  respect.  .  .  .  Rousseau  has,  in  one  respect,  been 
utterly  misrepresented  and  misunderstood.  Even  Chateaubriand  most 
unfilially  classes  him  and  Voltaire  together.  It  appears  to  me  that  the 
inmost  core  of  his  being  was  religious.  Had  he  remained  in  the  Catholic 
Church,  he  might  have  been  a  saint.  Had  he  come  earlier,  he  might 
have  founded  an  order.  He  was  precisely  the  nature  on  which  religious 
enthusiasm  takes  the  strongest  hold — a  temperament  which  finds  a 
sensuous  delight  in  spiritual  things,  and  satisfies  its  craving  for  excite- 
ment with  celestial  debauch.  He  had  not  the  iron  temper  of  a  great 
reformer  and  organiser  like  Knox,  who,  true  Scotchman  that  he  was, 
found  a  way  to  weld  this  world  and  the  other  together  in  a  cast-iron 
creed ;  but  he  had  as  much  as  any  man  ever  had  that  gift  of  a  great 
preacher  to  make  the  oratorical  fervour  which  persuades  himself  while  it 
lasts  into  the  abiding  conviction  of  his  hearers. — J.  R.  LOWELL,  Among 
My  Books. 

The  prince  of  all  autobiographers  in  this  full  sense  of  the  word — the 
man  who  represents  the  genuine  type  in  its  fullest  realisation — is  un- 
doubtedly Rousseau.  The  Confessions  may  certainly  be  regarded  not 
only  as  one  of  the  most  remarkable,  but  as  in  parts  one  of  the  most 
repulsive,  books  ever  written.  Yet,  one  must  add,  it  is  also  one  of  the 
most  fascinating.  Rousseau  starts  by  declaring  that  he  is  undertaking  a 
task  which  has  had  no  precedent,  and  will  have  no  imitators — the  task  of 
showing  a  man  in  all  the  truth  of  nature,  and  that  man  himself.  .  .  . 


ROUSSEAU,  RUNDLE,  RUSKIN.  361 

Rousseau  represents  the  strange  combination  of  a  kind  of  sensual  appetite 
for  pure  and  simple  pleasures.  On  one  side  he  reminds  us  of  Keats,  by 
his  intense  appreciation  of  sensuous  beauty ;  and,  on  the  other,  of 
Cowper,  by  his  love  of  such  simple  pleasures  as  our  English  poet  enjoyed 
when  sitting  at  Mrs,  Unwin's  tea-urn.  It  is  a  strange,  almost  a  contra- 
dictory mixture  ;  but  Rousseau's  life  is  a  struggle  between  antagonisms. — 
LESLIE  STEPHEN,  Hours  in  a  Library,  Vol.  III. 

The  creed  of  Rousseau  was  not  a  faith  but  an  emotion,  capable  of 
impelling,  not  of  controlling  or  sustaining  men. — GOLDWIN  SMITH,  Three 
English  Statesmen. 

Undoubtedly,  Rousseau's  extremely  attractive  and  widely  read  writings 
did  a  great  deal  to  give  a  colour  of  rationality  to  those  principles  of  '89 
which,  even  after  the  lapse  of  a  century,  are  considered  by  a  good  many 
people  to  be  the  Magna  Charta  of  the  human  race.  "  Liberty,  Equality, 
and  Fraternity  "  is  still  the  war-cry  of  those,  and  they  are  many,  who 
think,  with  Rousseau,  that  human  sufferings  must  needs  be  the  con- 
sequence of  the  artificial  arrangements  of  society  and  can  all  be  alleviated 
or  removed  by  political  changes. 

The  intellectual  impulse  which  may  thus  be  fairly  enough  connected 
with  the  name  of  the  Genevese  dreamer  has  by  no  means  spent  itself  in 
the  century  and  a  half  which  has  elapsed  since  it  was  given.  On  the 
contrary,  after  a  period  of  comparative  obscurity  (at  least  outside  France), 
Rousseauism  has  gradually  come  to  the  front  again,  and  at  present 
promises  to  exert  once  more  a  very  grave  influence  on  practical  life.  .  .  . 
The  political  lantern  of  Rousseauism  is  a  mere  corpse  candle  and  will 
plunge  those  who  follow  it  in  the  deepest  of  anarchic  bogs.  .  .  .  Rousseau 
is  not  intelligible  without  Buffon. — HUXLEY,  Method  and  Results. 

DR.  THOMAS  RUNDLE. 

Bishop  of  Derry  :   1686-1743. 

Make  Rundle  bishop  !  fie  for  shame  ! 

An  Arian  to  usurp  the  name ! 

A  bishop  in  the  Isle  of  Saints  ! 

How  will  his  brethren  make  complaints ! 

— SWIFT,  On  Dr.  Rundle,  Bishop  of  Deny, 

And  thou,  O  Rundle,  lend  thy  strain, 
Thou  darling  friend  !   thou  brother  of  his  soul ! 
In  whom  the  head  and  heart  their  stores  unite  ; 
Whatever  of  fancy  paints,  invention  pours, 
Judgment  digests,  the  well-tun'd  bosom  feels, 
Truth  natural,  moral,  or  divine,  has  taught, 
The  Virtues  dictate,  or  the  Muses  sing. 

— THOMSON,  A  Poem  to  the  Memory  of  the  Right  Hon.  Lord  Talbot. 

JOHN  RUSKIN. 
Art  Critic  and  Political  Economist :  1819-1900. 

No  true  disciple  of  mine  will  ever  be  a  Ruskinian ;  he  will  follow,  not 
me,  but  the  instincts  of  his  own  soul,  and  the  guidance  of  its  Creator. — 
RUSKIN,  St.  Mark's  Rest. 


362  R  USKIN. 

Note  how  colour  enters  into  his  style ;  and  sound  also — sound  so  con- 
veyed in  words  that  we  hear  what  he  writes  of  as  though  we  were  on  the 
spot.  Yes ;  even  hear  it  more  distinctly,  because  he  calls  our  ear  and 
interprets  the  harmonies.  Again,  there  is  the  pulse-beat  of  his  sentences 
— pulse-beats  in  which  we  feel  the  throb  of  a  mighty  soul,  and  which  no 
literary  enemic  could  yield.  Take  also  the  intermixture  of  Scripture. 
How  he  delicately,  yet  strikingly,  interweaves  the  passages  from  the 
Bible,  until  a  chapter  on  art  or  political  economy  becomes  an  exposition 
of  many  a  text  called  in  to  finish  a  sentence  or  point  a  lesson  !  For  in- 
terpreting life  by  Scripture,  and  Scripture  by  life,  he  stands  unrivalled. 
But  this  presupposes  a  knowledge  of  Scripture  that  few  have,  and  a  sense 
of  proportion  that  few  possess. — MARSHALL  MATHER,  John  Ruskin,  His 
Life  and  Teaching. 

Since  Tennyson  died  no  greater  loss  has  been  sustained  by  English 
literature  than  that  of  John  Ruskin.  Of  all  the  men  who  have  dominated 
the  Art-world  of  Britain  during  the  nineteenth  century,  Ruskin  is  beyond 
all  question  and  beyond  all  comparison  the  greatest — by  universal  admis- 
sion the  most  individual  and  most  interesting.  What  his  exact  position 
as  a  critic  and  preacher  of  Art  may  be,  what  his  rank  as  a  scientist  or  a 
leader  of  thought,  I  make  no  pretence  here  of  determining.  But,  by 
common  consent,  he  has  been  the  most  distinguished  figure  in  the  arena 
of  Art  philosophy  for  half-a-century  and  more,  the  philanthropist-militant 
par  excellence.  He  is  the  man  who  has  admittedly  moulded  the  taste  of 
the  public  to  a  preponderating  extent  in  aesthetic  affairs  and,  apart  from 
his  labours  outside  the  pale  of  Art,  has  exerted  an  influence  so  powerful 
that  he  has  given  a  direction  to  the  practice  of  painting  and  architecture 
that  may  still  be  traced  in  some  of  the  happiest  productions  of  the  day.. 
His  death  has  given  reason  for  mourning  to  many  ;  no  one  has  more  elo- 
quently, more  passionately,  pleaded  the  cause  of  the  poor  than  Ruskin  ;  no- 
one  (with  the  exception  of  Mr.  Gladstone — his  political  bete  noire)  could 
boast  so  vast  a  number  of  friends  amongst  the  great  mass  of  the  public. 
.  .  .  If  we  had  to  define  the  main  characteristics  of  Ruskin's  mind,  "  and 
the  keys  to  the  secret  of  all  he  said  or  did,"  I  think  we  could  hardly  do 
better  than  repeat  the  analysis  he  made  of  Turner's  :  "  Uprightness,, 
generosity,  extreme  tenderness  of  heart,  sensuality,  excessive  obstinacy,, 
irritability,  infidelity  "  ;  and,  we  should  have  to  add,  "  impulsiveness,  violent 
prejudice,  kindliest  sympathy,  and  profound  piety  ".  But  impulsiveness, 
and  its  offspring — prejudice- — were  at  the  root  of  too  many  of  his  acts  and 
hastier  judgments.  He  was  supposed  to  hate  Jews  on  principle,  not  from 
religious  motives,  but  simply  because  some  of  the  lowest  and  most  con- 
temptible of  them  practised  the  usury  that  persecution  had  schooled  them 
in ;  he  despised  all  bishops,  because  some  of  them  died  rich.  No  one 
really  deserves  hanging,  he  says  somewhere,  save  bankers  and  bishops.. 
.  .  .  Ruskin  is  and  must  be  regarded,  by  friend  and  foe  alike,  as  the  great 
modern  master  of  English  prose — the  Magician  of  Coniston  Lake.  .  .  . 
The  sun  has  indeed  gone  down  behind  the  Grand  Old  Man  of  Coniston  ; 
while  the  sky  is  still  all  aglow  with  the  fire  of  his  words  and  the  gold  of 
his  beneficent  acts. — M.  H.  SPIELMANN,  John  Ruskin. 

To  read  Fors  is  like  being  out  in  a  thunderstorm.  At  first,  you  open 
the  book  with  interest  to  watch  the  signs  of  the  times.  While  you  climb 
your  mountain — shall  we  say  the  Old  Man  of  Coniston  ? — at  unawares, 
there  is  a  darkening  of  the  cloud  upon  you,  and  the  tension  of  instinctive: 


RUSKIN,  RUSSELL.  363 

dread,  as  image  after  image  arises  of  misery,  and  murder,  and  lingering 
death,  with  here  and  there  a  streak  of  sun  in  the  foreground,  only  throwing 
the  wildness  of  the  scene  into  more  rugged  relief;  and  through  the  gaps 
you  see  broad  fields  of  ancient  history,  like  lands  of  promise  left  behind. 
By-and-by  the  gloom  wraps  you.  The  old  thunder  of  the  Ruskinian 
paragraph  shortened  now  to  whip-lash  cracks,  reverberates  unremittingly 
from  point  to  point,  raising  echoes,  sounding  deeps  ;  allusions,  suggestions, 
intimations,  stirring  the  realm  of  chaos,  that  ordinarily  we  are  glad  to  let 
slumber,  but  now  terribly  discern,  by  flashes  of  thought,  most  unexpectedly 
arriving.  Fascinated  by  the  hammer-play  of  Thor,  berserking  among 
Rime-giants — customs  that  "  hang  upon  us,  heavy  as  frost" — you  begin 
to  applaud ;  when  a  sudden  stroke  rolls  your  own  standpoint  into  the 
abyss.  But  if  you  can  climb  forward,  undismayed,  to  the  summit,  the 
storm  drifts  by  ;  and  you  see  the  world  again,  all  new,  beneath  you — how- 
rippling  in  Thor's  laughter,  how  tenderly  veiled  in  his  tears !  .  .  .  A  life 
which  was  a  battle  with  adversities  from  the  beginning.  Over-stimulus  in 
childhood  ;  intense  application  to  work  in  youth  and  middle  age,  under 
conditions  of  discouragement,  both  public  and  private,  which  would  have 
been  fatal  to  many  another  man ;  and  this,  too,  not  merely  hard  work,, 
but  work  of  an  intensely  emotional  nature,  involving — in  his  view  at  least 
— wide  issues  of  life  and  death,  in  which  he  was  another  Jacob  wrestling 
with  the  angel  in  the  wilderness,  another  Savonarola  imploring  reconcilia- 
tion between  God  and  man. — W.  G.  COLLINGWOOD,  Life  and  Work  of 
John  Ritskin. 

Ruskin's  diction  is  noble  in  vigour  and  high  in  vitality  in  this  work  of 
impassioned  intellect,  Fors  Clavigcra.  Not  here  does  he  force  with 
difficulty  the  tired  and  inelastic  common  speech  to  explain  his  untired 
mind,  as  in  some  pages  of  the  Modern  Painters ;  not  here  are  perorations 
of  eloquence  over-rich  ;  not  here  constructions  after  Hooker,  nor  signs  of 
Gibbon.  All  the  diction  is  fused  in  the  fiery  life,  and  the  lesser  beauties 
of  eloquence  are  far  transcended.  During  the  publication  of  these  letters 
the  world  told  him,  now  that  he  could  express  himself  but  could  not  think, 
and  now  that  he  was  effeminate.  But  he  was  giving  to  that  world  the 
words  of  a  martyr  of  thought,  and  the  martyr  was  a  man. — MRS.  MEYNELL,. 
John  Ruskin. 

LORD  WILLIAM  RUSSELL. 
Statesman  and  Patriot:  1639-1683. 

Bring  every  sweetest  flower,  and  let  me  strew 
The  grave  where  Russell  lies  ;  whose  temper'd  blood, 
With  calmest  cheerfulness  for  thee  resign'd, 
Stain'd  the  sad  annals  of  a  giddy  reign. 

— THOMSON,  The  Seasons  :  Summer. 

Some  men  have  found  in  a  grateful  posterity  the  guardians  of  an  enviable 
renown,  less  by  a  remarkable  excellence  of  their  own,  than  by  the  wrongs 
they  have  suffered  in  a  cause  which  is  endeared  to  the  interests  of  mankind. 
Thus,  William  Lord  Russell  and  Algernon  Sidney  are  hallowed  to  English 
freemen  so  long  as  our  history  shall  last.  But  if  they  had  not  died  on  the 
scaffold,  it  may  be  reasonably  doubted  whether  they  could  still  live  in 
fame. — LYTTON,  Essays  :  Posthumous  Reputation. 


364         RUTHERFORD,  SACHEVERELL,  SALES,  SAND. 

SAMUEL  RUTHERFORD. 
Scottish  Theologian.    1600-1661. 

Samuel  Rutherford,  .  .  .  one  of  the  uncanonized  saints  of  the  Church 
Universal. — A.  B.  GROSART,  Representative  Nonconformists. 

DR.  HENRY  SACHEVERELL. 

English  Divine  :  1672-1724. 

States  to  embroil,  and  faction  to  display 

In  wild  harangues,  Sacheverell  show'd  the  way. 

— DODSLEY,  The  Art  of  Preaching. 

Sacheverell  charms  with  "  Right  Divine," 
Court  preacher,  and  a  Catiline  ! 

— REV'.  JOHN  DAVIES,  Historic  Prologues. 

A  sudden  conflict  rises  from  the  swell 

Of  a  proud  slavery  met  by  tenets  strained 

In  liberty's  behalf.     Fears  true  or  feigned, 

Spread  through  all  ranks  ;  and  lo  !  the  sentinel 

Who  loudest  rang  his  pulpit  'larum  bell, 

Stands  at  the  bar — absolved  by  female  eyes, 

Mingling  their  light  with  graver  flatteries, 

Lavished  on  him  that  England  may  rebel 

Against  her  ancient  virtue.     High  and  Low, 

Watchwords  of  party,  on  all  tongues  are  rife ; 

As  if  a  Church,  though  sprung  from  Heaven,  must  owe 

To  opposites  and  fierce  extremes  her  life — 

Not  to  the  golden  mean,  and  quiet  flow 

Of  truths  that  soften  hatred,  temper,  strife. 

— WORDSWORTH,  Sacheverell. 

FRANCIS  DE  SALES. 
French  Roman-Catholic  Prelate:  1567-1622. 

What  a  difference,  for  instance,  between  Saint  Bernard  and  Saint 
Francis  de  Sales :  how  much  more  human,  natural,  and  universal  is  the 
one,  how  much  more  removed  is  the  other  from  the  largeness  of  the  true 
type  of  manhood. — GLADSTONE,  Gleanings,  Vol.  III. 

"GEORGE  SAND"  (MME.  A.  L.  A.  DUDEVANT). 
French  Novelist  and  Dramatist :  1804-1876. 

In  George  Sand's  finest  work  there  is  a  sweet  spontaneity,  almost  as  if 
she  were  an  oracle  of  Nature  uttering  automatically  the  divine  message. 
But,  on  the  other  hand,  when  the  inspiration  forsakes  her,  she  drifts  along 
-on  a  windy  current  of  words,  the  fatal  facility  of  her  pen  often  beguiling 
tht  writer  into  vague  diffuseness  and  unsubstantial  declamation. — 
MATHILDE  BLIND,  Life  of  George  Eliot. 


SAPPHO,  SAVONAROLA.  365. 

SAPPHO. 
Greek  Poetess:  fl.  B.C.  611-592. 

When  Sappho  struck  the  quiv'ring  wire, 
The  throbbing  breast  was  all  on  fire  : 
And  when  she  rais'd  the  vocal  lay, 
The  captive  soul  was  charm1  d  away  ! 

— SMOLLETT,  On  a  Young  Lady  Playing  on  a  Harpsichord. 

At  Sappho's  woes  we  breathe  a  tender  sigh, 
And  the  soft  sorrow  steals  from  every  eye. 

— WALTER  HARTE,  To  a  Young  Lady,  with  Fenton's  Miscellanies. 

Among  the  ancients  Sappho  enjoyed  a  unique  renown.  She  was  called 
"  The  Poetess,"  as  Homer  was  called  "  The  Poet  ".  Aristotle  placed  her 
in  the  same  rank  as  Homer  and  Archilochus.  Plato  in  the  Phcedrus 
mentioned  her  as  the  tenth  Muse.  Solon,  hearing  one  of  her  poems, 
prayed  that  he  might  not  see  death  till  he  had  learned  it.  Strabo  speaks  of 
her  genius  with  religious  awe.  Longinus  cites  her  love  ode  as  a  specimen 
of  poetical  sublimity.  The  epigrammatists  call  her  Child  of  Aphrodite  and 
Eros,  nursling  of  the  Graces  and  Persuasion,  pride  of  Hellas,  peer  of  Muses, 
companion  of  Apollo.  Nowhere  is  a  hint  whispered  that  her  poetry  was 
aught  but  perfect.  As  far  as  we  can  judge,  these  praises  were  strictly  just. 
Of  all  the  poets  of  the  world,  of  all  the  illustrious  artists  of  all  literatures^ 
Sappho  is  the  one  whose  every  word  has  a  peculiar  and  unmistakable  per- 
fume, a  seal  of  absolute  perfection  and  inimitable  grace.  In  her  art  she  was 
unerring.  Even  Archilochus  seems  commonplace  when  compared  with  her 
exquisite  rarity  of  phrase. — J.  ADDINGTON  SYMONDS,  Studies  of  Greek  Poets. 

Sappho  wrote  in  the  most  varied  styles — there  are  fifty  different  metres 
in  our  scanty  remains  of  her — but  all  bear  a  strong  impress  of  personal 
character.  By  the  side  of  Alcasus,  one  feels  her  to  be  a  woman.  Her 
dialect  is  more  the  native  speech  of  Mitylene,  where  she  lived;  his  the 
more  literary.  His  interests  cover  war  and  drinking  and  adventure  and 
politics ;  hers  are  all  in  personal  feeling,  mostly  tender  and  introspective. 
Her  suggestions  of  nature — the  line,  "  /  heard  the  footfall  of  the  flowery 
spring  "  ;  the  marvellously  musical  comparison,  "  Like  the  one  siveet  apple 
very  red,  up  high  on  the  highest  bough,  that  the  apple-gatherers  have  for- 
gotten ;  110,  not  forgotten,  but  could  never  reach  so  far  " — are  perhaps  more 
definitely  beautiful  than  the  love-poems  which  have  made  Sappho's  name 
immortal.  Two  of  these  are  preserved  by  accident ;  the  rest  of  Sappho's 
poetry  was  publicly  burned  in  1073  at  Rome  and  at  Constantinople,  as 
being  too  much  for  the  shaky  morals  of  the  time.  One  must  not  over- 
estimate the  compliments  of  gallantry  which  Sappho  had  in  plenty  :  she  was 
"  the  Poetess  "  as  Homer  was  "  the  Poet  "  ;  she  was  "  the  Tenth  Muse," 
"  the  Pierian  Bee  "  ;  the  wise  Solon  wished  to  "  learn  a  song  of  Sappho's 
and  then  die". — GILBERT  MURRAY,  History  of  Ancient  Greek  Literature* 

GIROLAMO  SAVONAROLA. 
Italian  Dominican  Monk  and  Reformer  :   1452-1498. 

Savonarola  wore  the  martyr's  shirt, 
And  gloried  in  the  stake's  encaustic  robe. 
For  higher  light — the  Light  not  yet  arrived. 

— ALFRED  AUSTIN,  Human  Tragedy. 


366  SAVONAROLA,  SCALIGER,  SCHILLER. 

Have  you  boldly  to  rebuke  vice  ?  Read  the  life  of  Savonarola. — F.  W. 
FARRAR.  Social  and  Present-Day  Questions. 

Savonarola  was  the  first  man  of  the  fifteenth  century  to  realise  that  the 
human  race  was  palpitating  with  the  throes  of  a  new  life,  and  his  words 
were  loudly  echoed  by  that  portion  of  the  Italian  people  still  left  untainted 
by  the  prevalent  corruption.  He  accordingly  merits  the  title  of  the 
prophet  of  the  new  civilisation.  .  .  .  Columbus  discovered  the  paths  of 
the  sea,  Savonarola  those  of  the  soul ;  when  the  one  was  mounting  the 
pulpit,  the  other  had  already  set  sail,  and  was  cleaving  with  daring  prow 
the  waves  of  an  unknown  deep.  The  latter,  while  believing  to  have 
found  a  new  track  to  India,  had  discovered  America  instead ;  the  former 
believed  that  he  had  found  the  way  to  reawaken  faith  and  reconstitute 
the  religious  unity  of  the  human  race,  but  his  own  martyrdom  served  to 
prove  that  his  purpose  could  only  be  attained  after  passing  through  a 
period  of  schism  and  bloodshed.  Both  believed  themselves  sent  by  the 
Lord  to  diffuse  Christianity  on  earth  ;  both  beheld  strange  visions  which 
revived  their  ardour  for  the  task  ;  both  touched  a  new  world  with  their 
finger-tips,  without  being  in  a  position  to  appreciate  its  immensity :  the 
one  was  rewarded  with  chains,  the  other  with  death  at  the  stake.  .  .  . 
Accordingly,  it  were  idle  to  inquire  whether  Savonarola  upheld  the 
scrvum  arbitrium  of  Martin  Luther  or  the  Calvinistic  doctrine  of  pre- 
destination !  He  embraced  a  far  vaster  if  much  less  definite  world  ;  and, 
although  still  shackled  by  the  prejudices  and  superstitions  of  the  past,  looked 
to  a  more  remote  aim.  He  was  the  first,  in  his  age,  to  urge  humanity 
towards  the  goal  that  even,  at  this  day,  is  still  unattained,  but  towards 
which  we  are  straining  with  redoubled  effort.  He  endeavoured  to 
conciliate  reason  with  faith,  religion  with  liberty. — PASQUALE  VILLARI, 
Life  and  Times  of  Girolamo  Savonarola  (transl.). 

JULIUS  C^SAR  SCALIGER. 
Italian  Philologist :  1484-1558. 

Julius  Caesar  Scaliger,  who  became  a  prodigy  of  learning,  did  not 
commence  the  study  of  Greek  till  he  was  nearly  forty.  He  did  not  even 
know  the  Greek  characters  till  about  that  time  ;  nor  did  he  devote  himself 
entirely  to  a  life  of  letters  till  he  was  forty-seven.  His  days  till  then  had 
been  spent  in  an  unsettled  manner,  chiefly  in  the  army,  with  habits  and 
disposition  unfavourable  to  study.  But  he  had  a  mind  which,  like  that 
of  his  namesake,  the  Roman  conqueror,  was  formed  to  break  down  all 
obstacles ;  and  age,  instead  of  abating  his  vigour,  served  but  to  harden 
and  corroborate  the  sinews  of  his  intellect. — DR.  VICESIMUS  KNOX, 
Winter  Evenings :  Evening  LXXIX. 

FRIEDRICH  VON  SCHILLER. 
German  Poet  and  Historian  :  1759-1805. 

Schiller  !  that  hour  I  would  have  wish'd  to  die, 
If  through  the  shuddering  midnight  I  had  sent 
From  the  dark  dungeon  of  the  tower  time-rent 
That  fearful  voice,  a  famished  father's  cry  ; 


SCHILLER.  367 

Lest  in  some  after  moment  aught  more  mean 
Might  stamp  me  mortal !     A  triumphant  shout 
Black  Horror  scream'd,  and  all  her  goblin  rout 
Diminished  shrunk  from  the  more  withering  scene  ! 
Ah  !   Bard  tremendous  in  sublimity  ! 
Could  I  behold  thee  in  thy  loftier  mood 
Wandering  at  eve  with  finely  frenzied  eye 
Beneath  some  vast  old  tempest-swinging  wood ! 
Awhile  with  mute  awe  gazing  I  would  brood  ; 
Then  weep  aloud  in  a  wild  ecstasy ! 

— S.  T.  COLERIDGE,  To  the  Author  of  "  The  Robbers  ". 

This  is  Goethe,  with  a  forehead 

Like  the  fabled  front  of  Jove  ; 
In  its  massive  lines  the  tokens 

More  of  majesty  than  love. 
This  is  Schiller,  in  whose  features, 

With  their  passionate  calm  regard, 
We  behold  the  true  ideal 

Of  the  higher  heroic  bard, 
Whom  the  inward  world  of  feeling 

And  the  outward  world  of  sense 
To  the  endless  labour  summon, 

And  the  endless  recompense. 
These  are  they,  sublime  and  silent, 

From  whose  living  lips  have  rung 
Words  to  be  remembered  ever 

In  the  noble  German  tongue ; 
Thoughts  whose  inspiration,  kindling 

Into  loftiest  speech  or  song, 
Still  through  all  the  listening  ages 

Pours  its  torrent  swift  and  strong. 

— W.  ALLEN  BUTLER,  The  Busts  of  Goethe  and  Schiller. 

The  poetry  which  would  be  produced  by  imagination,  conversing  inti- 
mately with  human  life,  would  be  that  of  tragedy.  But  we  have  no  tragic 
poet.  Schiller  is,  perhaps,  the  only  great  tragic  poet  who  has  lived  in  the 
same  day  with  ourselves.  And  wild  and  portentous  as  his  shapes  of  life 
often  are,  who  is  there  that  does  not  feel  that  the  strange  power  by  which 
they  hold  us  is  derived  from  the  very  motions  of  our  blood,  and  that  the 
breath  by  which  we  live  breathes  in  them  ?  He  has  thrown  back  his 
scenes  into  other  times  of  the  world :  but  we  find  ourselves  there.  It  is 
from  real  present  life  that  he  has  borrowed  that  terrible  spell  of  passion 
by  which  he  shakes  so  inwardly  the  very  seat  of  feeling  and  thought. — 
JOHN  WILSON,  Essays  :  A  Few  Words  on  Shakespeare. 

Schiller  was  the  best  of  friends — the  best  of  fathers — the  best  of 
husbands  ;  no  quality  was  wanting  to  complete  that  gentle  and  peaceful 
character,  which  was  animated  by  the  fire  of  genius  alone.  The  love 
of  liberty,  respect  for  the  female  sex,  enthusiastic  admiration  of  the  fine 
arts,  inspired  his  mind ;  and  in  the  analysis  of  his  works  it  would  be 
easy  to  point  out  to  what  particular  virtue  we  owe  the  various  produc- 
tions of  his  masterly  pen. — MADAME  DE  STAEL  (transl.). 


368  SCHILLER. 

Schiller  is  a  thousand  times  more  hearty  than  Goethe.  .  .  .  Schiller's; 
blank  verse  is  bad.  He  moves  in  it  as  a  fly  in  a  glue  bottle. — S.  T. 
COLERIDGE,  Table  Talk. 

No  author  ever  had  more  earnestness  than  Schiller,  his  earnestness  was. 
the  real  secret  of  his  greatness  ;  this  combination  of  philosophy  and 
poetry,  this  harmony  between  genius  and  conscience,  sprang  out  of  the 
almost  perfect,  almost  unrivalled  equality  of  proportions  which  give  sym- 
metry to  his  various  faculties.  With  him  the  imagination  and  the  intellect 
were  so  nicely  balanced,  that  one  knows  not  which  was  the  greater ; 
owing,  happily  to  the  extensive  range  of  his  studies,  it  may  be  said  that, 
as  the  intellect  was  enriched,  the  imagination  was  strengthened.  There- 
fore, his  philosophy,  in  strict  accordance  with  his  poetry,  was  designed 
not  so  much  to  convince  as  to  ennoble ;  it  addresses  the  soul  rather  than 
the  understanding. — LYTTON,  Life  of  Schiller. 

It  is  not  the  predominating  force  of  any  one  faculty  that  impresses  us 
in  Schiller  ;  but  the  general  force  of  all.  Every  page  of  his  writings  bears 
the  stamp  of  internal  vigour  ;  new  truths,  new  aspects  of  known  truth, 
bold  thought,  happy  imagery,  lofty  emotion.  Schiller  would  have  been 
no  common  man,  though  he  had  altogether  wanted  the  qualities  peculiar 
to  poets.  His  intellect  is  clear,  deep,  and  comprehensive  ;  its  deductions, 
frequently  elicited  from  numerous  and  distant  premises,  are  presented 
under  a  magnificent  aspect,  in  the  shape  of  theorems,  embracing  an  im- 
mense multitude  of  minor  propositions.  .  .  .  To  those  who  look  on  him 
as  we  have  wished  to  make  them,  Schiller  will  not  need  a  further  pane- 
gyric. For  the  sake  of  Literature,  it  may  still  be  remarked,  that  his 
merit  was  peculiarly  due  to  her.  Literature  was  his  creed,  the  dictate  of 
his  conscience ;  he  was  an  Apostle  of  the  Sublime  and  Beautiful,  and  this 
his  calling  made  a  hero  of  him.  For  it  was  in  the  spirit  of  a  true  man  he 
received  it,  and  undertook  to  cultivate  it ;  and  its  inspirations  constantly 
maintained  the  noblest  temper  in  his  soul.  ...  In  another  age,  this 
Schiller  will  stand  forth  in  the  foremost  rank  among  the  master-spirits  of 
his  century,  and  be  admitted  to  a  place  among  the  chosen  of  all  centuries. 
His  works,  the  memory  of  what  he  did  and  was,  will  rise  afar  off  like  a 
towering  landmark  in  the  solitude  of  the  Past,  when  distance  shall  have 
dwarfed  into  invisibility  the  lesser  people  that  encompassed  him,  and  hid 
him  from  the  near  beholder. — CARLYLE,  Life  of  Friedrich  Schiller. 

Schiller  inspires  us  to  noble  action  and  to  sacrifice. — MAZZINI,  Life  and 
Writings,  Vol.  II. 

The  authority  of  the  name  of  Schiller  is  too  great  for  his  books.  This 
inequality  of  the  reputation  to  the  works  or  the  anecdotes  is  not  accounted 
for  by  saying  that  the  reverberation  is  longer  than  the  thunder-clap  ;  but 
somewhat  resided  in  these  men  which  begot  an  expectation  that  outran 
all  their  performance.  The  largest  part  of  their  power  was  latent.  This 
is  that  which  we  call  Character,  a  reserved  force  which  acts  directly  by 
presence,  and  without  means. — EMERSON,  Essays  :  Character. 

But  Schiller  was  not  only  a  destroyer  and  liberator ;  he  fulfilled  yet 
another  and  more  distinctive  function  of  Apollo.  He  was  a  purifier  ;  and 
it  was  by  his  work  of  purification  that  his  influence  became  most  per- 
manent. It  was  this  that  made  him  a  classic,  and  gave  him  a  share  in 


SCHILLER,  SCHOPENHAUER.  369 

moulding  the  language  and  thought  of  a  great  people.  The  purifiers  of 
literature  are,  it  is  true,  seldom  popular  ;  they  have  "  no  cunning  art  to  stir 
the  blood  " ;  they  seldom  approach  the  themes  that  take  the  crown,  the 
common  sources  of  tears  and  laughter. — H.  W.  NEVINSON,  Life  of 
Friedrich  Schiller. 


ARTHUR  SCHOPENHAUER. 
German  Philosopher:  1788-1860. 

Schopenhauer's  natural  disposition  was  one  of  ill-tempered  discontent- 
ment with  things  in  general,  joined  to  an  immoderate  self-esteem,  and  an 
abusive  disdain  of  others  ;  and  in  spite  of  his  own  ethical  precepts  his  con- 
duct was  marked  by  self-indulgence  and  ignoble  fear.  His  unfortunate 
temperament  was  embittered  by  the  long  period  of  neglect  which  his 
doctrines  had  to  encounter,  and  the  predominance  of  those  whom  he  re- 
garded as  sophists  and  charlatans  ;  his  works  are  full  of  brilliant  abuse  of 
the  professional  philosophy  of  the  universities. — ANDREW  SETH,  Celebrities 
of  the  Century. 

Perhaps,  however,  his  most  interesting  aspect  is  his  character  as  a  re- 
presentative of  the  Indian  intellect — a  European  Buddhist.  The  study  of 
Indian  wisdom,  conducting  by  another  path  to  conclusions  entirely  in 
harmony  with  the  results  of  natural  science,  is  destined  to  affect,  and  is 
affecting,  the  European  mind  in  a  degree  not  inferior  to  the  modification 
accomplished  by  the  renaissance  of  Hellenic  philosophy ;  but  the  process 
is  retarded  by  the  national  peculiarities  of  the  Indian  sages,  and  the  diffi- 
culty of  naturalising  them  in  Europe.  It  is,  therefore,  much  to  possess 
a  writer  like  Arthur  Schopenhauer,  capable  of  imparting  Western  form  to 
Eastern  ideas,  or  rather  to  ideas  once  solely  Eastern  ;  but  which,  like 
seeds  wafted  by  the  winds,  have  wandered  far  from  their  birthplace  to 
germinate  anew  in  the  brain  of  Europe.  .  .  .  Schopenhauer  may  yet 
prove  the  Kapila  of  a  new  Buddha. — HELEN  ZIMMERN,  Life  of  Arthur 
Schopenhauer. 

In  thus  keeping  open  and  guarding  that  small  door  leading  to  the  Unseen, 
Schopenhauer  affords  a  grateful  refuge  to  that  love  of  the  mysterious  and 
unearthly,  which  lingers  in  many  hearts,  and  refuses  to  be  charmed  away 
by  the  wisest  and  wittiest  demonstration  of  the  scientific  masters  that 
measurable  matter  is  all,  and  in  all.  Wherever  there  lies  an  unsatisfied 
soul,  longing  for  direct  communication  with  the  potency  in  universal  nature, 
there  is  a  possible  disciple  for  Schopenhauer. — W.  WALLACE,  Life  of 
Arthur  Schopenhauer. 

Schopenhauer,  a  man  who  hated  much. — AUGUSTINE  BIRRELL,  Essays, 
about  Men,  Women,  and  Books. 

I  must  confess  that  I  have  not  read  Schopenhauer,  and  I  decline  to 
lower  my  spiritual  temperature  by  reading  a  book  which  I  am  told  is 
meant  to  convince  one  that  "  all  things  are  for  the  worst  in  the  worst  of 
all  possible  worlds  ". — THOMAS  HODGKIN,  Society  of  Friends  Conference^ 
1895. 

24 


370  SCHUBERT,  SCHUMANN,  SCIPIO,  SCOTT. 

FRANZ  PETER  SCHUBERT. 
German  Musical  Composer:  1797-1828. 

The  cause  of  freedom,  in  music  as  elsewhere,  is  now  very  nearly 
triumphant ;  but  at  a  time  when  its  adversaries  were  many  and  powerful, 
we  can  hardly  imagine  the  sacred  bridge  of  liberty  kept  by  a  more  stal- 
wart trio  than  Schubert  the  Armourer,  Chopin  the  Refiner,  and  Liszt  the 
Thunderer. — H.  R.  HAWEIS,  Music  and  Morals. 

ROBERT  SCHUMANN. 
German  Musical  Composer:   1810-1856. 

Schumann's  our  music-maker  now  ; 

"  Has  his  march-movement  youth  and  mouth  ?  " 

— BROWNING,  Dis  aliter  visuin. 

SCIPIO  AFRICANUS. 
Roman  General:  B.C.  234-183. 

And  thou  Scipio,  a  myrrour  mayst  thou  be 
To  all  nobles,  that  they  learn  not  too  late, 
Howe  they  once  trust  the  unstable  commontye, 
Thou  that  recuredst  the  torne  dismembred  state, 
Even  when  the  conquerour  was  at  the  gate. 

— LORD  BUCKHURST,  Complaynt  of  Henry e,  Duke  of  Buckingham. 

Bold  Scipio,  saviour  of  the  Roman  state  ; 
Great  in  his  triumphs,  in  retirement  great. 

—POPE,  The  Temple  of  Fame. 

Excess  in  youth  made  Scipio  less  rever'd. 

— PRIOR,  Carmen  Seculare,for  the  Year  1700. 

Scipio,  the  gentle  chief,  humanely  brave, 
Who  soon  the  race  of  spotless  glory  ran 
And,  warm  in  youth  to  the  poetic  shade 
With  friendship  and  philosophy  retir'd. 

— THOMSON,  The  Seasons  :   Winter. 

Scipio,  Milton  called  "  the  height  of  Rome  "  ;  and  all  history  resolves 
itself  very  easily  into  the  biography  of  a  few  stout  and  earnest  persons. 
.  .  .  Every  great  man  is  a  unique.  The  Scipionism  of  Scipio  is  precisely 
that  part  he  could  not  borrow. — EMERSON,  Essays  :  Self -Reliance. 

SIR  WALTER  SCOTT. 
Scottish  Novelist  and  Poet:  1771-1832. 

.   .   .  thou,  with  powers  that  mock  the  aid  of  praise, 
Shouldst  leave  to  humbler  bards  ignoble  lays : 
Thy  country's  voice,  the  voice  of  all  the  nine, 
Demand  a  hallow'd  harp — that  harp  is  thine.  .  .  . 


SCOTT.  371 

Scotland  !  still  proudly  claim  thy  native  bard, 
And  be  thy  praise  his  first,  his  best  reward ! 
Yet  not  with  thee  alone  his  name  should  live, 
But  own  the  vast  renown  a  world  can  give : 
Be  known,  perchance,  when  Albion  is  no  more, 
And  tell  the  tale  of  what  she  was  before ; 
To  future  times  her  faded  fame  recall, 
And  save  her  glory,  though  his  country  fall. 

— BYRON,  English  Bards  and  Scotch  Reviewers. 

...  the  Ariosto  of  the  North, 
Sang  ladye-love  and  war,  romance  and  knightly  worth. 

— Id.,  Childe  Harold's  Pilgrimage,  Canto  IV. 

Blessed  be  the  act  of  sovereign  grace 

That  raised  thee  'bove  the  rhyming  race  ;  .  .  . 

Bootless  the  waste  of  empty  words, 

Thy  pen  is  worth  ten  thousand  swords. 

— HOGG,  Lines  to  Sir  Walter  Scott,  Bart. 

There  too,  old  and  young, 
Gentle  and  simple,  by  Sir  Walter's  tales 
Spell-bound,  shall  feel 
Imaginary  hopes  and  fears 
Strong  as  realities, 
And  waking  from  the  dream,  regret  its  close. 

— SOUTHEY,  Ode  written  after  the  King's  Visit  to  Scotland. 

Great  Minstrel  of  the  Border. 

— WORDSWORTH,  Yarrow  Revisited. 

Lift  up  your  hearts,  ye  Mourners !  for  the  might 

Of  the  whole  world's  good  wishes  with  him  goes ; 

Blessings  and  prayers  in  nobler  retinue 

Than  sceptred  King  or  laurelled  Conqueror  knows, 

Follow  this  wondrous  Potentate.     Be  true, 

Ye  winds  of  ocean,  and  the  midland  sea, 

Wafting  your  charge  to  soft  Parthenope. 

—Ibid.,  On  Sir  W.  Scott's  Departure  for  Naples. 

The  trumpet-blast  of  Marmion  never  shook 
The  God-built  walls  of  Ilion  ;  yet  what  shout 
Of  the  Achaians  swells  the  heart  so  high  ? 

— LANDOR,  To  the  Author  of  "  Festus  ". 

Of  all  that  bloom  in  field  or  fell, 
O  Scott  of  Scots,  how  passing  well 
The  Scottish  flow'r,  the  wild  Bluebell, 

May  be  assign'd  to  you. 
On  breezy  heath  it  nods  to  greet 
The  happy  rover's  bounding  feet, 
Whose  eye  with  welcome  laughs  to  meet 

The  glance  of  kindly  blue  ; 
Or  on  some  mouldering  donjon  tow'r 
Waves  in  the  wind  its  slender  flow'r 


372  SCOTT. 

Where  'scutcheon'd  banners  flew — 
A  bright  existence,  springing  gay 
From  time's  despoil  and  power's  decay. 

— W.  ALLINGHAM,  Poets  and  Flowers. 

I  belong  to  the  Black  Hussars  of  literature,  who  neither  give  nor 
receive  criticism. — SIR  WALTER  SCOTT. 

Sir  Walter  Scott !  The  man  in  Scotland  I  most  wish  to  see ! — KING 
GEORGE  IV. 

The  poetically  great  Walter  Scott  came  like  a  sunbeam  to  my  dwelling. 
— ANNA  SEWARD,  Letter  to  Mr.  Gary. 

I  see  the  Lady  of  the  Lake  advertised.  Of  course  it  is  in  his  old 
ballad  style  and  pretty.  After  all,  Scott  is  the  best  of  them.  The  end  of 
all  scribblement  is  to  amuse,  and  he  certainly  succeeds  there.  I  long  to 
read  his  new  romance.  .  .  .  He  is  undoubtedly  the  Monarch  of  Parnassus, 
and  the  most  English  of  bards. — BYRON,  in  MOORE'S  Life  of  Byron. 

When  I  am  very  ill  indeed,  I  can  read  Scott's  novels,  and  they  are 
almost  the  only  books  I  can  then  read.  I  cannot  at  such  times  read 
the  Bible ;  my  mind  reflects  on  it,  but  I  can't  bear  the  open  page. — S.  T. 
COLERIDGE,  Table  Talk. 

Sir  Walter  Scott  more  nearly  resembles  Homer  than  any  poet  who  has 
sung  since  the  siege  of  Troy.  Not  that  he  has  produced  any  poem  which 
will  for  a  moment  bear  a  comparison  with  the  Iliad — fine  as  the  Lady  of 
the  Lake  and  Marmion  are,  it  would  be  the  height  of  national  partiality  to 
make  any  such  comparison.  But  nevertheless  Sir  Walter's  mind  was  cast  in 
the  same  mould,  and  was  in  some  respects  of  the  same  dimensions,  as  that 
of  Homer.  We  see  in  him  the  same  combination  of  natural  sagacity 
with  acquired  information ;  of  pictorial  eye  with  dramatic  capability ;  of 
observation  of  character  with  reflection  and  feeling  ;  of  graphic  power  with 
poetic  fervour ;  of  ardour  of  imagination  with  rectitude  of  principle ;  of 
warlike  enthusiasm  with  domestic  tenderness,  which  has  rendered  the 
Grecian  bard  immortal.  .  .  .  The  battle  in  Marmion  is  beyond  all  question, 
as  Jeffrey  long  ago  remarked,  the  most  Homeric  strife  which  has  been 
sung  since  the  days  of  Homer. — SIR  ARCHIBALD  ALISON,  Essays  :  Homer, 
Dante,  and  M.  Angela. 

Scott  burned  with  the  soul  of  painting  in  his  poetry  and  his  prose. — 
Id.,  Ibid. :  British  School  of  Painting. 

The  King  the  other  day  made  Sir  Walter  Scott  a  baronet,  but  not  all 
the  power  of  the  Three  Estates  could  make  another  Author  of  Waverley* 
— HAZLITT,  Table  Talk. 

North  :  "  Scott's  poetry  puzzles  me — it  is  often  very  bad." 

Tickler:  "Very." 

North  :  "  Except  when  his  martial  soul  is  up,  he  is  but  a  tame  and  feeble 

writer.     His  versification  in  general  flows  on  easily — smoothly — almost 

sonorously — but  seldom  or  never  with  impetuosity  or  grandeur.     There  is 

no  strength,  no  felicity  in  his  diction — and  the  substance  of  his  poetry  is 

neither  rich  nor  rare.  .  .  ." 

Tickler  :  .  .  .  "  But  then  when  his  martial  soul  is  up — and  up  it  is  at 

sight  of  a  spear-point  or  a  pennon — then  indeed  you  hear  the  true  poet 


SCOTT.  373 

of  chivalry.  What  care  I,  Kit,  for  all  his  previous  drivelling — drivelling  if 
it  be — and  God  forbid  I  should  deny  drivelling  to  any  poet,  ancient  or 
modern — for  now  he  makes  my  very  soul  to  burn  within  me — and,  coward 
and  civilian  though  I  be — yes,  a  most  intense  and  insuperable  coward, 
prizing  life  and  limb  beyond  all  other  earthly  possessions,  and  loath  to 
shed  one  single  drop  of  blood  either  lor  my  King  or  country — yet  such  is 
the  trumpet-power  of  the  song  of  that  son  of  genius,  that  I  start  from  my 
old  elbow-chair,  up  with  the  poker,  tongs,  or  shovel,  no  matter  which, 
and  flourishing  it  round  my  head,  cry,  '  Charge,  Chester,  charge  !  On, 
Stanley,  on  ! '  and  then  dropping  my  voice,  and  returning  to  my  padded 
bottom,  whisper,  '  Were  the  last  words  of  Marmion  ! ' 

"  Therefore  I  say  that  Scott  is  a  Homer  of  a  poet,  and  so  let  him  dose 
when  he  has  a  mind  to  it ;  for  no  man  I  know  is  better  entitled  to  an 
occasional  half-canto  of  slumber." — JOHN  WILSON,  Noctes  Amhrosiance, 
Vol.  I. 

The  Minstrel— the  Magician— the  Man.— Id.,  Ibid.,  Vol.  III. 

We  believe  that  we  speak  the  general  voice  when  we  place  on  a  triple 
throne,  Scott,  Wordsworth,  and  Byron. 

Though  greatly  inferior  in  many  things  to  his  illustrious  brethren,  Scott 
is  perhaps,  after  all,  the  most  unequivocally  original.  We  do  not 
know  of  any  model  after  which  the  form  of  his  principal  Poems  has  been 
moulded.  They  bear  no  resemblance,  and,  we  must  allow,  are  far 
inferior  to  the  heroic  Poems  of  Greece ;  nor  do  they,  though  he  has  been 
called  the  Ariosto  of  the  North,  seem  to  us  to  resemble,  in  any  way 
whatever,  any  of  the  great  Poems  of  modern  Italy.  He  has  given  a 
most  intensely  real  representation  of  the  living  spirit  of  the  chivalrous 
age  of  his  country.  There  is  not  much  of  all  this  in  any  modern  poetry 
but  his  own  ;  and  therefore  it  is,  that,  independently  of  all  his  other 
manifold  excellences,  we  glory  in  him  as  the  great  modern  National 
Poet  of  Scotland — in  whom  old  times  revive — whose  Poetry  prevents 
History  from  becoming  that  which,  in  times  of  excessive  refinement,  it 
is  often  too  apt  to  become — a  dead  letter — and  keeps  the  animating  and 
heroic  spectacles  of  the  past  moving  brightly  across  our  everyday  world, 
and  flashing  out  from  them  a  kindling  power  over  the  actions  and 
characters  of  our  own  age. — Id.,  Essays :  Wordsworth. 

The  principal  merit  of  Walter  Scott  consists  in  his  portraiture  of  times 
utterly  distinct  from  the  time  in  which  he  lived. — LYTTON,  Essays :  The 
Moral  Effect  of  Writers. 

And,  first,  it  appears  to  me  that  one  cause  of  Sir  Walter  Scott's  un- 
precedented popularity  as  a  novelist,  among  all  classes  and  in  all  civilized 
lands,  is  to  be  found  in  the  ease  and  the  breadth  of  his  knowledge  of  the 
world.  He  does  not  pretend  too  much  metaphysical  science  or  much 
vehement  eloquence  of  passion.  He  troubles  himself  very  little  with  the 
analysis  of  mind,  with  the  struggle  of  conflicting  emotions.  For  that 
reason,  he  could  never  have  obtained,  in  the  highest  walks  of  the  drama, 
a  success  correspondent  to  the  loftiness  of  his  fame  as  a  tale-teller.  The 
drama  must  bear  to  an  audience  the  machinery  of  an  intellect  or  the  world 
of  a  heart.  No  mere  interest  of  narrative,  no  mere  skill  of  situation,  can, 
for  a  play  that  is  to  retain  a  permanent  hold  on  the  stage,  supply  the  want 
of  that  wondrous  insight  into  motive  and  conduct  which  attests  the  philo- 


374  SCOTT. 

sophy  of  Shakespeare,  or  that  fervent  oratory  of  passion  which  exalts  into 
eloquence  almost  superhuman  the  declamatory  verse  of  Corneille.  .  .  . 
Of  all  our  great  poets  since  Milton,  Byron  and  Scott  are  at  once  those  the 
most  recognised  by  foreign  nations,  and  who  yet  owe  the  least  to  foreign 
poets.  They  owed  nothing  to  the  French,  yet  of  all  our  poets  they  are 
those  whom  .the  French  most  condescend  to  imitate.  If  the  French  now 
study  Shakespeare,  it  is  because  Scott  and  Byron  allured  them  to  study 
English. — LYTTON,  Essays  :  Knowledge  of  the  World. 

In  the  sense  in  which  we  are  now  using  the  word  correctness,  we  think 
that  Sir  Walter  Scott,  Mr.  Wordsworth,  Mr.  Coleridge,  are  far  more 
correct  poets  than  those  who  are  commonly  extolled  as  the  models  of 
correctness,  Pope  for  example,  and  Addison. — MACAULAY,  Essays  :  Lord 
Byron. 

The  most  startling  fault  of  the  age  being  its  faithlessness,  it  is  necessary 
that  its  greatest  man  should  be  faithless.  Nothing  is  more  notable  or 
sorrowful  in  Scott's  mind  than  its  incapacity  of  steady  belief  in  anything. 
He  cannot  even  resolve  hardly  to  believe  in  a  ghost,  or  a  water-spirit  ; 
always  explains  them  away  in  an  apologetic  manner,  not  believing,  all 
the  while,  even  in  his  own  explanation.  He  never  can  clearly  ascertain 
whether  there  is  anything  behind  the  arras  but  rats  ;  never  draws  sword, 
and  thrusts  at  it  for  life  or  death ;  but  goes  on  looking  at  it  timidly,  and 
saying,  "It  must  be  the  wind".  He  is  educated  a  Presbyterian  and 
remains  one,  because  it  is  the  most  sensible  thing  he  can  do  if  he  is  to  live 
in  Edinburgh  ;  but  he  thinks  Romanism  more  picturesque,  and  profaneness 
more  gentlemanly ;  does  not  see  that  anything  affects  human  life  but  love, 
courage  and  destiny ;  which  are,  indeed,  not  matters  of  faith  at  all,  but  of 
sight.  Any  gods  but  those  are  very  misty  in  outline  to  him  ;  and  when 
the  love  is  laid  ghastly  in  poor  Charlotte's  coffin ;  and  the  courage  is  no 
more  of  use  ; — the  pen  having  fallen  from  between  the  fingers  ;  and  destiny 
is  sealing  the  scroll, — the  God-light  is  dim  in  the  tears  that  fall  on  it.  ... 
He  is  in  all  the  epitome  of  his  epoch. — RUSKIN,  Modern  Painters. 
Vol.  III. 

Let  Scott  thank  John  Knox,  for  he  owed  him  much,  little  as  he 
dreamed  of  debt  in  that  quarter  !  No  Scotchman  of  his  time  was  more 
entirely  Scotch  than  Walter  Scott :  the  good  and  the  not  so  good,  which 
all  Scotchmen  inherit,  ran  through  every  fibre  of  him.  ...  It  can  be 
said  of  Scott,  when  he  departed  he  took  a  man's  life  along  with  him. 
No  sounder  piece  of  British  manhood  was  put  together  in  that  eighteenth 
century  of  time.  Alas,  his  fine  Scotch  face,  with  its  shaggy  honestness, 
sagacity,  and  goodness,  when  we  saw  it  latterly  on  the  Edinburgh  streets, 
was  all  worn  with  care,  the  joy  all  fled  from  it,  ploughed  deep  with 
labour  and  sorrow.  We  shall  never  forget  it— we  shall  never  see  it 
again.  Adieu,  Sir  Walter,  pride  of  all  Scotchmen  ;  take  our  proud  and 
sad  farewell. — CARLYLE. 

The  name  of  Scott  is  only  less  dear  to  Englishmen  than  the  name  of 
Shakespeare.  .  .  .  Scott  is  certainly  the  greatest  of  peaceful  and  bene- 
ficent conquerors  in  the  world  of  letters. — SIR  W.  S.  MAXWELL,  Mis- 
cellaneous Essays,  Vol.  VI. 

Scott  is  the  other  wonder  of  this  age.  Picturesque,  interesting,  and 
bard-like  as  are  his  narrative  poems,  the  pathos,  humour,  description, 


SCOTT.  375 

character,  and,  above  all,  the  marvellous  fertility  displayed  in  the  novels, 
show  far  greater  power  :  a  whole  region  of  the  territory  of  Imagination  is 
occupied  by  this  extraordinary  man  alone  and  unapproachable. — LORD 
JOHN  RUSSELL,  Introduction  to  Memoirs,  Journal,  and  Correspondence  of 
Thomas  Moore,  Vol.  I. 

If  Scott  has  contributed  no  great  characters,  like  Hamlet,  or  Don 
Quixote,  or  Mephistopheles,  to  the  world  of  fiction,  he  is  the  undisputed 
parent  of  a  whole  population  full  of  enduring  vitality.,  and,  if  rising  to 
no  ideal  standard,  yet  reflecting  with  unrivalled  clearness  the  char- 
acteristics of  some  of  the  strongest  and  sturdiest  of  the  races  of  man.— 
LESLIE  STEPHEN,  Hours  in  a  Library,  First  Scries. 

