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Title: The Three Devils: Luther's, Milton's, and Goethe's
With Other Essays
Author: David Masson
Release Date: March 1, 2011 [eBook #35438]
Language: English
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THE THREE DEVILS: LUTHER'S, MILTON'S, AND GOETHE'S.
With Other Essays.
by
DAVID MASSON, M.A., LL.D.,
Professor of Rhetoric and English Literature in the
University of Edinburgh.
London:
Macmillan And Co.
1874.
[The Right of Translation and Reproduction is Reserved.]
London:
R. Clay, Sons, and Taylor, Printers,
Bread Street Hill.
PREFATORY NOTE.
The first five of the following Essays are reprinted from the Author's
_Essays Biographical and Critical: chiefly on English Poets_, published in
1856. The present Volume and two similar Volumes issued separately (under
the titles "_Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats, and other Essays_" and
"_Chatterton: A Story of the Year 1770_") may be taken together as forming
a new and somewhat enlarged edition of the older book. The addition in the
present Volume consists of the last Essay.
EDINBURGH:
_November 1874_.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
I. THE THREE DEVILS: LUTHER'S, MILTON'S, AND GOETHE'S 1
II. SHAKESPEARE AND GOETHE 61
III. MILTON'S YOUTH 125
IV. DRYDEN AND THE LITERATURE OF THE RESTORATION 153
V. DEAN SWIFT 235
VI. HOW LITERATURE MAY ILLUSTRATE HISTORY 301
THE THREE DEVILS: LUTHER'S, MILTON'S, AND GOETHE'S.
THE THREE DEVILS: LUTHER'S, MILTON'S, AND GOETHE'S.[1]
Luther, Milton, and Goethe: these are very strange names to bring
together. It strikes us, however, that the effect may not be uninteresting
if we connect the names of those three great men, as having each
represented to us the Principle of Evil, and each represented him in a
different way. Each of the three has left on record his conception of a
great accursed being, incessantly working in human affairs, and whose
function it is to produce evil. There is nothing more striking about
Luther than the amazing sincerity of his belief in the existence of such
an evil being, the great general enemy of mankind, and whose specific
object, in Luther's time, it was to resist Luther's movement, and, if
possible, "cut his soul out of God's mercy." What was Luther's exact
conception of this being is to be gathered from his life and writings.
Again, we have Milton's Satan. Lastly, we have Goethe's Mephistopheles.
Nor is it possible to confound the three, or for a moment to mistake the
one for the other. They are as unlike as it is possible for three grand
conceptions of the same thing to be. May it not, then, be profitable to
make their peculiarities and their differences a subject of study?
Milton's Satan and Goethe's Mephistopheles have indeed been frequently
contrasted in a vague, antithetic way; for no writer could possibly give a
description of Goethe's Mephistopheles without saying something or other
about Milton's Satan. The exposition, however, of the difference between
the two has never been sufficient; and it may give the whole speculation
greater interest if, in addition to Milton's Satan and Goethe's
Mephistopheles, we include Luther's Devil. It is scarcely necessary to
premise that here there is to be no theological discussion. All that we
propose is to compare, as we find them, three very striking delineations
of the Evil Principle, one of them experimental, the other two poetical.
* * * * *
These last words indicate one respect in which, it will be perceived at
the outset, Luther's conception of the Evil Principle on the one hand and
Milton's and Goethe's on the other are fundamentally distinguishable. All
the three, of course, are founded on the Scriptural proposition of the
existence of a being whose express function it is to produce evil. Luther,
firmly believing every jot and tittle of Scripture, believed the
proposition about the Devil also; and so the whole of his experience of
evil in himself and others was cast into the shape of a verification of
that proposition. Had he started without such a preliminary conception,
his experience would have had to encounter the difficulty of expressing
itself in some other way; which, it is likely, would not have been nearly
so effective, or so Luther-like. Milton, too, borrows the elements of his
conception of Satan from Scripture. The Fallen Angel of the Bible is the
hero of _Paradise Lost_; and one of the most striking things about this
poem is that in it we see the grand imagination of the poet blazing in the
very track of the propositions of the theologian. And, though there can be
no doubt that Goethe's Mephistopheles is conceived less in the spirit of
Scripture than either Milton's Satan or Luther's Devil, still even in
Mephistopheles we discern the lineaments of the same traditional being.
All the three, then, have this in common--that they are founded on the
Scriptural proposition of the existence of an accursed being whose
function it is to produce evil, and that, more or less, they adopt the
Scriptural account of that being. Still, as we have said, Luther's
conception of this being belongs to one category; Milton's and Goethe's
to another. Luther's is a biographical phenomenon; Milton's and Goethe's
are literary performances. Luther illustrated the Evil Being of Scripture
to himself by means of his personal experience. Whatever resistance he met
with, whatever obstacle to Divine grace he found in his own heart or in
external circumstances, whatever event he saw plainly cast in the way of
the progress of the Gospel, whatever outbreak of a bad or unamiable spirit
occurred in the Church, whatever strange phenomenon of nature wore a
malevolent aspect,--out of that he obtained a clearer notion of the Devil.
In this way it might be said that Luther was all his life gaining a deeper
insight into the Devil's character. On the other hand, Milton's Satan and
Goethe's Mephistopheles are poetical creations, the one epic, the other
dramatic. Borrowing the elements of his conception from Scripture, Milton
set himself to the task of describing the ruined Archangel as he may be
supposed to have existed at that epoch of the creation when he had hardly
decided his own function, as yet warring with the Almighty, or, in pursuit
of a gigantic scheme of revenge, travelling from star to star. Poetically
assuming the device of the same Scriptural proposition, Goethe set himself
to the task of representing the Spirit of Evil as he existed six thousand
years later, no longer gifted with the same powers of locomotion, or
struggling for admission into this part of the universe, but plying his
understood function in crowded cities and on the minds of individuals.
So far as the mere fact of Milton's having made Satan the hero of his
epic, or of Goethe's having made Mephistopheles a character in his drama,
qualifies us to speak of the theological opinions of the one or of the
other, we are not entitled to say that either Milton or Goethe believed in
a Devil at all as Luther did. Or, again, it is quite conceivable that
Milton might have believed in a Devil as sincerely as Luther did, and that
Goethe might have believed in a Devil as sincerely as Luther did also, and
yet that, in that case, the Devil which Milton believed in might not have
been the Satan of the _Paradise Lost_, and the Devil which Goethe believed
in might not have been the Mephistopheles of _Faust_. Of course, we have
other means of knowing whether Milton did actually believe in the
existence of the great accursed being whose fall he sings. It is also
plain that Goethe's Mephistopheles resembles Luther's Devil more than
Milton's Satan does in this respect--that Mephistopheles is the expression
of a great deal of Goethe's actual observation of life and experience in
human affairs. Still, neither the fact, on the one hand, that Milton did
believe in the existence of the Evil Spirit, nor the fact, on the other,
that Mephistopheles is an expression for the aggregate of much profound
thinking on the part of Goethe, is of force to obliterate the fundamental
distinction between Luther's Devil, as a biographical reality, and
Milton's Satan and Goethe's Mephistopheles, as two literary performances.
If we might risk summing up under the light of this preliminary
distinction, perhaps the following would be near the truth:--Luther had as
strong a faith as ever man had in the existence and activity of the Evil
Spirit of Scripture: he used to recognise the operation of this Spirit in
every individual instance of evil as it occurred; he used, moreover, to
conceive that this Spirit and he were personal antagonists; and so, just
as one man forms to himself a distinct idea of the character of another
man to whom he stands in an important relation, Luther came to form to
himself a distinct idea of the Devil, and what this idea was it seems
possible to find out by examining his writings. Milton, again, chose the
Scripture personage as the hero of an epic poem, and employed his grand
imagination in realizing the Scripture narrative: we have reason also to
know that he did actually believe in the Devil's existence; and it agrees
with what we know of Milton's character to suppose that the Devil thus
believed in would be pretty much the same magnificent being he has
described in his poem--though, on the whole, we should not say that Milton
was a man likely to carry about with him, in daily affairs, any constant
recognition of the Devil's presence. Lastly, Goethe, adopting, for a
different literary effect, the Scriptural and traditional account of the
same being, conceived his Mephistopheles. This Mephistopheles, there is no
doubt, had a real allegoric meaning with Goethe; he meant him to typify
the Evil Spirit in modern civilization; but whether Goethe did actually
believe in the existence of a supernatural intelligence whose function it
is to produce evil is a question which no one will feel himself called
upon to answer, although, if he did, it may be unhesitatingly asserted
that this supernatural intelligence cannot have been Mephistopheles.
From all this it appears that Luther's conception of the Evil Being
belongs to one category, Milton's and Goethe's to another. Let us
consider, _first_, Milton's Satan, _secondly_, Goethe's Mephistopheles,
and, _thirdly_, Luther's Devil.
* * * * *
The difficulties which Milton had to overcome in writing his _Paradise
Lost_ were immense. The gist of those difficulties may be defined as
consisting in this, that the poet had at once to represent a supernatural
condition of being and to construct a story. He had to describe the
ongoings of Angels, and at the same time to make one event follow another.
It is comparatively easy for Milton to sustain his conception of those
superhuman beings as mere objects or phenomena--to represent them flying
singly through space like huge black shadows, or standing opposite to
each other in hostile battalions; but to construct a story in which these
beings should be the agents, to exhibit these beings thinking, scheming,
blundering, in such a way as to produce a likely succession of events, was
enormously difficult. The difficulty was to make the course of events
correspond with the reputation of the objects. To do this perfectly was
literally impossible. It is possible for the human mind to conceive
twenty-four great supernatural beings existing together at any given
moment in space; but it is utterly impossible to conceive what would occur
among those twenty-four beings during twenty-four hours. The value of
time, the amount of history that can be transacted in a given period,
depends on the nature and prowess of the beings whose volitions make the
chain of events; and so a lower order of beings can have no idea at what
rate things happen in a higher. The mode of causation will be different
from that with which they are acquainted.
This is the difficulty with which Milton had to struggle; or, rather, this
is the difficulty with which he did not struggle. He had to construct a
narrative; and so, while he represents to us the full stature of his
superhuman beings as mere objects or phenomena, he does not attempt to
make events follow each other at a higher rate among those beings than
they do amongst ourselves, except in the single respect of their being
infinitely more powerful physical agents than we are. Whatever feeling of
inconsistency is experienced in reading the _Paradise Lost_ may be traced,
perhaps, to the fact that the necessities of the story obliged the poet
not to attempt to make the rate of causation among those beings as
extraordinary as his description of them as phenomena. Such a feeling of
inconsistency there is; and yet Milton sustains his flight as nobly as
mortal could have done. Throughout the whole poem we see him recollecting
his original conception of Satan as an object:--
"Thus Satan, talking to his nearest mate,
With head uplift above the waves, and eyes
That sparkling blazed; his other parts besides,
Prone on the flood, extended long and large,
Lay floating many a rood."
And this is a great thing to have done. If the poet ever flags in his
conception of those superhuman beings as objects, it is when he finds it
necessary to describe a multitude of them assembled together in some
_place_; and his usual device then is to reduce the bulk of the greatest
number. This, too, is for the behoof of the story. If it is necessary, for
instance, to assemble the Angels to deliberate, this must be done in an
audience-hall, and the human mind refuses to go beyond certain limits in
its conception of what an audience-hall is. Again the gate of Hell is
described, although the Hell of Milton is a mere vague extent of fiery
element, which, in strict keeping, could not be described as having a
gate. The narrative, however, requires the conception. And so in other
cases. Still, consistency of description is well sustained.
Nor is it merely as objects or phenomena that Milton sustains throughout
his whole poem a consistent conception of the Angels. He is likewise
consistent in his description of them as physical agents. Lofty stature
and appearance carry with them a promise of so much physical power; and
hence, in Milton's case, the necessity of finding words and figures
capable of expressing modes and powers of mechanical action, on the part
of the Angels, as superhuman as the stature and appearance he has given to
them. This complicated his difficulties very much. It is quite conceivable
that a man should be able to describe the mere appearance of a gigantic
being standing up, as it were, with his back to a wall, and yet utterly
break down, and not be able to find words, when he tried to describe this
gigantic being stepping forth into colossal activity and doing some
characteristic thing. Milton has overcome the difficulty. His conception
of the Angels as physical agents does not fall beneath his conception of
them as mere objects. In his description, for instance, in the sixth book,
of the Angels tearing up mountains by the roots and flinging them upon
each other, we have strength suggested corresponding to the reputed
stature of the beings. In extension of the same remark, we may observe how
skilfully Milton has aggrandized and eked out his conception of the
superhuman beings he is describing by endowing them with the power of
infinitely swift motion through space. On this point we offer our readers
an observation which they may verify for themselves:--Milton, we are
persuaded, had it vaguely in his mind, throughout _Paradise Lost_, that
the bounding peculiarity between the human condition of being and the
angelic one he is describing is the law of gravitation. We, and all that
is cognisable by us, are subject to this law; but Creation may be peopled
with beings who are not subject to it, and to us these beings are as if
they were not. But, whenever one of those beings becomes cognisable by us,
he instantly becomes subject to gravitation; and he must resume his own
mode of being ere he can be free from its consequences. The Angels were
not subject to gravitation; that is to say, they had the means of moving
in any direction at will. When they rebelled, and were punished by
expulsion from Heaven, they did not _fall_ out; for, in fact, so far as
the description intimates, there existed no planet, no distinct material
element, towards which they could gravitate. They were _driven_ out by a
pursuing fire. Then, after their fall, they had the power of rising
upward, of navigating space, of quitting Hell, directing their flight to
one glittering planet, alighting on its rotund surface, and then bounding
off again, and away to another. A corollary of this fundamental difference
between the human condition of being and the angelic would be that angels
are capable of direct vertical action, whereas men are capable mainly of
horizontal. An army of men can exist only as a square, or other plane
figure, whereas an army of angels can exist as a cube or parallelopiped.
Now, in everything relating to the physical action of the Angels, even in
carrying out this notion of their mode of being, Milton is most
consistent. But it was impossible to follow out the superiority of these
beings to its whole length. The attempt to do so would have made a
narrative impossible. Exalting our conception of these beings as mere
objects, or as mere physical agents, as much as he could, it would have
been suicidal in the poet to attempt to realize history as it must be
among such beings. No human mind could do it. He had, therefore, except
where the notion of physical superiority assisted him, to make events
follow each other just as they would in a human narrative. The motives,
the reasonings, the misconceptions of those beings, all that determined
the succession of events, he had to make substantially human. The whole
narrative, for instance, proceeds on the supposition that those
supernatural beings had no higher degree of knowledge than human beings,
with equal physical advantages, would have had under similar
circumstances. Credit the spirits with a greater degree of insight--credit
them even with such a strong conviction of the Divine omnipotence as, in
their reputed condition of being, we can hardly conceive them not
attaining--and the whole of Milton's story is rendered impossible. The
crushing conviction of the Divine omnipotence would have prevented them
from rebelling with the alleged motive; or, after they had rebelled, it
would have prevented them from struggling with the alleged hope. In
_Paradise Lost_ the working notion which the devils have about God is
exactly that which human beings have when they hope to succeed in a bad
enterprise. Otherwise the poem could not have been written. Suppose the
fallen Angels to have had a working notion of the Deity as superhuman as
their reputed appearance and physical greatness: then the events of the
_Paradise Lost_ might have happened nevertheless, but the chain of
volitions would not have been the same, and it would have been impossible
for any human poet to realize the narrative.
These remarks are necessary to prepare us for conceiving the Satan of
Milton. Except, as we have said, for an occasional feeling during a
perusal of the poem that the style of thinking and speculating about the
issue of their enterprise is too meagre and human for a race of beings
physically so superhuman, one's astonishment at the consistency of the
poet's conceptions is unmitigated throughout. Such keeping is there
between one conception and another, such a distinct material grasp had the
poet of his whole subject, so little is there of the mystic or the hazy in
his descriptions from beginning to end, that it would be quite possible to
prefix to the _Paradise Lost_ an illustrative diagram exhibiting the
universal space in which Milton conceived his beings moving to and fro,
divided, as he conceived it, at first into two or three, and afterwards
into four tropics or regions. Then his narrative is so clear that a brief
prose version of it would be a history of Satan in the interval between
his own fall and the fall of Man.
It is to be noted that Milton as a poet proceeds on the Homeric method,
and not on the Shakespearian, devoting the whole strength of his genius to
the object, not of being discursive and original, not of making profound
remarks on everything as he goes along, but of carrying on a sublime and
stately narrative. We should hardly be led to assert, however, that the
difference between the epic and the drama lies in this, that the latter
may be discursive and reflective while the former cannot. We can conceive
an epic written after the Shakespearian method; that is, one which, while
strictly sustaining a narrative, should be profoundly expository in its
spirit. Certain it is, however, that Milton wrote after the Homeric
method, and did not exert himself chiefly in strewing his text with
luminous propositions. One consequence of this is that the way to obtain
an idea of Milton's Satan is not to lay hold of specific sayings that fall
from his mouth, but to go through his history. Goethe's Mephistopheles, we
shall find, on the other hand, reveals himself in the characteristic
propositions which he utters. Satan is to be studied by following his
progress; Mephistopheles by attending to his remarks.
In the history of Milton's Satan it is important to begin at the time of
his being an Archangel. Before the creation of our World, there existed,
according to Milton, a grand race of beings altogether different from what
we are. Those beings were Spirits. They did not lead a planetary
existence; they tenanted space in some strange, and, to us, inconceivable
way. Or, rather, they did not tenant all space, but only that upper and
illuminated part of infinity called Heaven. For Heaven, in Milton, is not
to be considered as a locality, but as a region stretching infinitely out
on all sides--an immense extent of continent and kingdom. The infinite
darkness, howling and blustering underneath Heaven, was Chaos or Night.
What was the exact mode of being of the Spirits who lived in dispersion
through Heaven is unknown to us; but it was social. Moreover, there
subsisted between the multitudinous far-extending population of Spirits
and the Almighty Creator a relation closer, or at least more sensible and
immediate, than that which exists between human beings and Him. The best
way of expressing this relation in human language is by the idea of
physical nearness. They were God's Angels. Pursuing, each individual among
them, a life of his own, agreeable to his wishes and his character, yet
they all recognised themselves as the Almighty's ministering spirits. At
times they were summoned, from following their different occupations in
all the ends of Heaven, to assemble near the Divine presence. Among these
Angels there were degrees and differences. Some were, in their very
essence and constitution, grander and more sublime intelligences than the
rest; others, in the course of their long existence, had become noted for
their zeal and assiduity. Thus, although really a race of beings living on
their own account as men do, they constituted a hierarchy, and were called
Angels.
Among all the vast angelic population three or four individuals stood
pre-eminent and unapproachable. These were the Archangels. Satan was one
of these: if not the highest Archangel in Heaven, he was one of the four
highest. After God, he could feel conscious of being the greatest being in
the Universe. But, although the relation between the Deity and the
angelic population was so close that we can only express it by having
recourse to the conception of physical nearness, yet even to the Angels
the Deity was so shrouded in clouds and mystery that the highest Archangel
might proceed on a wrong notion of his character, and, just as human
beings do, might believe the Divine omnipotence as a theological
proposition, and yet, in going about his enterprises, might not carry a
working consciousness of it along with him. There is something in the
exercise of power, in the mere feeling of existence, in the stretching out
of a limb, in the resisting of an obstacle, in being active in any way,
which generates a conviction that our powers are self-contained, hostile
to the recollection of inferiority or accountability. A messenger,
employed in his master's business, becomes, in the very act of serving
him, forgetful of him. As the feeling of enjoyment in action grows strong,
the feeling of a dependent state of being, the feeling of being a
messenger, grows weak. Repose and physical weakness are favourable to the
recognition of a derived existence: hence the beauty of the feebleness of
old age preceding the approach of death. The feebleness of the body
weakens the self-sufficient feeling, and disposes to piety. The young man,
rejoicing in his strength, cannot believe that his breath is in his
nostrils. In some such way the Archangel fell. Rejoicing in his strength,
walking colossal through Heaven, gigantic in his conceptions, incessant in
his working, ever scheming, ever imagining new enterprises, Satan was in
his very nature the most active of God's Archangels. He was ever doing
some great thing, and ever thirsting for some greater thing to do. And,
alas! his very wisdom became his folly. His notion of the Deity was higher
and grander than that of any other Angel: but, then, he was not a
contemplative spirit; and his feeling of derived existence grew weak in
the glow and excitement of constant occupation. As the feeling of
enjoyment in action grew strong, the feeling of being an Angel grew weak.
Thus the mere duration of his existence had undermined his strength and
prepared him for sin. Although the greatest Angel in Heaven--nay, just
because he was such--he was the readiest to fall.
At last an occasion came. When the intimation was made by the Almighty in
the Congregation of the Angels that he had anointed his only-begotten Son
King on the holy hill of Zion, the Archangel frowned and became a rebel:
not because he had weighed the enterprise to which he was committing
himself, but because he was hurried on by the impetus of an over-wrought
nature. Even had he weighed the enterprise, and found it wanting, he would
have been a rebel nevertheless; he would have rushed into ruin on the
wheels of his old impulses. He could not have said to himself "It is
useless to rebel, and I will not;" and, if he could, what a hypocrite to
have remained in Heaven! His revolt was the natural issue of the thoughts
to which he had accustomed himself; and his crime lay in having acquired a
rebellious constitution, in having pursued action too much, and spurned
worship and contemplation. Herein lay the difference between him and the
other Archangels, Raphael, Gabriel, and Michael.
Satan in his revolt carried a third part of the Angels with him. He had
accustomed many of the Angels to his mode of thinking. One of the ways in
which he gratified his desire for activity had been that of exerting a
moral and intellectual influence over the inferior Angels. A few of these
he had liked to associate with, discoursing with them, and observing how
they imbibed his ideas. His chief associate, almost his bosom-companion,
had been Beelzebub, a princely Angel. Moloch, Belial, and Mammon, had
likewise been admitted to his confidence. These five had constituted a
kind of clique in Heaven, giving the word to a whole multitude of inferior
Angels, all of them resembling their leader in being fonder of action than
of contemplation. Thus, in addition to the mere hankering after action,
there had grown up in Satan's mind a love of power. This feeling that it
was a glorious thing to be a leader seems to have had much to do with his
voluntary sacrifice of happiness. We may conceive it to have been
voluntary. Foreseeing never so much misery would not have prevented such a
spirit from rebelling. Having a third of the Angels away with him in some
dark, howling region, where he might rule over them alone, would have
seemed, even if he had foreseen it, infinitely preferable to the puny
sovereignty of an Archangel in that world of gold and emerald: "better to
reign in Hell than serve in Heaven." Thus we conceive him to have faced
the anticipation of the future. It required little persuasion to gain over
the kindred spirit of Beelzebub. These two appear to have conceived the
enterprise from the beginning in a different light from that in which they
represented it to their followers. Happiness with the inferior Spirits was
a more important consideration than with such Spirits as Satan and
Beelzebub; and to have hinted the possibility of losing happiness in the
enterprise would have been to terrify them away. Satan and Beelzebub were
losing happiness to gain something which they thought better; to the
inferior Angels nothing could be mentioned that would appear better.
Again, the inferior Angels, judging from narrower premises, might indulge
in enthusiastic expectations which the greater knowledge of the leaders
would prevent them from entertaining. At all events, the effect of the
intercourse with the Angels was that a third of their number joined the
standard of Satan. Then began the wars in Heaven, related in the poem.
It may be remarked that the carrying on those wars by Satan with the hope
of victory is not inconsistent with what has been said as to the
possibility of his not having proceeded on a false calculation. We are apt
to imagine those wars as wars between the rebel Angels and the armies of
God. Now this is true; but it is scarcely the proper idea in the
circumstances. How could Satan have hoped for victory in that case? You
can only suppose that he did so by lessening his intellect, by making him
a mere blundering Fury, and not a keen, far-seeing Intelligence. But in
warring with Michael and his followers he was, until the contrary should
be proved, warring merely against his fellow-beings of the same Heaven,
whose strength he knew and feared not. The idea of physical nearness
between the Almighty and the Angels confuses us here. Satan had heard the
threat which had accompanied the proclamation of the Messiah's
sovereignty; but it may have been problematical in his mind whether the
way in which God would fulfil the threat would be to make Michael conquer
him. So he made war against Michael and his Angels. At last, when all
Heaven was in confusion, the Divine omnipotence interfered. On the third
day the Messiah rode forth in his strength, to end the wars and expel the
rebel host from Heaven. They fled, driven before his thunder. The crystal
wall of Heaven opened wide, and the two lips, rolling inward, disclosed a
spacious gap yawning into the wasteful Deep. The reeling Angels saw down,
and hung back affrighted; but the terror of the Lord was behind them:
headlong they threw themselves from the verge of Heaven into the
fathomless abyss, eternal wrath burning after them down through the
blackness like a hissing fiery funnel.
And now the Almighty determined to create a new kind of World, and to
people it with a race of beings different from that already existing,
inferior in the meantime to the Angels, but with the power of working
themselves up into the Angelic mode of being. The Messiah, girt with
omnipotence, rode out on this creating errand. Heaven opened her
everlasting gates, moving on their golden hinges, and the King of Glory,
uplifted on the wings of Cherubim, rode on and on into Chaos. At last he
stayed his fervid wheels and took the golden compasses in his hand.
Centering one point where he stood, he turned the other silently and
slowly round through the profound obscurity. Thus were the limits of _our_
Universe marked out--that azure region in which the stars were to shine,
and the planets were to wheel. On the huge fragment of Chaos thus marked
out the Creating Spirit brooded, and the light gushed down. In six days
the work of creation was completed. In the centre of the new Universe hung
a silvery star. That was the Earth. Thereon, in a paradise of trees and
flowers, walked Adam and Eve, the last and the fairest of all God's
creatures.
Meanwhile the rebel host lay rolling in the fiery gulf underneath Chaos.
The bottom of Chaos was Hell. Above it was Chaos proper, a thick, black,
sweltering confusion. Above it again was the new experimental World, cut
out of it like a mine, and brilliant with stars and galaxies. And high
over all, behind the stars and galaxies, was Heaven itself. Satan and his
crew lay rolling in Hell, the fiery element underneath Chaos. Chaos lay
between them and the new World. Satan was the first to awake out of stupor
and realize the whole state of the case--what had occurred, what was to be
their future condition of being, and what remained to be attempted. In the
first dialogue between him and Beelzebub we see that, even thus early, he
had ascertained what his function was to be for the future, and decided in
what precise mode of being he could make his existence most pungent and
perceptible.
"Of this be sure,
To do aught good never will be our task,
But ever to do evil our sole delight,
As being the contrary to His high will
Whom we resist."
Here the ruined Archangel first strikes out the idea of existing for ever
after as the Devil. It is important to observe that his becoming a Devil
was not the mere inevitable consequence of his being a ruined Archangel.
Beelzebub, for instance, could see in the future nothing but a prospect of
continued suffering, until Satan communicated to him his conception of a
way of enjoying action in the midst of suffering. Again, some of the
Angels appear to have been ruminating the possibility of retrieving their
former condition by patient enduring. The gigantic scheme of becoming a
Devil was Satan's. At first it existed in his mind only as a vague
perception that the way in which he would be most likely to get the full
worth of his existence was to employ himself thenceforward in doing evil.
The idea afterwards became more definite. After glancing round their new
domain, Beelzebub and he aroused their abject followers. In the speech
which Satan addresses to them after they had all mustered in order we find
him hint an opening into a new career, as if the idea had just occurred to
him:--
"Space may produce new worlds; whereof so rife
There went a fame in Heaven that He ere long
Intended to create, and therein plant
A generation whom His choice regard
Should favour equal to the sons of Heaven:
Thither, if but to pry, shall be perhaps
Our first eruption."
Here is an advance in definiteness upon the first proposal--that, namely,
of determining to spend the rest of existence in doing evil. Casting
about in his mind for some specific opening, Satan had recollected the
talk they used to have in Heaven about the new World that was to be cut
out of Chaos, and the new race of beings that was to be created to inhabit
it; and it instantly struck his scheming fancy that _this_ would be the
weak point of the Universe. If he could but insert the wedge here! He did
not, however, announce the scheme fully at the moment, but went on
thinking. In the council of gods which was summoned some advised one
thing, some another. Moloch was for open war; Belial had great faith in
the force of circumstances; and Mammon was for organizing their new
kingdom so as to make it as comfortable as possible. No one, however,
could say the exact thing that was wanted. At last Beelzebub, prompted by
Satan, rose and detailed the project of their great leader:--
"There is a place
(If ancient and prophetic fame in Heaven
Err not), another world, the happy seat
Of some new race called Man, about this time
To be created, like to us, though less
In power and excellence, but favoured more
Of Him who rules above. So was His will
Pronounced among the gods, and by an oath
That shook Heaven's whole circumference confirmed.
Thither let us bend all our thoughts, and learn
What creatures there inhabit, of what mould
Or substance, how endued, and what their power
And where their weakness: how attempted best;
By force or subtlety."
This was Satan's scheme. The more he had thought on it the more did it
recommend itself to him. It was more feasible than any other. It held out
an indefinite prospect of action. Success in it would be the addition of
another fragment of the Universe to Satan's kingdom, mingling and
confounding the new World with Hell, and dragging down the new race of
beings to share the perdition of the old. The scheme was universally
applauded by the Angels; who seem to have differed from their leaders in
this, that they were sanguine of being able to better their condition,
whereas their leaders sought only the gratification of their desire of
action.
The question next was, Who would venture out of Hell to explore the way to
the new World? Satan volunteered the perilous excursion. Immediately,
putting on his swiftest wings, he directs his solitary flight towards
Hell-gate, where sat Sin and Death. When, at length, the gate was opened
to give him exit, it was like a huge furnace-mouth, vomiting forth smoke
and flames into the womb of Chaos. Issuing thence, Satan spread his
sail-broad wings for flight, and began his toilsome way upward, half on
foot, half on wing, swimming, sinking, wading, climbing, flying, through
the thick and turbid element. At last he emerged out of Chaos into the
glimmer surrounding the new Universe. Winging at leisure now through the
balmier ether, and still ascending, he could discern at last the whole
empyrean Heaven, his former home, with its opal towers and sapphire
battlements, and, depending thence by a golden chain, our little World or
Universe, like a star of smallest magnitude on the full moon's edge. At
the point of suspension of this World from Heaven was an opening, and by
that opening Satan entered.
When Satan thus arrived in the new Creation the whole phenomenon was
strange to him, and he had no idea what kind of a being Man was. He asked
Uriel, whom he found on the sun fulfilling some Divine errand, in which of
all the shining orbs round him Man had fixed his seat, or whether he had a
fixed seat at all, and was not at liberty to shift his residence, and
dwell now in one star, now in another. Uriel, deceived by the appearance
which Satan had assumed, pointed out the way to Paradise.
Alighting on the surface of the Earth, Satan walks about immersed in
thought. Heaven's gate was in view. Overhead and round him were the quiet
hills and the green fields. Oh, what an errand he had come upon! His
thoughts were sad and noble. Fallen as he was, all the Archangel stirred
within him. Oh, had he not been made so high, should he ever have fallen
so low? Is there no hope even now, no room for repentance? Such were his
first thoughts. But he roused himself and shook them off. "The past is
gone and away; it is to the future that I must look. Perish the days of my
Archangelship! perish the name of Archangel! Such is my name no longer. My
future, if less happy, shall be more glorious. Ah, and this is the World I
have singled out for my experiment! Formerly, in the days of my
Archangelship, I ranged at will through infinity, doing one thing here and
another there. Now I must contract the sphere of my activity, and labour
nowhere but here. But it is better to apply myself to the task of
thoroughly impregnating one point of space with my presence than
henceforth to beat my wings vaguely all through infinitude. Ah, but may
not my nature suffer by the change? In thus selecting a specific aim, in
thus concerning myself exclusively with one point of space, and
forswearing all interest in the innumerable glorious things that may be
happening out of it, shall I not run the risk of degenerating into a
smaller and meaner being? In the course of ages of dealing with the puny
offspring of these new beings, may I not dwindle into a mere pungent,
pettifogging Spirit? What would Raphael, Gabriel, and Michael say, were
they to see their old co-mate changed into such a being? But be it so. If
I cannot cope with the Almighty on the grand scale of infinitude, I shall
at least make my existence felt by opposing His plans respecting this new
race of beings. Besides, by beginning with this, may I not worm my way to
a more effective position even in infinitude? At all events, I shall have
a scheme on hand, and be incessantly occupied. And, as time makes the
occupation more congenial, if I do become less magnanimous, I shall, at
the same time, become happier. And, whether my fears on this point are
visionary or not, it will, at least, be a noble thing to be able to say
that I have caused a whirlpool that shall suck down generation after
generation of these new beings, before their Maker's eyes, into the same
wretched condition of being to which He has doomed us. It will be
something so to vitiate the Universe that, let Him create, create on, as
He chooses, it will be like pouring water into a broken vessel."
In the very course of this train of thinking Satan begins to degenerate
into a meaner being. He is on the very threshold of that career in which
he will cease for ever to be the Archangel and become irrevocably the
Devil. The very manner in which he tempts the first pair is devil-like. It
is in the shape of a cormorant on a tree that he sits watching his
victims. He sat at the ear of Eve "squat like a toad." It was in the shape
of a serpent that he tempted her. And, when the evil was done, he slunk
away through the brushwood. In the very act of ruining Man he committed
himself to a life of ignominious activity: he was to go on his belly and
eat dust all his days.
* * * * *
Such is the story of Milton's Satan. It will be easy to express more
precisely the idea which we have acquired of him when we come to contrast
him with Goethe's Mephistopheles. Meanwhile, we shall be much assisted in
our efforts to conceive Goethe's Mephistopheles by keeping in mind what we
have been saying about Milton's Satan.
We do not think it possible to sum up in a single expression all that
Goethe meant to signify by his Mephistopheles. For one thing, it is
questionable whether Goethe kept strictly working out one specific meaning
and making it clearer all through Mephistopheles's gambols and devilries,
or whether, having once for all allegorized the Spirit of Evil into a
living personage, he did not treat him just as he would have treated any
other of his characters, making him always consistent, always diabolic,
but not intent upon making his actions run parallel to any under-current
of exposition. It may be best, therefore, to take Mephistopheles as a
character in a drama which we wish to study. On the whole, perhaps, we
shall be on the right track if, in the first place, we establish a
relation between Satan and Mephistopheles by adopting the notion which we
have imagined Satan himself to have entertained when engaged in scheming
out his future life, _i.e._ if we suppose Mephistopheles to be what Satan
has become after six thousand years. Milton's Satan, then, is the ruined
Archangel deciding his future function, and forswearing all interest in
other regions of the universe, in order that he may more thoroughly
possess and impregnate this. Goethe's Mephistopheles is this same being
after the toils and vicissitudes of six thousand years in his new
vocation: smaller, meaner, ignobler, but a million times sharper and
cleverer. By way of corroboration of this view, we may refer, in passing,
to the Satan of the _Paradise Regained_; who, though still a sublime and
Miltonic being, dealing in high thoughts and high arguments, yet seems to
betray, in his demeanour, the effects of four thousand years spent in a
new walk. Is there not something Mephistopheles-like, for instance, in the
description of the Fiend's appearance when he approached Christ to begin
his temptation? Christ was walking alone and thoughtful one evening in the
thick of the forest where he had lived fasting forty days, when he heard
the dry twigs behind him snapping beneath approaching footsteps. He turned
round, and
"An aged man in rural weeds,
Following as seemed the quest of some stray ewe,
Or withered sticks to gather, which might serve
Against a winter's day when winds blow keen
To warm him, wet returned from field at eve,
He saw approach; who first with curious eye
Perused him, then with words thus uttered spake."
Observe how all the particulars of this description are drawn out of the
very thick of the civilization of the past four thousand years, and how
the whole effect of the picture is to suggest a Mephistophelic-looking
man, whom it would be disagreeable to meet alone. Indeed, if one had
space, one could make more use of the _Paradise Regained_ as exhibiting
the transition of Satan into Mephistopheles. But we must pass at once to
Goethe.
Viewing Mephistopheles in the proposed light (of course it is not
pretended that Goethe himself had any such idea about his Mephistopheles),
we obtain a good deal of insight from the "Prologue in Heaven." For here
we have Mephistopheles out of his element, and contrasted with his old
co-equals. The scene is Miltonic. The Heavenly Hosts are assembled round
the throne, and the three Archangels, Raphael, Gabriel, and Michael, come
forward to praise the Lord. The theme of their song is Creation--not, as
it would have been in Milton, as an event about to take place, and which
would vary the monotony of the universe, but as a thing existing and
grandly going on. It is to be noted too that, while Milton appeals chiefly
to the sight, and is clear and coherent in his imagery, Goethe produces a
similar effect in his own manner by appealing to sight and hearing
simultaneously, making sounds and metaphors dance and whirl through each
other, as in a wild, indistinct, but overpowering dream. Raphael describes
the Sun rolling on in thunder through the heavens, singing in chorus with
the kindred stars. Gabriel describes the Earth revolving on her axis, one
hemisphere glittering in the light, the other dipped in shadow. Michael in
continuation sings of the ensphering atmosphere and the storms that rage
in it, darting forth tongues of lightning, and howling in gusts over land
and sea. And then the three burst forth in symphony, exulting in their
nature as beings deriving strength from serene contemplation, and
proclaiming all God's works to be as bright and glorious as on the day
they were created. Suddenly, while Heaven is still thrilling to the grand
undulation, another voice breaks in:
"Da du, O Herr, dich einmal wieder nahst,
Und fragst wie alles sich bei uns befinde,
Und du mich sonst gewöhnlich gerne sahst,
So siehst du mich auch unter dem Gesinde."
Ugh! what a discord! The tone, the voice, the words, the very metre, so
horribly out of tune with what had gone before! Mephistopheles is the
speaker. He has been standing behind, looking about him and listening
with a sarcastic air to the song of the Archangels; and, when they have
done, he thinks it his turn to speak, and immediately begins. (We give the
passage in translation.)
"Since thou, O Lord, approachest us once more,
And askest how affairs with us are going,
And commonly hast seen me here before,
To this my presence 'mid the rest is owing.
Excuse my plainness; I'm no hand at chaffing;
I _can't_ talk fine, though all around should scorn;
_My_ pathos certainly would set thee laughing,
Hadst thou not laughter long ago forborne.
Of suns and worlds deuce one word can _I_ gabble;
I only know how men grow miserable.
The little god of Earth is still the same old clay,
And is as odd this hour as on Creation's day.
Better somewhat his situation
Hadst thou not given him that same light of inspiration:
Reason he calls 't, and uses 't so that he
Grows but more beastly than the beasts to be;
He seems to me, begging your Grace's pardon,
Like one of those long-legged things in a garden
That fly about and hop and spring,
And in the grass the same old chirrup sing.
Would I could say that here the story closes!
But in each filthy mess they thrust their noses."
And so shameless, and at the same time so voluble, is he that he would go
on longer in the same strain did not the Lord interrupt him.
Now this speech both announces and exhibits Mephistopheles's nature.
Without even knowing the language, one could hardly hear the original read
as Mephistopheles's without seeing in it shamelessness, impudence,
volubility, cleverness, a sneering, sarcastic disposition, want of heart,
want of sentiment, want of earnestness, want of purpose, complete,
confirmed, irrecoverable devilishness. And, besides, Mephistopheles
candidly describes himself in it. When, in sly and sarcastic allusion to
the song of the Archangels, he tells that _he_ has not the gift of talking
fine, he announces in effect that he is not going to be Miltonic. _He_ is
not going to speak of suns and universes, he says. Raphael, Gabriel, and
Michael, are at home in that sort of thing; but _he_ is not. Leaving them,
therefore, to tell how the universe is flourishing on the grand scale, and
how the suns and the planets are going on as beautifully as ever, he will
just say a word or two as to how human nature is getting on down yonder;
and, to be sure, if comparison be the order of the day, the little godkin,
Man, is quite as odd as on the day he was made. And at once, with
astounding impudence, he launches into a train of remark the purport of
which is that everything down below is at sixes and sevens, and that in
his opinion human nature has turned out a failure. And, heedless of the
disgust of his audience, he would go on talking for ever, were he not
interrupted.
And is this the Satan of the _Paradise Lost_? Is this the Archangel
ruined? Is this the being who warred against the Almighty, who lay
floating many a rood, who shot upwards like a pyramid of fire, who
navigated space wherever he chose, speeding on his errands from star to
star, and who finally conceived the gigantic scheme of assaulting the
universe where it was weakest, and impregnating the new creation with the
venom of his spirit? Yes, it is he; but oh, how changed! For six thousand
years he has been pursuing the walk he struck out at the beginning, plying
his self-selected function, dabbling devilishly in human nature, and
abjuring all interest in the grander physics; and the consequence is, as
he himself anticipated, that his nature, once great and magnificent, has
become small, virulent, and shrunken,
"Subdued
To what it works in, like the dyer's hand."
As if he had been journeying through a wilderness of scorching sand, all
that was left of the Archangel has long since evaporated. He is now a dry,
shrivelled up, scoffing spirit. When, at the moment of scheming out his
future existence and determining to become a Devil, he anticipated the
ruin of his nature, he could not help thinking with what a strange feeling
he should then appear before his old co-equals, Raphael, Gabriel, and
Michael. But now he stands before them disgustingly unabashed, almost
ostentatious of not being any longer an Archangel. Even in the days of his
glory he was different from them. They luxuriated in contemplation; he in
the feeling of innate all-sufficient vigour. And lo, now! They are
unchanged, the servants of the Lord, revering the day's gentle going. He,
the scheming, enthusiastic Archangel, has been soured and civilized into
the clever cold-hearted Mephistopheles.
Mephistopheles is the Spirit of Evil in modern society. Goethe's _Faust_
is an illustration of this spirit's working in the history of an
individual. The case selected is a noble one. Faust, a man of grand and
restless nature, is aspiring after universality of feeling. Utterly
dissatisfied and disgusted with all human method and all human
acquisition, nay, fretting at the constitution of human nature itself, he
longs to spill out his soul, so that, mingling with the winds, it may
become a part of the ever-thrilling spirit of the universe and know the
essence of everything. He has been contemplating suicide. To this great
nature struggling with itself Mephistopheles is linked. It is to be noted
that throughout the whole drama there is no evidence that it was an object
of very earnest solicitude with Mephistopheles to gain possession of the
soul of Faust. Of course, he desired this, and had it in view. Thus, he
exacted a bond from Faust; and we find him also now and then chuckling
when alone in anticipation of Faust's ultimate ruin. But on the whole he
is constant to no earnest plan for effecting it. In fact, he is constant
to no single purpose whatever. The desire of doing devilry is his motive
all through. Going about with Faust was but being in the way of business
and having a companion at the same time. He studies his own gratification,
not Faust's, in all that he does. Faust never gets what he had a right to
expect from him. He is dragged hither and thither through scenes he has no
anxiety to be in, merely that Mephistopheles may enjoy some new and
_piquant_ piece of devilry. The moment he and Faust enter any place, he
quits Faust's side and mixes with the persons present, to do some mischief
or other; and, when it is done, he comes back to Faust, who has been
standing, with his arms folded, gloomily looking on, and asks him if he
could desire any better amusement than this. Now this is not the conduct
of a devil intent upon nothing so much as gaining possession of the soul
of his victim. A Miltonic devil would have pressed on to the mark more. He
would have been more self-denying, and would have kept his victim in
better humour. But Mephistopheles is a devil to the very core. He is a
devil in his conduct to Faust. What he studies is not to gratify Faust,
but to find plenty of congenial occupation for himself, to perpetrate as
great a quantity of evil as possible in as short a time as possible. It
seems capable of being inferred from this peculiarity in the character of
Mephistopheles that Goethe had in his mind all through the poem a certain
under-current of allegoric meaning. One sees that Mephistopheles, though
acting as a dramatic personage, represents an abstract something or other.
The character of Mephistopheles is brought out all through the drama. In
the first and second parts we have Faust and him brought into a great
variety of situations and into contact with a great variety of
individuals; and in watching how Mephistopheles conducts himself in these
we obtain more and more insight into his devilish nature. He manifests
himself in two ways--by his style of speaking, and by his style of acting.
That is to say, Mephistopheles, in the first place, has a habit of making
observations upon all subjects, and throwing out all kinds of general
propositions in the course of his conversation, and by attending to the
spirit of these one can perceive very distinctly his mode of looking at
things; and, in the second place, he acts a part in the drama, and this
part is, of course, characteristic.