Possessing  in  a  high  degree  the  active  and  athletic  frame,  the  robust 
health,  the  hardy  training,  the  vigorous  nerve,  the  bold  spirit,  the  frank 
bearing,  and  the  genial  kindness  of  the  gentlemen  of  the  olden  time,  he 
could  heartily  appreciate  and  unhesitatingly  approve  all  that  time  and 
revolution  had  spared  of  feudal  dominion  and  territorial  grandeur.  The 
ancient  loyalty,  so  happily  tempering  the  firmness  of  a  principle  with  the 
fervour  of  a  feeling,  never  beat  higher  in  the  heart  of  a  cavalier  of  the 
seventeenth  than  in  that  of  the  Scottish  Advocate  of  the  nineteenth 
century.  Every  one  will  remember  that  he  refused  to  write  a  life  of 
Mary  Queen  of  Scots,  because  in  reference  to  her  conduct,  his  feelings 
were  at  variance  with  his  judgment  and  in  painting  those  old  times  in 
which  his  imagination  delighted  to  revel,  all  that  would  most  have  re- 
volted our  modern  mildness  of  manners,  and  shocked  our  modern  sense 
of  justice,  was  softened  down  or  dropped  out  of  sight,  and  the  nobler 
features  of  those  ages,  their  courage,  their  devotion,  their  strength  and 
clearness  of  purpose,  their  marked  individuality  of  character,  their 
impulses  of  heroism  and  delicacy,  their  manly  enterprise,  their  picturesque 
costumes  and  manners  of  life,  were  all  brought  into  bold  relief,  and  placed 
before  the  reader  with  such  fulness  of  detail,  in  such  grandeur  of  outline, 
in  such  bright  and  vivid  colouring,  as  gave  even  to  the  unimaginative  a 
more  distinct  conception  of,  and  a  more  lively  sympathy  with,  the  past 
than  they  could  gain  for  themselves  of  the  present,  as  it  was  whirling 
and  roaring  round  them,  confusing  them  with  its  shifting  of  hues  and 
forms,  and  stunning  them  with  its  hurricane  of  noises. — GEORGE  BRIMLEY, 
Essays. 

Scott's  veneration  for  the  past  reached  its  highest  and  most  shrewd 
and  intelligent  form  in  his  Scotticism.  It  is  a  coincidence  with  more 
than  the  usual  amount  of  verbal  good  luck  in  it  that  his  name  should 
have  been  Scott — generically  and  comprehensively  the  Scotchman. — 
DAVID  MASSON,  British  Novelists  and  their  Styles. 

On  the  whole,  and  speaking  roughly,  these  defects  in  the  delineation 
which  Scott  has  given  us  of  human  life  are  but  two.  He  omits  to  give  us 
a  delineation  of  the  soul.  We  have  mind,  manners,  animation,  but  it  is 
the  stir  of  the  world.  We  miss  the  consecrating  power ;  and  we  miss  it 
not  only  in  its  own  peculiar  sphere,  which,  from  the  difficulty  of  introducing 
the  deepest  elements  into  a  novel,  would  have  been  scarcely  matter  for  a 
harsh  criticism,  but  in  the  place  in  which  a  novelist  might  most  be  expected 
to  delineate  it.  ...  His  heroes  and  heroines  are  well  dressed  for  this 
world,  but  not  for  another ;  there  is  nothing  even  in  their  love  which  is 
suitable  for  immortality. — WALTER  BAGEHOT,  Literary  Studies,  Vol.  II. 


376  SCOTT. 

"  This  was  a  man  !  "  And  Lockhart  did  not  show  us — would  not  let 
us  see — what  a  man  of  men  this  was.  But  now  that  we  know,  we  may 
say  with  Milton's  Manoah,  "  Nothing  is  here  for  tears".  The  very  last 
days  of  all,  as  recorded  by  Lockhart,  are  painful  indeed  to  read  of,  but 
not  painfuller  than  would  be  the  record  of  any  other  gradual  and  con- 
scious decline  and  subsidence  of  spirit  and  body,  overworked  and  over- 
worn, towards  the  common  end — "  no  rest  for  Sir  Walter  but  in  the 
grave  ". — SWINBURNE,  Studies  in  Prose  and  Poetry. 

Sir  Walter's  influence  on  our  fictitious  literature  will  never  disappear. 
He  taught  us  how  to  tell  those  exquisite  stories  which  now  roll  forth  year 
by  year,  in  hundreds  from  the  presses,  and  will  be  a  marvel  to  after  ages. 
The  ease  and  strength  of  the  modern  novel  came  from  him.  He  showed 
writers  how  to  construct  plots  devoid  of  the  cumbrous  machinery  of 
Paul  Jones,  how  to  develop  the  graphic  force  of  Defoe  and  to  keep  free 
from  his  twaddle,  and  how  to  put  on  paper  a  brilliant  passage  of  repartee 
without  the  manifest  effort  of  Sterne.  He  lived  to  see  better  novelists  than 
himself  in  the  field  (and  he  had  the  noble-mindedness  to  acknowledge 
their  excellence),  but  he  had  the  satisfaction  of  observing  that  whatever 
new  melodies  and  combinations  of  sound  they  produced  it  was  his  instru- 
ments they  used. — J.  C.  JEAFFRESON,  Novels  and  Novelists  from  Elizabeth 
to  Victoria,  Vol.  II. 

In  Scott  is  broad  health  and  freedom,  breadth  of  sky,  clearness  of 
atmosphere,  not  less  in  the  outlook  and  character  of  his  own  mind  than 
in  his  presentation  of  artistic  effects  ;  but  nowhere  does  he  show  himself 
penetrated  by  any  sense  of  the  mystery  and  complexity  of  life.  He 
writes  with  the  good-natured  ease  of  a  man  blessed  with  an  excellent 
digestion  and  familiar  with  broad  moors  and  sweet  country  air  ;  who,  in 
his  own  life,  has  never  sounded  the  deeper  notes  of  tragedy  and  never 
known  the  bitter  throes  of  anguish. — W.  J.  DAWSON,  Quest  and  Vision. 

Scott's  biography  is  the  true  key  to  his  art,  and  attracts  us  for  reasons 
the  exact  opposite  of  those  that  lend  fascination  to  the  records  of  him 
who  has  brooded  over  the  mystery  of  existence.  He  was  not  the  chemist 
who  analyses  the  contents  of  the  cup  of  life,  but  he  who  quaffs  them  to 
the  lees.  There  is  no  saner  and  more  joyous  youth  than  his  told  of  in 
the  annals  of  English  literature ;  though,  were  our  knowledge  more 
complete,  it  would  probably  be  found  that  Shakespeare's  equalled  it  in 
full-blooded  gaiety. — P.  A.  GRAHAM,  Nature  in  Books. 

There  was  in  Sir  Walter,  I  think,  at  least  as  much  of  the  Stoic  as 
the  Christian.  But  Stoic  or  Christian,  he  was  a  hero  of  the  old,  in- 
domitable type.  Even  the  last  fragments  of  his  imaginative  power  were 
all  turned  to  account  by  that  unconquerable  will,  amidst  the  discouragement 
of  friends,  and  the  still  more  disheartening  doubts  of  his  own  mind.  Like 
the  headland  stemming  a  rough  sea,  he  was  gradually  worn  away,  but 
never  crushed. — R.  H.  HUTTON,  Sir  Walter  Scott. 

For  when  Time,  that  old  ravager,  has  done  his  very  worst,  there  will 
be  enough  left  of  Sir  Walter  to  carry  down  his  name  and  fame  to  the 
remotest  age. — AUGUSTINE  BIRRELL,  Essays  about  Men,  Women,  and 
Books. 

Sir  Walter's  work  has  proved  to  be  of  so  permanent  a  character,  his 
insight  into  all  things  Scotch  so  deep  and  true,  and  his  human  worth  and 


SCOTT,  SELDEN.  377 

excellence  so  rare  and  noble,  that  it  has  hardly  been  worth  while  to  re- 
member the  froth  and  effervescence  he  at  first  occasioned ;  but  that  he  did 
create  a  movement  in  the  Oxford  direction  is  certain.  He  made  the  old 
Catholic  times  interesting.  He  was  not  indeed,  like  the  Tractarians,  a 
man  of  "  primitive  "  mind  ;  but  he  was  romantic,  and  it  all  told. — AUGUS- 
TINE BIRRELL,  Res  JudicatcE. 

Scott,  by  the  confession  of  all  competent  judges,  save  a  very  few,  has 
created  almost  more  men  and  women,  undoubtedly  real  and  life-like,  than 
any  other  prose  novelist.  Now  you  cannot  create  a  man  or  a  woman 
without  knowing  whereof  a  man  and  a  woman  are  made,  though  the  converse 
proposition  is  unfortunately  by  no  means  so  universally  predicable.  .  .  . 
There  need  be  very  little  doubt  that  if  we  knew  everything  about  Shake- 
speare, he  would,  as  a  man  of  mould  might,  come  scatheless  from  the  test. 
But  we  do  know  everything,  or  almost  everything,  about  Scott,  and  he  comes 
•out  nearly  as  well  as  any  one  but  a  faultless  monster  could.  For  all  the 
works  of  the  Lord  in  literature,  as  in  other  things,  let  us  give  thanks — for 
Blake  and  for  Beddoes  as  well  as  for  Shelley  and  for  Swift.  But  let 
every  one  who  by  himself,  or  by  his  fathers,  claims  origin  between  Tol- 
Pedn-Penwith  and  Dunnet  Head  give  thanks,  with  more  energy  and  more 
confidence  than  in  any  other  case  save  one,  for  the  fact  that  his  is  the 
race  and  his  the  language  of  Sir  Walter  Scott. — SAINTSBURY,  Life  of  Sir 
Walter  Scott. 

Concerning  Scott,  who  will  not  agree  with  Lockhart's  remark  in  the 
preface  to  his  abridged  edition  of  1848 :  "  I  should  have  been  more 
willing  to  produce  an  enlarged  edition ;  for  the  interest  of  Sir  Walter's 
history  lies,  I  think,  peculiarly  in  its  minute  details  "  ?  You  may  explore 
here,  and  explore  there,  and  still  you  find  pure  gold ;  for  the  man  was 
gold  right  through.  .  .  .  To  me,  a  southron,  Scott  is  the  most  imaginative, 
and  at  the  same  time  justest,  writer  of  our  language  since  Shakespeare 
died.  To  say  this  is  not  to  suggest  that  he  is  comparable  to  Shakespeare. 
— A.  T.  QUILLER-COUCH,  Adventures  in  Criticism. 

Nowhere,  else,  perhaps,  in  modern  literature  could  any  one  be  found 
who,  in  an  equal  measure  with  Scott,  has  united  these  three  conditions 
of  a  true  spiritual  analogy  to  Homer  ;  living  realisation  of  a  past  heroic 
age ;  a  genius  in  native  sympathy  with  the  heroic  ;  and  a  manner  which 
joins  the  spontaneous  impulse  of  the  balladist  to  a  higher  order  of  art 
and  intellect. — R.  C.  JEBB,  Introduction  to  the  "  Iliad"  and  "  Odyssey  ". 

JOHN  SELDEN. 

English  Statesman  and  Jurist :  1584-1654. 

Hayward  and 

Selden  !  two  names  that  so  much  understand  ! 
On  whom  I  could  take  up,  and  ne'er  abuse, 
The  credit,  what  would  furnish  a  tenth  muse ! 
But  here's  no  time  nor  place  my  wealth  to  tell, 
You  both  are  modest.     So  am  I.     Farewell. 

— BEN  JONSON,  An  Epistle  to  Mr.  John  Selden. 

Mr.  Selden  was  a  person  whom  no  character  can  flatter,  or  transmit  in 
any  expressions  equal  to  his  merit  and  virtue.  He  was  of  such  stupendous 


378  SELDEN,  SELWYN,  SENECA. 

learning  in  all  kinds  and  in  all  languages,  as  may  appear  from  his  ex- 
cellent and  transcendent  writings,  that  a  man  would  have  thought  he 
had  been  entirely  conversant  among  books,  and  had  never  spent  an  hour 
but  in  reading  or  writing;  yet  his  humanity,  courtesy,  and  affability  were 
such,  that  he  would  have  been  thought  to  have  been  bred  in  the  best  courts,, 
but  that  his  good-nature,  charity,  and  delight  in  doing  good,  and  com- 
municating all  he  knew,  exceeded  that  breeding. — CLARENDON. 

It  has  been  said  that  the  Table  Talk  of  Selden  is  worth  all  the  Ana  of" 
the  Continent. — HALLAM,  Introduction  to  the  Literature  of  Europe,  Vol. 
III. 

GEORGE  AUGUSTUS  SELWYN. 
First  Bishop  of  New  Zealand:  1809-1878. 

Seldom  has  such  indomitable  and  courageous  energy  been  witnessed 
in  any  man,  as  was  seen  in  Bishop  Selwyn ;  never,  perhaps,  has  such 
determined  energy  been  observed  to  issue  forth  from  a  character  naturally 
cautious  and  even  nervous.  Seldom  has  such  a  chastened  delight  been 
felt  by  any  man,  as  was  felt  by  Bishop  Selwyn,  in  handling  the  reins  of 
power ;  never,  perhaps,  has  it  been  felt  in  equal  degree  by  any  one  who- 
at  the  same  time  positively  craved  to  be  "  under  authority  "  and  to  whom 
the  habit  of  "obedience"  formed  the  joy  of  his  life. — G.  H.  CURTEIS, 
Life  of  Bishop  Selwyn. 

George  Selwyn  was  a  heroic  Christian  soul— a  rebuke  to  most  of  us. — 
CARDINAL  MANNING  in  PURCELL'S  Manning,  Vol.  I. 

SENECA. 
Roman  Stoic  Philosopher  and  Moralist :  2-65. 

Wei  can  Senek  and  many  a  philosophre 
Bewailen  time  more  than  gold  in  coffre ; 
For  losse  of  catel  may  recovered  be, 
But  losse  of  time  shendeth  us,  quod  he. 

— CHAUCER,  Man  of  Laws  Prologue- 

This  Seneka,  of  which  that  I  devise, 
Because  Nero  had  of  him  swiche  drede, 
For  he  fro  vices  wold  him  ay  chastise 
Discretly,  as  by  word,  and  not  by  dede. 

— Id.,  Monk's  Talc, 

He  died  not  as  the  martyr  dies, 
Wrapped  in  his  living  shroud  of  flame  ; 
He  fell  not  as  the  warrior  falls, 
Gasping  upon  the  field  of  fame  ; 
A  gentler  passage  to  the  grave, 
The  murderer's  softened  fury  gave. 

— OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES,  The  Dying  Seneca. 

Seneca  wrote  largely  on  natural  philosophy,  and  magnified  the  import- 
ance of  that  study.  But  why  ?  Not  because  it  tended  to  assuage  suffering 


SENECA,  EARL  OF  SHAFTESBURY.        379- 

to  multiply  the  conveniences  of  life,  to  extend  the  empire  of  man  over 
the  material  world ;  but  solely  because  it  tended  to  raise  the  mind  above 
low  cares,  to  separate  it  from  the  body,  to  exercise  its  subtilty  in  the  solu- 
tion of  very  obscure  questions.  Thus  natural  philosophy  was  considered 
in  the  light  merely  of  a  mental  exercise.  It  was  made  subsidiary  to  the 
art  of  disputation  ;  and  it  consequently  proved  altogether  barren  of  useful 
discoveries. — MACAULAY,  Essays  :  Lord  Bacon. 

All  that  I  here  desire  to  say  is,  that  in  considering  the  life  of  Seneca 
we  are  not  only  dealing  with  a  life  which  was  rich  in  memorable  incidents, 
and  which  was  cast  into  an  age  upon  which  Christianity  dawned  as  a  new 
light  in  the  darkness,  but  also  the  life  of  one  who  climbed  the  loftiest  peaks 
of  the  moral  philosophy  of  Paganism,  and  who  in  many  respects  may  be 
regarded  as  the  Coryphaeus  of  what  has  been  sometimes  called  a  Natural 
Religion.  .  .  .  So  died  a  Pagan  philosopher,  whose  life  must  always  excite 
our  interest  and  pity,  although  we  cannot  apply  to  him  the  titles  to  great 
and  good.  He  was  a  man  of  high  genius,  of  great  susceptibility,  of  an 
ardent  and  generous  temperament,  of  far-sighted  and  sincere  humanity. 
Some  of  his  sentiments  are  so  remarkable  for  their  moral  beauty  and  pro- 
fundity that  they  forcibly  remind  us  of  the  expressions  of  St.  Paul.  But 
Seneca  fell  infinitely  short  of  his  own  high  standard,  and  has  contemptu- 
ously been  called  "  the  father  of  all  them  that  wear  shovel-hats  ".  Incon- 
sistency is  written  on  the  entire  history  of  his  life,  and  it  has  earned  him 
the  scathing  contempt  with  which  many  writers  have  treated  his  memory. 
— F.  W.  FARRAR,  Seekers  after  God. 

ANTHONY  ASHLEY  COOPER,  EARI,  OF  SHAFTESBURY. 
English  Philanthropist :  1801-1885. 

He  took  human  suffering  and  human  sorrow,  and  the  helplessness  of 
childhood,  of  the  poor  as  the  end  for  which  to  live.  He  spent  and  was 
spent  for  it,  and  his  own  life  was  a  suffering  life  like  the  Man  of  Sorrows,, 
going  about  doing  good. — CARDINAL  MANNING  in  PURCELL'S  Manning, 
Vol.  II. 

The  social  reforms  of  the  last  century  have  not  been  mainly  due  to  the 
Liberal  party.  They  have  been  due  mainly  to  the  influence,  character 
and  perseverance  of  one  man — Lord  Shaftesbury. — DUKE  OF  ARGYLL. 

£-•> If  the  Christian  Socialists  ever  frame  a  Kalendar  of  Worthies  (after  the 
manner  of  Auguste  Comte),  it  is  to  be  hoped  that  they  will  mark  among 
the  most  sacred  of  their  anniversaries  the  day — 28th  April,  1801 — which 
gave  birth  to  Anthony  Ashley,  seventh  Earl  of  Shaftesbury.  His  life  of 
eighty-four  years  was  consecrated,  from  boyhood  till  death,  to  the  social 
service  of  humanity. — [G.  W.  E.  RUSSELL],  Collections  and  Recollections. 

If  "  Christian  Socialism  "  means  the  full  and  practical  recognition  of  the 
duty  to  apply  the  word  and  will  of  the  Saviour  of  man  the  sinner  to  the 
fullest  present  benefit  of  man  the  struggler  and  sufferer,  leaving  no  relation 
and  condition  of  life  outside  His  government,  Lord  Shaftesbury,  patrician 
of  patricians,  the  perfect  antithesis  to  the  demagogue,  totally  free  from 
that  flattery  of  the  masses  which  is  as  ignoble  as  any  flattery  of  kings, 
was  the  ideal  of  a  Christian  Socialist. — DR.  H.  C.  G.  MOULE  in  The 
"Record"  tfh  Jan.,  1901. 


380  SHAKSPERE. 

WILLIAM  SHAKSPERE. 
English  Dramatist  and  Poet :  1564-1616. 

He  was  not  of  an  age,  but  for  all  Time  .  .  . 
Sweet  Swan  of  Avon.  .  .  . 

Soul  of  the  age  ! 

Th'  applause  !  delight !  the  wonder  of  our  stage  ! 
My  Shakespeare  rise !  I  will  not  lodge  thee  by 
Chaucer,  or  Spenser,  or  bid  Beaumont  lie 
A  little  further,  to  make  thee  a  room : 
Thou  art  a  monument  without  a  tomb, 
And  art  alive  still,  while  thy  book  doth  live, 
And  we  have  wits  to  read,  and  praise  to  give. 
— BEN  JONSON,  To  the  Memory  of  my  beloved  Mr.  Wm.  Shakespeare. 

Renowned  Spenser,  lie  a  thought  more  nigh 

To  learned  Chaucer,  and,  rare  Beaumont,  lie 

A  little  nearer  Spenser,  to  make  room 

For  Shakespeare  in  your  threefold,  fourfold  Tomb. 

To  lodge  all  four  in  one  bed  make  a  shift 

Until  Doomsday,  for  hardly  with  a  fifth 

Betwixt  this  day  and  that  by  Fate  be  slain, 

For  whom  your  Curtains  may  be  drawn  again. 

If  your  precedency  in  death  doth  bar 

A  fourth  place  in  your  sacred  sepulchre, 

Under  this  carved  marble  of  thine  own, 

Sleep  rare  Tragedian,  Shakespeare,  sleep  alone ; 

Thy  unmolested  peace,  unshared  Cave, 

Possess  as  Lord,  not  Tenant,  of  thy  Grave, 

That  unto  us  and  others  it  may  be 

Honour  hereafter  to  be  laid  by  thee. 

— WILLIAM  BASSE,  To  Mr.  Wm.  Shakespeare. 

Hope  to  mend  Shakespeare  !  or  to  match  his  style ! 
""Tis  but  a  jest  would  make  a  Stoic  smile. 

— DUKE  OF  BUCKINGHAM,  Prologiie  to  the  alteration  of 
Julius  C&sar. 

Old  mother  Wit  and  Nature  gave 
Shakespeare  and  Fletcher  all  they  have. 

— DENHAM,  On  Mr.  A.  Cowley's  Death  and  Burial. 

Or  sweetest  Shakespeare,  Fancy's  child, 
Warble  his  native  wood-notes  wild. 

— MILTON,  U Allegro. 

What  needs  my  Shakespeare  for  his  honor'd  bones 

The  labor  of  an  age  in  piled  stones, 

Or  that  his  hallow'd  reliques  should  be  hid 

Under  a  star-ypointing  pyramid  ? 

Dear  son  of  memory !  great  heir  of  fame  ! 

What  need'st  thou  such  weak  witness  of  thy  name  ? 

Thou  in  our  wonder  and  astonishment 

Hast  built  thyself  a  live-long  monument. 


SHAKSPERE.  381 

And  so  sepulchred  in  such  pomp  dost  lie, 
That  kings  for  such  a  tomb  would  wish  to  die. 

— MILTON,  On  Shakespeare* 

Shakespeare,  who,  taught  by  none,  did  first  impart 

To  Fletcher  wit,  to  labouring  Jonson  art ; 

He,  monarch-like,  gave  those  his  subjects  law, 

And  is  that  Nature  which  they  paint  and  draw.  .  .  . 

But  Shakespeare's  magic  could  not  copied  be  ; 

Within  that  circle  none  durst  walk  but  he. 

I  must  confess  'twas  bold,  nor  would  you  now 

That  liberty  to  vulgar  wits  allow, 

Which  works  by  magic  supernatural  things  ; 

But  Shakespeare's  power  is  sacred  as  a  king's. 

— DRYDEN,  Prologue  to  "  The  Tempest"^ 

Time,  place,  and  action,  may  with  pains  be  wrought ; 

But  genius  must  be  born,  and  never  can  be  taught, 

This  is  your  portion  ;  this  your  native  store  ; 

Heaven,  that  but  once  was  prodigal  before, 

To  Shakespeare  gave  as  much  ;  she  could  not  give  him  more. 

— Id.,  Epistle  X.,  To  my  dear  Friend,  Mr.  Congreve- 

Shakespeare  (whom  you  and  ev'ry  playhouse  bill 
Style  the  divine,  the  matchless,  what  you  will) 
For  gain,  not  glory,  wing'd  his  roving  flight, 
And  grew  immortal  in  his  own  despite. 

On  Avon's  banks  where  flow'rs  eternal  blow. 

— POPE,  Epistles  of  Horace  imitated,  Epistle  I.,  Book  //_ 

For  lofty  sense, 

Creative  fancy,  and  inspection  keen 
Through  the  deep  windings  of  the  human  heart, 
Is  not  wild  Shakespeare  thine  and  Nature's  boast  ? 

— THOMSON,  The  Seasons  :  Summer. 

Shakespeare's  muse  aspires 
Beyond  the  reach  of  Greece  ;  with  native  fires, 
Mounting  aloft  he  wings  his  daring  flight, 
Whilst  Sophocles  below  stands  trembling  at  his  height.   .  .  . 
Things  of  the  noblest  kind  his  genius  drew, 
And  look'd  through  nature  at  a  single  view ; 
A  loose  he  gave  to  his  unbounded  soul, 
And  taught  new  lands  to  rise,  new  seas  to  roll ; 
Call'd  into  being  scenes  unknown  before, 
And  passing  Nature's  bounds,  was  something  more. 

— CHURCHILL,  The  Rosciad- 

Shakespeare,  thy  gift,  I  place  before  my  sight : 
With  awe,  I  ask  his  blessing  ere  I  write ; 
With  reverence  look  on  his  majestic  face ; 
Proud  to  be  less,  but  of  his  godlike  race. 

—Id.,  Epistle  XIV.,  To  Sir  Godfrey  Kneller. 


382  SHAKSPERE. 

Where  Nature  listening  stood,  whilst  Shakespeare  played, 
And  wonder'd  at  the  work  herself  had  made. 

—CHURCHILL,  The  Author. 

But  is  there  then  no  honour  due  to  age  ? 

No  reverence  to  great  Shakespeare's  noble  page  ? 

Pride  of  his  own,  and  wonder  of  this  age, 
Who  first  created,  and  yet  rules,  the  stage, 
Bold  to  design,  all-powerful  to  express, 
Shakespeare  each  passion  drew  in  every  dress : 
Great  above  rule,  and  imitating  none ; 
Rich  without  borrowing,  nature  was  his  own. 

—DAVID  MALLET,  Of  Verbal  Criticism. 

To  claim  attention  and  the  heart  invade, 
•Shakespeare  but  wrote  the  play  th'  Almighty  made. 


None  think  of  Shakespeare  till  the  curtain  falls. 

And  yet  in  Shakespeare  something  still  I  find, 
Which  makes  me  less  esteem  all  humankind  ; 
He  made  one  nature,  and  another  found, 
Both  in  his  page  with  master-strokes  abound ; 
His  witches,  fairies,  and  enchanted  isle, 
Bid  us  no  longer  at  our  nurses  smile ; 
Of  lost  historians  we  almost  complain, 
Nor  think  it  the  creation  of  his  brain. 

— YOUNG,  Epistle  to  George,  Lord  Lansdowne. 

Yet  then  shall  Shakespeare's  powerful  art 
O'er  every  passion,  every  heart, 
Confirm  his  awful  throne. 

— AKENSIDE,  Ode  VII.,  On  the  Use  of  Poetry. 

Say  to  each  other  :  "  This  was  Shakespeare's  form  ; 
Who  walk'd  in  every  path  of  human  life, 
Felt  every  passion  ;  and  to  all  mankind 
Doth  now,  will  ever,  that  experience  yield 
Which  his  own  genius  only  could  acquire." 

— Id.,  Epistle  IV. 

Far  from  the  sun  and  summer-gale, 
In  thy  green  lap  was  Nature's  Darling  laid, 
What  time,  where  lucid  Avon  strayed, 

To  him  the  mighty  Mother  did  unveil 
Her  awful  face.     The  dauntless  Child 
Stretched  forth  his  little  arms,  and  smiled. 
"  This  pencil  take  (she  said)  whose  colours  clear 
Richly  paint  the  vernal  year  ; 
Thine  too  these  golden  keys,  immortal  Boy ! 
This  can  unlock  the  gates  of  Joy ; 
Of  Horror  that,  and  thrilling  Fears, 
Or  ope  the  sacred  source  of  sympathetic  Tears." 

—GRAY,  The  Progress  of  Poesy,  III.,  I. 


SHAKSPERE.  383 

We  grant  that  Butler  ravishes  the  heart, 
As  Shakespeare  soar'd  beyond  the  reach  of  art ; 
^For  nature  form'd  those  poets  without  rules, 
To  fill  the  world  with  imitating  fools). 

— WALTER  HARTE,  An  Essay  on  Satire. 

When  Shakespeare  leads  thy  mind  a  dance, 
From  France  to  England,  hence  to  France, 
Talk  not  to  me  of  time  and  place ; 
I  own  I'm  happy  in  the  chase. 
Whether  the  drama's  here  or  there, 
'Tis  nature,  Shakespeare,  everywhere. 

— ROBERT  LLOYD,  Shakespeare. 

Next  Shakespeare  sat,  irregularly  great, 

And  in  his  hand  a  magic  rod  did  hold, 

Which  visionary  beings  did  create, 

And  turn  the  foulest  dross  to  purest  gold. 

Whatever  spirits  rove  in  earth  or  air, 

Or  bad  or  good,  obey  his  dread  command ; 

To  his  behests  these  willingly  repair, 

Those  aw'd  by  terrors  of  his  magic  wand, 

The  which  not  all  their  powers  united  might  withstand. 

— Id.,  The  Progress  of  Envy. 

The  name  of  King  Shakespeare  has  charms 
To  rouse  you  to  actions  of  glory. 

What  man  but  would  Nature  obey, 
And  fight  for  her  Shakespeare  for  ever ! 

Thrice  happy  the  nation  that  Shakespeare  has  charm'd ! 
More  happy  the  bosoms  his  genius  has  warm'd ! 
Ye  children  of  nature,  of  fashion,  and  whim, 
He  painted  you  all,  all  join  to  praise  him. 

— DAVID  GARRICK,  Song  in  Harlequin'' s  Invasion. 

The  garden  of  Shakespeare  all  fancies  will  suit, 
With  the  sweetest  of  flowers,  the  fairest  of  fruit. 

But  law  and  the  gospel  in  Shakespeare  we  find, 
And  he  gives  the  best  physic  for  body  and  mind. 

The  genius  of  Shakespeare  outshines  the  bright  day, 
More  rapture  than  wine  to  the  heart  can  convey. 

— Id.,  Shakespeare's  Mulberry  Tree. 

^Eschylus'  pen  Will  Shakespeare  drives. 

— BURNS,  Poem  on  Pastoral  Poetry. 

But  happier  Stratford,  thou, 
With  incontested  laurels  deck  thy  brow : 
Thy  bard  was  thine  unschool'd,  and  from  thee  brought 
More  than  all  Egypt,  Greece,  or  Asia  taught. 


384  SHAKSPERE. 

Not  Homer's  self  such  matchless  honours  won  ; 
The  Greek  has  rivals,  but  thy  Shakespeare  none. 

— ANNA  SEWARD. 

To  Shakespeare,  Sidney,  Spenser  and  the  rest 
Who  made  our  land  an  island  of  the  blest. 
Things  wiser  than  were  ever  said  in  book, 
Except  in  Shakespeare's  wisest  tenderness. 

— SHELLEY,  Letter  to  Maria  Gisborne* 

And  Shakespeare,  who  in  our  hearts  for  himself  has  erected  an  empire 
Not  to  be  shaken  by  Time,  nor  e'er  by  another  divided. 

— SOUTHEY,  A  Vision  of  Judgment:  The  Elder  Worthies* 

Or  warm  with  Fancy's  energy,  to  glow, 
And  rival  all  but  Shakespeare's  name  below  ! 

— CAMPBELL. 

We  must  be  free  or  die,  who  speak  the  tongue 
That  Shakespeare  spake ;  the  faith  and  morals  hold 
Which  Milton  held.     In  everything  we  are  sprung 
Of  earth's  first  blood,  have  titles  manifold. 

— WORDSWORTH,  Sonnets  dedicated  to  Liberty. 

Shakespeare  is  not  our  poet,  but  the  world's — 
Therefore  on  him  no  speech  ! 

— LANDOR. 

And  every  human  brow  that  veils  a  thought 
Conceals  the  Castaly  which  Shakespeare  sought. 

— LYTTON,  The  New  Timon. 

.  .  .  The  wondrous  pages 
Of  the  great  poet  who  foreruns  the  ages, 
Anticipating  all  that  shall  be  said !   .  .  . 
The  magic  book,  whose  Syblline  leaves  have  caught 
The  rarest  essence  of  all  human  thought ! 

— LONGFELLOW,  On  Mrs.  Kcmble's  Readings  from  Shakespeare. 

If  I'm  a  Shakespeare,  let  the  well  alone  ; 
Why  should  I  try  to  be  what  now  I  am  ? 
If  I'm  no  Shakespeare,  as  too  probable, — 
His  power  and  consciousness  and  self-delight 
And  all  we  want  in  common,  shall  I  find — 
Trying  for  ever  ? 

— BROWNING,  Bishop  Blougram's  Apology. - 

Shakespeare ! — to  such  name's  sounding,  what  succeeds 

Fitly  as  silence  ?     Falter  forth  the  spell, — 

Act  follows  word,  the  speaker  knows  full  well, 
Nor  tampers  with  its  magic  more  than  needs. 
Two  names  there  are  :  That  which  the  Hebrew  reads 

With  his  soul  only  :  if  from  lips  it  fell, 

Echo,  back  thundered  by  earth,  heaven  and  hell, 
Wou'd  own,  "  Thou  didst  create  us  !  "     Nought  impedes 
We  voice  the  other  name,  man's  most  of  might, 

Awesomely,  lovingly  :  let  awe  and  love 


SHAKSPERE.  385 

Mutely  await  their  working,  leave  to  sight 

All  of  the  issue  as  below — above — 

Shakespeare's  creation  rises  :  one  remove, 
Though  dread — this  finite  from  that  infinite. 

— BROWNING,  Bishop  Blougram's  Apology. 

There  Shakespeare,  on  whose  forehead  climb 
The  crowns  o'  the  world ;  oh,  eyes  sublime 
With  tears  and  laughter  for  all  time. 

— ELIZABETH  BARRETT  BROWNING,  A  Vision  of  Poets. 

Seethed  in  mists  of  Penmenmawr, 
Taught  by  Plinlimmon's  Druid  power, 
England's  genius  filled  all  measure 
Of  heart  and  soul,  of  strength  and  pleasure, 
Gave  to  the  mind  its  emperor, 
And  life  was  larger  than  before  : 
Nor  sequent  centuries  could  hit 
Orbit  and  sun  of  Shakespeare's  wit. 
The  men  who  lived  with  him  became 
Poets,  for  the  air  was  fame. 

— EMERSON,  Solution. 

I  see  all  human  wits 

Are  measured  but  a  few 
Unmeasured  still  my  Shakspeare  sits, 

Lone  as  the  blessed  Jew. 

— Id.,  Shakspeare.. 

Shakespeare  !  loveliest  of  souls, 
Peerless  in  radiance,  in  joy. 

— MATTHEW  ARNOLD,  Heine's  Grave. 

Others  abide  our  question.     Thou  art  free. 

We  ask  and  ask — Thou  smilest  and  art  still, 

Out-topping  knowledge.     For  the  loftiest  hill, 
Who  to  the  stars  uncrowns  his  majesty, 
Planting  his  steadfast  footsteps  in  the  sea, 

Making  the  heaven  of  heavens  his  dwelling-place, 

Spares  but  the  cloudy  border  of  his  base 
To  the  foil'd  searching  of  mortality  ; 
And  thou,  who  didst  the  stars  and  sunbeams  know, 
Self-school'd,  self-scann'd,  self-honour'd,  self-secure, 
Didst  tread  on  earth  unguess'd  at. — Better  so ! 
All  pains  the  immortal  spirit  must  endure, 
All  weakness  which  impairs,  all  griefs  which  bow, 
Find  their  sole  speech  in  that  victorious  brow. 

— Id.,  Shakespeare. 

It  was  said  of  Euripides,  that  every  verse  was  a  precept ;  and  it  may  be 
said  of  Shakespeare,  that  from  his  works  may  be  collected  a  system  of 
civil  and  economical  prudence.  Yet  his  real  power  is  not  shown  in  the 
splendour  of  particular  passages,  but  by  the  progress  of  his  fable,  and  the 
tenor  of  his  dialogue :  and  he  that  tries  to  recommend  him  by  select 
quotations,  will  succeed  like  the  pedant  in  Hierocles,  who,  when  he  offered 

25 


386  SPIAKSPERE. 

his  house  to  sale,  carried  a  brick  in  his  pocket  as  a  specimen.  .  .  .  The 
sand  heaped  by  one  flood  is  scattered  by  another,  but  the  rock  always 
continues  in  its  place.  The  stream  of  time,  which  is  continually  washing 
the  dissoluble  fabrics  of  other  poets,  passes  without  injury  by  the  adamant 
of  Shakespeare.  .  .  .  He  needed  not  the  spectacles  of  books  to  read  nature  : 
he  looked  inwards  and  found  her  there. — DR.  JOHNSON,  Preface  to 
Shakespeare. 

The  genius  of  Shakespeare  was  an  innate  universality ;  wherefore  he 
laid  the  achievements  of  human  intellect  prostrate  beneath  his  indolent 
and  kingly  gaze :  he  could  do  easily  men's  utmost — his  plan  of  tasks  to 
come  was  not  of  this  world.  If  what  he  proposed  to  do  hereafter  would 
not,  in  the  idea,  answer  the  aim,  how  tremendous  must  have  been  his  con- 
ception of  ultimates. — KEATS  in  LORD  HOUGHTON'S  Life  and  Letters  of 
John  Keats. 

Shakespeare  seems  to  have  been  a  man  of  genius,  raised  above  the 
definition  of  genius.  "  Born  universal  heir  to  all  humanity."  ...  If  we 
wish  to  know  the  force  of  human  genius,  we  should  read  Shakespeare. 
If  we  wish  to  see  the  insignificance  of  human  learning,  we  may  study  his 
commentators. — HAZLITT,  Table  Talk. 

Shakespeare  is  the  Spinosistic  deity —an  omnipresent  creativeness.  .  .  . 
Our  myriad-minded  Shakespeare.  .  .  .  There's  such  a  divinity  doth  hedge 
our  Shakespeare  round,  that  we  cannot  even  imitate  his  style. — S.  T. 
COLERIDGE,  Table  Talk. 

In  Shakespeare's  Poems,  the  creative  power  and  the  intellectual  energy 
wrestle  as  in  a  war  embrace.  Each  in  its  excess  of  strength  seems  to 
threaten  the  extinction  of  the  other.  At  length,  in  the  drama  they  were 
reconciled,  and  fought  each  with  its  shield  before  the  breast  of  the  other. 
Or  like  two  rapid  streams  that,  at  their  first  meeting  within  narrow  and 
rocky  banks,  mutually  strive  to  repel  each  other,  and  intermix  reluctantly 
and  in  tumult,  but  soon  finding  a  wider  channel  and  more  yielding  shores, 
blend  and  dilate,  and  flow  on  in  one  current  and  with  one  voice. — Id., 
Biographia  Literaria. 

It  is  as  nearly  two  centuries  as  possible  since  Shakespeare  ceased  to 
write,  but  when  shall  he  cease  to  be  read  ?  When  shall  he  cease  to  give 
light  and  delight  ?  Yet  even  at  this  moment  he  is  only  receiving  the  first- 
fruits  of  that  glory,  which  must  continue  to  augment  as  long  as  our  lan- 
guage is  spoken.  English  has  given  immortality  to  him,  and  he  has  given 
immortality  to  English.  Shakespeare  can  never  die,  and  the  language  in 
which  he  wrote  must  with  him  live  for  ever.  ...  In  the  plays  of  Shake- 
speare every  man  sees  himself,  without  knowing  that  he  does  so :  as  in 
some  of  the  phenomena  of  nature,  in  the  mist  of  the  mountain,  the  traveller 
beholds  his  own  figure,  but  the  glory  round  the  head  distinguishes  it  from 
a  mere  vulgar  copy. — Id.,  Lectures  on  Shakespeare  and  Milton. 

Shakespeare — that  is,  English  tragedy — postulates  the  intense  life  of 
flesh  and  blood,  of  animal  sensibility,  of  man  and  woman — breathing, 
waking,  stirring,  palpitating  with  the  pulses  of  hope  and  fear.  In  Greek 
tragedy  the  very  masks  show  the  utter  impossibility  of  these  tempests  or 
conflicts. — DE  QUINCEY,  Leaders  in  Literature. 


SHAKSPERE.  387 

Shakespeare  came  from  heaven — and  along  with  him  a  Tragedy  that 
poured  into  one  cup  the  tears  of  mirth  and  madness  ;  showed  Kings  one 
day  crowned  with  jewelled  diadems,  and  another  day  with  wild  wisps  of 
straw ;  taught  the  Prince  who,  in  single  combat, 

Had  quench'd  the  flame  of  hot  rebellion 
Even  in  the  rebels'  blood, 

to  moralise  on  the  field  of  battle  over  the  carcass  of  a  fat  buffoon  wittily 
simulating  death  among  the  bloody  corpses  of  English  nobles ;  nay, 
showed  the  son — and  that  son,  prince,  philosopher,  paragon  of  men — 
jocularly  conjuring  to  rest  his  Father's  Ghost,  who  had  revisited  earth 
"by  the  glimpses  of  the  moon,  making  night  hideous". — JOHN  WILSON, 
Nodes  Ambrosiana',  Vol.  II. 

Shakespeare  is  of  no  age.  He  speaks  a  language  which  thrills  in  our 
blood  in  spite  of  the  separation  of  two  hundred  years.  His  thoughts, 
passions,  feelings,  strains  of  fancy,  all  are  of  this  day,  as  they  were  of  his 
own — and  his  genius  may  be  contemporary  with  the  mind  of  every  genera- 
tion for  a  thousand  years  to  come.  He,  above  all  poets,  looked  upon 
men,  and  lived  for  mankind.  His  genius,  universal  in  intellect  and 
sympathy,  could  find,  in  no  more  bounded  circumference,  its  proper  sphere. 
It  could  not  bear  exclusion  from  any  part  of  human  existence.  Whatever 
in  nature  and  life  was  given  to  man,  was  given  in  contemplation  and 
poetry  to  him  also,  and  over  the  undimmed  mirror  of  his  mind  passed  all 
the  shadows  of  our  mortal  world.  .  .  .  Of  Shakespeare  and  Homer  alone 
it  may  be  averred,  that  we  miss  in  them  nothing  of  the  greatness  of 
nature.  In  all  other  poets  we  do ;  we  feel  the  measure  of  their  power, 
and  the  restraint  under  which  it  is  held  ;  but  in  Shakespeare  and  in  Homer, 
all  is  free  and  unbounded  as  in  nature  ;  and  so  we  travel  along  with  them, 
in  a  car  drawn  by  celestial  steeds,  our  view  seems  ever  interminal  as 
before,  and  still  equally  far  off  the  glorious  horizon. — Id.,  Essays  :  A  Few 
Words  on  Shakespeare. 

The  Poet  Laureate  of  the  Court  of  Faery. — Id.,  Ibid.  :  Cruickshank  on 
Time. 

Highest  among  those  who  have  exhibited  human  nature  by  means  of 
dialogue,  stands  Shakespeare.  His  variety  is  like  the  variety  of  nature, 
endless  diversity,  scarcely  any  monstrosity.  The  characters  of  which  he 
has  given  us  an  impression,  as  vivid  as  that  which  we  receive  from  the 
characters  of  our  own  associates,  are  to  be  reckoned  by  scores.  Yet  in 
all  these  scores  hardly  one  character  is  to  be  found  which  deviates  widely 
from  the  common  standard,  and  which  we  should  call  very  eccentric  if  we 
met  it  in  real  life.  The  silly  notion  that  every  man  has  one  ruling  passion, 
and  that  this  clue,  once  known,  unravels  all  the  mysteries  of  his  conduct, 
finds  no  countenance  in  the  plays  of  Shakespeare.  There  man  appears 
as  he  is,  made  up  of  a  crowd  of  passions,  which  contend  for  the  mastery 
over  him,  and  govern  him  in  turn.  What  is  Hamlet's  ruling  passion  ? 
Or  Othello's  ?  Or  Harry  the  Fifth's  ?  Or  Wolsey's  ?  Or  Lear's  ?  Or 
Shylock's?  Or  Benedict's  ?  Or  that  of  Cassius  ?  Or  that  of  Falconbridge  ? 
But  we  might  go  on  for  ever. — MACAULAY,  Essays:  Madame  D'Arblay. 

I  should  like  to  have  been  Shakespeare's  shoe-black — just  to  have  lived 
in  his  house,  just  to  have  worshipped  him — to  have  run  on  his  errands, 


388  SHAKSPERE. 

and  seen  that  sweet  serene  face. — W.  M.  THACKERAY,  English  Humourists 
of  the  Eighteenth  Century. 

Of  this  Shakespeare  of  ours,  perhaps  the  opinion  one  sometimes  hears, 
a  little  idolatrously  expressed  is,  in  fact,  the  right  one ;  I  think  the  best 
judgment  not  of  this  country  only,  but  of  Europe  at  large,  is  slowly  pointing 
to  the  conclusion — That  Shakespeare  is  the  chief  of  all  Poets  hitherto  ; 
the  greatest  intellect  who,  in  our  recorded  world,  has  left  record  of  himself 
in  the  way  of  Literature.  On  the  whole,  I  know  not  such  a  power  of 
vision,  such  a  faculty  of  thought,  if  we  take  all  the  characters  of  it,  in  any 
other  man.  Such  a  calmness  of  depth  ;  placid  joyous  strength  ;  all  things- 
imaged  in  that  great  soul  of  his  so  true  and  clear,  as  in  a  tranquil  un- 
fathomable sea  !  It  has  been  said,  that  in  the  constructing  of  Shakespeare's 
Dramas  there  is,  apart  from  all  other  "  faculties "  as  they  are  called,  an 
understanding  manifested,  equal  to  that  of  Bacon's  Novum  Organum. 
That  is  true  ;  and  it  is  not  a  truth  that  strikes  every  one.  It  would  become 
more  apparent  if  we  tried,  any  of  us  for  himself,  how,  out  of  Shakespeare's 
dramatic  materials,  lee  could  fashion  such  a  result !  ...  It  is  in  what  I 
called  Portrait-painting,  delineating  of  men  and  things,  especially  of  men, 
that  Shakespeare  is  great.  All  the  greatness  of  the  man  comes  out 
decisively  here.  It  is  unexampled,  I  think,  that  calm  creative  perspicacity 
of  Shakespeare.  The  thing  he  looks  at  reveals  not  this  or  that  face  of  it : 
but  its  inmost  heart,  and  generic  secret :  it  dissolves  itself  as  in  light 
before  him,  so  that  he  discerns  the  perfect  structure  of  it.  Creative,  we 
said :  poetic  creation,  what  is  this  too  but  seeing  the  thing  sufficiently  ? 
...  If  I  say  therefore,  that  Shakespeare  is  the  greatest  of  intellects,  I  have 
said  all  concerning  him.  But  there  is  more  in  Shakespeare's  intellect 
than  we  have  yet  seen.  It  is  what  I  call  an  unconscious  intellect ;  there 
is  more  virtue  in  it  than  he  himself  is  aware  of.  Novalis  beautifully 
remarks  of  him,  that  {hose  Dramas  of  his  are  Products  of  Nature  too,  deep 
as  Nature  herself.  I  find  a  great  truth  in  this  saying.  Shakespeare's  Art 
is  not  Artifice  ;  the  noblest  worth  of  it  is  not  there  by  plan  or  precontrivance. 
It  grows  up  from  the  deeps  of  Nature,  through  this  noble  sincere  soul, 
who  is  a  voice  of  Nature.  .  .  .  Here  I  say  is  an  English  King,  whom  no 
time  or  chance,  Parliament  or  combination  of  Parliaments  can  dethrone  f 
This  King  Shakespeare,  does  not  he  shine,  in  crowned  sovereignty,  over 
us  all,  as  the  noblest,  gentlest,  yet  strongest  of  rallying-signs ;  /^destructible  ; 
really  more  valuable  in  that  point  of  view  than  any  other  means  or  ap- 
pliance whatsoever  ?  We  can  fancy  him  as  radiant  aloft  over  all  the 
Nations  of  Englishmen,  a  thousand  years  hence.  From  Paramatta,  from 
New  York,  wheresoever,  under  what  sort  of  Parish  Constable  soever 
English  men  and  women  are,  they  will  say  to  one  another:  "  Yes,  this 
Shakespeare  is  ours;  we  produced  him,  we  speak  and  think  by  him  ;  we 
are  of  one  blood  and  kind  with  him  ". — CARLYLE,  On  Heroes  and  Hero- 
Worship. 

Jesus  and  Shakespeare  are  fragments  of  the  soul,  and  by  love  I  conquer 
and  incorporate  them  in  my  own  conscious  domain.  His  virtue, — is  not 
that  mine  ?  His  wit, — if  it  cannot  be  made  mine,  it  is  not  wit. — EMERSON, 
Essays :  Compensation. 

Shakespeare  is  the  only  biographer  of  Shakespeare ;  and  even  he  can 
teH  nothing,  except  to  the  Shakespeare  in  us  ;  that  is,  to  our  most  ap- 
prehensive and  sympathetic  hour.  He  cannot  step  from  off  his  tripod ,. 


SHAKSPERE.  389 

and  give  us  anecdotes  of  his  inspirations.  Read  the  antique  documents 
extricated,  analyzed,  and  compared  by  the  assiduous  Dyce  and  Collier  ;  and 
now  read  one  of  those  skyey  sentences — aerolites — which  seem  to  have 
fallen  out  of  heaven,  and  which,  not  your  experience,  but  the  man  within 
the  breast,  has  accepted  as  words  of  fate  ;  and  tell  me  if  they  match ;  if 
the  former  account  in  any  manner  for  the  latter  ;  or  which  gives  the  most 
historical  insight  into  the  man. — EMERSON,  Shakespeare :  or,  the  Poet. 

When  Shakespeare  is  charged  with  debts  to  his  authors,  Landor  replies  : 
*'  Yet  he  was  more  original  than  his  originals.  He  breathed  upon  dead 
bodies  and  brought  them  into  life." — Id. 

Our  love  of  Shakespeare,  therefore,  is  not  a  monomania  or  solitary  and 
unaccountable  infatuation  ;  but  is  merely  the  natural  love  which  all  men 
bear  to  those  forms  of  excellence  that  are  accommodated  to  their  peculiar 
character,  temperament,  and  situation. — LORD  JEFFREY,  Essays. 

The  name  of  Shakespeare  is  the  greatest  in  our  literature — it  is  the 
greatest  in  all  literature.  No  man  ever  came  near  to  him  in  the  creative 
powers  of  the  mind ;  no  man  had  ever  at  once  such  strength,  and  such 
variety  of  imagination. — HALLAM,  Introduction  to  the  Literature  of 
Europe,  Vol.  III. 

Shakespeare's  personages  live  and  move  as  if  they  had  just  come  forth 
from  the  hand  of  God. — MAZZINI,  Life  and  Writings,  Vol.  II. 

If  it  be  said  that  Shakespeare  wrote  perfect  historical  plays  on 
subjects  belonging  to  the  preceding  centuries,  I  answer  that  they  are 
perfect  plays  just  because  there  is  no  care  about  centuries  in  them,  but  a 
life  which  all  men  recognise  for  the  human  life  of  all  time  ;  and  this  it  is, 
not  because  Shakespeare  sought  to  give  universal  truth,  but  because, 
painting  honestly  and  completely  from  the  men  about  him,  he  painted 
that  human  nature  which  is  indeed  constant  enough — a  rogue  in  the 
fifteenth  century  being,  at  heart,  what  a  rogue  is  in  the  nineteenth  and  was 
in  the  twelfth ;  and  an  honest  or  a  knightly  man  being,  in  like  manner, 
very  similar  to  other  such  at  any  other  time.  And  the  work  of  these 
great  idealists  is,  therefore,  always  universal ;  not  because  it  is  not  portrait, 
but  because  it  is  complete  portrait  down  to  the  heart,  which  is  the  same  in 
all  ages ;  and  the  work  of  the  mean  idealists  is  not  universal,  not  because 
it  is  portrait,  but  because  it  is  half  portrait — of  the  outside,  the  manners 
and  the  dress,  not  of  the  heart. — RUSKIN,  Modern  Painters,  Vol.  III. 

The  keen  vision  of  the  philosopher  enlightens  and  directs  the  imagination 
of  the  poet ;  thus  man  appears  to  Shakespeare  only  when  fully  furnished 
with  all  that  belongs  to  his  nature.  The  truth  is  always  there,  before  the 
eyes  of  the  poet:  he  looks  down  and  writes.  .  .  .  No  one  has  ever  com- 
bined, in  an  equal  degree  with  Shakespeare,  this  double  character  of  an 
impartial  observer  and  a  man  of  profound  sensibility.  Superior  to  all  by 
his  reason,  and  accessible  to  all  by  sympathy,  he  sees  nothing  without 
judging  it,  and  he  judges  it  because  he  feels  it. — GUIZOT,  Sliakespeare  and 
his  Times  (transl.). 

Shakespeare,  what  is  he  ?  You  might  almost  answer,  he  is  the  earth. 
Lucretius  is  the  sphere,  Shakespeare  is  the  globe.  There  is  more  and 
less  in  the  globe  than  in  the  sphere.  In  the  sphere  there  is  the  whole  ; 
on  the  globe  there  is  man.  Here  the  outer,  there  the  inner  mystery. 


3go  .  SHAKSPEKE. 

Lucretius  is  the  being,  Shakespeare  is  the  existence.  Thence  so  much 
shadow  in  Lucretius  ;  thence  so  much  movement  in  Shakespeare.  Space, 
the  bine,  as  the  Germans  say,  is  certainly  not  forbidden  to  Shakespeare. 
The  earth  sees  and  surveys  heaven  ;  the  earth  knows  heaven  under  its 
two  aspects,  darkness  and  azure,  doubt  and  hope.  .  .  .  Shakespeare  is 
a  brother  of  Dante.  The  one  completes  the  other.  Dante  incarnates 
all  supernaturalism,  Shakespeare  all  nature ;  and,  as  these  two  regions, 
nature  and  supernaturalism,  which  appear  to  us  so  different,  are  really 
the  same  unity,  Dante  and  Shakespeare,  however  dissimilar,  commingle 
outwardly,  and  are  but  one  innately  ;  there  is  something  of  the  Alighieri, 
something  of  the  ghost  in  Shakespeare.  The  skull  passes  from  the  hands 
of  Dante  into  the  hands  of  Shakespeare;  Ugolino  gnaws  it,  Hamlet 
questions  it ;  and  it  shows  perhaps  even  a  deeper  meaning  and  a  loftier 
teaching  in  the  second  than  in  the  first.  Shakespeare  shakes  it  and 
makes  stars  fall  from  it.  ...  Shakespeare  is  ^Eschylus  II.  ...  Shake- 
speare is  fertility,  force,  exuberance,  the  overflowing  breast,  the  foaming 
cup,  the  brimful  tub,  the  overrunning  sap,  the  overflooding  lava,  the 
whirlwind  scattering  germs,  the  universal  rain  of  life,  everything  by 
thousands,  everything  by  millions,  no  reticence,  no  binding,  no  economy, 
the  inordinate  and  tranquil  prodigality  of  the  creator.  To  those  who  feel 
the  bottom  of  their  pocket,  the  inexhaustible  seems  insane.  Will  it  stop 
soon  ?  Never,  Shakespeare  is  the  sower  of  dazzling  wonders.  At  every 
turn,  the  image;  at  every  turn,  contrast:  at  every  turn,  light  and  dark- 
ness. .  .  .  The  depths  of  Shakespeare  equal  the  gulfs  of  Chimborazo. 
.  .  .  Art,  like  religion,  has  its  Ecce  Homo.  Shakespeare  is  one  of  those 
of  whom  we  may  utter  this  grand  saying:  He  is  man. — VICTOR  HUGO, 
William  Shakespeare  (transl.). 