The distinguishing feature in Mephistopheles's conversation is the amazing
intimacy which it displays with all the conceivable ways in which crime
can be perpetrated. There is positively not a wrong thing that people are
in the habit of doing that he does not seem to be aware of. He is profound
in his acquaintance with iniquity. If there is a joint loose anywhere in
society, he knows of it; if the affairs of the State are going into
confusion because of some blockhead's mismanagement, he knows of it. He is
versed in all the forms of professional quackery. He knows how pedants
hoodwink people, how priests act the hypocrite, how physicians act the
rake, how lawyers peculate. In all sorts of police information he is a
perfect Fouché. He has gone deep enough into one fell subject to be able
to write a book like Duchatelet's. And not only has he accumulated a mass
of observations, but he has generalized those observations, and marked
evil in its grand educational sources. If the human mind is going out into
a hopeless track of speculation, he has observed and knows it. If the
universities are frittering away the intellect of the youth of a country
in useless and barren studies, he knows it. If atheistic politicians are
vehemently defending the religious institutions of a country, he has
marked the prognostication. Whatever promises to inflict misery, to lead
people astray, to break up beneficial alliances, to make men flounder on
in error, to cause them to die blaspheming at the last, he is thoroughly
cognisant of it all. He could draw up a catalogue of social vices. He
could point out the specific existing grievances to which the
disorganization of a people is owing, and lay his finger on the exact
parent evils which the philanthropist ought to exert himself in exposing
and making away with. But here lies the diabolical peculiarity of his
knowledge. It is not in the spirit of a philanthropist that he has
accumulated his information; it is in the spirit of a devil. It is not
with the benevolent motive of a Duchatelet that he has descended into the
lurking-places of iniquity; it is because he delights in knowing the whole
extent of human misery. The doing of evil being his function, it is but
natural that he should have a taste for even the minutest details of his
own profession. Nay more, as the Spirit of all evil, who had been working
from the beginning, how could he fail to be acquainted with all the
existing varieties of criminal occupation? It is but as if he kept a
diary. Now, in this combination of the knowledge of evil with the desire
of producing it lies the very essence of his character. The combination is
horrible, unnatural, unhuman. Generally the motive to investigate deeply
into what is wrong is the desire to rectify it; and it is rarely that
profligates possess very valuable information. But in every one of
Mephistopheles's speeches there is some profound glimpse into the
rottenness of society, some masterly specification of an evil that ought
to be rooted out; and yet there is not one of those speeches in which the
language is not flippant and sarcastic, not one in which the tone is
sorrowful or philanthropic. Everything is going wrong in the world;
twaddle and quackery everywhere abounding; nothing to be seen under the
sun but hypocritical priests, sharking attorneys, unfaithful wives,
children crying for bread to eat, men and women cheating, robbing,
murdering each other: hurrah! This is exactly a burst of Mephistophelic
feeling. In fact it is an intellectual defect in Mephistopheles that his
having such an eye for evil and his taking such an interest in it prevent
him from allowing anything for good in his calculations. To Mephistopheles
the world seems going to perdition as fast as it can, while in the same
universal confusion beings like the Archangels recognise the good
struggling with the evil.
Respecting the part which Mephistopheles performs in the drama we have
already said something. Going about the world, linked to Faust, is to him
only a racy way of acting the devil. Having as his companion a man so
flighty in his notions did but increase the flavour of whatever he engaged
in. All through he is laughing in secret at Faust, and deriving a keen
enjoyment from his transcendental style of thinking. Faust's noble
qualities are all Greek and Gaelic to his cold and devilish nature. He
has a contempt for all strong feeling, all sentiment, all evangelism. He
enjoys the Miltonic vastly. Thus in the "Prologue in Heaven" he quizzes
the Archangels about the grandiloquence of their song. Not that he does
not understand that sort of thing intellectually, but that it is not in
his nature to sympathize with anything like sentiment. Hence, when he
assumes the sentimental himself and mimicks any lofty strain, although he
does it full justice in as far as giving the whole intellectual extent of
meaning is concerned, yet he always does so in words so inappropriate
emotionally that the effect is a parody. He must have found amusement
enough in Faust's company to have reconciled him in some measure to losing
him finally.
But to go on. Mephistopheles acts the devil all through. In the first
place he acts the devil to Faust himself, for he is continually taking his
own way and starting difficulties whenever Faust proposes anything. Then
again in his conduct towards the other principal personages of the drama
it is the same. In the murder of poor Margaret, her mother, her child, and
her brother, we have as fiendish a series of acts as devil could be
supposed capable of perpetrating. And, lastly, in the mere filling up and
side play, it is the same. He is constantly doing unnecessary mischief. If
he enters Auerbach's wine-cellar and introduces himself to the four
drinking companions, it is to set the poor brutes fighting and make them
cut off each other's noses. If he spends a few minutes in talk with
Martha, it is to make the silly old woman expose her foibles. The Second
Part of Faust is devilry all through, a tissue of bewilderments and
devilries. And while doing all this Mephistopheles is still the same cold,
self-possessed, sarcastic being. If he exhibits any emotion at all, it is
a kind of devilish anger. Perhaps, too, once or twice we recognise
something like terror or flurry. But on the whole he is a spirit bereft of
feeling. What could indicate the heart of a devil more than his words to
Faust in the harrowing prison scene?
"Komm, komm, ich lasse dich mit ihr im Stich."
* * * * *
And now for a word or two describing Milton's Satan and Goethe's
Mephistopheles by each other:--Satan is a colossal figure; Mephistopheles
an elaborated portrait. Satan is a fallen Archangel scheming his future
existence; Mephistopheles is the modern Spirit of Evil. Mephistopheles has
a distinctly marked physiognomy; Satan has not. Satan has a sympathetic
knowledge of good; Mephistopheles knows good only as a phenomenon. Much of
what Satan says might be spoken by Raphael; a devilish spirit runs through
all that Mephistopheles says. Satan's bad actions are preceded by noble
reasonings; Mephistopheles does not reason. Satan's bad actions are
followed by compunctious visitings; Mephistopheles never repents. Satan is
often "inly racked;" Mephistopheles can feel nothing more noble than
disappointment. Satan conducts an enterprise; Mephistopheles enjoys an
occupation. Satan has strength of purpose; Mephistopheles is volatile.
Satan feels anxiety; Mephistopheles lets things happen. Satan's greatness
lies in the vastness of his motives; Mephistopheles's in his intimate
acquaintance with everything. Satan has a few sublime conceptions;
Mephistopheles has accumulated a mass of observations. Satan declaims;
Mephistopheles puts in remarks. Satan is conversant with the moral aspects
of things and uses adjectives; Mephistopheles has a preference for nouns,
and uses adjectives only to convey significations which he _knows_ to
exist. Satan may end in being a devil; Mephistopheles is a devil
irrecoverably.
* * * * *
Milton's Satan and Goethe's Mephistopheles are literary performances; and,
for what they prove, neither Milton nor Goethe need have believed in a
Devil at all. Luther's Devil, on the other hand, was a being recognised by
him as actually existing--as existing, one might say, with a vengeance.
The strong conviction which Luther had on this point is a feature in his
character. The narrative of his life abounds in anecdotes showing that the
Devil with him was no chimera, no mere orthodoxy, no fiction. In every
page of his writings we have the word _Teufel_, _Teufel_, repeated again
and again. Occasionally there occurs an express dissertation upon the
nature and functions of the Evil Spirit; and one of the longest chapters
in his _Table Talk_ is that entitled "The Devil and his Works"--indicating
that his conversation with his friends often turned on the subject of
Satanic agency. _Teufel_ was actually the strongest signification he had;
and, whenever he was excited to his highest emotional pitch, it came in to
assist his utterance at the climax, and give him a correspondingly
powerful expression. "This thing I will do," it was common for him to say,
"in spite of all who may oppose me, be it duke, emperor, priest, bishop,
cardinal, pope, or Devil." Man's heart, he says, is a "Stock, Stein,
Eisen, Teufel, hart Herz," ("a stock, stone, iron, Devil, hard heart").
And it was not a mere vague conception he had of this being, such as
theology might oblige. On the contrary, he had observed him as a man would
his personal enemy, and in so doing had formed a great many conclusions
respecting his powers and his character. In general, Luther's Devil may be
defined as a personification, in the spirit of Scripture, of the resisting
medium which Luther had to toil his way through--spiritual fears,
passionate uprisings, fainting resolutions within himself; error,
weakness, envy, in those around him; and, without, a whole world howling
for his destruction. It is in effect as if Luther had said, "Scripture
reveals to me the existence of a great accursed Being, whose function it
is to produce evil. It is for me to ascertain the character of this Being,
whom I, of all men, have to deal with. And how am I to do so except by
observing him working? God knows I have not far to go in search of his
manifestations." And thus Luther went on filling up the Scriptural
proposition with his daily experience. He was constantly gaining a clearer
conception of his great personal antagonist, constantly stumbling upon
some more concealed trait in the Spirit's character. The Being himself was
invisible; but men were walking in the midst of his manifestations. It was
as if there were some Being whom we could not see, nor directly in the
ordinary way have any intercourse with, but who every morning, before it
was light, came and left at our doors some exquisite specimen of his
workmanship. It would, of course, be difficult under such disadvantages to
become acquainted with the character of our invisible correspondent and
nightly visitant; still we could arrive at a few conclusions respecting
him, and the more of his workmanship we saw the more insight we should
come to have. Or again, in striving to realize to himself the Scriptural
proposition about the Devil, Luther, to speak in the language of the
"Positive Philosophy," was but striving to ascertain the laws according to
which evil happens. Only the Positive Philosophy would lay a veto on any
such speculation, and pronounce it fundamentally vicious in this
respect--that there are not two courses of events, separable from each
other, in history, the one good and the other evil, but that evil comes of
good and good of evil; so that, if we are to have a science of history at
all, the most we can have is a science of the laws according to which, not
evil follows evil, but events follow each other. But History to Luther was
not a physical course of events. It was God acting, and the Devil
opposing.
So far Luther did not differ from his age. Belief in Satanic agency was
universal at that period. We have no idea now how powerful this belief
was. We realize something of the truth when we read the depositions in an
old book of trials for witchcraft. But it is sufficient to glance over any
writings of the period to see what a real meaning was then attached to the
words "Hell" and "Devil." The spirit of these words has become obsolete,
chased away by the spirit of exposition. That was what M. Comte calls the
Theological period, when all the phenomena of mind and matter were
referred to the agency of Spirits. The going out of the belief in Satanic
agency (for even those who retain it in profession allow it no force in
practice) M. Comte would attribute to the progress of the spirit of that
philosophy of which he is the apostle. We do not think, however, that the
mere progress of the scientific spirit--that is, the mere disposition of
men to pursue one mode of thinking with respect to all classes of
phenomena--could have been sufficient of itself to work such an alteration
in the general mind. We are fond of accounting for it, in part at least,
by the going out, in the progress of civilization, of those sensations
which seem naturally fitted to nourish the belief in supernatural beings.
The tendency of civilization has been to diminish our opportunities of
feeling terror, of feeling strongly at all. The horrific plays a much less
important part in human experience than it once did. To mention but a
single instance: we are exempted now, by mechanical contrivances for
locomotion, &c., from the necessity of being much in darkness or wild
physical solitude. This is especially the case with those who dwell in
cities, and therefore exert most conspicuously an intellectual influence.
The moaning of the wind at night in winter is about their highest
experience of the kind; and is it not a corroboration of the view now
suggested that the belief in the supernatural is always strongest at the
moment of this experience? Scenes and situations our ancestors were in
every day are strange to us. We have not now to travel through forests at
the dead of night, nor to pass a lonely spot on a moor where a murderer's
body is swinging from a gibbet. Tam o' Shanter, even before he came to
Allowa' Kirk, saw more than many of us see in a life-time.
"By this time he was 'cross the ford
Whaur in the snaw the chapman smoored,
And past the birks and muckle stane
Whaur drunken Charlie brak's neck-bane,
And through the whins and by the cairn
Whaur hunters fand the murdered bairn,
And near the thorn aboon the well
Whaur Mungo's mither hanged hersel'."
This effect of civilization in reducing all our sensations to those of
comfort is a somewhat alarming circumstance in the point of view we are
now taking. It is necessary, for many a reason, to resist the universal
application of the "Positive Philosophy," even if we adopt and adore it as
an instrument of explication. The "Positive Philosophy" commands us to
forbear all speculation into the inexplicable. For the sake of many things
this order must be disregarded. Speculation into the metaphysical is the
invariable accompaniment of strong feeling; and the moral nature of man
would starve upon such chopped straw as the mere intellectual relations of
similitude and succession. Nor does it meet the demands of the case to say
that the "Positive Philosophy" would be always far in arrear of the known
phenomena, and that here would be mystery enough. No! the "Positive
Philosophy" would require to strike a chasm in itself under the title of
the Liberty of Hypothesis. We do not mean the liberty of hypothesis merely
as a means of anticipating theory, but for spiritual and imaginative
purposes. It is in this light that one would welcome Animal Magnetism, or
any thing else whatever that would but knock a hole through the paper wall
that incloses our mode of being, snub the self-conceit of our present
knowledge, and give us other and more difficult phenomena to explain.
But, though Luther and his age were not at variance in the belief in
Satanic agency, Luther, of course, did this as he did every thing else,
gigantically. The Devil, as Luther conceived him, was not the Satan of
Milton; although, had Luther set himself to realize the Miltonic
narrative, his conception might not have been dissimilar. But it was as
the enemy of mankind, working in human affairs, that Luther conceived the
Devil. We should expect his conception therefore to tally with Goethe's in
some respects, but only as a conception of Luther's would tally with one
of Goethe's. Luther's conception was truer to the strict Scriptural
definition than either Milton's or Goethe's. Mephistopheles being a
character in a drama, and apparently fully occupied in his part there, we
cannot bring ourselves to recognise in him that virtually omnipotent being
to whom all evil is owing, who is leavening the human mind everywhere as
if the atmosphere round the globe were charged with the venom of his
spirit. In the case of Milton's Satan we have no such difficulty, because
in his case a whole planet is at stake, and there are only two individuals
on it. But Luther's conception met the whole exigency of Scripture. His
conception was distinctly that of a being to whose operation all the evil
of all times and all places is owing, a veritable [Greek: pneuma] diffused
through the earth's atmosphere. Hence his mind had to entertain the notion
of a plurality of devils; for he could conceive the Arch-Demon acting
corporeally only through imps or emanations. Goethe's Mephistopheles might
pass for one of these.
It would be possible farther to illustrate Luther's conception of the Evil
Principle by quoting many of his specific sayings about diabolic agency.
It would be found from these that his conception was that of a being to
whom evil of all kinds was dear. The Devil with him was a meteorological
agent. Devils, he said, are in woods, and waters, and dark poolly places,
ready to hurt passers-by; there are devils also in the thick black clouds,
who cause hail and thunders and lightnings, and poison the air and the
fields and the pastures. "When such things happen, philosophers say they
are natural, and ascribe them to the planets, and I know not what all."
The Devil he believed also to be the patron of witchcraft. The Devil, he
said, had the power of deceiving the senses, so that one should swear he
heard or saw something while really the whole was an illusion. The Devil
also was at the bottom of dreaming and somnambulism. He was likewise the
author of diseases. "I hold," said Luther, "that the Devil sendeth all
heavy diseases and sicknesses upon people." Diseases are, as it were, the
Devil striking people; only, in striking, he must use some natural
instrument, as a murderer uses a sword. When our sins get the upper hand,
and all is going wrong, then the Devil must be God's hangman, to clear
away obstructions and to blast the earth with famines and pestilences.
Whatsoever procures death, that is the Devil's trade. All sadness and
melancholy come of the Devil. So does insanity; but the Devil has no
farther power over the soul of a maniac. The Devil works in the affairs of
nations. He looks always upward, taking an interest in what is high and
pompous; he does not look downward, taking little interest in what is
insignificant and lowly. He likes to work on the great scale, to establish
an influence over the central minds which manage public affairs. The Devil
is also a spiritual tempter. He is the opponent of the Divine grace in the
hearts of individuals. This was the aspect of the doctrine of Satanic
agency which was most frequent in preaching; and, accordingly, Luther's
propositions on the point are very specific. He had ascertained the laws
of Satanic operation upon the human spirit. The Devil, he said, knows
Scripture well, and uses it in argument. He shoots fearful thoughts, which
are his fiery darts, into the hearts of the godly. The Devil is acquainted
even with those mysterious enjoyments, those spiritual excitements, which
the Christian would suppose a being like him must be ignorant of. "What
gross inexperienced fellows," Luther says, "are those Papist commentators!
They are for interpreting Paul's 'thorn in the flesh' to be merely fleshly
lust; because they know no other kind of tribulation than that." But,
though the Devil has great power over the human mind, he is limited in
some respects. He has no means, for instance, of knowing the thoughts of
the faithful until they give them utterance. Again, if the Devil be once
foiled in argument, he cannot tempt that soul again on the same tack. The
Papacy being with Luther the grand existing form of evil, he of course
recognised the Devil in _it_. If the Papacy were once overthrown, Satan
would lose his stronghold. Never on earth again would he be able to pile
up such another edifice. No wonder, then, that at that moment all the
energies of the enraged and despairing Spirit were employed to prop up the
reeling and tottering fabric. Necessarily, therefore, Luther and Satan
were personal antagonists. Satan saw that the grand struggle was with
Luther. If he could but crush him by physical violence, or make him forget
God, then the world would be his own again. So, often did he wrestle with
Luther's spirit; often in nightly heart-agonies did he try to shake
Luther's faith in Christ. But he was never victorious. "All the Duke
Georges in the universe," said Luther, "are not equal to a single Devil;
and I do not fear the Devil." "I should wish," he said, "to die rather by
the Devil's hands than by the hands of Pope or Emperor; for then I should
die, at all events, by the hands of a great and mighty Prince of the
World: but, if I die through him, he shall eat such a bit of me as shall
be his suffocation; he shall spew me out again; and, at the last day, I,
in requital, shall devour him." When all other means were unavailing,
Luther found that the Devil could not stand against humour. In his hours
of spiritual agony, he tells us, when the Devil was heaping up his sins
before him, so as to make him doubt whether he should be saved, and when
he could not drive the Devil away by uttering sentences of Holy Writ, or
by prayer, he used to address him thus: "Devil, if, as you say, Christ's
blood, which was shed for my sins, be not sufficient to insure my
salvation, can't you pray for me yourself, Devil?" At this the Devil
invariably fled, "_quia est superbus spiritus et non potest ferre
contemptum sui_."
What Luther called "wrestling with the Devil" we at this day call "low
spirits." Life must be a much more insipid thing than it was then. O what
a soul that man must have had; under what a weight of feeling, that would
have crushed a thousand of us, _he_ must have trod the earth!
SHAKESPEARE AND GOETHE.
SHAKESPEARE AND GOETHE.[2]
If there are any two portraits which we all expect to find hung up in the
rooms of those whose tastes are regulated by the highest literary culture,
they are the portraits of Shakespeare and Goethe.
There are, indeed, many and various gods in our modern Pantheon of genius.
It contains rough gods and smooth gods, gods of symmetry and gods of
strength, gods great and terrible, gods middling and respectable, and
little cupids and toy-gods. Out of this variety each master of a household
will select his own Penates, the appropriate gods of his own mantelpiece.
The roughest will find some to worship them, and the smallest shall not
want domestic adoration. But we suppose a dilettante of the first class,
one who, besides excluding from his range of choice the deities of war,
and cold thought, and civic action, shall further exclude from it all
those even of the gods of modern literature who, whether by reason of
their inferior rank, or by reason of their peculiar attributes, fail as
models of universal stateliness. What we should expect to see over the
mantelpiece of such a rigorous person would be the images of the English
Shakespeare and the German Goethe.
On the one side, we will suppose, fixed with due gance against the
luxurious crimson of the wall, would be a slab of black marble exhibiting
in relief a white plaster-cast of the face of Shakespeare as modelled from
the Stratford bust; on the other, in a similar setting, would be a copy,
if possible, of the mask of Goethe taken at Weimar after the poet's death.
This would suffice; and the considerate beholder could find no fault with
such an arrangement. It is true, reasons might be assigned why a third
mask should have been added--that of the Italian Dante; in which case
Dante and Goethe should have occupied the sides, and Shakespeare should
have been placed higher up between. But the master of the house would
point out how, in that case, a fine taste would have been pained by the
inevitable sense of contrast between the genial mildness of the two
Teutonic faces and the severe and scornful melancholy of the poet of the
Inferno. The face of the Italian poet, as being so different in kind, must
either be reluctantly omitted, he would say, or transferred by itself to
the other side of the room. Unless, indeed, with a view to satisfy the
claims both of degree and of kind, Shakespeare were to be placed alone
over the mantelpiece, and Dante and Goethe in company on the opposite
wall, where, there being but two, the contrast would be rather agreeable
than otherwise! On the whole, however, and without prejudice to new
arrangements in the course of future decorations, he is content that it
should be as it is.
And so, reader, for the present are we. Let us enter together, then, if it
seems worth while, the room of this imaginary dilettante during his
absence; let us turn the key in the lock, so that he may not come in to
interrupt us; and let us look for a little time at the two masks he has
provided for us over the mantelpiece, receiving such reflections as they
may suggest. Doubtless we have often looked at the two masks before; but
that matters little.
* * * * *
As we gaze at the first of the two masks, what is it that we see? A face
full in contour, of good oval shape, the individual features small in
proportion to the entire countenance, the greater part of which is made up
of an ample and rounded forehead and a somewhat abundant mouth and chin.
The general impression is that rather of rich, fine, and very mobile
tissue, than of large or decided bone. This, together with the length of
the upper lip, and the absence of any set expression, imparts to the face
an air of lax and luxurious calmness. It is clearly a passive face rather
than an active face, a face across which moods may pass and repass rather
than a face grooved and charactered into any one permanent show of
relation to the outer world. Placed beside the mask of Cromwell, it would
fail to impress, not only as being less massive and energetic, but also as
being in every way less marked and determinate. It is the face, we repeat,
of a literary man, one of those faces which depend for their power to
impress less on the sculptor's favourite circumstance of distinct osseous
form than on the changing hue and aspect of the living flesh. And yet it
is, even in form, quite a peculiar face. Instead of being, as in the
ordinary thousand and one portraits of Shakespeare, a mere general face
which anybody or nobody might have had, the face in the mask (and the
singular portrait in the first folio edition of the poet's works
corroborates it) is a face which every call-boy about the Globe Theatre
must have carried about with him in his imagination, without any trouble,
as specifically Mr. Shakespeare's face. In complexion, as we imagine it,
it was rather fair than dark; and yet not very fair either, if we are to
believe Shakespeare himself (Sonnet 62)--
"But when my glass shows me myself indeed,
Beated and chopped with tanned antiquity--"
a passage, however, in which, from the nature of the mood in which it was
written, we are to suppose exaggeration for the worse. In short, the face
of Shakespeare, so far as we can infer what it was from the homely
Stratford bust, was a genuine and even comely, but still unusual, English
face, distinguished by a kind of ripe intellectual fulness in the general
outline, comparative smallness in the individual features, and a look of
gentle and humane repose.
Goethe's face is different. The whole size of the head is perhaps less,
but the proportion of the face to the head is greater, and there is more
of that determinate form which arises from prominence and strength in the
bony structure. The features are individually larger, and present in their
combination more of that deliberate beauty of outline which can be
conveyed with effect in sculpture. The expression, however, is also that
of calm intellectual repose; and, in the absence of harshness or undue
concentration of the parts, one is at liberty to discover the proof that
this also was the face of a man whose life was spent rather in a career of
thought and literary effort than in a career of active and laborious
strife. Yet the face, with all its power of fine susceptibility, is not so
passive as that of Shakespeare. Its passiveness is more the passiveness of
self-control, and less that of natural constitution; the susceptibilities
pass and repass over a firmer basis of permanent character; the tremors
among the nervous tissues do not reach to such depths of sheer nervous
dissolution, but sooner make impact against the solid bone. The calm in
the one face is more that of habitual softness and ease of humour; the
calm in the other is more that of dignified, though tolerant,
self-composure. It would have been more easy, one thinks, to take
liberties with Shakespeare in his presence than to attempt a similar thing
in the presence of Goethe. The one carried himself with the air of a man
often diffident of himself, and whom, therefore, a foolish or impudent
stranger might very well mistake till he saw him roused; the other wore,
with all his kindness and blandness, a fixed stateliness of mien and look
that would have checked undue familiarity from the first. Add to all this
that the face of Goethe, at least in later life, was browner and more
wrinkled; his hair more dark; his eye also nearer the black and lustrous
in species, if less mysteriously vague and deep; and his person perhaps
the taller and more symmetrically made.[3]
But a truce to these guesses! What do we actually know respecting those
two men, whose masks, the preserved similitudes of the living features
with which they once fronted the world, are now before us? Let us turn
first to the one and then to the other, till, as we gaze at these poor
eyeless images, which are all we now have, some vision of the lives and
minds they typify shall swim into our ken.
* * * * *
Shakespeare, this Englishman who died two hundred and sixty years ago,
what is he now to us his countrymen, who ought to know him best? A great
name, in the first place, of which we are proud! That this little foggy
island of England should have given birth to such a man is of itself a
moiety of our acquittance among the nations. By Frenchmen Shakespeare is
accepted as at least equal to their own first; Italians waver between him
and Dante; Germans, by race more our brethren, worship him as their own
highest product too, though born by chance amongst us. All confess him to
have been one of those great spirits, occasionally created, in whom the
human faculties seem to have reached that extreme of expansion on the
slightest increase beyond which man would burst away into some other mode
of being and leave this behind. And why all this? What are the special
claims of Shakespeare to this high worship? Through what mode of activity,
practised while alive, has he won this immortality after he is dead? The
answer is simple. He was an artist, a poet, a dramatist. Having, during
some five-and-twenty years of a life not very long, written about forty
dramatic pieces, which, after being acted in several London theatres,
were printed either by himself or by his executors, he has, by this means,
bequeathed to the memory of the human race an immense number of verses,
and to its imagination a great variety of ideal characters and
creations--Lears, Othellos, Hamlets, Falstaffs, Shallows, Imogens,
Mirandas, Ariels, Calibans. This, understood in its fullest extent, is
what Shakespeare has done. Whatever blank in human affairs, as they now
are, would be produced by the immediate withdrawal of all this
intellectual capital, together with all the interest that has been
accumulated on it: _that_ is the measure of what the world owes to
Shakespeare.
This conception, however, while it serves vaguely to indicate to us the
greatness of the man, assists us very little in the task of defining his
character. In our attempts to do this--to ascend, as it were, to the
living spring from which have flowed those rich poetic streams--we
unavoidably rely upon two kinds of authority: the records which inform us
of the leading events of his life; and the casual allusions to his person
and habits left us by his contemporaries.
To enumerate the ascertained events of Shakespeare's life is unnecessary
here. How he was born at Stratford-on-Avon, in Warwickshire, in April,
1564, the son of a respectable burgess who afterwards became poor; how,
having been educated with some care in his native town, he married there,
at the age of eighteen, a farmer's daughter eight years older than
himself; how, after employing himself as scrivener or schoolmaster, or
something of that kind, in his native county for a few years more, he at
length quitted it in his twenty-fourth year, and came up to London,
leaving his wife and three children at Stratford; how, connecting himself
with the Blackfriars theatre, he commenced the career of a poet and
play-writer; how he succeeded so well in this that, after having been a
flourishing actor and theatre-proprietor, and a most popular man of genius
about town for some seventeen years, he was able to leave the stage while
still under forty, and return to Stratford with property sufficient to
make him the most considerable man of the place; how he lived here for
some twelve years more in the midst of his family, sending up occasionally
a new play to town, and otherwise leading the even and tranquil existence
of a country gentleman; and how, after having buried his old mother,
married his daughters, and seen himself a grandfather at the age of
forty-three, he was cut off rather suddenly near his fifty-third birthday,
in the year 1616:--all this is, or ought to be, as familiar to educated
Englishmen of the present day as the letters of the English alphabet. M.
Guizot, with a little inaccuracy, has made these leading facts in the life
of the English poet tolerably familiar even to our French neighbours.
But, while such facts, if conceived with sufficient distinctness, serve to
mark out the life of the poet in general outline, it is rather from the
few notices of him that have come down to us from his contemporaries that
we derive the more special impressions regarding his character and ways
with which we are accustomed to fill up this outline. These notices are
various; those of interest may, perhaps, be about a dozen in all; but the
only ones that take a very decided hold on the imagination are the three
following:--
_Fuller's Fancy-picture of Shakespeare and Ben Jonson at the Mermaid
Tavern._--"Many were the wit-combats betwixt him and Ben Jonson;
which two I behold like a Spanish great galleon and an English
man-of-war. Master Jonson, like the former, was built far higher in
learning; solid, but slow in his performances. Shakespeare, with the
English man-of-war, lesser in bulk, but lighter in sailing, could
turn with all tides, tack about, and take advantage of all winds, by
the quickness of his wit and invention."--_Written, about 1650, by
Thomas Fuller, born in 1608._
_Aubrey's Sketch of Shakespeare at second hand._--"This William,
being inclined naturally to poetry and acting, came to London, I
guess, about 18; and was an actor at one of the play-houses, and did
act exceedingly well. (Now B. Jonson was never a good actor, but an
excellent instructor.) He began early to make essays at dramatic
poetry, which at that time was very low; and his plays took well. He
was a handsome, well-shaped man; very good company, and of a very
ready and pleasant smooth wit. The humour of the constable in '_A
Midsummer Night's Dream_,' he happened to take at Grendon, in Bucks,
which is the road from London to Stratford; and there was living that
constable about 1642, when I first came to Oxon. Mr. Jos. Howe is of
that parish; and knew him. Ben Jonson and he did gather humours of
men daily wherever they came.... He was wont to go to his native
country once a year. I think I have been told that he left 200_l._ or
300_l._ per annum, there and thereabout, to a sister. I have heard
Sir William Davenant and Mr. Thomas Shadwell, who is accounted the
best comedian we have now, say that he had a most prodigious wit, and
did admire his natural parts beyond all other dramatical writers. He
was wont to say that he never blotted out a line in his life. Said
Ben Jonson, 'I wish he had blotted out a thousand.'"--_Written, about
1680, by John Aubrey, born 1625._
_Ben Jonson's own Sketch of Shakespeare._--"I remember the players
have often mentioned it as an honour to Shakespeare, that in his
writing (whatsoever he penned) he never blotted out a line. My answer
hath been 'Would he had blotted a thousand!'; which they thought a
malevolent speech. I had not told posterity this but for their
ignorance, who chose that circumstance to commend their friend by
wherein he most faulted; and to justify mine own candour: for I loved
the man, and do honour his memory, on this side idolatry, as much as
any. He was, indeed, honest, and of an open and free nature; had an
excellent phantasy, brave notions, and gentle expressions; wherein he
flowed with that facility that _sometimes it was necessary he should
be stopped_: '_Sufflaminandus erat_,' as Augustus said of Haterius.
His wit was in his own power; would the rule of it had been so too!
Many times he fell into those things could not escape laughter; as
when he said, in the person of Cæsar, one speaking to him, 'Cæsar,
thou dost me wrong,' he replied, 'Cæsar did never wrong but with just
cause,' and such like; which were ridiculous. But he redeemed his
vices with his virtues. There was ever more in him to be praised than
to be pardoned."--_Ben Jonson's "Discoveries."_
It is sheer nonsense, with these and other such passages accessible to
anybody, to go on repeating, as people seem determined to do, the
hackneyed saying of the commentator Steevens, that "all that we know of
Shakespeare is, that he was born at Stratford-on-Avon; married and had
children there; went to London, where he commenced actor, and wrote plays
and poems; returned to Stratford, made his will, died, and was buried."[4]
It is our own fault, and not the fault of the materials, if we do not know
a great deal more about Shakespeare than that; if we do not realize, for
example, these distinct and indubitable facts about him--his special
reputation among the critics of his time, as a man not so much of
erudition as of prodigious natural genius; his gentleness and openness of
disposition; his popular and sociable habits; his extreme ease, and, as
some thought, negligence in composition; and, above all, and most
characteristic of all, his excessive fluency in speech. "He sometimes
required stopping," is Ben Jonson's expression; and whoever does not see a
whole volume of revelation respecting Shakespeare in that single trait has
no eye for seeing anything. Let no one ever lose sight of that phrase in
trying to imagine Shakespeare.
Still, after all, we cannot be content thus. With regard to such a man we
cannot rest satisfied with a mere picture of his exterior in its aspect of
repose, or in a few of its common attitudes. We seek, as the phrase is, to
penetrate into his heart--to detect and to fix in everlasting portraiture
that mood of his soul which was ultimate and characteristic; in which, so
to speak, he came ready-fashioned from the Creator's hands; towards which
he always sank when alone; and on the ground-melody of which all his
thoughts and actions were but voluntary variations. As far short of such a
result as would be any notion we could form of the poet Burns from a mere
chronological outline of his life, together with a few stories such as are
current about his moral irregularities, so far short of a true
appreciation of Shakespeare would be that idea of him which we could
derive from the scanty fund of the external evidence.
And here it is that, in proceeding to make up the deficiency of the
external evidence by going to the only other available source of light on
the subject, namely the bequeathed writings of the man himself, we find
ourselves obstructed at the outset by an obvious difficulty, which does
not exist to the same extent in most other cases. We can, with comparative
ease, recognise Burns himself in his works; for Burns is a lyrist, pouring
out his own feelings in song, often alluding to himself, and generally
under personal agitation when he writes. Shakespeare, on the other hand,
is a dramatist, whose function it was not to communicate, but to create.
Had he been a dramatist of the same school as Ben Jonson, indeed--using
the drama as a means of spreading, or, at all events, as a medium through
which to insinuate, his opinions, and often indicating his purposes by the
very names of his _dramatis personæ_ (as Downright, Merecraft, Eitherside,
and the like)--then the task would have been easier. But it is not so with
Shakespeare. Less than almost any man that ever wrote does he inculcate or
dogmatise. He is the very type of the poet. He paints, represents,
creates, holds the mirror up to nature; but from opinion, doctrine,
controversy, theory, he holds instinctively aloof. In each of his plays
there is a "central idea," to use the favourite term of the German
critics--that is, a single thought round which all may be exhibited as
consciously or unconsciously crystallized; but there is no pervading
maxim, no point set forth to be argued or proved. Of none of all the plays
can it be said that it is more than any other a vehicle for fixed articles
in the creed of Shakespeare.
One quality or attribute of Shakespeare's genius we do, indeed, contrive
to seize out this very difficulty of seizing anything--that quality or
attribute of _many-sidedness_ of which we have heard so much for the last
century and a half. The immense variety of his characters and conceptions,
embracing as it does Hamlets and Falstaffs, Kings and Clowns, Prosperos
and Dogberrys, and his apparently equal ease in handling them all, are
matters that have been noted by one and all of the critics. And thus,
while his own character is lost in his incessant shiftings through such a
succession of masks, we yet manage, as it were in revenge, to extract from
the very impossibility of describing him an adjective which does possess a
kind of quasi-descriptive value. It is as if of some one that had baffled
all our attempts to investigate him we were to console ourselves by saying
that he was a perfect Proteus. We call Shakespeare "many-sided;" not a
magazine, nor a young lady at a party, but tells you that; and in adding
this to our list of adjectives concerning him we find a certain
satisfaction, and even an increase of light.
But it would be cowardice to stop here. The old sea-god Proteus himself,
despite his subtlety and versatility, had a real form and character of his
own, into which he could be compelled, if one only knew the way. Hear how
they served this old gentleman in the Odyssey:
"We at once,
Loud shouting, flew on him, and in our arms
Constrained him fast; nor the sea-prophet old
Called not incontinent his shifts to mind.
First he became a long-maned lion grim;
A dragon then, a panther, a huge boar,
A limpid stream, and an o'ershadowing tree.
We, persevering, held him; till, at length,
The subtle sage, his ineffectual arts
Resigning weary, questioned me and spoke."
And so with _our_ Proteus. The many-sidedness of the dramatist, let it be
well believed and pondered, is but the versatility in form of a certain
personal and substantial being, which constitutes the specific mind of the
dramatist himself. Precisely as we have insisted that Shakespeare's face,
as the best portraits represent it to us, is no mere general face or face
to let, but a good, decided, and even rather singular face, so, we would
insist, he had as specific a character, as thoroughly a way of his own in
thinking about things and going through his morning and evening hours, as
any of ourselves. "Man is only many-sided," says Goethe, "when he strives
after the highest because he _must_, and descends to the lesser because he
_will_;" that is, as we interpret, when he is borne on in a certain noble
direction in all that he does by the very structure of his mind, while, at
his option, he may keep planting this fixed path or not with a sportive
and flowery border. By the necessity of his nature, Shakespeare was
compelled in a certain earnest direction in all that he did; and it is our
part to search through the thickets of imagery and gratuitous fiction amid
which he spent his life, that this path may be discovered. As the lion, or
the limpid stream, or the overshadowing tree, into which Proteus turned
himself, was not a real lion, or a real stream, or a real tree, but only
Proteus as the one or as the other; so, involved in each of Shakespeare's
characters,--in Hamlet, in Falstaff, or in Romeo,--involved in some deep
manner in each of these diverse characters, is Shakespeare's own nature.
If Shakespeare had not been precisely and wholly Shakespeare, and not any
other man actual or conceivable, could Hamlet or Falstaff, or any other of
his creations, have been what they are?
But how to evolve Shakespeare from his works, how to compel this Proteus
into his proper and native form, is still the question. It is a problem
of the highest difficulty. Something, indeed, of the poet's personal
character and views we cannot help gathering as we read his dramas.
Passages again and again occur of which, from their peculiar effect upon
ourselves, from their conceivable reference to what we know of the poet's
circumstances, or from their evident superfluousness and warmth, we do not
hesitate to aver "There speaks the poet's own heart." But to show
generally how much of the man has passed into the poet, and how it is that
his personal bent and peculiarities are to be surely detected inhering in
writings whose essential character it is to be arbitrary and universal, is
a task from which a critic might well shrink, were he left merely to the
ordinary resources of critical ingenuity without any positive and
ascertained clue.
In this case, however, all the world ought to know, there is a positive
and ascertained clue. Shakespeare has left to us not merely a collection
of dramas, the exercises of his creative phantasy in a world of ideal
matter, but also certain poems which are assuredly and expressly
autobiographic. Criticism seems now pretty conclusively to have
determined, what it ought to have determined long ago, that the _Sonnets_
of Shakespeare are, and can possibly be, nothing else than a poetical
record of his own feelings and experience--a connected series of entries,
as it were, in his own diary--during a certain period of his London life.
This, we say, is conclusively determined and agreed upon; and whoever does
not, to some extent, hold this view knows nothing about the subject.
Ulrici, who is a genuine investigator, as well as a profound critic, is,
of course, right on this point. So, also, in the main, is M. Guizot,
although he mars the worth of the conclusion by adducing the foolish
theory of _Euphuism_--that is, of the adoption of an affected style of
expression in vogue in Shakespeare's age--in order to explain away that
which is precisely the most important thing about the Sonnets, and the
very thing _not_ to be explained away: namely, the depth and strangeness
of their pervading sentiment, and the curious hyperbolism of their style.
In truth, it is the very closeness of the contact into which the right
view of the Sonnets brings us with Shakespeare, the very value of the
information respecting him to which it opens the way, that operates
against it. Where we have so eager a desire to know, there we fear to
believe, lest what we have once cherished on so great a subject we should
be obliged again to give up, or lest, if our imaginations should dare to
figure aught too exact and familiar regarding the traits and motions of so
royal a spirit, the question should be put to us, what _we_ can know of
the halls of a palace, or the mantled tread of a king? Still the fact is
as it is. These Sonnets of Shakespeare _are_ autobiographic--distinctly,
intensely, painfully autobiographic, although in a style and after a
fashion of autobiography so peculiar that we can cite only Dante in his
_Vita Nuova_, and Tennyson in his _In Memoriam_, as having furnished
similar examples of it.
We are not going to examine the Sonnets in detail here, nor to tell the
story which they involve as a whole. We will indicate generally, however,
the impression which, we think, a close investigation of them will
infallibly leave on any thoughtful reader, as to the characteristic
personal qualities of that mind the larger and more factitious emanations
from which still cover and astonish the world.
The general and aggregate effect, then, of these Sonnets, as contributing
to our knowledge of Shakespeare as a man, is to antiquate, or at least to
reduce very much in value, the common idea of him implied in such phrases
as William the Calm, William the Cheerful, and the like. These phrases are
true, when understood in a certain very obvious sense; but, if we were to
select that designation which would, as we think, express Shakespeare in
his most intimate and private relations to man and nature, we should
rather say William the Meditative, William the Metaphysical, or William
the Melancholy. Let not the reader, full of the just idea of Shakespeare's
wonderful concreteness as a poet, be staggered by the second of these
phrases. The phrase is a good phrase; etymologically, it is perhaps the
best phrase we could here use; and whatever of inappropriateness there may
seem to be in it proceeds from false associations, and will vanish, we
hope, before we have done with it. Nor let it be supposed that, in using,
as nearly synonymous, the word Melancholy, we mean anything so absurd as
that the author of Falstaff was a Werther. What we mean is that there is
evidence in the Sonnets, corroborated by other proof on all hands, that
the mind of Shakespeare, when left to itself, was apt to sink into that
state in which thoughts of what is sad and mysterious in the universe most
easily come and go.
At no time, except during sleep, is the mind of any human being completely
idle. All men have some natural and congenial mood into which they fall
when they are left to talk with themselves. One man recounts the follies
of the past day, renewing the relish of them by the recollection; another
uses his leisure to hate his enemy and to scheme his discomfiture; a third
rehearses in imagination, in order to be prepared, the part which he is to
perform on the morrow. Now, at such moments, as we believe, it was the
habit of Shakespeare's mind, obliged thereto by the necessity of its
structure, to ponder ceaselessly those quest ions relating to man, his
origin, and his destiny, in familiarity with which consists what is called
the spiritual element in human nature. It was Shakespeare's use, as it
seems to us, to revert, when he was alone, to that ultimate mood of the
soul in which one hovers wistfully on the borders of the finite, vainly
pressing against the barriers that separate it from the unknown; that mood
in which even what is common and under foot seems part of a vast current
mystery, and in which, like Arabian Job of old, one looks by turns at the
heaven above, the earth beneath, and one's own moving body between,
interrogating whence it all is, why it all is, and whither it all tends.
And this, we say, is Melancholy. It is more. It is that mood of man,
which, most of all moods, is thoroughly, grandly, specifically human. That
which is the essence of all worth, all beauty, all humour, all genius, is
open or secret reference to the supernatural; and this is sorrow. The
attitude of a finite creature, contemplating the infinite, can only be
that of an exile, grief and wonder blending in a wistful longing for an
unknown home.
As we consider this frame of mind to have been characteristic of
Shakespeare, so we find that as a poet he has not forgotten to represent
it. We have always fancied Hamlet to be a closer translation of
Shakespeare's own character than any other of his personations. The same
meditativeness, the same morbid reference at all times to the
supernatural, the same inordinate development of the speculative faculty,
the same intellectual melancholy, that are seen in the Prince of Denmark,
seem to have distinguished Shakespeare. Nor is it possible here to forget
that minor and lower form of the same fancy--the ornament of _As You Like
It_, the melancholy Jaques.
"_Jaques._ More, more, I prithee, more.
_Amiens._ It will make you melancholy, Monsieur Jaques.
_Jaques._ I thank it. More, I prithee, more! I can suck melancholy
out of a song, as a weasel sucks eggs. More. I prithee, more!
_Amiens._ My voice is ragged; I know I cannot please you.
_Jaques._ I do not desire you to please me; I desire you to sing.
* * * * *
_Rosalind._ They say you are a melancholy fellow.
_Jaques._ I am so; I do love it better than laughing.
_Rosalind._ Those that are in extremity of either are abominable
fellows, and betray themselves to every modern censure worse than
drunkards.
_Jaques._ Why, 'tis good to be sad and say nothing.
_Rosalind._ Why, then, 'tis good to be a post.
_Jaques._ I have neither the scholar's melancholy, which is
emulation; nor the musician's, which is fantastical; nor the
courtier's, which is proud; nor the soldier's, which is ambitious;
nor the lawyer's, which is politic; nor the lady's, which is nice;
nor the lover's, which is all these: but it is a melancholy of mine
own, compounded of many simples, extracted from many objects, and
indeed the sundry contemplation of my travels, in which my often
rumination wraps me in a most humorous sadness."
Jaques is not Shakespeare; but in writing this description of Jaques
Shakespeare drew from his knowledge of himself. His also was a "melancholy
of his own," a "humorous sadness in which his often rumination wrapt him."
In that declared power of Jaques of "sucking melancholy out of a song" the
reference of Shakespeare to himself seems almost direct. Nay more, as
Rosalind, in rating poor Jaques, tells him on one occasion that he is so
abject a fellow that she verily believes he is "out of love with his
nativity, and almost chides God _for making him of that countenance that
he is_," so Shakespeare's melancholy, in one of his Sonnets (No. 29),
takes exactly the same form of self-dissatisfaction.
"When, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
_Featured like him_, like him with friends possessed,
Desiring this man's art and that man's scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet, in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee," &c.
Think of that, reader! That mask of Shakespeare's face, which we have been
discussing, Shakespeare himself did not like; and there were moments in
which he was so abject as actually to wish that he had received from
Nature another man's physical features!
If Shakespeare's melancholy was, like that of Jaques, a complex
melancholy, a melancholy "compounded of many simples"--extracted perhaps
at first from some root of bitter experience in his own life, and then
fed, as his Sonnets clearly state, by a habitual sense of his own
"outcast" condition in society, and by the sight of a hundred social
wrongs around him, into a kind of abject dissatisfaction with himself and
his fate--yet, in the end, and in its highest form, it was rather, as we
have already hinted, the melancholy of Hamlet, a meditative, contemplative
melancholy, embracing human life as a whole, the melancholy of a mind
incessantly tending from the real ([Greek: ta physika]) to the
metaphysical ([Greek: ta meta ta physika]), and only brought back by
external occasion from the metaphysical to the real.
Do not let us quarrel about the words, if we can agree about the thing.
Let any competent person whatever read the Sonnets, and then, with their
impression on him, pass to the plays, and he will inevitably become aware
of Shakespeare's personal fondness for certain themes or trains of
thought, particularly that of the speed and destructiveness of time.
Death, vicissitude, the march and tramp of generations across life's
stage, the rotting of human bodies in the earth--these and all the other
forms of the same thought were familiar to Shakespeare to a degree beyond
what is to be seen in the case of any other poet. It seems to have been a
habit of his mind, when left to its own tendency, ever to indulge by
preference in that oldest of human meditations, which is not yet trite:
"Man that is born of a woman is of few days, and full of trouble; he
cometh forth as a flower, and is cut down: he fleeth as a shadow, and
continueth not." Let us cite a few examples from the Sonnets:--
"When I consider everything that grows
Holds in perfection but a little moment,
That this huge stage presenteth nought but shows
Whereon the stars in secret influence comment."--
_Sonnet 15._
"If thou survive my well-contented clay,
When that churl Death my bones with dust shall
cover."-- _Sonnet 32._
"No longer mourn for me when I am dead
Than you shall hear the surly sullen bell
Give warning to the world that I am fled
From this vile world, with vilest worms to dwell."--
_Sonnet 71._
"The wrinkles, which thy glass will truly show,
Of mouthed graves will give thee memory;
Thou by thy dial's shady stealth may'st know
Time's thievish progress to eternity."--
_Sonnet 77._
"Or I shall live your epitaph to make,
Or you survive when I in earth am rotten."--
_Sonnet 81._
These are but one or two out of many such passages occurring in the
Sonnets. Indeed, it may be said that, whenever Shakespeare pronounces the
words time, age, death, and the like, it is with a deep and cutting
personal emphasis, quite different from the usual manner of poets in their
stereotyped allusions to mortality. Time, in particular, seems to have
tenanted his imagination as a kind of grim and hideous personal existence,
cruel out of mere malevolence of nature. Death, too, had become to him a
kind of actual being or fury, morally unamiable, and deserving of
reproach: "that churl Death."
If we turn to the plays of Shakespeare, we shall find that in them too the
same morbid sensitiveness to all associations with mortality is
continually breaking out. The vividness, for example, with which Juliet
describes the interior of a charnel-house partakes of a spirit of revenge,
as if Shakespeare were retaliating, through her, upon an object horrible
to himself:--
"Or hide me nightly in a charnel-house,
O'ercovered quite with dead men's rattling bones,
With reeky shanks and yellow chapless skulls."
More distinctly revengeful is Romeo's ejaculation at the tomb:--
"Thou détestable maw, thou womb of Death,
Gorged with the dearest morsel of the earth,
Thus I enforce thy rotten jaws to open!"
And who does not remember the famous passage in _Measure for Measure_?--
"_Claudio._ Death is a fearful thing.
_Isabella._ And shamed life is hateful.
_Claudio._ Ay, but to die, and go we know not where;
To lie in cold obstruction and to rot;
This sensible warm motion to become
A kneaded clod; and the delighted spirit
To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside
In thrilling regions of thick-ribbèd ice;
To be imprisoned in the viewless winds,
And blown with restless violence round about
The pendent world; or to be worse than worst
Of those that lawless and incertain thoughts
Imagine howling: 'tis too horrible!
The weariest and most loathed worldly life
That age, ache, penury, and imprisonment,
Can lay on nature is a paradise
To what we fear of Death."
Again in the grave-digging scene in _Hamlet_ we see the same fascinated
familiarity of the imagination with all that pertains to churchyards,
coffins, and the corruption within them.
"_Hamlet._ Prithee, Horatio, tell me one thing.
_Horatio._ What's that, my lord?
_Hamlet._ Dost thou think Alexander looked o' this fashion i' the
earth?
_Horatio._ E'en so.
_Hamlet._ And smelt so? pah! (_Puts down the skull._)
_Horatio._ E'en so, my lord!
_Hamlet._ To what base uses we may return, Horatio! Why may not
imagination trace the noble dust of Alexander till he find it
stopping a bung-hole?
_Horatio._ 'Twere to reason too curiously to consider so.
_Hamlet._ No, faith, not a jot; but to follow him thither with
modesty enough, and likelihood to lead it: as thus:--Alexander died;
Alexander was buried; Alexander returneth to dust; the dust is earth;
of earth we make loam; and why of that loam whereto he was converted
might they not stop a beer-barrel?
Imperial Cæsar, dead and turned to clay,
Might stop a hole to keep the wind away:
O that that earth which kept the world in awe
Should patch a wall to expel the winter's flaw!"
Observe how Shakespeare here defends, through Hamlet, his own tendency
"too curiously" to consider death. To sum up all, however, let us turn to
that unparalleled burst of language in the _Tempest_, in which the poet
has defeated Time itself by chivalrously proclaiming to all time what Time
can do:--
"And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And, like this unsubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made of; and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep."
This, we contend, is no mere poetic phrenzy, inserted because it was
dramatically suitable that Prospero should so express himself at that
place; it is the explosion into words of a feeling during which Prospero
was forgotten, and Shakespeare swooned into himself. And what is the
continuation of the passage but a kind of postscript, describing, under
the guise of Prospero, Shakespeare's own agitation with what he had just
written?--
"Sir, I am vexed;
Bear with my weakness; my old brain is troubled:
Be not disturbed with my infirmity:
If you be pleased, retire into my cell,
And there repose: _a turn or two I'll walk,
To still my beating mind_."
To our imagination the surmise is that Shakespeare here laid down his pen,
and began to pace his chamber, too agitated to write more that night.
In this extreme familiarity with the conception of mortality in general,
and perhaps also in this extreme sensitiveness to the thought of death as
a matter of personal import, all great poets, and possibly all great men
whatever, have to some extent resembled Shakespeare. For these are the
feelings of our common nature on which religion and all solemn activity
have founded and maintained themselves. Space and Time are the largest and
the outermost of all human conceptions; to stand, therefore, incessantly
upon these extreme conceptions, as upon the perimeter of a figure, and to
view all inwards from them, is the highest exercise of thought to which a
human being can attain. Accordingly, in all great poets there may be
discerned this familiarity of the imagination with the world figured as a
poor little ball pendent in space and moving forward out of a dark past to
a future of light or gloom. But in this respect Shakespeare exceeds them
all; and in this respect, therefore, no poet is more religious, more
spiritual, more profoundly metaphysical, than he. Into an inordinate
amount of that outward pressure of the soul against the perimeter of
sensible things, infuse the peculiar _moral_ germ of Christianity, and you
have the religion of Shakespeare. Thus:--
"And our little life
Is rounded with a sleep."--_Tempest._
Here the poetic imagination sweeps boldly round the universe, severing it
as by a soft cloud-line from the infinite Unknown.
"Poor soul! the centre of my sinful earth,
Fooled by those rebel powers that lead thee 'stray!"
_Sonnet 146._
Here the soul, retracting its thoughts from the far and physical, dwells
disgustedly on itself.
"The dread of something after death,
The undiscovered country from whose bourn
No traveller returns."--_Hamlet._
Here the soul, pierced with the new and awful thought of sin, wings out
again towards the Infinite, and finds all dark.
"How would you be,
If He, which is the top of judgment, should
But judge you as you are?"--_Measure for Measure._
Here the silver lamp of hope is hung up within the gloomy sphere, to burn
softly and faintly for ever!
And so it is throughout Shakespeare's writings. Whatever is special or
doctrinal is avoided; all that intellectual tackling, so to speak, is
struck away that would afford the soul any relief whatever from the whole
sensation of the supernatural. Although we cannot, therefore, in honest
keeping with popular language, call Shakespeare, as Ulrici does, the most
Christian of poets, we believe him to have been the man in modern times
who, breathing an atmosphere full of Christian conceptions, and walking
amid a civilization studded with Christian institutions, had his whole
being tied by the closest personal links to those highest generalities of
the universe which the greatest minds in all ages have ever pondered and
meditated, and round which Christianity has thrown its clasp of gold.
Shakespeare, then, we hold to have been essentially a meditative,
speculative, and even, in his solitary hours, an abject and melancholy
man, rather than a man of active, firm, and worldly disposition. Instead
of being a calm, stony observer of life and nature, as he has been
sometimes represented, we believe him to have been a man of the gentlest
and most troublesome affections, of sensibility abnormally keen and deep,
full of metaphysical longings, liable above most men to self-distrust,
despondency, and mental agitation from causes internal and external, and a
prey to many secret and severe experiences which he did not discuss at the
Mermaid tavern. This, we say, is no guess; it is a thing certified under
his own hand and seal. But, this being allowed, we are willing to agree
with all that is said of him, by way of indicating the immense variety of
faculties, dispositions, and acquirements, of which his character was
built up. Vast intellectual inquisitiveness, the readiest and most
universal humour, the truest sagacity and knowledge of the world, the
richest and deepest capacity of enjoying all that life presented: all
this, as applied to Shakespeare, is a mere string of undeniable
commonplaces. The man, as we fancy him, who of all others trod the
oftenest the extreme metaphysic walk which bounds our universe in, he was
also the man of all others who was related most keenly by every fibre of
his being to all the world of the real and the concrete. Better than any
man he knew life to be a dream; with as vivid a relish as any man he did
his part as one of the dreamers. If at one moment life stood before his
mental gaze, an illuminated little speck or disc, softly rounded with
mysterious sleep, the next moment this mere span shot out into an
illimitable plain, whereon he himself stood--a plain covered with forests,
parted by seas, studded with cities and huge concourses of men, mapped out
into civilizations, over-canopied by stars. Nay, it was precisely because
he came and went with such instant transition between the two extremes
that he behaved so genially and sympathetically in the latter. It was
precisely because he had done the metaphysic feat so completely once for
all, and did not bungle on metaphysicizing bit by bit amid the real, that
he stood forth in the character of the most concrete of poets. Life is an
illusion, a show, a phantasm: well then, that is settled, and _I_ belong
to that section of the illusion called London, the seventeenth century,
and woody Warwickshire! So he may have said; and he acted accordingly. He
walked amid the woods of Warwickshire, and listened to the birds singing
in their leafy retreats; he entered the Mermaid tavern with Ben Jonson
after the theatre was over, and found himself quite properly related, as
one item in the illusion, to that other item in it, a good supper and a
cup of canary. He accepted the world as it was, rejoiced in its joys, was
pained by its sorrows, reverenced its dignities, respected its laws, and
laughed at its whimsies. It was this very strength and intimacy and
universality of his relations to the concrete world of nature and life
that caused in him that spirit of acquiescence in things as they were,
that evident conservatism of temper, that indifference, or perhaps more,
to the specific contemporary forms of social and intellectual movement,
with which he has sometimes been charged as a fault. The habit of
attaching weight to what are called abstractions, of metaphysicizing bit
by bit amid the real, is almost an essential feature in the constitution
of men who are remarkable for their faith in social progress. It was
precisely, therefore, because Shakespeare was such a votary of the
concrete, because he walked so firmly on the green and solid sward of that
island of life which he knew to be surrounded by a metaphysic sea, that
this or that metaphysical proposal with respect to the island itself
occupied him but little.
How, then, _did_ Shakespeare relate himself to this concrete world of
nature and life in which his lot had been cast? What precise function with
regard to it, if not that of an active partisan of progress, did he accept
as devolving naturally on _him_? The answer is easy. Marked out by
circumstances, and by his own bent and inclination, from the vast
majority of men, who, with greater or less faculty, sometimes perhaps with
the greatest, pass their lives in silence, appearing in the world at their
time, enjoying it for a season, and returning to the earth again,--marked
out from among these, and appointed to be one of those whom the whole
earth should remember and think of; yet precluded, as we have seen, by his
constitution and fortune, from certain modes of attaining to this
honour--the special function which, in this high place, he saw himself
called upon to discharge, and by the discharge of which he has ensured his
place in perpetuity, was simply that of _expressing_ what he felt and saw.
In other words, Shakespeare was specifically and transcendently a literary
man. To say that he was the greatest _man_ that ever lived is to provoke a
useless controversy, and comparisons that lead to nothing, between
Shakespeare and Cæsar, Shakespeare and Charlemagne, Shakespeare and
Cromwell; to say that he was the greatest _intellect_ that ever lived, is
to bring the shades of Aristotle and Plato, and Bacon and Newton, and all
the other systematic thinkers, grumbling about us, with demands for a
definition of intellect, which we are by no means in a position to give;
nay, finally, to say that he is the greatest _poet_ that the world has
produced (a thing which we would certainly say, were we provoked to it,)
would be unnecessarily to hurt the feelings of Homer and Sophocles, Dante
and Milton. What we will say, then, and challenge the world to gainsay, is
that he was the greatest _expresser_ that ever lived. This is glory
enough, and it leaves the other questions open. Other men may have led, on
the whole, greater and more impressive lives than he; other men, acting on
their fellows through the same medium of speech that he used, may have
expended a greater power of thought, and achieved a greater intellectual
effect, in one consistent direction; other men, too (though this is very
questionable), may have contrived to issue the matter which they did
address to the world in more compact and perfect artistic shapes. But no
man that ever lived said such splendid things on all subjects universally;
no man that ever lived had the faculty of pouring out on all occasions
such a flood of the richest and deepest language. He may have had rivals
in the art of imagining situations; he had no rival in the power of
sending a gush of the appropriate intellectual effusion over the image and
body of a situation once conceived. From a jewelled ring on an alderman's
finger to the most mountainous thought or deed of man or demon, nothing
suggested itself that his speech could not envelope and enfold with ease.
That excessive fluency which astonished Ben Jonson when he listened to
Shakespeare in person astonishes the world yet. Abundance, ease,
redundance, a plenitude of word, sound, and imagery, which, were the
intellect at work only a little less magnificent, would sometimes end in
sheer braggartism and bombast, are the characteristics of Shakespeare's
style. Nothing is suppressed, nothing omitted, nothing cancelled. On and
on the poet flows; words, thoughts, and fancies crowding on him as fast as
he can write, all related to the matter on hand, and all poured forth
together, to rise and fall on the waves of an established cadence. Such
lightness and ease in the manner, and such prodigious wealth and depth in
the matter, are combined in no other writer. How the matter was first
accumulated, what proportion of it was the acquired capital of former
efforts, and what proportion of it welled up in the poet's mind during and
in virtue of the very act of speech, it is impossible to say; but this at
least may be affirmed without fear of contradiction, that there never was
a mind in the world from which, when it was pricked by any occasion
whatever, there poured forth on the instant such a stream of precious
substance intellectually related to it. By his powers of expression, in
fact, Shakespeare has beggared all his posterity, and left mere
practitioners of expression nothing possible to do. There is perhaps not a
thought, or feeling, or situation, really common and generic to human
life, on which he has not exercised his prerogative; and, wherever he has
once been, woe to the man that comes after him! He has overgrown the
whole system and face of things like a universal ivy, which has left no
wall uncovered, no pinnacle unclimbed, no chink unpenetrated. Since he
lived the concrete world has worn a richer surface. He found it great and
beautiful, with stripes here and there of the rough old coat seen through
the leafy labours of his predecessors; he left it clothed throughout with
the wealth and autumnal luxuriance of his own unparalleled language.
* * * * *
This brings us, by a very natural connexion, to what we have to say of
Goethe. For, if, with the foregoing impressions on our mind respecting the
character and the function of the great English poet, we turn to the mask
of his German successor and admirer, which has been so long waiting our
notice, the first question must infallibly be What recognition is it
possible that, in such circumstances, we can have left for _him_? In other
words, the first consideration that must be taken into account in any
attempt to appreciate Goethe is that he came into a world in which
Shakespeare had been before him. For a man who, in the main, was to pursue
a course so similar to that which Shakespeare had pursued this was a
matter of incalculable importance. Either, on the one hand, the value of
all that the second man could do, if he adhered to a course very similar,
must suffer from the fact that he was following in the footsteps of a
predecessor of such unapproachable excellence; or, on the other hand, the
consciousness of this, if it came in time, would be likely to _prevent_
too close a resemblance between the lives of the two men, by giving a
special direction and character to the efforts of the second. Hear Goethe
himself on this very point:--
"We discoursed upon English literature, on the greatness of
Shakespeare, and on the unfavourable position held by all English
dramatic authors who had appeared after that poetical giant. 'A
dramatic talent of any importance,' said Goethe, 'could not forbear
to notice Shakespeare's works; nay, could not forbear to study them.
Having studied them, he must be aware that Shakespeare has already
exhausted the whole of human nature in all its tendencies, in all its
heights and depths, and that, in fact, there remains for him, the
aftercomer, nothing more to do. And how could one get courage to put
pen to paper, if one were conscious, in an earnest appreciating
spirit, that such unfathomable and unattainable excellencies were
already in existence? It fared better with me fifty years ago in my
own dear Germany. I could soon come to an end with all that then
existed; it could not long awe me, or occupy my attention. I soon
left behind me German literature, and the study of it, and turned my
thoughts to life and to production. So on and on I went, in my own
natural development, and on and on I fashioned the productions of
epoch after epoch. And, at every step of life and development, my
standard of excellence was not much higher than what at such a step
I was able to attain. But, had I been born an Englishman, and had all
those numerous masterpieces been brought before me in all their power
at my first dawn of youthful consciousness, they would have
overpowered me, and I should not have known what to do. I could not
have gone on with such fresh light-heartedness, but should have had
to bethink myself, and look about for a long time to find some new
outlet.'"--_Eckermann's Conversations of Goethe_, i. pp. 114, 115.
All this is very clear and happily expressed. Most Englishmen that have
written since Shakespeare _have_ been overawed by the sense of his vast
superiority; and Goethe, if he had been an Englishman, would have partaken
of the same feeling, and would have been obliged, as he says, to look
about for some path in which competition with such a predecessor would
have been avoided. Being, however, a German, and coming at a time when
German literature had nothing so great to boast of but that an ardent
young man could hope to produce something as good or better, the way was
certainly open to him to the attainment, in his own nation, of a position
analogous to that which Shakespeare had occupied in his. Goethe might, if
he had chosen, have aspired to be the Shakespeare of Germany. Had his
tastes and faculties pointed in that direction, there was no reason,
special to his own nation, that would have made it very incumbent on him
to thwart the tendency of his genius and seek about for a new outlet in
order to escape injurious comparisons. But, even in such circumstances, to
have pursued a course _very_ similar to that of Shakespeare, and to have
been animated by a mere ambition to tread in the footsteps of that master,
would have been death to all chance of a reputation among the highest.
Great writers do not exclusively belong to the country of their birth; the
greatest of all are grouped together on a kind of central platform, in the
view of all peoples and tongues; and, as in this select assemblage no
duplicates are permitted, the man who does never so well a second time
that which the world has already canonized a man for doing once has little
chance of being admitted to co-equal honours. More especially in the
present case would too close a resemblance to the original, whether in
manner or in purpose, have been regarded in the end as a reason for
inferiority in place. As the poet of one branch of the great Germanic
family of mankind, Shakespeare belonged indirectly to the Germans, even
before they recognised him; in him all the genuine qualities of Teutonic
human nature, as well as the more special characteristics of English
genius, were embodied once for all in the particular form which had
chanced to be his; and, had Goethe been, in any marked sense, only a
repetition of the same form, he might have held his place for some time as
the wonder of Germany, but, as soon as the course of events had opened up
the communication which was sure to take place at some time between the
German and the English literatures, and so made his countrymen acquainted
with Shakespeare, he would have lost his extreme brilliance, and become
but a star of the second magnitude. In order, then, that Goethe might hold
permanently a first rank even among his own countrymen, it was necessary
that he should be a man of a genius quite distinct from that of
Shakespeare, a man who, having or not having certain Shakespearian
qualities, should at all events signalize such qualities as he had by a
marked character and function of his own. And, if this was necessary to
secure to Goethe a first rank in the literature of Germany, much more was
it necessary to ensure him a place as one of the intellectual potentates
of the whole modern world. If Goethe was to be admitted into this select
company at all, it could not be as a mere younger brother of Shakespeare,
but as a man whom Shakespeare himself, when he took him by the hand, would
look at with curiosity, as something new in species, produced in the earth
since his own time.
Was this, then, the case? Was Goethe, with all his external resemblance in
some respects to Shakespeare, a man of such truly individual character,
and of so new and marked a function, as to deserve a place among the
highest, not in German literature alone, but in the literature of the
world as a whole? We do not think that anyone competent to give an opinion
will reply in the negative.
A glance at the external circumstances of Goethe's life alone (and what a
contrast there is between the abundance of biographic material respecting
Goethe and the scantiness of our information respecting Shakespeare!) will
beget the impression that the man who led such a life must have had
opportunities for developing a very unusual character. The main facts in
the life of Goethe are:--that he was born at Frankfort-on-the-Main in
1749, the only surviving son of parents who ranked among the wealthiest in
the town; that, having been educated with extreme care, and having
received whatever experience could be acquired by an impetuous
student-life, free from all ordinary forms of hardship, first at one
German town and then at another, he devoted himself, in accordance with
his tastes, to a career of literary activity; that, after unwinding
himself from several love-affairs, and travelling for the sake of farther
culture in Italy and other parts of Europe, he settled in early manhood at
Weimar, as the intimate friend and counsellor of the reigning duke of that
state; that there, during a long and honoured life, in the course of which
he married an inferior housekeeper kind of person, of whom we do not hear
much, he prosecuted his literary enterprise with unwearied industry, not
only producing poems, novels, dramas, essays, treatises, and criticisms in
great profusion from his own pen, but also acting, along with Schiller and
others, as a director and guide of the whole contemporary intellectual
movement of his native land; and that finally, having outlived all his
famous associates, become a widower and a grandfather, and attained the
position not only of the acknowledged king and patriarch of German
literature, but also, as some thought, of the wisest and most serene
intellect of Europe, he died so late as 1832, in the eighty-third year of
his age. All this, it will be observed, is very different from the life of
the prosperous Warwickshire player, whose existence had illustrated the
early part of the seventeenth century in England; and it necessarily
denoted, at the same time, a very different cast of mind and temper.
Accordingly, such descriptions as we have of Goethe from those who knew
him best convey the idea of a character notably different from that of the
English poet. Of Shakespeare personally we have but one uniform
account--that he was a man of gentle presence and disposition, very good
company, and of such boundless fluency and intellectual inventiveness in
talk that his hearers could not always stand it, but had sometimes to
whistle him down in his flights. In Goethe's case we have two distinct
pictures.
In youth, as all accounts agree in stating, he was one of the most
impetuous, bounding, ennui-dispelling natures that ever broke in upon a
society of ordinary mortals assembled to kill time. "He came upon you,"
said one who knew him well at this period, "like a wolf in the night." The
simile is a splendid one, and it agrees wonderfully with the more subdued
representations of his early years given by Goethe himself in his
Autobiography. Handsome as an Apollo and welcome everywhere, he bore all
before him wherever he went, not only by his talent, but also by an
exuberance of animal spirits which swept dulness itself along, took away
the breath of those who relied on sarcasm and their cool heads, inspired
life and animation into the whole circle, and most especially delighted
the ladies. This vivacity became even, at times, a reckless humour,
prolific in all kinds of mad freaks and extravagances. Whether this
impetuosity kept always within the bounds of mere innocent frolic is a
question which we need not here raise. Traditions are certainly afloat of
terrible domestic incidents connected with Goethe's youth, both in
Frankfort and in Weimar; but to what extent those traditions are founded
on fact is a matter which we have never yet seen any attempt to decide
upon evidence. More authentic for us, and equally significant, if we could
be sure of our ability to appreciate them rightly, are the stories which
Goethe himself tells of his various youthful attachments, and the various
ways in which they were concluded. In Goethe's own narratives of these
affairs there is a confession of error, arising out of his disposition
passionately to abandon himself to the feelings of the moment without
looking forward to the consequences; but whether this confession is to be
converted by his critics into the harsher accusation of heartlessness and
want of principle is a thing not to be decided by any general rule as to
the matter of inconstancy, but by accurate knowledge in each case of the
whole circumstances of that case. One thing these love-romances of
Goethe's early life make clear--that, for a being of such extreme
sensibility as he was, he had a very strong element of self-control. When
he gave up Rica or Lilli, it was with tears, and no end of sleepless
nights; and yet he gave them up. Shakespeare, we believe (and there is an
instance exactly in point in the story of his Sonnets), had no such power
of breaking clear from connexions which his judgment disapproved. Remorse
and return, self-reproaches for his weakness at one moment followed the
next by weakness more abject than before--such, by his own confession, was
the conduct, in one such case, of our more passive and gentle-hearted
poet. Where Shakespeare was "past cure," and "frantic-mad with evermore
unrest," Goethe but fell into "hypochondria," which reason and resolution
enabled him to overcome. Goethe at twenty-five gave up a young, beautiful
and innocent girl, from the conviction that it was better to do so.
Shakespeare at thirty-five was the abject slave of a dark-complexioned
woman, who was faithless to him, and whom he cursed in his heart. The
sensibilities in the German poet moved from the first, as we have already
said, over a firmer basis of permanent character.
It is chiefly, however, the Goethe of later life that the world remembers
and thinks of. The bounding impetuosity is then gone; or rather it is kept
back and restrained, so as to form a calm and steady fund of internal
energy, capable sometimes of a flash and outbreak, but generally revealing
itself only in labour and its fruits. What was formerly the beauty of an
Apollo, graceful, light, and full of motion, is now the beauty of a
Jupiter, composed, stately, serene. "What a sublime form!" says Eckermann,
describing his first interview with him. "I forgot to speak for looking at
him: I could not look enough. His face is so powerful and brown, full of
wrinkles, and each wrinkle full of expression. And everywhere there is
such nobleness and firmness, such repose and greatness. He spoke in a
slow, composed manner, such as you would expect from an aged monarch."
Such is Goethe, as he lasts now in the imagination of the world. Living
among statues, books, and pictures; daily doing something for his own
culture and for that of the world; daily receiving guests and visitors,
whom he entertained and instructed with his wise and deep, yet charming
and simple, converse; daily corresponding with friends and strangers, and
giving advice or doing a good turn to some young talent or other--never
was such a mind consecrated so perseveringly and exclusively to the
service of _Kunst_ and _Literatur_. One almost begins to wonder if it was
altogether right that an old man should go on, morning after morning, and
evening after evening, in such a fashion, talking about art and science
and literature as if they were the only interests in the world, taking his
guests into corners to have quiet discussions with them on these subjects,
and always finding something new and nice to be said about them. Possibly,
indeed, this is the fault of those who have reported him, and who only
took notes when the discourse turned on what they considered the proper
Goethean themes. But that Goethe far outdid Shakespeare in this conscious
dedication of himself to a life of the intellect is as certain as the
testimony of likelihood can make it. Shakespeare did enjoy his art; it was
what, in his pensive hours, as he himself hints, he enjoyed most; and
whatever of intellectual ecstasy literary production can bring must surely
have been his in those hours when he composed _Hamlet_ and the _Tempest_.
But Shakespeare's was precisely one of those minds whose strength is a
revelation to themselves during the moment of its exercise, rather than a
chronic ascertained possession; and from this circumstance, as well as
from the attested fact of his carelessness as to the fate of his
compositions, we can very well conceive that literature and mental culture
formed but a small part of the general system of things in Shakespeare's
daily thoughts, and that he would have been absolutely ashamed of himself
if, when anything else, from the state of the weather to the quality of
the wine, was within the circle of possible allusion, he had said a word
about his own plays. If he had not Sir Walter Scott's positive conviction
that every man ought to be either a laird or a lawyer, casting in
authorship as a mere addition if it were to be practised at all, he at
least led so full and keen a life, and was drawn forth on so many sides by
nature, society, and the unseen, that Literature, out of the actual
moments in which he was engaged in it, must have seemed to him a mere
bagatelle, a mere fantastic echo of not a tithe of life. In his home in
London, or his retirement at Stratford, he wrote on and on, because he
could not help doing so, and because it was his business and his solace;
but no play seemed to him worth a day of the contemporary actions of men,
no description worth a single glance at the Thames or at the deer feeding
in the forest, no sonnet worth the tear it was made to embalm. Literature
was by no means to him, as it was to Goethe, the main interest of life;
nor was he a man so far master of himself as ever to be able to behave as
if it were so, and to accept, as Goethe did, all that occurred as so much
culture. Yet Shakespeare would have understood Goethe, and would have
regarded him, almost with envy, as one of those men who, as being "lords
and owners of their faces," and not mere "stewards," know how to husband
Nature's gifts best.
"They that have power to hurt and will do none,
That do not do the thing they most do show,
Who, moving others, are themselves as stone,
Unmovèd, cold, and to temptation slow,
They rightly do inherit Heaven's graces,
And husband nature's riches from expense;
They are the lords and owners of their faces,
Others but stewards of their excellence."--_Sonnet 94._
If Goethe attained this character, however, it was not because, as it is
the fashion to say, he was by nature cold, heartless, and impassive, but
because, uniting will and wisdom to his wealth of sensibilities, he had
disciplined himself into what he was. A heartless man does not diffuse
geniality and kindliness around him, as Goethe did; and a statue is not
seized, as Goethe once was, with hæmorrhage in the night, the result of
suppressed grief.
That which made Goethe what he was--namely, his philosophy of life--is to
be gathered, in the form of hints, from his various writings and
conversations. We present a few important passages here, in what seems
their philosophic connexion, as well as the order most suitable for
bringing out Goethe's mode of thought in contrast with that of
Shakespeare.
_Goethe's Thoughts of Death._--"We had gone round the thicket, and
had turned by Tiefurt into the Weimar-road, where we had a view of
the setting sun. Goethe was for a while lost in thought; he then said
to me, in the words of one of the ancients,
'Untergehend sogar ist's immer dieselbige Sonne.'
(Still it continues the self-same sun, even while it is sinking.)
'At the age of seventy-five,' continued he, with much cheerfulness,
'one must, of course, think sometimes of death. But this thought
never gives me the least uneasiness, for I am fully convinced that
our spirit is a being of a nature quite indestructible, and that its
activity continues from eternity to eternity. It is like the sun,
which seems to set only to our earthly eyes, but which, in reality,
never sets, but shines on unceasingly.'"--_Eckermann's Conversations
of Goethe_, vol. i. p. 161.
_Goethe's Maxim with respect to Metaphysics._--"Man is born not to
solve the problem of the universe, but to find out where the problem
begins, and then to restrain himself within the limits of the
comprehensible."--_Ibid._ vol. i. p. 272.
_Goethe's Theory of the intention of the Supernatural with regard to
the Visible._--"After all, what does it all come to? God did not
retire to rest after the well-known six days of creation, but, on the
contrary, is constantly active as on the first. It would have been
for Him a poor occupation to compose this heavy world out of simple
elements, and to keep it rolling in the sunbeams from year to year,
if He had not the plan of founding a nursery for a world of spirits
upon this material basis. So He is now constantly active in higher
natures to attract the lower ones."--_Ibid._ vol. ii. p. 426.
_Goethe's Doctrine of Immortality._--"Kant has unquestionably done
the best service, by drawing the limits beyond which human intellect
is not able to penetrate, and leaving at rest the insoluble problems.
What a deal have people philosophised about immortality! and how far
have they got? I doubt not of our immortality, for nature cannot
dispense with the _entelecheia_. But we are not all, in like manner,
immortal; and he who would manifest himself in future as a great
_entelecheia_ must be one now.... To me the eternal existence of my
soul is proved from my idea of activity. If I work on incessantly
till my death, nature is bound to give me another form of existence
when the present one can no longer sustain my spirit."--_Ibid._ vol.
ii. pp. 193, 194, and p. 122.
_Goethe's Image of Life._--"Child, child, no more! The coursers of
Time, lashed, as it were, by invisible spirits, hurry on the light
car of our destiny; and all that we can do is, in cool
self-possession, to hold the reins with a firm hand, and to guide the
wheels, now to the left, now to the right, avoiding a stone here, or
a precipice there. Whither it is hurrying, who can tell? and who,
indeed, can remember the point from which it started?"--_Egmont._
_Man's proper business._--"It has at all times been said and repeated
that man should strive to know himself. This is a singular
requisition; with which no one complies, or indeed ever will comply.
Man is by all his senses and efforts directed to externals--to the
world around him; and he has to know this so far, and to make it so
far serviceable, as he requires for his own ends. It is only when he
feels joy or sorrow that he knows anything about himself, and only by
joy or sorrow is he instructed what to seek and what to
shun."--_Eckermann's Conversations of Goethe_, vol. ii. p. 180.
_The Abstract and the Concrete, and the Subjective and the
Objective._--"The Germans are certainly strange people. By their deep
thoughts and ideas, which they seek in everything, and fix upon
everything, they make life much more burdensome than is necessary.
Only have the courage to give yourself up to your impressions; allow
yourself to be delighted, moved, elevated--nay, instructed and
inspired by something great; but do not imagine all is vanity if it
is not abstract thought and idea.... It was not in my line, as a
poet, to strive to embody anything abstract. I received in my mind
impressions, and those of a sensual, animated, charming, varied,
hundred-fold kind, just as a lively imagination presented them; and I
had, as a poet, nothing more to do than artistically to round off and
elaborate such views and impressions, and by means of a lively
representation so to bring them forward that others might receive the
same impressions in hearing or reading my representation of them....
A poet deserves not the name while he only speaks out his few
subjective feelings; but as soon as he can appropriate to himself and
express the world he is a poet. Then he is inexhaustible, and can be
always new; while a subjective nature has soon talked out his little
internal material, and is at last ruined by mannerism. People always
talk of the study of the ancients; but what does that mean, except
that it says 'Turn your attention to the real world, and try to
express it, for that is what the ancients did when they were alive?'
Goethe arose and walked to and fro, while I remained seated at the
table, as he likes to see me. He stood a moment at the stove, and
then, like one who has reflected, came to me, and, with his finger on
his lips, said to me, 'I will now tell you something which you will
often find confirmed in your own experience. All eras in a state of
decline and dissolution are subjective; on the other hand, all
progressive eras have an objective tendency. Our present time is
retrograde, for it is subjective; we see this not merely in poetry,
but also in painting and much besides. Every healthy effort, on the
contrary, is directed from the inward to the outward world, as you
will see in all great eras, which have been really in a state of
progression, and all of an objective nature.'"--_Ibid._ vol. i. pp.
415, 416, and pp. 283, 284.
_Rule of Individual Activity._--"The most reasonable way is for every
man to follow his own vocation to which he has been born and which he
has learnt, and to avoid hindering others from following theirs. Let
the shoemaker abide by his last, the peasant by his plough, and let
the king know how to govern; for this is also a business which must
be learned, and with which no one should meddle who does not
understand it."--_Ibid._ vol. i. p. 134.
_Right and Wrong: The habit of Controversy._--"The end of all
opposition is negation, and negation is nothing. If I call _bad_ bad,
what do I gain? But, if I call _good_ bad, I do a great deal of
mischief. He who will work aright must never rail, must not trouble
himself at all about what is ill done, but only do well himself. For
the great point is not to pull down, but to build up; and in this
humanity finds pure joy."--_Ibid._ vol. i. p. 208.
_Goethe's own Relation to the Disputes of his Time._--"'You have been
reproached,' remarked I, rather inconsiderately, 'for not taking up
arms at that great period [the war with Napoleon], or at least
co-operating as a poet.' 'Let us leave that point alone, my good
friend,' returned Goethe. 'It is an absurd world, which knows not
what it wants, and which one must allow to have its own way. How
could I take up arms without hatred, and how could I hate without
youth? If such an emergency had befallen me when twenty years old, I
should certainly not have been the last; but it found me as one who
had already passed the first sixties. Besides, we cannot all serve
our country in the same way; but each does his best, according as God
has endowed him. I have toiled hard enough during half a century. I
can say that, in those things which nature has appointed for my daily
work, I have permitted myself no relaxation night or day, but have
always striven, investigated, and done as much, and that as well, as
I could. If everyone can say the same of himself, it will prove well
with all. I will not say what I think. There is more ill-will
towards me hidden beneath that remark than you are aware of. I feel
therein a new form of the old hatred with which people have
persecuted me, and endeavoured quietly to wound me, for years. I know
very well that I am an eyesore to many; that they would all willingly
get rid of me; and that, since they cannot touch my talent, they aim
at my character. Now, it is said that I am proud; now, egotistical;
now, immersed in sensuality; now, without Christianity; and now,
without love for my native country and my own dear Germans. You have
now known me sufficiently for years, and you feel what all that talk
is worth.... The poet, as a man and citizen, will love his native
land; but the native land of his _poetic_ powers and _poetic_ action
is the good, noble, and beautiful: which is confined to no particular
province or country, and which he seizes upon and forms wherever he
finds them. Therein he is like the eagle, who hovers with free gaze
over whole countries, and to whom it is of no consequence whether the
hare on which he pounces is running in Prussia or in
Saxony.'"--_Ibid._ vol. ii. pp. 257, 258, and p. 427.
Whoever has read these sentences attentively, and penetrated their meaning
in connexion, will see that they reveal a mode of thought somewhat
resembling that which we have attributed to Shakespeare, and yet
essentially different from it. Both poets are distinguished by this, that
they abstained systematically during their lives from the abstract, the
dialectical, and the controversial, and devoted themselves, with true
feeling and enjoyment, to the concrete, the real, and the unquestioned;
and so far there is an obvious resemblance between them. But the manner in
which this characteristic was attained was by no means the same in both
cases. In Shakespeare, as we have seen, there was a metaphysical longing,
a tendency towards the supersensible and invisible, absolutely morbid, if
we take ordinary constitutions as the standard of health in this respect;
and, if, with all this, he revelled with delight and moved with ease and
firmness in the sensuous and actual, it was because the very same soul
which pressed with such energy and wailing against the bounds of this life
of man was also related with inordinate keenness and intimacy to all that
this life spheres in. In Goethe, on the other hand, the tendency to the
real existed under easier constitutional conditions, and in a state of
such natural preponderance over any concomitant craving for the
metaphysical, that it necessarily took, German though he was, a higher
place in his estimate of what is desirable in a human character. That
world of the real in which Shakespeare delighted, and which he knew so
well, seemed to him, all this knowledge and delight notwithstanding, far
more evanescent, far more a mere filmy show, far less considerable a shred
of all that is, than it did to Goethe. To Shakespeare, as we have already
said, life was but as a little island on the bosom of a boundless sea: men
must needs know what the island contains, and act as those who have to
till and rule it; still, with that expanse of waters all round in view,
and that roar of waters ever in the ear, what can men call themselves or
pretend their realm to be? "Poor fools of Nature" is the poet's own
phrase--the realm so small that it is pitiful to belong to it! Not so with
Goethe. To him also, of course, the thought was familiar of a vast region
of the supersensible outlying nature and life; but a higher value on the
whole was reserved for nature and life, even on the universal scale, by
his peculiar habit of conceiving them, not as distinct from the
supersensible and contemporaneously begirt by it, but rather, if we may so
speak, as a considerable portion, or even duration, of the
_quondam_-supersensible in the new form of the sensible. In other words,
Goethe was full of the notion of progress or evolution; the world was to
him not a mere spectacle and dominion for the supernatural, but an actual
manifestation of the substance of the supernatural itself, on its way
through time to new issues. Hence his peculiar notion of immortality;
hence his view as to the mere relativeness of the terms right and wrong,
good and bad, and the like; and hence also his resolute inculcation of the
doctrine, so unpalatable to his countrymen, that men ought to direct their
thoughts and efforts to the actual and the outward. Life being the current
phase of the universal mystery, the true duty of men could be but to
contribute in their various ways to the furtherance of life.
And what then, finally, was Goethe's _own_ mode of activity in a life thus
defined in his general philosophy? Like Shakespeare, he was a literary
man; his function was literature. Yes, but in what respect, otherwise than
Shakespeare had done before him, did he fulfil this literary function in
reference to the world he lived in and enjoyed? In the first place, as all
know, he differed from Shakespeare in this, that he did not address the
world exclusively in the character of a poet. Besides his poetry, properly
so called, Goethe has left behind him numerous prose-writings, ranking
under very different heads, abounding with such deep and wise maxims and
perceptions, in reference to all things under the sun, as would have
entitled him, even had he been no poet, to rank as a sage. So great,
indeed, is Goethe as a thinker and a critic that it may very well be
disputed whether his prose-writings, as a whole, are not more precious
than his poems. But even if we set apart this difference, and regard the
two men in their special character as poets or artists, a marked
difference is still discernible. Hear Goethe's own definition of his
poetical career and aim.
"Thus began that tendency from which I could not deviate my whole
life through: namely, the tendency to turn into an image, into a
poem, everything that delighted or troubled me, or otherwise occupied
me, and to come to some certain understanding with myself upon it,
that I might both rectify my conceptions of external things, and set
my mind at rest about them. The faculty of doing this was necessary
to no one more than to me, for my natural disposition whirled me
constantly from one extreme to the other. All, therefore, that has
been put forth by me consists of fragments of a great
confession."--_Autobiography_, vol. i. p. 240.
Shakespeare's genius we defined to be the genius of universal expression,
of clothing objects, circumstances, and feelings with magnificent
language, of pouring over the image of any given situation, whether
suggested from within or from without, an effusion of the richest
intellectual matter that could possibly be related to it. Goethe's genius,
as here defined by himself, was something different and narrower. It was
the genius of translation from the subjective into the objective, of
clothing real feelings with fictitious circumstance, of giving happy
intellectual form to states of mind, so as to dismiss and throw them off.
Let this distinction be sufficiently conceived and developed, and a full
idea will be obtained of the exact difference between the literary
many-sidedness attributed to Shakespeare and that also attributed to
Goethe.
MILTON'S YOUTH.
MILTON'S YOUTH.[5]
Never surely did a youth leave the academic halls of England more full of
fair promise than Milton, when, at the age of twenty-three, he quitted
Cambridge to reside at his father's house, amid the quiet beauties of a
rural neighbourhood some twenty miles distant from London. Fair in person,
with a clear fresh complexion, light brown hair which parted in the middle
and fell in locks to his shoulders, clear grey eyes, and a well-knit frame
of moderate proportions--there could not have been found a finer picture
of pure and ingenuous English youth. And that health and beauty which
distinguished his outward appearance, and the effect of which was
increased by a voice surpassingly sweet and musical, indicated with
perfect truth the qualities of the mind within. Seriousness, studiousness,
fondness for flowers and music, fondness also for manly exercises in the
open air, courage and resolution of character, combined with the most
maiden purity and innocence of life--these were the traits conspicuous in
Milton in his early years. Of his accomplishments it is hardly necessary
to take particular note. Whatever of learning, of science, or of
discipline in logic or philosophy, the University at that time could give,
he had duly and in the largest measure acquired. No better Greek or Latin
scholar probably had the University in that age sent forth; he was
proficient in the Hebrew tongue, and in all the other customary aids to a
Biblical Theology; and he could speak and write well in French and
Italian. His acquaintance, obtained by independent reading, with the
history and with the whole body of the literature of ancient and modern
nations, was extensive and various. And, as nature had endowed him in no
ordinary degree with that most exquisite of her gifts, the ear and the
passion for harmony, he had studied music as an art, and had taught
himself not only to sing in the society of others, but also to touch the
keys for his solitary pleasure.