Shakespeare  "glances  from  heaven  to  earth,  from  earth  to  heaven". 
All  Nature  ministers  to  him,  as  gladly  as  a  mother  to  her  child.  Whether 
he  wishes  her  to  tune  her  myriad-voiced  organ  to  Romeo's  love,  or  to 
Miranda's  innocence,  or  to  Perdita's  simplicity,  or  to  Rosalind's  playful- 
ness, or  to  the  sports  of  the  Fairies,  or  to  Timon's  misanthropy,  or  to 
Macbeth's  desolating  ambition,  or  to  Lear's  heart-broken  frenzy — he  has 
only  to  ask,  and  she  puts  on  every  feeling  and  every  passion  with  which 
he  desires  to  invest  her. — JULIUS  C.  HARE,  Guesses  at  Truth,  First  Series. 

One  always  fancies  Shakespeare  in  his  best  verses,  and  Milton  at  the 
key-board  of  his  organ.  Shakespeare's  language  is  no  longer  the  mere 
vehicle  of  thought,  it  has  become  part  of  it,  its  very  flesh  and  blood.  The 
pleasure  it  gives  us  is  unmixed,  direct,  like  that  from  the  smell  of  a  flower 
or  the  flavour  of  a  fruit. — J.  R.  LOWELL,  Among  My  Books. 

The  works  of  Shakespeare  .  .  .  entirely  unrivalled  in  all  literature  for 
largeness  and  variety,  with  depth. — GLADSTONE,  Gleanings,  Vol.  III. 

Certainly  Shakespeare  was  a  "  million-minded  man,"  if  he  was  conscious, 
of  the  innumerable  philosophies  and  psychological  truths  which  his  million 
critics  have  found  in  every  trifling  word  and  sentence.  I  am  heretic 
enough  to  think  that  Shakespeare  was  mind  and  dust,  and  that  he  can  be 
very  low  and  gross.  Horace  ventured  to  opine  that  now  and  then  Homer 
nodded  a  little  ;  he  said  it  in  a  very  gentlemanly  way — for  the  friend  of 
Maecenas  was  a  perfect  gentleman — but  I  have  no  doubt  he  was  reckoned 
a  heretic  for  saying  it.  What  I  admire  in  Shakespeare,  however,  is  that 
his  loves  are  all  human — no  earthliness  hiding  itself  from  itself  in  senti- 


SHAKSPERE.  391 

mental  transcendentalism — no  loves  of  the  angels,  which  are  the  least 
angelic  things,  I  believe,  that  float  in  the  clouds,  though  they  do  look  down 
upon  mortal  feelings  with  contempt. — F.  W.  ROBERTSON,  Life  and  Letters 
of  F.  W.  Robertson,  by  Dr.  Stopford  Brooke. 

Surely,  then,  we  may  consider  Shakespeare,  as  an  ancient  mythologist 
would  have  done,  as  "  enskied  "  among  "  the  invulnerable  clouds,"  where 
no  shaft,  even  of  envy,  can  assail  him.  From  this  elevation  we  may 
safely  predict  that  he  never  can  be  plucked.  .  .  .  We  may  compare  the 
mind  of  Shakespeare  to  a  diamond,  pellucid,  bright,  and  untinted,  cut  into 
countless  polished  facets,  which,  in  constant  movement,  at  every  smallest 
change  of  direction  or  of  angle,  caught  a  new  reflection,  so  that  not  one 
of  its  brilliant  mirrors  could  be  for  a  moment  idle,  but  by  a  power  beyond 
its  control  was  ever  busy  with  the  reflection  of  innumerable  images,  either 
distinct  or  running  into  one  another,  or  repeated  each  so  clearly  as  to 
allow  him,  when  he  chose,  to  fix  it  in  his  memory. — CARDINAL  WISEMAN, 
William  Shakespeare. 

Shakespeare  is  as  astonishing  for  the  exuberance  of  his  genius  in  abstract 
notions,  and  for  the  depth  of  his  analytic  and  philosophic  insight,  as  for 
the  scope  and  minuteness  of  his  poetic  imagination.  It  is  as  if  into  a 
mind  poetical  inform  there  had  been  poured  all  the  matter  that  existed  in 
the  mind  of  his  contemporary  Bacon.  In  Shakespeare's  plays  we  have 
thought,  history,  exposition,  and  philosophy,  all  within  the  round  of  the 
poet.  The  only  difference  between  him  and  Bacon  sometimes  is  that 
Bacon  writes  an  essay  and  calls  it  his  own,  while  Shakespeare  writes  a 
similar  essay  and  puts  it  into  the  mouth  of  a  Ulysses  or  a  Polonius. — 
DAVID  MASSON,  Wordsworth,  Shelley,  Keats,  and  other  Essays. 

Take  the  entire  range  of  English  literature ;  put  together  our  best 
authors,  who  have  written  upon  subjects  not  professedly  religious  or 
theological,  and  we  shall  not  find,  I  believe,  in  them  all  united,  so  much 
evidence  of  the  Bible  having  been  read  and  used,  as  we  have  found  in 
Shakespeare  alone.  This  is  a.  phenomenon  which  admits  of  being  looked 
at  from  several  points  of  view  ;  but  I  shall  be  content  to  regard  it  solely 
in  connection  with  the  undoubted  fact,  that  of  all  our  authors,  Shake- 
speare is  also,  by  general  confession,  the  greatest  and  the  best. — BISHOP 
CHARLES  WORDSWORTH,  On  Shakespeare's  Knowledge  and  Use  of  the 
Bible. 

The  godlike  equity  of  Shakespeare's  judgment,  his  implacable  and  im- 
peccable righteousness  of  instinct  and  of  insight,  was  too  deeply  ingrained 
in  the  very  core  of  his  genius  to  be  perverted  by  any  provincial  or  pseudo- 
patriotic  prepossessions  ;  his  patriotism  was  too  national  to  be  provincial. 
Assuredly  no  poet  had  more  than  he  :  not  even  the  king  of  men  and  poets 
who  fought  at  Marathon  and  sang  of  Salamis :  much  less  had  any  or  has. 
any  one  of  our  own,  from  Milton  on  to  Campbell  and  from  Campbell  even 
to  Tennyson.  .  .  .  Arnica  Britannia,  sed  magls  arnica  vcritas.  The 
master  poet  of  England — all  Englishmen  may  reasonably  and  honourably 
be  proud  of  it — has  not  two  weights  and  two  measures  for  friend  and  foe. 
— SWINBURNE,  A  Study  of  Shakespeare. 

From  Shakespeare,  no  doubt,  the  world  may  learn,  and  has  learnt,  much, 
yet  he  professed  so  little  to  be  a  teacher,  that  he  has  often  been  represented 
as  almost  without  personal  opinions,  as  a  mere  undisturbed  mirror,  in 


392  SHAKSPERE,  SHELLEY. 

which  all  Nature  reflects  herself. — J.  R.  SEELEY,  Goethe  reviewed  after 
Sixty  Years. 

It  is  a  favourite  way  with  some  eulogists  of  Shakespeare  to  deny  him 
all  individuality  whatsoever.  He  was  not  one  man,  they  say,  but  an 
epitome  of  all  men.  "  His  mind,"  says  Hazlitt,  "  had  no  one  peculiar  bias 
or  exclusive  excellence  more  than  another.  He  was  just  like  any  other 
man,  but  that  he  was  like  all  other  men.  He  was  the  least  of  an  egotist 
that  it  was  possible  to  be.  He  was  nothing  in  himself;  but  he  was  all 
that  others  were  or  that  they  could  become."  Against  such  a  degradation 
of  Shakespeare's  character,  or  of  any  man's  character,  it  is  our  duty  to 
protest.  In  trying  to  make  Shakespeare  more  than  human,  the  reckless 
panegyrist  makes  him  considerably  less  than  human  :  instead  of  the  man 
whose  prudence  made  him  rich,  whose  affectionate  nature  made  him  loved 
almost  to  idolatry,  and  whose  genius  has  been  the  wonder  of  the  world, 
we  are  presented  with  plasticity  in  the  abstract,  an  object  not  more  in- 
teresting than  a  quarry  of  potter's  clay. — WILLIAM  MINTO,  Characteristics 
of  English  Poets. 

As  a  corollary  to  what  has  hitherto  been  said  about  the  differences  be- 
tween the  drama  of  Sophocles  and  that  of  Shakespeare,  it  follows  that  the 
former  aims  at  depicting  the  destinies,  and  the  latter  the  characters  of 
men. — J.  ADDINGTON  SYMONDS,  Studies  of  the  Greek  Poets. 

Shakespeare  illustrates  every  phase  and  variety  of  humour :  a  complete 
analysis  of  Shakespeare's  humour  would  make  a  system  of  psychology. — 
R.  G.  MOULTON,  Shakespeare  as  a  Dramatic  Critic. 

Shakespeare's  mind,  as  Hazlitt  suggested,  contained  within  itself  the 
germs  of  all  faculty  and  feeling.  He  knew  intuitively  how  every  faculty 
and  feeling  would  develop  in  any  conceivable  change  of  fortune.  Men 
and  women — good  or  bad,  old  or  young,  wise  or  foolish,  merry  or  sad, 
rich  or  poor — yielded  their  secrets  to  him,  and  his  genius  enabled  him  to 
give  being  in  his  pages  to  all  the  shapes  of  humanity  that  presents  them- 
selves on  the  highway  of  life.  Each  of  his  characters  gives  voice  to 
thought  or  passion  with  an  individuality  and  a  naturalness  that  rouse  in 
the  intelligent  play-goer  and  reader  the  illusion  that  they  are  over-hearing 
men  and  women  speak  unpremeditatingly  among  themselves,  rather  than 
that  they  are  reading  written  speeches  or  hearing  written  speeches  recited. 
The  more  closely  the  words  are  studied,  the  completer  the  illusion  grows. 
Creatures  of  the  imagination — fairies,  ghosts,  witches — are  delineated 
with  a  like  potency,  and  the  reader  or  spectator  feels  instinctively  that 
these  supernatural  entities  could  not  speak,  feel,  or  act  otherwise  than 
Shakespeare  represents  them.  The  creative  power  of  poetry  was  never 
manifested  to  such  effect  as  in  the  corporeal  semblances  in  which  Shake- 
speare clad  the  spirits  of  the  air.  ...  To  Shakespeare  the  intellect  of  the 
world,  speaking  in  divers  accents,  applies  with  one  accord  his  own  words  : 
How  noble  in  reason !  how  infinite  in  faculty !  in  apprehension  how  like 
a  god! — SIDNEY  LEE,  A  Life  of  Shakespeare. 

PERCY  BYSSHE  SHELLEY. 
English  Poet:   1792-1822. 

Sun-treader,  life  and  light  be  thine  for  ever ! 
Thou"  art  gone  from  us  ;  years  go  by  and  spring 


SHELLEY.  393 

•Gladdens  and  the  young  earth  is  beautiful, 
Yet  thy  songs  come  not,  other  bards  arise, 
But  none  like  thee :  they  stand,  thy  majesties, 
Like  mighty  works  which  tell  some  spirit  there 
Hath  sat  regardless  of  neglect  and  scorn, 
Till,  its  long  task  completed,  it  hath  risen 
And  left  us,  never  to  return,  and  all 
Rush  in  to  peer  and  praise  when  all  in  vain.  .  .   . 
But  thou  art  still  for  me  who  have  adored 
Tho'  single  panting,  but  to  hear  thy  name 
Which  I  believed  a  spell  to  me  alone, 
Scarce  deeming  thou  wast  as  a  star  to  men  ! 

— BROWNING,  Pauline. 

What  boots  it,  Shelley !  that  the  breeze 

Carried  thy  lovely  wail  away, 

Musical  through  Italian  trees 

Which  fringe  thy  soft  blue  Spezzian  bay  ? 

Inheritors  of  thy  distress 

Have  restless  hearts  one  throb  the  less  ? 

— MATTHEW  ARNOLD,  Stanzas  from  the  Grand  Chartreuse. 

He  with  the  gleaming  eyes, 
And  glances  gentle  and  wild, 
The  angel  eternal  child  ; 
His  heart  could  not  throb  with  ours, 
He  could  not  see  with  our  eyes 
Dimm'd  with  the  dulness  of  earth, 
Blind  with  the  bondage  of  hours  ; 
Yet  none  with  diviner  mirth 
Hail'd  what  was  noble  and  sweet ; 
The  blood-track'd  journey  of  life, 

The  way- sore  feet 
None  have  watch'd  with  more  human  eyes. 

— PALGRAVE,  Two  Graves  at  Rome. 

Slow  from  the  shore  the  sullen  waves  retire ; 

His  form  a  nobler  element  shall  claim  ; 
Nature  baptized  him  in  ethereal  fire, 

And  death  shall  crown  him  with  a  wreath  of  flame. 

Breathe  for  his  wandering  soul  one  passing  sigh, 

O  happier  Christian,  while  thine  eye  grows  dim, — 
In  all  the  mansions  of  the  house  on  high, 

Say  not  that  Mercy  has  not  one  for  him  ! 

— OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES,  After  a  Lecture  on  Shelley. 

Oh,  not  like  ours  that  life  was  born, 

No  mortal  mother  Shelley  knew, 
But  kindled  by  some  starry  morn 

Lit  like  a  snow-flake  from  the  blue  ; 
Saw  on  some  peak  the  lightnings  gleam, 

The  lingering  soft  auroras  play ; 
Then  foamlike  on  a  leaping  stream 


394  SHELLEY. 

Sped  downwards  to  the  earthly  day. 

So  keen  a  wish  had  winged  his  flight — 

His  heart  was  faint  with  such  desire — 
To  bear  from  that  supernal  light 

A  Promethean  fount  of  fire  : 
His  quivering  thyrsus  flashed  with  flame, 

He  sang  the  spell  long  learnt  above  ; 
With  ardent  eyes  one  only  name 

He  named  ;  the  mountains  echoed  "  Love  !  " 

— F.  W.  H.  MYERS,  Stanzas  on  Shelley. 

Thy  voice  is  heard  above  the  silent  tomb, 
And  shall  be  heard  until  the  end  of  days, 
While  Freedom  lives,  and  whatsoever  things 
Are  good  and  lovely — still  thy  spirit  sings, 

And  by  thy  grave  to-day  fresh  violets  bloom, 
But  on  thy  head  imperishable  bays. 

— WALTER  CRANE,  At  Shelley' 's  Grave* 

When  Keats  died  the  Muses  still  had  left 

One  silver  voice  to  sing  his  threnody, 
But  ah !  too  soon  of  it  we  were  bereft 

When  on  that  riven  night  and  stormy  sea 
Panthea  claimed  her  singer  as  her  own, 
And  slew  the  mouth  that  praised  her.  .  .  . 

— OSCAR  WILDE,  The  Garden  of  Eros. 

And  in  his  gusts  of  song  he  brings 
Wild  odours  shaken  from  strange  wings, 
And  unfamiliar  whisperings 

From  far  lips  blown, 
With  all  the  rapturous  heart  of  things 

Throbs  through  his  own. 

— WILLIAM  WATSON,  Shelley's  Centenary  (qth  August,  1892). 

Brothers  in  Shelley,  we  this  morn  are  strong : 

Our  Heart  of  Hearts  hath  conquered — conquered  those 

Once  fain  to  work  the  world  and  Shelley  wrong ; 
Their  pyre  of  hate  now  bourgeons  with  the  rose — 
Their  every  fagot,  now  a  sweet-brier,  throws 

Love's  breath  upon  the  breeze  of  Shelley's  song  ! 

— THEODORE  WATTS,  For  the  Shelley  Centenary. 

Never  did  a  fancy  so  teem  with  sensuous  imagery  as  Shelley's.  Words- 
worth economises  an  image,  and  detains  it  until  he  has  distilled  all  the 
poetry  out  of  it,  and  it  will  not  yield  a  drop  more :  Shelley  lavishes  his 
with  a  profusion  which  is  unconscious  because  it  is  inexhaustible. — 
J.  STUART  MILL,  Dissertations  and  Discussions,  Vol.  I. 

A  dialogue  between  two  qualities,  in  his  dream,  has  more  dramatic  effect 
than  a  dialogue  between  two  human  beings  in  most  plays.  In  this  respect 
the  genius  of  Bunyan  bore  a  great  resemblance  to  that  of  a  man  who  had 
very  little  else  in  common  with  him,  Percy  Bysshe  Shelley.  The  strong 
imagination  of  Shelley  made  him  an  idolater  in  his  own  despite.  Out  of 


SHELLEY.  395 

the  most  indefinite  terms  of  a  hard,  cold,  dark,  metaphysical  system,  he 
made  a  gorgeous  Pantheon,  full  of  beautiful,  majestic,  and  life-like  forms. 
He  turned  atheism  itself  into  a  mythology,  rich  with  visions  as  glorious 
as  the  gods  that  live  in  the  marble  of  Phidias,  or  the  virgin  saints  that 
smile  on  us  from  the  canvas  of  Murillo.  The  Spirit  of  Beauty,  the 
Principle  of  Good,  the  Principle  of  Evil,  when  he  treated  of  them,  ceased 
to  be  abstractions.  They  took  shape  and  colour.  They  were  no  longer 
mere  words;  but  "intelligible  forms,"  "fair  humanities,"  objects  of  love, 
of  adoration,  or  of  fear.  As  there  can  be  no  stronger  sign  of  a  mind 
destitute  of  the  poetical  faculty  than  that  tendency  which  was  so  common 
among  the  writers  of  the  French  school  to  turn  images  into  abstractions, 
Venus,  for  example,  into  Love,  Minerva  into  Wisdom,  Mars  into  War, 
and  Bacchus  into  Festivity,  so  there  can  be  no  stronger  sign  of  a  mind 
truly  poetical  than  a  disposition  to  reverse  this  abstracting  process,  and  to 
make  individuals  out  of  generalities.  Some  of  the  metaphysical  and 
ethical  theories  of  Shelley  were  certainly  most  absurd  and  pernicious. 
But  we  doubt  whether  any  modern  poet  has  possessed  in  an  equal  degree 
some  of  the  highest  qualities  of  the  great  ancient  masters.  The  words 
bard  and  inspiration,  which  seem  so  cold  and  affected  when  applied  to 
other  modern  writers,  have  a  perfect  propriety  when  applied  to  him.  He 
was  not  an  author  but  a  bard.  His  poetry  seems  not  to  have  been  an  art, 
but  an  inspiration.  Had  he  lived  to  the  full  age  of  man,  he  might  not 
improbably  have  given  to  the  world  some  great  work  of  the  very  highest 
rank  in  design  and  execution.  But,  alas! — MACAULAY,  Essays :  The 
Pilgrim's  Progress. 

Shelley,  with  a  more  daring  and  dramatic  genius,  with  great  mastery  of 
language,  and  the  true  Lucretian  soul,  for  ever  aspiring  extra  flammantia 
moenia  mundi,  is  equally  intellectual  in  his  creations ;  and  despite  the 
young  audacity  which  led  him  into  denying  a  God,  his  poetry  is  of  a  re- 
markably ethereal  and  spiritualising  cast.  It  is  steeped  in  veneration — it 
is  for  ever  thirsting  for  the  Heavenly  and  the  Immortal — and  the  Deity  he 
questioned  avenges  Himself  only  by  impressing  His  image  upon  all  that 
the  poet  undertook.  But  Shelley  at  present  has  subjected  himself  to  be 
misunderstood ;  he  has  become  the  apologist  for  would-be  mystics,  and 
dreamers  of  foolish  dreams, — for  an  excellent  master  may  have  worthless 
disciples. — LYTTON,  England  and  the  English. 

The  greatest  sinner  of  the  oracular  school  was  Shelley — because  the 
only  true  poet.  True  poets  admire  his  genius,  but,  in  spite  of  love  and 
pity  for  the  dead,  they  disdain  the  voluntary  darkness  in  which  he  per- 
versely dallied  with  things  of  light  that  should  never  have  been  so 
enshrouded,  and  according  to  the  command  and  law  of  nature  should 
have  been  wooed,  won,  wedded,  and  enjoyed  in  the  face  of  heaven. — JOHN 
WILSON,  Noctes  Ambrosian<z,  Vol.  IV. 

A  more  crystalline  heart  than  Shelley's  has  rarely  throbbed  in  human 
bosom.  He  was  incapable  of  an  untruth,  or  of  deceit  in  any  form.  .  .  . 
Whatever  peculiarity  there  might  have  been  in  Shelley's  religious  faith, 
I  have  the  best  authority  for  believing  that  it  was  confined  to  the  early 
period  of  his  life.  The  practical  result  of  its  course  of  action,  I  am  sure, 
had  its  source  from  the  "Sermon  on  the  Mount".  There  is  not  one 
clause  in  that  Divine  Code  which  his  conduct  towards  his  fellow  mortals 
did  not  confirm  and  substantiate  him  to  be — in  action  a  follower  of  Christ. 
— CHARLES  COWDEN  CLARKE,  Recollections  of  Writers. 


396  SHELLEY. 

What  was  the  real  character  of  the  man  whom  critics  and  relatives,  and 
the  law,  which  stripped  him  of  his  children,  and  the  self-righteous  world1, 
contrived  to  chase  from  society  as  a  demon  ?  a  perfectly  childlike  and 
Christlike  creature.  If  Christianity  is  love,  and  love  of  your  neighbour 
especially,  then  was  Shelley  in  heart  and  soul  and  daily  deed  a  perfect 
Christian.  He  lamented  his  early  errors,  but  found  no  forgiveness.  "  He 
was,"  says  Captain  Medwin,  his  relative,  and  one  who  knew  him  from 
childhood,  "  an  enemy  to  all  sensuality."  The  pleasures  of  the  table,  that 
form  the  summinn  bonum  of  the  herd,  were  not  his  pleasures.  His  diet 
was  that  of  a  hermit,  his  drink  water,  and  his  principal  and  favourite 
food  bread.  His  conversation  was  as  chaste  as  his  morals — all  grossness 
he  abominated. — WILLIAM  HOWITT,  The  Northern  Heights  of  London. 

Shelley,  with  due  admiration  for  his  genius,  is  entirely  mischievous. — 
RUSKIN. 

Who  that  has  read  Shelley  does  not  recollect  scraps  worthy  to  stand  by 
Ariel's  song — chaste,  simple,  unutterably  musical  ?  Yes,  when  he  will  be 
himself — Shelley  the  scholar  and  the  gentleman  and  the  singer — and  leave 
philosophy  and  politics,  which  he  does  not  understand,  and  shriekings  and 
cursings,  which  are  unfit  for  any  civilised  and  self-respecting  man,  he  is 
perfect.  Like  the  American  mocking-bird,  he  is  harsh  only  when  aping 
other  men's  tunes — his  true  power  lies  in  his  own  "native  woodnotes 
wild". — CHARLES  KINGSLEY,  Literary  and  General  Lectures,  etc. 

Shelleyism  is  very  sublime,  sublimer  a  good  deal  than  God,  for  God's 
world  is  all  wrong,  and  Shelley  is  all  right — more  pure  than  Christ,  for 
Shelley  can  criticise  Christ's  heart  and  life — nevertheless  Shelleyism  is  only 
atmospheric  profligacy,  to  coin  a  Montgomeryism. — F.  W.  ROBERTSON, 
Life  and  Letters  of  F.  W.  Robertson,  Vol.  I. 

We  should  regard  Shelley  as  the  poetical  representative  of  those  whose 
hopes  and  aspirations  and  affections  rush  forward  to  embrace  the  great 
Hereafter,  and  dwell  in  rapturous  anticipation  on  the  coming  of  the 
golden  year,  the  reign  of  universal  freedom,  and  the  establishment  of 
universal  brotherhood.  By  nature  and  by  circumstance  he  was  marvel- 
lously fitted  for  his  task — gentle,  sensitive,  and  fervid,  he  shrank  from  the 
least  touch  of  wrong,  and  hated  injustice  with  the  zeal  and  passion  of  a 
martyr.  .  .  .  With  one  exception,  a  more  glorious  poet  has  not  been 
given  to  the  English  nation  ;  and  if  we  make  one  exception,  it  is  because 
Shakespeare  was  a  man  of  profounder  insight,  of  calmer  temperament, 
of  wider  experience,  of  more  extensive  knowledge  ;  a  greater  philosopher, 
in  fact,  and  a  wiser  man  ;  not  because  he  possessed  more  vital  heat,  more 
fusing,  shaping  power  of  imagination,  or  a  more  genuine  poetic  impulse 
and  inspiration.  After  the  passions  and  the  theories  which  supplied 
Shelley  with  the  subject-matter  of  his  poems  have  died  away  and  become 
mere  matters  of  history,  there  will  still  remain  a  song,  such  as  mortal 
man  never  sung  before,  of  inarticulate  rapture  and  of  freezing  pain — of  a 
blinding  light  of  truth  and  a  dazzling  weight  of  glory,  translated  into 
English  speech,  as  coloured  as  a  painted  window,  as  suggestive,  as 
penetrating,  as  intense  as  music. — GEORGE  BRIMLEY,  Essays. 

Shelley  had  many  merits  and  many  defects.  This  is  not  the  place  for 
a  complete  or  indeed  for  any  estimate  of  him.  But  one  excellence  is  most 
evident.  His  words  are  as  flexible  as  any  words;  the  rhythm  of  some 


SHELLEY.  397 

modulating  air  seems  to  move  them  into  their  place  without  a  struggle  by 
the  poet,  and  almost  without  his  knowledge.  This  is  the  perfection  of 
true  art. — WALTER  BAGEHOT,  Literary  Studies,  Vol.  II. 

If  ever  any  human  being  was  gifted  with  "  the  vision  and  the  faculty 
divine,"  Shelley  was  so  gifted. — P.  G.  PATMORE,  My  Friends  and 
Acquaintances,  Vol.  III. 

Perhaps  there  never  was  a  man  of  more  opulent  religious  phantasy,  of 
more  burning  religious  emotion,  than  Shelley  ;  the  same  poet  who  called 
himself  with  boyish  folly,  Atheist,  yet  dreamed  of  and  hymned  the  Spirit 
of  Beauty.  The  Iconoclast,  whether  poet,  or  prophet,  or  satirist,  may 
through  the  mere  and  earnest  simplicity  of  contradiction,  be,  in  certain 
barren  or  corrupt  or  Pharisaical  ages,  the  True  Adorer.  —  WILLIAM 
MACCALL,  The  Newest  Materialism. 

Shelley  is  pre-eminently  the  poet  of  what  may  be  called  meteorological 
circumstance.  He  is  at  home  among  winds,  mists,  rains,  snows,  clouds 
gorgeously  coloured,  glories  of  sunrise,  nights  of  moonshine,  lightnings, 
streamers,  and  falling  stars  ;  and  what  of  vegetation  and  geology  he  brings 
in  is  but  so  much  that  might  be  seen  by  an  aerial  creature  in  its  ascents 
and  descents. — DAVID  MASSON,  Wordsworth,  Shelley,  Keats,  etc. 

Shelley,  as  pure  a  philanthropist  as  St.  Francis  or  Howard,  could  for- 
get mankind,  and,  like  his  Adonais,  become  one  with  nature. — JOHN 
NICHOL,  Life  of  Byron. 

The  most  truly  spiritual  of  all  English  poets,  Shelley.  .  .  .  We  feel  that 
Shelley  transports  the  spirit  to  the  highest  bound  and  limit  of  the  intelli- 
gible ;  and  that  with  him  thought  passes  through  one  superadded  and 
more  rarefying  process  than  the  other  poet  (Byron)  is  master  of.  If  it  be  true, 
as  has  been  written,  that  "  Poetry  is  the  breath  and  finer  spirit  of  all  know- 
ledge," we  may  say  that  Shelley  teaches  us  to  apprehend  that  further 
something,  the  breath  and  finer  spirit  of  poetry  itself. — JOHN  MORLEY, 
Miscellanies,  Vol.  I. 

Who  shall  say  that  Shelley  has  not  been  "  the  trumpet  of  a  prophecy  "  ? 
What  matters  it,  though  some  of  his  poems  should  be  disfigured  by  affec- 
tation, and  others  by  a  quixotic  assault  upon  wind-mills  of  his  own 
creation  ? — there  is  yet  a  glamour  over  all  his  song,  which  proclaims  him 
the  great  poet.  Even  in  his  translations — an  important  branch  of  his  art 
— the  same  glamour  shines.  We  understand  the  old  aphorism,  poeta 
nascitnr  non  fit,  when  it  is  applied  to  him.  The  value  and  extent  of  his 
work,  when  placed  in  juxtaposition  with  the  brevity  of  his  life,  leave  us 
but  astonishment  and  wonder.  He  was  inspired,  and  has  since  been  the 
source  of  inspiration  in  others.  .  .  .  His  prophetic  eyes  shone  with  a 
glorified  light  from  other  suns  than  ours. — G.  B.  SMITH,  Shelley  :  A 
Critical  Biography. 

Shelley  seems  to  have  sunk  himself  in  Nature,  and  made  himself  the 
translator  of  Nature's  mute  emotions.  To  use  one  of  his  favourite  phrases, 
his  being  became  "  inwoven  "  with  the  very  life  of  the  universe.  We  find 
it  hard  to  realize  him  as  a  bodily  presence ;  he  is  "  as  the  air  invulnerable  ". 
He  did  not  live  prose  and  write  poetry ;  he  was  poetry  from  the  crown  of 
his  head  to  the  sole  of  his  foot ;  a  creature  of  imagination  all  compact. — 
W.  J.  DAWSON,  Quest  and  Vision. 


3Q8  SHELLEY,  SHENSTONE. 

Meanwhile,  the  thoughtful  student  of  literature  and  history  will  not 
cease  to  ponder  on  the  strange  revenge  of  time  which  Shelley's  life  and 
works  constitute.  He  whose  mission  it  was  to  loosen  traditional  authority 
and  untie  worn-out  convention  was  born  in  the  very  lap  of  that  solid  but 
exclusive  comfort  which  the  centuries  had  been  building  upon  authority 
and  convention.  He  who  was  more  penetrable  by  ideas  than  any  poet  of 
his  age  came  into  the  world  among  associations  where  every  new  idea 
was  "  God  bless  us!  a  thing  of  naught".  ...  As  Shelley  the  poet  had 
been  the  supreme  lord  of  song  in  a  prosaic  world,  as  Shelley  the  propo- 
gandist  had  been  through  faith  the  lord  of  hope,  so  Shelley  the  man  had 
been,  to  those  who  hung  upon  him  or  needed  him,  the  lord  of  love. — H. 
BUXTON  FORMAN,  Memoir  prefixed  to  Shelley's  Poetical  Works,  Vol.  I. 

Not  for  this  set  of  readers  nor  for  that,  but  for  all  who  love  what  is 
loftiest  and  best  in  poetry,  Shelley  must  always  seem  one  of  the  highest 
enthroned  among  the  kings  of  song.  It  can  never  be  that  the  avarice  of 
time  shall  take  his  name  and  his  music  from  us.  Even  as  "  Adonais,"  of 
whom  he  wrote  in  deathless  strains,  he  veritably  wakes  or  sleeps  with  the 
enduring  dead. — WILLIAM  SHARP,  Life  of  Percy  Bysshc  Shelley. 

To  illustrate  Shelley  would  be  as  impossible  as  to  paint  a  strain  of 
music,  unless  indeed  some  of  Turner's  cloud  scenery  may  be  taken  as 
representative  of  his  incidental  descriptions. — LESLIE  STEPHEN,  Hours  in 
a  Library,  Vol.  III. 

Shelley  is  too  great  to  serve  as  text  for  any  sermon  ;  and  yet  we  may 
learn  from  him  as  from  a  hero  of  Hebrew  or  Hellenic  story.  His  life  was 
a  tragedy ;  and  like  some  protagonist  of  Greek  Drama,  he  was  capable  of 
erring  and  of  suffering  greatly.  .  .  .  We  have  only  to  read  Shelley's 
Essay  on  Christianity,  in  order  to  perceive  what  reverent  admiration  he 
felt  for  Jesus,  and  how  profoundly  he  understood  the  true  character  of  his 
teaching.  That  work,  brief  as  it  is,  forms  one  of  the  most  valuable  extant 
contributions  to  a  sound  theology,  and  is  morally  far  in  advance  of  the 
opinions  expressed  by  many  who  regard  themselves  as  specially  qualified 
to  speak  on  the  subject.  It  is  certain  that,  as  Christianity  passes  beyond 
its  mediaeval  phase,  and  casts  aside  the  husk  of  out-worn  dogmas,  it  will 
more  and  more  approximate  to  Shelley's  exposition.  Here  and  here  only 
is  a  vital  faith,  adapted  to  the  conditions  of  modern  thought,  indestructible 
because  essential,  and  fitted  to  unite  instead  of  separating  minds  of  divers 
quality.  It  may  sound  paradoxical  to  claim  for  Shelley  of  all  men  a  clear 
insight  into  the  enduring  element  of  the  Christian  creed  ;  but  it  was  pre- 
cisely his  detachment  from  all  its  accidents  which  enabled  him  to  discern 
its  spiritual  purity,  and  placed  him  in  a  true  relation  to  its  Founder.  For 
those  who  would  neither  on  the  one  hand  relinquish  what  is  permanent  in 
religion,  nor  yet  on  the  other  deny  the  inevitable  conclusions  of  modern 
thought,  his  teaching  is  indubitably  valuable. — J.  ADUINGTON  SYMONDS, 
Shelley  :  A  Memoir. 

WILLIAM  SHENSTONE. 
English  Poet :  1714-1763. 

Nor  Shenstone,  thou 

Shalt  pass  without  thy  meed,  thou  son  of  peace  ! 
Who  knew'st,  perchance,  to  harmonize  thy  shades, 


SHENSTONE,  SHERIDAN.  399 

Still  softer  than  thy  song ;  yet  was  that  song 
Nor  rude,  nor  inharmonious,  when  attun'd 
To  pastoral  plaint,  or  tale  of  slighted  love. 

— W.  MASON,  The  English  Garden. 

The  pleasure  of  Shenstone  was  all  in  his  eye  ;  he  valued  what  he 
valued  merely  for  its  looks;  nothing  raised  his  indignation  more  than  to 
ask  if  there  were  any  fishes  in  his  water.  His  house  was  mean,  and  he 
did  not  improve  it  ;  his  care  was  of  his  grounds.  When  he  came  home 
from  his  walks,  he  might  find  his  floors  flooded  by  a  shower  through  the 
broken  roof;  but  could  spare  no  money  for  its  reparation.  In  time  his 
expenses  brought  clamours  about  him,  that  overpowered  the  lamb's  bleat 
and  the  linnet's  song;  and  his  groves  were  haunted  by  beings  very 
different  from  fauns  and  fairies. — DR.  JOHNSON,  Lives  of  the  Poets  : 
Shenstone. 

I  have  read,  too,  an  octavo  volume  of  Shenstone's  Letters.  Poor 
man  !  he  was  always  wishing  for  money,  for  fame,  and  other  distinctions  ; 
and  his  whole  philosophy  consisted  in  living  against  his  will  in  retirement, 
and  in  a  place  which  his  taste  had  adorned,  but  which  he  only  enjoyed 
when  people  of  note  came  to  see  and  commend  it ;  his  correspondence 
is  about  nothing  else  but  this  place  and  his  own  writings,  with  two  or 
three  neighbouring  clergymen,  who  wrote  verses  too. — THOMAS  GRAY. 

RICHARD  BRINSLEY  SHERIDAN. 
Irish  Statesman,  Orator,  and  Dramatist :  1751-1816. 

Long  shall  we  seek  his  likeness,  long  in  vain, 
And  turn  to  all  of  him  which  may  remain, 
Sighing  that  Nature  form'd  but  one  such  man, 
And  broke  the  die — in  moulding  Sheridan  ! 

— BYRON,  Monody  on  the  Death  of  the  Right  Hon.  R.  B.  Sheridan. 

Such  was  Sheridan  !   he  could  soften  an  attorney  I 
There  has  been  nothing  like  it  since  the  days  of  Orpheus. 

— Id.  in  MOORE'S  Life  of  Byj-on. 

It  was  some  Spirit !  Sheridan  !  that  breathed 

O'er  thy  young  mind  such  wildly  various  power  ! 

My  soul  hath  marked  thee  in  her  shaping  hour, 

Thy  temples  with  Hymettian  flow'rets  wreathed : 

And  sweet  thy  voice,  as  when  o'er  Laura's  bier 

Sad  music  trembled  through  Vauclusa's  glade ; 

Sweet,  as  at  dawn  the  love-born  Serenade 

That  wafts  soft  dreams  to  Slumber's  listening  ear. 

Now  patriot  Rage  and  indignation  high 

Swell  the  full  tones !  And  now  thine  eye-beams  dance 

Meanings  of  Scorn  and  Wit's  quaint  revelry  ! 

Writhes    inly  from  the  bosom-probing  glance 

The  apostate  by  the  brainless  rout  adored, 

As  erst  that  elder  Fiend  beneath  great  Michael's  sword. 

— S.  T.  COLERIDGE,  Sonnet  VI. 


4oo  SHERIDAN,  SHERLOCK,  SIDNEY. 

Of  Mr.  Fox's  adherents  who  have  just  been  named,  the  most  remarkable 
certainly  was  Mr.  Sheridan,  and  with  all  his  faults,  and  all  his  failings, 
and  all  his  defects,  the  first  in  genius  and  greatest  in  power. — LORD 
BROUGHAM,  Statesmen  of  the  Time  of  George  III. 

Mr.  Sheridan  has  been  justly  called  "a  dramatic  star  of  the  first 
magnitude  "  ;  and  indeed  among  the  comic  writers  of  the  last  century  he 
"  shines  like  Hesperus  among  the  lesser  lights  ".  .  .  .  He  had  wit,  fancy, 
sentiment  at  command,  enabling  him  to  place  the  thoughts  of  others  in 
new  lights  of  his  own,  which  reflected  back  one  added  lustre  on  the 
originals :  whatever  he  touched  he  adorned  with  all  the  ease,  grace,  and 
brilliancy  of  his  style.  If  he  ranks  only  as  a  man  of  second-rate  genius, 
he  was  assuredly  a  man  of  first-rate  talents. — HAZLITT,  Lectures  on  the 
English  Comic  Writers. 

Sheridan  blazed  and  exploded  from  side  to  side  in  a  reckless  yet  rigid 
course,  like  a  gigantic  and  splendid  piece  of  firework,  his  follies  repeating 
themselves,  his  inability  to  follow  up  success,  and  careless  abandonment 
of  one  way  after  another  that  might  have  led  to  a  better  and  happier 
fortune.  He  had  a  fit  of  writing,  a  fit  of  oratory,  but  no  impulse  to  keep 
him  in  either  path  long  enough  to  make  anything  more  than  the  dazzling 
but  evanescent  triumph  of  a  day.  His  harvest  was  like  a  southern  har- 
vest, over  early,  while  it  was  yet  but  May ;  but  he  sowed  no  seed  for  a 
second  ingathering,  nor  was  there  any  growth  or  richness  left  in  the 
soon-exhausted  soil. — MRS.  OLIPHANT,  Life  of  Sheridan. 


THOMAS  SHERLOCK. 
Bishop  of  London  :  1678-1761. 

Rather  verge 

To  Sherlock's  plain  compactness,  that  admits 
No  decorating  figures,  than  o'erload 
Thy  lessons  with  the  metaphor's  crude  mass. 

— RICHARD  POLWHELE,  Pulpit  Eloquence. 

Among  the  citizens  be  grave  and  slow  ; 

Before  the  nobles  let  fine  periods  flow  ; 

The  Temple  Church  asks  Sherlock's  sense  and  skill  ; 

Beyond  the  Tow'r — no  matter — what  you  will. 

—ROBERT  DODSLEY,  The  Art  of  Preaching. 

Sherlock  staggered  to  and  fro  between  Tritheism  and  Sabellianism. 
S.  T.  COLERIDGE,  Table  Talk. 


SIR  PHILIP  SIDNEY. 
English  Statesman  and  Poet :  1554-1586. 

But  that  immortal  spirit,  which  was  deckt 

With  all  the  dowries  of  celestial  grace, 

By  sovereign  choice  from  th'  heavenly  quires  select, 


SIDNEY.  401 

And  lineally  deriv'd  from  angels'  race, 
O  what  is  now  of  it  become  ?  aread  : 
Aye  me  !  can  so  divine  a  thing  be  dead  ? 

— SPENSER,  Upon  the  Death  of  Sir  Philip  Sidney. 

Immortal  Sidney,  glory  of  the  field  ! 
And  glory  of  the  Muses  ! 

—  SAMUEL  DANIEL,  A  Funeral  Poem,  upon  the  Death  of  the 
Earl  of  Devonshire. 

Reason's  sense  and  learning's  sweeting 
Where  the  Muses  had  their  meeting, 
Nature's  grace  and  honour's  glory, 
Of  the  world  the  woful  story  ; 
That  with  bitter  tears  be  read 
Sweet  Sir  Philip  Sidney  dead. 

Dead  ?     Oh  no  !  in  heaven  he  liveth, 
Whom  the  heavens  such  honour  giveth, 
.That  though  here  his  body  lie, 
Yet  his  soul  shall  never  die  ; 
But  as  fame  can  perish  never, 
So  his  faith  shall  live  for  ever. 

— NICHOLAS  BRETON,  Sir  Philip  Sidney's  Epitaph. 

The  noble  Sidney,  with  this  last  arose, 
That  hero  for  numbers,  and  for  prose. 
That  throughly  pac'd  our  language  as  to  show, 
The  plenteous  English  hand  in  hand  might  go 
With  Greek  and  Latin,  and  did  first  reduce 
Our  tongue  from  Lilly's  writing  then  in  use  ; 
Talking  of  stones,  stars,  plants,  of  fishes,  flies, 
Playing  with  words,  and  idle  similes. 

— MICHAEL  DRAYTON,  Elegy  to  Henry  Reynolds,  Esq.. 

Nor  can  the  Muse  the  gallant  Sidney  pass, 
The  plume  of  war  !  with  early  laurels  crown'd, 
The  lover's  myrtle,  and  the  poet's  bay. 

— THOMSON,  The  Seasons  :  Summer. 

O  Britain,  parent  of  illustrious  names, 

While  o'er  thy  annals  memory  shoots  her  eye, 

How  the  heart  glows,  rapt  with  high-wondering  love, 

And  emulous  esteem  !  hail,  Sidney  hail ! 

Whether  Arcadian  blithe,  by  fountain  clear, 

Piping  thy  love-lays  wild,  or  Spartan  bold, 

In  freedom's  van  distinguished,  Sidney,  hail ! 

Oft  o'er  thy  laurell'd  tomb  from  hands  unseen 

Fall  flowers ;  oft  in  thy  vale  of  Penshurst  fair 

The  shepherd  wandering  from  his  nightly  fold, 

Listeneth  strange  music,  by  the  tiny  breath 

Of  fairy  minstrels  warbled. 

— JOHN  LANGHORNE,  Fragment,  1762. 

Sidney,  warbler  of  poetic  prose. 

— COWPER,  The  Task  :  The  Winter  Evening. 
26 


402  SIDNEY. 

Sidney  as  he  fought 

And  as  he  fell,  and  as  he  lived  and  loved, 
Sublimely  mild,  a  spirit  without  spot, 
Arose. 

— SHELLEY,  Adonais. 

For  a  dearer  life 

Never  in  battle  hath  been  offered  up, 
Since  in  like  cause  and  in  unhappy  day, 
By  Zutphen's  walls  the  peerless  Sidney  fell. 

— -SouTHEY,  To  the  Memory  of  Major -General  Mackinnon, 

Arcadian  Sidney — Nursling  of  the  Muse, 
Flower  of  divine  Romance,  whose  bloom  was  fed 
By  daintiest  Helicon's  most  silver  dews, 
Alas !  how  soon  thy  lovely  leaves  were  shed. 

— LYTTON,  The  Last  Days  of  Elizabeth. 

Music  bright  as  the  soul  of  light,  for  wings  an  eagle,  for  notes  a  dove, 
Leaps  and  shines  from  the  lustrous  lines  where  through  thy  soul  from  afar 

above 
Shone  and  sang  till  the  darkness  rang  with  light  whose  fire  is  the  fount 

of  love. 

Love  that  led  thee  alive,  and  fed  thy  soul  with  sorrows  and  joys  and  fears, 
Love  that  sped  thee,  alive  and  dead,  to  fame's  fair  goal  with  thy  peerless 

peers, 

Feeds  the  flame  of  thy  quenchless  name  with  light  that  lightens  the  ray- 
less  years. 

— SWINBURNE,  Astrophel,  II. 

The  life  of  Sir  Philip  Sidney  was  poetry  put  into  action. — CAMPBELL. 

Sir  Philip  Sidney  is  one  of  the  patron  saints  of  England,  of  whom 
Wotton  said,  "His  wit  was  the  measure  of  congruity". — EMERSON, 
English  Traits  :  Manners. 

What  English  gentleman  would  not  rejoice  to  bequeath  a  name  like 
that  of  Sir  Philip  Sidney? — LYTTON,  Essays:  Posthumous  Reputation. 

Sir  Philip  Sidney  represented  the  popular  sentiment  in  Elizabeth's  day 
— Byron  that  in  our  own.  Each  became  the  poetry  of  a  particular  age 
put  into  action — each,  incorporated  with  the  feelings  he  addressed, 
attracted  towards  himself  an  enthusiasm  which  his  genius  alone  did  not 
deserve. — Id.,  England  and  the  English  :  Intellectual  Spirit,  etc. 

Personalities  so  unique  as  Sidney's  exhale  a  perfume  which  evanesces 
when  the  lamp  of  life  burns  out.  This  the  English  nation  felt  when  they 
put  on  mourning  for  his  death.  They  felt  that  they  had  lost  in  Sidney, 
not  only  one  of  their  most  hopeful  gentlemen  and  bravest  soldiers,  but 
something  rare  and  beautiful  in  human  life,  which  could  not  be  recaptured, 
which  could  not  even  be  transmitted,  save  by  hearsay,  to  a  future  age. 
.  .  .  When  we  review  the  life  of  Sir  Philip  Sidney,  it  is  certain  that  one 
thought  will  survive  all  other  thoughts  about  him  in  our  mind.  This 
man,°we  shall  say,  was  born  to  show  the  world  what  goes  to  the  making 


SIDNEY,  SIMONIDES,  SI  XT  US  IV.  403 

of  an  English  Gentleman.  But  he  belonged  to  his  age  ;  and  the  age  of 
Elizabeth  differed  in  many  essential  qualities  from  the  age  of  Anne  and 
from  the  age  of  Victoria.  Sidney  was  the  typical  English  gentleman  of 
the  modern  era  at  the  moment  of  transition  from  the  mediaeval  period. 
He  was  the  hero  of  our  Renaissance. — J.  ADDINGTON  SYMONDS,  Biography 
of  Sir  Philip  Sidney. 

SIMONIDES. 
Greek  Poet:  B.C.  556-467. 

O  ye,  who  patiently  explore 
The  wreck  of  Herculanean  lore, 
What  rapture  !  could  ye  seize 
Some  Theban  fragment,  or  unroll 
One  precious,  tender-hearted,  scroll 
Of  pure  Simonides. 

— WORDSWORTH,  Departing  Summer. 

The  tenderest  Poet  that  could  be 

Who  sang  in  ancient  Greece  his  loving  lay. 

— Id. 

Of  him  who  sang  the  Seasons  as  they  roll, 
With  all  a  Hesiod's  truth,  a  Homer's  power, 
And  the  pure  feeling  of  Simonides. 

— D.  M.  MOIR,  Thomson's  Birthplace. 

In  reviewing  the  life  of  Simonides,  after  admitting  that  he  was  greedy 
of  gain  and  not  averse  to  flatter,  we  are  bound  to  confess  that,  as  a  poet, 
he  proved  himself  adequate  to  the  age  of  Marathon  and  Salamis.  He 
was  the  voice  of  Hellas — the  genius  of  Fame,  sculpturing  upon  her 
brazen  shield  with  a  pen  of  adamant,  in  austere  letters  of  indelible  gold, 
the  achievements  to  which  the  whole  world  owes  its  civilisation.  Happy 
poet !  Had  ever  any  other  man  so  splendid  a  heritage  of  song  allotted  to 
him  ?  In  style  Simonides  is  always  pure  and  exquisitely  polished.  The 
ancients  called  him  the  sweet  poet — Melicertes  — par  excellence.  His 
fftafypoffvvi)  gives  a  mellow  tone  not  merely  to  his  philosophy  and  moral 
precepts,  but  also  to  his  art.  He  has  none  of  Pindar's  rugged  majesty, 
volcanic  force,  gorgeous  exuberance :  he  does  not,  like  Pindar,  pour 
forth  an  inexhaustible  torrent  of  poetical  ideas,  chafing  against  each 
other  in  the  eddies  of  breathless  inspiration.  On  the  contrary,  he  works 
up  a  few  thoughts,  a  few  carefully  selected  images,  with  patient  skill, 
producing  a  perfectly  harmonious  result,  but  one  which  is  always  border- 
ing on  the  commonplace.  Like  all  correct  poets,  he  is  somewhat  tame, 
though  tender,  delicate,  and  exquisitely  beautiful. — J.  ADDINGTON  SYMONDS, 
Studies  of  Greek  Poets. 

SIXTUS  IV. 
Pope :  1414-1484. 

Pope  Sixtus  IV.,  one  of  the  worst  men  that  ever  sat  in  the  chair  of  St. 
Peter,  praised  himself  immeasurably  in  the  anathema  he  pronounced 
against  Lorenzo  de  Medici,  whom  he  presumed  to  call  "  the  Son  of 


404  SIXTUS  IV.,  SMITH. 

Iniquity,"  and  the  "  Heir  of  Perdition  " ;  while  he  was  himself  all  mild- 
ness, moderation,  and  gentleness.  This  was  not  self-delusion  ;  but  im- 
pudence, blended  with  the  most  astonishing  hypocrisy.  Sixtus  was  of  an 
order,  who,  in  their  declamations  against  the  crimes  and  vices  of  others, 
brave  the  discovery  of  their  own  crimes  and  defects.  "  They  are  them- 
selves the  great  sublime  they  draw." — CHARLES  BUCKE,  Book  of  Human 
Character. 

ADAM  SMITH. 
English  Political  Economist :  1723-1790. 

Adam  Smith  was  nearly  the  first  who  made  deeper  reasonings  and  more 
exact  knowledge  popular  among  us. — LORD  JEFFREY,  Essays. 

Adam  Smith  is,  in  an  unobtrusive  way,  the  apostle  of  Democracy  as 
well  as  of  Free  Trade. — GOLDWIN  SMITH,  Three  English  Statesmen. 

Adam  Smith,  one  of  the  most  distinguished  positive  thinkers  in  this 
negative  century. — JOHN  MORLEY,  Life  of  Edmund  Burke. 

REV.  SYDNEY  SMITH. 
Canon  of  St.  Paul's  ;  Critic  and  Wit :  1771-1845. 

Rare  Sydney  !  thrice  honour'd  the  stall  where  he  sits, 

And  be  his  every  honour  he  deigneth  to  climb  at ! 

Had  England  a  hierarchy  formed  all  of  wits, 

Whom,  but  Sydney,  would  England  proclaim  as  its  Primate  ? 

And  long  may  he  flourish,  frank,  merry,  and  brave, 

A  Horace  to  feast  with,  a  Pascal  to  read ! 

While  he  laughs  all  is  safe ;  but  when  Sydney  grows  grave, 

We  shall  then  think  the  Church  is  in  danger  indeed. 

— MOORE. 

Tickler:  "Yes — Sydney  Smith  has  a  rare  genius  for  the  grotesque.  He 
is,  with  his  quips  and  cranks,  a  formidable  enemy  to  pomposity  and  pre- 
tension. No  man  can  wear  a  big  wig  comfortably  in  his  presence;  the 
absurdity  of  such  enormous  frizzle  is  felt ;  and  the  dignitary  would  fain 
exchange  all  that  horse-hair  for  a  few  scattered  locks  of  another  animal." — 
JOHN  WILSON,  Nodes  Ambrosiance,  Vol.  I. 

As  for  Sydney  Smith,  to  him  fighting  is  fun,  and  he  cuts  as  many  capers 
in  the  ring  as  young  Spring,  the  Conqueror.  But  he  is  formidable  in  his 
frolic — though  rather  too  showy,  yet  a  clean,  straight,  and  even  heavy 
hitter  ;  and  most  of  his  antagonists,  though  heavier  men  than  himself,  and 
deficient  in  neither  science  nor  bottom,  have,  after  a  few  rounds,  in  which 
their  gravity  was  most  amusingly,  and  to  the  infinite  mirth  of  all  beholders, 
contrasted  with  the  antics  of  the  Parson  who  kept  hopping  about  like  a 
mountebank,  yet  all  the  while  dealing  out  right  and  left  handers  like 
lightning,  been  carried  out  of  the  ring  deaf  as  a  house,  and  blind  as  the 
pier  of  Leith,  or  the  mole  of  Tyre.  He  has  fought  one  or  two  drawn  battles, 
especially  one  with  the  best  man  then  in  the  ring,  under  the  nom  de 
guerre  of  Peter  Plymley,  which  was  brought  to  a  wrangle,  and  ended  in  a 
draw — but  he  has  never  yet  been  fairly  defeated ;  and  to  accomplish  that 
will  require  an  out-and-outer. — Idem.,  Essays  :  The  Man  of  Ton. 