The instruments which Milton preferred as a musician were, his biographers
tell us, the organ and the bass-viol. This fact seems to us to be not
without its significance. Were we to define in one word our impression of
the prevailing tone, the characteristic mood and disposition of Milton's
mind, even in his early youth, we should say that it consisted in a deep
and habitual _seriousness_. We use the word in none of those special and
restricted senses that are sometimes given to it. We do not mean that
Milton, at the period of his early youth with which we are now concerned,
was, or accounted himself as being, a confessed member of that noble party
of English Puritans with which he afterwards became allied, and to which
he rendered such vast services. True, he himself tells us, in his account
of his education, that "care had ever been had of him, with his earliest
capacity, not to be negligently trained in the precepts of the Christian
religion;" and in the fact that his first tutor, selected for him by his
father, was one Thomas Young, a Scotchman of subsequent distinction among
the English Puritans, there is enough to prove that the formation of his
character in youth was aided expressly by Puritanical influences. But
Milton, if ever in a denominational sense he could be called a Puritan (he
wore his hair long, and in other respects did not conform to the usages of
the Puritan party), could hardly, with any propriety, be designated as a
Puritan in this sense, at the time when he left College. There is evidence
that at this time he had not given so much attention, on his own personal
account, to matters of religious doctrine as he afterwards bestowed. That
seriousness of which we speak was, therefore, rather a constitutional
seriousness, ratified and nourished by rational reflection, than the
assumed temper of a sect. "A certain reservedness of natural disposition,
and a moral discipline learnt out of the noblest philosophy"--such, in
Milton's own words, were the causes which, apart from his Christian
training, would have always kept him, as he believed, above the vices that
debase youth. And herein the example of Milton contradicts much that is
commonly advanced by way of a theory of the poetical character.
Poets and artists generally, it is held, are and ought to be distinguished
by a predominance of sensibility over principle, an excess of what
Coleridge called the spiritual over what he called the moral part of man.
A nature built on quicksands, an organization of nerve languid or
tempestuous with occasion, a soul falling and soaring, now subject to
ecstasies and now to remorses--such, it is supposed, and on no small
induction of actual instances, is the appropriate constitution of the
poet. Mobility, absolute and entire destitution of principle properly so
called, capacity for varying the mood indefinitely rather than for
retaining and keeping up one moral gesture or resolution through all
moods: this, say the theorists, is the essential thing in the structure of
the artist. Against the truth of this, however, as a maxim of universal
application, the character of Milton, as well as that of Wordsworth after
him, is a remarkable protest. Were it possible to place before the
theorists all the materials which exist for judging of Milton's personal
disposition as a young man, without exhibiting to them at the same time
the actual and early proofs of his poetical genius, their conclusion, were
they true to their theory, would necessarily be that the basis of his
nature was too solid and immovable, the platform of personal aims and
aspirations over which his thoughts moved and had footing too fixed and
firm, to permit that he should have been a poet. Nay, whosoever, even
appreciating Milton as a poet, shall come to the investigation of his
writings armed with that preconception of the poetical character which is
sure to be derived from an intimacy with the character of Shakespeare will
hardly escape some feeling of the same kind. Seriousness, we repeat, a
solemn and even austere demeanour of mind, was the characteristic of
Milton even in his youth. And the outward manifestation of this was a life
of pure and devout observance. This is a point that ought not to be
avoided, or dismissed in mere general language; for he who does not lay
stress on this knows not and loves not Milton. Accept, then, by way of
more particular statement, his own remarkable words in justifying himself
against an innuendo of one of his adversaries in later life, reflecting on
the tenor of his juvenile pursuits and behaviour. "A certain niceness of
nature," he says, "an honest haughtiness and self-esteem either of what I
was, or what I might be (which let envy call pride), and lastly that
modesty whereof, though not in the title-page, yet here I may be excused
to make some beseeming profession, all these, uniting the supply of their
natural aid together, kept me still above those low descents of mind
beneath which he must deject and plunge himself that can agree to saleable
and unlawful prostitutions." Fancy, ye to whom the moral frailty of genius
is a consolation, or to whom the association of virtue with youth and
Cambridge is a jest--fancy Milton, as this passage from his own pen
describes him at the age of twenty-three, returning to his father's house
from the university, full of its accomplishments and its honours, an
auburn-haired youth, beautiful as the Apollo of a northern clime, and that
beautiful body the temple of a soul pure and unsoiled. Truly, a son for a
mother to take to her arms with joy and pride!
Connected with this austerity of character, discernible in Milton even in
his youth, may be noted also, as indeed it is noted in the passage just
cited, a haughty yet modest self-esteem and consciousness of his own
powers. Throughout all Milton's works there may be discerned a vein of
this noble egotism, this unbashful self-assertion. Frequently, in arguing
with an opponent, or in setting forth his own views on any subject of
discussion, he passes, by a very slight topical connexion, into an account
of himself, his education, his designs, and his relations to the matter in
question; and this sometimes so elaborately and at such length, that the
impression is as if he said to his readers, "Besides all my other
arguments, take this also as the chief and conclusive argument, that it is
_I_, a man of such and such antecedents, and with such and such powers to
perform far higher work than you see me now engaged in, who affirm and
maintain this." In his later years Milton evidently believed himself to
be, if not the greatest man in England, at least the greatest writer, and
one whose _egomet dixi_ was entitled to as much force in the intellectual
commonwealth as the decree of a civil magistrate is invested with in the
order of civil life. All that he said or wrote was backed in his own
consciousness by a sense of the independent importance of the fact that it
was he, Milton, who said or wrote it; and often, after arguing a point for
some time on a footing of ostensible equality with his readers, he seems
suddenly to stop, retire to the vantage-ground of his own thoughts, and
bid his readers follow him thither, if they would see the whole of that
authority which his words had failed to express.
Such, we say, is Milton's habit in his later writings. In his early life,
of course, the feeling which it shows existed rather as an undefined
consciousness of superior power, a tendency silently and with satisfaction
to compare his own intellectual measure with that of others, a resolute
ambition to be and to do something great. Now we cannot help thinking
that it will be found that this particular form of self-esteem goes along
with that moral austerity of character which we have alleged to be
discernible in Milton even in his youth, rather than with that temperament
of varying sensibility which is, according to the general theory, regarded
as characteristic of the poet. Men of this latter type, as they vary in
the entire mood of their mind, vary also in their estimate of themselves.
No permanent consciousness of their own destiny, or of their own worth in
comparison with others, belongs to them. In their moods of elevation they
are powers to move the world; but, while the impulse that has gone forth
from them in one of those moods may be still thrilling its way onward in
wider and wider circles through the hearts of myriads they have never
seen, they, the fountains of the impulse, the spirit being gone from them,
may be sitting alone in the very spot and amid the ashes of their triumph,
sunken and dead, despondent and self-accusing. It requires the evidence of
positive results, the assurance of other men's praises, the visible
presentation of effects which they cannot but trace to themselves, to
convince such men that they are or can do anything. Whatever
manifestations of egotism, whatever strokes of self-assertion come from
such men, come in the very burst and phrenzy of their passing
resistlessness. The calm, deliberate, and unshaken knowledge of their own
superiority is not theirs. True, Shakespeare, the very type, if rightly
understood, of this class of minds, is supposed in his Sonnets to have
predicted, in the strongest and most deliberate terms, his own immortality
as a poet. It could be proved, however, were this the place for such an
investigation, that the common interpretation of those passages of the
Sonnets which are supposed to supply this trait in the character of
Shakespeare is nothing more nor less than a false reading of a very subtle
meaning which the critics have missed. Those other passages of the Sonnets
which breathe an abject melancholy and discontentment with self, which
exhibit the poet as "cursing his fate," as "bewailing his outcast state,"
as looking about abasedly among his literary contemporaries, envying the
"art" of one, and the "scope" of another, and even wishing sometimes that
the very features of his face had been different from what they were and
like those of some he knew, are, in our opinion, of far greater
autobiographic value.
Nothing of this kind is to be found in Milton. As a Christian, indeed,
humiliation before God was a duty the meaning of which he knew full well;
but, as a man moving among other men, he possessed, in that moral
seriousness and stoic scorn of temptation which characterized him, a
spring of ever-present pride, dignifying his whole bearing among his
fellows, and at times arousing him to a kingly intolerance. In short,
instead of that dissatisfaction with self which we trace as a not
unfrequent feeling with Shakespeare, we find in Milton, even in his early
youth, a recollection firm and habitual that he was one of those servants
to whom God had entrusted the stewardship of ten talents. In that very
sonnet, for example, written on his twenty-third birthday, in which he
laments that he had as yet achieved so little, his consolation is that the
power of achievement was still indubitably within him--
"All is, if I have grace to use it so,
As ever in my great Task-Master's eye."
And what was that special mode of activity to which Milton, still in the
bloom and seed-time of his years, had chosen to dedicate the powers of
which he was so conscious? He had been destined by his parents for the
Church; but this opening into life he had definitively and deliberately
abandoned. With equal decision he renounced the profession of the Law; and
it does not seem to have been long after the conclusion of his career at
the university when he renounced the prospects of professional life
altogether. His reasons for this, which are to be gathered from various
passages of his writings, seem to have resolved themselves into a jealous
concern for his own absolute intellectual freedom. He had determined, as
he says, "to lay up, as the best treasure and solace of a good old age,
the honest liberty of free speech from his youth;" and neither the Church
nor the Bar of England, at the time when he formed that resolution, was a
place where he could hope to keep it. For a man so situated, the
alternative, then as now, was the practice or profession of literature. To
this, therefore, as soon as he was able to come to a decision on the
subject, Milton had implicitly, if not avowedly, dedicated himself. To
become a great writer, and, above all, a great poet; to teach the English
language a new strain and modulation; to elaborate and surrender over to
the English nation works that would make it more potent and wise in the
age that was passing, and more memorable and lordly in the ages to come:
such was the form which Milton's ambition had assumed when, laying aside
his student's garb, he went to reside under his father's roof.
Nor was this merely a choice of necessity, the reluctant determination of
a young soul "Church-outed by the prelates" and disgusted with the chances
of the Law. Milton, in the Church, would certainly have been such an
archbishop, mitred or unmitred, as England has never seen; and the very
passage of such a man across the sacred floor would have trampled into
timely extinction much that has since sprung up amongst us to trouble and
perplex, and would have modelled the ecclesiasticism of England into a
shape that the world might have gazed at with no truant glance backward
to the splendours of the Seven Hills. And, doubtless, even amid the
traditions of the Law, such a man would have performed the feats of a
Samson, albeit of a Samson in chains. An inward prompting, therefore, a
love secretly plighted to the Muse, and a sweet comfort and delight in her
sole society, which no other allurement, whether of profit or pastime,
could equal or diminish,--this, less formally perhaps, but as really as
care for his intellectual liberty, or distaste for the established
professions of his time, determined Milton's early resolution as to his
future way of life. On this point it will be best to quote his own words.
"After I had," he says, "from my first years, by the ceaseless diligence
and care of my father (whom God recompense!), been exercised to the
tongues and some sciences, as my age would suffer, by sundry masters and
teachers both at home and at the schools, it was found that, whether ought
was imposed upon me by them that had the overlooking or betaken to of mine
own choice, in English or other tongue, prosing or versing, but chiefly
this latter, the style, by certain vital signs it had, was likely to
live." The meaning of which sentence is that Milton, before his
three-and-twentieth year, knew himself to be a poet.
He knew this, he says, by "certain vital signs" discernible in what he had
already written. What were those "vital signs," those proofs indubitable
to Milton that he had the art and faculty of a poet? We need but refer the
reader for the answer to those smaller poetical compositions of Milton,
both in English and in Latin, which survive as specimens of his earliest
Muse. Of these, some three or four which happen to be specially
dated--such as the _Elegy on the Death of a Fair Infant_, written in 1626,
or the author's eighteenth year; the well-known _Hymn on the Morning of
Christ's Nativity_, written in 1629, when the author was just twenty-one;
and the often-quoted _Lines on Shakespeare_, written not much later--may
be cited as convenient materials from which anyone who would convince
himself minutely of Milton's youthful vocation to poetry, rather than to
anything else, may derive proofs on that head. Here will be found power of
the most rare and beautiful conception, choice of words the most exact and
exquisite, the most perfect music and charm of verse. Above all, here will
be found that ineffable something--call it imagination or what we
will--wherein lies the intimate and ineradicable peculiarity of the poet:
the art to work on and on for ever in a purely ideal element, to chase and
marshal airy nothings according to a law totally unlike that of rational
association, never hastening to a logical end like the schoolboy when on
errand, but still lingering within the wood like the schoolboy during
holiday. This peculiar mental habit, nowhere better described than by
Milton himself when he speaks of verse
"Such as the meeting soul may pierce,
In notes with many a winding bout
Of linkèd sweetness long drawn out
With wanton heed and giddy cunning,"
is so characteristic of the poetical disposition that, though in most of
the greatest poets, as, for example, Dante, Goethe, Shakespeare in his
dramas, Chaucer, and almost all the ancient Greek poets, it is not
observable in any extraordinary degree, chiefly because in them the
element of direct reference to human life and its interests had fitting
preponderance, yet it may be affirmed that he who, tolerating or admiring
these poets, does not relish also such poetry as that of Spenser, Keats,
and Shakespeare in his minor pieces, but complains of it as wearisome and
sensuous, is wanting in a portion of the genuine poetic taste.
There was but one "vital sign" the absence of which in Milton could,
according to any theory of the poetical character, have begotten doubts in
his own mind, or in the minds of his friends, whether poetry was his
peculiar and appropriate function. The single source of possible doubt on
this head could have been no other than that native austerity of feeling
and temper, that real though not formal Puritanism of heart and
intellect, which we have noticed as distinguishing Milton from his youth
upward. The poet, it is said in these days, when, by psychologizing a man,
it is supposed we can tell what course of life he is fit for--the poet
ought to be universally sympathetic; he ought to hate nothing, despise
nothing. And a notion equivalent to this, though by no means so
articulately expressed, was undoubtedly prevalent in Milton's own time. As
the Puritans, on the one hand, had set their faces against all those
practices of profane singing, dancing, masquing, theatre-going, and the
like, in which the preservation of the spirit of the arts was supposed to
be involved, so the last party in the world from which the reputed
devotees of the arts in those days would have expected a poet to arise was
that of the Puritans. Even in Shakespeare, and much more in Ben Jonson,
Beaumont and Fletcher, and other poets of the Elizabethan age, may be
traced evidences of an instinctive enmity to that Puritanical mode of
thinking which was then on the increase in English society, and in the
triumph of which those great minds foresaw the proscription of their craft
and their pleasures. When Sir Toby says to Malvolio, "Dost thou think,
because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale?" and when
the Clown adds, "Yes, by Saint Anne, and ginger shall be hot i' the mouth
too," it is the Knight and the Clown on the one side against Malvolio the
Puritan on the other. That the defence of the festive in this passage is
not borne by more respectable personages than the two who speak is indeed
a kind of indication that Shakespeare's personal feelings with regard to
the austere movement which he saw gathering around him were by no means so
deep or bitter as to discompose him; but, if his profounder soul could
behold such things with serenity, and even pronounce them good, they
assuredly met with enough of virulence and invective among his lesser
contemporaries. That literary crusade against the Puritans, as canting,
sour-visaged, mirth-forbidding, art-abhorring religionists, which came to
its height at the time when Butler wrote his _Hudibras_, and Wycherley his
plays, was already hot when the wits of King James's days used to assemble
after the theatre, in their favourite taverns; and if, sallying out after
one of their merry evenings in their most favourite tavern of all, the
Mermaid in Bread Street, those assembled poets and dramatists had gone in
search of the youth who was likeliest to be the poet of the age then
beginning, they certainly would not have gone to that modest residence in
the same street where the son of the Puritanic scrivener, then preparing
for College, was busy over his books. Nay, if Ben Jonson, the last
twenty-nine years of whose life coincided with the first twenty-nine of
Milton's, had followed the young student from the house where he was born
in Bread Street to his rooms at Cambridge, and had there become acquainted
with him and looked over his early poetical exercises, it is probable
enough that, while praising them so far, he would have constituted himself
the organ of that very opinion as to the requisites of the poetical
character which we are now discussing, and declared, in some strong phrase
or other, that the youth would have been all the more hopeful as a poet if
he had had a little more of the _bon vivant_ in his constitution.
This, then, is a point of no little importance, involving as it does the
relations of Milton as a poet to the age in which he lived, that splendid
age of Puritan mastery in England which came between the age of
Shakespeare and Elizabeth and the age of Dryden and the second Charles.
Milton was _the_ poet of that intermediate era; that his character was
such as we have described it made him only the more truly a representative
of all that was then deepest in English society; and, in inquiring,
therefore, in what manner Milton's austerity as a man affected his art as
a poet, we are, at the same time, investigating the _rationale_ of that
remarkable fact in the history of English literature, the interpolation of
so original and isolated a development as the Miltonic poems between the
inventive luxuriousness of the Elizabethan epoch and the witty
licentiousness that followed the Restoration.
First, then, it was not _humour_ that came to the rescue, in Milton's
case, to help him out in those respects wherein, according to the theory
in question, the strictness and austerity of his own disposition would
have injured his capacity to be a poet. There are and have been men as
strict and austere as he, who yet, by means of this quality of humour,
have been able to reconcile themselves to much in human life lying far
away from, and even far beneath, the sphere of their own practice and
conscientious liking. As Pantagruel, the noble and meditative, endured and
even loved those immortal companions of his, the boisterous and profane
Friar John, and the cowardly and impish Panurge, so these men, remaining
themselves with all rigour and punctuality within the limits of sober and
exemplary life, are seen extending their regards to the persons and the
doings of a whole circle of reprobate Falstaffs, Pistols, Clowns, and Sir
Toby Belches. They cannot help it. They may and often do blame themselves
for it; they wish that, in their intercourse with the world, they could
more habitually turn the austere and judicial side of their character to
the scenes and incidents that there present themselves, simply saying of
each "That is right and worthy" or "That is wrong and unworthy," and
treating it accordingly. But they break down in the trial. Suddenly some
incident presents itself which is not only right but clumsy, or not only
wrong but comic, and straightway the austere side of their character
wheels round to the back, and judge, jury, and witnesses are convulsed
with untimely laughter. It was by no means so with Milton. As his critics
have generally remarked, he had little of humour, properly so called, in
his composition. His laughter is the laughter of scorn. With one unvarying
judicial look he confronted the actions of men, and, if ever his tone
altered as he uttered his judgments, it was only because something roused
him to a pitch of higher passion. Take, as characteristic, the following
passage, in which he replies to the taunt of an opponent who had asked
where _he_, the antagonist of profane amusements, had procured that
knowledge of theatres and their furniture which certain allusions in one
of his books showed him to possess:--
"Since there is such necessity to the hearsay of a tire, a periwig,
or a vizard, that plays must have been seen, what difficulty was
there in that, when in the colleges so many of the young divines, and
those in next aptitude to divinity, have been seen so often upon the
stage, writhing and unboning their clergy limbs to all the antic and
dishonest gestures of Trinculoes, buffoons, and bawds, prostituting
the shame of that ministry which either they had or were nigh having
to the eyes of courtiers and court ladies, with their grooms and
mademoiselles? There, whilst they acted and overacted, among other
young scholars, I was a spectator: they thought themselves gallant
men, and I thought them fools; they made sport, and I laughed; they
mispronounced, and I misliked; and, to make up the atticism, they
were out, and I hissed."--_Apology for Smectymnuus._
Who can doubt that to a man to whom such a scene as this presented itself
in a light so different from that in which a Shakespeare would have viewed
it Friar John himself, if encountered in the real world, would have been
simply the profane and unendurable wearer of the sacred garb, Falstaff
only a foul and grey-haired iniquity, Pistol but a braggart and coward,
and Sir Toby Belch but a beastly sot?
That office, however, which humour did not perform for Milton, in his
intercourse with the world of past and present things, was in part
performed by what he did in large measure possess--intellectual
_inquisitiveness_: respect for intellect, its accomplishments, and its
rights. If any quality in the actions or writings of other men could have
won Milton's favourable regards, even where his moral sense condemned,
that quality, we believe, was intellectual greatness, and especially
greatness of his own stamp, or marked by any of his own features. Hence
that tone of almost pitying admiration which pervades his representation
of the ruined Archangel; hence his uniformly respectful references to the
great intellects of Paganism and of the Catholic world; and hence, we
think, his unbounded and, for a time at least, unqualified reverence for
Shakespeare. As by the direct exercise of his own intellect, on the one
hand, applied to the rational discrimination for himself of what was
really wrong from what was only ignorantly reputed to be so, he had kept
his mind clear, as Cromwell also did, from many of those sectarian
prejudices in the matter of moral observance which were current in his
time--justified, for example, his love of music, his liking for natural
beauty, his habits of cheerful recreation, his devotion to various
literature, and even, most questionable of all, as would then have been
thought, his affection for the massy pillars and storied windows of
ecclesiastical architecture,--so, reflexly, by a recognition of the
intellectual liberty of others, he seems to have distinctly apprehended
the fact that there might be legitimate manifestations of intellect of a
kind very different from his own. A Falstaff in real life, for example,
might have been to Milton the most unendurable of horrors, just as,
according to his own confession, a play-acting clergyman was his
abomination; and yet, in the pages of his honoured Shakespeare, Sir John
as mentor to the Prince, and Parson Hugh Evans as the Welch fairy among
the mummers, may have been creations he would con over and very dearly
appreciate. And this accounts for the multifarious and unrestricted
character of his literary studies. Milton, we believe, was a man whose
intellectual inquisitiveness and respect for talent would have led him, in
other instances than that of the College theatricals, to see and hear much
that his heart derided, to study and know what he would not strictly have
wished to imitate. Ovid and Tibullus, for example, contain much that is
far from Miltonic; and yet that he read poets of this class with
particular pleasure let the following quotation prove:--
"I had my time, readers, as others have who have good learning
bestowed upon them, to be sent to those places where, the opinion
was, it might be soonest attained; and, as the manner is, was not
unstudied in those authors which are most commended: whereof some
were grave orators and historians, whose matter methought I loved
indeed, but, as my age was, so I understood them; others were the
smooth elegiac poets whereof the schools are not scarce, whom, both
for the pleasing sound of their numerous writing (which, in
imitation, I found most easy, and most agreeable to nature's part in
me) and for their matter (which, what it is, there be few who know
not), I was so allured to read that no recreation came to me more
welcome--for, that it was then those years with me which are excused
though they be least severe I may be saved the labour to remember
ye."--_Apology for Smectymnuus._
That Milton, then, notwithstanding his natural austerity and seriousness
even in youth, was led by his keen appreciation of literary beauty and
finish, and especially by his delight in sweet and melodious verse, to
read and enjoy the poetry of those writers who are usually quoted as
examples of the lusciousness and sensuousness of the poetic nature, and
even to prefer them to all others, is specially stated by himself. But let
the reader, if he should think he sees in this a ground for suspecting
that we have assigned too much importance to Milton's personal seriousness
of disposition as a cause affecting his aims and art as a poet, distinctly
mark the continuation--
"Whence, having observed them [the elegiac and love poets] to account
it the chief glory of their wit, in that they were ablest to judge,
to praise, and by that could esteem themselves worthiest to love,
those high perfections which, under one or other name, they took to
celebrate, I thought with myself, by every instinct and presage of
nature (which is not wont to be false), that what emboldened them to
this task might, with such diligence as they used, embolden me, and
that what judgment, wit, or elegance was my share would herein best
appear, and best value itself, by how much more wisely and with more
love of virtue I should choose (let rude ears be absent!) the object
of not unlike praises. For, albeit these thoughts to some will seem
virtuous and commendable, to others only pardonable, to a third sort
perhaps idle, yet the mentioning of them now will end in serious. Nor
blame it, readers, in those years to propose to themselves such a
reward as the noblest dispositions above other things in this life
have sometimes preferred; whereof not to be sensible, when good and
fair in one person meet, argues both a gross and shallow judgment,
and withal an ungentle and swainish breast. For, by the firm settling
of these persuasions, I became, to my best memory, so much a
proficient that, if I found those authors anywhere speaking unworthy
things of themselves, or unchaste those names which before they had
extolled, this effect it wrought in me: From that time forward their
art I still applauded, but the men I deplored; and above them all
preferred the two famous renowners of Beatrice and Laura, who never
wrote but honour of them to whom they devote their verse, displaying
sublime and pure thoughts without transgression. And long it was not
after when I was confirmed in this opinion, that he who would not be
frustrate of his hope to write well hereafter in laudable things
ought himself to be a true poem--that is, a composition and pattern
of the best and honourablest things; not presuming to sing high
praises of heroic men or famous cities unless he have in himself the
experience and the practice of all that which is
praiseworthy."--_Apology for Smectymnuus._
Here, at last, therefore, we have Milton's own judgment on the matter of
our inquiry. He had speculated himself on that subject; he had made it a
matter of conscious investigation what kind of moral tone and career would
best fit a man to be a poet, on the one hand, or would be most likely to
frustrate his hopes of writing well, on the other; and his conclusion, as
we see, was dead against the "wild oats" theory. Had Ben Jonson,
according to our previous fancy, proffered him, out of kindly interest, a
touch of that theory, while criticising his juvenile poems, and telling
him how he might learn to write better, there would have descended on the
lecturer, as sure as fate, a rebuke, though from young lips, that would
have made his strong face blush. "_He who would not be frustrate of his
hope to write well hereafter in laudable things ought himself to be a true
poem_:" fancy that sentence, an early and often pronounced formula of
Milton's, as we may be sure it was, hurled some evening, could time and
chance have permitted it, into the midst of the assembled Elizabethan wits
at the Mermaid! What interruption of the jollity, what mingled uneasiness
and resentment, what turning of faces towards the new speaker, what forced
laughter to conceal consternation! Only Shakespeare, one thinks, had he
been present, would have fixed on the bold youth a mild and approving eye,
would have looked round the room thoroughly to observe the whole scene,
and, remembering some passages in his own life, would mayhap have had his
own thoughts! Certainly, at least, the essence of that wonderful and
special development of the literary genius of England which came between
the Elizabethan epoch and the epoch of the Restoration, and which was
represented and consummated in Milton himself, consisted in the fact that
then there was a temporary protest, and by a man able to make it good,
against the theory of "wild oats," current before and current since. The
nearest poet to Milton in this respect, since Milton's time, has
undoubtedly been Wordsworth.
DRYDEN, AND THE LITERATURE OF THE RESTORATION.
DRYDEN, AND THE LITERATURE OF THE RESTORATION.[6]
It is a common remark that literature flourishes best in times of social
order and leisure, and suffers immediate depression whenever the public
mind is agitated by violent civil controversies. The remark is more true
than such popular inductions usually are. It is confirmed, on the small
scale, by what every one finds in his own experience. When a family is
agitated by any matter affecting its interests, there is an immediate
cessation from all the lighter luxuries of books and music wherewith it
used to beguile its leisure. All the members of the family are intent for
the time being on the matter in hand; if books are consulted it is for
some purpose of practical reference; and, if pens are active, it is in
writing letters of business. Not till the matter is fairly concluded are
the recreations of music and literature resumed; though then, possibly,
with a keener zest and a mind more full and fresh than before. Precisely
so it is on the large scale. If everything that is spoken or written be
called literature, there is probably always about the same amount of
literature going on in a community; or, if there is any increase or
decrease, it is but in proportion to the increase of the population. But,
if by literature we mean a certain peculiar kind and quality of spoken or
written matter, recognisable by its likeness to certain known precedents,
then, undoubtedly literature flourishes in times of quiet and security,
and wanes in times of convulsion and disorder. When the storm of some
great civil contest is blowing, it is impossible for even the serenest man
to shut himself quite in from the noise, and turn over the leaves of his
Horace, or practise his violin, as undistractedly as before. Great is the
power of _pococurantism_; and it is a noble sight to see, in the midst of
some Whig and Tory excitement which is throwing the general community into
sixes and sevens, and sending mobs along the streets, the calm devotee of
hard science, or the impassioned lover of the ideal, going on his way,
aloof from it all, and smiling at it all. But there are times when even
these obdurate gentlemen will be touched, in spite of themselves, to the
tune of what is going on; when the shouts of the mob will penetrate to the
closets of the most studious; and when, as Archimedes of old had to leave
his darling diagrams and trudge along the Syracusan streets to superintend
the construction of rough cranes and catapults, so philosophers and poets
alike will have to quit their favourite occupations, and be whirled along
in the common agitation. Those are times when whatever literature there is
assumes a character of immediate and practical interest. Just as, in the
supposed case, the literary activity of the family is consumed in mere
letters of business, so, in this, the literary activity of the community
exhausts itself in newspaper articles, public speeches, and pamphlets,
more or less elaborate, on the present crisis. There may be a vast amount
of mind at work, and as much, on the whole, may be written as before; but
the very excess of what may be called the pamphlet literature, which is
perishable in its nature, will leave a deficiency in the various
departments of literature more strictly so called--philosophical or
expository literature, historical literature, and the literature of pure
imagination. Not till the turmoil is over, not till the battle has been
fairly fought out, and the mental activity involved in it has been let
loose for more scattered work, will the calmer muses resume their sway,
and the press send forth treatises and histories, poems and romances, as
well as pamphlets. Then, however, men may return to literature with a new
zest, and the very storm which has interrupted the course of pure
literature for a time may infuse into such literature, when it begins
again, a fresher and stronger spirit. If the battle has ended in a
victory, there will be a tone of joy, of exultation, and of scorn, in what
men think and write after it; if it has ended in a defeat, all that is
thought and written will be tinged by a deeper and finer sorrow.
The history of English literature affords some curious illustrations of
this law. It has always puzzled historians, for example, to account for
such a great unoccupied gap in our literary progress as occurs between the
death of Chaucer and the middle of the reign of Elizabeth. From the year
1250, when the English language first makes its appearance in anything
like its present form, to the year 1400, when Chaucer died, forms, as all
know, the infant age of our literature. It was an age of great literary
activity; and how much was achieved in it remains apparent in the fact
that it culminated in a man like Chaucer--a man whom, without any drawback
for the early epoch at which he lived, we still regard as one of our
literary princes. Nor was Chaucer the solitary name of his age. He had
some notable contemporaries, both in verse and in prose. When we pass from
Chaucer's age, however, we have to overleap nearly a hundred and eighty
years before we alight upon a period presenting anything like an adequate
show of literary continuation. A few smaller names, like those of
Lydgate, Surrey, and Skelton, are all that can be cited as poetical
representatives of this sterile interval in the literary history of
England: whatever of Chaucer's genius still lingered in the island seeming
to have travelled northward, and taken refuge in a series of Scottish
poets, excelling any of their English contemporaries. How is this to be
accounted for? Is it that really, during this period, there was less of
available mind than before in England, that the quality of the English
nerve had degenerated? By no means necessarily so. Englishmen, during this
period were engaged in enterprises requiring no small amount of
intellectual and moral vigour; and there remain to us, from the same
period, specimens of grave and serious prose, which, if we do not place
them among the gems of our literature, we at least regard as evidence that
our ancestors of those days were men of heart and wit and solid sense. In
short, we are driven to suppose that there was something in the social
circumstances of England during the long period in question which
prevented such talent as there was from assuming the particular form of
literature. Fully to make out what this "something" was may baffle us;
but, when we remember that this was the period of the Civil Wars of the
Roses, and also of the great Anglican Reformation, we have reason enough
to conclude that the dearth of pure literature may have been owing, in
part, to the engrossing nature of those practical questions which then
disturbed English society. When Chaucer wrote, England, under the splendid
rule of the third Edward, was potent and triumphant abroad, but large and
leisurely at home; but scarcely had that monarch vacated the throne when a
series of civil jars began, which tore the nation into factions, and was
speedily followed by a religious movement as powerful in its effects.
Accordingly, though printing was introduced during this period, and thus
Englishmen had greater temptations to write, what they did write was
almost exclusively plain grave prose, intended for practical or polemical
occasions, and making no figure in a historical retrospect. How different
when, passing the controversial reigns of Henry VIII., Edward VI., and
Mary, we come upon the golden days of Queen Bess! Controversy enough
remained to give occasion to plenty of polemical prose; but about the
middle of her reign, when England, once more great and powerful abroad as
in the time of the Edwards, settled down within herself into a new lease
of social order and leisure under an ascertained government, there began
an outburst of literary genius such as no age or country had ever before
witnessed. The literary fecundity of that period of English history which
embraces the latter half of the reign of Elizabeth and the whole of the
reign of James I. (1580-1625) is a perpetual astonishment to us all. In
the entire preceding three centuries and a half we can with difficulty
name six men that can, by any charity of judgment, be regarded as stars in
our literature, and of these only one that is a star of the first
magnitude: whereas in this brief period of forty-five or fifty years we
can reckon up a host of poets and prose-writers all noticeable on high
literary grounds, and of whom at least thirty were men of extraordinary
dimensions. Indeed, in the contemplation of the intellectual abundance and
variety of this age--the age of Spenser, Shakespeare, and Bacon, of
Raleigh and Hooker, of Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, Donne, Herbert,
Massinger, and their illustrious contemporaries--we feel ourselves driven
from the theory that so rich a literary crop could have resulted from that
mere access of social leisure after a long series of national broils to
which we do in part attribute it, and are obliged to suppose that there
must have been, along with this, an actually finer substance and
condition, for the time being, of the national nerve. The very brain of
England must have become more "quick, nimble, and forgetive," before the
time of leisure came.
We have spoken of this great age of English literature as terminating with
the reign of James I., in 1625. In point of fact, however, it extended
some way into the reign of his son, Charles I. Spenser had died in 1599,
before James had ascended the English throne; Shakespeare and Beaumont had
died in 1616, while James still reigned; Fletcher died in 1625; Bacon
died in 1626, when the crown had been but a year on Charles's head. But,
while these great men and many of their contemporaries had vanished from
the scene before England had any experience of the first Charles, some of
their peers survived to tell what kind of men they had been. Ben Jonson
lived till 1637, and was poet-laureate to Charles I.; Donne and Drayton
lived till 1631; Herbert till 1632; Chapman till 1634; Dekker till 1638;
Ford till 1639; and Heywood and Massinger till 1640.
There is one point in the reign of Charles, however, where a clear line
may be drawn separating the last of the Elizabethan giants from their
literary successors. This is the point at which the Civil War commences.
The whole of the earlier part of Charles's reign was a preparation for
this war; but it cannot be said to have fairly begun till the meeting of
the Long Parliament in 1640, when Charles had been fifteen years on the
throne. If we select this year as the commencement of the great Puritan
and Republican Revolution in England, and the year 1660, when Charles II.
was restored, as the close of the same Revolution, we shall have a period
of twenty years to which, if there is any truth in the notion that the
Muses shun strife, this notion should be found peculiarly applicable. Is
it so? We think it is. In the first place, as we have just said, the last
of the Elizabethan giants died off before this period began, as if killed
by the mere approach to an atmosphere so lurid and tempestuous. In the
second place, in the case of such writers as were old enough to have
learnt in the school of those giants and yet young enough to survive them
and enter on the period of struggle,--as for example, Herrick (1591-1660),
Shirley (1596-1666), Waller (1605-1687), Davenant (1605-1668), Suckling
(1608-1643), Milton (1608-1674), Butler (1612-1680), Cleveland
(1613-1658), Denham (1615-1668), and Cowley (1618-1667),--it will be
found, on examination, either that the time of their literary activity did
not coincide with the period of struggle, but came before it, or after it,
or lay on both sides of it; or that what they did write of a purely
literary character during this period was written in exile; or, lastly,
that what they did write at home of a genuine literary character during
this period is inconsiderable in quantity, and dashed with a vein of
polemical allusion rendering it hardly an exception to the rule. The
literary career of Milton illustrates very strikingly this fact of the all
but entire cessation of pure literature in England between 1640 and 1660.
Milton's life consists of three distinctly marked periods--the first
ending with 1640, during which he composed his exquisite minor poems; the
second extending precisely from 1640 to 1660, during which he wrote no
poetry at all, except a few sonnets, but produced his various polemical
prose treatises or pamphlets, and served the state as a public
functionary; and the third, which may be called the period of his later
muse, extending from 1660 to his death in 1674, and famous for the
composition of his greater poems. Thus Milton's prose-period, if we may so
term it, coincided exactly with the period of civil strife and Cromwellian
rule. And, if this was the case with Milton--if he, who was essentially
the poet of Puritanism, with his whole heart and soul in the struggle
which Cromwell led, was obliged, during the process of that struggle, to
lay aside his singing robes, postpone his plans of a great immortal poem,
and in the meanwhile drudge laboriously as a prose pamphleteer--how much
more must those have been reduced to silence, or brought down into
practical prose, who found no such inspiration in the movement as it gave
to the soul of Milton, but regarded it all as desolation and disaster!
Indeed, one large department of the national literature at this period was
proscribed by civil enactment. Stage-plays were prohibited in 1642, and it
was not till after the Restoration that the theatres were re-opened. Such
a prohibition, though it left the sublime muse of Milton at liberty, had
it cared to sing, was a virtual extinction for the time of all the
customary literature. In fine, if all the literary produce of England in
the interval between 1640 and 1660 is examined, it will be found to
consist in the main of a huge mass of controversial prose, by far the
greater proportion of which, though effective at the time, is little
better now than antiquarian rubbish, astonishing from its bulk, though
some small percentage including all that came from the terrible pen of
Milton is saved by reason of its strength and grandeur. The intellect of
England was as active and as abundant as ever, but it was all required for
the current service of the time. Perhaps the only exception of any
consequence was in the case of the philosophical and calm-minded Sir
Thomas Browne, author of the _Religio Medici_. While all England was in
throes and confusion Browne was quietly attending his patients, or
pottering along his garden at Norwich, or pursuing his meditations about
sepulchral urns and his inquiries respecting the Quincuncial Lozenge. His
views of things might have been considerably quickened by billeting upon
his household a few of the Ironsides.
Had Cromwell lived longer, or had he established a dynasty capable of
maintaining itself, there can be little doubt that there would have come a
time of leisure during which, even under a Puritan rule, there would have
been a new outburst of English Literature. There were symptoms, towards
the close of the Protectorate that Cromwell, having now "reasonable good
leisure," was willing and even anxious that the nation should resume its
old literary industry and all its innocent liberties and pleasures. He
allowed Cowley, Waller, Denham, Davenant, and other Royalists, to come
over from France, and was glad to see them employed in writing verses.
Waller became one of his courtiers, and composed panegyrics on him. He
released Cleveland from prison in a very handsome manner, considering what
hard things the witty roysterer had written about "O.P." and his "copper
nose." He appears even to have winked at Davenant, when, in violation of
the act against stage-plays, that gentlemanly poet began to give private
theatrical entertainments under the name of operas. Davenant's heretical
friend, Hobbes, too, already obnoxious by his opinions even to his own
political party, availed himself of the liberty of the press to issue some
fresh metaphysical essays, which the Protector may have read. In fact, had
Cromwell survived a few years, there would, in all probability, have
arisen, under his auspices, a new literature, of which his admirer and
secretary, Milton, would have been the laureate. What might have been the
characteristics of this literature of the Commonwealth, had it developed
itself to full form and proportions, we can but guess. That, in some
respects, it would not have been so broad and various as the literature
which took its rise from the Restoration is very likely; for, so long as
the Puritan element remained dominant in English society, it was
impossible that, with any amount of liberty of the press, there should
have been such an outbreak of the merely comic spirit as did occur when
that element succumbed to its antagonist, and genius had official licence
to be as profligate as it chose. But, if less gay and riotous, it might
have been more earnest, powerful, and impressive. For its masterpiece it
would still have had _Paradise Lost_,--a work which, as it is, we must
regard as its peculiar offspring, though posthumously born; nor can we
doubt that, if influenced by the example and the recognised supremacy of
such a laureate as Milton, the younger literary men of the time would have
found themselves capable of other things than epigrams and farces.
It was fated, however, that the national leisure requisite for a new
development of English literary genius should commence only with the
restoration of the Stuarts in 1660; and then it was a leisure secured in
very different circumstances from those which would have attended a
perpetuation of Cromwell's rule. With Charles II. there came back into the
island, after many years of banishment, all the excesses of the cavalier
spirit, more reckless than before, and considerably changed by long
residence in continental cities, and especially in the French capital.
Cavalier noblemen and gentlemen came back, bringing with them French
tastes, French fashions, and foreign ladies of pleasure. As Charles II.
was a different man from his father, so the courtiers that gathered round
him at Whitehall were very different from those who had fought with
Charles I. against the Parliamentarians. Their political principles and
prejudices were nominally the same; but they were for the most part men of
a younger generation, less stiff and English in their demeanour, and more
openly dissolute in their morals. Such was the court the restoration of
which England virtually confessed to be necessary to prevent a new era of
anarchy. It was inaugurated amid the shouts of the multitude; and
Puritanism, already much weakened by defections before the event, hastened
to disappear from the public stage, diffusing itself once more as a mere
element of secret efficacy through the veins of the community, and
purchasing even this favour by the sacrifice of its most notorious
leaders.
* * * * *
Miserable in some respects as was this change for England, it offered, by
reason of the very unanimity with which it was effected, all the
conditions necessary for the forthcoming of a new literature. But where
were the materials for the commencement of this new literature?
First, as regards _persons_ fit to initiate it. There were all those who
had been left over from the Protectorate, together with such wits as the
Restoration itself had brought back, or called into being. There was the
old dramatist, Shirley, now in his sixty-fifth year, very glad, no doubt,
to come back to town, after his hard fare as a country-schoolmaster during
the eclipse of the stage, and to resume his former occupation as a writer
of plays in the style that had been in fashion thirty years before. There
was Hobbes, older still than Shirley, a tough old soul of seventy-three,
but with twenty more years of life in him, and, though not exactly a
literary man, yet sturdy enough to be whatever he liked within certain
limits. There was mild Izaak Walton, of Chancery-lane, only five years
younger than Hobbes, but destined to live as long, and capable of writing
very nicely if he could have been kept from sauntering into the fields to
fish. There was the gentlemanly Waller, now fifty-six years of age, quite
ready to be a poet about the court of Charles, and to write panegyrics on
the new side to atone for that on Cromwell. There was the no less
gentlemanly Davenant, also fifty-six years of age, steady to his royalist
principles, as became a man who had received the honour of knighthood from
the royal martyr, and enjoying a wide reputation, partly from his poetical
talents, and partly from his want of nose. There was Milton, in his
fifty-second year, blind, desolate, and stern, hiding in obscure lodgings
till his defences of regicide should be sufficiently forgotten to save him
from molestation, and building up in imagination the scheme of his
promised epic. There was Butler, four years younger, brimful of hatred to
the Puritans, and already engaged on his poem of _Hudibras_, which was to
lash them so much to the popular taste. There was Denham, known as a
versifier little inferior to Waller, and with such superior claims on the
score of loyalty as to be considered worthy of knighthood and the first
vacant post. There was Cowley, still only in his forty-third year, and
with a ready-made reputation, both as a poet and as a prose-writer, such
as none of his contemporaries possessed, and such indeed as no English
writer had acquired since the days of Ben Jonson and Donne. Younger still,
and with his fame as a satirist not yet made, there was Milton's friend,
honest Andrew Marvell, whom the people of Hull had chosen as their
representative in Parliament. Had the search been extended to theologians,
and such of them selected as were capable of influencing the literature by
the form of their writings, as distinct from their matter, Jeremy Taylor
would have been noted as still alive, though his work was nearly over,
while Richard Baxter, with a longer life before him, was in the prime of
his strength, and there was in Bedford an eccentric Baptist preacher, once
a tinker, who was to be the author, though no one supposed it, of the
greatest prose allegory in the language. Close about the person of the
king, too, there were able men and wits, capable of writing themselves, or
of criticising what was written by others, from the famous Clarendon down
to such younger and lighter men as Dillon, Earl of Roscommon, Sackville,
Earl of Dorset, and Sir Charles Sedley. Lastly, not to extend the list
farther, there was then in London, aged twenty-nine, and going about in a
stout plain dress of grey drugget, a Northamptonshire squire's son, named
John Dryden, who, after having been educated at Cambridge, had come up to
town in the last year of the Protectorate to push his fortune under a
Puritan relative then in office, and who had already once or twice tried
his hand at poetry. Like Waller, he had written and published a series of
panegyrical stanzas on Cromwell after his death; and, like Waller also, he
had attempted to atone for this miscalculation by writing another poem,
called _Astræa Redux_, to celebrate the return of Charles. As a taste of
what this poet, in particular, could do, take the last of his stanzas on
Cromwell:--
"His ashes in a peaceful urn shall rest;
His name a great example stands to show
How strangely high endeavours may be blessed,
Where piety and valour jointly go";
or, in another metre and another strain of politics, the conclusion of the
poem addressed to Charles:--
"The discontented now are only they
Whose crimes before did your just cause betray:
Of those your edicts some reclaim from sin,
But most your life and blest example win.
Oh happy prince! whom Heaven hath taught the way
By paying vows to have more vows to pay!
Oh happy age! Oh times like those alone
By fate reserved for great Augustus' throne,
When the joint growth of arms and arts foreshow
The world a monarch, and that monarch you!"
Such were the _personal elements_, if we may so call them, available at
the beginning of the reign of Charles II. for the commencement of a new
era in English literature. Let us see next what were the more pronounced
_tendencies_ visible amid these personal elements--in other words, what
tone of moral sentiment, and what peculiarities of literary style and
method, were then in the ascendant, and likely to determine the character
of the budding authorship.
It was pre-eminently clear that the forthcoming literature would be
Royalist and anti-Puritan. With the exception of Milton, there was not one
man of known literary power whose heart still beat as it did when Cromwell
sat on the throne, and whose muse magnanimously disdained the change that
had befallen the nation. Puritanism, as a whole, was driven back into the
concealed vitals of the community, to sustain itself meanwhile as a
sectarian theology lurking in chapels and conventicles, and only to
re-appear after a lapse of years as an ingredient in the philosophy of
Locke and his contemporaries. The literary men who stepped forward to lead
the literature of the Restoration were royalists and courtiers: some of
them honest cavaliers, rejoicing at being let loose from the restraints of
the Commonwealth; others timeservers, making up for delay by the fulsome
excess of their zeal for the new state of things. It was part of this
change that there should be an affectation, even where there was not the
reality, of lax morals. According to the sarcasm of the time, it was
necessary now for those who would escape the risk of being thought
Puritans to contract a habit of swearing and pretend to be great rakes.
And this increase, both in the practice and in the profession of
profligacy, at once connected itself with that institution of English
society which, from the very fact that it had been suppressed by the
Puritans, now became doubly attractive and popular. The same revolution
which restored royalty in England re-opened the play-houses; and in them,
as the established organs of popular sentiment, all the anti-Puritanic
tendencies of the time hastened to find vent. The custom of having female
actors on the stage for female parts, instead of boys as heretofore, was
now permanently introduced, and brought many scandals along with it.
Whether, as some surmise, the very suppression of the theatres during the
reign of Puritanism contributed to their unusual corruptness when they
were again allowed by law--by damming up, as it were, a quantity of
pruriency which had afterwards to be let loose in a mass--it is not easy
to say; it is certain, however, that never in this country did impurity
run so openly at riot in literary guise as it did in the Drama of the
Restoration. To use a phrenological figure, it seemed as if the national
cranium of England had suddenly been contracted in every other direction
so as to permit an inordinate increase of that particular region which is
situated above the nape of the neck. This enormous preponderance of the
back of the head in literature was most conspicuously exhibited in Comedy.
Every comedy that was produced represented life as a meagre action of
persons and interests on a slight proscenium of streets and bits of green
field, behind which lay the real business, transacted in stews. To set
against this, it is true, there was a so-called Tragic Drama. The tragedy
that was now in favour, however, was no longer the old English tragedy of
rich and complex materials, but the French tragedy of heroic declamation.
Familiarized by their stay in France with the tragic style of Corneille
and other dramatists of the court of Louis XIV., the Royalists brought
back the taste with them into England; and the poets who catered for them
hastened to abandon the Shakespearian tragedy, with its large range of
time and action and its blank verse, and to put on the stage tragedies of
sustained and decorous declamation in the heroic or rhymed couplet,
conceived, as much as possible, after the model of Corneille. Natural to
the French, this classic or regular style accorded ill with English
faculties and habits; and Corneille himself would have been horrified at
the slovenly and laborious attempts of the English in imitation of his
masterpieces. The effect of French influence at this time, however, on
English literary taste, did not consist merely in the introduction of the
heroic or rhymed drama. The same influence extended, and in some respects
beneficially, to all departments of English literature. It helped, for
example, to correct that peculiar style of so-called "wit" which,
originating with the dregs of the Elizabethan age, had during a whole
generation infected English prose and poetry, but more especially the
latter. The characteristic of the "metaphysical school of poetry," as it
is called, which took its rise in a literary vice perceptible even in the
great works of the Elizabethan age, and of which Donne and Cowley were the
most celebrated representatives, consisted in the identification of mere
intellectual subtlety with poetic genius. To spin out a fantastic conceit,
to pursue a thread of quaint thought as long as it could be held between
the fingers of the metre without snapping, and, in doing so, to wind it
about as many oddities of the real world as possible, and introduce as
many verbal quibbles as possible, was the aim of the "metaphysical poets."
Some of them, like Donne and Cowley, were men of independent merit; but
the style of poetry itself, as all modern readers confess by the alacrity
with which they avoid reprinted specimens of it, was as unprofitable an
investment of human ingenuity as ever was attempted. At the period of the
Restoration, and partly in consequence of French influence, this kind of
wit was falling into disrepute. There were still practitioners of it; but,
on the whole, a more direct, clear, and light manner of writing was coming
into fashion. Discourse became less stiff and pedantic; or, as Dryden
himself has expressed it, "the fire of English wit, which was before
stifled under a constrained melancholy way of breeding, began to display
its force by mixing the solidity of our nation with the air and gaiety of
our neighbours." And the change in discourse passed without difficulty
into literature, calling into being a nimbler style of wit, a more direct,
rapid, and decisive manner of thought and expression, than had beseemed
authorship before. In particular, and apart from the tendency to greater
directness and concision of thought, there was an increased attention to
correctness of expression. The younger literary men began to object to
what they called the involved and incorrect syntax of the writers of the
previous age, and to pretend to greater neatness and accuracy in the
construction of their sentences. It was at this time, for example, that
the rule of not ending a sentence with a preposition or other little word
began to be attended to. Whether the notion of correctness, implied in
this, and other such rules, was a true notion, and whether the writers of
the Restoration excelled their Elizabethan predecessors in this quality of
correctness, admits of being doubted. Certain it is, however, that a
change in the mechanism of writing--this change being on the whole towards
increased neatness--did become apparent about this time. The change was
visible in prose, but far more in verse. For, to conclude this enumeration
of the literary signs or tendencies of the age of the Restoration, it was
a firm belief of the writers of the period that then for the first time
was the art of correct English versification exemplified and appreciated.
It was, we say, a firm belief of the time, and indeed it has been a
common-place of criticism ever since, that Edmund Waller was the first
poet who wrote smooth and accurate verse, that in this he was followed by
Sir John Denham, and that these two men were reformers of English metre.
"Well-placing of words, for the sweetness of pronunciation, was not known
till Mr. Waller introduced it," is a deliberate statement of Dryden
himself, meant to apply especially to verse. Here, again, we have to
separate a matter of fact from a matter of doctrine. To aver, with such
specimens of older English verse before us as the works of Chaucer and
Spenser, and the minor poems of Milton, that it was Waller or any other
petty writer of the Restoration that first taught us sweetness, or
smoothness, or even correctness of verse, is so ridiculous that the
currency of such a notion can only be accounted for by the servility with
which small critics go on repeating whatever any one big critic has said.
That Waller and Denham, however, did set the example of something new in
the manner of English versification,--which "something" Dryden, Pope, and
other poets who afterwards adopted it, regarded as an improvement,--needs
not be doubted. For us it is sufficient in the meantime to recognise the
change as an attempt after greater neatness of mechanical structure,
leaving open the question whether it was a change for the better.
It was natural that the tendencies of English literature thus enumerated
should be represented in the poet-laureate for the time being. Who was the
fit man to be appointed laureate at the Restoration? Milton was out of the
question, having none of the requisites. Butler, the man of greatest
natural power of a different order, and possessing certainly as much of
the anti-Puritan sentiment as Charles and his courtiers could have desired
in their laureate, was not yet sufficiently known, and was, besides,
neither a dramatist nor a fine gentleman. Cowley, whom public opinion
would have pointed out as best entitled to the honour, was somehow not in
much favour at court, and was spending the remainder of his days on a
little property near Chertsey. Waller and Denham were wealthy men, with
whom literature was but an amusement. On the whole, Sir William Davenant
was felt to be the proper man for the office. He was an approved royalist;
he had, in fact, been laureate to Charles I. after Ben Jonson's death in
1637; and he had suffered much in the cause of the king. He was, moreover,
a literary man by profession. He had been an actor and a theatre-manager
before the Commonwealth; he had been the first to start a theatre after
the relaxed rule of Cromwell made it possible; and he was one of the first
to attempt heroic or rhymed tragedies after the French model. He was also,
far more than Cowley, a wit of the new school; and, as a versifier, he
practised, with no small reputation, the neat, lucid style introduced by
Denham and Waller. He was the author of an epic called _Gondibert_,
written in rhymed stanzas of four lines each, which Hobbes praised as
showing "more shape of art, health of morality, and vigour and beauty of
expression," than any poem he had ever read. We defy anyone to read the
poem now; but there have been worse things written; and it has the merit
of being a careful and rather serious composition by a man who had
industry, education, and taste, without genius. There was but one
awkwardness in having such a man for laureate: he had no nose. This
awkwardness, however, had existed at the time of his first appointment in
the preceding reign. At least, Suckling adverts to it in the _Session of
the Poets_, where he makes the wits of that time contend for the bays--
"Will Davenant, ashamed of a foolish mischance,
That he had got lately, travelling in France,
Modestly hoped the handsomeness of 's muse
Might any deformity about him excuse.
"And surely the company would have been content,
If they could have found any precedent;
But in all their records, either in verse or prose,
There was not one laureate without a nose."
If the more decorous court of Charles I., however, overlooked this
deficiency, it was not for that of Charles II. to take objection to it.
After all, Davenant, notwithstanding his misfortune, seems to have been
not the worst gentleman about Charles's court, either in morals or
manners. Milton is said to have known and liked him.
Davenant's laureateship extended over the first eight years of the
Restoration, or from 1660 to 1668. Much was done in those eight years both
by himself and others. Heroic plays and comedies were produced in
sufficient abundance to supply the two chief theatres then open in
London--one of them that of the Duke's company, under Davenant's
management; the other, that of the King's company, under the management
of an actor named Killigrew. The number of writers for the stage was very
great, including not only those whose names have been mentioned, but
others new to fame. The literature of the stage formed by far the largest
proportion of what was written, or even of what was published. Literary
efforts of other kinds, however, were not wanting. Of satires, and small
poems in the witty or amatory style, there was no end. The publication by
Butler of the first part of his _Hudibras_ in 1663, and of the second in
1664, drew public attention, for the first time, to a man, already past
his fiftieth year, who had more true wit in him than all the aristocratic
poets put together. The poem was received by the king and the courtiers
with shouts of laughter; quotations from it were in everybody's mouth;
but, notwithstanding large promises, nothing substantial was done for the
author. Meanwhile Milton, blind and gouty, and living in his house near
Bunhill Fields, where his visitors were hardly of the kind that admired
Butler's poem, was calmly proceeding with his _Paradise Lost_. The poem
was finished and published in 1667, leaving Milton free for other work.
Cowley, who would have welcomed such a poem, and whose praise Milton would
have valued more than that of any other contemporary, died in the year of
its publication. Davenant may have read it before his death in the
following year; but perhaps the only poet of the time who hailed its
appearance with enthusiasm adequate to the occasion was Milton's personal
friend Marvell. Gradually, however, copies of the poem found their way
about town, and drew public attention once more to Cromwell's old
secretary.
The laureateship remained vacant two years after Davenant's death; and
then it was conferred--on whom? There can be little doubt that, of those
eligible to it, Butler had, in some respects, the best title. The author
of _Hudibras_, however, seems to have been one of those ill-conditioned
men whom patronage never comes near, and who are left, by a kind of
necessity, to the bitter enjoyment of their own humours. There does not
seem to have been even a question of appointing him; and the office, the
income of which would have been a competence to him, was conferred on a
man twenty years his junior, and whose circumstances required it
less--John Dryden. The appointment, which was made in August, 1670,
conferred on Dryden not only the laureateship, but also the office of
"historiographer royal," which chanced to be vacant at the same time. The
income accruing from the two offices thus conjoined was 200_l._ a-year,
which was about as valuable then as 600_l._ a-year would be now; and it
was expressly stated in the deed of appointment that these emoluments were
conferred on Dryden "in consideration of his many acceptable services done
to his majesty, and from an observation of his learning and eminent
abilities, and his great skill and elegant style both in verse and prose."
At the time of the Restoration, or even for a year or two after it, such
language could, by no stretch of courtesy, have been applied to Dryden. At
that time, as we have seen, though already past his thirtieth year, he was
certainly about the least distinguished person in the little band of wits
that were looking forward to the good time coming. He was a stout,
fresh-complexioned man, in grey drugget, who had written some robust
stanzas on Cromwell's death, and a short poem, also robust, but rather
wooden, on Charles's return. That was about all that was then known about
him. What had he done, in the interval, to raise him so high, and to make
it natural for the Court to prefer him to what was in fact the titular
supremacy of English literature, over the heads of others who might be
supposed to have claims, and especially over poor battered old Butler? A
glance at Dryden's life during Davenant's laureateship, or between 1660
and 1670, will answer this question.
Dryden's connexion with the politics of the Protectorate had not been such
as to make his immediate and cordial attachment to the cause of restored
Royalty either very strange or very unhandsome. Not committed either by
strong personal convictions, or by acts, to the Puritan side, he hastened
to show that, whatever the older Northamptonshire Drydens and their
relatives might think of the matter, he, for one, was willing to be a
loyal subject of Charles, both in church and in state. This main point
being settled, he had only farther to consider into what particular walk
of industry, now that official employment under government was cut off, he
should carry his loyalty and his powers. The choice was not difficult.
There was but one career open for him, or suitable to his tastes and
qualifications--that of general authorship. We say "general authorship;"
for it is important to remark that Dryden was by no means nice in his
choice of work. He was ready for anything of a literary kind to which he
was, or could make himself, competent. He had probably a preference for
verse; but he had no disinclination to prose, if that article was in
demand in the market. He had a store of acquirements, academic and other,
that fitted him for an intelligent apprehension of whatever was going on
in any of the London circles of that day--the circle of the scholars, that
of the amateurs of natural science, or that of the mere wits and men of
letters. He was, in fact, a man of general intellectual strength, which he
was willing to let out in any kind of tolerably honest intellectual
service that might be in fashion. This being the case, he set the right
way to work to make himself known in quarters where such service was
going on. He had about 40_l._ a-year of inherited fortune; which means
something more than 120_l._ a-year with us. With this income to supply his
immediate wants, he went to live with Herringman, a bookseller and
publisher in the New Exchange. What was the precise nature of his
agreement with Herringman cannot be ascertained. His literary enemies used
afterwards to say that he was Herringman's hack and wrote prefaces for
him. However this may be, there were higher conveniences in being
connected with Herringman. He was one of the best known of the London
publishers of the day, was a personal friend of Davenant, and had almost
all the wits of the day as his customers and occasional visitors. Through
him, in all probability, Dryden first became acquainted with some of these
men, including Davenant himself, Cowley, and a third person of
considerable note at that time as an aristocratic dabbler in
literature--Sir Robert Howard, son of the Earl of Berkshire. That the
impression he made on these men, and on others in or out of the Herringman
circle, was no mean one, is proved by the fact that in 1663 we find him a
member of the Royal Society, the foundation of which by royal charter had
taken place in the previous year. The number of members was then one
hundred and fifteen, including such scientific celebrities of the time as
Boyle, Wallis, Wilkins, Christopher Wren, Dr. Isaac Barrow, Evelyn, and
Hooke, besides such titled amateurs of experimental science as the Duke of
Buckingham, the Marquis of Dorchester, the Earls of Devonshire, Crawford,
and Northampton, and Lords Brouncker, Cavendish, and Berkeley. Among the
more purely literary members were Waller, Denham, Cowley, and Sprat,
afterwards Bishop of Rochester. The admission of Dryden into such company
is a proof that already he was socially a man of mark. As we have Dryden's
own confession that he was somewhat dull and sluggish in conversation, and
the testimony of others that he was the very reverse of a bustling or
pushing man, and rather avoided society than sought it, we must suppose
that he had been found out in spite of himself. We can fancy him at
Herringman's, or elsewhere, sitting as one of a group with Davenant,
Howard, and others, taking snuff and listening, rather than speaking, and
yet, when he did speak, doing so with such judgment as to make his chair
one of the most important in the room, and impress all with the conviction
that he was a solid fellow. He seems also to have taken an interest in the
scientific gossip of the day about magnetism, the circulation of the
blood, and the prospects of the Baconian system of philosophy; and this
may have helped to bring him into contact with men like Boyle, Wren, and
Wallis. At all events, if the Society elected him on trust, he soon
justified their choice by taking his place among the best known members
of what was then the most important class of literary men--the writers for
the stage. His first drama, a lumbering prose-comedy entitled _The Wild
Gallant_, was produced at Killigrew's Theatre in February, 1662-3; and,
though its success was very indifferent, he was not discouraged from a
second venture in a tragi-comedy, entitled _The Rival Ladies_, written
partly in blank verse, partly in heroic rhyme, and produced at the same
theatre. This attempt was more successful; and in 1664 there was produced,
as the joint composition of Dryden and Sir Robert Howard, an attempt in
the style of the regular heroic or rhymed tragedy, called _The Indian
Queen_. The date of this effort of literary co-partnership between Dryden
and his aristocratic friend coincides with the formation of a more
intimate connexion between them, by Dryden's marriage with Sir Robert's
sister, Lady Elizabeth Howard. The marriage (the result, it would seem, of
a visit of the poet, in the company of Sir Robert, to the Earl of
Berkshire's seat in Wilts) took place in November, 1663; so that, when
_The Indian Queen_ was written, the two authors were already
brothers-in-law. The marriage of a man in the poet's circumstances with an
earl's daughter was neither altogether strange nor altogether such as to
preclude remark. The earl was poor, and able to afford his daughter but a
small settlement; and Dryden was a man of sufficiently good family, his
grandfather having been a baronet, and some of his living relations having
landed property in Northamptonshire. The property remaining for the
support of Dryden's brothers and sisters, however, after the subduction of
his own share, had been too scanty to keep them all in their original
station; and some of them had fallen a little lower in the world. One
sister, in particular, had married a tobacconist in London--a connexion
not likely to be agreeable to the Earl of Berkshire and his sons, if they
took the trouble to become cognisant of it. Dryden himself probably moved
conveniently enough between the one relationship and the other. If his
aristocratic brother-in-law, Sir Robert, could write plays with him, his
other brother-in-law, the tobacconist of Newgate-street, may have
administered to his comfort in other ways. It is known that the poet, in
his later life at least, was peculiarly fastidious in the article of
snuff, abhorring all ordinary snuffs, and satisfied only with a mixture
which he prepared himself; and it is not unlikely that the foundation of
this fastidiousness may have been laid in the facilities afforded him
originally in his brother-in-law's shop. The tobacconist's wife, of
course, would be pleased now and then to have a visit from her brother
John; but whether Lady Elizabeth ever went to see her is rather doubtful.
According to all accounts, Dryden's experience of this lady was not such
as to improve his ideas of the matrimonial state, or to give encouragement
to future poets to marry earls' daughters.
In consequence of the ravages of the Great Plague in 1665 and the
subsequent disaster of the Great Fire in 1666 there was for some time a
total cessation in London of theatrical performances and all other
amusements. Dryden, like most other persons who were not tied to town by
business, spent the greater part of this gloomy period in the country. He
availed himself of the interruption thus given to his dramatic labours to
produce his first writings of any moment out of that field, his _Annus
Mirabilis_ and his _Essay on Dramatic Poesy_. The first, an attempt to
invest with heroic interest, and celebrate in sonorous stanzas, the events
of the famous years 1665-6, including not only the Great Fire, but also
the incidents of a naval war then going on against the Dutch, must have
done more to bring Dryden into the favourable notice of the King, the Duke
of York, and other high personages eulogized in it, than anything he had
yet written. It was, in fact, a kind of short epic on the topics of the
year, such as Dryden might have been expected to write if he had been
already doing laureate's duty; and, unless Sir William Davenant was of
very easy temper, he must have been rather annoyed at so obvious an
invasion of his province, notwithstanding the compliment the poet had
paid him by adopting the stanza of his _Gondibert_, and imitating his
manner. Scarcely less effective in another way must have been the prose
_Essay on Dramatic Poesy_--a vigorous treatise on various matters of
poetry and criticism then much discussed. It contained, among other
things, a defence of the Heroic or Rhymed Tragedy against those who
preferred the older Elizabethan Tragedy of blank verse; and so powerful a
contribution was it to this great controversy of the day that it produced
an immediate sensation in all literary circles. Sir Robert Howard, who now
ranked himself among the partisans of blank verse, took occasion to
express his dissent from some of the opinions expounded in it; and, as
Dryden replied rather tartly, a temporary quarrel ensued between the two
brothers-in-law.
On the re-opening of the theatres in 1667 Dryden, his reputation increased
by the two performances just mentioned, stepped forward again as a
dramatist. A heroic tragedy called _The Indian Emperor_, which he had
prepared before the recess, and which, indeed, had then been acted, was
reproduced with great success, and established Dryden's position as a
practitioner of heroic and rhymed tragedy. This was followed by a comedy,
in mixed blank verse and prose, called _The Maiden Queen_; this by a
prose-comedy called _Sir Martin Mar-all_; and this again, by an
adaptation, in conjunction with Sir William Davenant, of Shakespeare's
_Tempest_. The two last were produced at Davenant's theatre, whereas all
Dryden's former pieces had been written for Killigrew's, or the King's
company. About this time, however, an arrangement was made which secured
Dryden's services exclusively for Killigrew's house. By the terms of the
agreement, Dryden engaged to supply the house with three plays every year,
in return for which, he was admitted a shareholder in the profits of the
theatre to the extent of one share and a-half. The first fruits of the
bargain were a prose-comedy called _The Mock Astrologer_ and two heroic
tragedies entitled _Tyrannic Love_ and _The Conquest of Granada_, the
latter being in two parts. These were all produced between 1668 and 1670,
and the tragedies, in particular, seem to have taken the town by storm,
and placed Dryden, beyond dispute, at the head of all the heroic
playwrights of the day.
The extent and nature of Dryden's popularity as a dramatist about this
time may be judged by the following extract from the diary of the
omnipresent Pepys, referring to the first performance of the _Maiden
Queen_:--"After dinner, with my wife to see the _Maiden Queene_, a new
play by Dryden, mightily commended for the regularity of it, and the
strain and wit; and the truth is, the comical part done by Nell [Nell
Gwynn], which is Florimell, that I never can hope to see the like done
again by man or woman. The King and Duke of York were at the play. But so
great a performance of a comical part was never, I believe, in the world
before as Nell do this, both as a mad girle, then most and best of all
when she comes in like a young gallant and hath the motions and carriage
of a spark the most that ever I saw any man have. It makes me, I confess,
admire her." But even Nell's performance in this comedy was nothing
compared to one part of her performance afterwards in the tragedy of
_Tyrannic Love_. Probably there was never such a scene of ecstasy in a
theatre as when Nell, after acting the character of a tragic princess in
this play, and killing herself at the close in a grand passage of heroism
and supernatural virtue, had to start up as she was being borne off the
stage dead, and resume her natural character, first addressing her bearer
in these words:--
"Hold! are you mad? you d----d confounded dog:
I am to rise and speak the epilogue.",
and then running to the footlights and beginning her speech to the
audience:--
"I come, kind gentlemen, strange news to tell ye:
I am the ghost of poor departed Nelly.
Sweet ladies, be not frighted; I'll be civil:
I'm what I was, a little harmless devil." &c. &c.
It is a tradition that it was this epilogue that effected Nell's conquest
of the king, and that he was so fascinated with her manner of delivering
it, that he went behind the scenes after the play was over and carried her
off. Ah! and it is two hundred years since that fascinating run to the
footlights took place, and the swarthy face of the monarch was seen
laughing, and the audience shrieked and clapped with delight, and Pepys
bustled about the boxes, and Dryden sat looking placidly on, contented
with his success, and wondering how much of it was owing to Nelly!
One can see how, even if the choice had been made strictly with a
reference to the claims of the candidates, it would have been felt that
Dryden, and not Butler, was the proper man to succeed Davenant in the
laureateship. If Butler had shewn the more original vein of talent in one
peculiar walk, Dryden had proved himself the man of greatest general
strength, in whom were more broadly represented the various literary
tendencies of his time. The author of ten plays, four of which were
stately rhymed tragedies, and the rest comedies in prose and blank verse;
the author, also, of various occasional poems, one of which, the _Annus
Mirabilis_, was noticeable on its own account as the best poem of current
history; the author, moreover, of one express prose-treatise, and of
various shorter prose dissertations in the shape of prefaces and the like
prefixed to his separate plays and poems, in which the principles of
literature were discussed in a manner at once masterly and adapted to the
prevailing taste: Dryden was, on the whole, far more likely to perform
well that part of a laureate's duties which consisted in supervising and
leading the general literature of his age than a man whose reputation,
though justly great, had been acquired by one continuous effort in the
single department of burlesque. Accordingly, Dryden was promoted to the
post, and Butler was left to finish, on his own scanty resources, the
remaining portion of his _Hudibras_, varying the occupation by jotting
down those scraps of cynical thought which were found among his posthumous
papers, and which show that towards the end of his days there were other
things that he hated and would have lashed besides Puritanism. Thus:--
"'Tis a strange age we've lived in and a lewd
As e'er the sun in all his travels viewed."
Again:
"The greatest saints and sinners have been made
Of proselytes of one another's trade."
Again:
"Authority is a disease and cure
Which men can neither want nor well endure."
And again, with an obvious reference to his own case:--
"Dame Fortune, some men's titular,
Takes charge of them without their care,
Does all their drudgery and work,
Like fairies, for them in the dark;
Conducts them blindfold, and advances
The naturals by blinder chances;
While others by desert and wit
Could never make the matter hit,
But still, the better they deserve,
Are but the abler thought to starve."
Dryden, at the time of his appointment to the laureateship, was in his
fortieth year. This is worth noting, if we would realize his position
among his literary contemporaries. Of those contemporaries there were some
who, as being his seniors, would feel themselves free from all obligations
to pay him respect. To octogenarians like Hobbes and Izaak Walton he was
but a boy; and even from Waller, Milton, Butler, and Marvel, all of whom
lived to see him in the laureate's chair, he could only look for that
approving recognition, totally distinct from reverence, which men of
sixty-five, sixty, and fifty-five, bestow on their full-grown juniors.
Such an amount of recognition he seems to have received from all of them.
Butler, indeed, does not seem to have taken very kindly to him; and it
stands on record, as Milton's opinion of Dryden's powers about this
period, that he thought him "a rhymer but no poet." But Butler, who went
about snarling at most things, and was irreverent enough to think the
Royal Society itself little better than a humbug, was not the man from
whom a laudatory estimate of anybody was to be expected; and, though
Milton's criticism is too precious to be thrown away, and will even be
found on investigation to be not so far amiss, if the moment at which it
was given is duly borne in mind, yet it is, after all, not Milton's
opinion of Dryden's general literary capacity, but only his opinion of
Dryden's claims to be called a poet. Dryden, on his part, to whose charge
any want of veneration for his great literary predecessors cannot be
imputed, and whose faculty of appreciating the most various kinds of
excellence was conspicuously large, would probably have been more grieved
than indignant at this indifference of men like Butler and Milton to his
rising fame. He had an unfeigned admiration for the author of _Hudibras_;
and there was not a man in England who more profoundly revered the poet of
_Paradise Lost_, or more dutifully testified this reverence both by acts
of personal attention and by written expressions of allegiance to him
while he was yet alive. It would have pained Dryden much, we believe, to
know that the great Puritan poet, whom he made it a point of duty to go
and see now and then in his solitude, and of whom he is reported to have
said, on reading the _Paradise Lost_, "This man cuts us all out, and the
ancients too," thought no better of him than that he was a rhymer. But,
however he may have felt himself related to those seniors who were
vanishing from the stage, or whose literary era was in the past, it was in
a conscious spirit of superiority that he confronted the generation of his
coevals and juniors, the natural subjects of his laureateship. If we set
aside such men as Locke and Barrow, belonging more to other departments
than to that of literature proper, there were none of these coevals or
juniors who were entitled to dispute his authority. There was the Duke of
Buckingham, a year or two older than Dryden, at once the greatest wit and
the greatest profligate about Charles's court, but whose attempts in the
comic drama were little more than occasional eccentricities. There were
the Earls of Dorset and Roscommon, both about Dryden's age, and both
cultivated men and respectable versifiers. There was Thomas Sprat,
afterwards Bishop of Rochester, and now chaplain to his grace of
Buckingham, five years younger than Dryden, his fellow-member in the Royal
Society, and with considerable pretensions to literary excellence. There
was the witty rake, Sir Charles Sedley, a man of frolic, like Buckingham,
some seven years Dryden's junior, and the author of at least three
comedies and three tragedies. There was the still more witty rake, Sir
George Etherege, of about the same age, the author of two comedies,
produced between 1660 and 1670, which, for ease and sprightly fluency,
surpassed anything that Dryden had done in the comic style. But "gentle
George," as he was called, was incorrigibly lazy; and it did not seem as
if the public would get anything more from him. In his place had come
another gentleman-writer, young William Wycherley, whose first comedy had
been written before Dryden's laureateship, though it was not acted till
1672, and who was already famous as a wit. Of precisely the same age as
Wycherley, and with a far greater _quantity_ of comic writing in him,
whatever might be thought of the quality, was Thomas Shadwell, whose bulky
body was a perpetual source of jest against him, though he himself vaunted
it as one of his many resemblances to Ben Jonson. The contemporary opinion
of these two last-named comic poets, Wycherley and Shadwell, after they
came to be better known, is expressed in these lines from a poem of
Rochester's:--
"Of all our modern wits none seem to me
Once to have touched upon true comedy
But hasty Shadwell and slow Wycherley.
Shadwell's unfinished works do yet impart
Great proofs of force of Nature, none of Art.
With just bold strokes he dashes here and there,
Showing great mastery with little care;
Scorning to varnish his good touches o'er,
To make the fools and women praise the more.
But 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."
The author of these lines, the notorious Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, was
also one of Dryden's literary subjects. He was but twenty-two years of age
when Dryden became laureate; but before ten years of that laureateship
were over he had blazed out, in rapid debauchery, his wretchedly-spent
life. Younger by three years than Rochester, and also destined to a short
life, though more of misery than of crime, was Thomas Otway, of whose six
tragedies and four comedies, all produced during the laureateship of
Dryden, one at least has taken a place in our dramatic literature, and is
read still for its power and pathos. Associated with Otway's name is that
of Nat. Lee, more than Otway's match in fury, and who, after a brief
career as a tragic dramatist and drunkard, became an inmate of Bedlam.
Another writer of tragedy, whose career began with Dryden's laureateship,
was John Crowne, "little starched Johnny Crowne," as Rochester calls him,
but whom so good a judge as Charles Lamb has thought worthy of
commemoration as having written some really fine things. Finally, the list
includes a few Nahum Tates, Elkanah Settles, Tom D'Urfeys, and other small
celebrities, in whose company we may place Aphra Behn, the poetess.
Doing our best to fancy this cluster of wits and play-writers, in the
midst of which, from his appointment to the laureateship in 1670, at the
age of thirty-nine, to his deposition from that office in 1688, at the age
of fifty-eight, Dryden is historically the principal figure, we can very
well see that not one of them all could wrest the dictatorship from him.
With an income from various sources, including his salary as laureate and
historiographer and his receipts from his engagement with Killigrew's
company, amounting in all to about 600_l._ a-year--which, according to Sir
Walter Scott's computation, means about 1,800_l._ in our value--he had,
during a portion of this time at least, all the means of external
respectability in sufficient abundance. His reputation as the first
dramatic author of the day was already made; and if, as yet, there were
others who had done as well or better as poets out of the dramatic walk,
he more than made up for this by the excellence of his prologues and
epilogues, and by his readiness and power as a prose-critic of general
literature. No one could deny that, though a rather heavy man in private
society, and so slow and silent among the wits of the coffee-house that,
but for the pleasure of seeing his placid face, the deeply indented
leather chair on which he sat would have done as well to represent
literature there as his own presence in it, John Dryden was, all in all,
the first wit of the age. There was not a Buckingham, nor an Etherege,
nor a Shadwell, nor a starched Johnny Crowne, of them all, that singly
would have dared to dispute his supremacy. And yet, as will happen, what
his subjects could not dare to do singly, or ostensibly, some of them
tried to compass by cabal and systematic depreciation on particular
points. In fact, Dryden had to fight pretty hard to maintain his place,
and had to make an example or two of a rebel subject before the rest were
terrified into submission.
He was first attacked in the very field of his greatest triumphs, the
drama. The attack was partly directed against himself personally, partly
against that style of heroic or rhymed tragedy of which he was the
advocate and representative. There had always been dissenters from this
new fashion; and among these was the Duke of Buckingham, who had a natural
genius for making fun of anything. Assisted, it is said, by his chaplain
Sprat, and by Butler, who had already satirized this style of tragedy by
writing a dialogue in which two cats are made to caterwaul to each other
in heroics, the duke had amused his leisure by preparing a farce in which
heroic plays were held up to ridicule. In the original draft of the farce
Davenant was made the butt under the name of Bilboa; but, after Davenant's
death, the farce was recast, and Dryden substituted under the name of
Bayes. The plot of this famous farce, _The Rehearsal_, is much the same as
that of Sheridan's _Critic_. The poet Bayes invites two friends, Smith
and Johnson, to be present at the rehearsal of a heroic play which he is
on the point of bringing out, and the humour consists in the supposed
representation of this heroic play, while Bayes alternately directs the
actors, and expounds the drift of the play and its beauties to Smith and
Johnson, who all the while are laughing at him, and thinking it monstrous
rubbish. Conceive a farce like this, written with amazing cleverness, and
full of absurdities, produced in the very theatre where the echoes of
Dryden's last sonorous heroics were still lingering, and acted by the same
actors; conceive it interspersed with parodies of well-known passages from
Dryden's plays, and with allusions to characters in those plays; conceive
the actor who played the part of Bayes dressed to look as like Dryden as
possible, instructed by the duke to mimic Dryden's voice, and using
phrases like "i'gad" and "i'fackins," which Dryden was in the habit of
using in familiar conversation; and an idea may be formed of the sensation
made by _The Rehearsal_ in all theatrical circles on its first performance
in the winter of 1671. Its effect, though not immediate, was decisive.
From that time the heroic or rhymed tragedy was felt to be doomed. Dryden,
indeed, did not at once recant his opinion in favour of rhymed tragedies;
but he yielded so far to the sentence pronounced against them as to write
only one more of the kind.
Though thus driven out of his favourite style of the rhymed tragedy, he
was not driven from the stage. Bound by his agreement with the King's
Company to furnish three plays a-year, he continued to make dramatic
writing his chief occupation; and almost his sole productions during the
first ten years of his laureateship were ten plays. Three of these were
prose-comedies; one, a tragi-comedy, in blank verse and prose; one, an
opera in rhyme; five, tragedies in blank verse; and one, the rhymed
tragedy above referred to. It will be observed that this was at the rate
of only one play a-year, whereas, by his engagement, he was to furnish
three. The fact was that the company were very indulgent to him, and let
him have his full share of the receipts, averaging 300_l._ a-year, in
return for but a third of the stipulated work. Notwithstanding this, we
find them complaining, in 1679, that Dryden had behaved unhandsomely to
them in carrying one of his plays to the other theatre, and so injuring
their interests. As, from that year, none of Dryden's plays were produced
at the King's Theatre, but all at the Duke's, till 1682, when the two
companies were united, it is probable that in that year the bargain made
with Killigrew terminated. It deserves notice, by the way, that the
so-called "opera" was one entitled _The State of Innocence; or, The Fall
of Man_, founded on Milton's _Paradise Lost_, and brought out in 1674-5,
immediately after Milton's death. That this was an equivocal compliment
to Milton's memory Dryden himself lived to acknowledge. He confessed to
Dennis, twenty years afterwards, that at the time when he wrote that opera
"he knew not half the extent of Milton's excellence." A striking proof of
Dryden's veneration for Milton, when we consider how high his admiration
of Milton had been even while Milton was alive!
Of these dramatic productions of Dryden during the first ten years of his
laureateship some were very carefully written. Thus _Marriage à-la-mode_,
performed in 1672, is esteemed one of his best comedies; and of the rhymed
tragedy, _Aurung-Zebe_, performed in 1675, he himself says in the
Prologue--
"What verse can do he has performed in this,
Which he presumes the most correct of his."
The tragedy of _All for Love_, which followed _Aurung-Zebe_, in 1678, and
in which he falls back on blank verse, is pronounced by many critics to be
the very best of all his dramas; and perhaps none of his plays has been
more read than the _Spanish Friar_, written in 1680. Yet it may be doubted
if in any of these plays Dryden achieved a degree of immediate success
equal to that which had attended his _Tyrannic Love_ and his _Conquest of
Granada_, written before his laureateship. This was not owing so much to
the single blow struck at his fame by Buckingham's _Rehearsal_ as to the
growth of that general spirit of criticism and disaffection which pursues
every author after the public have become sufficiently acquainted with his
style to expect the good, and look rather for the bad, in what he writes.
Thus, we find one critic of the day, Martin Clifford, who was a man of
some note, addressing Dryden, a year or two after his laureateship, in
this polite fashion: "You do live in as much ignorance and darkness as you
did in the womb; your writings are like a Jack-of-all-trades' shop; they
have a variety, but nothing of value; and, if thou art not the dullest
plant-animal that ever the earth produced, all that I have conversed with
are strangely mistaken in thee." This onslaught of Mr. Clifford's is
clearly to be regarded as only that gentleman's; but what young Rochester
said and thought about Dryden at this time is more likely to have been
what was said and thought generally by the critical part of the town.
"Well sir, 'tis granted: I said Dryden's rhymes
Were stolen, unequal--nay, dull, many times.
What foolish patron is there found of his
So blindly partial to deny me this?
But that his plays, embroidered up and down
With wit and learning, justly pleased the town,
In the same paper I as freely own.
Yet, having this allowed, the heavy mass
That stuffs up his loose volumes must not pass.
* * * * *
But, to be just, 'twill to his praise be found
His excellencies more than faults abound;
Nor dare I from his sacred temples tear
The laurel which he best deserves to wear.
* * * * *
And may I not have leave impartially
To search and censure Dryden's works, and try
If these gross faults his choice pen doth commit
Proceed from want of judgment or of wit,
Or if his lumpish fancy doth refuse
Spirit and grace to his loose slattern muse?"
We have no doubt the opinion thus expressed by the scapegrace young earl
was very general. Dryden's own prose disquisitions on the principles of
poetry may have helped to diffuse many of those notions of genuine
poetical merit by which he was now tried. But, undoubtedly, what most of
all tended to expose Dryden's reputation to the perils of criticism was
the increasing number of his dramatic competitors and the evident ability
of some of them. True, most of those competitors were Dryden's personal
friends, and some of the younger of them, as Lee, Shadwell, Crowne, and
Tate, were in the habit of coming to him for prologues and epilogues, with
which to increase the attractions of their plays. On more than one
occasion, too, Dryden clubbed with Lee or Shadwell in the composition of a
dramatic piece. But, though thus on a friendly footing with most of his
contemporary dramatists, and almost in a fatherly relation to some of
them, Dryden found his popularity not the less affected by their
competition. In the department of prose comedy, Etherege, whose last and
best comedy, _Sir Fopling Flutter_, was produced in 1676, and Wycherley,
whose four celebrated comedies were all produced between 1672 and 1677,
had introduced a style compared with which Dryden's best comic attempts
were but heavy horse-play. Even the hulking Shadwell, who dashed off his
comedies as fast as he could write, had a vein of coarse natural humour
which Dryden lacked. It was in vain that Dryden tried to keep his
pre-eminence against these rivals by increased strength of language,
increased intricacy of plot, and an increased use of those indecencies
upon which they all relied so much in their efforts to please. One comedy
in which Dryden, trusting too confidently to this last element of success,
pushed grossness to the utmost conceivable limit, was hissed off the
stage. In tragedy, it is true, his position was more firm. But even in
this department some niches were cut in the body of his fame. His friend
Nat. Lee had produced one or two tragedies displaying a tenderness and a
wild force of passion to which Dryden's more masculine genius could not
pretend; Crowne had also done one or two things of a superior character;
and, though it was not till 1682 that Otway produced his _Venice
Preserved_, he had already given evidence of his mastery of dramatic
pathos. All this Dryden might have seen without allowing himself to be
much disturbed, conscious as he must have been that in general strength he
was still superior to all about him, however they might rival him in
particulars. The deliberate resolution, however, of Rochester and some
other aristocratic leaders of the fashion to make good their criticisms on
his writings, by setting up first one and then another of the dramatists
of the day as patterns of a higher style of art than his, provoked him out
of his composure. To show what he could do, if called upon to defend his
rights against pretenders, he made a terrible example of one poor wretch,
who had been puffed for the moment into undue popularity. This unfortunate
was Elkanah Settle, and the occasion of the attack was a heroic tragedy
written by Settle, acted with great success both on the stage and at
Whitehall, and published with illustrative woodcuts. On this performance
Dryden made a most merciless onslaught in a prose-criticism prefixed to
his next published play, tearing Settle's metaphors and grammar to pieces.
Settle replied with some spirit, but little effect, and was, in fact,
"settled" for ever. Rochester next patronized Crowne and Otway for a time,
but soon gave them up, and contented himself with assailing Dryden more
directly in such lampoons as we have quoted. In the year 1679, however,
suspecting Dryden to have had a share in the authorship of a poem, then
circulating in manuscript, in which certain liberties were taken with his
name, he caused him to be way-laid and beaten as he was going home one
evening through Rose-alley to his house in Gerard-street. The poem,
entitled _An Essay on Satire_, is usually printed among Dryden's works;
but it remains uncertain whether Dryden was really the author.
It was fortunate for Dryden and for English literature that, just about
this time, when he was beginning to be regarded as a veteran among the
dramatists, whose farther services in that department the town could
afford to spare, circumstances led him, almost without any wish of his
own, into a new path of literature. He was now arrived at the ripe age of
fifty years, and, if an inventory had been made of his writings, they
would have been found to consist of twenty-one dramas, with a series of
critical prose-essays for the most part bound up with these dramas, but
nothing in the nature of non-dramatic poetry, except a few occasional
pieces, of which the _Annus Mirabilis_ was still the chief. Had a
discerning critic examined those works with a view to discover in what
peculiar vein of verse Dryden, if he abandoned the drama, might still do
justice to his powers, he would certainly have selected the vein of
reflective satire. Of the most nervous and emphatic lines that could have
been quoted from his plays a large proportion would have been found to
consist of what may be called _maxim_ metrically expressed; while in his
dramatic prologues and epilogues, which were always thought among the
happiest efforts of his pen, the excellence would have been found to
consist in very much the same power of direct didactic declamation applied
satirically to the humours, manners, and opinions of the day. Whether any
critic, observing all this, would have been bold enough to advise Dryden
to take the hint, and quit the drama for satirical, controversial, and
didactic poetry, we need not inquire. Circumstances compelled what advice
might have failed to bring about. After some twenty years of political
stagnation, or rather of political confusion, relieved only by the
occasional cabals of leading statesmen, and by rumours of Catholic and
Protestant plots, the old Puritan feeling and the general spirit of civil
liberty which the Restoration had but pent up within the vitals of England
broke forth in a regular and organized form as modern English Whiggism.