405 


Irs.  Austin  justly  remarks  that  the  reputation  of  Sydney  Smith  has 
risen  since  his  death.  It  has  risen,  and  it  is  to  rise.  Every  year  lessens 
the  number  of  those  who  can  remember  the  marvellous  charm  of  his  con- 
versation, that  diaphragm-shaking,  fancy-chasing,  oddity-piling,  incon- 
gruity-linking, hyperbole-topping,  wonder-working  faculty  of  his,  which  a 
bookful  of  Homeric  compound  adjectives  would  still  leave  undescribed. 
But  meanwhile,  the  true  proportions  of  that  large  intellect  have  been  grow- 
ing upon  the  vision  of  men.  Blinded  with  tears  of  laughter,  they  could 
not  estimate  his  magnitude.  Hands  palsied  by  convulsive  cachinnations 
were  too  unsteady  to  hold  the  measure  and  fit  the  colossus  with  a  judg- 
ment. Now  it  is  better  understood  how  all  that  wit  was  only  the  efflor- 
escence of  his  greatness — the  waving  wild  flowers  on  the  surface  of  a 
pyramid.  Time  may  take  from  the  edifice  of  his  fame  some  of  its  lighter 
decorations,  obliterate  quaint  carvings,  decapitate  some  grotesque  and 
pendant  gargoyles,  destroy  some  rich  flamboyant  word  traceries  ;  but  that 
very  spoliation  will  only  display  more  completely  the  solid  foundation,  the 
broad  harmonious  plan  of  his  life's  structure,  and  exhibit  the  fine  con- 
scientiousness with  which  those  parts  of  the  building  most  remote  from 
the  public  eye  were  finished,  even  as  they  most  seem.  .  .  .  The  wit  of 
Sydney  Smith  was  always  under  the  control  of  good  taste  and  good  feeling. 
It  was  never  mischievous  to  him  by  any  unseemliness,  impertinence,  or 
vulgarity.  Throughout  his  writings,  so  remarkable  for  natural  flow  and 
freedom  of  style,  so  simple  and  so  idiomatic,  you  search  in  vain  for  any- 
thing slipshod,  for  triteness  or  chit-chat,  for  a  single  colloquial  solecism. 
His  style,  like  golden  haired  Pyrrha,  is  always  simplex  munditiis. — R.  A. 
VAUGHAN,  Essays  and  Remains,  Vol.  II. 

We  will  not  say  that,  like  Goldsmith,  he  adorned  everything  he  touched, 
but  he  compelled  everything  he  touched  to  appear  in  its  natural  shape  and 
genuine  colours.  In  his  hands  the  logical  process  called  the  Yeductio  ab 
absnrdum  operated  like  the  spear  of  Ithuriel.  No  form  of  sophistry  or 
phase  of  bigotry  could  help  throwing  off  its  disguise  at  his  approach  ;  and 
the  dogma  which  has  been  deemed  questionable  touching  ridicule  in 
general,  may  be  confidently  predicated  of  his,  namely,  that  it  was  literally 
and  emphatically  the  test  of  truth. — A.  HAYWARD,  Biographical  and 
Critical  Essays,  Vol.  I. 

The  reader  of  to-day  who  turns  to  refresh  his  mind  with  the  mischiev- 
ous sallies  and  sparkling  common  sense  of  Sydney  Smith,  hardly  knows 
which  to  admire  most — his  vivacity  or  his  vigour,  and  is  equally  delighted 
with  the  spontaneous  flow  of  his  humour  and  the  honesty  of  purpose  by 
which  it  is  directed  and  curbed.  His  humour  was  genial,  frolicsome,  and 
healthy ;  it  ran  like  a  golden  thread  through  all  his  articles,  and  lit  up  in 
the  most  unexpected  manner  subjects  of  the  driest  kind,  and  arguments  of 
the  most  recondite  description.  His  style  is  so  clear  and  crisp  that  he 
who  runs  may  read,  and  his  illustrations  are  so  felicitous  that  all  who  read 
must  laugh.  .  .  .  Not  a  few  of  the  noblest  ministers  of  the  Christian 
Church  have  not  been  cut  after  the  regulation  pattern,  and,  as  a  rule,  such 
men  have  fared  more  hardly  in  the  Church  than  in  the  world.  All  through 
the  earlier  years  of  Sydney  Smith's  ministry  that  was  precisely  his  posi- 
tion. His  ecclesiastical  superiors  looked  coldly  upon  him;  they  were 
dazzled  by  his  brilliant  common  sense,  and  alarmed  at  the  freedom  with 
which  he  applied  it  even  to  such  venerable  personages  as  themselves.  He 
was  regarded,  in  the  prim  and  decorous  circles  of  the  day,  as  a  dangerous 


406  SMITH,  SMOLLETT. 

man,  and  a  dangerous  man  he  certainly  was  to  the  end  of  the  chapter,  so 
far  as  all  clerical,  political,  or  social  pretence  and  injustice  were  concerned. 
But  straightforward  people,  high  and  low,  from  earls  and  marquesses  to 
farm  labourers  and  village  children,  opened  their  hearts  to  welcome  a  man 
who  placed  the  precious  things  of  his  creed  in  circulation,  not  only  in  good 
words,  but  likewise  in  the  more  tangible  coin  of  golden  deeds. — S.  J.  REID, 
Life  and  Times  of  the  Rev.  Sydney  Smith. 

The  history  of  the  Liberal  Movement  in  the  English  Church  of  the 
nineteenth  century  could  not  begin  better  than  with  Sydney  Smith.  He 
is  the  principal  link  between  the  Liberalism  of  the  eighteenth  and  the 
Broad  Churchism  of  the  nineteenth  century. — A.  J.  FITZROY,  Dogma  and 
the  Church  of  England. 

Sydney  Smith  was  an  ideal  soldier  of  reform  for  his  time,  and  in  his 
way.  He  was  not  extraordinarily  long-sighted — indeed  (as  his  famous  and 
constantly  repeated  advice  to  "  take  short  views  of  life"  shows)  he  had  a 
distinct  distrust  of  taking  too  anxious  thought  for  political  or  any  other 
morrows.  But  he  had  a  most  keen  and,  in  many  cases,  a  most  just  scent 
and  sight  for  the  immediate  inconveniences  and  injustices  of  the  day,  and 
for  the  shortest  and  most  effective  ways  of  mending  them.  He  was  per- 
haps more  destitute  of  romance  and  of  reverence  (though  he  had  too  much 
good  taste  to  be  positively  irreverent)  than  any  man  who  ever  lived. — 
SAINTSBURY,  Essays  in  English  Literature. 

I  regard  the  admirable  Sydney  as  not  only  the  supreme  head  of  all 
ecclesiastical  jesters,  but  as,  on  the  whole,  the  greatest  humorist  whose 
jokes  have  come  down  to  us  in  an  authentic  and  unmutilated  form. 
Almost  alone  among  professional  jokers,  he  made  his  merriment — rich, 
natural,  fantastic,  unbridled  as  it  was — subserve  the  serious  purposes  of 
his  life  and  writing.  Each  joke  was  a  link  in  an  argument ;  each  sarcasm 
was  a  moral  lesson. — [G.  W.  E.  RUSSELL],  Collections  and  Recollections. 

TOBIAS  GEORGE  SMOLLETT. 
English  Novelist  and  Historian  :  1721-1771. 

There  are  in  the  main  only  two  divisions  in  the  business  of  writing:  the 
men  who  are  themselves  form  one,  and  the  men  who  are  the  echoes  of 
somebody  else  form  the  other.  In  the  first  class  there  are  gradations  of 
merit,  but  its  members  are  separated  by  a  wide  gulf,  over  which  there  is  no 
passing,  from  the  second  order.  Smollett  was  very  distinctly  on  the  right 
side  of  the  gulf.— DAVID  HANNAY,  Life  of  T.  G.  Smollett. 

Smollett  seldom  holds  communication  with  his  readers  in  his  own  per- 
son. He  manages  his  delightful  puppet-show  without  thrusting  his  head 
beyond  the  curtain,  like  Gines  de  Passamont,  to  explain  what  he  is  doing  ; 
and  hence,  besides  that  our  attention  to  the  story  remains  unbroken,  we 
are  sure  that  the  author,  fully  confident  in  the  abundance  of  his  materials, 
has  no  occasion  to  eke  them  out  with  intrinsic  matter. — SCOTT,  Prose 
Works,  Vol.  III. 

Smo  lett  excels  most  as  the  lively  caricaturist :  Fielding  as  the  exact 
painter  and  profound  metaphysician. — HAZLITT,  Lectures  on  the  English 
Comic  Writers,  Lecture  VI :  On  the  English  Novelists. 


SOCINUS,  SOCRATES.  407 

FAUSTUS  SOCINUS. 
Founder  of  the  Sect  of  the  Socinians  :  1539-1604. 

Leave  Socinus  and  the  schoolmen, 
Which  Jack  Bond  swears  do  but  fool  men. 

— SUCKLING,  Upon  my  Lord  Brohall's  Wedding. 

SOCRATES. 
Athenian  Philosopher:  B.C.  469-399. 

Remembrith  you  of  Socrates, 
For  he  ne  countith  not  thre  strees 
Of  nought  that  Fortune  coude  ydo. 

— CHAUCER,  The  Dream  of  Chaucer. 

"  Know,"  Socrates  reply'd, 

"I  for  the  one  true  God  a  Martyr  dy'd, 

I  knew  great  God  by  native  Light, 

And  Conscience  told  me  what  was  right." 

— BISHOP  THOMAS  KEN. 

Then  those  who  follow'd  reason's  dictates  right, 
Liv'd  up,  and  lifted  high  their  nat'ral  light ; 
With  Socrates  may  see  their  Maker's  face, 
While  thousand  rubric-martyrs  want  a  place. 

— DRYDEN,  Religio  Laid. 

Fair  virtue's  silent  train  :  supreme  of  these 
Here  ever  shines  the  godlike  Socrates; 
He  whom  ungrateful  Athens  could  expel, 
At  all  times  just,  but  when  he  sign'd  the  shell. 

—POPE,  The  Temple  of  Fame. 

First  Socrates, 

Who  firmly  good  in  a  corrupted  state, 
Against  the  rage  of  tyrants  single  stood, 
Invincible  !  calm  reason's  holy  law, 
That  voice  of  God  within  th'  attentive  mind, 
Obeying,  fearless,  or  in  life,  or  death : 
Great  moral  teacher  !  wisest  of  mankind  ! 

— THOMSON,  The  Seasons  :  Winter. 

Socrates,  for  god-like  virtue  fam'd, 

And  wisest  of  the  sons  of  men  proclaim'd. 

— FALCONER,  The  Shipwreck. 

Yet  here  the  mind  of  Socrates  could  soar  ; 
And,  being  less  than  man,  he  rose  to  more. 

— WALTER  HARTE,  Boetius. 

Like  Socrates  or  Antonine, 
Or  some  auld  pagan  heathen, 
The  moral  man  he  does  define, 
But  ne'er  a  word  o'  faith  in. 

—BURNS,  The  Holy  Fair. 


4o8  SOCRATES. 

The  birth  of  that  more  subtle  wisdom,  which 
Dawn'd  in  the  world  with  Socrates,  to  bear 
Its  last  most  precious  offspring  in  the  rich 
And  genial  soul  of  Shakespeare. 

— LYTTON,  Euripides. 

Men  love  him  [Euripides]  not : 

How  should  they  ?  Nor  do  they  much  love  his  friend 
Sokrates  :  but  those  two  have  fellowship  : 
Sokrates  often  comes  to  hear  him  read, 
And  never  misses  if  he  teach  a  piece. 

— BROWNING,  Balaustioii's  Adventure. 

Socrates  set  the  example  of  fixing  the  principles  of  virtue  for  private  life. 
— LORD  JEFFREY,  Essays. 

What  made  Socrates  the  greatest  of  men  ?  His  moral  truth — his  ethics. 
What  proved  Jesus  Christ  the  Son  of  God  hardly  less  than  His  miracles  ? 
His  moral  precepts. — BYRON  in  MOORE'S  Life  of  Byron. 

Socrates  seems  to  have  been  continually  oscillating  between  the  good 
and  the  useful. — S.  T.  COLERIDGE  in  T.  ALLSOP'S  Letters,  Conversations, 
and  Recollections  of  S.  T.  Coleridge. 

Socrates  himself  wrote  nothing;  but  "  Socrates  taught  Xenophon  and 
Plato  ".  The  minds  of  Xenophon  and  Plato  were  the  works  he  left  behind 
him.  It  is  only,  however,  a  very  superior  genius  in  whom  ideas  thus 
spontaneously  cast  off  in  familiar  discourse  can  set  into  movement  the 
genius  of  great  writers,  and  wing  in  others  the  words  by  which  those  ideas 
are  borne  on  through  space.  There  is  in  this  power  something  beyond 
even  the  eloquence  of  public  orators. — LYTTON,  Essays :  Charles  Lamb 
and  some  of  his  Companions. 

He  is  a  man,  and  partakes  of  humanity,  even  its  weaknesses  and  doubts. 
But  he  lived  well,  he  spoke  well,  and  he  died  well ;  that  is  to  say,  he  per- 
formed the  part  in  all  its  humility,  and  all  its  greatness,  which  Providence 
imposes  on  every  mortal,  of  thinking  justly,  leading  an  honest  life,  and 
dying  with  hope.  Such  was  Socrates,  the  purest  incarnation  of  good 
sense  and  practical  philosophy,  which  Greece,  the  land  of  his  birth,  has 
exhibited  to  antiquity. — LAMARTINE,  Celebrated  Characters  (transl.), 
Vol.  II. 

Socrates  is  now  regarded  as  the  greatest  man  in  an  age  of  great  men. 
The  name  of  King  has  grown  dim  before  that  of  Apostle.  To  teach, 
whether  by  word  or  action,  is  the  highest  function  on  earth.— W.  E. 
CHANNING,  On  Temperance. 

He  was  a  cool  fellow,  adding  to  his  humour  a  perfect  temper,  and  a 
knowledge  of  his  man,  be  he  who  he  might  whom  he  talked  with,  which 
laid  the  companion  open  to  certain  defeat  in  any  debate, — and  in  debate 
he  immoderately  delighted. — EMERSON,  Plato  :  or  the  Philosopher. 

In  the  face  of  the  lofty  affirmations  of  believers,  Socrates  had  an  un- 
comfortable sly  half-smile.  There  is  something  of  Voltaire  in  Socrates. 
Socrates  denounced  all  the  Eleusian  philosophy  as  unintelligible  and  in- 


SOCRATES.  409 

•discernible,  and  he  said  to  Euripides  that  to  understand  Heraclitus  and  the 
old  philosophers,  "one  required  to  be  a  swimmer  of  Delos  "  ;  in  other 
words,  a  swimmer  capable  to  land  on  an  isle  which  was  always  receding 
from  him. — VICTOR  HUGO,  William  Shakespeare  (transl.). 

As  to  Socrates,  it  is  about  time  we  had  done  with  him.  We  have  all 
been  betrayed  into  rhetoric  regarding  the  most  virtuous  of  Athenian 
sages,  and  the  most  gifted  of  Grecian  sages.  But  was  not  Socrates,  while 
attacking  and  ridiculing  the  sophists,  an  egregious  sophist  himself?  Was 
not  his  mode  of  reasoning  a  clever,  elaborate  trickery,  of  which  the  frank 
tongue  would  be  ashamed  ?  Could  a  man  intensely,  irresistibly  in  ear- 
nest, have  delighted  so  much  in  mere  feats  of  intellectual  legerdemain  ? 
Socrates  unquestionably  helped  to  slay  the  faith  of  his  country,  without 
attempting  to  put  any  more  celestial  faith  in  its  place.  Therefore  he  de- 
served the  lash  of  Aristophanes ;  therefore  he  deserved  the  hemlock  cup, 
the  theatrical  drinking  of  which  by  no  means  impresses  us  ;  therefore  he 
ought  not  to  be  classed  with  the  pure  and  puissant  pleaders  and  fighters 
for  eternal  and  immutable  verities. — WILLIAM  MACCALL,  The  Newest 
Materialism. 

Socrates  is,  and  has  been  for  twenty  centuries,  reverenced  among  the 
great  teachers  and  martyrs.  But  of  the  thousands  who  delight  to  honour 
his  name  how  many  would  have  honoured  the  man  ?  how  many  would 
have  seen  divine  significance  in  that  ugly,  unimposing  figure  loafing  about 
the  Agora,  and  teaching  new  disreputable  doctrines  ?  again,  how  many 
of  those  who  have  a  distinct  vision  of  the  contrast  between  the  aspect 
presented  by  Socrates,  and  the  "  ideal  "  foolishly  demanded,  would  dis- 
trust their  impressions  if  another  Socrates  were  now  in  their  company? — 
G.  H.  LEWES,  Introduction  to  A.  MAIN'S  Life  and  Conversations  of  Dr. 
Samuel  Johnson  (1874). 

Socrates'  positive  doctrines  amounted  to  little :  he  clung  to  a  para- 
doxical belief  that  Virtue  is  Knowledge;  a  view  refuted  before  him  by 
Euripides,  and  after  him  by  Aristotle — in  its  ordinary  sense,  at  least :  to 
him,  of  course,  it  meant  something  not  ordinary.  .  .  .  He  was  working 
incessantly  at  a  problem  which  he  never  really  could  frame  to  himself 
which  mankind  never  has  been  able  to  frame.  He  felt  that  the  big  truth 
he  wanted  must  be  visible  everywhere,  if  we  knew  how  to  look  for  it. 
It  is  not  more  knowledge  that  we  want:  only  the  conscious  realising  of 
what  is  in  us.  .  .  .  Socrates  was  never  understood ;  it  seems  as  if,  for  all 
his'  insistence  on  the  need  of  self-consciousness,  he  never  understood  him- 
self. .  .  .  What  was  the  source  of  Socrates'  immense  influence  over  all 
later  philosophy,  since  in  actual  philosophic  achievement  he  is  not  so 
great  as  Protagoras,  not  comparable  with  Democritus  ?  It  was  largely 
the  daemonic,  semi-inspired  character  of  the  man.  Externally,  it  was 
the  fact  of  his  detachment  from  all  existing  bodies  and  institutions,  so 
that  in  their  wreck,  when  Protagoras,  Pericles,  Gorgias  fell,  he  was  left 
standing  alone  and  undiscredited.  And,  secondly,  it  was  the  great  fact 
that  he  sealed  his  mission  with  his  blood.  He  had  enough  of  the  prophet 
in  him  to  feel  that  it  was  well  for  him  to  die  ;  that  it  was  impossible 
to  unsay  a  word  of  what  he  believed,  or  to  make  any  promise  he  did 
not  personally  approve. — GILBERT  MURRAY,  History  of  Ancient  Greek 
.Literature. 


410  SOCRATES,  SOLON,  SOPHOCLES. 

The  teaching  of  Socrates  may  be  summed  up  in  the  injunction,  know 
thyself,  and  in  the  formulas,  Virtue  is  knowledge  ;  Virtue  may  be  taught ; 
No  one  wilfully  goes  wrong;  Virtue  results  in  happiness;  and  all  these 
maxims  are  first  principles  of  Stoic  dogma. — G.  H.  KENDALL,  Marcus 
Aurelius  Antoninus  to  Himself. 

SOLON. 
Athenian  Legislator  :  B.C.  638-558. 

Solon  the  next,  who  built  his  common-weal 
On  equity's  wide  base  ;  by  tender  laws 
A  lively  people  curbing,  yet  undamp'd 
Preserving  still  that  quick  peculiar  fire, 
Whence  in  the  laurel'd  field  of  finer  arts, 
And  of  bold  freedom,  they  unequal'd  shone, 
The  pride  of  smiling  Greece,  and  human-kind. 

—THOMSON,  The  Seasons  :  Winter.. 

Shall  I,  with  Solon,  form  the  moral  plan, 
And  aim  to  mould  a  savage  to  a  man  ? 

— JAMES  CAWTHORN,  The  Equality  of  Human  Conditions. 

SOPHOCLES. 
Greek  Tragic  Poet :  B.C.  495-405. 

And  Sophocles  his  last  direction 
Stamp'd  with  the  signet  of  perfection. 

— ROBERT  LLOYD,  Shakespeare  :  an  Epistle. 

Born  in  a  happier  age,  and  happier  clime, 
Old  Sophocles  had  merit,  in  his  time. 

— WILLIAM  WHITEHEAD,  A  Charge  to  the  Poets.. 

Ours  the  great  Dionusiac  theatre, 
And  tragic  triad  of  immortal  fames, 
Aischulos,  Sophokles,  Euripides ! 

— BROWNING,  Balaustion's  Adventure.. 

Oh,  our  Sophocles,  the  royal 

Who  was  born  to  monarch's  place, 
And  who  made  the  whole  word  loyal 

Less  by  kingly  power  than  grace  ! 

— E.  B.  BROWNING,  Wine  of  Cyprus. 

Be  his 

My  special  thanks,  whose  even-balanced  soul, 
From  first  youth  tested  up  to  extreme  old  age, 
Business  could  not  make  dull,  nor  passion  wild ; 

Who  saw  life  steadily,  and  saw  it  whole  ; 
The  mellow  glory  of  the  Attic  stage, 
Singer  of  sweet  Colonus,  and  its  child. 

— MATTHEW  ARNOLD,  To  a  Friend. 


SOPHOCLES,  SOUTH.  4n 

Sophocles  is  sometimes — not  seldom — sublime  ;  and  perhaps  his  sub- 
limity is  the  noblest  of  sublimities,  for  it  seems  to  be  but  Beauty  changing 
its  character  as  it  ascends  the  sky — even  as  one  might  think  a  Dove  high 
up  in  the  sunshine,  and  soaring  so  loftily  that  eye  can  no  more  discern 
her  silver  plumage — an  Eagle  ;  nor  in  such  heavenward  flight  would  the 
Bird  of  Venus  be  not  as  sublime  as  the  Bird  of  Jove. — JOHN  WILSON, 
Essays :  Greek  Drama. 

Sophocles  attempted  neither  Cyclopean  nor  Praxitelean  work.  He 
attained  to  the  perfection  of  Pheidias.  Thus  we  miss  in  his  tragedies  the 
colossal  scale  and  terrible  effects  of  ^Eschylean  art.  His  plays  are  not  so 
striking  at  first  sight,  because  it  was  his  aim  to  put  all  the  parts  of  his 
composition  in  their  proper  places,  and  to  produce  a  harmony  which 
should  not  agitate  or  startle,  but  which  upon  due  meditation  should  be 
found  complete.  The  (rcatypocrvvr),  or  moderation,  exhibited  in  all  his  work, 
implies  by  its  very  nature  the  sacrifice  of  something — the  sacrifice  of  pas- 
sion and  impetuosity  to  higher  laws  of  equability  and  temper.  So  perfect 
is  the  beauty  of  Sophocles,  that,  as  in  the  case  of  Raphael  or  Mozart,  it 
.  seems  to  conceal  the  strength  and  fire  which  animate  his  art. — J .  ADDINGTON 
SYMONDS,  Studies  of  the  Greek  Poets,  Second  Series. 

Sophocles  shows  at  times  one  high  power  which  but  few  of  the  world's 
poets  share  with  him.  He  feels,  as  Wordsworth  does,  the  majesty  of  order 
and  well-being  ;  sees  the  greatness  of  God,  as  it  were,  in  the  untroubled 
things  of  life. — GILBERT  MURRAY,  History  of  Ancient  Greek  Literature. 


DR.  ROBERT  SOUTH. 
English  Divine:  1633-1716. 

Have  I  made  South  and  Sherlock  disagree, 
And  puzzle  truth  with  learn'd  obscurity  ? 

—  SIR  SAMUEL  GARTH,  The  Dispensary,  Canto  V. 

Idly  might  a  South 

His  witty  turns,  his  quaintnesses  display, 
Except  to  waken  laughter. 

— RICHARD  POLWHELE,  Pulpit  Eloquence. 

He  seems  for  a  moment  to  tread  on  the  verge  of  buffoonery,  recovering 
himself  by  some  stroke  of  vigorous  sense  and  language  ;  such  was  the 
witty  Dr.  South,  whom  the  courtiers  delighted  to  hear. — HALLAM,  Litera- 
ture of  the  Middle  Ages,  Vol.  IV. 

South's  sentences  are  gems,  hard  and  shining  :  Voltaire's  look  like  them, 
but  are  only  French  paste. — J.  C.  HARE,  Guesses  at  Truth,  First  Series. 

South  has  obtained  a  great  and  deserved  reputation.  Wit  was  his  talent, 
yet  he  often  reaches  sublimity.  He  is,  however,  one'of  those  authors  who 
is  to  be  admired  and  not  imitated.  To  excite  a  laugh  from  the  pulpit  is  to 
inspire  the  hearer  with  a  levity  of  temper  ill  adapted  to  the  indulgence  of 
devotional  feelings.  The  taste  of  the  age  in  which  South  flourished  gave 
countenance  to  a  pulpit  jocularity. — DR.  VICESIMUS  KNOX,  Essays :  On 
Preaching  and  Sermon  Writers. 


412  SOUTHEY. 

ROBERT  SOUTHEY. 
Poet  Laureate :  1774-1843. 

BOB  SOUTHEY  !     You're  a  poet — Poet-laureate, 

And  representative  of  all  the  race  ; 

Although  'tis  true  that  you  turn'd  out  a  Tory  at 

Last, — yours  has  lately  been  a  common  case, — 

And  now,  my  Epic  Renegade  !  what  are  ye  at  ? 

With  all  the  Lakers,  in  and  out  of  place  ? 

A  nest  of  tuneful  persons,  to  my  eye 

Like  "  four  and  twenty  Blackbirds  in  a  pye  ". 

— BYRON,  Don  yuan  Dedication. 

Let  Southey  sing,  although  his  teeming  muse, 
Prolific  every  spring,  be  too  profuse. 

— Id.,  EnglisJi  Bards  and  Scotch  Reviewers. 

Ye  vales  and  hills  whose  beauty  hither  drew 

The  poet's  steps,  and  fixed  him  here,  on  you 

His  eyes  have  closed !     And  ye,  loved  books,  no  more 

Shall  Southey  feed  upon  your  precious  lore, 

To  works  that  ne'er  shall  forfeit  their  renown, 

Adding  immortal  labours  of  his  own — 

Whether  he  traced  historic  truth,  with  zeal 

For  the  State's  guidance,  or  the  Church's  weal, 

Or  Fancy,  disciplined  by  studious  art, 

Informed  his  pen,  or  wisdom  of  the  heart, 

Or  Judgments  sanctioned  in  the  Patriot's  mind 

By  reverence  for  the  rights  of  all  mankind. 

— WORDSWORTH,  Inscription  for  a  Monument  in  Crossthwaite 
Church. 

Southey  was  fain  to  pour  forth  his  exuberant  stream  over  regions 
Near  and  remote  :  his  command  was  absolute  ;  every  subject, 
Little  or  great,  he  controll'd  ;  in  language,  variety,  fancy, 
Richer  than  all  his  compeers. 

— LANDOR,  English  Hexameters. 

Rare  architect  of  many  a  wondrous  tale 

Which,  till  Helvellyn's  head  lie  prostrate,  shall  remain  ! 

— Id.,  To  Southey,  1833. 

Southey,  I  have  not  seen  much  of.  His  appearance  is  Epic ;  and  he  is 
the  only  existing  entire  man  of  letters.  All  the  others  have  some  pursuit 
annexed  to  their  authorship.  His  manners  are  mild,  but  not  those  of  a 
man  of  the  world,  and  his  talents  of  the  first  order.  His  prose  is  perfect. 
Of  his  poetry  there  are  various  opinions  :  there  is,  perhaps,  too  much  of  it 
for  the  present  generation  ; — posterity  will  probably  select.  He  has 
passages  equal  to  anything.  At  present,  he  has  a  party,  but  no  public — 
except  for  his  prose  writings.  The  Life  of  Nelson  is  beautiful. — BYRON 
in  MOORE'S  Life  of  Byron. 

Craboe's  English  is  of  course  not  upon  a  level  with  Southey's,  which 
is  rtext  door  to  faultless. — S.  T.  COLERIDGE,  Table  Talk. 


SOU  THEY,  SPENSER.  415 

It  is,  indeed,  most  extraordinary,  that  a  mind  like  Mr.  Southey's,  a  mind 
richly  endowed  in  many  respects  by  nature,  and  highly  cultivated  by  study, 
a  mind  which  has  exercised  considerable  influence  on  the  most  enlightened 
generation  of  the  most  enlightened  people  that  ever  existed,  should  be 
utterly  destitute  of  the  power  of  discerning  truth  from  falsehood.  Yet 
such  is  the  fact.  Government  is  to  Mr.  Southey  one  of  the  fine  arts.  He 
judges  of  a  theory,  of  a  public  measure,  of  a  religion  or  a  political  party, 
of  a  peace  or  a  war,  as  men  judge  of  a  picture  or  a  statue,  by  the  effect 
produced  on  his  imagination.  A  chain  of  associations  is  to  him  what  a 
chain  of  reasoning  is  to  other  men  ;  and  what  he  calls  his  opinions  are  in 
fact  merely  his  tastes. — MACAULAY,  Essays :  Southey's  Colloquies. 

Southey's  rich  taste  and  antique  stateliness  of  mind.  .  .  .  The  great 
charm  of  that  simple  verve  which  is  so  peculiarly  Southeian.  .  .  .  But 
the  most  various,  scholastic,  and  accomplished  of  such  of  our  literary  con- 
temporaries as  have  written  works  as  well  as  articles,  and  prose  as  well  as 
poetry — is,  incontestably,  Mr.  Southey.  The  Life  of  Nelson  is  ac- 
knowledged to  be  the  best  biography  of  the  day.  The  Life  of  Wesley 
and  The  Book  of  the  Church,  however  adulterated  by  certain  preposses- 
sions and  prejudices,  are,  as  mere  compositions,  characterized  by  an  equal 
simplicity  and  richness  of  style, — an  equal  dignity  and  an  equal  ease.  No 
writer  blends  more  happily  the  academical  graces  of  the  style  of  the  last 
century  with  the  popular  vigour  of  that  which  distinguishes  the  present. 
— LYTTON,  England  and  the  English. 

We  may  justly  be  proud  of  our  late  Laureate.  Literature  does  not 
every  day  present  us  with  so  worthy  a  son  ;  students  who  forsake  the 
trodden  paths  of  life  to  earn  their  difficult  crust  by  patient  spinning  of  the 
brain  cannot  find  a  more  illustrious  example.  The  pursuit  of  letters  was 
the  business  of  Southey's  life  ;  it  was  also  the  first  and  last  joy  of  his  heart. 
Rather  than  not  at  intervals  breathe  the  pure  air  and  partake  of  the  golden 
light  that  await  the  worshipper  on  the  topmost  heights  of  Parnassus,  he 
condescended  to  work  as  a  bondman,  through  winter  and  summer  from 
year  to  year,  on  its  barren  sides.  Literature  was  his  glory,  and  he  her 
pride. — SAMUEL  PHILLIPS,  Essays  from  "  The  Times"  Vol.  I. 

Southey,  .  .  .  like  one  of  his  best-known  works,  was  only  one  long 
"  Common-place  Book  ".  His  books  were  in  reality  dearer  to  him  than 
the  human  species. — G.  B.  SMITH,  Shelley  :  a  Critical  Biography. 

EDMUND  SPENSER. 
English  Poet :  1553-1599. 

Spenser  !  a  jealous  honourer  of  thine, 

A  forester  deep  in  thy  midmost  trees, 

Did,  last  eve,  ask  my  promise  to  refine 

Some  English,  that  might  strive  thine  ear  to  please. 

But,  Elfin-poet !  'tis  impossible 

For  an  inhabitant  of  wintry  earth 

To  rise,  like  Phoebus,  with  a  golden  quill.  .  .  . 

Of  me  no  lines  are  loved  nor  letters  are  of  price,  .  .   . 

Of  all  which  speak  our  English  tongue,  but  those  of  thy  device. 

— SIR  WALTER  RALEIGH,  Sonnet  V. 


414  SPENSER. 

Farewell  Judgment,  with  invention 
To  describe  a  heart's  intention  : 
Farewell  Wit,  whose  sound  and  sense 
Show  a  poet's  excellence. 

Farewell,  all  in  one  together, 

And  with  Spenser's  garland,  wither. 

— NICHOLAS  BRETON,  An  Epitaph  upon  Poet  Spenser. 

Grave  moral  Spenser  after  these  came  on, 
Than  whom  I  am  persuaded  there  was  none 
Since  the  blind  Bard  his  Iliads  up  did  make, 
Fitter  a  task  like  that  to  undertake, 
To  set  down  boldly,  bravely  to  invent, 
In  all  high  knowledge,  surely  excellent. 

— MICHAEL  DRAYTON,  Elegy  to  Henry  Reynolds,  Esq. 

Divinest  Spenser,  heav'n-bred,  happy  muse  ! 
Would  any  power  into  my  brain  infuse 
Thy  worth  or  all  that  poets  had  before, 
I  could  not  praise  till  thou  deserv'st  no  more. 

— WILLIAM  BROWNE,  Britannia's  Pastoral,  Book  II.,  Song  I. 

...  his  memory  yet  green, 

Lives  in  his  well-tun'd  songs,  whose  leaves  immortal  been. 
Nor  can  I  guess,  whether  his  Muse  divine 
Or  gives  to  those,  or  takes  from  them  his  grace.  .  .  . 
Next  to  our  Mantuan  poet  doth  he  rest  ; 
There  shall  our  Colin  lives  for  ever  blest.   .  .  . 

—P.  FLETCHER,  The  Purple  Island,  Canto  VI.,  51,  52. 

Old  Spenser  next,  warm'd  with  poetic  rage, 
In  ancient  tales  amus'd  a  barbarous  age  ; 
An  age  that  yet  uncultivate  and  rude, 
Where'er  the  poet's  fancy  led,  pursued 
Through  pathless  fields,  and  unfrequented  floods, 
To  dens  of  dragons,  and  enchanted  woods. 

— ADDISON,  An  Account  of  the  Greatest  English  Poets. 

When  bright  Eliza  rul'd  Britannia's  state, 
Widely  distributing  her  high  commands, 
And  boldly  wise,  and  fortunately  great, 
Freed  the  glad  nations  from  tyrannic  bands  ; 
An  equal  genius  was  in  Spenser  found ; 
To  the  high  theme  he  match'd  his  noble  lays  ; 
He  travell'd  England  o'er  on  fairy  ground, 
In  mystic  notes  to  sing  his  monarch's  praise  : 
Reciting  wondrous  truths  in  pleasing  dreams, 
He  deck'd  Eliza's  head  with  Gloriana's  beams. 

— MATTHEW  PRIOR,  An  Ode,  Humbly  Inscribed  to  the  Queen. 

In  Spenser  native  Muses  play. 

— POPE,  Imitations  of  Horace,  Part  of  the  Ninth  Ode  of  the 
Fourth  Book. 

The  gentle  Spenser,  fancy's  pleasing  son  ; 
Who,  like  a  copious  river,  pour'd  his  song 
•O'er  all  the  mazes  of  enchanted  ground. 

— THOMSON,  The  Seasons  :  Summer. 


SPENSER.  415 

Is  this  the  land,  where,  on  our  Spenser's  tongue, 
Enamour'd  of  his  voice,  description  hung  ? 

— CHURCHILL,  The  Author. 

Sage  Spencer  wak'd  his  lofty  lay 

To  grace  Eliza's  golden  sway : 

O'er  the  proud  theme  new  lustre  to  diffuse, 

He  chose  the  gorgeous  allegoric  muse. 

— THOMAS  WARTON,  Ode   on   His  Majesty's  Birthday, 
$th  June,  1787. 

Fire-winged,  and  make  a  morning  in  his  mirth. 

—KEATS,  To  Spenser. 

He  whose  green  bays  shall  bloom  for  ever  young, 
And  whose  dear  name  whenever  I  repeat, 
Reverence  and  love  are  trembling  on  my  tongue ; 
Sweet  Spenser,  sweetest  Bard ;  yet  not  more  sweet 
Than  pure  was  he,  and  not  more  pure  than  wise, 
High  Priest  of  all  the  Muses'  mysteries. 

— SOUTHEY,  The  Lay  of  the  Laureate,  Proem. 

Spenser,  my  master  dear ;  with  whom  in  boyhood  I  wander'd 
Through  the  regions  of  Faeryland,  in  forest  or  garden 
Spending  delicious  hours,  or  at  tilt  and  tourney  rejoicing ; 
Yea,  by  the  magic  of  verse  enlarged,  and  translated  in  spirit, 
In  the  World  of  Romance  free  denizen  I ;  till  awakening, 
When  the  spell  was  dissolved,  this  real  earth  and  its  uses 
Seem'd  to  me  weary,  and  stale,  and  flat. 

—Id.,  A  Vision  of  Judgment:  The  Elder  Worthies. 

Were  I  to  name,  out  of  the  times  gone  by, 

The  poets  dearest  to  me,  I  should  say  .  .  . 

Spenser  for  luxury,  and  sweet,  sylvan  play  .  .  . 

But  which  take  with  me,  could  I  take  but  one  ? 

Shakespeare,  as  long  as  I  was  unoppressed 

With  the  world's  weight,  making  sad  thoughts  intenser ; 

But  did  I  wish,  out  of  the  common  sun, 

To  lay  a  wounded  heart  in  leafy  rest 

And  dream  of  things  far  off  and  healing, — Spenser. 

— LEIGH  HUNT,  His  Poets  (Examiner,  2^th  Dec.,  1815). 

.  .  .  the  lyre  .  .  . 

Among  whose  wires  with  light  finger  playing, 
Our  elder  bard,  Spenser,  a  gentle  name, 
The  lady  Muses'  dearest  darling  child, 
Elicited  the  deftest  tunes  yet  heard 
In  hall  or  bower.  .  .  . 

— CHARLES  LAMB,  To  the  Poet  Cowper. 

.  .  .  that  gentle  Bard, 

Chosen  by  the  Muses  for  their  Page  of  State — 
Sweet  Spenser,  moving  through  his  clouded  heaven 
With  the  moon's  beauty  and  the  moon's  soft  pace, 
I  called  him  Brother,  Englishman,  and  Friend ! 

— WORDSWORTH,  The  Prelude,  Book  III. 


416  SPENSER,  SPINOZA. 

The  palfrey  pace  and  the  glittering  grace 
Of  Spenser's  magical  song. 

— ROBERT  BUCHANAN,  Cloudland. 

Edmond  Spenser,  the  Prince  of  Poets  in  his  Tyme,  whose  Divine  Spirrit 
needs  noe  othir  witnesse  than  the  works  which  he  left  behinde  him. — 
Spenser'1  s  Epitaph  in  Westminster  Abbey. 

But  Spenser  I  could  have  read  for  ever.  Too  young  to  trouble  myself 
about  the  allegory,  I  considered  all  the  knights  and  ladies  and  dragons 
and  giants  in  their  outward  and  exoteric  sense,  and  God  only  knows  how 
delighted  I  was  to  find  myself  in  such  society. — SIR  WALTER  SCOTT 
in  LOCKHART'S  Life  of  Scott. 

The  language  of  Spenser,  like  that  of  Shakespeare,  is  an  instrument 
manufactured  for  the  sake  of  the  work  it  was  to  perform. — HALLAM, 
Literature  of  the  Middle  Ages,  Vol.  II. 

Milton  said,  that  he  dared  be  known  to  think  Spenser  a  better  teacher 
than  Scotus  or  Aquinas. — LEIGH  HUNT,  Men,  Women,  and  Books. 

Spenser,  in  whom  philosophy,  where  found,  as  completely  forgets  its 
purpose,  in  allegorical  fancies  and  melodious  roundelays,  as  a  bee  may 
forget  its  hive  amid  the  honeys  of  Hymettus. — LYTTON,  Essays  :  Know- 
ledge of  the  World. 

That  other,  soft-burning,  dewy,  and  almost  twinkling  star — now  seem- 
ing to  shine  out  into  intenser  beauty,  and  now  almost  dim,  from  no  obscur- 
ing cloud  or  mist,  but  as  if  some  internal  spirit  shaded  the  light  for  a 
moment,  even  as  an  angel  may  veil  his  countenance  with  his  wings — that 
is  the  star  of  Spenser  !  And  of  all  the  bright  people  of  the  skies,  to  fancy's 
gaze,  thou,  most  lovely  Planet,  art  the  very  Fairy  Queen  ! — JOHN  WILSON, 
Essays  :  Old  North  and  Young  North. 

That  which  sets  the  Shepherd's  Calendar  and  other  of  Spenser's  earlier 
pieces  above  everything  else  that  had  preceded  them  in  the  language, 
what  Chaucer  had  done  only  excepted,  is  the  same  thing  the  presence  of 
which  likewise  we  feel  so  strongly  in  the  minor,  and  for  the  most  part 
probably  also  earlier,  poetry  of  Shakespeare. — the  fulness  and  easy  flow 
of  the  poetic  vein,  making  the  composition  all  life.  The  bright  green 
herbage  seems  ready  to  burst  forth  everywhere,  as  from  a  soil  of  inex- 
haustible fertility  and  moisture.  Whatever  else  may  be  wanting,  whatever 
may  be  less  carefully  or  less  successfully  executed,  the  spirit  of  poetry  at 
least  is  always  there,  strong  and  abundant. — G.  L.  CRAIK,  Spenser  and 
His  Poetry. 

BENEDICT  BARUCH  SPINOZA. 
Dutch  Philosopher :  1632-1677. 

Spinoza  was  truly,  what  Voltaire  has  with  rather  less  justice  called 
Clarke,  a  reasoning  machine. — HALLAM,  Literature  of  the  Middle  Ages, 
Vol.  IV. 

No  vulgar  sceptics  can  comprehend  the  ethereal  scepticism  of  a  Spinoza* 
— LYTTON. 


SPINOZA,  STANLEY,  STEELE.  417 

Let  us  not  fall  short  of  the  truth  through  fear  of  falling  into  exaggera- 
tion : — Spinoza's  life  was  of  a  beauty  to  which  history  can  hardly  find  a 
parallel;  on  that  Sunday  afternoon  of  the  2ist  of  February,  two  hundred 
years  ago,  there  cracked  as  noble  and  as  sweet  a  heart  as  ever  beat  in 
human  breast. — A.  B.  LEE. 

You  may  set  out,  like  Spinoza,  with  all  but  the  truth,  and  end  with  a 
conclusion  which  is  altogether  monstrous ;  and  yet  the  mere  deduction 
shall  be  irrefragable.— S.  T.  COLERIDGE,  Table  Talk. 

A  god-intoxicated  man. — NOVALIS  (transl.). 

Spinoza,  the  greatest  and  the  most  logical  of  all  the  descendants  of 
Descartes. — J.  P.  MAHAFFY,  Life  of  Descartes. 

Bigotry  does  not  like  to  confess  its  blunders,  otherwise  it  would  long 
have  abandoned  as  a  deplorable  error  and  a  flagrant  injustice,  the  ignor- 
ant and  stupid  calumny  which  places  Spinoza  foremost  among  blasphemers 
and  atheists.  Those  who  reject  popular  idols  are  always  classed  by  pop- 
ular prejudice  with  such  as  deny  God ;  and  few  have  suffered  more  from 
.this  cruel  wrong  than  the  great  thinker  whose  career  we  propose  to 
chronicle  in  all  honesty  and  in  no  prejudiced  or  proselytising  spirit,  and 
whose  holy  deeds  are  the  best  indication  of  his  sublime  ideas.  .  .  .  Never 
was  high  thought  so  nobly  embodied  in  every  action,  even  the  most  in- 
significant, as  in  Spinoza  ;  which  makes  his  path  a  fecund  lesson  and  a 
blessed  spectacle  to  many  who  feel  nothing  but  distaste,  and  who  express 
nothing  but  scorn  for  philosophy. — WILLIAM  MACCALL,  Foreign  Bio- 
graphies, Vol.  II. 

Whatever  else  Spinozism  is,  it  is  an  attempt  to  find  in  the  idea  of  God 
a  principle  from  which  the  whole  universe  could  be  evolved  by  a  necessity 
as  strict  as  that  by  which,  according  to  Spinoza's  favourite  illustration,  the 
properties  of  a  triangle  follow  from  its  definition.  For  the  clear  intelli- 
gence of  Spinoza  it  was  impossible  to  rest  satisfied  with  a  system  in  which 
metaphor  plays  the  part  of  logical  thought. — JOHN  CAIRD,  Life  of  Spinoza.. 

ARTHUR  PENRHYN  STANLEY. 
Dean  of  Westminster  :  1815-1881. 

But  to  Arthur  Stanley,  as  to  all  the  best  and  truest  men,  the  trappings; 
and  surroundings  of  life,  all  that  makes  the  base  cringe  and  kotow  before 
the  successful,  were  as  nothing — F.  W.  FARRAR,  Social  and  Present-Day 
Questions. 

Every  page  of  his  many  books  teems  with  golden  thoughts,  happy  illus- 
trations, fervent  piety.  His  whole  life  was  a  sermon.  Seldom  has  the 
Christian  religion  been  preached  as  attractively  and  healthily  as  in  the 
words  and  deeds  of  Arthur  Stanley. — A.  J.  FITZROY,  Dogma  and  the 
Church  of  England. 

SIR  RICHARD  STEELE. 
English  Essayist  and  Dramatic  Writer:   1671-1729. 

Thus  Steele,  who  own'd  what  others  writ, 
And  flourish'd  by  imputed  wit, 

27 


4i8  STEELE,  STERNE. 

From  perils  of  a  hundred  jails, 
Withdrew  to  starve,  and  die  in  Wales. 

— SWIFT,  A  Libel  on  Dr.  Delany  and  Lord  Carteret. 

But  allow  me  to  speak  what  I  honestly  feel — 
To  a  true  poet-heart  add  the  fun  of  Dick  Steele, 
Throw  in  all  of  Addison,  minus  the  chill. 

— J.  R.  LOWELL,  A  Fable  for  Critics. 

Steele  seems  to  have  gone  into  his  closet  to  set  down  what  he  observed 
out  of  doors.  Addison  seems  to  have  spent  most  of  his  time  in  his  study, 
and  to  have  spun  out  and  wire-drawn,  hints  which  he  borrowed  from  Steele, 
or  took  from  nature,  to  the  utmost.  I  am  far  from  wishing  to  depreciate 
Addison's  talents,  but  I  am  anxious  to  do  justice  to  Steele,  who  was,  I 
think,  upon  the  whole,  a  less  artificial  and  more  original  writer. — HAZLITT, 
Lectures  on  the  English  Comic  Writers. 

Alas  !  for  poor  Dick  Steele  !  For  nobody  else,  of  course.  There  is  no 
man  or  woman  in  our  time  who  makes  fine  projects  and  gives  them  up 
from  idleness  or  want  of  means.  When  duty  calls  upon  us,  we  no  doubt 
are  always  at  home  and  ready  to  pay  that  grim  tax-gatherer.  When  we 
are  stricken  with  remorse  and  promise  reform,  we  keep  our  promise,  and 
are  never  angry,  or  idle,  or  extravagant  any  more.  There  are  no  chambers 
in  our  hearts,  destined  for  family  friends  and  affections,  and  now  occupied 
by  some  Sin's  emissary  and  bailiff  in  possession.  There  are  no  little  sins, 
shabby  peccadilloes,  importunate  remembrances,  or  disappointed  holders 
of  our  promises  to  reform,  hovering  at  our  steps,  or  knocking  at  our  door  ! 
Of  course  not.  We  are  living  in  the  nineteenth  century  ;  and  poor  Dick 
Steele  stumbled  and  got  up  again,  and  got  into  jail  and  out  again,  and 
sinned  and  repented,  and  loved  and  suffered,  and  lived  and  died,  scores  of 
years  ago.  Peace  be  with  him !  Let  us  think  gently  of  one  who  was  so 
gentle :  let  us  speak  kindly  of  one  whose  own  breast  exuberated  with 
human  kindness. — THACKERAY,  English  Humourists  of  the  Eighteenth 
Century. 

There  have  been  wiser,  stronger,  greater  men.  But  many  a  strong 
man  would  have  been  stronger  for  a  touch  of  Steel's  indulgent  sympathy  ; 
many  a  great  man  has  wanted  his  genuine  largeness  of  heart ;  many  a 
wise  man  might  learn  something  from  his  deep  and  wide  humanity.  His 
virtues  redeemed  his  frailties.  He  was  thoroughly  amiable,  kindly,  and 
generous.  Faute  d'archanges  il  faut  aimer  des  creatures  imparfaites. — 
AUSTIN  DOBSON,  Life  of  Richard  Steele. 

LAURENCE  STERNE. 
English  Parson  and  Novelist :  1713-1768. 

Shall  pride  a  heap  of  sculptur'd  marble  raise, 
Some  worthless,  unmourn'd  titled  fool  to  praise, 
And  shall  we  not  by  one  poor  grave-stone  learn 
Where  genius,  wit,  and  humour,  sleep  with  Sterne  ? 

— DAVID  GARRICK,  Epitaph  on  Sterne. 

Sttrne  is  our  best  example  of  the  plagiarist  whom  none  dare  make 
ashamed. — AUGUSTINE  BIRRELL,  .Essays  about  Men,  Women,  and  Books. 


STERNE.  419 

Sterne's  morals  are  bad,  but  I  don't  think  they  can  do  much  harm  to  any 
one  whom  they  would  not  find  bad  enough  before.— S.  T.  COLERIDGE, 
Table  Talk. 

This  illustrious  Irishman  (I  have  a  Shandean  reason  for  speaking  of  him 
under  that  title)  is  Rabelais  reborn  at  a  riper  period  of  the  world,  and  gifted 
with  sentiment.  To  accuse  him  of  cant  and  sentimentality  is  itself  a  cant 
or  an  ignorance  ;  or  at  least,  if  neither  of  these,  it  is  but  to  misjudge  him 
from  an  excess  of  manner  here  and  there.  The  matter  always  contains  the 
solidest  substance  of  truth  and  duty.  Among  passages  which  are  supposed 
to  be  connected  with  coarseness,  but  really  are  not  so,  are  some  which  are 
yet  destined  to  be  of  important  service. — LEIGH  HUNT. 

What  lavish  and  riotous  beauty  beyond  that  of  mere  prose,  and  dispens- 
ing with  the  interest  of  mere  fiction,  sporting  with  the  Muse  like  a  spoiled 
darling  of  the  Graces,  charms  poets  and  thinkers  in  the  wayward  genius 
of  Sterne  !  Though  his  most  exquisite  characters  are  but  sketches  and 
outlines,  Mr.  Shandy,  Uncle  Toby,  Corporal  Trim,  and  the  mysterious, 
shadowy  Yorick, — though  his  finest  passages  in  composition  are  marred 
and  blurred  by  wanton  conceit,  abrupt  impertinence,  audacious  levity, 
ribald  indecorum, — still  how  the  lively  enchanter  enforces  and  fascinates 
•our  reluctant  admiration! — LYTTON,  Essays:  Knowledge  of  the  World. 

The  life  of  literary  men  is  often  a  kind  of  sermon  in  itself;  for  the  pur- 
suit of  lame,  when  it  is  contrasted  with  the  grave  realities  of  life,  seems 
more  absurd  and  trifling  than  most  pursuits,  and  to  leave  less  behind  it. 
Mere  amttsers  are  never  respected.  It  would  be  harsh  to  call  Sterne  a 
mere  amuser,  he  is  much  more ;  but  so  the  contemporary  world  regarded 
him.  They  laughed  at  his  jests,  disregarded  his  death-bed,  and  neglected 
his  grave. — WALTER  BAGEHOT,  Literary  Studies,  Vol.  II. 

Sterne  has  been  called  the  English  Rabelais,  and  was  apparently  more 
ambitious  himself  of  being  considered  as  an  English  Cervantes.  To  a 
modern  English  reader  he  is  certainly  far  more  amusing  than  Rabelais, 
and  he  can  be  appreciated  with  less  effort  than  Cervantes.  But  it  is  im- 
possible to  mention  these  great  names  without  seeing  the  direction  in  which 
Sterne  falls  short  of  the  highest  excellence.  We  know  that,  on  clearing 
away  the  vast  masses  of  buffoonery  and  ribaldry  under  which  Rabelais  was 
forced,  or  chose,  to  hide  himself  we  come  to  the  profound  thinker  and 
powerful  satirist.  Sterne  represents  a  comparatively  shallow  vein  of 
thought. — LESLIE  STEPHEN,  Hours  in  a  Library,  Vol.  III. 

Even  now  the  grace,  the  insinuating  delicacy,  the  light  lucidity,  the 
diamond-like  sparkle  of  Sterne's  style  make  reading  him  a  peculiar  literary 
pleasure. — DAVID  MASSON,  British  Novelists  and  their  Styles. 

What  did  Sterne  contribute  to  the  English  novel  ?  Quite  a  new  element, 
and  an  unmistakable  one.  Scarcely  a  novel  issued  from  the  Minerva 
press,  scarcely  one  comes  from  the  incomparable  novelists  of  Europe  and 
America  in  our  own  day,  in  which  "  the  Sterne  art  "  is  not  immediately 
to  be  recognised.  Prolix  and  tedious  as  Sterne  could  be  when  it  was  his 
whim,  he  showed  us  how  to  tell  stories  gracefully.  No  writer  previous  to 
him  was  so  skilful  a  narrator ;  knew  so  well  how  to  arrest  the  attention  ; 
by  the  repetition  of  what  notes  to  work  the  charm.  Dealing  largely  in  bad 
grammar  and  obscure  and  careless  expressions,  he  had  a  delicate  acquaint- 
ance with  and  ready  command  of  words  when  the  nicety  of  his  subject 


420          STERNE,  EARL  OF  STRAFFORD. 

required  them.  In  him  we  find  no  vast  creations,  no  original  forms  of 
architecture,  but  a  rare  variety  of  tracery  and  ornament  with  which  every 
later  builder  has  decorated  his  structures. — J.  C.  JEAFFRESON,  Novels  and 
Novelists,  Vol.  I. 

To  talk  of  "  the  style  "  of  Sterne  is  almost  to  play  one  of  those  tricks 
with  language  of  which  he  himself  was  so  fond.  For  there  is  hardly  any 
definition  of  the  word  which  can  make  it  possible  to  describe  him  as  having 
any  style  at  all.  It  is  not  only  that  he  manifestly  recognized  no  external 
canons  whereto  to  conform  the  expression  of  his  thoughts,  but  he  had 
apparently  no  inclination  to  invent  and  obscure,  except  indeed  in  the 
most  negative  of  senses,  any  style  of  his  own.  The  "  style  of  Sterne,"  in 
short,  is  as  though  one  should  say  "the  form  of  Proteus".  He  was 
determined  to  be  uniformly  eccentric,  regularly  irregular,  and  that  was  all. 
— H.  D.  TRAILL,  Life  of  Sterne. 

The  English  Rabelais. — PERCY  FITZGERALD,  Life  of  Laurence  Sterne, 
Vol.  II. 

Sterne  has  given  us  a  thousand  occasions  to  laugh,  but  never  an  occasion 
to  laugh  on  the  wrong  side  of  the  mouth.  For  savagery  or  bitterness  you 
will  search  his  works  in  vain.  He  is  obscene,  to  be  sure.  But  who,  pray, 
was  ever  the  worse  for  having  read  him  ?  Alas,  poor  Yorick !  He  had 
his  obvious  and  deplorable  failings.  I  never  heard  that  he  communicated 
them.  Good  humour  he  has  been  communicating  now  for  a  hundred  and 
fifty  years. — A.  T.  QUILLER-COUCH,  Adventures  in  Criticism. 