The controversy had many ramifications; but its immediate phase at that
moment was an antagonism of two parties on the question of the succession
to the crown after Charles should die--the Tories and Catholics
maintaining the rights of the Duke of York as the legal heir, and the
Whigs and Protestants rallying, for want of a better man, round Charles's
illegitimate son, the handsome and popular Duke of Monmouth, then a puppet
in the hands of Shaftesbury, the recognised leader of the Opposition.
Charles himself was forced by reasons of state to take part with his
brother, and to frown on Monmouth; but this did not prevent the lords and
wits of the time from distributing themselves pretty equally between the
two parties, and fighting out the dispute with all the weapons of intrigue
and ridicule. Shadwell, Settle, and some other minor poets, lent their
pens to the Whigs, and wrote squibs and satires in the Whig service. Lee,
Otway, Tate, and others, worked for the Court party. Dryden, as laureate
and Tory, had but one course to take. He plunged into the controversy with
the whole force of his genius; and in November, 1681, when the nation was
waiting for the trial of Shaftesbury, then a prisoner in the Tower, he
published his satire of _Absalom and Achitophel_, in which, under the thin
veil of a story of Absalom's rebellion against his father David, the
existing political state of England was represented from the Tory point of
view. Among the characters portrayed in it Dryden had the satisfaction of
introducing his old critic, the Duke of Buckingham, upon whom he now took
ample revenge.
The satire of _Absalom and Achitophel_, than which nothing finer of the
kind had ever appeared in England, and which indeed surpassed all that
could have been expected even from Dryden at that time, was the first of a
series of polemical or satirical poems the composition of which occupied
the last eight years of his laureateship. _The Medal, a Satire against
Sedition_, appeared in March, 1682, as the poet's comment on the popular
enthusiasm occasioned by the acquittal of Shaftesbury; _Mac Flecknoe_, in
which Shadwell, as poet-in-chief of the Whigs, received a thrashing all to
himself, was published in October in the same year; and, a month later,
there appeared the so-called _Second Part of Absalom and Achitophel_,
written by Nahum Tate, under Dryden's superintendence, and with
interpolations from Dryden's pen. In the same avowed character, as
literary champion of the government and the party of the Duke of York,
Dryden continued to labour during the remainder of the reign of Charles.
His _Religio Laici_, indeed, produced early in 1683, and forming a
metrical statement of the grounds and extent of his own attachment to the
Church of England, can hardly have been destined for immediate political
service. But the solitary play which he wrote about this period--a tragedy
called _The Duke of Guise_--was certainly intended for political effect,
as was also a translation from the French of a work on the history of
French Calvinism.
How ill-requited Dryden was for these services appears but too clearly
from evidence proving that, at this time, he was in great pecuniary
difficulties. At the time when the king's cast-off mistresses were
receiving pensions of 10,000_l._ a-year, and when 130,000_l._ or more was
squandered every year on secret court-purposes, Dryden's salary as
laureate remained unpaid for four years; and when, in consequence of his
repeated solicitations, an order for part-payment of the arrears was at
last issued in May 1684, it was for the miserable pittance of one
quarter's salary, due at midsummer 1680, leaving fifteen quarters, or
750_l._ still in arrears. It appears, however, from a document published
for the first time by Mr. Bell, that an additional pension of 100_l._
a-year was at this time conferred on Dryden--that pension to date
retrospectively from 1680, and the arrears to be paid, as convenient,
along with the larger arrears of salary. How far Dryden benefited by this
nominal increase of his emoluments from government, or whether any further
portion of the arrears was paid up while Charles continued on the throne,
can hardly be ascertained. Charles died in February, 1684-5, and Dryden,
as in duty bound, wrote his funeral panegyric. In this Pindaric, which is
entitled _Threnodia Augustalis_, the poet seems to hint, as delicately as
the occasion would permit, at the limited extent of his pecuniary
obligations to the deceased monarch.
"As, when the new-born phoenix takes his way
His rich paternal regions to survey,
Of airy choristers a numerous train
Attends his wondrous progress o'er the plain,
So, rising from his father's urn,
So glorious did our Charles return.
The officious muses came along--
A gay harmonious choir, like angels ever young;
The muse that mourns him now his happy triumph sung.
Even they could thrive in his auspicious reign;
And such a plenteous crop they bore
Of purest and well-winnowed grain
As Britain never knew before:
Though little was their hire, and light their gain,
Yet somewhat to their share he threw.
Fed from his hand, they sung and flew,
Like birds of Paradise, that lived on morning dew.
Oh, never let their lays his name forget:
The pension of a prince's praise is great."
If there was any literary man in whose favour James II., on his accession,
might have been expected to relax his parsimonious habits, it was Dryden.
The poet had praised him and made a hero of him for twenty years, and had
during the last four years been working for him incessantly. In
acknowledgment of these services, James could not do otherwise than
continue him in the laureateship; but this was all that he seemed inclined
to do. In the new patent issued for the purpose, not only was there no
renewal of the deceased king's private grant of 100_l._ a-year, but even
the annual butt of sherry, hitherto forming part of the laureate's
allowance, was discontinued, and the salary limited to the precise money
payment of 200_l._ a-year. If, as is probable, the salary was now more
punctually paid than it had been under Charles, the reduction may have
been of less consequence. In March 1685-6, however, James opened his
purse, and, by fresh letters patent, conferred on Dryden a permanent
additional salary of 100_l._ a-year, thus raising the annual income of the
laureateship to 300_l._ The explanation of this unusual piece of
liberality on the part of James has been generally supposed to lie in the
fact that, in the course of the preceding year, Dryden had proved the
thorough and unstinted character of his loyalty by declaring himself a
convert to the king's religion. That Dryden's passing over to the Catholic
church was contemporaneous with the increase of his pension is a fact; but
what may have been the exact relation between the two events is a question
which one ought to be cautious in answering. Lord Macaulay's view of the
case is harsh enough. "Finding," he says, "that, if he continued to call
himself a Protestant, his services would be overlooked, he declared
himself a Papist. The king's parsimony instantly relaxed Dryden was
gratified with a pension of one hundred pounds a-year, and was employed to
defend his new religion both in prose and verse." Sir Walter Scott's view
is more charitable, and, we believe, more just. He regards Dryden's
conversion as having been, in the main, honest to the extent professed by
himself, though his situation and expectations may have co-operated to
effect it. In support of this view Mr. Bell points out the fact that the
pension granted by James was, after all, only a renewal of a pension
granted by Charles, and which, not being secured by letters patent, had
lapsed on that king's decease. Dryden, it is also to be remarked, remained
sufficiently staunch to his new faith during the rest of his life, and
seems even to have felt a kind of comfort in it. Probably, therefore, the
true state of the case is that conformity to the Catholic religion, at the
time when Dryden embraced it, was the least troublesome mode of
systematizing for his own mind a number of diverse speculations, personal
and political, that were then perplexing him, and that, afterwards, in
consequence of the very obloquy which his change of religion drew upon him
from all quarters, he hugged his new creed more closely, so as to coil
round him, for the first time in his life, a few threads of private
theological conviction. This is not very different from the notion
entertained by Sir Walter Scott, who argues that Dryden's conversion was
not, except in outward profession, a change from Protestant to Catholic
belief, but rather, like that of Gibbon, a choice of Catholicism as the
most convenient resting-place for a mind tired of Pyrrhonism, and disposed
to cut short the process of emancipation from it by taking a decisive step
at once.
At all events, Dryden showed sufficient polemical energy in the service of
the religion which he had adopted. He became James's literary factotum,
the defender in prose and in verse of the worst measures of his rule; and
he was ready to do battle with Stillingfleet, Burnet, or anyone else that
dared to use a pen on the other side. As if to make the highest display of
his powers as a versifier at a time when his character as a man was
lowest, he published in 1687 his controversial allegory of _The Hind and
the Panther_, by far the largest and most elaborate of his original poems.
In this poem, in which the various churches and sects of the day figure as
beasts--the Church of Rome as a "milk-white hind," innocent and unchanged;
the Church of England as a "panther," spotted, but still beautiful;
Presbyterianism as a haggard ugly "wolf;" Independency as the "bloody
bear;" the Baptists as the "bristled boar;" the Unitarians as the "false
fox;" the Freethinkers as the "buffoon ape;" and the Quakers as the timid
"hare"--Dryden showed that, whatever his new faith had done for him, it
had not changed his genius for satire. In fact, precisely as during
James's reign Dryden appears personally as a solitary giant, warring on
the wrong side, so this poem remains as the sole literary work of any
excellence in which the wretched spirit of that reign is fully
represented. Dryden himself, as if he had thrown all his force into it,
wrote little else in verse till the year 1688, when, on the occasion of
the birth of James's son, afterwards the Pretender, he made himself the
spokesman of the exulting Catholics, and published his _Britannia
Rediviva_.
"See how the venerable infant lies
In early pomp; how through the mother's eyes
The father's soul, with an undaunted view,
Looks out, and takes our homage as his due.
See on his future subjects how he smiles,
Nor meanly flatters, nor with craft beguiles;
But with an open face, as on his throne,
Assures our birthrights, and secures his own."
Within a few months after these lines were written, the father, the
mother, and the baby, were out of England, Dutch William was king, and the
Whigs had it all to themselves. Dryden, of course, had to give up the
laureateship; and, as William had but a small choice of poets, Shadwell
was put in his place.
The concluding period of Dryden's career, extending from the Revolution to
his death in 1701, exhibits him as a Tory patriarch lingering in the midst
of a Whig generation, and still, despite the change of dynasty, retaining
his literary pre-eminence. For a while, of course, he was under a cloud;
but after it had passed away he was at liberty to make his own terms with
the public. The country could have no literature except what he and such
as he chose to furnish. Locke, Sir William Temple, and others, indeed,
were now in a position to bring forward speculations smothered during the
previous reigns, and to scatter seeds that might spring up in new
literary forms. Burnet, Tillotson, and others might represent Whiggism in
the Church. But all the especially literary men whose services were
available at the beginning of the new reign were men who, whatever might
be their voluntary relations to the new order of things, had been more or
less trained in the school of the Restoration, and accustomed to the
supremacy of Dryden. The Earl of Rochester, the Earl of Roscommon, the
Duke of Buckingham, Etherege, and poor Otway, were dead; but Shadwell,
Settle, Lee, Crowne, Tate, Wycherley, the Earl of Dorset, Tom D'Urfey, and
Sir Charles Sedley, were still alive. Shadwell, coarse and fat as ever,
enjoyed the laureateship till his death in 1692, when Nahum Tate was
appointed to succeed him. Settle had degenerated in the City showman. Lee,
liberated from Bedlam, continued to write tragedies till April 1692, when
he tumbled over a bulk going home drunk at night through Clare Market, and
was killed or stifled among the snow. "Little starched Johnny Crowne" kept
up the respectability of his character. Wycherley lived as a man of
fashion about town, and wrote no more. Sedley and the Earl of Dorset were
also idle; and Tom D'Urfey made small witticisms, and called them "pills
to purge melancholy." Among such men Dryden, so long as he cared to be
seen among them, held necessarily his old place. Nor were there any of
the younger men, as yet known, in whom the critics recognised, or who
recognised in themselves, any title to renounce allegiance to the
ex-laureate. Thomas Southerne had begun his prolific career as a dramatist
in 1682, when Dryden furnished him with a prologue to his first play; but,
though after the Revolution he made more money by his dramas than ever
Dryden had made by his, he was ashamed to admit the fact to Dryden
himself. Matthew Prior, twenty-four years of age at the Revolution, had
made his first literary appearance before it, in no less important a
character than that of one of Dryden's political antagonists; but, though
_The Town and Country Mouse_ had been a decided hit, and Dryden himself
was said to have winced under it, no one pretended that the author was
anything more than a clever young man who had sat in Dryden's company and
turned his opportunities to account. Five years after the Revolution,
Congreve produced his first comedy at the age of twenty-four; but it was
Congreve's greatest boast in after life that that comedy had won him the
warm praises of Dryden, and laid the foundation of the extraordinary
friendship which subsisted between them during Dryden's last years, when
they used to walk together and dine together as father and son. During
these last years Dryden, had he been willing to see merit in any other
comedies than those of his young friend Congreve, might have hailed his
equal in Vanbrugh, and his superior in Farquhar, then beginning to write
for the stage. Among their coevals, destined to some distinction, he might
have marked Colley Cibber, Nicholas Rowe, and John Philips, the pleasing
parodist of Milton. Of the epics of Blackmore he had quite enough, at
least three of those performances having been given to the world before
Dryden died. At the time of Dryden's death his kinsman, Jonathan Swift,
was thirty-three years of age; Richard Steele was thirty; Daniel Defoe was
thirty; Addison was twenty-nine; Shaftesbury, the essayist, was
twenty-nine; Bolingbroke was twenty-two; and Parnell, the poet,
twenty-one. With these men a new literary movement was to take its origin;
but they had hardly yet begun their work; and there was not one of them,
Swift excepted, that would not, in the height of his subsequent fame, have
been proud to acknowledge his obligations to Dryden. Alexander Pope, the
next Englishman that was to take a place in general literature as high as
that occupied by Dryden, had been born only in the year of the Revolution,
and was consequently but a precocious boy of thirteen when Dryden left the
scene. _Virgilium tantum vidit_, as he used himself to say.
Living, a hale patriarch, among these newer men, Dryden partly influenced
them, and was partly influenced by them. On the one hand, it was from his
chair in Will's Coffee-house that those literary decrees were issued
which still ruled the judgment of the town; and for a young author, on
visiting Will's, to receive a pinch from Dryden's snuff-box was equivalent
to his formal admission into that society of wits. On the other hand, the
times were so changed and the men were so changed that Dryden, dictator
though he was, had to yield in some points, and defend himself in others.
His cousin Swift, whom he had offended by an unfavourable judgment given
in private on some of his poems, was the only man who would have made a
general attack upon his literary reputation; but the moral character of
his writings was a subject on which adverse criticism was likely to be
more general. At first, indeed, there was little perceptible improvement
in the moral tone of the literature of the Revolution, as compared with
that of the Restoration--the elder dramatists, such as Shadwell, still
writing in the fashion to which they had been accustomed, and the younger
ones, such as Congreve and Vanbrugh, deeming it a point of honour to be as
immoral as their predecessors. In the course of a few years, however, what
with the influence of a Whig court, what with other causes, a more
delicate taste crept in, and people became ashamed of what their fathers
had delighted in. Dryden lived to see the beginnings of this important
change, and, with many expressions of regret for his own past
delinquencies in this respect, to welcome the appearance of a purer
literature.
Those of Dryden's writings which were produced during the twelve years of
his life subsequent to the Revolution constitute an important part of his
literary remains, not merely in point of bulk, but also in respect of a
certain general peculiarity of their character. They may be described as
for the most part belonging to the department of pure, as distinct from
that of controversial, literature. Dryden did not indeed wholly abandon
satire and controversy after the Revolution; but his aim after that period
seemed rather to be to produce such literature as would at once be
acceptable to the public and earn for himself most money with the least
trouble. Deprived of his laureateship, and so rendered almost entirely
dependent on his pen at a time when age was creeping upon him and the
expenses of his family were greater than ever, he was obliged to make
considerations of economy paramount in his choice of work. As was natural,
he fell back at first on the drama; and his five last plays, two of which
are tragedies, one an opera, and two comedies, were all produced between
1689 and 1694. The profits of these dramas, however, were insufficient;
and he was obliged to eke them out by all those devices of dedication to
private noblemen, execution of literary commissions for elegiac poems, and
the like, which then formed part of the professional author's means of
livelihood. Sums of 50_l._, 100_l._, and even, in one or two cases,
500_l._, were earned by Dryden in this disagreeable way from earls,
squires, and clubs of gentlemen. His poem of _Eleonora_ was a 500_l._
commission, executed for the Earl of Abingdon, who wanted a poem in memory
of his deceased wife, and, without knowing anything of Dryden personally,
applied to him to write it, just as now, in a similar case, a commission
might be given to a popular sculptor for a _post mortem_ statue. In spite
of the utmost allowance for the custom of the time, no one knowing the
circumstances, can read the poem now, without disgust; and it does show a
certain lowness of mind in Dryden to have been able, under any pressure of
necessity, to write for hire such extravagances as that poem contains
respecting a person he had never seen. Far more honourable were Dryden's
earnings by work done for Jacob Tonson, the publisher. His dealings with
Tonson had begun before the Revolution; but after the Revolution Tonson
was his mainstay. First came several volumes of miscellanies, consisting
of select poems, published and unpublished, with scraps of prose and
translation. Then, catching at the hint furnished by the success of some
of the scraps of translation from the Latin and Greek poets, Dryden and
Tonson found it mutually advantageous to prosecute that vein. Juvenal and
Persius were translated under Dryden's care; and in 1697, after three
years of labour, he gave to the world his completed translation of
_Virgil_. Looking about for a task to succeed this, he undertook to
furnish Tonson with so many thousands of lines of narrative verse, to be
published under the title of _Fables_. Where the fables came from Tonson
did not care, provided they would sell; and Dryden, with his rapid powers
of versification, soon produced versions of some tales of Chaucer and
Boccaccio which answered the purpose exceedingly well. They were printed
in 1699. Of the other poems written by Dryden in his last years his
_Alexander's Feast_ is the most celebrated. He continued his literary
labours till within a few days of his death, which happened on the 1st of
May, 1701.
When we inquire what it is that makes Dryden's name so important as to
entitle it to rank, as it seems to do, the fifth in the series of great
English poets after Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, and Milton, we find
that it is nothing else than the fact, brought out in the preceding
sketch, that, steadily and industriously, for a period of forty-two years,
he kept in the front of the national literature, such as it then was. It
is because he represents the entire literary development of the
Restoration--it is because he fills up the whole interval between 1658 and
1701, thus connecting the age of Puritanism and Milton with the age of the
Queen Anne wits--that we give him such a place in such a list. The reason
is a chronological one, rather than one of strict comparison of personal
merits. Though we place Dryden fifth in the list, after Chaucer, Spenser,
Shakespeare, and Milton, it is not necessarily because we regard him as
the co-equal of those men in genius; it is only because, passing onward in
time, we find his the next name of very distinguished magnitude after
theirs. Personally there is no one that would compare Dryden with
Shakespeare or Milton; and there are not many now that would compare him
with Chaucer or Spenser. On the whole, if the estimate is one of general
intellectual strength, he takes rank only with the first of the second
class, as with the Jonsons, the Fletchers, and others of the Elizabethan
age; while, if the estimate have regard to genuine poetic or imaginative
power, he sinks below even these. Yet, if historical reasons only are
regarded, Dryden has perhaps a better right to his place in the list than
any of the others. At least as strictly as Chaucer is the representative
of the English literature of the latter half of the fourteenth century,
far more strictly than Spenser and Shakespeare are the representatives of
the literature of their times, and in a more broad and obvious manner than
Milton is the literary representative of the Commonwealth, Dryden
represents the literary activity of the reigns of Charles II. and James
II., and of the greater part of that of William III. Davenant, Butler,
Waller, Etherege, Otway, Wycherley, Southerne, Prior, and Congreve, are
names leading us over the same period, and illustrating perhaps more
exquisitely than Dryden some of its individual characteristics; but for a
solid representative of the period as a whole, resuming in himself all
its more prominent characteristics in one substantial aggregate, we are
obliged to take Dryden. Twelve years of his literary life he laboured as a
strong junior among the Davenants, the Butlers, and the Wallers,
qualifying himself to set them aside; eighteen years more were spent in
acknowledged lordship over the Ethereges, Otways, and Wycherleys, who
occupied the middle of the period; and during the twelve concluding years
he was a patriarch among the Southernes, and Priors, and Congreves, in
whose lives the period wove itself into the next.
And yet, personally as well as historically, Dryden is a man of no mean
importance. Not only is he the largest figure in one era of our
literature; he is a very considerable figure also in our literature as a
whole. To begin with the most obvious, but at the same time not the least
noteworthy, of his claims, the _quantity_ of his contributions to our
literature was large. He was a various and voluminous writer. In Scott's
collected edition of his works they fill seventeen octavo volumes. About
seven of these volumes consist of dramas, with accompanying prefaces and
dedications, the number of dramas being in all twenty-eight. Two volumes
more embrace the polemical poems, the satires, and the poems of
contemporary historical allusion, written chiefly between 1681 and 1683.
One volume is filled with odes, songs, and lyrical pieces, written at
various times. The Fables, or Metrical Tales, redacted in his old age from
Chaucer and Boccaccio, occupy a volume and a half. Three volumes and a
half are devoted to the translations from the classic poets, including the
Translation of Virgil. The remaining two volumes consist of miscellaneous
prologues, epilogues, and witty pieces of verse, and of miscellaneous
prose-writings, original and translated, including the critical Essay on
Dramatic Poetry. Considered as a whole, the matter of the seventeen
volumes is a goodly contribution from one man as respects both extent and
variety. Spread over forty-two years, it does not argue that excessive
industry which Scott, of all men in the world, has found in it; but it
fairly entitles Dryden to take his place among those writers who deserve
regard for the quantity of their writings, in addition to whatever regard
they may be entitled to on the score, of quality. And it is a fact worth
noting, and remarked by Scott more than once, that most writers who have
taken a high place in literature have been voluminous--have not only
written well, but also written much. Moreover there are two ways of
writing much. One may write much and variously, or one may write much all
of one kind. Dryden was various as well as voluminous.
Of all that Dryden wrote, however, there is but a comparatively small
portion that has won for itself a permanent place in our literature; and
in this he differs from other writers that have been equally voluminous.
It is indeed a significant fact about Dryden that the proportion of that
part of his matter which survives, or deserves to survive, to that part
which was squandered away on the age it was first written for, and there
ended, is unusually small. In Shakespeare there is very little that is
felt to be of such inferior quality as not to be worth reading in due time
and place. In Milton there is, if we consider only his poetry, still less.
All Chaucer, almost, is felt to be worth preservation by those who like
Chaucer; all Wordsworth, almost, by those who like Wordsworth. But, except
for library purposes, there is no admirer of Dryden that would care to
save more than a small select portion of what he wrote. His satires and
polemical poems; one or two of his odes; his Translation of Virgil; his
fables; one of his comedies, and one of his tragedies, by way of specimen
of his dramatic powers; a complete set of his prologues, for the sake of
their allusions to contemporary manners and humours; and a few pieces of
his prose, to show his style of criticism:--these would together form a
collection not much more than a fourth part of the whole, and which would
require to be yet farther winnowed, were the purpose to leave only what is
sterling and in Dryden's best manner. Mr. Bell's edition, which comprise
in three volumes all Dryden's original non-dramatic poetry, and the best
collection of his prologues and epilogues yet made, is itself a surfeit of
matter. It is such an edition of Dryden as ought to be included in a
series of the English poets intended to be complete; but even in it there
is more of dross than of ore.
What is the reason of this? How is it that in Dryden the proportion of
what is now rubbish to what is still precious as a literary possession is
so much greater than in most other writers of great celebrity? There are
two reasons for it. The first is, that originally, and in its own nature,
much of the matter that Dryden put forth was not of a kind for which his
genius was fitted. Whatever his own imagination constructed on the large
scale was mean and conventional. Wherever, as in his translations of
Virgil and his imitations of Chaucer and Boccaccio, he employed his powers
of language and verse in refurbishing matter invented by others, the
poetical substance of his writings is valuable; but the sheer produce of
his own imagination, as in his dramas, is in general such stuff as nature
disowns and no creature can take pleasure in. There is no fine power of
dramatic story, no exquisite invention of character or circumstance, no
truth to nature in ideal landscape: at the utmost, there is conventional
dramatic situation, with an occasional flash of splendid imagery such as
may be struck out in the heat of heroic declamation. Thus--
"I am as free as Nature first made man,
Ere the base laws of servitude began,
When wild in woods the noble savage ran."
Dryden's natural powers, as all his critics have remarked, lay not so much
in the imaginative as in the didactic, the declamatory, and the
ratiocinative. What Johnson claims for him, and what seems to have been
claimed for him in his own lifetime, was the credit of being one of the
best reasoners in verse that ever wrote. Lord Macaulay means very much the
same thing when he calls Dryden a great "critical poet," and the founder
of the "critical school of English poetry." Probably Milton meant
something of the kind when he said that Dryden was a rhymer, but no poet.
It was in declamatory and didactic rhyme, with all that could consist with
it, that Dryden excelled. It was in the metrical utterance of weighty
sentences, in the metrical conduct of an argument, in vehement satirical
invective, and in such passages of lyric passion as depended for their
effect on rolling grandeur of sound, that he was pre-eminently great. Even
his imagination worked more powerfully, and his perceptions of physical
circumstance became keener and truer, under the influence of polemical
rage, the pursuit of terse maxim, or the passion for sonorous declamation.
Thus--
"And every shekel which he can receive
Shall cost a limb of his prerogative."
Or, in his character of Shaftesbury,--
"Of these the false Achitophel was first:
A name to all succeeding ages curst;
For close designs and crooked counsels fit;
Sagacious, bold, and turbulent of wit;
Restless, unfixed in principles and place;
In power unpleased, impatient of disgrace;
A fiery soul, which, working out its way,
Fretted the pigmy body to decay,
And o'er-informed the tenement of clay.
A daring pilot in extremity,
Pleased with the danger when the waves went high,
He sought the storms; but, for a calm unfit,
Would steer too nigh the sands, to boast his wit.
Great wits are sure to madness near allied,
And thin partitions do their bounds divide."
Or, in the lines which he sent to Tonson the publisher as a specimen of
what he could do in the way of portrait-painting if Tonson did not send
him supplies--
"With leering looks, bull-faced, and freckled fair,
With two left legs, and Judas-coloured hair,
And frowzy pores that taint the ambient air."
And, again, in almost every passage in the noble ode on Alexander's Feast,
_e.g._--
"With ravished ears
The monarch hears;
Assumes the god,
Affects to nod,
And seems to shake the spheres."
In satire, in critical disquisition, in aphoristic verse, or in lyrical
grandiloquence, Dryden was in his natural element; and one reason why, of
all the matter of his voluminous works, so small a portion is of permanent
literary value, is that, in his attempts after literary variety, he could
not or would not restrict himself within these proper limits of his
genius.
But, besides this, Dryden was a slovenly worker within his own field. Even
of what he could do best he did little continuously in a thoroughly
careful manner. In his best poem there are not twenty consecutive lines
without some logical incoherence, some confusion of metaphor, some
inaccuracy of language, or some evident strain of the meaning for the sake
of the metre. His strength lies in passages and weighty interspersed
lines, not in whole poems. Even in Dryden's lifetime this complaint was
made. It was hinted at in _The Rehearsal_; Rochester speaks of Dryden's
"slattern muse;" and Blackmore, who criticised Dryden in his old age,
expresses the common opinion distinctly and deliberately--
"Into the melting-pot when Dryden comes,
What horrid stench will rise, what noisome fumes!
How will he shrink, when all his lewd allay
And wicked mixture shall be purged away!
When once his boasted heaps are melted down,
A chest-full scarce will yield one sterling crown;
But what remains will be so pure, 'twill bear
The examination of the moot severe."
This is true, though it was Blackmore who said it. Dryden's slovenliness,
however, consisted not so much in a disposition to spare pains as in a
constitutional robustness which rendered artistic perfection all but
impossible to him even when he laboured hardest to attain it. One's notion
of Dryden is that he was originally a _robust_ man, who, when he first
engaged in poetry, could produce nothing better than strong stanzas of
rather wooden sound and mechanism, but who, by perseverance and continual
work, drilled his genius into higher susceptibility and a conscious
aptitude and mastery in certain directions, so that, the older he grew, he
became mellower, more musical, and more imaginative, what had been
robustness at first having by long practice been subdued into flexibility
and nerve. It is stated of Dryden that, in his earlier life at least, he
used, as a preparation for writing, to induce on himself an artificial
state of languor by taking medicine or letting blood. The trait is
characteristic. Dryden's whole literary career was a metaphor of it. Had
he died before 1670, or even before 1681, when his _Annus Mirabilis_ was
still his most ambitious production, he would have been remembered as
little more than a robust versifier; but, living as he did till 1701, he
performed work which has entitled him to rank among English poets. As a
contributor to the actual body of our literature, and as a man who
produced by his influence a lasting effect on its literary methods,
Dryden's place is certainly high.
DEAN SWIFT.
DEAN SWIFT.[7]
In dividing the history of English literature into periods it is customary
to take the interval between the year 1688 and the year 1727 as
constituting one of those periods. This interval includes the reigns of
William III., Anne, and George I. If we do not bind ourselves too
precisely to the year 1727 as closing the period, the division is proper
enough. There _are_ characteristics about the time thus marked out which
distinguish it from previous and from subsequent portions of our literary
history. Dryden, Locke, and some other notabilities of the Restoration,
lived into this period, and may be regarded as partly belonging to it; but
the names more peculiarly representing it are those of Swift, Burnet,
Addison, Steele, Pope, Shaftesbury, Gay, Arbuthnot, Atterbury, Prior,
Parnell, Bolingbroke, Congreve, Vanbrugh, Farquhar, Rowe, Defoe, and
Cibber. The names in this cluster disperse themselves over the three
reigns which the period includes, some of them having already been known
as early as the accession of William, while others survived the first
George and continued to add to their celebrity during the reign of his
successor; but the most brilliant portion of the period was from 1702 to
1714, when Queen Anne was on the throne. Hence the name of "Wits of Queen
Anne's reign," commonly applied to the writers of the whole period.
A while ago this used to be spoken of as the Golden or Augustan age of
English literature. We do not talk in that manner now. We feel that when
we get among the authors of the times of Queen Anne and the first George
we are among very pleasant and very clever men, but by no means among
giants. In coming down to this period from those going before it, we have
an immediate sensation of having left the region of "greatness" behind us.
We still find plenty of good writing, characterized by certain qualities
of trimness, artificial grace, and the like, to a degree not before
attained; here and there also, we discern something like real power and
strength, breaking through the prevailing element; but, on the whole,
there is an absence of what, except by a compromise of language, could be
called "great." It is the same whether we regard largeness of imaginative
faculty, loftiness of moral spirit, or vigour of speculative capacity, as
principally concerned in imparting the character of "greatness" to
literature. What of genius in the ideal survived the seventeenth century
in England contented itself with nice little imaginations of scenes and
circumstances connected with the artificial life of the time; the moral
quality most in repute was kindliness or courtesy; and speculation did not
go beyond that point where thought retains the form either of ordinary
good sense, or of keen momentary wit. No sooner, in fact, do we pass the
time of Milton than we feel that we have done with the sublimities. A kind
of lumbering largeness does remain in the intellectual gait of Dryden and
his contemporaries, as if the age still wore the armour of the old
literary forms, though not at home in it; but in Pope's days even the
affectation of the "great" had ceased. Not slowly to build up a grand poem
of continuous ideal action, not quietly and at leisure to weave forth
tissues of fantastic imagery, not perseveringly and laboriously to
prosecute one track of speculation and bring it to a close, not earnestly
and courageously to throw one's whole soul into a work of moral agitation
and reform, was now what was regarded as natural in literature. On the
contrary, he was a wit, or a literary man, who, living in the midst of the
social bustle, or on the skirts of it, could throw forth in the easiest
manner little essays, squibs, and _jeux d'esprit_, pertinent to the rapid
occasions of the hour, and never tasking the mind too long or too much.
This was the time when that great distinction between Whiggism and
Toryism which for a century-and-a-half has existed in Great Britain as a
kind of permanent social condition, affecting the intellectual activity of
all natives from the moment of their birth, first began to be practically
operative. It has, on the whole, been a wretched thing for the mind of
England to have had this necessity of being either a Whig or a Tory put so
prominently before it. Perhaps, in all times, some similar necessity of
taking one side or the other in some current form of controversy has
afflicted the leading minds, and tormented the more genial among them; but
we question if ever in this country in previous times there was a form of
controversy, so little to be identified, in real reason, with the one only
true controversy between good and evil, and so capable, therefore, of
breeding confusion and mischief, when so identified in practice, as this
poor controversy of Whig and Tory which came in with the Revolution. To be
called upon to be either a Puritan or a Cavalier--there was some
possibility of complying with _that_ call and still leading a tolerably
free and large intellectual life; though possibly it was one, cause of the
rich mental development of the Elizabethan era that the men of that time
were exempt from any personal obligation of attending even to this
distinction. But to be called upon to be either a Whig or a Tory--why, how
on earth can one retain any of the larger humanities about him if society
is to hold him by the neck between two chairs such as these, pointing
alternately to the one and to the other, and incessantly asking him on
which of the two he means to sit? Into a mind trained to regard
adhesiveness to one or other of these chairs as the first rule of duty or
of prudence what thoughts of any high interest can find their way? Or, if
any such do find their way, how are they to be adjusted to so mean a rule?
Now-a-days, our higher spirits solve the difficulty by kicking both chairs
down, and plainly telling society that they will not bind themselves to
sit on either, or even on both put together. Hence partly it is that, in
recent times, we have had renewed specimens of the "great" or "sublime" in
literature--the poetry, for example, of a Byron, a Wordsworth, or a
Tennyson. But in the interval between 1688 and 1727 there was not one wit
alive whom society let off from the necessity of being, and declaring
himself to be, either a Whig or a Tory. Constitutionally, and by
circumstances, Pope was the man who could have most easily obtained the
exemption; but even Pope professed himself a Tory. Addison and Steele were
Whigs. In short, every literary man was bound, by the strongest of all
motives, to keep in view, as a permanent fact qualifying his literary
undertakings, the distinction between Whiggism and Toryism, and to give to
at least a considerable part of his writings the character of pamphlets or
essays in the service of his party. To minister by the pen to the
occasions of Whiggism and Toryism was, therefore, the main business of the
wits both in prose and verse. Out of those occasions of ministration there
of course arose personal quarrels, and these furnished fresh opportunities
to the men of letters. Critics of previous writings could be satirized and
lampooned, and thus the circle of subjects was widened. Moreover, there
was abundant matter, capable of being treated consistently with either
Whiggism or Toryism, in the social foibles and peculiarities of the day,
as we see in the _Tatler_ and the _Spectator_. Nor could a genial mind
like that of Steele, a man of taste and fine thought like Addison, and an
intellect so keen, exquisite, and sensitive as that of Pope, fail to
variegate and surround all the duller and harder literature thus called
into being with more lasting touches of the humorous, the fanciful, the
sweet, the impassioned, the meditative, and the ideal. Thus from one was
obtained the character of a _Sir Roger de Coverley_, from another a
_Vision of Mirza_, and from the third a _Windsor Forest_, an _Epistle of
Héloïse_, and much else that delights us still. After all, however, it
remains true that the period of English literature now in question,
whatever admirable characteristics it may possess, exhibits a remarkable
deficiency of what, with recollections of former periods to guide us in
our use of epithets, we should call great or sublime.
With the single exception of Pope, and that exception made from deference
to the peculiar position of Pope as the poet or metrical artist of his
day, the greatest name in the history of English literature during the
early part of last century is that of Swift. In certain fine and deep
qualities, Addison and Steele, and perhaps Farquhar, excelled him, just as
in the succeeding generation Goldsmith had a finer vein of genius than was
to be found in Johnson with all his massiveness; but in natural brawn and
strength, in original energy, force, and imperiousness of brain, he
excelled them all. It was about the year 1702, when he was already
thirty-five years of age, that this strangest specimen of an Irishman, or
of an Englishman born in Ireland, first attracted attention in London
literary circles. The scene of his first appearance was Button's
coffee-house: the witnesses were Addison, Ambrose Philips, and other wits
belonging to Addison's little senate, who used to assemble there.
"They had for several successive days observed a strange clergyman
come into the coffee-house, who seemed utterly unacquainted with any
of those who frequented it, and whose custom it was to lay his hat
down on a table, and walk backward and forward at a good pace for
half an hour or an hour, without speaking to any mortal, or seeming
in the least to attend to anything that was going forward there. He
then used to take up his hat, pay his money at the bar, and walk away
without opening his lips. After having observed this singular
behaviour for some time, they concluded him to be out of his senses;
and the name that he went by among them was that of 'the mad parson.'
This made them more than usually attentive to his motions; and one
evening, as Mr. Addison and the rest were observing him, they saw him
cast his eyes several times on a gentleman in boots, who seemed to be
just come out of the country, and at last advance towards him as
intending to address him. They were all eager to hear what this dumb
mad parson had to say, and immediately quitted their seats to get
near him. Swift went up to the country gentleman, and in a very
abrupt manner, without any previous salute, asked him, 'Pray, sir, do
you remember any good weather in the world?' The country gentleman,
after staring a little at the singularity of his manner, and the
oddity of the question, answered 'Yes, sir, I thank God I remember a
great deal of good weather in my time.' 'That is more,' said Swift,
'than I can say; I never remember any weather that was not too hot or
too cold, too wet or too dry; but, however God Almighty contrives it,
at the end of the year 'tis all very well.' Upon saying this, he took
up his hat, and without uttering a syllable more, or taking the least
notice of anyone, walked out of the coffee-house; leaving all those
who had been spectators of this odd scene staring after him, and
still more confirmed in the opinion of his being mad."--_Dr.
Sheridan's Life of Swift, quoted in Scott's Life._
If the company present had had sufficient means of information, they would
have found that the mad parson with the harsh, swarthy features, and eyes
"azure as the heavens," whose oddities thus amused them, was Jonathan
Swift, then clergyman of Laracor, a rural parish in the diocese of Meath
in Ireland. They would have found that he was an Irishman by birth, though
of pure English descent; that he could trace a relationship to Dryden;
that, having been born after his father's death, he had been educated, at
the expense of his relatives, at Trinity College, Dublin; that, leaving
Ireland in his twenty-second year, with but a sorry character from the
College authorities, he had been received as a humble dependent into the
family of Sir William Temple, at Sheen and Moorpark, near London, that
courtly Whig and ex-ambassador being distantly connected with his mother's
family; that here, while acting as Sir William's secretary, amanuensis,
librarian, and what not, he had begun to write verses and other trifles,
some of which he had shown to Dryden, who had told him in reply that they
were sad stuff, and that he would never be a poet; that still, being of a
restless, ambitious temper, he had not given up hopes of obtaining
introduction into public employment in England through Sir William
Temple's influence; that, at length, at the age of twenty-eight,
despairing of anything better, he had quarrelled with Sir William,
returned to Ireland, taken priest's orders, and settled in a living; and
that again, disgusted with Ireland and his prospects in that country, he
had come back to Moorpark, and resided there till 1699, when Sir
William's death had obliged him finally to return to Ireland, and accept
first a chaplaincy to Lord Justice Berkeley, and then his present living
in the diocese of Meath. If curious about the personal habits of this
restless Irish parson, they might have found that he had already won the
reputation of an eccentric in his own parish and district: performing his
parochial duties when at home with scrupulous care, yet by his language
and manners often shocking all ideas of clerical decorum and begetting a
doubt as to his sincerity in the religion he professed; boisterous,
fierce, overbearing, and insulting to all about him, yet often doing acts
of real kindness; exact and economical in his management of his income to
the verge of actual parsimony, yet sometimes spending money freely, and
never without pensioners living on his bounty. They would have found that
he was habitually irritable, and that he was subject to a recurring
giddiness of the head, or vertigo, which he had brought on, as he thought
himself, by a surfeit of fruit while he was staying with Sir William
Temple at Sheen. And, what might have been the best bit of gossip of all,
they would have found that, though unmarried, and entertaining a most
unaccountable and violent aversion to the very idea of marriage, he had
taken over to reside with him, or close to his neighbourhood, in Ireland,
a certain young and beautiful girl, named Hester Johnson, with whom he had
formed an acquaintance in Sir William Temple's house, where she had been
brought up, and where, though she passed as a daughter of Sir William's
steward, she was believed to be, in reality, a natural daughter of Sir
William himself. They would have found that his relations to this girl,
whom he had himself educated from her childhood at Sheen and Moorpark,
were of a very singular and puzzling kind; that on the one hand she was
devotedly attached to him, and on the other he cherished a passionate
affection for her, wrote and spoke of her as his "Stella," and liked
always to have her near him; yet that a marriage between them seemed not
to be thought of by either; and that, in order to have her near him
without giving rise to scandal, he had taken the precaution to bring over
an elderly maiden lady, called Mrs. Dingley, to reside with her as a
companion, and was most careful to be in her society only when this Mrs.
Dingley was present.
There was mystery and romance enough, therefore, about the wild,
black-browed Irish parson, who attracted the regards of the wits in
Button's coffee-house. What had brought him there? That was partly a
mystery too; but the mystery would have been pretty well solved if it had
been known that, uncouth-looking clerical lout as he was, he was an author
like the rest of them, having just written a political pamphlet which was
making or was to make a good deal of noise in the world, and having at
that moment in his pocket at least one other piece which he was about to
publish. The political pamphlet was an _Essay on the Civil Discords in
Athens and Rome_, having an obvious bearing on certain dissensions then
threatening to break up the Whig party in Great Britain. It was received
as a vigorous piece of writing on the ministerial side, and was ascribed
by some to Lord Somers, and by others to Burnet. Swift had come over to
claim it, and to see what it and his former connexion with Temple could do
for him among the leading Whigs. For the truth was, an ambition equal to
his consciousness of power gnawed at the heart of this furious and gifted
man, whom a perverse fate had flung away into an obscure vicarage on the
wrong side of the channel. His books, his garden, his canal with its
willows at Laracor; his dearly-beloved Roger Coxe, and the other perplexed
and admiring parishioners of Laracor over whom he domineered; his clerical
colleagues in the neighbourhood; and even the society of Stella, the
wittiest and best of her sex, whom he loved better than any other creature
on earth: all these were insufficient to occupy the craving void in his
mind. He hated Ireland, and regarded his lot there as one of banishment;
he longed to be in London, and struggling in the centre of whatever was
going on. About the date of his appointment to the living of Laracor he
had lost the rich deanery of Derry, which Lord Berkeley had meant to give
him, in consequence of a notion on the part of the bishop of the diocese
that he was a restless, ingenious young man, who, instead of residing,
would be "eternally flying backwards and forwards to London." The bishop's
perception of his character was just. At or about the very time when the
wits at Button's saw him stalking up and down in the coffee-house, the
priest of Laracor was introducing himself to Somers, Halifax, Sunderland,
and others, and stating the terms on which he would support the Whigs with
his pen. Even then, it seems, he took high ground, and let it be known
that he was no mere hireling. The following, written at a much later
period, is his own explanation of the nature and limits of his Whiggism at
the time when he first offered the Whigs his services:--
"It was then (1701-2) I began to trouble myself with the differences
between the principles of Whig and Tory; having formerly employed
myself in other, and, I think, much better speculations. I talked
often upon this subject with Lord Somers; told him that, having been
long conversant with the Greek and Latin authors, and therefore a
lover of liberty, I found myself much inclined to be what they call a
Whig in politics; and that, besides, I thought it impossible, upon
any other principles, to defend or submit to the Revolution; but, as
to religion, I confessed myself to be a High-Churchman, and that I
could not conceive how anyone who wore the habit of a clergyman could
be otherwise; that I had observed very well with what insolence and
haughtiness some lords of the High-Church party treated not only
their own chaplains, but all other clergymen whatsoever, and thought
this was sufficiently recompensed by their professions of zeal to the
Church: that I had likewise observed how the Whig lords took a direct
contrary measure, treated the persons of particular clergymen with
particular courtesy, but showed much contempt and ill-will for the
order in general: that I knew it was necessary for their party to
make their bottom as wide as they could, by taking all denominations
of Protestants to be members of their body: that I would not enter
into the mutual reproaches made by the violent men on either side;
but that the connivance or encouragement given by the Whigs to those
writers of pamphlets who reflected upon the whole body of the clergy,
without any exception, would unite the Church to one man to oppose
them; and that I doubted his lordship's friends did not consider the
consequences of this."
Even with these limitations the assistance of so energetic a man as the
parson of Laracor was doubtless welcome to the Whigs. His former connexion
with the stately old Revolution Whig, Sir William Temple, may have
prepared the way for him, as it had already been the means of making him
known in some aristocratic families. But there was evidence in his
personal bearing and his writings that he was not a man to be neglected.
And, if there had been any doubt on the subject on his first presentation
of himself to ministers, the publication of his _Battle of the Books_ and
his _Tale of a Tub_ in 1703 and 1704 would have set it overwhelmingly at
rest. The author of these works (and, though they were anonymous, they
were at once referred to Swift) could not but be acknowledged as the first
prose satirist, and one of the most formidable writers, of the age. On his
subsequent visits to Button's, therefore (and they were frequent enough;
for, as the Bishop of Derry had foreseen, he was often an absentee from
his parish), the mad Irish parson was no longer a stranger to the company.
Addison, Steele, Tickell, Philips, and the other Whig wits came to know
him well, and to feel his weight among them in their daily convivial
meetings. "To Dr. Jonathan Swift, the most agreeable companion, the truest
friend, and the greatest genius of the age" was the inscription written by
Addison on a copy of his Travels presented to Swift; and it shows what
opinion Addison and those about him had formed of the author of the _Tale
of a Tub_.
Thus, passing and repassing between Laracor and London, now lording it
over his Irish parishioners, and now filling the literary and Whig haunts
of the great metropolis with the terror of his merciless wit and with talk
behind his back of his eccentricities and rude manners, Swift spent the
interval between 1702 and 1710, or between his thirty-sixth and his
forty-fourth year. His position as a High-Church Whig, however, was an
anomalous one. In the first place, it was difficult to see how such a man
could honestly be in the Church at all. People were by no means strict in
those days in their notions of the clerical character; but the _Tale of a
Tub_ was a strong dose even then to have come from a clergyman. If
Voltaire afterwards recommended the book as a masterly satire against
religion in general, it cannot be wondered at that an outcry arose among
Swift's contemporaries respecting the profanity of the book. It is true,
Peter and Jack, as the representatives of Popery and Presbyterianism, came
in for the greatest share of the author's scurrility; and Martin, as the
representative of the Church of England, was left with the honours of the
story; but the whole structure and spirit of the story, to say nothing of
the oaths and other irreverences mingled with its language, were well
calculated to shock the more serious even of Martin's followers, who could
not but see that rank infidelity alone would be a gainer by the book.
Accordingly, despite all that Swift could afterwards do, the fact that he
had written this book left a public doubt as to his Christianity. It is
quite possible, however, that, with a very questionable kind of belief in
Christianity, he may have been a conscientious High-Churchman, zealous for
the social defence and aggrandisement of the ecclesiastical institution
with which he was connected. Whatever that institution was originally
based upon, it existed as part and parcel of the commonwealth of England,
rooted in men's habits and interests, and intertwined with the whole
system of social order; and, just as a Brahmin, lax enough in his own
speculative allegiance to the Brahminical faith, might still desire to
maintain Brahminism as a vast pervading establishment in Hindostan, so
might Swift, with a heart and a head dubious enough respecting men's
eternal interest in the facts of the Judæan record, see a use
notwithstanding in that fabric of bishoprics, deaneries, prebends,
parochial livings, and curacies, which ancient belief in those facts had
first created and put together. This kind of respect for the Church
Establishment is still very prevalent. It is a most excellent thing, it is
thought by many, to have a cleanly, cultured, gentlemanly man invested
with authority in every parish throughout the land, who can look after
what is going on, fill up schedules, give advice, and take the lead in all
parish business. That Swift's faith in the Church included no more than
this perception of its uses as a vast administrative and educational
establishment we will not say. Mr. Thackeray, indeed, openly avows his
opinion that Swift had no belief in the Christian religion. "Swift's," he
says, "was a reverent, was a pious spirit--he could love and could pray;"
but such religion as he had, Mr. Thackeray hints, was a kind of mad,
despairing Deism, and had nothing of Christianity in it. Hence, "having
put that cassock on, it poisoned him; he was strangled in his bands." The
question thus broached as to the nature of Swift's religion is too deep to
be discussed here. Though we would not exactly say, with Mr. Thackeray,
that Swift's was a "reverent" and "pious" spirit, there are, as he phrases
it, breakings out of "the stars of religion and love" shining in the
serene blue through "the driving clouds and the maddened hurricane of
Swift's life;" and this, though vague, is about all that we have warrant
for saying. As to the zeal of his Churchmanship, however, there is no
doubt at all. There was not a man in the British realms more pugnacious in
the interests of his order, more resolute in defending the prerogatives of
the Church of England against Dissenters and others desirous of limiting
them, or more anxious to elevate the social position and intellectual
character of the clergy, than the author of the _Tale of a Tub_. No
veteran commander of a regiment could have had more of the military than
the parson of Laracor had of the ecclesiastical _esprit de corps_; and,
indeed, Swift's known dislike to the military may be best explained as the
natural jealousy of the surplice at the larger consideration accorded by
society to the scarlet coat. Almost all Swift's writings between 1702 and
1710 are assertions of his High-Church sentiments and vindications of the
Establishment against its assailants. Thus in 1708 came forth his _Letter
on the Sacramental Test_, a hot High-Church and anti-Dissenter pamphlet;
and this was followed in the same year by his _Sentiments of a Church of
England man with respect to Religion and Government_, and by his ironical
argument, aimed at free-thinkers and latitudinarians, entitled _Reasons
against Abolishing Christianity_. In 1709 he published a graver pamphlet,
under the name of _A Project for the Advancement of Religion_, in which he
urged certain measures for the reform of public morals and the
strengthening of the Establishment, recommending in particular a scheme of
Church-extension. Thus, with all his readiness to help the Whigs
politically, Swift was certainly faithful to his High-Church principles.
But, as we have said, a High-Church Whig was an anomaly which the Whigs
refused to comprehend. Latitudinarians, Low Churchmen, and Dissenters, did
not know what to make of a Whiggism in state-politics which was conjoined
with the strongest form of ecclesiastical Toryism. Hence, in spite of his
ability, Swift was not a man that the Whigs could patronise and prefer.
They were willing to have the benefit of his assistance, but their favours
were reserved for men more wholly their own. Various things were, indeed,
talked of for Swift--the secretaryship to the proposed embassy of Lord
Berkeley in Vienna, a prebend of Westminster, the office of
historiographer-royal; nay, even a bishopric in the American colonies: but
all came to nothing. Swift, at the age of forty-three, and certified by
Addison as "the greatest genius of the age," was still only an Irish
parson, with some 350_l._ or 400_l._ a year. How strange if the plan of
the Transatlantic bishopric had been carried out, and Swift had settled in
Virginia!
Meanwhile, though neglected by the English Whigs, Swift had risen to be a
leader among the Irish clergy, a great man in their convocations and other
ecclesiastical assemblies. The object which the Irish clergy then had at
heart was to procure from the Government an extension to Ireland of a boon
granted several years before to the clergy of England: namely, the
remission of the tax levied by the Crown on the revenues of the Church
since the days of Henry VIII. in the shape of tenths and first-fruits.
This remission, which would have amounted to about 16,000_l._ a year, the
Whigs were not disposed to grant, the corresponding remission in the case
of England not having been followed by the expected benefits. Archbishop
King and the other prelates were glad to have Swift as their agent in this
business; and, accordingly, he was absent from Ireland for upwards of
twelve months continuously in the years 1708 and 1709. It was during this
period that he set London in a roar by his famous Bickerstaff hoax, in
which he first predicted the death of Partridge, the astrologer, at a
particular day and hour, and then nearly drove the wretched tradesman mad
by declaring, when the time was come, that the prophecy had been
fulfilled, and publishing a detailed account of the circumstances. Out of
this Bickerstaff hoax, and Swift's talk over it with Addison and Steele,
arose the _Tatler_, prolific parent of so many other periodicals.
The year 1710 was an important one in the life of Swift. In that year he
came over to London, resolved in his own mind to have a settlement of
accounts with the Whigs, or to break with them for ever. The Irish
ecclesiastical business of the tenths and first-fruits was still his
pretext, but he had many other arrears to introduce into the account.
Accordingly, after some civil skirmishing with Somers, Halifax, and his
other old friends, then just turned out of office, he openly transferred
his allegiance to the new Tory administration of Harley and Bolingbroke.
The 4th of October, not quite a month after his arrival in London, was the
date of his first interview with Harley; and from that day forward till
the dissolution of Harley's administration by the death of Queen Anne, in
1714, Swift's relations with Harley, St. John, and the other ministers,
were more those of an intimate friend and adviser than a literary
dependent. How he dined almost daily with Harley or St. John; how he
bullied them, and made them beg his pardon when by chance they offended
him--either, as Harley once did, by offering him a fifty-pound note, or,
as St. John once did, by appearing cold and abstracted when Swift was his
guest at dinner; how he obtained from them not only the settlement of the
Irish business, but almost everything else he asked; how he used his
influence to prevent Steele, Addison, Congreve, Rowe, and his other Whig
literary friends, from suffering loss of office by the change in the state
of politics, at the same time growing cooler in his private intercourse
with Addison and poor Dick, and tending more to young Tory writers, such
as Pope and Parnell; how, with Pope, Gay, Arbuthnot, Harley, and St. John,
he formed the famous club of the _Scriblerus_ brotherhood, for the satire
of literary absurdities; how he wrote squibs, pamphlets, and lampoons
innumerable for the Tories and against the Whigs, and at one time actually
edited a Tory paper called the _Examiner_: all this is to be gathered, in
most interesting detail, from his epistolary journal to Stella, in which
he punctually kept her informed of all his doings during his long three
years of absence. The following is a description of him at the height of
his Court influence during this season of triumph, from the Whiggish, and
therefore somewhat adverse, pen of Bishop Kennet:--
"When I came to the antechamber [at Court] to wait before prayers,
Dr. Swift was the principal man of talk and business, and acted as
master of requests. He was soliciting the Earl of Arran to speak to
his brother, the Duke of Ormond, to get a chaplain's place
established in the garrison of Hull for Mr. Fiddes, a clergyman in
that neighbourhood, who had lately been in jail, and published
sermons to pay the fees. He was promising Mr. Thorold to undertake
with my lord-treasurer that, according to his petition, he should
obtain a salary of 200_l._ per annum as minister of the English
church at Rotterdam. He stopped F. Gwynne, Esq., going in with the
red bag to the Queen, and told him aloud he had something to say to
him from my lord-treasurer. He talked with the son of Dr. Davenant,
to be sent abroad, and took out his pocket-book, and wrote down
several things as _memoranda_ to do for him. He turned to the fire,
and took out his gold watch, and, telling him the time of day,
complained it was very late. A gentleman said he was too fast. 'How
can I help it,' says the Doctor, 'if the courtiers give me a watch
that won't go right?' Then he instructed a young nobleman that the
best poet in England was Mr. Pope (a Papist), who had begun a
translation of Homer into English verse, for which he must have them
all subscribe; 'for,' says he, 'the author shall not begin to print
till I have a thousand guineas for him.' Lord-treasurer, after
leaving the Queen, came through the room, beckoning Dr. Swift to
follow him: both went off just before prayers."
Let us see, by a few pickings from the journal to Stella, in what manner
the black-browed Irish vicar, who was thus figuring in the mornings at
Court as the friend and confidant of Ministers, and almost as their
domineering colleague, was writing home from his lodging in the evenings
to the "dear girls" at Laracor.
_Dec. 3, 1710._ "Pshaw, I must be writing to those dear saucy brats
every night whether I will or no, let me have what business I will,
or come home ever so late, or be ever so sleepy; but it is an old
saying and a true one, 'Be you lords or be you earls, you must write
to naughty girls.' I was to-day at Court, and saw Raymond [an Irish
friend] among the beefeaters, staying to see the Queen; so I put him
in a better station, made two or three dozen bows, and went to
church, and then to Court again to pick up a dinner, as I did with
Sir John Stanley: and then we went to visit Lord Mountjoy, and just
left him; and 'tis near eleven at night, young women, and methinks
this letter comes very near to the bottom," &c. &c.
_Jan. 1, 1711._ Morning. "I wish my dearest pretty Dingley and Stella
a happy new year, and health, and mirth, and good stomachs, and
_Fr's_ company. Faith, I did not know how to write _Fr_. I wondered
what was the matter; but now I remember I always write _Pdfr_ [by
this combination of letters, or by the word _Presto_, Swift
designates himself in the Journal] * * Get the _Examiners_, and read
them; the last nine or ten are full of reasons for the late change
and of the abuses of the last ministry; and the great men assure me
that all are true. They were written by their encouragement and
direction. I must rise, and go see Sir Andrew Fountain; but perhaps
to-morrow I may answer _M.D.'s_ [Stella's designation in the Journal]
letter: so good morrow, my mistresses all, good morrow. I wish you
both a merry new year; roast beef, minced pies, and good strong beer;
and me a share of your good cheer; that I was there or you were here;
and you're a little saucy dear," &c. &c.
_Jan. 13, 1711._ "O faith, I had an ugly giddy fit last night in my
chamber, and I have got a new box of pills to take, and I hope shall
have no more this good while. I would not tell you before, because it
would vex you, little rogues; but now it is better. I dined to-day
with Lord Shelburn," &c. &c.
_Jan. 16, 1711._ "My service to Mrs. Stode and Walls. Has she a boy
or a girl? A girl, hmm!, and died in a week, hmmm!, and was poor
Stella forced to stand for godmother?--Let me know how accounts
stand, that you may have your money betimes. There's four months for
my lodging; that must be thought on too. And zoo go dine with Manley,
and lose your money, doo extravagant sluttikin? But don't fret. It
will just be three weeks when I have the next letter: that is,
to-morrow. Farewell, dearest beloved _M.D._, and love poor, poor
Presto, who has not had one happy day since he left you, as hope to
be saved."
_March 7, 1711._ "I am weary of business and ministers. I don't go to
a coffee-house twice a month. I am very regular in going to sleep
before eleven. And so you say that Stella's a pretty girl; and so she
be; and methinks I see her just now, as handsome as the day's long.
Do you know what? When I am writing in our language [a kind of
baby-language of endearment used between him and Stella, and called
'the little language'] I make up my mouth just as if I was speaking
it. I caught myself at it just now. * * Poor Stella, won't Dingley
leave her a little daylight to write to Presto? Well, well, we'll
have daylight shortly, spite of her teeth; and zoo must cly Zele, and
Hele, and Hele aden. Must loo mimitate _Pdfr_, pay? Iss, and so la
shall. And so leles fol ee rettle. Dood Mollow. [You must cry There
and Here and Here again. Must you imitate _Pdfr_, pray? Yes, and so
you shall. And so there's for the letter. Good morrow.]"
And so on, through a series of daily letters, forming now a goodly octavo
volume or more, Swift chats and rattles away to the "dear absent girls,"
giving them all the political gossip of the time, and informing them about
his own goings-out and comings-in, his dinings with Harley, St. John, and
occasionally with Addison and other old Whig friends, the state of his
health, his troubles with his drunken servant Patrick, his
lodging-expenses, and a host of other things. Such another journal has,
perhaps, never been given to the world; and but for it we should never
have known what depths of tenderness and power of affectionate prattle
there were in the heart of this harsh and savage man.
Only on one topic, affecting himself during his long stay in London, is he
in any degree reserved. Among the acquaintanceships he had formed was one
with a Mrs. Vanhomrigh, a widowed lady of property, who had a family of
several daughters. The eldest of these, Hester Vanhomrigh, was a girl of
more than ordinary talent and accomplishments, and of enthusiastic and
impetuous character; and, as Swift acquired the habit of dropping in upon
the "Vans," as he called them, when he had no other dinner engagement, it
was not long before he and Miss Vanhomrigh fell into the relationship of
teacher and pupil. He taught her to think and to write verses; and, as
among Swift's peculiarities of opinion, one was that he entertained what
would even now be called very advanced notions as to the intellectual
capabilities and rights of women, he found no more pleasant amusement, in
the midst of his politics and other business, than that of superintending
the growth of so hopeful a mind.
"His conduct might have made him styled
A father, and the nymph his child:
The innocent delight he took
To see the virgin mind her book
Was but the master's secret joy
In school to hear the finest boy."
But, alas! Cupid got among the books.
"Vanessa, not in years a score,
Dreams of a gown of forty-four;
Imaginary charms can find
In eyes with reading almost blind;
She fancies music in his tongue,
Nor farther looks, but thinks him young."
Nay, more: one of Swift's lessons to her had been that frankness, whether
in man or women, was the chief of the virtues, and
"That common forms were not design'd
Directors to a noble mind."
"Then," said the nymph,
"I'll let you see
My actions with your rules agree;
That I can vulgar forms despise,
And have no secrets to disguise."
She told her love, and fairly argued it out with the startled tutor,
discussing every element in the question, whether for or against--the
disparity of their ages, her own five thousand guineas, their similarity
of tastes, his views of ambition, the judgment the world would form of the
match, and so on; and the end of it was that she reasoned so well that
Swift could not but admit that there would be nothing after all so very
incongruous in a marriage between him and Esther Vanhomrigh. So the matter
rested, Swift gently resisting the impetuosity of the young woman, when it
threatened to take him by storm, but not having the courage to adduce the
real and conclusive argument--the existence on the other side of the
channel of another and a dearer Esther. Stella, on her side, knew that
Swift visited a family called the "Vans"; she divined that something was
wrong; but that was all.
That Swift, the Mentor of ministers, their daily companion, at whose
bidding they dispensed their patronage and their favour, should himself be
suffered to remain a mere vicar of an Irish parish, was, of course,
impossible. Vehement and even boisterous and overdone as was his zeal for
his own independence--"If we let these great ministers pretend too much,
there will be no governing them," was his maxim; and, in order to act up
to it, he used to treat Dukes and Earls as if they were dogs--there were
yet means of honourably acknowledging his services in a way to which he
would have taken no exception. Nor can we doubt that Oxford and St. John,
who were really and heartily his admirers, were anxious to promote him in
some suitable manner. An English bishopric was certainly what he coveted,
and what they would at once have given him. But, though the bishopric of
Hereford fell vacant in 1712, there was, as Sir Walter Scott says, "a lion
in the path." Queen Anne, honest dowdy woman,--her instinctive dislike of
Swift strengthened by the private influence of the Archbishop of York, and
that of the Duchess of Somerset, whose red hair Swift had
lampooned--obstinately refused to make the author of the _Tale of a Tub_ a
bishop. Even an English deanery could not be found for so questionable a
Christian; and in 1713 Swift was obliged to accept, as the best thing he
could get, the Deanery of St. Patrick's in his native city of Dublin. He
hurried over to Ireland to be installed, and came back just in time to
partake in the last struggles and dissensions of the Tory administration
before Queen Anne's death. By his personal exertions with ministers, and
his pamphlet entitled _Public Spirit of the Whigs_, he tried to buoy up
the sinking Tory cause. But the Queen's death destroyed all; with George
I. the Whigs came in again; the late Tory ministers were dispersed and
disgraced, and Swift shared their fall. "Dean Swift," says Arbuthnot,
"keeps up his noble spirit; and, though like a man knocked down, you may
behold him still with a stern countenance, and aiming a blow at his
adversaries." He returned, with rage and grief in his heart, to Ireland, a
disgraced man, and in danger of arrest on account of his connexion with
the late ministers. Even in Dublin he was insulted as he walked in the
streets.
For twelve years--that is, from 1714 to 1726--Swift did not quit Ireland.
At his first coming, as he tells us in one of his letters, he was
"horribly melancholy;" but the melancholy began to wear off; and, having
made up his mind to his exile in the country of his detestation, he fell
gradually into the routine of his duties as Dean. How he boarded in a
private family in the town, stipulating for leave to invite his friends to
dinner at so much a head, and only having two evenings a week at the
deanery for larger receptions; how he brought Stella and Mrs. Dingley from
Laracor, and settled them in lodgings on the other side of the Liffey,
keeping up the same precautions in his intercourse with them as before,
but devolving the management of his receptions at the deanery upon Stella,
who did all the honours of the house; how he had his own way in all
cathedral business, and had always a few clergymen and others in his
train, who toadied him, and took part in the facetious horse-play of which
he was fond; how gradually his physiognomy became known to the citizens,
and his eccentricities familiar to them, till the "Dean" became the lion
of Dublin, and everybody turned to look at him as he walked in the
streets; how, among the Dean's other oddities, he was popularly charged
with stinginess in his entertainments and a sharp look-out after the wine;
how sometimes he would fly off from town, and take refuge in some
country-seat of a friendly Irish nobleman; how all this while he was
reading books of all kinds, writing notes and jottings, and corresponding
with Pope, Gay, Prior, Arbuthnot, Oxford, Bolingbroke, and other literary
and political friends in London or abroad: these are matters in the
recollection of all who have read any of the biographies of Swift. It is
also known that it was during this period that the Stella-and-Vanessa
imbroglio reached its highest degree of entanglement. Scarcely had the
Dean located Stella and Mrs. Dingley in their lodging in Dublin when, as
he had feared, the impetuous Vanessa crossed the Channel to be near him
too. Her mother's death, and the fact that she and her younger sister had
a small property in Ireland, were pretext enough. A scrap or two from
surviving letters will tell the sequel, and will suggest the state of the
relations at this time between Swift and this unhappy and certainly very
extraordinary, woman:--
_Swift to Miss Vanhomrigh: London, Aug. 12, 1714._ "I had your letter
last post, and before you can send me another I shall set out for
Ireland. * * * If you are in Ireland when I am there, I shall see you
very seldom. It is not a place for any freedom, but where everything
is known in a week, and magnified a hundred degrees. These are
rigorous laws that must be passed through; but it is probable we may
meet in London in winter; or, if not, leave all to fate."
_Miss Vanhomrigh to Swift: Dublin, 1714_ (_some time after August_).
"You once had a maxim, which was to act what was right, and not mind
what the world would say. I wish you would keep to it now. Pray, what
can be wrong in seeing and advising an unhappy young woman? I cannot
imagine. You cannot but know that your frowns make my life
unsupportable. You have taught me to distinguish, and then you leave
me miserable."
_Miss Vanhomrigh to Swift: Dublin, 1714._ "You bid me be easy, and
you would see me as often as you could. You had better have said as
often as you could get the better of your inclinations so much, or as
often as you remembered there was such a one in the world. If you
continue to treat me as you do, you will not be made uneasy by me
long. It is impossible to describe what I have suffered since I saw
you last. I am sure I could have bore the rack much better than those
killing, killing words of yours. Sometimes I have resolved to die
without seeing you more; but those resolves, to your misfortune, did
not last long; for there is something in human nature that prompts
one to find relief in this world. I must give way to it, and beg
you'd see me, and speak kindly to me; for I am sure you'd not condemn
any one to suffer what I have done, could you but know it. The reason
I write to you is because I cannot tell it to you should I see you.
For, when I begin to complain, then you are angry; and there is
something in your looks so awful that it strikes me dumb."
Here a gap intervenes, which record fills up with but an indication here
and there. Swift saw Vanessa, sometimes with that "something awful in his
looks which struck her dumb," sometimes with words of perplexed kindness;
he persuaded her to go out, to read, to amuse herself; he introduced
clergymen to her--one of them afterwards Archbishop of Cashel--as suitors
for her hand; he induced her to leave Dublin, and go to her property at
Selbridge, about twelve miles from Dublin, where now and then he went to
visit her, where she used to plant laurels against every time of his
coming, and where "Vanessa's bower," in which she and the Dean used to
sit, with books and writing materials before them, during those happy
visits, was long an object of interest to tourists; he wrote kindly
letters to her, some in French, praising her talents, her conversation,
and her writing, and saying that he found in her "_tout ce que la nature
a donnée à un mortel, l'honneur, la vertu, le bon sens, l'esprit, la
douceur, l'agrément et la fermeté d'âme_." All did not suffice; and one
has to fancy, during those long years, the restless beatings, on the one
hand, of that impassioned woman's heart, now lying as cold
undistinguishable ashes in some Irish grave, and, on the other hand, the
distraction, and anger, and daily terror, of the man she clung to. For,
somehow or other, there _was_ an element of terror mingled with the
affair. What it was is beyond easy scrutiny, though possibly the data
exist if they were well sifted. The ordinary story is that some time in
the midst of those entanglements with Vanessa, and in consequence of their
effects on the rival-relationship--Stella having been brought almost to
death's door by the anxieties caused her by Vanessa's proximity, and by
her own equivocal position in society--the form of marriage was gone
through by Swift and Stella, and they became legally husband and wife,
although with an engagement that the matter should remain secret, and that
there should be no change in their manner of living. The year 1716, when
Swift was forty-nine years of age, and Stella thirty-two, is assigned as
the date of this event; and the ceremony is said to have been performed in
the garden of the deanery by the Bishop of Clogher. But more mystery
remains. "Immediately subsequent to the ceremony," says Sir Walter Scott,
"Swift's state of mind appears to have been dreadful. Delany (as I have
learned from a friend of his widow) said that about the time it was
supposed to have taken place he observed Swift to be extremely gloomy and
agitated--so much so that he went to Archbishop King to mention his
apprehensions. On entering the library, Swift rushed out with a
countenance of distraction, and passed him without speaking. He found the
archbishop in tears, and, upon asking the reason, he said, 'You have just
met the most unhappy man on earth; but on the subject of his wretchedness
you must never ask a question.'" What are we to make of this? Nay more,
what are we to make of it when we find that the alleged marriage of Swift
with Stella, with which Scott connects the story, is after all denied by
some as resting on no sufficient evidence: even Dr. Delany, though he
believed in the marriage, and supposed it to have taken place about the
time of this remarkable interview with the archbishop, having no certain
information on the subject? If we assume a secret marriage with Stella,
indeed, the subsequent portion of the Vanessa story becomes more
explicable. On this assumption we are to imagine Swift continuing his
letters to Vanessa, and his occasional visits to her at Selbridge on the
old footing, for some years after the marriage, with the undivulged secret
ever in his mind, increasing tenfold his former awkwardness in
encountering her presence. And so we come to the year 1720, when, as the
following scraps will show, a new paroxysm on the part of Vanessa brought
on a new crisis in their relations.
_Miss Vanhomrigh to Swift: Selbridge, 1720._ "Believe me, it is with
the utmost regret that I now write to you, because I know your
good-nature such that you cannot see any human creature miserable
without being sensibly touched. Yet what can I do? I must either
unload my heart, and tell you all its griefs, or sink under the
inexpressible distress I now suffer by your prodigious neglect of me.
It is now ten long weeks since I saw you, and in all that time I have
never received but one letter from you, and a little note with an
excuse. Oh, have you forgot me? You endeavour by severities to force
me from you. Nor can I blame you; for, with the utmost distress and
confusion, I behold myself the cause of uneasy reflections to you.
Yet I cannot comfort you, but here declare that it is not in the
power of art, time, or accident, to lessen the inexpressible passion
I have for ----. Put my passion under the utmost restraint, send me
as distant from you as the earth will allow; yet you cannot banish
those charming ideas which will ever stick by me whilst I have the
use of memory. Nor is the love I bear you only seated in my soul; for
there is not a single atom of my frame that is not blended with it.
Therefore do not flatter yourself that separation will ever change my
sentiments; for I find myself unquiet in the midst of silence, and my
heart is at once pierced with sorrow and love. For Heaven's sake,
tell me what has caused this prodigious change in you which I have
found of late."
_Miss Vanhomrigh to Swift: Dublin, 1720._ * * "I believe you thought
I only rallied when I told you the other night that I would pester
you with letters. Once more I advise you, if you have any regard for
your quiet, to alter your behaviour quickly; for I do assure you I
have too much spirit to sit down contented with this treatment.
Because I love frankness extremely, I here tell you now that I have
determined to try all manner of human arts to reclaim you; and, if
all these fail, I am resolved to have recourse to the black one,
which, it is said, never does. Now see what inconveniency you will
bring both yourself and me unto * *. When I undertake a thing, I
don't love to do it by halves."
_Swift to Miss Vanhomrigh: Dublin, 1720._ "If you write as you do, I
shall come the seldomer on purpose to be pleased with your letters,
which I never look into without wondering how a brat that cannot read
can possibly write so well. * * Raillery apart, I think it
inconvenient, for a hundred reasons, that I should make your house a
sort of constant dwelling-place. I will certainly come as often as I
conveniently can; but my health and the perpetual run of ill weather
hinder me from going out in the morning, and my afternoons are taken
up I know not how; so that I am in rebellion with a hundred people
besides yourself for not seeing them. For the rest, you need make use
of no other black art besides your ink. It is a pity your eyes are
not black, or I would have said the same; but you are a white witch,
and can do no mischief."
_Swift to Miss Vanhomrigh: Dublin, 1720._ "I received your letter
when some company was with me on Saturday night, and it put me in
such confusion that I could not tell what to do. This morning a woman
who does business for me told me she heard I was in love with one,
naming you, and twenty particulars; that little master ---- and I
visited you, and that the Archbishop did so; and that you had
abundance of wit, &c. I ever feared the tattle of this nasty town,
and told you so; and that was the reason why I said to you long ago
that I would see you seldom when you were in Ireland; and I must beg
you to be easy, if, for some time, I visit you seldomer, and not in
so particular a manner."
_Miss Vanhomrigh to Swift: Selbridge, 1720._ * * "Solitude is
unsupportable to a mind which is not easy. I have worn out my days in
sighing and my nights in watching and thinking of ----, who thinks
not of me. How many letters shall I send you before I receive an
answer? * * Oh that I could hope to see you here, or that I could go
to you! I was born with violent passions, which terminate all in
one--that inexpressible passion I have for you. * * Surely you cannot
possibly be so taken up but you might command a moment to write to me
and force your inclinations to so great a charity. I firmly believe,
if I could know your thoughts (which no human creature is capable of
guessing at, because never anyone living thought like you), I should
find you had often in a rage wished me religious, hoping then I
should have paid my devotions to Heaven. But that would not spare
you; for, were I an enthusiast, still you'd be the deity I should
worship. What marks are there of a deity but what you are to be known
by? You are present everywhere; your dear image is always before my
eyes. Sometimes you strike me with that prodigious awe I tremble with
fear; at other times a charming compassion shines through your
countenance, which revives my soul. Is it not more reasonable to
adore a radiant form one has seen than one only described?"
_Swift to Miss Vanhomrigh: Dublin, October 15, 1720._ "All the
morning I am plagued with impertinent visits, below any man of sense
or honour to endure, if it were any way avoidable. Afternoons and
evenings are spent abroad in walking to keep off and avoid spleen as
far as I can; so that, when I am not so good a correspondent as I
could wish, you are not to quarrel and be governor, but to impute it
to my situation, and to conclude infallibly that I have the same
respect and kindness for you I ever professed to have."
_Swift to Miss Vanhomrigh: Gaullstoun, July 5, 1721._ * * "Settle
your affairs, and quit this scoundrel-island, and things will be as
you desire. I can say no more, being called away. _Mais soyez assurée
que jamais personne au monde n'a été aimée, honorée, estimée, adorée
par votre ami que vous._"
Vanessa did not quit the "scoundrel-island;" but, on the contrary,
remained in it, unmanageable as ever. In 1722, about a year after the date
of the last scrap, the catastrophe came. In a wild fit Vanessa, as the
story is, took the bold step of writing to Stella, insisting on an
explanation of the nature of Swift's engagements to her; Stella placed
the letter in Swift's hands; and Swift, in a paroxysm of fury, rode
instantly to Selbridge, saw Vanessa without speaking, laid a letter on her
table, and rode off again. The letter was Vanessa's death-warrant. Within
a few weeks she was dead, having previously revoked a will in which she
had bequeathed all her fortune to Swift.
Whatever may have been the purport of Vanessa's communication to Stella,
it produced no change in Swift's relations to the latter. The pale pensive
face of Hester Johnson, with her "fine dark eyes" and hair "black as a
raven," was still to be seen on reception-evenings at the deanery, where
also she and Mrs. Dingley would sometimes take up their abode when Swift
was suffering from one of his attacks of vertigo and required to be
nursed. Nay, during those very years in which, as we have just seen, Swift
was attending to the movements to and fro of the more imperious Vanessa in
the background, and assuaging her passion by visits and letters, and
praises of her powers, and professions of his admiration of her beyond all
her sex, he was all the while keeping up the same affectionate style of
intercourse as ever with the more gentle Stella, whose happier lot it was
to be stationed in the centre of his domestic circle, and addressing to
her, in a less forced manner, praises singularly like those he addressed
to her rival. Thus, every year, on Stella's birth-day, he wrote a little
poem in honour of the occasion. Take the one for 1718, beginning thus:--
"Stella this day is thirty-four
(We sha'n't dispute a year or more):
However, Stella, be not troubled;
Although thy size and years be doubled
Since first I saw thee at sixteen,
The brightest virgin on the green,
So little is thy form declined,
Made up so largely in thy mind."
Stella would reciprocate these compliments by verses on the Dean's
birth-day; and one is struck with the similarity of her acknowledgments of
what the Dean had taught her and done for her to those of Vanessa. Thus,
in 1721,--
"When men began to call me fair,
You interposed your timely care;
You early taught me to despise
The ogling of a coxcomb's eyes;
Show'd where my judgment was misplaced,
Refined my fancy and my taste.
You taught how I might youth prolong
By knowing what was right and wrong;
How from my heart to bring supplies
Of lustre to my fading eyes;
How soon a beauteous mind repairs
The loss of changed or falling hairs;
How wit and virtue from within
Send out a smoothness o'er the skin:
Your lectures could my fancy fix,
And I can please at thirty-six."
The death of Vanessa in 1722 left Swift from that time entirely Stella's.
How she got over the Vanessa affair in her own mind, when the full extent
of the facts became known to her, can only be guessed. When some one
alluded to the fact that Swift had written beautifully about Vanessa, she
is reported to have said "That doesn't signify, for we all know the Dean
could write beautifully about a broomstick." "A woman, a true woman!" is
Mr. Thackeray's characteristic comment.
To the world's end those who take interest in Swift's life will range
themselves either on the side of Stella or on that of Vanessa. Mr.
Thackeray prefers Stella, but admits that, in doing so, though the
majority of men may be on his side, he will have most women against him.
Which way Swift's _heart_ inclined him it is not difficult to see. Stella
was the main influence of his life; the intimacy with Vanessa was but an
episode. And yet, when he speaks of the two women as a critic, there is a
curious equality in his appreciation of them. Of Stella he used to say
that her wit and judgment were such that "she never failed to say the best
thing that was said wherever she was in company;" and one of his
epistolary compliments to Vanessa is that he had "always remarked that,
neither in general nor in particular conversation, had any word ever
escaped her lips that could by possibility have been better." Some little
differences in his preceptorial treatment of them may be discerned--as
when he finds it necessary to admonish poor Stella for her incorrigibly
bad spelling, no such admonition, apparently, being required for Vanessa;
or when, in praising Stella, he dwells chiefly on her honour and gentle
kindliness, whereas in praising Vanessa he dwells chiefly on her genius
and force of mind. But it is distinctly on record that his regard for both
was founded on his belief that in respect of intellect and culture both
were above the majority of their sex. And here it may be repeated that,
not only from the evidence afforded by the whole story of Swift's
relations to these two women, but also from the evidence of distinct
doctrinal passages scattered through his works, it appears that those who
in the present day maintain the co-equality of the two sexes, and the
right of women to as full and varied an education, and as free a social
use of their powers, as is allowed to men, may claim Swift as a pioneer in
their cause. Both Stella and Vanessa have left their testimony that from
the very first Swift took care to indoctrinate them with peculiar views on
this subject; and both thank him for having done so. Stella even goes
further, and almost urges Swift to do on the great scale what he had done
for her individually:--
"O turn your precepts into laws;
Redeem the woman's ruin'd cause;
Retrieve lost empire to our sex,
That men may bow their rebel necks."
This fact that Swift had a _theory_ on the subject of the proper mode of
treating and educating women, which theory was in antagonism to the ideas
of his time, explains much both in his conduct as a man and in his habits
as a writer.
* * * * *
For the first six years of his exile in Ireland after the death of Queen
Anne, Swift had published nothing of any consequence, and had kept aloof
from politics, except when they were brought to his door by local
quarrels. In 1720, however, he again flashed forth as a political
luminary, in a character that could hardly have been anticipated--that of
an Irish patriot. Taking up the cause of the "scoundrel-island," to which
he belonged by birth, if not by affection, and to which fate had consigned
him in spite of all his efforts, he made that cause his own. Virtually
saying to his old Whig enemies, then in power on the other side of the
water, "Yes, I am an Irishman, and I will show you what an Irishman is,"
he constituted himself the representative of the island, and hurled it,
with all its pent-up mass of rage and wrongs, against Walpole and his
administration. First, in revenge for the commercial wrongs of Ireland
came his _Proposal for the Universal Use of Irish Manufactures, utterly
Rejecting and Renouncing Everything Wearable that comes from England_;
then, amidst the uproar and danger excited by this proposal, other and
other defiances in the same tone; and lastly, in 1723, on the occasion of
the royal patent to poor William Wood to supply Ireland, without her own
consent, with a hundred and eight thousand pounds' worth of copper
half-pence of English manufacture, the unparalleled _Drapier's Letters_,
which blasted the character of the coppers and asserted the nationality of
Ireland. All Ireland, Catholic as well as Protestant, blessed the Dean of
St. Patrick's; associations were formed for the defence of his person;
and, had Walpole and his Whigs succeeded in bringing him to trial, it
would have been at the expense of an Irish rebellion. From that time till
his death Swift was the true King of Ireland; only when O'Connell arose
did the heart of the nation yield equal veneration to any single chief;
and even at this day the grateful Irish, forgetting his gibes against
them, and forgetting his continual habit of distinguishing between the
Irish population as a whole and the English and Protestant part of it to
which he belonged himself, cherish his memory with loving enthusiasm, and
speak of him as the "great Irishman." Among the phases of Swift's life
this of his having been an Irish patriot and agitator deserves to be
particularly remembered.
In the year 1726 Swift, then in his sixtieth year, and in the full flush
of his new popularity as the champion of Irish nationality, visited
England for the first time since Queen Anne's death. Once there, he was
loth to return; and a considerable portion of the years 1726 and 1727 was
spent by him in or near London. This was the time of the publication of
_Gulliver's Travels_, which had been written some years before, and also
of some _Miscellanies_, which were edited for him by Pope. It was at
Pope's villa at Twickenham that most of his time was spent; and it was
there and at this time that the long friendship between Swift and Pope
ripened into that extreme and affectionate intimacy which they both lived
to acknowledge. Gay, Arbuthnot, and Bolingbroke, now returned from exile,
joined Pope in welcoming their friend. Addison had been dead several
years. Prior was dead, and also Vanbrugh and Parnell. Steele was yet
alive; but between him and Swift there was no longer any tie. Political
and aristocratic acquaintances, old and new, there were in abundance, all
anxious once again to have Swift among them to fight their battles. Old
George I. had not long to live, and the Tories were trying again to come
into power in the train of the Prince of Wales. There were even chances of
an arrangement with Walpole, with possibilities, in that or in some other
way, that Swift should not die a mere Irish dean. These prospects were but
temporary. The old King died; and, contrary to expectation, George II.
retained Walpole and his Whig colleagues. In October, 1727, Swift left
England for the last time. He returned to Dublin just in time to watch
over the death-bed of Stella, who expired, after a lingering illness, in
January, 1728. Swift was then in his sixty-second year.
* * * * *
The story of the remaining seventeen years of Swift's life--for, with all
his maladies, bodily and mental, his strong frame withstood, for all that
time of solitude and gloom, the wear of mortality--is perhaps better known
than any other part of his biography. How his irritability and
eccentricities and avarice grew upon him, so that his friends and servants
had a hard task in humouring him, we learn from the traditions of others;
how his memory began to fail, and other signs of breaking-up began to
appear, we learn from himself;--
"See how the Dean begins to break!
Poor gentleman he droops apace;
You plainly find it in his face.
That old vertigo in his head
Will never leave him till he's dead.
Besides, his memory decays;
He recollects not what he says;
He cannot call his friends to mind,
Forgets the place where last he dined,
Plies you with stories o'er and o'er;
He told them fifty times before."
The fire of his genius, however, was not yet burnt out. Between 1729 and
1736 he continued to throw out satires and lampoons in profusion,
referring to the men and topics of the day, and particularly to the
political affairs of Ireland; and it was during this time that his
_Directions to Servants_, his _Polite Conversation_, and other well-known
facetiæ, first saw the light. From the year 1736, however, it was well
known in Dublin that the Dean was no more what he had been, and that his
recovery was not to be looked for. The rest will be best told in the words
of Sir Walter Scott:--
"The last scene was now rapidly approaching, and the stage darkened
ere the curtain fell. From 1736 onward the Dean's fits of periodical
giddiness and deafness had returned with violence; he could neither
enjoy conversation nor amuse himself with writing, and an obstinate
resolution which he had formed not to wear glasses prevented him from
reading. The following dismal letter to Mrs. Whiteway [his cousin,
and chief attendant in his last days] in 1740 is almost the last
document which we possess of the celebrated Swift as a rational and
reflecting being. It awfully foretells the catastrophe which shortly
after took place.
'I have been very miserable all night, and to-day extremely deaf
and full of pain. I am so stupid and confounded that I cannot
express the mortification I am under both in body and mind. All
I can say is that I am not in torture, but I daily and hourly
expect it. Pray let me know how your health is and your family.
I hardly understand one word I write. I am sure my days will be
very few; few and miserable they must be.
'I am, for these few days,
'Yours entirely,
'J. SWIFT.'
'If I do not blunder, it is Saturday, July 26th, 1740.'
"His understanding having totally failed soon after these melancholy
expressions of grief and affection, his first state was that of
violent and furious lunacy. His estate was put under the management
of trustees, and his person confided to the care of Dr. Lyons, a
respectable clergyman, curate to the Rev. Robert King, prebendary of
Dunlavin, one of Swift's executors. This gentleman discharged his
melancholy task with great fidelity, being much and gratefully
attached to the object of his care. From a state of outrageous
frenzy, aggravated by severe bodily suffering, the illustrious Dean
of St. Patrick's sank into the situation of a helpless changeling. In
the course of about three years he is only known to have spoken once
or twice. At length, when this awful moral lesson had subsisted from
1743 until the 19th of October, 1745, it pleased God to release him
from this calamitous situation. He died upon that day without a
single pang, so gently that his attendants were scarce aware of the
moment of his dissolution."
Swift was seventy-eight years of age at the time of his death, having
outlived all his contemporaries of the Queen Anne cluster of wits, with
the exception of Bolingbroke, Ambrose Philips, and Cibber. Congreve had
died in 1729; Steele in the same year; Defoe in 1731; Gay in 1732;
Arbuthnot in 1735; Tickell in 1740; and Pope, who was Swift's junior by
twenty-one years, in 1744. Swift, therefore, is entitled in our literary
histories to the place of patriarch as well as to that of chief among the
Wits of Queen Anne's reign; and he stands nearest to our own day of any of
them whose writings we still read. As late as the year 1820 a person was
alive who had seen Swift as he lay dead in the deanery before his burial,
great crowds going to take their last look of him. "The coffin was open;
he had on his head neither cap nor wig; there was not much hair on the
front or very top, but it was long and thick behind, very white, and was
like flax upon the pillow." Such is the last glimpse we have of Swift on
earth. Exactly ninety years afterwards the coffin was taken up from its
resting-place in the aisle of the cathedral; and the skull of Swift, the
white locks now all mouldered away from it, became an object of
scientific curiosity. Phrenologically, it was a disappointment, the
extreme lowness of the forehead striking everyone, and the so-called
organs of wit, causality, and comparison being scarcely developed at all.
There were peculiarities, however, in the shape of the interior,
indicating larger capacity of brain than would have been inferred from the
external aspect. Stella's coffin was exhumed, and her skull examined at
the same time. The examiners found the skull "a perfect model of symmetry
and beauty."
* * * * *
Have we said too much in declaring that of all the men who illustrated
that period of our literary history which lies between the Revolution of
1688 and the beginning or middle of the reign of George II. Swift alone
(Pope excepted, and he only on certain definite and peculiar grounds)
fulfils to any tolerable extent those conditions which would entitle him
to the epithet of "great," already refused to his age as a whole? We do
not think so. Swift _was_ a great genius; nay, if by _greatness_ we
understand general mass and energy rather than any preconceived
peculiarity of quality, he was the greatest genius of his age. Neither
Addison, nor Steele, nor Pope, nor Defoe, possessed, in anything like the
same degree, that which Goethe and Niebuhr, seeking a name for a certain
attribute found often present, as they thought, in the higher and more
forcible order of historic characters, agreed to call the _demonic_
element. Indeed very few men in our literature, from first to last, have
had so much of this element in them--perhaps the sign and source of all
real greatness--as Swift. In him it was so obvious as to attract notice at
once. "There is something in your looks," wrote Vanessa to him, "so awful
that it strikes me dumb;" and again, "Sometimes you strike me with that
prodigious awe I tremble with fear;" and again, "What marks are there of a
deity that you are not known by?" True, these are the words of a woman
infatuated with love; but there is evidence that, wherever Swift went, and
in whatever society he was, there was this magnetic power in his presence.