THOMAS  WENTWORTH,  EARL  OF  STRAFFORD. 
Statesman  :  1593-1641. 

Great  Strafford  !  worthy  of  that  name,  though  all 

Of  thee  could  be  forgotten  but  thy  fall, 

Crush'd  by  imaginary  treason's  weight, 

Which  too  much  merit  did  accumulate. 

As  chemists  gold  from  brass  by  fire  would  draw, 

Pretexts  are  into  reason  forg'd  by  law. 

His  wisdom  such  at  once  it  did  appear 

Three  kingdoms  wonder,  and  three  kingdoms  fear, 

Whilst  single  he  stood  forth,  and  seem'd,  although 

Each  had  an  army,  as  an  equal  foe. 

Such  was  his  force  of  eloquence,  to  make 

The  hearers  more  concern'd  than  he  that  spake. 

Each  seem'd  to  act  that  part  he  came  to  see, 

And  none  was  more  a  looker-on  than  he. 

So  did  he  move  our  passions,  some  were  known 

To  wish,  for  the  defence,  the  crime  their  own. 

— SIR  JOHN  DENHAM,  On  the  Earl  of  Straff  or  d's  Life  and  Death* 

But  what  is  man  at  enmity  with  truth  ? 
What  were  the  fruits  of  Wentworth's  copious  mind 
When  (blighted  all  the  promise  of  his  youth) 
The  pacriot  in  a  tyrant's  league  had  join'd  ? 
v  Let  Ireland's  loud-lamenting  plains, 


EARL  OF  STRAFFORD.  421 

Let  Tyne's  and  Humber's  trampled  swains, 

Let  menac'd  London  tell 

How  impious  guile  made  wisdom  base ; 
How  generous  zeal  to  cruel  rage  gave  place ; 
And  how  unbless'd  he  liv'd,  and  how  dishonour'd  fell. 

— AKENSIDE,  Ode  IV.  :  To  the  Hon.  Charles  Townshend. 

Charles:  "Strafford,  my  friend,  there  may  have  been  reports, 
Vain  rumours.     Henceforth  touching  Strafford  is 
To  touch  the  apple  of  my  sight :  why  gaze 
So  earnestly." 

— ROBERT  BROWNING,  Strafford. 

But  Wentworth,  who  ever  names  him  without  thinking  of  those  harsh 
dark  features,  ennobled  by  their  expression  into  more  than  the  majesty  of 
an  antique  Jupiter  ;  of  that  brow,  that  eye,  that  cheek,  that  lip,  wherein, 
as  in  a  chronicle,  are  written  the  events  of  many  stormy  and  disastrous 
years,  high  enterprise  accomplished,  frightful  dangers  braved,  power  un- 
sparingly exercised,  suffering  unshrinkingly  borne  ;  of  that  fixed  look,  so 
full  of  severity,  of  mournful  anxiety,  of  deep  thought,  of  dauntless  resolution, 
which  seems  at  once  to  forebode  and  to  defy  a  terrible  fate,  as  it  lowers  on 
us  from  the  living  canvas  of  Vandyke  ?  Even  at  this  day  the  haughty 
earl  overawes  posterity  as  he  overawed  his  contemporaries,  and  excites  the 
same  interest  when  arraigned  before  the  tribunal  of  history  which  he  excited 
at  the  bar  of  the  House  of  Lords.  In  spite  of  ourselves,  we  sometimes 
feel  towards  his  memory  a  certain  relenting  similar  to  that  relenting  which 
his  defence,  as  Sir  John  Uenham  tells  us,  produced  in  Westminster  Hall. 
— MACAULAY,  Essays:  John  Hampden. 

It  is  said  of  Salvator  Rosa,  that  everything  in  his  pictures  was  of  a 
piece  :  his  rocks,  trees,  mountains,  and  skies,  having  the  same  wild  charac- 
ter that  animated  his  figures.  Well  had  it  been  for  Lord  Strafford  had  he 
exhibited  the  same  consistency.  For,  had  he  adhered  to  the  advice  he  gave 
to  Charles  I. — viz.,  to  let  his  ministers  serve  him  according  to  the  laws 
and  statutes  of  the  realm  ;  had  he  done  this,  he  had  not  perished  on  a 
scaffold.  He  had  been,  in  fact,  one  of  the  noblest  men  of  his  age. — 
CHARLES  BUCKE,  Book  of  Human  Character. 

Strafford  was  born  to  command.  The  maxim,  Thorough — that  was  his 
guiding-star  through  life — fitly  represents  his  actions.  Everything  he 
undertook  he  did  with  his  might,  and  knew  no  rest  till  Thorough  had 
been  accomplished.  .  .  .  Save  from  the  King  he  brooked  neither  control 
nor  interference,  and  those  who  crossed  his  path  found  in  him  an  enemy 
as  pitiless  as  a  Richelieu  or  a  Napoleon.  If  he  could  not  be  Caesar  he 
would  be  Caesar's  first  lieutenant,  and  none  should  dare  oust  him  from  the 
post. — A.  C.  EWALD,  Representative  Statesmen,  Vol.  I. 

Ireland  in  all  its  ranks  and  classes  having  through  its  parliament 
applauded  him  as  a  benefactor,  now  with  strange  versatility  cursed  him  as 
a  tyrant.  It  was  the  weight  of  all  these  converging  animosities  that  de- 
stroyed him.  "Three  whole  kingdoms,"  says  a  historian  of  the  time, 
"  were  his  accusers,  and  eagerly  sought  in  one  death  a  recompense  of  all 
their  sufferings." — JOHN  MORLEY,  Oliver  Cromwell. 


422  STRAUSS,  SUCKLING,  SWEDENBORG. 

DAVID  FRIEDRICH  STRAUSS. 
German  Rationalistic  Theologian  :  1808-1874. 

As  well  be  Strauss  as  swing  'twixt  Paul  and  him. 
It's  not  worth  having,  such  imperfect  faith, 
No  more  available  to  do  faith's  work 
Than  unbelief  like  mine.     Whole  faith,  or  none! 

Then  add  there's  still  that  plaguy  hundredth  chance 
Strauss  may  be  wrong.     And  so  a  risk  is  run. 

— ROBERT  BROWNING,  Bishop  Blougram's  Apology. 

SIR  JOHN  SUCKLING. 
English  Poet,  Dramatist,  Courtier  :  1609-1641. 

Had  I  the  pen  of  Sir  John  Suckling, 
And  could  find  out  a  rhyme  for  duckling, 
Why  dearest  madam,  in  that  case, 
I  would  invite  you  to  a  brace. 

— CHRISTOPHER  SMART,  An  Invitation  to  Mrs.  Tyler,  etc. 

O  Suckling,  O  gallant  Sir  John, 
Thou  gentleman  poet,  first  plume  of  the  ton  ;  .  .  . 
Fresh  painter  of  "  Weddings,"  great  author  of  rare 
"  Poet  Sessions."  .  .  . 
O  facile  princcps  of  "wit  about  town  ".  .   .  . 

—LEIGH  HUNT,  The  Feast  of  the  Violets,  Canto  III. 

The  blithest  throat  that  ever  carolled  love 

In  music  made  of  morning's  merriest  heart, 
Glad  Suckling.  .  .  . 

— SWINBURNE,  James  Shirley. 

Sir  John  Suckling  is  acknowledged  to  have  left  far  behind  him  all  former 
writers  of  song  in  gaiety  and  ease  ;  it  is  not  equally  clear  that  he  has  ever 
since  been  surpassed. — HALLAM,  Introduction  to  the  Literature  of  Europe, 
Vol.  III. 

EMANUEL  SWEDENBORG. 
Swedish  Philosopher  and  Theosophist :  1688-1772. 

Great  minds — Swedenborg's  for  instance — are  never  in  the  wrong,  but 
in  consequence  of  being  in  the  right,  but  imperfectly. — S.  T.  COLERIDGE, 
Table  Talk. 

This  (De  Cultu  et  Amore  Dei]  would  of  itself  serve  to  mark  Swedenborg 
as  a  man  of  philosophic  genius,  indicative  and  involent.  Much  of  what  is 
most  valuable  in  the  philosophic  works  of  Schelling,  Schubert,  and  Escher- 
mayer  is  to  be  found  anticipated  in  this  supposed  Dementato,  or  madman. 
Oh !  thrice  happy  should  we  be  if  the  learned  and  the  teachers  of  the  pre- 
sent age  were  gifted  with  a  similar  madness.  A  madness  indeed  celestial, 
and  flowing  from  a  divine  mind! — Id.,  Notes  :  Theological,  Political  and 
Miscellaneous. 


SWEDEN BORG,  SWIFT.  423 

Swedenborg  styles  himself,  in  the  title-page  of  his  books,  "  Servant  of 
the  Lord  Jesus  Christ"  ;  and  by  force  of  intellect,  and  in  effect,  he  is  the 
last  Father  in  the  Church,  and  is  not  likely  to  have  a  successor.  No 
wonder  that  his  depth  of  ethical  wisdom  should  give  him  influence  as  a 
teacher.  To  the  withered  traditional  Church  yielding  dry  catechisms,  he 
let  in  nature  again,  and  the  worshipper,  escaping  from  the  vestry  of  verbs 
and  texts,  is  surprised  to  find  himself  a  party  to  the  whole  of  his  religion  : 
his  religion  thinks  for  him,  and  is  of  universal  application  :  he  turns  it  on 
every  side  ;  it  fits  every  part  of  life,  interprets  and  dignifies  every  circum- 
stance.— EMERSON,  Swedenborg  ;  or,  the  Mystic. 

The  most  remarkable  step  in  the  religious  history  of  recent  ages  is  that 
made  by  the  genius  of  Swedenborg,  who  describes  the  moral  faculties  and 
affections  of  man,  with  the  hard  realism  of  an  astronomer  describing  the 
suns  and  planets  of  our  system,  and  explained  his  opinion  of  the  history 
and  destiny  of  souls  in  a  narrative  form,  as  of  one  who  had  gone  in  a  trance 
into  the  society  of  other  worlds. — Id.,  Immortality. 

DR.  JONATHAN  SWIFT. 
Irish  Satirist ;  Dean  of  St.  Patrick's  :  1667-1745. 

O  Swift !  if  fame  be  life  (as  well  we  know 
That  bards  and  heroes  have  esteem'd  it  so), 
Thou  canst  not  wholly  die.     Thy  works  will  shine 
To  future  times,  and  life  in  fame  be  thine. 

— PARNELL,  To  Dr.  Swift  on  his  Birthday. 

Thou  too,  my  Swift,  dost  breathe  Boeotian  air ; 
When  wilt  thou  bring  back  wit  and  humour  here  ? 

—GAY,  Epistle  VI. :  To  Mr.  Pope. 

Let  Ireland  tell,  how  wit  upheld  her  cause, 
Her  trade  supported,  and  supplied  her  laws  : 
And  leave  on  Swift  this  grateful  verse  engrav'd : 
"  The  rights  a  court  attack'd,  a  poet  sav'd  ". 

— POPE,  Epistles  of  Horace  imitated,  Epistle  /.,  Book  II. 

Let  Swift  be  Swift,  nor  e'er  demean 
The  sense  and  humour  of  the  Dean. 

— ROBERT  LLOYD,  The  Two  Rubric  Posts. 

Those  doctors  in  the  laughing  school, 
Those  giant  sons  of  Ridicule, 
Swift,  Rab'lais. 

— Id. ,  A  Familiar  Epistle. 

Swift  too,  thy  tale  is  told :  a  sound,  a  name, 
No  more  than  Lucian,  Butler,  or  Scarron. 
Fantastic  humour  drop'd  the  feeling  sense, 
Her  empire  less'ning  by  his  fall.     The  shades 
Of  frolic  Rabelais,  and  HIM  of  Spain, 
Madrid's  facetious  glory,  joins  his  ghost  ; 
Triumvirate  of  laughter  ! 

— WILLIAM  THOMPSON,  Sickness,  a  Poem  :  The  Recovery. 


424  SWIFT. 

And  Swift  expires  a  driv'ler  and  a  show. 

— DR.  JOHNSON,  The  Vanity  of  Human  Wishes. 

Nature  imparting  her  satiric  gift, 

Her  serious  mirth,  to  Arbuthnot  and  Swift, 

With  droll  sobriety  they  raise  a  smile 

At  folly's  cost,  themselves  unmoved  the  while. 

That  constellation  set,  the  world  in  vain, 

Must  hope  to  look  upon  their  like  again. 

— COWPER,  Table  Talk. 

But  (I  might  instance  in  St.  Patrick's  dean) 
Too  often  rails  to  gratify  his  spleen. 
Most  satirists  are  indeed  a  public  scourge  ; 
Their  mildest  physic  is  a  farrier's  purge  ; 
Their  acrid  temper  turns,  as  soon  as  stirr'd, 
The  milk  of  their  good  purpose  all  to  curd. 

—Id.,  Charity. 

Yes,  friend  !  for  thee  I'll  quit  my  cynic  cell, 
And  bear  Swift's  motto,  "  Vive  la  bagatelle  ". 

The  dirty  language,  and  the  noisome  jest, 
Which  pleased  in  Swift  of  yore,  we  now  detest, 
Proscribed  not  only  in  the  world  polite, 
But  even  too  nasty  for  a  city  knight ! 

Peace  to  Swift's  faults !  his  wit  hath  made  them  pass, 
Unmatch'd  by  all,  save  matchless  Hudibras  ! 

— BYRON,  Hints  from  Horace t 

When  Swift  is  considered  as  an  author,  it  is  just  to  estimate  his  powers 
by  their  effects.  In  the  reign  of  Queen  Anne  he  turned  the  stream  of 
popularity  against  the  Whigs,  and  must  be  confessed  to  have  dictated  for 
a  time  the  political  opinions  of  the  English  nation.  In  the  succeeding  reign 
he  delivered  Ireland  from  plunder  and  oppression ;  and  showed  that  wit, 
confederated  with  truth,  had  such  force  as  authority  was  unable  to  resist. 
He  said  truly  of  himself,  that  Ireland  "  was  his  debtor  ".  It  was  from  the 
time  when  he  first  began  to  patronize  the  Irish,  that  they  may  date  their 
riches  and  prosperity.  He  taught  them  first  to  know  their  own  interest, 
their  weight  and  their  strength,  and  gave  them  spirit  to  assert  that  equality 
with  their  fellow-subjects  to  which  they  have  ever  since  been  making 
vigorous  advances,  and  to  claim  those  rights  which  they  have  at  last 
established.  Nor  can  they  be  charged  with  ingratitude  to  their  benefactor  ; 
for  they  reverenced  him  as  a  guardian,  and  obeyed  him  as  a  dictator.  .  .  . 
It  was  said,  in  a  Preface  to  one  of  his  Irish  editions,  that  Swift  had  never 
been  known  to  take  a  single  thought  from  any  writer,  ancient  or  modern. 
This  is  not  literally  true  ;  but  perhaps  no  writer  can  easily  be  found  that 
has  borrowed  so  little,  or  that  in  all  his  excellences  and  all  his  defects,  has 
so  well  maintained  his  claim  to  be  considered  as  original. — DR.  JOHNSON, 
Lives  of  the  Poets  :  Swift. 

When  these  articles  of  his  political  tenets  are  examined,  they  will  leave 
no  room  for  any  one  particular  party  to  assume  the  honour  of  having  had 


SWIFT.  425 

lim  in  their  alliance.  He  was  neither  Whig  nor  Tory,  neither  Jacobite 
nor  Republican.  He  was  DOCTOR  SWIFT. — EARL  OF  ORRERY,  An  Essay 
upon  Dr.  Swift. 

M.  Swift  est  Rabelais  dans  son  bon  sens,  et  vivant  en  bonne  compagnie. 
II  n'a  pas,  a  la  verite,  la  gaite  du  premier,  mais  il  a  toute  la  finesse,  la 
raison,  le  choix,  le  bon  gout  qui  manquent  a  notre  cure  de  Meudon.  Ses 
vers  sont  d'un  gout  singulier,  et  presque  inimitable ;  la  bonne  plaisanterie 
est  son  partage  en  vers  et  en  prose  ;  mais  pour  le  bien  entendre  il  faut  faire 
un  petit  voyage  dans  son  pays. — VOLTAIRE,  Lcttres  sur  les  Anglais, 
Let.  22. 

The  other  day,  mention  was  made  of  a  "  Dean  of  St.  Patrick's  "  now 
living  ;  as  if  there  was,  or  ever  could  be,  more  than  one  Dean  of  St. 
Patrick's. — LEIGH  HUNT,  Men,  Women,  and  Books. 

Swift  was  anima  Rabcllaisii  habitans  in  sicco, — the  soul  of  Rabelais 
•dwelling  in  a  dry  place. — S.  T.  COLERIDGE,  Table  Talk. 

In  humour  and  in  irony,  and  in  the  talent  of  debasing  and  defiling  what 
he  hated,  we  join  with  all  the  world  in  thinking  the  Dean  of  St.  Patrick's 
without  a  rival. — LORD  JEFFREY,  Essays. 

The  master-Mocker  of  Mankind. — LYTTON,  The  Souls  of  Books. 

How  realistic  or  materialistic  in  treatment  of  his  subject  is  Swift.  He 
•describes  his  fictitious  persons  as  if  for  the  police. — EMERSON,  English 
Traits  :  Literature. 

The  manner  of  Swift  is  the  very  opposite  to  this.  He  moves  laughter, 
but  never  joins  in  it.  He  appears  in  his  works  such  as  he  appeared  in 
.society.  All  the  company  are  convulsed  with  merriment,  while  the  Dean, 
the  author  of  all  the  mirth,  preserves  an  invincible  gravity,  and  even  sour- 
ness of  aspect,  and  gives  utterance  to  the  most  eccentric  and  ludicrous 
fancies,  with  the  air  of  a  man  reading  the  commination  service.  .  .  . 
Severity,  gradually  hardening  and  darkening  into  misanthropy,  character- 
ises the  works  of  Swift.  .  .  .  The  mirth  of  Swift  is  the  mirth  of 
Mephistopheles. — MACAULAY,  Essays  :  Addison. 

Little  did  Temple  imagine  that  the  coarse  exterior  of  his  dependent  con- 
•cealed  a  genius  equally  suited  to  politics  and  to  letters,  a  genius  destined 
to  shake  great  kingdoms,  to  stir  the  laughter  and  the  rage  of  millions,  and 
to  leave  to  posterity  memorials  which  can  perish  only  with  the  English 
language. — Id.,  Ibid.  :  Sir  William  Temple. 

As  fierce  a  beak  and  talon  as  ever  struck — as  strong  a  wing  as  ever  beat, 
belonged  to  Swift.  I  am  glad,  for  one,  that  fate  wrested  the  prey  out  of 
his  claws,  and  cut  his  wings  and  chained  him.  One  can  gaze,  and  not 
without  awe  and  pity,  at  the  lonely  eagle  chained  behind  the  bars.  .  .  . 
Ah  man  !  you,  educated  in  Epicurean  Temple's  library,  you  whose  friends 
were  Pope  and  St.  John — what  made  you  to  swear  to  fatal  vows,  and  bind 
yourself  to  a  life-long  hypocrisy  before  the  Heaven  which  you  adored  with 
such  real  wonder,  humility,  and  reverence  ?  For  Swift  was  a  reverent,  was 
a  pious  spirit — for  Swift  could  love  and  could  pray.  Through  the  storms 
.and  tempests  of  his  furious  mind,  the  stars  of  religion  and  love  break  out  in 


426  SWIFT. 

the  blue,  shining  serenely,  though  hidden  by  the  driving  clouds  and  the- 
maddened  hurricane  of  his  life. — THACKERAY,  English  Humourists  of  the 
E igh tcenth  Centu ry . 

The  rule  of  measuring  what  is  knowable  of  a  famous  man  by  the  inverse 
ratio  of  what  has  been  said  about  him,  is  applicable  to  Swift  in  a  marked 
degree.  Few  men  who  have  been  talked  about  so  much  are  known  so  little. 
His  writings  and  his  life  are  connected  so  closely,  that  to  judge  of  either 
fairly  with  an  imperfect  knowledge  of  the  other  is  not  possible. — JOHN 
FORSTER,  Life  of  Swift,  Vol.  I. 

On  this  gloom  one  luminary  rose,  and  Ireland  worshipped  it  with  Persian 
idolatry  ;  her  true  patriot — her  first — almost  her  last.  Sagacious  and 
intrepid,  he  saw — he  dared;  above  suspicion,  he  was  trusted  ;  above  envy, 
he  was  beloved  ;  above  rivalry,  he  was  obeyed.  His  wisdom  was  practical 
and  prophetic — remedial  for  the  present,  warning  for  the  future.  He  first 
taught  Ireland  that  she  might  become  a  nation,  and  England  that  she 
must  cease  to  become  a  despot.  But  he  was  a  churchman  ;  his  gown  im- 
peded his  course,  and  entangled  his  efforts.  Guiding  a  senate,  or  heading  an 
army,  he  had  been  more  than  Cromwell,  and  Ireland  not  less  than  England. 
As  it  was,  he  saved  her  by  his  courage,  improved  her  by  his  authority, 
adorned  her  by  his  talents,  and  exalted  her  by  his  fame.  His  mission  was 
but  of  ten  years,  and  for  ten  years  only  did  his  personal  power  mitigate 
the  government ;  but  though  no  longer  feared  by  the  great,  he  was  not 
forgotten  by  the  wise  ;  his  influence,  like  his  writings,  has  survived  a 
century  ;  and  the  foundations  of  whatever  prosperity  we  have  since  erected 
are  laid  in  the  disinterested  and  magnanimous  patriotism  of  Swift. — J.  W.. 
CROKER,  A  Sketch  of  Ireland. 

Greater  men  than  Dean  Swift  may  have  lived.  A  more  remarkable  man 
never  left  his  impress  upon  the  age,  immortalized  by  his  genius.  To  say 
that  English  history  supplies  no  narrative  more  singular  and  original  than 
the  career  of  Jonathan  Swift,  is  to  assert  little.  We  doubt  whether  the- 
histories  of  the  world  can  furnish,  for  example  and  instruction,  for  wonder 
and  pity,  for  admiration  and  scorn,  for  approval  and  condemnation,  a 
specimen  of  humanity  at  once  so  illustrious  and  so  small.  Before  the 
eyes  of  his  contemporaries,  Swift  stood  a  living  enigma.  To  posterity  he 
must  continue  for  ever  a  distressing  puzzle.  One  hypothesis — and  one 
alone — gathered  from  a  close  and  candid  perusal  of  all  that  has  been  trans- 
mitted to  us  upon  this  interesting  subject,  helps  us  to  account  for  a  whole 
life  of  anomaly,  but  not  to  clear  up  the  mystery  in  which  it  is  shrouded. 
From  the  beginning  to  the  end  of  his  days  Jonathan  Swift  was  more  or 
less  MAD. — SAMUEL  PHILLIPS,  Essays  from  "  The  Times,"  Vol.  I. 

One  may  dislike  such  a  man  as  Swift,  but  one  cannot  set  him  aside. 
His  amazing  intellectual  vigour,  the  power  with  which  he  states  some  of 
the  great  problems  of  life,  and  the  trenchant  decision  of  his  answer,  give 
him  a  right  to  be  heard.  We  may  shudder,  but  we  are  forced  to  listen. — 
LESLIE  STEPHEN,  Hours  in  a  Library,  Vol.  III. 

Swift  at  Dublin  recalls  Napoleon  at  Elba.  The  duties  of  a  deanery  are 
not  supposed,  I  believe,  to  give  absorbing  employment  for  all  the  faculties, 
of  the  incumbent  ;  but  an  empire,  however  small,  may  be  governed ;  and 
Swift  at  an  early  period  set  about  establishing  his  supremacy  within  his. 
small  domains. — Id.,  Life  of  J.  Swift. 


SWIFT,  SY DEN HAM,  TACITUS.  427 

At  the  same  time,  while  it  must  be  admitted  that  Swift  was  far  from  being 
a  model  clergyman,  it  is,  I  conceive,  a  misapprehension  to  regard  him  as 
a  secret  disbeliever  in  Christianity.  He  was  admirably  described  by  St. 
John  as  "  a  hypocrite  reversed  ",  He  disguised  as  far  as  possible  both  his 
religion  and  his  affections,  and  took  a  morbid  pleasure  in  parading  the 
harsher  features  of  his  nature.  If  we  bear  this  in  mind,  the  facts  of  his 
life  seem  entirely  incompatible  with  the  hypothesis  of  habitual  concealed 
unbelief. — W.  E.  H.  LECKY,  Biographical  Introduction  to  the  Prose 
Works  of  Jonathan  Swift,  Vol.  I. 

Swift,  in  his  fictions,  as  in  the  rest  of  his  writings,  is  the  British  satirist 
of  his  age.  His  prototype,  in  as  far  as  he  had  any,  was  Rabelais.  In 
Swift  first  the  mad,  the  obscene,  the  ghastly,  the  all  but  infernal  and  yet 
infinitely  sorrowful  humour  of  the  French  satirist  of  the  sixteenth  century 
appears  in  full  measure  in  the  literature  of  Britain.  That  he  was  a  reader 
of  Rabelais  cannot  be  doubted.  He  adopts  his  style  and  the  whimsicalities 
of  his  method  so  openly  as  almost  to  court  the  name  of  his  imitator.  But  it 
was  as  a  man  of  original  genius,  who  would  have  gone  near  to  be  the 
.Rabelais  of  his  time  and  country,  even  had  no  Rabelais  been  in  France 
before  him. — DAVID  MASSON,  British  Novelists  and  their  Styles. 

THOMAS  SYDENHAM. 
English  Doctor  of  Medicine  :  1624-1689. 

If  we  may  adapt  the  simple  but  sublime  saying  of  Sir  Isaac  Newton,. 
Sydenham,  though  diligent  beyond  most  other  "  children  "  in  gathering 
his  pebbles  and  shells  on  the  shore  of  the  great  deep,  and  in  winning  for 
mankind  some  things  of  worth  from  the  vast  and  formless  infinite,  was 
not  unconscious  of  the  mighty  presence  beside  which  he  was  at  work  ;  he 
was  not  deaf  to  the  strong  music  of  that  illimitable  sea.  He  recognised  in  the 
midst  of  the  known,  a  greater,  an  infinite,  a  divine  unknown  ;  behind  every- 
thing certain  and  distinct,  he  beheld  something  shadowy  and  unsearchable, 
past  all  finding  out ;  and  he  did  not,  as  many  of  his  class  have  too  often 
done,  and  still  do,  rest  in  the  mere  contemplation  and  recognition  of  the 
rl  df'iov.  This  was  to  him  but  the  shadow  of  supreme  substance,  6  6ebs~ 
— JOHN  BROWN,  Hone  Subsecivcz,  First  Series. 

CAIUS  CORNELIUS  TACITUS. 
Roman  Historian  :  55-117. 

Wise  Tacitus,  of  penetration  deep, 
Each  secret  spring  reveal'd. 

— SOMERVILLE,  Hobbinol,  Canto  II. 

The  object  of  Tacitus  was  to  demonstrate  the  desperate  consequences- 
of  the  loss  of  liberty  on  the  minds  and  hearts  of  men. — S.  T.  COLERIDGE, 
Table  Talk. 

The  greatest  man  who  has  as  yet  given  himself  to  the  recording  of 
human  affairs  is,  beyond  question,  Cornelius  Tacitus. — J.  A.  FROUDE,, 
Short  Studies,  Vol,  II. 


428  TACITUS,  TASSO. 

In  Tacitus,  Stoicism  has  left  an  external  evidence  how  grand  a  creature 
man  may  be,  though  unassisted  by  conscious  dependence  on  external 
spiritual  help,  through  steady  disdain  of  what  is  base,  steady  reverence  for 
all  that  deserves  to  be  revered,  and  inflexible  integrity  in  word  and  deed. 
— Id.,  Calvinism. 

Men  like  Tacitus  are  unhealthy  subjects  for  authority.  Tacitus  applies 
his  style  to  the  shoulder  of  an  emperor,  and  the  mark  remains.  Tacitus 
always  makes  his  thrust  at  the  required  spot.  A  deep  thrust  .  .  .  Tacitus  has 
the  conciseness  of  red  iron. — VICTOR  HUGO,  William  Shakespeare  (transl.). 

Tacitus  belongs  to  a  different  class  among  the  great  writers  of  the  world. 
He  had,  beyond  almost  any  author  of  the  front  rank  that  has  ever  lived, 
the  art  of  condensing  his  thought  and  driving  it  home  to  the  mind  of  the 
reader  with  a  flash. — JOHN  MORLEY,  Studies  in  Literature. 

That  gloomy  moralist,  Tacitus — the  Carlyle  of  his  day. — C.  LORING 
BRACE,  The  Unknown  God. 

TORQUATO  TASSO. 
Italian  Poet :  1544-1595. 

In  scenes  like  these,  which,  daring  to  depart 

From  sober  truth,  are  still  to  nature  true, 

And  call  forth  fresh  delight  to  fancy's  view, 
The  heroic  muse  employed  her  Tasso's  art !  ... 
Prevailing  poet!  whose  undoubting  mind 

Believed  the  magic  wonders  which  he  sung  ! 
Hence,  at  each  sound,  imagination  glows ! 

Hence,  at  each  picture,  vivid  life  starts  here  ! 
Hence  his  warm  lay  with  softest  sweetness  flows ! 

Melting  it  flows,  pure,  murmuring,  strong,  and  clear, 

And  fills  the  impassioned  heart,  and  wins  the  harmonious  ear  ! 

— W.  COLLINS,  Ode  on  the  Popular  Superstitions  of  the  High- 
lands of  Scotland,  XII. 

Peace  to  Torquato's  injured  shade  !  'twas  his 

In  life  and  death  to  be  the  mark  where  Wrong 

Aim'd  with  her  poison'd  arrows — but  to  miss. 

Oh,  victor  unsurpass'd  in  modern  song ! 

Each  year  brings  forth  its  millions ;  but  how  long 

The  tide  of  generations  shall  roll  on, 

And  not  the  whole  combined  and  countless  throng 

Compose  a  mind  like  thine  ?     Though  all  in  one 

Condensed  their  scatter'd  rays,  they  would  not  form  a  sun. 

— BYRON,  Childe  Harold's  Pilgrimage. 

I  honour  every  man  and  each  man's  merit  ; 
To  Tasso  I  am  only  just.     His  eye 
Scarce  rests  upon  this  earth ;  his  eye  perceives 
The  harmony  of  nature  ;  while  his  breast 
Accepts,  at  once  and  gladly,  every  gift 
Of  history's  records,  or  that  life  bestows  : 
Things  widely  scattered  can  his  mind  collect, 
His  heart  on  lifeless  things  true  life  bestow. 
What  we  thought  common  he  ennobles  oft, 


TASSO. 


429 


While  what  we  prized  before  him  turns  to  nought. 

In  such  peculiar  magic  circle  wanders 

The  marvellous  man,  and  makes  us  wander  with  him. 

— GOETHE,  Torquato  Tasso  (trans!.}. 

His  to  drink  deep,  of  sorrow,  and,  through  life, 
To  be  the  scorn  of  them  that  knew  him  not, 
Trampling  alike  the  giver  and  his  gift, 
The  gift  a  pearl  precious,  inestimable, 
A  lay  divine,  a  lay  of  love  and  war, 
To  charm,  ennoble,  and,  from  age  to  age, 
Sweeten  the  labour  when  the  oar  was  plied 
Or  on  the  Adrian  or  the  Tuscan  sea. 

— ROGERS,  Italy  :  Amalfi. 
He,  whose  song  beguiles 
The  day  of  half  its  hours  ;  whose  sorcery 
Dazzles  the  sense,  turning  our  forest-glades 
To  lists  that  blaze  with  gorgeous  armoury, 
Our  mountain-caves  to  regal  palaces. 

— Id.,  Ibid.  :  Banditti. 

Tasso's  ardent  numbers 

Float  along  the  pleased  air, 
Calling  youth  from  idle  slumbers, 

Rousing  them  from  Pleasure's  lair : — 
Then  o'er  the  strings  his  fingers  gently  move, 
And  melt  the  soul  to  pity  and  to  love. 

— KEATS,  Ode  to  Apollo. 

She  that  reads  Tasso  or  Malherbe, 
Chooses  a  step  that  is  superb. 

— DR.  WILLIAM  KING,  The  Art  of  Love,  Part  XII. 

Considered  as  a  work  of  imagination,  the  Gerusalcmme  Liberata,  is  one 
of  the  most  exquisite  conceptions  of  human  fancy,  and  will  for  ever  com- 
mand the  admiration  of  romantic  and  elevated  minds.  But  it  wants  that 
yet  higher,  or,  at  least,  more  popular  quality,  which  arises  from  a  thorough 
knowledge  of  human  nature — a  graphic  delineation  of  actual  character,  a 
faithful  picture  of  the  real  passions  and  sufferings  of  mortality.  It  is  the 
most  perfect  example  of  poetic  fancy  ;  but  the  highest  species  of  the  epic 
poem  is  to  be  found,  not  in  poetic  fancy,  but  poetic  history. — SIR  ARCHIBALD 
ALISON,  Essays  :  The  Crusades. 

Tasso  is  not  one  of  my  favourites,  either  as  a  man  or  a  poet.  There  is 
too  little  of  the  fine  frenzy  in  his  verses,  and  too  much  in  his  life. — 
MACAULAV,  Life  and  Letters,  Vol.  II. 

A  thousand  romantic  associations  cling  round  the  very  name  of  Torquato 
Tasso.  His  strange  and  eventful  story,  his  genius,  above  all,  his  mis- 
fortunes, encompass  his  image  with  a  halo  of  interest  denied  to  common 
men,  and  even  to  greater  poets  than  himself;  and  have  made  his  woes  the 
theme  of  other  bards,  and  his  form  the  central  figure  of  dramas,  such  as 
those  of  Goldoni  and  of  Goethe.  Variously  estimated  by  his  own  con- 
temporaries according  to  their  differing  powers  of  insight — a  madman  to 
some,  a  sage  to  others — they  yet  all  agree  that  he  was  good — they  all  in 
some  sense  acknowledge  that  he  was  great. — E.  J.  HASELL,  Life  of  Tasso. 


.430  TAYLOR. 

JEREMY  TAYLOR. 

Bishop  of  Down  and  Connor  and  Dromorc  :  1613-1667. 

Taylor  too  was  there,  from  whose  mind  of  its  treasures  redundant 
Streams  of  eloquence  flow'd,  like  an  inexhaustible  fountain. 

— SOUTHEY,  A  Vision  of  Judgment :  The  Elder  Worthies. 

Jeremy  Taylor  is  an  excellent  author  for  a  young  man  to  study,  for 
the  purpose  of  imbibing  noble  principles. — S.  T.  COLERIDGE,  Table 
Talk. 

The  writings  of  Bishop  Jeremy  Taylor  are  a  perpetual  feast  tome.  His 
hospitable  board  groans  under  the  weight  and  multitude  of  viands.  Yet  I 
seldom  rise  from  the  perusal  of  his  works  without  repeating  or  recollecting 
the  excellent  observation  of  Minucius  Felix  :  Fabulas  et  crrores  ale  impcritis 
parentibus  discimus  ;  ct  quod  est  gravius,  ipsis  studiis  et  disciplinis  elabor- 
amus. — Id.,  Notes  :  Theological,  Political,  and  Miscellaneous. 

There  is  a  great  distinction  between  the  art  of  style  and  what  the  phren- 
ologists call  "  the  organ  of  language  ".  In  Jeremy  Taylor,  for  instance, 
we  are  dazzled  by  the  opulent  splendour  of  diction  with  which  the  preacher 
comes  in  state  to  our  souls.  High  priest  of  eloquence,  to  his  sacred  tiara 
the  many  royalties  of  genius  contribute  the  richest  gems  of  their  crowns. 
But  no  teacher  of  style  would  recommend  as  a  safe  model  to  his  pupil  the 
style  of  Jeremy  Taylor. — LYTTON,  Essays  :  On  Style  and  Diction. 

From  amongst  the  ranks  of  the  people  rose  Taylor,  the  Milton  of  the 
Church,  whose  power  and  pathos,  and  "purple  grandeur  '  of  eloquence, 
beautified  even  piety  itself. — Id.,  England  and  the  English. 

The  gentleman,  the  orator,  the  poet,  and  the  Christian  !  Such  are  the 
titles  of  Bishop  Taylor  to  the  regard  of  posterity  ;  consummate  in  every 
character,  unapproachable  in  many  of  the  qualities  that  go  to  form  the  in- 
structor of  the  people,  and  the  enunciator  of  the  holy  messages  of  Heaven. 
In  the  pulpit  he  captivated  and  enravished  his  listeners  by  the  richness  of 
a  fancy  which  found  food  in  all  that  nature  could  supply  or  erudition  bring. 
In  his  works  the  acuteness  of  the  schoolman,  the  depth  of  the  philosopher, 
the  piety  of  a  saint,  meet  you  at  every  turn. — SAMUEL  PHILLIPS,  Essays 
Jrom  "  The  Times,'"  Vol.  II. 

The  ethereal  tincture  that  pervades  the  style  of  Jeremy  Taylor,  making 
it,  as  Burke  said  of  Sheridan's  eloquence,  "  neither  prose  nor  poetry,  but 
something  better  than  either". — J.  R.  LOWELL,  Among  My  Books. 

I  doubt  whether  we  shall  not  as  soon  see  another  Shakespeare  as  another 
Jeremy  Taylor. — F.  W.  FARRAR,  Masters  in  English  Theology  :  Jeremy 
Taylor. 

Even  the  mighty  rhetoric  of  ...  Jeremy  Taylor,  to  whom  only  it  has 
been  granted  to  open  the  trumpet-stop  on  that  great  organ  of  passion, 
oftentimes  leaves  behind  it  the  sense  of  sadness  which  belongs  to  beautiful 
apparitions  starting  out  of  darkness  upon  the  morbid  eye,  only  to  be  re- 
claimed by  darkness  in  the  instant  of  their  birth,  or  which  belongs  to 
pageantries  in  the  clouds. — DE  QUINCEY,  Leaders  in  Literature. 


TENIERS,  TENNYSON.  431 

DAVID  TENIERS. 
Flemish  Painter :  1610-1694. 

Never  did  any  one  paint  air,  the  thin  air,  the  absolutely  apparent  vacancy 
tetween  object  and  object,  so  admirably  as  Teniers. — S.  T.  COLERIDGE, 
Table  Talk. 

ALFRED  LORD  TENNYSON. 
Poet  Laureate  :  1809-1892. 

Poet !     I  come  to  touch  thy  lance  with  mine  ; 

Not  as  a  knight,  who  on  the  listed  field 

Of  tourney  touched  his  adversary's  shield 

In  token  of  defiance,  but  in  sign 
Of  homage  to  the  mastery,  which  is  thine, 

In  English  song ;  nor  will  I  keep  concealed, 

And  voiceless  as  a  rivulet  frost-congealed, 

My  admiration  for  thy  verse  divine. 
Not  of  the  howling  dervishes  of  song, 

Who  craze  the  brain  with  their  delirious  dance, 

Art  thou,  O  sweet  historian  of  the  heart ! 
Therefore  to  thee  the  laurel-leaves  belong, 

To  thee  our  love  and  our  allegiance, 
For  thy  allegiance  to  the  poet's  art. 

— LONGFELLOW,  Wapentake :  To  Alfred  Tennyson. 

Tennyson's  enchanted  reverie.  .  .  . 

— E.  B.  BROWNING,  Lady  Geraldine's  Courtship. 

Then  cried  the  King,  and  smote  the  oak, 
"  Love,  Truth,  and  Beauty,  one,  but  three, 
This  is  the  Artist's  Trinity  !  " 
And  lo,  'twas  Tennyson  who  spoke. 
For  this  shall  be  through  endless  time 
The  burden  of  the  golden  rhyme 
Of  Tennyson,  our  Laureate. 

— W.  C.  MONKHOUSE,  Recollections  of  Alfred  Tennyson  : 
A  Day  Dream  (1869). 

Fairer  far  than  the  morning  star,  and  sweeter  far  than  the  songs  that  rang 
Loud  through  Heaven  from  the  choral  Seven  when  all  the  stars  of  the 

morning  sang, 
Shines  the  song  that  we  loved  so  long — since  first  such  love  in  us  flamed 

and  sprang. 

— SWINBURNE,  Threnody. 

Thy  song  can  girdle  hill  and  mead 

With  choirs,  more  pure,  more  fair, 
Their  locks  with  wild  flower  dressed  and  weed, 

Than  ever  Hellas  bare  : 
Theocritus,  we  cry,  once  more 
Treads  his  beloved  Trinacrin  shore  ! 

— AUBREY  DE  VERE,  Ode  (The  Golden  Mean}. 


432  TENNYSON. 

Long  may  your  green  maturity  maintain 

Its  universal  season  ;  and  your  voice, 

A  household  sound,  be  heard  about  our  hearths, 

Now  as  a  Christmas  carol,  now  as  the  glee 

Of  vernal  Maypole,  now  as  harvest  song. 

And  when,  like  light  withdrawn  from  earth  to  heaven, 

Your  glorious  gloaming  fades  into  the  sky, 

We,  looking  upward,  shall  behold  you  there, 

vShining  amid  the  young  unageihg  stars. 

— ALFRED  AUSTIN,  A  Poet's  Eightieth  Birthday  (6th  August,  1889). 

Thy  place  is  with  the  Immortals.     Who  shall  gauge 
Thy  rank  among  thy  peers  of  world-wide  song  ? 
Others,  it  may  be,  touched  a  note  more  strong, 
Scaled  loftier  heights,  or  glowed  with  fiercer  rage ; 
But  who  like  thee  could  slay  our  modern  Doubt  ? 
Or  soothe  the  sufferers  with  a  tenderer  heart  ? 
Or  dress  gray  legends  with  such  perfect  grace  ? 
Or  nerve  life's  world-worn  pilgrims  for  their  part  ? 
Who,  since  our  English  tongue  first  grew,  has  stirred 
More  souls  to  noble  effort  by  his  word  ? 
More  reverent  who  of  Man,  of  God,  of  Truth  ? 
More  piteous  of  the  sore-tried  strength  of  Youth  ? 
Thy  chaste,  white  Muse,  loathing  the  Pagan  rout, 
Would  drive  with  stripes  the  goatish  Satyr  out. 
Thy  love  of  Righteousness  preserved  thee  pure, 
Thy  lucid  genius  scorned  to  lurk  obscure, 
And  all  thy  jewelled  Art  and  native  Grace 
Were  consecrate  to  God  and  to  the  Race. 

— LEWIS  MORRIS,  6th  October,  1892. 

From  Alfred  Tennyson — although  in  perfect  sincerity  I  regard  him  as 
the  noblest  poet  that  ever  lived — I  have  left  myself  time  to  cite  only  a  very 
brief  specimen.  I  call  him,  and  think  him  the  noblest  of  poets — not  be- 
cause the  impressions  he  produces  are,  at  all  times,  the  most  profound — 
not  because  the  poetical  excitement  which  he  produces  is,  at  all  times,  the 
most  intense — but  because  it  is,  at  all  times,  the  most  ethereal — in  other 
words,  the  most  elevating  and  the  most  pure.  No  poet  is  so  little  of  the 
earth,  earthy.— POE,  Works  of  Edgar  A.  Poe,  Vol.  I. 

Tennyson  is  endowed  precisely  in  points  where  Wordsworth  wanted. 
There  is  no  finer  ear  than  Tennyson's,  nor  more  command  of  the  keys  of 
language.  Colour,  like  the  dawn,  flows  over  the  horizon  from  his  pencil, 
in  waves  so  rich  that  we  do  not  miss  the  central  form.  Through  all  his 
refinements,  too,  he  has  reached  the  public — a  certificate  of  good  sense  and 
general  power,  since  he  who  aspires  to  be  the  English  poet  must  be  as 
large  as  London,  not  in  the  same  kind  as  London,  but  in  his  own  kind. 
—  EMERSON,  English  Traits  :  Literature. 

Tennyson  should  speak  of  the  sea  so  as  to  rouse  the  souls  of  sailors, 
rather  than  the  soles  of  tailors — the  enthusiasm  of  the  deck,  rather  than  of 
the  board.  Unfortunately,  he  seems  never  to  have  seen  a  ship,  or,  if  he 
did,  to  have  forgotten  it.  The  vessel  in  which  the  land-lubbers  were  drift- 
ing, when  the  Sea-Fairies  salute  them  with  a  song,  must  have  been  an  old 
tub  of  a  thing,  unfit  even  for  a  transport.  Such  a  jib  !  In  the  cut  of  her 


TENNYSON.  433 

mainsail  you  smoke  the  old  table-cloth.  To  be  solemn — Alfred  Tennyson 
is  as  poor  on  the  sea  as  Barry  Cornwall — and  of  course,  calls  him  a  serpent. 
They  both  write  like  people  who,  on  venturing  upon  the  world  of  waters 
.in  a  bathing-machine,  would  insure  their  lives  by  a  cork-jacket.  Barry 
swims  on  the  surface  of  the  Great  Deep  like  a  feather ;  Alfred  dives  less 
after  the  fashion  of  a  duck  than  a  bell ;  but  the  one  sees  few  lights,  the 
other  few  shadows,  that  are  not  seen  just  as  well  by  an  oyster-dredger. 
But  the  soul  of  the  true  sea-poet  doth  undergo  a  sea-change,  soon  as  he 
sees  Blue  Peter ;  and  he  is  off  in  the  gig, 

"  While  bending  back,  away  they  pull, 
With  measured  strokes  most  beautiful  " — 
There  goes  the  Commodore  ! 

— JOHN  WILSON,  Essays  :  Tennyson's  Poems. 

Lately  I  have  been  reading  again  some  of  Alfred  Tennyson's  second 
volume,  and  with  profound  admiration  of  his  truly  lyric  and  idyllic  genius. 
There  seems  to  me  to  have  been  more  epic  power  in  Keats,  that  fiery, 
beautiful  meteor  ;  but  they  are  two  most  true  and  great  poets.  When  we 
think  of  the  amount  of  recognition  they  have  received,  one  may  well  bless 
God  that  poetry  is  in  itself  strength  and  joy,  whether  it  be  crowned  by  all 
mankind  or  left  alone  in  its  own  magic  hermitage. — JOHN  STERLING,, 
Essays  and  Tales. 

Tennyson,  finding  himself  in  a  world  where  sorrow  alternates  with  joy,, 
and  in  a  nation  whose  humour,  even,  has  been  supposed  to  have  a  serious 
and  Saturnine  cast, — having  heard,  too,  we  may  presume,  of  a  text  in  a 
certain  book  which  says,  "  Blessed  are  they  that  mourn,  for  they  shall  be 
tomforted," — and  having  himself  lost  a  friend  who  was  as  the  light  of  his 
eyes  and  the  joy  of  his  heart,  has  not  thought  it  an  unworthy  employment 
of  his  poetic  gifts  to  bestow  them  in  erecting  a  monument  to  his  friend, 
upon  which  he  has  carved  bas-reliefs  of  exceeding  grace  and  beauty,  and 
has  worked  delicate  flowers  into  the  cornices,  and  adorned  the  capitals  of 
the  columns  with  emblematic  devices  ;  and  upon  the  summit  he  has  set 
the  statue  of  his  friend,  and  about  the  base  run  the  sweetest  words  of  love 
with  the  mournfullest  accents  of  grief — the  darkest  doubts  with  the  sub- 
imest  hopes. — GEORGE  BRIMLEY,  Essavs. 

Should  our  noble  Tennyson  survive  as  a  constant  writer  till  his  black  locks 
have  grown  grey,  one  sees  qualities  in  him  that  predict  for  him  more  than, 
a  Wordsworth's  fame. — DAVID  MASSON,  Wordsworth,  Shelley,  and  Keats- 
Tennyson,  among  the  poets  of  the  nineteenth  century,  owes  much  to> 
the  Greek  idyllists.  His  genius  appears  to  be  in  many  respects  akin  to 
theirs,  and  the  age  in  which  he  lives  is  not  unlike  the  Ptolemaic  period. 
Unfitted,  perhaps,  by  temperament  for  the  most  impassioned  lyrics,  he 
delights  in  minutely  finished  pictures,  in  felicities  of  expression  and  in 
subtle  harmonies  of  verse.  Like  Theocritus,  he  finds  in  nature  and  in  the 
legends  of  past  ages  subjects  congenial  to  his  muse.  (Enonc  and  Tithonns 
are  steeped  in  the  golden  beauty  of  Syracusan  art. — J.  A.  SYMONDS, 
Studies  iu  the  Greek  Poets. 

.  In  Tennyson  and  Browning  we  have  veritable  fountain-heads  of  the 
spiritual  energy  of  our  time.  "  Ranging  and  ringing  thro'  the  minds  of 
men,"  their  words  are  linked  in  many  a  memory  with  what  life  has  held  of 
best. — F.  W.  H.  MYERS,  Science  and  a  Future  Life. 

28 


434  TENNYSON,  THACKERAY. 

The  melodious  languors  of  Tennyson's  early  poems  soon  gave  way  to 
the  deep-centred  activities  of  thought  which  were  everywhere  rending 
men's  lives  apart,  and  the  golden  clime  in  which  the  poet  was  born  was 
speedily  vexed  with  the  rolling  cloud  and  tempest  of  the  great  upheaval. 
The  In  Memoriam  is  the  nineteenth  century's  Book  of  Job,  and  is  in- 
separably inwoven  with  the  history  of  the  century  because  it  is  woven  out 
of  the  sentiment  of  the  century. — W.  J.  DAWSON,  Quest  and  Vision. 

Lord  Tennyson's  poetry  is  the  newspaper  of  his  era,  and  he  the  supreme 
journalist  of  the  time.  It  is  not  that  he  has  been  the  mere  reporter  or 
chronicler  of  passing  events,  but  he  has  been  an  assiduous  commentator 
on  them.  He  has  rilled  his  place  without  aspiring  to  leadership.  .  .  .  His 
first  Locksley  Hall  was  the  Nicene  creed  of  a  party.  .  .  .  The  elaborately 
painted  flowers,  laburnum,  and  tulip,  and  marigold,  that  occur  in  the  verse 
of  Tennyson  like  illuminations  in  a  mediaeval  manuscript. — P.  G.  GRAHAM, 
Nature  in  Books. 

The  death  of  Tennyson  was  worthy  of  his  life.  He  died  with  the  sim- 
plicity which  marked  his  life,  and  yet  with  a  certain  conscious  stateliness 
which  was  all  his  own  ;  and  these  two,  simplicity  and  stateliness,  were  also 
vital  in  the  texture  of  his  poetry.  But  his  dying  hour,  though  it  has  left 
a  noble  picture  on  the  mind  of  England,  is  not  the  important  thing.  His 
life  and  poetry  are  the  real  matter  of  use  and  interest,  and  its  death  gains 
its  best  import  from  its  being  the  beautiful  and  fitting  end  of  all  the  work 
that  had  gone  before  it.  It  became  an  artist,  it  became  a  Christian,  it 
became  a  man. — STOPFORD  BROOKE,  Tennyson. 

Both  Tennyson  and  Browning  are  full  of  hope.  But  it  is  a  sober  hope 
— a  hope  that  has  to  justify  itself  at  every  turn,  to  fight  its  way  at  every 
step,  against  possible  challenge  or  denial  ;  essentially  a  reasoned,  not  an 
instinctive  hope. — C.  E.  VAUGHAN  in  Broivning  Notes. 


WILLIAM  MAKEPEACE  THACKERAY. 
English  Novelist  and  Satirist :   1811-1863. 

flPMr.  Thackeray's  humour  does  not  mainly  consist  in  the  creation  of 
'oddities  of  manner,  habit,  or  feeling  ;  but  in  so  representing  actual  men 
and  women  as  to  excite  a  sense  of  incongruity  in  the  reader's  mind — a 
feeling  that  the  follies  and  vices  described  are  deviations  from  an  ideal  of 
humanity  always  present  to  the  writer.  The  real  is  described  vividly,  with 
that  perception  of  individuality  which  constitutes  the  artist ;  but  the  de- 
scription implies  and  suggests  a  standard  higher  than  itself,  not  by  any 
direct  assertion  of  such  a  standard,  but  by  an  unmistakable  irony.  The 
moral  antithesis  of  actual  and  ideal  is  the  root  from  which  springs  the 
peculiar  charm  of  Mr.  Thackeray's  writings;  that  mixture  of  gaiety  and 
seriousness,  of  sarcasm  and  tenderness,  of  enjoyment  and  cynicism,  which 
reflects  so  well  the  contradictory  consciousness  of  man  as  a  being  with 
senses  and  passions  and  limited  knowledge,  yet  with  a  conscience  and  a 
reason  speaking  to  him  of  eternal  laws  and  a  moral  order  of  the  universe. 
It  is  this  that  makes  Mr.  Thackeray  a  profound  moralist,  just  as  Hogarth 
showed  his  knowledge  of  perspective  by  drawing  a  landscape  throughout 
in  violation  of  its  rules.  So,  in  Mr.  Thackeray's  picture  of  society  as  it  is, 


THACKERAY.  435 

society  as  it  ought  to  be  is  implied.  He  could  not  have  painted  Vanity 
Fair  as  he  has,  unless  Eden  had  been  shining  brightly  in  his  inner  eyes. 
The  historian  of  "  snobs "  indicates  in  every  touch  his  fine  sense  of  a 
gentleman  or  a  lady.  No  one  could  be  simply  amused  with  Mr.  Thackeray's 
descriptions  or  his  dialogues.  A  shame  at  one's  own  defects,  at  the  de- 
fects of  the  world  in  which  one  was  living,  was  irresistibly  aroused  along 
Avith  the  reception  of  the  particular  portraiture.  But  while  he  was  dealing 
with  his  own  age,  his  keen  perceptive  faculty  prevailed,  and  the  actual 
predominates  in  his  pictures  of  modern  society. — GEORGE  BRIMLEY, 
Essays. 

Whatever  Thackeray  says,  the  reader  cannot  fail  to  understand ;  and 
whatever  Thackeray  attempts  to  communicate,  he  succeeds  in  conveying. 
— ANTHONY  TROLLOPE,  Life  of  Thackeray. 

Thackeray,  like  Sterne,  looked  at  everything — at  nature,  at  life,  at  art — 
from  a  sensitive  aspect.  His  mind  was  to  some  considerable  extent  like 
a  woman's  mind.  It  could  comprehend  abstractions  when  they  were  un- 
Tolled  and  explained  before  it,  but  it  never  naturally  created  them  ;  never 
•of  itself,  and  without  external  obligation,  devoted  itself  to  them.  The 
visible  scene  of  life — the  streets — the  servants,  the  clubs,  the  gossip,  the 
West  End — fastened  on  his  brain.  They  were  to  him  reality.  They  burnt 
in  upon  his  brain  ;  they  pained  his  nerves ;  their  influence  reached  him 
through  many  avenues,  which  ordinary  men  do  not  feel  much,  or  to  which 
they  are  altogether  impervious.  He  had  distinct  and  rather  painful  sensa- 
tions where  most  men  have  but  confused  and  blurred  ones. — WALTER 
BAGEHOT,  Literary  Studies,  Vol.  II. 

Thackeray's  success  is  almost  solely  owing  to  his  moral  influence. 
Much  as  we  respect  his  intellectual  powers,  we  have  a  far  higher  admira- 
tion of  his  heart — that  noble  courageous  generosity  for  which  language  has 
no  word.  He  is  emphatically  the  true  gentleman  of  our  generation,  who 
has  appealed  to  our  best  and  most  chivalric  sympathies,  and  raising  us 
from  the  slough  and  pollution  of  the  Regency  has  made  us  once  more  "a 
nation  of  gentlemen". — J.  C.  JEAFFRESON,  Novels  and  Novelists  from 
Elizabeth  to  Victoria,  Vol.  II. 

For  myself,  I  honestly  confess  that  I  never  could  learn  anything  from 
Thackeray  ;  there  is  a  certain  feeble  amiability  even  about  his  best 
characters,  which,  if  it  is  free  from  the  depressing  influence  of  his  bad  ones, 
is  certainly  anything  but  bracing. — J.  STUART  BLACKIE,  On  Self -Culture. 

William  Makepeace  Goliath,  white  waistcoat  and  all. — A.  T.  QUILLER- 
'CoucH,  Adventures  in  Criticism. 

Thackeray,  with  a  fine  and  sympathetic  soul,  had  a  creative  imagination 
that  was  far  stronger  on  the  darker  and  fouler  sides  of  life  than  it  was  on  the 
brighter  and  pure  side  of  life.  He  saw  the  bright  and  pure  side  :  he  loved 
it,  he  felt  with  it,  he  made  us  love  it.  But  his  artistic  genius  worked  with 
-more  free  and  consummate  zest  when  he  painted  the  dark  and  the  foul. 
His  creative  imagination  fell  short  of  the  true  equipoise,  of  that  just  vision 
of  chiaroscuro,  which  we  find  in  the  greatest  masters  of  the  human  heart. 
This  limitation  of  his  genius  has  been  visited  upon  Thackeray  with  a  heavy 
hand.  And  such  as  it  is,  he  must  bear  it. — FREDERIC  HARRISON,  Studies 
in  Earlv  Victorian  Literature. 


436  THEOCRITUS,  SAINT  THERESA. 

THEOCRITUS. 
Greek  Poet :  fl.  ^rd  cent.  B.C. 

Our  Theocritus,  our  Bion, 

And  our  Pindar's  shining  goals  ! — 
These  were  cup-bearers  undying, 

Of  the  wine  that's  meant  for  souls. 

— E.  B.  BROWNING,  Wine  of  Cvprus. 

The  names  and  shades  adored  of  all  of  us, 

The  nurslings  of  the  brave  world's  earlier  brood, 
Grown  gods  for  us  themselves  :  Theocritus 
First,  and  more  dear  Catullus,  names  bedewed 
With  blessings  bright  like  tears 
From  the  old  memorial  years, 
And  loves  and  lovely  laughters,  every  mood 
Sweet  as  the  drops  that  fell 
Of  their  own  venomel 
From  living  lips  to  clear  the  multitude 

That  feeds  on  words  divine. 
— SWINBURNE,  Song  for  the  Centenary  of  Walter  Savage  Landor. 

Shepherd :  "  The  Allan  Ramsay  o'  Sicily,  as  I  hae  heard  ;  and  the  best 
pastoral  poet  o'  the  ancient  warld." — JOHN  WILSON,  Nodes  Ambrosiaitu', 
Vol.  I. 

Theocritus  is  perhaps  the  most  universally  attractive  of  all' Greek  poets. 
It  is  common  to  find  young  students  who  prefer  him  to  Homer,  and  most 
people  are  conscious  of  a  certain  delighted  surprise  when  they  first  make 
his  acquaintance.  In  his  own  sweet  and  lowly  domain  he  is  absolute 
monarch  ;  one  might  almost  say  that  there  is  hardly  anything  beautiful  in 
the  pastoral  poetry  of  the  world  that  does  not  come  from  Theocritus. — 
GILBERT  MURRAY,  History  of  Ancient  Greek  Literature. 

SAINT  THERESA. 
SpanisJi  Carmelite  Nun  :   1515-1582. 

Ah!  rather  would  I  forget  myself,  than  forget  the  writings  of  Teresa. — 
MADAME  GUYON  (transl.}. 

Teresa's  image  still  stands  in  the  Castilian  churches.  The  faithful 
crowd  about  her  with  their  offerings,  and  dream  that  they  leave  behind 
them  their  aches  and  pains ;  but  her  words  were  forgotten,  and  her  rules 
sank  again  into  neglect.  The  Church  of  Rome  would  have  done  better 
in  keeping  alive  Teresa's  spirit  than  in  converting  her  into  a  goddess.  Yet 
the  Church  of  Rome  is  not  peculiarly  guilty,  and  we  all  do  the  same  thing 
in  our  own  way.  When  a  great  teacher  dies  who  has  told  us  great  truths 
which  it  would  be  disagreeable  to  act  upon,  we  write  adoring  lives  of  him, 
we  place  him  in  the  intellectual  pantheon  ;  but  we  go  on  as  if  he  had  never 
lived  at  all.  We  put  up  statues  to  him  as  if  that  would  do  as  well,  and 
the  prophet  who  has  denounced  idols  is  made  an  idol  himself. — J.  A. 
FROUDE,  The  Spanish  Story  of  the  Armada  and  other  Essays. 

Wherever  the  tears  of  Theresa  fell,  new  weeds  of  superstition  sprang 
up.— <R.  A.  VAUGHAN,  Hours  with  the  Mystics,  Vol.  II. 


THOMSON.  437 

JAMES  THOMSON. 
Scottish  Poet :  1700-1748. 

See  Thomson  loitering  near  some  limpid  well, 
For  Britain's  friend  the  verdant  wreath  prepare, 
Or  studious  of  revolving  seasons,  tell, 
How  peerless  Lucia  made  all  seasons  fair. 

—  SHENSTONE,  Elegy  XXIII. 

O  favour'd  stream  !  where  thy  fair  current  flows, 
The  child  of  nature,  gentle  Thomson  rose. 
Young  as  he  wander'd  on  thy  flowery  side, 
With  simple  joy  to  see  thy  bright  waves  glide, 
Thither,  in  all  their  native  charms  array'd, 
From  climes  remote  the  sister  seasons  stray'd. 
Long  each  in  beauty  boasted  to  excel, 
(For  jealousies  in  silver-bosoms  dwell) 
But  now,  delighted  with  the  liberal  boy, 
.  Like  heaven  s  fair  rivals  in  the  groves  of  Troy, 
Yield  to  a  humble  swain  their  high  debate, 
And  from  his  voice  the  palm  of  beauty  wait. 

— DR.  J.  LANGHORNE,  Genius  and  Valour. 

To  paint  with  Thomson's  landscape-glow.   .  .   . 

—BURNS,  The  Vision,  II. 

The  warblings  of  the  blackbird,  clear  and  strong, 
Are  musical  enough  in  Thomson's  song. 

— COWPER,  Retirement. 

.  .  .  the  poet  well  you  know : 
Oft  has  he  touch'd  your  hearts  with  tender  woe  : 
Oft  in  this  crowded  house,  with  just  applause 
You  heard  him  teach  lair  Virtue's  purest  laws ; 
For  his  chaste  muse  employ'd  her  heaven-taught  lyre 
None  but  the  noblest  passions  to  inspire, 
Not  one  immortal,  one  corrupted  thought, 
One  line,  which  dying  he  could  wish  to  blot. 

— LORD  LYTTLETON,  Prologue  to  Thomson's  "  Coriolamis  ". 

.  .  .  the  strain  my  Thomson  sung, 
Delicious  dreams  inspiring  by  his  note. 
What  time  to  Indolence  his  harp  he  strung.  .  .  . 

— SCOTT,  Introduction  to  "  Harold  the  Dauntless  ". 

In  other  climates,  youths  and  maidens  there 
Shall  learn  from  Thomson's  verse  in  what  attire 
The  various  seasons,  bringing  in  their  change 

Variety  of  good, 
Revisit  their  beloved  English  ground. 

— SOUTHEY,  Ode  written  after  the  King's  visit  to  Scotland. 

As  a  writer,  he  is  entitled  to  one  praise  of  the  highest  kind :  his  mode 
of  thinking,  and  expressing  his  thoughts,  is  original.  His  blank  verse  is 
no  more  the  blank  verse  of  Milton,  or  of  any  other  poet,  than  the  rhymes 
of  Prior  are  the  rhymes  of  Cowley.  His  numbers,  his  pauses,  his  diction, 


438        THOMSON,  THOREAU,  THURLOW,  TILLOTSON. 

are  of  his  own  growth,  without  transcription,  without  imitation.  He  thinks, 
in  a  peculiar  train,  and  he  thinks  always  as  a  man  of  genius ;  he  looks, 
round  on  Nature  and  on  Life  with  the  eye  which  Nature  bestows  only  on 
a  poet ;  the  eye  that  distinguishes  in  everything  presented  to  its  view, 
whatever  there  is  on  which  imagination  can  delight  to  be  detained,  and 
with  a  mind  that  at  once  comprehends  the  vast,  and  attends  to  the  minute. 
The  reader  of  the  Seasons  wonders  that  he  never  saw  before  what 
Thomson  shows  him,  and  that  he  never  yet  has  felt  what  Thomson  im- 
presses. His  is  one  of  the  works  in  which  blank  verse  seems  properly 
used. —  DR.  JOHNSON,  Lives  of  the  Poets  :  Thomson. 

Thomson  breathed  landscape  beauty  in  the  Seasons. — SIR  ARCHIBALD' 
ALISON,  Essavs  :  British  School  of  Painting. 

HENRY  DAVID  THOREAU. 
Transcendcntalist :  1817-1862. 

Thoreau's  Mysticism,  though  born  out  of  due  time,  is  pure  Darwinian. 
In  that  Walden  wood  he  stands  as  the  most  wonderful  and  sensitive 
register  of  phenomena,  finer  and  more  exact  than  any  cunningly  devised 
measure.  He  is  vision  and  learning,  touch,  smelling,  and  taste  incarnate. 
Not  only  so,  but  he  knows  how  to  preserve  the  flashing  forest  colours  in 
unfading  light,  to  write  down  the  wind's  music  in  a  score  that  all  may 
read,  to  glean  and  garner  every  sensuous  impression. — P.  A.  GRAHAM,. 
Nature  in  Books. 

LORD  EDWARD  THURLOW. 
Lord  Chancellor  of  England  :  1732-1806. 

Round  Thurlow's  head  in  early  youth, 

And  in  his  sportive  days, 
Fair  Science  pour'd  the  light  of  truth, 

And  genius  shed  its  rays. 

— COWPER,  On  the  Promotion  of  Edward  Thurlow,  Esq. 

I  wonder  whether  any  one  ever  was  so  wise  as  Thurlow  looks. — C.  J. 
Fox. 

JOHN  TILLOTSON. 
Archbishop  of  Canterbury  :   1630-1694. 

We  with  pride  may  own 
Our  Tillotson;  and  Rome,  her  Fenelon. 

— RICHARD  SAVAGE,  Character  of  the  Rer.  James  Foster. 

I  have  frequently  heard  him  (Dryden)  own  with  pleasure,  that  if  he  had 
any  talent  for  English  prose  it  was  owing  to  his  having  often  read  the 
writings  of  the  great  Archbishop  Tillotson. — WILLIAM  CONGREVE. 

Tillotson  is  always  of  a  tolerant  and  catholic  spirit ;  enforcing  right 
actions  rather  than  orthodox  opinions. — HALLAM,  Literature  of  the 
Middle  Ages,  Vol.  IV. 


TILLOTSON,  TITIAN.  439 

The  gentle  Tillotson,  once  the  standard  of  all  pulpit  persuasion. 
— LYTTON,  England  and  the  English  :  Survey  of  Education. 

Of  all  the  members  of  the  Low  Church  party  Tillotson  stood  highest  in 
general  estimation.  As  a  preacher  he  was  thought  by  his  contemporaries 
to  have  surpassed  all  rivals  living  or  dead.  Posterity  has  reversed  this 
judgment.  Yet  Tillotson  still  keeps  his  place  as  a  legitimate  English 
classic.  .  .  .  His  style  is  not  brilliant ;  but  it  is  pure,  transparently  clear, 
and  equally  free  from  the  levity  and  from  the  stiffness  which  disfigure 
the  sermons  of  some  eminent  divines  of  the  seventeenth  century.  He  is 
always  serious,  yet  there  is  about  his  manner  a  certain  graceful  ease 
which  marks  him  as  a  man  who  knows  the  world,  who  has  lived  in 
populous  cities  and  in  splendid  courts,  and  who  has  conversed,  not  only 
with  books,  but  with  lawyers  and  merchants,  wits  and  beauties,  statesmen 
and  princes. — MACAULAY,  History  of  England,  Vol.  II.,  Chap.  XIV. 

Tillotson,  who  was  long  the  great  model  of  English  preachers,  was 
latitudinarian  in  his  opinions,  and  singularly  mild  and  tolerant  in  his 
disposition. — W.  E.  H.  LECKY,  History  of  England,  Vol.  I. 

Unlike  South's,  the  character  of  John  Tillotson  is  no  matter  for  con- 
troversy. With  the  possible  exception  of  Archbishop  Herring,  he  was 
the  most  amiable  man  that  ever  filled  the  See  of  Canterbury,  and  was 
pronounced  by  the  discerning  and  experienced  William  III.  the  best 
friend  he  had  ever  had  and  the  best  man  he  had  ever  known.  To  the 
meekness  of  the  pastor,  Tillotson  added  the  qualities  of  the  statesman,  and 
happy  was  it  for  the  Church  of  England  that  such  a  man  could  be  found 
to  fill  the  primacy  at  such  a  time. — RICHARD  GARNETT,  The  Age  of 
Dry  den. 


TITIAN  (TiziANO  VECELLIO). 
Venetian  Painter :  1477-1576. 

But  how  should  any  sign-post  dauber  know 
The  worth  of  Titian  or  of  Angelo  ? 
Hard  features  every  bungler  can  command  ; 
To  draw  true  beauty,  shows  a  master's  hand. 

— DRYDEN,  To  Mr.  Lee,  on  his  Alexander. 

Titian  glowing  paint  the  canvas  warm'd. 

—GAY,  Trivia,  Book  //. 

Titian's  warmth  divine. 

—POPE,  Epistle  to  Mr.  Jcrvas. 

Rarely  a  Titian,  or  a  Pope  appears, 
The  forming  glory  of  a  thousand  years  ! 

Exact  correctness  Titian's  hand  bestow'd. 

— WALTER  HARTE,  An  Essay  on  Painting. 

So  when  great  Titian  rose,  immortal  man  ! 
With  rural  scenes  his  pencil  first  began  ; 
Employ'd  all  genial  nature's  laws  to  trace, 
And  copy  from  her  ever-blooming  face. 

— SAMUEL  BOYSE,  To  Mr.  Thomson. 


440  TITIAN,  TITUS,   TRAJAN,   TURNER. 

The  golden  scenes  of  Titian  and  Raphael.  ...  Names  that  make  us 
hear  the  music  of  their  owners. — LEIGH  HUNT,  Men,  Women,  and  Books. 

There  is  no  greater  name  in  Italian  art — therefore  no  greater  in  art — 
than  that  of  Titian.  If  the  Venetian  master  does  not  soar  as  high  as 
Leonardo  da  Vinci  or  Michelangelo,  those  figures  so  vast,  so  mysterious, 
that  clouds  even  now  gather  round  their  heads  and  half  veil  them  from 
our  view ;  if  he  has  not  the  divine  suavity,  the  perfect  balance,  not  less 
of  spirit  than  of  answering  hand,  that  makes  Raphael  an  appearance  unique 
in  art,  since  the  palmiest  days  of  Greece  ;  he  is  wider  in  scope,  more 
glowing  with  the  life-blood  of  humanity,  more  the  poet-painter  of  the 
world  and  the  world's  fairest  creatures,  than  any  one  of  these. — CLAUDE 
PHILLIPS,  The  Earlier  Work  of  Titian. 

FLAVIUS  SABINUS  VESPASIANUS  TITUS. 
Roman  Emperor :  40-81:. 

This  world,  'tis  true, 
Was  made  for  Caesar — but  for  Titus  too  ; 
And  which  more  blest  ?  who  chain'd  his  country,  say, 
Or  he  whose  virtue  sigh'd  to  lose  a  day  ? 

— POPE,  Essay  on  Man. 

MARCUS  ULPIUS  NERVA  TRAJANUS. 
Emperor  of  Rome  :  52-117. 

I  gladly  commune  with  the  mind  and  heart 

Of  him  who  thus  survives  by  classic  art, 

His  actions  witness,  venerate  his  mien, 

And  study  Trajan  as  by  Pliny  seen  ; 

Behold  how  fought  the  chief  whose  conquering  sword 

Stretched  far  as  earth  might  own  a  single  lord. 

In  the  delight  of  moral  prudence  schooled, 

How  feelingly  at  home  the  sovereign  ruled ; 

Best  of  the  good — in  pagan  faith  allied 

To  more  than  man  by  virtue  deified. 

— WORDSWORTH,  The  Pillar  of  Trajan, 

HENRI,  VICOMTE  DE  TURENNK. 
Marshal  of  France  :  1611-1675. 

Louis  Fourteenth's  Marshals  are  a  kind  of  poetical  men  withal ;  the 
things  Turenne  says  are  full  of  sagacity  and  geniality,  like  sayings  of 
Samuel  Johnson. — CARLYLE,  On  Heroes  and  Hero-Worship. 

JOSEPH  MALLORD  WILLIAM  TURNER. 
English  Painter :  1775-1851. 

Of  pictures,  I  should  like  to  own 
Titians  and  Raphaels  three  or  four, — 
I  love  so  much  their  style  and  tone, — 


TURNER,   VANDYCK.  441 

One  Turner,  and  no  more, 

<(A  landscape — foreground  golden  dirt, — 

The  sunshine  painted  with  a  squirt). 

— OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES,  Contentment. 

Turner  was  once  without  a  rival  ;  all  that  his  fancy  whispered,  his 
:skill  executed.  Of  late,  he  has  forsaken  the  beautiful  and  married  the 
fantastic.  His  genius  meant  him  for  the  Wordsworth  of  description,  he 
has  spoilt  himself  to  the  Cowley  !  he  no  longer  sympathizes  with  Nature, 
he  coquets  with  her.- — -LvrTON,  England  and  tltc  English  :  Intellectual 
•Spirit,  etc. 

But  the  original  make  and  frame  of  Turner's  mind  being  not  vulgar, 
but  as  nearly  as  possible  a  combination  of  the  minds  of  Keats  and  Dante, 
joining  capricious  waywardness,  and  intense  openness  to  every  fine  plea- 
sure of  sense  ;  and  hot  defiance  of  formal  precedence,  with  a  quite  infinite 
tenderness,  generosity,  and  desire  of  justice  and  truth — this  kind  of  mind 
did  not  become  vulgar,  but  very  tolerant  of  vulgarity,  even  fond  of  it  in 
.some  forms ;  and  on  the  outside,  visibly  infected  by  it,  deeply  enough  ; 
the  curious  result,  in  its  combination  of  elements,  being  to  most  people 
wholly  incomprehensible.  It  was  as  if  a  cable  had  been  woven  of  blood- 
crimson  silk,  and  then  tarred  on  the  outside.  People  handled  it,  and  the 
tar  came  off  on  their  hands ;  red  gleams  were  seen  through  the  black 
underneath,  at  the  places  where  it  had  been  strained.  Was  it  ochre  ? — 
said  the  world — or  red  lead  ? — RUSKIN,  Modern  Painters,  Vol.  III. 

J.  M.  W.  Turner's  vagueness  and  extravagance,  so  much  complained 
of  by  common  folk,  is  another  example  of  the  transformation  of  thoughts 
into  emotion.  Mr.  Ruskin  has  observed  that  Turner  painted  the  soids  of 
pictures.  Even  Turner's  opponents  will  agree  that  in  many  of  his  pictures 
most  of  the  distinct  images  have  evaporated  ;  while  others  perceive  that 
these  have  only  vanished  to  make  way  for  emotions  of  transcendent  fo.rce 
and  beauty. — H.  R.  HAWEIS,  Music  and  Morals. 


SIR  ANTHONY  VANDYCK. 
Flemish  Painter :   1599-1641. 

Vandyck  is  dead ;  but  what  bold  Muse  shall  dare 
•(Tho'  poets  in  that  word  with  painters  share) 
T'  express  her  sadness  ?     Poesy  must  become 
An  art,  like  painting  here,  an  art  that's  dumb. 
Let's  all  our  solemn  grief  in  silence  keep, 
Like  some  sad  picture  which  he  made  to  weep. 

— COWLEY,  On  the  Death  of  Sir  Ant/tony  Vandyek. 

That  picture  there  your  eyes  does  strike  ; 
It  is  the  work  of  great  Van  Dyck, 
Which  by  a  Roman  would  be  sainted  : 
What  was't  but  canvas  till  'twas  painted  ? 

—DR.  WILLIAM  KING,  The  Art  of  Love,  Part  XII. 


442  VANE,   VESALIUS. 

SIR  HENRY  VANE. 

English  Statesman  :   1589-1654. 

Ladv  Carlisle  :  "  You'll  vanquish  Pym  ? 

Old  Vane 

Can  vanquish  you.     And  Vane  you  think  to  fly  ? 
Rush  on  the  Scots  !     Do  nobly  !     Vane's  slight  sneer 
Shall  test  success,  adjust  the  praise,  suggest 
The  faint  result :  Vane's  sneer  shall  reach  you  there." 

— ROBERT  BROWNING,  Act  II.,  Scene  II. 

SIR  HENRY  VANE,  THE  YOUNGER. 
Republican  Statesman  :   1612-1662. 

Vane,  young  in  years,  but  in  sage  counsel  old, 

Than  whom  a  better  senator  ne'er  held 

The  helm  of  Rome,  when  gowns  not  arms  repell'd 

The  fierce  Epirot  and  the  African  bold, 

Whether  to  settle  peace,  or  to  uphold 

The  drift  of  hollow  states  hard  to  be  spell'd, 

Then  to  advise  how  War  may  best  upheld 

Move  by  her  two  main  nerves,  iron  and  gold. 

Therefore  on  thy  firm  hand  Religion  leans 
In  peace,  and  reckons  thee  her  eldest  son. 

— MILTON,  Sonnet  to  Sir  Henry  Vane,  The  Younger* 

O  for  one  hour  of  that  undaunted  stock 

That  went  with  Vane  and  Sydney  to  the  block  ! 

— J.  R.  LOWELL. 

Hampden  :  "  You  may  grow  one  day, 

A  steadfast  light  to  England,  Henry  Vane !  " 

— ROBERT  BROWNING,  Strafford,  Act  II.,  Scene  I. 

The  Lord  deliver  me  from  Sir  Harry  Vane. — OLIVER  CROMWELL. 

We  need  not  sneer  at  the  high  aspirations  of  Vane  and  the  Republicans. 
If  some  men  did  not  aspire  too  high,  the  world  in  general  would  fall  too- 
low. — GOLDWIN  SMITH,  Three  English  Statesmen. 


ANDREAS  VESALIUS. 
Dutch  Anatomist:  1514-1564. 

If  Vesalius  was  not  quite  to  anatomy  what  Copernicus  was  to  astronomy, 
he  has  yet  been  said,  a  little  hyperbolically,  to  have  discovered  a  new 
world. — HALLAM,  Literature  of  the  Middle  Ages,  Vol.  I. 

Let  the  astronomers  vaunt  their  Copernicus,  the  natural  philosophers 
their  Galileo  and  Torricelli,  the  mathematicians  their  Pascal,  the  geo- 
graphers their  Columbus,  I  shall  always  place  Vesalius  above  all  their 
heroes. — BARON  DE  PORTAL. 


VINCI,   VIRGIL.  443 

LEONARDO  DA  VINCI. 
Florentine  Patntcr :  1452-1519. 

Four  great  walls  in  the  New  Jerusalem, 
Meted  on  each  side  by  the  angel's  reed, 
For  Leonard,  Rafael,  Agnolo  and  me 
To  cover — the  three  first  without  a  wife, 
While  I  have  mine  ! 

— ROBERT  BROWNING,  Andrea  del  Sarto* 

Like  Vinci's  strokes,  the  verses  we  behold, 
Correctly  graceful,  and  with  labour  bold. 

— WALTER  HARTE. 

VIRGIL. 
Roman  Poet:  B.C.  70-19 

Glorie  and  honour,  Virgile  Mantuan, 
Be  to  thy  name,  and  I  shal  as  I  can 
Folowe  thy  lanterne  as  thou  goest  beforne. 

— CHAUCER,  The  Legend  of  Dido. 

The  Mantuan, 
As  Sweet  in  fields,  as  stately  in  Troy's  fire. 

— G.  DANIEL,  A  Vindication  of  Poesy. 

Homer  and  Virgil ! — with  what  sacred  awe 

Do  those  mere  sounds  the  world's  attention  draw ! 

Whose  just  discernment,  Virgil-like  is  such, 
Never  to  say  too  little  or  too  much. 

— DUKE  OF  BUCKINGHAM,  An  Essay  on  Poetry. 

How  many  ages  since  has  Virgil  writ ! 

How  few  are  they  who  understand  him  yet ! 

Approach  his  altars  with  religious  fear  : 

No  vulgar  deity  inhabits  there. 

Heaven  shakes  not  more  at  Jove's  imperial  nod, 

Than  poets  should  before  their  Mantuan  God. 

— ROSCOMMON,  An  Essay  on  Translated  Verse. 

P'irst  from  the  green  retreats  and  lowly  plains, 
Her  Virgil  soar'd  sublime  in  epic  strains ; 
His  theme  so  glorious,  and  his  flight  so  true, 
She  with  Maeonian  garlands  grac'd  his  brow. 

— ELIJAH  FENTON,  An  Epistle  to  Mr.  Southerns. 

Two  shepherds  most  I  love  with  just  adoring ; 
That  Mantuan  swain,  who  chang'd  his  slender  reed 
To  trumpet's  martial  voice,  and  war's  loud  roaring, 
From  Corydon  to  Turnus'  dering-deed ; 

And  next  our  home-bred  Colin's  sweetest  firing ; 

That  steps  not  following  close,  but  far  admiring ; 
To  lackey  one  of  these  is  all  my  pride's  aspiring. 

— PHINEAS  FLETCHER,  The  Purple  Island,  Canto  VI. 


444  VIRGIL. 

Welcome  the  Mantuan  swan  !  Virgil  the  wise, 
Whose  verse  walks  highest,  but  not  flies ; 
W^ho  brought  green  Poesy  to  her  perfect  age, 
And  made  that  art  which  was  a  rage. 

— COWLEY,  The  Motto. 

Hence  mighty  Virgil's  said  of  old, 
From  dung  to  have  extracted  gold. 

— SAMUEL  BUTLER,  Satire  upon  Plagiaries. 

In  fame's  fair  temple,  o'er  the  boldest  wits 
Inshrin'd  on  high  the  sacred  Virgil  sits. 

— PARXELL,  To  Mr.  Pope, 

0  had  I  Virgil's  force,  to  sing  the  man, 
Whose  learned  lines  can  millions  raise  per  ami. 

—GAY,  Epistle  XL 

Amongs  the  Lotyns  Vyrgilius 
Was  beste  of  poets  founde. 

— CHATTERTOX,  Song  to  (Ella. 

Melodious  swells 

The  sweet  majestic  tone  of  Maro's  lyre  : 
The  soul  delighted  on  each  accent  dwells, — 
Enraptured  dwells.  .   .  . 

— KEATS,  Ode  to  Apollo. 

Virgil :  shade  of  Mantuan  beech 
Did  help  the  shade  of  bay  to  reach 
And  knit  around  his  forehead  high  ; 
For  his  gods  wore  less  majesty 
Than  his  brown  bees  hummed  deathlessly. 

— E.  B.  BROWNING,  A  Vision  of  Poets. 

Landscape-lover,  lord  of  language 

More  than  he  that  sang  the  Works  and  Days, 
All  the  chosen  coin  of  fancy 

Flashing  out  from  many  a  golden  phrase ; 
Thou  that  singest  wheat  and  woodland, 

Tilth  and  vineyard,  hive  and  horse  and  herd  ; 
All  the  charm  of  all  the  Muses 

Often  flowering  in  a  lonely  word  ; 
Poet  of  the  happy  Tityrus. 

Piping  underneath  his  beechen  bowers ; 
Poet  of  the  poet-satyr 

Whom  the  laughing  shepherd  bound  with  flowers  ;   .  .  . 
Light  among  the  vanish'd  ages  ; 

Star  that  gildest  yet  this  phantom  shore ; 
Golden  branch  amid  the  shadows, 

Kings  and  realms  that  pass  to  rise  no  more  ;  .  .  . 

1  salute  thee,  Mantovano, 

I  that  loved  thee  since  my  day  began, 
Wielder  of  the  stateliest  measure 

Ev'er  moulded  by  the  lips  of  man. 

—TENNYSON,  To  Virgil. 


VIRGIL,  VOLTAIRE.  445 

Even  the  grandiloquent  Virgil  cannot  get  through  his  epic  without  a 
strong  spice  of  love,  and  pious  JEneas  vindicates  for  himself  the  English 
as  well  as  the  Latin  force  of  the  stereotyped  epithet  by  behaving  like  a 
scoundrel  to  a  woman,  and  sneaking  off  without  even  saying  good-bye, 
or  leaving  a  christening-cup  for  the  possible  Tyrian  Julus.  That  episode 
has  saved  the  JEneid  from  becoming  a  mere  scholar's  poem,  in  spite  of 
its  magnificent  versification. — GEORGE  BRIMLEY,  Essays. 

Virgil  had  been  Dante's  guide  in  the  three  kingdoms  of  the  unseen 
world ;  Virgil  is  Petrarch's  guide  in  the  study  of  nature. — PASQUALE 
VILLARI,  Niccolo  Macchiavellt  and  his  Times  (transl.),  Vol.  I. 

Virgil  and  Horace  lived  nearly  two  thousand  years  ago,  and  belonged 
to  a  society  of  which  the  outward  form  and  fashion  have  utterly  perished. 
But  Virgil  and  Horace  do  not  grow  old,  because  while  society  changes, 
men  continue,  and  we  recognise  in  reading  them  that  the  same  heart  beat 
under  the  toga  which  we  feel  in  our  own  breasts. — J.  A.  FROUDE,  Short. 
Studies  mi  Great  Subjects,  Vol.  IV. 

FRANCOIS  MARIE  AROUET  DE  VOLTAIRE. 
French  Philosopher,  Poet,  Historian  :  1694-1778. 

The  Frenchman,  first  in  literary  fame, 

(Mention  him,  if  you  please.     Voltaire  ?     The  same.) 

With  spirit,  genius,  eloquence  supplied, 

Lived  long,  wrote  much,  laugh'd  heartily,  and  died  ; 

The  Scripture  was  his  jest-book,  whence  he  drew 

Bon-mots  to  gall  the  Christian  and  the  Jew ; 

An  infidel  in  health,  but  what  when  sick  ? 

Oh — then  a  text  would  touch  him  to  the  quick  ; 

View  him  at  Paris  in  his  last  career, 

Surrounding  throngs  the  demigod  revere  : 

Exalted  on  his  pedestal  of  pride, 

And  fumed  with  frankincense  on  every  side, 

He  begs  their  flattery  with  his  latest  breath, 

And  smother'd  in't  at  last,  is  praised  to  death. 

— COWPER,  Truth. 

Voltaire  !  long  life's  the  greatest  curse 
That  mortals  can  receive, 
When  they  imagine  the  chief  end 
Of  living  is  to  live. 

— YOUNG,  Resignation. 

And  a  light  on  the  brow  of  the  bronze  Voltaire 
Like  the  ghost  of  a  cynical  joke. 

— OWEN  MERIDITH.  Two  out  of  the  Crowd. 

In  Voltaire,  as  in  most  men,  there  was  a  double  self— the  one  sickened 
to  cynicism  by  the  iniquity  and  folly  which  he  saw  around  him — the  other, 
hungering  after  a  nobler  life. — KINGSLEY,  Historical  Lectures  and  Essays. 

The  mention  of  Voltaire  at  once  presents  to  every  one  the  idea,  not  so 
much  of  a  philosopher  whose  early  inquiries  have  led  him  to  doubt  upon 
the  foundations  of  religion,  or  even  to  disbelieve  its  truths,  as  of  a  bitter 


446  VOLTAIRE. 

enemy  to  all  belief  in  the  evidence  of  things  unseen — an  enemy  whose 
assaults  were  directed  by  malignant  passions,  aided  by  unscrupulous  con- 
trivances, and  above  all,  pressed  by  the  unlawful  weapon  of  ridicule,  not 
the  fair  armoury  of  argument ;  in  a  word,  he  is  regarded  as  a  scoffer,  not 
a  reasoner. — LORD  BROUGHAM,  Men  oj  Letters,  Vol.  II. 

The  most  figuring  person  in  the  work,  and  indeed  of  the  age  to  which 
it  belongs,  was  beyond  all  question  Voltaire.  ...  He  receives  no  other 
name  throughout  the  book,  than  "The  Patriarch"  of  the  Holy  Philoso- 
phical Church. — LORD  JEFFREY,  Essays. 

Voltaire  is  the  prince  of  buffoons.  His  merriment  is  without  disguise 
or  restraint.  He  gambols  ;  he  grins ;  he  shakes  his  sides  ;  he  points  the 
finger  ;  he  turns  up  the  nose  ;  he  shoots  out  the  tongue.  .  .  .  The  nature 
of  Voltaire  was,  indeed,  not  inhuman  ;  but  he  venerated  nothing.  Neither 
in  the  masterpieces  of  art  nor  in  the  purest  examples  of  virtue,  neither  in 
the  Great  First  Cause  nor  in  the  awful  enigma  of  the  grave,  could  he  see 
anything  but  subjects  for  drollery.  The  more  solemn  and  august  the 
theme,  the  more  monkey-like  was  his  grimacing  and  chattering. — 
MACAULAY,  Essays :  Addison. 

In  truth,  of  all  the  intellectual  weapons  which  have  ever  been  wielded 
by  man,  the  most  terrible  was  the  mockery  by  Voltaire.  Bigots  and 
tyrants,  who  had  never  been  moved  by  the  wailing  and  cursing  of  millions, 
turned  pale  at  his  name.  Principles  unassailable  by  reason,  principles 
which  had  withstood  the  fiercest  attacks  of  power,  the  most  valuable 
truths,  the  most  generous  sentiments,  the  noblest  and  most  graceful 
images,  the  purest  reputations,  the  most  august  institutions,  began  to  look 
mean  and  loathsome  as  soon  as  that  withering  smile  was  turned  upon 
them.  To  every  opponent,  however  strong  in  his  cause  and  his  talents, 
in  his  station  and  in  his  character,  who  ventured  to  encounter  the  great 
scoffer,  might  be  addressed  the  caution  which  was  given  of  old  to  the 
Archangel : — 

"  I  forewarn  thee  shun 
His  deadly  arrow  ;  neither  vainly  hope 
To  be  invulnerable  in  those  bright  arms 
Though  temper'd  heavenly ;  for  that  fatal  dint, 
Save  Him  who  reigns  above,  none  can  resist." 

We  cannot  pause  to  recount  how  often  that  rare  talent  was  exercised 
against  rivals  worthy  of  esteem ;  how  often  it  was  used  to  crush  and 
torture  enemies  worthy  only  of  silent  disdain  ;  how  often  it  was  perverted 
to  the  more  noxious  purpose  of  destroying  the  last  solace  of  earthly 
misery,  and  the  last  restraint  on  earthly  power.  Neither  can  we  pause 
to  tell  how  often  it  was  used  to  vindicate  justice,  humanity,  and  toleration, 
the  principles  of  sound  philosophy,  the  principles  of  free  government. — 
Id.,  Ibid. :  Frederic  the  Great. 

This  singular  man,  who  was  a  freethinker  at  London,  a  Cartesian  at 
Versailles,  a  Christian  at  Nancy,  and  an  infidel  at  Berlin.  In  society,  he 
was  alternately  an  Aristippus  and  a  Diogenes.  He  made  pleasure  the 
object  of  his  researches :  he  enjoyed  it,  and  made  it  the  object  of  his 
praise  ;  he  grew  weary  of  it,  and  turned  it  into  ridicule. — ALEXANDER 
CHALMERS,  Biographical  Dictionary. 


VOLTAIRE.  447 

Of  all  the  many  kinds  of  knowledge  possessed  by  Voltaire,  knowledge 
of  the  world  was,  perhaps,  that  for  which  he  was  most  remarkable.  It 
was  that  knowledge  which  secured  to  him  so  vast  an  audience  and  so  lofty 
a  position  ;  and  the  aptitude  for  such  kind  of  knowledge  was  inborn  with 
him  —made  three  parts  of  his  ingenium  or  native  genius.  .  .  .  Voltaire's 
knowledge  of  this  world,  as  exhibited  whether  in  his  life  or  his  writings, 
was  exceedingly  keen  and  sharp ;  and  for  any  knowledge  of  a  world 
beyond  this,  Voltaire  is  the  last  guide  a  man  of  bold  genius  would  follow, 
or  a  man  of  calm  judgment  consult. — LYTTON,  Essavs  :  Knowledge  of  the 
World. 

The  withered  Pontift"  of  Encyclopedism.  .  .  .  The  unbelieving  French 
believe  in  their  Voltaire  ;  and  burst  out  round  him  into  very  curious  Hero- 
worship,  in  that  last  act  of  his  life  when  they  "  stifle  him  under  roses  ". 
It  has  always  seemed  to  me  extremely  curious  this  of  Voltaire.  Truly,  if 
Christianity  be  the  highest  instance  of  Hero-worship,  then  we  may  find 
here  in  Voltaireism  one  of  the  lowest !  He  whose  life  was  that  of  a  kind 
of  Antichrist,  does  again  on  this  side  exhibit  a  curious  contrast.  No 
people  were  ever  so  little  prone  to  admire  at  all  as  those  French  of 
Voltaire.  Persiflage  was  the  character  of  their  whole  mind ;  adoration 
had  nowhere  a  place  in  it.  Yet  see !  The  old  man  of  Ferney  comes  up 
to  Paris ;  an  old,  tottering,  infirm  man  of  eighty-four  years.  They  feel 
that  he  too  is  a  kind  of  Hero ;  that  he  has  spent  his  life  in  opposing  error 
and  injustice,  delivering  Calases,  unmasking  hypocrites  in  high  places  ;  in 
short,  that  lie  too,  though  in  a  strange  way,  has  fought  like  a  valiant  man. 
They  feel  withal  that,  if  persiflage  be  the  great  thing,  there  never  was 
such  a  persifleur.  He  is  the  realised  ideal  of  every  one  of  them  ;  the 
thing  they  are  all  wanting  to  be ;  of  all  Frenchmen  the  most  French. 
He  is  properly  their  god,  such  god  as  they  are  fit  for.  Accordingly  all 
persons,  from  the  Queen  Antoinette  to  the  Douanier  at  the  Porte  St. 
Denis,  do  they  not  worship  him  ? — CARLYLE,  On  Heroes  and  Hero- 
Worship. 

The  fertility  of  Voltaire  is  wonderful,  but  great  part  of  what  he  has 
written  is  so  objectionable  on  the  score  of  religion  or  humanity,  that  even 
his  wit  does  not  furnish  salt  enough  to  keep  from  corruption  the  intel- 
lectual food  he  has  lavished  in  such  abundance. — LORD  JOHN  RUSSELL, 
Introduction  to  Memoirs,  journal,  and  Correspondence  of  Thomas  Moore, 
Vol.  I. 

However  this  may  be,  it  is  chiefly  as  a  literary  phenomenon  that  Vol- 
taire is  now  interesting  to  us.  In  that  light  it  appears  to  the  present 
writer  that  no  inconsiderable  part  of  his  extraordinary  fame  was  owing  to 
the  circumstances  of  the  period,  and  the  conditions  in  which  he  wrote, 
and  has  reasonably  vanished  with  the  lapse  of  time.  That  he  still  retains 
so  eminent  a  position  in  France  is  due,  in  great  measure,  to  those  gifts 
of  expression  which  do  not  much  aid  in  extending  a  writer's  reputation 
beyond  his  own  country.  But,  after  the  winnowings  of  generations,  a 
wide  and  deep  repute  still  remains  to  him  ;  nor  will  any  diminution  which 
it  may  have  suffered  be  without  compensation,  for,  with  the  fading  of  old 
prejudices,  and  with  better  knowledge,  his  name  will  be  regarded  with 
increased  liking  and  respect.  Yet  it  must  not  be  supposed  that  he  is  here 
held  up  as  a  pattern  man.  He  was,  indeed,  an  infinitely  better  one  than 


448  VOLTAIRE. 

the  religious  bigots  of  the  time.  He  believed,  with  far  better  effect  on  his 
practice  than  they  could  boast,  in  a  Supreme  Ruler.  He  was  the  untiring 
and  eloquent  advocate,  at  the  bar  of  the  Unseen,  of  the  rights  of  humanity. 
He  recognised  and  lamented  all  the  evils  permitted  by  Providence.  But 
he  forgot,  except  sometimes  in  theory,  to  return  thanks  for  the  blessings 
which  are  showered  along  with  those  evils  on  the  earth,  and  thus  the 
great  intellect  and  the  high  purpose  are  left  without  the  crowning  grace  of 
reverence. — COLONEL  HAMLEY,  Life  of  Voltaire. 

The  rays  from  Voltaire's  burning  and  far-shining  spirit  no  sooner  struck 
upon  the  genius  of  the  time,  seated  dark  and  dead  like  the  black  stone 
of  Memnon's  statue,  than  the  clang  of  the  breaking  chord  was  heard 
through  Europe,  and  men  awoke  in  new  day  and  more  spacious  air.  The 
sentimentalist  has  proclaimed  him  a  mere  mocker.  To  the  critic  of  the 
schools,  ever  ready  with  compendious  label,  he  is  the  revolutionary- 
destructive.  To  each  alike  of  the  countless  orthodox  sects  his  name  is 
the  symbol  for  the  prevailing  of  the  gates  of  hell.  Erudition  figures  him 
as  shallow  and  a  trifler  ;  culture  condemns  him  for  pushing  his  hatred  of 
spiritual  falsehood  much  too  seriously  ;  Christian  charity  feels  constrained 
to  unmask  a  demon  from  the  depths  of  the  pit.  .  .  .  Voltaire  was  ever  in 
the  front  and  centre  of  the  fight.  His  life  was  not  a  mere  chapter  in  a 
history  of  literature.  He  never  counted  truth  a  treasure  to  be  discreetly 
hidden  in  a  napkin.  He  made  it  a  perpetual  war-cry  and  emblazoned  it 
on  a  banner  that  was  many  a  time  rent,  but  was  never  out  of  the  field. 
.  .  .  Voltaire  was  the  very  eye  of  modern  illumination.  It  was  he  who 
conveyed  to  his  generation  in  a  multitude  of  forms  the  consciousness  at 
once  of  the  power  and  the  rights  of  human  intelligence.  Another  might 
well  have  said  of  him  what  he  magnanimously  said  of  his  famous  con- 
temporary, Montesquieu,  that  humanity  had  lost  its  title-deeds,  and  he 
had  recovered  them. — JOHN  MORLEY,  Life  of  Voltaire. 

Voltaire  is  never  so  good  as  when  he  is  ridiculing  the  cruel  folly  which 
crimps  a  number  of  ignorant  and  innocent  peasants,  dresses  them  up  in 
uniform,  teaches  them  to  march  and  wheel,  and  sends  them  off  to  kill  and 
be  killed  by  another  army  of  peasants,  ignorant  and  innocent  like  them- 
selves, as  a  sacrifice  to  what  is  called  the  honour  of  kings. — GOLDWIX 
SMITH,  Three  English  Statesmen. 

Voltaire,  so  great  in  the  eighteenth  century,  is  still  greater  in  the  nine- 
teenth. The  grave  is  a  crucible.  That  earth,  thrown  on  a  man,  sifts  his 
name,  and  allows  that  name  to  pass  forth  only  purified.  Voltaire  has  lost 
his  false  glory  and  retained  the  true.  To  lose  the  false  is  to  gain.  Vol- 
taire is  neither  a  lyric  poet,  nor  a  comic  poet,  nor  a  tragic  poet ;  he  is 
the  indignant  yet  tender  critic  of  the  old  world ;  he  is  the  mild  reformer 
of  manners ;  he  is  the  man  who  softens  men.  Voltaire,  who  has  lost 
ground  as  a  poet,  has  risen  as  an  apostle.  He  has  done  what  is  good, 
rather  than  what  is  beautiful.  .  .  .  Voltaire  is  common  sense  in  a  con- 
tinual stream.  Excepting  in  literature,  he  is  a  good  judge  in  everything. 
Voltaire  was,  in  spite  of  his  insulters,  almost  adored  during  his  lifetime,; 
he  is  ir  our  days  admired,  now  that  the  true  facts  of  the  case  are  known. 
The  eighteenth  century  saw  his  mind  :  we  see  his  soul. — VICTOR  HUGO, 
William  Shakespeare  (transl.). 


WALLACE,  WALLER.  44g 

SIR  WILLIAM  WALLACE. 
Scotch  Patriot :  1270-1305. 

All  this  may  be,  the  people's  voice  is  odd  ; 
The  Scots  will  fight  for  Wallace  as  for  God. 

— POPK. 

At  WALLACE'S  name,  what  Scottish  blood, 
But  boils  up  in  a  spring-tide  flood  ! 
Oft  have  our  fearless  fathers  strode 

By  WALLACE'S  side. 
Still  pressing  onward,  red-wat-shod, 

Or  glorious  dy'd ! 

— BURNS,  To  William  Simpson. 

Is  there  no  daring  bard  will  rise,  and  tell 
How  glorious  Wallace  stood,  how  hapless  fell  ? 

— Id.,  Scots  Prologue, 

But  never  in  all  her  annals  were  found  together  Shame  and  Scotland. 
Sir  William  Wallace  has  not  left  Shame  one  single  dark  cavern  wherein 
to  hide  her  head. — JOHN  WILSON,  Essays :  Old  North  and  Young  North. 

Wallace's  name  stands  brightly  forward  among  the  foremost  of  men, 
with  "Vasa,  with  the  two  Williams  of  Orange,  with  Washington,  with 
Kosciusko,  with  his  own  more  fortunate  but  less  pure  successor,  Robert 
Bruce. — SIR  JAMES  MACKINTOSH,  History  of  England,  Vol.  I. 

The  instinct  of  the  Scotch  people  has  guided  it  aright  in  choosing 
Wallace  for  its  national  hero.  He  was  the  first  to  assert  freedom  as  a 
national  birthright,  and  amidst  the  despair  of  nobles  and  priests  to  call 
the  people  itself  to  arms. — J.  R.  GREEN,  History  of  England. 

EDMUND  WALLER. 
English  Poet :  1605-1687. 

Parent  of  harmony  in  English  verse, 

Whose  tuneful  Muse  in  sweetest  accents  flows, 

In  couplets  first  taught  straggling  sense  to  close. 

— CHURCHILL,  The  Apology. 
Waller  by  Nature  for  the  Bays  design'd, 
With  force  and  fire,  and  fancy  unconfin'd, 
In  panegyric  does  excel  mankind. 

— ROCHESTER,  An  Allusion. 
Waller  had  numbers,  fancy,  wit,  and  fire ; 
And  Saccharissa  was  his  fond  desire. 

— HALIFAX,  Written  at  Althrop  in  a  blank  leaf  of  Waller's  Poems. 
The  courtly  Waller  next  commands  thy  lays : 
Muse,  tune  thy  verse,  with  art,  to  Waller's  praise. 
While  tender  airs  and  lovely  dames  inspire 
Soft  melting  thoughts,  and  propagate  desire  : 
So  long  shall  Waller's  strains  our  passions  move, 
And  Saccharissa's  beauty  kindle  love. 

— ADDISON,  An  Account  of  the  Greatest  British  Poets. 
29 


450  WALLER,  WALPOLE. 

Waller,  the  Muse  with  heavenly  verse  supplies, 
Smooth  as  the  fair,  and  sparkling  as  their  eyes. 

— ELIJAH  FENTON,  An  Epistle  to  Mr.  Southerne. 

O  Waller !  Petrarch  !  you  who  tun'd  the  lyre 
To  the  soft  notes  of  elegant  desire. 

— LORD  LYTTLETON,  Elegy. 

Of  the  praise  of  Waller,  though  much  may  be  taken  away,  much  will 
remain  ;  for  it  cannot  be  denied  that  he  added  something  to  our  elegance 
of  diction,  and  something  to  our  propriety  of  thought ;  and  to  him  may 
be  applied  what  Tasso  said,  with  equal  spirit  and  justice,  of  himself  and 
Guarini,  when,  having  perused  the  Pastor  Fido,  he  cried  out,  "  If  he  had 
not  read  Aminta,  he  had  not  excelled  it". — DR.  JOHNSON,  Lives  of  the 
Poets:  Waller. 

HORACE  WALPOLE. 
Earl  of  Orford :  1717-1797. 

The  faults  of  Horace  Walpole's  head  and  heart  are  indeed  sufficiently 
glaring.  His  writings,  it  is  true,  rank  as  high  S.mong  the  delicacies  of  in- 
tellectual epicures  as  the  Strasburg  pies  among  the  dishes  described  in 
the  Almanack  des  Gourmands.  But  as  the  pdte-de-fois-gras  owes  its  ex- 
cellence to  the  diseases  of  the  wretched  animal  which  furnishes  it,  and  would 
be  good  for  nothing  if  it  were  not  made  of  livers  preternaturally  swollen, 
so  none  but  an  unhealthy  and  disorganised  mind  could  have  produced  such 
literary  luxuries  as  the  works  of  Walpole.  ...  He  was,  unless  we  have 
formed  a  very  erroneous  judgment  of  his  character,  the  most  eccentric, 
the  most  artificial,  the  most  fastidious,  the  most  capricious  of  men.  His 
mind  was  a  bundle  of  inconsistent  whims  and  affectations.  .  .  .  The  con-* 
formation  of  his  mind  was  such  that  whatever  was  little  seemed  to  him 
great,  and  whatever  was  great  seemed  to  him  little.  Serious  business  was 
a  trifle  to  him,  and  trifles  were  his  serious  business.  .  .  .  What  then  is 
the  charm,  the  irresistible  charm,  of  Walpole's  writings  ?  It  consists,  we 
think,  in  the  art  of  amusing  without  exciting.  He  never  convinces  the 
reason,  or  filh  the  imagination,  or  touches  the  heart;  but  he  keeps  the 
mind  of  the  reader  constantly  attentive,  and  constantly  entertained. — 
MACAULAY,  Essays  :  Walpole.  n 

Our  own  Horace  Walpole's  knowledge  of  the  world  is  much  more  ex- 
pansive than  that  of  St.  Simon  or  Rochefoucauld,  and  is  much  less  deep 
in  proportion  to  its  width.  It  takes  a  more  varied  survey  of  manner  and 
humours,  embracing  more  of  the  active  and  serious  employments  of  that  life 
which  is  not  spent  in  patrician  salons  and  royal  anterooms. — LYTTON, 
Essays  :  Knowledge  of  the  World. 

Horace  Walpole  was  a  man  of  the  world  and  a  courtier ;  he  had  quick 
natural  parts  and  much  acquired  discernment.  No  elevated  thoughts,  no 
lofty  aspirations,  no  patristic  resolves,  are  visible  in  his  writings.  Political 
insouciance  was  his  prevailing  habitude  of  mind ;  an  invincible  tendency 
to  laissez-aller  the  basis  of  his  character.  But  he  did  not  lie  by  and  ob- 
serve events,  like  Metternich  and  Talleyrand,  to  become  imbued  with  their 
tendency,  and  ultimately  gain  the  mastery  of  them  ;  he  let  them  take  their 
course,  and  in  reality  cared  very  little  for  the  result.  He  was  an  epicurean, 


WALPOLE.  451 

not  a  stoic,  in  politics.  His  character  approaches  very  nearly  to  that 
which  common  report  has  assigned  to  Lord  Melbourne. —  SIR  ARCHIBALD 
ALISON,  Essays  :  British  History,  etc. 

The  history  of  England  throughout  a  very  large  segment  of  the 
eighteenth  century,  is  simply  a  synonym  for  the  works  of  Horace  Wal- 
pole. .  .  .  Walpole,  in  fact,  represents  a  common  creed  amongst  comfort- 
able but  clear-headed  men  of  his  time.  It  was  the  strange  mixture  of 
scepticism  and  conservatism  which  is  exemplified  in  such  men  as  Hume 
and  Gibbon.  He  was  at  heart  a  Voltairian,  and,  like  his  teacher,  con- 
founded all  religious  and  political  beliefs  under  the  name  of  superstition. 
— LESLIE  STEPHEN,  Hours  in  a  Library,  Second  Series. 

SIR  ROBERT  WALPOLE. 
Earl  of  Orford  :  1676-1745. 

,See  Britain,  see  thy  Walpole  shine  from  far, 
His  azure  ribbon,  and  his  radiant  star ; 
A  star  that,  with  auspicious  beams,  shall  guide 
Thy  vessel  safe,  through  fortune's  roughest  tide. 

— YOUNG,  The  Instalment. 

Few  men  ever  reached  and  maintained  for  so  many  years  the  highest 
station  which  the  citizen  of  a  free  state  can  hold,  who  have  enjoyed  more 
power  than  Sir  Robert  Walpole,  and  have  left  behind  them  less  just  cause 
of  blame,  or  more  monuments  of  the  wisdom  and  virtue  for  which  his 
country  has  to  thank  him. — LORD  BROUGHAM,  Statesmen  of  the  Time  of 
•George  III.,  Vol.  II. 