Pope felt it; Addison felt it; they all felt it. We question if, among all
our literary celebrities, from first to last, there has been one more
distinguished for being personally formidable to all who came near him.
And yet, in calling Swift a great genius, we clearly do not mean to rank
him in the same order of greatness with such men among his predecessors as
Spenser, or Shakespeare, or Milton, or such men among his successors as
Scott, Coleridge, and Wordsworth. We even retain instinctively the right
of not according to him a certain kind of admiration which we bestow on
such men of his own generation as Pope, Steele, and Addison. How is this?
What is the drawback about Swift's genius which prevents us from
referring him to that highest order of literary greatness to which we do
refer others who in respect of hard general capacity were apparently not
superior to him, and on the borders of which we also place some who in
that respect were certainly his inferiors? To make the question more
special, why do we call Milton great in quite a different sense from that
in which we consent to confer the same epithet on Swift?
Altogether, it will be said, Milton was a greater man than Swift; his
intellect was higher, richer, deeper, grander, his views of things were
more profound, grave, stately, and exalted. This is a true enough
statement of the case; and one likes that comprehensive use of the word
intellect which it implies, wrapping up, as it were, all that is in and
about a man in this one word, so as to dispense with the distinctions
between imaginative and non-imaginative, spiritual and unspiritual
natures, and make every possible question about a man a mere question in
the end as to the size or degree of his intellect. But such a mode of
speaking is too violent and recondite for common purposes. According to
the common use of the word intellect, it might be maintained (we do not
say it would) that Swift's intellect, his strength of mental grasp, was
equal to Milton's, and yet that, by reason of the fact that his
intellectual style was different, or that he did not grasp things
precisely in the Miltonic way, a distinction might be drawn unfavourable
to his genius as compared with that of Milton. According to such a view,
we must seek for that in Swift's genius upon which it depends that, while
we accord to it all the admiration we bestow on strength, our sympathies
with height or sublimity are left unmoved. Nor have we far to seek. When
Goethe and Niebuhr generalized in the phrase "the demonic element" that
mystic something which they seemed to detect in men of unusual potency
among their fellows, they used the word "demonic," not in its English
sense, as signifying what appertains specially to the demons or powers of
darkness, but in its Greek sense, as equally implying the unseen agencies
of light and good. The demonic element in a man, therefore, may in one
case be the demonic of the etherial and celestial, in another the
demonic of the Tartarean and infernal. There is a demonic of the
_super_natural--angels, and seraphs, and white-winged airy messengers,
swaying men's phantasies from above; and there is a demonic of the
_infra_-natural--fiends and shapes of horror tugging at men's thoughts
from beneath. The demonic in Swift was of the latter kind. It is false, it
would be an entire mistake as to his genius, to say that he regarded, or
was inspired by, only the worldly and the secular--that men, women, and
their relations in the little world of visible life, were all that his
intellect cared to recognise. He also, like our Miltons and our
Shakespeares, and all our men who have been anything more than prudential
and pleasant writers, had his being anchored in things and imaginations
beyond the visible verge. But, while it was given to them to hold rather
by things and imaginations belonging to the region of the celestial, to
hear angelic music and the rustling of seraphic wings, it was his
unhappier lot to be related rather to the darker and subterranean
mysteries. One might say of Swift that he had far less of belief in a God
than of belief in a Devil. He is like a man walking on the earth and among
the busy haunts of his fellow-mortals, observing them and their ways, and
taking his part in the bustle, all the while, however, conscious of the
tuggings downward of secret chains reaching into the world of the demons.
Hence his ferocity, his misanthropy, his _sæva indignatio_, all of them
true forms of energy, imparting unusual potency to a life, but forms of
energy bred of communion with what outlies nature on the lower or infernal
side.
Swift, doubtless, had this melancholic tendency in him constitutionally
from the beginning. From the first we see him an unruly, rebellious,
gloomy, revengeful, unforgiving spirit, loyal to no authority, and
gnashing under every restraint. With nothing small or weak in his nature,
too proud to be dishonest, bold and fearless in his opinions, capable of
strong attachments and of hatred as strong, it was to be predicted that,
if the swarthy Irish youth, whom Sir William Temple received into his
house when his college had all but expelled him for contumacy, should ever
be eminent in the world, it would be for fierce and controversial, and not
for beautiful or harmonious, activity. It is clear, however, on a survey
of Swift's career, that the gloom and melancholy which characterized it
were not altogether congenital, but, in part at least, grew out of some
special circumstance, or set of circumstances, having a precise date and
locality among the facts of his life. In other words, there was some
secret in Swift's life, some root of bitterness or remorse, diffusing a
black poison throughout his whole existence. That communion with the
invisible almost exclusively on the infernal side--that consciousness of
chains wound round his own moving frame at the one end, and at the other
held by demons in the depths of their populous pit, while no cords of love
were felt sustaining him from the countervailing heaven--had its origin,
in part at least, in some one recollection or cause of dread. It was some
one demon down in that pit that held the chains; the others but assisted
him. Thackeray's perception seems to us exact when he says of Swift that
"he goes through life, tearing, like a man possessed with a devil;" or
again, changing the form of the figure, that "like Abudah, in the Arabian
story, he is always looking out for the Fury, and knows that the night
will come, and the inevitable hag with it." What was this Fury, this hag
that duly came in the night, making the mornings horrible by the terrors
of recollection, the evenings horrible by those of anticipation, and
leaving but a calm hour at full mid-day? There was a secret in Swift's
life: what was it? His biographers as yet have failed to agree on this
dark topic. Thackeray's hypothesis, that the cause of Swift's despair was
chiefly his consciousness of disbelief in the creed to which he had sworn
his professional faith, does not seem to us sufficient. In Swift's days,
and even with his frank nature, we think that difficulty could have been
got over. There was nothing, at least, so unique in the case as to justify
the supposition that this was what Archbishop King referred to in that
memorable saying to Dr. Delany, "You have just met the most miserable man
on earth; but on the subject of his wretchedness you must never ask a
question." Had Swift made a confession of scepticism to the Archbishop, we
do not think the prelate would have been taken so very much by surprise.
Nor can we think, with some, that Swift's vertigo (now pronounced to have
been increasing congestion of the brain), and his life-long certainty that
it would end in idiocy or madness, are the true explanation of this
interview and of the mystery which it shrouds. There was cause enough for
melancholy here, but not exactly the cause that meets the case. Another
hypothesis there is of a physical kind, which Scott and others hint at,
and which finds great acceptance with the medical philosophers. Swift, it
is said, was of "a cold temperament," &c., &c. But why a confession on the
part of Swift that he was not a marriageable man, even had he added that
he desired, above all things in the world, to be a person of that sort,
should have so moved the heart of an Archbishop as to make him shed tears,
one cannot conceive. Besides, although this hypothesis might explain much
of the Stella and Vanessa imbroglio, it would not explain all; nor do we
see on what foundation it could rest. Scott's assertion that all through
Swift's writings there is no evidence of his having felt the tender
passion is simply untrue. On the whole, the hypothesis which has been
started of a too near consanguinity between Swift and Stella, either known
from the first to one or both, or discovered too late, would most nearly
suit the conditions of the case. And yet, as far as we have seen, this
hypothesis also rests on air, with no one fact to support it. Could we
suppose that Swift, like another Eugene Aram, went through the world with
a murder on his mind, it might be taken as a solution of the mystery; but,
as we cannot do this, we must be content with supposing that either some
one of the foregoing hypotheses, or some combination of them, is to be
accepted, or that the matter is altogether inscrutable.
Such by constitution as we have described him--with an intellect strong as
iron, much acquired knowledge, an ambition all but insatiable, and a
decided desire to be wealthy--Swift, almost as a matter of course, flung
himself impetuously into that Whig and Tory controversy which was the
question paramount in his time. In that he laboured as only a man of his
powers could, bringing to the side of the controversy on which he chanced
to be (and we believe when he was on a side it was honestly because he
found a certain preponderance of right in it) a hard and ruthless vigour
which served it immensely. But from the first, or at all events after the
disappointments of a political career had been experienced by him, his
nature would not work merely in the narrow warfare of Whiggism and
Toryism, but overflowed in general bitterness of reflection on all the
customs and ways of humanity. The following passage in _Gulliver's Voyage
to Brobdingnag_, describing how the politics of Europe appeared to the
King of Brobdingnag, shows us Swift himself in his larger mood of thought.
"This prince took a pleasure in conversing with me, inquiring into
the manners, religion, laws, government, and learning of Europe;
wherein I gave him the best account I was able. His apprehension was
so clear, and his judgment so exact, that he made very wise
reflections and observations upon all I said. But I confess that,
after I had been a little too copious in talking of my own beloved
country, of our trade, and wars by sea and land, of our schisms in
religion and parties in the state, the prejudices of his education
prevailed so far that he could not forbear taking me up in his right
hand, and, stroking me gently with the other, after a hearty fit of
laughing asking me whether _I_ was a Whig or Tory. Then, turning to
his first minister, who waited behind him with a white staff nearly
as tall as the mainmast of the 'Royal Sovereign,' he observed how
contemptible a thing was human grandeur, which could be mimicked by
such diminutive insects as I; 'And yet,' says he, 'I dare engage
these creatures have their titles and distinctions of honour; they
contrive little nests and burrows, that they call houses and cities;
they make a figure in dress and equipage; they love, they fight, they
dispute, they cheat, they betray.' And thus he continued on, while my
colour came and went several times with indignation to hear our noble
country, the mistress of arts and arms, the scourge of France, the
arbitress of Europe, the seat of virtue, piety, honour, truth, the
pride and envy of the world, so contemptuously treated."
Swift's writings, accordingly, divide themselves, in the main, into two
classes,--pamphlets, tracts, lampoons, and the like, bearing directly on
persons and topics of the day, and written with the ordinary purpose of a
partisan; and satires of a more general aim, directed, in the spirit of a
cynic philosopher, against humanity on the whole, or against particular
human classes, arrangements, and modes of thinking. In some of his
writings the politician and the general satirist are seen together. The
_Drapier's Letters_ and most of the poetical lampoons exhibit Swift in his
direct character as a party-writer; in the _Tale of a Tub_ we have the
ostensible purpose of a partisan masking a reserve of general scepticism;
in the _Battle of the Books_ we have a satire partly personal to
individuals, partly with a reference to a prevailing tone of opinion; in
the _Voyage to Laputa_ we have a satire on a great class of men; and in
the _Voyages to Lilliput and Brobdingnag_, and still more in the story of
the _Houyhnhnms_ and _Yahoos_, we have human nature itself analysed and
laid bare.
Swift took no care of his writings, never acknowledged some of them, never
collected them, and suffered them to find their way about the world as
chance, demand, and the piracy of publishers, directed. As all know, it is
in his character as a humourist, an inventor of the preposterous as a
medium for the reflective, and above all as a master of irony, that he
takes his place as one of the chiefs of English literature. There can be
no doubt that, as regards the literary form which he affected most, he
took hints from Rabelais as the greatest original in the realm of the
absurd. Sometimes, as in his description of the Strulbrugs in the _Voyage
to Laputa_, he approaches the ghastly power of that writer; but on the
whole there is more of stern English realism in him, and less of sheer
riot and wildness. Sometimes, however, Swift throws off the disguise of
the humourist, and speaks seriously and in his own name. On such occasions
we find ourselves in the presence of a man of strong, sagacious, and
thoroughly English mind, content, as is the habit of most Englishmen, with
vigorous proximate sense, expressed in plain and rather coarse idiom. For
the speculative he shows in these cases neither liking nor aptitude: he
takes obvious reasons and arguments as they come to hand, and uses them in
a robust, downright, Saxon manner. In one respect he stands out
conspicuously even among plain Saxon writers--his total freedom from cant.
Johnson's advice to Boswell, "above all things to clear his mind of cant,"
was perhaps never better illustrated than in the case of Dean Swift.
Indeed, it might be given as a summary definition of Swift's character
that he had cleared his mind of cant without having succeeded in filling
the void with song. It was Swift's intense hatred of cant--cant in
religion, cant in morality, cant in literature--that occasioned many of
those peculiarities which shock people in his writings. His principle
being to view things as they are, with no regard to the accumulated cant
of orators and poets, he naturally prosecuted his investigations into
those classes of facts which orators and poets have omitted as unsuitable
for their purposes. If they had viewed men as Angels, he would view them
as Yahoos. If they had placed the springs of action among the fine
phrases and the sublimities, he would trace them down into their secret
connections with the bestial and the obscene. Hence, as much as for any of
those physiological reasons which some of his biographers assign for it,
his undisguised delight in filth. And hence, also, probably--since among
the forms of cant he included the traditional manner of speaking of women
in their relations to men--his studious contempt, whether in writing for
men or for women, of all the accustomed decencies. It was not only the
more obvious forms of cant, however, that Swift had in aversion. Even to
that minor form of cant which consists in the "trite" he gave no quarter.
Whatever was habitually said by the majority of people seemed to him, for
that very reason, not worthy of being said at all, much less put into
print. A considerable portion of his writings, as, for example, his
_Tritical Essay on the Faculties of the Mind_, and his _Art of Polite
Conversation_--in the one of which he strings together a series of the
most threadbare maxims and quotations to be found in books, offering the
compilation as a gravely original disquisition, while in the other he
imitates the insipidity of ordinary table-talk in society--may be regarded
as showing a systematic determination on his part to turn the trite into
ridicule. Hence, in his own writings, though he refrains from the
profound, he never falls into the commonplace. Apart from Swift's other
views, there are to be found scattered through his writings not a few
distinct propositions of an innovative character respecting our social
arrangements. We have seen his doctrine as to the education of women; and
we may mention, as another instance of the same kind, his denunciation of
the system of standing armies as incompatible with freedom. Curiously
enough, also, it was Swift's belief that, Yahoos though we are, the world
is always in the right.
HOW LITERATURE MAY ILLUSTRATE HISTORY.
HOW LITERATURE MAY ILLUSTRATE HISTORY.[8]
Some of the ways in which Literature may illustrate History are obvious
enough. In the poems, the songs, the dramas, the novels, the satires, the
speeches, even the speculative treatises, of any time or nation, there is
imbedded a wealth of direct particulars respecting persons and events,
additional to the information that has been transmitted in the formal
records of that time or nation, or in its express histories of itself. "It
has often come to my ears that it is a saying too frequently in your mouth
that you have lived long enough for yourself:" so did Cicero, if the
speech in which the passage occurs is really his, address Cæsar face to
face, in the height of his power, and not long before his assassination,
remonstrating with him on his melancholy, and his carelessness of a life
so precious to Rome and to the world. If the words are any way authentic,
what a flash they are into the mind of the great Roman in his last years,
when, _blasé_ with wars and victories, and all the sensations that the
largest life on earth could afford, he walked about the streets of Rome,
consenting to live on so long as there might be need, but, so far as he
himself was concerned, heedless when the end might come, the conspirators
in a ring round him, the short scuffle, the first sharp stab of the
murderous knife!
Let this pass as one instance of a valuable illustration of Biography and
History derived from casual reading. Literature teems with such: no one
can tell what particles of direct historical and biographical information
lie yet undiscovered and unappropriated in miscellaneous books. But there
is an extension of the use for the historian of the general literature of
the time with which he may be concerned. Not only does Literature teem
with yet unappropriated anecdotes respecting the persons and events of
most prominent interest in the consecutive history of the world; but quite
apart from this, the books, and especially the popular books, of any time,
are the richest possible storehouses of the kind of information the
historian wants. Whatever may be the main thread of his narrative, he has
to re-imagine more or less vividly what is called the general life of the
time, its manners, customs, humours, ways of thinking, the working of its
institutions, all the peculiarities of that patch of the never-ending,
ever-changing rush and bustle of human affairs, to-day above the ground,
and to-morrow under. Well, here in the books of the time he has his
materials and aids. They were formed in the conditions of the time; the
time played itself into them; they are saturated with its spirit; and
costumes, customs, modes of eating and drinking, town-life, country life,
the traveller on horseback to his inn, the shoutings of mobs in riot, what
grieved them, what they hated, what they laughed at, all are there. No
matter of what kind the book is, or what was its author's aim; it is, in
spite of itself, a bequest out of the very body and being of that time,
reminding us thereof by its structure through and through, and by a crust
of innumerable allusions. It has been remarked by Hallam, and by others,
how particularly useful in this way for the historian, as furnishing him
with social details of past times, are popular books more especially of
the humorous order--comic dramas and farces, poems of occasion, and novels
and works of prose-fiction generally. How the plays of Aristophanes admit
us to the public life of Athens! How, as we read the Satires and Epistles
of Horace, we see old Rome, like another huge London, only with taller
houses, and the masons mending the houses, and the poet himself, like a
modern official in Somerset House, trudging along to his office, jostled
by the crowds, and having to get out of the way of the ladders and the
falling rubbish, thinking all the while of his appointment with Mæcenas!
Or, if it is the reign of George II. in Britain that we are studying,
where shall we find better illustration of much of the life, and
especially the London life, of that coarse, wig-wearing age, than in the
novels of Fielding and Smollett?
* * * * *
These, and perhaps other ways in which Literature may illustrate History,
are tolerably obvious, and need no farther exposition. There is, however,
a higher and somewhat more subtle service which Literature may perform
towards illustrating History and modifying our ideas of the Past.
What the historian chiefly and finally wants to get at, through all his
researches, and by all his methods of research, is the _mind_ of the time
that interests him, its mode of thinking and feeling. Through all the
trappings, all the colours, all the costumes, all those circumstances of
the picturesque which delight us in our recollections of the past, this is
what we seek, or ought to seek. The trappings and picturesque
circumstances are but our optical helps in our quest of this; they are the
thickets of metaphor through which we push the quest, interpreting as we
go. The metaphors resolve themselves; and at last it is as if we had
reached that vital and essential something--a clear transparency, we seem
to fancy it, and yet a kind of throbbing transparency, a transparency
with pulses and powers--which we call the mind or spirit of the time. As
in the case of the individual, so in that of a time or a people, we seem
to have got at the end of our language when we use this word, mind or
spirit. We know what we mean, and it is the last thing that we can mean;
but, just on that account, it eludes description or definition. At best we
can go to and fro among a few convenient synonyms and images. Soul, mind,
spirit, these old and simple words are the strongest, the profoundest, the
surest; age cannot antiquate them, nor science undo them; they last with
the rocks, and still go beyond. But, having in view rather the operation
than the cause, we find a use also in such alternative phrases as "mode of
thinking," "mode of feeling and thinking," "habit of thought," "moral and
intellectual character or constitution," and the like. Or, again, if we
will have an image of that which from its nature is unimaginable, then, in
our efforts to be as pure and abstract as possible, we find ourselves
driven, as I have said, into a fancy of mind as a kind of clear aërial
transparency, unbounded or of indefinite bounds, and yet not a dead
transparency, but a transparency full of pulses, powers, motions, and
whirls, capable in a moment of clouding itself, ceasing to be a
transparency, and becoming some strange solid phantasmagory, as of a
landscape smiling in sunshine or a sky dark with a storm. Yet again there
is another and more mechanical conception of mind which may be of
occasional use. The thinking power, the thinking principle, the substance
which feels and thinks, are phrases for mind from of old: what if we were
to agree, for a momentary advantage, to call mind rudely the thinking
apparatus? What the advantage may be will presently appear.
Mind, mode of thinking, mode of thinking and feeling, moral and
intellectual constitution, that mystic transparency full of pulses and
motions, this thinking apparatus,--whichever phrase or image we adopt,
there are certain appertaining considerations which we have to take along
with us.
(1.) There is the consideration of differences of degree, quality, and
worth. Mind may be great or small, noble or mean, strong or weak; the mode
of thinking of one person or one time may be higher, finer, grander than
that of another; the moral and intellectual constitutions of diverse
individuals or peoples may present all varieties of the admirable and
lovely or the despicable and unlovely; the pulses and motions in that
mystic transparency which we fancy as one man's mind may be more vehement,
more awful, more rhythmical and musical, than are known in that which we
fancy as the mind of some other; the thinking apparatus which A possesses,
and by which he performs the business of his life, may be more massive,
more complex, more exquisite, capable of longer reaches and more superb
combinations, than that which has fallen to the lot of B. All this is
taken for granted everywhere; all our speech and conduct proceed on the
assumption.
(2.) Somewhat less familiar, but not unimportant, is a consideration which
I may express by calling it the necessary instability of mind, its
variability from moment to moment. Your mind, my mind, every mind, is
continually sustaining modifications, disintegrations, reconstructions, by
all that acts upon it, by all it comes to know. We are much in the habit,
indeed, of speaking of experience, of different kinds of knowledge, as so
much material for the mind--material delivered into it, outspread as it
were on its floor, and which it, the lord and master, may survey, let lie
there for occasion, and now and then select from and employ. True! but not
the whole truth! The mind does not stand amid what it knows, as something
distinct and untouched; the mind is actually composed at any one moment of
all that it has learnt or felt up to that moment. Every new information
received, every piece of knowledge gained, every joy enjoyed, every sorrow
suffered, is then and there transmuted into mind, and becomes incorporate
with the prior central substance. To resort now to that mechanical figure
which I said might be found useful: every new piece of information, every
fact that one comes to apprehend, every probability brought before one in
the course of life, is not only so much new matter for the thinking
apparatus to lay hold of and work into the warp and woof of thought; it is
actually also a modification of the thinking apparatus itself. The mind
thinks _with_ what it knows; and, if you alter the knowledge in any one
whit, you alter the thinking instrumentality in proportion. Our whole
practice of education is based on this idea, and yet somehow the idea is
allowed to lurk. It may be brought out best perhaps by thinking what may
happen to a mind that has passed the period of education in the ordinary
sense. A person of mature age, let us say, betakes himself, for the first
time, to the study of geology. He gains thereby so much new and important
knowledge of a particular kind. Yes! but he does more. He modifies his
previous mind; he introduces a difference into his mode of thinking by a
positive addition to that instrumentality of notions _with_ which he
thinks. The geological conceptions which he has acquired become an organic
part of that reason, that intellect, which he applies to all things
whatsoever; he will think and imagine thenceforward with the help of an
added potency, and, consequently, never again precisely as he did before.
Generalize this hint, and let it run through history. The mind of Man
cannot remain the same through two consecutive generations, if only
because the knowledge which feeds and makes mind, the notions that
constitute the thinking power, are continually varying. In this age of a
hundred sciences, all tramping on Nature's outside with their flags up,
and marching her round and round, and searching her through and through
for her secrets, and flinging into the public forum their heaps of
results, how is it possible to call mind the same as it was a generation
or two ago, when the sciences were fewer, their industry more leisurely,
and their discoveries less frequent? Nay, but we may go back not a
generation or two only, but to generation beyond generation through a long
series, still, as we ascend, finding the sciences fewer, earth's load of
knowledge lighter, and man's very imagination of the physical universe
which he tenants cruder and more diminutive. Till two hundred years ago
the Mundus, or physical system of things, to even the most learned of men,
with scarcely an exception, was a finite spectacular sphere, or succession
of spheres, that of the fixed stars nearly outermost, wheeling round the
central earth for her pleasure; as we penetrate through still prior
centuries, even this finite spherical Mundus is seen to shrink and shrink
in men's fancies of it till a radius of some hundreds of miles would sweep
from the earth to the starry roof; back beyond that again the very notion
of sphericity disappears, and men were walking, as it seemed, on the upper
side of a flat disc, close under a concave of blue, travelled by fiery
caprices. How is it possible to regard man's mode of thinking and
feeling, man's mind, as in any way constant through such vicissitude in
man's notions respecting his very housing in space, and the whole
encircling touch of his physical belongings?
(3.) A third consideration, however, administers a kind of corrective to
the last. It is that, though the last consideration is not unimportant,
its importance practically, and as far as the range of historic time is
concerned, may be easily exaggerated. We have supposed a person betaking
himself to the study of geology, and have truly said that his very mode of
thinking would be thereby affected, that his geological knowledge would
pass into his reason, and determine so far the very cast of his mind, the
form of his ability. Well, but he might have betaken himself to something
else; and who can tell, without definite investigation, but that out of
that something else he might have derived as much increase of his mental
power, or even greater? There are thousands of employments for all minds,
and, though all may select, and select differently, there are thousands
for all in common. Life itself, all the inevitable activity of life, is
one vast and most complex schooling. Books or no books, sciences or no
sciences, we live, we look, we love, we laugh, we fear, we hate, we
wonder; we are sons, we are brothers, we have friends; the seasons return,
the sun shines, the moon walks in beauty, the sea roars and beats the
land, the winds blow, the leaves fall; we are young, we grow old; we
commit others to their graves, we see somewhere the little grassy mound
which shall conceal ourselves:--is not this a large enough primary school
for all and sundry; are not these sufficient and everlasting rudiments?
That so it is we all recognise. Given some original force or goodness of
nature, and out of even this primary school, and from the teaching of
these common rudiments, may there not come, do there not come, minds
worthy of mark--the shrewd, keen wit, the upright and robust judgment, the
disposition tender and true, the bold and honest man? And though, for
perfection, the books and the sciences must be superadded, yet do not the
rudiments persist in constant over-proportion and incessant compulsory
repetition through all the process of culture, and is not the great result
of culture itself a reaction on the rudiments? And so, without prejudice
to our foregone conclusion that mind is variable with knowledge, that
every new science or body of notions conquered for the world modifies the
world's mode of thinking and feeling, alters the cast and the working
trick of its reason and imagination, we can yet fall back, for historic
time at least, on the notion of a human mind so essentially permanent and
traditional that we cannot decide by mere chronology where we may justly
be fondest of it, and certainly cannot assume that its latest individual
specimens, with all their advantages, are necessarily the ablest, the
noblest, or the cleverest. In fact, however we may reconcile it with our
theories of vital evolution and progressive civilization, we all
instinctively agree in this style of sentiment. Shakespeare lived and
died, we may say, in the pre-scientific period; he lived and died in the
belief of the fixedness of our earth in space and the diurnal wheeling
round her of the ten spectacular spheres. Not the less was he Shakespeare;
and none of us dares to say that there is now in the world, or has
recently been, a more superb thinking apparatus of its order than his mind
was, a spiritual transparency of larger diameter, or vivid with grander
gleamings and pulses. Two hundred and fifty years, therefore, chock-full
though they are of new knowledges and discoveries, have not been a single
knife-edge of visible advance in the world's power of producing splendid
individuals; and, if we add two hundred and fifty to that, and again two
hundred and fifty, and four times two hundred and fifty more without
stopping, still we cannot discern that there has been a knife-edge of
advance in that particular. For at this last remove we are among the
Romans, and beyond them there lie the Greeks; and side by side with both,
and beyond both, are other Mediterranean Indo-Europeans, and, away in
Asia, clumps and masses of various Orientals. For ease of reference, let
us go no farther than the Greeks. Thinking apparatuses of first-rate grip!
mental transparencies of large diameter and tremulous with great powers
and pulses! What do we say to Homer, Plato, Æschylus, Sophocles,
Euripides, Aristophanes, Thucydides, Aristotle, Demosthenes, and the rest
of the great Hellenic cluster which these represent! True, their cosmology
was in a muddle (perhaps _ours_ is in a muddle too, for as little as we
think so); but somehow they contrived to be such that the world doubts to
this day whether, on the whole, at any time since, it has exhibited, in
such close grouping, such a constellation of spirits of the highest
magnitude. And the lesson enforced by this Greek instance may be enforced,
less blazingly perhaps, but still clearly, as by the light of scattered
stars, by instances from the whole course of historic time. Within that
range, despite the vicissitudes of the mode of human thought caused by
continued inquisitiveness and its results in new knowledges, despite the
change from age to age in mankind's very image of its own whereabouts in
space, and the extent of that whereabouts, and the complexity of the
entanglement in which it rolls, it is still true that you may probe at any
point with the sure expectation of finding at least _some_ minds as good
intrinsically, as strong, as noble, as valiant, as inventive, as any in
our own age of latest appearances and all the newest lights. I am aware,
of course, where the compensation may be sought. The philosophical
historian may contend that, though some minds of early ages have been as
able intrinsically as any minds of later ages, these later minds being
themselves the critics and judges, yet an enormous general progress may be
made out in the increased _number_ in the later ages of minds tolerably
able, in the heightening of the general level, in the more equable
diffusion of intelligence, in the gradual extension of freedom, and the
humanizing of manners and institutions. On that question I am not called
upon to enter now, nor is my opinion on it to be inferred from anything I
am now saying. I limit myself to the assertion that within historic time
we find what we are obliged to call an intrinsic co-equality of _some_
minds at various successive points and at long-separated intervals, and
that consequently, if the human race _is_ gradually acquiring a power of
producing individuals more able than their ablest predecessors, the rate
of its law in this respect is so slow that 2,500 years have not made the
advance appreciable. The assertion is limited; it is reconcilable, I
believe, with the most absolute and extreme doctrine of evolution; but it
seems to be both important and curious, inasmuch as it has not yet been
sufficiently attended to in any of the phrasings of that doctrine that
have been speculatively put forward. No doctrine is rightly phrased, I
would submit, when, if it were true according to that phrasing, it would
be man's highest duty to proceed as if it weren't.
History itself, the mere tradition and records of the human race, would
have authorized our assertion. Pericles, Epaminondas, Alexander the Great,
Hannibal, Julius Cæsar, Charlemagne: would not the authenticated tradition
of the lives and actions of those men, and others of their order, or of
other orders, prove that possible capacity of the individual mind has not,
for the last 2,500 years of our earth's history, been a mere affair of
chronological date? But it is Literature that reads us the lesson most
fully and convincingly. Some of those great men of action have left little
or no direct speech of themselves. They mingled their minds with the rage
of things around them; they worked, and strove, and died. But the books we
have from all periods, the poems, the songs, the treatises, the
pleadings--some of them from men great also in the world of action, but
most from men who only looked on, and thought, and tried to rule the
spirit, or to find how it might be ruled--these remain with us and can be
studied yet microscopically. If what the Historian wants to get at is the
mind of the time that interests him, or of the past generally, here it is
for him in no disguised form, but in actual specimens. Poems, treatises,
and the like, are actual transmitted _bits_ of the mind of the past;
every fragment of verse or prose from a former period preserves something
of the thought and sentiment of that period expressed by some one
belonging to it; the masterpieces of the world's literature are the
thought and feeling of successive generations expressed, in and for each
generation, by those who could express them best. What a purblind
perversity then it is for History, professing that its aim is to know the
mind or real life of the past, to be fumbling for that mind or life amid
old daggers, rusty iron caps and jingling jackets, and other such material
relics as the past has transmitted, or even groping for it, as ought to be
done most strictly, in statutes and charters and records, if all the while
those literary remains of the past are neglected from which the very thing
searched for stares us face to face!
* * * * *
There is a small corollary to our main proposition. It is that ages which
we are accustomed to regard as crude, barbarous, and uncivilized, may turn
out perhaps, on due investigation and a better construction of the
records, to have been not so crude and barbarous after all, but to have
contained a great deal of intrinsic humanity, interesting to us yet, and
capable, through all intervening time and difference, of folding itself
round our hearts. And here I will quit those great, but perhaps too
continually obtrusive, Greeks and Romans, and will take my examples, all
the homelier though they must be, from our own land and kindred.
The Fourteenth Century in our island was not what we should now hold up as
a model age, a soft age, an orderly age, an instructed age, a pleasant age
for a lady or gentleman that has been accustomed to modern ideas and
modern comforts to be transferred back into. It was the age of the three
first Edwards, Richard II., and Henry IV. in England, and of the Wallace
Interregnum, Bruce, David II., and the two first Stuarts in Scotland. Much
was done in it, as these names will suggest, that has come down as
picturesque story and stirring popular legend. It is an age, on that
account, in which schoolboys and other plain uncritical readers of both
nations revel with peculiar relish. Critical inquirers, too, and real
students of history, especially of late, have found it an age worth their
while, and have declared it full of important facts and powerful
characters. Not the less the inveterate impression among a large number of
persons of a rapid modern way of thinking is that all this interesting
vision of the England and Scotland of the fourteenth century is mere
poetical glamour or antiquarian make-believe, and that the real state of
affairs was one of mud, mindlessness, fighting and scramble generally, no
tea and no newspapers, but plenty of hanging, and murder almost _ad
libitum_. Now these are most wrong-headed persons, and they might be
beaten black and blue by sheer force of records. But out of kindliness one
may take a gentler method with them, and try to bring them right by
æsthetic suasion. It so chances, for example, that there are literary
remains of the fourteenth century, both English and Scottish, and that the
authors of the chief of these were Geoffrey Chaucer, the father of English
literature proper, and John Barbour, the father of the English literature
of North Britain. Let us take a few bits from Chaucer and Barbour.
Purposely, we shall take bits that may be already familiar.
Here is Chaucer's often-quoted description of the scholar, or typical
student of Oxford University, from the Prologue to his _Canterbury
Tales_:--
A Clerk there was of Oxenford also,
That unto logic haddè long ygo,
As leanè was his horse as is a rake,
And _he_ was not right fat, I undertake;
But lookèd hollow, and thereto soberly.
Full threadbare was his overest courtepy;
For he had getten him yet no benefice,
Ne was so worldly for to have office;
For him was liefer have at his bed's head
A twenty books, clothèd in black and red,
Of Aristotle and his philosophie
Than robès rich, or fiddle, or sautrie.
But, albe that he was a philosópher,
Yet had he but a little gold in coffer;
But all that he might of his friendès hent
On bookès and on learning he it spent,
And busily gan for the soulès pray
Of hem that gave him wherewith to scholay.
Of study took he most cure and most heed;
Not oe word spak he morè than was need;
And that was said in form and reverence,
And short and quick, and full of high sentence;
Souning in moral virtue was his speech,
And gladly would he learn, and gladly teach.
Or take an out-of-doors' scene from one of Chaucer's reputed minor poems.
It is a description of a grove or wood in spring, or early summer:--
In which were oakès great, straight as a line,
Under the which the grass, so fresh of hue,
Was newly sprung, and an eight foot or nine
Every tree well fro his fellow grew,
With branches broad, laden with leavès new,
That sprungen out agen the sunnè sheen,
Some very red, and some a glad light green.
Or, for a tidy scene indoors, take this from another poem:--
And, sooth to sayen, my chamber was
Full well depainted, and with glass
Were all the windows well yglazed
Full clear, and not an hole ycrased,
That to behold it was great joy;
For wholly all the story of Troy
Was in the glazing ywrought thus,
Of Hector and of King Priamus,
Of Achilles and of King Laomedon,
And eke of Medea and Jason,
Of Paris, Helen, and Lavine;
And all the walls with colours fine
Weren paint, both text and glose,
And all the Rómaunt of the Rose:
My windows weren shut each one,
And through the glass the sunnè shone
Upon my bed with brighte beams.
Or take these stanzas of weighty ethical sententiousness (usually printed
as Chaucer's, but whether his or not does not matter):--
Fly from the press, and dwell with soothfastness;
Suffice unto thy good, though it be small;
For hoard hath hate, and climbing tickleness,
Press hath envy, and weal is blent in all;
Savour no more than thee behovè shall;
Rede well thyself that other folk canst rede;
And truth shall thee deliver, it is no drede.
Painè thee not each crooked to redress
In trust of her that turneth as a ball.
Great rest standeth in little business;
Beware also to spurn against an awl;
Strive not as doth a crockè with a wall;
Deemè thyself that deemest others dead;
And truth shall thee deliver, it is no drede.
That thee is sent receive in buxomness;
The wrestling of this world asketh a fall;
Here is no home, here is but wilderness:
Forth, pilgrim! forth, beast, out of thy stall!
Look up on high, and thankè God of all:
Waivè thy lusts, and let thy ghost thee lead;
And truth shall thee deliver, it is no drede.
Or, finally, take a little bit of Chaucer's deep, keen slyness, when he is
speaking smilingly about himself and his own poetry. He has represented
himself as standing in the House or Temple of Fame, observing company
after company going up to the goddess, and petitioning for renown in the
world for what they have done. Some she grants what they ask, others she
dismisses crestfallen, and Chaucer thinks the _levée_ over:--
With that I gan about to wend,
For one that stood right at my back
Methought full goodly to me spak,
And said, "Friend, what is thy name?
Art _thou_ come hither to have fame?"
"Nay, forsoothè, friend," quoth I;
"I came not hither, grammercy,
For no such causè, by my head.
Sufficeth me, as I were dead,
That no wight have _my_ name in hand:
I wot myself best how I stand;
For what I dree or what I think
I will myselfè all it drink,
Certain for the morè part,
As farforth as I ken mine art!"
Chaucer ranks to this day as one of the very greatest and finest minds in
the entire literature of the English speech, and stands therefore on a
level far higher than can be assumed for his contemporary Barbour. But
Barbour was a most creditable old worthy too. Let us have a scrap or two
from his _Bruce_. Who does not know the famous passage which is the very
key-note of that poem? One is never tired of quoting it:--
Ah! freedom is a noble thing;
Freedom makes man to have liking:
Freedom all solace to man gives;
He lives at ease that freely lives.
A noble heart may have nane ease,
Ne ellys nought that may him please
Gif freedom faileth; for free liking
Is yearnit ower all other thing;
Nor he that aye has livit free
May not know weel the propertie,
The anger, ne the wretched doom,
That is couplit to foul thirldom;
But, gif he had essayit it,
Then all perquére he suld it wit,
And suld think freedom mair to prize
Than all the gold in the warld that is.
Or take the portrait of the good Sir James, called "The Black Douglas,"
the chief companion and adherent of Bruce, introduced near the beginning
of the poem, where he is described as a young man living moodily at St.
Andrews before the Bruce revolt:--
Ane weel great while there dwellit he:
All men loved him for his bountie;
For he was of full fair effere,
Wise, courteous, and debonair;
Large and lovand also was he,
And ower all thing loved loyauty.
Loyautie to love is gretumly;
Through loyautie men lives richtwisely;
With a virtue of loyautie
Ane man may yet sufficiand be;
And, but loyautie, may nane have prize,
Whether he be wicht or be he wise;
For, where _it_ failis, nae virtue
May be of prize, ne of value
To mak ane man sae good that he
May simply callit good man be.
He was in all his deedès leal;
For him dedeignit not to deal
With treachery ne with falsét.
His heart on high honóur was set,
And him contened in sic manére
That all him loved that war him near.
But he was not sae fair that we
Suld speak greatly of his beautíe.
In visage was he somedeal grey,
And had black hair, as I heard say;
But of his limbs he was well made,
With banès great and shoulders braid;
His body was well made leanlie,
As they that saw him said to me.
When he was blythe, he was lovely
And meek and sweet in company;
But wha in battle micht him see
All other countenance had he.
And in speech lispit he somedeal;
But that set him richt wonder weel.
To Good Hector of Troy micht he
In mony thingès likenit be.
Hector had black hair as he had,
And stark limbès and richt weel made,
And lispit also as did he,
And was fulfillit of loyautie,
And was courteous, and wise, and wicht.
My purpose in quoting these passages from Chaucer and Barbour will have
been anticipated. Let me, however, state it in brief. We hear sometimes in
these days of a certain science, or rather portion of a more general
science, which takes to itself the name of _Social Statics_, and
professes, under that name, to have for its business--I give the very
phrase of those who define it--the investigation of "possible social
simultaneities." That is to say, there may be a science of what can
possibly go along with what in any social state or stage; or, to put it
otherwise, any one fact or condition of a state of society being given,
there may be inferred from that fact or condition some of the other facts
and conditions that must necessarily have co-existed with it. Thus at
length perhaps, by continued inference, the whole state of an old society
might be imaged out, just as Cuvier, from the sight of one bone, could
infer with tolerable accuracy the general structure of the animal. Well,
will _Social Statics_ be so good as to take the foregoing passages, and
whirr out of them their "possible social simultaneities"? Were this done,
I should be surprised if the England and Scotland of the fourteenth
century were to turn out so very unlovely, so atrociously barbarian, after
all. These passages are actual transmitted bits of the English and
Scottish mind of that age, and surely the substance from which they are
extracts cannot have been so very coarse or bad. Where such sentiments
existed and were expressed, where the men that could express them lived
and were appreciated, the surrounding medium of thought, of institutions,
and of customs, must have been to correspond. There must have been truth,
and honour, and courtesy, and culture, round those men; there must have
been high heart, shrewd sense, delicate art, gentle behaviour, and, in one
part of the island at least, a luxuriant complexity of most subtle and
exquisite circumstance.
* * * * *
The conclusion which we have thus reached vindicates that mood of mind
towards the whole historical past which we find to have been actually the
mood of all the great masters of literature whenever they have ranged back
in the past for their themes. When Shakespeare writes of Richard II., who
lived two hundred years before his own time, does he not overleap those
two hundred years as a mere nothing, plunge in among Richard's Englishmen
as intrinsically not different from so many great Elizabethans, make them
talk and act as co-equals in whom Elizabethans could take an interest, and
even fill the mouth of the weak monarch himself with soliloquies of
philosophic melancholy and the kingliest verbal splendours? And so when
the same poet goes back into a still remoter antique, as in the council of
the Greek chiefs in his _Troilus and Cressida_. We speak of Shakespeare's
anachronisms in such cases. There they are certainly for the critic to
note; but they only serve to bring out more clearly his main principle in
his art--his sense or instinct, for all historic time, of a grand
over-matching synchronism. And, indeed, without something of this
instinct--this sense of an intrinsic traditional humanity persisting
through particular progressive variations, this belief in a co-equality of
at least some minds through all the succession of human ages in what we
call the historic period--what were the past of mankind to us much more
than a history of dogs or ruminants? Nay, and with that measure with which
we mete out to others, with the same measure shall it not be meted out to
ourselves? If to be dead is to be inferior, and if to be long dead is to
be despicable, to the generation in possession, shall not we who are in
possession now have passed into the state of inferiority to-morrow, with
all the other defunct beyond us, and will not a time come when some far
future generation will lord it on the earth, and _we_ shall lie deep, deep
down, among the strata of the despicable?
THE END.
LONDON; R. CLAY, SONS, AND TAYLOR, PRINTERS.
Footnotes:
[1] _Fraser's Magazine_, Dec. 1844.
[2] _British Quarterly Review_, November, 1852.--1. "Shakspeare and His
Times." By M. Guizot. 1852.--2. "Shakspeare's Dramatic Art; and his
Relation to Calderon and Goethe." Translated from the German of Dr.
Hermann Ulrici. 1846.--3. "Conversations of Goethe with Eckermann and
Soret." Translated from the German by John Oxenford. 2 vols. 1850.
[3] According to Mr. Lewes, in his Life of Goethe, it is a mistake to
fancy that Goethe was tall. He seemed taller than he really was.
[4] This saying of Steevens, though still repeated in books, has lost its
force with the public. The Lives of Shakespeare by Mr. Halliwell and Mr.
Charles Knight, written on such different principles, have effectually
dissipated the old impression. Mr. Knight, by his use of the principle of
synchronism, and his accumulation of picturesque details, in his Biography
of Shakespeare, has left the public without excuse, if they still believe
in Steevens.
[5] _North British Review_, February 1852:--"The Works of John Milton." 8
vols. London: Pickering. 1851.
[6] _British Quarterly Review_, July, 1854. The Annotated Edition of the
English Poets: Edited by Robert Bell. "Poetical Works of John Dryden." 3
vols. London. 1854.
[7] _British Quarterly Review_, October 1854.--1. "The English Humourists
of the Eighteenth Century." A Series of Lectures. By W. M. Thackeray.
London: 1853. 2. "The Life of Swift." By Sir Walter Scott. Edinburgh:
1848.
[8] _Macmillan's Magazine_, July 1871.
* * * * *
Transcriber's note:
Text in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_).
The following misprints have been corrected:
"entersprie" corrected to "enterprise" (page 20)
"ancy" corrected to "fancy" (page 66)
"extravagan s" corrected to "extravagances" (page 222)
"hpyotheses" corrected to "hypotheses" (page 292)
Other than the corrections listed above, inconsistencies in spelling and
hyphenation have been retained from the original.
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