Lord  Dover  seems  to  have  been  enthusiastic  on  the  same  side,  and  goes 
so  far  as  to  call  Sir  Robert  "  the  glory  of  the  Whigs  ".  Sir  Robert  deserved 
this  high  eulogium,  we  think,  as  little  as  he  deserved  the  abusive  epithets 
which  have  often  been  coupled  with  his  name.  A  fair  character  of  him 
still  remains  to  be  drawn :  and,  whenever  it  shall  be  drawn,  it  will  be 
equally  unlike  the  portrait  by  Coxe  and  the  portrait  by  Smollett.  He  had, 
undoubtedly,  great  talents  and  great  virtues.  He  was  not,  indeed,  like 
the  leaders  of  the  party  which  opposed  his  Government,  a  brilliant  orator. 
He  was  not  a  profound  scholar,  like  Carteret,  or  a  wit  and  a  fine  gentleman, 
like  Chesterfield.  In  all  these  respects  his  deficiencies  were  remarkable. 
His  literature  consisted  of  a  scrap  or  two  of  Horace  and  an  anecdote  or 
two  from  the  end  of  the  Dictionary.  His  knowledge  of  history  was  so 
limited  that,  in  the  great  debate  on  the  Excise  Bill,  he  was  forced  to  ask 
the  Attorney-General  Yorke  who  Empson  and  Dudley  were.  His  manners 
were  a  little  too  coarse  and  boisterous  even  for  the  age  of  Westerns  and 
Topehalls.  When  he  ceased  to  talk  of  politics,  he  could  talk  of  nothing 
but  women  :  and  he  dilated  on  his  favourite  theme  with  a  freedom  which 
shocked  even  that  plain-spoken  generation,  and  which  was  quite  unsuited 
to  his  age  and  station. — MACAULAY,  Essays:  Horace  Walpole. 

No  English  minister  had  a  sounder  judgment  in  emergencies  or  a 
•greater  skill  in  reading  and  in  managing  men. — W.  E.  H.  LECKY,  History 
.of  England,  Vol.  I. 


452  WALPOLE,  WALTON,  WASHINGTON. 

For  the  greater  part  of  his  life  Walpole  had  been  behind  the  scenes ; 
he  had  seen  the  actresses  paint  and  powder  and  storm  at  each  other ;  he 
had  seen  the  actors  learn  their  parts,  pad  their  limbs  and  set  their  features  ; 
he  had  seen  the  mechanism  of  the  performances,  and  how  the  art  had  been 
acquired  which  was  to  hide  the  art ;  and  therefore  we  cannot  expect  from 
him  the  same  opinion  of  the  play  and  of  the  players  as  from  the  audience 
which  watches  the  stage  from  the  front  of  the  house.  It  is  only  those  in 
power  who  can  really  know  the  heights  to  which  man  can  rise,  and  the 
depths  into  which  he  can  fall.  .  .  .  Human  nature  was  to  Walpole  what 
the  human  body  is  to  the  anatomist — he  dissected  its  different  component 
parts,  and  knew  the  exact  value  and  comparative  merits  of  each.  During 
his  leadership  of  the  House  of  Commons  no  statesman  ever  better  suc- 
ceeded in  commanding  the  adhesion  of  his  followers  and  in  suppressing 
the  spite  of  personal  feuds.  High  principles,  a  sound  morality,  greatness 
of  sentiment,  he  did  not  possess ;  he  bribed,  he  cajoled,  he  intrigued,  he 
resorted  to  every  political  trick  within  the  compass  of  parliamentary  tactics, 
and  the  result  was  that  his  tenure  of  office  is  among  the  longest  and  most 
successful  on  record.  Yet  lax  as  we  should  now  consider  his  political 
dealings,  his  personal  honour  throughout  his  career  was  unsullied. — A.  E. 
EWALD,  Representative  Statesmen,  Vol.  I. 

IZAAC  WALTON. 
English  Author :  1593-1683. 

Methinks  their  very  names  shine  still  and  bright ; 

Apart,  like  glow-worms  on  a  summer  night ; 

Or  lonely  tapers  when  from  far  they  fling 

A  guiding  ray ;  or  seen,  like  stars  on  high, 

Satellites  burning  in  a  lucid  ring 

Around  meek  Walton's  heavenly  memory. 

— WORDSWORTH,  Walton's  Book  of  Lives. 

NEVILL,  EARL  OF  WARWICK. 
English  Courtier :  1420-1471. 

We  might  not,  however,  hold  for  ourselves  that  the  State  is  a  church- 
maker  as  the  Earl  of  Warwick  was  a  king-maker. — GLADSTONE,  Gleanings* 
Vol.  III. 

GEORGE  WASHINGTON. 
First  President  of  the   United  States :  1732-1799. 

Where  may  the  wearied  eye  repose 
When  gazing  on  the  Great, 
Where  neither  guilty  glory  glows, 
Nor  despicable  state  ? 
Yes — one — the  first — the  last — the  best — 
The  Cincinnatus  of  the  West, 
Whom  envy  dared  not  hate, 
Bequeath'd  the  name  of  WASHINGTON, 
To  make  man  blush  there  was  but  one ! 

— BVRON,  Ode  to  Napoleon^ 


WASHINGTON. 


453 


While  Washington's  a  watchword,  such  as  ne'er 
Shall  sink  while  there's  an  echo  left  to  air. 

— BYRON,  The  Age  of  Bronze. 

Where  Washington  hath  left 

His  aweful  memory 
A  light  for  after  time  ! 

— SOUTHEY,  Ode  written  during  the  War  with  America. 

Washington  !  said  the  Monarch,  well  hast  thou  spoken  and  truly, 
Just  to  thyself  and  to  me.     On  them  is  the  guilt  of  the  contest, 
Who,  for  wicked  ends,  with  foul  arts  of  faction  and  falsehood, 
Kindled  and  fed  the  flame :  but  verily  they  have  their  guerdon. 
Thou  and  I  are  free  from  offence.     And  would  that  the  nations, 
Learning  of  us,  would  lay  aside  all  wrongful  resentment, 
All  injurious  thought,  and  honouring  each  in  the  other 
Kindred  courage  and  virtue,  and  cognate  knowledge  and  freedom, 
Live  in  brotherhood  wisely  conjoin'd.     We  set  the  example. 

— Id.,  A  Vision  of  Judgment. 

Vain  is  Empire's  mad  temptation  ! 

Not  for  him  an  earthly  crown ! 
He  whose  sword  hath  freed  a  nation ! 

Strikes  the  offered  sceptre  down. 
See  the  throneless  Conqueror  seated, 

Ruler  by  a  people's  choice  ; 
See  the  Patriot's  task  completed ; 

Hear  the  Father's  dying  voice. 

— OLIVER  W.  HOLMES,  Ode  for  Washington's  Birthday. 

Surely  Washington  was  the  greatest  man  that  ever  lived  in  this  world 
uninspired  by  divine  wisdom  and  unsustained  by  supernatural  virtue. — 
LORD  BROUGHAM,  Statesmen  of  the  Reign  of  George  III.,  Vol.  III. 

England  missed  the  sobriety,  the  self-command,  the  perfect  soundness 
of  judgment,  the  perfect  rectitude  of  intention,  to  which  the  history  of 
revolutions  furnishes  no  parallel,  or  furnishes  a  parallel  in  Washington 
alone. — MACAULAY,  Essays:  Joint  Hampdcn. 

Washington,  the  perfect  citizen. — EMERSON,  Society  and  Solicitude: 
Old  Age. 

Washington  served  us  chiefly  by  his  sublime  moral  qualities.  To  him 
belonged  the  proud  distinction  of  being  the  leader  in  a  revolution,  without 
awakening  one  doubt  or  solicitude  as  to  the  spotless  purity  of  his  purpose. 
His  was  the  glory  of  being  the  brightest  manifestation  of  the  spirit  which 
reigned  in  his  country ;  and  in  this  way  he  became  a  source  of  energy,  a 
bond  of  union,  the  centre  of  an  enlightened  people's  confidence. 

In  such  a  revolution  as  that  of  France,  Washington  would  have  been 
nothing ;  for  that  sympathy  which  subsisted  between  him  and  his  fellow- 
citizens,  and  which  was  the  secret  of  his  power,  would  have  been  wanting. 
By  an  instinct  which  is  unerring,  we  call  Washington,  with  grateful 
reverence,  the  Father  of  his  country,  but  not  its  Saviour.  A  people  which 
wants  a  saviour,  which  does  not  possess  an  earnest  and  pledge  of  freedom 
in  its  own  heart,  is  not  yet  ready  to  be  free. — DR.  W.  E.  CHANNING,  On 
the  Life  and  Character  of  Napoleon. 


454     WASHINGTON,  WATTS,  DUKE  OF  WELLINGTON. 

Washington  is  to  my  mind  the  purest  figure  in  history. — GLADSTONE. 

In  Washington,  America  .  .  .  found  a  leader  who  could  be  induced  by 
no  earthly  motive  to  tell  a  falsehood,  or  to  break  an  engagement,  or  to 
commit  any  dishonourable  act. — W.  E.  H.  LECKY,  History  of  England, 
Vol.  I. 

DR.  ISAAC  WATTS. 
Nonconformist  Divine  and  Author:  1674-1748. 

Thy  soul,  great  Watts  !  forsakes  the  earth, 

And  scorns  the  glitt'ring  toy ; 
While  conscious  of  her  higher  birth 

She  seeks  immortal  joy. 

— SAMUEL  BOYSE,  Written  in  My.  Watts'  Horce  Lyricce. 

Few  men  have  left  behind  such  purity  of  character,  or  such  monuments 
of  laborious  piety.  He  has  provided  instruction  for  all  ages  ;  from  those 
who  are  lisping  their  first  lessons,  to  the  enlightened  readers  of  Malebranche 
and  Locke  ;  he  has  left  neither  corporeal  nor  spiritual  nature  unexamined  ; 
he  has  taught  the  art  of  reasoning,  and  the  science  of  the  stars.  His 
character,  therefore,  must  be  formed  from  the  multiplicity  and  diversity 
of  his  attainments,  rather  than  from  any  single  performance  ;  for  it  would 
not  be  safe  to  claim  for  him  the  highest  rank  in  any  single  denomination 
of  literary  dignity ;  yet  perhaps  there  was  nothing  in  which  he  would  not 
have  excelled,  if  he  had  not  divided  his  powers  to  different  pursuits.  .  .  . 
It  is  sufficient  for  Watts  to  have  done  better  than  others  what  no  man  has 
done  well. — DR.  JOHNSON,  Lives  of  the  Poets  :  Watts. 

ARTHUR  WELLESLEY,  DUKE  OF  WELLINGTON. 
Field  Marshal  and  Statesman  :  1769-1852. 

Such  fearful  odds 

Were  balanced  by  Sir  Arthur's  master  mind 
And  by  the  British  heart. 

— SOUTHEY,  Inscription  :  Talavcra. 

Next  with  loose  rein  and  careless  canter  view 
Our  man  of  men,  the  Prince  of  Waterloo  ; 
O'er  the  firm  brow  the  hat  as  firmly  prest, 
The  firm  shape  rigid  in  the  button'd  vest ; 
Within — the  iron  which  the  fire  has  proved, 
And  the  close  Sparta  of  a  mind  unmoved  ! 

— LYTTON,  The  Nezv  Tinion. 

Bury  the  Great  Duke 

With  an  empire's  lamentation, 

Let  us  bury  the  Great  Duke 

To  the  noise  of  the  mourning  of  a  mighty  nation. 

So  great  a  soldier  taught  us  there, 
What  long-enduring  hearts  could  do 
In  that  world-earthquake,  Waterloo  ! 

— TENNYSON,  Ode  on  the  Death  of  the  Duke  of  Wellington. 


DUKE  OF  WELLINGTON.  455 

How  could  a  thousand  words  of  all  the  names  that  could  be  named  speak 
so  powerfully,  and  even  if  I  spoke  with  the  tongue  of  an  angel — as  if  I 
mention  one  word— Sir  Arthur  Wellesley,  Duke  of  Wellington,  the  hero 
of  a  hundred  fields,  in  all  of  which  his  banner  was  raised  in  triumph  ! 
Who  never — bear  witness,  Europe  !  bear  witness,  Asia  ! — advanced  but  to 
cover  his  arms  with  glory ;  the  captain  who  never  advanced  but  to  be 
victorious;  the  mightier  captain  who  never  retreated,  but  to  eclipse  the 
glory  of  his  advances,  by  the  yet  harder  task  of  unwearied  patience, 
indomitable  to  lassitude — by  the  inexhaustible  resources  of  transcendent 
skill,  showing  the  wonders,  the  marvels  of  a  moral  courage  never  yet 
subdued. — LORD  BROUGHAM,  Speech  at  Banquet  to  the  Duke  of  Wellirg- 
ton,  August,  1839. 

Wellington  belongs  to  the  latter,  and  by  far  the  highest  class  of  il- 
lustrious characters.  He  was  not  a  great  man  because  he  was  a  great 
general,  but  a  great  general  because  he  was  a  great  man.  He  would  have 
been  equally  great  in  anything  else  which  he  undertook.  It  is  reported 
that  he  has  said  "  that  the  native  bent  of  his  mind  was  towards  finance 
and  civil  government  rather  than  military  affairs  ".  It  is  certain  that  when 
he  took  his  seat  at  the  board  of  the  cabinet  council,  it  was  the  vigour  of 
thought  and  perfect  command  of  every  subject  which  came  before  them, 
even  more  than  his  military  fame,  which  won  such  general  respect,  and 
ultimately  raised  him,  in  difficult  times,  to  the  highest  place  in  the  govern- 
ment. .  .  .  Napoleon  placed  himself  at  the  head  of  Europe,  and  desolated 
it  for  fifteen  years  with  his  warfare  :  Europe  placed  Wellington  at  the  head 
of  its  armies,  and  he  gave  it  thirty  years  of  unbroken  peace.  The  former 
was  in  the  end  led  to  ruin  while  blindly  following  the  meteor  of  worldly 
greatness ;  the  latter  was  unconsciously  led  to  final  greatness  while  only 
following  the  star  of  public  duty.  Wellington  was  a  warrior,  but  he  was 
so  only  to  become  a  pacificator:  he  has  seen  shed  the  blood  of  men,  but 
it  was  only  to  stop  the  shedding  of  human  blood :  he  has  borne  aloft  the 
sword  of  conquest,  but  it  was  only  to  plant  in  its  stead  the  emblems  of 
mercy. — SIR  ARCHIBALD  ALISON,  Essays  :  Wellington. 

THE  DUKE  OF  WELLINGTON  !  .  .  .  May  my  tongue  cleave  to  the  roof 
of  my  mouth — or  wag  in  mumbling  palsy — if  ever  my  breath  seek  to  stain 
the  lustre  of  that  glorious  name.  He  saved  England.  .  .  .  Till  the  day 
of  my  death  will  I  raise  up  my  feeble  voice  in  honour  of  the  Hero  of 
Waterloo.  He  saved  Europe — the  world.  Twin-stars  in  England's  sky, 
immortally  shall  burn  the  deified  spirits  of  Nelson  and  Wellington.  .  .  . 
In  war,  Wellington,  the  Gaul-humbler,  is  a  greater  name,  immeasurably 
greater,  than  Alfred,  the  Dane-destroyer. — JOHN  WILSON,  Nodes  Ambro- 
siance,  Vol.  II. 

Wellington,  the  perfect  soldier. — EMERSON,  Society  and  Solicitude  :  Old 
Age. 

Of  all  the  Heroes  of  Duty  whose  names  history  proudly  cherishes  none 
occupies  a  more  conspicuous  position  on  the  list  than  England's  greatest 
General.  With  Wellington  duty  was  the  absorbing  principle  of  his  life. 
It  was  the  guiding  star  of  all  his  actions.  When  he  said  it  was  "his 
duty  "  to  proceed  in  any  particular  course,  men  knew  it  to  be  worse  than 
useless  to  endeavour  to  turn  him  from  his  purpose.  Throughout  his  dis- 
patches, throughout  his  orders,  throughout  his  vast  private  correspondence, 
it  is  curious  to  observe  how  often  the  word  "  duty  "  occurs.  Nor  was  there 


456  DUKE  OF  WELLINGTON,  WESLEY. 

in  this  love  of  Wellington  for  duty  anything  of  the  courtier  or  the  aspir- 
ant :  he  did  not  set  before  him  fame,  glory,  or  reward ;  he  did  his  duty 
because  it  was  his  duty — simply  because  it  was  the  right  thing  to  do.  .  .  . 
In  summing  up  the  biography  of  the  Duke  of  Wellington,  both  as  soldier 
and  as  statesman,  we  can  arrive  at  no  other  conclusion  than  that  he  was 
a  great  Englishman — haughty,  proud  with  all  the  faults  and  virtues  of  his 
orders,  but  the  pink  of  honour,  most  just  in  the  disposal  of  his  patronage, 
indifferent  to  public  applause  or  public  hate,  yet  ever  sensitive  to  the 
verdict  of  his  own  conscience,  brave,  truthful,  straightforward,  patriotic. — 
A.  C.  EWALD,  Representative  Statesmen,  Vol.  II. 

The  more  deeply  and  thoroughly,  we  examine  the  Duke's  character, 
the  more  we  admire  it.  To  those  who  have  the  fatal  gift  of  idealization 
such  a  character  as  the  Duke  of  Wellington's  offers  repose.  For  once 
they  find  their  Ideal  exists.  To  those  who  have  the  sad  talent  of  minute 
and  perspicuous  observation,  the  Duke's  conduct  is  also  satisfactory.  To 
those,  and  they  are  but  few,  who  have  the  misfortune  to  possess  both  these 
qualities  ;  who  "  walk  in  a  region  that  they  find  almost  uninhabited  "  ;  it  is 
a  consolation  to  believe  that  Human  Nature  has  for  once  reached  such  per- 
fection. .  .  .  This  Globe  has  produced  three  beings,  whose  names  will 
only  perish  when  the  Earth  itself  shall  be  dissolved  into  its  elements ;  a 
POET,  an  ARTIST,  and  a  MAN  :  of  these  BRITAIN  claims  two  ;  ITALY  one  : 
SHAKESPEARE  the  POET  ;  MICHAEL  ANGELO  the  ARTIST  ;  WELLINGTON 
the  MAN. — SIR  WILLIAM  FRASER,  Words  on  Wellington. 

The  place  I  should  be  inclined  to  assign  to  Wellington  as  a  general 
would  be  one  in  the  very  first  rank — equal,  if  not  superior,  to  that  given 
to  Napoleon.  In  estimating  the  comparative  merits  of  these  illustrious 
rivals,  it  may  be  conceded  that  the  schemes  of  the  French  Emperor  were 
more  comprehensive,  his  genius  more  dazzling,  and  his  imagination  more 
vivid  than  Wellington's.  On  the  other  hand,  the  latter  excelled  in  that 
coolness  of  judgment  which  Napoleon  himself  described  as  "  the  foremost 
quality  in  a  general  ". — GENERAL  LORD  ROBERTS,  The  Rise  of  Wellington. 

JOHN  WESLEY. 

Founder  of  Methodism  :   1703-1791. 

Reverend  in  comely  mien,  of  aspect  mild  and  benignant, 
There,  too,  Wesley  I  saw  and  knew,  whose  zeal  apostolic, 
Though  with  error  alloy'd,  hath  on  earth  its  merited  honour, 
As  in  Heaven  its  reward. 

— SOUTHEY,  A  Vision  of  Judgment :   Worthies  of  the  Georgian  Age. 

I  look  upon  the  whole  world  as  my  parish. — JOHN  WESLEY. 

I  hear  my  son  John  has  the  honour  of  being  styled  the  Father  of  the 
Holy  Club.  If  it  be  so,  I  am  sure  I  must  be  the  grandfather  of  it,  and  I 
need  not  say  that  I  had  rather  any  of  my  sons  should  be  so  dignified  and 
distinguished  than  have  the  title  His  Holiness. — REV.  SAMUEL  WESLEY. 

Mr.  Wesley's  conversation  is  good.  He  talks  well  on  any  subject.  I 
could  converse  with  him  all  night. — DR.  JOHNSON  in  BOSWELL'S  'Life. 

The  history  of  men  who  have  been  prime  agents  in  those  great  moral 
and  intellectual  revolutions  which  from  time  to  time  take  place  among 


}\'I'SLEY.  457 

mankind,  is  not  less  important  than  that  of  statesmen  and  conquerors. 
If  it  has  not  to  treat  of  actions  wherewith  the  world  has  rung  from  side 
to  side,  it  appeals  to  the  higher  part  of  our  nature,  and  may  perhaps  excite 
more  salutary  feelings,  a  worthier  interest,  and  wiser  meditations.  The 
Emperor  Charles  V.,  and  his  rival  of  France,  appear  at  this  day  infinitely 
insignificant,  if  we  compare  them  with  Luther  and  Loyola  ;  and  there  may 
come  a  time  when  the  name  of  Wesley  will  be  more  generally  known,  and 
in  remoter  regions  of  the  globe,  than  that  of  Frederick  or  of  Catharine. 
For  the  works  of  such  men  survive  them,  and  continue  to  operate,  when 
nothing  remains  of  worldly  ambition  but  the  memory  of  its  vanity  and  its 
guilt. — ROBERT  SOUTHEY.  Life  of  Wesley,  Vol.  I. 

John  Wesley,  the  Ignatius  Loyola  of  the  English  Church.  .  .  .  If  Louis 
XIV.  could  say  with  truth  UEtat  c'est  moi,  with  even  greater  accuracy 
•could  Wesley  claim  the  Methodist  body  as  his  own. — FRANCIS  HITCHMAN, 
Eighteenth  Century  Essays  :  The  Father  of  Methodism. 

An  institution  is  the  lengthened  shadow  of  one  man  ;  .  .  .  Methodism 
of  Wesley. — EMERSON,  Essays  :  Self -Reliance. 

The  Life  of  Wesley  (Southey's)  will  probably  live.  Defective  as  it  is,  it 
•contains  the  only  popular  account  of  a  most  remarkable  moral  revolution, 
and  of  a  man  whose  eloquence  and  logical  acuteness  might  have  made 
him  eminent  in  literature,  whose  genius  for  government  was  not  inferior  to 
that  of  Richelieu,  and  who,  whatever  his  errors  may  have  been,  devoted 
all  his  powers,  in  defiance  of  obloquy  and  derision,  to  what  he  sincerely 
considered  as  the  highest  good  of  his  species. — MACAULAY,  Essays  : 
Southey's  Colloquies. 

He  was  an  enthusiast  of  no  vulgar  kind :  as  Nelson  was  an  enthusiast 
for  his  country,  so  was  John  Wesley  for  religion.  Where  the  highest 
interests  of  men  were  concerned,  Wesley  made  no  account  of  precedent, 
or  public  opinion,  or  maxims  of  human  or  even  of  ecclesiastical  preced- 
•ence. — ALEXANDER  KNOX. 

The  robust  energy  of  Wesley  and  Whitfield.— W.  E.  H.  LECKY,  History 
#f  England,  Vol.  I. 

In  the  beginnings  of  Methodism  there  was  something  of  the  grandeur 
and  simplicity  of  Early  Christianity,  or  if  that  is  too  strong  a  comparison, 
•of  the  foundation  of  the  Mendicant  Orders. — FRANCIS  DE  PRESSENSE, 
Cardinal  Manning  (transl.). 

If  ever  a  good  Protestant  has  been  practically  canonised,  it  has  been 
John  Wesley !  It  would  be  strange  indeed  if  his  name  was  not  well 
known.  .  .  .  Let  us  thank  God  for  what  John  Wesley  was,  and  not  keep 
poring  over  his  deficiencies,  and  only  talking  of  what  he  was  not.  Whether 
we  like  it  or  not,  John  Wesley  was  a  mighty  instrument  in  God's  hand 
for  good  ;  and,  next  to  George  Whitfield,  was  the  first  and  foremost 
evangelist  of  England  a  hundred  years  ago. — BISHOP  J.  C.  RYLE,  English 
Leaders  of  the  Last  Century. 

Not  Mark  Anthony,  not  Charles  the  Twelfth,  not  Napoleon,  ever  went 
through  such  physical  suffering  for  the  love  of  war,  or  for  the  conqueror's 
ambition,  as  Wesley  was  accustomed  to  undergo  for  the  sake  of  preaching 
at  the  right  time  and  in  the  right  place  to  some  crowd  of  ignorant  and 
obscure  men,  the  conversion  of  whom  could  bring  him  neither  fame  nor 


458  WESLEY. 

fortune.  .  .  .  Wesley  was  as  completely  in  command  of  his  body  of 
missionaries  as  the  general  of  the  order  of  Jesuits  is  of  those  over  whom' 
he  is  called  to  exercise  control.  The  humblest  of  the  Wesleyan  preachers 
caught  something,  caught  indeed  very  much,  of  the  energy,  the  courage,, 
the  devotion,  the  self-sacrifice,  of  their  great  leader. — JUSTIN  MCCARTHY, 
History  of  the  Four  Georges,  Vol.  II. 

How  truly  it  has  been  said  by  a  writer  in  the  British  Quarterly,  that 
the  most  romantic  lives  of  the  saints  of  the  Roman  Catholic  calendar  do 
not  present  a  more  startling  succession  of  incidents  than  those  which 
meet  us  in  the  life  and  labours  of  Wesley.  Blessed  Raymond,  of  Pegna- 
fort,  spread  his  cloak  upon  the  sea  to  transport  him  across  the  water, 
sailing  one  hundred  and  sixty  miles  in  six  hours,  and  entering  the  convent 
through  closed  doors !  The  devout  and  zealous  Francis  Xavier  spent 
three  whole  days  in  two  different  places  at  the  same  time,  preaching  all 
the  while  !  Rome  shines  out  in  transactions  like  these  :  Wesley  does  not ; 
but  he  seems  to  have  been  almost  ubiquitous,  and  he  moves  with  a  rapidity 
reminding  us  of  that  flying  angel  who  had  the  everlasting  Gospel  to  preach,, 
and  he  shines  alike  in  his  conflicts  with  nature  and  the  still  wilder  tempests 
caused  by  the  passions  of  men.  We  read  of  his  travelling,  through  the 
long  wintry  hours,  two  hundred  and  eighty  miles  on  horseback  in  six  days  ; 
it  was  a  wonderful  feat  in  those  times.  When  Wesley  first  began  his 
itinerancy  there  were  no  turnpikes  in  the  country  ;  but  before  he  closed 
his  career,  he  had  probably  paid  more,  says  Dr.  Southey,  for  turnpikes 
than  any  other  man  in  England,  for  no  other  man  in  England  travelled  so 
much. — E.  PAXTON  HOOD,  Vignettes  of  the  Great  Revival. 

What  deathful  torpor  would  have  succeeded  the  shamelessness  of  the 
Restoration  epoch  in  the  eighteenth  century  but  for  John  Wesley  ! — F.  W. 
FARRAR,  Social  and  Present-Day  Questions. 

The  heart  religion  of  John  Wesley,  the  everlasting  yea  of  Carlyle. — W.. 
S.  LILLY,  Four  English  Humourists. 

The  Christ  of  the  Cross  and  of  the  Throne  has  received  gifts  of  men  for 
men,  some  apostles  and  prophets,  and  some  pastors  and  evangelists.  And 
of  those  men  He  has  in  His  grace  bestowed  in  these  later  centuries,  John 
Wesley  holds  a  place  as  primary  as  it  is  arresting,  and  as  unchallenged  as 
it  is  immeasurably  and  prophetically  fruitful.  He  is  the  chief  prophet  of 
the  eighteenth  century.  The  Prophetism  of  the  New  Testament  in  all 
its  sublime  qualities  and  successes  reaches  its  maximum  in  him,  and  places 
him  at  the  spring  head  of  the  spiritual  life  of  our  modern  England.  .  .  . 
No  man  with  an  eye  for  spiritual  facts  can  look  into  Wesley's  history 
without  seeing  God ;  and  he  who  looks  continuously  is  likely  to  feel,  as 
Newton  did  after  looking  at  the  sun,  that  the  image  of  God  is  so  burned 
into  his  soul  that  he  can  see  nothing  else. — DR.  JOHN  CLIFFORD,  Sermon 
preached  at  the  Wesley  Centenary  (1891). 

Two  great  men  in  the  eighteenth  century  were  contemporaries.  There 
is  not  much  interval  between  the  dates  of  their  respective  deaths, — Vol- 
taire and  Wesley.  You  trace  the  influence  of  Voltaire  through  the 
French  Revolution — for  that  Revolution  was  practically  originated  by 
him — that  influence  is  seen  to-day  in  the  legislation,  in  the  government, 
in  the  morals,  in  the  irreligion  of  France.  The  same  description  can  be 
applied  to  Wesley.  We  trace  his  history  through  the  same  period  of 


WESLEY,  WHISTON,  WHITE,  WHITFIELD.  459. 

time,  and  we  see  his  influence  to-day  in  the  legislation,  the  government, 
the  morals,  and  the  religion  of  Great  Britain. — SIR  HENRY  H.  FOWLER, 
Address  at  the  Wesley  Centenary  (1891). 

The  Rev.  John  Wesley  was  a  distinguished  man,  if  ever  there  was  one, 
and  his  name  is  associated  with  a  movement  certainly  as  remarkable  as, 
and  a  great  deal  more  useful  than,  the  one  connected  with  the  name  of 
Newman.  Wesley's  great  missionary  tours  in  Devon  and  Cornwall,  and 
the  wild,  remote  parts  of  Lancashire,  lack  no  single  element  of  sublimity. 
To  this  day  the  memories  of  those  apostolic  journeys  are  green  and 
precious,  and  a  source  of  strength  and  joy :  the  portrait  of  the  eager 
preacher  hangs  up  in  almost  every  miner's  cottage,  whilst  his  name  is 
pronounced  with  reverence  by  a  hundred  thousand  lips.— AUGUSTINE 
BIRRELL,  Res  Judicata.'. 

WILLIAM  WHISTON. 
English  Theologian  and  Mathematician  :  1667-1752. 

Whiston  perhaps  in  Euclid  may  succeed, 
But  shall  I  trust  him  to  reform  my  creed  ? 

— ELIJAH  FENTON,  An  Epistle  to  Thomas  Lombard,  Esq 

HENRY  KIRKE  WHITE. 
English  Poet:  1785-1806. 

Unhappy  White !  while  life  was  in  its  spring, 
And  thy  young  muse  just  waved  her  joyous  wing, 
The  spoiler  swept  the  soaring  lyre  away 
Which  else  had  sounded  an  immortal  lay. 
Oh !  what  a  noble  heart  was  here  undone, 
When  Science'  self  destroy'd  her  favourite  son  ! 
Yes,  she  too  much  indulged  thy  fond  pursuit ; 
She  sow'd  the  seeds  but  death  has  reap'd  the  fruit. 

— BYRON,  English  Bards  and  Scotch  Reviewers. 

Not  alone  of  the  Muses 

But  by  the  Virtues  loved,  his  soul  in  its  youthful  aspirings 
Sought  by  the  Holy  Hill,  and  his  thirst  was  for  Siloa's  waters. 

— SOUTHEY,  A  Vision  of  Judgment. 

GEORGE  WHITFIELD. 
English  Preacher  and  Revivalist :  1714-1770. 

Leuconomus  (beneath  well-sounding  Greek 
I  slur  the  name  a  poet  must  not  speak) 
Stood  pilloried  on  infamy's  high  stage, 
And  bore  the  pelting  scorn  of  half  an  age  ; 
The  very  butt  of  slander,  and  the  blot 
For  every  dart  that  malice  ever  shot. 

Now,  Truth,  perform  thine  office ;  waft  aside 
The  curtain  drawn  by  prejudice  and  pride, 


460  WHITFIELD. 

Reveal  (the  man  is  dead)  to  wondering  eyes 
This  more  than  monster  in  his  proper  guise. 
He  loved  the  world  that  hated  him  ;  the  tear 
That  dropp'd  upon  his  Bible  was  sincere. 
Assail'd  by  scandal  and  the  tongue  of  strife, 
His  only  answer  was  a  blameless  life, 
And  he  that  forged  and  he  that  threw  the  dart 
Had  each  a  brother's  interest  in  his  heart. 
Paul's  love  of  Christ,  and  steadiness  unbribed, 
Were  copied  close  in  him,  and  well  transcribed ; 
He  follow'd  Paul ;  his  zeal  a  kindred  flame, 
His  apostolic  charity  the  same, 
Like  him,  cross'd  cheerfully  tempestuous  seas, 
Forsaking  country,  kindred,  friends,  and  ease  ; 
Like  him,  he  labour'd,  and  like  him,  content 
To  bear  it,  suffer'd  shame  where'er  he  went. 

— COWPER,  Hope. 

God  sent  his  two  servants  Whitfield  and  Wesley;  were  they  prophets  ? 
Or  were  they  idiots  and  madmen  ?     "  Show  us  Miracles  ?  " 
Can  you  have  greater  Miracles  than  these  ?     Men  who  devote 
Their  life's  whole  comfort  to  entire  scorn,  injury,  and  death  ? 

— W.  BLAKE. 

Let  the  name  of  George  Whitfield  perish,  if  God  be  glorified.  .  .  . 
Lord  Jesus,  I  am  weary  in  Thy  work,  but  not  of  Thy  work. — GEORGE 
WHITFIELD. 

The  quarterings  of  Whitfield  are  entitled  to  a  conspicuous  place  in  the 
•"  Evangelical  "  scutcheon ;  and  they  who  bear  it  are  not  wise  in  being 
ashamed  of  the  blazonry.  ...  If  ever  philanthropy  burned  in  the  human 
heart  with  a  pure  and  intense  flame,  embracing  the  whole  family  of  man 
in  the  spirit  of  universal  charity,  it  was  in  the  heart  of  George  Whitfield. 
He  loved  the  world  that  hated  him.  He  had  no  preferences  but  in  favour 
of  the  ignorant,  the  miserable,  and  the  poor. — SIR  JAMES  STEPHEN,  Essays 
in  Ecclesiastical  Biography. 

The  first  and  foremost  whom  I  will  name  is  the  well-known  George 
Whitfield.  Though  not  the  first  in  order,  if  we  look  at  the  date  of  his 
birth,  I  place  him  first  in  the  order  of  merit,  without  any  hesitation.  Of 
:all  the  spiritual  heroes  of  a  hundred  years  ago  none  saw  so  soon  as 
Whitfield  what  the  times  demanded,  and  none  were  so  forward  in  the 
great  work  of  spiritual  aggression.  I  should  think  I  committed  an  act  of 
injustice  if  I  placed  any  name  before  his.  .  .  .  That  any  human  frame 
could  so  long  endure  the  labours  that  Whitfield  went  through  does  indeed 
seem  wonderful.  That  his  life  was  not  cut  short  by  violence,  to  which 
he  was  frequently  exposed,  is  no  less  wonderful.  But  he  was  immortal 
till  his  work  was  done.  .  .  .  The  Arabians  have  a  proverb  which  says, 
"  He  is  the  best  orator  who  can  turn  men's  ears  into  eyes  ".  Whitfield 
seems  to  have  had  a  peculiar  faculty  of  doing  this.  He  dramatised  his 
subject  so  thoroughly  that  it  seemed  to  move  and  walk  before  your  eyes. 
He  used  to  draw  such  vivid  pictures  of  the  things  he  was  handling,  that 
his  hearers  could  believe  they  actually  saw  and  heard  them. — BISHOP  J. 
C.  RYLE,  English  Leaders  of  the  Last  Century. 


WHITFIELD,   WHITMAN.  461 

Whitfield  must  be  allowed  to  occupy  the  luminous  centre  upon  the 
field  of  Methodism.  Besides  his  personal  claim  to  this  distinction,  which 
we  think  is  clear,  there  is  a  ground  on  which  those  who  would  award  this, 
position  to  Wesley  might  be  content  to  relinquish  it  in  his  behalf;  for,  if 
it  be  true  that  his  ministerial  course  furnishes  peculiar  evidence  of  the 
reality  of  the  Gospel  which  he  preached,  and  of  the  presence  of  Him  who 
"  worketh  all  in  all  " — if  it  be  true  that  Wesley's  glory  was,  as  one  may 
say,  an  effulgence  of  Christianity  itself,  the  same  may  more  emphatically 
be  affirmed  as  to  Whitfield,  whose  natural  endowments  were  fewer,  and 
whose  success  as  a  preacher  of  the  Gospel  was  not  less,  perhaps  greater. 
— ISAAC  TAYLOR,  Wesley  and  Methodism. 

He  lived  perpetually  in  the  sight  of  eternity,  and  a  desire  to  save  souls, 
was  the  single  passion  of  his  life. — W.  E.  H.  LECKY,  History  of  England, 
Vol.  I. 

We  do  not  exaggerate  in  speaking  of  him  as  the  very  Orpheus  of  the 
pulpit.  Assuredly,  as  it  has  been  said,  Orpheus,  by  the  power  of  his 
music,  drew  trees,  stones,  the  frozen  mountain-tops,  and  the  floods  to  bow 
to  his  melody,  so  men,  "  stockish,  hard,  and  full  of  rage,"  felt  a  change 
pass  over  their  nature  as  they  came  under  the  spell  of  Whitfield. — E. 
PAXTON  HOOD,  Vignettes  of  the  Great  Revival. 

WALT  WHITMAN. 
American  Poet :   1819-1892. 

Good-bye,  Walt! 

Good-bye  from  all  you  loved  on  earth — 
Rock,  tree,  dumb  creature,  man  and  woman — 
To  you  their  comrade  human. 

The  last  assault 

Ends  now ;  and  now  in  some  great  world  has  birth 
A  minstrel  whose  strong  soul  finds  broader  wings, 

More  brave  imaginings. 

Stars  crown  the  hill-tops  where  your  dust  shall  lie, 
Even  as  we  say  good-bye, 
Good-bye  old  Walt ! 

— E.  C.  STEDMAN  (Read  at  Whitman's  Burial}. 

Friend  Whitman  !  wert  thou  less  serene  and  kind, 

Surely  thou  mightest  (like  our  Bard  sublime, 
Scorn'd  by  a  generation  deaf  and  blind) 

Make  thine  appeal  to  the  avenger,  Time ; 

For  thou  art  none  of  those  who  upward  climb, 
Gathering  roses  with  a  vacant  mind ; 
Ne'er  have  thy  hands  for  jaded  triflers  twined 

Sick  flowers  of  rhetoric  and  weeds  of  rhyme. 
Nay,  thine  hath  been  a  Prophet's  stormier  fate 
While  Lincoln  and  the  martyred  legions  wait 

In  the  yet  widening  blue  of  yonder  sky, 
On  the  great  strand  below  them  thou  art  seen, 
Blessing,  with  something  Christ-like  in  thy  mien, 

A  sea  of  turbulent  lives  that  break  and  die  ! 

— ROBERT  BUCHANAN,  Walt  Whitman- 


462  WHITMAN,  WHITTIER. 

The  term  poet  does  not  fully  describe  Walt  Whitman  :  the  \vordprophet 
would  come  nearer ;  but  that  might  be  misunderstood.  Schopenhauer 
has  been  well  described  as  "  the  great  prophet  of  the  world's  despair  ". 
Walt  Whitman  may  be  termed  conversely  the  great  prophet  of  the  world's 
hope.  .  .  .  He  sounds  all  the  chords  of  human  feeling  with  the  depth  and 
urgency  of  one  who  has  suffered,  in  his  own  person  and  by  sympathy,  all 
woes  and  agonies,  but  whose  spirit  is  too  great  to  be  turned  by  any  suffer- 
ing from  the  clear  faith  that  "all  is  well  ". — H.  BUXTON  FORMAN  in  Cele- 
brities of  the  Century. 

Whitman  has  seldom  struck  a  note  of  thought  and  speech  so  just  and 
so  profound  as  Blake  has  now  and  then  touched  upon  ;  but  his  work  is 
generally  more  frank  and  fresh,  smelling  of  sweeter  air,  and  readier  to  ex- 
pound or  expose  its  message  than  this  of  the  prophetic  books.  Nor  is 
there  among  these  any  poem  or  passage  of  equal  length  so  faultless  and 
so  noble  as  his  "  Voice  out  of  the  Sea,"  or  as  his  dirge  over  President 
Lincoln — the  most  sweet  and  sonorous  nocturn  ever  chanted  in  the 
<church  of  the  world. — SWINBURNE,  William  Blake  :  A  Critical  Essay. 

The  voluminous  and  incoherent  effusions  of  Walt  Whitman.  ...  He 
has  said  wise  and  noble  things  upon  such  simple  and  eternal  subjects  as 
life  and  death,  pity  and  enmity,  friendship  and  fighting ;  and  even  the  in- 
tensely conventional  nature  of  its  elaborate  and  artificial  simplicity  should 
not  be  allowed,  by  a  magnanimous  and  candid  reader  too  absolutely  to 
eclipse  the  genuine  energy  and  the  occasional  beauty  of  his  feverish  and 
convulsive  style  of  writing.  .  .  .  Mr.  Whitman's  Eve  is  a  drunken  apple- 
woman,  indecently  sprawling  in  the  slush  and  garbage  of  the  gutter  amid 
the  rotten  refuse  of  her  overturned  fruit-stall :  but  Mr.  Whitman's  Venus 
is  a  Hottentot  wench  under  the  influence  of  cantharides  and  adulterated 
rum.  Cotyto  herself  would  repudiate  the  ministration  of  such  priestesses 
as  these. — Id.,  Ibid. 

Walt  Whitman  is  American  among  the  Americans,  untamable  as  a  fowl 
of  the  Atlantic,  rude  in  his  strength,  contemptuous  of  authority,  hopeful  of 
a  new  cycle  of  great  national  histories  to  be  acted  on  this  little  earth,  and 
"  sounding  his  barbaric  yaup  over  the  roof  of  the  world  "  in  an  ecstasy 
of  healthy  animalism.  Notwithstanding  this  animalism,  he  reveals  the 
deepest  spirituality  at  times.  His  tuneless  songs  are  full  of  noble  thought. 
It  is  impossible  to  describe  Whitman  without  searching  for  the  language 
of  exaggeration.  He  is  a  Hebrew  bard  translated  to  the  American  back- 
woods, where  he  has  turned  himself  inside  out,  thence  going  on  to  study 
pantheism  on  the  quays  of  New  York. — ERIC  S.  ROBERTSON,  Life  of  H. 
W.  Longfellow. 


JOHN  GREENLEAF  WHITTIER. 
American  Poet:  1807-1892. 

O  thou,  whose  daily  life  anticipates 

The  life  to  come,  and  in  whose  thought  and  word 
The  spiritual  world  preponderates, 


WHITTIER.  463 

Hermit  of  Amesbury  !  thou  too  hast  heard 
Voices  and  melodies  from  beyond  the  gates, 
And  speakest  only  when  thy  soul  is  stirred  ! 

— LONGFELLOW,  The  Three  Silences  of  Molinos. 
(To  John  Greenleaf  Whittier.) 

The  faith  that  lifts,  the  courage  that  sustains, 

These  thou  wert  sent  to  teach  : 
Hot  blood  of  battle,  beating  in  thy  veins, 

Is  turned  to  gentle  speech. 

Not  less,  but  more,  than  others  hast  thou  striven  ; 

Thy  victories  remain  ; 
The  scars  of  ancient  hate,  long  since  forgiven, 

Have  lost  their  power  to  pain. 

.Apostle  pure  of  Freedom  and  of  Right, 

Thou  had'st  thy  one  reward  : 
'Thy  prayers  were  heard,  and  flashed  upon  thy  sight 

The  Coming  of  the  Lord  ! 

Now,  sheathed  in  myrtle  of  thy  tender  songs, 

Slumbers  the  blade  of  Truth  ; 
But  Age's  wisdom,  crowning  thee,  prolongs 

The  eager  hope  of  Youth  ! 

— BAYARD  TAYLOR,  A  Friend's  Greeting. 

There  is  Whittier,  whose  swelling  and  vehement  heart 
Strains  the  strait-breasted  drab  of  the  Quaker  apart, 
And  reveals  the  live  Man,  still  supreme  and  erect, 
Underneath  the  bemummying  wrappers  of  sect. 

— J.  R.  LOWELL,  A  Fable  of  Critics 

And  he,  so  serene,  so  majestic,  so  true, 
Whose  temple  hypcethral  the  planets  shine  through, 
Let  us  catch  but  five  words  from  that  mystical  pen, 
We  should  know  our  one  sage  from  all  children  of  men. 

So  fervid,  so  simple,  so  loving,  so  pure, 

We  hear  but  one  strain  and  our  verdict  is  sure, 

Thee  cannot  elude  us,  no  further  we  search, 

•"  'Tis  Holy  George  Herbert  cut  loose  from  his  church  ! 

— OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES,  Whittier' s  Birthday. 

In  Whittier  with  his  special  themes — (his  out-cropping  love  of  heroism 
and  war,  for  all  his  Quakerdom,  his  verses  at  times  like  the  measured  step 
of  Cromwell's  old  veterans) — in  Whittier  lives  the  zeal,  the  moral  energy, 
that  founded  New  England — the  splendid  rectitude  and  ardour  of  Luther, 
Milton,  George  Fox — I  must  not,  dare  not,saythewilfulness  and  narrowness 
— though  doubtless  the  world  needs  now,  and  always  will  need,  almost  above 
•all,  just  such  narrowness  and  wilfulness. — WALT  WHITMAN,  Specimen  Days. 

John  G.  Whitter,  a  man  whose  genius  and  virtues  would  do  honour  to 
any  city,  whose  poetry  bursts  from  the  soul  with  the  fire  and  indignant 
energy  of  an  ancient  prophet,  and  whose  noble  simplicity  of  character  is 
*aid  to  be  the  delight  of  all  who  know  him.  —  DR.  W.  E.  CHANNING, 
Remarks  on  the  Slavery  Question. 


464  WICLIF. 

JOHN   WICLIF. 
English  Reformer:  1324-1384. 

The  returning  light, 

That  first  through  Wickliff  streak'd  the  priestly  gloom, 
Now  burst  in  open  day.     Bar'd  to  the  blaze, 
Forth  from  the  haunts  of  superstition  crawl'd 
Her  motly  sons,  fantastic  figures  all ; 
And  wide-dispers'd.  their  useless  fetid  wealth 
In  graceful  labour  bloom'd,  and  fruits  of  peace. 

— THOMSON,  Liberty. 

Hail,  honour'd  Wickliff!  enterprising  sage! 

An  Epicurus  in  the  cause  of  truth  ! 

For  'tis  not  radiant  suns,  the  jovial  hours 

Of  youthful  spring,  an  ether  all  serene, 

Nor  all  the  verdure  of  Campania's  vales, 

Can  chase  religious  gloom  !     'Tis  reason,  thought, 

The  light,  the  radiance  that  pervades  the  soul, 

And  sheds  its  beams  on;heav'n's  mysterious  sway  ! 

— SHENSTONE,  The  Ruin'd  Abbey. 

Once  more  the  Church  is  seized  with  sudden  fear, 

And  at  her  call  is  Wicliffe  disinhumed ; 

Yea,  his  dry  bones  to  ashes  are  consumed, 

And  flung  into  the  brook  that  travels  near ; 

Forthwith  that  ancient  voice  which  streams  can  hear, 

Thus  speaks,  (that  voice  which  walks  upon  the  wind, 

Though  seldom  heard  by  busy  human  kind,) 

"  As  thou  these  ashes,  little  brook  !  wilt  bear 

Into  the  Avon,  Avon  to  the  tide 

Of  Severn,  Severn  to  the  narrow  seas, 

Into  main  ocean  they,  this  deed  accurst 

An  emblem  yields  to  friends  and  enemies 

How  the  bold  teacher's  doctrine,  sanctified 

By  truth  shall  spread  throughout  the  world  dispersed." 

— WORDSWORTH,  Wicliffe* 

Not  least  art  thou,  thou  little  Bethlehem 
In  Judah,  for  in  thee  the  Lord  was  born ; 
Nor  thou  in  Britain,  little  Lutterworth, 
Least,  for  in  thee  the  word  was  born  again. 

Rather  to  thee,  thou  living  water,  drawn 
By  this  good  Wiclif  mountain  down  from  heaven, 
And  speaking  clearly  in  thy  native  tongue — 
No  Latin — He  that  thirsteth,  come  and  drink. 

—TENNYSON,  To  Sir  John  Oldcastle,  Lord  Cobham. 

Wiclif  was  in  religion,  what  Bacon  was  afterwards  in  science ;  the 
great  detecter  of  those  arts  and  glosses,  which  the  barbarism  of  ages  had 
drawn  together  to  obscure  the  mind  of  man.  To  this  intuitive  genius 
Christendom  was  unquestionably  more  obliged  than  to  any  name  in  the 
list  of  reformers.  He  explored  the  regions  of  darkness,  and  let  in  not  a 


WICLIF.  465 

feeble  and  glimmering  ray  ;  but  such  an  effulgence  of  light,  as  was  never 
afterwards  obscured.  He  not  only  loosened  j-rejudices;  but  advanced 
such  clear,  incontestable  proofs,  as,  having  once  obtained  footing,  still 
kept  their  ground,  and  even  in  an  age  of  reformation  wanted  little  amend- 
ment.— W.  GILPIN,  Lives  of  the  Reformers,  Vol.  I. 

Such  was  this  great  pioneer  of  the  Reformation.  That  he  was  apt  to 
ply  the  axe  with  indiscriminate  violence,  it  would  be  scarcely  reasonable 
to  deny ;  with  such  violence,  indeed,  that  he,  uccasicnally,  seems  to  work 
like  one,  who  was  rather  making  a  clearance  for  the  foundation  of  new 
edifices,  than  ridding  the  earth  of  the  rubbish  which  encumbered  and 
deformed  the  old. — CHARLES  WEBB  LE  BAS,  Life  of  Wiclif. 

Wicliffe's  genius  was,  perhaps,  not  equal  to  Luther's ;  but  really  the 
more  I  know  of  him  ...  I  think  him  as  extraordinary  a  man  as  Luther 
upon  the  whole.— S.  T.  COLERIDGE,  Table  Talk. 

Wickliffe's  testimony  was  a  shaking  of  the  papacy :  Luther's,  an 
establishment  of  the  Gospels.  At  the  approach  of  "Wickliffe  the  minions 
of  Rome  trembled,  as  if  a  strong  man  armed  had  burst  into  their  house 
at  night.  When  Luther  spoke,  they  slunk  into  corners,  as  do  creatures 
of  darkness  at  the  breaking  of  the  day.  .  .  .  Wickliffe  stands  as  the 
representative  of  the  class  of  practical  reformers.  The  constitution  of 
his  mind  was  characteristically  English,  more  distinguished  by  a  straight- 
forward good  sense  than  by  intellectuality,  richness,  or  refinement ; — 
impatient  of  subterfuges,  indignant  at  abuses,  he  arrived  at  truth  as  a 
consequence  of  his  rejection  of  error.  .  .  .  The  ship  of  the  Church,  to 
resume  our  figure,  needs  a  Wickliffe,  from  time  to  time,  to  trim  the 
rigging,  to  clear  the  decks,  to  pack  the  ballasts ;  but  she  must  look  to 
men  of  another  mould  to  steer  her  in  the  storm,  and  to  work  her  in  the 
hour  of  battle.  Luther  and  his  colleagues  were  such  men. — ISAAC  TAYLOR  ,, 
Introduction  to  G.  Pjizer's  "Life  of  Luther" . 

The  slowness  and  limitation  of  Wicklif's  work,  when  compared  with 
Luther's,  may  be  explained  to  a  large  extent  by  the  fact  that  Wicklifs. 
only  instrument  was  the  pen,  whilst  Luther  sowed  the  living  seed  with, 
the  press. — REV.  W.  L.  WATKINSON,  Life  of  John  Wicklif. 

John  Wycliffe  may  be  justly  accounted  one  of  the  greatest  men  that 
our  country  has  produced.  He  is  one  of  the  very  few  who  have  left  the 
impress  of  their  minds,  not  only  on  their  own  age  but  on  all  time. — DEAN 
W.  F.  HOOK. 

The  first  and  perhaps  the  greatest  of  the  reformers,  John  Wickliffe. — • 
MACAULAY,  Essays:  Burlcigh\and  His  Times. 

It  was  the  misfortune  of  Wycliffe,  as  it  was  his  greatest  glory,  that  he 
anticipated  by  almost  two  centuries  the  principles  of  a  more  enlightened 
generation,  and  scattered  his  lessons  on  a  soil  not  yet  prepared  to  give 
them  maturity.  Therefore  it  was  wisely  determined  by  this  admirable 
Christian  to  send  forth  along  with  them  the  Facred  volume  itself.  This 
was  the  life  of  the  system,  the  treasure  which  he  bequeathed  to  future 
ages  for  their  immortal  inheritance. —  DEAN  G.  WAPDINGTON. 

Wickliffe  was  the  Daniel  of  his  era, — he  dared  to  be  singular,  and  to 
offend  even  to  exasperation  a  power  the  most  dreadful  and  overwhelming 

30 


466  WICLIF,   WILBERFORCE,   WILKES. 

and  implacable  that  then  existed.  ...  To  the  Romish  hierarchy,  Wick- 
liffe  was  more  mischievous  when  dead  than  when  alive.  His  books  con- 
ferred on  him  a  spiritual  omnipresence,  for  by  those  he  spoke  at  once  in 
a  multitude  of  places,  and  to  tens  of  thousands.  When  the  Romanists 
could  do  no  more,  they  bestowed  an  epitaph  on  their  arch-opponent. 
This  singular  article  was  expressed  as  follows  : — "  The  devil's  instrument, 
church's  enemy,  people's  confusion,  heretic's  idol,  hypocrite's  mirror, 
schism's  broacher,  hatred's  sower,  lie's  forger,  flattery's  sink — who,  at  his 
death,  despaired  like  Cain,  and  stricken  by  the  terrible  judgment  of  God, 
breathed  forth  his  wicked  soul  to  the  dark  mansion  of  the  black  devil !  "- 
G.  G.  CUNNINGHAM,  Lives  of  Illustrious  Englishmen. 

WILLIAM  WILBERFORCE. 
Philanthropist :   1759-1833. 

Thy  country,  Wilberforce,  with  just  disdain, 
Hemrs  thee  by  cruel  men  and  impious  call'd 
Fanatic,  for  thy  zeal  to  loose  the  inthrall'd 
From  exile,  public  sale,  and  slavery's  chain. 
Friend  of  the  poor,  the  wrong'd,  the  fetter-gall'd, 
Fear  not  lest  labour  such  as  thine  be  vain. 

— COWPER,  Sonnet  to  William  Wilberforce,  Esq. 

And  one,  I  ween, 

Is  Wilberforce,  placed  rightly  at  his  side. 
Whose  eloquent  voice  in  that  great  cause  was  heard 
So  oft  and  well. 

— SOUTHEY,  The  Poet's  Pilgrimage  :  The  Hopes  of  Man. 

The  basis  of  the  natural  or  indigenous  character  of  Mr.  Wilberforce  was 
laid  in  this  quick  fellow-feeling  with  other  men.  All  the  restless  vivacity 
of  Voltaire,  and  a  sensibility  more  profound  than  that  of  Rousseau,  met  in 
him  and  mutually  controlled  each  other. — SIR  JAMES  STEPHEN,  Essays  in 
Ecclesiastical  Biography. 

Few  persons  have  ever  either  reached  a  higher  and  more  enviable  place 
in  the  esteem  of  their  fellow-creatures,  or  have  better  deserved  the  place 
they  had  gained,  than  William  Wilberforce. — LORD  BROUGHAM,  Statesmen 
of  the  Time  of  George  III.,  Vol.  I. 

JOHN  WILKES. 
English  Politician  :  1727-1797. 

Next  Wilkes  appear'd,  vain  hoping  the  reward, 
A  glorious  patriot,  an  inglorious  bard, 
Yet  erring,  shot  far  wide  of  Freedom's  mark, 
And  rais'd  a  flame  in  putting  out  a  spark. 

— CUTHBERT  SHAW,  The  Race. 

The  celebrated  John  Wilkes  is  said  to  have  explained  to  King  George 
III.  that  he  himself,  amid  his  full  tide  of  popularity,  was  never  a  Wilkite. 
—SiR  WALTER  SCOTT. 


WILKES,  WILKIE,  WILLIAM  /.  467 

Wilkes  was  one  of  the  worst  specimens  of  a  popular  leader. — DR. 
ARNOLD,  Introductory  Lectures  on  Modern  History. 

John  Wilkes,  member  of  Parliament  for  Aylesbury,  was  singled  out  for 
persecution.  Wilkes  had,  till  very  lately,  been  known  chiefly  as  one  of 
the  most  profane,  licentious,  and  agreeable  rakes  about  town.  He  was  a 
man  of  taste,  reading,  and  engaging  manners.  His  sprightly  conversation 
was  the  delight  of  green  rooms  and  taverns,  and  pleased  even  grave  hearers 
when  he  was  sufficiently  under  restraint  to  abstain  from  detailing  the 
particulars  of  his  amours,  and  from  breaking  jests  on  the  New  Testament. 
His  expensive  debaucheries  forced  him  to  have  recourse  to  the  Jews.  He 
was  soon  a  ruined  man,  and  determined  to  try  his  chance  as  a  political 
adventurer.  In  parliament  he  did  not  succeed.  His  speaking,  though 
pert,  was  feeble,  and  by  no  means  interested  his  hearers  so  much  as  to 
make  them  forget  his  face,  which  was  so  hideous  that  the  caricaturists 
were  forced,  in  their  own  despite,  to  flatter  him.  As  a  writer  he  made  a 
better  figure. — MACAULAY,  Essays  :  The  Earl  of  Chatham,  1844. 

The  turbulent  democracy  of  Wilkes. — LORD  ROSEBERY,  Life  of  Pitt. 


SIR  DAVID  WILKIE. 
Scotch  Painter :  1785-1841. 

Wilkie  is  the  Goldsmith  of  painters,  in  the  amiable  and  pathetic  humour, 
in  the  combination  of  smiles  and  tears,  of  the  familiar  and  the  beautiful ; 
but  he  has  a  stronger  hold,  both  over  the  more  secret  sympathies  and  the 
springs  of  a  broader  laughter  than  Goldsmith  himself.  If  the  Drama 
could  obtain  a  Wilkie,  we  should  hear  no  more  of  its  decline.  He  is  the 
exact  illustration  of  the  doctrine  I  have  advanced — of  the  power  and  dignity 
of  the  popular  school,  in  the  hands  of  a  master  ;  dignified,  for  truth  never 
loses  a  certain  majesty,  even  in  her  most  familiar  shapes.  .  .  .  Who  does 
not  feel  that  the  pathos  and  the  humour  of  that  most  remarkable  painter 
have  left  on  him  recollections  as  strong  and  enduring  as  the  chef-d'ceitvres 
of  literature  itself  ;  and  that  every  new  picture  of  W'ilkie — in  Wilkie's  own 
view — constitutes  an  era  in  enjoyment  ?  More  various,  more  extensive  in 
his  grasp  than  even  Hogarth,  his  genius  sweeps  from  the  dignity  of 
history  to  the  verge  of  caricature  itself. — LYTTON,  England  and  the 
English  :  Intellectual  Spirit. 


WILLIAM  I. 
King  of  England  :  1027-1087. 

For  first,  the  Norman  conqu'ring  all  by  might, 
By  might  was  forc'd  to  keep  what  he  had  got ; 
Mixing  our  customs  and  the  form  of  right 
With  foreign  constitutions  he  had  brought. 
Mast'ring  the  mighty,  humbling  the  poorer  wight, 
By  all  severest  means  that  could  be  wrought. 

— SAMUEL  DANIEL,  History  of  the  Civil  Wars,  Book  I. 


468  WILLIAM  I. 

From  the  first  William,  our  great  Norman  king, 
The  bold  Plantagenets  and  Tudors  bring 
Illustrious  virtues. 

— PRIOR,  Carmen  Seculare,for  the  Year  1700. 

Proud  Nimrod  first  the  bloody  chase  began, 

A  mighty  hunter,  and  his  prey  was  man  : 

Our  haughty  Norman  boasts  that  barbarous  name, 

And  makes  his  trembling  slaves  the  royal  game. 

— POPE,  Windsor  Forest. 

The  haughty  Norman  seiz'd  at  once  an  isle, 
For  which,  through  many  a  century  in  vain, 
The  Roman,  Saxon,  Dane,  had  toil'd  in  vain, 
Of  Gothic  nations  this  the  final  burst ; 
And,  mix'd  the  genius  of  these  people  all, 
These  virtues  mix'd  in  one  exalted  stream, 
Here  the  rich  tide  of  English  blood  grew  full. 

— THOMSON,  Liberty. 

The  Son  of  Love  and  Lord  of  War  I  sing ; 

Him  who  bade  England  bow  to  Normandy, 

And  left  the  name  of  the  Conqueror  more  than  King 

To  his  unconquerable  dynasty. 

— BYRON,  The  Conquest. 

Rage  enough  was  in  this  Willelmus  Conquasstor,  rage  enough  for  his 
occasions : — and  yet  the  essential  element  of  him,  as  of  all  such  men,  is 
not  scorching  fire  but  shining  illuminative  light.  Fire  and  light  are 
strangely  interchangeable ;  nay,  at  bottom,  I  have  found  them  different 
forms  of  the  same  most  godlike  "  elementary  substance  "  in  our  world  :  a 
thing  worth  stating  in  these  days.  The  essential  element  of  the  Con- 
quaestor  is,  first  of  all,  the  most  sun-eyed  perception  of  what  is  really 
what  on  this  God's-Earth  ; — which,  thou  wilt  find,  does  mean  at  bottom, 
•'  Justice,"  and  "Virtues  "  not  a  few:  Conformity  to  what  the  Maker  has 
seen  good  to  make.  ...  I  have  a  certain  indestructible  regard  for  Willel- 
mus Conqua?stor.  A  resident  House-Surgeon,  provided  by  Nature  for  her 
beloved  English  People,  and  even  furnished  with  the  requisite  fees,  as  I 
said  ;  for  he  by  no  means  felt  himself  doing  Nature's  work,  this  Willelmus, 
but  his  own  work  exclusively  !  And  his  own  work  withal  it  was  ;  informed 
par  la  Splcndenr  de  Dieu. — CARLYLE,  Past  and  Present :  Democracy. 

As  long  as  William  lived,  ruthless  as  he  was  to  all  rebels,  he  kept 
order  and  did  justice  with  a  strong  and  steady  hand  ;  for  he  brought 
with  him  from  Normandy  the  instincts  of  a  truly  great  statesman. — 
KINGSLEY,  Historical  Lectiires  and  Essays. 

That  the  history  of  England  for  the  last  eight  hundred  years  has  been 
what  it  has  been  has  come  of  the  personal  character  of  a  single  man. 
That  we  are  what  we  are  to  this  day  comes  of  the  fact  that  there  was  a 
moment  when  our  national  destiny  might  be  said  to  hang  on  the  will  of  a 
single  man,  and  that  that  man  was  William,  surnamed  at  different  stages 
of  his  life  and  memory,  the  Bastard,  the  Conqueror,  and  the  Great.  .  .  . 
As  far  as  mortal  man  can  guide  the  course  of  things  when  he  is  gone,  the 
course  of  our  national  history  since  William's  day  has  been  the  result  of 


WILLIAM  I.,   WILLIAM  II.,   WILLIAM  III.  469 

William's  character  and  of  William's  acts.  Well  may  we  restore  to  him 
the  surname  that  men  gave  him  in  his  own  day.  He  may  worthily  take 
his  place  as  William  the  Great  alongside  of  Alexander,  Constantine,  and 
Charles. — E.  A.  FREEMAN,  William  the  Conqueror  :  A  Memoir. 


WILLIAM  II. 
King  of  England  :  1056-1100. 

King  Rufus, — a  man  of  rough  ways,  in  whom  the  "  inner  Lightbeam  " 
shone  very  fitfully. — CARLYLE,  Past  and  Present. 

Deep  as  is  the  importance  of  the  reign  of  William  Rufus  in  so  many 
ways,  there  is  a  certain  way  of  looking  at  things  in  which  the  reign  of 
William  Rufus  is  a  kind  of  episode.  Or  rather  it  is  an  attempt  at  a 
certain  object  which,  when  tried  in  the  person  of  Rufus,  failed,  and  which 
had  to  be  again  tried  with  better  luck,  in  the  person  of  Henry.  The  pro- 
blem was  to  reconcile  the  English  nation  to  the  Norman  Conquest,  to 
nationalize,  so  to  speak,  the  Conquest  and  the  dynasty  which  the  Con- 
quest had  brought  in.  The  means  thereto  was  to  find  a  prince  of  the 
foreign  stock  who  should  reign  as  an  English  king,  with  the  good  will  of 
the  English  people,  in  the  interests  of  the  English  people.  William  Rufus 
might  have  held  that  place,  if  he  had  been  morally  capable  of  it. — E.  A. 
FREEMAN,  The  Reign  of  William  Rnfns,  Vol.  II. 

WILLIAM  III. 
King  of  England  :   1650-1702. 

And  here,  perhaps,  by  fate's  unerring  doom, 
Some  mighty  bard  lies  hid  in  years  to  come, 
That  shall  in  William's  godlike  acts  engage, 
And  with  his  battles  warm  a  future  age. 

The  race  of  Nassau  was  by  heaven  design'd 
To  curb  the  proud  oppressors  of  mankind. 

— ADDISON.  A  Poem  to  His  Majesty,  1695. 

And  yet,  O  Muse,  remains  the  noblest  theme  ; 
The  first  of  men,  mature  for  endless  fame. 
Thy  future  songs  shall  grace,  and  all  thy  lays, 
Thenceforth,  alone  shall  wait  on  William's  praise. 

— CONGREVE,  The  Birth  of  the  Muse. 

Hopes  after  hopes  of  pious  Papists  fail'd, 

While  mighty  William's  thundering  arm  prevail'd. 

— POPE,  Imitations  of  Horace,  Book  II.,  Epistle  II. 

To  save  Britannia,  lo  !  my  darling  son, 
Than  hero  more  !  the  patriot  of  mankind  ! 
Immortal  Nassau  came. 

— THOMSON,  Liberty. 


470  WILLIAM  III.,   WOLFE. 

For  William's  praise  can  ne'er  expire, 

Though  nature's  self  at  last  must  die, 

And  all  this  fair-erected  sky 

Must  sink  with  earth  and  sea,  and  melt  away  in  fire. 

— JOHN  HUGHES,  The  House  of  Nassau. 

William,  the  scourge  of  tyrants  past, 
And  awe  of  princes  yet  unborn. 

—  DR.  WATTS,  An  Epitaph  on  King  William  III. 

Such  Nassau  is,  the  fairest,  gentlest  mind, 
In  blooming  youth  the  Titus  of  mankind. 

— DAVID  MALLET,  Verses  presented  to  the  Prince  of  Orange. 

Calm  as  an  under-current — strong  to  draw 
Millions  of  waves  into  itself,  and  run, 
From  sea  to  sea,  impervious  to  the  sun 
And  ploughing  storm — the  spirit  of  Nassau. 

— WORDSWORTH,  William  the  Third. 

The  reign  of  William  the  Third,  as  Mr.  Hallam  happily  says,  was  the 
nadir  of  the  national  prosperity.  It  was  also  the  nadir  of  the  national 
character.  It  was  the  time  when  the  rank  harvest  of  vices  sown  during 
thirty  years  of  licentiousness  and  confusion  was  gathered  in  ;  but  it  was 
also  the  seed-time  of  great  virtues. —  MACAULAY,  Essays  :  Hallam. 

Few  English  sovereigns  have  ever  sunk  to  the  tomb  less  regretted  by 
the  mass  of  the  English  nation  than  William  III. — W.  E.  H.  LECKY, 
History  of  England,  Vol.  I. 

William  was  self-contained,  proud,  and  ambitious  as  Lucifer ;  a  states- 
man, a  diplomatist,  and  yet,  above  all  things,  a  devoted  patriot.  So 
able  was  he  as  a  negociator,  that  his  allies,  it  was  said,  reaped  as  much 
benefit  from  his  diplomacy  as  his  own  subjects.  His  courage  was  rather 
of  the  Wellington  than  of  the  Cassar  type,  for  as  a  leader,  he  lacked  that 
depth  of  human  sympathy,  that  sense  of  comradeship,  which  some  master- 
minds inspire,  and  which  cause  them  to  be  followed  with  blind  devotion. 
There  was  none  of  that  animal  magnetism  about  him,  with  which  some 
leaders  are  so  charged  as  to  infect  all  who  come  within  the  zone  of  their 
influence. — LORD  WOLSELEY,  Life  of  Mar  thorough,  Vol.  I. 

JAMES  WOLFE. 
English  General;  1726-1759. 

They  have  fallen 

Each  in  his  field  of  glory :  one  in  arms, 
And  one  in  council — Wolfe  upon  the  lap 
Of  smiling  Victory  that  moment  won. 

Wolfe,  where'er  he  fought, 
Put  so  much  of  his  heart  into  his  act, 
That  his  example  had  a  magnet's  force, 
And  all  were  swift  to  follow  whom  all  loved. 

—  COWPER,  The  Task  :  The  Time-Piece. 


WOLFE,    WOLSEY.  471 

So  long  as  the  pulses  of  men's  hearts  do  answer  to  any  martial  music, 
so  long  men  will  say  of  Wolfe  that  he  died  well  as  became  a  soldier,  a 
hero,  and  a  gentleman. — JUSTIN  MCCARTHY,  History  of  the  Four  Georges, 
Vol.  II. 

THOMAS  WOLSEY. 
English  Cardinal  and  Statesman  :  1471-1530. 

King  Henry  :    "  Who's  there  ?  my  good  Lord  Cardinal  ?     O,  my  Wolsey. 
The  quiet  of  my  wounded  conscience  ; 
Thou  art  a  cure  fit  for  a  king." 

— SHAKSPERE,  King  Henry  VIII.,  Act  II. ,  Scene  II. 

Wolsey  :  "  Cromwell,  I  did  not  think  to  shed  a  tear 

In  all  my  miseries ;  but  thou  hast  forced  me, 

Out  of  thy  honest  truth,  to  play  the  woman. 

Let's  dry  our  eyes :  and  thus  far  hear  me,  Cromwell ; 

And,  when  I  am  forgotten,  as  I  shall  be, 

And  sleep  in  dull  cold  marble,  where  no  mention 

Of  me  more  must  be  heard  of,  say,  I  taught  thee, 

Say,  Wolsey,  that  once  trod  the  ways  of  glory, 

And  sounded  all  the  depths  and  shoals  of  honour, 

Found  thee  a  way,  out  of  his  wreck,  to  rise  in  ; 

A  sure  and  safe  one,  though  thy  master  miss'd  it. 

Mark  but  my  fall,  and  that  that  ruin'd  me. 

Cromwell,  I  charge  thee,  fling  away  ambition  ; 

By  that  sin  fell  the  angels ;  how  can  man,  then, 

The  image  of  his  Maker,  hope  to  win  by  it  ? 

Love  thyself  last :  cherish  those  hearts  that  hate  thee  ; 

Corruption  wins  not  more  than  honesty. 

Still  in  thy  right  hand  carry  gentle  peace, 

To  silence  envious  tongues.     Be  just,  and  fear  not: 

Let  all  the  ends  thou  aim'st  at  be  thy  country's, 

Thy  God's,  and  truth's;  then  if  thou  fall'st,  O  Cromwell, 

Thou  fall'st  a  blessed  martyr  !  Serve  the  king  ; 

And,  prithee,  lead  me  in  : 

There  take  an  inventory  of  all  I  have, 

To  the  last  penny  ;  'tis  the  king's  :  my  robe, 

And  my  integrity  to  heaven,  is  all 

I  dare  now  call  mine  own.     O  Cromwell,  Cromwell ! 

Had  I  but  served  my  God  with  half  the  zeal 

I  served  my  king,  he  would  not  in  mine  age 

Have  left  me  naked  to  mine  enemies." 

— Id.,  Ibid.,  Act  III.,  Scene  II. 

In  full-blown  dignity,  see  Wolsey  stand, 

Law  in  his  voice,  and  fortune  in  his  hand : 

To  him  the  church,  the  realm,  their  pow'rs  consign, 

Thro'  him  the  rays  of  regal  bounties  shine  ; 

Turn'd  by  his  nod  the  stream  of  honour  flows, 

His  smile  alone  security  bestows  : 

Still  to  new  heights  his  restless  wishes  tow'r ; 

Claim  leads  to  claim,  and  pow'r  advances  pow'r  ; 


472  WOLSEY r  WORDSWORTH. 

Till  conquest  unresisted  ceas'd  to  please, 

And  rights  submitted  left  him  none  to  seize. 

At  length  his  sov'reign  frowns— the  train  of  state 

Mark  the  keen  glance,  and  watch  the  sign  to  hate. 

Where'er  he  turns  he  meets  a  stranger's  eye, 

His  suppliants  scorn  him,  and  his  followers  fly : 

Now  drops  at  once  the  pride  of  awful  state, 

The  golden  canopy,  the  glitt'ring  plate, 

The  regal  palace,  the  luxurious  board, 

The  liv'ried  army,  and  the  menial  lord. 

With  age,  with  cares,  with  maladies  opprest, 

He  seeks  the  refuge  of  monastic  rest. 

Grief  aids  disease,  remember'd  folly  stings, 

And  his  last  sighs  reproach  the  faith  of  kings. 

Speak  thou,  whose  thoughts  at  humble  peace  repine, 

Shall  Wolsey's  wealth  with  Wolsey's  end  be  thine  ? 

Or  liv'st  thou  now,  with  safer  pride  content, 

The  wisest  justice  on  the  banks  of  Trent  ? 

For  why  did  Wolsey  near  the  steeps  of  fate, 

On  weak  foundations  raise  th'  enormous  weight  ? 

Why  but  to  sink,  beneath  misfortune's  blow, 

With  louder  ruin  to  the  gulphs  below  ? 

— DR.  JOHNSON,  The  Vanity  of  Human  Wishes. 

Then  Wolsey  rose,  by  nature  form'd  to  seek 
Ambition  trophies,  by  address  to  win, 
By  temper  to  enjoy — whose  humbler  birth 
Taught  the  gay  scenes  of  pomp  to  dazzle  more. 

— SHENSTONE,  The  Ruin'd  Abbey. 

WILLIAM  WORDSWORTH. 
Poet  Laureate :  1770-1850. 

Let  Wordsworth  weave,  in  mystic  rhyme, 

Feelings  ineffably  sublime, 

And  sympathies  unknown ; 

Yet  so  our  yielding  breasts  enthral, 

His  Genius  shall  possess  us  all, 

His  thoughts  become  our  own, 

And,  strangely  pleased,  we  start  to  find 

Such  hidden  treasures  in  our  mind. 

— JAMES  MONTGOMERY,  A  Theme  for  a  Poet. 

And  Wordsworth,  in  a  rather  long  "  Excursion," 
(I  think  the  quarto  holds  five  hundred  pages) 
Has  given  a  sample  from  the  vasty  version 
Of  his  new  system  to  perplex  the  sages ; 
'Tis  poetry — at  least  by  his  assertion, 
And  may  appear  so  when  the  dog-star  rages — 
And  he  who  understands  it  would  be  able 
To  add  a  story  to  the  Tower  of  Babel. 

We  learn  from  Horace,  "  Homer  sometimes  sleeps"  ; 
We  feel  without  him,  Wordsworth  sometimes  wakes, — 


WORDSWORTH.  473 

To  show  with  what  complacency  he  creeps, 
With  his  dear  Wdgifoncrs,  around  his  lakes. 
He  wishes  for  "  a  boat"  to  sail  the  deeps — 
Of  ocean  ? — No,  of  air  :  and  then  he  makes 
Another  outcry  for  "a  little  boat," 
And  drivels  seas  to  set  it  well  afloat. 

— BYRON,  Don  yuan  :  Dedication  and  Third  Canto. 

Poet  of  Nature,  thou  has  wept  to  know 

That  things  depart  which  never  may  return  : 

Childhood  and  youth,  friendship,  and  love's  first  glow, 

Have  fled  like  sweet  dreams,  leaving  thee  to  mourn. 

These  common  woes  1  feel.     One  loss  is  mine, 

Which  thou  too  feel'st,  yet  I  alone  deplore. 

Thou  wert  as  a  lone  star  whose  light  did  shine 

On  some  frail  bark  in  winter's  midnight  roar: 

Thou  hast  like  to  a  rock-built  refuge  stood 

Above  the  blind  and  battling  multitude  : 

In  honoured  poverty  thy  voice  did  weave 

Songs  consecrate  to  truth  and  liberty. 

Deserting  these,  thou  leavest  me  to  grieve, 

Thus,  having  been,  that  thou  shouldst  cease  to  be. 

— SHELLEY,  To  Wordsworth. 

This  be  the  meed,  that  thy  song  creates  a  thousand-fold  echo  ! 

Sweet  as  the  warble  of  woods  ;  that  awakes  at  the  gale  of  the  morning  ! 

List !  the  Hearts  of  the  Pure,  like  caves  in  the  ancient  mountains 

Deep,  deep  in  the  Bosom,  and  from  the  Bosom  resound  it, 

Each  with  a  different  tone,  complete  or  in  musical  fragments — 

All  have  welcomed  thy  Voice,  and  receive  and  retain  and  prolong  it ! 

— S.  T.  COLERIDGE,  Ad  Vilmum  Axiologum  (To   William 
Wordsworth}. 

Then  (last  strain) 

Of  duty,  chosen  laws  controlling  choice, 
Action  and  joy  ! — An  Orphic  song  indeed, 
A  song  divine  of  high  and  passionate  thoughts, 
To  their  own  music  chanted  ! 

O  great  Bard 

Ere  yet  that  last  strain  dying  awed  the  air, 
With  steadfast  eye  I  view'd  thee  in  the  choir 
Of  ever-enduring  men.     The  truly  great 
Have  all  one  age,  and  from  one  visible  space 
Shed  influence !     They,  both  in  power  and  act, 
Are  permanent,  and  Time  is  not  with  them, 
Save  as  it  worketh  for  them,  they  in  it. 
Nor  less  a  sacred  roll  than  those  of  old, 
And  to  be  placed,  as  they,  with  gradual  fame, 
Among  the  archives  of  mankind,  thy  work 
Makes  audible  a  linked  lay  of  truth, 
'Of  truth  profound  a  sweet  continuous  lay, 
JNot  learnt,  but  native,  her  own  natural  notes ! 

— Id.,   To    William   Wordsworth    (Composed  on  the  Night 
after  his  Recitation  of"  The  Prelude  "). 


474  WORDSWORTH. 

Man  in  his  simple  grandeur,  which  can  take 

From  power  but  poor  increase ;  the  Truth  which  lies 
Upshining  in  "  the  Well  of  homely  Life  "  ; 

The  Winds,  the  Waters,  and  their  Mysteries — 
The  Morn  and  moted  Noon,  the  Stars  which  make 

Their  mirror  in  the  heart ;  the  Earth  all  rife 
With  warnings  and  with  wisdom  ;  the  deep  lore 

Which  floateth  air-like  over  lonely  places — 
These  made  thy  study  and  thy  theme ;  and  o'er 

The  Beauty  of  thy  Soul  no  Paphian  Graces, 
But  a  religious  and  a  reverent  Awe, 

Breathed  Sanctity  and  Music — inspiration, 
Not  from  the  dark  Obscure  of  priestly  law, 

But  that  which  burns — the  Centre  of  Creation  — 
A  Love,  a  Mystery,  and  a  Fear — the  unseen 
Source  of  all  worship  since  the  world  hath  been ! 

— LYTTON,  To  Wordsworth. 

I  spake  of  Wordsworth,  of  that  lofty  mind, 
Enthronised  in  a  little  monarchy 
Of  hills  and  waters,  where  no  one  thing  is, 
Lifeless,  or  pulsing  fresh  with  mountain  strength. 
But  pays  a  tribute  to  his  shaping  spirit ! 

— ARTHUR  H.  HALLAM,  Meditative  Fragments.. 

Others,  perchance,  as  keenly  felt, 

As  musically  sang  as  he  ; 

To  Nature  as  devoutly  knelt, 

Or  toil'd  to  serve  humanity  : 

But  none  with  those  ethereal  notes, 

That  star-like  sweep  of  self-control ; 

The  insight  into  worlds  unseen, 

The  lucid  sanity  of  soul. 

The  fever  of  our  fretful  life, 

The  autumn  poison  of  the  air, 

The  soul  with  its  own  self  at  strife. 

He  saw  and  felt,  but  could  not  share : 

With  eye  made  clear  by  pureness,  pierced 

The  life  of  Man  and  Nature  through ; 

And  read  the  heart  of  common  things, 

Till  new  seem'd  old,  and  old  was  new. 

— F.  T.  PALGRAVE,  William  Wordsworth.. 

The  last  poetic  voice  is  dumb — 

We  stand  to-day  by  Wordsworth's  tomb.  .   .  . 

But  where  will  Europe's  latter  hour 

Again  find  Wordsworth's  healing  power  ? 

— MATTHEW  ARNOLD,  Memorial  Verses. 

Too  fast  we  live,  too  much  are  tried, 
Too  h?rass'd,  to  attain 
Wordsworth's  sweet  calm. 

— Id.,  In  Memory  of  the  Author  of  "  Obcrmnnn  ". 


WORDSWORTH.  475 

How  welcome  to  our  ears,  long  pained 

By  strife  of  sect  and  party  noise, 
The  brook-like  murmur  of  his  song 

Of  nature's  simple  joys  ! 
The  violet  by  its  mossy  stone, 

The  primrose  by  the  river's  brim, 
And  chance-sown  daffodil,  have  found 

Immortal  life  through  him. 
The  sunrise  on  his  breezy  lake, 

The  rosy  tints  his  sunset  brought, 
World-seen,  are  gladdening  all  the  vales 

And  mountain-peaks  of  thought. 

— WHITTIER,  Wordsworth. 

From  Shelley's  dazzling  glow  or  thunderous  haze, 

From  Byron's  tempest-anger,  tempest-mirth, 
Men  turned  to  thee  and  found — not  blast  and  blaze, 

Tumult  of  tottering  heavens,  but  peace  on  earth. 
Nor  peace  that  grows  by  Lethe,  scentless  flower, 

There  in  white  languors  to  decline  and  cease ; 
But  peace  whose  names  are  also  rapture,  power, 

Clear  sight,  and  love :   for  these  are  parts  of  peace. 

— WILLIAM  WATSON,  Wordsworth's  Grave. 

Man  and  nature  as  they  appear  through  the  telescope  of  Wordsworth 
assume  no  ideal  grace,  no  visionary  excellence  ;  but  they  wear  a  comeli- 
ness which  engenders  optimism.  The  age  is  not  yet  prepared  to  appreciate 
the  poet  in  his  fulness — who  in  winning  accents  of  sweetly  uttered  know- 
ledge convinces  us  that  the  humblest  object  which  can  attract  our  gaze, 
though  seemingly  inanimate,  is  yet  an  instrument  of  design  in  the  labora- 
tory of  the  Lord  of  all. — KEATS,  Lord  Houghton's  Life  and  Letters  of 
John  Keats. 

I  think  Wordsworth  possessed  more  of  the  genius  of  a  great  philoso- 
phic poet  than  any  man  I  ever  knew,  or,  as  I  believe,  has  existed  in 
England  since  Milton.— S.  T.  COLERIDGE,  Table  Talk. 

Mr.  Wordsworth  is  the  last  man  to  "  look  abroad  into  universality,"  if 
that  alone  constituted  genius  :  he  looks  at  home  into  himself,  and  is 
"content  with  riches  fineless  ". — HAZLITT,  Table  Talk. 

Wordsworth — with  his  eternal — Here  we  go  up,  and  here  we  go  down, 
down,  and  here  we  go  roundabout,  roundabout ! — Look  at  the  nerveless 
laxity  of  his  Excursion  ! — What  interminable  prosing  ! — The  language  is 
out  of  condition  : — fat  and  fozy,  thick-winded,  purpled  and  plethoric.  Can 
he  be  compared  with  Pope  ? — Fie  on't !  no,  no,  no  ! — Pugh,  pugh  !  .  .  .  I 
confess  that  the  Excursion  is  the  worst  poem,  of  any  character,  in  the 
English  language.  It  contains  about  two  hundred  sonorous  lines,  some 
of  which  appear  to  be  fine,  even  in  the  sense,  as  well  as  the  sound.  The 
remaining  seven  thousand  three  hundred  are  quite  ineffectual.  Then,  what 
labour  the  builder  of  that  lofty  rhyme  must  have  undergone !  It  is,  in  its 
own  way,  a  small  tower  of  Babel,  and  all  built  by  a  single  man  ! — JOHN 
WILSON,  Nodes  Ambrosiance,  Vol  I. 

Wordsworth,  the  High  Priest  of  Nature's  joy. — Id.,  Essays :  Greek 
Drama. 


476  WORDSWORTH. 

We  believe  that  Wordsworth's  genius  has  had  a  greater  influence  on 
the  spirit  of  poetry  in  Britain,  than  was  ever  before  exercised  by  any  in- 
dividual  mind.  He  was  the  first  man  who  impregnated  all  his  descriptions 
of  external  nature  with  sentiment  or  passion.  In  this  he  has  been  followed 
— often  successfully — by  other  true  poets.  He  was  the  first  man  that  vindi- 
cated the  native  dignity  of  human  nature,  by  showing  that  all  her  elementary 
feelings  were  capable  of  poetry — and  in  that  too  he  has  been  followed  by 
other  true  poets,  although  here  he  stands,  and  probably  ever  will  stand, 
unappoached.  He  was  the  first  man  that  stripped  thought  and  passion  of 
all  vain  or  foolish  disguises,  and  showed  them  in  their  just  proportions 
and  unencumbered  power.  He  was  the  first  man  who  in  poetry  knew  the 
real  province  of  language,  and  suffered  it  not  to  veil  the  meanings  of  the 
spirit.  In  all  these  things, — and  in  many  more, —  Wordsworth  is  indisput- 
ably the  most  ORIGINAL  POET  OF  THE  AGE  ;  and  it  is  impossible,  in  the  very 
nature  of  things,  that  he  can  ever  be  eclipsed.  From  his  golden  urn  other 
orbs  may  draw  light ;  but  still  it  will  be  said  of  him — 

"  Then  shone  the  firmament 

With  living  sapphires.     HESPERUS,  WHO  LED 

THE  STARRY  HOST,  RODE  BRIGHTEST." 

—JOHN  WILSON,  Essays  :   Wordsworth. 

Wordsworth  is  the  apostle,  the  spiritualiser  of  those  who  cling  to  the 
most  idealised  part  of  things  that  are  —Religion  and  her  houses,  Loyalty 
and  her  monuments — the  tokens  of  the  Sanctity  which  overshadows  the 
Past:  these  are  of  him,  and  he  of  them.— LYTTON,  Essays :  Intellectual 
Spirit  of  the  Time. 

In  Wordsworth,  the  poetry  is  almost  always  the  mere  setting  of  a 
thought.  The  thought  may  be  more  valuable  than  the  setting,  or  it  may 
be  less  valuable,  but  there  can  be  no  question  as  to  which  was  first  in  his 
mind :  what  he  is  impressed  with,  and  what  he  is  anxious  to  impress,  is 
some  proposition,  more  or  less  distinctly  conceived;  some  truth,  or 
something  which  he  deems  such.  He  lets  the  thought  dwell  in  his  mind, 
till  it  excites,  as  in  the  nature  of  thought,  other  thoughts,  and  also  such 
feelings  as  the  measure  of  his  sensibility  is  adequate  to  supply. — J. 
STUART  MILL,  Dissertations  and  Discussions,  Vol.  I. 

The  exceptional  fact  of  the  period  is  the  genius  of  Wordsworth.  He 
had  no  master  but  nature  and  solitude.  "  He  wrote  a  poem,"  says 
Landor,  "without  the  aid  of  war."  His  verse  is  the  voice  of  sanity  in  a 
worldly  and  ambitious  age.  One  regrets  that  his  temperament  was  not 
more  liquid  and  musical.  He  has  written  longer  than  he  was  inspired. 
But  for  the  rest  he  has  no  competitor. — EMERSON,  English  Traits  : 
Literature. 

The  works  of  genius  of  our  age  breathe  a  spirit  of  universal  sympathy. 
The  great  poet  of  our  times,  Wordsworth — one  of  the  few  who  are  to  live — 
has  gone  to  common  life,  to  the  feelings  of  our  universal  nature,  to  the 
obscure  and  neglected  portions  of  society,  for  beautiful  and  touching 
themes.  Nor  ought  it  to  be  said  that  he  has  shed  over  these  the  charms 
of  his  genius,  as  if  in  themselves  they  had  nothing  grand  or  lovely. 
Genius  is  not  a  creator,  in  the  sense  of  fancying  or  feigning  what  does 
not  exist.  Its  distinction  is  to  discern  more  of  truth  than  common  minds. 
It  sees  under  disguises  and  humble  forms  everlasting  beauty.  .  .  .  This 


WORDSWORTH.  477 

it  is  the  prerogative  of  Wordsworth  to  discern  and  reveal  in  the  ordinary 
walks  of  life,  in  the  common  human  heart.  He  has  revealed  the  loveli- 
ness of  the  primitive  feelings,  of  the  universal  auctions  of  the  human 
soul.  The  grand  truth  which  pervades  his  poetry  is  that  the  beautiful  is 
not  confined  to  the  rare,  the  new,  the  distant — to  scenery  and  modes  of 
life  open  only  to  the  few ;  but  that  it  is  poured  forth  profusely  on  the 
common  earth  and  sky,  that  it  gleams  from  the  loneliest  flower,  that  it 
lights  up  the  humblest  sphere,  that  the  sweetest  affections  lodge  in  lowly 
hearts,  that  there  is  sacredness,  dignity,  and  loveliness  in  lives  which 
few  eyes  rest  on — that,  even  in  the  absence  of  all  intellectual  culture,  the 
domestic  relations  can  quietly  nourish  that  disinterestedness  which  is  the 
element  of  all  greatness,  and  without  which  intellectual  power  is  a  splendid 
deformity.  .  .  .  Wordsworth  is  the  poet  of  humanity  ;  he  teaches  rever- 
ence for  our  universal  nature ;  he  breaks  down  the  factitious  barriers 
between  human  hearts. — DR.  W.  E.  CHANNING,  The  Present  Age. 

Next  to  Byron,  there  is  no  poet  whose  writings  have  had  so  much 
influence  on  the  taste  of  the  age  as  Wordsworth.  Byron  drove  on  through 
the  upper  air  till  the  thunder  of  his  wheels  died  on  the  ear.  Wordsworth 
'drove  to  Parnassus  by  the  lower  road,  got  sometimes  lost  in  bushes  and 
lowland  fogs,  and  was  much  molested  by  mosquito  critics. — LONGFELLOW, 
Samuel  Longfellow's  Life  of  H.  W.  Longfellow,  Vol.  I. 

Wordsworth  is  more  like  Scott,  and  understands  how  to  be  happy,  but  yet 
cannot  altogether  rid  himself  of  the  sense  that  he  is  a  philosopher,  and 
ought  always  to  be  saying  something  wise.  He  has  also  a  vague  notion 
that  Nature  would  not  be  able  to  get  on  well  without  Wordsworth  ;  and 
finds  a  considerable  part  of  his  pleasure  in  looking  at  himself  as  well  as 
at  her. — RUSKIN,  Modern  Painters,  Vol.  III. 

Look  at  the  self-confidence  of  Wordsworth,  stiffening  every  other 
sentence  of  his  prefaces  into  defiance  ;  there  is  no  more  of  it  than  was 
needed  to  enable  him  to  do  his  work,  yet  it  is  not  a  little  ungraceful  here 
and  there.— Id.,  On  the  Old  Road,  Vol.  I. 

Tennyson  says  of  the  laureate  wreath  which  he  so  deservedly  wears, 
that  it  is 

"  Greener  than  the  brows 

Of  him  who  uttered  nothing  base  ". 

And  this,  which  seems  at  first  sight  negative  praise,  is,  in  reality,  a  proof 
of  exquisite  discernment ;  for  it  is  just  that  which  constitutes  the  marked 
distinction  between  Wordsworth  and  the  other  really  original  poets  who 
are  likely  to  share  with  him  the  honour  of  representing  poetically  to  pos- 
terity the  early  part  of  the  nineteenth  century.  In  their  crowns  there  is 
alloy,  both  moral  and  intellectual.  His  may  not  be  of  so  imperial  a 
fashion ;  the  gems  that  stud  it  may  be  less  dazzling ;  but  the  gold  is  of 
ethereal  temper,  and  there  is  no  taint  upon  his  robe.  Weakness,  incom- 
pleteness, imperfection,  he  had,  for  he  was  a  mortal  man  of  limited 
faculties,  but  spotless  purity  is  not  to  be  denied  him — he  uttered  nothing 
base. — GEORGE  BRIMLEY,  Essays. 

That  we  would  assign  to  Wordsworth  a  high  place  among  the  poets  of 
England  the  whole  tenor  of  our  observations  hitherto  will  have  made 
clear.  At  the  same  time,  that  he  falls  short  of  the  very  highest  rank, 
that  he  does  not  stand  on  the  very  top  of  our  English  Parnassus,  where 


478  WORDSWORTH. 

Chaucer,  Milton,  and  Spenser  keep  reverent  company  with  Shakespeare, 
but  rather  on  that  upper  slope  of  the  mountain  whence  these  greatest  are 
visible,  and  where  various  other  poets  hold  perhaps  as  just,  if  not  so  fixed, 
a  footing :  this  also  we  have  sought  to  convey  as  part  of  our  general  im- 
pression. .  .  .  The  ink  of  Wordsworth  is  rarely  his  own  blood. — DAVID 
MASSON,  Wordsworth,  Shelley,  Keats,  and  other  Essays. 

Wordsworth  was,  and  felt  himself  to  be,  a  discoverer,  and  like  other 
great  discoverers,  his  victory  was  in  seeing  by  faith  things  which  were 
not  yet  seen,  but  which  were  obvious,  or  soon  became  so,  when  once 
shown.  He  opened  a  new  world  of  thought  and  enjoyment  to  English- 
men ;  his  work  formed  an  epoch  in  the  intellectual  and  moral  history  of 
the  race.  But  for  that  very  reason  he  had,  as  Coleridge  said,  like  all 
great  artists,  to  create  the  taste  by  which  he  was  to  be  relished,  to  teach 
the  art  by  which  he  was  to  be  seen  and  judged.  And  people  were  so 
little  prepared  for  the  thorough  and  systematic  way  in  which  he  searched 
out  what  is  deepest  or  highest  or  subtlest  in  human  feeling  under  the 
homeliest  realities,  that  not  being  able  to  understand  him  they  laughed 
at  him.  Nor  was  he  altogether  without  fault  in  the  misconceptions  which 
occasioned  so  much  ridicule  and  scorn. — DEAN  R.  W.  CHURCH,  Dante, 
and  other  Essays. 

For  those  to  whom  the  mission  of  Wordsworth  appears  before  all  things 
as  a  religious  one,  there  is  something  solemn  in  the  spectacle  of  the  seer 
standing  at  the  close  of  his  own  apocalypse,  with  the  consciousness  that 
the  stiffening  brain  would  never  permit  him  to  drink  again  that  overflowing 
sense  of  glory  and  revelation ;  never,  till  he  should  drink  it  new  in  the 
Icingdom  of  God.  He  lived,  in  fact,  through  another  generation  of  men, 
but  the  vision  came  to  him  no  more. 

"  Or  if  some  vestige  of  those  gleams 
Survived,  'twas  only  in  his  dreams."  .  .  . 

Surely  of  him,  if  of  any  one,  we  may  think  as  of  a  man  who  was  so  in 
accord  with  Nature,  so  at  one  with  the  very  soul  of  things,  that  there  can 
be  no  Mansion  of  the  Universe  which  shall  not  be  to  him  a  home,  no 
Governor  who  will  not  accept  him  among  His  servants,  and  satisfy  him 
with  love  and  peace. — F.  W.  H.  MYERS,  Life  of  Wordsworth. 

The  influence  of  Wordsworth  upon  his  time  has  been  the  influence  of 
the  Gulf-Stream ;  it  has  flowed  silently  and  surely,  and  has  conquered. 
.  .  .  He  is  in  the  great  apostolic  succession  of  truth,  and  his  diocese  is 
as  wide  as  the  walls  of  heaven.  ...  If  poetry  is,  as  some  one  has  beauti- 
fully described  it,  the  Sabbath  influence  of  literature,  Wordsworth  breathes 
upon  us  the  very  Sabbath  of  poetry— its  rest,  its  devotion,  and  its  healing 
calm. — W.  J.  DAWSON,  Quest  and  Vision. 

If  Wordsworth  is  pleasant  to  read  it  is  on  account  neither  of  his  direct 
religious  and  moral  teaching,  nor  by  reason  of  his  expression,  but  because 
he  has  like  no  other  entered  deeply  into  the  joy  of  earth.  Indeed  the  very 
odour  of  newly  dug  soil  seems  to  hang  about  his  verse ;  when  most  dull 
and  tiresome  he  suggests  at  worst  the  weariness  of  a  long  journey  over  a 
dull  landscape.  At  his  best  the  charm  he  wields  is  comparable  only  to 
that  of  sunlight  on  waving  corn,  of  birds  singing  on  flowery  hawthorn,  of 
the  brook  chattering  round  its  ferny  islets. — P.  A.  GRAHAM,  Nature  in 
Books. 


WORDSWORTH,  WREN,  WYCHERLEY.  479 

Wordsworth  has  exercised  more  influence  over  English  poetry  than 
any  other  man  of  this  century.  He  has  done  so  mainly  by  virtue  of  his 
originality,  for  he  is  pre-eminently  original.  It  is,  of  course,  true  that 
we  find  among  his  predecessors,  and  especially  in  Burns,  anticipations 
of  his  style,  and,  at  times,  of  his  mode  of  thought.  It  is  also  true  that 
the  spirit  of  Wordsworth  gives  a  poetic  exposition  of  the  cry  of  Rousseau 
for  a  return  to  nature,  and  in  making  it  less  a  theory  makes  it  much  more 
profoundly  true.  But  it  is  just  in  this  that  his  originality  consists.  He 
gives  a  clear  exposition  to  tendencies  which  before  his  day  had  been 
vague  and  undefined.  To  do  so  he  breaks  boldly  with  the  past,  and 
enters  upon  a  path  of  his  own,  a  path  which  had  been  missed  just  because 
it  is  so  very  obvious.  Wordsworth's  great  principle  is  to  be  in  all  things 
natural,  natural  in  thought,  natural  in  language;  to  avoid  far-fetched 
ingenuities  of  fancy  and  expression,  and  to  trust  for  success  to  the  force 
•of  simple  truth. — HUGH  WALKER  in  Celebrities  of  the  Centiiry. 

SIR  CHRISTOPHER  WREN. 
English  Architect:  1632-1723. 

Stone-masons  collected  the  dome  of  St.  Paul's,  but  Wren  hung  it  in 
air. — R.  A.  WILLMOTT,  Advantages  of  Literature. 

WILLIAM  WYCHERLEY. 
English  Dramatist:   1640-1715. 

The  standard  of  thy  style  let  Etherege  be  ; 
For  wit,  th'  immortal  spring  of  Wycherley  ; 
Learn,  after  both,  to  draw  some  just  design, 
And  the  next  age  will  learn  to  copy  thine. 

— DRYDEN,  To  Mr.  Sontherne. 

Thou,  whom  the  Nine  with  Plautus'  wit  inspire, 
The  art  of  Terence,  and  Menander's  fire  ; 
Whose  sense  instructs  us,  and  whose  humour  charms, 
Whose  judgment  sways  us,  and  whose  spirit  warms. 

— POPE,  Pastorals. 

Wycherley  earns  hard  whate'er  he  gains  ; 
He  wants  no  Judgment  and  he  spares  no  Pains  : 
He  frequently  excels  ;  and  at  the  least 
Makes  fewer  Faults  than  any  of  the  rest. 

— ROCHESTER,  An  Allusion  to  the  Tenth  Satire  of  the  First 
Book  of  Horace. 

In  sense  and  numbers  if  you  would  excel, 
Read  Wycherley,  consider  Dryden  well. 
In  one,  what  vigorous  turns  of  fancy  shine  ! 
In  th'  other,  Syrens  warble  in  each  line. 

—GARTH,  The  Dispensary,  Canto  IV. 

Wycherley  was  a  worse  Congreve.  There  was,  indeed,  a  remarkable 
analogy  between  the  writings  and  lives  of  these  two  men.  Both  were 
gentlemen  liberally  educated.  Both  led  town  lives,  and  knew  human 


480        WYCHERLEY,  XAVIER,  XENOPHON,  XERXES  I. 

nature  only  as  it  appears  between  Hyde  Park  and  the  Tower.  Both  were 
men  of  wit.  Neither  had  much  imagination.  Both  at  an  early  age  pro- 
duced lively  and  profligate  comedies.  Both  retired  from  the  field  while 
still  in  early  manhood,  and  owed  to  their  youthful  achievements  in  litera- 
ture whatever  consideration  they  enjoyed  in  later  life.  Both,  after  they 
had  ceased  to  write  for  the  stage,  published  volumes  of  miscellanies  which 
did  little  credit  either  to  their  talents  or  to  their  morals.  Both,  during 
their  declining  years,  hung  loose  upon  society ;  and  both,  in  their  last 
moments,  made  eccentric  and  unjustifiable  dispositions  of  their  estates. — 
MACAULAY,  Essays  :  Leigh  Hunt. 

FRANCIS  XAVIER. 
Jesuit  Missionary  ;  The  Apostle  of  the  Indies  :  1506-1552. 

The  "  God-in-us "  enthusiasm  of  Francis  Xavier.  .  .  .  Xavier  the 
magnanimous,  the  holy,  and  the  gay ;  the  canonised  saint,  not  of  Rome 
only,  but  of  universal  Christendom  ;  who,  if  at  this  hour  there  remained 
not  a  solitary  Christian  to  claim  and  to  rejoice  in  his  spiritual  ancestry, 
should  yet  live  in  hallowed  and  everlasting  remembrance,  as  the  man  who 
has  bequeathed  to  these  later  ages,  at  once  the  clearest  proof  and  the 
most  illustrious  example,  that  even  amidst  the  enervating  arts  of  our 
modern  civilisation  the  apostolic  energy  may  still  burn  with  all  its  primeval 
ardour  in  the  human  soul,  when  animated  and  directed  by  a  power  more 
than  human. — SIR  JAMES  STEPHEN,  Essays  in  Ecclesiastical  Biography. 

XENOPHON. 
Athenian  General,  Historian  and  Philosopher :  B.C.  445-355. 

And  Attic  Xenophon  unfolds 
Rich  honey  from  Lyceum's  flow'rs. 

— J.  G.  COOPER,  Epistle  I.  :  The  Retreat  of  Aristippus. 

Was  the  retreat  of  the  Ten  Thousand  under  Xenophon,  or  his  work  of 
that  name,  the  most  consummate  performance  ? — HAZLITT,  Table  Talk. 

Xenophon,  the  Attic  bee,  presents  us  with  a  style  flowing  with  honey. — 
DR.  VICESIMUS  KNOX,  Essays  :  Cursory  Thoughts  on  Biography. 

XERXES  I. 

King  of  Persia  :  B.C.  485-465.     - 

Great  Xerxes  comes  to  seize  the  certain  prey, 

And  starves  exhausted  regions  on  his  way  ; 

Attendant  Flatt'ry  counts  his  myriads  o'er, 

Till  counted  myriads  soothe  his  pride  no  more  ; 

Fresh  praise  is  tried  till  madness  fires  his  mind, 

The  waves  he  lashes,  and  enchains  the  wind  : 

New  pow'rs  are  claim'd,  new  pow'rs  are  still  bestow'd, 

Till  rude  resistance  lops  the  spreading  god; 

The  daring  Greeks  deride  the  martial  show, 


XERXES  I.,  YOUNG,  ZENO.  ,s, 

And  heap  their  valleys  with  the  gaudy  foe; 

Th'  insulted  sea  with  humbler  thoughts  he  gains, 

A  single  skiff  to  speed  his  flight  remains : 

Th'  encumber'd  oar  scarce  leaves  the  dreaded  coast 

Through  purple  billows  and  a  floating  host. 

— DR.  JOHNSON,  The  Vanity  of  Human  Wishes. 

Xerxes  the  Percian  kyng  yet  sawe  I  there, 

With  his  huge  host  that  dranke  the  rivers  drye, 
Dismounted  hilles,  and  made  the  vales  uprere, 

His  hoste  and  all  yet  sawe  I  slayne  perdye. 

— LORD  BUCKHURST,  Induction  to  a  Mirror  for  Magistrates. 

DR.  EDWARD  YOUNG. 
English  Poet :  1684-1765. 

And  kindle  the  brisk-sallying  fire  of  Young. 

— DR.  JOHN  BROWN,  On  Honour. 

What  Young,  satiric  and  sublime,  has  writ, 
Whose  life  is  virtue,  and  whose  muse  is  wit. 

— SAVAGE,  The  Wanderer,  Canto  i. 

Night's  seraphic  bard,  immortal  Young ! 

— MICHAEL  BRUCE,  Lochleven. 

To  crown  the  hoary  bard  of  night, 
The  muses  and  the  virtues  all  unite. 

— BEATTIE,  On  the  Report  of  a  Monument. 

...  the  Bard 

Whose  genius  spangled  o'er  a  gloomy  theme 
With  fancies  thick  as  his  inspiring  stars.   .  .  . 

— WORDSWORTH,  The  Prelude. 

Young's  works  are  as  devout,  as  satirical,  sometimes  as  merry,  as  those 
of  Cowper  ;  and,  undoubtedly,  more  witty. — LORD  JEFFREY,  Essays. 

A  later  satirist,  Dr.  Young,  is  still  read  with  pleasure.  But  he  has  the 
fault  of  Seneca,  of  Ovid,  of  Cowley  :  a  profuse  and  unseasonable  applica- 
tion of  wit.  His  satires  have  been  justly  called  a  string  of  epigrams.  A 
lover  of  originality,  he  did  not  regard  models.  Had  he  endeavoured 
to  imitate  Juvenal  or  Persius,  he  would  have  avoided  this  fault.  Those 
great  masters  were  too  much  engrossed  by  the  importance  of  their  sub- 
jects to  fall  into  the  puerility  of  witticism.  There  is  also  something  in 
Young's  versification  which  a  good  ear  does  not  approve. — DR.  VICESI- 
MUS  KNOX,  Essays  :  Cursory  Thoughts  on  Satire  and  Satirists. 

ZENO. 
Emperor  of  the  East :  474-491. 

More  just  the  prescience  of  the  eternal  goal, 

Which  gleam'd  'mid  Cyprian  shades,  on  Zeno's  soul, 

31 


482  ZENO,  ZOROASTER. 

Or  shone  to  Plato  in  the  lonely  cave ; 
God  in  all  space,  and  life  in  every  grave  ! 

— LYTTON,  The  New  Timon. 

See  how  nations  and  races  flit  by  on  the  sea  of  time,  and  leave  no  ripple 
to  tell  where  they  floated  or  sunk,  and  one  good  soul  shall  make  the  name 
of  Moses,  or  of  Zeno,  or  of  Zoroaster  reverent  for  ever.— EMERSON,  An 
Address,  i$th  July,  1838. 


ZOROASTER. 
Ancient  Persian  Philosopher. 

There,  in  long  robes,  the  royal  Magi  stand ; 
Grave  Zoroaster  waves  the  circling  wand. 

—POPE,  The  Temple  of  Fame. 

Oh  Persic  Zoroaster,  lord  of  stars 

— Who  said  these  pld  renowns,  dead  long  ago, 

Could  make  me  overlook  the  living  world 

To  gaze  through  gloom  at  where  they  stood,  indeed. 

— ROBERT  BROWNING,  Paracelsus. 

The  grave  and  time-worn  sentences  of  Zoroaster  may  all  be  parsed, 
though  we  do  not  parse  them.  .  .  .  Therefore,  when  we  speak  of  the  Poet 
in  any  high  sense,  we  are  driven  to  such  examples  as  Zoroaster  and  Plato, 
St.  John  and  Menu,  with  their  moral  burdens. — EMERSON,  Poetry  and 
Imagination. 

Zoroaster,  like  Moses,  saw  behind  the  physical  forces  into  the  deeper 
laws  of  right  and  wrong.  He  supposed  himself  to  discover  two  antagon- 
ist powers  contending  in  the  heart  of  man  as  well  as  in  the  outward 
universe — a  spirit  of  light  and  a  spirit  of  darkness,  a  spirit  of  truth  and  a 
spirit  of  falsehood,  a  spirit  life-giving  and  beautiful,  a  spirit  poisonous  and 
deadly.  To  one  or  other  of  these  powers  man  was  necessarily  in  servi- 
tude. As  the  follower  of  Ormuzd,  he  became  enrolled  in  the  celestial 
armies,  whose  business  was  to  fight  against  sin  and  misery,  against  wrong- 
doing and  impurity,  against  injustice  and  lies  and  baseness  of  all  sorts  and 
kinds ;  and  every  one  with  a  soul  in  him  to  prefer  good  to  evil  was  sum- 
moned to  the  holy  wars,  which  would  end  at  last  after  ages  in  the  final 
overthrow  of  Ahriman.  .  .  .  The  Persians  caught  rapidly  Zoroaster's 
spirit.  Uncorrupted  by  luxury,  they  responded  eagerly  to  a  voice  which 
they  recognised  as  speaking  truth  to  them.  They  have  been  called 
the  Puritans  of  the  Old  World.  Never  any  people,  it  is  said,  hated  idolatry 
as  they  hated  it,  and  for  the  simple  reason  that  they  hated  lies. — J.  A. 
FROUDE,  Calvinism:  An  Address. 


PN       Wale,  William 

6084        What  great  men  have  said 

G7W35     about  great  men 


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